CHALLENGE, April 25, 2001

TO OUR WEB READERS: This issue of CHALLENGE includes a special supplement on the racist sociobiology "science." How it has spread to all areas of the academic world and its effects on our daily lives. Again, we ask our web readers to help us keep both versions of our newspaper (the digital one and the printed one) spreading communist politics as an antidote to the poisong of capitalism and all its different ideologies. You can help subscribing to the printed version of the paper or sending a contribution. One year sub to CHALLENGE cost 15 dollars. You can send a check or MO made out to Challenge periodicals and mail it to PLP: GPO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202, USA.

1. Spy Vs. Spy Shows
   U.S.-Russian Bosses on Collision Course
2. Rulers Want Latino Mayor For
   L. A. to Curb Class Struggle
3. SCABS, NATIONAL GUARD
   BREAK NURSING HOME STRIKE
   1. SOLID MULTI-RACIAL UNITY
4. Boeing's Top Bosses Leave Town:
   Are They Taking our Jobs and Pensions with Them?
   1. Even The Bosses Admit What The Workers Know
   2. A Strategic War Asset
   3. How Did CHALLENGE Know?
5. Ford Workers Fight for A Better Idea
6. Europe's Bosses Invading U.S. `Backyard'
   1. European Imperialist Inroads in Latin America
   2. The Boys from Brazil
7. Pipeline Politics Fueled Balkan Bombing
   1. Macedonia: Pipeline Politics II
8. Garment Strikers Fight Scabs, Welcome CHALLENGE
9. Transit Workers' Unity Jails
   Sexist D.C. Boss
10. Jobs Cut, Profits Rocket, Capitalism Kills 91 Oil Workers
11. UCLA: Take Affirmative Action To Smash Bosses' Racism
12. `No Free Speech For Racists!'
13. Capitalism's No Accident; Murders Two More Steelworkers
14. LETTERS
    Workers of the World, Write!
    1. They Can't Stand
       the Truth
    2. Smack C.R.A.C.K.
    3. Fighting for
       Our Children
    4. U.S. STEEL, KKK
       Go Way Back
    5. Vietnam: Turning
       The Guns Around
    6. Murder in Seattle By Racist Cops
    7. Capitalist Anthropology:
       `Science' of Extermination
    8. Guns, Germs, Steel and Anthropologists
    9. BACKLASH
15. Zapatistas March:
    Can't Reform Bosses' Racist Rule.
16. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Special Effects Make History Disappear

---

Editorial 1

Spy Vs. Spy Shows
U.S.-Russian Bosses on Collision Course

The recent "spy vs. spy" finger-pointing between U.S. and Russian bosses confirms that the main political trend in the world today is sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry.

In the wake of revelations that an FBI agent had been handing U.S. security secrets to the Russians for years, Bush ordered the expulsion of 50 Russian diplomats. The Russians retaliated. Both groups of rulers will eventually limit this particular incident. Regardless of its short-term tactical result, however, the incident itself shows that U.S. and Russian bosses are on a long-range collision course. U.S. bosses want to rule the world. After all, the Russian bosses still have one of the world's largest nuclear arsenals and the largest country in the world. They don't want to be ruled by other bosses.

When the old Soviet Union self-destructed in 1991, many U.S. capitalists thought they could take advantage of a super-profit bonanza. They rushed in with loans and investments. They succeeded mainly in wreaking economic terror against the Russian working class by helping Russian vulture capitalists strip it bare of broad protections and benefits workers had enjoyed for decades under Soviet socialism. But the U.S. business pipe-dream was short-lived. Led by current president Putin, a group of Russian nationalist politicians and generals grabbed power away from the Yeltsin clique, who had favored deals with the U.S.

Many in the U.S. ruling class have done an about-face over policy toward Russia. One of the most important is Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. As C.E.O. of aluminum giant Alcoa, he tried to take over the huge Russian aluminum industry during the Yeltsin years. Putin gave O'Neill the bum's rush, preferring to deal with the French aluminum company, Péchiney. Now O'Neill calls further loans to Russia "crazy" (New York Times, 3/25).

O'Neill reflects Bush & Co.'s overall hawkishness toward Russia. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his assistant Paul Wolfowitz made hostile statements to the British press about Russian arms deals with Iran. In February, Bush National Security advisor Condoleezza Rice called Russia "a threat to the world in general" (New York Post, 3/25).

This sparring isn't just verbal. The Bush administration intends to expand NATO to include the Baltic nations on Russia's border, a clear attempt to surround Russia and prevent it from becoming an imperialist threat to U.S. world domination. Further trying to humiliate Putin & Co., a Bush State Department official will meet with the foreign minister of the Chechen nationalists with whom Russian rulers have waged a brutal war for the last year and a half.

The Russian bosses have a long road to travel before they can confront U.S. imperialism as equals. However, they are mapping out such a strategy. "Despite Russia's economic weakness...[Putin...is rebuilding] relationships with...former Soviet republics in hopes of slowing NATO's expansion" (New York Times, 3/25). The Russians are re-establishing toeholds in other strategically vital areas -- the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, the Balkans, Korea and even Cuba.

The Russians aren't alone. As the Times grudgingly admits, the U.S. may still be the "lone superpower," but the "world is starting to get in its way" (3/25). The "world" includes the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, China and Western Europe. U.S. efforts to impose "peace" on Israel and the Palestinians are fizzling. Saddam Hussein still holds power and continues to thumb his nose at Exxon Mobil. Differences between the U.S. and Chinese bosses are growing. And "the U.S. and the European Union are on the brink of a major trade and economic conflict," according to C. Fred Bergsten, head of the Institute for International Economic Studies (NYT, 3/25).

None of the above furnishes a recipe for peace and tranquillity, particularly if the worldwide profit system's current economic slump continues. Like the Russians, the Chinese and Europeans are a far cry from the strength they will need to unseat U.S. imperialism. But contradictions between U.S. rulers and their rivals are slowly sharpening and U.S. isolation is increasing.

Competition among imperialists for markets, resources and cheap labor makes war inevitable. As CHALLENGE has often noted, all the world's rulers are secretly planning for this war, even if it lies in a still-undetermined future. We, too, must make our plans as a class. As the drift toward world war accelerates over the coming decades, the progress we make today and tomorrow in building our Party and in sharpening the class struggle will enable the working class to understand the necessity to turn imperialist war into class war for communism.

[Editor's note: The Bush administration is also retooling its foreign policy to treat China as a strategic enemy. Regardless of tactical disputes among U.S. bosses about which of the two looms as the primary threat to their domination, the trend is toward treating each as a strategic foe. Future CHALLENGE articles will examine the growth of these two rivalries.]

Editorial 2

Rulers Want Latino Mayor For
L. A. to Curb Class Struggle

About two dozen candidates are running for mayor here on April 10. Only six are considered serious contenders. Of these, only two will remain for a June run-off that's virtually inevitable with such a large number of candidates. The run-off will most likely be between James Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa. Hahn is the city attorney and son of the late Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, remembered kindly by many liberals and black voters, particularly in South Central LA. Villaraigosa is the former speaker of the California State Assembly.

Hahn is white. Villaraigosa is Mexican-American. In a city over 60% minority, of which the majority is Latin, Villaraigosa is the candidate of choice of the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, the Eastern Establishment. Not surprisingly, he has been praised by the New York Times, and endorsed by the LA Times, Gov. Gray Davis, the LA County Federation of Labor and by many black liberal politicians and religious leaders.

He is proud to describe himself as a "product of the American dream," a poor boy from the barrio, whose abandoned mother's efforts and affirmative action put him through college and on the road to success. He is charismatic and, as the LA Times writes, has "the highest potential to take up the unifying mantle of the late Tom Bradley." Bradley made "history" as the first black elected mayor of LA.

But Villaraigosa, 48, is not without blemishes. Besides having Clinton-style marital relations, after being appointed to his first public position by County Supervisor Gloria Molina, one of his first acts was to grant Molina's husband a contract for $193,000.

But none of this worries the ruling class. Their politicians' rampant immorality in both private and public life is common knowledge. What does worry the rulers is his claim that sometimes he leads "with my heart instead of my head," as he said to explain his letter to President Clinton to pardon Carlos Vignali. Vignali was a big-time drug dealer whose father was a hefty contributor to Villaraigosa's political campaigns. Another main concern is that, although he is an able coalition builder, "Does he know the line between trying to forge coalitions and trying to please everyone all the time?"asks the LA Times (3/25) "As Mayor, will he be able to say no to them [the unions] when necessary?"

Nevertheless, he's their best choice for implementing their plans for war and fascism. According to the same LA Times editorial, the main problems to be addressed are "rehabilitating the LAPD,.... saving the public school system, [and] the racial and class resentments simmering just below the surface." War is not mentioned, but the U.S. military has a major propaganda blitz to recruit more Latino youth. The ruling class hopes that Villaraigosa will be able to dampen the class struggle, maintain fascist police terror through community policing and get Latino and black youth to willingly fight and die for U.S. imperialism.

But capitalism is driven by its own internal laws that no boss or politician can correct. Voting for any of these politicians won't change a thing. The deepening economic crisis inflicting misery and havoc on the working class, plus a racist police state mowing down young black and Latin youth in the streets, terrorizing and imprisoning tens of thousands, does not bode well for "peace and harmony." Communists in PLP will fight to turn that "simmering racial and class resentment" into a fight for communism.

SCABS, NATIONAL GUARD
BREAK NURSING HOME STRIKE

BLOOMFIELD, CONN., March 27 -- "This is supposed to be these people's golden years," declared a locked-out nursing home worker at the Alexandria Nursing Home here. "It's impossible to do the kind of job that will allow this to happen," she said. She was one of 4,500 nursing assistants and food and maintenance workers, members of District 1199 of the New England Health Care Employees Union, who walked out last week at 40 nursing homes throughout the state in a planned one-day strike.

The workers' main demand was for increases in per-patient staffing levels. Here there is only one nursing aide assigned to 40 patients on the night shift.

Gov. John Rowland immediately called out the National Guard to break the strike by escorting the bosses' hired scabs into the struck workplaces. Rowland pledged $6 million to cover the cost of those scabs.

SOLID MULTI-RACIAL UNITY

The strikers here are largely black women whose overwhelming feeling is concern for their patients who they treat "like family." But when they headed back, the racist bosses, with no feeling either for the workers or their patients, locked out 1,500 statewide for the next four days while the scabs continued to work their jobs. Then the bosses threatened to refuse to take back the mostly white LPN's altogether because they're seeking union recognition. But the predominantly black aides and maintenance workers vowed, "We'll all stay out together. Everyone in or no one in!" This multi-racial solidarity resulted in the LPN's returning with everyone else. Workers grabbed whatever CHALLENGES a PLP member had as they told him to make sure he brings this next issue with their story.

Rowland's attack follows Bush's latest blocking of a Northwest mechanics walkout and pledge to break any strike by 100,000 airline workers whose contracts expire this year. (See CHALLENGE, March 28.) Under capitalism's class rule, government (State) power is the bosses' biggest weapon to make strikes illegal and force workers to knuckle under to their profit system.

The Governor claimed it was necessary for the State to pay the scabs (with workers' tax money) to safeguard the nursing home residents. But he hasn't appeared worried over the threat to their safety caused by understaffing and sped-up workers the other 51 weeks a year.

Despite all the hoopla about budget "surpluses", the bosses face a crisis, trying to re-coup falling profits in many industries while planning for costly wars in the Middle East and the Balkans. Maintaining a huge naval armada in the Persian Gulf to control oil routes costs $50 billion a year -- a billion dollars a week!

This kind of 1-day walkout the union called won't cut it. It reveals to the bosses the union leaders' refusal to wage an all-out battle. The unions, while calling strikes here and there, are loyal to the bosses' profit system and refuse to mobilize the entire working class to back particular groups of workers on the front lines. That kind of class war will only happen with communist leadership that doesn't operate within the bosses' laws. Through that kind of political struggle workers can learn, and act on, the necessity to get rid of the whole damn system.

Boeing's Top Bosses Leave Town:
Are They Taking our Jobs and Pensions with Them?

SEATTLE, WA, March 25 -- Last Monday we were debating if the Boeing bosses suckered us by offering 401k's instead of adequate guaranteed pensions with a cost-of-living escalator. On Wednesday, CEO "Lyin Phil" Condit announced corporate HQ was moving to Chicago, Denver or Dallas. On Friday, we got the "good news": Boeing was not going to sell the commercial division "for the foreseeable future," but 500 manufacturing jobs would soon be eliminated and the 757-fuselage assembly would be gone from here.

The week was not so bad--for some. Lyin Phil got a 400% raise, pulling in a hefty $18.7 million. Boeing president Stonecipher got $16.2 million, while Alan Mulally, CEO of the Commercial division, netted a "meager" $8.5 million.

While some workers on the shop floor seemed baffled, soon a theme emerged: capitalism had pushed the aerospace industry into a crisis of overproduction. The anarchy of the bosses' system was destroying our lives.

Even The Bosses Admit What The Workers Know

"Boeing...is...a company that is generating a flood of cash," said Wolfgang Demish, an investment banker and a long-time Boeing specialist. (New York Times, 3/23) "The critical issue from a corporate perspective is how do you deploy that cash for the benefit of the shareholders."

"I listened to Condit," said a machinist, using wisdom gained through class struggle, "and all I heard was shareholders, shareholders and profits, profits, nothing about employees."

It's true we made oodles of money for the bosses. The "financial markets" (i.e. the biggest capitalists) demand huge profits from the investment of this capital. Boeing can't make that kind of profit building airplanes because "it can no longer dominate the market for airplanes, as it once did." (Reuters, 3/22) Too many jets are chasing a shrinking market. Orders have dropped more than 50% the first quarter of this year.

Lyin Phil's answer is to dump money into the "new economy" and speculate in the stock market. The company has spent more than $3 billion of the money we made for them buying back its own shares. More billions have been sunk into airborne Internet schemes, but "airlines enthusiasm for in-flight Internet has cooled."(New York Times, 3/23) Boeing has also expanded aircraft maintenance services, but run into competition from some of its big customers, like United and Northwest. Meanwhile, European Airbus has invested $10 billion in their new Superjumbo jet--which is already replacing Boeing's cash cow, the 747.

Boeing is forced to look for places to generate bigger profits so it's moving its headquarters to free itself to make more of these speculative investments, financed by gutting its manufacturing base. "It's a lot easier to slaughter the cow when it's not in your own back yard," observed a machine operator.

During the last year and a half, Boeing stock would rise every time the company announced one of these "asset reductions." Interestingly enough, last week's announcements saw Boeing stock sink. You can only go to that well so many times. The absurdity of capitalism is becoming all too obvious.

A Strategic War Asset

Boeing is a strategic war asset, necessary to the dominance of U.S. imperialism. Ultimately, U.S. bosses won't allow Boeing to collapse--no matter how many of us they have to destroy. The situation is even more urgent since, "The European Commission and aerospace industry executives have unveiled `A Vision for 2020' which calls for a $93 billion investment over 20 years to obtain `global leadership' in aeronautics," reports Aviation Week and Space Technology (3/05).

The crisis in commercial aircraft production has put U.S. bosses between a rock and a hard place. Commercial production helps war production with technology and capital, but as commercial production becomes less profitable, the benefits rapidly disappear. The Pentagon intends to aid Boeing in a desperate gamble to "free up" capital for military production. The Air Force is telling the airlines to buy C-17 military transports from Boeing, subsidized by the Pentagon and use them for commercial freight shipments. But if war comes, the airlines must lease them back to the Pentagon. All this means the C-17s will be virtually given to airlines at taxpayers' expense, while the Pentagon's Defense Science task force recommends a dozen ways to lower our wages.

The union leadership says they will fight for every job. To them that means calling another press conference. To us that means organizing class struggle pointing the way to the only sensible solution--communist revolution. We'll advance this struggle on many fronts, including flooding the plants with May Day leaflets. Each and every May Day marcher will help us organize for the coming battle against this exploitative system. To Lyin Phil and his gang, we say, "You can run, but you can't hide!"

How Did CHALLENGE Know?

"How did you guys know about Corporate's move before the announcement?" asked a Boeing CHALLENGE reader.
"We didn't."
"But I read that article about how you have to pay attention to the primary contradictions of this system, just like you can't ignore faults in the ground."
"Oh! We were just talking about the crisis of overproduction and inter-imperialist rivalry in general."
"I guess I'm going to have to study that paper more carefully," concluded the now-avid CHALLENGE reader.
A few others that we know have also decided--on their own--to take CHALLENGE more seriously. Their faith in this system has been shaken. How many more will read, sell and contribute to our paper, given the present circumstances, if we consciously campaign for a bigger circulation? Let's find out!

Ford Workers Fight for A Better Idea

MEXICO, March 26 -- In order to maintain its position in the sharpening competition for markets, Ford is trying to impose its fascist production program (FPS). Ford bosses want to nullify labor contracts and make class struggle illegal. This is a stage of capitalism called fascism. The new Fox government, like the PRI before it, has opened the door to legalizing the Ford program.

For three years they've tried to get workers at a Ford assembly plant here to submit mind, body and soul to the interests of the company. But rank-and-file workers are resisting. Ford said, "Accept or you're fired," but only a minority wears the company shirt. In a February audit to guage its progress, Ford reported reaching a level 3 on a scale of 10. But even this is fictitious.

The local union committee opposes FPS. Ford and the gangster leadership of the national union (CTM) decided to get rid of it. They tried to win the support of the workers, but the majority repudiated them. In spite of this massive rejection, Ford dissolved the local committee.

The committee called an assembly. Ford and the national union attacked and intimidated the workers but half of them attended the meeting. The fired committee has rejected the national CTM and declared itself independent. The fired committee has accepted the support of another labor federation which unfortunately is just as fascist as the CTM, converting it into a fight of gangsters vs. gangsters for power. Meanwhile, Ford persists in imposing the CTM national committee.

A rebellious worker asked CHALLENGE, "What's happening?" We answered, "Capitalism is in a crisis of overproduction, which leads to increased work-loads, layoffs, fascism and war. We can't win with pro-capitalist gangster union leaders. We need a communist party to confront the bosses and destroy them."

This worker showed his agreement by singing a stanza of a song calling on the workers to fight. He promised to write a song about the Party and the revolution. This kind of response makes the decaying atmosphere of capitalism livable.

Europe's Bosses Invading U.S. `Backyard'

Since President Monroe's 1823 Doctrine of "America for the Americans," proclaiming the Western Hemisphere as the U.S. sphere of influence, the U.S. has considered Latin America its "backyard." In 1845, the U.S. annexed Texas. The ensuing war cost Mexico a fifth of its territory (including California).

In 1898, the U.S. provoked a war with Spain by having its own agents sink the U.S. battleship Maine in the port of Havana, Cuba. Spain lost the remainder of its empire -- Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines -- to the U.S. In 1903, the U.S. supported a rebellion to separate Panama from Colombia. Then it built the Panama Canal. Throughout the last century U.S. rulers sent the Marines to country after country, installing the most brutal dictators in power (Trujillo, Somoza, Batista, Pinochet, the death squads governments of El Salvador and Guatemala, etc.). In the second half of the 20th century, as the U.S. launched its cold war against the former Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands were murdered by the anti-communist death squads and right-wing governments imposed by the U.S. in Central America, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Haiti, etc.

Now U.S. bosses have launched Plan Colombia, spending $1.7 billion to maintain the Monroe Doctrine in Colombia, using the "war on drugs" as a cover. It was begun by Clinton and is now being continued by Bush. But instead of sending the Marines, the White House uses mercenaries (mostly former U.S. Special Forces) and local death squads. Since closing the Panama Canal military headquarters of the U.S. southern command, the U.S. has used bases in other countries (like the Manta air base in Ecuador) to pursue its Plan Colombia.

European Imperialist Inroads in Latin America

European imperialists are increasingly exploiting the cheap labor and resources of Latin America. Spain's banks are the leaders. From 1995 to 1998, the Spanish bank BBVA bought banks in Peru, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil and Puerto Rico and became partners with the Bhif bank of Chile. In 2000 it took over Mexico's Bancomer, its biggest acquisition in Latin America.

In the last year BSCH, Spain's largest bank, spent $8.4 billion to acquire three banks: Banespa, Brazil's third largest private financial group and Banco Serfin and Banco Caracas, the fourth largest banks in Mexico and Venezuela respectively.

The Boys from Brazil

This financial "invasion" is part of the growth of European investments. Previously they were centered in Brazil and Argentina, but now Europe's annual investments have virtually equaled those of the U.S. Latin America draws 60% of Germany's overseas investments, 52% of Holland's and 44% of Britain's. Europe is now Brazil's main trading partner. Germany accounts for 27%, ahead of the U.S. at 20%, in trading with Latin America's largest country.

BP, Elf-Totalfina, Repsol and Shell are among the European energy companies expanding into the U.S. "backyard," along with auto giants like VW, Peugeot, FIAT and Renault. They represent intense competition for U.S. companies.

U.S. bosses still have many aces up their sleeve to protect their empire, including the expansion of NAFTA into the so-called Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, to try to keep out the European bosses. The competition among these imperialists will continually sharpen.

(Coming articles will deal with various aspects of this struggle, including the price paid by workers and their allies because of imperialist rivalry, the role of opportunist forces allying themselves with the different imperialist forces and how can we build a revolutionary communist movement to fight these imperialist butchers.)

Pipeline Politics Fueled Balkan Bombing

A special report appearing in the British newspaper Guardian (2/15) confirms CHALLENGE'S analysis of the Balkan war as a struggle for control over oil pipelines. It documents a project "little-reported in any British, European or American newspaper," the Trans-Balkan pipeline, whose "purpose is to secure a passage for oil from the Caspian Sea....likely to become the main route for the oil and gas now being extracted in central Asia. It will carry 750,000 barrels a day.

"The project is necessary, according to...the U.S. Trade and Development Agency because the oil coming from the Caspian `will quickly surpass the safe capacity of the Bosphorus [Strait, through Turkey] as a shipping lane.' The scheme, the Agency notes, will `provide a consistent source of crude oil to American refineries, provide American companies with a key role in developing the vital east-west corridor, [and] advance the privatisation aspirations of the U.S. government in the region.'"

The Guardian reports that Clinton's Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson, said in November 1998 that, "This is about America's energy security,....about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values....

"We would like to see them [Central Asian countries] reliant on Western commercial and political interests rather than going the other way. {Russia] We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right."

The Guardian also stated that the pipeline "featured prominently in Balkan war politics. On December 9, 1998, the Albanian president...noted `that no solution [to the pipeline scheme] confined within Serbian borders will bring a lasting peace.'" "The message," says the Guardian, "could scarcely have been blunter: if you want Albanian consent for the Trans-Balkan pipeline, you had better wrest Kosovo out of the hands of the Serbs." That was exactly the main purpose of the U.S./NATO Balkan bombing: to oust the Serbs from Kosovo. In fact, the Guardian reports, "In July 1993...the U.S. sent peacekeeping forces to the Balkans. They were stationed not in the conflict zones in which civilians were being rounded up and killed, but on the northern borders of Macedonia...."-- precisely where this pipeline project was headed.

Concludes Guardian reporter George Monbiat, "I can't tell you that the war in the former Yugoslavia was fought solely to secure access to oil from...central Asia. But in light of these findings, can anyone now claim that it was not?" Enough said....

Macedonia: Pipeline Politics II

Fighting over export oil pipeline routes for Caspian oil continues to fuel violence in the Balkans. In 1999, when the U.S. and its NATO allies rained "humanitarian" high explosives on Serbia, CHALLENGE revealed that the Western powers' real goals were to protect a U.S.-backed pipeline project that would run through Macedonia, within ten miles of the Serbian border. Another U.S. aim was to prevent strongman Milosevic from building his own Russian-sponsored pipeline network to export Caspian crude to the West through Macedonia and Serbia. (See article left.) Gun battles have now broken out inside Macedonia between Albanian nationalists (people of Albanian background living in Macedonia) and the government right along the route of the major U.S. pipeline.

The shooting is centered just to the west of the Macedonian city of Skopje. Halliburton -- Vice President Cheney's old company -- is building a line to move Caspian crude from Bulgaria through Skopje to Albania and from there to Western Europe and North America. BP Amoco and Chevron support this route. But Skopje also serves as a strategic junction for competing projects. Russia's Lukoil and Greece's Hellenic Petroleum plan to pipe Caspian oil from Thessaloniki to Skopje. And before the NATO bombardment, Milosevic boasted of a grand design to pump Russian-produced Caspian oil from Skopje through Serbia and then to Croatia for export to the world market. The ousting of Milosevic and the current occupation of Kosovo by U.S.-led NATO troops puts this scheme on hold for now.

But Moscow's influence in the Balkans has been growing ever since Russian troops seized Kosovo's main airport at the close of NATO's bombing campaign. Today, Washington appears forced to tolerate the Albanian fascists -- who want a bigger slice of the pipeline profits for themselves -- because they are sworn enemies of the Russians and Serbs. For the warlords, both the local nationalists and the big imperialists, too much is at stake for the pipeline question to be settled peacefully.

The endless battle in the Balkans shows that the capitalists are willing to spill barrels of workers' blood for a secondary source of petroleum. We must also be ready for a bigger, more deadly, showdown over the grand prize, the oil of the Persian Gulf.

Garment Strikers Fight Scabs, Welcome CHALLENGE

LOS ANGELES, March 25 --"We're tired of so much injustice, that's why we're on strike," declared a worker from Hollander Home Fashion. These workers, who make curtains, bedspreads and mattresses, have been out for over two weeks.

"We produce everything. You need us more than we need you!" charged an angry worker when a bosses' agent came out to speak with the strikers. The bosses have refused to negotiate. In January they sharply attacked the workers, cutting their wages in half while bringing in new machines to speed up the work and lower costs. Then over 450 workers in two plants in Vernon (a small city near here) struck for decent wages, a pension plan (they have none) and an end to harassment by supervisors. Workers with 25 years seniority earn between $7.50 and slightly over $8 an hour. These workers have been represented by the UNITE union for many years.

The strikers, especially the women, are very militant. They welcomed CHALLENGE with open arms and asked for extra copies of a PLP leaflet. It related a struggle in another garment factory and called for workers to fight for power and to March on May Day.

Several strikers spoke at a nearby high school, asking students for support and explaining that workers create all value. The strikers have welcomed the support of other garment workers, students and other workers. We are urging workers and students to raise money for the strikers and join their picket line.

