Rulers Plotting: 5 Million Troop Invasion To Control Mid-East Oil?
Angry Delphi Workers Show Up Auto Billionaires
Profits First, Safety Last Rules the Coal Fields
a href="#Transit Strikers Collided with Rulers’ War Budget">"ransit Strikers Collided with Rulers’ War Budget
a href="#Auto Makers’ Rivalry Fires Thousands at Mexico Ford">"uto Makers’ Rivalry Fires Thousands at Mexico Ford
a href="#Hektoen Medical Workers’ Strike Defies Union Hacks">"ektoen Medical Workers’ Strike Defies Union Hacks
a href="#Could Transit Bosses’ Plans Be Any Clearer?">"ould Transit Bosses’ Plans Be Any Clearer?
- a href="#‘Greatest Threat To America’s World Role’? Medicare!">‘Gre"test Threat To America’s World Role’? Medicare!
a href="#Bankers Steal Workers’ Pensions to Make Profits, War">"ankers Steal Workers’ Pensions to Make Profits, War
a href="#Ideas in CHALLENGE Lead to Factory Workers’ Class Struggle">"deas in CHALLENGE Lead to Factory Workers’ Class Struggle
a href="#300 Anti-Racists Protest Fascist ‘Minutemen’">30" Anti-Racists Protest Fascist ‘Minutemen’
D.C. Winter Project Advances Communist Goals
Red Professors Fight for Communist Politics at Modern Languages Association Convention
El Salvador: Youth Take Lead At School for Red Politics
LETTERS
Capitalism Holds New Orleans by the Throat
Profiteering From Hurricane Victims
Murders of Miners Have Long History
Transit Workers in U.S. and Iran: Same Enemy, Same Fight
Evolution: A Materialist Breakthrough
Airport Workers Fight Anti-Immigrant Racism
- Dems just want to polish up Fed snooping
- Behind 'ethnic' wars is oil or mineral $$
- Spy bio shows US plots vs. worlds rebels
- China kills ‘wonders’ of barefoot-doctor days
- Texas Rev. says US has slid into fascism
- ‘Syriana’ Is Sugar-coated Poison
UNDER COMMUNISM: Collectivity Among Soviet Women and Men Combat Pilots in World War II (Part 3)
Rulers Plotting: 5 Million Troop Invasion To Control Mid-East Oil?
By resuming their nuclear program while vowing to "wipe Israel off the map," Iran’s capitalist ayatollahs have provoked a diplomatic crisis threatening expanded U.S.imperialism -led warfare in the Mid-East. U.S. rulers desperately want the UN Security Council to slap sanctions on the Iranian bosses but are unlikely to get the rulers of China to agree.
China’s bosses view Iran as a major energy source and thus a strategic ally. Iran holds one-tenth of the world’s oil and is the second largest natural gas producer. In late 2004, Beijing and Teheran signed a $100-billion oil and gas deal. Iran’s nuke move also suits energy-hungry China’s need to weaken U.S. influence in the Middle East.
Washington promises to pursue every diplomatic avenue before resorting to armed force against Iran. But it insists that force may ultimately become necessary. Senator John McCain warned, "The military option is the last option, but cannot be taken off of the table," because "there’s only one thing worse than the U.S. exercising the military option, that is, a nuclear-armed Iran." (CBS, 1/15/06)
McCain’s "option" involves U.S. or Israeli air strikes on Iranian nuclear plants. But even before such action, the impasse could spark intensified fighting in Iraq.
Iran’s Capitalist Mullahs ‘Principle Winner’ in Saddam Demise
In a Jan. 12 speech, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, said Iran’s Shiite theocracy had exploited the chaos and political vacuum in neighboring Iraq and had become the "principal winner" after the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime. "For most purposes, Iranians own the south," he said, referring to the oil-rich region where Shiites form an overwhelming majority. A harsh U.S. response to Teheran — sanctions or bombing raids — could cause pro-Iranian Shiites in Iraq to rebel against the U.S. presence there.
Should such a scenario cause Iraq to fall into anti-U.S. hands, the dominant wing of U.S. capitalists envisions a massive re-invasion of the entire Persian Gulf region. On Oct. 19, Col. Wilkerson spoke to an applauding audience at the liberal, Rockefeller- and Soros-funded New America Foundation think-tank. He said, "If we leave [Iraq] in a way that doesn’t leave something there we can trust, we will [have to] mobilize the nation, put five million men and women under arms and go back and take the Middle East within a decade."
Wilkerson noted that before Gulf War II, Powell had spoken of an all-out invasion targeting Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq that would have taken years to prepare. " We had a discussion in policy planning about actually mounting an operation to take the oilfields in the Middle East, internationalize them, put them under some sort of U.N. trusteeship and administer the revenues and the oil accordingly." But Bush & Co. pulled the trigger in April 2003, aiming the gun solely at Baghdad.
Niall Ferguson, a Harvard professor and frequent speaker at the Rockefeller-dominated Council on Foreign Relations, thinks the Iran standoff could prove to be "the origin of the next world war," eventually pitting the U.S. directly against China. He wrote an article in London’s Sunday Telegraph (1/15/06) from the viewpoint of a future historian. It began, "By the beginning of 2006, nearly all the combustible ingredients for a conflict — far bigger in its scale and scope than the wars of 1991 or 2003 — were in place."
Ferguson pretends to look back on an exchange of nuclear missiles between Iran and Israel in 2007. After that came "the subsequent spread of the conflict as Iraq's Shiite population overran the remaining American bases in their country and the Chinese threatened to intervene on the side of Teheran." The only way to avoid such a disaster, says Harvard’s Ferguson, is a pre-emptive U.S. strike against Iran.
Oil is Behind it All
U.S. ruler’s current predicament with Iran and the scarcity of available responses underscore a shift in military policy born of political weakness. From 1953 to 1979, the U.S. relied on its "twin pillars," Iran and Israel, to police its Mid-East oil empire. But ever since the U.S. has had to use its own troops.
The U.S. had installed the Shah of Iran in a CIA-backed coup and armed his regime to the teeth. But when the ayatollahs grabbed state power (and oil) for themselves, Jimmy Carter uttered his famous doctrine: Persian Gulf oil was a "vital interest" of the United States; the U.S. would counter any nation’s attempt to seize it with direct military action. Carter began, and Reagan continued, a huge U.S. naval build-up in the Gulf. Bush, Sr. sent 700,000 U.S. troops into Kuwait and Iraq. Clinton ordered the Air Force to bomb Iraq. Bush, Jr. invaded Iraq again. Now, with the old pillars threatening to annihilate each other, U.S. rulers are compelled to contemplate the mobilization of 5,000,000 soldiers.
The scenarios above may or may not come to pass. Nevertheless, the various nations’ rulers’ ruthless competition for oil’s "geopolitical leverage" make them plausible. We can’t predict specific events. But we can and must constantly point out that when imperialists prattle about diplomacy in public, behind the scenes they’re planning for war. Putting into practice the red politics in CHALLENGE is the answer to imperialist war.
Angry Delphi Workers Show Up Auto Billionaires
DETROIT, MI, Jan. 8 — Today about 500 workers from Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, Toledo, Kokomo and other cities, joined by 20 workers from Windsor, Ontario, demonstrated at the opening of the Detroit International Auto Show. Most were Delphi workers protesting the largest parts supplier’s attempts to cut wages and jobs by two-thirds. The rally also targeted plant closings and health care concessions at GM and Ford, and among Detroit City workers, who also participated.
In one sense, the rally had much in common with the victims of the recent West Virginia mine cave-in. These auto workers are caught in the economic cave-in of a rapidly changing world, poking around in the dark, desperately looking for a way out. The main reason they’re in the dark is because they share much of the political outlook of the UAW leadership. The latter did not even show up or organize anyone to attend, even though UAW headquarters at Solidarity House is just blocks away.
For one thing, there were more American flags than black workers, not a good sign. One young worker carried a sign that said, "Keep the Profits Here at Home." Another held a sign that read, "Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet," but Chevrolet was written in red Chinese characters.
These workers and others have bought the "big lie" that all the auto manufacturing jobs are leaving the U.S., mainly to China. This is the UAW’s argument, and on the surface it could appear that way. After all, GM just passed Volkswagen as the largest automaker in China and just tripled its investment in India. Meanwhile, its closing 12 plants, eliminating 30,000 jobs and ripping concessions out of the hides of active and retired workers here, while Toyota, Mercedes and Hyundai are growing.
But looks can be deceiving. Last year the U.S. market sold 16.9 million cars and trucks produced by 1.1 million autoworkers, which means there are about as many U.S. autoworkers as there were 30 years ago, producing about the same number of cars. But they aren’t mainly Ford and GM workers anymore. GM and Ford and are losing market share and the UAW its membership. GM’s share is the lowest since the 1920’s, and the UAW has failed to organize one transplant from Asia or Europe. The parts suppliers are now more than 50% non-union.
As for the GM and Ford jobs in Asia, they didn’t exist before, because there was no market there. All the patriotic "Buy American — Save American Jobs" talk has left the UAW leadership and those that swallow its line, defenseless in a world where cars are produced everywhere, by many players, and the potential markets of China and India draw factories like giant magnets.
This struggle in auto reflects the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry shaping events in the world. Nationalism, which has never advanced the revolutionary communist movement, is more destructive today than ever. This situation cries out for a mass PLP, from Detroit to Cuautitlan to Beijing, based among industrial workers, and on the principle, "Workers of the World, Unite!" That’s the light that will lead workers out of the darkness and to power. Slowly but surely, with patience and a sense of urgency, that process is underway.
Profits First, Safety Last Rules the Coal Fields
The death of twelve miners in the Sago Mine was no "accident." It was the predictable result of billionaire capitalist Wilbur Ross’s cut-it-to-the-bone-and-milk-it-for-all-its-worth management.
The latter is symptomatic of how the U.S. ruling class must attack workers in a period when its need to control oil supplies drives it into imperialist wars in the Middle East, killing tens of thousands of Iraqi workers and U.S. GI’s while sending miners here to an early grave.
Under capitalism’s profit system, even well-run mines are frightening places. The average Appalachian mine seam is less than five feet high. Some barely reach 20 inches!
Generally, coal mines have aged safety equipment and profit from lax enforcement of feeble federal and state "safety" rules. "Almost every…piece of safety equipment is nearly identical to those used more than 20 years ago." (NY Times, 1/10/06). Had the Sago miners had hand-held radios, they could have been directed safely out of the mine, instead of turning away from the exit because they believed their escape path was blocked — which it was not. Some miners say they must accept unsafe working conditions or become jobless.
Miners die instantly from roof falls, electrocutions and explosions, as well as from black lung disease, which still slowly kills 1,000 miners annually. The technology to prevent it has been available for 100 years, but Bruce Watzman, VP of the bosses’ National Mining Association arrogantly remarked: "We’re not in the self-rescuer manufacturing business." (NY Times, 1/10/06)
Record Of The Sago Mine
Horizon Natural Resources (HNR) had owned several mines, including Sago. With HNR in bankruptcy, in September 2004 a federal bankruptcy judge allowed it to terminate its union contract with the United Mine Workers. Ross’s International Coal Group (ICG) took over the mine last November. (An ICG member had been on Horizon’s Board of Directors.)
An-eleven week safety review of the Sago Mine, ending 12/22/05, revealed 46 violations of federal health and safety rules, including failures to safeguard against roof falls and to control methane. With fines set at $250 per violation, fines were cheaper than compliance; blood was part of the bottom-line equation.
Ross makes his millions by finding bankrupt industries where workers’ benefits like health coverage and pensions can be shed via bankruptcy courts. Before concentrating on coal, Ross made untold millions off the backs of steel workers. His ISG bought Bethlehem and LTV Steel and was able to lower wage scales and dump health and pension costs. He made deals with the steel workers’ union to stay open, or reopen mills, based on this cheaper labor.
Yet Bruce Raynor (of the UNITE-HERE union and the "Change to Win Coalition") says, "I really think the future of domestic manufacturing is people like Wilbur Ross." (NY Magazine)
Murderous conditions will exist in the mines and elsewhere as long as capitalist society exists. Loss of pensions, health coverage and union pay rates are sweeping the U.S. We don’t need a stinking system that forces us to choose between job safety and a job, that won’t provide decent health care or a secure retirement after lifelong work. Ultimately, only a worker-run communist society is the answer.
a name="Transit Strikers Collided with Rulers’ War Budget">">"ransit Strikers Collided with Rulers’ War Budget
NEW YORK CITY. Jan. 18 — "We did not strike to give more and get less, but that’s what happened," transit worker Richard Watson told the NY Times (1/10) after a meeting called by union president Roger Toussaint to urge workers to accept what amounts to a wage-cut contract agreed to by him and the MTA bosses. There is a lot of anger among NYC’s 33,000 rank-and-file transit workers who are voting on this agreement that ended the militant 3-day strike which shut down the world’s largest transit system.
The proposed 10.5% wage "increase" over 37 months is more than wiped out by the introduction of health care payments, fines of 6-day’s wages and an expected 3.5%-per-year rise in inflation (10.5% over three years).
The fact that the workers defied the anti-strike Taylor Law and refused to sacrifice for the bosses’ war budget turned the strike into a mass political anti-racist struggle — something missing for many years in the U.S.
This defiance of the rulers’ state power scared the bosses, particularly in this age of endless wars and a police state. Once workers start thinking — and acting — against the bosses’ government, they become more open to the communist idea of fighting beyond reforms and for workers’ power. Our Party’s ideas were welcomed by the strikers; thousands of communist leaflets and CHALLENGES were distributed during the strike.
As one worker told a PL’er at a Manhattan bus depot picket line, "The bosses are the real criminals. Look what they did to the Enron, Northwest and GM workers. They cut our wages and steal our benefits and then call us ‘thugs’ for fighting back. Workers are never safe."
Precisely. No matter how hard workers fight within the limits of capitalism — for reform gains — "workers are never safe" from the bosses’ attacks to take away any gains.
This strike was even more significant occurring as it did during a murderous imperialist war which could cost over a trillion dollars, (see page 4) money which comes from the cutbacks in pensions, wages and health care.
Finally, this strike was forced by an angry, militant rank and file which is predominantly black and Latin, workers who have suffered — and fought against — racism their entire lives. Another reason the bosses are ready to heap lies of "thuggery" and "selfishness" on the strikers: the rulers fear the leadership that black and Latin workers can give to the entire working class — polls indicated 75% of the city’s black workers backed the strikers. The rulers want to split white workers from uniting behind that kind of militant leadership.
After ending the strike with a lousy projected settlement, Toussaint is pushing the rank and file to accept it. Toussaint doesn’t act this way because he fears jail or fines (although that might be a factor). He plays this accommodating, sellout role — as do all the city’s union misleaders who urged him to call off the strike — mainly because he and they defend the capitalist system that is stacked against the working class.
We must support the workers if they do reject this sellout. But most important, workers must realize that as long as the bosses hold state power and control the courts, cops and media, we won’t be free from their racist system of wage slavery. Building a mass communist leadership among workers and fighting for a new society without bosses is the only way out of this dark endless tunnel. Putting into practice the red politcs in CHALLENGE is the answer to imperialist war.
a name="Auto Makers’ Rivalry Fires Thousands at Mexico Ford">">"uto Makers’ Rivalry Fires Thousands at Mexico Ford
CUAUTITLAN, MEXICO — Recently current and laid-off Ford workers met with PLP members here. We remembered previous struggles we waged with whistles and yells; we opposed Ford’s attempts to get us to support their production plans that would mean more layoffs and increased workloads. One worker recalled disagreeing with us then, believing that Ford’s plans would bring more jobs.
Now he sees we were right. The company’s plans made more workers jobless, and subjected those remaining to huge workloads. He said workloads and hours are so difficult that sometimes he wants to quit, even though jobs are scarce.
These workers, and many others, know that the auto industry is in a worldwide crisis and that the only way Ford can survive is by exploiting workers to the maximum. They also understand that unemployment and exploitation are increasing as Ford, Volkswagen, GM, Nissan, Toyota and all the world’s auto companies fight for markets, resources and cheap labor, from North America to China.
"The most important thing is our people" — that’s always been Ford’s hypocritical cry, but the only thing these bosses and all capitalists really care about is maximizing profits. That’s the essence of capitalism and is evident in the countless arbitrary technical shutdowns and the layoffs of thousands of workers. In 1990 there were almost 7,000 Ford workers at the Cuautitlan plant. Today about 500 remain, working under increasingly brutal workloads with less benefits.
Recently Ford announced it was closing six plants in North America, including the bus assembly plant here, eliminating 30,000 jobs in all. This is the result of fierce international competition, especially from Asian rivals like Toyota, which is grabbing a large market share from GM and Ford in the rich North American market. GM, still the world’s largest auto company, is closing 12 plants and also eliminating 30,000 jobs.
Ford’s new management reorganization will cut another 4,000 salaried jobs. The auto bosses’ competition for market share is sharpening. To stay in the race, Ford must convince workers to support its production changes. The bosses know the only way to survive is to super-exploit the workers, here and worldwide. Supporting the bosses’ production plans won’t guarantee our jobs. Even workers who were company favorites also lost their jobs.
We can’t expect the sellouts who run the union to defend us, since they always defend Ford. In the long run, the bosses will resolve their crisis of overproduction and sharpening competition through war, using racism as their main weapon.
As long as capitalism exists, our lives will be subject to the decisions of the bosses and of their competition for maximum profits. That’s why the working class needs to organize in a mass international PLP.
We plan to spread CHALLENGE to more workers here. This way, we can show how economic crises and the bosses’ fascism expose their system, which will build revolutionary communist consciousness among workers. We must destroy this system of exploitation and build a communist society which eliminates wages, bosses, racism, sexism, nationalism and the crisis of overproduction. "Long Live Communism!"
a name="Hektoen Medical Workers’ Strike Defies Union Hacks">">"ektoen Medical Workers’ Strike Defies Union Hacks
CHICAGO, IL Jan. 11 — Today about 120 Hektoen workers took part in a one-day strike at the CORE Center, across the street from Stroger Cook County Hospital. About 30 County workers, also in contract negotiations, joined the picket lines on their lunch break.
The Hektoen strike is a continuation of what could be the start of something big. It follows on the heels of the three-day NYC transit walkout, where 34,000 black, Latin and white workers waged an illegal strike against attacks on their pensions and health care. It continues a mini-strike wave at Lockheed, Boeing, Northwest Airline mechanics and others. It follows a demonstration of almost 500 GM-Delphi workers at the opening of the Detroit Auto Show, and could set the stage for a bigger strike of County and Hektoen workers together.
More workers are in a fighting mood as a result of the deteriorating oil war in Iraq, the mass racist terror that is following Hurricane Katrina and the endless attacks on health care, pensions, wages and jobs. Hektoen workers are striking against racist budget cuts, aimed mainly at the patients they serve. They’re refusing to accept a war contract that attacks their own health care while they’re on the front lines of the fight against HIV/AIDS and TB, diseases that thrive on racism and capitalist poverty. Hektoen is funded mainly by CDC (Center for Disease Control) grants which are being diverted away from public health to Homeland Security bio-terrorism.
To reach this one-day strike, Hektoen workers overwhelmingly rejected a tentative agreement between SEIU Local 20 and the bosses and then voted almost unanimously to authorize a strike. The bosses imposed the rejected contract, and the union leadership has thrown obstacles in the workers’ path every step of the way.
The union gave Hektoen a 10-day strike notice, so they could rearrange their clinic appointments. The notice had a typographical error, dated January 2005 instead of 2006, so two days before the strike management told workers the strike was "unauthorized." The union leaders then informed the strike committee that, "We don’t have the laws on our side; there’s the possibility that workers might be fired."
The workers shot back, "We’re not asking for permission. The strike is on!"
The day before, the local president tried to convince us to "reschedule" the strike, but we weren’t buying it. The real leadership has emerged from the workplace, not the downtown union offices.
The strike was very spirited. Every picketer received a PLP leaflet and many got CHALLENGE. The union has no plan to get the bosses back to table. They’re hoping we’ll draw the wrong conclusions and say, "See, there’s nothing more we can do," and accept the imposed contract. We see it as the beginning of a long struggle that can escalate to a strike of County and Hektoen workers together against racist budget cuts that are financing the $6 billion-a-month war in Iraq. We want a world where our patients will not have to beg for health care and the workers that serve them will not fear getting sick because treatment is unaffordable.
In order to reach that point, we need more workers reading and distributing CHALLENGE, more attending PLP events and participating in other struggles. We have a long road ahead of us, but we’re on the right track.
a name="Could Transit Bosses’ Plans Be Any Clearer?">">"ould Transit Bosses’ Plans Be Any Clearer?
"This is from the transit company website. Take a look." A worker held out a copy of a Board of Directors’ agenda item authorizing over half a million dollars for a labor consultant to help the transit bosses negotiate three contracts expiring this summer. Everyone understood the company wasn’t spending the money to increase our wages and benefits. So much for the illusion that management would leave us alone, after provoking strikes over pensions and medical in the last two contracts.
Raising Communist Ideas
A week later many workers watched the New York City strike. One asked, "This is going to affect us, isn’t it?" Several workers wanted to meet to discuss the latest developments in southern California and on the East Coast.
At previous meetings we’ve tried to connect the sacrifices forced on workers at United Airlines, GM and Delphi to the competition U.S. companies face globally, as well as discussing the war budget. With the holidays approaching a meeting was set up right after Christmas lunch.
The bus was over half full as 20 workers discussed the gutsy transit workers who broke the anti-strike law in New York. A friend brought copies of a PLP flier supporting the strikers. We put one inside CHALLENGE for everyone on the bus.
We discussed the serious situation we’re in. "If the company is in trouble, maybe we should ask for nothing in the new contract and just try to hold on to what we’ve got," a concerned worker commented. "At least until the war is over and the economic picture improves." This man has a newborn son. Someone asked, "How old do you think your baby boy might be by the time things will have turned around for the USA?"
The Party’s aim is to make crystal clear to workers the depths to which U.S. bosses are preparing to drive us to maintain their world dominance. They must wage war wherever their profit interests are threatened — especially in the Middle East — for many years to come. The profit system makes imperialist war inevitable. We aim to help mobilize workers to fight these coming attacks with a clear view of the stakes in this fight
a name="‘Greatest Threat To America’s World Role’? Medicare!"></a>"Greatest Threat To America’s World Role’? Medicare!
And how will imperialism’s "vast military deployments" be paid for? U.S. rulers and their liberal politicians want "American taxpayers to keep paying for it…Either social security and Medicare shrink or the Pentagon shrinks." (Foreign Affairs column, New York Times, 1/4/06) Could the big bosses spell out their war plans any more clearly?
A system planning to sacrifice so many for the profit of so few should not continue to exist. Only the working class armed with communist ideas in the factories, in mass transit that carries millions to their jobs in the large cities and revolutionary soldiers in the military can take power from this murderous class of capitalist billionaires. We can organize a revolution. From the black smoke and blood of their oil wars we can build a communist world.
Workers will take communist ideas as their own by steadily increasing the number of CHALLENGE networks of readers and sellers, and using these ideas to sharpen the class and political struggle against the union misleaders. With transit workers asking for more meetings and more workers reading CHALLENGE, the way forward is becoming clearer.
a name="Bankers Steal Workers’ Pensions to Make Profits, War">">"ankers Steal Workers’ Pensions to Make Profits, War
Whether it is an Enron-type crisis or a New York City transit strik, we’re now forced to look at pension systems we once thought only experts could analyze.
Two things stand out immediately. First, if wealth is power, these pension funds show the working class might very well be sitting atop a Mount Everest of potential power. But in reality it shows workers having as much power as a snowball in hell. The contrast couldn’t be sharper.
In "Banking on Death," Robin Blackburn writes, "There are thousands of pension funds worth over $1billion [each], with dozens in the United States worth more than Bill Gates." Pension funds account for over half the value of the world’s stock markets — some $13 trillion! Never mind having "a voice at the table," as the AFL-CIO keeps begging for; with wealth like this we should control the table!
In reality, of course, we control next to nothing. Investment bankers and brokers (capitalists or their close friends) manage our funds and, through a battery of legalities, strip the policyholder of any influence.
In the 1980’s and early ’90’s, for example, these funds were used to finance junk bonds. A type of speculator, known as a corporate raider, would buy a profitable company. The aim wasn’t to run the company but to cash in by selling off its operations as quickly as possible. Since these speculators lacked sufficient funds to buy these companies outright, they borrowed huge sums from other (institutional) investors. Pension funds were a ready source.
Often the end result of these corporate raids would be that a big company is broken up into smaller franchises. With each sale, the junk bondsman would skim off a profit and repay part of the loan from the institutional investor. Each new owner of a smaller franchise, of course, would look for a new labor contract, leading to worker layoffs, cuts in wages and benefits, speed-up and so on. The Greyhound strike of the 1980’s grew from one of these junk-bond raids. In short, pension funds were mobilized to impoverish the working class.
This money could have been used to build subsidized housing, recreation centers, or health clinics for retired members. Nothing says they must be invested in the stock market. Nothing, that is, except the relative absence of communist ideas, which point out how workers should develop political goals in our own interests. The fact is the bosses’ legal system makes sure vast sums of money are never put at the disposal of the working class. In part, that's why the rulers worry so much over who sits on the Supreme Court.
How these funds are used has now become more acute. Today, pensions have surfaced as an issue because U.S. capitalism must pay for a costly series of imperialist wars. The main capitalist grouping can no longer afford to put these vast sums at the disposal of just any capitalist or corporate raider. Today, they must be channeled into the government’s war coffers.
Yesterday, our pension funds — controlled by capitalists — were used to finance the impoverishment of millions. Now they will be used to finance the murder of millions. Some might say that even our retirement plans make a powerful argument for communist revolution.
Pensions And The Trillion-Dollar War
The demand by the NYC transit bosses to make pensions more costly for the workers highlighted the claim nationally by governments and private employers that pension costs are skyrocketing. They want to cut back, eliminate or replace workers’ pensions with 401(k)s — which absolve employers from committing to defined future pension payouts. NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg wants to cut or make pensions more costly for all city workers.
But who created this "crisis"?
In 1981 pension payments claimed 24% of NYC’s budget. In 2000, it had sunk to ONE percent! Huge returns from pension fund investments in a booming stock market led many local and state governments and private bosses to stop contributing to pension funds.
At the height of the boom, NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani diverted more than $800 million from the pension system to finance tax cuts. But even as City Hall stopped paying, workers still were required to fork over at least 3% of their wages into the pension system.
Starting in 2003, when the City increased its pension contributions, it still amounted to only 8% of the total budget, one-third of the 1981 percentage.
So when the bosses cry "broke" on pensions, they’re hiding the fact that they didn’t pay anywhere near their share for nearly two decades. Now they expect the workers to make up the difference for this robbery, or take a huge cut in their pensions for which they worked all their lives on promises they were living the "American Dream."
Yes, nationally there’s a big pension problem, created by a system dependent on the boom-and-bust stock market for income and the bosses’ commitment to financing a trillion-dollar expense for imperialist war. Conservative columnist Paul Craig Robert questioned the competency of the White House "when a $70 billion war [in Iraq] became a $2 trillion war." These figures are based on a recent study by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia U.) and Linda Bilmes (Harvard).
Where will they get these trillions? Even as they borrow hundreds of billions (incurring huge interest to bondholders for those loans), to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and balance the budget, look out private and public pensions, Social Security, Medicare and workers’ wages! Capitalism always takes its profits and war costs out of workers’ hides.
a name="Ideas in CHALLENGE Lead to Factory Workers’ Class Struggle">">"deas in CHALLENGE Lead to Factory Workers’ Class Struggle
About 40 workers in my factory, angry over the amount of "mandatory" overtime forced on us, confronted our shop manager. When 40 workers stop production for an hour, the boss realizes we’re not producing profits. Our immediate goal was met: the hours were reduced, temporarily. But the important lesson here is that profits are the bosses’ only concern. When the workers collectively stood together in solidarity, the bosses had to listen.
One worker close to me said, "This is all because of you." This was good in the sense that when the bosses attack, workers know to turn to the ideas of PL. But I pointed out there was one woman in particular who really took charge and made sure that everyone responded. She realized it takes more than one person to pull off something like this. Even one of the bosses’ snitches told me he had never seen this before.
My club’s main focus has been increasing ties and winning more CHALLENGE readers among industrial workers, with the goal of building unity around communist ideas. Since we average 60 hours per week at work, not a lot of people were easily able to find time to socialize with co-workers off the job. However, a group has begun to take shape, although development within the group is uneven.
One worker, Chris, was pretty quiet and didn’t seem to trust too many people. But after a few discussions we ate breakfast after work one morning, to hang out. Once outside the workplace it was easier to become better acquainted. We’ve now been to each other’s homes several times for dinner. He invited me to go camping with him, another co-worker, and a large family that does this annually.
While there we talked about the war, Katrina (which happened while we were camping), and about how children are raised under capitalism. This enabled me to introduce him to CHALLENGE. He didn’t snatch it right out of my hands, but he didn’t run away either.
After numerous discussions of the Party’s ideas since then, Chris gladly takes a copy every issue. Now I take him two copies because the last time I asked him about an article he said he hadn’t read it, adding, "My wife took it."
Since then, after many pot lucks on the job, picnics in the park and dinners with more workers, friendships have developed based on respect and trust. Thanks to these relationships and workers’ class anger, those 40 workers confronted the boss.
Chris and I were both facing the contradiction between the individual and the collective. My commitment to intensify my political work sharpened this contradiction, indicating that I hadn’t been making the Party primary.
Chris cynically viewed people as "lazy," which was why "they didn’t move up." He said if he was able to "move up on his own" it meant anyone could "if they weren’t so lazy." When I asked him how he reached his position, he told me how a co-worker stuck her neck out for him, talking to the head of that department, and still had to convince the boss to give him a shot.
It was easy to point out that he hadn’t gotten the position by himself. Then I asked him if he thought the shop could exist if everyone "moved up" to his position and no one was left to do the other jobs. This is one of many conversations that have led to him participating in more collective activities, such as the pot lucks and the picnics.
We both have a long way to go, but with time, practice and consistent evaluation we can build a bigger network of CHALLENGE readers/sellers/writers as a stepping stone to our bigger goal of recruiting to the Party and building for communist revolution. These practical experiences have convinced me of the need and the possibilities of increasing this CHALLENGE network.
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GLENDALE, CA., Jan. 7 — PLP members joined about 300 people to demonstrate against the racist Minutemen who were protesting a day laborers' center across the street from Home Depot here. Many laborers joined the action. The angry protestors confronted the Minutemen. They saw clearly how racist provocateur Joe Tuner would station himself amid a group of demonstrators as five or more police squad cars would pull up ready to arrest anyone who laid a hand on him. This led many (who we didn't know) to take up the chant, "The cops, the courts, the Minutemen, all are part of the bosses' plan."
This was the title of our PLP leaflet which detailed the role of the Minutemen in helping the rulers push for more "border security" as part of Homeland Security. In addition, coming immigration bills will be advanced as "helping" immigrants get on the "road to legalization" which, for many, will include joining the military. Over 100 demonstrators took CHALLENGE, including many of the day laborers. The crowd took up the class-conscious chants of "Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras "and "La clase obrera no tiene frontera." (Workers' and their Struggles Have No Borders.")
We also talked with many about the coming trial of two anti-racists facing a racist frame-up for protesting the speech of Minuteman leader Jim Gilchrist at a meeting of the infamous CCIR (California Coalition for Immigration Reform, initiator of Proposition 187 and racist attacks on immigrants for decades). At that one, known racist Hal Netkin ran his car into demonstrators and wasn't charged with any crime, while anti-racists face felonies for merely protesting.
Unionists, churchgoers, students and teachers are all raising money to help defend these anti-racists. (More next issue)
D.C. Winter Project Advances Communist Goals
WASHINGTON, D.C. — This area’s youth leadership led a Winter Project during semester break to develop ourselves through intense study and by spreading communist ideas. We wanted to counter the ruling-class ideological domination of our high schools and colleges by building the Party and strengthening our knowledge. We had to confront the contradiction between reform and revolutionary work: building a mass party capable of seizing state power, destroying its incorrigible institutions and keeping it communist.
The Metro Transit Struggle
Metro workers helped lead discussions about revolutionary ideas related to the NY transit strike. Armed with CHALLENGE and a flyer tying the NY strike to D.C., four of us spoke about communism to Metro workers at bus stops. We then rode the bus driven by a comrade who gave us a tour of his route, explaining gentrification, racism and police brutality while we distributed literature to welcoming riders. Our driver comrade remarked on how he could see everyone reading CHALLENGE in his rear view mirror, and said, "It’s beautiful. I wish you all could see what I see right now." One woman was so enthused by the paper that she said we need to get this information into her church. She gave us the name of her church and its pastor, and encouraged us to distribute literature there.
The Hampton Struggle and the MLA
Hampton University students told their story of repression by academic officials (see CHALLENGE, 1/4). As a result of a reform-versus-revolution discussion, they’re considering developing a paper distribution and discussion network in their dorms. The Winter Project also supported our comrades in the Modern Languages Association by agitating outside the convention, handing out 400 PL flyers specifically targeting the MLA issues, and selling 60 CHALLENGES.
Stalin and the Soviet Union
Some interested students requested a discussion of the Stalin-era USSR. Based on several readings, PLP’s position became much clearer. PLP rejected the cult of the individual decades ago. Our job is to advance communist theory and practice to the working class, not glorify some "great man." PL is often labeled "Stalinist" because we insist that anti-communist lies and distortions about the period when Stalin led the Soviet Union are vicious attempts by the ruling class and its intellectual lapdogs to keep workers oppressed by hiding their true history. We’re proud of this position! We defend the Stalin-era government for its many achievements, while criticizing its errors. The Stalin-era USSR developed under incredible pressure from the imperialist powers, a crucial fact that is often ignored in the ruling-class accounts of the "purges." In fact, these "purges" rid the communist government of collaborators and saboteurs, and helped make possible the defeat of Hitler, in sharp contrast with the "quislings" (traitors) roaming free in Western Europe, softening those countries for the Nazi conquest.
Membership In The Progressive Labor Party
Several students from the Project are seriously considering joining PLP. We argued that building a revolutionary communist party is the only thing that will permanently destroy capitalism. PL membership means agreeing in general with the Party’s analysis of the world and of revolutionary strategy, and agreeing to engage in struggle over the development of the line to better destroy capitalism; selling CHALLENGE-DESAFIO — the Party’s primary organ of communication and network-building; engaging in mass organizations while advancing PL’s ideas; donating money to help sustain the Party; and accepting and upholding democratic centralism, the means by which the party works.
We moved a number of young people closer to the Party, and removed some obstacles that hold them back from fully understanding and committing to our ideas, and to the only party with truly revolutionary goals, for a society of, by and for the working class!
Red Professors Fight for Communist Politics at Modern Languages Association Convention
PLP members of the Modern Languages Association (MLA) brought communist ideas to the group’s annual convention by fighting for and winning militant resolutions developed by the Radical Caucus, and by providing revolutionary Marxist analyses of literature and current educational policy in many of the sessions. The MLA is the world’s largest association of academics, bringing together English, Literature and Language college teachers and graduate students from around the world. One successful resolution committed the MLA to oppose the "Academic Bill of Rights" (a transparent right-wing assault on campus leftists led by the notorious David Horowitz) and to defend professors who oppose capitalism, exploitation and imperialism in their classes.
Over 10,000 professors, teachers, and graduate students attended this year’s December convention, mostly women presenting research findings and trying to get decent-paying, full-time jobs. Few attendees were black or Latin. The capitalist cutback attacks on higher education has meant fewer working-class students in college, more badly paid, part-time teaching jobs, super-exploited graduate student labor and harsher discipline against all teachers.
These real-life conditions have led most attendees to understand that liberal Democratic Party "answers" won’t change things, but they do not yet see the possibility of a radically different society, a communist society, led by the working class, in which racism, sexism, imperialist war and poverty would be abolished by ending exploitation. This was our special contribution to the conference.
PL members and friends sold CHALLENGE both inside and outside the convention, and discussed PLP’s more profound goals with colleagues. In the open debate and struggle over resolutions, PLP’ers rejected the classless slogan of "academic freedom" advanced by liberals, noting that the slogan, like "free speech," is often used by racists and anti-communists to cover up their building of fascist movements and their attacks on workers and communists. PLP believes that racism and fascism must be crushed in all forms, including suppressing the speech and writings of racists and fascists.
PLP’ers also argued that "the right to unionize" will get workers only so far since it accepts the limits of working within — and ultimately defending — capitalism. As long as the capitalists hold state power, than they can always (and do) turn around the reforms that workers may wrench from them. Instead, PLP’ers explained how the present attacks in the U.S. are endemic to capitalism, a part of the growing racist repression for which "fascism" is the only appropriate word, and that fundamental revolutionary change is needed for liberation.
While the MLA will never be a revolutionary organization, it is one vehicle of struggle against capitalist, anti-communist and racist ideas, a kind of "school for communism." The next step is to win more of our professor friends to take revolutionary ideas onto their campuses and into their classrooms to strengthen the fight against imperialism and war.
El Salvador: Youth Take Lead At School for Red Politics
EL SALVADOR — "It’s my first experience hearing what communism offers the working class," said one of the CHALLENGE readers who was meeting in a PLP-led discussion group. "The FMLN teaches you only how to paint signs and put up electoral propaganda."
"For the first time, I feel very good sharing my ideas with you about how I think work should be carried out under a communist system," said another comrade, a textile worker. "I’ve been around religious groups, the FMLN and in all of them I’ve only seen corruption and tricks for the workers."
"This is what the working class needs," said a young comrade who reviewed his experiences in an electoral party before joining PLP.
This group of comrades, mostly youth, met in the country’s most beautiful mountains to discuss three points: (1) An international report given by a Party leader; (2) Dialectical Materialism, led by a university student; and (3) writing for CHALLENGE, led by a comrade responsible for editing letters and articles for the paper.
Farm workers and city workers, teachers and university students all expressed satisfaction at being there. It was a festive day for all the youth from many cities. They listened to music, some hearing Bella Ciao and the Internationale for the first time. They asked to reproduce the CD’s in order to share them and listen to them in their clubs. Some brought guitars and sang protest songs from Latin American groups.
Those who had traveled far to get there were very enthusiastic, never tired or bored. There were serious moments — including criticism and self criticism — but also time to see a beautiful river.
In discussing the international report, one youth related the situation in the country to the Free Trade Agreement between El Salvador and the U.S. This sparked a broader discussion about the growing fight between the US, China and the European Union and how this affects El Salvador’s working class.
The comrade who led the discussion on dialectical materialism was well-prepared. Before the meeting he said, "I’m really worried because I’m still learning this material myself." A leader told him, "Prepare, but remember that the discussion is collective and you’ll be giving the introduction."
The presentation went very well, becoming more profound in relating dialectics to theory but also its application to everyone’s daily life. This shows how these young workers, farm workers and students can use dialectics to analyze reality. When one of the youngest participants was questioned about whether she understood the importance of contradictions and deciding which was the main one, she replied "For me, the main contradiction is the internal, since if I’m not convinced of the Party’s ideas, how can I convince others."
A CHALLENGE reader noted, "Here I’m seeing the importance of involving our children in political discussion. They learn more quickly and won’t be as easily contaminated by capitalism as we were."
The last point concerned the importance of writing for CHALLENGE, that it isn’t only informative, but is a tool for oganizing the Party.
At the end, everyone took responsibility for spreading communist ideas in their mass organizations, and in organizing more groups to read and distribute CHALLENGE.
LETTERS
Katrina: Face of U.S. Fascism
Recently, my partner and I spent three days in New Orleans, viewing the devastation first hand and working in the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Committee. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been uprooted in ways unimaginable. Four months after Katrina, 30,000 people are still living in temporary housing. FEMA is paying hotels $150 a night to house people, instead of seeking permanent housing solutions. On February 7, those subsidies will end and thousands will be out on the street.
While we were there, a Quality Inn hotel attempted to evict Katrina survivors. We were able to get the eviction postponed, through political and legal efforts. About 100 people, called on short notice, protested at the hotel and spoke with residents, many of whom had no place to go but the streets. The hotel wanted to kick people out; Mardi Gras season was approaching. Driving through the French Quarter, you’d never know about the devastation just a short distance away. Tourists in the Quarter partied as if the hurricane had never happened.
Meanwhile, in the lower 9th ward, where 14,000 mostly poor African-American people had lived, the whole area was uninhabitable. Block after block of rubble, stench from the accumulation of wastes, no electricity, gas, or water, and no FEMA trailers for people to use while rebuilding their homes.
One look at the levee shows why. The part of the levee alongside this neighborhood (and other poor neighborhoods) is less than two feet wide and made of non-reinforced cement. It was no match for the huge surges of water which easily broke through it. In contrast, the levee protecting the French Quarter is a steel-reinforced, half-block wide street with hotels and shopping centers atop it.
During a community meeting in the lower 9th ward, residents spoke passionately about the lack of responsiveness of all levels of government. The Army Corp of Engineers had begun bulldozing the area, making no attempt to contact owners of the houses they planned to demolish. They were stopped temporarily when about 100 people surrounded the bulldozers and threatened to make a "citizens arrest" based on a Temporary Restraining Order granted earlier.
