Introduction (Citations at the end)

California residents are facing a medical emergency, caused by the greed and anarchy of capitalism in health care.   There is  a dangerous shortage of emergency and critical care beds because of massive closings of hospitals over the last five years.  These hospital closings, job eliminations, and patient care cuts were deliberately done to increase profits.   The cuts have produced untold misery for patients and healthcare workers.   They have also produced obscene profits for health maintenance organizations  (HMOs). But healthcare is no longer profitable.   Capitalist healthcare has produced its own downfall.   Hospital closings, job eliminations, and patient care cuts are one-time-only savings that cannot be repeated, and other healthcare costs have continued to rise.  At the same time, the HMOs are in a dog-eat-dog struggle to steal each other's members, so they have kept their premiums down to undercut each other. The result is that after six years of record-breaking profits, HMOs have had two years of huge losses.

Their  immediate solution will be simply to raise premiums, but this is already causing a crisis.    HMOs and employers are refusing to pay hospitals higher rates, and hospitals are refusing to cover patients without the higher rates.  The health industry's  long-term solutions will be more consolidations, a new round of massive hospital closings,  a whole new form of managed care with more "teeth" to severely ration patient care, and abandoning the poor and the old.

As international financial crisis spreads and worsens, and as war over oil and world resources approaches, a major battle over healthcare is developing between two groups of capitalists. Some capitalists in private healthcare want to renew their profits by cutting their own costs more. But the more dominant capitalists have a more long- term outlook, and are more concerned with   reasserting the US as a world power. These capitalists  need overall health care drastically curtailed "in the national interest," and don't trust the marketplace to do this.Hard as this may be to believe, it is quite possible that the rulers of this country will move healthcare away from the for-profit HMOs, and turn it over to "non-profit" health care like Kaiser, which will become centralized and quasi-governmental.   This sounds progressive, but it is not.  "Removing profit from health care" will mean the rulers have decided real healthcare is too expensive and should be abandoned so they can make greater profits elsewhere or rebuild their factories and military.  "Single-payer" will mean the rulers have decided to use the government to enforce healthcare rationing.

Like so many of the "reforms" offered by capitalism in crisis, this restructuring of health care will actually be fascism with a liberal cover.   Any attempt to make meaningful improvements in healthcare directly challenges the needs late-20^th century capitalism. Capitalist healthcare cannot be "fixed" without challenging capitalism itself and finally smashing it.

PROGRESSIVE LABOR PARTY envisions a communist future where workers control society.    We would work to supply each other's needs, not to make profits for an elite. Health care will exist to improve the quality of our lives rather than making money. This would make our work and our lives much richer and more integrated. There would be no reason for the horrors of racism, sexism, poverty, or managed care. Our fights against our downward spiraling wages, working conditions and standard of living can develop into a movement to unite, to act, and take power as a class. That is the purpose of PLP.

Read our newspaper CHALLENGE/DESAFIO about the day-to-day struggles to make this dream a reality.

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   a dangerous shortage of emergency and critical care beds ...

In January, 1998, it became obvious that there is a healthcare emergency in California. The shortage of beds in Emergency Rooms and Critical Care units threatens everyone, whether they have medical coverage or not.

• In the second week of January, there were times when no critical care beds were available from San Francisco through San Jose. The shortage of pediatric critical care beds was so severe that one Oakland hospital prepared backup plans to transport pediatric patients to Los Angeles. (personal communications)
• At San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH), the Nursery was closed to new patients for the first time in years. Non-emergency surgery was canceled because no beds were available for recovering patients. (Personal communication) Severely ill patients could spend 12-24 hrs in the Emergency Department, waiting for critical care beds. Emergency Room (ER) workers were having to care for both gunshot or heart attack victims and critical care patients waiting for beds. In the first two weeks of December '97, SFGH diverted critical ambulance patients to other hospitals 56% of the time. (SF Examiner, 12-17-97)
• For half of the month of January '98, city officials in San Francisco told Emergency Rooms that, no matter how busy they were, they could not divert new patients to other ERs, because all the other ERs in the city were just as busy. (SF Examiner, 1-27-98) In the last year, diversions were suspended in four of the last 12 months, more than in the last 10 years. (SF Examiner, 12-16-97)
• Kaiser Richmond's stand-by emergency department had thirteen-hour delays in transferring critically ill patients; a patient died there waiting for a critical care bed. At Kaiser Walnut Creek's ER, a child with extreme fatigue and shortness of breath waited more than 5 hrs to be seen. "I saw people lying on the floor in the emergency room; it was disgusting," the child’s mother said. (SF Examiner, 1-27-98) Kaiser was giving its ER patients fliers saying they would wait an average of six hours. (California Nursing Association,CNA, press release, 1-8-98)
• For the first two weeks in January, Washington Hospital in Fremont pitched a tent outside the ER for families of patients waiting for treatment. (SF Examiner, 1-27-98)
• Los Angeles County already is facing a serious undersupply of ER capacity, which will worsen by 2005. According to a May 1997 report by the National Health Foundation. In the mid-1980s there were 102 acute-care hospitals with basic ERs. Now there are 81 basic emergency rooms, and not all of those provide the full range of services for ambulances responding to 911 calls.  (Modern Healthcare, 7-20-98) 
• The San Francisco Emergency Services administrator said hospital and ER patients are 25-50 percent above projections.  (SF Examiner, 1-27-98) Kaiser is seeing 10 percent more ER patients than this time last year. Davies Medical Center is seeing 25 percent more. (SF Examiner,12-16-97) This increase in ER visits is a reflection of fewer people having medical coverage.
• Emergency Room patients are much sicker than before. Thousands of people have lost medical coverage. 30% of San Francisco residents who were eligible for Medi-Cal managed care a year ago are no longer on the rolls, either because of intimidation of legal immigrants or because of losing welfare. (SF Chronicle, 11-18-97) Those who have lost Medi-Cal now have no coverage at all. They must use county hospital ERs when they get so sick they can no longer postpone care. By then, they are seriously ill, and often come into emergency rooms needing critical care.

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hospital cuts deliberately done to increase profits ...

This crisis is the result of a  policy of increasing profits by closing beds, units, and entire hospitals, and by laying off thousands of hospital workers.

• In Contra Costa County, Kaiser refused to open an ICU in their newly built hospital in Richmond.  In February 1997,  woman with chest pains drove there, was transferred to Kaiser Oakland, which had no free beds because it was being closed, and died in transit to a third hospital.  (Modern Healthcare, 7-20-98)   Kaiser also closed its emergency room (ER) and critical care beds in Martinez in late January 1998, and plans to close its standby ER in Richmond in April 1998. (CNA, 1-8-98)   All Contra Costa Kaiser patients will be diverted to Kaiser Walnut Creek, whose ER can already barely handle its patients. An 84- year-old man died there on December 30. He had come to the hospital with shortness of breath and was not seen until almost 4 hours later, when he stopped breathing completely. (SF Chronicle, 1-10-98) In late May 1997, 12% of Walnut Creek ER patients left without being seen. (CNA Kaiser Pamphlet) Walnut Creek Kaiser’s 24-bed critical care unit is already operating at capacity. (SF Chronicle, 1-10-98) At Kaiser Martinez a man waited in the emergency room for eight hours, untreated, after suffering a stroke because the hospital’s CT scan was broken. Emergency room waits were so long that at one point, 19% of registered patients left without being seen. (CNA Kaiser Pamphlet)   Contra Costa County lost 282 beds between 1994 and 1996, while the population grew. (SF Examiner, 1-27-98)   Contra Costa County, in particular, has some of the lowest per-capita rates of health resources of any state.  The U.S. average is 3.0 acute-care beds per thousand residents, Contra Costa's is 1.7, the third lowest in the US.  Where the U.S. has 3.4 hospital-based registered nurses per thousand, Contra Costa has 2.1. Where the U.S. has 13.7 hospital employees per thousand, Contra Costa has 8.1. (Modern Healthcare, 7-20-98)
• In Alameda County, Kaiser plans to close its 167,000 member Oakland Hospital this year; it saw 61,000 ER patients per year. (SF Chronicle, 1-10-98) Kaiser is also investigating transferring hospitalized patients at Kaiser's Redwood City and Santa Clara hospitals to a rented floor at Stanford University Medical Center. It is investigating similar arrangements for Kaiser Hayward and Kaiser Fremont. (SF Chronicle, 12-15-95, 1-25-96, 2-12-96) Planned closings of Oakland, Richmond, and Sacramento Kaisers, plus the Martinez closing, means 9,880 licensed beds closed. (CNA webpage, "Empty by Design")
• Kaiser Permanente eliminated 1,600 RN positions (14% of the total) in Northern California over the past three years and is pushing to eliminate one in eight physicians. (California Nurses Association, "Medical Strip-mining and the New Nursing Shortage") Between 1991 and 1994, Kaiser reduced its overall hospitalization rate by 25%. Kaiser Hawaii reduced its average length of hospitalization by a full day within a single year. (SF Chronicle, 2-15-96) Kaiser's 1994-1997 Southern California business plan called for a 30% decrease in days of hospitalization per member. (The Link, CNA Kaiser Interfacility Newsletter, 9-95)
• In San Francisco, Kaiser and French merged, and then French closed. Garden-Sullivan, Pacific Presbyterian and SF Children's were merged into CPMC, which closed Garden-Sullivan and three ERs. (SF Examiner, 12-16-97) Letterman also closed. UCSF and Mount Zion merged closing the Mt Zion nursery. UCSF and Stanford have merged, probably leading to closings in pediatrics, OB, and radiology. In addition, UCSF and CPMC merged their OB-GYN, pediatrics and radiology services.
• California hospital closings reflect a pattern of racism and anti-working class bias that the California Nurses Association aptly calls "Medical Redlining," which it defines as  "abandoning communities where ill people are concentrated in favor of communities where healthy people predominate, with a goal of increasing overall profits and revenues." (see the CNA Kaiser Pamphlet for really excellent documentation)
 

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Kaiser's new Richmond hospital, where the ICU was never opened and where the ER was recently closed, is located in a predominantly black industrial city, with four times the poverty rate of Walnut Creek, where Kaiser is keeping its hospital open.   The now-closed Martinez facility, where the stroke victim waited eight hours because of a broken CAT machine, is in a working-class part of Contra Costa County with 1.5 times the poverty rate of Walnut Creek.  The flagship hospital in Oakland targeted for closing is in the middle of a majority black city with low average family incomes and four times the poverty rate of Walnut Creek.

In Los Angeles County, the May 1997 report on emergency room access by the National Health Foundation divided the county into 10 hospital regions. It found a shortage of emergency capacity in seven regions largely working-class and minority. It found a surplus in middle-class San Fernando, and Glendale areas and the wealthy West Side. (Modern Healthcare, 7-20-98)

• According to SF Emergency Medical Services Quality Control officer Mark Forrett, " We have discovered that staffing for critical care beds is the major determinant factor when hospitals go on critical care diversion." (internet news group letter) SFGH is short 13 critical care RNs and the three Catholic Hospital West hospitals in San Francisco are short 32 ER and critical care RNs by their own admission. (SF Examiner, 12-16-97)
  
• New York City Hospitals closed 1,000 beds and got rid of 5,000 workers in 1995. (NY Times, 10-26-95) At least a dozen New York City hospitals closed during the 1970's.
  
• At Los Angeles in May 1966, after the federal "bailout" of the county healthcare system, 6 county clinics had already been privatized, 20 county clinics were being privatized, 2,400 health workers were already laid off, 3,500 positions were being cut, and officials were in the process of closing 1700 County beds, a one-third reduction. (LA Times, Modern Healthcare, 10-2-95)

In November 1997, the LA County Supervisors voted to decrease County-USC Medical  Center from 960 beds to 600 beds.  County-USC Medical Center is the biggest public hospital in the US, in the midst of the biggest unsured population in the US, 2.8 million and expected to grow by 25,000 per year.   Nearly a third of the population under age 65 is uninsured. (LA Times, 10-30-97)   The former head of the LA County medical Association said "They are going to be dying in the hallways, dying waiting to get into the operating room."  (LA Times, 11-13-97)  A family practice doctor predicted that private hospitals in the vicinity of County-USC would close their own ERs, rather than risk begin "stuck" with indigent patients who could not be transferred out because County-USC had no room to accept them.  (LA Times, 11-12-97) 

• Nationally, hospitals are still operating at 60 percent of capacity, but many of the unused beds are "mothballed," adding little to costs, so most hospitals have been able to generate profits or, in the case of nonprofit hospitals, surpluses. (NY Times, 1-5-98) Kaiser Permanente has about 2,000 licensed but unstaffed beds in California. (CNA webpage, "Empty by Design"

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  . untold misery for patients and healthcare workers ...
 
The effects of these hospital closings, job eliminations, and patient care cuts have been catastrophic.  They have produced untold misery for patients and healthcare workers.

• The US has the worst infant mortality, highest percentage of low-birthweight babies, shortest male life-span, second-shortest female life-span, and second-lowest visits to doctors per person of all industrialized countries.
• 41 million of us across the country have no health coverage (17%), including 6.5 million of us in California. (SEIU Unity, Feb./March 95) Over 100,000 people die yearly in the US from lack of health insurance, 11 per hour. (Vincent Navarro, 1993, quoted in Don DeMoro, Restructuring Health Care, SEIU 250 publication, J-3) An additional 29 million people with private insurance are underinsured, "risking out-of-pocket expenses in excess of 10 percent of family income in the event of a catastrophic illness." (SF Examiner, 10-25-95) Medicaid covers only about 47 percent of the poverty population. (Nation, 1-9-95)
• Most people without medical insurance have jobs. Nationally, 40% of jobs have no health benefits, including one of three healthcare workers. The General Accounting Office says of the 9.3 million children lacking health insurance during 1993, 89% had at least one parent working full-time. (Don DeMoro, Restructuring Health Care, SEIU 250 publication, p. I-3)  80% of the 2.6 million medically uninsured in Los Angeles either have jobs or are dependents of someone with a job. (L A Times, 10-30-95)
• Institutional racism has made these cuts particularly devastating to minorities. New York City's black and Latino communities have five times the national average number of TB cases, and comprise 80 % of cases in the state. (Nation 2-28-94) Survival rates among blacks for several common cancer are half those of whites, also from lack of early detection. The leading causes of death among black women 15 to 50 years old are breast and cervical cancer, mainly for want of early detection. Only 22 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer at Harlem Hospital live five years, compared with 76 percent of white women and 64 percent of black women nationwide. Between 1989 and 1993, black women in their fifties had only one ninth the drop in breast cancer death rates as their white counterparts. (SF Chronicle 5-8-96) A recent DPH study in San Francisco showed that in Bayview-Hunters Point, the rates of cervical cancer and breast cancer for women under 50 are twice that of San Francisco as a whole, due to lack of gynecological care and pap smears. (SF Examiner 8-18-95, SF Chronicle 9-22-95) Black infant mortality is twice as high as white infant mortality, largely due to premature birth and low birth weight, which are largely preventable by pre-natal care. Low-birth weight infants are known to have forty times the risk of dying in the first month of life. (NY Times, 1995) Blacks have proportionately fewer heart bypasses even though heart disease is the main killer of black Americans.
• Figures of Latinos are similar. Over one-third of Mexican-Americans under age 65 lack health insurance. Latinos represent half of California's approximately 6.4 million uninsured. Stillbirths among California Latinos increased by 45 percent between 1987 and 1989 while infant mortality rate improved in the state as a whole. The average waiting period to obtain a prenatal appointment in a Los Angeles County clinic is more than 16 weeks, past the critical first trimester . The average life expectancy of Latino farm workers in the U.S. is 49 years, compared with a national average of 75 years for non-Latinos.
• Beyond race, the disparity of health between rich and poor is appalling: A recent report from the National Center for Health Statistics shows people with less money and less education die younger and suffer more from virtually every health problem.   For people of the same race and gender, lack of money or education was associated with: a seven-year gap in life expectancy,  2.4-fold more babies dying in their first year,  a 5-fold increase in teen-age pregnancy,  a 6-fold increase in toxic blood-levels of lead,  and a greater probability of dying from heart disease (2.5X),  lung cancer (2.4X),  diabetes (3.0X), and  suicide (3.7X).  (LA Times, 7-29-98 and 7-30-98)  These statistics are a mirror of a society where the current disparity of wealth is greater than ever recorded starting in  the early 1930s, and the richest 1% has more wealth than the poorest 90% combined.