The bosses are using scabs. When the scabs discover they're breaking a strike, many don't return. The union leaders obey the bosses' laws. When the strikers stopped a scabs' bus for ten minutes, the union opened a path for the bus to go through.

Many workers resist this, and want to use workers' violence to stop the scabs. Many agreed that the laws serve the bosses' interests, not the workers'. And many workers agreed that workers must break the bosses' laws to win anything. The bosses' State -- cops, courts and laws -- exist to keep workers exploited.

The entire capitalist system and its crisis of overproduction, not just the Hollander bosses, are attacking these workers. The fierce competition among the bosses driving for maximum profits has cut workers' wages or jobs in California while thousands of workers in China, Mexico, Central America and elsewhere, are forced to work for $2 to $4 a day.

Strikers said they're interested in coming to the May Day March on Saturday, April 28, to unite workers against the bosses' attacks and fight for workers' power. This strike shows capitalism cannot meet workers' needs. Our alternative is to fight together for a communist society where a decent retirement for workers is a priority--not expendable on the alter of the bosses' profits.

Transit Workers' Unity Jails
Sexist D.C. Boss

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 20 -- A Metro senior supervisor was convicted here in Superior Court of sexual assault on a northern bus operator and given a 90-day jail sentence. This was the latest battle in an ongoing struggle against sexism at Metro, the city's mass transit system.

For several years women drivers have stood up to management's sexual attacks. In each case, the bosses have refused to take any serious action against the supervisor involved and have intimidated the workers making the accusations.

Men and women workers have circulated petitions to fight this management sexism. This has emboldened other women to fight back. In this particular case -- because of the support of her fellow workers -- this woman withstood an all-out attack on her credibility and the portrayal of her as a "disgruntled" worker trying to get back at management by "making false charges" against them.

Will this end sexism at Metro? No! The conviction was the result of a liberal woman judge, a very arrogant supervisor, some obvious lying by management and a very credible victim. The bosses who control the judicial system will not let this happen very often.

Sexism is very important for the bosses. It divides the working class and prevents many women from leading class struggle. Sometimes the bosses are willing to let one of their stooges go to jail to maintain their system's credibility.

Sexism, like racism will only end when workers make communist revolution and take political power away from the racist and sexist rulers. Because of the PLP's involvement in this struggle for many years, some workers have learned the above political lessons and have moved closer to the Party. Others believe the system can yield justice for women workers. But this is the nature of any reform effort. Without engaging the bosses in a struggle, no lessons can be learned.

Jobs Cut, Profits Rocket, Capitalism Kills 91 Oil Workers

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL, March 16 --Today, an oil workers protest denounced the real causes behind the off-shore sinking of the state-owned oil company Petrobrás' biggest oil rig into the Atlantic Ocean. At least one worker died and ten are missing. Yesterday, three explosions within a few minutes of each other sank oil rig 36, located 125 kilometers (78 miles) off the coast here.

The United Federation of Oil Workers, which organized the protest, blamed Petrobrás for the "accident" with its policy of using contractors and cutting labor. In 1990 Petrobrás employed 60,000 workers. Today it's down to 34,000. Rig 36 opened in 1999, with a daily capacity of 180,000 barrels. Later that year it was producing a record one million barrels daily. Between production speed up and rising oil prices, profits shot up, but 91 oil workers paid with their lives. Twelve died on Rig 36 in 1999 alone. These non-union workers have less training and, of course, are paid less.

Capitalism and its industrial "accidents" kill workers from Inland Steel to off-shore in the Atlantic.

UCLA: Take Affirmative Action To Smash Bosses' Racism

LOS ANGELES, March 21 -- On March 14, PLP youth participated in a demonstration at UCLA for affirmative action and for the repeal of SP-1 and SP-2, the policies that ended affirmative action on University of California (UC) campuses. About 3,000 people came from all over the state, including many local high school students. About 140 CHALLENGES and nearly 1,000 leaflets were distributed that, as one comrade told people, "shows you need a revolution to get rid of racism." The march was spirited, rallying to chants like "U C Regents, We see racists!"

Despite the militancy and numbers, it did not force the Regents to vote on the issue. This left many students frustrated and angry. Others were more optimistic, saying that the effort caused several Regents to agree to put the vote on their agenda for their May meeting. While this is true, PLP is working to spread a critical communist approach to affirmative action, to explain why it was created and why it's been removed. Students involved in this struggle wrote a PLP leaflet about the racist nature of capitalism and the need for revolution to end it, calling on students to march on May Day.

Participating in this struggle is reaping results. Several local junior college students came and, for the first time, helped distribute PLP leaflets. We also met others from another UC campus that we've been working with who agreed to help with May Day. Friends of other comrades at different schools got the leaflet as well. This can inspire them to build for May Day on their campuses. PLP's presence also helped the Party at UCLA, where many students are linking the fight against racism to the fight against capitalism. All this will hopefully help bring a bigger college contingent to May Day this year.

Affirmative Action was a compromise won through student struggles. It helped integrate the colleges and universities. Faced with massive social unrest from urban rebellions and anti-war demonstrations at the end of the 1960s, the ruling class felt it could allow certain reforms like Affirmative Action. The U.S.' relative position of dominance in the world and the growing post-World War II economy convinced the rulers that not only could they allow more women and black, Latino and Asian students into the universities but they could turn them around and use them to defend the capitalist system and teach patriotism and loyalty to the U.S. bosses. California State Speaker of the House Bustamante spoke at the rally in favor of affirmative action. He represents the liberal politicians who want more black and Latino youth to go to college and to graduate believing that the system works.

As long as capitalism controls the schools, they will try to produce people from these groups who make racism and sexism legitimate while serving the bosses. But now that capitalism is in crisis, it is sucking the schools dry of needed resources and funds in order to pay for the bosses' global war plans. The bosses have fewer crumbs to give to youth and workers. So their need for more pro-capitalist black and Latin graduates conflicts with their need to divert funds for social programs, including affirmative action, into investments and wars to dominate their imperialist competition.

PLP fights this system's racism, for a world without racism, sexism, exploitation, bosses, or borders...a communist world. An attack on any one of us is an attack on us all. All students fighting racist attacks must understand that racism was born with capitalism. The only real end to all forms of racism will come destroying its creator, the capitalist system. Marching on May Day is one step towards that goal.

`No Free Speech For Racists!'

BERKELEY, CA, March 15 --"10 Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks are a Bad Idea for Blacks-And Racist Too!" Right-winger David Horowitz placed advertisements in college newspapers across the U.S. with this headline. When he came to speak at the University of California here, PLP'ers rallied outside, distributed nearly 200 leaflets with the headline, "NO FREE SPEECH FOR RACISTS!" and made communist speeches. We said the best reparations for racism is destroying the capitalist profit system that needs it. We ended by inviting all students to march on May Day for a communist world.

Horowitz claimed black people should be "thankful" for what the U.S. has "given them," and that "the failures of the black `underclass' are failures of individual character." Topping this racist garbage, Horowitz lied, "there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Englishmen and Americans created one." Mass slave revolts in Brazil created an independent communal society. In Haiti ex-slaves drove out the French slavemasters and then smashed Napoleon's invading hordes. In the U.S. over 400 slave revolts occurred before the Civil War. The 180,000 freed slaves who joined the Union Army became the decisive forced that defeated the Southern slaveowners.

However, calling for reparations for slavery and segregation, but not for an end to job and housing discrimination, police terror, incarceration or sub-standard schools is also a mistake. It implies racism no longer exists. It is true that slavery under capitalism was one of the cruelest forms of murder and exploitation in history, but ever since societies were divided into classes, the exploiters have murdered and brutalized the exploited masses, stealing the fruits of their labor. Today's bosses will never pay us that debt. That's why we need revolution.

The campus reactionaries say they invited Horowitz because he should have "a right to free speech." Well, he sure did: he was defended by cops and bodyguards and was interviewed on the evening TV news! Free speech is a question of power. The bosses have more free speech in their TV, movies, newspapers, schools and universities than workers will ever have under capitalism. On top of that, the cops defend racist speechmakers but attack demonstrators and striking workers. Speech and action are not unrelated. Spreading racist ideas leads to racist actions.

At this event we met friends and acquaintances who we'll see in "Students for Justice in Palestine" meetings or back in our classes. There we'll discuss the need for militancy.

We did not go in and disrupt the speech. This was a big mistake. We compromised our ideas by not doing our best to shout him down, mainly because we worried about not getting enough support. Next time we'll organize to do this and will struggle to mobilize groups from our mass organizations to join in.

Capitalism's No Accident; Murders Two More Steelworkers

EAST CHICAGO, IN, March 16 -- Ronald L. Robinson, 45, and Norman L. Brown, 53, were killed in a fiery explosion at Ispat Inland Steel. Both workers, with more than 25 years seniority, were burning out ductwork in the mill's No. 4 shop by cutting steel pipes with hand-held torches. Dan Kado and Mike Davis died in a similar explosion Feb. 2 at Bethlehem Steel's Burns Harbor plant.

The explosion occurred when the workers cut into a 12-inch high-pressure oxygen pipe that feeds oxygen to the furnace. The oxygen pipes are painted green, but years of grime and dust made them indistinguishable. The oxygen pipe was not shown on the building's blueprint and was the same size in diameter as other pipes in the area.

Before the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration had any time to investigate this double murder, United Steel Workers Local 1010 president Hargrove said, "We're not laying blame on anyone. We have a good safety program."

This is what it's coming to. Gambling casinos and beauty pageants. KKK rallies protected by hundreds of riot cops. Plant closings, layoffs, and funerals for murdered steel workers. This garden of weeds is bringing fascism and war, and must be pulled out from the roots. Steel workers have two more reasons to march on May Day and build PLP.

LETTERS
Workers of the World, Write!

They Can't Stand
the Truth

The article describing the "racial profiling" of babies at Cook County Hospital in the last CHALLENGE is causing a stir. Most people who read that newborns get their urine tested for drugs without anyone telling their mothers agreed with us -- it's terribly wrong to make criminals out of our patients and cops out of us medical workers. But administrators and doctors in charge of the program were furious, especially after 1,500 copies of the article in leaflet form filtered through the hospital last week. One clinical director saw some on a secretary's desk and asked angrily, "What are you doing with THOSE?" She replied coolly, "I'm planning to distribute them in my community. People need to know what's going on."

One of the doctors opposed to drug testing seems to be getting blamed for the leaflet. Of course! The bosses would assume no "mere" worker could be behind writing a leaflet. The head doctor, his boss, refused to speak to him. When he mentioned this to a nursing assistant friend, she said, "They can't stand it when the truth comes out."

Some people object to controversy. Why should we get everyone upset and cause tensions? Because if you rest comfortably while others are oppressed, it's only a matter of time before they come for you, too. Struggle, although stressful, gives knowledge, life and hope.

Some of those on the newborn ward have jokingly started calling each other "comrade." Not a bad start.

Red Hospital Worker

Smack C.R.A.C.K.

The Ad Hoc Coalition Against CRACK, organized a community forum opposed to the group Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (CRACK). The latter is a private organization paying $200 to women with substance abuse problems who verify they've been sterilized or use long-term birth control methods. The Coalition is concerned with drug policy, women's health and racism.

Last summer CRACK opened a chapter here and placed subsidized ads on Metro buses serving the black and Latin communities. Several organizations immediately circulated petitions against the ads. Metro unions and the American Federation of Government Employees passed resolutions condemning CRACK. Last November, the American Public Health Association (APHA) passed an interim resolution opposing CRACK's approach to women who use drugs (see http://www.mwpha.org under Issues, and the March 2001 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, page 516). We urge other unions and organizations to use this resolution. In Seattle, organizers are plastering anti-CRACK messages over the CRACK advertisements.

At our meeting, speakers from the National Black Women's Health Project and the South Carolina Advocates for Pregnant Women spoke eloquently about CRACK's dangers. They explained how poverty and racism cause many of the problems that encourage self-medication or drug use, and how CRACK uses racial profiling to deal with this problem. For example, they don't try to reach women who use tobacco, which is much more widespread.

They also related CRACK to eugenics, the attempt to select "good genes" for reproduction and to limit "bad genes." During the 1920s and '30s, over 30 states legalized involuntary sterilization for those considered "mentally defective." Population control measures have been used on welfare recipients during the 1970s. Today, we see many groups linking inattention, violence or depression solely to biological causes rather than social conditions.

Black and Latin women are especially stigmatized for drug use. In many states, pregnant women who test positive for drugs can be arrested for inflicting harm on the fetus. Black and Latin people who use drugs are disproportionately arrested and jailed under harsh drug laws.

There are no quick fixes to drug addiction, but people can change with compassion, support and treatment. While we would support people who fight for that outlook, PLP believes that only a society free of exploitation for profits can eliminate drugs and addiction. We encourage all people opposed to CRACK to march on May Day on April 28 in Washington, D.C.

Participants at the Coalition meeting planned to organize an anti-CRACK campaign by holding more community forums, notifying clergy, meeting with City Council members and distributing the statement.

CRACK is also organizing in many other cities. Check their web site at http://www.cashforbirthcontrol.com to see if it's in yours so you can take action also.

D.C. Comrade

Fighting for
Our Children

Parents, teachers and a school nurse at an urban school have united to retain a free dental program and win safety rumble strips on the street in front of the school. The nurse found out which residents of the housing complex across from the school wanted to be involved through a regular neighborhood CHALLENGE route.

We faced many obstacles. While the authorities revealed how little they care, we persisted to achieve these immediate benefits. However, the fact that fatal accidents still occur and that our dental program is still in jeopardy demonstrates that we need a strong communist party to fight for a system where children will be our priority.

When a car crashed through the apartment complex, a parent who is a regular CHALLENGE reader and contributor alerted the school nurse, a communist, to begin a safety campaign. Only two other schools in the area have rumble strips. One has a very active parent-teacher coalition with communist involvement. At the other a student was killed despite the strips. Funds have been available for several years through a state grant for ALL the schools.

We asked the principal if we could circulate a petition for the rumble strips inside our school. She said it was a "community" affair, that we should take our case to the parent advisory council. The council (most of whom had never been public school parents) initially said a petition in the school was impossible. Two days later they called the school nurse saying we could go ahead. Evidently, they had second thoughts, worrying they would look bad if someone got hurt.

Even after hundreds signed, asking for traffic lights in addition to the strips, it still took many follow-up phone calls before the strips were installed (but no lights and no school signs). Just a few weeks later a speeding car killed a fourth-grade girl. The City then said it would have to do a survey because signs were so expensive. Today there are signs but still no traffic lights at the school corner.

Conditions have worsened since the state take-over of our schools. The dental program provides for buses or vans to take some children every week to get their teeth fixed. However, the dental bus attendants were privatized and then removed altogether. Now parents volunteer as unpaid attendants to keep the program running. When such a parent attendant has an emergency and can't escort the children, dozens are denied dental care. A fight possibly could be made to restore the original attendants. Still, the ongoing volunteer effort by parents and grandparents (most don't even have children in the program; many must go to Workfare sites), shows that communism won't need money and wage slavery to induce people to work to meet society's needs.

We have experienced first-hand that even though we put band-aids on the capitalist system, our children continue to bleed. Yet if we don't unite and fight, the rulers rip off whatever little monies are due us. Under the cover of state "supervision," school administrators have already stolen millions, while ceilings are literally falling on our children's heads.

As we PLP members lead class struggles, we must expose the nature of the capitalist system. CHALLENGE is an important tool. Two mothers have agreed to take five and three copies respectively for friends and folks in a Workfare program. This is all part of re-building a new communist international. We can begin now by marching on May Day, asking our friends to come, and join PLP.

Concerned parents, teachers,

aides and nurse

U.S. STEEL, KKK
Go Way Back

CHALLENGE readers are familiar with the March 10th KKK rally in Gary, Indiana. The police staged an overwhelming show of force to protect two dozen Klan gutter racists. It was especially outrageous given the high level of racist police terror directed at young black and Latin workers, and the crisis in the steel industry that means plant and mill closings, job cuts and a rash of workers killed in explosions. But really, this is nothing new.

In her new book Carry Me Home, Diane McWhorter covers Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 when she was growing up. She reveals "the long tradition of enmeshment between law enforcers and Klansmen," including the FBI, state and local police.

She writes that in the 1920's, the coal and steel bosses used the KKK to get U.S.-born Protestants to fight immigrant Catholics so there would be "no danger of union solidarity even among whites, let alone across color lines." U.S. Steel and other corporations kept Klansmen on their payroll as anti-union thugs. When the owners of industry, known as the Big Mules, were no longer willing to dirty their own hands, they used "the racism they had fomented whenever the have-nots threatened to organize across racial lines," McWhorter writes. "Rather than give specific orders to the [KKK], they would delegate political intermediaries to oversee...racial violence."

Birmingham's police chief "Bull" Connor ran the Klan on behalf of the murdering Mules. Among the racist terrorists under Conner were Troy Ingram, who learned about dynamite while working for Charles DeBardeleben's coal mining company, and Robert Chambliss, who organized the infamous 16th Street church bombing that murdered four black children, using a device rigged by Ingram.

Conner was picked to be the center of an alliance of the Big Mules, the judges, the police, the politicians, local newspaper editors and the Klan. When Freedom Riders arrived in an integrated bus in 1961, he kept his police away so Klansmen could beat defenseless protesters. When children marched peacefully, Connor had them met by snarling police dogs, high-pressure fire hoses, cattle prods and clubs.

So the steel bosses and the KKK go way back. Old friends. Then as now, communists saw the struggle against racism as crucial to the liberation of the whole working class. And then as now, "The Cops, The Courts, The Ku Klux Klan, are all a part of the bosses' plan!"

Chicago Comrade

Vietnam: Turning
The Guns Around

A recent CHALLENGE supplement summarized the history of working-class revolts inside the bosses' military during the Vietnam War. We received the following letter from a long-time PL'er, a college professor. He tells of a comrade who was drafted after refusing the military deferment available at the time to college students and who entered the army to organize for communist revolution.

On the day this comrade was inducted into the army, I was one of those detailed to keep the MP's out of the room so he and fellow PL'ers could give speeches to the other recruits. When the MP's finally threw me out, they ripped off my pants, and I had to take the subway wrapped in newspaper. I heard the speeches were good, though. When M... returned from Vietnam a couple of years later he told this story. He was stationed in Pleiku and some guy fired quad 50's at him. He assumed the guy was trying to kill him because the guy disliked his politics. Later he confronted the guy, who apologized profusely, saying he had thought M... was an officer who they all hated! I still use this story with students from time to time.

A Comrade

Murder in Seattle By Racist Cops

On December 28, 1998, Michael Randall Ealy, a 35-year-old African American, was brutally murdered by two Seattle cops, McLaughlin and Traverso, and two American Medical Response (AMR) attendants. Michael had been calling for help; he was ill, very weak and unable to stand on his own. Some passersby called 911 to try to get help for him. Cops McLaughlin and Traverso arrived on the scene, as did Danny Hill and Brett Munsey in the AMR ambulance, which had been called to transport Michael to Harborview Hospital. Something happened on the way to Harborview, and Michael was DOA. He had intrusions, scars and bruises all over his body, and died of brain damage from suffocation.

It took 85 days to get an inquest. When one was finally called, it was composed of five white men and one white woman. There was no justice for Michael at this inquest.

At the end of last year, Michael's mother sued the four men involved, hoping to focus media attention on the case and get the King County police officers and AMR employees to be accountable for Michael's death. However, the jury voted 11-1 in favor of the murderers.

Challenge interviewed Michael's mother (see next issue). She has been very active in continuing the fight to determine what happened to Michael, to bring the responsible parties to justice, to organize the families of other people murdered by the police and to fight against this ever happening again.

Seattle Comrade

CHALLENGE SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

Nazism 101--
Sociobiology: Genes For Genocide

With this special supplement, CHALLENGE is reinvigorating our Party's struggle against the murderous theory that genes determine society. This idea starts as a "scientific" discussion, but its consequences are far from academic. In the first part of the 20th century, millions of workers died as victims of policies first developed by Harvard "eugenicists." Hitler could never have carried out his "Final Solution" without first establishing "racial science" in German universities. More recently, the U..S.imperialist war of genocide in Vietnam, racist budget cuts, the fascist Workfare slave labor scheme and many other body blows against the working class owe a lot to the Big Lies of genetic determinists like Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. Like the sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, they all have close ties to Harvard. Wilson's "Consilience" (Consilience, a little-used word, roughly means "being on the same page.") is just the latest disguise assumed by this many-headed monster. Exposing and smashing this trash in a revolutionary manner is, quite literally, a matter of life and

death for our class

A recent CHALLENGE editorial (2/28) described the report of the U.S. Commission on National Security as a bosses' "blueprint for fascism" -- to centralize and strengthen the state apparatus, unite the capitalist class, increase attacks on the working class and indoctrinate us for war against rival capitalist countries. The rulers need the support of millions of college students and professors. The most important blueprint for the colleges is the 1997 book by Harvard professor E.O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.

The ruling class is striving to make its government totally consilient in its preparations for "homeland security." Similarly, Wilson and the ruling class want to make all academic disciplines consilient, to effectively indoctrinate students and the general public by updating the Hitlerite lie that putting millions in concentration camps and carrying out genocidal wars is the highest calling of a genetically-based human nature. For example, Wilson claims the recent genocide in Rwanda and "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans were rooted in genetically-based "tribal instincts, ethnic rivalry, and religious dogmatism," calling Rwanda "a microcosm of the world."

Ant specialist Wilson's 1975 Harvard-published book, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, updated the old social Darwinist ideology that there is an underlying biological basis for all human social behavior. The bosses showered Wilson with publicity and praise, transforming him from an obscure investigator of ant colonies into an academic celebrity.

Four years ago they extolled Consilience as the crowning achievement of a visionary elder scientific statesman. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal lavishly praised his call for the subjugation of the social sciences and the humanities to the natural sciences.

Last June, a 3-day a New York Academy of Sciences conference, "Unity of Knowledge: The Convergence of Natural and Human Sciences," based itself on Wilson's book and featured him as keynote speaker. It involved prominent supporters of sociobiology, discussing how to promote consilience.

An example of this promotion occurred last month in New York. Senior administrators from Texas Tech University (TTU) met with Steven C. Rockefeller, chairman of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Ken Chenault, CEO of American Express and E. O. Wilson who has helped develop the TTU program in natural sciences and the humanities. They wanted funding for, (1) a new inter-disciplinary major in "natural sciences and the humanities," and (2) an environmental institute for government research on germ warfare.

Since the 1890s, the Rockefeller family has used philanthropy to influence how the world is organized and to shape the direction of education. The Rockefellers' financed the field of "industrial relations" to promote reforms that would quiet U.S. workers unrest and radicalism. Here Rockefeller and Wilson were looking to establish a beachhead for Wilson's views within the university and develop a pro-business environmentalism.

They told TTU officials that campuses like theirs could become the cutting edge in reforming liberal arts education according to Wilson's Consilience ideas. They apparently viewed TTU as receptive to consilience and as "business friendly."

These developments reflect a broader consilient trend in universities. Biological anthropology and sociobiology have marginalized cultural anthropology. Evolutionary psychology, a disgustingly sexist update of sociobiology, has made significant inroads into psychology. Behavioral genetics and biological psychiatry have displaced social explanations for alcoholism, mental illness and violence.

Worse still, sociobiology has been applied in practice with horrific consequences. New York psychiatrists Wasserman and Pine have drawn blood samples from, and given fenfluromine to, young black and Latin boys to test abnormal serotonin levels in the brain as a "cause" of violent behavior. These children had no history of violent behavior and were subjected to risky experimentation without informed consent. These studies are part of a larger program of U.S. government- funded research once known as the "Violence Initiative."

Further, anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and geneticist James Neel experimented on the Yanomami, indigenous people living on the brink of extinction in the Amazon basin of Brazil and Venezuela. Beginning in the 1960s, they bribed the Yanomami with metal goods, incited internal warfare, exposed them to epidemics of infectious diseases and dislocated villages, all to obtain 12,000 blood samples to test their sociobiological and eugenic theories.

In the 1970s, Wilson invented sociobiology based on Chagnon's lies about the Yanomami as "the fierce people" to support his claims that men are genetically predisposed to fight each other over access to women. Last year, British journalist Patrick Tierney published Darkness in El Dorado, exposing the genocidal crimes scientists like Chagnon and Neel committed or justified against indigenous Amazonian people. The book has provoked sharp struggle in the field of anthropology. The ruling class values sociobiology enough to mount a concerted attack against Tierney. (See review of Tierney's Darkness in El Dorado, next page.)

These examples of racist medical experimentation on minority children and indigenous Amazonian people offer a glimpse of capitalism in crisis moving toward fascism and world war. After all, U.S. genocidal sanctions have killed 1.2 million Iraqis, imprisoned two million workers at home and forced hundreds of thousands into slave labor in prisons or welfare Workfare programs.

Our Party fought against sociobiology in the 1970s. We led modest struggle against the racist Bell Curve in 1994. Recently we've built a more sustained campaign against the Violence Initiative. We need to increase our efforts to build a broad movement against the rulers' fascist ideology and strategy of consilience. This should include campus-based struggles against local sociobiologists, classroom struggles against sociobiology curricula and exposure of consilience at academic meetings.

These beliefs that everything is genetic have become very mainstream in the U.S. Every day we hear people say that intelligence, racism, nationalism, obesity, mental illness and children's behavioral problems are genetic. Such fascist ideology is being promoted throughout popular culture -- movies, songs, TV shows, etc. We must expose it and organize many more workers, students and professionals to learn through this battle the need to join and build the PLP in order to destroy the system responsible for fascism, capitalism.

Capitalist Anthropology:
`Science' of Extermination

The science of anthropology has just been rocked by its worst scandal in 50 years. Patrick Tierney's book Darkness in El Dorado charges prominent scientists with genocidal crimes.

During the early 1960's the Atomic Energy Commission funded research into mutation rates of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the Cold War objective of establishing "tolerable" nuclear radiation dosages. As an unexposed "control" group, it chose the Yanomami, semi-isolated Indians living on the brink of extinction in the Amazon basin of Brazil and Venezuela. Geneticist James Neel, program director, and Napoleon Chagnon, then an anthropology graduate student, collected 12,000 blood samples from their "research subjects," bribing them with steel axes and pots.