In New Orleans, lives have been devastated by a capitalist system that cares more about profits and oil wars than people’s needs. Over 100,000 people were left in New Orleans to die, and they surely would have if the hurricane had hit directly. Still, thousands were killed by the breaking of the "sand-castle" levees by the water Katrina stirred up. Fascism is not too strong a word to describe the utter disregard the system is showing for the lives of our New Orleans brothers and sisters.
One of the most striking aspects of our visit was the hundreds of volunteers, from college students to retired people, from all over the continent. Between these volunteers and the thousands of black and white working-class New Orleanians angry at the government, there are many opportunities to organize and help out. All CHALLENGE readers should seriously consider either going to New Orleans, helping to support work in your city, or in other ways spreading the word and contributing to this important anti-racist fight.
The volunteers and New Orleans residents I met during our short stay were extremely open to PLP’s ideas about capitalism and communism. I think our Party should go to New Orleans with as many people and for as long as is feasible, given the other important work we’re doing. The face of U.S. fascism is clearest right now in New Orleans, and we need to be there to point workers and students in the direction of communist revolution as the only solution.
Midwest Reader
Capitalism Holds New Orleans by the Throat
Some may ask, "Why didn’t all of the people evacuate when told to do so?" We have been through so many hurricane threats that we didn’t know which one to take seriously. Besides that, our rulers told us that since the devastating Hurricane Betsy of 1965; our levee system was built in such a way to protect us from anything. They lied.
There were some people who could not leave New Orleans to flee to safety. I saw them taken out of their houses by helicopter a day after the storm. Some were dead.
Did we make a "choice" to stay? Yes. I did because my old 1986 Toyota would never have made it. I also based my "choice" on what our city rulers had told us over the years.
If we had mass transit out of the city, I would have left. But where were our city buses? All neatly parked in the bus yard…
The ultimate question is: Could this happen again? YES, YES, YES! If you fly over the New Orleans area you’ll see a city surrounded by water. But there’s money to be made by having a city like New Orleans. The tourist industry rakes in millions each year, especially off the backs of tens of thousands of black people who are kept poverty-stricken by this racist system. The greedy claw of capitalism holds New Orleans by the throat and won’t let go. It’ll be interesting to see if, and why, New Orleans will be rebuilt.
You’ll notice I now have a Houston address. I’m not going back to N.O. I will return when it’s safe (not now) and see if I can salvage anything out of my apartment. Stay there? No.
The greed also comes in the form of the New Orleans Energy Co. and the South Central Bell Telephone Co. They both sent me bills for services during the hurricane. I phoned them both and called them capitalist swine! They both have transferred my bill to a collection agency. I got a letter from one agency. I called and told a lady the whole truth about their bill. She seemed to understand that, at the moment, I have no means of support. But capitalism doesn’t know the word "compassion." They’re not sitting or swimming in water. Perhaps they should be!
Red Reader
P.S. — I’ve enclosed two recent pictures of the New Orleans that Mayor Ray Nagin wants us to return to. He’s come to Houston twice to ask us to return. I hit him with an egg on his bald head.
Profiteering From Hurricane Victims
The holiday season and last year’s devastating worldwide "natural disasters" have inspired the collective desire to help the working class’s suffering members to become stronger than ever. But the bosses are taking advantage of workers’ class instincts to help each other and are using volunteer service to eliminate the need for state aid. Their manipulation and exploitation is often difficult to detect. As a social service employee and PLP member, I’ve spent many hours leading many disgruntled workers in my organization to oppose such exploitative demands.
Following Hurricane Katrina, a non-profit organization — NCR — established a toll-free hotline number to place victims in new housing. NCR operates through private rental payments and funds from the Office on Housing and Urban Development to manage housing projects for low-income seniors in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Advertised on CNN, through FEMA and the Red Cross, the NCR hotline received much publicity for its "outstanding service to hurricane victims." Potential callers were informed that they would reach "trained housing specialists" to help them relocate and establish new and better lives.
But the truth about the NCR hotline is not so glamorous. To staff this housing hotline the organization mandates my fellow social service employees and me to drop our current caseloads of 50-100 low-income seniors to answer hotline calls. We weren’t trained as "housing specialists" and the company e-mail suggests we use internet resources such as Yahoo, Craigslist, and Santa-for-Seniors to meet the complicated needs of hurricane victims. In addition, the organization emphatically states that it’s "God’s mission" for the mostly part-time staff to work through evenings and weekends without pay. Super-exploitation at its finest!
I’ve struggled with many co-workers to view the Katrina disaster as a failure of the racist capitalist system, and to see that NCR’s opportunist hotline is a lose-lose situation for all workers: the social service workers are super-exploited, their current senior caseload needs are neglected and Hurricane Katrina victims are once again screwed by the system. The only winners are the NCR bosses whose profits increase as hotline publicity spreads nationwide to win them more housing contracts.
To date, the hotline has received 724 calls and has only placed 46 individuals in housing units, failure even by capitalist standards. This proves that workers don’t benefit from the opportunist activities of private enterprise. What the homeless Hurricane Katrina victims, along with all oppressed workers, do need is organized communist leadership. Without the drive for profits, workers could be given centralized training and resources to assist disaster victims efficiently and effectively. To achieve this, PLP continues to build a base among the working class at work, in the military, in school, at church and in our neighborhoods to fight for real revolutionary change.
New Jersey Comrade
Murders of Miners Have Long History
I’ve lived most of my life in the Western Pennsylvania coal fields, and some of my relatives and friends worked in the mines, so I’m very aware that this is a dangerous occupation.
The coal bosses’ murder of 12 miners in West Virginia last month (see CHALLENGE (1/19) is not just a recent development. Historically, U.S. coal bosses have murdered hundreds, if not thousands of miners over the years. In 1942, 63 miners were trapped in an explosion caused by a build-up of carbon monoxide or "black damp" at the Sonman mine near Portage, Pa., a stone’s throw from Johnstown. When rescue workers reached the miners, they were already dead. The former said many of the victims appeared to be sleeping. Some had written brief letters to their loved ones, one scrawling "I love you" on his lunch pail.
The Portage Historical Society made a video about this tragedy, titled "63 Men Down"; the actors were all local people. An investigation proved that the coal bosses were the culprits in this disaster. Initially they claimed they had checked for carbon monoxide gas, attempting to compel an employee to testify he had done so. But the latter refused and was fired.
Eventually the truth came out, provoking an outpouring of righteous anger at the mine owners. Today, there’s a statue of a miner on Portage’s Main Street to honor these workers.
But the capitalist USA is not the only country in which coal mining is a dangerous occupation. In capitalist China, 5,000 miners were killed in privately-owned mines last year. So miners in the U.S. and China have a common enemy: the capitalist system. Only a communist revolution that leads to a true workers’ state and workers’ power will ensure that coal mining, and all other jobs for that matter, will be safe. It’s clear that attempts to reform capitalism don’t cut the mustard.
Red Coal
Transit Workers in U.S. and Iran: Same Enemy, Same Fight
My co-workers and I have had many conversations about world events and workers’ struggles. Recently we discussed the NY transit strike and the fines and threats of jail for workers and their leaders; the attack on retirement benefits of public workers; the recent jailing of transit union officials in Tehran, Iran; and the subsequent strike of 9,000 bus drivers which appears to have won the release of those leaders.
Someone brought in an article detailing U.S. military and diplomatic preparations for attacking Iran in 2006, and it seems like transit workers in both countries are being attacked as part of those war preparations.
Though, I know little of Iran’s transit workers’ history, it appears that an attack on an independent organization like their union would be consistent with silencing potential opposition to the leading clergy’s regional ambitions. In the U.S., with all parts of society totally in debt, the curtailing of retirement benefits to the largest generation of retirees in history would be a way of paying for past, present and future wars.
I believe it was Mao who said that for the U.S., or any other country’s ruling class, to attack other countries it had first to attack the workers within its own borders even harder. Since what most workers want is a decent and stable life, and these ruling classes have just the opposite planned for us, this might be a good reason for workers in both countries to build solidarity and connections.
An Internationalist
Evolution: A Materialist Breakthrough
The recent column, "What Will Science Be Like Under Communism," [CHALLENGE. .01/04/06] acknowledges the importance of Darwin’s "powerful" and "confirmed" theory of evolution, including the central role of natural selection. However, the article might give the impression that PLP opposes this theory. For example, it says "[evolutionary theory] partly reflects the capitalist social relationships of Victorian England — a highly individualistic society, marked by workers competing for jobs subservient to capitalist exploiters competing for profits.…Not all relationships among members of a species or between members of different species are competitive.…In today’s capitalist society, similar false ideas are passed off as ‘objective science.’ "
Natural selection is a materialist explanation for evolutionary change among living organisms. Certain small changes in an animal (or plant) — changes that arise largely by chance — give that animal a reproductive advantage over similar animals without those changes. Reproductive means that the population of slightly-changed animals produces more offspring than the population of unchanged ones.
There can be several reasons for this advantage: the changed animals compete successfully for food with the unchanged animals; the changed animals are better able to fight off predators from another species; or the changed animals are better able to adapt to changes in the environment. Eventually the small changes become permanent in this animal population.
Natural selection is a biological process. Capitalist competition is a social process. The laws of capitalism — discovered by Marx and Engels — should not be confused with the laws of evolution. True, some writers following Herbert Spencer in the 19th century, promoted the pseudo-scientific "social Darwinist" idea that the competition and poverty of capitalism is "explained" by the laws of evolution. Darwin, however, didn’t deal with this, and the theory of evolution has nothing to do with how capitalism works.
We should be careful to distinguish the false application of evolutionary biology to social phenomena (such as capitalism, imperialism, racism or war) from the great materialist scientific breakthrough that was Darwin’s theory of evolution. This is especially important in the face of today’s right-wing religious attacks ("intelligent design") on evolutionary theory.
A Reader
CHALLENGE comments: Thanks to "A Reader" for pointing out the possible false impression about PLP’s approach towards Darwin’s theory. We agree with Karl Marx that Darwin’s contribution to natural science was one of the most important advances ever made. The above letter also explains natural selection very clearly. One additional point: all of us, Darwin included, are influenced by the society in which we live, and our ideas are, in part, shaped by the nature of our social relationships. All of us, both individually and collectively, must intensively wage the struggle to overcome capitalist ideas every day of our lives. Darwin reflected the capitalist ideas of Victorian England not in his explanation of evolution, or even of natural selection as the main mechanism of evolution, but rather in the incidental point he advanced about the "survival of the fittest," as the article "What Will Science Be Like Under Communism" explains.
Airport Workers Fight Anti-Immigrant Racism
Citizen and immigrant airport workers in SEIU passed a resolution condemning our governor's racist anti-immigrant campaign, begun a month ago to justify racist cutbacks. Utilizing false data from the Center for Immigration Education, a racist think-tank used by the fascist Minutemen, the governor wants all state and local police to ask Latino workers about their immigration status whenever they have contact with them.
This is fascism. The state government wants to criminalize a whole group of workers. Already the racist airport police have started asking Latino airport workers if they're legal residents. There is much post-9/11 anti-immigrant racism at the airport. With the Department of Homeland Security things could get worse.
Our union resolution not only calls the governor a racist, but supports recent anti-racist struggles from the Hurricane Katrina victims to the rebellions of African and Arab youth in France. Capitalist bosses need racism worldwide to make super-profits off of workers, be they African, Arab, Latino, or Asian. That's why PLP is building an international communist movement. Only communist revolution can eliminate racism. We're trying to increase the distribution of CHALLENGE among workers who support the resolution and spread the fight against anti-immigrant racism throughout the airport and into our communities. This is a racist attack on all workers.
Airport Red
REDEYE ON THE NEWS
Dems just want to polish up Fed snooping
The antiterrorism law…expanded the government’s investigative powers after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Administration and Congressional officials said they expected a compromise on the renewal bill in coming weeks between the White House and members of both parties….
Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who said he voted to block permanent renewal of the act in part because of the revelations about the spying program, said Tuesday that there was room for a deal.
"Look," Mr. Schumer said, "this is one that should be able to be worked out because the sides are relatively close." (NYT, 1/4)
Behind 'ethnic' wars is oil or mineral $$
Civil wars are much more likely in countries with oil or other mineral wealth….
The leaders of insurgent armies certainly magnify ethnic grievances as part of their grab for spoils, but sectarian hatred usually isn't sufficient to start civil wars. These wars are started by local elites that are essentially making an investment. They decide to commit violence now in the hopes of grabbing great wealth later. The people who do the killing might be whipped up by ethnic grievances, but the people who lead the civil wars are usually rational and greedy. (NYT, 12/18)
Spy bio shows US plots vs. worlds rebels
[CIA Agent] Edward Lansdale…during the cold war… was the Zelig of Washington’s global counterinsurgency effort, squelching a rebellion in the Philippines, plotting the overthrow of Fidel Castro in Cuba and blocking a potential Communist takeover of Vietnam in the first days of America’s involvement….
In 1950, Lansdale was sent to the Philippines to quell a growing Communist insurgency. There, he orchestrated what one journalist later called "a brilliantly led counterrevolution,"….
"Do what you did in the Philippines," Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told Lansdale before sending him to Vietnam in 1954. "Lansdale went to play an immense role in creating and maintaining the new regime headed by Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam…."
John Kennedy thought of Lansdale as America’s James Bond, and in the early 60’s Robert Kennedy put him in charge of Operation Mongoose, a fantastical $50 million plan to topple Castro….
Lansdale flickered on in the public consciousness after Vietnam, providing counsel to Oliver North in his effort to aid the contras in Nicaragua….
Some two decades after Lansdale’s death in 1987, the flawed assumptions that guided his thinking still thrive. Just ask the American pundits and policy makers fond of calling people like the former Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi the "George Washington of Iraq…." (NYT, 1/15)
China kills ‘wonders’ of barefoot-doctor days
China’s economic reforms have turned an almost uniformly poor nation into an increasingly prosperous one in the space of a mere generation. But the collapse of socialized medicine and staggering cost increases have opened a yawning gap between health care in the cities and the rural areas, where the former system of free clinics has disintegrated….
Until the beginning of the reform period in the early 1980’s, China’s socialized medical system, with "barefoot doctors" at its core, worked public health wonders.
From 1952 to 1982 infant mortality fell from 200 per 1,000 live births to 34, and life expectancy increased from about 35 years to 68, according to a recent study published by The New England Journal of Medicine. (NYT, 1/14)
Texas Rev. says US has slid into fascism
Listen to the Rev. Davison Loehr. A Vietnam veteran and graduate of Chicago Divinity School, Loehr is senior minister at the First Universalist Church in Austin. That’s Austin, Texas!
Loehr may be among the first ministers to use the f-word. In his new book, America, Fascism, + God: Sermons from a Heretical Preacher, he does not mince words. His Nov 7, 2004 sermon warns:
"You may wonder why anyone would use the word ‘fascism’ in a serious discussion of where America is today. …I don’t mean it as name-calling at all. I mean to persuade you that the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism, and that the necessary implications of this fact are rightly regarded as terrifying." (Dolph Honicker: Pythian Press)
‘Syriana’ Is Sugar-coated Poison
Syriana is an important film about the dangers to U.S. bosses of inter-imperialist rivalry in the fight to control world oil markets. This film is preparing the U.S. population for the next Mid-East war, and eventually for war with China, by raising the levels of education about, and the commitment to, U.S. domination of the Mid-East.
The movie is quite gripping. Scenes and plot lines cut in on each other in an almost random manner, supposedly representing the chaos and unpredictability characterizing the conflicts surrounding the control of Mid-East oil. A slogan of the movie, "Everything is connected," emphasizes that what happens on the ground (i.e., war or even assassinations) results from what happens in the courts, the state and the boardrooms. It requires work to follow the film, warming us up to the fact that it requires work to understand the situation in the Mid-East.
One of the main story lines is: a CIA agent (George Clooney), with decades of experience wreaking havoc in the Arab world, gets himself onto the bad side of two major U.S. oil firms seeking to make a merger work. Events unfold too rapidly for him to distance himself from past assignments and an evil coterie of oil executives, lobbyists, Arab royals and high-powered Washington lawyers who are positively ruthless in their individual quests for power and move — quite literally — to destroy him.
Perhaps the most compelling plot line surrounds Pakistani youth who are laid off by the evil new mega-corporation and are seduced by Islamic fundamentalists with shady ties to an oil-rich royal family. The stories of these workers are told with a surprising humanity that borders (gasp) on a lack of racism. That is saved for the Matt Damon character’s relationship with an "enlightened" royal (more below).
Additionally, the film has none of the overt cheerleading for the Democratic Party characterizing, for instance, Michael Moore’s work. The film paints the U.S. Establishment quite harshly. The movie’s strengths exist in order to inject its poisons into the viewer more effectively.
Poison #1: An oldy but goody — the myth of the "honorable cop." The viewer is left with a hope that a horribly corrupt system can be saved if only the "right people" are in charge. This time we wind up rooting for Clooney, the CIA terrorist who is betrayed by his bosses, and the Arab Prince who wants to bring Democratic reform but is in bed with the Chinese bosses.
Poison #2: Arabs are ruled by incompetent, wasteful and stupid royal families and deserve to be ruled by Westernized comprador [local pro-imperialist boss] elements that will bring "democracy," "market efficiency" and "stability" to the region while maintaining enough Muslim veneer and social spending to keep Bin Laden’s recruitment in check. In the vein of classic racist colonialist claptrap, dating back to Rudyard Kipling, it takes a brilliant white economic adviser (Matt Damon) to lead a Western-educated emir’s son by the hand along the road to liberal capitalist nirvana.
Poison #3: Perhaps the most difficult to capture, the film makes economics, not politics, the driving force behind the miserable world situation. Impossibly powerful economic forces drive even decent men to commit foul acts (Syriana’s Bennett Holliday) and leave the viewer feeling powerless. Resistance comes in flashes of anger and acts of terror but ring hollow with futility.
For all of its weaknesses, Syriana is an important film to discuss with workers and students. It can be a launching pad for PL’s politics; we need to emphasize the idea that the only way to destroy the society represented in the movie is by workers organizing together worldwide to destroy ALL the bosses internationally and create a world controlled by workers: communism.
(Next issue, a review of Jarrhead).
UNDER COMMUNISM: Collectivity Among Soviet Women and Men Combat Pilots in World War II (Part 3)
(Part 2 described the struggle for recognition of equality by women combat pilots. This final part describes solidarity between the women and men. Quotes from Anne Noggle’s "A Dance With Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II.")
"My navigator, Larisa Radchikova, and I completed the first mission, but on the second one we were caught by enemy searchlights after we had dropped our bombs. The anti-aircraft guns fired at us fiercely from all directions, and suddenly I felt our aircraft hit. My left foot slipped down into an empty space below me; the bottom of the cockpit had been shot away. I felt something hot streaming down my left arm and leg — I was wounded.
"An airwave lifted us, and I managed to glide back over the river to the neutral zone. The Germans could see us in that zone and went on firing at us. We got out of the cockpit with difficulty, because both of us were wounded. Large splinters were sticking out of my body. My navigator was wounded in the neck. We walked very slowly toward the hills where our troops were supposedly located.
"Larisa was wearing army high boots, and they were squeaking and making so much noise that I made her take them off so we would not be detected by the enemy. All the way from the landing place to the Soviet lines she walked through mud and impassable roads with nothing on her feet but socks. I was trying to take care of her and she was trying to take care of me!
"A sentry came out of the darkness and questioned us in a thick Kazakh accent. Larisa replied in shock ‘Are you Russian or German?’ And they were Russian! We were taken to their dugout. I had a piece of shrapnel sticking out of my arm, and one of the soldiers tried to pull [it] out with pliers, but he couldn’t.
"It was a number of hours before we arrived at a field hospital where severely wounded soldiers were waiting their turn to be operated on. I had lost much blood and was very weak. We sat on a bench awaiting our turn for surgery. As long as I live I’ll never forget mortally wounded soldiers whispering to us to jump the line and go ahead of them for surgery, because their own minutes of life were numbered."
Another woman recounted, "[During a mission] I saw our commander wounded in his chest and right arm. I couldn’t hold the control stick — it was beyond my physical capacity. I dashed to the flight engineer for help, but he was on the floor, bleeding from six bullet wounds. We touched the ground — our commander was barely conscious but still managed to control the plane. I can hardly account of how I energized myself to drag our commander out through the hatch, but I did.
"He wanted us to leave him because he was so badly wounded, and he had his pistol ready to shoot himself if the fascists came. I didn’t obey him and stayed with the wounded.
"Months later, this commander transferred me to Kiev toward the end of the war because our regiment was attacked again and again, and on each flight we returned with bullet holes in the fuselage. He made this decision because he felt that he bore responsibility for my life; he was saving me from a wild bullet. I sobbed for several days, not only because I was losing my crew but because I would never cross the front again."
This short series on Soviet women pilots during World War II has shown how the world’s first society to be controlled by the working class, led by its communist party, inspired women and men to fight for women’s equality. Old sexist habits inherited from capitalism die hard, and require constant struggle, by both men and women. We have seen how this hard-won equality of opportunity for women unified and benefited both women and men. We have seen how the fight to build a communist society can inspire selfless heroism from both.
Finally, we’ve seen how all this occurred despite the weaknesses in this first historic attempt to destroy capitalism — weaknesses such as maintaining the wage system and elitist inequalities, that eventually led the Soviet Union back to capitalism, rather than on to communism.
Today’s international working class has the benefit of their gigantic achievements and, through PLP’s contributions, an understanding of the weaknesses. PLP will fight to guarantee that communism will ultimately seize a permanent hold throughout the world.
In Memoriam: Mary Finney
Mary Finney, a long-time member of Progressive Labor Party in New Jersey, died on January 6. She succumbed to a series of debilitating illnesses, against which she had fought a hard battle for many years.
Mary first joined the Party in 1971. We met at a time when she was fighting the welfare department to get child care for her kids. She had been told she was "$5 over the eligibility limit." Mary had recently lost her first husband; he died in an accident while driving a truck. Party members joined Mary in confronting welfare officials about this unjust denial. Suddenly, Mary and her family were "eligible" after all.
Our student comrades looked up to Mary as a strong woman comrade and a real fighter. Once becoming active with the Party, she wanted to know everything about what made us tick. She learned quickly, growing from her experience as a black woman fighting racism and oppression, both of which she hated with a passion her entire life. She always had friends from many different backgrounds, men and women, young and older.
Some of her main qualities testify to why she became involved, then active. Mary had a wonderful heart. She wanted the best for other people, and she always put herself second to the needs of others. Once, when a Party member visited her in her small apartment, Mary had taken in three people newly arrived from Haiti. Without resources, they had knocked on her door. Mary let them spend the night.
Mary was always a hard worker, holding many different jobs in her life, from factories like Arts Metal in Newark to her work as a home health aide in Bergen County. She worked until she was too sick to continue.
As was said at her funeral, Mary wanted a better world for every worker on earth. She knew it would take a decisive revolutionary struggle by millions of people to achieve it. She tried to stay in that struggle herself, before the pressures of life took her away from it.
Like many working-class families in Newark, Mary was forced to shuttle her seven children and belongings to a series of apartments. She was always fighting for Section 8 housing, which she acquired only after becoming disabled.
Despite all the stresses confronting her, Mary never, ever lost sight of the goal of communism. Towards the end of her life, she rededicated herself to that struggle. One of her last political acts was to attend a May Day celebration in New York City. Finally, Mary was victimized by the oppressive system she fought so hard to change.
No one should have had to go through the hard times and suffering that Mary experienced, especially toward the end of her life. And when we achieve the world for which Mary and so many others like her have fought, no one will.
(Ed. Note: Much of the above eulogy was delivered at Mary’s funeral service, attended by 250 people at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Newark, NJ.)
- Workers Refuse to Sacrifice for Imperialist War:
TRANSIT STRIKE SHOWS NEED TO BREAK BOSSES' LAWS - Bosses' State Power Cuts Wages, Pensions, Health Benefits
- BANKS ARE THE BIG WINNERS; TRANSIT WORKERS GET WAGE-CUT
- NY Union Hacks on Bosses' Side in Transit Strike
- `The Bosses are the Real Criminals . . .
- COAL BOSSES MURDER 12 MINERS
- U.S., China Imperialists Headed For Showdown
- VW Wildcatters March Against Union Hacks
- UAW Sellouts Jam Thru Suspect Vote Over Ford Give-backs
- No Matter Who `Administers' the Market, It's Still Capitalism
- Frame-up of Anti-Racist Fighters Defeated
- Anti-Racist Legal Strategy
- D.C. Winter Project Combines Marxist Study with Pro-Worker Action
- Challenging the Pro-War Dictatorship in Public Health
- Under Communism
Soviet Women Fighter Pilots' Struggle for Equality - Banks, Loans Sharks Make War on GI's
- `Monk' Builds Sympathy for Cops
- LETTERS
- Class Consciousness Emerges on Picket Line
- Barcelona Bus Drivers Greet NYC Strikers
- Strikers Cheer Student, Teacher Support
- Transit Fight Helps Teachers
- Bosses' Media Unite to Attack Strikers
- U.S. Bosses Aim to Slaughter Pensions
- CHALLENGE comments:
- Hospital Workers Back Strikers
- Youth Stand on Workers' Side
- Morales' Socialism Protects Bosses
- Using CHALLENGE to Fight Factory Fascism
- RED EYE ON THE NEWS
Workers Refuse to Sacrifice for Imperialist War:
TRANSIT STRIKE SHOWS NEED TO BREAK BOSSES' LAWS
NEW YORK CITY, Jan. 2 -- For three days, 33,000 black, Latin and white, men and women transit workers, members of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union (TWU), shut down the largest mass transit system in the U.S. These workers move 7,000,000 riders 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It is a dangerous job with one of the highest injury rates in the U.S., prompting many other other workers to appreciate the transit workers' efforts and to agree they deserve a decent contract and retirement rights at 55.
The strike showed that workers are not willing to pay for the hundreds of billions the bosses need for their endless imperialist wars. The ruling class must allocate as much money as possible to its war machine, with little left over to pay for workers' wages, pensions or health care. Locked in fierce global competition with their imperialist rivals, the bosses must drive down the wages and working conditions of workers here. Even if the workers didn't view this as a strike against the war economy, the bosses certainly do. The mainly black and Latin workers waged an illegal strike over issues affecting the entire working class -- health care, pensions and wages. They defied the Taylor Law which bans strikes of public employees, fining them two days pay for every day on strike and fining the union $1 million a day.
The rank-and-file's leadership and anger forced the walkout and demonstrated the power of the working class, setting an example for workers everywhere facing the same attacks. When scores of PLP members joined the picket lines, the strikers gave CHALLENGE and PLP leaflets a warm reception.
MASS SUPPORT FOR THE STRIKERS
The racist rulers cannot stand workers challenging their state apparatus. What if auto and airline workers were to follow that example? Despite an all-out racist attack from the ruling class and its media, the strikers enjoyed mass support. One poll showed 52% of the general public and 75% of black people backed the strikers. This reflects how the war in Iraq, the mass racist terror following Hurricane Katrina and endless economic hardships are beginning to impact the outlook of the masses. This bodes well for future attempts to organize mass support for workers' actions.
Despite a $1 billion surplus, the corrupt MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) bosses -- recently caught keeping two sets of books -- demanded a discriminatory two-tier pension system for new workers and an increase in the retirement age from 55 to 62 plus a 6% contribution towards the health plan for new workers. While the Mayor, the Governor and the media smeared the workers as "law-breakers," the MTA was breaking the Taylor Law, which makes it illegal to negotiate retirement benefits.
The bosses pulled out all stops of their state power and their media to beat down the transit strikers. In a lynch-mob atmosphere, racist billionaire Mayor Bloomberg called the mostly black and Latino workers "selfish, greedy thugs." A NY Post columnist labeled them a "homegrown enemy," comparing them to the terrorists responsible for 9/11. Even black radio morning show DJ Miss Jones slandered the mostly black strikers. Every news outlet lied about how the strikers were "harming the poorest workers," something they never said when the MTA hiked the fare to $2. With the strikers defying the Taylor Law, racist billionaire Bloomberg tried to get the court to impose a penalty of $25,000 PER WORKER for the first day of the strike and DOUBLING it every day thereafter -- more than a year's wages in two days!
This short transit strike, led by black and Latin workers against the bosses' law, defying racist hysteria that equated them with 9/11 terrorists and "holding the city for ransom," was a breath of fresh air for the entire working class. It highlighted the power of organized workers and how the city runs on workers' labor. It showed how the bosses run the state and will use their class dictatorship launch racist attacks to finance their imperialist wars. Only the fight for communism -- where workers will rule -- will smash the bosses' dictatorship.
In the wake of this strike, PLP will work hard to consolidate new readers and distributors of CHALLENGE and strengthen our ties with transit workers, on all of our jobs, in our schools and communities and in the barracks. This is how that flash of anti-racist defiance can build the revolutionary movement. Although it did not "win" appreciable gains, the transit strike was a significant political battle. It could be the rumbling before a volcano or the thunder before a storm.
Bosses' State Power Cuts Wages, Pensions, Health Benefits
The year 2005 saw a mini-strike wave. It ended with the transit workers strike in NYC and with Northwest Airline strikers rejecting the bosses' latest offer and its pilots threatening to strike. Attacks on pensions and retiree medical care for future workers have sparked a walkout at Lockheed and two at Boeing -- to name a few. The New York Times worries about the "clash of race, culture and class." The potential for anti-racist, class-conscious politics has grown in a few short months. Let the New York Times and the bosses they serve have nightmares!
The bosses' labor lieutenants have worked mightily to short-circuit rank-and-file militancy. In order to hit the bricks, Lockheed workers had to override a proposed contract the IAM union misleaders had cooked up to eliminate retiree medical benefits for new hires -- setting the stage for walkouts at Boeing. The biggest Boeing strike was cut short when the liberal Gephardt, ex-Senator from Missouri, brokered a secret deal. Most recently, the TWU strikers were undercut by nearly the whole NYC labor leadership in another backroom deal.
KNOW THY ENEMY!
We need to build working-class strength. Make no mistake about it; such strength cannot be built through secret backroom deals. Such deals won't help our class understand how the bosses exercise their dictatorship over us. They only spread illusions about the nature of capitalism, illusions that disarms us.
No matter what the result of the TWU contract, the ruling class intends to use the "unforgiving discipline of the financial markets" to force future pension and retiree health cuts. A New York Times article a scant two weeks before the transit strike ("The Next Retirement Time Bomb," 12/11/05), said, "Thousands of government bodies including states, cities, towns, school districts and water authorities [will be subject to] a new accounting rule to be phased in over three years." These governmental bodies will be forced to account for "future [retiree] obligations" instead of the present "pay-as-you-go" accounting rules. Their credit ratings will plummet, making it enormously expensive to borrow money, if not actually forced into bankruptcy -- "propelling radical cutbacks for government retirees."
The "invisible hand of the market" will assure these attacks are viciously racist. "The pressure is greatest in places like Detroit, Flint and Lansing," doubly victimizing a disproportionately black work-force already attacked by the cut-backs in auto and other manufacturing industries.
Democracy is exposed as a sham when faced with capitalist markets. The same group of labor hacks who sold out the NYC transit strikers complain about "right-wing think tanks and conservative Republicans [who] want to do away with traditional pension plans and replace them with much-cheaper 401(K)s." (New York Times, 12/24/05) But the fact remains, no politician, Democrat or Republican, can stand up to the "unforgiving discipline of the financial markets" -- the hidden hand of the bosses' dictatorship.
Turn Strikes into Schools for Communism
The only viable answer to the bosses' dictatorship is the dictatorship of the working class. Working-class power can't be voted in, nor can even the most militant of strikes assure it. That kind of power requires a revolution.
Indeed, even socialism, which preserves the market and production for sale, can't serve our interests. Nothing less than communism -- where we produce for use not for sale -- can end these attacks.
The bosses must prepare for "stunningly expensive" wars to maintain their hold on Mid-East oil, according to Peter Peterson, the head of the Council of Foreign Relations. "It's national security or retirement security," he warns. We welcome and support anti-racist, pro-working class strikes, but ultimately the bosses will use their dictatorship to force cuts to finance their imperialist dreams. We must shed all illusions of peace with capitalism and prepare for communist revolution. Lasting gains can be measured in CHALLENGES sold and new networks of sellers, laying the basis for growth of the Party and the revolutionary movement.
BANKS ARE THE BIG WINNERS; TRANSIT WORKERS GET WAGE-CUT
"I think we got shafted," said veteran bus driver William Vargas. "I don't think we should pay for health benefits. We never did and we shouldn't start now." (NY Daily News, 12/28) He's right. The corrupt MTA claimed it couldn't afford to pay workers a decent contract despite a $1 billion surplus, because of a projected "deficit" three years from now.
But that "deficit" is caused by rapidly rising interest payments to Wall Street's big banks. In the 1990's, Governor Pataki cut the state's contribution to the MTA's capital improvement budget in order to pay for his tax cuts. This forced the MTA to borrow millions and raise fares. The interest payments on the debts to the banks will double between 2002 and 2007, and the MTA will pay twice as much in debt service costs to the banks as it pays to the workers' pension fund, shooting up 36% by 2009.
In their last contract, the MTA cried "broke" and forced workers to take a wage freeze in the first year. Now, it claims it needs a $1 billion surplus for "future deficits." At this rate workers could never demand increases. And it's the State's under-funding of the transit system that's responsible for the "deficit," a scam that fills the vaults of the big bankers.
A WAGE-CUT CONTRACT
Meanwhile, transit workers may be stuck with a wage-cut! The tentative agreement provides a total wage increase of 10.5% over 37 months. However, workers will pay AT LEAST 1.5% per year in health premiums (see below). Deducting that 1.5% in health premiums leaves a net increase of 9% over three years. If inflation rises at 3% per year, or 9% over three years, the workers' wage "increase" will have been wiped out. But....
THE HIDDEN HEALTH CARE TIME BOMB
The kicker is health care premiums are not limited to 1.5%. The "Memorandum of Agreement" states that "the 1.5% contribution shall be increased [our emphasis -- Ed.] by the extent to which the rate of increase in the cost of health benefits exceed general wage increases." Based on the MTA's projected rise in health care costs over the next three years, the workers' health premium would soon go up to 2% per year and would continue rising thereafter as health care costs rise. Combined with projected inflation, the workers will end up with a net wage cut.
Taylor Law fines of 6 days pay for 3 days on strike average $1,000 per worker, or a .7% percent over three years. The lump-sum refund of pension contributions-- for maybe half the workforce (talk about two-tier systems) -- that were wrongly deducted from workers' paychecks from 1994 to 2000 is no sure thing either. It has to be approved by the State Legislature and if that happens Pataki has already promised to veto it (as he has done twice before).
Yet this was the workers' money in the first place -- the bosses stole it to pay it into the pension funds prior to 2001. If workers had not struck, the MTA would never have given it back as part of the new contract. And rarely publicized is the fact that the pension system already is a multi-tier system, with continually added tiers by the State Legislature.
Finally, the workers lose in two ways because of the 37th month contract extension: First, it means this agreement expires on January 15, 2009. meaning the workers lose the leverage of a potential mid-December strike, during the billion-dollar holiday season; and second, the MTA "estimates that the contract extension is worth...more than $11 million [to the MTA] because it "defers raises by one month in the second and third years." (NY Times, 12/31/05) [Our emphasis -- Ed.)
While the contract includes maternity pay, an extra holiday and increased health coverage for retired workers, it made no progress on one of the union's main demands, a reduction in the 16,000 disciplinary attacks on the workers.
MEANWHILE, $17 BILLION IN WALL STREET BONUSES
Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg labeled striking transit workers "greedy" and "selfish," but didn't mention his buddies on Wall Street. According to Johnson Associates, a compensation consulting firm, the top layer of traders, brokers and investment bankers will rake in $17 BILLION in incentive payouts and year-end bonuses. According to New York magazine, Goldman Sachs alone has put aside $11 billion for bonuses! Top guys can expect incentive awards of up to $40 million each.
NY Union Hacks on Bosses' Side in Transit Strike
"What they did not do was declare support for the strike." (NY Times, 12/23) That's how the bosses' leading mouthpiece characterized the city's union leaders who abandoned the strikers and helped sell them out. They feared that their own members might get similar militant ideas if the strike continued.
According to the Times, 40 city union "leaders," who "represent" over two million members, "warned [Local 100 President] Toussaint that the fines, public anger and contempt citations could be disastrous," and that "his union was in real peril" if he didn't end the strike soon. So Toussaint asked the presidents of UNITE-HERE (apparel/hotel/restaurant union) and SEIU Local 32-B (building service workers), who both backed the mayor's re-election, to let Bloomberg know that if the MTA dropped the (illegal) pension demand, the union would accept health care payments for the workers. This enabled the bosses to take their illegal demand off the table in exchange for the TWU accepting a 1.5% payment per year for health benefits. It created the illusion of "give and take from both sides" and led to the tentative agreement. The workers give, and the bosses take, capitalism's foundation stone.
The TWU International didn't back the strike, denouncing it as "illegal" and urging workers to cross their own picket lines. Trying to save their own asses from any fines or jail time, they sent their lawyers to court to support the bosses' position that Local 100 was breaking the law!
UNION MIS-LEADERS: LIEUTENANTS OF THE BOSSES
The union misleaders are caught between Iraq and a hard place. Their loyalty to the Wall Street bankers and the profit system mean they must figure out a way to help the bosses drive down the standard of living of all workers so they can maintain a permanent war economy and compete internationally.
The strike exposed the bankruptcy of relying on Democratic or Republican politicians. Politicians from both parties condemned the strike as "illegal," despite receiving millions in contributions from the TWU and other city unions.
In 1937, when the bosses threatened to use the Army and National Guard to retake the GM plants seized by workers in a sit-down strike, the then communist-led UAW organized 40,000 workers from four states to rush to Flint, Michigan, and surround the struck factories. That kind of support is far from the minds of NYC's labor fakers who feared organizing their two million members into any mass demonstrations or sympathy strikes and expose the bankers who reap billions off the workers and riding public (see page 2).
Today GM and Ford squeeze auto workers for nearly $2 billion in health care premiums, Delphi demands a 67% wage-cut and the airline bosses cut wages and eliminate pensions, all without strikes, except the Northwest Airlines mechanics who got no support and were all replaced.
But even greater militancy isn't the answer, though it's necessary. The key is building a movement to overthrow the bosses with communist revolution. Despite the best efforts of those who came before us, today we are facing permanent war and the bosses are taking back 70 years of hard-won gains. As long as the bosses hold power, no worker is secure, and no strike will lead to workers' power. But every strike and every action can build the revolutionary movement if communists are active in the struggle, building unbreakable ties to the workers and offering them a revolutionary alternative. Based on the warm reception given to PLP on the picket lines, there are more opportunities to win transit workers away from the bosses' lieutenants who run the unions and to communist revolution and a system that operates for workers' needs.
`The Bosses are the Real Criminals . . .
(The following are strikers' comments a PL'er heard at the Mike Quill Bus Depot, 41st St. and 11th Ave., Manhattan, on the first two days of the transit strike.)
"I fought in Nam and the Gulf War. This is how they repay us, by attacking workers and cutting VA benefits. These wars are all about making money for the rich."
"The Taylor Law is a weapon of management against the workers. We need to break it."
"If we're not allowed to strike, what good is a union?"
"They send these guys to die in Iraq and leave behind families with no way to support themselves."
"They sent us to ferry people to and from the WTC on 9/11 without giving us any protective gear or warning about toxic dust. Now some of us are sick and they deny we were poisoned."
"The workers helped people get out on 9/11 but the politicians take all the credit."
"The bosses lie to the public about how much we earn."
"Why are the police here? They pay them overtime while we get fined."
"The bosses are the real criminals. Look what they did to the Enron, Northwest and GM workers. They cut our wages and steal our benefits, and then they call us `thugs' for fighting back. Workers are never safe."
"We face disciplinary actions for calling in to use the bathroom on the job."
"The bosses' media spreads a bunch of lies to turn other workers against us."
[Upon hearing from a union lieutenant that Toussaint was going to meet with a mediator and send the workers back before settling a contract, one worker shouted out]: "This is a fascist society! The bosses are no different from Hitler. They want to bust the unions. I'm not going back until we have a contract." [The crowd of workers around him cheered.]
COAL BOSSES MURDER 12 MINERS
SAGO, WEST VIRGINIA, Jan. 4 -- Eleven miners were murdered in an explosion in a mine filled with deadly carbon dioxide, owned by the ICG conglomerate, a mine cited for 202 violations in 2005. Sixteen citations were for "unwarrantable failure orders," problems that a mine owner "knows exists but fails to correct. Thirteen of these orders were issued in the past six months." (NY Times, 1/4/06) The company was fined $24,000 for these 202 citations, an average of $118 per violation.
Since June the mine has had 15 roof-falls or wall collapses, "an unusually high number...indicative of roof-control problems." The mine also had "dangerous accumulations of coal dust....which is highly combustible."