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obscene profits for health maintenance organizations ...
 
The cuts have also produced obscene profits for health maintenance organizations.

• From 1989-1995, healthcare was the most profitable industry in the US. (NY Newsday 4-17 95)
• The profits of the 7 largest providers jumped 700% in one year. (California Nurse, 5-96)
• In 1994, the top 21 HMOs, hospital chains, and long-term care providers made over $3 billion profits (LA Times, 5-4-95) and California's six biggest HMOs made $1.13 billion. (SF Examiner, 3-10-96) Northern California Kaiser alone made over $813 million. (SF Chronicle, 2-12-96)
• Kaiser’s 1993 profits were so high that dozens of pages of memos were exchanged between high-level administrators discussing how to explain these profits to its workers whose jobs were being cut, and to its patients whose hospitals were being closed. One sample: "As much as possible, present 1993 financial results in context so that they don’t conflict with current budget/layoff imperatives." (California Nurses Association)
• The CEOs of the 7 largest HMOs earned an average of $7 million in 1994. (California Nurse, 6-95) The stock holdings of CEOs of the top ten are worth $2.4 billion. (Ralph Nader, speech to SF conference on managed care, 8-95) Columbia/HCA’s CEO owns $249 million in stock. The CEO of PacifiCare, SFGH’s one-time HMO partner, owns $35 million in stock in addition to $1.2 million salary. (California Nurse, 3-96) The value of stock owned by just the top 25 health care executives by itself could provide medical insurance to 14% of the nation’s uninsured. (California Nurse, 3-96) With the merger of US Healthcare and Aetna, among the largest HMOs and insurance companies, US Healthcare’s CEO Leonard Abramson received a cash and stock bonus of $929 million, more than enough to fund LA County’s 1996 healthcare budget deficit (California Nurse, August 1996)

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But healthcare is no longer profitable..

Those glory days of gigantic profits are gone with the wind.   Having gutted health care, the financial geniuses of the "health industry" are looking around in disbelief, wondering where their profits went. "I don't think anyone knows where we are going," said Marilyn Moon, a health economist at the Urban Institute in Washington. "This is a wacky period in health care." (NY Times, 1-5-98)
 
With all respect to Ms Moon, it's not "the period" that's wacky. It's the greed and anarchy of capitalism that's wacky. The savings from hospital closings, job eliminations, and patient care cuts, are one-time-only savings that cannot be repeated, meanwhile healthcare costs continue to rise, particularly pharmaceuticals. At the same time, HMOs have been in a dog-eat-dog struggle to capture each other's members, and have had to keep their premiums down to undercut each other. The result is that after six years of record-breaking profits, HMOs have lost large amounts of money for the last two years.
 
The tendency to self-destruct is built into capitalism; there is no way it can escape. On one hand, capitalists must expand their business and get more customers, because if they do not, their competitors will force them out the market: it's grow or die. On the other hand, in order to grow, capitalists, must sink more and more money into buildings and machinery, and interest on the necessary loans, so their profits-per-dollar-invested decrease. Inevitably, the system crashes. Because workers are enmeshed in capitalism's machinery, our lives become part of the wreckage. What's happened to healthcare is an illustration of this.

• Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, the biggest HMO in the country, lost $270 million in 1997, its first loss in its 50 years. Only last year its profits were $265 million. Its first quarter 1998 losses were $92 million. (SF Chronicle, 5-2-98) Kaiser traces its problems to its own success in attracting new members in California. Kaiser was then unprepared to handle additional members and had to pay to have them treated elsewhere.   Standard & Poor's credit-rating service placed Kaiser's debt on "credit watch with negative implications." (LA Times 2-14-98) Kaiser had a 20% growth in membership last year. It has 8.9 million members nationally, including 1/3 of Northern California residents with coverage. It has $12 billion in assets. (SF Chronicle, 2-14-98)
• "HMO (patient) ranks continue to grow, while profits continue to sink. ... Profits at the nation's HMOs fell 60 percent last year, from $1.8 billion in 1995 to $700 million in 1996," according to a recent report by Weiss Ratings Inc. in Palm Beach Gardens. The rating agency looked at 344 managed care companies nationwide, which insure nine out of 10 HMO members. "This was the second year of declining profits after six years of steady profit growth," said Martin Weiss, the agency's chairman. "The reason is health care expenses went up, but HMOs were unable to raise premiums accordingly, due to increasing competition in the managed care industry." As a result, Weiss believes that HMOs now are under pressure to either raise rates, cut services or do both. (South Florida Business Journal, 9-1-97)
• "Many other health care organizations and major insurance companies like Aetna, the Cigna Corporation and the Prudential Insurance Company of America are suffering losses this year or acute erosions of their profits." (NY Times, 10-19-97)
• "Despite a 3.2 percent increase in enrollment during the second quarter, overall profits for Florida's health maintenance organizations plummeted by 72 percent, with more than half of the health plans losing money." (Orlando Business Journal, 9-23-96)
• "Combined first-quarter net income for the 10 health plans with the largest local enrollment was down 21 percent from the first quarter last year. PacifiCare Health Systems saw its stock tumble in June after preliminary reports that second-quarter earnings will come in far below initial projections." (Sacramento Business Journal, 7-21-97) PacifiCare's fourth quarter 1997 profits dropped 53% from a year before. PacifiCare blamed losses in the Utah operations of FHP International, which PacifiCare acquired last year. PacifiCare said it would close the Utah operations down if it could not sell it. (LA Times, 3-5-98)
• "Shares of Oxford, the biggest health maintenance organization in the New York area, fell 62.4 percent in Nasdaq trading. Oxford's announcement was only the latest in a string of disastrous financial reports in the managed health care industry, as Aetna, Cigna and other companies said that higher costs would reduce their profits, too." (NY Times, 10-28-97)
• "Six of the seven largest HMOs in Georgia saw their profits plunge in the first half of 1996. The six companies' net incomes dropped anywhere from 28% to 95%. Three of the seven -- Cigna, United and U.S. Healthcare of Georgia Inc., registered losses in the second quarter, according to the filings." (Atlanta Business Chronicle, 9-2-96)
• Some critics of managed care say the savings from restrictions like limiting access to specialists and tests can be realized only once. "We may have squeezed what we can out of the health care system," said Assemblyman Alexander B. Grannis, a Manhattan Democrat who is chairman of the Insurance Committee. (NY Times, 1-11-98)
• "Many analysts in New York state say the primary reason (for HMO losses) is that managed care companies had kept prices artificially low for years to encourage reluctant New Yorkers to sign up and are only now coming to terms with the actual cost of care." (NY Times, 1-11-98)
• "The competitive landscape has shifted. There are a lot of HMOs competing for a finite amount of business. The upshot has been that HMOs have not been able to raise premiums like they used to." (CNN financial services 1-17-97)
• HMOs are complaining that Kaiser deliberately undercut rivals' prices to grab market share, then found itself unable to make money on the new business. California Nurses Association Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro claimed that Kaiser has diverted funds from patient care to pay for advertising and marketing, management consultants and mergers and acquisitions "for the sole purpose of dominating the HMO market." (LA Times, 2-14-98)
• Stuart H. Altman, a Brandeis University professor who is chairman of a council studying changes in the health system for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said it all: "In the early days, the HMOs extracted fairly substantial profits. Those days are over." (NY Times, 1-5-98)

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 The HMOs' immediate solution will be simply to raise premiums. ...
 

The  immediate solution will be simply to raise premiums 5-15%, but this is already causing a crisis.   Health insurance buyers and employers are refusing to pay higher rates, and hospitals are refusing to cover patients unless the rates are raised.

• Increases in health premiums are endangering employee's medical coverage. A law firm with 20 employees in Kenilworth, NJ, was recently notified by Aetna U.S. Healthcare that monthly premiums would rise 19 percent for single employees and 28 percent for families with children. Benefits experts expect big employers to see rate increases of 9 percent to 14 percent in most parts of the country. (NY Times, 4-24-98) Kaiser won 12-14% rate increases from the Health Insurance Plan of California, which purchases health insurance for about 8,000 California companies with fewer than 50 workers. (LA Times, 4-25-98) Kaiser, has demanded a 12% 1998 rate hike from CalPERS, the nation's second largest purchaser of employee health benefits, which purchases health benefits for more than 1 million state and local public employees. (CalPERS press statement: April 14, 1998) CalPERS members on Kaiser's Medicare plan would have a 27% increase. (LA Times, 4-15-98) Sources familiar with the negotiations say Kaiser may try to phase in rate increases of up to 30 percent over the next three years. (SF Business Times 3-27-98) CalPERS has warned Kaiser that it may freeze further enrollment unless it cuts its rate request by half. Kaiser has warned CalPERS that it may withdraw from the state health plan entirely if it doesn't get what it wants. (LA Times, 4-15-98) 340,000 CalPERS members belong to Kaiser.

 
• Sutter Health, with 26 hospitals in Northern California, planned to cancel its $60 million contract with California Blue Cross, which refused the rate increases Sutter demanded. 180,000 Blue Cross enrollees would have been  without non-emergency care. Blue Cross covers 4.4 million in California, and its CaliforniaCare has contracts to cover Medi-Cal recipients in several counties. (SF Chronicle, 5-16-98, Modern Healthcare, 5-18-98)  After a three week standoff, Blue Cross relented, agreeing to Sutter's increases. (SF Examiner, 6-6-98)

 
• In the wake of Blue Cross's capitulation to Sutter, Catholic Healthcare West, with 30 hospitals in California, has cancelled its contract with Blue Cross as of July 7 1998, over clashes on reimbursement rates.    No new non-emergency care will be available for Blue Cross members.  (SF Bay Guardian, 7-8-98)

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But the HMOs' long-term solution will be more consolidations and ...
 

The long-term solutions will have to be more consolidations, a new round of massive hospital closings, and a whole new form of managed care with more "teeth" to drastically restrict patient care.  This will include abandoning Medicaid and Medicare coverage for expensive or unprofitable paitents such as the poor and the elderly.  The devastation of health care over the last five years is not enough!

 

• There will be even more hospital consolidations as bigger HMOs with more cash reserves can hold out and undercut smaller HMOs and then raise rates higher than the smaller HMOs did. "The fierce competition for customers has driven out some contenders, leaving those remaining freer to seek higher rates. For very small programs with disproportionately high numbers of chronically sick members, increases of over 30 percent are expected." (NY Times, 10-19-97) Robert Hoehn of Salomon Brothers said half of the HMOs in the country aren't viable. While many will be acquired, others will disappear.  In Dallas, for example,  recent mergers, plus one in the works, will eliminate four of the nine biggest health plans, which cover  80 percent of the patients. After a merger in western Pennsylvania, Highmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield provides coverage for more than 60 percent of the population of Pittsburgh and 29 surrounding counties. (NY Times, 6-29-98)

 

• There will be a faster pace of hospital or bed closings as HMOs that develop monopolies in their areas will now be free to close "excess capacity." "It's clear we have overcapacity," said Thomas H. Crenshaw, senior vice president for strategic planning for Health Midwest, the largest hospital chain in the area. "This continued building is counterintuitive from a community-need perspective." (NY Times, 11-22-97)

 

• "In general we have probably twice as many physicians as we need," said Kathryn A. Paul, president of the Rocky Mountain Division of Kaiser Permanente, which oversees the big health maintenance group's Kansas City services. The surplus, Ms. Paul said, generates excess demand, with underemployed doctors hustling for patients. (NY Times, 11-22-97) People are dying in Kaiser's Emergency Rooms, and 100,000 people a year die from lack of health insurance, and yet health care capitalists say there are twice as many doctors as we need!

 

• There will be a tougher form of managed care than in the past, one which will directly restrict patient care as opposed to the "failed" managed care which was a mixture of restricting patient care and holding down premiums.

 
• Standard and Poor's Financial service said of Kaiser: "More conservative financial practices, strategic and operational restructuring initiatives, and higher premiums are expected to yield improved earnings by 2000.  Lasting prosperity, however will depend on the unified efforts of management and their independent Permanente Medical Group partners (the doctors) to align the system's capacity with demand and effectively manage costs."  (S&P Creditwire, 6-24-97)

 
• As HMOs are realizing they cannot make profits off elderly, sick, or poor patients, they are dropping their Medicaid and Medicare plans.   "Market woes are so severe that experts wonder if any MediCare HMO can prosper indefinitely" (NY Times, 9-9-98)   The July 6th New York Times says: "Citing losses and cuts in government payments, the nation's biggest health maintenance organizations are quitting managed care programs for the poor and elderly ... advocates for patients say they fear the retreat will bean a return to crowded Medicaid mill clinics delivering inferior care."  Managed care organizations like Aetna U.S. Healthcare, Pacificare, Oxford Health Plans, Kaiser Permanente and Blue Cross and Blue Shield Associations have shut down some of their Medicaid (Medi-Cal) services in at least 12 states, including New York, New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts and Connecticut.  (Also see NY Times, 9-9-98)   The withdrawals have spread to Medicare managed programs for the elderly, primarily in rural  communities with few patients and where clinics and doctors are scarce. In May, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield said it was pulling out of Medicare plans in 19 Ohio counties. Last month, Health Net, a large California HMO, said it would end its Medicare service in 10 counties.