Chagnon depicted the Yanomami as unusually brutal warriors, calling them " the fierce people." He claimed murder and trickery were rewarded in Yanomami society, and that they typify human society before agriculture. Actually, today's Yanomami are survivors of once-large Amazonian populations decimated by colonial slavery. After E.O.Wilson published Sociobiology (1975), Chagnon applied this new biodeterminist theory that human behavior is genetically inherited, falsely claiming that Yanomami men who kill have more children and are more likely to pass on their genes. When gold was discovered in Amazonia, Brazilian rulers -- seeking to carve up Yanomami land for profit -- used Chagnon's portrayal of Indians as bloodthirsty killers to justify genocide. By 1990, Chagnon, hated by Yanomami activists, was barred from Yanomami territory. His research was enshrined in popular films and college textbooks but attacked by other anthropologists who studied the Yanomami.

Guns, Germs, Steel and Anthropologists

According to Tierney, Neel and Chagnon carelessly or deliberately used an obsolete vaccine to spread a lethal measles epidemic among the Yanomami. This charge has grabbed headlines, and drawn angry rebuttals by Chagnon's supporters. But even more serious are charges that Chagnon became a village headman and created the very warfare he described by bribing Indians with sought-after steel goods and stirring up enmities. Chagnon's frequent trips to remote villages to gather blood samples and genealogies ignored the health of Yanomami, who lacked immunity to urban diseases and died by the thousands.

At one point "Chagnon's village" actually made war on "Lizot's village" run by another corrupt anthropologist! During the early '90s, Chagnon conspired with the crooked mistress of Venezuela's president Perez and gold mining bosses to create a Yanomami reservation which would allow unlimited access to minerals and to Chagnon's human research "subjects." Obviously Chagnon's "research" is scientifically worthless.

(Incidentally, this is the same President Pérez who, in 1989, sent tanks to murder hundreds of workers and youth who had rebelled against an austerity plan imposed by him and the International Monetary Fund. The reservation scheme was derailed when Pérez was ousted and imprisoned for being a crook and helping oil-rich Venezuela go broke.)

BACKLASH

Chagnon's crimes have shaken U.S. anthropologists, who tend to be more left-leaning than most academics. Their national association began a formal investigation last month. But leaders of the academic right, who regard Chagnon's "research" as the poster child of human sociobiology, launched a pre-emptive strike against Tierney's book even before it was published, according to a Science magazine investigative reporter.

Chagnon's defenders campaigned by e-mail to discredit Tierney, lining up sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, philosopher Daniel Dennett, zoologist Richard Dawkins of "selfish gene" fame, psychologist Steven Pinker and science writer Matt Ridley. These men have no expertise in anthropology, human genetics or the Yanomami, and had not even seen Tierney's book. They are all hardcore biodeterminists; each is celebrated for pushing the idea that genes rigidly control human behavior.

This struggle is clearly very important to the ruling class and its academic bloodhounds. Our Party can give the leadership exposing the political motives and inevitable spread of fascism behind such "science".

Zapatistas March:
Can't Reform Bosses' Racist Rule.

MEXICO CITY -- The Zapatista march from Chiapas to Mexico City attracted masses. It dramatized the poverty, racism and oppression of the indigenous communities. Yet they sought protection from the bosses' constitution and used the rulers' flag as their banner. The EZLN's (Zapatista) nationalist alternative is "good democracy," a "just nation" and a world where all fit in. This creates the illusion that this exploitative capitalist system offers something beneficial to the working class. Yet for 500 years, millions of indigenous people have been subjected to the most brutal oppression. Without class content, the Zapatista movement becomes an obstacle to the liberation of the indigenous people.

All this politically disarms the oppressed in the face of growing fascism, a result of fierce imperialist competition for the natural resources and low-paid labor of Chiapas. It's no accident that President Fox is trying to negotiate with the EZLN in order to stabilize the southeast region and begin huge profit-making projects (see below).

In 100 days of rule, Fox and the group of fascist bosses he represents, have raised the price of everything, pushed speed-up in the work-place and aims to tax everything, while lowering wages. (Real wages have already declined 25% since 1980 -- LA Times, 3/25)

The indigenous people suffer the most rabid and brutal racism in the world today. They've been so marginalized that urban workers are either ignorant of, or passive and indifferent (sometimes accomplices) of the discrimination and terrible conditions of the indigenous people. "The worker in the white skin will never be free while the worker in the black skin is in chains," said Karl Marx. This applies to the indigenous communities, which provide the cities with domestic slave labor and forces the abandonment of children to the streets.

Up to now, the North has been the primary source of low-paid skilled labor while the South supplies oil and electricity. But now the Puebla-Panama project will employ indigenous slave labor to develop Southern Mexico in order to produce low-cost goods for the Central American market and act as a brake on emigration to the U.S.

Historically the indigenous people in Mexico have fought back the hardest. Today, they are the most willing to take up arms, to sacrifice their lives to end oppression. The rise of the EZLN publicized the racism afflicting the indigenous people. But its political alternative will lead to alliances with one or another capitalist/imperialist gang.

PLP must spread our communist politics to the rebellious communities. We're convinced that only communism can liberate them and the whole working class from racism and exploitation. We must win these communities to make the fight for communism their fight. CHALLENGE is distributed in some indigenous communities and has sparked discussions and study groups about communism. This is the beginning of the fight for liberation.

[Editor's note: Using the term "Zapatour" in our last issue was an error. "Zapatour" is a term created by the right-wing racists who degrade the indigenous rebellion.]

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Special Effects Make History Disappear

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the recent multiple Oscar-winning film by Ang Lee attempts to play off two film genres: the Hong Kong-based martial arts melodrama and the "yakuza" saga. Yakuza culture (gangster samurai serving the ruling class in one form or another) is Japanese, and Crouching Tiger is Chinese, but the analogy holds. These films are really about mythologies of violence, revenge and redemption in which the central character is provoked into using his/her martial arts skills in defense of an aggrieved sense of communal moral outrage. In the case of Crouching Tiger, the main achievement is not the awesome and breathtaking special effects, but the way in which the film makes the oppressive "communal" bonds of feudalism and early mercantilism in China completely invisible.

One interesting aspect of this film is its use of complex female characters in prominent roles. As a matter of fact, these women are far more interesting than the men! In martial arts films, women are usually either sex objects or the victims of male action; rarely, are they the subjects of the plot. Although Ang Lee deserves some credit for nodding in the direction of women's independence, the women are eventually circulated back into the male-dominated social relations of a feudal culture. The female protagonist, played by the actress Michelle Yeoh, owns a private security business which guards shipments of commodities and currency from place to place in China. The male protagonist (Chow Yun Fat) is the alienated (exiled? retired?) leader of a yakuza cult, formerly in service to the same ruling class. Yeoh's character is like an ancient Pinkerton or rent-a-cop! What's totally absent and romanticized beyond belief are the class relations of feudal, semi-feudal, and emergent mercantile economies. There is also the distorted history of the warlords -- glorified gang leaders posing as military officers -- who also use the yakuza/samurai/martial arts cultists for the same purposes as the various Chinese dynasties and ruling classes do: extreme repression and coercion to guarantee their own personal power and that of their allies, available for a price, of course.

So the film uses impressive cinematography and special effects to lull the audience into a sense of wonder and awe at its beauty and the exotic allure of seemingly bizarre and distant Chinese cultures of the past. "Oh, how inscrutable, how beautiful, how honorable, how loyal, how romantic! It took my breath away!" While the audience gasps in temporary, but pleasurable, cardiopulmonary distress, ideologies of primitive capital accumulation, murder, racism, rape, pillage, etc., go unobserved or are so disguised as to be unrecognizable. This, I think, is the point of the film--to create a world elsewhere, to distort history. In this sense, the film reminds me of the Godfather trilogy and the current HBO hit, The Sopranos. With one or two exceptions, mainstream films about organized crime romanticize the violence of the criminals, disguise their relationship to big capital, and lure us into fuzzy thinking about the nature of crime, honor and loyalty.

By the way, none of the above is meant to suggest that we should avoid these films. My breath was taken away at some of the scenes in Crouching Tiger, and I laugh at some stuff on The Sopranos. All the more reason to see such films with our friends and discuss the political nature of art with them.

 

To our web readers:

For the benefit of many of our readers who cannot get the printed version of CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, Progressive Labor Party communist newspaper, we place the entire content of the paper in the web. We thank you for reading our paper. If you agree with what we do, analyze the world and the struggles of the international working class from a communist point of view, please help us continue and expanding what we do. Subscribe to the printed version of CHALLENGE, it is only US$15 a year. Or send us a contribution. Any amount helps. Our address is GPO Box 808, NY, NY 10001, USA. You can make checks or money orders payable to Challenge Periodicals.

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a href="#Bush’s Tax Cut Scheme:Billions for Billionaires—War for Workers">Ed"torial: Bush’s Tax Cut Scheme Billions for Billionaires—War for Workers

• The Real Worry? Money For War
• Rockefeller Forces Organize For Bi-Partisan Tax Cut Limits
• U.S. Bosses Fight For Control
• Why Liberal Bosses Up in Arms Over Bush Tax Plan

a href="#Hundreds Defy KKKops and Klan:"Stop Singing—Start Swinging!"">"undreds Defy KKKops and Klan:"Stop Singing—Start Swinging!"

Demopublican Strikebreakers Begin PATCO;

NY Welfare Workers Endorse May Day, Blast Workfare

• Anti-Workfare Outburst Stuns Bosses

Union Hacks Sweeten Pot for Domino Bosses

Angry Workers Tell Off Union Hacks

Bavaria Class Struggle School For Communism

Harvard University: 360 Years of Racism and Counting

a href="#Capitalism Won’t Crumble Until Workers Rumble For Communism">"apitalism Won’t Crumble Until Workers Rumble For Communism

Black Monday, Wednesday

Anti-Racists Link Clinton Diallo Decision To Fascism

CHALLENGE Sparks May Day Buzz In LA Garment Shop

Are Humans Naturally Selfish?

Fired Daewoo Workers Battle Cops

Workers Have No Nations

LETTERS

a href="#ESL’ers Learn the Language of May Day">"SL’ers Learn the Language of May Day

Jury Duty: Make-Believe Justice

May Day, Class Struggle: A Winning Combo

Fight APHA Award To Drug Moguls: Health Professionals Resist Sellout

Racism Rules Roost in Newark Schools

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Editorial

a name="Bush’s Tax Cut Scheme:Billions for Billionaires—War for Workers"></">Bu"h’s Tax Cut Scheme:Billions for Billionaires—War for Workers

When a politician or boss says he’s giving us money, look out! They normally give it with one hand and take it back — and more — with the other. Capitalism, by definition, gives nothing to the working class. The bosses are always on the take.

Bush’s 1.6 trillion-dollar tax cut bill is a transparent give-away to the big business pals who helped steal the presidency for him. But let’s not fall into the trap of joining with the liberal rulers who oppose it. This is a major tactical fight among the bosses. We have no stake in supporting Bush or his opponents.

As the tax bill moves from the House to the Senate, it has outraged the main wing of the ruling class, the Eastern Establishment liberals. On a daily basis, the New York Times has printed editorials and columns attacking it. "The richest one percent of tax payers would get 43 percent of the benefits," thunders the Times indignantly. "Fifty-five percent of African-American children and 56 percent of Hispanic children would receive nothing from the proposed tax cut," the Times adds (3/1). The paper warns that the Bush plan puts Medicare and even Social Security at risk. But make no mistake. The editors of the biggest capitalists’ leading mouthpiece haven’t suddenly become anti-racist and pro-working class. They have an ulterior motive.

The Real Worry? Money For War

The rulers’ main wing is worried that Bush’s cuts will impair its ability to control society and wage war. As CHALLENGE’s reporting on the Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security in the 21st Century shows, the major U.S. capitalists are seeking a more cohesive and disciplined state apparatus that will enable them to remain "the world’s only superpower." But that requires trillions of dollars. When Bush revealed his plan to repeal the estate tax, Microsoft mogul Bill Gates, David Rockefeller Jr., Steven Rockefeller, billionaire George Soros and others protested that, "the billions of dollars in state and federal revenues lost will inevitably be made up...by cutting Social Security, Medicare, environmental protection, and many other government programs so important to our nation’s continued well-being." While they’re worried about Bush cutting social programs too much, they’re even more concerned about the danger Bush’s scheme poses to "increasing defense spending" — according to Congressional testimony by William Gale, a scholar from the liberal Brookings Institution.

Rockefeller & Co. also fear for their own foundations: "Repeal would have a devastating impact on public charities." Groups like the Rockefeller, Ford — and now Gates and Soros — foundations exert tremendous influence on what gets taught in schools, how heath care is administered and how the police patrol the cities. These bosses don’t want Bush to weaken their leverage.

Rockefeller Forces Organize For Bi-Partisan Tax Cut Limits

On March 7, a bi-partisan group of representatives and senators with strong links to the main wing of the ruling class called for limits to the tax cuts. Concerned that the government wouldn’t have enough cash for "national priorities," they demanded "triggers" that would hike taxes if the U.S. budget surplus fell below a certain level.

One Republican in that group, Rep. Amo Houghton of New York, is an heir to the Corning Glass fortune. His brother James sits on Rockefeller’s Exxon Mobil board. Joining Houghton is fellow Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who’s in the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations. She proved her loyalty to them by crossing party lines to vote against convicting the impeached Clinton. Rep. David Bonior, a Michigan Democrat, also opposes the tax cuts. His 1999 minimum wage bill was formulated by the liberal Economic Policy Institute and financed by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

U.S. Bosses Fight For Control

Major challenges confront U.S. capitalists in the near and far term. They must forcibly reassert control over Persian Gulf oil and prepare to confront the eventual emergence of rival superpowers based on one coalition or another of European, Russian and Chinese forces. These are vast and costly military undertakings that require the biggest capitalists to impose economic discipline on the others.

But the profit system drives individual capitalists to pursue their immediate interests. The fight over Bush’s tax program shows just how hard it is to get capitalists to see beyond their own companies’ bottom lines. Bill Gates indicates he’s joined with Rockefeller to oppose the tax reductions; he now invests in naval shipbuilding as well as software. But Gates came on board only after Clinton had hauled him into court and Wall Street had relieved him of $30 billion during the 2000-01 technology market swoon.

Disunity within the bosses’ ranks persists despite their serious efforts to reverse it. This disunity and many other factors temporarily hinder the rulers’ war plans. We should see these difficulties as a chance for us to organize our Party, especially to expose the liberals as the warmakers and fascists. We must rely on ourselves, not on them. Organizing masses of workers and youth to march on May Day is an important element in achieving this goal.

Why Liberal Bosses Up in Arms Over Bush Tax Plan

The list of big-gun liberals opposed to the Bush tax package is growing. Two former Treasury Secretaries, Clinton pal Robert Rubin and long-time Rockefeller stooge Paul Volcker, attacked Bush’s plan as "too large and risky for the nation’s economy" (New York Times, 3/13). They made this statement at a news conference sponsored by the Concord Coalition, a "bipartisan" group opposed to budget deficits. The group is chaired by Warren Rudman, the same former Republican senator who co-led the U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century. Rudman is "very nervous" about Bush’s tax plan because it threatens the big bosses’ plan to militarize U.S. society and prepare for a period of major wars. Workers’ interests can never be served by rejecting one enemy—Bush—only to unite with an even more dangerous one, the liberals planning a future of mass terror against our class.

a name="Hundreds Defy KKKops and Klan:"Stop Singing—Start Swinging!"">">"undreds Defy KKKops and Klan:"Stop Singing—Start Swinging!"

GARY, IN, March 10 — Despite overwhelming police intimidation, hundreds of angry workers and youth demonstrated their hatred of the Ku Klux Klan and the cops, rattling the cage we were placed in. It was like a scene out of Nazi Germany (well, not quite yet), as the fascist Klan rallied in an empty sports stadium in a remote corner of a park. The government went all out to prevent any protest. Newspapers withheld information. Several unions and fake radical groups cancelled their plans to protest, as afraid of the workers as they were of the cops.

To get inside Gilroy Stadium, every anti-racist was patted down and passed through a metal detector — no coins, watches, jewelry or pens permitted. No cell phones or cameras. No literature or picket signs. Inside and around the stadium, about 300 cops, sheriffs, state police and federal agents were armed with rifles, tear gas grenade launchers, shields, sticks and dogs. They had an entire motor pool of cars, vans and trucks, and three helicopters. All this to protect the Klan. "Free speech," brought to you by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Outside the stadium, a PLP member was arrested for carrying a bullhorn, while one cop shouted racist insults. A youth was later arrested for "intimidating" a group of armed cops!

Inside, we had to walk a narrow path into a holding pen, surrounded by dozens of riot cops and under the constant view of police snipers. They held us in the pen while they gave the Klan a motorcade out of town with a helicopter escort. After the Klan was safely out of the stadium, anti-racists were forced to walk a narrow gauntlet of armed riot cops. The working class of Gary experiences racist police terror every day. But this open display of fascism helped many understand the true nature of capitalism.

Despite this intimidation, the protestors were militant and determined. More than 250 entered the stadium, including about 60 under PLP’s leadership.

For over an hour, the KKK was completely drowned out. Much of the anger was directed at the cops. One of the most popular chants was: "The Klan in White, the Klan in Blue — F___ YOU!" When a "Jesus Saves" minister tried to pray for love and the KKK, militant youth chanted, "STOP SINGING—START SWINGING!"

However, we could have done better at thinking on our feet and providing overall political leadership. In the holding pen many discussions and debates took place in between verbal barrages against the fascists. We discussed May Day, nationalism, fighting for jobs, the need for mass violence and many other questions. But we gave very few May Day speeches to the anti-racists.

Over 70 CHALLENGES and hundreds of leaflets had been distributed at a nearby shopping center a week earlier. We leafleted the neighborhood and a nearby high school the day before and distributed another 40 CHALLENGES and 1,000 leaflets the day of the protest. Overall, about 3,500 PLP leaflets were distributed in the community and the Purdue campus. A number of people asked to be contacted about future activities, and many black residents expressed a strong respect for our multi-racial group.

We raised the issue in steel and SEIU local unions. At the protest, steelworkers and Cook County Hospital workers met fellow hospital workers and union members who had been on strike last year. There was a bold and militant group of high school and college students, young workers and others. The overt display of fascism helped deepen their anger and renew their confidence in the Party and the working class.

We were all disappointed at being unable to physically smash the KKK. But we should be clear about winning and losing. We will not be able to prevent the development of fascism, but what we do will strengthen our forces and weaken theirs! Doing the day-to-day work to build a mass PLP will ultimately destroy the KKK along with the racist profit system spawning it. With all our limitations, this effort was a step forward. Now we can strengthen the Party by building for a strong May Day.

Demopublican Strikebreakers Begin PATCO;

Airline Workers Must Break Law

On March 8, strikebreaker Bush appointed a Presidential Emergency Board to block a strike of 10,000 mechanics at Northwest Airlines. The executive order extends the strike deadline to mid-May. Bush said he would take "the necessary steps" to prevent strikes by more than 70,000 workers at other airlines. Northwest mechanics immediately picketed the White House to protest Bush’s strikebreaking.

In February 1997, Clinton used the emergency board to order striking American Airlines pilots back to work, five minutes after they walked out. Democrat or Republican they’re all strikebreakers, and workers must be prepared to break their laws when we take them on.

The Northwest mechanics took pay cuts in 1993 to save the fourth-largest US airline from financial collapse. They have been without a contract since 1996. Negotiations have been going on for 4½ years.

At United Airlines, 26,000 members of the Association of Flight Attendants are beginning a job action called "CHAOS" (Create Havoc Around Our System), after their contract talks broke down. They and 14,000 mechanics in the International Association of Machinists (IAM) want some job protection when United merges with US Airways.

Contract talks also broke down between Delta Airlines and the 9,800 members of the Airline Pilots Association. Baggage handlers and others picketed Southwest Airlines to protest an "unacceptable" contract offer.

American Airlines got a federal court to issue a temporary restraining order against the Transport Workers Union. American claims a slowdown by mechanics forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights at New York’s Kennedy Airport. The Supreme Court recently upheld American’s claim for $45.5 million in damages against the Allied Pilots Association for a 1999 sick-out — one of the largest fines in U.S. labor history. In the original District Court decision, Judge Kendell threatened the pilots that, "If the activity and consequent damages continue...all the assets of the union, including their strike war chest, will be capable of being stored in the overhead bin of a Piper Cub."

What’s more, American is demanding that TWA’s 16,000 mechanics, flight attendants and service workers grant major concessions before it buys the bankrupt airline.

The sharpening attack on 100,000 airline workers grows out of the intensifying competition among the bosses. United’s "merger" with US Airways and American’s takeover of TWA are reflections of the big fish eating the little ones. With every merger and acquisition, thousands of jobs are destroyed and profits soar. This "consolidation of capital" is a hallmark of developing fascism. So is the more open use of state terror to settle labor disputes.

Since Reagan fired the air traffic controllers (PATCO) in 1981, the past two decades have been a trail of broken strikes and unions. Some of the mile markers on the road to fascism include Greyhound, Hormel, Staley and Caterpillar and more recently, the Detroit newspaper strike (despite overwhelming popular support). It has become legal to fire strikers and permanently hire scabs. For the overwhelming majority of workers, including most of the 13.5 percent in unions, it’s illegal to strike!

Despite a minor face-lift, this is the same union leadership with the same outlook that left the air traffic controllers hanging back in ’81. Although 16 million jobs have been created since 1992, union membership is at its lowest point in over 60 years. The union leaders have been unable to stop the closing of unionized factories, mines and mills. They’re not looking to wage class war. Like the other small fish, they’re trying to stay in business. This may put them in conflict with the bosses, but above all else they are loyal to the profit system and wage slavery.

In contrast, communist leadership would meet the current crisis with a general strike of all airline workers, grounding every flight and shutting every airport. The government, courts and cops would be mobilized to attack the strikers. The army and National Guard would be used to break the strike. Whole sections of the working class could be mobilized to defend the strikers, defy the courts and hold the airports and jumbo jets hostage.

But even with this scenario, we could break the laws and still lose the reform demands. Look at PATCO I or the Daewoo auto workers in South Korea! Leading the masses to break the law stands in stark contrast to the politicians, preachers and union leaders who want us to fight for better labor laws and trade accords. Exposing the class dictatorship of the bosses helps prepare our Party and our class to make revolution.

We should raise the need to break the bosses’ laws in our factories, schools and barracks. We can raise resolutions in our unions, encouraging airline workers to defy Bush and the courts. We can make contact with them at local airports and invite them to march on May Day. We can win regular CHALLENGE readers and distributors to spread the word that we must replace the dictatorship of the bosses with the dictatorship of the workers.

NY Welfare Workers Endorse May Day, Blast Workfare

NEW YORK CITY, N.Y., March 6 — Tonight, Social Services Employees Union (SSEU) Local 371 voted to endorse May Day organizing, including PLP’s march in Washington, D.C., and agreed to buy 50 tickets for members, family and friends who wish to attend. A long-time union member introduced the following resolution:

"Whereas, May Day is the international holiday of the working class, and,

Whereas, May Day demonstrates the fighting unity of the working class, and,

Whereas, members of this local have traditionally participated in May Day events, and,

Whereas, issues like the threat of war, prison labor and slave labor Workfare, police brutality and racism affect all members of this Local and must be fought;

Therefore, Be It Resolved that SSEU Local 371 urges its members to participate in May Day events including the March in Washington organized by the Progressive Labor Party, and,

Be It Further Resolved that this Local purchase up to 50 rickets for members, family and friends who wish to attend."

Anti-Workfare Outburst Stuns Bosses

The following day, rank-and-file representatives on the union’s negotiating committee erupted during a bargaining session between the union and city bosses. When the latter sought to shoot down the workers’ demand that, "No work performed by employees covered by this contract shall be performed by non-city employees, including Workfare participants and Wildcat workers," most members of the 60-member union negotiating committee broke their silence and loudly yelled their support or clapped for the fight against slave labor Workfare, clearly stunning the bosses’ hired guns.

Normally, members of the union negotiating team speak in the union caucuses but are quiet as the bargaining process unfolds, limiting themselves to an occasional remark. However, when the union negotiator responded to the bosses’ put-down of the anti-Workfare proposal, saying it "was an important demand and that this local would fight to keep these jobs" (as union rate jobs), the sentiments of the rank-and-file committee representatives rang out loud and clear.

These contract talks affect some 16,000 workers among the Social Service and Related Titles. Currently, contracts for 300,000 city workers have expired, and negotiations have proceeded at a snail’s pace. Secret negotiations between top union and city boss honchos will undoubtedly seek to establish a wage pattern for all city unions. It’s up to the rank and file to break any back-door deals.

PLP has played an important role in making the fight against Workfare a mass issue in Local 371. We know one outburst won’t stop slave labor Workfare any more than resolutions will fill a May Day bus. The combination of spreading communist literature and ideas, encouraging and participating in class struggle, and building communist ties among co-workers can establish the basis for a mass pro-communist movement led by PLP that can smash the bosses and their system once and for all!

Union Hacks Sweeten Pot for Domino Bosses

BROOKLYN, NY, March 5 — The 20 month strike at the Domino Sugar refinery ended when workers voted 56 to 48 to accept a contract and return to work. The new contract cuts 110 jobs, shatters seniority and the 40-hour week, and speeds up production with fewer workers, "wiping out the protections people fought for, for 50, 60 years." (New York Times, 3/6). This plant once employed 1,300 workers. It will now dip below 200.

The 300 workers were forced back to work, abandoned by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney’s "new labor movement," the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the NYC Central Labor Council.

The strikers symbolized the international solidarity of the working class. They included U.S.-born workers, black and white from the North and the South, and immigrants from Egypt, Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia and the Caribbean. Their ranks were solid. From June 15, 1999 to April, 2000, not one worker crossed the picket line, even though they received no strike benefits and lost $14.3 million in wages. The same solidarity existed during their five-month walkout in 1994. Last April, 104 demoralized strikers returned to work.

They were fighting the British firm Tate & Lyle, the world’s largest sugar and sweetener company. Over the last two decades, this global conglomerate has made billions in world-wide profits. With holdings in 21 countries, from Australia to Zimbabwe, this is the same company that busted the Staley strike (a T&L subsidiary) in the mid-’90s. While Sweeney is always ranting about multi-national companies that pit workers against each other worldwide, he did absolutely nothing to defend these courageous workers. Zero, zilch, nada.