The dead miners' families experienced an excruciating turn of events when at one point the bosses and the deputy secretary of the state's Dept. of Military Affairs and Public Safety said the miners were alive, "being examined at the mine...and would soon be taken to nearby hospitals." (NYT) This was exposed as a blatant lie when three hours later the overjoyed families were told that the eleven were dead.
Such is the life of a worker under capitalism where profits are supreme and bosses such as these mine owners look on paltry fines as merely a "fee" for doing business, while these coal barons' government hardly gives them a slap on the wrist. Meanwhile, the miners' families must suffer the rest of their lives without fathers, husbands or brothers.
A system that destroys the lives of workers in this fashion must be smashed.
U.S., China Imperialists Headed For Showdown
The U.S., currently the world's biggest imperialist power, and China, the fastest growing economy, are on a collision course over Middle Eastern oil. We can't predict just when or how the crunch will come, but both sides are warning of -- and planning for -- dire events.
Flynt Leverett and Jeffrey Bader, Brookings Institution scholars, recently published an article entitled "Managing China-U.S. Energy Competition in the Middle East" (Washington Quarterly, Winter 2005-2006). They note China's skyrocketing energy needs: "By 2004, with the economy still growing at 9.5 percent annually...Chinese oil demand had risen to six million barrels per day....China's oil demand will rise to about 10 million barrels per day by 2030, of which 80 percent will be imported." Those imports can come only from the Persian Gulf region, which holds two-thirds of proven global oil reserves. No other part of the world, including Russia and the Caspian region, claims more than one-tenth.
But U.S. rulers' oil thirst is growing, too. And it's not just because U.S. imports will pass 20 million barrels a day in 2025. U.S. imperialism functions largely through the energy weapon. The domination of Mid-East crude by U.S. companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron Texaco, and British allies Shell and BP, gives U.S. bosses tremendous economic and political leverage over dependent foreign customers. Russian Gazprom's strong-arming of Eastern Europe pales beside the worldwide extortion racket the Exxon gang has run ever since World War II.
Chinese and U.S. oil requirement projections are fairly old news. What's new is the increasingly hostile rhetoric. Imperialist pundits and politicians now admit freely that the economic conflict could erupt into war. The Brookings paper says China will intensify its financial, diplomatic and naval efforts in the Middle East in order "to maximize its access to hydrocarbon resources under any foreseeable circumstances, including possible military conflict with the United States." It cites Vietnam War criminal Henry Kissinger as arguing, with direct reference to China, "that competition over hydrocarbon resources will be the most likely cause for international conflict in coming years."
In November, Senator Joe Lieberman, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), another top imperialist think-tank like Brookings, foresaw "Sino-American confrontations over oil that could in the years ahead threaten our national security and global security." Lieberman, who led Senate support for both U.S. wars for Iraq's oil, warned, "China is entering military-basing agreements with countries along its oil supply routes from the Middle East and is building a very substantial blue-water navy." Lieberman bluntly suggested the ultimate scope of the conflict: "Wars have been fought over such competitions for natural resources....exactly such a competition is one of the factors that led to Pearl Harbor and World War II."
What will happen, and when, has become a topic of great debate among think-tankers. Ted Galen Carpenter, a CFR member who preaches imperialism at the formerly isolationist Cato Institute, has written a book called "America's Coming War with China." It pinpoints the sinking of a U.S. aircraft carrier off Taiwan in 2013 as the outbreak of combat. Beijing recently reaffirmed its threat to seize Taiwan -- which commands Mid-East oil routes to much of China, as well as to Korea and Japan -- if Taipei declares independence. Adam Segal, a CFR fellow, acknowledged (CFR interview, 02/16/05) the conventional wisdom that "China was two decades behind the United States" militarily. But Segal cautioned, "China doesn't have to be a peer competitor with the United States to be a threat, especially if you look at the weapons it's been purchasing from the Russians: the Su-27 and Su-30 combat aircraft, the Sovremenny-class destroyer, the Kilo-class attack submarine. All of these seem to be targeted to U.S. Navy carrier groups."
In a real sense, the shooting has already started. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 nullified big oil-production contracts China had made with Saddam Hussein in 1997. But U.S. rulers are not yet ready to face China, or even a Chinese ally like Iran, head-on (although, if forced, they will, ruthlessly). They suffer from serious weaknesses. One is their inability to wage war by proxy, as they did in NIcaragua, El Salvador and Colombia. Another is their inability to field an army large enough to secure Iraq. Most significant is their related failure to militarize U.S. society, especially in the wake of Sept. 11. When 33,000 New York City transit workers struck recently in defiance of the bosses' law, they showed a healthy reluctance to submit to an agenda of "sacrifice" for U.S. imperialism.
U.S. rulers seem to be pursuing a tactic of side-stepping the China problem until they have emerged victorious from Iraq's quicksands and fully mobilized the nation for war. Since each prospect appears increasingly doubtful in the near term, U.S. imperialists are seeking to buy time. Brookings and Lieberman urge China to buy oil on the international market (meaning from Exxon), instead of making private deals with "rogue states" like Iran. Such purchases, while enhancing China's economic and military might, would at least for a while, slow China's influence with U.S. enemies. Kissinger, hoping to use the U.S. nuclear arsenal to deter China's expansion, calls for "a global conference among the nuclear powers." Carpenter says the U.S. should sell Taiwan more arms but avoid binding promises to defend the island against a Chinese invasion.
We don't pretend to have the proverbial crystal ball. We can't provide a date or location for the outbreak of U.S.-China hostilities. But recent history shows that capitalists' need for profits drives them to fight viciously over resources such as oil. Chasing oil wealth, U.S. rulers have wasted the lives of over a million Iraqis and thousands of GIs in the past two decades alone. War between the U.S. and China would make that carnage look trifling. The only way to stop the escalating slaughter is to eliminate the profit system itself and replace it with a government of the working class. This is our Party's ultimate goal.
VW Wildcatters March Against Union Hacks
BARCELONA, SPAIN, Dec. 30 -- On Dec. 23, the day before the Xmas "recess" was to begin, 660 workers at the SEAT Martorell auto plant here (owned by VW) got a holiday "gift" from the bosses: mass layoffs. The bosses went worker to worker, telling them to pack their belongings and leave. They even had buses waiting for the fired workers, who were some of the most militant rank-and-filers and older workers who the company wanted to replace with lower-paid workers.
Workers immediately organized wildcats against this attack, first paralyzing the morning shift for three hours, later almost shutting down the next two shifts. Marches were organized to the bosses' main offices and to the two unions in the plant (CCOO and UGT) which endorsed the deal. SEAT security guards were sent to protect these hacks from the angry workers.
A third smaller and more militant union, the CGT, was heavily hit by the firings, including the woman leader of the local CGT, Merchez Sanchez. Twenty percent of all those fired were women although they comprise only 12% of the labor force. Some were pregnant.
While workers were fighting back, union hack Joan Costubiela, general secretary of the CCOO in Catalonia, with help from the local government, justified the deal, saying: "Unfortunately we had no choice but to negotiate the firings." They think that this way VW will at least continue some production in Spain, instead of moving to lower-wage regions in Eastern Europe.
SEAT, Spain's biggest auto company, was originally built by fascist dictator Franco with help from Italy's Fiat). In the last decade VW, Europe's largest automaker swallowed SEAT. Ironically, the SEAT firings occurred just as VW was celebrating the 60th anniversary of the mass production of the VW Beetle -- Hitler's dream car -- although it was not sold commercially until after World War II. In December 1945, British occupying forces took it over to restart production and later turned it over to its original German bosses.
Today, the world's big automakers are fighting their own "car war." To be competitive, Ford and GM are eliminating 60,000 jobs worldwide. VW is attempting the same. It's estimated VW has 15,000 excess jobs in Western Europe. Spain used to be a cheaper labor zone, attractive to automakers because of its proximity to the big auto markets in France and Germany. But Eastern Europe and China are taking Spain's place.
Spain's "socialist" government is doing its best to ensure that labor costs are competitive with cheap wage areas like China and Poland. New "labor reforms" aim to end the collective agreements and open-ended contracts -- won when the Franco dictatorship collapsed in the 1970's -- and which guarantee cost-of-living increases while protecting other conditions and rights for 70% of Spain's workers. Recently coal miners and SEAT workers, among others, have struck against the labor "reforms."
With this deal, Volkswagen says it will continue its $750 million investment as part of a restructuring plan entitled "New SEAT." This involves the production of a new model of its Ibiza car and another new model at Martorell in 2008. But in the 1990s, VW also invested heavily in SEAT and built one of Europe's most modern and productive plants. So many think the attacks against the workers will continue.
The Martorell SEAT Plant was scheduled to reopen on Jan. 2. The union hacks, the company and the local government are trying their best to sabotage any workers' struggles. Again, we see that autoworkers worldwide have a lot in common: they're suffering mass attacks aided by union hacks, be they UAW in the U.S., CCOO/UGT in Spain, or IGMetall in Germany.
Autoworkers need a common international strategy to fight back. They need an international revolutionary leadership to carry on the fight against these warmakers, and to link their struggles from Barcelona to Detroit. Autoworkers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your union hacks and mass layoffs!
UAW Sellouts Jam Thru Suspect Vote Over Ford Give-backs
DETROIT, MI. Dec. 22 -- "I underestimated my brothers and sisters," one Ford worker said as his local and many other workers rejected the UAW leadership's health care concession contract. The UAW leadership claims it passed by 51%-49%, but didn't release a local-by-local vote count and refused to say how many workers voted. "Democracy" in action!
About 87,000 active Ford workers were eligible to vote. As with GM, where the union claims the contract won by 60-40, retirees were barred from voting. Large locals in Chicago, Louisville, Kansas City and St. Louis, MO, and St. Paul, MN rejected the contract. A leaflet distributed at Local 600, the UAW's biggest Ford local, said the contract passed by 68 votes, 2,645-2577, after union officials passed around plastic jugs to collect "Yes/No" slips. Had retires voted, both contracts definitely would have been rejected.
The UAW agreed to $850 million in annual health care cuts for retirees just as Ford was announcing the closing of six plants and eliminating 30,000 jobs. Active workers will pay a minimum of $2,000 annually to a health care fund while retired workers will pay up to $752 a year for family coverage.
At GM, the union agreed to $15 billion in current and future health care cuts and ten days later GM announced 12 plant closings and the slashing of 30,000 jobs. These cuts, and more to come at Chrysler, Delphi and Visteon, will ripple throughout the industry and the economy.
These attacks, midway through a contract that expires in September 2007, are a down payment by the nationalist union leaders to help the bosses meet their fierce international competition, especially their loss of the U.S. market share to the Japanese bosses. The UAW hacks' loyalty to the bosses has brought the labor movement to the brink of extinction as more than 70 years of hard-won gains are unraveling.
This inter-imperialist competition among billionaires has led to the savage war in Iraq, which has already cost more than 100,000 lives and more than $6 billion-a-month. The bosses need fascism in the workplace to feed their war economy. The only future we have supporting "our" bosses is more poverty, racist terror, Homeland Security fascism and imperialist wars.
We need to build an international communist movement to overthrow the bosses and their racist profit system.
The sentiment of Ford workers, like that in the NYC transit strike, could reflect a change in the workers' mood refusing to sacrifice themselves on the altar of the bosses' war machine. It certainly signals increased opportunities for PLP's growth among industrial workers. This process will in part be measured CHALLENGE by CHALLENGE and with a growing network of distributors.
No Matter Who `Administers' the Market, It's Still Capitalism
On November 19, I participated in the "Students and Educators to Stop the War Conference." In my workshop, a participant mentioned political torture in El Salvador and said workers administering the means of production would create an alternative system to capitalism. Two decades of political struggle taught me the futility of this path. Administering factories in a capitalist market inevitably leads back to exploitation and oppression. Nothing short of smashing the whole capitalist apparatus with communist revolution will free our class.
I related my experience in El Salvador. In 1992, ending a 12-year civil war with "peace accords," FMLN leaders said we were in a "new stage of the revolution," feeding us the illusion that the socio-economic changes we had fought for were here.
Under this illusion I joined an "association" of FMLN members. Among them were members of the misnamed "Communist" Party of El Salvador, the main promoters of this association. Their goal was obtaining credit and buying goods produced in the FMLN's factories. During the war, these shops produced shoes and uniforms for the fighters. However, when the fighting ended, they started producing for the civilian market.
With credit we opened two stores with the idea of selling goods at low prices to benefit the neediest people. But the illusionary ambition to make quick money flourished in some of the supposed "revolutionaries." Their price for the shoes was almost triple the production cost. As they raised prices, they dreamt of each "associate" having his own store. To achieve this, they hired a saleswoman. Before long, they used their positions as bosses to make sexual advances toward her.
In previous jobs, I had seen supervisors take similar advantage of women workers' need to work. I had fought it and refused to be silent now. At a "partners" meeting, I demanded respect for the saleswoman. "If she wants us," they replied, "there's no problem."
"We can't go from being exploited to being exploiters," I argued. "We've fought against this and shouldn't do it now." I explained surplus value, saying the price of the goods was too high. This conflicted with the association's plans. They labeled me a "conformist" (I was settling for too little). With this thinking, the business wouldn't grow.
They were correct, but essentially my ideas weren't so different from theirs. I only wanted to sell the shoes for less, not stop selling them altogether. I agreed with profits, but lower ones. Our clients were exploited workers and we, the "revolutionary" businessmen, only wanted "a drop more" of the workers' sweat.
I knew nothing about communism, but was class conscious. In defending workers, it didn't matter if I had to risk my life, but I never thought I'd have to confront those who said they had also fought for the workers' interests.
In one of the last confrontations, the association president told me, "The two of us don't fit here. Either you leave or I leave. I'm not afraid to die." "Neither am I," I replied. We talked coldly and seriously, knowing that bodies continued appearing in the streets of San Salvador and the possibility existed that one of us would be among them.
I decided to leave. "No more `politics' for me," I said. I began thinking I had wasted my time trying to achieve a different society for the workers. That prompted my emigration to the U.S. Here my idea of peacefully leaving the class struggle also changed. The super-exploitation in the factories and learning about real communist ideas changed my mind.
Today I see workers' movement to "take over the factories," in South America, led by liberal bosses like Chavez (Venezuela) and Lula (Brazil) along with "revolutionary" union leaders. They champion the dangerous illusion that workers can escape exploitation or class struggle with these take-overs. My example disproves this. Under capitalism, you're either an exploiter or are exploited -- there's no third road. These "factory take-overs" continue to depend on exploitation, sale of commodities, legalization by the courts and bank loans.
Commodities (produced for sale), the market, wages and money must be eliminated; they're the material basis of capitalism. Anywhere they exist, capitalism maintains its essence, no matter who administers it.
Cooperatives, workers' associations, factories rescued and "run" by workers, do not change the essence of capitalism. Socialism maintained the market, including the sale and exploitation of labor power -- wages, as --PLP's "Road to Revolution IV" explains. The solution lies in building a mass international revolutionary communist movement to destroy capitalism and build a new communist society based on production for the needs of the whole working class, not for sale and profit.
Red Worker from Central America
Frame-up of Anti-Racist Fighters Defeated
BRIDGEWATER, N.J., Dec. 14 -- All charges against four anti-racist demonstrators were dropped here today as each defendant pled guilty to "speaking too loudly," a minor municipal ordinance offense and paid a small fine. The four had been arrested last June while protesting a recruiting drive by the racist Minuteman Project at the Bridgewater Sports Arena. This hearing was the culmination of a six-month-long battle to fight charges of assault, disorderly conduct and trespassing, following a brutal attack on one of the anti-racists by a Somerset County SWAT cop.
Over 40 people attended the hearing to support the defendants, filling the small courtroom. The crowd included members from the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of NY. That union's Executive Council had passed a strong class-conscious resolution opposing the Minutemen and contributed $500 to the legal defense fund.
After the hearing, at a rally outside the courtroom, the anti-racist who had been brutalized gave a rousing speech. Another speaker explained the importance of this case in exposing the bosses' increased drive for "homeland security." Although the rulers' state power still allows them to promote racism and fascism, the speaker called on those present to fight for the day when the working class, led by PLP, will take that power away from them.
This struggle is not over. We're suing the cops for the arrest and fascist assault on our comrade. We'll bring people to the court for that case, too.
Four PLP members in Farmingville, NY still face charges for their July protest against racist anti-immigrant filth there. Two anti-racists in California face more serious charges. An Anti-Racist Legal Defense Fund has been established to carry on these court cases. This showed once again the importance of an ongoing legal defense committee (see box).
There will be bigger battles in the future. We must train ourselves to fight on all fronts, including the courts. As fascism grows, and the capitalists fight bigger wars to control the world, the battles we lead can begin to challenge their hold on the masses. The fight for workers' power can emerge from that cauldron of struggle.
Anti-Racist Legal Strategy
Members and friends of PLP, joining together as the Bridgewater Legal Defense Committee, applied the lessons we've learned through years of fighting back against the capitalist legal system. That system has, as one of its main purposes, crushing working-class struggle and resistance.
In most attorney-client relationships, the attorney is the "expert," the legal system is a maze of mysterious rules and procedures and the client is a passive participant. Our attorneys and defendants met together regularly. We discussed the politics of the events, the prosecution's and legal system's points of weakness, and the tactics that we developed along the way, including mass support, both inside and outside the courtroom.
We remained strong and united in our commitment that no defendant would be sacrificed in order to obtain a better deal for any other defendant. Our willingness to force the prosecution to take us to trial unless they were willing to give us an acceptable plea agreement again proved to be a winning strategy.
D.C. Winter Project Combines Marxist Study with Pro-Worker Action
During the last two weeks of December, 18 comrades and friends kicked off the Washington, D.C. area's first Winter Project with vigorous discussions about the struggle in transit (led by two transit workers), the battle at Hampton University, the fight against the Minutemen, and the need to study and learn about revolutionary strategy. We distributed over 60 CHALLENGES and more than 400 party flyers to the English professors at the Modern Language Association's annual meeting. We also rode buses ("ride-alongs") with our transit comrades, distributing PL literature to passengers talking politics with the driver.
The intense political readings and discussion during the project included Lenin's "What Is To Be Done," about the need for a disciplined party with a well-distributed newspaper, stressing revolution over reform. We saw the parallels with PLP's "Reform and Revolution" document. Friends and comrades made presentations on the Party's Road to Revolution 3 and 4, and on Anna Louise Strong's 1957 book, "The Stalin Era" (available on PLP's website), published shortly after Khrushchev attacked Stalin and consolidated the capitalist road in the Soviet Union.
This book helped us understand and debunk the myths about the Soviet Union and its leadership and refute anti-Stalin lies. Comrades, friends and potential future Party members discussed the Soviet Union and the ideas and lessons to be learned. One lesson: taking power is not as difficult as holding it amid revisionist ideas and counter-revolution. As one comrade declared, "The capitalists won't say, `Oh here, take power....it's ALL good.' They'll fight and die trying to hold on to their individualist profit system" -- which means a ruthless revolution is needed.
We also discussed the advances communist leadership made against sexism in the 1920's and 1930's, including a greater move toward wage equalization and in rights for women workers. The Soviet Union was the first to have women bomber pilots! Also, Strong noted the communist fight against the religious mullahs and their oppression of women, important today in fighting the sexism of the Islamic fundamentalists (and the Christian fundamentalists as well).
I was particularly impressed by Strong's account of the energy and enthusiasm of workers in creating this new revolutionary society based on the needs of the working class. Even though the Soviets retained capitalist wage differentials, their commitment to a working-class future should be emulated by us all. One comrade noted he drew that kind of energy when participating in Party actions, saying it would be great if everyone could achieve that level of energy.
The Winter Project created a spark of interest and zeal that will help build our Party and move towards revolution. Everyone should read Strong's book, as well as others on Stalin to better understand him and the Soviet Party's accomplishments at that time, as well as their errors, it is from this that we continue to learn today. All power to the Workers!
D.C. Red
Challenging the Pro-War Dictatorship in Public Health
PHILADELPHIA, PA, Dec. 13 -- There was something liberating about the sight of over 100 health professionals filling the wide carpeted aisle between displays of the newest health care products and public health teaching aids, chanting "One-two-three-four, We don't want your racist war!" The voices of tweed-jacketed professors and graying midwives joined scores of others, the sound filling the cavernous exhibit hall at the annual American Public Health Association (APHA) meeting. Onlookers gaped, many smiled and still others joined the marchers.
By the time the group reached the U.S. Air Force Medical Personnel booth, it had become a giant picket line large enough to completely surround the block of booths containing the recruiters' exhibit. Philadelphia Police and "undercover" Convention Center security "guarded" the Air Force recruiters while a woman from Military Families Speak Out raised a picture of her uniformed son, now back in Iraq for yet another tour. Marchers picked up her chant as they passed: "Support the troops -- Bring them home!"
This mass protest was encouraging, as was the distribution of 2,500 anti-war buttons, but other developments showed there's plenty more to do. The battle between communists in PLP and ruling class representatives for the ideological leadership of health workers intensified at this meeting.
As reported earlier (CHALLENGE, 12/14), APHA's Executive Director, Georges Benjamin, has actively obstructed attempts to publicize the APHA's official anti-war public policy, established in a series of resolutions passed by the APHA's Governing Council in recent years. Although these policies sit on the association's Web site, they've never been communicated to the press or otherwise acted on. Last February, anti-war APHA members started pushing Benjamin and the Executive Board to withhold exhibit space from military recruiters as one way to put teeth in the anti-war policy.
Benjamin vigorously opposed this and personally blocked e-mail distribution of the proposal within one APHA section. His actions were openly challenged in the 200-member Governing Council; a motion called for the APHA central office in Washington, D.C. -- where Benjamin and his staff work -- to "facilitate communication" by distributing mass e-mails for section chairs when requested.
One Councilor said, "I find it outrageous that one person can dictate what will be discussed in e-mails by members of this association." Benjamin lunged to the microphone claiming a "point of personal privilege," meaning he had been personally insulted. The Council Speaker responded, "The Councilor's comments are not appropriate and will be removed from the record!"
Every speaker who followed opposed the motion, including many "progressives" who defended Benjamin because he's the first black Executive Director in decades. The motion was defeated; over 80% voted to support Benjamin. One comrade put the Council vote in perspective saying, "If 20% voted against the Director's authority, that's a few dozen people we need to contact about how to oppose developing fascism inside our `liberal' association."
The PLP members among the 12,000 attending the four-day convention function in a few of the larger sections and caucuses and raised resolutions against the oil war, against collaboration by health personnel in torture and in support of Katrina victims. With friends and colleagues we organize sessions that raise awareness of developing fascism in medicine and the health consequences of imperialist war. The political work combines mass education, organizing struggles against racist and imperialist practices in the health sphere and one-on-one work with colleagues and friends, communists of the future.
We added more CHALLENGE readers during this meeting. One colleague looked particularly tired after the Governing Council confrontation over Benjamin's censorship powers. A comrade asked her, "Does CHALLENGE make any more sense to you now?" She replied, "I've always thought that paper made sense." While our numbers limit our impact, our main task is to use those moments -- when APHA reveals its true nature as part of the ideological and institutional control of a capitalist society moving toward more overt fascism -- to turn these opportunities into new CHALLENGE readers and eventually new members.
Soldiers -- along with veterans and military families -- and black workers are crucial to the revolutionary process. We can strengthen our ties with Military Families Speak Out and the Black Caucus of Health Workers (BCHW), both of whose members are essential to building PLP. Right now, the APHA anti-war activity is mostly all white, and BCHW's anti-racist activity never mentions the war budget that's slashing programs vital to black and other low-income workers.
At next fall's APHA meeting, a solid base of CHALLENGE readers and others, presenting the perspective of soldiers and workers, especially black and Latin workers, can expose both the Democrats and Republicans' imperialist program for the 2006 elections. We must spend the next 11 months strengthening our personal relationships and intensifying the political struggle, enabling us to advance under the increasing backlash from APHA's leadership. Sharpening the contradictions will parallel world events, bringing us closer to the revolutionary society in which public health is a reality.
Under Communism
Soviet Women Fighter Pilots' Struggle for Equality
(Part 2 of series on Soviet women flyers)
The December 14 CHALLENGE described how Soviet women excelled as World War II fighter pilots. This part depicts their struggle for equality. (Quotes are from Anne Noggle's "A Dance With Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II.")
The Soviet Union was the first workers' state to try to end capitalist exploitation. We try to learn from their achievements and mistakes. One of their great achievements was the people's war it waged against the Nazi military machine -- the most powerful and deadly of its time. Some 27 million Soviet workers died in this titanic battle in which women played an important role.
"When the war began we women applied to join the army along with the men, but we were not accepted because the army would not draft women. We protested that we were brought up to believe that women were equal to men. In October, 1941, we learned that three women's air regiments were to be formed."
One woman remembers, "I was promised that I would be appointed flight commander in this squadron, but when I arrived there were all male pilots. Some...were full of indignation saying, `Why? Aren't there any good men?' I told the commander that I would like to be appointed to the position right now but first let these male pilots see what kind of a pilot I am. The commander often tested me and sent me with other crews on missions. Then...I was appointed flight commander."
Another said, "On one airfield there were two regiments, one female and one male. We had the same missions, the same aircraft and the same targets, so we worked together. The female regiment performed better and made more combat flights each night than the male regiment. Once, one of our German prisoners told us, `When the women started bombing our trenches, the radio stations on this line warned all their troops, Attention! Attention! The ladies are in the air! Stay at your shelter!'"
Still another woman pilot recounted, "I was going to reconnoiter the ground and photograph it [with] two fighters to protect my plane...After my transmission I heard, `Why are you speaking in such a tiny voice?' I realized they [the other two fighter pilots] didn't know I was a woman. I managed to photograph the front line even though the Germans made some holes in the plane. I reported from the air...and the person on the ground said, `Thank you, Anechka,' and only then did they [the accompanying pilots] realize I was a woman. I told them, `Thank you, brothers; land, please.' They escorted me to my field, wagged their wings, and flew away."
"When I was assigned to a male regiment, they flew the Lavochkin-5 aircraft, more advanced than our Yak fighters. From the very start the male regimental commander didn't believe we were good pilots. Once he decided to test us,, and said, `In the afternoon we will have a training dogfight between two male crews and you two.' One of us approached their aircraft from the rear and won the mock attack. Everything depended on skill."
"I flew an open cockpit plane -- open to the wind -- and in spite of the armistice [with Finland] we went on flying out the wounded. My life was complicated by the fact that I was...[pregnant]. When in June I announced to the commander that I was expecting a baby, he was astonished. He had never even noticed.... It had never occurred to him that there should be a gynecologist on the medical test board."
Toward the end of WWII, one woman said, "I have always been a devoted Communist, and I have worked for the benefit of my people. There is an opinion about women in combat that a woman stops being a woman after bombing, destroying, and killing, that she becomes crude and tough. That is not true; we all remained kind, compassionate, and loving. We became...more caring of our children, our parents, and the land that has nourished us."
Communism will teach all men, as well as women, that -- without capitalist exploitation -- everyone can be kind, compassionate and loving.
Banks, Loans Sharks Make War on GI's
The hypocrisy of the U.S. imperialist war machine knows no bounds. Exposing the rulers' calls to "support our troops" in Iraq, the bosses' profit system has trapped GI's into the clutches of "legal" loan sharks who force these GI's to support that very profit system to the tune of $40 billion a year. CHALLENGE revealed this fraud some time ago, but it appears to have increased, affecting possibly 300,000 GI's. These loans are incurring interest rates far exceeding even those demanded by the Mafia.
It works this way: A GI goes to a "payday store" and shows a pay stub and proof of a bank account to borrow $100 for a charge of $120. The borrower writes a check for $120 and postdates the check to next payday. After two weeks, if the borrower can't pay, the loan is rolled over until next pay day for another $20. The Pentagon says "most troops go through four or five rollovers."
"Army Chief Warrant Officer Thomas Burden,...now serving in Iraq, told Congress he paid back $1,400 on an original loan of $300." (all quotes in this article are from the N.Y. Daily News, 12/26) That's an interest rate of nearly 400%! "It just kind of keeps snowballing if you don't have the money to cover it," Burden said.
"The troops get roped into it and they can't get out," says Joyce Raezer of the National Military Families Association. "It becomes a spiral."
A Pentagon official "estimated that 7% of the active-duty military, or 100,000 troops, used the loans, but consumer groups said the number could be as high as 20%," or nearly 300,000.
The 22,000 U.S. outlets involved in this $40 billion payday scam are backed by some of the country's biggest banks who provide these leeches with the set-up money they need to get started and keep going. Thus, these bankers are raking in part of the profits through the interest they charge the payday outfits for the banks' loans to them.
The drive to maintain these big-time loan sharks is a bi-partisan affair. "The loan industry's powerful lobbyists, both Democratic and Republican, are fighting hard to keep the interest windfalls, which in at least one case topped 500%." Opposing any limits is Maria Echevista, a lobbyist for the payday business association, and a deputy chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton.
Of course, nobody seems to ask WHY the GI's need the loans in the first place. The fact is, the brass has ordered up tens of thousands of Reservists and National Guard troops, paying them a good deal less than their civilian incomes. This has forced them to borrow to make up the difference in order to meet their family's bills. Talk about putting troops in harm's way!
Not only does this imperialist system use GI's as cannon fodder to fight their oil wars but then it turns around and makes them pay the system interest to support their families while dying for the bosses while killing tens of thousands of Iraqi workers and their families.
`Monk' Builds Sympathy for Cops
"Monk" is a witty and entertaining TV show about an obsessive compulsive cop who has an almost miraculous ability to solve crimes. (Meanwhile, he's treated rather as a "freak" -- in one episode all of his friends reject and ridicule him, selling out to the TV star who, of course, turns out to be the killer.)
It's an easy show to get sucked into -- and I did. I pretended to myself that it was just in fun, that the "bad guys" (as the cops say of anyone they don't like) deserved to be caught. I used to feel the same way about the original "Columbo" series, where a cop "up" from the working class was always able to solve the crime, even in the face of frequent opposition from police higher-ups. The guilty in "Columbo" were almost always rich people, so one could relate to this guy. One or two shows changed my mind: he bulldogged even people with absolutely justifiable motives for their crime.
The same is true of the "Monk" series -- only it's worse. In between solving crimes, Monk manages to take backhanded slaps at unions, and to praise "tort reform" which, as he defines it, is to stop the ability of people to sue, with the threat that if they lose their case they have to pay court costs. In practice this sympathy for the "overburdened court system" means people who have been screwed by rich corporations will be frightened to fight back. (Of course, I'm not saying the court system answers what's being done to working people, but there are times when, short of revolution, one must get a good lawyer and fight back. The hero Monk says that's a bad thing to do, so don't try it.)
But a particular episode really slapped me in the back of my head for not having been sharp enough to see what was going on.
Because of his condition, Monk was thrown off the force years back, and now he's used as a "consultant." In one episode, the wife of his boss, Lieutenant Stottlemeyer, is involved in a car crash caused by a man trying to prevent the cops from finding a gun he used to kill someone.
Stottlemeyer, as anyone would be, is horrified and angry that his wife may die. Though she pulls through, in his "justifiable rage" Stottlemeyer attacks union strikers who he believes may have caused the crash. Monk finds out the union's not at fault, and he tries to calm down his lieutenant, to little effect. When Monk and his female assistant learn who really caused the crash, Stottlemeyer tries to physically attack that man, but Monk nobly keeps the attack at a minimum. It all ends peacefully enough.
But it struck me that when workers -- say the ones who died or lost their homes and belongings recently in New Orleans -- are screwed openly by a combination of big business and government, and then prevented by cops and courts from doing anything about it, they're treated as "crazy" or "unreasonable" in their attempts to do something about it.
We can't root for cute and witty cops any more than we can cheer on brutal cops. While some of us may know a nice person who took that job, in my experience, most change for the worse. Those who keep some sort of ethic and morality will inevitably have to protest the rotten cop -- or quit the "force." Most stay.
In a way, shows like "Monk" and "Columbo" are instructive: because the cops and the courts operate to prevent us from fighting back, generally only a revolutionary attitude works to fight back. (Note how Lynne Stewart is facing jail because she attempted to fight for her client.)
Joining the revolutionary Progressive Labor Party is the first step in changing the heroes into those who actually fight for us.
Up North Reader
LETTERS
Class Consciousness Emerges on Picket Line
The recent TWU strike was very inspiring. It showed that when workers are organized with class consciousness they have the power to change society for the better. The week before the strike my union passed a resolution supporting any transit workers' action. We planned to send workers to each bus depot. When the strike began, we arrived bearing signs reading, "Right to Organize, Right to Strike!" We joined the picket line at one of several depots where workers walked out on the bosses' system.
Workers gave us thumbs up. They thanked us and eagerly spoke with us. One worker told me he was a veteran of two wars and that the rulers sacrifice workers to enrich themselves. His high level of consciousness was very impressive.
Several workers described the deplorable working conditions. We agreed on the need to "hold the line" on pensions to protect future workers. These workers clearly knew their action was setting a militant precedent for workers nationally. We mentioned the Northwest, GM and Ford workers who were facing similar vicious attacks. One worker said the bosses' pension demand was a divide-and-conquer strategy, creating a divisive tier system. The bosses' attacks, media lies and slander provoked another worker to shout, "This is a fascist society!" We noted that Hitler and Mussolini broke the back of labor, the same as U.S. bosses now.
The next day, we started a chant with a few pickets and the whole line enthusiastically joined, "They say give back, We say fight back!" When we left the line, the workers gave us high fives and heartily thanked us for our support.
But that was not all. We made several contacts and drew up a plan for rank-and-filers to organize against the strike-breaking Taylor Law and to push for all city unions to bargain as one. We agreed that rank-and-filers shouldn't wait for their crooked leadership to make this happen. The leadership of many NYC unions made lots of promises but delivered nothing during the strike. Workers would be better off if they started organizing each other. Together we could bust the anti-labor laws and call crippling general strikes. This strike line was truly a school for communism.
Red Duo
Barcelona Bus Drivers Greet NYC Strikers
The following letter was sent to PLP:
Comrades,
We in the CGT union local in the bus company of Barcelona, Spain, are following with much interest the transit workers' strike in New York.
We would like to send our solidarity greetings to those workers who are defying a regime that forbids them the right to strike. We are asking you to send them our solidarity greetings....
Mercader
CGT delegate, Barcelona buses
Strikers Cheer Student, Teacher Support
During the recent NYC transit strike, a group of college students and a teacher had some great experiences, both on the picket lines and at our jobs and schools.
The overwhelming response at my job was to support the strikers 100%. Although these hourly or commissioned workers aren't paid if they can't get in, they understood the larger importance of the transit workers' action. We had some really sharp discussion about the mis-treatment of the transit workers, and how their demands would benefit other workers.
On the lines the strikers greeted us -- and our signs: "Teachers and Students Support Transit Workers" and "Smash Racism" -- with tremendous cheers. At every line strikers grabbed our literature, which linked their fight to the war and to the need to smash capitalism.
We heard many strikers' stories. Although most of them clearly understood the issues in the contract fight and why the bosses want to save money on their backs, PLP's role with the pickets and back at the job must be to broaden the struggle and win these workers to fight for the working class worldwide.
One mechanic has since kept in touch with me because he wants to report how the returning workers are treated by their bosses and about further struggles. He knows now that CHALLENGE will tell the truth about class struggle.
PL Strike Supporter
Transit Fight Helps Teachers
Some teachers in my NYC high school met and agreed to support the transit strikers by collecting money, joining the picket lines and building support among other teachers. One of many reasons why teachers backed the transit workers was that they were fighting our fight, too -- we just got sold a really horrible contract.
Several teachers were active collecting over $200 and writing flyers and notices. When we joined the lines, the pickets were delighted to have our support and applauded us. We told them they were the heroes, not us. We distributed CHALLENGES and leaflets, and brought money that we'd raised to the picket captains.
Not all teachers supported the strike -- some fell for the bosses' propaganda that the workers were attacking us by striking. The school helped this along by doing nothing about organizing carpools for teachers to get to work. Some were angry at spending money for cabs, or being unable to get in at all.
One struggle was turning people's anger toward the ruling class, not the strikers. A worker in my department missed one day, and then paid $25 to get in by cab. When I asked for a contribution he really became angry. We've shared teaching materials and are developing a relationship, so we were able to talk and get past his anger. He then contributed $5. Often the personal ties we build can lead to political gains.
Two people who stepped forward are CHALLENGE readers and have moved closer to PLP. One distributed the paper to strikers. The other collected money and towards the end of the strike was thinking about joining the Party. Our organizing strike support has opened up many opportunities to advance our ideas and class struggle.
Red Teacher
Bosses' Media Unite to Attack Strikers
One lesson of the New York transit strike was the role of the media as an arm of the state. From the "right-wing" Post to the "liberal" Times, all were unified in "reporting" that people were angry at the hardship caused by the walkout.
Print, television and radio media all played quote after quote of upset, put-out people. On the second day, a reporter for the "liberal" NY1-TV said she was interviewing people who supported the strike as well as those upset by it. This "balanced" perspective was too much for the morning anchor, the very liberal Pat Kierney, to let stand. He practically forced her to say that the "majority" of people were angry at the strikers.
This view contrasted sharply with what was happening in the real world. On the street, at many PLP members' jobs and when talking to friends, the feeling was for lots of support for the strike.
Sure, there were people who were angry, and others who said what the TV people seemed to ask for. But most people, even those walking many miles to work, didn't seem angry at the strikers.
Ironically, NY1-TV released a poll the day after the strike ended showing a majority felt the workers' demands were "fair," with more people blaming the MTA bosses for the strike than blaming the workers.
Wonder why they didn't run that poll on day 2 of the strike?
A Comrade
U.S. Bosses Aim to Slaughter Pensions
On a picket line during the recent NYC transit strike, I asked a bus driver about management's demand to increase the retirement age from 55 to 62. He said there were many days when his back ached after a day of driving his bus, and that he couldn't envision driving a bus in his late fifties. 'Besides," he continued, "shouldn't we have the right to enjoy our final years with dignity?"
Good question. The average U.S. life expectancy is in the mid-seventies (probably less for industrial workers). A worker retiring at 55 has roughly 20 years to live. (It's probably less since most workers can't retire at 55, both because their pensions aren't adequate and they're not collecting Social Security yet.) So how will workers spend the last two decades of their lives?
That's a social question, determined by class struggle. The capitalist class - and their politician agents - are determined to reduce pension and Social Security because they cut into profits, through higher labor costs as Social Security is half paid by employers. They plan to reduce pension costs by forcing workers to (a) retire later; (b) contribute more to their pension plans; and (c) convert defined-benefit plans to 401(K)-type plans. Under Social Security workers receive a definite amount each month. But under 401-(K) plans, employees contribute to their own pension investment plan. These are vastly under-funded, and provide only a fraction of what retirees will actually need to live.
According to the NY Times, only 20% of private sector workers have defined-benefit plans, down from 40% in 1960. Many private companies have switched to 401(K)s because they're less costly for the owners. Many large companies have reneged on their pension contributions, forcing a federal agency to pick up the tab, while paying workers only a fraction of their "guarantees." In California, Schwarzenegger attempted to replace the defined-benefit plan with a 401(K), greatly reducing benefits for State workers.
The attack on the NYC transit workers was part of the ruling class's plan to cut overall pension costs, enthusiastically supported by billionaire Mayor Bloomberg and Presidential candidate Governor Pataki. Bloomberg explicitly said that city-worker pensions must be cut, and that the MTA was leading the way. And who does this racist mayor pick on as the targets in this anti-pension attack? The mostly black and Latin transit workers.
The fact is the strike cost NYC hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue while the Times reported that the MTA's demand would have saved only $15 million in pension costs in the first three years. This only makes sense if one understands that the ruling class as a whole is willing to bear a costly strike as part of an overall goal to worsen pensions for all city and state employees, and then the entire working class (and, as usual, start the attack with a mostly black and Latin work-force).
Bloomberg said he had received hundreds of messages from people without pensions complaining about transit workers striking against forcing new workers to pay 6% of their salaries to their pension (present workers pay 2%). Bloomberg was fanning resentment among lower-paid, non-unionized and white collar workers - without pensions and health benefits - towards unionized workers who have managed to hold on to some of these gains that were won by previous strikes and struggles but have now become too expensive for a capitalism in crisis. This bosses' ploy tends to weaken the unionized workers and bring them closer to the level of the non-union workers, while the bosses laugh all the way to the bank.
While workers' intense class struggle can fight these attacks, ultimately only a society free of profits and bosses - communism - can devote all of the value produced by workers to the well-being of the working class as a whole, as determined collectively by our class.
A Reader
CHALLENGE comments:
We agree but would add that the U.S. bosses' campaign to reduce employee pension and health plans - as well as wages and corporate taxes -- is driven by the necessity to meet competition from international corporate rivals, who are virtually free of worker health care costs because of government-paid plans, or who function in countries with no health benefits whatsoever. This lowers their labor costs relative to U.S. bosses who must pay out billions in health benefits fought for by workers here, where there is no government health insurance for workers under 65 unless they are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.
Likewise, to meet increased competition from both U.S. bosses and low-wage countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia, European bosses are seeking to drastically cut long-held social services to lower their own labor costs.