Part of this is due to government cutbacks to Medicaid and Medi-Care.  The 1997 Balanced Budget Act reduces federal Medi-Care spending by $115 billion over the next five years.  (NY Times, 9-9-98)  "The economics of serving people on Medicare make it virtually impossible to make money," said Karen Korn, a health care services analyst at Putnam Investments in Boston. "The government has approved rate increases for Medicare managed programs of about 2 percent while medical costs are rising at 4 percent or higher. "There's no way that translates into OK margins," Ms. Korn said. (NY Times, 7-6-8)     Meanwhile, Washington is still pushing to force even more Medicaid and Medi-Care recipients into managed care plans.  (NY Times, 9-9-98)

Most of the withdrawals from Medicaid care have come in the most populous states with large  pockets of urban poverty. The  Massachusetts Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and the Tufts Health Plan dropped out  dropped out of the Massachusetts Medicaid program.  (NY Times, 7-6-8)  Oxford Health Plans has canceled its contract to cover 33,000 Medicaid managed care recipients in Connecticut, raising questions about its commitment to cover 42,220 more in New York City.  In early February 1998, U S Healthcare withdrew from the New York City Medicaid managed care program, where it was to cover 24,000 recipients. In August 1998, U S Healthcare announced that it was absorbing a  $900 million charge  to be able to back out of Medicare plans in 35 counties, an announcement that made Wall Street wonder whether any profits could be made off Medicare patients.  (NY Times, 8-7-98)  Over the past year, eight organizations, including Aetna U.S. Healthcare and Prudential, have  dropped Medicaid programs in New York state. Both states have cut back their Medicaid reimbursement to participating HMOs. (NY Times, 2-26-98)    In March, Kaiser Permanente, the biggest HMO, quit  Medicaid care in Charlotte, N.C., and last year Humana did so in St. Louis.  Pacificare, the nation's third largest HMO and which was supposed to have been SFGH's partner in Medi-Cal managed care,  has decided to drop all Medicaid services, closing programs in California, Oregon and Utah. In California, Blue Cross, the designated private HMO for half of the Medi-Cal managed care population in San Francisco and Contra Costa counties, does not want the business any more, since California's Medi-Cal rolls have been greatly reduced. (SF Chronicle, 11-18-97)

In a similar way, economic pressures force  HMOs out of Medi-Care markets where old and sick people are concentrated.   On the average,  managed care companies get $5,700 per year per Medi-Care patient.  90% of these patients are healthy and cost about $1,200 per year.  10% are not healthy and cost about $37,000 per year.  This should make it easy to make profits, but the problem is that healthy patients live in non-urban areas where there are fewer hospitals, and therefore less incentive for hospitals to cut rates they charge to the managed care companies.  (NY Times, 9-9-98)  The only HMOs that have made money from Medi-Care are PacifiCare and Humana, which pay doctors a fixed amount of money per month per patient (physician payment on a capitation basis), thus passing the financial risk onto the individual provider.  (NY Times, 9-9-98, LA Times, 8-12-98)   Despite this, even Humana is dropping some it its Medi-Care markets.  (LA Times, 9-16-98)

Instead, public and county hospitals are taking over Medicaid and Medi-Care patients.  This is a recipe for disaster.  On one hand, federal and state reimbursement for these patients is dropping, up to 20% since the mid-90s.  On the other hand, public and county hospitals are already drained by serving indigent patients, and have no rich patients to shift Medi-Cal/Medicare patients’ costs onto.  As the Times says, "Advocates for patients say they fear the retreat will mean a return to crowded 'Medicaid mill' clinics delivering inferior care."   (NY Times, 7-6-98)
 

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A major battle over healthcare is developing between two groups of capitalists. ....
 

In respnse to this crisis in healthcare,  an intense struggle between two different modes of managed  care has developed.

 

In one corner are the free-market, for-profit HMOs, typified by the giant hospital chain Columbia/HCA.

 

In the other corner are the giant "non-profit" HMOs with their own chains of hospitals and doctors, typified by Kaiser-Permanente.

 

One sign of the struggle between the giant for-profit HMOs and the giant non-profit HMOs  is their positions on federal regulation of HMOs.   Let's be clear on this:  neither the Democrat or the Republican plans challenge the basic premise that the rich and powerful have the right

 

 to restrict our medical care.

 

All of these plans are restricted to workers with health benefits from their jobs, an estimated 168 million.  But 40% of jobs has no health coverage; these workers are excluded.  Medicare and Medicaid (Medi-Cal) recipeints are excluded.  Indigent people with no coverage at all are excluded. The Senate Republican plan is further limited to workers in companies that self-insure their employees, an extimated 48 million. (SF Examiner, 7-20-98)

 

In fact, as we saw above, both for-profit and non-profit HMOs are abandoning care of Medicare and Medicaid patients.

 

As Bill Clinton says, "Our job ... is not to abolish managed care. Our job is to restore managed care to its proper role in American life, which is to give us the most efficient and cost-effective systems possible,"  (LA Times, 7-16-98)

 

Nevertheless, the non-profit HMOs and for-profit HMOs still have radically different outlooks about government regulation:

 

The non-profit HMOs are for government HMO regulation:  Approximately 18 Kaiser HMOs and HMOs and Kaiser affiliates (9 million covered) and an equal number of other HMOs that are also non-profit and have their own hospitals and staffs of doctors have formed THE HMO GROUP to lobby and promote their interests. This group is pushing to have HMOs governed by all of the federal regulations proposed by the Clinton and the Democrats, with the important exception of allowing HMOs to be sued. (See below.)  (NY Times, 7-14-98)

 

 In fact, as we will see, the non-profits helped draft the regulations.
 
The for-profit HMOs are vehemently against government regulation:  Eight of the largest for-profit HMOs, many offshoots of insurance companies, have united with business lobbiests like the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of independent Business, and the National Association of Manufacturers to form the Health Benefits Coalition.     The HMOs are  Blue Cross/Blue Shield Assn (18 million), United Healthcare/Humana (10 million), Cigna (6million), Aetna-USHealthcare (5 million), New York Life/NYLHealthCARE, Premier, and Prudential HealthCare.  Other members are The American Association of Health Plans (1000 managed care companies, 140 million covered) and Health Insurance Association (commercial health insurers).   (HBC webpage) (Coverage figures from Modern Healthcare, 6-1-98)  The Health Benefits Coalition is pushing to have no federal regualtion of HMOs at all.  (NY Times, 7-14-98, SF Examinier, 7-13-98)

 

What are these plans for HMO regulation?

 

As of mid-July 1998, there are three major legislative HMO reform plans: a Democrat Senate/House proposal (Kennedy,Mass/Dingell, Mich), a Republican House proposal, (Gingrich, GA), and  Republican Senate proposal.  These are the highlights:

 

Health plan liability in case of death or injury:
DEMOCRATS: Allows plan members to sue under state malpractice laws by removing ERISA shield.
HOUSE REPUBLICANS: Expands penalties for health plans for inferior care, $250,000 cap on medical malpractice awards.
SENATE REPUBLICANS: No provisions

 

Appeals process for patients denied particular care by an HMO:
DEMOCRATS: Requires an internal appeals process and a government-certified company for external.
HOUSE REPUBLICANS: Requires internal appeals process through HMO-appointed arbitrator, non-binding.
SENATE REPUBLICANS: Requires internal appeals process and external appeals board selected by the health plan, for "medically necessary" procedures over $1000..
 
Patients' access to specialists:
DEMOCRATS: Allows the chronically ill to consult specialists to get adequate care. Allows women to choose an OB/GYN as primary care provider.
HOUSE REPUBLICANS: Allows children to choose a pediatrician and women to choose an OB/GYN as primary care provider.
SENATE REPUBLICANS: Allows women to choose an OB/GYN as primary care provider and children to see a pediatrician without a referral
 
Continuity of care if patient or doctor is dropped from health plan:
DEMOCRATS: Requires up to 90 days of coverage after primary care doctor is dropped from plan or coverage is ended.
HOUSE REPUBLICANS: No provisions.
SENATE REPUBLICANS: Similar to Democrats' plan
 
Coverage of services by Emergency Rooms not part of patient's HMO: 
ALL PLANS: Must be covered if a reasonable person would have concluded such care was needed. Doctors right to discuss treatments not covered by HMO ("gag rule")
ALL PLANS: gag rules prohibited

 

Length of hospital stay following mastectomy
DEMOCRATS: Allows 48-hour hospital stays.
HOUSE REPUBLICANS: No provision.
SENATE REPUBLICANS: No provision.
 
Medical Savings Account
DEMOCRATS: No provision.
HOUSE REPUBLICANS: Some expansion of medical savings accounts.
SENATE REPUBLICANS: Vast expansion. Allows tax-deductible contributions to medical savings accounts instead of comprehensive insurance.

 

Disclosure of information to patients and potential patients:
DEMOCRATS: includes drugs covered and patient outcome/satisfaction information
REPUBLICANS: limited to what is covered and appeals process.

 

(data from LA Times, 7-15-98, 7-16-98,  SF Examinier, 7-13-98, SF Examiner, 7-20-98) 

 

Part of this struggle between the for-profits and the non-profits is a simple dogfight between two competing groups of capitalists. But this is not simply a struggle over immediate profits. These two competing groups of capitalists have completely different sources of money and power, and completely different national agendas and needs. Increasingly, they cannot co-exist.

 

• Columbia/HCA is controlled by a newly-rich group of Texas capitalists. Richard L. Scott started Columbia/HCA in 1987 by buying two El Paso hospitals with Richard Rainwater, a Texas investor with big holdings in Texas natural gas, oil drilling, Marathon and Texaco oil companies, Texas real estate, and Walt Disney. This money has fueled the growth of the Columbia/HCA empire. At its height, Columbia/HCA controlled 340 hospitals, nearly half of the for-profit hospital beds in the country, 200 home health care agencies, and 135 outpatient-surgery offices. It was the nation's 10th largest employer, with 240,000 employees. Columbia acquired in-trouble hospitals at the lowest possible cost, closed or consolidated facilities which duplicated services, and cut staff. At one point, it was acquiring a new hospital every ten days. (texasmonthly.website, Modern Healthcare, 5-15-96)

 

• Kaiser, on the other hand, was founded as a health plan for workers in Kaiser steel, cement, and shipbuilding industries during WWII. These industries are financially tied to older Rockefeller money and the corporate banking system of the US, particularly Chase-Manhattan.

 

• The "new-money", "oil patch" Texas capitalists tied to Columbia/HCA get their money from domestic oil production and high-tech industries. They do not have the interest or the money to compete in the world-wide market, particularly in foreign oil. Their interest is in amassing as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, domestically. They do not want to pay taxes to support world-wide armies to dominate other countries. They therefore are associated with isolationism, anti-NAFTA, anti-taxation, anti-government rhetoric, and highly speculative financial dealings for quick profits. They are generally portrayed as "reactionary," and are tied to the militias, the Promise Keepers, and the anti-abortion movement. They are not as rich and as powerful as the "old-money" Rockefeller capitalists, but in the last three decades their position has risen enough that they now challenge the "old-money" Rockefeller interests.

For example, in healthcare,  the Health Benefits Coalition (see above), representing the largest for-profit HMOs and insurance company related HMOs, also contains Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), which called managed care reform "the road to socialized medicine."  (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, AFSCME, bulletin, 1-23-98)

Citizens for a Sound Economy is associated with Congressman Dick Armey, who promotes Steve Forbes' flat tax, and with Congressman BillyTauzin, who promotes a national sales tax.

CSE received  $9.3 million from foundations of the Koch family, the largest family owned business in the US, from domestic oil, gas, coal, and chemicals. The Koch foundations considered CSE "an important weapon in the assault on government interference in business." (Nation, 8-26-96, and the CSE webpage)

• The more dominant "old-money" Rockefeller interests tied to Kaiser get their profits from foreign countries, chiefly oil from the Mid-East. Their interest is in trying to maintain the US's weakening hold on the rest of the world, because capitalists in Germany, France, Russia, and even China are threatening this domination. Therefore the Rockefeller interests are in maintaining a strong US military force, pursuing an aggressive foreign policy to maintain US interests abroad, and building up the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to promote world-wide financial stability. The "old money" also wants to regain the loyalty of a bitterly cynical working class, particularly minorities, so they will fight in foreign wars to regain US domination abroad. They therefore are associated with internationalism, a longer-term national outlook, and are pro-taxation and pro-central authority. They are generally portrayed as "liberals," and support affirmative action, abortion, and unions, if kept sufficiently subservient. This is the group that is leading the US into war in the Mid-east and eventually into world war.

 

For example, in healthcare, The HMO Group (THMOG), representing non-profit HMOs with their own hospitals and staffs of doctors, has as a goal "to coordinate national health priorities through collaboration between public agencies and private sector HMOs,"   THMOG has close ties with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest US think tank and philanthropy devoted to health care issues.  Much of the Johnson Foundation's work has been helping states get "waivers" from the federal government, excusing states from federal requirements of providing medical and welfare assistance to poor people.  Even before the Clinton/Gingrich welfare reform program,  Clinton's Health and Human Services Department granted waivers to 2/3 of the states in the country.  Many of the Medicaid waivers put together by the Johnson Foundation involved public/private partnerships in the sense of forcing Medicaid recipients into private HMOs.

THMOG recently received a 5 year multi-million dollar contract from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Centers for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP)  to assess the linkage between private providers of health care services and the CDC and other Public Health Service agencies. According to THMOG;s press release, "The HMO Group shares CDC's vision of fostering bridges between public and private health partners that benefit the entire community."
 

 
• In fact, both groups of capitalists are equally workers' enemies. The agenda of the dominant "Rockefeller" capitalists calls for extracting gigantic sums of money to rebuild the US manufacturing base and infrastructure, and re-arm the military for war. This is why the "liberal" Clinton passed "Workfare" (Welfare Reform), forcing welfare recipients to work and replace millions of "regular" workers who will go on workfare themselves, tremendously lowering all worker's wages.

• For more information on the struggle between the the dominant "Rockerfeller" capitalists and the "new-money" domestic oil-based capitalists,  see the Progressive Labor Party article "Fascists versus Fascists," in the January, 1998 issue of Communist.

 The Rockefeller agenda of extracting billions for rebuilding the manufacturing base and the army means limiting the profits of their domestic rivals, and severely limiting the amount of money that workers get for healthcare. The Rockefeller capitalists cannot afford to spend as much heath care money as the for-profit HMOs use, and they cannot afford to let profits go to their "new money" rivals. The stakes are huge, health spending accounts for one-seventh of gross domestic product. As international financial crisis worsens and as war over oil and world resources approaches, many economists are deciding health care costs must be drastically slashed "in the national interest," and free-market economics cannot be depended on to do this.

 

• "Some economists have begun to question whether, over the longer term, health maintenance organizations can deliver on their promise of keeping health costs under control. "Oxford joined the long list of HMOs that lost control over costs," said Kenneth S. Abramowitz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co." (NY Times, 10-28-97)

 
• "As for the HMO's, their job is getting more difficult," said Mr. Altman, consultant for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "They have to push harder on one side, against doctors and hospitals. On the other side, buyers are more demanding; they want higher quality, lower prices, greater access and more choice of doctors and hospitals." (NY Times, 1-5-98)

 
• "United Healthcare's woes also raise the question of whether managed care works as a model for the future of health care in keeping costs under control. While the company's difficulties are limited to caring for the elderly, it is unclear how successful any managed-care company will be once it covers more people. The backlash from consumers, who are increasingly demanding more from their plans and want more choice of doctors and hospitals, adds to the difficulty of containing costs. 'You can't make huge margins in this business long term,' Feinberg argued."  (NY Times, 8-7-98)

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The rulers of this country may well move healthcare away from the for-profit HMOs ...
 

Hard as this may be to believe, it is quite possible that the dominant capitalists of this country will move health care away from the for-profit sector, and turn it over to "non-profits" like Kaiser, which will become quasi-governmental. They will probably use people's anger at for-profit health care as an opportunity to make this move in the guise of reform. To many, this move will look progressive, but it is not.

A recent NY Times article (6-1-98) shows how trying to reform healthcare through the proposed Patients' Bills of Rights will strongly favor large HMOs with their own doctors, so-called Group Practice HMOs, like Kaiser.   The reform legislation mandates that HMOs must publish extensive and detailed statistics about their quality of care.    In theory, the patient can then choose HMOs and doctors with good statistics.  But this theory ignores the reality of who controls health care.  Only the large HMOs with their own doctors charting on their centralized computer patient records  will be able to meet the requirements of the reform legislation.   In this way,   patients' justifiable demand for accountability will speed up the monopolization  of hospitals and insurers, and open up patients to more coercion and worse medical care in the future.  In more detail, the article says:
 

"But the experts also know something the politicians won't say. These bills of rights, the product of a consumer backlash against restrictions imposed by the HMOs, are almost certain to do the opposite of what consumers say they want. Rather than expand consumer options, they will drive patients into restrictive types of HMOs that limit patients to a small roster of doctors. The bills could also wipe out old-fashioned fee-for-service health insurance, which puts medical choices completely in the hands of doctors and patients."
 
Patients' rights have broad support among health policy experts who say they will make insurance companies accountable for the quality of care they provide. The idea is that if every plan reports clear data on mortality, morbidity and patient satisfaction, consumers can reward the best plans with their business.