PLP members joined the picket lines every week, distributing leaflets and CHALLENGES and talking with the strikers. Several of them now receive the paper regularly. Our worker groups should have organized more strike support, including demonstrations and forums. This might have given some of our co-workers, and possibly some strikers, a clearer understanding of the long-term struggle to defeat capitalism, and drawn them closer to the Party.

The fate of the Domino workers is a glaring example of the limits of fighting for reforms. Domino workers battled for better conditions for 60 years only to see them and 1,100 co-workers wiped out. Why? The bosses hold state power. Over time they will always take back whatever gains we force out of them. As the bosses prowl the globe looking for cheap labor, markets, and resources, more workers will be victimized by fascist attacks. Only a system run by and for workers — communism — will enable the working class to live a decent life. We call on Domino workers to join the fight for workers’ power. March with PLP on May Day, the international working class day.

Angry Workers Tell Off Union Hacks

BROOKLYN, NY — A group of a dozen disgusted Domino Sugar rank-and-filers descended on their union leaders to read the riot act to them after they betrayed the workers’ 20-month strike. The 12 angry workers shouted and screamed at the union hacks that while they were mad at the company they were even madder at the union, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA).

"We lost the strike," said Bobby Horn, a company mechanic for 27 years. "Our union didn’t support us. They didn’t help us in any way." The workers were angry with the union for not having provided any strike benefits and for failing to rally other workers to their side. Horn was furious at ILA president John Bowers for never even visiting the picket line in one of New York’s longest, hardest fought strikes in decades.

"I always thought the ILA was a real powerful union," said Horn. "I guess we all learn."

Bavaria Class Struggle School For Communism

Colombia—Workers at the union meeting of Bavaria brewery workers here in Colombia were angry as hell. They damned Minister of Labor Angelino Garzón — ex-union leader and ex-member of the old "Communist" Party — as a traitor to the workers for sending the strike to arbitration. Workers know arbitration means the bosses will win easily. But despite that, workers recognized the limitations of the situation: if they rejected the deal the government would ban a strike and workers were not ready to directly confront the cops and the army that would have been sent to force us back. So most voted to return to work, to continue the struggle inside the plant.

For 72 days, workers and their relatives shared each other’s lives. We sang together — union songs and The Internationale, the revolutionary workers’ anthem; shared food, wine and a place to sleep; and developed close friendships. We also organized conferences, watched videos about things like Plan Colombia, the U.S.-Colombian governments’ war plans for the country and had sharp discussions about the world’s labor movement. We realized that our problems at Bavaria were similar to those faced by workers internationally.

We received support from many other workers and unions. We built trenches around our strike tent, with bags of sand, rocks and even barbed wire. Workers bravely kept guard, armed with lead and rubber pipes and bats. We constantly chanted against capitalism.

All these images reminded one of the Bolshevik headquarters at the Smolny Institute in Petrograd, Russia, in 1917 described by John Reed in Ten Days That Shook the World. Indeed, for over two months the strikers’ tent became a center for workers fighting the bosses’ fascist drive.

All this time we shut down 18 breweries owned by one of the biggest capitalist groups in Colombia (the Santodomingo family), causing them millions in losses. We marched into the plants and took them over. We broke up secret scab meetings, confronted the bosses’ mass media lies and refused to be intimidated by the constant threats from the cops. When workers unite lots more can be done.

When tractors demolished the tents a lot of workers cried. "The tents come down but the strike continues," said many defiantly. Now the bosses and the arbitration board are taking away some of the gains we’ve had for decades. The union executive board exposed itself more by building illusions that were shattered.

We have won a lot politically. For many workers it was the best school in class struggle they’ve ever had. PLP is proud of being part of it. Our literature, videos and leaflets were there all the time. We tried to give political leadership at decisive moments. Many workers in several breweries are now reading CHALLENGE. We’ve made new friends and new comrades.

Finally, we thank all the people and unionists who showed political and financial solidarity with the strike. This support helped us maintain this anti-capitalist struggle for 72 days.

Bavaria Workers

Harvard University: 360 Years of Racism and Counting

Harvard students are outraged by the racist comments of government professor Harvey Mansfield who spread the racist lie that the admission of many black Harvard students in the early 1970s was the sole cause of a supposed "lowering of standards and grade inflation" (Boston Globe, 2/7). Mansfield continues a long Harvard tradition of defending racism and imperialism. It was founded from the profits of the slave trade. Its more recent racist/imperialist faculty includes Henry Kissinger, George Kelling (the father of community policing), and Richard Herrnstein, author of the notoriously racist tract, The Bell Curve and head of the Harvard psychology department when he wrote that trash.

On Feb. 13, more than 60 students held a silent sit-in in Mansfield's class, organized by the Black Students Association (BSA). A member of PLP participated. Although a number of students took a PLP leaflet, no student in Mansfield's class confronted him about his racism.

Mansfield asked the protesters if we wanted to talk, but, because the BSA leadership explicitly called for a silent protest, no one spoke. Mansfield should have been prevented from holding class.

The BSA leadership's reasons for a silent protest were, (1) acceptance of Mansfield's "right of free speech," and (2) the threat of expulsion. Prior to the sit-in a comrade pointed out to BSA rank-and-filers and leaders that racist words lead to racist acts. Moreover, while the expulsion threat for stopping Mansfield's class is real, not attempting to do so out of fear only spreads demoralization and only helps the racists. From the Social-Democrats of the 1920s and '30s who handed Germany over to Hitler, to the Al Sharptons and John Sweeneys of today, misleaders have used fear of the bosses' retaliation to keep workers and their allies from fighting back.

We believe the BSA leadership is choosing what they believe is the best way to combat the racism. However, opposing militant struggle against racism only ensures its triumph. Indeed, had Harvard expelled militant, protesting students, it would have sharpened the class struggle and raised the consciousness of many more about the true nature of Harvard. Also, more militant tactics might have had a better chance of silencing Mansfield and/or forcing Harvard to fire him.

Before and after the protest, I distributed about 100 PLP leaflets calling for communist revolution to destroy racism. The leaflet exposed Harvard's long history of defending racism, fascism and imperialism. The leaflet also called on all students to unite to fight racism in the interest of all workers and students. It also invited students and workers to march on May Day. I also made a new student contact and raised the struggle against Mansfield and his racism in the classroom.

This experience shows the importance of PLP members joining a student group. I've been active in the BSA for several years, building social ties with other members. I've also tried to sharpen anti-racist struggle, attempting to involve BSA in fights against racist police terror and prison labor. To have more of an impact on such protests, I need to give more leadership in them and be involved in their preparation.

We will follow up our new contact and learn from these experiences how to unite all workers and students, a prerequisite for successful communist revolution.

a name="Capitalism Won’t Crumble Until Workers Rumble For Communism">">"apitalism Won’t Crumble Until Workers Rumble For Communism

SEATTLE, WA., March 3—"I didn’t think Seattle would ever have much of an earthquake," began our May Day dinner speaker, quoting an 18-year veteran flight controller at Seattle-Tacoma airport. After the control tower collapsed around him, the flight controller admitted: "I guess I was wrong."

"This controller learned you can’t ignore faults—primary contradictions," continued our speaker. "Even if you can’t predict exactly when the next ‘big one’ is going to hit."

"Just so, capitalism is riddled with contradictions that can’t be ignored—like overproduction and inter-imperialist rivalry. We can’t predict exactly when the next depression or world war will come, but just as assuredly as that control tower came tumbling down, so capitalism will eventually lead to depression and war."

Even as we dined on the delicious food prepared by our comrades and sipped good Seattle coffee, our speaker described the first tremors of economic uncertainty and the rumbles in the manufacturing sector. Key Mid-West states, like Michigan, are officially in recession. Basic industry has laid off hundreds of thousands.

Stresses are building internationally. The lead article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, the magazine of Eastern Money’s foreign policy think-tank, warns of "America’s Two-Front Economic Conflict." The U.S. bosses are heading for "double trouble," says this article, in uncharacteristically blunt language. Asians and the Europeans are on the "brink of major trade and economic conflict" with the U.S.

Trade wars eventually lead to shooting wars, while the shooting wars seem to be spreading. Plan Colombia has spilled over into neighboring countries, according to the New York Times. The Middle East continues to be the mother of all hot spots.

Locally, the bosses’ media is building racist hysteria over the fights at Mardi Gras. Every major paper has run half-page pictures of black youth beating up partygoers. Where are the pictures of the racist cop assassins that murdered the son of our friend at the dinner?

While all this is happening, the King County Labor Council (KCLC), AFL-CIO, has endorsed demonstrations to reform the upcoming Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA)—the plan to extend NAFTA to the whole hemisphere. Changing the language or even abolishing these trade accords will not eliminate the contradictions of capitalism. The KCLC wants to apply a new coat of paint to the same old rickety shack, and then tell us its earthquake proof.

"To deal with the faults—the primary contradictions," concluded our speaker, "we have to build a movement to end capitalism with communist revolution. Unlike the control tower, capitalism won’t collapse of its own internal weaknesses without the efforts of conscious revolutionaries with a long-term outlook. Building this communist movement and developing those revolutionaries is job #1 of May Day. We have limited numbers so let’s concentrate. For the next two months, we can do no better than to build for the May Day March."

At the dinner new comrades signed up to march. Others had sharp, but comradely questions. After tonight, we have a shot at bringing one of the largest Seattle contingents ever to May Day. Hard work over the next two months will make the difference.

Black Monday, Wednesday As we go to press, the Dow Jones, Nasdaq have plummeted. Trillions in paper money have been lost. It is not just speculators who are losing money. Workers’ pensions and retirement funds have been invested in the stock market. PLP members should not only lead struggles against this robbery of workers’ livelihood, but also use the opportunity to explain workers how capitalism really works, and workers always pay for the bosses’crisis. Fight for communism! March on May Day!

Anti-Racists Link Clinton Diallo Decision To Fascism

Newark, NJ February 15, 2001—A small, but dedicated group of anti-racists held a lunchtime rally at the Federal Building here today. We were protesting the Clinton administration’s decision refusing to prosecute the NYC cops who executed Amadou Diallo two years ago.

People from several local organizations came to the rally. Speakers exposed how the bosses’ government allowed this racist atrocity to stand, connecting it to deepening fascism. One student speaker eloquently explained that she’s viewed as a criminal by the Newark police merely because she happens to live in a high-crime neighborhood. Many people stopped to listen. Thirty CHALLENGES were distributed.

PLP has begun a campaign in some of the organizations represented here today to expose the creation of a police state in New Jersey, NYC and elsewhere. We will link this growing fascism to the need for communist revolution.

This police state has many components: the explosion of "community policing," spearheaded by Rutgers professor George Kelling; massive racial profiling by the NJ state police; police murders like that of Earl Faison (killed by Orange, NJ cops); links between local cops and federal plans to suppress demonstrations under the guise of "fighting terrorism"; the mass jailing of mainly black and Latin youth; and the use of prison and Workfare slave labor.

The Diallo case reflects several of these trends. After Diallo was murdered, Kelling wrote several high profile articles in NYC newspapers basically saying the cops "made a mistake" and should walk. The court system in New York State made sure that happened.

Then "community" leaders and politicians like Al Sharpton misled thousands of angry demonstrators by calling for a federal civil rights investigation. Clinton’s Attorney-General Janet Reno deliberately withheld the no-prosecute decision until after the Bush inauguration. According to a NY Times article, Reno/Clinton did this to limit the number of angry anti-racists who otherwise would have joined the thousands who had already planned to protest at the inauguration.

We in PLP must take advantage of this anger of the masses against growing racism, fascism and war. If we persistently build our Party among the honest people in mass organizations, we will move ahead. A big step along this road will be bringing these people to the May Day march in Washington, D.C.

CHALLENGE Sparks May Day Buzz In LA Garment Shop

LOS ANGELES — "Last night I prayed to God that the boss would read this CHALLENGE article, so that she would shake with fear, because we’re tired of all this harassment!" declared a garment worker. She was referring to the article in the March 14 issue about the successful struggle to stop the firing of a worker. Despite our disagreement over religion, this religious co-worker respects our Party’s commitment to defending the workers and fighting the bosses.

The workers’ response to the article was magnificent. Some workers read it to others. Still others asked, with respect and admiration, "who wrote it?" The article provoked many discussions inside and outside the factory. This has created the basis for more struggle to mobilize more workers to march on May Day.

Conditions in this factory and in the city’s entire garment industry are sharpening. The bosses continue to move production abroad where they pay workers $2 a day. This competition drives bosses here to lower wages even more. Many mid-level bosses can’t compete with the big manufacturers who send their production to other countries. One garment boss told a group of workers, "The Korean Association of garment bosses wants to increase restrictions on imports." The main way they try to resolve their crisis is to attack workers here even more.

Now, with the increase in the minimum wage to $6.25 an hour, the bosses have sped up workers to produce more and make them pay for their "wage increase."

During the successful struggle against firing the worker, the boss declared, "I’m the owner of this factory and I do what I want" — if the workers let her. Under capitalism, the bosses own the factories, but we workers produce ALL the value and their profits. For example, if the boss pays even $1,000 a day for a machine, it still won’t sew a stitch of clothing by itself, nor make any profit for the boss. Only if a worker sits at the machine and sews the clothing will new value be created. A small part pays the worker’s wages —as small as the boss can get away with; the rest becomes the boss’s profit. This is the key to capitalism—the bosses’ robbery of the sweat and blood of the workers.

Under communism, the working class as a whole will own the factories. We’ll produce to meet the needs of the international working class, not to fill the pockets of the greedy bosses. Garment workers will work to clothe all workers and their families. Today there are thousands of stores full of clothing while millions of people worldwide barely have a shirt to cover themselves.

We have a long road to travel to achieve a world where workers control society. But with increased struggles in the factories, the discussion and spreading of communist ideas through CHALLENGE and a mass May Day March, we will advance towards our goal. In uniting with our co-workers in class struggle, we welcome disagreements whose resolution will become a key to building a revolutionary communist movement.

Are Humans Naturally Selfish?

A review of Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals, by Frans de Waal.

Azalea, a rhesus monkey at the Wisconsin Primate Center, was born with an extra chromosome and multiple disabilities. Slow-moving and slow-witted, she can’t figure out the rules of rhesus society and would never have survived in the wild. But others in her group protect her and overlook her social blunders. To treat Azalea so tolerantly, monkeys must have qualities rarely attributed to animals—empathy, to grasp that she functions differently from them, and sympathy, to make them want to help her ¹.

Frans de Waal, Dutch-born scientist who studies the behavior of non-human primates (monkeys and apes), uses stories like Azalea’s to argue that human morality has deep evolutionary roots. His lively books challenge the conventional wisdom that human nature is innately selfish, male-dominated, and warlike.

Konrad Lorenz, Austrian founder of ethology, the study of animal behavior in nature, argued in "On Aggression" (1967) that humans had an innate drive to violence, at best feebly suppressed by "civilization." (Lorenz may have been justifying his own past: he would later be exposed as one of Hitler’s professors, who taught during WWII that Jews should be exterminated.)

Similar ideas have flooded popular culture. The 1950s novel "Lord of the Flies," still a staple of high school classrooms, features shipwrecked boys who revert to "killer ape" instincts and vote each other off the island with sharp weapons.

Sociobiology and its current alias, evolutionary psychology, echo Lorenz’s ideas, invoking genes for rape, war, racism and sexism. If, as sociobiologist E.O. Wilson says, our genes keep us on a short leash and make us mean, there is not much hope for transforming the world.

Despite de Waal’s inconsistent and often reactionary political ideas, his writings are useful in countering this cynical, unscientific view of human nature. De Waal’s chief contributions are a more balanced approach to animal behavior, an explanation of the role of reconciliation in primate societies, and evidence for culture in animal societies. ("Culture" in this context means nongenetic transmission of behaviors and inventions.) He points out that many complex behaviors are not properties of individuals, but are aspects of interrelationships between individuals. Aggression, for instance, does not belong to a chimpanzee, and is not inherently good or bad, but is a socially imbedded interaction. This is a step toward a dialectical understanding of animal societies.

According to de Waal, acts of reconciliation between two chimps, following an act of aggression, are just as important to their relationship as the aggression. Shortly after a fight, the combatants often hug and kiss each other, while other chimps may intervene to prevent fights from arising in the first place Sociobiologists are one-sided in their neglect of reconciliation, which de Waal considers the essential glue that holds primate societies together. Some of de Waal’s open-mindedness may stem from his experience studying bonobos (a rarer ape species related to chimps). Bonobos are more egalitarian and peaceable than chimps, share food, and have female-centered societies that use sex to promote social cohesion ².

Culture and behavioral flexibility, once thought to be exclusively human, are found throughout primate societies. In a revealing experiment, young rhesus monkeys were housed with slightly older stump-tail monkeys. On their own, rhesus tend to be aggressive, fighting at slight provocation. Stump-tails are more peaceful. After months of co-existence the rhesus adopted the easy-going behavior of stump-tails. Even after separation, the rhesus retained these friendlier behaviors. De Waal’s experiment shows that behavior can be culturally (not biologically) transmitted, and can change within a generation. It also suggests that conciliatory behavior has a social usefulness apparent even to monkeys.

De Waal’s research argues against a narrowly deterministic view of ape (and human) behavior ³. Without culture and history, there is no human nature. We say that capitalism, not biology, encourages wars, racism and sexism.

While his optimism about human potential may help us counter cynicism, don’t count de Waal as a political ally. He is crudely anti-communist, railing against formerly socialist East Germany and China. He prefers Adam Smith (father of capitalist economic theory) to Karl Marx. He is often sexist, suggesting innate gender differences in our ability to sympathize with others, and racist, speculating that "an impoverished social environment" may rob poor children of peacemaking skills ^4.

De Waal accepts sociobiological assumptions even as he undercuts their foundation. Indeed, one sometimes wonders whether he has read his own books." It is remarkable," Marx noted drily, "how Darwin recognizes among beasts and plants his own English society with its competition, opening up of new markets, and the Malthusian struggle for existence ⁵." De Waal, who naively praises the European Community as a model of peacemaking ⁴, seems to recognize among conciliatory apes the shaky "peace" deals and shifting alliances of European imperialism.

1

de Waal, F. (1996) "Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals." Harvard University Press.
² de Waal, F., and Lanting, F. (1997) "Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape." University of California Press.
³ de Waal, F. (2001) "The Ape and the Sushi Master." Basic Books.
⁴ de Waal, F. (2000) "Primates: a natural heritage of conflict resolution." Science 289: 586-590.
⁵ Marx, K. (1862) Letter to Engels.

Fired Daewoo Workers Battle Cops

INCHON, SOUTH KOREA, March 7 — About 1,500 workers fought thousands of cops in the streets with rocks, bricks and Molotov cocktails as the Daewoo auto factory reopened today. The plant had been closed for three weeks to reduce excess inventory and slash 1,750 jobs.

The 7,000 workers still employed at the plant had to be brought in on 100 buses from four different pickup points. About 200 workers tried to block the buses while others tried to enter the plant grounds. More than 9,000 cops did what cops are paid to do: protect the bosses and scabs from workers.

Surprising the police, the workers marched about a mile to Inchon University of Education, where about 500 students joined them. A scuffle broke out and a dozen workers and students and six cops were injured. They tried to redirect the march toward the Pupyong railway station, but lines of police blocked them.

In 1999, Daewoo Motor collapsed under a debt load of more than $10 billion. Since then they have slipped from second to third place among South Korean automakers. The creditors who control the bankrupt company want to sell to General Motors. But GM is demanding more massive job cuts before making an offer.

The South Korean rulers’ struggle to increase profits by restructuring the economy and coping with a huge debt threatens more job cuts, which is spawning more resistence from workers. Bank workers have protested mergers in the banking industry, trapping one chief executive in his office for several days. Cutbacks in auto and shipbuilding industries are being met with sit-down strikes and mass militancy.

At the time of this battle, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung was in Washington and Chicago assuring U.S. bosses they shouldn’t worry. GM Chairman Jack Smith introduced him to a luncheon at the Chicago Hilton. To attract investors, Kim, the bosses’ Nobel Prize winner, boasted that his government had cracked down on illegal labor actions, saying he will not tolerate union violence. He said that foreign investment totaled $24 billion in the three years before he took over but it’s now at $41 billion. Bush and GM should award him the "Piece Prize" for giving them a bigger piece of the action.

One of the dismissed workers said, "GM will close this factory if they take over Daewoo." He may be right. Factories at Kunsan and Changwon are much more modern than the 29-year-old Inchon plant. In this global crisis of overcapacity, the weak will be swallowed by the strong. Just as Daimler grabbed Chrysler, GM will keep what is profitable from Daewoo and destroy the rest.

Workers Have No Nations

This same worker added, "We have to struggle for our survival, for our lives, for our nation. I don’t like foreigners to take over." Here he is dead wrong. Unlike union leaders from Detroit to South Korea, we can use this fight to build international solidarity and the revolutionary communist movement. Nationalism is a completely reactionary idea because it ties workers of one nation to our exploiters. "Buy Korean" is as bad as "Buy American." Imperialist competition for markets, resources and cheap labor inevitably leads to war. Autoworkers must unite across all borders, against all bosses.

We salute the mass heroism of the Daewoo workers. All PLP workers’ collectives, especially in basic industry, should organize letters of support at our jobs and in our unions. And when we march on May Day we will tell this Daewoo worker, Korea has never been nor will it never be "your nation," but it can be your world!

LETTERS

a name="ESL’ers Learn the Language of May Day">">"SL’ers Learn the Language of May Day

I work part-time in a Chicago community organization, preparing immigrants for the U.S. citizenship test. Most of my students are adults who speak little or no English.

My PLP club discussed how to invite my students — and many others waiting for an amnesty and their immigrant papers — to participate in the May Day march in Washington, D.C. All my students and those working in the center (including the director) know CHALLENGE and PLP.

One day I was preparing my students for the exam, and simultaneously presenting a working-class view of history. A week before we had discussed May Day and they all had tickets. I said they should all come to the March and invite their friends and relatives. I told them I wouldn’t be teaching this Saturday (March 10) because I’d be in Gary protesting a KKK rally. I invited them to participate. Immediately a 65-year-old woman added, "Yes, it’s important because those killers should not be allowed to speak. If we don’t fight them they will continue murdering people at the border and all over. I am sorry I cannot go because I can hardly walk."

A student then said he wanted to pay for the May Day ticket and gave me $60. Another gave half the ticket money, and even though she couldn’t go she said she wanted to pay for someone else to go. We continued talking even after class.

Later, a cousin of mine said she’d received a call from one of my students, who happened to be a relative of hers, inviting her to May Day!

I learned workers can relate things quite well. They link the fight against the racist KKK to marching on May Day, to the fight for an amnesty for undocumented immigrants, and so on. Sometimes we don’t do our job of explaining the relationship between all these struggles. Talking and listening to workers I can see how we are all part of the same working class with a common interest. Fighting for communism is the best we can offer workers, the best way to win workers to our Party. The struggle is just beginning.

Juana Gallo, Chicago

Jury Duty: Make-Believe Justice

Recently, I was called as a potential jurors in a police brutality case. Some of us were asked to explain why we had stood in response to any of the questions the judge posed earlier.

I said I believe the police serve capitalism, and that capitalism requires the police to be racist and brutal. The judge then asked, would my beliefs prevent me from rendering a fair and impartial judgment. I said I would surely be fair, but not impartial! (Are the cops impartial when they choose who to brutalize?)

That did it! The judge removed me on the spot from the pool of potential jurors.

Apparently, in cases like these, "jury of one’s peers" means excluding anyone who doesn’t feel some peer kinship with the cops. Anyone with a little awareness of police brutality and its roots in capitalism is quickly excluded. I suppose we’re not reliable actors on the stage of make-believe justice.

A majority of the population in Baltimore is African-American. One might think that white people living in a majority-black city would have a better-than-typical understanding (for white folks) about police brutality. However, when the judge asked if any potential jurors would be prejudiced about any cops testimony as witnesses — either favorably or unfavorably — virtually every white person who stood said they would believe the word of a cop more than other witnesses. Clearly, we in Progressive Labor Party have a major job ahead of us, winning white workers to understand that racism is real and must be fought!

Finally, I met up with a friend and former colleague was also assigned to jury duty for that day. She said a family member of hers had been a cop working for an internal unit investigating other cops. He had shown her papers revealing that the police chief himself was getting large, routine payments from major drug traffickers.

When my friend was asked, as a potential juror, if she would be prejudiced about the testimony of cops as witnesses, she said loudly and clearly that she wouldn’t believe anything the cops said!

When I was leaving the courtroom my friend and I smiled to each other, and so did a new acquaintance who had gone to lunch with us.

Capitalism creates its own grave-diggers — throwing workers together in large numbers, thus helping us organize and spread the truth! All in all, a pretty good day!

A Baltimore Comrade

May Day, Class Struggle: A Winning Combo

Early one morning two workers are huddled in an out-of-the-way corner at a major hospital. From their pockets come wads of crumpled money and some unsold tickets for the area’s PLP May Day dinner. "Yeah," says Jewel, "Billy says she’s coming and Angela says she can take the train to the job, but she’ll need a ride from here." "I saw Marilyn when I punched in today," says Lenny. "She told me you also sold her a ticket and did a good job of explaining what the dinner was about."

Jewel is selling the May Day dinner tickets like she’s got some kind of fever. Many, many workers are buying them. Some are planning to come to the dinner and are interested in coming on May Day. But then there’s a large group who are buying a ticket because they like Jewel. We can always use money. But part of our organizing this year is to work with Jewel and figure out how to win more of these workers to actually come to our dinner and to the March. Thanks to Jewel we are now talking about May Day and PLP to many workers for the first time.

During lunch Linda and Izzy meet casually on the street and appear to be watching the traffic go by. But Linda and Izzy are actually meeting to organize a group of women with young families to confront a hospital boss. Some had to leave work early because their children were dismissed from school due to a snowstorm scare. This boss then threatened to fire one of the women.

Izzy had written a rough draft of a letter from the workers demanding a meeting with the boss. "Me and the other women didn’t like what you wrote ‘Viejo’," Linda says to Izzy. "You made us sound like we’re whining."

"So write it the way you want it," answered Izzy, "I just want us to get this fight on!"