Hospital Workers Back Strikers
When the NYC transit strike began, my son and I made the 45-minute walk from our house on a cold and windy day to join the workers on the picket line. I distributed 15 CHALLENGES to the strikers. During my two days on the picket line, I shared the ideas in the paper and noted the need for a mass communist party for all workers.
I told them I'm a hospital worker in solidarity with them. They welcomed my support. I started some chants on the picket line: "Whose trains? Our trains! Whose subway? Our subway!" And, "The Workers, United, will never be defeated!"
Back at the hospital, I encouraged coworkers to join the picket line nearest to their neighborhood. We had many discussions about the strike. One worker stated that it "would take a revolution" to break the Taylor Law. All strikes are considered illegal by the bosses."
The next day two workers from the hospital joined the picket line. I interviewed a few transit workers about the strike and conditions below Ground Zero on 9/11.Their responses:
"The work is hard and dangerous. It's hazardous to your health. You're working with lead and other forms of chemicals."
"The life span of a transit worker ends around 65."
"Our union should have called on workers from other unions to join the picket line. The union hasn't raised a strike fund."
Despite this, the workers seemed very upbeat as they defied the Taylor Law.
A Hospital comrade
Youth Stand on Workers' Side
As a working-class youth I believe transit workers were right to strike. It demonstrated their power. Working-class youth should stand alongside and ally with the workers in solidarity to fight back against the capitalist system exploiting us all. This alliance is crucial in working towards a communist revolution.
At our PLP club study group held days before the strike, one comrade said the transit workers are the heart and soul of New York and we should support them. Others added that the strike is necessary to show that people can protest their treatment in the workplace. Workers really have NO rights under capitalism.
My school stands across the street from a transit workshop picketed by the workers. On the day before the strike there was a rally right outside my school. After school a group of my classmates, members of my debate team and a few teachers bundled up in the freezing cold and talked with the workers. I came to realize that the workers were fighting for more than bigger paychecks and pensions, that they also cared about the future of the working class. When I pointed to capitalism as our common enemy, a worker on the line hugged me.
This strike demonstrates that the working class is journeying on the road to revolution. It shows that workers' power is enhanced through the amount of people standing with them. We need a worker-youth alliance to fight back. The transit strike is a step towards this and can lead to developing a communist society. This struggle needs masses of people, young and old. The workers, united, will never be defeated.
Red Youth
Morales' Socialism Protects Bosses
Evo Morales has been elected as the "first Indian President of Bolivia." His Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) is supposed to be a threat to capitalism. But, again, this only highlights why PLP fights for communism, not socialism. Morales and his socialist MAS party affirm abstract principles like ending exploitation and racism, building "economic community and social justice and protecting the environment. But they can't achieve this while rejecting the concrete goal of destroying capitalism. Morales can't "move toward socialism" while promising to respect and protect private (capitalist) property.
Major historical socialist movements - especially the Bolsheviks who established the Soviet Union - were far to the left of Morales, MAS and other current socialists. They fought for power by smashing the bosses' government rather than working within it, destroying capitalism rather than reforming it. They saw socialism as an immediate step toward communism, not an abstract ideal.
We've learned valuable lessons from these heroic achievements. One of PLP's most important contributions to the working class is our recognition that socialism not only did not, but cannot lead to communism. Socialism maintained and nurtured key elements of capitalism (such as nationalism and the wage system) with the disastrous results seen today in former socialist countries like Russia and China. That's why -- as CHALLENGE says on page 2 -- we fight directly for communism.
That's also why I think it's unfortunate that some of the contributions to the useful "Under Communism" series obscure the differences between socialism and communism. It's certainly important to laud the Soviet Union's achievements in fighting racism, fascism and sexism. It's just as important to acknowledge their limitations. Articles praising the former Soviet Union -- under the heading "Under Communism" -- without also explaining the sources of its reversal, can leave the mistaken impression that socialism and communism are basically the same.
Let's strive to be more consistently dialectical in our efforts to learn from history and envision more clearly the communist future PLP fights for.
A Comrade
Using CHALLENGE to Fight Factory Fascism
What does it mean to be political and militant in a factory under fascist conditions? Is it one individual confronting management, or is it organizing a base for class struggle, fortified with a network of CHALLENGE readers? This thought arose after Humberto, a co-worker (and CHALLENGE reader) said to me, "I thought you were political and militant. Why didn't you speak out?" (at a meeting between the workers and the company manager who related the importance of our work for national security).
Management detailed the use of our products for homeland security and the "war against terror" - that we "should be proud of our contribution to freedom." The company manager said they wanted to outsource work, consolidate all the shops and eliminate old unused machines, also saying we "needed to be more careful" - clean up any spills we spot and tell the boss if we see someone doing something wrong.
One government representative stressed the importance of this work being done "in-house," not outsourced.
Most of my shift of machinists and assembly workers was there. The morning shift had filled the room. The number of workers they said took in-house training was suspect - it nearly matched the total number of workers. Yet most of us haven't been trained.
I wanted to expose the government rep's praise for our "doing a good job" and lauding company for keeping the work in-house. But most of the work is already outsourced. We're retained because some aspects of the work are proprietary; only this company can do it.
But there was a contradiction: the VP intended to eliminate machines and looked to outsource some work, while the government representative said the work should stay in-house. Would the work be kept here based on "company values" and the "integrity" written on the back of our badges? Or will it be profits and shareholders' interests not written on the back of the badges? My heart was pounding when they asked for our questions, but I did not say anything, realizing we had no organization or plans.
When I spoke to my friend Ramon, he said my question was very good, but if I asked it I'd be "a marked man." He wanted to ask if we were doing "so well why weren't we getting any more overtime and why couldn't he get the grinding wheels he needed for some jobs. I replied that it's because they want us to do more with less. Another worker agreed that I had a good question, but asking it would end my tenure in this factory.
Humberto was angry, demanding, "Why didn't you speak out? You know those classes they're offering are only for managers and engineers, not for the machinists."
"The whole meeting was propaganda," I replied. "It was about outsourcing, about working harder and faster to keep our jobs under threat of outsourcing," I continued. "That was their main demand. Besides, if I said something, who would back me up?" Humberto said, "I would."
"But we're only two," I countered. "Who else is with us?" They'd list us for getting fired. We have no organization. They outlined their demands but what are ours?"
"We could have come up with some on the spot," he said. "Then other workers might have said something."
"Yeah, but we don't really know that, do we?" I asked. "We must have a plan. Before the next meeting we need to assemble other workers in the shop and develop our demands. Then we can meet theirs with ours."
It's becoming clearer that to reach this point, we must talk to more workers, to deepen their understanding that the source of all these attacks on us is the capitalist system. Our best weapon for this is CHALLENGE. Increasing the number of workers who read, study and distribute our paper will help us sharpen the class struggle and use it as a school for communism.
West Coast Red Worker
RED EYE ON THE NEWS
`We do torture' US school could boast
The US military ran the notorious School of the Americas (SOA) from 1946 to 1984, a sinister educational institution that, if it had a motto, might have been "We do torture." It is here in Panama, and later at the schools' new location in Fort Benning, Georgia, that the roots of the current torture scandal can be found.
Some Panama school graduates went on to commit the continent's greatest war crimes of the past half-century: the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador, the systematic theft of babies from Argentina's "disappeared" prisoners; the massacre of 900 civilians in El Mozote in El Salvador; and military coups too numerous to list here....
The embrace of torture by US officials has been integral to American foreign policy. GW, 12/22)
Big biz robs us no matter who is elected
There is nothing unusual about handouts for private companies. In his book Perverse Subsidies, published in 2001, Professor Norman Myers estimates that when you add the direct payments US corporations receive to the wider costs they oblige society to carry, you come up with a figure of $2.6 trillion, or roughly five times as much as the profits they make....
It would be tempting to hold Bush responsible for this, but the oil firms were scooping up taxpayers' money long before they put their robot in the White House. Myers reports that between 1993 and mid-1996 "American oil and gas companies gave $10.3m to political campaigns and received tax breaks worth $4bn." (GW, 1/5)
US, Britain plan hidden control of Iraq oil
November 21, a consortium of U.K- and U.S.-based policy groups published Crude Designs: the rip-off of Iraq's oil wealth, a 48-page exposé of the slick plan devised by the United States and Great Britain to take over Iraq's oil profits. Read it yourself at www.crudedesigns.org
It says, "Iraqi public opinion is strongly opposed to handing control over oil development to foreign companies. But with the active involvement of the U.S. and British governments a group of powerful Iraqi politicians is pushing for a system of long-term contracts with foreign oil companies which will be beyond the reach of Iraqi courts, public scrutiny or democratic control." (San Antonio Express-News)
Shantytowns erupt, losing faith in SA gov't
South Africa's sprawling shantytowns have begun to erupt, sometimes violently, in protest over the government's inability to deliver the better life that the end of apartheid seemed to herald a dozen years ago.
At a hillside shantytown in Durban called Foreman Road....the only measurable improvements to the residents' lives amounted to a single water standpipe and four scrap-wood privies. Electricity and real toilets were a pipe dream....
The number of shanty dwellers has grown by as much as 50 percent to 12.5 million people.
Unemployment, estimated at 26 percent in 1994, has soared to roughly 40 percent.... 881 protests rocked slums in the...year; unofficial tallies say that at least 50 percent were violent.... Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria estimated that the minister's tally was at least five times the number of any comparable previous period....
Said [Council analyst David] Hensen.... "It shows that ordinary people are now feeling that they can only get ahead by coming out on the streets and mobilizing -- and those are the poorest people in society. That's a sea change from the position in, say 1994, when everyone was expecting great changes from above." (NYT, 12/25)
Workers founded science, not just great men
In writing about science...historians celebrate a few great names -- Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein -- and neglect contributions of common, ordinary people who were not afraid to get their hands dirty. With "A People's History of Science," Conner tries to help right the balance. The triumphs of science rest on "massive foundations created by humble laborers," he writes....
An accomplished army of the anonymous bequeathed...their tools, data, problems, ideas and even, Conner argues, the scientific method itself....
Tough, trial-and-error, sometimes live-or-die work...was gradually refined into the intellectual and rarefied pursuit we call science. (NYT, 12/18)
CHALLENGE is tri-weekly during the end of December. We wish our readers a 2006 full of struggles for a world without bosses.
Anti-Racist Movement Growing in the South:: Katrina Survivors Organizing Fight-Back
Student Protest Defies Hampton U. Bosses
a href="#Langston Hughes on Hampton’s Racism">"angston Hughes on Hampton’s Racism
Boeing Strikers Fighting for Future Workers
a href="#Garment Workers’ Unity Stops Bosses Cold">"arment Workers' Unity Stops Bosses Cold
a href="#Auto Workers Shouldn’t Pay For GM-Ford Decline">"uto Workers Shouldn’t Pay For GM-Ford Decline
The Struggle at CUNY: Building Solidarity Between Workers and Students
Cook County Rank-&-File Unite, Demand Strike vs. Give-backs
Lynne Stewart Case: Hundreds Take Stand vs. Police State Attack
Homecare Workers Tell Off Sellout Union Bosses
Toledo Cops Protect Nazis, Attack Anti-Fascists
Home Health Care Workers Strike Over Racist Poverty Pay
LETTERS
Anti-war Conference Spawns New Activists
France: Clear Rebels of Deadly Assault
Anti-Racist Holiday Excites Co-Workers
Soccer Players Score Against Racism
Back Anti-Minutemen Protesters
Language-Literature Profs Planning Counter-Attack vs. Fascist Control
a href="#‘Land of Dead’ Review">‘L"nd of Dead’ Review
REDEYEZ
- Profiteers rob poorest countries of trillions
- Nobelest Pinter roasts US lies and brutality
- Ruling class $ goes to Iraq, not New Orleans
- US capitalism up while most families down
- Bosses’ media hypnotize public with lies
- Unions shrink as bosses strongarm workers
UNDER COMMUNISM: What will science be like?
Anti-Racist Movement Growing in the South:
Katrina Survivors Organizing Fight-Back
NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 10 — "I’ve been bumped around to four different places since Katrina. Now I’m in a hotel in downtown New Orleans with a whole bunch of other people. They say they’re going to put us out soon, and I don’t know where we’ll go." The speaker, a woman in her fifties, was standing in front of City Hall at the concluding rally of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) march today. "What we’ll probably do is walk in that door and camp on the floor till they find some housing for us," said another homeless resident. If the City doesn’t do something to help these people, they’ll have to arrest a whole bunch of people. They’ll have to build a whole bunch of jails."
About 1,200 hurricane survivors and their supporters from the Gulf Coast and around the country marched behind a big red banner reading, "From Outrage to Action; Justice after Katrina: the People Must Decide." A brass band energized the marchers, who felt stronger and more determined the farther they walked.
Spectators greeted the march enthusiastically, dancing, clapping, shouting or blowing car horns. Although few people were on the streets, many joined the march. One survivor who joined commented, "Something’s got to start. It might as well be now!"
Chants like "I’m Back, You’re Back, Tell [Mayor] Nagin We’re All Back," "Whose Streets? Our Streets," and "What Do We Want? Housing! When Do We Want It? Now!" rang out loud and clear. PLP members led chants like, "FEMA, You Liar, We’ll Set Your Ass On Fire," "The Workers, United, Will Never Be Defeated," and "The Only Solution Is Communist Revolution!"
Rally speakers condemned all levels of government for the racist terror against hurricane victims and tied their murderous actions to the war in Iraq. Survivors encouraged New Orleanians to reclaim their homes. This grassroots march barred any politicians or big-name speakers from its platform.
The day before the march, about 500 survivors and activists met in Jackson, Mississippi, to plan further action to fight for the rights of the mainly poor, black workers who were displaced by the ruling class since the hurricane. The energy and commitment of many young people in PHRF was inspiring. These multi-racial youth see the events surrounding Katrina as the beginning of a new anti-racist movement. They fought hard for the agenda and demands of the movement and the voices of the survivors came through in the events.
But nationalists and revisionists (pseudo-leftists) also fought hard to lead and control. Nationalism is the same worldwide: "Follow me because I look or talk like you. Hate those other folks and forget that they’re oppressed workers just like you. Follow me into battle so I can claim my piece of the capitalist pie." The U.S. ruling class uses this ideology to get workers to fight and die in their wars. It poisons any movement claiming to fight racism.
PLP members learned a lot and were very moved by seeing the devastation of New Orleans first-hand. The contents of people’s homes are on the street waiting for pick-up, trees are leaning on power lines, few people are on major streets. But the French Quarter looks like nothing ever happened, as middle-class people living there buy sushi at the corner grocery. A few streets away, black neighborhoods have no electricity, not even street lights or traffic signals. In the wealthier areas, the lights are on again.
We shared our communist ideas and literature with many people at the conference and the march. We exchanged phone numbers with survivors who are totally disgusted with the system and interested in revolutionary ideas. We pointed out to college and high school students who came to help Katrina victims that communism is the only solution to racism. We plan to continue to work with this movement.
The racist attack against black workers after Katrina may have changed the possibilities for class struggle in the U.S. Given the imperialist war in Iraq and the slashing of workers’ living standards to the bone, New Orleans can energize an anti-racist movement. All CHALLENGE readers should do what they can to join and support the struggles of Katrina victims.
Student Protest Defies Hampton U. Bosses
HAMPTON, VA., Dec. 9 — Twenty Hampton University (HU) students protested the war in Iraq, U.S. racism in New Orleans, the AIDS epidemic, and the war in Sudan by distributing flyers and holding discussions in the student cafeteria on November 2. HU administrators and police shut down the activities, detained and videotaped students, confiscated their ID’s, and charged seven students with putting up posters, distributing flyers, and holding a protest without obtaining prior permission — and threatened, in writing, to expel them! If anyone doubted that we’re on the road to fascism, both locally and nationally, lose those doubts. But the HU students have sharpened their activism, are preparing a new offensive against racism, war and repression, and some may be joining the PLP Winter Project in Washington, DC over semester break.
Bold Mass Approach Leads to Advance
The students at this historically black university responded to the administration attacks by reaching out boldly to fellow students and to local and national organizations in which they have been involved (including Amnesty International, United Students Against Sweatshops, and the Campus Antiwar Network). Their participation in these mass organizations provided many friends to call on. Soon hundreds of phone calls and e-mails were pouring into administration offices. The university was embarrassed by local media, and the story quickly spread widely via the wire services and the internet. Two of the seven students wrote an article entitled "Corporate Plantation," a sharp and detailed analysis of recent events and the long history of racist oppression at Hampton. The article has been posted on the internet:
http://blackcommentator.com/162/162_corporate_plantation.html
On the morning of the hearing, several dozen students and others were at the Student Center to support and defend the HU Seven, including supporters from Howard University, who brought petitions of support with 900 signatures, gathered in just two days; the parents of the accused; a faculty advisor; attorneys from both the ACLU and AFSCME; and the director of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Office of Amnesty International. Members of predominantly white local anti-war organizations set up a support picket line just outside the University grounds.
Parents and attorneys put the HU administrators on the defensive and exposed the proceedings as a kangaroo court. The administrators rushed through the hearings and quickly announced that all were guilty; six received a "sentence" of 20 hours of community service and one (who had merely passed by the protest activity) was given a "warning." The administration’s clumsy attacks and the students’ bold response have changed the atmosphere on campus, paving the way for more intense struggle.(See article page 2)
Hampton University’s Racist Repression Serves Rulers’ Interests
Many outside supporters could scarcely believe that the Hampton University (HU) administration imposes such restrictive rules on its students (see front page article). Hampton’s near-fascist regime exists not only because its president for over 25 years, William Harvey, is a Republican who has enjoyed close ties to Presidents Reagan, Bush I and Bush II but the school has been run this way ever since its founding in 1868, and plays an important role in sustaining the entire structure of racism in U.S. capitalist society (see box). Many of the over 100 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) similarly serve the ruling class.
Hampton University was founded by a Union general who believed that blacks and Indians were thousands of years behind whites in moral and social development and therefore must be denied civil and political rights. Hampton trained teachers to be sent throughout the South to try to make blacks accept their subordination as super-exploited agricultural workers in a Jim Crow (segregated) society. Its most famous student was Booker T. Washington, who cloned Hampton at Tuskegee and received a huge endowment from billionaire capitalist Andrew Carnegie. In 1895, in his famous Atlanta speech, Washington openly embraced racial segregation and rejected the struggle for political rights. As W.E.B. Du Bois pointed out, Carnegie and other big capitalists contributed money to Tuskegee and Hampton to foster the movement to maintain black workers as cheap labor to break strikes and unions and thus hold down all workers. One historian called his book about Hampton "Schooling for the New Slavery."
Today Hampton trains black professional, managerial and technical workers to help the ruling class maintain the super-exploitation of black workers in a period of imperialist wars and U.S. decline. That means training Hampton students as army officers in the rulers’ wars; as criminal justice officials in a racist system of mass incarceration of blacks; as professional workers in corporations whose profits depend upon super-exploitation of workers; and as doctors and lawyers in a system that denies black workers access to decent medical and legal services.
To accomplish this mission, Hampton indoctrinates its students to look down on black workers and look up to military, political and corporate leaders such as Colin Powell and Condolezza Rice. For example, Hampton’s president Harvey selected as graduation speaker this past year Alphonso Jackson, Bush’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Jackson has cut Section 8 subsidized housing for poor workers. More recently, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, Jackson told the Houston Chronicle that most of New Orleans’ black population should not be allowed to return, and that New Orleans should become a predominantly white city!
The HU administration can deliver its chosen product only by operating in a highly repressive way. But these lackey administrators will not succeed. Black students often choose to come to HBCUs to avoid the racism at predominantly white colleges and universities, and then discover the racism of a heavy-handed black administration. However, in the late 1950’s and 1960’s black students at HBCUs sparked the sit-in movement that spawned the militant Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Their militancy provided leadership and inspiration to the entire student movement in the U.S. and worldwide. Black student leadership today is crucial to the development of an anti-imperialist, anti-racist revolutionary movement, and Hampton’s bold fighters are moving in that direction.
a name="Langston Hughes on Hampton’s Racism">">"angston Hughes on Hampton’s Racism
Langston Hughes, the black communist writer, penned an article in "The Crisis" in 1934 condemning the political conservatism of black colleges. He once was asked by Hampton students to speak to them about two vicious racist incidents — the death of Fisk University’s popular dean of women, caused by the refusal of white hospitals to admit her after a traffic accident, and the beating to death of a Hampton graduate by a white Alabama mob.
Hughes noted, "The students wanted to…protest the…brutality that brought about their deaths…. We began to lay plans for…a Sunday evening protest meeting, from which we would send wires to the press and formulate a memorial to these most recent victims of race hate….
"The faculty sent their… dean of men…to confer with the students. Major Brown [said]…that perhaps the reports we had received…had not been true. Had we verified those reports? I suggested wiring or telephoning immediately to Fisk and to Birmingham for verification. The Major….felt it was better to write. Furthermore,…Hampton did not like the word ‘protest.’ That was not Hampton’s way. He, and Hampton, believe in moving slowly and quietly, and with dignity….
"On and on he talked. When he had finished, the students knew quite clearly that they could not go ahead with their protest meeting…. They knew they would face expulsion and loss of credits if they did so…. Hampton students held no…protest over the mob-death of their own alumnus, nor the death on the road (in a Negro ambulance vainly trying to reach a black hospital) of one of [their]…finest young women. The brave…spirit of that little group of Hampton students who wanted to organize the protest was crushed by the official voice of Hampton…."
Boeing Strikers Fighting for Future Workers
HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA — About 1,600 workers in the International Association of Machinist (IAM) struck Boeing’s rocket business Nov. 3. The main issue mirrors the one that sparked the earlier September strike by 18,500 Machinists in the Seattle, Portland and Wichita commercial airplane plants: retiree health care for future hires. "We’re fighting for people who aren’t in the work force yet — people we don’t know," said Gary Quick, an 18-year veteran Boeing employee.
Since Lockheed workers overrode their leaders’ sellout on this issue in the spring, no IAM local leadership has dared to accept such a contract. The Party has helped put this class demand on the front burner, as rank-and-filers in several locals demanded solidarity around the fate of these future hires.
Nonetheless, the ideology of these pro-capitalist union leaders undermines this fight. Rather than hanging patriotic bunting over a small rally of a couple of hundred, we must mobilize the strength of our class. "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains," said Karl Marx in concluding the "Communist Manifesto." These days those words are life and death for our class brothers and sisters.
As reported in the last CHALLENGE, 100,000 workers in Sidney, Australia marched on the Boeing headquarters in support of 25 striking Boeing workers in that country. One thing that infuriated Sidney workers was the sacking of two workers for calling another employee a "scab."
International class consciousness — that calls a scab a scab — stands in stark contrast to the union leaders’ flag-waving nationalism. Nationalism is the ideology of the bosses, an enemy within our ranks. "It’s national security or retirement security," said Peter Peterson, chairperson of the Council on Foreign Relations, the bosses’ premier foreign policy think-tank.
The attack on retiree medical benefits has shifted from the purely economic realm to the political. The bosses are calling for an all-out attack on retirement benefits throughout the country. Although backed up with actuary figures, the real reason behind this attack is the need to wage bigger and more costly wars to maintain control over primarily Mid-east oil. The inter-imperialist rivalry is sharpening and we’ve been added to its list of victims. Appeals to nationalism play right into the bosses’ imperialist plans.
Even as this battle unfolds, SPEEA, the Boeing engineers union, caved in on retiree medical care for future hires. In addition, the rocket workers’ medical care expired and scabs have become a real problem. Now more than ever, these strikers need the class-conscious, revolutionary ideas advocated in the pages of CHALLENGE.
a name="Garment Workers’ Unity Stops Bosses Cold">">"arment Workers’ Unity Stops Bosses Cold
"We should stop production," a garment worker declared when I said Joaquin had quit because he couldn’t stand any more yelling from the factory’s general supervisor. We agreed to discuss a strike with other workers after lunch.
In five minutes, two other workers approached another worker’s machine to relate what had happened. I proposed to them to stop working at noon. Angrily they said, "Why don’t we stop now? Why wait?" "Then we must talk to the others," I responded, realizing I had underestimated the workers’ anger.
In minutes the factory was paralyzed. This wouldn’t have happened so quickly without the help of a co-worker who had gone through similar struggles in another factory. While I talked to my closest friends at one end of the factory, she did the same at the other end. Class consciousness and previous experience were her guides. But what really convinced all the workers was one worker yelling, "An injury to one is an injury to all!"
The machines stopped. We met near the offices and agreed to demand to speak to the boss, who was at her other factory. The general supervisor and an office worker asked, "What’s happening? Why aren’t you working?" Their Spanish was hard to understand. "We want to talk to Maria [the boss]. We don’t want any more harassment. We’re not animals. We want Joaquin to come back, but we don’t want to talk with you," declared the workers angrily.
When the two returned to the office, one worker told everyone that strikes are good weapons against the bosses. He raised the recent rebellion in France — showing we’re part of the same working class — as well as the racist police murders and the immigrant deaths at the border. He said we need to fight back, both inside and outside the factories.
"This is a dictatorship," said another worker who doesn’t work on the sewing machines. "If you don’t fight back, you’ll continue to be exploited." Another said, "Personally they don’t mistreat me because I don’t let them, but they do pressure me to work faster. The machine I work on is dangerous; it has knives and I can get cut. Pressure causes accidents." Then he told how another worker had been injured because of speed-up.
The general supervisor returned with a secretary to translate into Spanish. He argued that since he didn’t speak Spanish well, the workers misunderstand him. "Those who don’t like me raise their hands," he said, expecting a positive response. No one did. The workers answered, "All of us don’t like you." "Then I’ll leave," he said, turning around. "Bye Mister," said one worker." Say goodbye to Mister."
He glared angrily at this worker’s sarcasm and returned to the office. Out came the person in charge of giving out the work, saying, "We spoke to Maria and she said to go back to work and she’ll be here in half an hour to resolve this problem." No one opposed this, but many workers didn’t want to go back until they had talked to the boss.
When the boss arrived she made an announcement on the loudspeaker. "He [the supervisor] has a strong accent and since he doesn’t speak Spanish well, he was misunderstood," the boss said. If you don’t like him, that’s no problem. We’ll find another, but it will always be the same because I like them to be strict." She offered us child care and financial aid for some of our children in school.
The worker who quit came back. I haven’t worked in this factory long but the solidarity of these workers shows that the next step is building closer ties and distributing CHALLENGE to more workers to be able to move this anger towards the long-term fight for communist revolution to end exploitation once and for all. All bosses are the same. We need workers’ power.µ
A Garment Worker
a name="Auto Workers Shouldn’t Pay For GM-Ford Decline">">"uto Workers Shouldn’t Pay For GM-Ford Decline
In a 1997 survey of the world’s auto industry, the British magazine The Economist noted, "By 2000 overcapacity will have risen from 18 million to 22 million units (per year) — equivalent to 80 of the world’s 630 auto assembly plants standing idle." This was one of many indicators pointing to serious problems for world capitalism. Unemployment, idle machinery, loss of capital (plant closings), all loomed large in its immediate future.
While the survey was thorough, hindsight reveals an underestimation of the potential for capitalist growth and investment in China.
But when the next survey was published, Sept. 10, 2005, the Economist had changed its tune. "But globally the auto industry is set for a huge expansion with the motorization of China and India…Garel Rhys, the Director for the Center of Automotive Industry Research at Cardiff University in Britain, says…this growth will create the need for 180 new factories…Some experts predict that over the next 20 years more cars will be made than in the entire 110-year history of the industry." From the prospect of shutting down 80 plants to building 180 new ones in eight short years is quite a turn-around.
Then how is it that at this moment General Motors and Ford plan to lay off 30,000 workers each and close up to 18 plants in North America? For decades they were the poster boys for U.S. industrial supremacy. Today, however, the world’s auto industry is expanding while GM and Ford are contracting.
It’s a snapshot of the relative decline of U.S. industrial power. Domestically it shows up in over two million jailed; over 43 million without health insurance; wages falling; hours of full-time work increasing; Arab-Americans jailed without trial; the racist Katrina catastrophe and so on. Financially, it shows up as the world’s biggest debtor nation and being challenged by the euro as a world currency.
The world has changed drastically since World War II ended, when the bosses dreamed of an "American Century" and 80% of the worlds manufactured goods were U.S.-made. Today autos and steel are made everywhere and the challenges to U.S. imperialism are many. Every major industry, from auto and steel to textiles and aerospace, are undergoing dramatic and brutal restructurings as U.S. bosses try to maintain their status as the #1 imperialist in a shrinking world with many players. Europe is undergoing similar changes.
Despite all their layoffs, plant closings and attacks on pensions and health care, one of the U.S. bosses’ main trump cards is that they’re armed to the teeth and able to ensure that the world’s oil market still trades in dollars. The other is the defeat of the old communist movement, which allows them to get away with unlimited attacks on the working class while at the same time the old socialist countries like China have become a source of imperialist investment. However, China’s economic growth is enabling it to turn itself into an imperialist power and a rival of the U.S. and other bosses. This is partly true for India as well.
Even though Japanese and European bosses have a jump-start in the growing Chinese market, GM and Ford are also investing heavily there, building factories and hiring workers at 70 cents-an-hour. While a long strike at Delphi could eat up most of GM’s cash on hand, GM and the UAW appear to be working very hard to avoid that (see below).
All the auto bosses investing in China are dreaming of selling cars to a potential 250 million buyers. But this feeding frenzy will create still another glut of over-capacity, especially if there are serious economic downturns in China, leading to more boarded-up factories and long unemployment lines. Just as the rush to build auto factories in Mexico created more poverty on both sides of the border, now many of those Mexican plants are being shuttered and moved to China. It’s the nature of the beast.
GM and Ford highlight U.S. imperialism’s precarious plight. For decades now, control of the world’s oil has sustained its status as the world’s safest harbor for international capital. With a shrinking industrial base, it needs that capital more than ever. As CHALLENGE has pointed out, today’s war in Iraq is part of a larger plan to grab control of all Middle East oil. The strategic aim is to displace the euro as a rival world currency and open a door of influence in the Asian consumer markets by controlling the key raw material — oil.
All this challenges the working class. Can 60,000 GM and Ford workers (and thousands more in the supplier plants) be thrown out on the streets without a murmur of protest? Shouldn’t we fight for all our unions to send telegrams to the UAW urging support for any strike, including on mass picket lines and in sit-downs, and protest against this attack on our class?
This can be an opportunity for PLP members and friends on the shop floor to once again expose the U.S. bosses’ strategic plan for up to 30 years of oil war. It can also expose the central role of the union hacks who, in the face of preparations for sustained war, promote pro-war patriotism and passivity, as if the working class is merely a victim of history and not the actual agent of change.
Even if such a campaign doesn’t produce strikes or protests, it will help bring our revolutionary communist politics to masses of workers, strengthen our base and expand our revolutionary influence.
The Struggle at CUNY: Building Solidarity Between Workers and Students
(Third of a four-part series)
In 1912, Big Bill Haywood, leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies), stood before thousands of striking textile workers in Lowell, Mass. He held up one hand with each finger extended separately. "This is how the AFL organizes," he said. Then, raising a clenched fist he exclaimed, "This is how the Wobblies organize!" In 1919, Haywood joined and became a leader of the then revolutionary Communist Party USA.
Today, the working class in NYC is on the defensive, lacking real solidarity. Although there’s a "NYC Central Labor Council," in practice union leaders cut their own deals and don’t support each other. All city workers and students face declining wages and deteriorating living conditions as the capitalist class forces them to pay for imperialist wars. The Professional Staff Congress’s (PSC) contract struggle at the City University of New York (CUNY) is one example. Solidarity with other workers and CUNY students would sharpen this struggle, making it more successful. Steeled by united participation in immediate battles, the working class could also begin to look beyond reform, to the need for revolution.
At a September 29 PSC mass meeting, the President of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the Treasurer of the Transit Workers Union (TWU) promised to support the PSC in our fight. Although informed about the PSC informational picket lines scheduled for Oct 19 and 20, they didn’t organize their membership to support us.
This typifies classic trade unionism: unions rarely look beyond their own ranks. Building solidarity with all workers is not optional or a "second stage," only to be considered after one’s own contract is settled. It’s a vital part of winning economic demands. Rank-and-filers shouldn’t wait for the leadership’s signal to do this. PL members in the PSC proved that even modest efforts can pay off. As a result, on a few campuses members of the UFT and AFSCME’s District Council 37 joined our lines. And sympathetic TWU shop stewards at three bus depots took flyers to distribute to their members.
These stewards agreed about the need to unite against the Taylor Law, which criminalizes public employee strikes, threatening severe penalties for doing so. Fearing this, many CUNY workers would rather settle for a give-back contract. But if the PSC united with other municipal workers, together we could bust this anti-labor law and solidify unity within our own ranks. This occurred in the 1966 transit strike, when tens of thousands of other workers backed TWU members and busted the old strike-breaking Condon-Wadlin Law; in fact, it was that action that led to passage of the Taylor Law. By fighting together we could also break the city’s strategy of enforcing bargaining patterns, in which one union settles low and sets a precedent for other contracts.
The weakness of fighting separately was clear in the current graduate students’ strike at New York University (UAW Local 2110). NYU refuses to negotiate a new contract with the graduate teaching assistants while cutting their health care benefits and threatening to void their next semester appointments if they don’t return to work. While some professors are holding classes off campus, the majority of faculty, staff, and students cross the picket lines as if there were no strike! Ironically, NYU’s adjunct professors are also organized by the UAW (Local 7902). Where is the solidarity even between UAW locals?
PLP says fight to win. To take on the full power of the bosses — be it CUNY or NYU — we must build working-class solidarity across union lines.
For the PSC, this also means developing ties with CUNY students. Some faculty believe that bringing students into union "politics" breaches professional conduct. This is strange coming from a public university with a long history of fierce united student-teacher battles here for open admissions and affirmative action programs — inspired by the anti-racist rebellions and anti-Vietnam war movement of the late 1960’s early ’70’s.
After some delay, the PSC leadership is now taking seriously the need to build a worker-student alliance. First, students were invited to attend the September 29 mass membership meeting. Next, at the informational picket line flyers distributed to students raised the need for solidarity and explained why students should be supportive of CUNY workers and a potential strike. Student reaction was overwhelmingly positive. At one campus, students from an anti-war group joined the picketing by distributing a solidarity flyer and collecting signatures on a petition supporting PSC workers. At other campuses, students led the picket lines with rousing chants like, "Students and Workers United, Will Never Be Defeated!"
Now there’s a strong feeling of worker-student solidarity among workers and students. PSC workers are responding by speaking out against planned tuition hikes. Many CUNY workers and students are won to the idea that give-backs and tuition hikes are related to austerity measures forced on workers by a system that prefers to cut taxes for the rich while funding wars and prisons.
A worker-student alliance is particularly important at CUNY whose student body is overwhelmingly black, Latino and Asian. Racism has been a divisive tool used by the ruling class for centuries. The fact that a majority white faculty can unite with a majority non-white student population sets an example for the whole working class. CUNY’s racist bosses have cut state funding by 70% since 1990. Given that CUNY students come from predominantly lower-income black and Latin families, faculty opposition to tuition hikes in this instance also becomes an anti-racist fight. CUNY’s attack on the faculty is also an attack on students.
To cover up these racist attacks, CUNY bosses try to pit one against the other — telling students that workers’ gains cause tuition hikes. In reality, wages at CUNY have dropped 47% since the early 1970’s while tuition has skyrocketed. (CUNY was tuition-FREE until the ’70’s when its student population switched from predominantly white to mainly black and Latin.) A worker-student alliance will beat this divide-and-conquer strategy and sharpen the fight against racist tuition hikes and give-backs.
These events at CUNY prove that students and workers understand the need to fight together. They demonstrate that the "separate fingers of the hand" are really connected and have a lot to offer each other. The ability to see and make these connections is something communists can offer workers who are artificially divided into unions, movements, "races" and teacher/student categories. As more and more workers are involved in united struggle, they’ll begin to think and act as a class, laying the groundwork for the collective fist of the working class to smash capitalism with communist revolution.
Cook County Rank-&-File Unite, Demand Strike vs. Give-backs
CHICAGO, IL Dec. 1 — "It’s Time For County to Pay! It’s Time For County To Pay!" "They Say Cutback, We Say Fight Back!" These chants and others cut through the freezing temperatures as more than 200 black, Latin, Asian and white men and women workers held a lunchtime picket line at Stroger Cook County Hospital. The SEIU and AFSCME locals that represent thousands of area healthcare workers called the protest. County workers have been bargaining for a new contract for more than a year. The workers in SEIU Local 20 had just voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike.
Some of the pickets work for Hektoen. Their jobs are funded by grants, mainly from the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Their near-unanimous vote rejected a tentative agreement between SEIU and Hektoen. Then they voted to authorize a strike despite the union organizer’s attempted sabotage. During the strike vote they put out a flier stating, "The bosses are Katrina, the union is FEMA, and Hektoen is our Superdome!"
Though a much smaller bargaining unit, Hektoen workers, with their militancy and solidarity, have helped set the tone for the much bigger showdown at County. The union is threatening to call out the Hektoen workers on their own while continuing talks at County. Many workers have adopted the slogan, "Two Contracts — One Struggle," and want to strike both contracts together.
Health care is the main issue. The bosses were telling the Hektoen workers to sign up for the new health care plan they had just rejected, while the union sat by silently. The County’s last proposal would see increases in worker payments of about $200 month for family coverage, meaning a big wage-cut for most workers. And even these concessions pale compared to the health care available to the patients we serve.
The mostly black, Latin and immigrant poor patients at County often wait days in the ER for a bed, and more than 24 hours in the pharmacy for a prescription. The $6 billion-per-month cost of the war in Iraq is eating up all social services. In health care it means big cuts in Medicare and Medicaid that affect the poor and the elderly. Even a Sunday bus line to County was cut out. These racist cutbacks are financing the imperialist oil war and the building of the Homeland Security police state.
County and Hektoen workers are way ahead of the union leaders, who are desperately seeking an accommodation with the bosses. Last September the workers organized a bus to the anti-war march in Washington, D.C.
As one Party leader, a black woman with over 25 years at County, said recently, "Most workers are caught in the here and now. We need to spend more time struggling with the workers politically. We get so caught up fighting the attacks, the firings, handling grievances, fighting around the contract and with the Executive Board, that we spend more time fighting for reforms than for communism."
To remedy this, we’re trying to increase the CHALLENGE readership to 100, based on winning a number of new network distributors. A mass base for CHALLENGE will become the political leadership of the workers; they’ll be the first to follow the Party into battle. The network distributors will be the next wave of recruits. We’re planning a meeting for all CHALLENGE readers to fight for a strike that can truly be a school for communism.
Lynne Stewart Case: Hundreds Take Stand vs. Police State Attack
NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 8 — Tonight between 250 and 300 people attended a "speak-out" in support of Lynne Stewart, the lawyer facing a sentence of up to 30 years, for "conspiracy to provide material support for terrorism" and to "defraud the U.S. government." Her Arabic translator Mohamed Yousry and paralegal Ahmed Abdel Satter were also convicted. PL’ers distributed 90 CHALLENGES.
The event aimed to reach out to organizations and activists beyond Ms. Stewart’s normal base of supporters. The organizers hoped to merge the personal support for Lynne Stewart with the fight against developing fascistic trends facing working people in their schools, neighborhoods and unions. The event also featured politically-oriented entertainment by the "Raging Grannies," who sang, a spoken word poet, a comedian and a gospel singer.
Panelists included speakers from varied religious faiths, a union officer, a high school teacher and an anti-police brutality activist. Each gave impassioned reasons for supporting this fight. The clergy attempted to fuse their religious/moral outlook to activism needed to confront class, race and political oppression. The unionist questioned the failure of union "leaders" to openly oppose the war in Iraq and challenged their silence on the Stewart case. She called for rank-and-file power to change the direction of the unions.
The teacher related efforts to have Ms. Stewart speak at his school. His talk moved many in the audience to have confidence in youth to critically evaluate the world and act to fight racism, fascism and war. The speaker exposing police brutality demonstrated the need to fight this unjust system.
Afterwards, numerous people took the mic. One speaker explained how both Democrats and Republicans had joined together during the Clinton Administration — the Hart-Rudman Commission — to chart plans for wars abroad to control the world and fascism to prevent dissent at home. Another speaker questioned whether a system should exist that can’t and won’t house Katrina/Rita refugees, brutalizes youth, and won’t educate them.
A cheer arose for a speaker who — while detailing the attacks against auto and airline workers who face loss of pensions and health coverage — called for support of the NYC transit workers in their contract fight.
Probably the highlight of the speak-out portion were the teenagers from two Brooklyn high schools who detailed their activities in their schools to support this anti-racist struggle.
All in all, the general character of the evening was reflected in the statement by the anti-fascist German pastor Niemuller: "First they came for the communists and I did nothing. Then they came for the trade unionists and I still did nothing. Then they came for Jews and the Catholics and I did nothing. Finally they came for me, and there was no one left to defend me."
Homecare Workers Tell Off Sellout Union Bosses
NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 11 — Last week eleven homecare workers and their ESL teacher paid a surprise visit to their union, 1199/SEIU. As we left the elevator, shocked faces peered around cubicles. "What are your names and what agencies are you from?" the officials asked.