The patients' rights bills would demand substantial record-keeping. how many of its youngsters receive vaccinations,... how many diabetics are checked for high blood pressure and how many coronary patients take beta blockers ...How many of the plan's asthmatics return to normal work schedules without repeated visits to hospital emergency rooms?... How many of the plan's diabetics successfully control their blood pressure?
 
HMOs can handle demands for extensive data collection, typically by steering patients to a small roster of doctors and by using "gatekeepers" to intervene between patients and specialists. They also provide the plan a single place to find any patient's complete medical record. That makes tracking outcomes possible. By comparison, looser forms of managed care, like Preferred Provider Organizations, allow patients to see nearly any doctor, but require them to pay more for those who are not members of the plan. There is no one place to find a patient's complete record so plans must sift through claims submissions to figure out which treatments their patients received.
 
The bills would tighten the grip of managed care because they impose elaborate record-keeping requirements on the health plans, aimed at making them publicly accountable for how well they prevent, treat and cure illness. What the politicians won't yet admit is that accountability clashes with something else something else patients prize: choice.
 
 

This restructuring of health care will actually be fascism with a liberal cover ...
 

 
When we talk about turning health care over to quasi-governmental "non-profits" for a much tighter, more centralized rationing of patient care, we are talking abut fascism. Fascism can exist years before world war, or concentration camps. Capitalism inevitably leads to periodic crises of decreased profits. And when this happens capitalism switches from "democratic" mode to fascist mode to regain its profitability at any cost.

"Removing profit from health care" will mean the rulers have decided real healthcare is too expensive and should be abandoned so they can use the money saved to make greater profits elsewhere or rebuild their factories and military.  "Single-payer" will mean the rulers have decided to use the government to enforce healthcare rationing.

Fascism involves (among other things) three elements, all of which can be seen in the US and US healthcare:

 

• Fascism is using force and threat of economic ruination to wring more profits from workers, through huge cuts in wages and services, especially health.

•  Fascism is increased monopolization of the economy to capture profits for the dominant capitalists, and the merging of business and government to assure that business and government serve the dominant capitalists. (The merging of government and business is an attempt to rebuild the decaying factory system and infrastructure and prepare for war to regain international power.)

 Fascism is collaboration of unions with the dominant capitalists, and the co-optation of  unions and opposing groups to confuse and then obliterate class consciousness of workers. 

 

Let's try to look at these elements separately.
 

 
Fascism is using force and threat of economic ruination to wring more profits from workers:

 For the past twenty years, the rulers of the US have been setting the stage for using force and threat of economic ruination to extract more profits from workers, through huge cuts in wages and services, especially health.
 

• In the mid-1970s, US rulers realized that their defeat in Vietnam had broken the US stranglehold on the world's economy. They realized there would be serious problems for US capitalists in the coming decades, and that they would have to greatly reduce the living standards of the working class. Business Week (10-12-75) wrote :"Yet it will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow --- the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more. ... Nothing that this nation or any other nation has done in modern history compares to the selling job that now must be done to make people accept the new reality. And there are grave doubts about whether the job can be done at all. Historian Arnold Toynbee, filled with years of compassion, laments that democracy will be unable to cope with approaching economic problems --- and that totalitarianism will take its place" (Setting the stage for using force to impoverish workers and enrich the capitalists.)

•  In the same period, a leading hospital management magazine wrote, "Though some corporations make money as (health care) costs increase, the majority (of corporations) lose money because costs for health benefits, which they share with employees and unions, cut into their profits. Given the competition for markets with foreign firms, US corporations can no longer afford to leave health care politics to the usual participants -- professors, bureaucrats, physicians, and hospitals. .... Whether or not a hospital cost control bill is passed, or is passed but found inadequate, the big corporations are here to stay. They will work for federal and state attempts to control costs, preferably keeping the impetus in the private sector, but controlling costs by all means, at all costs. (Hospital Progress, 12-77 p 49-50). (Setting the stage for major cuts in health care, possibly using the government. Also setting the stage for increased monopolization, by suppressing health-care corporations whose interests conflict with the dominant corporate interests of the US.)

• The head of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the most powerful medical think-tank in the US, is Steven Schroeder. In 1890, as a member of the UCSF Health Policy Group, Schroeder organized a Cost Containment Conference, where he said "the main culprit in the high cost of medical care is our current inability to make and enforce decisions about what medical services we need and can afford." (Personal observation) Schroeder popularized the notion that "low-cost, high-utilization technologies such as lab testing create more of a regulatory problem than do the ‘high-fliers’ (high-tech CAT scans etc.)." He deplored the increased use of lab tests in maternity care, and in diagnosis of appendicitis, breast cancer, and heart attack at the Palo Alto Clinic, a primary-care based clinic serving the East Palo Alto ghetto as well as Palo Alto. He also deplored an increase in lab tests among a New Mexico Medicaid population. (Address to Sun Valley Forum). (Setting the stage for enforcing the rationing of healthcare, particularly healthcare of the poor.)

•  Another speaker at the same 1980 Cost Containment Conference described a 3-year program at UCSF to discourage residents (doctors-in-training) from ordering mechanized blood tests, blood clotting time tests, stat orders, X-rays, vital signs, weights, fluid Intake-and-Output tracking, and medicines administered four times daily. He advised doctors not to worry about malpractice suits, because residents, as students, were not legally liable. When asked why the program trained residents instead of doctors, he explained that there are two levels of healthcare. There is private health care, used by the wealthy, where decisions are made by doctors, and there is public health care, used by the poor, where decisions are made by the residents. "Therefore, it is the residents who need to be taught cost-containment, not the doctors." (Personal observation) (Again, enforcing the rationing of healthcare, particularly healthcare of the poor. Also justifying inequities in healthcare)

• Medical journals started publishing items like these:

"Persons will be recognized as in need of, and then denied, benefits that the medical care provision system is capable of providing. ... These decisions (to withhold treatment) are likely to be made when any of the following conditions are met: (1) the treatment is determined to be futile, (2) the patient declines treatment, (3) the quality of the patient’s life is unacceptable, or (4) the cost of providing care is too great. ... Only when society is fully able to come to grips with death and dying is it likely that policies and procedures for decisions not to treat will not only will be formulated, but will also be followed. This period is likely to be hastened as financial constraints force the issue." (Health Care Technology and the Inevitability of Resource Allocation and Rationing Decisions, Journal of the American Medical Association 4-22-83 p 2208) A cost-benefit analysis showing that care of very low birthweight babies is not economically justified, based on the expected lifetime earnings of the infant. ("Economic evaluation of neonatal intensive care of very-low-birth-weight infants", New England Journal of Medicine 308:1330-1337, 1983) (Setting the stage for denying care to those who are not "economically productive.") A survey of patient deaths in Seattle extended care facilities, showing that doctors were willing to withhold antibiotics to 40% of patients with fever, the majority of whom died. "Physicians have been accused of prolonging life at any cost. However, surveys of health professionals have found that many (50 to 70 per cent) are disposed to withdraw or withhold life-prolonging treatment." The question of whether the patient expressed a desire to continue living is never even mentioned in the article. ("Nontreatment of Fever in Extended-Care Facilities, New England Journal of Medicine, 5-31-1979, p 1246 (Popularizing the idea of killing unproductive people who might use up resources.) A prominent British neurologist wrote in 1975 that "no person with severe handicaps is likely to be able to earn his living in competitive employment, unless his IQ is at least 100." He developed a set of rigid criteria to determine which newborns with spina bifida should receive aggressive therapy. These criteria include consideration of the infant’s "social condition" (economic resources of the parents.) (J Roy Coll Phys, 10:47, 1975) (Popularizing the idea of letting economically unproductive people die without treatment.) 

•  At Children's Hospital of Oklahoma, secret "quality-of-life" experiments on children born with spina bifida were conducted between 1977 and 1982. Twenty-five parents were advised by doctors not to have their babies treated; 24 of these babies died. 36 parents were advised by doctors to have their babies fully treated; all 36 lived. The decision to advise for or against treatment was based on a formula devised by the doctors, involving the baby’s functionality, the parent’s financial resources and education, and how little public resources would have to be used for treatment and rehabilitation. The US Supreme Court refused to hear a lawsuit filed by the parents of children who were allowed to die. (Progressive, 10-94)

• More recently, in 1995, the Pew Health Professions Commission at UCSF, one of the most influential medical think tanks in the US, issued a report advocating closing 60% of the beds in the nation, half the hospitals, and 20% of the medical schools in the nation. It predicted "surpluses" of 100,000 doctors and 200,000 nurses by the year 2000. (NY Times 11-17-95) The San Francisco-based Pew Commission includes former government officials, medical educators including University of California San Francisco (UCSF), public health professionals and insurance company executives. The commission is headed by Richard Lamm, former governor of Colorado, who became notorious for speeches in 1984 declaring that old people had the DUTY to die and free up scarce national resources. (SF Chronicle, 3-29-84, NY Times, 11-17-95, and SF Examiner, 11-17-95)

•  Very recently, many economists are deciding that the marketplace cannot be depended on to adequately ration health care. "The HMO industry has lost a lot of clout," said Uwe Reinhardt, an economist at Princeton University. (NY Times, 10-28-97) "Managed care companies do not manage care," said Kenneth E. Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, a trade group. "Instead they manage price, the prices they pay to providers. There are really few good examples of any sound managed care in New York." "Medical costs are going up," an HMO representative said. "Utilization is going up. They are not managing care." (NY Times, 1-11-98) (Calling for more severe rationing of care. This passage also sets the stage for increased monopolization, by suppressing health-care corporations whose interests conflict with the dominant corporate interests of the US.) This bring us to the next characteristic of fascism: monopolization.

Return to "fascism".
 

Fascism is increased monopolization of the economy ...

The federal government has allowed, and even encouraged, monopolization on the part of "non-profits," particularly Kaiser, which are associated with the dominant Rockefeller-based capitalists. It has allowed them to form bigger and bigger conglomerates. At the same time, the government has attacked for-profit HMO conglomerates associated with the "new" capitalists, forcing them to break up.
 

• So-called "non-profits" especially Kaiser, have been allowed to swallow up each other rapidly. In the third quarter of 1996, 95% of all acquired hospitals were non-profits, and 80% of the buyers were non-profits as well. From late 1996 to September 1997, Kaiser acquired or merged with: (1) Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound (675,000 members), the largest membership-run non-profit HMO in the US, (2) Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York: (1,100,000 members) originally a state-run health plan for New York State employees, (3) Community Health Plan (350,000 members, and (4) Humana Group Health Plan (118,000 members) (CNA Kaiser Pamphlet, available on the CNA website)  In June, 1998, Kaiser announced an alliance with AvMed, Florida's largest non-profit, with 400,000 members.  (CNA communication)  What is important is not only the size and pace of the acquisitions, but also that they were non-profit, with a tradition of membership service and/or involvement. Kaiser wants a patient base more involved with its HMO, more likely to identify with it, and more willing to accept its cuts.

• On the other hand, Columbia/HCA has come under huge attack from the government, allegedly for Medi-Care fraud. Federal agents seized thousands of documents, have indicted high-ranking officials, and have forced a complete reorganization of Columbia/HCA in which they are losing a third of their hospitals and their entire home care operation. No one doubts that Columbia/HCA committed massive fraud, but Medicare fraud is very widespread, practically built into the system. (NY Times, 12-18-97) What's behind the attack on Columbia/HCA is an attack on new money. (Direct attack of the upstart capitalists by the dominant capitalists, which will lead to more monopolization.)

 Return to "fascism".
 
 

Fascism is merging business and government ...

Kaiser and other "non-profits" have made moves to integrate themselves with government-supplied health care. They have involved themselves in movements to federally regulate healthcare delivery by HMOs, and in a federal initiative to extend healthcare to more children.  The money  for these "non-profits" comes largely from bonds issued by state health facilities financing authorities, which charge no interest to the HMOs.
 

• In September, 1997 Kaiser's three non-profit arms (Kaiser itself, Group Health Co-operative of Puget Sound, and Health Insurance Plan of New York) announced an agreement with the American Association of Retired People (AARP) and Families USA (a health reform advocacy agency) on instituting standards in 18 areas of health consumer concern. According to Kaiser's 9-24-97 Press release, "the (joint) group will urge policymakers and President Clinton's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry to consider the 18 principles for national standards in their recommendations."

 In a letter to be sent to the Presidential Advisory Commission, the health plans and consumer organizations say they are advocating legally enforceable standards to protect consumers and to achieve fair, consistent and efficient regulation, and greater accountability by health plans."  Remember, this is the same Kaiser whose members are dying in its Emergency Rooms waiting to be seen!   Non-profits calling for federal regulation is a turnaround:   Kaiser and Health Insurance Plan of NY were two of the most prominent HMOs that pressured the federal Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) to abandon similar federal regulations for HMOs receiving Medicaid (Medi-Cal) and Medicare in July, 1996. (NY Times, 7-8-96) (Movement toward merging business and government; and co-optation of opposing groups.)

The Presidential Advisory Commission itself was tilted toward non-profit HMOs including representatives from Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO, which have entered into a partnership agreement with Kaiser (see below), Henry Ford Health Systems (another non-profit HMO on the Kaiser model with its own hospitals),  and Families USA.
 
 

• Many of the same Presidential Advisory Commission members are forming a pubic/private coordinating group charged with "ensur[ing] that consumers have a consistent set of standards so they can choose health plans based on quality--not just cost", according to vice-President Gore. (LA Times, 6-18-98)  Several of the HMO reform bills being debated require HMOs to divulge detailed information on their programs of patient care. (NY Times, 6-3-98)

• Another Kaiser move toward becoming a government-mandated managed care provider is its initiative to subsidize health coverage for children from low-income families in California.  It doesn't begin to solve the problem, paying an average of only 50% of Kaiser's premium for only 50,000 children in California. (An estimated 1.8 million California children lack health insurance. The overwhelming majority are in working families whose employers either have plans the parents can't afford or do not have health coverage at all.)
 

But if Kaiser's children's healthcare initiative is only a token remedy, it is a significant foot in the door to becoming an official provider of health care. Kaiser is pushing legislation to increase coverage of children by Medi-Cal and simplify enrollment. It plans to work with schools to identify 630,000 children presently eligible for Medi-Cal, but not enrolled. It also plans to work with schools and the California Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board to identify uninsured children. It plans to form a coalition with other health care providers, insurance plans, and employers get them to make financial contributions. (Kaiser press release, 6-23-97 and SF Chronicle 6-24-97) Kaiser plans to have its initiative go nation-wide in 1999.

 

The Kaiser initiative is part of a network of public-private partnerships to provide children's health insurance coverage. The largest is the Caring Program for Children, which operates in twenty-six states and pools Blue Cross and Blue Shield administrative services and matching funds with private and philanthropic donations. The Colorado Child Health Plan receives funding through corporations, pharmaceutical companies, private donations, and Medicaid teaching funds to the University of Colorado Hospital. (National Governors' Association Fact Sheet, on world wide web)  These three-way partnerships between non-profit HMOs, state governments, and corporate donors are the mainstay of many state's plans for extending children's' healthcare.(Movement toward merging business and government.)