Linda and the other women are taking this fight very seriously and are doing a good job of preparing for it. Linda started reading CHALLENGE during our involvement with our union’s contract struggle last year. She missed the March then. This year Linda’s more involved with workers’ fights on the job and therefore with us in PLP. We’re fighting harder to ensure she and her friends join us in Washington.

Later that day Lenny meets with a group of black and Latin women workers who feel they’re being passed over for full-time, higher-paying jobs. Ronnie, one of the black women, is the most outspoken and has decided to run for union delegate in the department. Lenny, Ronnie and the other workers develop a plan to deal with the department’s union delegates who don’t want to confront the boss. They don’t want to rock the boat. Later Lenny laughs and says to Ronnie, "It’s a small world."

Ronnie’s uncle "JJ" had been a PLP member for several years and is still very friendly. Ten years ago JJ and Lenny were side by side when PLP organized a fight that stopped a KKK march in a small nearby town. Now we’re in a fight side by side with JJ’s niece. We will introduce Ronnie to PLP, CHALLENGE and May Day.

PLP members participate with our co-workers in many fights, big and small. But through them all we struggle with our co-workers to do three things: read CHALLENGE, march on May Day, join PLP.

A Hospital Comrade

Fight APHA Award To Drug Moguls: Health Professionals Resist Sellout

A fight has erupted at the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) governing council for the maternal and child health section (MCH) over a new award to be named after Glaxo, an international drug company that’s raking in profits over the dead bodies of AIDS victims in Africa. This is extremely offensive.

Many of us in APHA want to "serve the people" in some capacity. The main thing transnational corporations serve is their bottom line —profits. They may produce some good medicine, but money controls which ones and how much.

The major health problem today is capitalism. Profit-driven health care is NOT the best way to serve the needs of the greatest number. Capitalism is very good at accumulating capital. Sometimes it’s even good at promoting innovation. But it is not designed for distribution to the people according to their needs. Only communism is.

At APHA meetings I see many who protested U.S. imperialism in the anti-war movement. This is where the old civil rights protestors have landed decades later. But with the collapse of the old communist movement political forces are pulling people so far to the right that naming an MCH award after a multinational corporation seems almost OK.

Glaxo has billions to entice professionals to its side. Communists offer love and respect for the masses of people. Most people are either cynical or misled about communism so they can’t see how to eliminate capitalism. We may not be able to prevent its flagrantly murderous excesses. But we don’t have to embrace it, bow down and worship it and name the finest efforts of colleagues after its corporate icons. With a long, hard fight, many intellectuals and professionals will be won over.

Red Doctor

Racism Rules Roost in Newark Schools

I am the parent of a high school student in Newark, New Jersey. Many years ago, Newark schools were "good" by ruling class standards. One high school was considered one of the country's best. Then the Newark rebellions of the '60s, led to "white flight" from the city. Services of all types declined. Once Newark's population became mostly working class black and Latin, the ruling class dropped its school funding far behind the predominately white suburbs. Even the New Jersey Supreme Court, unable to justify the disparity, ordered equalized funding.

But the state legislature refused to fund city schools at that level. The schools' decline continued. In a last ditch effort to appear "concerned," the State took over Newark's schools six years ago.

The State's first "improvement"? Metal detectors in all high schools! Some well-meaning parents, teachers and students believe this will ensure students' "safety," but it merely continues ruling class efforts to get city kids used to being treated like criminals and believing they're "bad." In fact, the president of the State's school psychologists' association said metal detectors actually make students feel less safe!

Recently, the State-appointed Superintendent of Newark schools decided to install video cameras in all high schools. Students will be continually videoed in all common areas - hallways, stairwells, cafeterias and gyms - with a security guard watching the video screens all day. Talk about schools feeling like prisons! This is happening after statistics show violence actually declined in Newark schools by 50% during the 1998-99 school year.

It's no accident this is all occurring precisely when the bosses are pushing more "community policing," the U.S. prison population is the world's highest and the federal government - in line with the Hart-Rudman Commission report - would consolidate all governmental law enforcement agencies. This is fascism, U.S. style.

It's critical for parents, students and teachers to unite to stop this increasingly repressive criminalizing of our children. Communists understand that the criminals are the rulers, not our young people. It's true that many students are less passive and more angry nowadays. Unfortunately, some of that anger is misdirected towards fellow students and teachers, rather than against this violent, racist, capitalist system which causes all this harm. We must point out that only a communist society will enable children to direct their energy and exuberance towards positive, collective goals, beneficial to the working class.

A Newark Mom

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1. Continuing the Line of Bush Senior and Clinton
   Dubya Bush Bombs Iraq and Makes Plans for Oil War
   1. U.S. Policy Is A Flop
   2. Daddy Bush's New World Order Didn't Last Long
   3. U.S. Bosses' Plans For Land War: Easier Said Than Done
2. Arrest of FBI Spy Shows Renewed U.S.-Russia Rivalry
3. IT'S THE BOSSES' CRISIS--MAKE THEM PAY!
4. Take a Stand
   OPPOSE RACIST KKK RALLY
5. NYTimes `Advice' to Workers:
   `This won't hurt a bit . . .'
   1. Layoffs Aren't Too Bad -- They Just Kill....
6. Strikers Forced Back to Work
   Red Politics Brewing Among Bavaria Beer Workers
7. `Communism is the greatest thing since the wheel....'
8. KILLED FOR A PACKAGE OF MEAT
9. Fascist Welfare Cutoff Looms for Over 200,000
10. RACIST MURDERING COP ACQUITTED
    FIGHT AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY GROWS
11. Suspended Red Teacher Should Be:
    `Commended, Not Condemned'
12. Students Attack Racist LA Schools
13. Bosses' Rivalry Heats Up Over `Zapatour'
14. ORGANIZE AGAINST `RACIAL PROFILING' OF INFANTS
    1. LIFE (AND DEATH) AT CCH
15. Daewoo Autoworkers Fight Cops Attacking Occupation of Plant
16. Letters
    Workers of the World, Write!
    1. A Streetcar Named Communism
    2. Jewish-Palestinian Unity Indicts Israeli Fascists
    3. ESL Students Meet The CHALLENGE
    4. `Let the red fire in our bellies burn hot . . . `
    5. `War On Drugs' is War On Workers
17. CHALLENGE SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
    War Crimes of U.S. Imperialism
    `Death is our business, and business is good...'
18. Icelanders Resist Gene Pirates' Looting 0f Health Records

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Editorial

Continuing the Line of Bush Senior and Clinton
Dubya Bush Bombs Iraq and Makes Plans for Oil War

Bush's increased bombing raids over Iraq show U.S. rulers will stop at nothing to restore their dwindling influence over the Persian Gulf and its oil.

These air raids are nothing new. U.S. and British warplanes have been terrorizing Iraqi civilians for years. But Bush's latest round represents an enlargement in both frequency and intensity. It coincides with growing U.S. isolation in the face of tactical victories by Saddam Hussein and U.S. oil rivals Russia and France.

U.S. Policy Is A Flop

The U.S. policy of using sanctions to force Hussein from power is a flop. The sanctions' only "success" has been the wholesale murder of Iraqi workers and children. U.S. pals and foes alike violate the sanctions every day. Iraqi oil has returned to the market. Exxon Mobil, the power behind the bombings, ironically, is its biggest customer, because Iraqi oil is the region's cheapest, and controlling the cheapest oil is crucial to market domination.

Another irony leaves U.S. bosses with egg on their faces. According to the London Times (2/21), Iraq's oil barons are smuggling their cheap oil in tankers into Turkey, tankers which the U.S. could easily bomb because they're breaking the sanctions. But since the U.S. is using the Turkish air base at Incirlik as a launching pad for U.S. and British war planes patrolling the northern no-fly zone over Iraq, they're allowing Turkish rulers to break the sanctions in exchange for use of that base. Thus Iraq is reaping oil profits growing out of the very bombing campaign that's aimed at weakening Saddam Hussein. Profits drive all capitalists, whether U.S., Iraqi or Turkish.

Bush's bombing occurs in a setting that reveals significant gains by Saddam Hussein. Despite U.S. threats, contact between Iraq and the outside world is increasing. Technicians and businessmen fly into Baghdad regularly from Western Europe and Russia, thumbing their noses at U.S. policy. Their visits aim at launching the multi-billion dollar deals for Iraqi oil and gas that await only the formal lifting of sanctions. Only days after Bush had taken office, Iraqi rulers signed free trade pacts with Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

Daddy Bush's New World Order Didn't Last Long

This situation is a far cry from the so-called "New World Order," of which Bush's father boasted after slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Iraqi workers in the 1991 Desert Storm. In that war, U.S. imperialism had managed to arm-twist and/or bribe the Europeans, Arabs and Russians into a supposed "coalition" which, even if it did very little fighting, at least didn't stand in Washington's way. But current Russian rulers are regrouping around a long-range plan to challenge the U.S. for world domination.

In 1991, French oil bosses came on board, however reluctantly. Now, with dreams of using Iraqi oil as leverage in the race against Exxon Mobil for maximum profit, they have a huge stake in opposing U.S. policy. And the Iraqi trade deals with former Arab enemies could spell further big trouble for the U.S., which so far has also failed to impose a "peace" deal between Israeli and Palestinian bosses on the crucial western flank of the Middle East.

So the stakes are climbing. Arab rulers will have to choose between the U.S. and Iraq. As usual, oil lies at the heart of the struggle. The big Persian Gulf producers, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, face a profit squeeze related to the current worldwide economic slump, a regular feature of the capitalist system. Growing amounts of Iraqi oil on a depressed market will lower prices. If Bush can convince these bosses that military force and sanctions against Iraq can stabilize the price of oil, then U.S. influence in the Persian Gulf may make a comeback. That was undoubtedly a key goal of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's recent Mid-East jaunt.

However, relying on the profit greed of wobbly oil princes isn't a recipe for long-term stability, peace or unchallenged U.S. supremacy. Nor is a failed policy of unenforceable sanctions or a military strategy that relies on bombing to resolve a situation that can be settled only on the ground.

Although U.S. imperialism continues to sit on the horns of a dilemma, we must not make the deadly error of believing that because launching war for Iraqi oil is difficult, the rulers won't do it. This is the isolation of a caged, untamed tiger. They must try everything to control and profit from the oil. Sooner or later this competition will lead to ever-widening armed struggle. We can't predict the timetable, but we must prepare our Party and our class for this inevitability. Imperialism and war are inseparable. Our job now and for the future remains mustering the determination and skill to build our revolutionary movement under all conditions.

U.S. Bosses' Plans For Land War: Easier Said Than Done

Everyone, from the Bush administration to U.S. foes, knows that control of Iraqi oil can be determined, as the London Times (2/21) puts it, "by the only means possible, a land war." However, U.S. rulers are unprepared both internally and externally for ground war in Iraq.

Internally, as CHALLENGE has often pointed out, the rulers have little confidence in the political will of the working-class soldiers and sailors in their military machine. Ground war means many casualties. Since Vietnam, no U.S. government has managed to convince workers to die in droves for the profits and power of the U.S. ruling class. This situation is unlikely to change.

Externally, the sanctions and bombing raids against Iraq generate sharper international contradictions with every passing day. Bush blamed and threatened the Chinese for giving Saddam Hussein improved radar defenses. In Russia, the February 16 raids--with no prior U.S. notification--will strengthen the rulers who "argue that the only way for Russia to avoid being ignored, marginalized and eventually dismembered is to win respect through strength." (Stratfor Global Intelligence Update, 02/21.)

Arrest of FBI Spy Shows Renewed U.S.-Russia Rivalry

The recent arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen on spying charges reflects increasing hostility between U.S. and Russian capitalists. As long as Gorbachev and Yeltsin welcomed Western investment and U.S. rulers dreamed of exploiting the former Soviet empire's cheap labor and resources, catching spies did not seem to be a priority as before. But now the party's over. The rise of the Putin faction clearly shows that U.S. and Russian strategic interests fundamentally conflict rather than coincide. Hanssen's plight is one signal of the end of the deal-making.

As analysts at Stratfor point out (2/21), "For the past decade, Russia has been led by a cadre of Western-oriented politicians, who, to various degrees, have been willing to sacrifice Russian strategic interests for economic and political integration with Europe and the West. They have been challenged by a much larger faction in the government, the military and the populace that argues Russia must re-establish itself as a superpower to avoid complete dominance by the United States." While they have a long way to go, Putin & Co. have done all they can, from Iraq to the Caspian to the Balkans, to build Russian political, military and economic influence at Washington's expense.

U.S. rulers, however, are planning to take drastic measures at home and abroad to ensure their survival as the "world's sole superpower." CHALLENGE has reported on the efforts of the Hart-Rudman commission to restructure the government into a police state in liberal clothing. One Hart-Rudman provision is to rein in the FBI by restricting its ability to block presidential appointments. The ruling class has a problem with the FBI. Since its inception led by J. Edgar Hoover, the bureau has largely recruited conservative Catholics, who don't necessarily share the liberal ideology of the ruling class's main wing. These super-obedient followers of rules are useful for enforcing the bosses' laws but not reliable in setting overall policy. Hanssen's purging can be seen as a tightening of the chain of command.

Hanssen belongs to Opus Dei, an overtly fascist Catholic sect. Louis Freeh used to belong but had to quit before he became FBI director (London Telegraph, 6/17/96). Hanssen once gave a talk at the bureau in which he equated "communism" as it was practiced in the last days of the Soviet Union with his own ultra-right religion (Boston Globe, 2/24). He was right; both are basically anti-communist attacks on workers. Thus, he justified his and the U.S. rulers' open door policy to Moscow at that time. But bosses on both sides have slammed the door. Furthermore, the main wing of U.S. rulers is not betting on religious conservatism as the primary means for rallying the masses, or its own cadre, for war. Exit Hanssen.

The bosses' media are using the Hanssen drama to pump up anti-Russian patriotism. We can use it to discuss what genuine communism is.

IT'S THE BOSSES' CRISIS--MAKE THEM PAY!

GARY, IN, February 22 -- "I think you're going to see it getting much worse. I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel." That's how United Steel Workers (USWA) District 7 Director Jack Parton described the future facing steelworkers in Indiana and Illinois.

Parton's right, the only light at the end of the tunnel, is the headlights of Usinor, the giant French steel manufacturer, which just merged with Arbed of Luxembourg and Aceralia Corporación Siderúrgica of Spain, to create the world's largest steel maker.

The new European steel giant will produce 46 million metric tons of steel a year, almost double the biggest Asian steel makers -- Nippon Steel of Japan and Pohang Iron and Steel of South Korea -- which combined produce about 52 million metric tons annually. Usinor will control 30% of European steel production and over 5% percent worldwide. It will make half of Europe's flat steel, used in autos and appliances.

The steel industry must consolidate to destroy excess capacity and combat falling prices. Klaus Soer, an analyst with Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt said, "The process of consolidation is in full steam in the steel sector." Usinor recently acquired Cockerill Sambre S.A. of Belgium, for $1.1 billion in 1999. Thyssen Krupp, Germany's biggest steel maker and Nazi war criminal, was formed by a merger the same year. Corus, created by merging British Steel and Royal Hoogovens of the Netherlands in 1999, just announced it will cut its work-force by 20%, or 6,050 jobs, to keep pace with the competition.

To make a profit, the U.S. steel industry must run at 85% to 90% of capacity. Most have been running under 80%. The industry as a whole fell to 65% in the final week of 2000.

During the crises of the 1980s, the USWA leadership gave up 350,000 jobs and billions of dollars in wage and benefit concessions, so the bosses could compete and profit. Despite the massive cutbacks, the steel bosses are facing a new crisis of low prices, high energy costs and the ever-sharpening battle with European and Asian steel bosses, with a lot less room to maneuver.

The union leaders are again rushing to the aid of the bosses. After the super-nationalist "Stand Up for Steel" campaign, District Director Parton now says he would suspend the job security clause of the current contract if the bosses eliminate overtime, lay off all contract workers and "prove the cuts will help."

In fact, the union leaders support their billionaire masters' war plans. Parton wants Bush to tour the steel mills accompanied by Pentagon officials. "Having a good steel industry is vital to our national defense," he said.

The life-and-death struggle among the bosses for markets, resources and cheap labor will inevitably lead to war. That's the nature of imperialism. Steel workers have no stake in bailing out the bosses, competing with our brothers and sisters around the world or following our worse-than-useless union leaders to war. While we fight for every job, we must build an international PLP to destroy the war-makers and lead the international working class to power.

Take a Stand
OPPOSE RACIST KKK RALLY

WHERE: GILROY STADIUM (32ND AND HARRISON)
IN GARY, INDIANA
WHEN: MARCH 10 AT 12 Noon
FOR MORE INFO, CALL: 1 800 330 9953

NYTimes `Advice' to Workers:
`This won't hurt a bit . . .'

Last month, companies announced plans to wipe out 140,000 jobs. DaimlerChrysler--26,000; Lucent--16,000; Nortel--10,000; Goodyear--7,200. Montgomery-Ward will close, eliminating 37,000 jobs. JC Penny will shut 47 stores and slash 5,000 jobs. Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Gateway computers will cut 6,000 jobs. The list goes on and on with new cuts announced daily.

But in an article entitled "Behind Layoffs, Reality is Often Less Severe in US"(New York Times, 2/19), we're told things aren't as bad as they seem. "More than half of the 7,000 cuts planned at Sara Lee...will occur in other countries." "...The 12,000 hourly Chrysler workers subject to layoff in the United States will continue to receive 95 percent of their pay..." "At least a third of the 16,000 jobs to be eliminated at Lucent will still exist--as parts of other companies."

The Times speaks for the bosses, not workers. Reality is less severe when the stock market is soaring and record profits result from increased productivity. "As the economy's growth has slowed, investors...cheer the announcement of major cost cuts and layoffs." True. "A single corporate layoff of a few thousand workers, likely to be spread over a few weeks or many months, has a minimal effect..."

You get a much different perspective from the streets of Detroit or Gary, Indiana, not to mention Ciudad Juarez or Bupyong, South Korea. In the U.S. during the 1980's, over 500,000 jobs were lost in auto, 350,000 in steel. More than 1.5 million industrial jobs vanished. The massive cuts were accompanied by a wave of strike-breaking and union-busting that continues to this day.

This may have had "a minimal effect" on the Times editors, but it took a terrible toll on the lives of the workers. About 75% of the displaced workers ended up working for two-thirds of their previous pay. Some turned to drugs, alcohol or petty crime. Many ended up homeless, in jail or dead. From western Pennsylvania to Logan, West Virginia, from East Chicago, IN to Flint, MI, whole communities were destroyed and never recovered.

Today, one-third of the auto industry and two-thirds of the coalmines are non-union. Auto production is at an all-time high, with 500,000 fewer workers. Thousands of young workers in Gary and Detroit are working in gambling casinos instead of the factories and mills. Health and safety standards and work rules have been gutted, reflected in the series of explosions at Rouge and Bethlehem Steel.

LTV, the third largest U.S. steel maker, has declared bankruptcy. American Steel is closing, moving the work to Monroe, NC, cutting wages in half. One difference between this crisis and the last is that welfare has been wiped out, along with many other health and welfare programs. Contrary to what the Times says, for many workers this wave of cuts will be more severe. And with the widespread use of multi-tiered wage systems and wage progressions, getting hired can be as severe as being laid off.

Layoffs Aren't Too Bad -- They Just Kill....

A Congressional Joint Economic Committee study published in 1976 attempted to "estimate the cost in human suffering of people being out of work." (New York Times, 10/31/76) That report concluded that when unemployment rose 1.4% in 1970 (from 3.5% to 4.9%) it led directly to the death of over 30,000 workers in the following five years-- from stress-related ailments, suicide and homicide. Of these, 26,440 were linked to strokes, heart and kidney ailments, 1,540 to suicide, 1,740 to homicide and 870 to cirrhosis of the liver.

Dr. Harvey Brenner of Johns Hopkins University told the Committee that, "The national rate of suicide in the United States can be viewed as an economic indicator," so close is the link between joblessness and workers' violent deaths. How conveniently the Times "forgets"....

Strikers Forced Back to Work
Red Politics Brewing Among Bavaria Beer Workers

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, Feb. 27--The two-month strike by 6,500 Bavaria brewery workers ended when the union accepted the Minister of Labor's decision to send it to binding arbitration. Angelino Garzón, a former union leader and member of the Communist Party, is the Minister of Labor. Now it should be renamed "Minister for the Bosses."

PLP forces have emerged stronger from this struggle. We have made many new friends and recruited several. Workers from various Bavaria plants around the country who didn't know our Party and our paper CHALLENGE do now. Bavaria strikers also learned what PLP means by "one working class, one flag, one international communist party."

Workers feel betrayed by the local and national union leaders. They had told workers the strike would continue until the demands were won. This is exactly what PLP had warned about: union hacks are not on the workers' side; they serve the bosses one way or another.

Despite the hacks, thousands of workers showed solidarity with the Bavaria strikers. PLP members in the U.S. and other countries also built support. Bavaria workers will long remember this moral and monetary backing fellow workers gave them during the struggle. This international solidarity showed in practice the validity of the slogan "Workers of the world, unite!"

But although we've been forced to return to work, the struggle will continue. We will be vigilant against any threatened firing of rank-and-file strike leaders. We will also continue to fight for the strike demands, to stop the company from taking away what we have fought for and won in recent decades. Mainly, we will continue to fight to win workers to PLP's communist politics. The strike became a school for communism for those many workers who became conscious of the need to fight for a new society, without bosses, without death squads and drug cartels. Communism has gained a foothold among these workers.

`Communism is the greatest thing since the wheel....'

In my first semester at the State University of N.Y. (SUNY) I've been more active than I envisioned. I joined a Ralph Nader organization involved in causes such as homelessness, the environment, voting and sweatshops. I chose the sweatshops committee because I thought it would produce the most activity.

A demonstration was planned to protest several stores that used sweatshop labor, especially the sneaker manufacturer NIKE. Nike uses slave-like conditions and wages in countries like Indonesia to super-exploit workers .

Five busloads carrying 120 students and two older leaders converged on a small town outside NYC. Two lawyers were present just in case people were "carried away." We were told repeatedly there would be no civil disobedience.

We marched to a large Nike store, chanting: "Down with sweatshops, shame on Nike!"; "No justice, no peace." It was a beautiful sight, a mass of young adults fighting for a cause. Hundreds of shoppers stood still, mouths open, while we marched and chanted.

As soon as we hit the Nike shop, security ordered us out. Although I wanted to stay, our strict leaders said to leave as soon as we were told, peacefully. We left chanting, "We'll be back."

Later, we went to a Mall, the biggest in the state. Divided into groups, each with a "tour guide," some dressed in Dresden shorts, long socks, straw hats and Hawaiian shirts, we were to walk through the mall pretending to be tourists. We followed our tour leaders from store to store, saying these clothes were made in sweatshops and describing the slave-like conditions those workers faced.

Mall shoppers, employers and employees watched. Some even followed us, laughing. They appeared not to know what to think. The five groups met in the center of the mall chanting our slogans. Security finally "escorted" us out.

I was excited and felt powerful but "accepted." I didn't believe the people watching us felt threatened as I think they sometimes do. The two lawyers present gave me a (false) sense of security. That's the danger of joining other groups -- one can get lost in that group and their fight.

On the bus returning to school the person next to me said he was a socialist. I felt this was a good opportunity to become friends. When I said I was in PLP, he said he used to buy CHALLENGE at his local grocery store. Some people overheard our conversation and declared they were communists, socialists and Marxists also. It was amazing. We started discussing politics and why we considered ourselves communist, socialists and Marxists.

Before I went to college I felt I would be isolated at school because I would be the only Party member at my university. I realized the importance of being in a mass organization, about the potential in every worker to become a member of PLP.

However, there's a contradiction: in mass organizations, you're fighting for reforms that maintain capitalism instead of abolishing it. These groups have good people who want a better world and we need to win them. Like CHALLENGE says, capitalism has really got to go. So, how do you tell your friends you're a communist, how do you introduce CHALLENGE, how do you explain all that complicated stuff about communism? And what will your friends think?

All too often we sell our communist ideas short. Communism is the greatest thing since the wheel. Many workers and students will grasp some aspect of that. When my fellow students first discovered I was a communist, their main reaction was a very friendly curiosity.

I remember struggling repeatedly with some young comrades about distributing CHALLENGE to their friends and relatives. One was a newly-arrived cousin from Africa. I was told he wouldn't be interested in politics or communism. One day, I asked him what he thought about communism. Without hesitation he said, "I think it's the greatest thing in the world." I'll never forget that.

As the semester progresses, many students on my campus may want a communist explanation of various events. When I participate in reform activities, they know I'm for more than some small change in the system. For me, there's nothing better than being known as a communist by friend and foe alike. It makes life worthwhile.

Workers and students want to understand the world. They want the truth. CHALLENGE and communism are what they're looking for. We're responsible to get it out there.

KILLED FOR A PACKAGE OF MEAT

DETROIT, MI, Feb. 21 -- On February 8, security guards at a Kroger supermarket killed 38-year old Travis Shelton. He was headed for the door with two packages of meat under his coat. Shelton's wife Jennifer said, "Nobody should have to feel this way. People should know, next time it could be your loved one."

Travis was 5'6" and weighed 260 pounds. He had asthma, high blood pressure and diabetes. A history of drug abuse had damaged his enlarged heart. But for all his ailments, it was racism that killed him. Racism where ten more dollars in Kroger's cash register is worth more than a man's life.

Security guards confronted Shelton. Within minutes he was face down on the floor gasping, "I can't breathe. I can't breathe," as 260 pound guard Jason Clover sat on his back. When the police arrived, they handcuffed Shelton and rolled him over only to find they had handcuffed a dead man.

An off-duty firefighter tried to assist the guards and held Shelton's arm. "I can't help but feel responsible," he said. "If I hadn't helped the guards, [he] would have had an arm free and still be alive."

On February 14, the Medical Examiner who preformed the autopsy ruled the death a homicide. The police response was, "Not every homicide is murder."

Shelton was the second black man in eight months to be killed by store security guards. Last June, Lord & Taylor security guards killed Frederick Finley when his barely teenage daughter was suspected of shoplifting a $10 bracelet.

Whether its police murders on the street, mass expulsions from school, strip searches at airports, or just driving in your car, racist terror infects all of society. The bosses have turned every black and Latin person into a suspect. With one in four young black men in the criminal justice system, and more than a million in prison, whole sections of the population are already living under full-blown fascism.