"That doesn’t matter," a worker replied. "We’re from different agencies, we’re here as a group and we want to see the president."
"She’s not here, but I’ll see you. I guess the revolution is starting today," said an official as she led us into a conference room. "So, what’s this about?"
"We want overtime pay that we’ve never gotten and we don’t want to work 24 hours for 12 hours pay," said the workers’ spokesperson.
The union official began a long-winded talk which several workers tried to interrupt. "Just let me finish!" the official admonished. (Later a worker said she acted like we were children or people from another planet.) Then a union organizer entered and recognized one worker and the ESL teacher because two years ago we had circulated a petition outside his assigned homecare agency demanding overtime. At that time he told us overtime was not the union’s priority and that the workers "liked" working 24 hours. "Yes, they love working 12 hours for free," the ESL teacher had shot back. Hundreds of workers had applauded as they lined up to sign the petition. Humiliated, the union official had scurried inside to meet with the agency’s director.
Now this same organizer wagged his finger in the faces of the worker and the teacher. "I know you and you. I don’t know what your motive is. But the rest of you better do this in an orderly way and within, not outside the union," he threatened.
Anger boiled over as the worker yelled back at him. The tables turned. All the workers spoke up. We demanded a meeting with the union president and that the union set up a committee to carry on this struggle. As we expected, the union official "explained" that a legal case to change a 1974 federal law that exempts "domestic companions" from the overtime law is in court and in the meantime there’s nothing the union can do.
"Yes, you can," responded a worker. "You can take us to Washington to fight this law."
"But the agencies and the City have no money," the official whined.
"Are you blaming that on us?" another worker added. "That’s the government’s problem, not ours."
"Just give us your names and phone numbers," the union official demanded. Not a single worker signed. Finally we agreed to leave one name and phone number so they can tell us the time of the meeting with the president. As this meeting ended the officials became defensive, saying, "We’re not your enemy, we’re on your side."
Afterwards the workers gathered far from the union building to discuss what had been learned. "I had to leave because I couldn’t stomach how they treated us." "They showed they’re not on our side."
"Why did they single you out?" a worker asked the teacher. The teacher, a PLP member, said, "It was a victory for us. Almost all of the workers spoke up. The union leaders exposed their racist attitudes toward their members. It’s the first time in two years of organizing that we’ve gotten their attention. Now we must keep it. To organize inside the union is messy and tricky, but we have to do it. They attacked me because they remember our petitioning activity, but also because they know that I’m motivated to fight for the working class. I’m against capitalism and I’m a long-time member of a revolutionary communist party, for those of you who don’t know. This is our newspaper."
Three distributors took their CHALLENGES; one gave $40. Other workers received it for the first time. The Party has many opportunities with these workers to continue and expand our fight-back and to raise political consciousness. We have a world to win!
Toledo Cops Protect Nazis, Attack Anti-Fascists
TOLEDO, OHIO, Dec. 10 — Two months after an anti-racist rebellion ran the "master race" out of town, about 30 Neo-Nazis returned to the scene of their crime, this time under much heavier police protection.
PLP members also returned, to spread revolutionary communist ideas and to try to smash the gutter fascists and their police protectors. Our group was mainly college students from Chicago and Indiana. About half were new to PLP and had never attended such an event.
At the rally, about 150 anti-Nazi demonstrators had to pass through police checkpoints, remove everything from their pockets, go through metal detectors and then be photographed! These fascist measures, coupled with freezing temperatures and the presence of about 200 cops (about 50 on horseback), caused many local residents to stay away.
The 30 Nazis were separated from the protestors by a full city block and a combination of a line of riot police, a 200-yard area covered in a foot of snow and a line of wooden horses. The police tried to provoke the crowd by riding horses into and around the anti-racist demonstrators. Towards the end of the demonstration, the police rode their horses directly into the crowd and arrested two people after assaulting one of them with a stun gun. They repeated this stampede several minutes later.
This action made it crystal clear who the police serve and protect. It exposed the true nature of the capitalist state we live under as one which not only protects, but promotes hatred. It also inspires us to fight for communism and build a world where racism will not be tolerated and Nazis will not be protected.
Home Health Care Workers Strike Over Racist Poverty Pay
NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 12 — On the cold and windy morning of Dec. 8, 1,000 home health care workers in Local 1199-SEIU, employed by People Care, went on a four-day strike over wages and health benefits. The agency pays less than $7 an hour with no health benefits or sick time. The racist and sexist bosses figure they can get away with these poverty conditions because the workers are predominantly black and Latin women.
As one worker told NY1-TV, "We need to pay our rent; we don’t have sick days. We don’t have holidays. Even for vacation, they only pay half of one week and the salary is so low."
The 1199-SEIU leadership neglected to mobilize mass strike support from among the 70,000 hospital workers. Consequently, there was a very small turnout on the picket line. This is the same leadership that’s always crowing about "strength in numbers" and that they’re a powerful and effective union. However, the union leadership uses its members for political campaigns to elect bosses’ politicians who represent the capitalist system that’s always cutting back on these same workers’ benefits.
Last year, 1199-SEIU settled with other home care agencies to raise hourly wages to $10. People Care has refused to match this. Even at $10 an hour (before taxes), it’s almost impossible for these workers to feed, clothe and house their families.
The home health care workers provide compassionate home care for people discharged from hospitals. The hospital bosses encourage shorter stays for these patients, because it increases their profits.
The patients tend to have more ailments when they’re discharged and require extra assistance at home. The workers administer medication, monitor pulse and temperature, assisting with physical therapy exercise, bathe, feed and dress the patients, run errands and escort patients to doctor appointments. Some patients are bedridden and obese, making the work even more strenuous. This work is just as important as that of a health care worker in a hospital but pays a lot less.
The capitalist home health care system is two-tiered, based upon agencies that make enormous profits from low-paid workers and a lack of patient care. Medicaid and Medicare finance the system, with the funds coming from taxes and bosses’ profits extracted from the working class. Medicaid and Medicare monies are channeled through Certified Home Health Agencies (CHHA). They withhold a substantial amount to pay their own administrative cost and reap their profits. They employ mostly nurses and therapists. These CHHAs in turn subcontract to Licensed Home Care Service Agencies. The LHCSA’s use the money from the CHHA’s to pay their own administrative costs and take their profit cut, leaving only a tiny amount for those who do all the work, the home health care workers.
Since the invasion of Iraq, billions have been diverted from social programs to support that war. The bosses are striving to reduce the cost of health care and drive down the wages of the working class. The answer is to organize the working class to build the PLP around the revolutionary communist ideas in CHALLENGE.
LETTERS
Anti-war Conference Spawns New Activists
The Students and Educators to Stop the War Conference (CHALLENGE, 12/14) provided a broad political arena for students and teachers who had never attended such a mass, progressive event. Newcomers witnessed mass political activism and saw themselves as political agents. Students made presentations, chaired sessions, helped with logistics and attended Youth/Student Committee meetings combining political veterans and new activists. A significant group of teachers brought students and participated similarly. The numbers reflect years of strong base-building and political struggle by students and teachers active on many campuses.
The conference increased students' and teachers' commitment to fight against the war in Iraq and against racism. At one high school this inspired more students to join a student club and confront military recruiters. More actions are being planned and more people are reading CHALLENGE.
At one college, which produced about 60 people for the conference, some enthusiastic teachers want to organize a mini-conference at their school.
Over 30 students attended from another school. Their preparation for the workshops helped them understand much more about the war and its connection to racism and capitalism. In the workshops, the ideological struggle was sharp.
In one workshop, on immigrants and the bosses' military, there were four presenters. One high school student advocated the need to organize in the military. This contrasted with some of the presenters who said that youth in general, and immigrants in particular, should completely reject the military. The inter-imperialist rivalry for resources (oil) and world dominance was highlighted. Another speaker described the Russian and Chinese revolutions. When one mentioned defending "our people," a discussion ensued about the whole working class being "our people."
Another workshop was devoted to teaching about war and peace in elementary school. Creative lesson plans were presented to raise issues about war with younger students. When opposition arose to the pledge of allegiance, some participants had a nationalist response, but most responded positively to the idea that the working class must unite internationally, rejecting all bosses' divisions.
In a workshop on dismantling the war machine, one presenter reviewed moral and religious grounds against the war. Another described how the war machine was part of capitalism and its quest for empire. Yet another advanced the need for revolution and the role of soldiers and workers in making it. At the end, someone asked what the solution was. One presenter said "socialism." Another presenter said that every time socialism was heroically fought for and established, it returned to capitalism, that the answer was communism, which the working class can fight for directly.
Many teachers were excited at seeing young people who were politically sharp and motivated. Most people who went came away exhilarated, wanting to do more to fight back and to learn more about how to end the war machine. A lot can come from this conference, as we keep the action and political struggle in high gear.
West Coast Participant
France: Clear Rebels of Deadly Assault
The article "France: Youth Explode Against Racism" (CHALLENGE, 11/30) includes an inaccuracy which is not without political significance. The article says "the young rebels" were responsible for "a deadly assault on a retired auto worker."
It seemed that way initially. L’Humanité (11/8) reported that on Nov. 4, Jean-Charles Le Chenadec, 60, president of an apartment building tenants association in Stains, went to the foot of the building with the association vice-president to douse a fire in a garbage bin. The two men were talking when some youths threw stones at them. The men ignored this. Then a man approached them and asked what they were talking about. They answered, "Our cars." The man struck Le Chenadec, who fell to the ground in a coma.
A small group of youths ran to help the two officials and then dashed into the street and stopped a passing ambulance. Unfortunately, this was in vain and Le Chenadec died on Nov. 7.
However, on Dec. 1, Le Monde published an article indicating that Le Chenadec’s widow, Nicole, had stated she believed her husband’s murder was a revenge killing unrelated to the urban violence.
Apparently the young rebels are not guilty of murder, but rather did everything possible to save Le Chenadec’s life. Nevertheless, CHALLENGE is right in saying that the rebels did make serious mistakes.
A Reader in France
Anti-Racist Holiday Excites Co-Workers
At my new job, soon after the Thanks for Fighting Racism Feast (TFFRF; see CHALLENGE, 12/14), I was eating lunch while chatting with a young black coworker around my age. He was fasting, even though he loves meat and barbecue and a lot of other great food. He said the aroma of the cooking was giving him hunger pangs. When I asked this buddy of mine why he was doing this, he replied he was protesting Thanksgiving. After all, he told me, Thanksgiving is really about conquest, not about friendship and community, and any assertions to the contrary are essentially a propaganda spin to make racist pigs look like wallflowers. So he fasts to show his opposition to all that.
I immediately thought about the TFFRF, and how amazing and inspiring to have had such a group of people in Washington D.C. that past weekend to recap a year of fighting racism, and yet also have the REAL food and community that most people associate with the racist Thanksgiving holiday. So I said, "There’s this great event that happens the weekend before Thanksgiving; it’s an anti-racist version of that day..."
As I revealed my friend’s protest already existed as an organized dinner, including food, absolutely everybody else in the room — maybe fifteen others — stopped their own conversations and started listening to me outline the TFFRF. They stared with a mixture of amazement, happiness and mock anger that I hadn’t told them sooner! Then everyone, including my friend, starting dropping stuff like, "Why didn't you say anything?" and, "Invite me next year!"
I was embarrassed, not because of their attention to me, but because I realized my error in not having considered that they all might have wanted to attend the Feast together! I assured them I’d invite them next year, and they responded, "Yeah, you better!"
This taught me that even in a new situation — although it might take time before people could come closer to the Party and to communist thought — it doesn’t automatically mean it takes just as much time to introduce them to an anti-racist event. Many people are anti-racist and already understand the need for people everywhere to fight racism. The fact that I didn't invite them shows not only that I simply "didn't think of it" because I’m new on the job, but also that I don’t have the confidence I should have in people who are active in reform movements but really, in their hearts, also want serious change.
I’ve learned that lesson now and all these co-workers will receive a full, open, and well-in-advance invitation to next year’s Thanks For Fighting Racism Feast!
Young (new) worker
Soccer Players Score Against Racism
Imagine my surprise when I turned on the soccer channel Sunday morning (12/4) to watch Lazio vs. Siena in the Italian league. The teams lined up side by side, reached down, picked up a big banner and unfurled it across the whole line-up: "No al Razzismo!" (No to Racism!)
The players were protesting racist heckling of black players in European matches, where the teams field players from all over the world. I had heard of these types of racist actions in Spain but not in Italy. This protest was an act of multi-racial, international solidarity among the players, and I wonder who organized it. Professional players make high salaries, far more than workers, but it was great they did this. It went beyond the individual political protests U.S. athletes sometimes make.
The match went to Lazio 3-2, but today both teams scored against racism.
Calcio Rosso (Red Football)
a name="‘Amazing Grace’ Won’t Beat Transit Bosses"></a>"Amazing Grace’ Won’t Beat Transit Bosses
On December 10th an overflow crowd of transit workers squeezed into NYC's Jacob Javits Center as thousands more stood outside. The mass membership meeting began with bagpipers circling the hall playing 'Amazing Grace,' which was written by the captain of a slave ship. Then came the pledge of allegiance to a system that practices genocide against Katrina victims and millions worldwide. This was followed by prayers by those who condone the slaughter by insisting that only god and not workers' power can stop it. Finally some flag-waving "justified" a steady supply of soldiers from our ranks for bosses' profit wars, financed by driving us into poverty.
The meeting consisted mostly of a discussion of Metropolitan Transit Authority demands for give-backs, speed-up, second class status for new workers and dangerous service cuts. The absence of any worker demands seemed to suggest the union would settle for a small raise and the stopping of most, but not all, of the give-backs. The lack of any real strike preparation or any rank-and-file input into the strike decision leads me to believe the Toussaint leadership will announce another, 12th-hour sellout "deal."
The hard reality is that the TWU is led by high-paid bureaucrats who use workers' dues to pay lawyers and politicians to negotiate with the bosses. It took bloody rank-and-file struggles led by communists to win the right to form the Transport Workers Union and establish collective leadership from the bottom up, with leaders like Mike Quill receiving an average worker's wage. When the U.S. government tried to force workers to pay for the Vietnam War, (like Bush with Iraq today), Quill led the workers in defying the war and anti-strike laws in a successful strike against cuts that would "force our workers into poverty."
Transit workers cannot continue to let these sellouts mentioned above conduct our struggles against corporate oppression. We must face the reality of a fight to the death against the bosses and their cops, courts and military. We need to unite with communists again, not just to win good contracts but to build a system dedicated to workers' needs — communism
Retired transit worker
Back Anti-Minutemen Protesters
ORANGE COUNTY, CA, Dec. 12 — Two anti-racists who were arrested May 25 for demonstrating against the Minutemen had their preliminary hearing today. The Judge refused to drop or lower any charges against one of them and dropped only two charges against the other. They face serious charges based on the lies of the Garden Grove and Orange County police who attacked the demonstration.
We ask those who support the fight against racism and the system it thrives on to contribute money to help with a vigorous legal and political defense against this attack. The defendants and their supporters are organizing a speaking tour about the Minutemen, the rise of racism and fascism and the need to organize against them. They spoke at the "Students and Educators to Stop the War" conference where they received donations and support. This fight, part of the long-term fight to destroy racism at its roots, will continue.
Language-Literature Profs Planning Counter-Attack vs. Fascist Control
Most people don’t think of academic conferences as political battlegrounds, but the Radical Caucus of the Modern Language Association (MLA) knows that winning the hearts and minds of the Association’s faculty and graduate students is an important part of the struggle to put people ahead of corporate profits. The MLA is the nation’s largest association of college language and literature professors. It meets each year from Dec. 27-30.
This year, the Caucus is aiming to battle the conservative groups that are trying to control what’s taught or discussed on campus. The Caucus is organizing two academic sessions on "Academic Work and the New McCarthyism." As part of its counter-attack, it’s proposing a resolution and a motion to the Delegate Assembly. They directly link the right-wing attacks to the economic de-funding and restructuring of higher education. The latter has replaced tenure/tenure-track faculty with vulnerable graduate teaching assistants or adjunct and non-tenure track ("contingent") faculty. These groups teach up to 65-75% of all higher education courses, at much lower salaries.
Government cuts in student financial aid, university administrative attacks on graduate student unions and exorbitant increases in tuition exemplify how economic attacks on higher education have freed up tax dollars for war and corporate tax cuts, making political activism more difficult just when it’s most needed. Communist faculty and students in the Progressive Labor Party have been active supporters of Radical Caucus resolutions and other efforts to popularize Marxist perspectives. We’re fighting for anti-capitalist demands that expose the inabilities of capitalism to meet our needs and to argue that more radical change is needed — and possible — over time.
The Radical Caucus resolution calls on the MLA to "oppose the Academic and Student Bills of Rights (A/SBOR) and all related legislation" which give government agencies power over course content and faculty expression. Distorting the rhetoric of the "Bill of Rights," these groups — including David Horowitz’s Center for Popular Culture, Students for Academic Freedom, Campus Watch and the David Project — want to enforce the teaching of reactionary ideas that cannot win support on their own merit while violating the rights of both students and faculty.
The Caucus motion demands that the MLA leadership allot financial and human resources to urge the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) to modify its policies to "assert the freedom of each faculty member, tenured or untenured, part-time or full-time, to determine…what is relevant to the subject matter he or she teaches, and to teach accordingly." The motion argues that the current AAUP statement "provides humanities teachers with insufficient protection, since it is widely acknowledged that our ‘subject’ has porous boundaries, and the determination of ‘controversiality’ is politicized."
Within the MLA, the Radical Caucus has been the primary leader of anti-capitalist struggles for more than a decade, successfully proposing resolutions that link the growing international competition over resources, the "war on terrorism" and the U.S. invasion of Iraq to growing political repression and economic attacks at home. Many of these resolutions — advocating academic labor justice and opposing racism, fascism and imperialist war — have passed the Delegate Assembly by large margins. This indicates that MLA members recognize how capitalist economic goals have led to massive reallocations of tax dollars to fund the war and to provide, through tax cuts, unprecedented profits for corporations and banks.
Since 9/11, and especially through the USA Patriot Act and the propaganda campaign around the "war on terrorism," faculty nationwide have been intimidated, and in some cases even fired, when their teaching "questions" U.S. foreign policy or the war. One recent example is the campaign to fire Warren County Community College English Professor John Peter Daly when his e-mail protesting an on-campus event by the right-wing Young Americans for Freedom was fed to the media. Such attacks, just like the torture in Abu Ghraib and the CIA’s secret prisons abroad, reflect the hardball being played by the U.S. government and economic elite, using intimidation and force, to enforce their policies as their lies get exposed and public support wanes for their imperialist motives.
At past conventions, PLP members have played a critical role in advancing Marxist class analyses of literary/cultural issues, of the Iraq war and of the growing ruling-class use of fascist tactics. As the economic and human costs of war increase the stakes at home and abroad, it’s more important than ever to help build a movement for communist ideas in the MLA.
a name="‘Land of Dead’ Review"></">‘L"nd of Dead’ Review
George Romero’s fourth zombie saga, "Land of the Dead," was recently released on dvd. Along with outlandish gore, it offers serious class politics—in fact, according to both Romero and those who know him, he made the film with politics in mind. Not that this is anything new. Romero is known for his populist take on the horror genre as well as his collective method of directing movies, in which actors and other staff share multiple jobs and have a say in the shooting of the films. "Night of the Living Dead," his first zombie film released in 1968, was, according to both critics and Romero (in a recent interview), a commentary on the violence of the Vietnam War as well as a critique of rural racism. 1979’s "Dawn of the Dead," filmed in one of the country’s first shopping malls, is a classic satire on consumerism. The 1985 sequel "Day of the Dead" (as well as Romero’s 1975 film "The Crazies," about military quarantine of a town with an outbreak of a psychosis-inducing virus), was a blunt attack on the racism, sexism, and "leaderism" of the military, with a healthy poke at the idealism of modern science. Romero’s zombie movies are also implicitly antiracist: "Night" features a strong, confident black man as its star, and both "Dawn" and "Day" end with a black man and white woman as the film’s only survivors.
This brings us to "Land of the Dead," which features a black male gas station attendant (humorously named Big Daddy) in the "lead zombie" role. The county’s few remaining human survivors live barricaded inside a city, with the outskirts (and everywhere else) populated by flesh-eating zombies. But the real problem is that a class system still remains, and with a vengeance. Dennis Hopper plays Kaufman, the self-appointed leader, a power-hungry ruling-class type who lives in an exclusive high-rise shopping mall called Fiddler’s Green. Only the rich, through an exclusive application process, are allowed to inhabit this place, which, it is soon pointed out, Kaufman simply took over. The rest are left to live in a slum. Kaufman maintains control not only with a personal security force dressed in nazi-like gray uniforms, but by providing the people with "vices and games"for example, a casino includes a grotesque game in which bets are placed on which caged zombie would be the first to kill a prostitute (perhaps meant as a satire on wrestling and other sports).
One of the movie’s best political scenes occurs when a Scottish man encourages several slum-dwellers to rise up against Kaufman, so they can collectively improve their lives. The film’s main plot line centers on John Leguizamo’s character, Cholo, a young Puerto Rican man whom Kaufman has hired to make dangerous trips outside to collect food and other supplies that can’t be produced in the walled-in city. However, Cholo’s real goal is to save up enough money in order to live in Fiddler’s Green. When Kaufman turns him down, due to his own racism and classism, Cholo takes drastic measures, which could also harm the city’s non-ruling class residents. Kaufman then sends the film’s hero, played by Simon Baker, to stop Cholo, but he has his own individualistic goal of moving to Canada, where there are neither people nor zombies.
However, "Land"s secondary plot is much more interesting. More and more zombies are seen trying to use tools, presumably as a way to imitate their former human existence. A trick that the humans use to distract the zombies begins to lose its effectiveness. The zombies, although technically dead, seem to be learning (a theme hinted at in Romero’s earlier films). This is all happening under the leadership of Big Daddy, who seems to be aware of how his fellow dead are being slaughtered by the humans on their missions. With the zombies as a parallel for the underclass, Romero hits us with an exciting subplot with revolutionary implications.
"Land" is not without flaws. Some of the acting is uninspired, the ending is a bit anticlimactic, and it was mostly filmed at night, making the gory scenes that had occurred in broad daylight in "Dawn" and "Day" seem less bizarre. The over-the-top gore and violence is not for everyone. And Romero apparently intended Kaufman’s character to be more of a jab at the Bush administration than against the ruling class in general (there’s a funny scene where Kaufman inadvertently quotes Bush). However, it’s great to see a film that is both fun and sides with the underdog, while trying to wake people up to the class oppression we live under.
REDEYEZ
Profiteers rob poorest countries of trillions
Five trillion dollars has been corruptly removed from the world’s poorest countries and lodged permanently in the world’s richest countries….
Multinational corporations, wealthy individuals and unscrupulous governments….use the world’s tax havens and banking systems to hide sums of money that could address almost all of the continent’s financial needs.
…Some 30% of the GDP of sub-Saharan African nations disappeared offshore in the second half of the 1990s. The situation in the Middle East and north Africa is even worse….
…Greedy individuals and companies and compliant banking systems and governments are far more responsible than corrupt dictators for the state of the poorest countries. (GW, 12/15)
Maybe Bush’s emergency abilities flu away
I’m not saying that President Bush is a dud in responding to national emergencies but when he announced his plan to fight the next flu pandemic, Las Vegas odds makers immediately installed flu as a 3-1 favorite….(MinutemanMedia.org, 11/15)
Nobelest Pinter roasts US lies and brutality
London, Dec.7 — The playwright Harold Pinter turned his Nobel Prize acceptance speech…into a furious howl of outrage against American foreign policy, saying that the United States had not only lied to justify waging war against Iraq but had also "supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship" in the last 50 years….
Mr. Pinter said: "You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good….
"Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion…" (NYT, 12/8)
Ruling class $ goes to Iraq, not New Orleans
Young middle-aged and old, these citizens of New Orleans, wiped out by Hurricane Katrina and now urgently seeking government assistance, spoke Friday of sleeping in a truck and on a floor, living out of a car and waiting for the help that never seems to come….
"You come to these FEMA centers, you sit all day" said Myrna Guity, 43, …."You get no answers to your questions. They’re evasive. You’re constantly ‘pending.’ What are you going to be doing, ‘pending’ for the rest of your life? I’ve lost everything.…"
Three months after the storm, political figures here talk often of the progress that has been made….But hidden behind these sometimes rosy declarations are tens of thousands of their constituents, living at the edge of their dwindling resources….
"We’ve got food stamps, and that’s pretty much it." (NYT, 12/3)
US capitalism up while most families down
Over the last few years G.D.P growth has been reasonably good, and corporate profits have soared. But that growth has failed to trickle down to most Americans.
Back in August the Census bureau released family income data for 2004. The report, which was overshadowed by Hurricane Katrina, showed a remarkable disconnect between overall economic growth and economic fortunes of most American families.
It should have been a good year for American families: the economy grew 4.2 percent, its best performance since 1999. Yet most families actually lost economic ground….
And one key source of economic insecurity got worse, as the number of Americans without health insurance continued to rise.
We don’t have comparable data for 2005 yet, but it’s pretty clear that the results will be similar…. (NYT, 12/5)
Bosses’ media hypnotize public with lies
The power of these lies was considerable. In a CBS News/New York Times poll released on Sept. 25, 2001, 60 percent of Americans thought Osama bin Laden had been the culprit in the attacks of two weeks earlier, either alone or in league with unnamed "others" or with the Taliban; only 6 percent thought bin Laden had collaborated with Saddam; and only 2 percent thought Saddam had been the sole instigator. By the time we invaded Iraq in 2003, however, CBS News found that 53 percent believed Saddam had been "personally involved" in 9/11; other polls showed…a similar percentage of Americans…convinced…that the hijackers were Iraqis. (NYT,11/12)
Unions shrink as bosses strongarm workers
…The percentage of American private sector workers in unions has fallen to 7.9 percent, the lowest rate in a century and down from 35 percent in the 1950’s….
…Surveys showed that more than half of American workers say they would vote to join a union if they could.…Nearly one-third of companies facing unionization campaigns fire union supporters and…one-half threaten to close work sites. (NYT, 12/9)
Slavery Built New York
Capitalism was born dripping blood from its pores. As Karl Marx pointed out, the original accumulation of capital — essential to the development of the profit system — was created by robbery and mass murder. The trans-Atlantic slave trade and enslavement of 12 million black Africans remains one of the greatest examples of this robbery. A current exhibit at the New York Historical Society on slavery in New York City bears this out. (Quotations are from this exhibit.) Teachers should definitely take their classes to see it. It closes March 5.
The slave trade "was the largest forced migration in world history," in which millions died from the brutal conditions on the slave ships. The racism directed first against Native Americans and soon afterwards against black people (later extended to Latino, Asian and other immigrants) was the foundation stone of U.S. capitalism. Without the continuance of this racist exploitation, it could not survive.
Originally, slavery of black people existed alongside "unfree white labor" — indentured servitude, forced military service (impressement), apprenticeship and convict labor. But "only in the late 17th century did North American [slave owners] tie lifelong and hereditary slavery to skin color." Soon the rulers used the division between black and white as a club over white workers’ heads to force down their wages. This rulers’ racism has been used to weaken the working class ever since.
"The trans-Atlantic [slave] trade yielded fabulous profits and transformed the world…. Profits from this trade fueled the world’s first industrial revolution in 18th century England."
"The trading of slaves along the African coast was tied to the rise of plantation agriculture in the Americas and the enormous expansion of European waterborne commerce."
The schools teach about slavery in the Southern U.S., in South America and in the Caribbean, but rarely mention slavery in the northern colonies of New York and New England. Yet from 1613 to 1633, Dutch ships provided the slaves who literally "built New York." The Dutch West India Company told Peter Stuyvesant, its Director-General in New York, that, "The importation of Negroes would greatly benefit the cultivation of the soil….The welfare of the country depends on it."
Stuyvesant supplied slaves to Portuguese, British and French sugar plantations in Brazil, Barbados…and throughout the Caribbean" as well as "to New England, Chesapeake" and "to farmers on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley." When the British took over New York from the Dutch in 1664, slaves "provided the labor that made New York boom."
"Trading in slaves was big business and enriched merchants, farmers, professionals and craftsmen." In 1703, "42% of New Yorkers had slaves….Among cities, only Charleston, South Carolina, had more."
"Slavery was the lifeline of hundreds of New York businesses…. Slave ads helped keep newspapers in business" because of regular advertisements for the buying and selling of slaves as shiploads arrived in New York, and through ads for the capture of runaways.
State law proclaimed, "All children born of slave mothers shall be slaves as well…. Living conditions were harsh, work constant." The "work-day" began before dawn and lasted until late at night. Revolts were met with death. Organized religion justified the oppression.
But, "For 400 years slaves rebelled, during the Middle Passage, on plantations, escaping to mountains, swamps and jungles…. Resistance never stopped." The first mass rebellion in New York occurred in 1712.
When slaves were promised freedom during the War for Independence, many joined Washington’s army. One-fourth of the troops at the final British surrender were black. However, when the war ended, Washington demanded the return of his slaves. (The British promised freedom to slaves who joined their army.)
The burgeoning need of Northern capitalists for wage labor impelled them to push for elimination of slave labor. Wage labor cheapened the cost to the capitalists, who imported a flood of white immigrants from Europe to compete with the freed slaves for jobs, driving costs even lower and profits higher. This led to the outlawing of slavery in New York in 1827, though not in New Jersey until the 1860’s and led directly to the U.S. Civil War, to prevent the spread of slave labor as the U.S. expanded westward. However, after the North won the war, the Northern capitalists helped the former slave owners keep freed slaves terrorized and a source of cheap labor there as well.
The Society’s exhibit did not cover the brutality and conditions on Southern cotton plantations, where thousands of slave rebellions occurred. But despite this, the exhibit does reveal much about how slavery was central to the economic growth of U.S. capitalism. The major capitalists sponsoring this exhibit hope to imply "progress" since slavery. But the horrors of Katrina visited on the black people of New Orleans; the 70% of the two million in U.S. prisons who are black and Latino; the prison-like schools in the inner cities; the mass unemployment among black and Latino youth; the racist police and many other racist horrors— all this can be traced to the brutal conditions of slavery suffered by black people for centuries. No exhibit implying "progress" can hide these continuing racist crimes by the capitalist ruling class based on endless wars and racist super-exploitation.
Capitalism and racism were born together. Only the struggle to build a society based on the abolition of wage slavery and racism can free the entire working class from the yoke of oppression. That society is communism.
UNDER COMMUNISM: What will science be like?
Science, far from being purely objective, is largely influenced by the prevailing social and economic system. For example, Darwin’s theory that evolution occurs through natural selection, has influenced the field of biology for the last 150 years. Few scientists have disagreed with the fact that evolution has taken place, but Darwin and other scientists showed that natural selection was one of the key mechanisms making it happen. Currently the anti-science religious right-wing is trying to roll back this scientific progress.
Nevertheless, as powerful and confirmed as Darwin’s theory has been, it also partly reflects the capitalist social relationships of Victorian England — a highly individualistic society, marked by workers competing for jobs subservient to capitalist exploiters competing for profits. Thus, Darwin’s formulation is about "survival of the fittest" rather than merely "survival of the fit." Not all relationships among members of a species or between members of different species are competitive. Many species cooperate to help those members with disabilities, such as parents do with children, so that even many of the less fit members will be able to survive and produce their own children.
In today’s capitalist society, similar false ideas are passed off as "objective science." For example, to justify racist and sexist discrimination, genetic theories of "race" and gender differences claim that white people are born "more intelligent" than black people or that men are born "more intelligent" than women.
Recently two scientists from Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in NYC posed that violent behavior among black youth is inherited. They proposed giving drugs to innocent children to curb "possible future criminality." In the 1980’s, a racist British scientist, Cyril Burt, claimed intelligence was inherited — based on his "studies" of twins. His data was exposed as completely falsified to produce this racist result. Emphasizing environment instead of genetics, Ivy Leaguers Banfield and Jencks concluded that impoverished workers were so used to the "culture" of slums that they actually "preferred" to live in slums!
Or consider the claim that the HIV virus causes AIDS. While HIV contributes, this simplistic approach omits the factors of widespread poverty, ignorance, racism, lack of medical care, global profit-seeking and sexism that contribute to full-blown AIDS.
So if society influences science, what will it be like under communism? Firstly, an understanding of science won’t be restricted to just a few select scientists. All workers will come to understand it.
Communists will fight for more widespread knowledge of the social sciences which will occur prior to a revolution. Many workers will need first to grasp the ideas of communist scientific philosophy — dialectical materialism. "Dialectical" refers to the struggle between two opposites. "Materialism" refers to the position that objective reality — not "design" or idealistic "freedom" of will — determines how people think and act. Dialectical materialism is, first and foremost, the science of revolution, including the interpretation of history that the working class is the dynamic force for social change.
In biology, for example, worker-scientists will develop an understanding of the extraordinary complexity defining the relationship between genetics and environment, how they simultaneously act on one another. We will learn the many ways in which the social environment affects the individual and vice versa.
Under communism we will struggle for every worker to be trained in the science of dialectical materialism. At every workplace and in every classroom, we will learn, and be guided by, the dynamic laws of change present in everyday life. Capitalism, on the other hand, through its schools, seeks to create an unquestioning, robot-like working class in its factories and in its armies. Communist society will need every individual worker to actively question and think about effective ways to improve the conditions of all: from the prevention of deadly diseases, to protection against natural disasters like Katrina, tsunamis or devastating earthquakes. We will study how to improve personal relationships, health and the environment. Science under communism, above all, will liberate the working class from misery and want.
(A future column will show what the science of dialectical materialism reveals about capitalism.)
- Hundreds At West Coast Conference:
Vow Fight Against Racist Imperialist War - `A lot of people...are really mad...They think this is the thing that revolutions are made of.'
GM Declares War on Its Workers - Anti-Bush Democrats' Goal: Larger, Deadlier War Machine
- Pentagon Carpet Bombs Iraq
- New Orleans: New Style Death Camp
- Apartheid Comes to New Orleans
- FEMA Foiled Rescuers
- A Transit Strike Could Set Pace for Fight-Back vs. Bosses' Attacks on All Workers
- Rail Strikers in France Needed Unity with Anti-Racist Rebels
- Guatemala: CIA-Trained Racist Killer Army Becomes Drug Cartel
- 100,000 Aussie Workers Back Boeing Strike
- Military Recruiters, `Democracy' and Public Health
- Red Teacher Organizes School To Oppose Sellout Contract
- Workers in Latin America Should Not Support Any Capitalist-Imperialist Side in Free Trade Dispute
- UNDER COMMUNISM:
- LETTERS
- Angry Militant Moms Oppose Iraq War
- `Stop the War' versus Anti-imperialism
- Racism/Nationalism Help Build Profit Wars
- Fighting Military Recruiters on Campus Is Not Enough
- Picketed Rep. Murtha When He Was Openly pro-War
- Fighting for Honoring Picket Lines at SF Schools
- Laborers Must Not Ignore Racist Minutemen
- Criticism Appreciated
- Last Half-Decent UFT Contract Was in 1972
- Anti-Racist Celebrations Raise Money for Fighters Against Minutemen
- Red Eye On the News
Hundreds At West Coast Conference:
Vow Fight Against Racist Imperialist War
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 19 -- "If it takes a revolution to end this war and all the wars for profit and empire, then I say let's bring on the revolution." That's how one young person summed up a workshop discussion about the nature of the war in Iraq and how to end it, at an exciting day-long conference called "Students and Educators to Stop the War."
It was sponsored by teachers' unions at the K-12 level, community colleges and the California Faculty Association, representing faculty in the California State College System, as well as high school and college student organizations, and drew 550 students, teachers and those with ties to people in the military. The conference was inspired by last spring's East Coast "Educators to Stop the War" gathering.
Many people donated time and money, helped with logistics, food and workshops, and the signing of petitions to prevent the LA Unified School District from withdrawing its permission.
PLP helped build the conference and participated in its workshops. CHALLENGE and PLP's call for communism was well-received in some workshops. Most people were open to discuss building a movement to fight imperialism. There was lots of friendly struggle over political ideas. Recent events like Katrina and the mounting death toll in Iraq have had an effect, as did concerted work within unions, student and anti-war groups and at workplaces.
Many agreed the Democrats were as pro-war as the Bush gang. In one workshop, when students noted their membership in PLP, one teacher thought it was bad that some students in a popular student club were also in PLP. Another teacher thought that was great. "Many people see the source of this war in the system of exploitation and profit," said this CHALLENGE reader. "They see the solution in a system that meets the needs of the workers of the world. I call that system communism."
There were debates about the best way to stop the war: encourage students not to join the military, or reach out to soldiers and expose this war as imperialist. This led some activists to re-think their upcoming campaigns. When someone related the excellent response from soldiers to leaflets linking the nature of this war to the capitalist system, people asked for copies to show their friends. There was friendly debate about a draft, whether anti-imperialists should join the military.
In one workshop, some young presenters said the U.S. was becoming a fascist country. They praised actions against open fascists like the Minutemen and exposed the Democrats as supporters of increased "Homeland Security." Another presenter who opposed organizing against the open fascists -- and advocated supporting the Democrats -- was criticized for passivity in the face of fascism. Others called for a mass revolutionary movement to defeat the source of fascism: capitalism.
In a workshop on fighting against the war budget, some participants explained the Council on Foreign Relation's proposal to cut all programs except those funding wars for decades to come, adding that we shouldn't let union leaders divorce the budget cuts from imperialism. There were discussions of the need for a worker-student-soldier alliance to fight imperialism, and the link between the current war for profits, past and future wars and the capitalist system. In a workshop on fighting the university's ties to the military, many suggested plans to fight back on their campuses. Workshops on Katrina connected the racist treatment of black workers in New Orleans and the war for oil profits in Iraq.
At the end of the conference, there was a call to support the anti-racist rebellion of black and Arab youth in France. Another speaker championed strikes and work actions against the war and its racist effects at every campus and work place. Both received enthusiastic applause.
The openness of the people to many aspects of PLP's line, and many families' growing anger at losing loved ones in an imperialist war, all make us more committed to struggle to up the ante against imperialism, and to show more of our friends that we must be in this struggle for the long haul.
Ultimately, imperialism can only be defeated by revolution to destroy capitalism. We need communism to end exploitation and wars for profit once and for all. For that, we need a mass PLP.
The excitement generated by this conference will help many sharpen the struggle and gain more confidence in the working class through the fight against imperialist war and the racist system that causes it.
`A lot of people...are really mad...They think this is the thing that revolutions are made of.'
GM Declares War on Its Workers
DETROIT, MI, November 21 -- Just ten days after ratifying $15 billion in current and future health care concessions -- mainly from retirees who were not allowed to vote -- the other shoe dropped on GM's 173,000 North American workers when CEO Richard Wagoner announced 30,000 job cuts along with closing and cutting back 12 plants in the U.S. and Canada. The "American Dream" is becoming a nightmare for GM workers like it has become for millions of others. This is especially true for black and Latin workers, who, because of racism were the last hired in auto and now form a disproportiately large section of those laid-off in the last few years.
"A lot of people...are really mad," said hourly worker Robert Paulk, employed at GM's Tech Center. "They think this is the thing that revolutions are made of." (Detroit Free Press, 11/22)
Workers who labored all their lives to produce tens of billions in profits for GM -- and struck many times to win gains that supposedly would produce this "dream" -- are now being robbed of their pensions, their health care and their very jobs. The politicians and media constantly refer to such workers as being "members of the middle class." But workers who are forced to sell their labor power to exist are constantly subject to the insoluble contradictions of capitalism. They're the first ones to suffer so the bosses -- the owners of the means of production -- can maintain their profits. Those who work for wages comprise the working class, no matter how much money they've managed to wrench from the bosses. All of this can disappear in the blinking of an eye -- or in the latest cutback to shore up their exploiters.
By 2008, GM will have cut its North American production capacity to 4.2 million vehicles, down 2 million from 2002, as its market share drops to about 25%. The cutbacks will save GM about $7 billion a year by 2006.
The Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., will close an assembly line. Saturn was set up as a separate GM division with a labor contract not part of the national agreement. The Saturn contract was supposed to be a "model" of labor-management cooperation, which workers resisted and ultimately trashed. Two plants that will close, one in the U.S. and one in Canada, are among GM's highest quality and most productive ones.
Once again we learn the hard way that concessions don't save jobs, nor does labor-management cooperation or producing quality cars. As long as the bosses hold power, no worker is secure, no job or benefit is guaranteed.
What is guaranteed is a future of war and fascism, poverty and terror. The UAW has served the auto bosses for more than 50 years, and seventy years of reform victories are rapidly disappearing. We must make sure that worker' illusions, their faith in the system and in the UAW leadership, disappear as well.
Just as hundreds of thousands are being sacrificed in the oil war in Iraq, millions of retired, current and future workers are being sacrificed as U.S. imperialism restructures its auto, steel, textile, aerospace and airline industries for a permanent war economy. The ripple effect will mean more poverty and racist terror for all workers.