 

• Kaiser's financing is largely governmental.  It currently has almost $1.5 billion outstanding debt to various state and municipal agencies, such as health facility finance authorites, community development authorites, state departments of budget and finance, etc.  The money from these bond issues is interest-free to Kaiser,  and the interest to the bondholders is paid from taxes. (PRNewswire, 6-24-98)  This includes a recent $400 million bond issue by the California Health Facilities Financing Authority, their largest ever to a health facility, a week after Kaiser forced a ten percent rate increase for California Public Employes Retirement System (CalPERS) members. (California State Controller's office press release, 6-25-98)

 

• These public/private partnerships are almost like a flip-flop optical illusion.  If you look at the partnerships one way it's privatization, because corporate donors finance children's healthcare, and "non-profit" HMOs co-administer it.          But if you look at the partnerships the other way, it's "socialization": because there is a federal initiative for children's healthcare, and state governments are co-administering it.  This simultaneous nationalization and turning national programs over to corporations is what the Nazis called national socialism, a term they devised in an attempt to get workers to support it.

 

• Robert Kuttner, of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), attacked profit-making ventures in healthcare, and called Kaiser itself and Kaiser affiliates Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound and HIP of New York, "the most consumer-oriented nonprofit plans," praising them for supporting mandated health consumer rights. Single-payer healthcare is one of EPI's programs. (http://epn.org/kuttner/bk971126.html)   The Economic Policy Institute is a Massachusetts think-tank behind the Richard-Gephardt-for-president campaign, and calls for a strategy of forming alliances with unions to regain the loyalty of workers. Gephardt: says "If you don’t temper capitalism, it’s a race to the bottom. Capitalism left alone will defeat itself…" (Boston Globe, 12-5-97). EPI's "anti-capitalist" funders are the Rockefeller Foundation, the C.S. Mott Foundation (General Motors money), and the Russell Sage Foundation (Cabot gas and banking money). Gephardt himself is a strong supporter of the "old money" strategy of getting money from international domination. He backed Clinton’s invasion of Haiti. In 1995, he voted to keep U.S. troops in South Korea and Japan. Last year, he voted for a $245 billion 1997 military budget—$10.6 billion more than Clinton had requested. (Challenge, 1-7-98, at http://www.plp.org) In addition, Gephardt is the leading member of Congress pushing for $18 billion for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to bail out crashing economies in Asia. (NY Times, 4-5-98) Gephardt's ally Defense Secretary Cohen emphasized that American economic and security goals are interlocking, especially in countries like Thailand and South Korea: "We need to move on the IMF funds as quickly as possible." (NY Times, 3-19-98) (Merging of business and government, and a realization that free-market capitalism cannot be left to its own devices. Also, capitalists posing as anti-capitalists, trying to obliterate class-consciousness of workers.)

 
 
 

Return to "fascism".

 

 
Fascism is collaboration of unions and co-optation of opposition groups ...
 

The third hallmark of fascism, particularly in its early stages, are collaboration between unions and the dominant capitalists, co-optation of opposing groups, and manipulating things to confuse and obliterate class consciousness of workers.
 

• Kaiser and the AFL-CIO leadership have recently concluded a partnership agreement, which stipulates that AFL-CIO officials will participate in all levels of Kaiser's strategic decision-making, including hospital closings, hospital and clinic downsizing, restructuring the workforce, and policy questions on the quality of patient care. Kaiser agrees to co-operate with AFL-CIO (chiefly SEIU) in areas where its employees are already unionized, and to co-operate with AFL-CIO moves to unionize Kaiser employees in hospitals Kaiser plans to take over. AFL-CIO agrees to market Kaiser as a health plan to all union members nationally. As part of their marketing obligation, the signers accept a pledge not to engage in activities that might damage Kaiser's image or reputation. The agreement contains a "confidentiality" gag clause, requiring the unions to remain silent about information on Kaiser's plans obtained through Partnership activities. Unions will have to conceal adverse data about Kaiser's poor record on patient care and treatment of employees while promoting Kaiser as the union health care plan. (CNA letter to international union presidents) (Collaboration between unions and rulers, Also confusing and obliterating class consciousness of workers by getting them to identify with Kaiser as a "non-profit" so they will sacrifice their jobs and living standards .)

•  SEIU has been preparing for this partnership for years. Years ago, SEIU International wrote in its pamphlet Keeping Public Hospitals Competitive:

  " ... as beds empty, private hospitals are competing head-on with public hospitals for privately-insured patients and even Medicaid (Medi-Cal) patients. ... The SEIU Research Department has identified the key conditions for keeping these institutions competitive: strong political and community support, stable funding, a well-developed clinic structure, recognized specialties, and a competitive cost structure. It's clear that keeping costs competitive will be key to the survival of public hospitals. For SEIU healthcare workers, this means working with management to address the future of public hospitals -- while defending worker's rights and protecting the quality of care." And just in case anyone doesn't understand what "competitive cost structure" and "working with management" means, SEIU spells it out in Findings About Healthcare Industry Restructuring and Implications for Our Union: 
"In order to maintain a patient base, public hospitals will be forced to compete with private hospitals. ... Implication: Many public hospitals will need to change to survive/prosper in the new marketplace. These changes will involve cost cutting often in the staffing area ..." Kaiser wrote in its Southern California Regional Business Plan for 1995-1997, which calls for massive layoffs, deskilling and job restructuring that it intends to "mitigate any potential harmful actions on the part of the labor unions" by continuing to develop "strong relationships with its union leadership." (The Link, CNA Kaiser Interfacility Newsletter, 9-95) (#3, Collaboration between unions and rulers) 

• At a time when San Francisco General Hospital was faced big cuts, SEIU brought the leadership of their Local 285 to San Francisco, to explain how Local 285 accepted the idea of the merger and the privatization of Boston City Hospital and supposedly made it work for them. The Boston local did a monumental job of mobilizing the people of Boston to vote for a Public Health Commission to direct the merged hospitals and insure that they fulfill their public health mission. Labor was guaranteed a seat on the seven-seat Commission. However the final contract that emerged called for cutting 1,200 workers (31% of the staff), and closing half the beds, and even this plan was dependent on attracting new business from community health centers and private insurers. (Boston Globe 6-30-96 and 4-21-96)
 
• To appreciate just how close SEIU's leadership is allied to old money and its global oil companies, consider a recent article on Nigeria from the SF Bay Guardian (7-8-98).

 

Nigeria's economy is based on oil; it is one of the richest deposits in the world, producing $12 billion/year, 40% of which goes to the US.  Five companies rule the roost: Shell (Dutch), AGIP (Italian), Elf-Aquitaine (French), and Mobil and Chevron (old-money US, aligned with Citibank and Bank of America.)  The country has been ruled by a succession of military dictatorships for 28 years, which gets half the oil profits in the guise of the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Company.

 

In 1994 Nigeria's two oil workers unions led a strike trying to force the military to recognize an election the year before. The strike paralyzed the oil industry, and the leaders of the unions were arrested. There were worldwide protests, emphasizing the collaboration of the US with the military dictatorship.

 

At Mobil's May 98 annual meeting, the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers union (OCAW) forced a resolution onto the floor demanding Mobile review its investments in Nigeria.  The resolution was quashed by institutional shareholders Franklin Research and Development, New York City Pension Fund, and SEIU.

 
• We can see the effect of the Kaiser-SEIU partnership agreement already:

 

SEIU  told its members to cross the picket lines of northern California RNs who are striking against patient care cutbacks and hospital closings. Kaiser's position is that it will "bargain" with AFL-CIO unions over patient-care-quality issues, but not with the California Nurses Association. (#3, union-boss collaboration, obliterating class consciousness) 
 On February 5, 1995 the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article claiming that CNA claims of deteriorating patient care at Kaiser were false, citing figures from a liberal business think-tank which purported to show that Kaiser nursing care was actually improving. (Kaiser has repeatedly refused to show patient care statistics to the CNA.) The Chronicle writer, Carl T. Hall, is an AFL-CIO shop steward on his job. (personal communication) (#3, union-boss collaboration, confusing the class consciousness of workers.) 

Kaiser has already opened a hospital in the Los Angeles suburb of Baldwin Park where the entire theme of the hospital is physician-union co-operation. "Kaiser said the opening will involve an unusual degree of union-management cooperation. Nursing, technical, maintenance and other employees will be closely involved in the planning." (personal communication and LA Times, 2-6-98)

Northern California Kaiser is planning to open its long-vacant Roseville Hospital in Fall '98, with SEIU Local 250 and 535 participation in planning of staffing models, health care delivery and other aspects of hospital operation. (union-corporation collaboration)(from SEIU Local 250 press releases, 3-5-98 and 3-23-98) (Kaiser seems to have changed its mind and decided not to close all its hospitals.)

•  The main body of physician opposition to managed care is now taking the position that for-profit HMOs are the enemy, not managed care itself. Describing The Ad-Hoc-Committee to Defend Health Care, composed of some of the leading critics of managed care in the past, Managed Care Magazine (8-29-97) says: "The physicians are not anti-managed care per se, but critical of what they view as undue corporate influence in medical care. Their most specific goal is a moratorium on for-profit takeovers of hospitals, insurance plans and physician practices."

While acknowledging that, in practice, there often is little difference between not-for-profit and for-profit organizations and hospitals, Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., one of the physicians spearheading the group, said, "The problem is profit-driven health care." Woolhandler said non-profits are forced to compete with, and behave like, for-profit companies. (Ad Hoc Committee's state in JAMA, 12-3-97) (#3, co-optation of opposing groups and confusing the class consciousness of workers.)

This is exactly the same rationalization the AFL-CIO uses to justify its partnership deal with Kaiser: we must help "non-profit" healthcare against for-profit healthcare. Promoting the "non-profits" by saying "Pursuit of corporate profit and personal fortune have no place in caregiving, " sounds good, but it ignores the fact that as capitalism goes further into crisis, its government will use "non-profit" health providers to severely restrict the flow of health care and make much greater profits for the class that runs the government. Whatever its intent, this babble about eliminating profit from healthcare has the effect of spreading passivity and setting us up for the kill. There is no way to escape profits under capitalism; only communism can give us life without profit. 

 Return to "fascism".

 

PROGRESSIVE LABOR PARTY:  a communist future where workers control society.
 

What does Progressive Labor Party mean by communism?

 

Our vision is a society run by the working class, with no profits, and no money. We produce the things we need and give them to each other. With no economic basis for racism, sexism, or elitism, we could struggle to develop our real human potential.

Under capitalism, the 1% that rules society has more wealth than the rest of us put together . They have built an entire apparatus to legitimatize, legalize, and secure this system of theft. This apparatus includes the government, the schools, the media, the universities, and the police and prisons. You can add many more parts yourself. Communists call this apparatus "the state".

These capitalists are not about to hand us control of society on a silver platter. Quite the contrary, the disaster of capitalist healthcare is a reflection of the entire economy. Capitalism is now in a world-wide crisis of inability to sell its goods; its high-flying global economy is rapidly crashing into depression and conflicts of major capitalists over markets, cheap labor, and raw materials, chiefly oil. The fascism we see being imposed on us in health care, the murder and massive jailing of our youth by the "justice" system, the forced labor of welfare recipients and prisoners, all this is being imposed to force more work out of us for less money, to take away our services, and to gear up to fight in world war. We seem very weak.

  On the other hand, the rulers’ hospitals, factories, schools, and armies are all staffed by workers like us. We have no interest in killing ourselves for our bosses on the job or in battle. And we have every interest in overthrowing our bosses. We believe that inspired by a vision of a communist future, we can fight all the aspects of fascism in a way to develop our ability to unite, to act together, and to forcibly take power as a class. That is the purpose of Progressive Labor Party.

 

What would healthcare be like in a communist society? Here is some of what we want:
 

Healthcare would exist to improve the quality of life, not make profits. This means we, the working class, would make healthcare decisions based on OUR needs. For example:
 

WE will decide how many hospitals and clinics were enough in our city or area.

WE will decide when our patients need to see specialty doctors.

WE will decide our staffing levels.

WE will decide when our patients are ready to go home.

WE will decide how much training was necessary for our different activities.

WE will decide whether it's better to treat a particular condition at home.

 
But would "WE" always agree with each other on what's best for all of us?

Probably not! Our existence has both collectivity and individuality; we all have our individual strengths and weaknesses to contribute. What's important is that the basis for making decisions would be our collective good, and that a mass communist party would exist as a framework to discuss questions and carry out our decisions.

For example, in the mid-60's, when millions had communist aspirations in China, some providers and patients preferred traditional medicine while others preferred western medicine. People argued over which form should be the medicine of the new society, until they realized there weren't enough practitioners of either type, and they needed to use everyone that was available. The communist party developed a plan to integrate the two disciplines. Traditional and western providers worked together in each clinic and hospital, discussed patients together to make sure all were getting the best care possible, learned from each other, and often devised new treatments based on both methods. (Joshua Horne, Away with All Pests)

 

 

There would be equality .  No one owning hospitals, food stores, or housing, to enrich themselves.

 No one to force sending patients home or onto the streets while they’re still sick. No one with power over us who would try to bribe us to scrimp on patient care. We wouldn't all have the same tastes, and people's needs would be different, but we would all have the same standard of living. At times this would mean sharing adversity, too. For example, as the working class begins to win in armed revolution, we can be sure the present rulers will try to destroy the nation's infrastructure, including hospitals, rather than let us take possession of it. During the rebuilding phase, there's no doubt about it: things will be difficult. We believe in an environment of collectivity and equality, people's best aspects will come forth. Even under capitalism the spark of this spirit flashes: In the huge 1993 Mississippi River flooding when urban black prisoners from Chicago prisons were sent into rural white downstate Illinois towns to repair levees and save towns, strong suspicions and antagonisms melted away, and strong attachments developed in many cases. (NPR news programming) 

Mental and manual labor would not be separated as they are now. Each person's work would involve both mental and manual labor. Elitist stratification would not be allowed.
 During the mid-60s striving for true communism in China, a local reporter looked for the captain of a Chinese ship docked in Canada. The captain was found setting tables in the dining room. The reporter asked the captain why he was setting tables. The captain said, yes, it is true he had navigational and nautical skills and was the leader while the ship was at sea, but those skills were no longer needed in port so he was just like everyone else.

 During this same period in China, huge resources were put into healing workers injured during the rapid industrialization. Huge advances were made in microsurgery, and surgeons from many countries came to study the new techniques of repairing hand trauma. These advances were the logical outgrowth of striving for communism, which values manual labor as much as mental labor, and makes each nourish the other. Communist merging of mental and manual work can make healthcare work a smooth continuum of skills where everyone can develop their potential.  Think about the awkward working relationship between nurses and new medical residents: As doctors-in-training, the residents are supposed to give the orders, but the nurses have to prompt the new residents on what orders to give.  It's not the new residents' fault, they've had very little patient contact. Think how much easier it would be to learn to be a doctor, if you'd already been a nurse for years, and an aide for years before that. Better yet, think of how these jobs could be combined, so clinicians could smoothly increase their skills, instead of hitting barriers where you can't get a "better" job, or the only "better" jobs are management, so you become clinically useless. The only reason for the capitalist boundaries between Aides, Nurses, and Doctors is to enforce aclass-based pecking order. We would be able to prevent and treat disease in entirely new ways if people's work involved both manual and mental labor, and both are given respect and validity. Once again in mid-60's China, liver cancer was very common in a large area where there was lots of hepatitis because of frequent fecal contamination of water supplies by flooding rivers. From the village level up there was huge campaign to drill thousands of wells each day to provide safe drinking water. Hepatitis was drastically reduced, very quickly. Cancer scientists said, "Now in 20 years, we'll know whether hepatitis causes liver cancer." Combining mental and manual labor, combining theory and practice, gives "epidemiology" a whole new outlook. (report of Stanford Medical School dean returning from China, early 1970s) Contrast this with capitalist cancer research, where it is almost impossible to use population studies to tell whether a substance causes cancer, because nothing has been done to eliminate the known carcinogens like cigarettes and industrial pollution. Cancers from known carcinogens swamp out cancers from the substance you would like to investigate. 
 

We would do our work for free, and get our needs free also.
 