But more to the point is the question raised by the firefighter. Yes, he is responsible. We are all responsible for each other to fight the bosses' dictatorship. We can't be "Good Nazis" and claim, "We didn't know about the concentration camps." Building a fighting PLP that serves the working class can help develop a sense of responsibility for our class. This is a requirement for becoming a more serious force for revolution.

Fascist Welfare Cutoff Looms for Over 200,000

NEW YORK CITY, Feb. 26 -- Over 200,000 people on welfare in this state face the cutoff of their cash benefits by the end of this year (New York Times, 2/10). At that time, each of them will have reached the arbitrary five-year federal limit enacted in the 1996 Clinton/Gingrich so-called welfare reform. Some 180,000 people in the U.S. have already lost benefits as some states, like Florida and Wisconsin, imposed shorter time limits under waivers granted by the Clinton Administration. Hundreds of thousands of men and women have been forced into slave labor Workfare programs.

The racist ideology of the Democratic/Republican Clinton/Gingrich gang insists that people on welfare "don't want to work." However, among the adults facing cutoff, nearly 28% are wage earners who work an average of 30 hours per week. Another 15% have disabilities that prevent them from working. Welfare bosses point to decreased welfare rolls as "proof" that the so-called reform is working. Soup kitchens and homeless shelters however report overwhelming increases in people seeking help. Welfare advocates report that large numbers of eligible applicants for welfare, food stamps and medicaid benefits either are wrongfully turned away or discouraged from applying in the first place.

NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has plans for six-month jobs for those reaching their five-year limits, followed by slave labor Workfare for those unable to make ends meet. As "payment" for this slave labor, families will receive a greatly-reduced cash benefit and vouchers to be used towards food and rent. The absolute terror of starvation of men, women and children will be a club used to lower the wages of, and divide, the entire working class, a clear indication of increasing fascism in the U.S.! We will continue and intensify our campaign opposing Workfare, both on the job and in the unions.

RACIST MURDERING COP ACQUITTED
FIGHT AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY GROWS

Upper Marlboro, MD, February 23 -- Today a murdering racist cop was acquitted in Prince George's County, Maryland (a suburb of Washington, D.C.), to the surprise of no one but angering everyone.

Brian Catlett is the first cop ever tried for killing someone in this county. He murdered a 19 year old unarmed black man, Gary Hopkins, Jr., in November 1999 during a fracas after a dance. The evidence of the cop's guilt was so overwhelming that Jack Johnson, the County's chief prosecutor, felt compelled to indict the cop for "involuntary" manslaughter and reckless endangerment. He was under pressure to make this gesture, given that 17 people have been shot -- some fatally -- by the County's cops in the last 18 months. (Howard University student Prince Jones was the latest fatality of the PG cops' rampage; see CHALLENGE over the last six months).

The trial was rigged from the start. The judge was a veteran conservative. The cop rejected a jury trial, choosing to be tried by the judge. Gary's mother described the judge-cop connection as part of an "old boy" network. Moreover, the prosecution was so inept that, for such a high profile case, can only be described as deliberate incompetence. For instance, the prosecution raised in an improper manner the fact that the cop and Hopkins had had previous run-ins, which was critical history behind the murder in November 1999; so this evidence was ruled inadmissible. Had a young black man killed a cop, no gross prosecution mistakes like this would have been made!

The anti-police brutality movement has really advanced. The Prince George's County People's Coalition for Police Accountability organized a prayer vigil of 150 people on the eve of the trial to back the family. The family's supporters packed the courtroom all week (along with the fascist cops and their "union" leader Rodney Bartlett). Dozens rallied outside the courthouse calling for the conviction of cop Catlett. Demonstrators included many county residents and Howard University workers. Speakers attacked the prosecution's malpractice and called for a broader movement against police brutality and racial profiling. One speaker called for a determined fight against the capitalist system and all its politicians, since capitalism spawns police brutality as a bosses' tool to better control and intimidate the working class, especially black workers.

During this campaign many important political issues have arisen. Who are our friends and who are our enemies? A cadre of black politicians have emerged over the last 15 years and, to a great extent, lead Prince George's County. They include County Executive Wayne Curry, State's Attorney Jack Johnson and local congressman Al Wynn. Yet these politicians have said virtually nothing about the fascist police force, merely suggesting a few minor reforms in police procedures (mounting video cameras on police cars, modest changes in the Law Enforcement Officer's Bill of Rights).

Nevertheless, some Coalition members believe the best political strategy for fighting police brutality is to work through the electoral system -- "which politicians are on our side." Other members, including PLP'ers, declare that, since the cause of the problem is capitalism, a mass revolutionary movement against capitalism is needed, which relies on the masses of workers and students to join the fight. The PLP identifies the media, politicians and legislative initiatives as all part of the enemy's apparatus, and will at best lead us to waste our time and energy and wind up demoralized.

Nevertheless, the Coalition has gotten several bills introduced in the state legislature to reduce the cops' protection against investigation and prosecution. Meanwhile, a major mass conference is being planned for mid-March at St. Paul's Baptist Church where the struggle over political direction will continue.

The PLP continues to urge the Coalition to fight racist police brutality and the system which generates it and to rely on the workers and students in the struggle. More will then see that reliance on the media, the politicians and the official political process does not produce the desired change.

The fact that hundreds of PLP leaflets about this case have been distributed in the County and at Howard University, and that most Coalition members have read CHALLENGE occasionally, makes this more possible. The PLP will continue to bring more workers and students into this movement, bolstering its mass character and its potential for militant action. They can be won to joining the revolutionary struggle and PLP.

Suspended Red Teacher Should Be:
`Commended, Not Condemned'

CHICAGO, IL February 21 -- "You can pay me back the money I lost, but you can never compensate the students for the education they lost. You say you care about the students, but everything you've done in this case indicates the opposite." This was the charge made by suspended communist math teacher Carol Caref against the Chicago Board of Education at their monthly meeting.

Carol was suspended without pay over a year ago for taking a student to an anti-KKK rally. In December, a hearing officer ruled that Carol should be sent back to work and "commended, not condemned." The Board can overrule the hearing officer, and that decision was supposed to have been made at the Board's last meeting. However, her case wasn't even on the agenda. They said they would poll the Board within two weeks and then issue a decision.

In the meantime, Carol's students at Chicago Vocational School (CVS) have been without a math teacher since the end of January. After Carol was removed from school last year, they were denied a teacher for several weeks. At a recent Local School Council meeting, the principal said Carol would be coming back, but that the Board will build another case against her. They're "out to get her."

About 75 supporters attended a victory party last month celebrating the hearing officer's favorable ruling. They are fighters against the repressive, anti-student regime of Schools boss Paul Vallas. Each one will be asked to be a May Day organizer and CHALLENGE distributor. The Caref-Bernal Defense Committee also plans to visit CVS parents and students. Fighting to carry out this struggle with each and every person in this way will help give communist political leadership to the fights against racist " intervention," high stakes tests, teacher layoffs (at a time of shortages!), and fascist "zero tolerance" policies.

The Board serves its capitalist masters, running the schools like factories designed to produce patriotic, individualistic, pro-capitalist soldiers and workers. Our Party fights for just the opposite. PLP serves the working class. We believe that all students are capable of learning, and becoming organizers and leaders of the revolutionary communist movement. Build a fighting Party in the schools! March on May Day!

Students Attack Racist LA Schools

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 27 -- Over 70 black and Latino high school students organized by the Coalition for Educational Justice attended a citywide high school conference. They condemned the rotten conditions in their schools and the racist education they're receiving: broken bathrooms and a lack of toilet tissue, overcrowded classrooms, teachers not teaching, constant harassment by school officials and police, and the lack of books and computers. The discussion revealed that overcrowded classrooms lead not only to a high teacher-student ratio but also assignment of one counselor to hundreds of students.

The "Stanford 9" standardized test, was attacked as racist, culturally biased and anti-working class. An Academic Performance Index (API) is based on the test's results. Each school is awarded money for improved API scores. Most of it has gone to the wealthier schools while the poorer ones get poorer. In addition, the curriculum is being geared to passing the test at the expense of critical educational development.

A group of students and teachers distributed a PLP leaflet attacking the U.S. bombing of Iraq. They told conference participants that the same rulers responsible for racist education are bombing Iraqi workers for oil profits. They said we need to build an international struggle against them.

These students want to fight back against racist education and conditions. We need to win them to understand that U.S. rulers are in trouble. They must defend their empire against imperialist rivals worldwide. They must change the schools to serve this goal. This includes building a national curriculum that justifies U.S. imperialism; pushes cultural nationalism and restricts students to learning only English; and obscures inter-imperialist rivalry leading to war. They want to build patriotism and win youth ideologically to fight and die for U.S. imperialism. Such tests as the Stanford 9 reflects this (see box).

All students can learn the real nature of the world and how to change it. Our fight is against capitalism because capitalism will never serve the educational interests of working-class students. The bosses' schools exist to reproduce their racist system. Only by destroying capitalism with a communist revolution will education ever meet the needs of the entire working class.

We need to deepen this fight and help prepare students today for the future by fighting to learn and learning to fight. A crucial part of this process is winning many of these angry students to march on May Day. This got a good push when one of the conference-goers called PLP applauding the leaflet and wanting to get together.

Sample questions reveal how the Stanford 9 exam obscures class relations and justifies U.S. imperialism in the attempt to win youth to defend and die for it:

What factor most strongly binds people together in a culture
a. Having simiilar economic problems
b. Living in similar neighborhoods
c. Sharing a common language
d. Joining the same political party
Their answer--c. Real answer--Which class one belongs to.

Events in Bosnia-Herzogovina both in 1914 and in the 1990's indicate the continuing influence of
a. international organizations
b. economic interdependence
c. economic self-interest
d. ethnic rivalries
Their answer--d. Real answer--Inter-imperialist rivalry.

The U.S. had numerous commitments around the world during the 1960's because it was
a. the richest country in the world at that time
b. the only superpower in the world at that time
c. leading the struggle against communist aggression
d. attempting to acquire a global empire
Their answer--c. Real answer--d.

Bosses' Rivalry Heats Up Over `Zapatour'

MEXICO CITY, Feb. 27 -- The march of the Zapatistas--the so-called Zapatour--led by Subcomandante Marcos from the jungles of Chiapas, has turned the eyes of the world toward Mexico. The academics say Marcos will revive the Mexican left. But behind all this is a fierce battle of rival bosses--from Mexico the U.S., and the European Union (EU). They view the Zapatistas home state, Chiapas, as a cash paradise, with its oil and mineral resources.

One example is the group PULSAR, a huge transnational company led by Alfonso Romo, which sells genetically engineered seeds. It wants to plant thousands of acres of eucalyptus trees to produce cellulose in the forests of Chimalapas and Lancondona. Then there's the ambitious project to build the super trans-isthmus Tehuantepec highway to connect the Gulf of Mexico with the Pacific Ocean.

Today the bourgeois intellectuals want to solve the Chiapas situation by accepting some of the demands of the rebellious indigenous. They figure this can counter the influence of European non governmental organizations (NGO's) who have been organizing sympathy with the Zapatista movement by implementing assistance programs. The Fox regime must settle the Chiapas conflict in order to start constructing the trans-isthmus superhighway. It aims to negotiate directly with the rebels, offering them trinkets while continuing their poverty. The U.S. media and its NGO's are even "supporting" the Zapatistas to counter EU influence. This is all part of the U.S. bosses' strategic plan for control of all resources from the Texas border south to Panama. All the bosses use the people's needs as fodder for their own class interests.

Many progressive people see Zapatismo as a solution to at least the immediate evils of capitalism. But the fight for tiny reforms only changes the mask of the exploiters. Amending the Constitution will not change people's lives. The Constitution is an arm of the bosses who use their laws to maintain their class oppression. We need to get rid of it, not reform it. Getting the indigenous people to vote still leaves power in the bosses' hands. We have to fight for power for the working people.

That's why today more than ever we must fight for communist revolution, for a society where our class will reap the full value of all we produce.

The indigenous people have valuable experiences to draw on in building a communist society.

They still practice features of primitive communism -- mutual aid, collectivity, preserving the earth as the source of needed resources, not as a component of capitalist production, serving the people without receiving any wages for it. Their tradition doesn't conceive of imposing control on another group. They make their important decisions in general assemblies of the collective, not in back door meetings.

Workers and students shouldn't follow the U.S. or the EU imperialists. Our class can gain tremendously by the integration of more indigenous workers in the fight for communist revolution!

ORGANIZE AGAINST `RACIAL PROFILING' OF INFANTS

AT COOK COUNTY HOSPITAL

CHICAGO, Feb. 25 -- The viciously racist incident in the ER (see box) was the last straw. It moved a group of black and white doctors to meet and struggle to come up with a plan to oppose the "racial profiling" in the Cook County Hospital (CCH) newborn nursery. They want to fight the drug testing of newborns without the mother's knowledge or consent. This practice, long-standing at CCH, would not be tolerated for a second by private patients at a predominantly white suburban hospital. The doctors decided they must stand up for the working-class families using CCH. Most were emphatic that treating their patients as "suspects" is not why they became doctors.

This issue is complicated. Some feel mothers "cannot be trusted" because they may conceal their drug addiction and harm their infants. But reporting her addiction risks losing custody of her baby.

Are we serving the people or the police? How "concerned" could the bosses be about helping people with drug problems when they fail to provide enough rehab facilities for low-income patients? Why did they cut the number of social workers in the newborn unit from three to one?

Once a woman is reported for drug use in pregnancy -- especially if she is black -- her infant may be taken away. No wonder women are tempted to conceal their problem! Many experiences in the life of a black or Latin working class woman would lead her to mistrust healthcare providers. Secretly testing a baby's urine for drugs will not likely restore any trust. And it makes the doctors and nurses into cops.

As fascism develops, there is a struggle for the hearts and minds of hospital workers and professionals. The bosses want us to side with them, against our working-class patients and become auxiliary police, not healthcare providers. Despite ever-increasing numbers of armed police and threats of job loss, hospital workers must resist. Our interests and those of our patients are the same.

At a recent meeting, the new chairman of pediatrics, recently arrived from one of the country's most elite historically black medical schools, delivered the bad news: while as of January, only 591 of the hospital's 1,200 beds remained open, by next July, it will fall to 464. Unity of all CCH workers and professionals is essential to fight these layoffs.

Some feel the administration has intentionally created the atmosphere of intimidation over recent years, to ward off expected resistance to worsening conditions. However, staff members have protested each new regulation, like the lock-down of the stairwells, the requirement of multiple pass checks or the strict limits on family members allowed to visit. As the countdown proceeds, the situation deteriorates.

The rulers and their police and CIA are responsible for the drug epidemics in the large cities. Clinton's buddies get pardons, while low-level dealers and users are locked up. Oppression breeds resistance, so the rulers ratchet up the police state. Part of that process is winning workers and professionals ideologically to the side of the police, and against the workers, especially black and Latin workers. Resisting this tendency is more than being a "nice person" or a good healthcare professional. It's being an anti-fascist and an ally of the working class.

Many come to work at CCH because they believe in providing care with concern, regardless of ability to pay. The main way to serve the people is to fight to win them to become revolutionary communist organizers and members of PLP. We value and respect black working-class infants and their mothers for what they are: future fighters and leaders of the working class. As this fight unfolds, we can build a contingent of CCH patients, workers and professionals to march on May Day. Now that's the best thing we can do with our lives.

LIFE (AND DEATH) AT CCH

The baby was dead on arrival. The small lifeless form of the four-month-old was brought into the pediatric emergency room. It was soon clear that efforts to revive him would not succeed. Still the doctors and nurses continued to pump on the little chest and inject medications for forty minutes. The mother did not arrive for nearly two hours, reportedly because there was a warrant for her arrest. Indeed, she arrived in shackles. She was given some privacy to see her dead child. But while the mother sat holding her cold, gray infant, a police officer stood behind her, silently mouthing the words "piece of shit." Another cop told one of the doctors in the room, "The baby is in a better place -- he shouldn't be raised in this environment." Capitalism couldn't offer this young family a life, only hopelessness and harassment, injury and racist insults.

Daewoo Autoworkers Fight Cops Attacking Occupation of Plant

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA -- Daewoo auto worker preparing to hurl a Molotov cocktail at some of the 4,000 armed cops who stormed the Daewoo plant near here after several hundred striking workers occupied it. The strikers are protesting the layoff of over 5,000 workers, victims of capitalism's worldwide auto overproduction. "Workers of the World, Unite!" must become the battle cry of autoworkers facing similar attacks on five continents.

Letters
Workers of the World, Write!

A Streetcar Named Communism

Last month I traveled to San Francisco from another state on a trip with two co-workers. We got on the famous cable car to go to Fisherman's Wharf. I asked the conductor/brakeman, an older white worker, how many years he had to drive a bus before being eligible to work the cable car. "Ten years," he replied. He described how physically difficult the front brakeman's job was.

Then he explained how the Muni workers had finally elected an honest shop steward, John Murray, who was kicking out the sellout union misleaders. He told the group of passengers around him that Murray was a communist who really fought for better conditions for the workers. He said he hadn't understood the importance of communists before but now he has gone to the communist bookstore to buy a book about the history of his union. Then he told everyone listening how he explained to the union's young workers that kicking the crooks out of union leadership took a long time. It couldn't be done overnight and John Murray had stuck with it over the long haul.

I said, "Well, I hope you keep John Murray honest." He told all of us that wouldn't be a problem. If we had stayed on for one more stop, there might have been a group discussion of workers' revolution right on the cable car.

San Francisco visitor

Jewish-Palestinian Unity Indicts Israeli Fascists

The renewed outbreak of fighting in Israel-Palestine over the last five months has inspired a growth in numbers and activity of anti-nationalist Jews in the U.S. and elsewhere, primarily among young people, but including many others. Several PLP'ers have been involved in these actions.

A number of new organizations have emerged here, opposing the actions of the Israeli ruling class. The most militant is Jews Against The Occupation (JATO). It is composed mostly of young people, many of whom took part in the anti-police brutality demonstrations around the Diallo murder in which the group Jews For Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) participated.

JATO's program calls for complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from all territory occupied after the 1967 Israeli-Arab war and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to areas from which they've been expelled since 1948, in both Israel and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza. This is a specifically anti-nationalist demand; carrying it out would dramatically change the demographics of the entire Israel-Palestine region.

JATO has organized or participated in actions against the Israeli ruling class, including picketing the Israeli Consulate; demonstrating against an Israeli Cabinet member appearing at a New York YM-YWHA; entering, and demonstrating against the Israel Discount Bank in New York (where "blood money" was tossed inside the bank); and participating in an informational picket line at Zabars, a large UpperWest Side delicatessen patronized by many Jewish people.

In some of these actions JATO worked together with Not In Our Name, another youth organization, and with Jews For Peace Through Justice, primarily older women who are also members of JFREJ. JATO has also linked up with a group of young people of predominantly Palestinian ethnicity called Al-Awda.

The anti-nationalist, anti-occupation movement is growing in other areas as well. A group named Jews Against the Occupation is active in England. In Montreal, The Jewish Alliance Against the Occupation and a Palestinian and Jewish Unity group hold demonstrations every Friday at noon outside the Israeli Consulate there.

Many people in this growing movement hold anti-imperialist views and recognize and oppose the role of the U.S. ruling class in developing Israel as an anchor for its push to control Middle East oil. They should be given CHALLENGE and urged to march on May Day. They need to be won to the view that there will be no permanent peace in the region until a united Arab-Jewish working class carries out a communist revolution and workers power is in control.

New York comrade

ESL Students Meet The CHALLENGE

Our PLP workers' club has a class in dialectical materialism. Recently we began studying the first law of dialectics, the unity and conflict of opposites. Out of that we discussed the contradictions holding us back from distributing more CHALLENGES. Then we read a CHALLENGE article describing healthcare cutbacks at a Brooklyn hospital. We looked for the contradictions between the workers and bosses in that story.

I said I'd been holding back from distributing more CHALLENGES in my ESL (English as a Second Language) class. One of those students, also in the dialectics class, noticed that. She offered to help distribute more papers there.

My union-sponsored ESL class is for home attendants. I've been selecting articles in each issue while my student distributes the paper. We discuss them, like the story in the last issue about the LA garment workers who stood up to the bosses to stop the layoff of a co-worker. It was inspiring. Most of my students had been factory workers until their plants closed or moved. They then became home attendants.

I also picked out the story from Ecuador and the one about Boeing workers supporting strikers in Colombia. My students eagerly marked down the pages of these stories. I plan to use the article on the drugging of children in the last issue in a class project called Problem-Based Learning. The class is small, but so far almost all the students have begun reading CHALLENGE.

In March I'm having a May Day dinner for my students. Usually many march with their families. Reading the paper will show the meaning of May Day and help motivate them.

What are other comrades' experiences with CHALLENGE? Do we realize what a good paper we have, how much it means to workers and how it can help change their perspectives and lives? How did LA garment workers receive the excellent article about their struggle? I bet it would enable us to introduce CHALLENGE to many more garment workers, janitors, their families and others as well as to their children who go to schools where our comrade teachers work.

A PLP member

`Let the red fire in our bellies burn hot . . . `

I have been enjoying CHALLENGE for a year or so and pass them on to others when I've finished them.

The Johnstown, PA police department's racism is overtly and shamelessly displayed by its fascist enforcers. According to the local media, three cops are being investigated for allegedly accosting a black tourist, Sherman Fauntleroy, two weeks ago as he pulled into a Wendy's restaurant on Broad Street for lunch. The cops stopped him without cause, searched his car and "reviewed" his driver's license, registration and other information without charging him. He then drove back to the Holiday Inn where he was staying with his wife, Diane (a National Drug Intelligence Center employee who was in the city on business at the agency's Johnstown offices).

Shortly thereafter, another cop confronted Mr. Fauntleroy as he walked from the Holiday Inn to a nearby store. According to Johnstown NAACP president Clea Hollis, all stops made by the police are to be documented and the "race" of the person(s) stopped recorded. This policy was adopted because of racial profiling occurring for more than a year in the area. Hollis contends that Police Chief Huntly should also be held accountable for his officers' behavior.

City councilman Ron Stevens said, "(The officers) know what the policy is. It's their problem. Not the chief's...not the city's." No, it's everyone's problem as long as capitalism continues to foster ignorance and racism.

Recently the Moxham section of Johnstown was leafleted with racist Klan literature. Shortly afterwards a letter appeared from a Lisa Penrod defending the leaflet as "free speech." Penrod is a local Klan sympathizer living in nearby Somerset County. A year ago she offered her farm for the Klan to hold a cross-burning.

Especially troubling is the fact that both black and white youth in this area are turning to drugs and violence. Since our children are our future, I don't like what I see in the crystal ball for Johnstown, this country or the world.

But I do hope and dream. I dream of a society where people are not stopped by the police for Driving While Black. I dream of a large bonfire using white sheets for fuel, (topped with a confederate flag for good measure). And I dream of a society where our children understand and practice communist principles.

As people become more oppressed, harassed and poorer, the opportunity to educate them about communism grows. Let the fire in our bellies burn hot and let our actions reflect what is true and honorable.

Red Hot

`War On Drugs' is War On Workers

The CHALLENGE article (2/28) on U.S. bosses' heavy involvement in drug trafficking -- in one way or another -- for several decades is very useful. The "war on drugs" is a racist and imperialist war on workers overseas and in the U.S. In one week in New York City's mostly black and Latin West Harlem and Washington Heights neighborhoods, three separate incidents show the real nature of this war.

First, several city, state and federal agencies (including the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the NYPD and the National Guard) raided several bodegas (grocery stores) in Washington Heights, "looking for drugs." The bodegas apparently were being used by local drug dealers. In the past, there have been many raids in that community, but I don't remember such an onslaught of agencies. It seems like a preview of the proposals by the bipartisan Hart-Rudman Commission to impose a wider police state in the U.S. (see CHALLENGE editorial, Feb. 28).

Then, a few days after that raid, Mayor Giuliani and all his top aides held a "town meeting" in a local West Harlem school. Many neighborhood people who attended demanded more action against the local drug dealers, refuting the cops' and Mayor's claims that they've "cleaned the streets" of these vermin. Unfortunately, many honest people see more cops and more arrests as the only solution to this problem. There are already two million in jail in the U.S., two-thirds of them for non-violent crimes (usually involving drugs). Drugs are big business. A new UN report stated that the use of new drugs like ecstasy and old ones like marihuana are growing, particularly among U.S. youth (the highest consumers of these drugs worldwide). Some people at the meeting did demand better and increased treatment for drug users as the solution.

Finally, that same week a racist leaflet appeared in English in certain sections of Washington Heights -- where the population is more affluent and white -- labeling all Dominican residents of the area as drug-dealers. This leaflet reflects the racist nature of the war on drugs. Indeed, while there are many young Dominican workers who sell drugs there, 99.99% of all Dominican residents of Washington Heights are hard-working people trying to make ends meets.

When I grew up in the Dominican Republic in the '50s and early '60s, drugs were unknown (alcohol has always been the big problem there, particularly among males). When I arrived in New York City in 1962, drugs were still unknown among my generation of Dominican immigrants. But in 1965 U.S. bosses invaded the Dominican Republic, intervening to back a right-wing junta deposed by a popular rebellion. They sent as many troops there (38,000) as there were in Vietnam at that time. It was only then that drugs became popular in the inner cities all over the country. Why? Because during that period millions were protesting the war in Vietnam and racism in the U.S. Rebellions were erupting against racist cops in all major cities.

That was why the CHALLENGE article on drugs was on the mark in explaining that the bosses and their cops, CIA, etc. began dumping drugs into the inner cities to dull the drive for rebellion. Knowledge is indeed subversive if it is used to fight the real drug dealers.

Red Immigrant

CHALLENGE SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
War Crimes of U.S. Imperialism
`Death is our business, and business is good...'

Progressive Labor Party has often described the lords of the U.S. ruling class -- both in and out of official government positions -- as war criminals "worse than Hitler." Perhaps some think this is simply exaggeration and rhetoric. But they may actually be underestimations.

The term "U.S. ruling class" is a broad term referring to the biggest capitalists who own the main industries and banks, plus their servants in government, like presidents, generals, leading underlings and the governors and mayors of the larger states and cities. Over the past 35 years, one of the leading lights of this class has been Henry Kissinger, the Rockefellers' chief foreign policy advisor and an appointee/advisor of numerous presidents. If anyone deserves to be strung up by the international working class for crimes against our class, it is Henry the Monster.