GM workers are not happy with these latest attacks, and Ford workers will be next up. Also, Delphi workers are threatening job actions and a possible strike in response to the company's demands for more than a 50% cut in pay and an end to pensions and retiree health care. Internationally, autoworkers from Germany to Russia, from China to Brazil, face similar attacks as the imperialists and their nationalist union leaders all fight to beat the "foreign" competition.
For communists, there are no foreign workers. We are all one class, in one world, and we need a mass international PLP to defeat imperialism and build a communist world. The current period offers more opportunities to build a mass base for communism among industrial workers, not to win a flurry of reforms, but to abolish wage slavery with communist revolution.
Anti-Bush Democrats' Goal: Larger, Deadlier War Machine
When dozens of Democratic politicians who voted to approve Bush's Iraq war suddenly begin hollering for U.S. military withdrawal, something's rotten. These imperialist diehards aren't turning their backs on the profit system. They aren't abandoning the idea that U.S. rulers need to dominate the world by controlling its oil supply. And they certainly aren't planning a generation of peace.
Representative John Murtha touched off a firestorm last month by calling for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Tears and insults filled the House chamber as lawmakers debated the Democrat's statement condemning the war as Bush's "flawed policy wrapped in illusion." A 70-member "Out-of-Iraq" Democratic congressional caucus was soon handing out "War Isn't Worth It" bumper stickers. But don't count on politicians to bring the troops home.
What the Democrats lambasting Bush really want is a war machine much larger and deadlier than the ineffective force he sent to Iraq. Murtha's "anti-war" manifesto observes, "stabilization in Iraq...cannot be achieved without the deployment of hundreds of thousands of additional U.S. troops."
Murtha & Co. understand that present and future challenges to U.S. imperialism demand an all-out militarization of society. They criticize Bush for not creating the necessary spirit of sacrifice. Murtha complains, "This is the first prolonged war we have fought with three years of tax cuts, without full mobilization of American industry and without a draft."
A 37-year veteran of the Marines, Murtha has close ties to top Pentagon brass. His outburst at Bush followed discussions "with longtime advisers, including two retired generals and a former secretary of the Army." (New York Times, 11/22) Military planners responsible for defending U.S. imperialism over the long term decry Bush's "off-the-shelf," "on-the-cheap" policies.
One severe critic (and probably a Murtha mentor) is retired general William Odom, who once headed the National Security Agency. Odom has a broader view of threats to the U.S. than the Bush gang. He specifically identifies Russia, China and India. He realizes that controlling Mid-East oil, key to the U.S.'s current supremacy, entails not just Iraq but militarily "stabilizing the region from the Eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan," a task requiring massive U.S. and allied forces. He thinks Bush's decision to invade Iraq with insufficient ground troops and virtually no allies may be the "greatest strategic disaster in United States history." (Commentary, 11/11) Odom says the U.S. should pull out of the quagmire to prepare for a far bigger bloodbath: "U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is the precondition to winning the support of our allies and a few others for a joint approach to the region."
To Odom, having U.S. soldiers bogged down in Iraq, when they could be battling al Qaeda in Pakistan or preparing to invade Iran, is a gross waste of manpower. Tellingly, Odom identifies with World War II Nazi generals who told Hitler "that `staying the course' at Stalingrad in 1942 was a strategic mistake, that he should allow the Sixth Army to be withdrawn, saving it to fight defensive actions on reduced frontage against the growing Red Army."
Nazi-lover Odom appreciates the value of phony propaganda in motivating a nation for war. In August he chided "leading Democrats," who "have failed so miserably to challenge the U.S. occupation of Iraq." With greater carnage in mind, Odom urged liberal politicians "to establish as conventional wisdom the fact that the war was never in the U.S. interest and has not become so."
Murtha has heeded the rulers' voice. So have the liberal media. But whether the liberals can use the "withdrawal" lie to galvanize either capitalists or workers in support of their wider war agenda remains to be seen.
The recent turmoil on Capitol Hill shows serious disarray among the bosses. As for the working class, the rulers hope to replay the trick they learned near the end of the Vietnam War when they portrayed tactical withdrawal as "peace" and lured millions of militant war opponents to the dead-end electoral system. It's no accident that the "Out-of-Iraq" caucus includes representatives from the districts most rebellious in the 1960's and 1970's. John Conyers of Detroit is there, and with him the entire congressional delegation of Massachusetts, which has the nation's highest concentration of college students.
Billions of people worldwide and, by now, scores of millions in the U.S. recognize and hate Bush as a racist war criminal. This has become obvious even without communist leadership to expose him. However, our job isn't to belabor the obvious. Of course, we should mobilize against Bush and his gangsters. But they represent only one faction of a dogfight within their class. The other side, which masquerades as "peacemakers," is trying to lay the groundwork for the greatest mass slaughters in history.
Murtha, Odom and the rulers for whom they front have no intention of renouncing war for Iraqi oil. We mustn't fall for their phony peace moves. Imperialism always leads to war. Elections can't change its deadly nature. The answer isn't to line up behind the lying liberal politicians but to build the Progressive Labor Party.
Pentagon Carpet Bombs Iraq
(The following appeared in an article entitled, "UP IN THE AIR; Where is the Iraq war headed next?" by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker, issue of 12/5/05)
The American air war inside Iraq today is perhaps the most significant -- and underreported -- aspect of the fight against the insurgency....One insight into the scope of the bombing...was supplied by the Marine Corps during the height of the siege of Falluja in the fall of 2004....A Marine press release said, "Marine close air support continues to put high-tech steel on target...." Since the beginning of the war, the press release said, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone [our emphasis -- Ed.] had dropped more than five hundred thousand tons of ordinance. "This number is likely to be much higher by the end of the operations," Major Mike Sexton said. In the battle for the city, more than seven hundred Americans were killed or wounded; U.S. officials did not release estimates of civilian dead, but press reports...told of women and children killed in the bombardments.
In recent months, the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased....
*Rep. John Murtha....reported that the number of attacks in Iraq has increased from 150 a week to more than 700 a week in the past year. He said that an estimated 50,000 American soldiers will suffer "from what I call battle fatigue...." The Americans were seen as "the common enemy" in Iraq.
*A retired senior CIA officer... [said] that...in a congressional tour there....legislators were repeatedly told, in meetings with enlisted men, junior officers and generals that "things were
f----d up."
*[A] former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported...to Bush in the White House: "I said to the President, `We're not winning the war.' And he asked, `Are we losing?' I said, `Not yet.'" The President "appeared displeased" with that answer.
New Orleans: New Style Death Camp
On December 8 and 9 there'll be a National Gulf Coast Survivors Assembly in Jackson, Mississippi, followed by a March for Human Rights and Right of Return in New Orleans the next day. The People's Hurricane Relief Fund, a coalition of community organizations, labor unions, youth and cultural groups, is demanding the right to return to their homes; that the government reunite families separated by the Katrina disaster; a Victim's Compensation Fund like the one for 9/11 victims; that reconstruction jobs go mainly to the displaced residents at union wages; and more.
PLP will march alongside these anti-racist fighters and share our vision of communism -- an egalitarian society controlled by the working class in which the people's needs are top priority, not the greed of bosses. We need a revolutionary movement. This system cannot be reformed. Whenever workers manage to squeeze gains from the bosses, they're taken away once the bosses must save their system from inevitable periodic crises. (see GM article, see page 1)
History may reveal the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina to be a turning point in the escalation of U.S. fascism. The rulers' actions reveal their plans for our class.
New Orleans sits where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico. It's a major trading port of strategic military importance, and a critical center for domestic oil. The government has known for decades that the levee system was weak. In 2001, a major analysis in Scientific American predicted disaster if the levees weren't improved. In 2002, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, National Public Radio and PBS followed with reports based on in-depth studies made at Louisiana State University and the National Hurricane Center. All said that a direct hit from a major hurricane would demolish the city and kill 25,000 to 100,000 people. But U.S. imperialism was caught in international competition and its need to control Mid-East oil, and didn't have the resources to reinforce the levees. The loss of New Orleans exposes the rulers' weakness.
As CHALLENGE noted, "The ruling class has turned a hurricane into genocide of black and poor workers in New Orleans." Two days before the hurricane, National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield told all levels of government that no one would survive a direct hit and that public officials ought to do everything in their power to get people out of the way. But local, state and federal officials, Democratic and Republican, did NOT evacuate workers without cars, a death sentence for thousands.
However, New Orleans was sideswiped, not suffering a direct hit. If it had, the storm surge and winds would have wiped the city off the map. The roofs people were clinging to wouldn't have been there. The people caught by the floods would have been killed. Most of those stranded were black and poor. This represents a big step in the development of fascism. Leaving 100,000 people to die is a new day.
The day after the flood, Blackwater Security mercenaries were on the ground protecting ruling-class property. Nearby Army bases with tens of thousands of soldiers and plenty of helicopters and trucks sat idle. It was five or six days before they began to evacuate the city. They stocked the shelters with only enough food and water for one day, with no portable bathrooms, and forced people to stay in the shelters at gunpoint. FEMA turned back nearly all civilian attempts to help rescue people. (See box right.) The ruling class used the flood to ramp up militarization of society. Instead of being rescued, trapped residents were chased around by cops, shot at by the National Guard and deprived of food and water for days until they concluded their captors wanted them to die. This adds up to a policy of racist genocide and fascist control.
The racist nature of the press has been exposed by its portrayal of black victims as violent predators. Typical was a Sept. 4 news report that "roared across cable television" nationwide about "five or six marauders" shot to death on the Danziger bridge. Now it turns out the cops killed two brothers, one a 40-year-old retarded man, and the other a 49-year-old career Federal Express employee. Neither owned or had guns. "The police just went berserk," said eyewitness Jose Holmes, Sr. whose son was hospitalized in the shooting. (All quotes from Los Angeles Times, 11/24)
Now, with over 4,000 people unaccounted for, survivors scattered across the country threatened with homelessness, and the entire Ninth Ward condemned and awaiting the bulldozers, we have a news blackout that parallels the tightly-controlled reporting on the Iraq war.
PLP has been reaching out to displaced workers in Texas and other areas, and has linked their plight to our daily battles on our jobs and in our mass organizations. We will fight to build a mass PLP and create a revolutionary hurricane to blow away all the bosses who are raining down terror from Baghdad to New Orleans.
Apartheid Comes to New Orleans
After Katrina, Ivor van Heerden, the deputy director of Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center, described the government's response: "It was unbelievable, especially because we'd done the Hurricane Pam exercise and I had even briefed White House officials....The biggest failing in all of this was we should have warned everybody [about the levee breaks]....We could have got to the media. We could have had vehicles driving on the interstates with bullhorns...could have used helicopters with bullhorns. We could have warned the people, `A big flood's coming, take evasive action.' We didn't....
Number one, we could have had the evacuation of the 57,000 families in New Orleans who don't own motor vehicles completed before the storm arrived....I grew up in apartheid South Africa, and what I saw in a lot of the images was mostly white policemen and military officials ordering mostly black Americans around. And I flashed back on the apartheid scenes that I saw back in the 1980's. It was totally disgusting, and the federal government really needs to apologize to every one of those people." (PBS's full interview with van Heerden can be read at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/orleans/vanheerden.html)
FEMA Foiled Rescuers
Thousands of workers of all ethnic groups inside and outside New Orleans did their best to rescue people. FEMA foiled nearly all such attempts, even Wal-Mart trucks. A line of 500 fishing boats was turned back, as well as an Amtrak train and an untold number of private cars and trucks. FEMA stopped Houston volunteer firefighters at gunpoint. They prevented people from entering the highways to travel toward the city, using the excuse of "danger" from looting and shooting. They burned food sent by England at a Georgia incineration site. They prevented the Red Cross from delivering food, the Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel and sent away a Navy hospital ship. Volunteers in private helicopters told of seeing military helicopters remaining on the ground as they went in to help. (From dailykos.com, London Financial Times, London Mirror, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, New York Times, NBC)
A Transit Strike Could Set Pace for Fight-Back vs. Bosses' Attacks on All Workers
NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 30 -- The ruling class has launched an all-out assault on 33,000 transit workers here, demanding multiple give-backs while hoarding a $1 billion surplus in Transit Authority coffers. They're threatening Taylor Law penalties if members of Transport Workers Union Local 100 walk out -- a fine of two day's pay for every day on strike. Possibly noting a recent modest increase in strikes nationally -- Philly transit workers, Verizon wireless, Sprint telecom, copper workers at Asarco LLC -- up 14% over last year, they want to ensure TWU members don't follow suit, especially while they're spending hundreds of billions to kill our brothers and sisters in imperialist wars abroad.
The Transit Authority bosses are demanding a string of give-backs: that new hires pay health premiums and work an additional seven years to qualify for pensions; force workers to work "out of title" (including lumping conductors and motormen together) meaning more work with less jobs, heavier work-loads and more dangerous conditions, both for riders and workers; removal of station token clerks, again dangerous for riders, especially at night; and expanding computer-operated one-person trains (already instituted on several subway lines), eliminating conductors.
The subway and bus workers are predominantly black and Latino, and have suffered over 15,000 disciplines in one year, falling heaviest on the minority and women workers in the lowest-paid jobs.
The Toussaint misleaders (originally elected on a "militant" reform platform) are in abject surrender mode. Barely talking "strike," they're not even pretending to prepare for one. Local 100 President Toussaint backed Hilary Clinton in the last election, the same Clinton who supported use of the Taylor Law to break any possible strike in 1999. He not only uses union funds to hire Israeli "counter-terrorist" agents to "train" transit workers to act as cops, but also backs an alliance with the police "union," the same cops who would bust heads in any strike.
Meanwhile, yesterday rank-and-filers marched out of a number of facilities across the city, chanting, "No contract, no work!"
The bosses who wield state power under capitalism -- through anti-strike laws, court injunctions and police attacks -- and their "elected" politicians who back the bosses every time, must be seen as a class enemy by workers, who cannot rely on some "neutral" government for justice. Rank-and-file transit workers must unite with all other workers, most of whom use the subways and buses to get to work, to fight to shut down the rulers' city. In the course of such a struggle, with communist leadership, they can come to the realization that getting rid of the profit system is the only solution to this constant assault on our class.
Rail Strikers in France Needed Unity with Anti-Racist Rebels
Under capitalism, workers' strength depends on the extent of their unity. The divisions among the rail workers in France during their recent Nov. 22 national strike -- by age, inter-union rivalry and especially by racism -- caused the walkout to fall far short of its potential.
The strike -- with just 31% of the workers participating -- shut down two-thirds of high-speed train traffic, three-fourths of regional train traffic and two-thirds of Paris metropolitan traffic. Only international service was near normal. This was enough to force the right-wing Chirac/de Villepin government to agree, "in writing," not to privatize the rail system, a principal political demand of the workers. They also won a $140 bonus, a .3% wage "hike" effective Jan. 1st (which may lead to more raises later), the replacement of 700 retiring workers and 200 new hires, and no closing of any lines.
But the strike came at a crucial moment. The government was reeling after three weeks of the greatest rebellion in 40 years. If the workers had demanded that the strike continue until the bosses agreed to give these 900 jobs they won to the rebelling black, Asian and North African youth, think of what that anti-racist demand would have meant to the unity and strength of the working class in challenging the government.
The national rail company hires mostly "French nationals." In 2002, only 800 of the 180,000 rail workers were citizens of non-European Union countries. It's a safe bet that few of the "French nationals" are children of Arab, African or Asian immigrants. If the rail workers were to fight for a big increase in the hiring of these youth, the workers' overall strength would rise sharply.
But the workers themselves are divided into seven competing unions. Three of them (comprising one-fourth of the workers) refused to strike and proclaimed the action a "flop." Another union, representing one-third of the engineers, mobilized along narrow craft lines. And two of the main unions -- the CGT, strongly influenced by the French "Communist" Party, and Sud-Rail, where the Trostkyites are strong -- were busy trying to pose as more "leftist" than the other while the government tried to play them against each other. And these union "leaders" had done little to impress the need for solidarity among the 70,000 new workers hired since 1997, another cause of the low number of strikers.
Meanwhile, the increasing use of ticket inspectors as virtual cops has separated them from the engineers. Twenty years ago, inspectors welcomed and helped passengers as much as checking tickets. Today, with the emphasis on profitability, making sure everybody pays is their main job. Many local suburban factories have closed, making it more vital for people living in the suburban projects (many of immigrant origin) to take the train. Meanwhile, growing unemployment and poverty has forced more people to ride "illegally." So now the inspectors are grouped into "shock teams," board suburban trains and systematically check everyone's tickets, being quick to call the cops when there's a "problem." They've become fertile ground for the racist propaganda of LePen's fascist anti-immigrant National Front. The inspectors' cop role divides them from the engineers who remain more faithful to traditional union values.
Because the government, having been shaken by the recent rebellion, was in a weak position, it tried to talk tough early on to try to bluff the workers. Transport minister Dominique Perben threatened to impose guaranteed service throughout the country in a contract clause, while the governing UMP party launched a petition drive to impose minimum service by law. Both would have forced a certain level of service during a strike, which, in effect, means workers scabbing on their own strike.
But the danger of the walkout spreading to other industries and turning into a long strike forced the government to back down, ordering management to back-track on dividing the train company by activity, universally seen as the first step to privatizing the most profitable sections. It moved quickly to offer enough concessions to settle, given that the workers were themselves divided, with 70% still working. Notably, the iDTGV service, which sells cut-price rail tickets, is to be reintegrated in the company. This acts as a brake on privatization, preventing management from spinning off this service separately to private ownership.
However, a serious threat to the workers looms in the European Union's (EU) intention to open rail service to competition next year. Other EU private companies will aim at underselling particular rail services in France. If no one uses particular French-owned lines, the national company will shut them, effectively privatizing those sectors. And given the probability other EU rail companies will use lower-paid immigrant labor, it would set up the racist/nationalist cry that they're "stealing French jobs." All the more reason for all EU workers to fight for anti-racist, anti-nationalist unity, to prevent whatever concessions they may win from their "own" ruling classes from being undercut by the EU overall.
In 1995, a strike by 70% of the rail workers set off a wave of labor unrest that ultimately toppled the right-wing government of Prime Minister Alain Juppé. But now France finds itself with still another capitalist right-wing government. While a stronger and more wide-spread strike might have toppled this one, it would only be followed by still another capitalist ruling group. Toppling whatever section of a ruling-class dominated government holds power, only to be replaced by another one, won't cut it for the working class.
The workers and youth have been politically disarmed by the opportunism and racism of the old "C"P, "Socialist" Party, and the Trotskyites. As usual, social benefits no longer hold as the EU rulers must increasingly attack their workers to compete with other imperialist rivals in this era of endless imperialist wars. Workers and their allies need to break with all these forces to turn their struggles into schools for communism. In recent weeks, we've also seen mass strikes elsewhere in the EU -- two general strikes in Belgium and one in Italy. Again, these workers and youth need revolutionary communist leadership to turn their actions into a fight for a society without any racism, exploitation or warmakers: communism.
Guatemala: CIA-Trained Racist Killer Army Becomes Drug Cartel
A few weeks ago, Adan Castillo, top Guatemala drug investigator and two of his aides, were arrested while arriving in Virginia for a training course on fighting drug trafficking. They were indicted for importing and distributing cocaine in the U.S. (BBC World News, 11/16/05). Since July, the Border Patrol was on alert because it suspected active and retired Guatemalan special forces soldiers (known as Kaibiles, after the ancient Mayan Prince Kaibil Bajam) were training drug cartel paramilitary forces across the border from McAllen, Texas.
The Kaibiles are among the most feared death-squad groups in Latin America. During the 1980's, with Reagan-Bush-CIA support, they led huge massacres. In September, Mexican authorities arrested seven Kaibiles; four were still active in the Guatemalan army. The seven were planning to join the Zetas, soldiers expelled from Mexico's special forces unit, who've now become goons for the drug cartels.
According to annual State Department reports, since 1999 Guatemala (which borders Mexico) has become the preferred route for shipping cocaine to the U.S. According to DEA officials, 75% of all cocaine reaching the U.S. goes through Guatemala. The Guatemalan army is the main drug cartel.
Recently, the State Department revoked the U.S. visas of retired generals Manuel A. Callejas and Francisco O Menaldo, both former commanders of Guatemalan intelligence. The State Department said the army is totally run by drug dealers. (Texas Observer, 11/17, reprinted at http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=31128).
According to U.S. intelligence reports, the retired generals are also among the founders of an elite, shadowy club within Guatemala's intelligence command, "La Cofradía" or "the brotherhood." The reports credit the "club" with defeating Guatemala's guerrillas, using "engineering" tactics that a U.N. Truth Commission found included "acts of genocide" for driving out or massacring the populations of no less than 440 Mayan villages.
Of course, Guatemala is not the only country whose military is involved in drugs. The Colombian army is famous for this. Last year, "Don" Quirino, the top drug dealer in the Dominican Republic, was arrested and later sent to the U.S. for trial after a truckload of drugs belonging to him was seized, along with the driver and other guards (all officers in the local police and Army). Quirino himself was given an officer's ranking in the National Police despite never having served in it.
This is another side effect of Blowback (when U.S. policies and action come back to haunt them), the results of many CIA operations. Osama bin Laden and the opium trade in Afghanistan are the best known examples of blowbacks (OBL was a known CIA operative). In 1954, the CIA organized a bloody right-wing coup in Guatemala, overthrowing Jacono Arbenz, a reformist-nationalist President who tried to nationalize United Fruit plantations there. Since then, 200,000 of Guatemala's workers and peasants have been killed by CIA-trained generals and politicians. During the dirty war of the 1980's, when the Reagan-Bush gang supported death squads throughout Central America, the Guatemalan army practiced "draining the sea to kill the fish" -- attacking civilians suspected of supporting guerrillas instead of attacking the armed combatants themselves.
The right-wing Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) was founded by Ret. Gen. Efrain Ríos Montt, whose 1982 coup d'etat gave him the Guatemalan Presidency just as La Cofradía was emerging. Also a born-again Christian, Montt oversaw the worst massacres. Today he's linked to the U.S. Republican Party. The current vice-chairman of Congress's Western Hemisphere subcommittee is Illinois Republican Jerry Weller III, who recently married Montt's daughter. Weller's father-in-law groomed Guatemala's last president, FRG member Alfonso Portillo, who fled the country in 2004 to escape arrest for alleged money laundering (State Department report).
Along with drug-trafficking, Guatemala is one of the region's most crime-ridden countries. The powerful maras (gangs) are protected by the military and the cops. Their murdering of women is also among the region's highest, almost similar to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
The Guatemala guerrillas of the 1980's must also bear some responsibility for the situation. They basically betrayed the struggle of the masses, making a deal with the government and the U.S. embassy to become part of the country's corrupt political structure.
Again, under capitalism, drugs, crime and racist -sexist mass murder go hand in hand.
100,000 Aussie Workers Back Boeing Strike
Twenty-five Boeing Australian maintenance workers have become a powerful symbol in the fight against the Howard government's industrial reform. On November 15, the country witnessed what was probably the largest labor protest in Australian history as nearly 500,000 workers laid down their tools and rallied against the government's plan to slash the right to organize. In Sydney, 100,000 marched to Boeing's headquarters to support Boeing workers who've been striking for 5_ months. The company still refuses to recognize their right to bargain collectively. Many linked this attack to Howard's support of the U.S. war in Iraq. Assaults on workers domestically and internationally will continue as long as we allow this system to survive. Large numbers, as inspiring as they are, are not sufficient. We in PLP must intensify our efforts to spread communist politics internationally.
Military Recruiters, `Democracy' and Public Health
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the 50,000-member American Public Health Association (APHA), could not have been pleased when its board voted to pay for a booth opposing the war in Iraq at the Dec. 11-14 national meeting in Philadelphia. He's still dealing with fallout from last year's "confrontation," where somebody stuck anti-war slogans on the military booth, an action the Army branded as "vandalism." Benjamin ran the Emergency Departments of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other elite military facilities for many years and made his name as the architect of Maryland's anti-bio-terror program.
Most years, upwards of 12,000 people attend the annual meeting, including several PLP'ers from different cities. We participate in the political debates and discussions in various sections and caucuses. The vast majority of APHA members oppose the war. PLP has been a leading force in every anti-war initiative over the past several years, helping to pass anti-war resolutions in the 300-member Governing Council in 2001, 2002 and 2003 with strong majorities (one exceeded 80%).
Many who oppose the war feel powerless to change U.S. foreign policy and prefer to simply run their clinics (or what's left of them) or teach public health students with a "progressive" slant. They think APHA helps them do their good work.
Our goal is to get to know good people and, by fighting for our communist analysis in struggles over political issues, help them see their communist potential and the futility of trying to reform capitalism.
But APHA members, including some in our movement have ideas at odds with communist consciousness. Communists say imperialism makes war inevitable. Yet many people believe that launching a war is based on the president's personality or fluctuations in the economy. We believe liberal and conservative politicians are just two sides of the same capitalist coin. Other APHA members see them as different as night and day.
The ruling class, either directly or ideologically, controls the bureaucrats that lead the labor unions, professional associations like APHA and other mass "progressive" organizations, to win workers and others to carry out their imperialist plans. The pro-war side of APHA emerges when the leaders are called on to implement anti-war policies. APHA depends on the dues and convention fees of tens of thousands of federal employees, such as health workers from the CDC (Center for Disease Control), and would find itself in a serious financial crisis if the government cut off dues reimbursement and travel support for federal employees.
In February, the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) section discussed a proposal to exclude military recruiters from the annual meeting, and consulted the section's 3,000 members via a mass e-mail. When the section Chairperson sent the e-mail to APHA headquarters for distribution, she was told it would not be distributed because, "it could be an embarrassment" to APHA.
This heavy-handed response shocked some members. But after 20 MCH leaders endorsed the proposal, it was debated in the executive board, which passed a compromise motion: APHA would sponsor a booth "somewhere in the exhibit hall" where our anti-war position could be publicized and the $1,500 rental fee would be waived.
Many anti-war members were excited and volunteered to staff the booth, but their celebration was premature. Instead, the Executive Director situated the booth across the hall from the military booths, entitling it "APHA -- Working for Peace," and decided it would not be staffed by those opposing the war, but by hired staff.
For the dozens of members who've participated in this struggle, the process has been educational. We live under a capitalist class dictatorship that is using APHA to bring health professionals into line with the imperialist agenda. Six weeks after September 11, former Surgeon General David Satcher told thousands of members at the 2001meeting, "You represent the front lines in the war against terrorism." But promised public health funds for "the front lines" never materialized and the government's motive for invading Afghanistan and Iraq has been revealed to be control of oil supplies.
Add the racist horror of hurricane Katrina and the stage is set for very productive and sharp discussions with a wide circle of APHA members (originally this year's meeting was scheduled for New Orleans in November). We'll find more potential communists in those discussions. Most APHA members hate racism and are appalled by the slaughter in Iraq. Unfolding events can provide new incentives to abandon numerous long-held beliefs and embrace revolution as a realistic option. The way we wage the battle over ideas will determine where things go from here.
Red Teacher Organizes School To Oppose Sellout Contract
New York City -- A PL'er's patiently advancing communist politics at a high school here won a majority of teachers to oppose the UFT's (United Federation of Teachers) sellout contract, built class consciousness, drew a number of teachers and students closer to PLP, and increased CHALLENGE readership. This was particularly important because the contract did nothing to fight the racism inherent in a school system with a predominantly black, Latin and Asian student body which capitalism is by offering the "options" of minimum-wage jobs (or none at all) or joining the military to fight and die in imperialist wars.
The PL'er has been working in the school for a year and a half, pursuing pro-student activities and has earned much respect among his fellow teachers. Many know his radical views and that he works hard for the students. Initially he organized an after-school club for students to write creatively and fully express themselves.
The respect he's earned was tested in the recent struggle between the rank-and-file teachers and the union's sellout to Mayor Bloomberg's contract. The teachers saw the UFT's strike "threat" as an empty one and therefore were unwilling to sacrifice and walk out over its narrow goals. Sensing this, the UFT leadership dispatched their dominant UNITY caucus misleaders into the schools to explain why we should blindly follow a strike call which doesn't fight for the best interests of all teachers and students.
At our school, one of the misleaders attacked rank-and-file teachers, saying we were "destroying the union." His sexist behavior emerged in a vehement attack on a young female teacher who asked him a question, contrasted with his civil answer to a similar question from a late-arriving male teacher. Angry over this, the PL'er -- following a few more questions -- asked the hack if this strike would be about class size, building unity with other unions and creating militancy. The hack replied that it was about getting a new contract since Bloomberg kept violating the old one. This provoked the simple question of what would keep the Mayor from violating the new contract if the precedent of violating the old one was already set. This deflated the hack. The PL'er later discussed the hack's blatantly sexist behavior with other teachers.
This challenge to this union sellout earned the PL'er even more respect from rank-and-filers. He continued to concentrate on his students, building CHALLENGE readership among them, while also discussing the contract and the recent Bronx high school walkout. His conversations about the war helped bring some students and teachers to the September 24th Washington anti-war protest. All these militant activities enabled him to build a strong base of support for the next union chapter meeting.
The chapter leader, nearing retirement, has a vested interest in the cost-of-living increase (which would increase her pension) and which the bosses' media has paraded as a "raise." The school delegate is a vocal parrot of the UFT leadership's UNITY caucus.
The chapter leader began by saying her vote at the Delegate Assembly (DA) would mirror the teachers' desires. A "yes" vote would recommend the contract to the rank and file; a "no" vote would reject it outright, spinning the truth by saying that "yes" was "a vote for democracy."
The PL'er said that the rank and file, not the union leadership, are the union, . This influenced many teachers to change their votes from "yes" to "no." This turning of the tide angered the delegate, who said that he "believed in democracy." A veteran teacher then asked him if he would vote the way the teachers wanted. He hypocritically replied that he would vote his "conscience" and "not against democracy." He then ran out of his own union meeting as several teachers shouted they wanted to impeach him!
One teacher proposed they all march on the DA meeting. He got this idea from literature the PL'er had left in the teacher center. Many teachers were open to the idea. A teacher close to PL advanced our idea of a rank-and-file revolt against -- and picketing -- the union leadership. Six teachers along with many from other schools picketed the DA in direct opposition to the union leadership, chanting slogans in their own class interest.
Many teachers signed a petition to impeach our delegate. It was then sent to the union. On December 8th, the UFT leader is coming to the school to discuss this situation. The PL'er and his base are preparing to meet this traitorous misleader.
A study group has been formed with the PL'er's base at school. Several students have attended, CHALLENGE distribution is rising, and a fellow teacher wants to learn more about the Party and may join soon. The determined spreading of communist ideas has helped the Party's influence grow at the school, enabling the workers to advance their own class interests, and proving that many workers really like our politics.
All this has demonstrated the importance of participating in union meetings to advance communist politics. The struggle is long-term. But this is the road to turn our schools into schools for communism.
Workers in Latin America Should Not Support Any Capitalist-Imperialist Side in Free Trade Dispute
Eleven years ago in Miami, Bill Clinton euphorically proposed the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), an agreement stretching from Alaska to Argentina's Patagonia. The presidents of 33 North and South American countries enthusiastically greeted his announcement and agreed to enact it into law by 2005. Thus was born the U.S. FTAA dream.
In April 2001, at the third Summit of the Americas, Bush confidently announced the FTAA would be law by 2005. The 33 hemispheric presidents signed it, including Hugo Chavez, however reluctantly. How things have changed! At this last November Summit Meeting in Argentina, Bush couldn't even get the FTAA on the agenda, much less get it signed. What has wrought such drastic change?
Sharpening Inter-imperialist Rivalry Fuels Latin America Rulers' Nationalism
The U.S. first organized the Summit of the Americas, comprising all the hemisphere's residents, in 1957 and then again in 1967, to counter rising Soviet influence in the region. In 1994, after the Soviet collapse, Clinton proposed hosting another Summit to create the FTAA to stop and reverse European and Japanese imperialist inroads in the region.
Although traditionally subservient to the U.S., dissent has been developing within Summit ranks. The FTAA defeat at its last meeting and its polarization into two blocs, one with 28 presidents supporting the U.S. and five -- Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela -- opposing, is a culmination of this process. Diverging economic and geopolitics interests, fueled by inter-imperialist rivalry, are the root cause.
The first four opposing countries comprise MERCOSUR (Venezuela is processing its admission). MERCOSUR was developed by these countries' rulers to counter U.S. influence in the south cone and to gain better bargaining power with any and all imperialists. For this, they must develop and/or expand their domestic industrial bases, while promising to deliver sufficient improvements to workers to guarantee some social stability -- difficult because 50% of their populations live in abject poverty.
Fledgling industries need protection and social-oriented programs need a "democratic-socialist" agenda, not the open markets and neoliberal programs Washington advocates. Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay have elected presidents who support a fast-disappearing European capitalist mode: more social spending and regulation of the private sector. Chavez has chosen this model, basing it on cooperatives and participation of all sectors of society in managing local affairs. He calls it "Socialism of the 21st century." But Europe's rulers themselves have launched an assault on this mode, slashing jobs and benefits for the working class. Capitalism cannot satisfy maximum profits and simultaneously provide social justice for workers.
Unfortunately, many honest workers and their allies believe these programs are a real alternative to capitalism. If Brazil's rulers want to become an all-around power center, they must create an internal market. But with 95% of the country's wealth in the hands of 5% of the population, it won't happen. Venezuela and the other MERCOSUR countries are in similar contradictory situations. Any redistribution of wealth can only temporarily defuse social tensions, which is why centuries ago the rising capitalist class invented nationalism to win the working class to willingly fight and die for them. Since then, the world's bosses have also honed it into a powerful anti-communist weapon to divert the working class from revolutionary communism, the only viable alternative to capitalism and imperialism.
Therefore, the more "anti-imperialist" regional bosses become, the more ardent the nationalism they profess. Chavez, for example, is building a 300,000-strong army -- purchasing weapons from Russia, Spain and China --to defend Venezuela's "sovereignty" against U.S. aggression. But nationalist bosses are never really "sovereign." They're always beholden to one imperialist or another. MERCOSUR bosses and Chavez are no exception.
THE CHINA FACTOR
Until recently, MERCOSUR has mainly been supported by European imperialists, who've been invading U.S. turf with investments and trade. Now China's rise as a major imperialist power -- thirsty for raw materials, for markets for its manufactured goods and for places to invest its trade surplus capital -- is accelerating these nationalist bosses' drive to unchain themselves from U.S. imperialism.
The FTAA aims to prevent this by boosting U.S. exports to squash the growth of their domestic industries and destroy MERCOSUR and other regional trading blocs. Unlike U.S. and European imperialists, China has presently no major contradictions (such as agricultural subsidies) with MERCOSUR. Thus, China can promise to help these bosses achieve their geopolitical ambitions.
Therefore it's no surprise that as China becomes a bigger player in the region, these nationalist bosses become more openly defiant of U.S. imperialism. China's trade with Latin America -- after inching upward from $200 million in 1975 to 2.8 billion in 1988 -- has exploded. From 1993 to 2003, China-Latin America trade skyrocketed by 600% to $26.8 billion. From January to November 2004, it increased almost another 40% to $36.4 billion. In 2005, trade and investments are well over $50 billion.
When China's President Hu visited Latin America in November 2004, he pledged to invest $100 billion over the next decade, rivaling the U.S. cash infusion during Kennedy's vaunted Alliance for Progress, which pumped $20 billion into the region in the 1960's (about $120 billion in today's dollars).
The growth of Chinese and other imperialists' influence threatens U.S. hegemony.
In 1823, the U.S. Monroe Doctrine proclaimed its "ownership" of Latin America, threatening war against any power daring to encroach upon it. The Doctrine, now nearly 200 years old, won't die without a fight. Trading blocs and trading wars will lead to shooting wars. The battlefields of World War III will decide which imperialist will exert its hegemony over Latin America and the world.
BOSSES WIN, WORKERS LOSE!
Trade -- products exchanged for money on the market -- always benefits one capitalist or another. It never benefits the working class, which in order to survive must sell its labor power on the market. Capitalism can't exist without the market and the exploitation of that labor power.
It doesn't matter which capitalists do the trading, run the factories or even administer the whole system. The revolution in the Soviet Union and China tried to do that through socialism -- which bacame state capitalism run by the working class and its communist parties -- didn't lead to communism but reverted to open capitalism/imperialism. Only communism -- which will eliminate money, wages, the market and wars for profits -- can meet the needs of the international working class. The growth of a mass PLP throughout the Americas will guarantee this fight.
UNDER COMMUNISM:
How Women Fought to Gain Equality
To begin to answer that question, this article begins a short series on the role of Soviet women as pilots in World War II. Events and quotes are from the book "A Dance With Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II" by Anne Noggle, Texas A&M University Press, 1994.
There were two major differences between the Soviet Air Force in World War II and those of the capitalist nations. First, the communist-led Soviet Union (SU) was the only participant in the war that didn't bomb civilian targets, knowing that the main victims of such bombing would be working-class men, women and children. The U.S. and Britain, like the Nazis who bombed London, destroyed the entire cities of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, among others.
Second, during World War II the SU was the first nation to let women fly combat planes. When the Nazis invaded in June 1941, nearly one-third of trained pilots in the SU were women. Indeed, by the time of the invasion, Soviet women had "claimed more women's aviation records than any other nation." Women who were already civilian flyers came to be trained as combat pilots, mechanics, navigators and ground crews. However, many male instructors, still steeped in bourgeois ideology, were less than enthusiastic about women flyers. Women, with the help of the Communist Party (CPSU), had to fight for their equality as pilots.
After Marina Raskova set a world record for flying non-stop from Moscow to the Soviet Far East, the Party allowed her to form all-female combat regiments in October 1941. During the war women accounted for more than 12% of the Soviet fighter aviation strength. Women's regiments flew more than 30,000 combat sorties.
They flew mainly the Pe-2 trainer, low in fuel consumption and able to land virtually anywhere. It had an open cockpit, a crew of two, and six to eight bombs, with the rear navigator often armed with a machine gun. Made of wood and fabric and traveling only 60 mph, the plane was a fire hazard in combat. It was a difficult plane for women to fly, especially "small women who were slim and hungry. The control stick was heavy to move, and our arms and legs were so short we had three folded pillows behind our backs. The navigators helped us by pushing on our backs as we pushed on the stick to get the tail up for takeoff."
The women carried no parachutes until 1944, because if they couldn't land safely back behind their own lines, they preferred to burn with the plane rather than suffer brutal Nazi torture.
The women sometimes flew 18 sorties a night. To avoid German searchlights they approached from a high elevation, throttled back the engine to idle, flew over the target soundlessly and dropped the bombs almost before the enemy was aware of their presence. They often flew in pairs, one noisily as a distraction. They flew in a continuous stream, bombing every few minutes. They returned to refuel, rearm, and immediately take off again. The Germans came to call them the "Night Witches" for their uncanny accuracy and persistence.
Once going 100 days without a rest, "we slept two to four hours each day throughout the four years of the war...Sometimes I even forgot whether I was flying toward the target or back from the target. At those times we had to peer under the wings to see if the bombs were attached in order to know whether we were going or returning!"
Some women even led male squadrons. "They [the men] trust you -- not because you are a woman but because you are a skillful and trained pilot."
"It was very difficult to be the leader of a squadron....The Germans always fired at the lead plane, because if the leader could be shot down, the formation would disperse and leave without a commander."
(Future columns will focus on women's struggle for equality as pilots and unity among the men and women pilots.)
LETTERS
Angry Militant Moms Oppose Iraq War
On Nov. 19, I had the privilege of attending the "Students and Educators to Stop the War" conference in LA. I was invited to speak as a member of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO). I also helped lead discussions in two workshops. They were centered on issues facing soldiers and their families. Other presenters included two members of Gold Star Families for Peace, two young students with a loved one currently deployed, and a mental health counselor who deals with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).
These workshops were often very emotional. People poured out their grief, anger and frustration against the bosses' bloody war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. It became very clear that PTSD directly affects families and friends as well as soldiers.
As many of us have long suspected, the military brass and their masters in government and business are not providing the care and support these soldiers and their families need. An article in USA Today (10-18-05) said, "More than 1 in 4 U.S. troops have come home from the Iraq war with health problems that require medical or mental health treatment..." Thousands of seriously wounded are put on medical hold due to staffing shortages. Yet these greedy and ungrateful bosses want to slash the budget even more! They're now "pre-screening" soldiers, hoping to prove they had mental health problems before deployment so they can later be denied care for PTSD!
Some of the workshop participants said that when their soldiers actually got up the courage to seek help (the military tells them they're not "real men," or are "half soldiers" if they do), all they get is a video game and drugs that are supposed to help them forget the war.
When I spoke, I acknowledged their grief, and agreed with their anger. I encouraged them to join MFSO, because it's a good, broad-based organization that provides support, information and many levels of participation for military families. However, I also said that the best hope for ending this war lies with the soldiers themselves. Conferences, demonstrations, petitions, referendums, even work stoppages and strikes are all good ways to protest the war. But when the soldiers themselves organize, resist and rebel, that's when "the fat lady sings!"
I gave a few examples of soldier rebellions throughout history and talked about the line the military pushes...that you "signed a contract to do a job and you have no choice but to obey orders," etc.