If you were to ask nurses, or other health workers what we would really like, the vast majority of us would say we want to be able to provide good health care for our patients without interference from the hospital, and we want to know we will have food, shelter, medical care, education, and free time for our families and our friends. So the time we're conscious that we need money isn't while we're working, it's when we need food, shelter, clothing, transportation, etc. We need the money because the bosses who own the farms, the apartments, the clothing factory, the bus line, etc have stolen what "their" workers have produced, and we need money to buy it back from those bosses. A hospital worker wrote up an experience on the question on money and wages:
  I went into an operating room in our hospital to adjust some equipment.
The room was filled with stainless steel and hard tile, but the nurses
had dimmed the lights, and were moving quietly and speaking in soft voices.
A delivery was in progress.

 
"When you feel a contraction coming, press against my hand."
"That’s good. Now breathe deeply, and let’s get ready for the next one."
"Very good!   Each time, you’re opening up a little more."
What quiet intensity!
What incredible focus!
What a privilege to work where life is being born!

 
No matter how much they try to make us forget it,
WE ARE THE ONES WHO HELP LIFE HAPPEN!
The administrators, with their power suits and spreadsheets and efficiency reports,
are completely foreign. They haven’t a clue. They’re just feeding off us.

 My friend works at a different hospital.
She nursed a preemie as small as a Cornish game hen into a thriving baby.
She worked with the whole family.
Later, she called the parents at home to see how the baby was doing.
They read her the letter they’d sent the hospital about her.
It was very touching.

 Later, my friend got a letter at work on midnight blue stationery with gold stars:
"Thank you for co-operating with our Customer Relations program."
"Please accept this coupon for a free yogurt in our cafeteria."

How dare these parasites think they can bribe us with yogurt!
Plying us with trinkets for what comes from our best nature!

 
But isn’t the whole wage system like the yogurt?
No amount of money can equal the work we do,
whether it’s resuscitating a baby,
or stopping the spread of disease by collecting infectious waste.

As far as we’re concerned, we work for each other.
The nurses don’t pay me to fix their machines.
The parents don’t pay the nurses for delivering their babies.
Why can’t we run all of society like this?
 
 

Finally, we would like to include a letter from Progressive Labor Party's newspaper, Challenge. It is the grandmother of a baby who was born at the hospital where a reader works.
 "She is the lay-midwife in a village near Guadalajara Mexico. She told the Labor and Delivery nurses how she takes women into her house for three days, delivers their babies, feeds them, does their laundry, takes care of the baby, helps the mom with breast-feeding, collects baby clothes from neighbors if the mom has none, and often treats them with medicines she makes from barks and leaves, or if necessary transports them to the hospital, about ninety minutes away. Her small house has two beds; if more than one woman is in labor, she and her husband sleep on the floor. She has been doing this for about twenty years, having learned from giving birth to fourteen children herself, taking a month's formal training, and continued reading.

 Her "fee" is the equivalent of three dollars, if people have it, or a chicken or a promise of some favor if they don't. Several times, she emphasized, "The money means nothing, it's all for love!" When asked if this was common in her village, she said "Of course, nobody has any money. We just help each other." The nurses and I were moved and inspired to hear health care described in such a completely different light.

At first it seemed an amazing co-incidence that we met this woman the same week as Challenge published an article on how humanity worked for free for much of history. But as an earlier article had pointed out, examples of working-class heroism are all around us. We have good reason to trust that our class can create a society where money means nothing, it's all for love.

 

Return to top of document.

 UNITE WITH WORKERS, NOT RULING CLASS LIBERALS, TO BUILD MILITANT, MASS, COMMUNIST WORKER-STUDENT ALLIANCE NEEDED TO SMASH HARVARD’S BOSSES

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Table of Contents:

Introduction

Harvard: Key Instrument Of U.S. Imperialism

"Veritas" Or Exxon U.?

Kennedy School Professors Help Draw Blueprint For Bosses’ Wars

Harvard And "Community Policing" Fascism

Unholy Trinity: The University, The Banks, And Killer Police

Racism: Harvard’s Major Field Of Concentration

Hitler Loved Harvard Eugenicists

"Genes Über Alles" Takes On A Modern Crimson Hue

Herrnstein And Banfield Pave Way For Clinton/Bush Assaults On Workers

William Julius Wilson: How Liberal Ideology Assists The Growth Of Fascism

"Sociobiology" Once Again Puts Harvard At Center Of Racist Stench

Harvard Can’t Be Reformed. Join PLP!

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Introduction

On May 8, 2001, Harvard students ended a long, spirited sit-in protest demanding that the university pay its employees a living wage. Hundreds of workers, students, and faculty supported this action. Progressive Labor Party members played an active role in the campaign. Despite many political weaknesses, the sit-in has exposed an obscene inequity behind Harvard’s genteel facade. Harvard is sitting on an endowment of nearly $20 billion. The university paid Jack Meyer, the fund’s top manager, $45 million in 1998. A typical Harvard janitor, however, takes home barely $309 a week, not enough to feed his family.

Protest against low wages at Harvard should continue and grow. Our Party applauds the student’s desire to ally with workers. Such unity is crucial to our common aspirations for a decent life. However, it is important to recognize that neither Harvard nor the profit system it serves can ever be reformed in a lasting, meaningful way. Unfortunately, the Living Wage Coalition led by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney fosters just that illusion. The paltry raise it calls for will not end Harvard’s exploitation of its workers. In fact, they would remain wage slaves at several times their current salary. Sweeney’s job is to promote the falsehood that capitalists and workers are ultimately on the same side and that no alternative to capitalism exists. That’s why the Ford and Rockefeller foundations donate heavily to the Living Wage Coalition and why the New York Times has printed multiple op-ed pieces in praise of the Harvard protesters.

 

HARVARD: KEY INSTRUMENT OF U.S. IMPERIALISM

Harvard is far worse than an unfair employer. Funded by the owners of the nation’s biggest corporations, Harvard leads the academic establishment in providing the ideological underpinnings of U.S capitalism’s deadliest crimes. For centuries, research, theorizing and teaching carried on in Harvard’s ivy-clad halls has justified and enabled genocidal U.S. wars of imperialism abroad and racist assaults on workers at home.

In other words, Harvard’s arrogant contempt for the workers it employs is no aberration or mistake. Communists in the Progressive Labor Party make a class analysis of institutions. Harvard serves specific interests. It’s not neutral. It is the instrument of the class that holds state power. It can be nothing else. The interests of billionaire capitalists can never coincide with those of the working class. The Harvard campus workers should get as big a raise as they can. However, no pay hike can change Harvard’s character. The university’s long, murderous history proves the point.

Harvard bears a large measure of guilt for the killing of 3 million Vietnamese workers and 55,000 U.S. troops in the Vietnam War. As a key advisor to Kennedy and Johnson, Harvard Dean McGeorge Bundy insisted on building U.S. forces to over 500,000 and on escalating attacks on North Vietnam. Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington devised the "strategic hamlets" program, under which the U.S. set up concentration camps to imprison Vietnamese workers and peasants. Anyone not in them was considered an enemy, worthy of assassination by death squads like Bob Kerrey’s Navy Seal Unit. When it became clear that U.S. rulers were losing the war, former Harvard professor and Rockefeller protege Henry Kissinger improved the U.S’s bargaining position by orchestrating the infamous Christmas bombing of Hanoi. Napalm, the U.S.’s most barbaric weapon in the war, had been invented by Harvard chemist Louis Feiser who was assisted by Harvard president James Conant, an early apostle of the A-bomb.

The bloody tradition continues. In the past few years, Harvard has transformed its Kennedy School of Government from a refuge for washed-up liberal politicians into a major policy factory. It focuses on retaking the Middle East’s oilfields by force and on helping U.S. imperialism prevent the rise of Russian and Chinese rivals as threats to its world supremacy. Robert Zoellick, a research fellow at the Kennedy School and senior advisor to George W. Bush throughout his campaign, "proposed seizing control of parts of Iraq as a way of undermining President Saddam Hussein" (AP, 5/19/00). General Bernard Trainor uses his status as a Kennedy School fellow to broadcast his disappointment that "we didn’t beat up the Iraqi army enough [in the Gulf War]" (WBUR radio, 2/20/01).

 

"VERITAS" OR EXXON U.?

The Rockefeller family and its allies (i.e., the Eastern Establishment) cemented their ties to Harvard in the 1930s. These owners of the Standard Oil companies were then consolidating their position as the dominant bloc of U.S. capital. To ensure that the economy and other key aspects of society would work in their interests, the Standard Oil heirs acquired Chase Manhattan and other big banks and made massive donations to major universities like Harvard. Standard Oil money actually transformed Harvard’s physical appearance in the 1930s, when Standard heir Edward Harkness plunked down $13 million to build the undergraduate residence houses. Harvard became a prime recipient for the philanthropy of the Rockefeller family and its various foundations.

But, however powerful, oil companies, banks, and universities were not enough. The Rockefellers and their allies in the Eastern Establishment had to employ military might against foreign rivals. At this time, their faction gained control of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the single most influential think-tank formulating U.S. foreign policy. Often working jointly with Harvard, the CFR has helped guide U.S. imperialism from World War II to Kosovo. David Rockefeller, a generous Harvard benefactor, long-time Harvard overseer and the CFR’s chairman emeritus, recently headed a CFR delegation to Havana to begin figuring out ways to put U.S. business investment back in now-capitalist Cuba.

If anything, the Rockefeller-Big Oil-CFR forces have only tightened their grip on Harvard, as the old Standard companies have reunited into Exxon Mobil and Chevron Texaco, and Chase has swallowed up its old nemesis J.P Morgan. Incoming Harvard president Larry Summers, when he was Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, praised these mergers as "Darwinian, with the fittest surviving." Of the seven members of the Harvard Corporation today, six, including Summers, belong to the CFR. The seventh, Robert Stone, is married to a Rockefeller. One member, James Houghton, sits on the boards of both Exxon and Chase J.P. Morgan. Another, Hanna Gray, was a Morgan director.

 

KENNEDY SCHOOL PROFESSORS HELP DRAW BLUEPRINT FOR BOSSES’ WARS

Another commuter from Cambridge to the war-rooms of Washington, Kennedy School professor Richard Falkenrath, has recently joined Bush’s National Security Council. A CFR member, Falkenrath’s research covers all the main threats to U.S. imperialism. He studies nuclear proliferation, Russia’s influence in Europe, Europe’s military readiness and the balance of power in the Persian Gulf. Falkenrath writes extensively about the growing possibility of massive terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. As the reports of the government’s Hart-Rudman Commission reveal, U.S. rulers fear such assaults in the near future but are also counting on them to mobilize the nation, Pearl Harbor-style, for a major war.

Oil looms large on the Pentagon’s radar screen and Harvard’s. The Kennedy School has begun a Caspian Studies Program, which "analyzes the geopolitics of the Caspian Basin border states as well as their strategic importance to the U.S." A consortium of companies led by Exxon Mobil and Chevron "makes the program possible." Harvard’s goal here is clearly to stem Russia’s growing influence in the oil-rich region. The current International Security, a joint MIT-Kennedy School publication, has a lead article focusing on "the assessment of China’s overall future military power compared with that of the United States." China is building a "blue water" navy to challenge the U.S. Navy’s control of increasingly strategic oil routes from the Persian Gulf to the Far East.

 

HARVARD AND "COMMUNITY POLICING" FASCISM

Through its hand-in-glove support of MassInc, a relatively new but highly influential think-tank, Harvard fosters racist police terror in Greater Boston. Needing tighter control of the urban working class, Boston’s bigger capitalists have employed MassInc to develop a fascistic "community policing" system. In it, churches and other community groups funnel information to the cops on "criminal activity" in their areas. The arrangement has reduced street arrests because it allows cops to haul off "criminals" directly from their homes and workplaces. Most of those jailed are young black and Latin workers suspected of petty, non-violent offenses.

In 1996, MassInc, which lists Harvard as a major sponsor - along with financial powerhouses Fleet, Fidelity, and State Street - issued a report demanding that "we build new jails and fill them." Community policing and merciless sentencing laws, it said, would bring "safer neighborhoods." State and local officials quickly got with the program. By 1999, MassInc was gleefully reporting that prison construction was booming and conviction rates more than doubling.

Harvard’s complicity in this shift towards fascism runs deep. MassInc’s founder and chairman Chris Gabrieli is both an advisor to Harvard’s Board of Overseers and a director of its school of Public Health. MassInc counts no fewer than six Harvard faculty members among its directors and advisors. Some of these, like Business School professors Michael Porter and Rosabeth Kanter, also advise giants of U.S. imperialism such as GM and IBM.

 

UNHOLY TRINITY: THE UNIVERSITY, THE BANKS, AND KILLER POLICE

Another, Ira Jackson of the Kennedy School, personifies the union of Harvard, the banks, and racist cop terror. While pursuing his master’s at the Kennedy School in the mid-1970s, Jackson served as a top advisor to Boston’s Mayor Kevin White. At the time, racist politicians and thugs used school desegregation as an excuse for a flood of assaults on black workers and their children. Counseled by Jackson, White punished the victims of racist violence, ordering his cops to protect the racists and attack their opponents - especially our Party and its allies in the Committee Against Racism. Harvard made Jackson a dean at the Kennedy School as soon as he left White’s employ. After a decade at Harvard, Jackson worked as an executive of BankBoston for 12 years, directing its notoriously racist community lending. Now Jackson is back at Harvard, and helping to guide MassInc’s war on workers.

Greater Boston is just a laboratory for a much wider design. Harvard plays a leading role both in developing fascistic community policing ideologically and in implementing it in cities across the nation. Harvard has bestowed upon George Kelling, community policing’s chief theoretician (now at Rutgers), the title of research fellow, as well as invaluable assistance in research and publishing. William Bratton, community policing’s best known practitioner, was also rewarded with a Kennedy School fellowship after his reign of terror as New York’s police commissioner. Bratton criminalized poverty. Under him, panhandling or failing to pay a subway fare became grounds for incarceration. Under the pretext of reducing petty crime, the Harvard/Bratton vision of "community policing" has turned growing numbers of working class neighborhoods into occupied territories, in which it’s a felony to be poor and non-white.

 

RACISM: HARVARD’S MAJOR FIELD OF CONCENTRATION

Harvard’s contempt for campus workers reflects its history of furnishing ammunition to generations of "Master Race" ideologues in the service of big capital. One of the earliest, a "Teutonist" named Prescott Hall, along with a Harvard climatology professor named Robert DeCourcy Ward, co-founded the Immigration Restriction League.

Official Harvard jumped on this racist bandwagon. Vice-presidents of the First International Congress of Eugenics, held in London in 1912, included Charles Eliot, Harvard president - emeritus, and Charles Davenport, a Harvard biologist who became director of the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) in Cold Spring Harbor, NY.

Under Davenport, the ERO practiced murderous social Darwinism. In addition to justifying U.S. government policies that both limited immigration and called for terror against immigrants residing in the United States, Davenport’s ERO found convenient "hereditary" explanations for various diseases of poverty. Pellagra was the deadliest example. Pellagra can be cured with a vitamin-rich diet. Denying evidence, Davenport and the ERO said the disease was caused by genetic factors affecting poor people of "inferior stock." This lie allowed the US government to justify denying food supplement programs to farm workers in areas with high pellagra incidences. Millions of pellagra-related deaths in the United States during the first third of the 20^th century can thus be directly charged to Davenport, the ERO and the Harvard laboratories that helped spawn them. The ERO also played an important role in forcing thousands of U.S. workers to undergo thousands of sterilization procedures during the 1920s and 1930s.