Kissinger has been a designer and director of policies that have directly killed millions of people in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Chile, the Middle East, South Africa, Angola and Central America. He was also the protector of the murderous Shah of Iran. While destruction of this entire ruling class by communist revolution is a necessary goal, many individuals must be held most accountable for the oppression and deaths of tens of millions of workers. Few can top Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger's Hitlerian crimes against the working class speak volumes. This article is drawn mainly from "The Case Against Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens in the February 2001 HARPER'S magazine. Here we will deal only with his genocidal actions in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Kissinger's "career" took off during the 1968 Paris negotiations to end the war in Vietnam. This war involved five U.S. presidents -- Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford. After the Viet Minh's People's War defeated the French colonialists, U.S. rulers decided to "save Vietnam from communism" (more accurately, for imperialist exploitation). They, too, were run aground by the organized might of the workers and peasants. Unfortunately the Vietnamese leadership was abandoning the goal of a workers' dictatorship over the bosses and began negotiating with the losing U.S. invaders. This has led to the welcoming of U.S. corporations and presidents back to Vietnam, ushering in capitalism in the name of "socialism."

In the fall of 1968, the Johnson Administration was about to end the massive bombing of north Vietnam and sign a peace deal with the Vietnamese. This -- given the ever-growing opposition to the war in the U.S. -- would have probably won the '68 election for Humphrey and the Democrats. Kissinger (a trusted "advisor" of that Administration) leaked this information to the Nixon-for-President campaign. Nixon then told the south Vietnamese, puppets of the U.S. (and necessary participants in a deal), that if they pulled out of the negotiations they would get a better deal from the Republicans, assuming that he (Nixon) would then win the Presidency.

On October 31st, Johnson ordered a halt to the bombing. Two days later the south Vietnamese fascists fulfilled Kissinger's double-cross and pulled out of the peace talks, virtually ending them. The result? Nixon beat Humphrey -- barely. His first appointee was none other than Kissinger as National Security Advisor. (Had Humphrey won, Kissinger was a certainty for a high position in his Administration as well since he had written in the Rockefeller House organ Foreign Affairs that he fully agreed with the Johnson Administration Vietnam policy.)

But the larger result was that the war was to continue for another four years, killing 600,000 more Vietnamese soldiers, at least two to three million more Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian civilians and 20,000 more U.S. GI's. This didn't include the effects of the massive sprayings of defoliants and pesticides, effects which continue to this day. Moreover, the 1973 settlement was virtually the same as the one agreed upon in 1968.

Kissinger was the architect of these barbarous four years, all of which promoted him from a "mediocre academic to an international potentate." In just those "extra" four years of war, there was such massive "carpet bombing" of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia -- more than twice the tonnage dropped during the ENTIRE World War II -- that Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton exclaimed, "We seem to be proceeding on the assumption that the way to eradicate the Vietcong is to destroy all the village structures, defoliate all the jungles and cover the entire surface of South Vietnam with asphalt."

Kissinger's first operation, "Speedy Express," designed under Johnson/Humphrey and carried forward under Nixon, was the "pacification" of the province of Kien Hoa in the Mekong Delta, to take political control away from the National Liberation Front. Knowing full well that there were no north Vietnamese troops in the area, 8,000 infantrymen and 3,381 tactical air strikes murdered 11,000 civilians in pursuit of "pacification."

Newsweek Saigon bureau chief Kevin Buckley was told by a U.S. official (June 19, 1972) that, "The...inflicting [of] civilian casualties...was worse than My Lai....sanctioned by the command's insistence on high body-counts...."

"There were 5,000 people in our village before 1969, but there were none in 1970. The Americans destroyed every house with artillery, air strikes, or by burning them down with cigarette lighters....Many children [were] killed by concussion from the bombs which their small bodies could not withstand, even if they were hiding underground."

General Creighton Abrams announced Operation Speedy Express a huge success. Kissinger's memoirs reveal that he micromanaged the war in such detail that nothing like this could take place without his knowledge or permission. It is no wonder that the slogan painted on one helicopter's quarters read, "Death is our business and business is good."

Such were some of the results of Kissinger's four extra years of genocidal war.

Still another atrocity carried out under Kissinger's direction was the massive bombing and then invasion of Laos and Cambodia. The initial bombing was performed secretly, knowing the effect on civilians. The revolting code names were: "Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, Dinner and Dessert." From March 1969 to May 1970, 3,630 such raids were flown over Cambodia. The official death toll from bombing was 350,000 civilians in Laos and 600,000 in Cambodia (not the highest estimates). "In addition, the widespread use of toxic chemical defoliants created a massive health crisis that fell most heavily on children, nursing mothers, the aged and the already infirm. That crisis persists to this day." (HARPERS, 2/01)

Kissinger's reaction to this slaughter appeared in Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman's "Diaries" for March 17, 1969:

Historic day. K[issinger]'s "Operation Breakfast" a great success. He came beaming in with report, very productive.

(Then, on April 22, 1970, Haldeman reports that Nixon, following Kissinger to a National Security Council meeting on Cambodia) "Turned back to me with a big smile and said `K[issinger]'s really having fun today, he's playing Bismarck."

Kissinger's joy over the murder of at least a million innocent people recalls Adolph Hitler's dancing a jig in the streets of Paris after the fall of France in World War II. Kissinger was not just issuing general directives. According to Colonel Sitton, by late 1969 his office was regularly being overruled in target selection: "Not only was Henry carefully screening the raids, he was reading the raw intelligence" and fiddling with the mission patterns and bombing runs.

Kissinger's manipulation of the war and the increasing genocide is reflected in another conversation recounted by Haldeman that occurred on December 15, 1970. Nixon had told both of them that he had this big "peace plan" set for the following year. Haldeman reports Kissinger opposed it. "He thinks that any pullout next year would be a serious mistake because the adverse reaction to it could set in well before the '72 elections. He favors a continued winding down and then a pullout right at the fall of '72 so that if any bad results follow they will be too late to affect the election." So the war went on as Kissinger planned.

These millions of deaths of workers and peasants could easily be defined by working-class historians as "Kissinger's Holocaust." While the five presidents, their underlings like McNamara, the heads of the CIA, the generals and admirals, and their real bosses -- the Rockefellers and their ilk -- are all as guilty of this mass murder as Kissinger, no capitalist court or "war crimes tribunal" will ever try them. Only a successful communist revolution will mete out working-class justice, like the communist-led Italian partisans "sentencing" of fascist dictator Mussolini -- death by immediate hanging.

Icelanders Resist Gene Pirates' Looting 0f Health Records

Human genes are now a commodity. The "rough draft" of the human genome was published this month, amid squabbles between the publicly-funded genome project and Celera, a private company. Behind these squabbles is big money. Some 100 biotech companies are competing for billions in investments toward the discovery of new drugs, based on gene information. Investors are moving from the generic information provided by "the" human genome to the genetics of human differences. A recent Iceland scandal gives us a glimpse of the future as genomes go on sale.

In December 1998, Iceland's Parliament passed a bill which gives a single, Delaware-based start-up company exclusive rights to Iceland's medical database and genetic profiles. Despite international outcry, at one point the bill was supposedly favored by a majority of adult Icelanders.

As people realized the scary implications, protest grew, led by the new organization Mannvernd ("Human Protection"). By now hundreds of Icelandic physicians are defying the new law and boycotting the registry, and over 10% of adults have opted out of the program. As the Icelandic model is being copied in other countries, notably Estonia, it bears close watching.

The database law was the brainchild of Kari Stefannson, Icelandic-born Harvard neurologist. Claiming that Iceland's genepool was a unique resource, Stefansson founded deCODE in 1996, with $12 million in venture capital, and began operating in Iceland. In 1998, deCODE signed a $200 million deal with Swiss-based pharmaceutical giant Hoffman La Roche.

The selling point was: common diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancer and arthritis have both a genetic component and an environmental one. Knowing the genes involved helps drug companies design better, more profitable drugs. But it's difficult to discover disease-influencing genes in typical human populations. Alzheimers, for instance, is influenced by variants (alleles) of many different genes in different families.

According to deCODE, the small Icelandic population (270,000) is less genetically diverse than most. Iceland was settled in the ninth century by a small number of Viking pirates and remained relatively isolated until recently. It suffered population bottlenecks when many people died of epidemics, volcanic eruptions and famine. Surviving families would be expected to carry only a few kinds of Alzheimer's-influencing alleles, making these genes easier to hunt.

Other advantages for studying Icelanders were a national health care system and detailed genealogies (family records), some hundreds of years old. deCODE would establish a centralized database linking the entire country's medical records to individual genetic information, including tissue samples, and to family records. In exchange for paying $100 million for the database, deCODE gets a monopoly license to sell information to customers and other big biotech companies. Icelanders have been promised a few biotech jobs and free research-based drugs, if these ever materialize.

It's a sweetheart deal for deCODE, Roche and a few Icelandic bosses, but most Icelanders will gain nothing and have much to lose in privacy. Although identities are encoded, security experts say that it would be child's play to break the code in a small country where "born on April 8, 1970, has two great-uncles and four children" might be a unique ID. That would make everyone's medical records--complete with alcohol abuse, psychiatric history or genetic risk factors--open to snooping. "A nation of Trumans," wrote one critic, referring to the movie "The Truman Show," in which a man's life is watched by a TV audience of millions.

In contrast to the standard of "informed consent" to human research, deCODE has invented "presumed consent," meaning that a person's records are added to the database unless he or she opts out. Outrage grew with the scandalous revelation that Parliament members had received a hefty bribe from deCODE just before voting. Many Icelanders resent the racist claim that they are "pure-bred" or carry "superior" Nordic genes. Icelandic geneticists point out that Vikings brought Irish slaves with them from Ireland. Over half of Iceland's relatively diverse genepool is probably of Celtic origin.

deCODE had counted on Iceland's pro-science public to be swept off their feet by high-tech promises. Like Nazi "race hygiene," the new science of genomics offered unprecedented social power to professionals. This is what 21st century fascism will look like--slick, high-tech and benevolent. Now it has encountered unexpected roadblocks, doctors and patients who inspiringly refuse to cooperate.

As one Icelander wrote, "On the eve of World War II, Adolf Hitler's emissary in Iceland, Werner Gerlach, [was]...sorely disappointed at not finding the Fuhrer's master race in our country, where the Nazis imagined it had been preserved in isolation for centuries. No such luck. What he encountered was a tribe of tall, gray-eyed, auburn-haired and red-bearded storytellers, insolently lacking in respect for Teutonic self-delusions of grandeur."

Opposing `Big Brother'
"Dear Sigmundur,
It is my pleasant duty to announce that I shall not send information about patients to the Health Sector Database operating according to Act nr. 139/1998, except with a written request of the patient....
Best regards, Haraldur Briem, Chief of Infectious Disease"

 

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Nationalism Fuels Auto Wars

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a name="Red-Led Working Class Must Fight U.S.Rulers’ Blueprint for Fascism">">"ed-Led Working Class Must Fight U.S.Rulers’ Blueprint for Fascism

CHALLENGE has referred frequently in recent months to a ruling-class blueprint for the fascist reorganization of U.S. society, devised by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (also called the Hart-Rudman Commission). The third and final phase of this plan was published on January 31. It contains long-range strategic recommendations for maintaining U.S. imperialism’s world supremacy. This Commission contains high-ranking Republicans and Democrats. All major figures among the big bosses support its findings.

The report anticipates mass bloodshed on U.S. soil from "terrorist" attacks and calls for ruthless measures to prevent or counter them. The Commission says the rulers must prepare to launch ever-widening wars against rivals. It makes a series of suggestions for centralizing the state apparatus under one command and for militarizing society as a whole.

Workers must make a balanced, accurate assessment of this ruling-class plan. On the one hand, our class enemy has great tactical advantages and strengths, as well as a proven willingness to spill enormous amounts of working-class blood in defense of its profit interests. The rulers can probably carry out many aspects of the Hart-Rudman proposals. On the other hand they have a crucial weakness—they can no longer rule in the old way but must move increasingly to fascism to enforce their power. The growth of PLP and the spread of mass communist consciousness among workers and others can turn all the rulers’ power into its opposite. Fascism and war are inevitable. U.S. imperialism’s ability to rule the world forever is not. The crucial question remains: what will PLP do to grow under any and all circumstances?

The Commission’s key recommendations:

•Creating a National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) to supervise all "homeland security" under one government umbrella;

•Transferring the Customs Service, the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard to NHSA;

•Converting the National Guard into a European-style internal security force;

•Putting under one roof the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Energy and Transportation, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency;

•Pushing math and science education for military purposes and target historically black colleges and universities as sources of recruitment;

Militarizing the economy by making the Secretary of the Treasury a member of the National Security Council;

Having every member of Congress participate in war games at least once every two years;

Streamlining the nomination process for Cabinet and other high-ranking posts to prevent partisan bickering.

This is obviously a very broad design to force discipline within the ruling class and support for the Eastern Establishment agenda of maintaining U.S. world domination. It’s also a scheme for terrorizing workers on the home front and stifling the inevitable class struggles sure to erupt as workers eventually rebel against economic oppression, racism and the horrors of bosses’ profit wars (see CHALLENGE, 2/14). As such, both "liberals" and "conservatives" have applauded the Commission’s recommendations. Democrat Lee Hamilton of Indiana, a Commissioner, urged Congress to support it. A key Bush ally, Texas Republican Rep. Mac Thornberry, gushed: "I think every conclusion is exactly right, and I think every recommendation that they’ve made needs to happen" ("Defense News," 1/15).

Thornberry is a revealing case. In his support of Bush vs. Gore, he was as partisan as they come. But his deep loyalty lies with U.S. imperialism. In 1999, he attended a national security conference sponsored by the Tufts University Fletcher School. His classmates included Hart-Rudman Commission co-chair Republican Warren Rudman, Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, and liberal Republican William Cohen, Clinton’s last defense secretary.

The conference’s final report reflects the rulers’ desperate worry that the U.S. working class will not willingly die to keep U.S. imperialism in the driver’s seat: "The…conflicting requirements of U.S. global strategy and the persistence of a strategic culture that contains minimal tolerance for casualties will produce a growing dilemma for the United States as a twenty-first century super-power. It will therefore be especially important for policy-makers to muster broad public support for U.S. national security policy."

In other words, the "Vietnam Syndrome" continues to plague the rulers. In 1991, Bush, Sr. blinked at the prospect of taking mass casualties on the road to Baghdad and left Saddam Hussein in power rather than risk them. In 1993, Clinton left Somalia with his tail between his legs after a handful of U.S. troops had died there. In 1999, fear of the political reaction to ground casualties led Clinton to announce at the very beginning that the U.S./NATO slaughter for oil pipelines in the former Yugoslavia would be limited to an air war.

Mustering "broad public support" for the "sacrifice [of] blood and treasure" (as the Commission’s Phase I report puts it) that will be required to defend U.S. imperialism in the next 25 years is a very tall order. The bosses may well find a way to discipline their own ranks. Many of the Commission’s recommendations for reorganizing state power are likely to be adopted in one form or another. But winning the working class is another matter altogether.

As conditions sharpen, the gap between the rulers’ need for willing cannon-fodder and the workers’ desire for an alternative to war and fascism can only increase. Our Party’s main job, now and for the foreseeable future, is to widen that gap and build the PLP in the process. Millions of young workers remain open to communism. We must find the ways to lead them to it.

a name="U.S. Rulers: Terror R’ Us">">".S. Rulers: Terror R’ Us

All three phases of the Hart-Rudman Commission report predict large loss of human life on U.S. soil from various terrorist attacks. Aside from the hypocrisy involved, any time the biggest terrorists in world history point the finger at someone else’s atrocities, this particular warning almost looks like a prayer that such attacks will happen. The rulers openly worry that they need to motivate workers inside and outside the military. Phase I of Hart-Rudman longs for a "Pearl Harbor" type of event to unite the country. Don’t put it past the bosses to orchestrate such an attack themselves. They’ve done it before, in Vietnam (in lying that the north Vietnamese attacked a U.S. warship in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964) and in Cuba (the Hearst-orchestrated sinking of the battleship Maine in 1898). And the stage is being set to identify a villain. Leading candidates are Saddam Hussein, whom the U.S. press calls a threat to the entire world, and Osama bin Laden, who’s been portrayed as worse than Hitler and Saddam combined. If terrorist threats didn’t exist, the bosses would have to invent them. The crudeness with which they’re going about it reflects their deep strategic weakness.

Exxon Aims for Iraqi Oil

The Feb. 14th CHALLENGE described the failure of U.S. imperialism’s Iraq policy. The NEW YORK TIMES (2/11 editorial) admits this failure and orders the Bush Adminisration to reverse it: "Thwarting…Hussein’s ambition to rebuild his military forces must remain the central goal of American policy." But this order is more easily given than carried out. As we’ve often reported, U.S. bosses’ French and Russian rivals have huge contracts for Iraqi oil. Sanctions don’t work when they aren’t unanimously enforced. All they do is kill lots of workers and children. U.S. imperialism is doing this daily without winning its goals, which include preventing Iraqi oil from competing with Exxon-Mobil. So right now the best Bush and his Secy. of State Powell can do is tread water while continuing to murder Iraqi kids.

Ground war remains the only strategic option for controlling Iraqi energy reserves. This means taking a huge risk with a U.S. military showing no sign of wanting an all-out fight for Exxon’s oily wealth. However, it’s a risk the rulers will ultimately have to take. The leadership given by PLP in the coming period can greatly influence how this contradiction plays out when ground war for Persian Gulf oil actually starts.

Ecuador: Uprising Against 500 Years of Racism

QUITO, ECUADOR, Feb. 13 — This country is the most recent clear example that capitalism is a failure for the masses and that the only way out of this hell is to fight for communism.

A Century’s Loss of Social Gains in One Year

According to UNICEF (UN agency for children), in the last year Ecuador has fallen back a century in social progress. Over one million people have emigrated in the last few years, fleeing from the misery caused by the profit system and its crooked politicians (who have stolen the oil wealth produced by workers here). Inflation is the highest on the continent. Racism against the indigenous population is rampant. And now the city of Manta is the site of a U.S. air base used to help the fascist army of neighboring Colombia in its war against the guerrillas there.

But workers are fighting back. Under the slogan of, "We’ve had enough with 500 years of slavery and racism," tens of thousands of indigenous people marched from their communities to Quito. Thousands seized highways and other areas. For several weeks they confronted the cops and the army.

Several protesters were slain in the Napo region. Angry demonstrators retaliated by burning down the local airport control tower to prevent more soldiers from reaching the region. This militant mass reaction forced the soldiers to withdraw to their bases.

This new mass movement offer great lessons to all those wanting to fight capitalism. Firstly, the masses conpletely isolated the traditional union hacks, taking the movement out of their control. The hacks tried to cover their faces by calling for a general strike a week after the mass uprising began. But their past treacheries and accommodations with the local bosses and with the imperialists’ International Monetary Fund are not being forgotten by the most militant workers and their allies.

Secondly, the reformist leadership of the indigenous people has also exposed itself, though it still controls much of the movement. Rank-and-file workers and youth took militant actions in spite of the leadership’s pacifism. When the angry indigenous workers came to take over Quito, the traitorous leadership did its job by holding the demonstrators in the Salesian University, instead of sending them to the working-class neighborhoods. They feared a full-blown insurrection. Realizing this, the leaders and the government reached a deal, offering the angry masses some crumbs.

But this won’t solve any basic problems. The contradictions are bound to sharpen: "President Noboa signed an agreement …with the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), ending a two-week national uprising by thousands of poor Indians…While Foreign Minister Heinz Moeller said the Noboa government barely had averted a civil war, implementing necessary economic reforms in the country will prove more difficult." (Stratfor.com, 2/12)

PLP Spreads Its Communist Politics

The PLP members in Quito participated in this uprising, bringing our communist ideas with hundreds of flyers and DESAFIO-CHALLENGES. Workers applauded our activities raising food and medicine for the indigenous workers entering Quito. We also participated in militant confrontations of indigenous women fighting the tear-gassing cops. Our comrades steeled themselves in these struggles, inspiring us even more to build our movement. We’ve won new friends for our Party, particularly in the mass organizations we’ve joined.

This is the path to growing and overcoming our weaknesses and showing that a communist society, which will destroy all bosses and their racism, is the only solution for all workers and their allies.

Racism and the Indigenous Population

Racism and capitalism are birds of a feather worldwide. In Ecuador, nearly half the population is indigenous, living mostly in rural areas. They lack most basic services. Over 45% lack running water and 48% lack draining systems. The infant mortality rate is at 35% in some areas.

Until recently large landowners treated indigenous people like slaves. No wonder, these workers are so angry and militant and are leading the class struggle here.

The old communist movement played an important role in the past organizing among the indigenous people. The movement’s first militant mass leaders were communists. We in PLP will do our best to build on this tradition while trying to avoid past errors. The future of the entire working class depends on that.

a name="Bogotá and Boeing: ‘Humanitarian’ Imperialism Won’t Work"></a>B"gotá and Boeing: ‘Humanitarian’ Imperialism Won’t Work

SEATTLE, WA., Feb. 12—Boeing workers heard a tale of two cities at last week’s union meeting. The first was of Bogotá, Colombia and the striking Bavaria workers. Many sat transfixed as we described the death squad killings of union leaders. Plan Colombia—U.S. imperialism’s billion-dollar package in support of the Colombian military, the de facto protector of these very same death squads—was discussed for the first time at a Boeing union meeting.

The second city was Tukwila, Washington, the home of Boeing’s corporate headquarters. Effective January 21, Thomas R. Pickering, former U.S. Undersecretary for Political Affairs, joined the company’s Executive Council. We briefly described Pickering’s history: illegal gun-running to the Nicaraguan Contras; the cover-up of the killing of U.S. nuns by the fascist El Salvadoran regime; the murder of millions of Iraqis through sanctions; the off-loading of tooling work to cheaper Russian factories; his role as a chief architect of Plan Colombia. We concluded by asking our union brothers and sisters where we should stand: with our boss Pickering or with the Bavaria workers striking for a little job security?

The meeting answered by authorizing rank-and-file workers to draft a union solidarity letter, to be sent to the Bavaria strikers.(See letter on right)

Castles Made Of Sand Slip Into The Sea…Eventually

Some in the leadership signaled for the local president to cut short this discussion, but the top leadership didn’t want to bring the issue to a head right now. Today even the AFL-CIO is looking for a way to put a humanitarian face on U.S. imperialism. In fact, it sponsored a trade unionist from Colombia recently at the local Labor Temple, speaking against Plan Colombia.

During the Cold War, U.S. bosses’ main worry in Latin America was USSR-backed guerrilla movements whose goal was national liberation. Today, the Social Democracy of the European Union (EU) represents the bigger threat. While the U.S. is spending more than a billion arming the fascist Colombian military and eradicating the crops of peasants, the EU is providing $800 million worth of roads, schools, infrastructure and agricultural aid. Exactly who do you suppose is winning the hearts and minds of workers in Colombia with programs like these? Of course, we should not be fooled: both U.S. and EU imperialism will ultimately prove deadly to millions of our co-workers.

Even winning U. S. workers—and especially largely black and Latin soldiers—to support U.S. imperialism is a problem for the bosses without a better humanitarian cover. U.S. rulers have the task of building a nationalist movement in support of U.S. imperialism that has the appearance of supporting workers around the world — a huge contradiction! Hence, the hesitancy of the union leadership at last week’s meeting, even though a junior partner of U.S. imperialism.

Strategically, the U.S. bosses and their labor lieutenants are in a weak position because of all the contradictions in building an imperialist movement that appears to have the interests of workers at heart. This opens up an opportunity for our Party to build a movement that really serves the working class. Job insecurity is caused by worldwide capitalism and its recurring crisis of overproduction. By exposing the labor lieutenants’ "Castles Made of Sand" and pointing the finger at the real enemy — capitalism —we can lay the groundwork for building a bigger revolutionary movement.

Boeing Workers Back Bavaria Strikers

We Boeing workers send you greetings of solidarity and support.

We remember your letter of international support for our strike against Boeing in 1995.

International solidarity among workers is even more important today. Our CEO, Phil Condit, recently told his capitalist buddies at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that he plans to pit worker against worker all around the world, to find the best way to exploit us. Thomas Pickering, the infamous architect of Plan Colombia at the U. S. State Department, has recently been appointed to Boeing’s Executive Council. Faced with enemies like this, we workers must forge strong international unity.

Our jobs are never secure under this system. Your demand to abolish short-term renewable contracts is aimed at this abuse. Here, too, Boeing threatens our jobs under a plan of "asset reduction."

All these huge conglomerates like Boeing and the Santo Domingo group offer workers are layoffs, racism, nationalism and war. Your strike offers us an opportunity to build the international solidarity the working class needs to answer these bosses. Your struggle is our struggle. Please let us know any way we can help.

In Struggle, Boeing Workers

[Editor’s note: Boeing workers are collecting donations on the shop floor to send to the Bavaria strikers.]

a name="Bethlehem, American, LTV… Steel Bosses’ Profit Squeeze Kills!"></">Be"hlehem, American, LTV… Steel Bosses’ Profit Squeeze Kills!

GARY, IN February 13 — Dan Kado and Mike Davis were killed in an explosion at the Bethlehem Steel Burns Harbor plant. Dan was a white worker with 32 years seniority, about to retire this spring. Mike was a black worker and the son of a Bethlehem worker. On February 2, a fireball engulfed the two workers and seriously injured Jose Claudio during repairs to a coke gas line at the 160-inch plate mill. It was the second explosion in two weeks. Maybe this is what steel union staff rep. Tom Conway meant when he said the current steel crisis "is going to be a bloodbath" for steelworkers.

Since January, LTV filed for bankruptcy, American Steel announced it’s closing, and Bethlehem incinerated two workers. Bethlehem president and CEO Duane Dunham says, "the worldwide oversupply of steel…[requires] bold actions…to compete." He’s "committed to…any and all…actions…for [the] stockholders" (HAMMOND TIMES, 2/6). Bethlehem lost over $300 million the last two years. Its stock dropped by two-thirds. To keep from going under, Bethlehem threw health and safety overboard, murdering Kado and Davis.

A hole used to be punched in the coke gas lines to purge them of dangerous gas before opening and cleaning them. None of this was done so the moment the line was opened, gas escaped forming an arc from the line to a nearby space heater. It ignited at the heater and the flame formed an arc back to the line and exploded.