This is a very controversial subject, and the discussion took a whole new direction after that. It carried over to the next two plenary sessions and the final workshops. The whole conference seemed to open up to more militant and revolutionary ideas. It was very encouraging to see so many young people interested in these ideas. I noticed many carrying a CHALLENGE.
It was a successful day. Each of my workshops had 20-30 people; at least 75% were either in the military (six or seven had recently served in Iraq), were veterans, or had a close relative or friend active in the military. Very promising!
Military Mom
`Stop the War' versus Anti-imperialism
Recently I attended a conference in South Los Angeles organized by Students and Educators to Stop the War and was incredibly surprised by the level of political sophistication and working-class consciousness of the students there. Approximately 500 high school and college students and teachers came and participated in workshops that discussed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Throughout the day-long event, the students demonstrated their working-class solidarity, linking the war machine, tuition hikes, the growth of recruiters on campuses, increased attacks on workers (wage cuts and mass layoffs) -- amid monolithic oil profits -- and the re-emergence of a strong anti-immigrant, nationalist movement. They boldly challenged those at the conference who repeated the empty, popular anti-war rhetoric of the need for a "peace movement," as opposed to a militant anti-imperialist movement.
The conference tone, thanks largely to these students, took on an anti-imperialist character. It moved towards organizing students and educators to see there's no common interest between the working class, sent to fight oil wars, and the ruling class whose only concern is their profits. This point of unity was the single most important development to emerge from the conference.
A fighting student
Racism/Nationalism Help Build Profit Wars
I participated in the Nov. 19th Students and Educators to Stop the War Conference in L.A. and led one of the workshops. A panel of students and religious leaders discussed racism and nationalism during wartime. Several students analyzed the Minutemen and how racism/nationalism go hand in hand. The religious leaders gave anecdotal accounts of why we need to end racism but didn't explain what to do about it.
As a PLP member I described how racism/nationalism is used to build for war and fascism and how the former are inextricably linked. We noted how those two ideologies are used to justify the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of our class brothers and sisters worldwide. The discussion also included a healthy debate on white skin privilege. Everyone in the workshop received CHALLENGE and our PL leaflet. One workshop I attended included veterans, and also discussed revolution.
For me, the weekend's best part saw three members of my campus group attend the conference despite it being a 6-hour drive. They returned inspired, having learned a lot, and spent much time with our Party and comrades.
They had nothing but really positive things to say about the whole experience. Topping it all was a conversation at Sunday breakfast with older comrades. We discussed the need for revolution and how capitalism stops at nothing to co-opt and misguide the younger generation's anger against capitalism into something futile.
Overall, these three friends were moved by our politics and presence. These events make me very optimistic for the growth of our Party. Hard work is ahead of us but we'll get there!
A Northern California comrade
Fighting Military Recruiters on Campus Is Not Enough
Some students from my campus, including close friends, attended the Nov. 19 anti-war conference in Los Angeles [see article front page]. It provided an alternative to the large demonstrations that focus only on Bush and create the illusion the war can end simply by marching, or even worse, by merely voting Bush out of office.
Those who came from my campus were re-energized, both politically and personally. Many left the conference with a stronger political understanding of the root causes of the war in Iraq, and now better understand the need to organize and fight against the source of these endless profit wars - imperialism and capitalism. Some even realized the limits of counter-recruitment, seeing that kicking recruiters off campus (which they've been working for) wasn't enough.
Soldiers are crucial to defeating imperialism and stopping its endless cycle of profit wars. We need to reach out to them and win them to active anti-imperialist organizing. Some friends have begun to re-think their counter-recruitment strategies. Others have showed new energy in committing themselves to organizing local actions for the next semester.
Some close friends have shown more openness to communist ideas and to PL. All these small advances provide great opportunity for building PLP on campus and winning students, workers and soldiers to fight for a communist future.
Red Student
Picketed Rep. Murtha When He Was Openly pro-War
Rep. John Murtha, the Democrat hawk from Johnstown, Pa., has called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. imperialist troops from Iraq, sending imperialist war criminal neo-conservatives into a frenzy. After first claiming that he had joined forces with his party's liberals, Bush and Cheney changed their tune, stating Murtha was a fine man and a patriot.
I've had my own experiences with Murtha. I'm a member of Johnstown's Citizens for Social Responsibility which has protested the imperialist debacle in Iraq at Murtha's local office, (on one occasion placing a body bag there).
But Murtha is not opposed to imperialist war or the capitalist system which breeds it. He was a Marine officer during the U.S. imperialist war in Vietnam and is a very strong supporter of the military. Murtha is a devoted anti-communist and supported, and pushed for, the first Gulf War. He also supported all of Reagan's military actions. Murtha backed El Salvador's death-squad regime that massacred Salvadoran workers.
On Nov. 22, I attended a press conference in Johnstown featuring Murtha. He said the public turned against the war before he vocalized his call for troop withdrawal. Murtha explained that success in Iraq required a huge mobilization of more troops. He had made the claim in May 2004. Now he said the U.S. war effort had begun with under-trained, poorly-equipped troops, citing a lack of body armor. (Incidentally, supporters of the fascist Lyndon LaRouche were outside distributing literature claiming Murtha was right on target.)
Murtha also mentioned that enlistment is dwindling and equipment is deteriorating, saying, "The future of the army is going down the drain." [Ed. Note: Murtha is championing a quick-strike force in the region to move into Iraq "when necessary."]
Murtha's call for withdrawal reflects his fears that the U.S. imperialist military may be incapable of effectively fighting future wars. He also recognizes the fact that Bush's popularity has been going down the tubes, endangering popular support for future wars.
Red Coal
Fighting for Honoring Picket Lines at SF Schools
Recently the possible strike of school workers in two different unions raised the potential for working-class solidarity. I teach at a San Francisco middle school. My friend sent me a PLP leaflet calling on teachers to honor an SEIU picket line in case the clerks and custodians walked out. I went to the SEIU members at my school, asked them to read it and contribute a few dollars to get it photocopied. This could build support for a strike and for PLP.
The first custodian I spoke to said he would copy it at school for me. I told him I didn't want him to get in trouble, but he insisted. I took his copies and began distributing them. Soon I met people who already had one. The custodian had made extra copies and had passed them out himself.
Tensions were mounting at the schools as people had to decide what to do. Some SEIU members announced they wouldn't honor their own picket line. A teacher who's a former Black Panther came to me for advice. I told him he shouldn't follow these scabs, that they're wrong and that his years of struggle against the system should teach him right from wrong. I said he should honor the strike. Two people saw CHALLENGE for the first time.
When I criticized the head of the Labor Council for showing up at our meeting and then disappearing, a co-teacher asked what PLP would do to support us. I called up a PL'er and asked him to organize friends to leaflet a nearby school, which would have happened if the SEIU leadership hadn't settled with a sellout contract.
With wages frozen for three previous years, the leadership settled for a two-year contract: a 2% raise at the end of this school year and 2% a year later; and health coverage up to 75% without a cap (which did cover some new members for the first time). But the cost of living has risen at least 2% a year for the past three years and is still increasing now, so the settlement is actually a wage-cut in purchasing power.
The crisis has passed, but the problems remain.
An SF teacher
Laborers Must Not Ignore Racist Minutemen
Recently a comrade and I went to Herndon, Virginia near Washington, D.C. to talk to day laborers at the local 7-11 store. They're being harassed by the racist Minutemen, who photograph and videotape the workers and employers to turn into Immigration, the IRS and the FBI. They even hide in bushes to do their dirty work, and provocatively follow workers to and from job sites and their homes. The workers don't feel safe.
The Minutemen claim they're not racist, but one of them wore a White Power shirt during their "filming." If it walks like a pig and smells like a pig...it's a pig!
An NGO working with the laborers to create a day-labor center tells them to "turn their backs on the Minutemen; ignore them and hope they'll go away." But there have already been documented reports of violence against day laborers in nearby Maryland. In one instance, someone posing as an employer called a worker over to his truck, and then a group of men jumped him (just like on Long Island). We cannot ignore the racist Minutemen. We must fight against them and show they're not welcome in Herndon, New Jersey, Arizona or any other place for that matter.
We were open with the workers. As the two of us were separating the DESAFIOS from the CHALLENGES, the workers became curious, then surrounded us, and even before we could hand them out, the workers ASKED us for copies. Over 40 of the 75 workers took papers! The second day we re-introduced ourselves and said we were communists, that we were anti-racists and that PL had experience in fighting the Minutemen. We were received with open arms and many more took the paper.
It will take many more visits, time and effort to build ties with these workers as well as to organize against the racist Minutemen. Many of us should learn Spanish and find out where these struggles are occurring near us. The workers themselves must lead this struggle. We must struggle politically with them. One of my best personal political moments came when a worker told me: "We feel good that you are here with us." That's how all workers should feel about us communists!
Red Internationalist
Criticism Appreciated
Being the one who wrote the letter called "The Other Superpower" (CHALLENGE, 11/16), I thank and appreciate the comrade who criticized it (CHALLENGE, 11/30). The writer is absolutely right -- the ruling class would not want to be exposed, as they were by Hurricane Katrina, in the writer's words, "for their racist neglect at home while spending hundreds of billions for imperialist oil wars..." That's absolutely true, and it's left Bush and the rest of his fascists vulnerable to criticism that the tame "opposition" press has all but refused to do since Clinton. Even the liberals, crying all the way, have had to attack Bush.
In my letter, I should have added that the gross incompetence the ruling class showed in its preparation for, and reaction to, the awful hurricane is not something they want to have to answer for -- especially because the devastation, largely in the black and other poorer areas, was preventable. I criticize myself for using imprecise language, and do so especially because in other letters, and in discussions with people in PL, I have stated that clear language is all-important in getting PLP's line and arguments across. Thanks again.
(Since I wrote the above, however, I've been repeatedly hearing news shows and analyses about how the "new" New Orleans will be aimed at the elite. Black and white workers -- who were murdered by the federal government as surely as if Bush had hijacked a plane and crashed it into the neglected levees that destroyed the city -- are and will be ignored and driven into other depressed areas. That's what capitalism has to say to us all.)
Freezing in the tundra, North Country Red
Last Half-Decent UFT Contract Was in 1972
There were two errors in the Nov. 30 article on the new NYC teachers' union contract. The membership vote approving it was not "the closest vote in the union's 40-year history." In the late 1990's, we actually rejected a contract recommended by the leadership, negotiated with the Giuliani administration. Secondly, the statement that "the last contract teachers won better working conditions and higher salaries was in 1975" is incorrect. The last half-way decent contract was in 1972.
Incidentally, the front-page articles on the rebellion in France and the anti-KKK march in Texas in this same issue were particularly good.
NYC H.S. Teacher
Anti-Racist Celebrations Raise Money for Fighters Against Minutemen
WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 19 -- Inspired by bold fund-raising activities in support of arrested and jailed anti-racist fighters in California, PLP'ers in this area organized two major events to support those arrested in the fight against the Minutemen. Over 40 people attended our August crab feast, raising $1,700. Over 80 workers, students and professionals attended the 20th Thanks for Fighting Racism (TFFR) Feast today, raising $835 more. When our brothers and sisters have been jailed, it's no time to be wishy-washy about supporting them!
PLP's growth among transit workers (Local 689, Amalgamated Transit Union) contributed to the success of these events, with many workers donating money, buying raffle tickets and speaking eloquently on the program.
The TFFR brought together students from a Baltimore high school and Howard University; workers from government offices, transit, and utilities; health professionals; and community members engaged in fighting police brutality.
TFFR began as a response to Thanksgiving -- the food is great, but the politics of European colonialism and genocide against Native Americans associated with this holiday are lousy. So we kept the food and changed the politics, celebrating the many facets of the anti-racist struggle in an international, multi-racial dinner with speeches, music, poetry and spoken word.
This 20th anniversary dinner concluded with a spirited singing of the Internationale. The many fists raised in the air expressed their enthusiasm for continuing the struggle against racism worldwide.
Red Eye On the News
US, like Saddam Hussein, uses chemical arms
...American forces at the siege of Falluja used "shake'n'bake" shells on residential areas. White phosphorus, as reported by George Monbiot and confirmed by the Pentagon, is worse than napalm. Since it is "chemical" in its effect on humans, it falls under a ban by the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention for use against "areas of high civilian population."
One of the most cited reasons for toppling Saddam Hussein was his deployment of chemical weapons...(GW, 12/1)
China health-care now profit-driven and corrupt
"In China today, if you don't have money, you don't dare go to the hospital,"....
In the first three decades of communist rule China eradicated some diseases and dramatically increased life expectancy, employing state-funded hospitals and "barefoot doctors" -- practitioners with basic training who ran rural clinics. But in the 1980s....Doctors and hospitals became responsible for living off their profit....
That decision is now widely viewed as a disaster . Pharmacies have become profit centres for Chinese hospitals, the source of up to 90% of revenue, encouraging doctors to overprescribe drugs....
...The free Aids treatment programme is being used to create profits....
"The reform process has made hospitals into clubs for the rich," said Zhang Ke, an Aids specialist at Beijing Youan hospital. "If the hospital is focused on making money, why would they tell anyone about these free drugs? There's a basic conflict of interest." (Washington Post in GW, 12/1)
Liberal media silent on oil motive in Iraq war
To the Editor:
The times Book Review published nearly 8,000 words reviewing five books on Iraq without the word "oil" ever appearing. What a remarkable symptom of...denial about what has been done in...Iraq. (NYT, 11/20)
US bigotry exposed by venerated black Prof.
John Hope Franklin....An African-American, raised and educated in an era of stifling race prejudice and legal segregation, .... now 90 years old, has spent his career exposing the bigotry that once dominated American intellectual life and continues to infect society at large. His scholarship is his weapon....
In 1961, he published "Reconstruction After the Civil War," a seminal work that challenged the common portrait of the era as one in which wild and ignorant former slaves, led by corrupt Northerners, rode roughshod over the defeated white South. "I would insist," he writes " that most freedmen were desperate for an education and extremely eager to participate in the ongoing development of their communities." Indeed, Franklin dared his opponents to find "anywhere at any time a more serious and responsible group of people so recently in bondage." There were no serious takers.
At Chicago, and later at Duke University, Franklin trained a legion of graduate students to merge the study of African-American society and culture into the larger fabric of American history. As a public intellectual, widely quoted in the media, he spoke out against what he saw as the federal government's retreat from civil rights....
Franklin uses "Mirror to America" to vent his considerable anger....At one point he claims that the "Negro seat" on the Supreme Court once held by his idol, Thurgood Marshall, has been "bleached white" by the appointment of Clarence Thomas, a man he thoroughly despises....
Franklin has studied his nation for nearly three-quarters of a century. His scholarship tells us that people must be judged by their willingness to remove the obstacles and disadvantages that oppress society's most vulnerable members. His conscience reminds us of how much remains to be done. (NYT, 11/27)
US workers slipping down; Dems won't fix
...There is also a profound anxiety over the economy that neither Democrats nor Republicans have fully understood, much less tried to answer. It wasn't just the quagmire of Iraq that prompted a stunning 68 percent of respondents to say they were dissatisfied with the country's direction, according to a recent Gallup poll. Despite unemployment rates that remain relatively low, many Americans are anxious about their bills, uncertain about their retirement prospects, and worried that their children won't fare as well as they did.
Slowly, stealthily, globalization is taking a toll throughout the American middle and working classes, shutting down factories, decimating unions, even threatening the Southeast's cotton farmers, who fear competition from cheap fiber grown in Africa and South America. The crosswinds of free trade have achieved hurricane force, battering factories and offices, rendering them unsteady spheres where a worker with 10 years of good performance reviews can walk in any morning to find he's out of work.
Add to that health insurance costs, which have left millions of parents stranded in a scary place where they ignore a child's hacking cough unless it persists for weeks and put off their own checkups indefinitely. Even families with medical insurance have discovered that a major illness can lead to bankruptcy....
As lackeys of the big-business, wealthy-investor class (or charter members of it), congressional Republicans have done everything in their power to make the lives of working folks worse....kicking them in the shins. Congressional Democrats helped supply the steel-toed boots. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11/13)
France: Youth Explode Against Racism
- French Rulers' Long History of Racist Warmaking
- 'Socialists' Back Anti-Immigrant Racism
3,000 Marchers Confront KKK in Texas
a href="#Why Bosses’ Factions Sharpen Fight Over Presidency">"hy Bosses’ Factions Sharpen Fight Over Presidency
Hundreds of D.C. Marchers Link Racism to AIDS Epidemic
Racist Contract Sparks Growing Fight in NYC Teachers Union
- An Important Contract
Puerto Rico: 3,000 Teachers March to Demand End to Wage Freeze
Laws of Capitalism Erasing Reform Gains in Auto
UAW Sellouts Giving Away Store to GM, Ford
a href="#Young French Auto Workers Speak:‘It’s like an erupting volcano’">Youn" French Auto Workers Speak:‘It’s like an erupting volcano’
The Struggle at CUNY: What Does Unity Mean?
Bringing Class Consciousness to H.S. Struggles
a href="#Vets Shake up Bosses’ Pro-War Parade">"ets Shake up Bosses’ Pro-War Parade
Spontaneous Rebellions Not Enough
a href="#Capitalism’s Anarchy Limits Bosses’ Options">Ca"italism’s Anarchy Limits Bosses’ Options
Red Leadership At Phila. Strike Picket Line
D.C. Transit Workers Bring Solidarity to Philly Strikers
Capitalism Turns Natural Disasters Into Catastrophe for Working Class
Spreading Communist Ideas in Reform Struggles
- Liberals don’t deliver fairer incomes
- Business bigs find judge Alito all neato
- Democrats help deny rights in Guantanamo
- 40% in US have skipped their costly drugs
- Despite laws, CIA has secret prisons
- Thousands of homes mined by $trip mining
- Elections make public education worse
a href="#Need Worker-Student-Teacher Unity To Block Colleges’ Racist, Imperialist Plans">"eed Worker-Student-Teacher Unity To Block Colleges’ Racist, Imperialist Plans
- Guns, Too…
- What We Can Do
The CFR: Center of the Web that Spins U.S. Foreign Policy
Bush Went for Churrasco, Got A Fiasco
Under Communism: What will prisons be like?
France: Youth Explode Against Racism
The rebellions against police brutality, racism and unemployment sweeping across many French cities have ripped the mask off the slogans of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, exposing a society in which millions of immigrant workers and their French-born children and grandchildren have been forced into high-rise ghettoes and into the country's worst jobs, education and living conditions.
The rebellion started on October 27, when cops began chasing two Muslim teenagers of African descent in Clichy-sous-Bois, an impoverished, ghettoized "suburb" northeast of Paris. The young men ran and climbed a fence, not noticing a warning about the presence of a high voltage electric generator. They were electrocuted. The cops told the usual victim-blaming lies when committing racist murder. And the rebellion was on.
Within days, it had spread across France to hundreds of oppressed "suburbs" where half the population is under 20. Many of these youth are the French-born sons and daughters of North African and sub-Sahara immigrant workers. Unemployment there is more than double the national average. For 18- to 24-year-olds it ranges between 30% and 40%. ID checks and police harassment are a way of life. (See page 4)
These French citizens and immigrants face the worst housing. All those who died in last summer's fires in run-down Paris buildings were black, from sub-Saharan Africa. While two-thirds of French children receive the equivalent of a high school diploma, less than half of foreign-born children do.
Police State
Now a three-month "state of emergency" exists nation-wide, permitting local officials to impose curfews and a ban on demonstrations as the rulers try to institute more of a police state. They've unleashed the special CRS "anti-riot" cops, known for their own brand of unlimited racist brutality.
With no communist political leadership, the young rebels have often targeted the most obvious symbols of a society that treats them like trash: the police, who brutalize them; the schools that humiliate and fail them; and the town halls symbolizing the government that exploits and discards them. Sometimes they've made serious mistakes, like trashing and burning thousands of cars, most belonging to other workers, or a deadly assault on a retired auto worker.
One wing of the racist French government and ruling class is using these incidents to characterize the rebels as "rabble" and "scum" and to depict the rebellions primarily as "vandalism" (Interior Minister Sarkozy). Another wing, resembling U.S. ruling-class liberals including Prime Minister De Villepin, Sarkozy's main rival for the presidency in the next election is shedding crocodile tears over a situation its system helped create, hypocritically decrying racism and calling for reform . The French "Communist" Party long ago gave up the idea of fighting for revolution. Along with the "Socialist" Party, more right-wing sections of both support the government crackdown and some called for even harsher measures. The unions they lead are misleading workers into the racist trap laid by the ruling class. And the Muslim religious "leaders" joined the chorus — the French Union of Islamic Organizations issued a fatwa telling young Muslims to "calm their anger" if they want to obtain "divine grace."
The conditions that prompted these justifiable uprisings can't be reformed. Their history proves the indivisibility of racism and the profit system. The universal laws of capitalism apply to France just as rigorously as they do to the U.S.
French Rulers' Long History of Racist Warmaking
Many in the international anti-war movement saw the French rulers as "allies" in the fight against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But Chirac opposed that invasion only because French oil companies lost their Iraq contracts when the U.S. expelled Saddam Hussein.
In the 19th century, French rulers colonized large parts of northern and western Africa, seeking an advantage in their competitive dogfight with British and German imperialism. This dogfight eventually led to two world wars. By the end of World War II, two developments were emerging. First, French rulers needed a massive influx of cheap labor power for their drive to become a major industrial force on world markets. Second, throughout the French empire, a growing independence struggle, led in large part by sincere communists with the old movement's incorrect pro-nationalist line, was taking shape.
The sharpest expression of this struggle for France was the Algerian War, which began in 1954, ended in 1961, and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. French President DeGaulle understood better than most of his political rivals the key class needs of French bosses, that an "independent" Algeria could be much more lucrative than an Algeria kept "French" by a costly colonial war threatening to tear France apart. So he signed the deal that made Algeria an ex-colony and turned its new bosses into business partners.
Importing Immigrants For Low-Wage Jobs
The war's end led to an explosion of immigration from Algeria and other parts of northern and western Africa to fill the most dangerous, lowest-paid jobs in heavy industry. The government gave French companies huge tax concessions to import these workers. The politicians were quite frank about the purpose of the newly-liberalized immigration policy. In 1963, Prime Minister Pompidou admitted: "Immigration is a way to loosen up the labor market and resist social pressure." When the bosses began to fear that legal immigration quotas might not fill the expanding economy's demand, Labor Minister Jeanney warbled praises of "Clandestine immigration" as "…not entirely useless…[otherwise] we might lack manpower."
But the profit system is unstable. Boom quickly turns into bust. By the mid-1970s, the "glorious years" of economic expansion were over. The bosses were laying off super-exploited immigrant workers rather than recruiting them. In 1974, Prime Minister Chirac, now president, suspended immigration. In 1978, Secretary of State Stoléru promoted an infamously racist measure to expel 500,000 immigrants over a five-year period. Throughout this period, Jean-Marie Le Pen was building the "National Front" — the most successful openly fascist electoral party in Europe since Hitler - around blatantly racist, anti-immigrant slogans.
The mainstream bosses' parties were co-opting his agenda while pretending to distance themselves from him. In 1991, Chirac was preparing his eventual presidential campaign. He visited a French family living in the same neighborhood as Arab immigrants and wondered aloud how "good French people" could bear the "stench and noise." Four years later he won largely because he captured a large section of Le Pen's political base, much like the two Bushes and Reagan before them, who pandered to the openly racist elements of the U.S. electorate. Now main-line fascistic leaders and presidential hopefuls like Sarkozy are again co-opting LePen's followers.
'Socialists' Back Anti-Immigrant Racism
But France's anti-immigrant racism doesn't belong exclusively to the open fascists and right-wingers. Barely two weeks after Chirac's racist tirade in 1991, Edith Cresson, then the "Socialist" Prime Minister, proposed charter flights to forcibly repatriate "unwanted" immigrants. Two weeks later, President Mitterrand, another "socialist," made a speech on July 14 (France's national holiday) supporting Cresson. Mitterrand had earlier distinguished himself as a collaborator with the Nazi occupation in World War II — supplying the Hitlerites with intelligence that sent anti-Nazis to prison and/or execution- as well as the Interior Minister who launched the French government's first wave of brutal colonial repression when the Algerian war erupted in 1954.
So Interior Minister Sarkozy's racist filth against today's rebels hardly falls from the sky. Every single cause of the present rebellion — racist super-exploitation of immigrant labor power, racist unemployment, racist police terror against immigrant workers and their unemployed children, racist schools that miseducate children and throw them onto a labor market to seek non-existent jobs, and racist insults by victim-blaming politicians — can be traced directly to the profit system.
The universality of racism and its consequences under capitalism is one important lesson to draw from the current rebellions in France. Others include:
•During the time the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong was sincerely fighting for workers' power, he wrote, "Revolution is not a tea party." Well, neither is spontaneous rebellion. The masses of young workers involved in today's uprisings are lashing out as best they can against a system that has made their lives intolerable. They aren't doing so in the most effective way, but they're hardly to blame for the current vacuum of revolutionary political leadership in France. The old communist movement first betrayed them, then abandoned them. Our Party salutes their rebellion and recognizes in it a sure sign that class struggle will always rise to the forefront sooner or later, even in the bleakest of periods.
•In a context of sharp, massive international class struggle, today's anti-racist rebellion by French youth could potentially serve as a catalyst to galvanize the world's working class. This was the case in April-May 1968, when a militant protest by university students outside Paris led to a general student strike and very rapidly thereafter to a general strike of the French working class that virtually shut down the country for three weeks. The powder in France and throughout the world is just as dry today as it was then. The difference lies in the absence of a vital communist center (like the inspiration drawn from that era’s Chinese Cultural Revolution) to transform class hatred into a force for the seizure of political power. However, a looming national rail strike (Nov. 21) against privatization of the railroads and an accompanying mass demonstration in Paris is an opportunity for oppressed youth to unite with workers in a pro-working class, anti-racist alliance.
We have a long way to go before we become such a force. But that's the Progressive Labor Party's goal, in the U.S., France and everywhere. We salute today's rebels. We celebrate their anger and their fighting spirit. We are inspired by their actions, which have once again placed class struggle on the front page. And we promise to keep building the PLP until it deserves to be recognized as the revolutionary communist leadership of the world's workers.
3,000 Marchers Confront KKK in Texas
AUSTIN, TEXAS, Nov. 5 — More than 3,000 protesters marched against the Ku Klux Klan today at City Hall here, the state capital. PLP members and friends from three Texas cities participated, some seizing leadership and leading chants, including "Black, Latino, Arab, Asian and White; No KKK No Way!"
This leadership galvanized the largest contingent of several hundred demonstrators, encouraging hundreds to join the march, and united with members of the U. of Texas Black Students Association to try to confront the racist Klan. Fake leftist organizers had no plan and were pushed aside as they almost led the march into an early police trap. Liberal peace groups trying to drown out militant chants were told by marchers, "We’re here to confront the Klan, not listen to speeches and songs." Hundreds more at two other intersections were less organized, some obeying misleaders’ instructions to hold a "silent vigil."
Austin’s mayor protected the Klan with several hundred baton-wielding riot police, including dozens on horseback, with spotters, snipers and photographers on rooftops. These Klansmen in blue protected the seven Klansmen who tried to rally, sealing off two square blocks and keeping the racist Klan right next to a large armored police vehicle. Each street intersection leading to the City Hall where the Klan hid was blocked by lines of cops, their batons at the ready.
For the week before this Klan action — "in support of family values and against gay marriage" — the mayor, peace groups and newspapers pleaded with Texans not to demonstrate and to ignore the Klan "so it wouldn’t get publicity." Obviously many workers and students refused these pro-fascist instructions, but some took them seriously until they heard the various ways the government is building fascism, including publicizing Klan events. Others argued the demonstration "wasn’t important" if there was no way to physically attack the Klan.
But asking people to protest the Klan is important; strength of numbers can change what’s possible. The bottom line is that thousands will fight racism and sexism, even without understanding how capitalism depends for its survival on keeping people divided.
PLP members talked to people about the militant rebellions of North African youth against the racist French government this week, the anti-Nazi rebellion in Toledo, and the massive street demonstrations against the U.S. and Bush in Argentina. We in PLP have a great opportunity to rebuild an international revolutionary communist movement among these thousands of angry demonstrators, from Austin to Argentina to the suburbs of Paris, to turn their militancy into a fight to destroy capitalism, the root cause of racism and fascism.
One radio station predicted hundreds would come to support the Klan because it supports a law banning gay marriage. But only a tiny handful of KKK’ers showed up while thousands came to protest. This indicates that the Klan is a product of the rulers’ media which publicizes its racist actions, and of their government which protects them. Every such event is an opportunity to win people to the need for revolution, not just reform.
In that vein, PL members met and exchanged phone numbers with marchers and spectators, including undocumented workers from Latin America who face attacks today from U.S. rulers’ newest nazi group, the Minutemen.
a name="Why Bosses’ Factions Sharpen Fight Over Presidency">">"hy Bosses’ Factions Sharpen Fight Over Presidency
The bosses' state is not neutral. It represents the interests of the capitalist class. Workers must understand its nature, and why different ruling-class factions fight to control it. When workers grasp that concept we can see that we have no friends in the ruling class and that the only state that serves our interests is one where workers rule and abolish wage slavery, capitalist profits, their wars and racist/fascist terror — communism.
The presidency of the United States is both supremely powerful and precarious. A president can make war (see box on Imperial Presidency), steer the economy, and shape society in significant ways. But the very importance of the office makes it a highly unstable element of the capitalists’ class dictatorship. Factions among them constantly battle tooth and nail over control of the White House. For more than a century, the struggle has essentially involved two camps: imperialist liberals, the dominant group, who need to militarize the U.S. for ever larger wars; and bosses who would only employ capital and manpower for their own companies’ gain. This fundamental rift, inseparable from the profit system, turns elections into circuses and underlies an endless series of presidential scandals, impeachments, and attempted and successful assassinations.
Today the liberal imperialist wing is using the Cheney-Libby-CIA flap to scold Bush for failing to secure Iraq and failing to whip up patriotic spirit for future wars. In response, Bush is taking small, halting steps to get on board the liberal agenda. In a Veterans’ Day speech, he vowed to finish the job in Iraq and even spoke the liberals’ magic word, half-heartedly acknowledging "the sacrifices that might lie ahead." "Shared sacrifice" has become the liberals’ slogan for the coming phase of inter-imperialist conflict. Capitalists will have to sacrifice some profits in the form of war taxes. Workers will have to sacrifice their wages, personal freedom and lives. But Bush’s efforts are too little and too late for liberal media outlets like Newsweek, which recently saddled him with a dismal approval rating of 36%.
The imperialist camp upholds Franklin D. Roosevelt as the presidential ideal. The regulatory agencies he created bent finance and industry to U.S. imperialism’s needs. He boosted U.S. troop strength from 400,000 to 14,000,000. But until FDR actually accomplished the liberals’ tasks, they employed their media to correct and direct even his administration. In 1938, the New York Times’ chief Washington correspondent Arthur Krock praised FDR for his "political execution of the right-wing conservative" and for planning "to mobilize industry under...a government agency reminiscent of the [World War I] War Industries Board." But simultaneously, Krock — speaking for the impatient imperialists — attacked FDR’s "incapacity to consolidate progress." FDR’s vindication, for the liberal warmakers, came only with the U.S. invasion of Normandy. Liberal sainthood followed soon after FDR’s death, when Truman executed the nuclear genocide FDR had planned for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The liberal wing hasn’t yet determined what it can do with Bush & Co. But it clearly wants them either ousted or thoroughly purged and the White House reshaped in the liberal image. The Times’ editorial (11/8) lamented, "It's unnerving to realize that his presidency still has more than three years to run. An administration with no agenda and no competence would be hard enough to live with on the domestic front. But the rest of the world simply can't afford an American government this bad for that long." The Times, targeting Cheney as a chief hindrance to the liberal war agenda and complaining that he can’t be fired, urges Bush to "keep him too busy attending funerals and acting as the chairman of studies to do more harm."
We can’t predict which of the bosses’ favorite forms the housecleaning will take (see box, "Uncertain Terms", page 2) — or even if the liberals can pull it off completely. But we can be sure they’ll keep trying. As scandals pile up and harsher actions become more plausible, we must avoid the trap of siding with either of the rulers’ factions. This is not about the ethics or intelligence of any politician. What drives the Oval Office dogfight is the liberal imperialists’ need to dominate the world, while killing millions of workers in the process.
Imperial Presidency
The growing need for U.S. rulers to expand and protect their worldwide profit empire by force has led to ever broader presidential war powers:
When the U.S. was just joining the ranks of the major imperialists in 1917, Wilson had to battle Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. Fifty-six congressmen voted against it. By 1941, the war declaration had become a rubber-stamp formality. Congress’s 470-1 vote for war on Japan merely blessed the mobilization FDR had begun years before. Truman dispensed with war declarations entirely, never bothering to ask for congressional ratification for the Korean War.
Presidents since then have had a free hand. JFK had troops in Vietnam long before Congress discussed the matter. Nor did the White House seek Capitol Hill’s advice for subsequent U.S. military assaults on the Dominican Republic, Panama, Haiti, Libya, Lebanon, Grenada, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Sanctimonious debates in Congress over launching the two Iraq wars were hollow farces. They both took place as the invasion fleets were already under way. Bush had Special Forces in Afghanistan well ahead of 9/11.
Uncertain Terms
As the importance of the presidency increases, recent history shows tenure in the White House gets shakier:
Kennedy: Assassinated in first term. His call for economic sacrifice for U.S. imperialism angered many capitalists, great and small.
Johnson: Forced to forgo second term by failure in Vietnam and rebellions at home.
Nixon: Forced to resign under threat of impeachment over Watergate. Economic policies hindered U.S. imperialism.
Ford: Never elected. Two assassination attempts. Defeated by Carter who vowed U.S. war for Persian Gulf oil (Carter Doctrine).
Carter: One term. Iran revolution and hostage crisis revealed inability to deliver on Middle East.
Reagan: Two terms. Courted right-wing voters. Doubled-crossed them by pursuing imperialist agenda once in office. Shot by neo-Nazi, domestic oil heir Hinckley. Continued military expansion begun by Carter. Benefited hugely from collapse of politically corrupt Soviet Union.
Bush, Sr.: One term. Won back Kuwaiti oil for U.S. but fell short of seizing Iraq.
Clinton: Two terms. Impeached by anti-regulation camp over "sex scandal." Bombed ex-Yugoslavia. Bombed and starved Iraq with sanctions. Never managed to launch ground war. Failed to rein in industry, especially drug companies.
Bush, Jr.: Stole 2000 election from liberal imperialist Gore. Future uncertain.
Hundreds of D.C. Marchers Link Racism to AIDS Epidemic
WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 9 — On Nov. 5, hundreds of marchers from the national movement to stop HIV/AIDS took its anti-racist message to the predominantly black Anacostia southeast neighborhood here. They included PLP public health activists and local members of Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association (MWPHA) and the Prince George’s County Health Action Forum. PLP members distributed dozens of CHALLENGES to marchers and residents, emphasizing that capitalism is to blame for AIDS having gone from being a disease to a genocidal epidemic, and that only communism can organize society to consistently stop such social disasters.
The Anacostia community is the most at-risk for the disease but the most-ignored by the bosses. Residents welcomed the march, declaring, "You’re doing the right thing!" During the Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA) Days of Action (11/5 through 11/8), chants rang out like "HIV Prevention Worldwide — Anything Less is Genocide!"; "Fund Condoms Not War!"; "Dead Addicts Don’t Recover — Needle Exchange and Harm Reduction Now!"
Three days later, C2EA convened in a park near the White House and "awarded" Golden Tombstones to right-wing groups which promote "abstinence only," fight sex education in the schools and oppose life-saving needle exchange programs for drug-users. After an energetic visit to the headquarters of one of these fascist lobbying groups, marchers demonstrated at the White House where 29 demonstrators were arrested after lying down on the sidewalk with gravestones reading, "Killed by Abstinence Only," and "Killed by Lack of Medications." In reality, racist capitalism is the killer, from the AIDS epidemic to the war in Iraq.
The MWPHA’s Disparities Committee, in fighting the racist HIV/AIDS epidemic, will be holding monthly street outreach, and education in the libraries of the most affected neighborhoods, and will be organizing residents to demand drug treatment on demand, HIV prevention policies, outreach to vulnerable groups, testing and care for all.
All this is greatly needed here where 1 in 20 people (over 75% black) have the deadly HIV infection, a rate comparable to Tanzania and Mozambique. HIV is one of the most racist health inequalities in the world. Over 40 million people have HIV, the majority in sub-Saharan Africa. In the U.S., nearly half of all black gay men have HIV; rates are growing fastest among young people ages 15 to 24. In D.C.’s poorest areas, drugs fuel the epidemic with IV drug-users spreading HIV to women.
The C2EA is demanding: HIV prevention based on science — condoms, comprehensive sex education, clean needles for drug users; treatment for all everywhere — maintain Medicaid for all beneficiaries; medications for people everywhere; full funding for the Ryan White Care Act, a critical source of financing HIV programs; Research for a cure and better treatment and prevention options; and an end to stigma and discrimination against people with HIV. Actions need to go beyond politics as usual.
Generating profit, not health, is intrinsic to capitalism. Blood-sucking drug companies insist on unaffordable prices for their drugs, so in Africa only 15% of the people who need medication are treated with the HIV drugs that keep people alive in the U.S.
Here, Democratic and Republican politicians all know that as long as there are enough reasonably healthy people to work (and fight wars), infected people can be ignored and disposed of. On the march we met a woman living with AIDS and ovarian cancer in a Mississippi shelter who was denied disability compensation because she "wasn’t sick enough." Then she couldn’t qualify for AIDS-related housing because she didn’t have an income!
The C2EA days of action were mild reform actions. They showed that only the working class can lead the fight. Virtually no one from AIDS service organizations, Schools of Public Health, Health Departments or the D.C. City Council participated. Just as during Hurricane Katrina, it’s up to the working class to lead the fight for a better society based on equality and health for all. Our class must be organized around PLP’s revolutionary politics, not the wishful thinking that a better politician will come along.
Racist Contract Sparks Growing Fight in NYC Teachers Union
NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 4 — The recent contract vote in the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) here saw 63% in favor and 37% against, the closest vote in the union’s 40-year history. Among classroom teachers, the percentage against was probably 40%.
This contract reflected the intense racism that permeates the NYC school system, with its overwhelmingly black and Latino student body. Nothing in the contract did anything for the students, whom billionaire Mayor Bloomberg and the ruling class view as the source of an endless supply for their low-wage economy and of cannon fodder for their imperialist wars.
An Important Contract
The large opposition vote has the union leadership running scared. They’re making plans to try to maintain control of the members. As CHALLENGE reported (11/16), opposition groups are growing within the union, some comprising young teachers who the bosses and the UFT assumed were in their hip pockets.
Two years ago the Mayor won direct control of the schools, no longer having to play political games to get what he wanted. He moved the headquarters of the renamed Department of Education (DOE) downtown, next door to City Hall. The UFT leadership agreed to this change, and therefore it was O.K.’d by the State Legislature. Mayoral control has increased many educators’ fears of harassment and increased oppression.
This contract is one more step in the increasing control of individual classroom teachers, dictating placement of classroom furniture, materials to be placed on bulletin boards and walls, timing and pacing of lessons, down to the minute. This harassment places the burden of the students’ success solely on the teachers, not on the DOE at all.
Even more critically, UFT’ers have lost the right to grieve this harassment, having given up the second step of a 3-step grievance process. They can no longer complain when administrators place letters of reprimand in their personal files. The day after the contract was ratified, union members began hearing about administrators’ plans to target teachers they want to fire.
Due to the increasing harassment and the tremendous workload, many new teachers leave before they’ve worked in the system for five years. The DOE bosses encourage that turnover since they assume these inexperienced teachers will not be loyal to their co-workers or to the union. While somewhat true, we’ve met younger teachers willing to fight and organize, some forming school groups against racism, others engaging in struggles against this contract.
We have to bring our co-workers and friends into action, struggling together against this harassment, micromanagement and racism, and build support for co-workers targeted by the administration. Even more important, we must build a fight for our students who are consistently losing out — class size is still far too large, resources are scarce in most schools, and overworked, harassed teachers cannot do their best.
We must involve the students, their parents and rank-and-file teachers in a united anti-racist fight against these fascist conditions, which are keyed by racist neglect of the students, a situation which the union leadership either does nothing about or, worse, fosters. Gaining strength from fighting for the working-class black and Latino students is the only way teachers can improve their own lives. (The last contract teachers won both better working conditions and higher salaries was in 1975; it’s been all downhill since then.)
The intensification of racism in the schools and control of the teachers adds up to fascism in the educational system. Through a united student-parent-teacher anti-racist struggle, PLP’ers can bring communist ideas to the fore and demonstrate that the racism of capitalism can only be defeated by overthrowing the system itself. That lesson is the best education students can ever receive, to extricate themselves from the rat hole which the profit system has created.