 

HITLER LOVED HARVARD EUGENICISTS

All this was a mere warm-up. Harvard’s racist eugenical theorizing really came into its own with the rise of Adolf Hitler. The connection between U.S. and Nazi eugenics has been well documented. Harvard students, faculty, and workers would be well advised to read Allan Chase’s The Legacy of Malthus and Stefan Kühl’s The Nazi Connection to learn more about it. One example will suffice here. The inventor of the modern phrase "under-man" (meaning genetically inferior races) was no German, but Harvard’s own Lothrop Stoddard, holder of a Harvard history Ph.D. and Law School degree, and author of The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-Man. This racist babble was applauded by President Harding and used in the drive to limit integration. The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s also picked it up and celebrated it.

So did Hitler and Co. The Führer told Stoddard’s sidekick, Madison Grant (a Yale product), that Grant’s book The Passing of the Great Race, had become his "bible." Stoddard’s ravings were particularly prized by Hans F. K. Günther, Hitler’s chief "raceologist." The Nazis freely acknowledged that Stoddard’s views on forced sterilization had inspired them to write the Nüremberg race laws. Stoddard attended a Nazi Eugenics Court as an honored guest - and proceeded to criticize it for showing excessive mercy in refusing to order the immediate sterilization of a seventeen year-old girl (Chase, p. 351)!

 

"GENES ÜBER ALLES" TAKES ON A MODERN CRIMSON HUE

For a few years following World War II, revelations of Nazi mass murders cramped the public style of Harvard eugenicists. By 1969, however, they had returned to a place of favor. The winter 1969 Harvard Review of Education published an article by Stanford educational psychologist Arthur Jensen which is entitled "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?"

Jensen explained that IQ was inherited, that black people had fewer "intelligence genes" than whites, and that therefore spending money on compensatory education programs was pointless. This new version of the old Big Lie helped Nixon slash education budgets. It also sugar-coated the viciously racist police terror that big city mayors were unleashing at the time against rebellious black workers.

Jensenism found many enthusiastic advocates at Harvard. One was Daniel Moynihan, a former Harvard professor, who had made a name for himself by explaining that the main problem in black working class neighborhoods was the "matriarchal structure" of black families. Moynihan also "discovered" that poverty was no longer a serious problem in the United States and that the government’s best attitude toward it was one of "benign neglect." Moynihan approvingly stated that the "winds of Jensen were gusting through the capital with gale force." For this racism, he was rewarded by the bosses with a lustrous political career, which culminated in a New York Senate seat.

 

HERRNSTEIN AND BANFIELD PAVE WAY FOR CLINTON/BUSH ASSAULTS ON WORKERS

Hot on the heels of Jensen and Moynihan came Richard Herrnstein, Harvard Psychology chair, who announced in the Atlantic Monthly (1971) that America was a "meritocracy" in which socioeconomic status varied directly with genetically inherited intelligence. Herrnstein wrote a series of books to develop this drivel. The last was The Bell Curve, co-authored with Harvard’s Charles Murray in 1995, which also argued the racist lie that black people were genetically less intelligent than whites. Another was a collaboration with police-ologist James Q. Wilson which is entitled Crime and Human Nature. Herrnstein’s collected works have not only played an instrumental role in helping various presidencies justify drastic cuts in social services, they have also provided the theoretical underpinning for contemporary policing and prison policies that view crime as a genetic trait. The brutal, racist "Violence Initiative," backed by several presidential administrations and sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, owes a large debt to Herrnstein.

No survey of modern Harvard racism would be complete without mentioning the contributions of the late Edward Banfield, Harvard government professor and author of The Unheavenly City. This is pure Social Darwinism. Banfield called for repealing the minimum wage, as well as for reducing the age of compulsory schooling. The reason, according to the learned professor, is: "The lower-class individual…does not care how dirty or dilapidated his housing is…Features that make the slum repellent to others actually please him. He finds it satisfying in several ways."

This racist, anti-worker nonsense got Banfield a slot as advisor to several presidential administrations. Most significantly, Banfield’s policy recommendations paved the way for the Clinton White House’s "welfare reform, known as workfare," a fascistic policy that forces former welfare recipients to work for slave labor wages. New Harvard president Lawrence Summers was a Clinton Treasury Secretary intimately involved in moving Banfield’s welfare theories from theory into practice.

 

WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON: HOW LIBERAL IDEOLOGY ASSISTS THE GROWTH OF FASCISM

In addition to Herrnstein and Banfield, Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson provided Clinton with useful ideological justifications for the abolition of welfare. Wilson was an influential advisor to Clinton. As an author of four influential books, including The Declining Significance of Race, and advisor to key politicians, Wilson has made the racist term "underclass" popular, legitimized liberal racism and justified the abolition of welfare, affirmative action and other "racially targeted programs." Wilson described welfare as an example of a racially targeted program that could not command popular support. He urged welfare reform and workfare as a means to rehabilitate the "underclass" by instilling in them a work ethic and other middle class values. Often misinterpreted as a Marxist because of his emphasis on class, not race, Wilson in fact is a black reincarnation of Daniel Patrick Moynihan who prescribes capitalist super-exploitation of low wage workers (i.e., racism) as the cure for ghetto related behavior.

Wilson wrote about the "Living Wage Campaign" in his most recent book, The Bridge Over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics. On pp. 83-85, Wilson described the LWC as "an excellent example of what can happen when local leaders are able to forge coalitions to rally behind an issue that concerns all races, in this case economic justice." Wilson’s argument is that fighting racism is divisive. He claims "race-specific" or "racially targeted" demands or campaigns cannot create a basis for progressive multi-racial coalitions. Demanding a "living wage" for all workers is a good example of a campaign that particularly benefits minority workers yet makes a "universalistic" appeal.

Contrary to Wilson’s lies, the capitalist class needs racism. From racist discrimination in hiring, to racial profiling, to racist police murder, to disproportionate sentencing laws, to attacks on affirmative action, the ruling class continues to push racism. Workers of color receive the most vicious treatment under racism, and the ruling class reaps enormous profits from their super-exploitation (e.g., lower wages on average than white workers). However, racism is the bosses’ most potent and valuable ideological weapon for dividing workers. Because the systematic division of workers and students by race and nationality keeps us easily divided and exploited, all workers and students are hurt by racism. Wilson spreads the lie that racism is not a serious problem and should not be fought. However, all workers and students have an absolute need to fight to eliminate racism.

Wilson helps U.S. imperialism by advocating a multiracial reform coalition under the leadership of Democratic politicians and the sectors of the capitalist class who control the Democratic Party (i.e., the Eastern Establishment). If college students, faculty and workers enlist in the coalition Wilson advocates, they will be helping Democratic politicians and labor union leaders maintain racist wage slavery and build support for fascism and imperialist war.

 

"SOCIOBIOLOGY" ONCE AGAIN PUTS HARVARD AT CENTER OF RACIST STENCH

This brief, incomplete overview of racist Harvard theorists ends with the most dangerous modern version, Professor Emeritus of Biology E.O. Wilson. Wilson’s Sociobiology hit the bookstores in 1975. In Sociobiology, he revived the social Darwinian view that all human social behavior is genetically determined. Having made a living as an entomologist, Wilson applied his notions about ants to his right wing view of society. All social organization, he opined, had a biological basis. Therefore, one could find a gene for everything from "creativity" to "entrepreneurship" to "territoriality." The media went wild. Wilson became a star. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his vulgarized version of Sociobiology, entitled On Human Nature. The open racists, including the anti-busing thugs who were being allowed to run amok in Boston in 1975 - and who were stopped only by our Party - claimed Wilson as one of their own, as did the Klu Klux Klan. But his most dangerous application was, and remains, the use made of his garbage by the ruling class and its successive governments. Change a word or two, and this is "Master Race" and "Under-Man" all over again. Wilson isn’t sitting on his poisonous laurels. He has updated Sociobiology and given it a new name: "consilience."

The unifying concept of "consilience" is human nature. According to Wilson, human nature "is the_hereditary regularities of mental development that bias cultural evolution in one direction_and thus connect the genes to culture." Therefore, in all human societies we favor our own family, ethnic and religious group, impose male dominance, create hierarchies of status, rank, and wealth and rules for inheritance, promote the territorial expansion and defense of our society, and enter into contractual agreements. Recycling the main ideological assertions of Sociobiology, Wilson claims that racism, religious hatred, sexism, and war are not inevitable features of capitalism, but universal traits of our genetically evolved human nature. The natural sciences, Wilson claims, have discovered these truths, and the social sciences and the humanities must adopt them in order to achieve "consilience."

The rulers have lovingly embraced "consilience." As our Party’s newspaper, CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, reported this past spring, Rockefeller University has widely promoted it. Wilson has dined with the CEO of American Express, the President of Texas Tech and Steven Rockefeller, to plan a national promotional campaign on college campuses. If the bosses have their way, "consilience" will be the curriculum of the future, and once again, Harvard is at the center of the racist stench.

According to this racist mythology, the criminalization of unemployment is justified, because "crime is in the genes," and therefore the U.S. government is right to keep building jails to house the world’s largest prison population. If "territoriality" is in the genes, then US imperialist foreign policy has a biological basis. If social hierarchy is in the genes, then trying to eliminate capitalism’s inequalities is pointless. In this "survival of the fittest" world according to Harvard’s Wilson, it’s even bad to demand that Harvard pay its workers a living wage, because they’re earning the wage their genes deserve. In recent years, thanks to Wilson and others, the capitalists have worked, with some success, to get workers, students, and professionals to believe that the causes for poverty, mental illness, alcoholism, violence - in other words, the worst of the problems caused by the profit system - are genetic.

Racist and fascist theories and statements put forth by Harvard professors lend credibility to U.S. government policies of racist police terror and mass incarceration of mostly black and Latin workers. Blaming youth for the problems of the racist education system, and drugging them as punishment, has become standard policy. In order to get away with the massive attacks that they have launched against workers, students, and professionals, the bosses have needed to win people to believe these ideas. They serve to keep people divided and passive in the face of fascism.

As one of U.S. capitalism’s major universities, Harvard will continue to spew forth racist ideology and policy blueprints. It can never change its character as an instrument for the super-profit of billionaires. The administration’s anti-worker arrogance in the present struggle accurately reflects the university’s essence.

 

HARVARD CAN’T BE REFORMED. JOIN PLP!

Defeating Harvard requires an understanding of its class role in society. Harvard can’t be reformed, any more than Exxon can stop trying to corner cheap oil supplies. The fight to destroy racist ideas, racist policy, fascism and imperialist war must have the long-range goal of destroying the profit system. Only communist revolution can do this.

Harvard students have taken an important step in attempting to forge unity with workers. However, unity around a reform line and under the leadership of John Sweeney & Co. is a dead-end. Despite minor tactical differences, Sweeney serves the same liberal imperialists who need the Kennedy School, community policing and the racist ravings of Herrnstein, Banfield and the sociobiologists. Like John Sweeney, Ted Kennedy, Robert Reich and John Kerry serve the eastern establishment capitalists who need loyal, pro-U.S. workers and students. They preach support for workers’ rights in order to win students and workers to support U.S. imperialism and its wars such as in Iraq.

U.S. rulers are preparing to militarize society and to launch a series of escalating wars in defense of their increasingly shaky empire. The period ahead will see growing opportunity for struggles like the fight to win higher pay for Harvard campus workers. The litmus test for victory in these struggles is not the immediate reform demand. We are all for the highest wage hike possible for Harvard workers, and we will continue to help fight for it. However, the real test of victory is the growth of the only movement that can eventually end wage slavery and the racism that justifies it.

That movement is the revolutionary communist movement, and its organizational expression is the Progressive Labor Party. We urge Harvard campus workers, the students who support them and pro-working class faculty, to read our newspaper, CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, contact our organization and consider joining PLP and taking the long, hard but necessary road to communist revolution.

 

The PLP has a long history of leading militant struggle at Harvard. In the 1960s, we played a key role in organizing actions and campaigns against aspects of the university’s support for U.S. imperialism’s war in Vietnam. We led the 1969 University Hall sit-in against Harvard’s racist expansion into Cambridge and support for ROTC, an action which culminated in a campus-wide strike that closed Harvard for the spring term. In the 1970s, our members actively organized against Herrnstein and other Harvard academic racists. We also developed several militant campaigns to unite students and campus workers. Harvard continues to fulfill its mission of aiding U.S. rulers in their drive to maintain world supremacy. Our Party will continue to organize workers and students to fight against Harvard’s racism and service to imperialism.

PROGRESSIVE LABOR PARTY PAMPHLET REPRINT EDITION APRIL 1999

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A NOTE TO READERS

The Great Flint Sit-Down Strike is a "classic" PLP pamphlet written in 1965—almost exactly halfway between today and the Great Sit-Down Strike itself. It was written at a time when our party was working to put down roots among industrial workers and build a base for revolution—as we are today. It was written at a time when many people who called themselves "left" were putting forward wrong ideas that workers

• couldn’t see that capitalism was their enemy and take action against it, and
• were too prosperous and bought-off to fight, or
• were living off the work of workers in other countries and were the enemy, or
• were unimportant because technology had created a "new working class" of technicians and "knowledge workers."

This pamphlet served an important role in defeating those wrong ideas, both among some party members, and among workers and students in the party’s base. In addition, thousands of copies of the original pamphlet were used in college labor history courses, and helped keep alive a piece of history the bosses wanted hidden.

Today, though, you can hear the wrong ideas (or actually, not ideas but reflections of ruling-class ideology) not only in the bosses’ press, but from the mouths of union leaders and false friends of workers everywhere. The fight to defeat this crippling ideology and to build a mass communist base for revolution in the working class, including in basic industry, is still a critical task for our party.

The copy you are reading is a work-in-progress. It contains the original text, altered only to correct a few grammar and spelling errors, and to change some references to 1965 from "today" to "in 1965." A few definitions have been added to footnotes, and the bibliographic references have not yet been scanned and restored, although their numbers appear in the text. A glossary will be added to the final reprint, as well.

As you read, you will see signs that in 1965 we had not yet developed as clear an understanding as we have now of the role of unions, and the correct ways for communists to work in them. Our understanding has changed in other ways, too, and these will be reflected in essays and articles which will accompany the completed reprint. The essays will discuss the development of our line and work in trade unions and other mass organizations, and also the changes that have taken place in the automobile industry and others, as the companies and the industry have become more internationalized and the terms of their competition have changed.

As you use this document, whether on a trip to Flint, or in club discussions, study groups or base-building, please give us your help. If you come across words that should be explained in the glossary, or ideas that should be developed, or have experiences to share with readers, or even find some typos, please send them to the PLP office, marked Attention: Flint Pamphlet.

PROGRESSIVE LABOR PARTY, G.P.O. Box 808, Brooklyn NY 11202,

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How Industrial Unionism Was Won:

THE GREAT FLINT SIT-DOWN STRIKE AGAINST GM 1936-37

The foreman paced slowly past his workmen, his eyes darting in and out of the machines, eager for any betraying gesture. He heard no word, and he saw no gesture. The hands flashed, the backs bent, the arms reached out in monotonous perfection. The foreman went back to his little desk and sat squirming on the smooth-seated swivel chair. He felt profoundly disturbed. Something, he knew, was coming off. But what? For God’s sake, what?

It was 1:57 A.M., January 29, 1936.

The tirebuilders worked in smooth frenzy, sweat around their necks, under their arms. the belt clattered, the insufferable racket and din and monotonous clash and uproar went on in steady rhythm. The clock on the south wall, a big plain clock, hesitated; its minute hand jumped to two. A tirebuilder at the end of the line looked up, saw the hand jump. The foreman was sifting quietly staring at the lines of men working under the vast pools of light. Outside, in the winter night, the streets were empty, and the whir of the factory sounded faintly on the snow-swept yard.