The Burns Harbor "Safety Team" of 200 workers and 10 safety coordinators has been gutted over the past two years. Bethlehem made a decision to cut safety. The USWA decided to let them. The workers decided to not fight back. This leads to death. One surviving worker said, "We just let it slide. We tried to hide. I tried to hide. And this is what happens."

Meanwhile, American Steel will throw 250 workers on the street this spring. The bosses are closing the Harbor Works foundry and moving the work to Monroe, North Carolina, where workers make $9.00/hour (about half the East Chicago wage). LTV could close in six months, possibly more profitable than selling it because reducing capacity (forcing layoffs) means higher prices.

The bosses are making more steel than they can sell at a profit, causing a general crisis of overproduction Competing capitalists are in a life-and-death fight for cheap labor, resources, and markets. They then cut excess capacity. The industry must consolidate. Jobs must be destroyed.

Workers Of The World, Unite!

Our contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. These union leaders then "Stand Up for Steel," not for the workers. Pushing very dangerous nationalism, they want us to stand up for the steel bosses and the lying slogan, "fight imports." Meanwhile, USX is shifting 25% of its production capacity to a giant mill in Slovakia, where workers make $2.00/hour!

Steelworkers in Latin America, Europe, Russia and Asia live on poverty wages and face mass unemployment. We should strike across all borders, build international solidarity and point the way forward for all workers. This will never happen with the pro-capitalist union leaders, who spread the bosses’ nationalism, acting as their lieutenants in the working class.

Today the crisis of overproduction destroys the mills. Eventually it will lead to war that destroys the workers. By fighting back, we can build a fighting, revolutionary PLP, expand the circulation of CHALLENGE and bring more steelworkers and their families to May Day. That’s how we can turn a bad thing into its opposite.

British Steelworker Rebellion Brewing Over Huge Job Cuts

GREAT BRITAIN, February 4 — "This is just the beginning," declared Tony McCarthy, a Corus hot mill worker at Llanwern, which is losing 1,340 jobs. "In two years time the remainder of the plant will be closed," he continued. "People feel very angry. There is a feeling of aggression at the plant, and aggression is very difficult to manage." McCarthy said workers feel betrayed because they’ve delivered huge productivity improvements. His son Craig, who’s worked at the mill for nine years, added, "I don’t know about violence, but if they press ahead there will be walkouts." (The OBSERVER, 2/4)

Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel giant, announced last week it would cut 6,050 jobs. Corus was formed in 1999 when British Steel merged with Dutch steelmaker Hoogovens.

Rising workers’ anger threatens to become open confrontation at plants across Britain. The Iron and Steel Trades Confederation leadership predicts cuts at plants in Wales and the North East will lead to further closures over the next two years. They’re working on a "rescue package" to cut wages (some "rescue"!) to keep plants open.

These cuts are occurring along with auto plant closings here, and steel cutbacks worldwide. Capitalism is a global monster, where more than one billion live on $1 a day and every worker faces a future of instability, terror and war. The best way to support Corus workers is to spread CHALLENGE in the mills, fight our bosses and build for a mass May Day march.

Overproduction, Corruption Slams Korean Autoworkers

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, Feb. 13 — The Daewoo automaker foiled a scheduled strike by 6,500 workers at its main plant at Bupyong, west of here, by permanently shutting some assembly lines. The workers were planning to strike against company plans to shed 5,500 jobs by February 16. Daewoo’s bosses need to improve terms of its possible sale to General Motors. GM is demanding 1,900 job cuts among Daewoo’s 12,844 employees. Yesterday Daewoo announced 127 job cuts at it West Sussex (England) technical center.

Daewoo’s plant closing here was not only directed against the planned strike but also reflects the overproduction problems facing automakers worldwide. As reported in CHALLENGE (Feb. 14), GM and DaimlerChrysler are also cutting production and laying off workers in Europe and the U.S. Daewoo annual sales declined from 945,000 in 1999 to 830,000 in 2000. January sales were 38,700 compared to 80,600 in January 2000.

Besides the crisis of overproduction blanketing the auto industry, Daewoo has been hit by corruption. A few weeks ago seven Daewoo CEOs were arrested for falsifying company books to exaggerate the net worth of Daewoo subsidiaries on order to obtain bank loans. Daewoo chief CEO Kin Woo-jopng has fled South Korea to avoid criminal punishment.

Daewoo workers have a long history of militancy, frequently striking against company attacks. Now they’ll face an even stronger and more oppressive enemy, GM, world’s biggest automaker. To fight such a warmaker during this capitalist crisis of overproduction, "Workers of the world, unite" must become the slogan guiding autoworkers from Seoul to Detroit to Sao Paulo. Joining the communist PLP is the best way to organize for this demand!

LA Garment Workers Defiance of Bosses: Good Omen For May Day

LOS ANGELES, CA. — In a garment factory, on a day like any other in the month of January, the following occurred. "What happened, Rosa? Why are you gathering your tools together?" asked Maria. "Because they fired me." "Why?" "Because some work came out wrong," answered Rosa, with tears in her eyes.

"We’re not going to let them fire you for something like that! Let’s talk to the manager" (the general supervisor), answered Maria.

When they confronted him, he said the decision was already made, her two checks were ready and she had to leave. "You’re not going to fire anybody," declared Maria. She explained to the rest of the workers that the reason Rosa was fired was NOT because of bad work but because the manager didn’t want to pay even the minimum wage to a worker who had been there for several years.

Other workers surrounded them, saying, "Don’t fire her." The owner arrived, exclaiming, "This is the manager’s decision; I won’t get involved."

"Clearly you’re involved," shot back Maria. "You’re the owner and you’re making this decision. But you’re not going to fire her," she declared. The owner yelled angrily, "Maybe you’re the owner of this factory."

Maria sensed the support of many workers around her. Her own class-consciousness told her an attack on one worker was an attack on all. She retorted, "We’re the ones who produce everything for a miserably tiny wage. And we say that this sister will not leave. I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but she won’t leave."

When the bosses saw the unity and strength of these workers, they were forced to give in. Rosa kept her job. After this confrontation, Dolores, who had helped greatly in the struggle, told Maria, "I was so angry at the bosses, it almost made me cry, but I held back. I’m really happy we won!"

This action, and many others like it, create the basis to organize garment workers to fight the racism and exploitation we suffer. We have a Committee of Struggle in this factory. We’re taking modest steps to increase the distribution of CHALLENGE here and in other garment factories, to be able to understand the connection between our problems and those of all workers.

Some of these workers have read CHALLENGE for several years. We will encourage them to become organizers for the West Coast May Day March here. Meanwhile, there’s a struggle to bring some of these workers into a larger campaign to fight exploitation in the garment industry overall, possibly including a fight for unionization.

The class struggle and CHALLENGE can form the rock solid basis to win many garment workers to understand that this capitalist system only offers us exploitation, layoffs, war and fascism. Our alternative is to develop the revolutionary communist movement, to fight for a society where there are no managers or bosses but only workers producing for the needs of one international working class.

a name="SUNY PLP’ers Build Campus Worker-Student Alliance">">"UNY PLP’ers Build Campus Worker-Student Alliance

BINGHAMTON, NY, Feb. 10 — PLP members at the State University of NY have been raising communist ideas on campus here, especially in the activities of the Political Action Coalition (PAC). Though most PAC members have many anti-capitalist ideas, they’re still very reformist with no unified political ideology. They’re interested in such issues as police brutality, political prisoners, the arming of university police and ending the bombing of Vieques. PAC’s major issues now are private prisons and the unionization of the campus dining hall workers.

A speaker from the Prison Moratorium Project (PMP) gave a presentation to PAC, including useful information on private prisons but ignored the more profound significance of public prisons and prison labor in general. PMP is building a campaign on college campuses narrowly aimed at attacking Sodexho Marriot (a multi-national food supplier) and its investments in Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company. PAC has wholeheartedly embraced PMP’s campaign. PMP has convinced PAC that replacing Sodexho Marriot with another corporation is somehow a victory.

We’ve attempted to advance a class analysis of the entire prison system. The Democrats, Republicans and the bosses they serve have jailed two million workers, 70% black or Latin, and used many thousands as slave laborers. It’s no coincidence that, as their competitors like Germany and China grow stronger, U.S. capitalists must seek ever cheaper labor and more ways to control unemployed and alienated workers. Fighting Sodexho or any other particular company will not alter the course towards fascism. Through months of work in PAC, we’ve raised these points and will continue doing so.

Concerning the unionization of campus dining hall workers, students uniting with campus workers in such a campaign provides the opportunity to build class-consciousness and raise revolutionary communist politics. Within this struggle we recognized the contradiction between forming a union and creating a pro-working class movement.

Using a CHALLENGE article about Party work at Boeing, we led a discussion in PAC about the anti-working class leadership of unions. The PAC leadership’s reaction to our suggestion to invite the campus workers to our meetings to discuss politics exposed its anti-working class elitism and pro-union reformism. They attacked us for "presuming that workers would have any interest in discussing politics." This inverted logic sought to disguise their lack of confidence in workers caring about or grasping revolutionary ideas.

We’ll take an active role in both building the new union and winning the workers to understanding how capitalism works so that we may destroy it, even as we learn from the workers’ own experiences in class struggle. We have a tough task in winning PAC to understand that neither a union nor any reform will reconcile the opposing interests of the rulers and the working class.

a name="‘Free Trade’—‘Internationalism’ For the Bosses"></a>‘Fre" Trade’—‘Internationalism’ For the Bosses

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 13 — The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) would extend NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) to the whole hemisphere. U.S. bosses need FTAA to keep Latin America under U.S. domination, to fight the increasing penetration of European capital there. Now some of those pushing FTAA want to throw a bone to labor rights. Billionaire businessman George Soros told the world’s CEO’s at their annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, that the anti-globalization movement is "right" in demanding more "guarantees" about environmental and workers’ rights in these trade deals.

Students groups and others are planning anti-FTAA demonstrations in April at the U.S.-Mexican and U.S.-Canadian borders. They’re reaching out to student and worker groups in Mexico, stressing NAFTA as being bad for both U.S. and Mexico’s workers. Some call for defeating FTAA. Others like AFL-CIO President Sweeney want more rules about the environment and workers’ rights — a "new internationalism."

Workers’ internationalism declares that workers of the world have the same class interests — elimination of exploitation, racism and the profit system. The phony "internationalism" of Soros and Sweeney is just the opposite — helping U.S. imperialism to continue oppressing the world’s workers and to defeat their rival imperialists who are fighting to become the number one oppressor.

Many honest, angry students and workers from Mexico and the U.S. favor border demonstrations. Millions hate the border and the fascist terror it represents. Rather than strengthening it, it’s in their interest to see the border abolished.

Recently NAFTA ruled that Mexican truckers could enter the U.S. Some opposing this say that "unsafe Mexican trucks on U.S. roads" endangers Americans. This nationalism pits Mexican and U.S. truckers against each other. The problem isn’t just NAFTA, it’s the capitalist crisis of overproduction, sharpening competition and pitting workers against each other while the bosses compete for market share. Workers need unity as a class to fight to get rid of all bosses!

US bosses have two contradictory needs. One is the need to build nationalism here, to get U.S. workers and soldiers to blame bosses and workers in other countries for layoffs, rather than blaming U.S. bosses and capitalism. But the other need is to prevent European bosses from appearing as the "lesser evil" imperialists. Therefore, U.S. rulers must build a movement advocating "human rights," from Latin America to China. Meanwhile, they and all imperialists are attacking workers worldwide. However, their primary need is to build nationalism, to try to win U.S. workers to defend their bloody empire.

"Humanitarian" imperialism and nationalist "internationalism" are policies based on smoke and mirrors. They need activists to support this charade. But these contradictions create opportunities for our Party. Small gains today lead to bigger ones tomorrow. We have confidence that when workers and students understand the real cause of the current crisis, they will see that capitalism and imperialism have nothing humanitarian about them — that "smash all borders" is the road to follow, not "strengthen all borders." Our activity in this movement will build workers’ internationalism.

PLP’s May Day March calls on workers to unite to fight for our class, against our bosses, and to ally with workers throughout the world. May Day champions the workers’ fight to smash exploitation, fascism and war with communist revolution. That’s a long, hard but sure road, as opposed to "guaranteeing" workers’ rights by uniting with class enemies like Soros and Sweeney.

May Day and the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the International Working Class

May Day has always had two sides: the one that demands reforms and the other side that organizes for revolution to destroy capitalism. May Day commemorates a massive strike wave in the U.S. and the particular battle in Chicago’s Haymarket Square in 1886. The leaders of this movement demanded an 8-hour day reform but also advocated the "abolition of the wage system."

Then and now the capitalists feared this revolutionary side to May Day. In 1848, Marx and Engels wrote in the "Communist Manifesto," "A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of Communism." By 1886, the rulers of Chicago saw this specter. "The newspapers and industrialists were increasingly declaring that May 1, 1886 was in reality the date for a Communist working class insurrection modeled on the Paris Commune. According to Melville E Stone, Head of the Chicago Daily News…a ‘repetition of the Paris Communal riots was freely predicted’ for May 1, 1886." (P. 90, Labor’s Untold Story, by Boyer and Morais)

In December 1886, San Francisco transit workers joined this strike wave. They were working up to 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. They wanted a 3-hour daily reduction in hours and a daily pay increase from $2.25 to $2.50. "Strike-breakers were hired, and there was a great deal of violence. Cars were damaged, strike-breakers were beaten, and one person was killed." Newspapers blamed eight instances of the use of dynamite on the striking workers. No doubt feeling threatened by the union and the worldwide strength and militancy of May Day, the Governor signed a bill in March 1887 "limiting gripmen, drivers, and conductors to a 12-hour day." ("Transit In San Francisco," published by SF MUNI R.R. Communications Department.)

By the 1920’s the now pro-capitalist AFL union leadership, fearing the growth of communist ideas in the working class, reversed its support for May Day and the latter’s openly declared communist ideas. Since then the AFL has collaborated with the U.S. government to subvert May Day and the revolutionary trend of workers here and abroad. At the 1928 AFL Convention, the Executive Council supported a Congressional resolution to make May 1 Child Health day. "May 1 will no longer be known as either strike day or communist labor day."

The revolutionary side of May Day dominated when the communist movement was strong. During the peak of the communist organizing of the CIO unions, May Day was celebrated in the U.S. But business unionism and anti-communism soon triumphed after World War II, with organized labor only recognizing Labor Day in September.

From the Haymarket battle in 1886, revolutionary workers spread May Day around the globe. But history is written by the conquerors. Many workers born here know nothing of the contribution the U.S. working class made to the development of this revolutionary holiday. Today it is the official Labor Day in most countries, but the leadership of these marches demands only reforms, and stresses the common goals of labor and capital.

PLP has learned both from the triumphs of the communist movement in the USSR and China, and from their failure to fight directly for communism. We too advocate "Abolish the Wage System" as part of changing the relationship of workers and work in a new communist society.

The abolition of money, of production for sale or profit and of the wage system is absolutely necessary to establish communism. When, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the international working class wins and holds control over all economic, political and cultural institutions of society, it will unleash a creative power that will propel the human race to its highest accomplishments in all fields of endeavor. Only a mass revolutionary communist party advocating and leading such a struggle can achieve this. Only such a party can defeat the fascism that capitalism will use to oppose it.

Long live the 1st of May, the revolutionary international working-class holiday! Fight for communism!

a name="The Real Drug ‘Traffic’-ers: The Bosses, Banks, & Gov’t"></a>"he Real Drug ‘Traffic’-ers: The Bosses, Banks, & Gov’t

RICHMOND, CA. January 24 — The movie "Traffic" completely blocks out the U.S. Government role in promoting the worldwide deadly drug trade. The modern drug trade began with the British East India Company selling opium to China. They were later joined by U.S. businessmen. However, by the mid-19th century the British government, an arm of that country’s ruling class, fought two successful wars to force the Chinese to accept opium imports. The modern drug trade relies on imperialist armies.

By 1900 China had some 13.5 million addicts who smoked 39,000 tons of opium every year. Misery and death to the Chinese people: profits to British and U.S. businessmen.

From Legal To Banned

In the U.S. in the early 1900s, opium, heroin and cocaine were legal. In one month in New York City, a single "dope" doctor wrote prescriptions for over 62,000 grains of heroin, 54,000 grains of morphine, and 30,000 grains of cocaine! By 1931, behind a movement to ban opium production, the League of Nations limited production strictly to medical needs. World output dropped by nearly 90%. World trade in drugs grows or shrinks depending on the needs of imperialist governments.

Gangsters And Governments

After 1931, the world drug trade was taken over by gangsters, with government cooperation. In the U.S. that cooperation was greatly expanded during and after World War II.

After liberating Sicily from the Nazis in 1943, the U.S. government had the power in Italy to push control of the country either to the Italian Communist Party, leader of the anti-Nazi resistance movement or to the pro-fascist Mafia. Surprise! It chose the Mafia.

In 1946, NY Govenor Dewey commuted the 30-year sentence of mafia mobster Lucky Luciano and "deported" him to Italy conveniently at the very moment the CIA was organizing against the growing Italian Communist Party. Luciano rebuilt a drug empire there and shipped heroin from the Mid-East via Marseilles, France, to New York City. Drug addiction grew in the USA and worldwide with the help of the U.S.-created capitalist governments, especially in France and Italy. The internal weaknesses of those country’s previously powerful Communist Parties—having become part of the bosses’ electoral systems—combined with attacks on them by the U.S.-directed AFL-CIA and Luciano’s Mafia, negated any opposition to these capitalist drug-runners.

After the communist revolution in China (which, incidently, wiped out drugs there), some pro-U.S. generals from the Nationalist Chinese Army seized land in the Burmese highlands. Supplied with weapons from the U.S., they began producing heroin in a region later named the "Golden Triangle," the source then of most of the world’s illegal heroin.

By the 1960s heroin production in the Highlands of Laos began to rival the Golden Triangle. Laotian troops organized by General Vang Pao fought the communists in North Vietnam while the general made huge profits from the heroin trade.

In the 1980s a group called the Mujaheddin began to fight the pro-Russian government in Afghanistan. They financed their operation by growing and exporting heroin to the U.S. and Europe.

Simultaneously, the US backed Contras, fighting the anti-U.S. Sandinistas in Nicaragua, made huge profits running cocaine from Colombia to the U.S.

Governments Are The Kingpins

The Mafia in Sicily; Nationalist Chinese generals in Burma; generals with private armies in Laos; the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan and the Contras in Central America—these are the main forces supplying the world with illegal narcotics since World War II. This dirty trade wrecks lives, kills people and disrupts whole communities. Not one of the drug-trading armies could exist without the support of the U.S. Government, through its CIA. It supplies these armies with guns, money and even aircraft to transport the heroin or cocaine. And the governments U.S. bosses help "elect" or install insure the continuation of the drug trade. In exchange, the drug-runners attack communist and left-wing movements.

Who Are The Real Gangsters?

In a ten-day period last month, three black teenagers were shot to death in their neighborhoods, but you’d hardly know it from the tame response of the local rulers. A local paper says none of these youths were involved in drugs but reported that, "Police and gang ‘experts’ suggest rival gangs in the area may be to blame for the surge in violence." Drug dealing lies behind most gangs and turf wars lie behind most drive-by shootings. Their solution? Send the cops’ anti-narcotics team into the area.

Yet the Richmond police won’t investigate the REAL drug dealers, those bringing the drugs into the country and into these communities. That’s a very elite group—top Government officials, airlines, bankers and the news media play a role.

The United Nations’ "World Drug Report" estimated that illegal drugs are now a $500-billion-a-year business. Most of that money is deposited in banks without being seized! And the news media turns a blind eye. When local reporter Gary Webb exposed the CIA’s role in the crack-cocaine epidemic, major papers like the NEW YORK TIMES attacked his articles and he lost his job.

David And Goliath

It’s easy to feel hopeless about the powerful forces behind drug dealing. But history is full of stories about "Davids" taking on and beating "Goliaths."

What kind of system puts greed and profits over the lives of so many innocent people like Richmond’s three black teenagers? A capitalist, imperialist one hell-bent on weakening, disrupting and pacifying potentially rebellious workers and youth worldwide. The history of the modern drug trade is another powerful argument for why we need communist revolution.

(Sources: The Politics of Heroin—CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade—Alfred McCoy; "The CIA/narcotics connection", Oakland Tribune, 4/3/89; The West County Times, December, 2000.

Letters

Black Woman Pilot Flies For May Day

On a recent visit to the Wright Brothers Museum in Kitty Hawk, NC, I saw a plaque on the wall telling the story of Bessie Coleman, a young black woman and daughter of a Texas sharecropper who wanted to become a pilot. Racism barred her from pilot schools. She went to France and received her international pilot’s license.

Returning to the U.S., she performed daredevil stunts on the barnstorming circuit. While practicing for an airshow for a May Day celebration in Jacksonville, Florida, she crashed and died, on April 30, 1926. The Negro Welfare League sponsored the May Day event. I’ve been unable to find any information on the Negro Welfare League or the demands of that May Day. Any clues would be appreciated.

West Coast Old-timer

Put Dialectics in the Classroom

The CHALLENGE article (Jan. 3) about the Modern Language Association (MLA) meeting shows we’re engaged in important struggles around exploitation of academic labor, racism and pro-capitalist ideology. I’d like to suggest a complementary but largely neglected struggle: a fight for explicit dialectical materialism in all academic disciplines.

Dialectical materialism is the fundamental communist science/philosophy of matter and motion. It’s the set of laws and categories that generally reflect how the objective world (and the human mind) works. It’s the science underlying the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and the basic worldview of our Party. History, anthropology, linguistics, physical sciences, and math are all special sciences within the more general science of dialectics.

It’s troubling that the MLA article never mentions dialectical materialism except indirectly (by criticizing bosses’ ideas about nonexistent objective truth and fixed human differences). Shouldn’t we be making a conscious, explicit fight for incorporating dialectical materialism into all the humanities, social and natural sciences?

We need to think through how dialectics relates to a number of academic disciplines. We’re probably more familiar with introducing dialectics in history and social sciences, e.g., fundamental contradiction of classes, and revolution as the resolution of this contradiction.

What about language? What are the dialectical principles that underlie the development of language, historically and in early childhood? What about the dialectics underlying grammatical structure? What dialectical principles are involved in learning (and teaching) a foreign language? What is the primary and secondary contradiction in foreign language learning/teaching? How and where does quantitative learning turn into quality? How might negation of the negation reflect this process, etc.?

Literature? The dialectical category of particular and general—how broad social and philosophical currents are reflected in the lives and characters of a few individuals—is central to all literature and art. Clearly the category of form and content—particularly the interdependence of these two concepts—is important in any analysis of literature. How are the three laws of dialectics embodied in a given novel or play? Isn’t "tragedy" a reflection of contradiction, negation of negation and other dialectical ideas?

This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive analysis. It’s simply a proposal that those of us involved in academia begin to make dialectical materialism an important part of our political activities. This means integrating dialectical principles in the classroom, perhaps introducing resolutions about dialectics in mass organizations. This would be something new for us. To neglect dialectical materialism in the academic arena is a grave mistake. I hope for comments on this proposal.

Reader

a name="Math—Is Being ‘Drilled’, Being ‘Screwed’?"></a>Math"Is Being ‘Drilled’, Being ‘Screwed’?

As a math teacher and a communist, I disagree strongly with the recent back-to-basics articles about a supposedly "communist" approach to math education. There is nothing communist about the approach, and the students won’t even learn much real mathematics from it. The author seems to think that learning math means acquiring mechanical skills, in particular, arithmetic and algebra. And he thinks the only way to get these skills is through lots of boring hard work.

I agree these skills are important. But the skills alone aren’t useful if the students don’t understand how they’re applied in practice. What’s the point of being able to add and multiply two numbers if you can’t figure out (in an actual situation) which numbers to combine, whether to add, multiply or divide, and what the result means in the context?

A simple example: suppose a truck driver travels 100 miles at 40 miles an hour, then 100 miles at 60 miles an hour. What was her average speed for the whole trip? Students can spend 18 hours a day memorizing arithmetic tables but it won’t help them see that adding 40 to 60 and dividing by 2 does not give the right answer!

Acquiring skills is not the same as learning mathematics. Students also need to be creative in finding solutions to problems, and to develop judgement (including intuition) in order to evaluate approaches and results. Furthermore, they need to be able to work in groups so they can share their creativity and their judgement, as well as their skills. In other words, math (in fact, all) education should be based on collective labor. As it was, for example, in the Soviet Union, when it was still communist.

Under capitalism, relatively few students manage to learn mathematics, and those who do are often self-taught. Apparently the bosses are worried that these few are now too few, and so once again they’re trying to "reform" math education. Nothing much will come of these reforms. The capitalist school system, organized like a giant factory, is incapable of treating most students as anything other than components on an assembly line.

For most students capitalist education will always be (in Marx’s words) "mere training to act as a machine." The back-to-basics author seems to accept this description as the defining principle of what mathematics education should be. Basically, he complains that the students are no longer being "machined" well enough, and that the answer is to "drill" them more thoroughly. He should remember that in the workshop, being drilled is usually preparation for being screwed!

E. Galois

Nationalism Fuels Auto Wars

Thanks for placing the two articles (2/14 issue) on auto cutbacks side by side. It made things very clear. Led by pro-capitalist union hacks, angry European workers protested cuts made by U.S. bosses (GM) while U.S. workers were being told by their union leaders to blame European bosses (Daimler) for the cutbacks here in the U.S.

Left unchallenged by a communist movement these union leaders will only build a dangerous nationalism ("U.S. jobs for U.S. workers"). Job cuts in the auto industry — whether GM cuts of European workers or Daimler-Chrysler cuts of U.S. workers—are attacks on auto workers internationally.

The cuts are not due to moves by individual U.S. or German capitalists, but by a worldwide crisis of overproduction. PLP has often written about this. Despite all the talk about a "new economy" solving its contradictions, overproduction still is inherent to capitalism. The bosses’ main way out of this crisis is to destroy the productive capacity of their rivals. Ultimately this always leads to war fueled by nationalism.

This does not mean war and depression will come tomorrow. It does mean communist leadership is desperately needed in the unions, not just to organize around internationalist slogans like "Workers of the World Unite," but to educate workers about the underlying nature of capitalism and the need to destroy it.

A comrade