Puerto Rico: 3,000 Teachers March to Demand End to Wage Freeze
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO, Nov. 9 — Workers here are on the move. Today, 5,000 members of UTIER (Union of Water and Electrical Workers) marched to the governor’s house (La Fortaleza — "The Fortress") protesting his privatization plan and demanding a new contract with decent pay. Several Senators met with the workers, saying they supported the demands, but the workers don’t trust them and will continue their protests.
Earlier, over 3,000 teachers marched from the Capitol to La Fortaleza in the biggest teachers’ action in recent years, demanding the government negotiate a new contract, with an 18% wage hike, smaller class size and better working conditions. For the last 11 years a teacher’s basic wage here has been frozen at $1,500 a month (a cop’s starting wage is $2,300 a month, over 50% more).
The teachers union — affiliated with the U.S. American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — has broken with the AFT, accusing it of just collecting their dues and doing nothing for them. The local here is fighting the AFT’s attempt to put it in receivership.
The teachers are rejecting the government’s claim of a "fiscal crisis" while money is being funneled to the Iraq war, in which many young soldiers from PR have been killed and injured.
One problem affecting teachers, and the population in general, is violent crime. Many teachers fear violence in their schools. The government’s "solution" is increased police patrols. The governor has responded by sending more cops into housing projects and working-class communities. But the main causes of this violence are unemployment, drugs — which cops are part of — and the general crisis of capitalism.
The government has increasingly employed the police state Patriot Act. Even Senators were surprised when they found hidden cameras monitoring them in the Capitol building. A few months ago, an FBI death squad ambushed and, in cold blood, killed Filiberto Ojeda, leader of an underground pro-independence group here. This was repudiated by many, viewed as an attack on all workers fighting back.
This fight-back is a good thing. From this workers can learn that under capitalism lousy education for working-class youth, rotten working conditions for workers and crime are constants. Turning such struggles into schools for communism — learning how to fight for workers’ power, a society without bosses — is he best lesson to be drawn from them.
Laws of Capitalism Erasing Reform Gains in Auto
The latest bosses’ offensive in the auto industry (see article below) proves in spades that trying to reform capitalism is a dead end. Over the last 60 years, of all industries and unions, auto and the UAW are the ones claiming to have provided workers, especially unskilled workers, with the greatest job security, pensions and health care "for life." Of course, the auto companies didn’t just give these reforms out of the goodness of their hearts. It took communist leadership in the unionization drive of the 1930’s to win them, with sit-down strikes occupying the plants and defying the bosses’ laws.
Then along came World War II and the no-strike pledge. In the post-war period, the class struggle resumed, with strike after strike in those years winning cost-of-living wage increases, pensions, health benefits and finally the so-called Guaranteed Annual Wage, SUB pay (Supplemental Unemployment Benefits) that would grant workers 95% of their wages throughout layoffs.
UAW chief honcho, Walter Reuther (who had ousted the communists from leadership in the late 1940’s during the height of the anti-communist cold war hysteria), proclaimed paradise for the workers. But capitalism — the system that Reuther and all his successors in leadership champion — doesn’t work that way.
No sooner had the Big Three — GM, Ford and Chrysler — faced stiff competition from their imperialist rivals in Germany and Japan, the U.S. auto industry hit the skids. Plant closings, mass layoffs, wrecking SUB pay, and billions in wage and benefit concessions became the order of the day, destroying any measure of previously-won job security. The fierce worldwide competition for market share — intrinsic to capitalism — squeezed profits out of the backs of the workers.
Soon GM and Ford greatly increased the number of their plants in Mexico, Vietnam, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and elsewhere, long before they started business in China. Now they could export many more jobs and pay these workers anywhere between 58¢ to $2 an hour, leading to even more massive layoffs in the U.S. This outsourcing partly helped cut the UAW auto membership in half. Ironically, VW, Nissan, Honda and Daimler began building plants in the U.S. (mainly in the non-union South) where labor costs are lower than in Germany and Japan.
Now wages, "guaranteed" pensions and health care are taking still another hit. This falls especially hard on black workers, who were the last ones hired in auto and the first ones to go because of the historic racist hiring practices of the Big Three.
So the laws of capitalism — competition, export of capital seeking the lowest labor costs (imperialist "globalization") and racism — are smashing all these reform gains won by the union, enforced by the bosses’ state in the person of bankruptcy judges and laws. The UAW leadership always operated within these bosses’ laws which guarantee that the bosses’ class interests are primary and that their profits must be defended at all costs. Now this means installing fascism in the work-place, which is exactly what these company attacks are producing, similar to what the Nazis did under Hitler.
All this is intensified by the U.S. rulers’ need to launch war after war to defend their class interests internationally against their imperialist rivals. This permanent war economy requires, among other things, money to pay for the enormous cost of their military machine. And the primary source of this money is lowering the living standards of the working class.
Once again, all this proves what PLP has always maintained: no reform is safe under capitalism because the bosses hold state power and, in the last analysis, their pro-capitalist laws and rule hold sway. Therefore, workers must understand that politics are primary — even in struggles for reforms — and that our class interests can never be served under capitalism. So sooner than later, workers must confront the bosses, their state and their union agents, along with their pro-war patriotism, racism and anti-communism, and fight for a system where workers rule: communism.
UAW Sellouts Giving Away Store to GM, Ford
DETROIT, MI, Nov. 1 — Tremors continue to rock the domestic auto industry. Delphi, the country’s largest parts supplier, filed the largest bankruptcy in the history of the U.S. auto industry and demanded billions in concessions, including wages as low as $10 an hour, a cut of more than 50%. GM and the United Auto Workers (UAW) announced health care concessions of $15 billion in GM’s previous contractual commitment, marking the beginning of the end of "guaranteed" benefits. Ford’s plan includes ‘’significant plant closings’’ and job cuts for its North American operations. In September, it was forced to reclaim 24 Visteon plants to bail out its former parts division.
Ford reported a $284 million loss in the third quarter, and GM lost nearly $4 billion through three quarters, including its largest quarterly loss in over a decade ($1.6 billion).
Now UAW president Ron Gettelfinger reported details of the tentative agreement with GM to impose health benefit cuts on union retirees, unanimously approved by several hundred GM local union leaders. Membership ratification (retired workers won’t be allowed to vote) is awaiting a court ruling that prevents retirees from suing the union and the company (see CHALLENGE, 11/16)).
For the first time, GM retirees will have to pay deductibles, monthly premiums and hospital co-payments. Right now this means a $15 billion down payment on a new 2007 contract that will include plant closings, elimination of the job bank for laid-off workers, and a possible end to the "30 and Out" retirement. In the long run, these concessions prove that as long as the bosses hold power, even benefits built up over a century of struggle cannot survive.
Retired GM workers will pay up to $370 a year for traditional coverage, ($752 for a family). The cost of some prescription drugs will double or triple. Current GM workers will give up $1-an-hour in 2006, deferring cost-of-living adjustments and wage increases to help pay retiree medical costs (GM will contribute $3 billion to the fund by 2011). Current workers will also face increased co-pays. Ford and Chrysler are looking for similar deals.
The bosses and bankers are locked in a sharpening struggle with their imperialist rivals, punctuated by high gas prices and declining market share. For them, $15 billion isn’t enough. Merrill Lynch analyst John Casesa said, ‘’Should GM’s results worsen, we are concerned that the door to additional UAW assistance would be closed, increasing the chance of a serious strike.’’ GM chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner said, ‘’It’s a very important step. I didn’t say it was the last step…’’
The brutal restructuring of the auto, steel and airline industries are not only destroying pensions, healthcare and wages, but bringing fascism to the work-place amid a permanent war economy. It will also shatter many illusions, the hard way. Along with the naked racism of the Katrina disaster and the building of a Homeland Security police state, the bosses are loaded for bear. Workers will not spontaneously draw revolutionary conclusions. That’s PLP’s job, and this is our opportunity.
a name="Young French Auto Workers Speak:‘It’s like an erupting volcano’"></a>"oung French Auto Workers Speak:‘It’s like an erupting volcano’
(Interviews with young Citroen workers from the housing projects, L’humanité hebdo, 11/12/05)
"Today it’s like an erupting volcano," said Housni…. Young people have accumulated years of discrimination."
"Me, I worked for Citroen for eighteen months," said Salim, 23…. "They promised [to]…hire me. I took the tests and the medical check-up…. But in the end they told me ‘no’." That was on May 5, 2003. Since then Salim hasn’t found anything. "I’m still furious. I would really have liked to work at the factory…. I had done all the jobs. But the bosses don’t want us."
"I work. I have nothing on my conscience, but I get stopped all the time by the cops." Lionel has registered several complaints on the police blotter against harassment. "I try to pull myself up by my bootstraps and the cops tell me: ‘You’re from the housing project, you’re a delinquent.’ The other day I went to eat in a little restaurant, they pass by in their patrol car,…they stop. They call out my name. I come out, I ask them why. For nothing."
"If my name was Franck, I’d have a good career," said Ahmed. "We’ve always got to slave away four times as hard as the others to be recognized…. When I went to ask my boss for a raise, he answered: ‘In the old days your parents didn’t ask any questions.’ I didn’t understand what he meant right away. Afterward it really hurt me. Our parents left with less than nothing in the way of a retirement pension, without any thanks, without any gratitude. And yet they worked like mad. Today, it’s the same thing all over with us."
Ahmed…echoed: "It’s not normal for them to burn cars. But that’s the only way you can make yourself heard…. What they did to our parents, they want to do to us….The old guys at Citroen tell us they were called n-----s, they got hit. Today it’s starting over again. But they won’t be able to do the same thing with us…. I can’t be any more French than I already am…. They sell us…the dream of equality. But it’s like the American dream. It’s not for us."
The Struggle at CUNY: What Does Unity Mean?
(Second of four-part series)
"I will strike. Labor has been holding up the wall for too long." This overworked CUNY academic counselor, an underpaid Higher Education Officer (HEO) with no real dental benefits, grew angrier as she spoke with the picket captain. The latter was one of 350 faculty and staff organizers trying to inform the 20,000 members of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) that the union might need to strike for a decent salary, health benefits and equity raises for the most exploited. The counselor then signed on to perform picket captain duty herself. She attended the next organizers’ meeting. Her reports of conversations with her list came in on time. She brought people to our first picket, unifying the rank and file at a higher level of organizing.
What does this new unity mean? As an African American woman in the HEO job title, she lives some of the structural inequalities in our own ranks that make unity so difficult. As in other industries, the capitalist organization of workers in higher education profits from racism and sexism through the division of labor. HEOs, with the same salary scale as faculty, earn less as a group because there is virtually no promotion in their series. The majority are women, compared to the 58% male faculty (68% male in the full professor title), and a majority people of color compared to only 23% of the faculty. Narrow professional and status consciousness among faculty, combined with residual racist and sexist ideas, increase their separateness from the more exploited professional staff, HEOs and College Lab Technicians (CLTs). CLTs are also a majority black and Latin with a very low salary scale.
Language Immersion and Continuing Education teachers are even more grossly exploited. The greatest inequality is between full-time and part-time workers. The latter comprise more than half the faculty and teach 60% of all CUNY courses, for one-third the per-course pay of a full-timer at the Lecturer rank. And though community college and senior college faculty have the same salary scale, their teaching loads are harshly unequal, especially because CUNY community college faculty hold Ph.D. degrees at twice the national rate. Meanwhile, management expresses contempt at the negotiating table for all but full-time senior college faculty.
Yet our new picket captain has a sense of workers’ need for unity as a class. Here reference to "labor," pointed to thinking of workers as a whole and the way unions are failing us all in the class war. Precisely as a PSC’er, an HEO, an African American and as a woman, she classifies her specific situation as "labor," as part of the working class. Unusual in her political clarity, she sees the particular in the general, unity in difference. The PSC has a fair representation of HEOs, African Americans and women in the union leadership, but fall short among core activists. The union feels that’s a major issue, so why haven’t we won our new picket captain before now? (Self-critically, a PLP’er on the same campus believes, it is because of white radicals’ fear of rejection by colleagues with black nationalist views.) How can the PSC sustain her new activism? How can faculty unite with staff, white with black, and faculty with our students as full political equals? Tough questions.
This sister prompts both the main question of this article, and perhaps suggests its answer: how to create unity amid inequality in our ranks? As the new picket captains form a permanent network of activists to last far beyond this contract, we cannot placate those who are most exploited with small gains and expect unity to flow from that. We must agitate for the most oppressed, never stop "speaking bitterness," as Chinese communist women once put it?
Capitalism cannot end inequality because the wage and profit system itself endlessly reproduces it. The PSC must agitate for radical labor egalitarianism, not placate everyone as liberal unions do. The union (especially the PLP’ers among us) must win people to a notion of work not as capitalist wage labor, but, in communist style, as commitment to others in a collective social project. We will answer these questions of theory and practice through struggle. In the PSC we’re holding up the wall no longer.
A Dialectical View of Unity
The unity and struggle of opposites is a central idea in the communist philosophy of dialectical materialism. (A brief readable introduction to dialectics is the PLP pamphlet "Jailbreak.") What seems to be one thing (e.g., a union like the PSC) is in fact a unity of opposites, whose connection constitutes the thing as long as it lasts. But the tension between opposites eventually transforms the thing into something else, for good or ill.
In the PSC an equal number of full-timers and part-timers work together in a single union even though part-timers earn only one-third to one-fifth of the full-time scale. But there’s a tension between the two, which, if each group looked out only for itself, could turn unity into division. The faculty at Nassau Community College on Long Island is divided into a full-timers’ and a part-timers’ union (the latter about to strike). "The literature shows that adjuncts who are represented by full-time faculty unions are treated as an afterthought…we must stand alone," said an officer of the Adjunct Faculty Association. Maybe so, if the unions are badly led. But a union in which both really stood together, at a higher level of unity, would put all faculty in a better position.
In dialectics we regard the unity of opposites as secondary, while the struggle of opposites is primary; in other words, everything is in flux, everything changes. In the PSC the tension is not yet at that point and that unity still exists, but the PSC could also split if the leadership treats adjuncts as an afterthought. Revolutionary communists would say politics is primary over economics here. In the PSC leadership and rank and file there’s still enough workers’ solidarity to challenge the capitalist myth of me-first. Enough full-timers want to fight alongside part-timers for equal pay for equal work for the PSC to remain united. But capitalism constantly threatens this unity, with its enforced inequality between the two and its culture of everyone standing alone. The CUNY bosses will fight to the bitter end to maintain the profits of inequality, and that means our political unity will be a constant struggle against the bosses’ ideology. The class struggle entails a constant battle for workers’ unity.
But politics is primary over economics, so higher and higher levels of workers’ unity are possible. The most oppressed workers in France are showing us the way. The political leadership of the union, and for the working class as a whole the revolutionary party, is the key factor. Pressing forward with a strike on the basis of mass organizing behind a strong demand for adjunct parity could lift unity in the PSC to a higher level and make it stronger for both groups. Dropping that plan and settling for a deal that leaves adjuncts behind will weaken unity in the PSC. ("10% of crap is crap," said one PSC adjunct leader.) The New Caucus leadership brought such unity to the PSC in 2000 and it has been much stronger since then. But things can still turn into their opposite under pressure from the boss. PLP’ers strive with our PSC sisters and brothers to keep the pressure on from the workers’ side, fighting for unity not only in one union but in our whole class. Then we can turn the petty mythology of inequality into its noble opposite.
Bringing Class Consciousness to H.S. Struggles
"An injury to one is an injury to all." When that call sounded over the high school’s PA system, teachers all knew it signaled an emergency union meeting to defend a popular counselor who the administration had attacked. It exemplified struggles occurring at this school.
While reforms that fundamentally improve workers’ lives are impossible under capitalism, involvement in the class struggle in the union, even when it appears to be only about "reforms," can contribute to a deeper understanding of capitalism among many people. During this period of increasing wars and war budgets, we can fight for stronger ties among teachers, students, staff and parents, and greater awareness of the long-term fight to destroy capitalism.
This large urban high school has a history of struggle. Its students come from families of Latino and black workers. Some at the school tell the truth about the class struggle, and have close ties with other students, parents, teachers and staff. Some — although too few — have distributed CHALLENGE.
The first struggle this summer involved taking away the right of the local school governance body to choose a principal, because our test scores had not met No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements. While we don’t advocate fighting to choose our own oppressor, this struggle enabled us to explain that NCLB is a war-time austerity measure attacking teachers and parents while making no improvement in the schools. We linked this attack to the need to attend a union-sponsored anti-war conference. A multi-racial effort broke down barriers of "race," age and status so prevalent in the schools. Without having picked our principal, we won more unity and class consciousness, and more people reading CHALLENGE.
This struggle made distributing a communist leaflet about Katrina in the school cafeteria easier. It helped more people understand that capitalism as a whole is a racist, killer system, and see the connection to the war in particular. This complemented work with students who, learning about racism, strikes, imperialism and past soldier rebellions, saw the links to current events in the capitalist system.
Students participated with PLP in the September 24 anti-war mobilization, distributed CHALLENGE, attended PLP study groups and played a leading role in organizing a school club on campus.
In October, when the new principal demoted a competent and popular counselor over an altercation with a notoriously rude administrator, and the union rep called an emergency meeting, announcing that "an injury to one is an injury to all," the entire school community mobilized to defend the counselor. All week the majority of the staff wore red union shirts and stickers with this slogan. Students were sitting-in in the principal’s office, and parents insisted on meeting with the principal. This struggle was victorious and has built unity in the school community.
While the union bureaucrats and many honest teachers were campaigning against Schwarzenegger’s anti-teacher and anti-labor ballot propositions, we emphasized that it’s the unity and struggle of the working class that won back the counselor’s job — teacher tenure laws, the union contract, politicians and elections were of no use here. Now students and teachers are interested in reading PLP leaflets that prove it’s not just Bush and Schwarzenegger, it’s capitalism, especially since it’s the Democrats who are pushing for more troops and more fascist homeland security.
During this struggle the district also canceled the union’s permission to hold the anti-war conference. Teachers district-wide responded by donating hundreds of dollars to pay conference expenses. Students and staff signed petitions demanding the conference be held — and the District backed down.
This has all helped increase class consciousness among many in the school community, especially measured by the doubling of hand-to-hand CHALLENGE distribution since last year. Fighting on a daily basis inspires confidence in the working class, and the need to deepen the struggle for the working class to take power. When communists give even modest leadership, to the class struggle, drawing communist lessons, we’re further along the road to ending this murderous system, and building one based on communist equality and workers’ power.
Letters
a name="Vets Shake up Bosses’ Pro-War Parade">">"ets Shake up Bosses’ Pro-War Parade
At the NYC Veteran’s Day parade, I joined my group of anti-war vets on 28th Street and Fifth Avenue. As luck would have it, a large group of politicians, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, was directly in front of us, stalled by the marchers in front of them. Our thunderous chants of "Troops home now!" had a visible effect on them, especially on Bloomberg, who began twisting and squirming until some police brass ran over and cleared a path so they could move out of hearing range.
About five minutes later 50 cops, some on motorcycles, surrounded our group trying to shield the rest of the marchers from us. I yelled, "This is Democracy folks — your right to dissent — as long as you’re completely surrounded by cops."
We raised our signs and banners and chanted louder, continuing to grab attention from the recruits marching by until a plainclothes cop ordered his KKKohorts to push us into a side street. They pushed us and we pushed back a few times and then started to chant, "No Police State" until a top cop told the plainclothes ones to back off. The situation was heading toward a battle and arrests so I guess they realized that dragging off vets (some in wheelchairs) might not do their phony democracy image much good.
The cops then informed our group that if we wanted to march we had to walk back a couple blocks and wait on a side street (where we wouldn’t be too effective). We moved there and waited until the very end of the parade, missing contact with the rest of the marchers. After almost two hours one vet joked, "Folks the Veterans’ anti-war parade has now officially become part of the Thanksgiving Parade."
When we finally got to march, we were dead last, with cops at our backs hurrying us along. We had a float for the disabled, playing music. The first song was, "War; what is it good for?" An 80-year-old vet in a wheelchair yelled, "Oil profits!" Everyone laughed and took up that chant, along with our anti-war drill cadences like, "We’re veterans against the war, We know what we’re fighting for; Bring our troops back to our soil, We say no more blood for oil!"
I had made a sign with Marine General Smedly Butler’s quote, "The flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag." When vets asked who Butler was, I showed them a CHALLENGE with articles about him and another one about soldiers being turned into mindless killers.
It turned our to be a day when about 50% of a supposedly patriotic and pro-military crowd gave us the thumbs up or cheered us on wildly and when some vets and recruits learned something about "Democracy" and who the cops really protect. I want to thank CHALLENGE for its very timely articles and I hope it continues to take note of dates important to veterans and workers.
Veteran Comrade
Spontaneous Rebellions Not Enough
The CHALLENGE article (10/19) saying Toledo youth supposedly "put revolutionary ideas into practice" is incorrect. Their actions surely were fantastic, militant and an expression of violent anti-racism, which we should encourage. But "revolutionary"? That implies they supported, or at least were aware of, communist politics, but that hasn’t been the case. These brave, local, mostly black youth acted completely out of their own anti-racist volition.
The article doesn’t counterpose the issue of the militant anti-racism with the need for a communist society. We must be as disciplined in our writing as we are in real life. We cannot afford to write something that — in the heat of unbridled praise — supports "revolutionary spontaneity," a concept all serious Marxist-Leninists oppose.
Young Red
a name="Capitalism’s Anarchy Limits Bosses’ Options"></">Ca"italism’s Anarchy Limits Bosses’ Options
The "Other Superpower" letter (CHALLENGE, 11/16) makes good points about working-class power but draws an incorrect conclusion about Katrina, that the ruling class is "glad" when large groups of workers die in disasters and other tragedies caused by capitalism because there will be fewer unemployment benefits, Social Security payments and less people to protest their crimes. The writer is criticizing another letter about Katrina saying the ruling class doesn’t care about the victims.
Of course, bosses don’t care if workers suffer as long as it means more profits, but they cannot be glad to be exposed for their racist neglect at home while spending hundreds of billions for imperialist oil wars abroad. A recent health study showed that while over 80,000 black and Latin people died last year from lack of health care — equivalent to almost one Katrina every week — it took the hurricane to make the rulers’ gross indifference a media event. The recent honoring of Rosa Parks and the resurrection of other black heroes shows that the ruling class realizes it needs millions of consenting minority troops for its imperialist plans and is desperately trying to repair its image.
The specter of black and Latin rebellions during the 1960’s and ’70s — which caused troops to be diverted from Vietnam — still haunts the U.S. ruling class, especially now with an ongoing two-week rebellion of exploited Muslim workers throughout France, spilling into Belgium and Germany.
While U.S. rulers cannot be glad when workers they need for imperialist expansion become devastated or politically hostile, the bottom line is that the anarchy of capitalist profiteering limits their options and creates the conditions for fascism which our Party should use to build its forces.
A Comrade
Red Leadership At Phila. Strike Picket Line
On November 3rd a group of D.C. Metro workers drove to Philadelphia to support the transit workers' strike there. We didn't know what to expect, but when we arrived, we found something definitely: leadership. The workers were sitting and talking amongst themselves. When we walked over, the workers were very receptive and excited about us being there to support them.
Soon the news cameras showed up and asked what we were doing there. We said we were showing solidarity with the strikers and helping do whatever is necessary to win the struggle. However, once I mentioned we also had to stop an imperialist war, the reporter quickly stopped asking questions. That's when we realized we needed to give some political leadership.
We started some chants with the strikers, including, "Asian, Latin, Black, and White, Workers of the World Unite!" Just like that the strike went from people standing around to people talking about what needs to be done to fight the bosses. It was an example of what correct leadership - communist leadership - could do for the workers.
Red D.C. Metro Worker
D.C. Transit Workers Bring Solidarity to Philly Strikers
PHILADELPHIA — On Nov. 3, a group of Washington, D.C. Metro transit workers brought solidarity greetings to transit strikers here during their recent walkout. The predominantly black strikers welcomed them to two picket lines and joined their chants, "Black, Latin, Asian, White; Workers of the World Unite!"; and "Healthcare Cutbacks mean Fight Back!"
The strikers were fighting the racist bosses’ attempt to make workers pay a $600 annual premium for health benefits. The Transport Workers Union conceded a payment of 1% of their base wage for health costs. Although the strike saved the drug prescription plan, it will be denied to all new hires when they’re covered by Medicare.
The act of solidarity by Metro workers, members of the Amalgamated Transit Union, in supporting rank-and-filers from a "rival" union, sharply contrasts with the airline unions that not only refused to support striking Northwest mechanics but ordered their members to cross their picket lines.
Capitalism Turns Natural Disasters Into Catastrophe for Working Class
MEXICO CITY —Under capitalism, natural phenomena become a problem for the working class, provoking destruction, death, further impoverishment of the people and in many cases leaving them without enough to survive.
The hurricane Katrina devastated some U.S. cities and revealed the great contradiction that saw U.S. rulers sending thousands of soldiers to Iraq to defend the rulers’ oil interests, while being incapable of sending adequate aid to those affected by Katrina. It also brought racism to the forefront, since New Orleans is inhabited mainly by black and Latino workers, for whom aid was practically nil.
This same problem was seen even more cruelly in Mexico and Central America with Hurricane Wilma. Many communities were buried in mud and thousands died even though the bosses’ press lied that it was only a few dozen.
In Chiapas the government hasn’t shown the slightest interest in helping those hurt by the hurricanes and floods. On the contrary, the funds slated for natural disasters (10 billion pesos) were stolen by the ruling politicians.
The human losses could have been prevented if the government had evacuated those who lived in the areas at risk. Both the U.S. and Mexican governments had the meteorological warnings.
Some bourgeois foundations like Televisa, TV Azteca and some politicians have taken advantage of this terrible situation to try to present themselves as the "saviors" of the communities by doling out crumbs.
Certainly very soon the government will disburse considerable monies to reconstruct devastated areas, but not to the communities where the poorest and most affected people live. Rather it will be used to rebuild tourist areas, the benefits going to the hotel and restaurant owners, as happened in Cancun.
We workers should be clear that under communism, natural phenomena will not become natural disasters, since people will live in secure areas and will build decent housing. They won’t lack services or food, since all will work for the common good, not for profits.
Building the communist PLP should be the most important job of every worker if we want to rid ourselves of this criminal system of exploitation which cannot solve the problems of the majority of the population, the working class.
We must fight for a society where the common interests are primary, not the interests of the individual or a small group. Communism will abolish racism, nationalism, sexism and exploitation, all of which only divide and weaken our class.
Spreading Communist Ideas in Reform Struggles
Being a relatively new full-time factory worker, I’ve sometimes mistakenly thought that mass ideas can only be reformist. The major contradiction facing me is, on the one hand, keeping my job by not exposing myself to my enemies, versus spreading communist ideas. The way forward is to develop closer ties with, and confidence in, my co-workers. My enemies are the bosses. Some workers seem right-wing, possibly snitches and close to the bosses. My outlook is building friendships of trust and organizing social gatherings leading to political discussions off the job.
Recently one worker, Humberto, with whom I’ve made friends, said, "Man, what should I do? The boss was all upset because I told Health and Safety our workbenches are an injury risk. They said they’d observe my workbench. The boss told me to lie, to tell Health and Safety we aren’t at risk."
I told him he should lie to Health and Safety, that he should work on multiple machines and workbenches and then lead them to where I work all day hunched over a workbench assembling parts. Then I’d tell them about the way I worked.
The day before I tried to adjust my chair because my neck was hurting. This angered another co-worker who said he’d been using this chair for over 20 years and that I shouldn’t adjust it. Actually the chair was difficult to take apart and adjust for my height.
I told Humberto about this conversation, noting that the bosses don’t want to buy new chairs because they’re locked into a global competition for profits and have accountants counting every single penny — that’s why we risk injury.
I’ve been struggling with Humberto for some time. Occasionally he says a worker must be on friendly terms with the racist bosses in order to get higher wages and keep one’s job. I’ve continually told him to keep it cool, not get too involved with them, that greater power lies in friendships and unity with co-workers.
We ate lunch at a nearby restaurant and discussed a plan to bring Health and Safety by "chance" to my workbench. My neck hurts too much not to say something.
Humberto told me about an uncle, much older than us, working as an assembler in another factory, and that he had gotten surgery on both hands and on his neck because of the repetitive stress of the job. Now, when he brought the conversation down to something personal, I seized the moment to sharpen the struggle over his ideas. I said that’s why the bosses can never be your friends. No matter how nice you are to them, no matter how friendly they may seem, even shaking your hand, they’ll never be your friend because their sole interest is in profits. You could die, have multiple surgeries, but they don’t give a f--- about us. They count the pennies that add up to billions of dollars of profit.
He then said we needed a union. I mentioned the Boeing machinists’ strike in Seattle. I said these were some of the best-paid workers in the country and yet they’re still having to fight for their healthcare and benefits. If workers do manage to get something, the bosses take it from somewhere else, because their profits always must be made. In general, they’ve been outsourcing most of their work to people like us, to break their union and pay lower wages, raising their profits in order to compete with other bosses.
He then asked what we should do. I said workers need to fight every day, fight for power from top to bottom. For that we need — in the long run — revolution in the complete interest of the workers, a state where the betterment of the workers is the sole interest. He nodded. Health and Safety never came. But I’m planning to get CHALLENGE to more co-workers.
A Factory comrade
REDEYE
Liberals don’t deliver fairer incomes
Income inequality is now near all-time highs….The average CEO now takes home a paycheck 431 times that of their average worker….
And inequality is non-partisan. The pace of inequality has grown steadily over three decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses. The Gini index, the global measure of inequality, grew as quickly under President Bill Clinton as it has under President George W. Bush. (MINUTEMEIDA.ORG. 10/27)
Business bigs find judge Alito all neato
…Business cases, which arise far more often than privacy and abortion cases,…are the bread and butter of the appeals courts and the Supreme Court….
Judge Alito’s record in business cases….over the last 15 years was such that corporate lawyers relished the prospect of his participation.…
Officials at the National Association of Manufacturers and the United States Chamber of Commerce said that as they combed through his record, they had been favorably impressed with what they had learned.
"He has come down on a host of issues in a way that the business community would prefer"… (NYT, 11/5)
Democrats help deny rights in Guantanamo
Democrats…provided the margin of victory…for a Republican-backed measure that would deny prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention in federal courts….
"A foreign national who is captured…in the world war on terrorism has no more right to a habeas corpus appeal to our courts than did a captured solider of the Axis powers during World War II," Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said in a statement….
Fewer than 200 of the approximately 500 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have filed petitions for habeas corpus hearings. They are not seeking trials, merely asking why they are being held. And according to government and military officials, an overwhelming majority should not have been taken prisoner in the first place. These men have been in isolation for nearly four years, subject to months of interrogation… (NYT, 11/12)
40% in US have skipped their costly drugs
…America’s health care system spends more, for worse results, than that of any other advanced country.
But don’t people in other countries sometimes find it hard to get medical treatment? Yes, sometimes — but so do Americans….
The journal Health Affairs recently published the results of a survey of the medical experience of "sicker adults" in six countries, including Canada, Britain, Germany and the United States. The responses don’t support claims about superior service from the U.S. system….
Above all, Americans are far more likely than others to forgo treatment because they can’t afford it. Forty percent of the Americans surveyed failed to fill a prescription because of cost. A third were deterred by cost from seeing a doctor when sick or from getting recommended tests or follow-up. (NYT, 11/7)
Despite laws, CIA has secret prisons
…The reported existence of secret prisons in eastern Europe where the CIA has detained top al-Qaida captives….could violate the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Convention Against Torture.
….It is illegal to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the US, which is why the CIA placed them overseas… (GW, 11/7)
Thousands of homes mined by $trip mining
Last month, the Bush administration demonstrated just how regal King Coal remains when it issued a long-delayed report on mountaintop removal that callously announced that "these expensive studies" on damages to the countryside have become too "exorbitant" to be continued.
…Scientific studies confirmed the damage to streams and forests….Thousands of Appalachian residents pleaded in hearings and petitions that the government bring mountain-top removal under control…
Many hamlets spared condemnation found the…stripped mountains causing torrential drainage shifts and floods dismissed as "acts of God" by mining officials.
"It wasn’t God who went up on our mountain with a dozer to leave it naked," observed Betty Banks amid the muck in her house in Kentucky…
Estimates are that by the end of the decade, an area larger that the state of Delaware will have been laid waste by dynamite and bulldozer… (NYT, 11/7)
Elections make public education worse
Almost all states report that, based on their own tests, incredibly large proportions of their students meet high standards. Yet the scores on the federal test (which was given to a representative sample of fourth and eighth graders) were far lower. Basically, the states have embraced low standards and grade inflation….
Why the discrepancies? The states function in a political environment. Educational leaders and elected officials want to assure the public that the schools are doing their jobs and making progress….
States…cling to lower standards for fear of alienating the public and embarrassing public officials responsible for education. (NYT, 11/7)
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We’re told that universities are neutral institutions with little involvement in U.S. imperialist wars. But actually universities play a major role in planning and carrying out U.S. capitalism’s policies, used to fight rival capitalists and dominate the world. Universities also play a key role in pushing ideas that keep the rulers in power. The fight against these policies can lead to united action and building the long-term struggle to destroy the profit system, the source of imperialist war and racist exploitation.
Many imperial policy-makers circulate between the universities, private consulting firms, the State and "Defense" Departments, or White House jobs (see below). Recent examples include Condoleezza Rice (Stanford), Madeline Albright (Georgetown), and Zbigniew Brzezinski (Johns Hopkins). These universities have institutes specializing in particular aspects of imperial policy. In one Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) project, Charles Kupchan (a Clinton National Security Council staffer) argues that the U.S. needs a multi-lateral foreign policy to maintain world dominance.
The elite schools are the major sources of pro-imperialist ideology for public consumption. In a New York Times Magazine article (Jan. 2003), "The American Empire (Get Used to It)," Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff argued that imperialism is a good thing for Arabs and especially Iraqis.
Guns, Too…
Some universities develop weapons. Univ. of California-Berkeley’s Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley and Los Alamos Laboratories develop and produce nuclear weapons. At MIT (Mass. Institute of Technology), labs that developed MIRV nuclear warheads in the 1960’s are now working on military robots. MIT’s Security Studies Program researches "The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony," and "The United States as an Asian Power."
Although policy planning is concentrated on a few campuses, all universities support imperialism. College ROTC programs provide 60% of all U.S. military officers and 75% of Army officers. The Solomon Amendment bans all Federal money for faculty research and students loans from colleges refusing to have ROTC. Clearly, for the rulers, these schools exist to serve imperialism, not the students or working class.
Many courses teach that capitalism is eternal, "the best of all possible worlds." Others teach that workers are powerless, that the U.S. "way of life" or "democracy" is superior and needs to be spread to other countries, and that communism cannot succeed. Teachers who encourage students to challenge these deadly lies are attacked and must be defended.
Programs students need for graduation — remedial classes and financial aid — are being cut drastically, along with workers’ pensions, to pay for the growing war budget. The CFR’s Chairperson pushes politicians to cut all entitlement programs to fund wars in coming decades. Liberal Democrats like Hillary Clinton support these attacks, calling for 100,000 more troops in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Homeland Security planning is implemented on most campuses.
What We Can Do
As long as the capitalist class holds power, universities will be capitalist-run institutions and serve the system’s interests, supporting imperialism, racism and fascism. Students, faculty and campus workers are getting angrier. We have opposite interests from the rulers. We’re starting to unite to expose and fight pro-imperialist and racist activities on campus. We can: (a) attack and discredit the lies that justify imperialism and racism; (b) campaign against military recruiters and ROTC, exposing their imperialist nature, demanding they be removed, and reaching out to rank-and-file soldiers whose class interests are anti-imperialist; and, (c) oppose planners, research and spokespersons for imperial policies.
Some student activists are uniting with workers to fight cuts in wages, benefits, classes and financial aid that pay for imperialism. Such activities can lead to united strikes against both racist cutbacks and imperialist war, turning schools into arenas of struggle against imperialism. Through CHALLENGE, more students, faculty and workers can see the potential and need to build a mass PLP to destroy the root cause of the problem — capitalism.
Students alone cannot stop imperialism. The working class is the key, not just another "interest group." They can become leaders in the fight against imperialism and for a communist society. Under communism, schools and production itself will serve the working class, not the imperialists. Wars for profit, and the profit system itself, will cease to exist.
The CFR: Center of the Web that Spins U.S. Foreign Policy
The hub connecting the small group of institutions which makes U.S. foreign policy for the ruling class is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). It includes executives of giant corporations, government officials, politicians and academics, who meet every few weeks in New York or Washington. The CFR publishes the journal "Foreign Affairs," and sponsors numerous books, study groups and special projects.
Other major foreign policy sources include top officials of the State Department and the National Security Council, a few key Senators, some think-tanks (Brookings, American Enterprise, Center for Strategic and International Studies), certain foundations (Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Shell Oil, Olin), and a few elite universities — including Harvard, Columbia, Rice, MIT and Stanford. Universities develop military technologies — from missiles to robots — that are crucial for present and future imperialist wars.
A much larger group of universities provides training for military officers, spies and diplomats, develop pro-imperialist and racist ideology, and are currently developing spying programs for Homeland Security.
Bush Went for Churrasco, Got A Fiasco
MAR del PLATA, ARGENTINA, Nov. 4 — Thousands repudiated Bush’s visit here during the Summit of the Presidents of the Americas. Bush just doesn’t have too many friends, from Washington, D.C. to the South Cone. Instead of churrasco (a popular steak dish here) he got a fiasco. The Summit sharpened the differences between the U.S. imperialists and the leaders of Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela over the U.S.-controlled continent-wide Free Trade Agreement.
The rulers of Brazil and Argentina see this U.S. plan as a blow to their own free trade agreement (Mercosur). Venezuela’s President Chavez was Bush’s most vociferous critic. This has ballooned into a fight between Chavez and Mexico’s President Fox, a supporter of the U.S.’s Free Trade scheme. Chavez and the rulers of Mercosur are fighting for their own class interests, seeking better deals with China and other imperialists.
Many workers believe Chavez’s "Bolivarian Socialism" is the road to their liberation. That’s a big mistake. Chavez’s main aim is strengthening the power of the section of the ruling class he represents, which controls the state-owned oil monopoly PDVSA. This powerful company owns CITGO, the largest gasoline-station owner in the U.S.
Under Communism: What will prisons be like?
A Political Prisoner in China
(Part Three)
In the early 1960’s, while author Edgar Snow was in China, he was invited to question a prisoner of his choosing. He selected a political offender under a suspended death sentence. The man was rugged in build, middle-aged and solemn. When Snow asked what his crime had been, the man answered that as a cop for the Kuomintang (the capitalist ruling party before the 1949 communist-led revolution), he led an anti-Red squad and had arrested many suspects.
Urged to elaborate, he said he had personally killed four revolutionaries, including a pregnant woman. He had compounded his crime by not coming forward after the revolution when everyone was given an opportunity to confess, repent and ask for punishment. Instead he hid, taking a textile mill job, pretending to be an ordinary worker. This worked for almost nine years, until someone recognized him and had him arrested.
Snow asked him if he felt he’d been treated fairly. He responded, "I ought to be dead. I deserved death but instead I’ve been given back life. I am being educated and I can now handle machines and do useful work. I am doing my best to remold myself to show my gratitude."
To Snow the man seemed sincerely remorseful, undoubtedly realizing that one bad mistake could be his last. Further, the man knew his salvation was completely dependent on his own repentance and reform. Snow thought that this knowledge must have placed a far heavier burden on him than there would be on a condemned man in a U.S. prison. In the U.S., prisoners realize that even a change of heart will generally have no effect on their situation, so at least they’re not subject to the agony of attempted self-reform. Instead they can blame society or their lawyers for their fate and avoid responsibility in their own minds. Rehabilitation is next to impossible under these circumstances.
Snow explained that the starting point for Chinese prisoners was sincere repentance, recognition of the crime and welcoming the sentence as "good." Once this happened their confinement was relaxed somewhat. The next step was the genuine desire to reform. Many prisoners were "really ignorant and understood nothing about the revolution or what the government was trying to do for the people." To overcome this ignorance, prisoners visited communes, factories and schools. Seeing the good being performed by workers was designed to make them ashamed. Those who were illiterate were taught to read and write. Everyone attended political lectures.
Prisoners who had already undergone these changes did much of the teaching. They were placed in cells with new arrivals and backward prisoners. True reform increased a prisoner’s chance of release.
Order and discipline was mostly maintained by these advanced prisoners, instead of by prison guards. Political prisoners did the same shop work as others but were subjected to much more intensified thought remolding in cells led by reformed prisoners. Punishment in prison consisted of overtime work or loss of holidays, but Snow was told that violence was never used and that solitary confinement never lasted more than a week.
Sometimes it took up to two years for prisoners to see the light. Very infrequently did prisoners refuse to admit error. However, even these silent resisters would be released when their sentences expired, as long as they worked well and were not political prisoners. But they were made to serve out their entire term. (Source: Edgar Snow, "The Other Side of The River")
(Editorial comment: Some American Indian cultures utilized similar "punishments," confining a murderer to the family of the person he had killed, forcing him to provide for food and maintenance for the family.)