The tirebuilder at the end of the line gulped. His hands stopped their quick weaving motions. Every man on the line stiffened. All over the vast room, hands hesitated. The foreman saw the falter, felt it instantly. He jumped up, but he stood beside his desk, his eyes darting quickly from one line to another.

This was it, then. But what was happening? Where was It starting? He stood perfectly still, his heart beating furiously, his throat feeling dry, watching the hesitating hands, watching the broken rhythm.

Then the tirebuilder at the end of the line walked three steps to the master safety switch and, drawing a deep breath, he pulled up the heavy wooden handle. With this signal, in perfect synchronization, with the rhythm they had learned in a great mass-production industry, the tirebuilders stepped back from their machines.

Instantly, the noise stopped. The whole room lay in perfect silence. The tirebuilders stood in long lines, touching each other, perfectly motionless, deafened by the silence. A moment ago there had been the weaving hands, the revolving wheels, the clanking belt, the moving hooks, the flashing tire tools. Now there was absolute stillness, no motion anywhere, no sound.

Out of the terrifying quiet came the wondering voice of a big tirebuilder near the windows: "Jesus Christ, it’s like the end of the world."

He broke the spell, the magic moment of stillness. For now his awed words said the same thing to every man, "We done it!’ We stopped the belt! By God, we done it!"’ And men began to cheer hysterically, to shout and howl in the fresh silence. Men wrapped long sinewy arms around their neighbors’ shoulders, screaming, "We done it! We done it!"

For the first time in history, American mass-production workers had stopped a conveyor belt and halted the inexorable movement of factory machinery.

—From Industrial Valley, by Ruth McKenney, NY, 1939, pp. 261-2.

The victory of the Akron rubber workers revealed the full power of the sit-down strike for the first time. The tactic of seizing possession of, and holding, great plants was not entirely unknown to the workers of the United States, but nothing like its mushrooming during the struggles of the mid-Thirties had ever been seen before. In the sit-down strike the workers found a weapon with which they could conquer the powerful resistance to unionization they met in the drive to organize rubber, auto, steel, electrical and other basic industries. One by one giant manufacturing corporations like General Motors, United States Steel, General Electric and Goodyear, the massive industrial aggregates of monopoly capital, were compelled to recognize and deal with the union. In some cases the resistance of the giants collapsed at scarcely more than the threat of a sit-down because they had seen its power. We could say that industrial unionism was born in the sit-down strikes. Certainly the impetus given to unionization by the sit-down strikes in 1936-7 was the main force that finally brought more than five millions into the emerging Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

One union more than any other, the United Auto Workers, can be singled out as the greatest contributor to the organization of the CIO and the success of industrial unionism because it took leadership and because its struggle was fought out most decisively.

One company more than any other, General Motors, can be singled out as ‘the key to the organization of the auto workers’ because it was the largest manufacturer in the industry—and the largest manufacturing corporation in the world—and was the first to be organized.

One part of the GM empire more than any other—Flint, Michigan—was the bastion that the workers had to take in order to smash the open shop among the mass of unskilled workers in the auto industry. It was here that most of the bodies for all GM cars, and all the engines for its biggest money-maker, Chevrolet, were manufactured. Flint was possibly the most completely controlled of any company town in the country.

For 44 days, from December 30, 1936 to February 11, 1937, the GM workers fought the corporation in a great sit-down struggle, centered in Flint, to test whether a union could or could not exist in General Motors.. In this test, GM employed every tactic its strength and cunning could devise, including full use of every level of government it controlled. The workers, employing the tactic of the sit-down to a degree unequalled in the country’s history, met attack with counterattack, took the offensive and finally emerged with a decisive victory.

The Flint strike was preceded by a fresh wave of unionization, born of desperate conditions, that swept through the masses of working people. This power took shape in militant strikes, in bitter struggles and protest actions in many industries, and in the rallying of millions to the cause of labor. And it might come as a surprise to the auto workers of today that in the 1930s it was the communists and the Communist Party that played a fundamental role in the building of the UAW. However, as will be seen, fundamental weaknesses existed within this communist leadership which were partly responsible for the workers’ inability to withstand a later bosses’ offensive that attempted to wipe out all the gains of the 1937 victory.

Despite these weaknesses, the Flint sit-down was a peak at which the workers made a stand and by the strength of collective action turned defeat into victory. It demonstrated the tremendous power inherent in such unshakable unity. It contains more lessons for the working class than any other struggle for industrial unionism, and perhaps than any other labor struggle in our history.

One of the first sit-down strikes occurred in 1906 at General Electric’s Schenectady, New York plant.¹ In 1910, women garment workers in New York City sat down in, a shop to prevent their bosses from farming out work to contractors not on strike.² Variations occurred in Poland, Yugoslavia and France from the end of the First World War to the early Thirties. In 1933, 2,500 workers stayed inside the Hormel Packing Company plant in Austin, Minnesota, during a three-day strike.³

An origin of the concept among the rubber workers is cited by labor historian Louis Adamic.⁴ Two teams of rubber workers were playing baseball in Akron one Sunday afternoon in 1933. Suddenly they refused to continue the game because they discovered that the umpire, whom they and the fans disliked anyway, was not a union man. They just sat down on the field. The fans, mostly rubber workers, ha1f seriously and half in fun, yelled for "a union ump." The "scab" was forced to retire from the field and a union man was found to take his place. A few days later a dispute broke out in the plant. When the foremen denied their grievance, the men, remembering the tactic successfully employed on the ballfield, sat down—and won. The tactic spread rapidly through the industry; the event described by Ruth McKenney in Industrial Valley was the beginning of the first factory-wide sit-down by rubber workers. From there the concept spread to workers of the other basic industries. Adamic attributes the leadership of the early rubber industry sit-downs to left-wingers working in Akron at the time. European press coverage of the 1936 Akron sit-downs was believed to have directly influenced the sit-down strike in the Semperit rubber works in Krakow, Poland on March 22, 1936, in which six workers were killed and 22 wounded.⁵

U.S. workers found the sit-down to have many advantages over the traditional forms of strike. It prevents the use of scabs to operate a factory, since the strikers guard the machines; it is harder for the company to oust men from inside a plant than break through an encircling picket line. Bosses are more reluctant to resort to strikebreaking violence, because it directly endangers millions of dollars of company property, vast assembly lines and unfinished products. The use of machine guns, tear gas and gangsters is much less effective. It is harder to label strikers aggressors while they are inside.

In a sit-down the workers’ morale is heightened. They are inside and therefore know for certain that scabs are not operating the machines; they are really protecting their jobs and this leads to a higher degree of solidarity and militancy. The men are protected from weather. They are never scattered, but are always on call at a moment’s notice in case of trouble. The basic democratic character of the sit-down is guaranteed by the fact that the workers on the line, rather than outside officials, determine its course.

Finally, defense against labor spies—a constant threat in the Thirties—is perfected because a sit-down can be started by one or two rank-and-file leaders over an issue that affects the entire plant. The workers vote by putting down their tools.

The sit-down is not a revolutionary action; it does not challenge the boss’s ownership of the plant but only, as with traditional strike forms, his right to fire the workers and operate with scabs. Nevertheless, the experience of the Thirties in the U.S. demonstrated the sit-down as a more intense form of struggle that stimulates tremendous initiative among the rank-and-file, especially among those on the inside during a prolonged strike.

There is no question that the auto workers needed a new weapon with which to fight the giant corporations that owned them body and soul. GM ran Flint like a feudal barony. Eighty per cent of the population of 150,000 were directly dependent on GM for livelihood, 20 per cent indirectly. Forty-five thousand men and women toiled in the GM Flint plants, heart and nerve center of the corporation’s world-wide empire. In the summer of 1936 every city official—the mayor, city manager, police chief and the judges—were GM stockholders or officials, or both. The only local newspaper, The Flint Journal, was 100 per cent GM, all the time. The corporation controlled the radio station directly: even paid-for time was denied the union during the fight for unionization. The school board, welfare department and all other government agencies were directly under the thumb of the corporation. Billboards throughout the city acclaimed "the happy GM family."

Total domination of the workers and the community in which they lived was part of the system by which GM was able to net an average annual profit of $173 million from 1927 to 1937⁶ during the depths of the Great Depression. Eighty stockholders became millionaires in four years during the late Twenties on GM dividends alone. In 1936 the auto giant completed a quarter-century with profits that totaled an astronomical $2.5 billion, a figure unequalled by any other corporation in the world up to that time. Its 1936 net profit was $225 millions, a rate of 24 per cent on a capitalization of $945 millions. No wonder it earned and kept the title of the "world’s greatest money-maker" among all corporations.

GM, in 1936 employing 55 per cent of all U.S. auto workers in 69 plants, was bigger than Ford and Chrysler combined. Three hundred and fifty of its officers and directors were paid ten million dollars in salaries that year. Its two top officers, Alfred Sloan and William Knudson, received $375,000 each in 1935. Its seventh vice-president, one Charles Wilson, received $190,000.⁷ The giant was controlled by the DuPont interests, which owned about a quarter of the stock.

The condition of the auto workers was in stark contrast to that of their bosses. In 1935, a year in which the government declared $1,600 as the minimum income on which a family of four could live decently, the average auto worker took home $900. Most lived in fearful insecurity. A foreman could fire at will. Layoffs between the old and new model year lasted from three to five months, without unemployment insurance. A compulsory loan system prevailed, under which GM deducted principal plus interest on the worker’s return to employment in the fall, cutting wages 10 per cent.

But it was the speed-up that made life intolerable. A wife described her husband as "coming home so dog-tired he couldn’t even walk upstairs to bed but crawled on his hands and knees"

One witness reported: "The men worked like fiends, their jaws set and eyes on fire. Nothing in the world exists for them except the line chassis bearing down on them relentlessly. They come along on a conveyor, and as each passes, the worker has to finish his particular job before the next one bears down on him. The line moves fast and the chassis are close together. The men move like lightning. Some are underneath on their backs on little carts, propelling themselves by their heels all day long, fixing something underneath the chassis as they move along." ⁸

Young workers, unused to the unbearable pace, couldn’t eat until they threw up their previous meals when they got home. One worker told Atlantic Monthly that he had been made so dizzy by the constant noises of the assembly line that when he left the plant he could not remember where he had parked his car.⁹

Walter Moore, a welder, father of eight and section organizer for the Communist Party in Flint, told a reporter: "Did you ever see a house in the country on fire? They tear up the carpets, rip out the furniture, throw everything out of the windows and doors, work at white heat while great, red flames shoot up to the sky. Well, that’s a shop, only in a shop It goes on and on; the fire never goes out."¹⁰

Flint workers were described as having a "peculiar, gray, jaundiced color," like "a city of tuberculars,"¹¹ and in July, 1936, when temperatures soared over 100 degrees, deaths in Michigan’s auto plants rose into the hundreds.¹²

The speed-up was intensified by the ever-present threat of layoffs.. "The fear of layoff is always in their minds, even if not definitely brought there by the foremen. The speed-up is thus inherent in the…lack of steady work and an army of unemployed waiting outside."¹³

It was the speed-up that organized Flint.

If any worker had "strange ideas" in his head about a union. a vast network of company spies was present to ferret him out immediately. Inexorable working-class pressure had forced exposures like those that came out of a Senate subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, headed by Robert LaFollette. Testimony before that Committee—much of it by workers at the risk of their lives—revealed that GM spent $839,000 in 1934 alone on "detective work,"¹⁴ more than half of it paid to the Pinkerton agency. Hundreds of spies worked in the plants, seeking out those who had union "inclinations." GM was a member of the National Metal Trades Association, a company group that supplied labor spies to terrorize workers and import scabs and helped set up company unions to break or forestall legitimate unions. The Committee reported that the Justice Department and Army and Navy Intelligence worked with this outfit in union-busting forays. Little came of these revelations, since, in the final analysis, it was the union victories of the workers themselves that ended the terror in the plants.

In addition, GM used the forces of the notorious Black Legion, a DuPont-financed terror group that beat, tarred and feathered and murdered active unionists. GM foremen were actually seen donning black robes inside the plant in preparation for a Black Legion raid.¹⁵ Organized force inside the plants had to be defeated to bring the union to auto.

Attempts had been made to fight the auto moguls early in the depression. In July 1930 a communist-led union struck Fisher Body No. 1 and marched into downtown Flint with banners flying: "In 1776 we fought for Liberty. Today we fight for bread."¹⁶

Prior to this there had been little organizing attempted in the auto industry. However, in 1933, the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL), a left-led organizing group, created the Auto Workers Union along industrial lines. It conducted strikes which eventually involved tens of thousands and which were met with ferocious brutality, especially at the Briggs Auto Works in Flint. The TUUL-type militancy not only earned the hatred of the corporations but also of the staid, sellout business unionism of the AFL piecards.^*

The AFL since its birth had opposed the organization of unskilled workers, and especially along industrial lines—that is, placing all the different types of workers in one plant into the same union. The AFL had intended all along to keep auto workers divided, both along craft lines and from one plant or company to the next. It organized federal locals for this purpose—groups of workers in a particular plant responsible directly to the national Federation and barred from joining together with. all other auto workers on an industry-wide basis. These locals were ruled by national officers and an executive board appointed by AFL President William Green.

When the AFL attempted to step into the auto industry soon after the Briggs strikes, the TUUL locals, in a move for unity, dissolved and joined the AFL federal locals. The entrance of the TUUL left-wing militants into these locals was a first step towards the creation of an industrial union.¹⁷ Thus, when the AFL, attempting to contain the auto workers’ rising militancy—which was poison to the narrow concepts of craft unionism—called a national conference of its federal locals, the latter sent rank-and-file leaders who called for an "international industrial union." As they rose to speak, William Collins, the AFL piecard in charge of auto organizing, would snap, "Sit down! You’re a Communist! Every time I hear the words ‘international industrial union’ I know that person…represents the Communist Party."¹⁸

Wyndham Mortimer, a militant left-winger who led the local which he helped organize at Cleveland’s White Motor Company—and later became UAW first vice-president—wrote in 1951: "That there were some Communists among them, there is not the slightest doubt. In fact, had it not been for the Communists, there is serious doubt that the forces of industrial unionism would have lived through this period."¹⁹

In 1934, President Roosevelt ignored GM’s refusal to negotiate-a violation of the NRA collective bargaining Section 7a, He proposed a compromise: proportional representation of all union groups in a plant—including the company unions! He also set up an Auto Labor Board, charged with the responsibility of determining which union should represent the workers; the union later discovered that labor’s representative on the Board was a member of the Black Legion!

Disregarding the interests of the rank and file while negotiating with the companies, the AFL leadership sacrificed every single demand, including the essential one for union recognition. Thousands of auto workers made huge bonfires of their union cards and quit in disgust. The left-wingers organized the Cleveland Auto Council, which sponsored another national conference at which 37 locals were represented, and again the AFL intervened to try to prevent an industrial union from forming.

At that point even a government report warned that because of "insecurity, low annual earnings, inequitable hiring and rehiring methods, espionage, speedup, and displacement of workers at an extremely early age…Unless something is done soon, they (the workers) intend to take things Into their own hands to get results." ²⁰

Finally, with pressure growing for the mass organization of auto workers, agreement was won in May, 1936, to give the auto workers autonomy inside the AFL for what was, in effect, an industrial union. The infant UAW—along with the other unions affiliated to the newly-emerging Committee for Industrial Organization—were suspended in August by the AFL leadership because of their industrial union concepts.

In April, 1936, however, the AFL was still trying to keep Its foot in the door. It succeeded in getting a compromise candidate elected president of the new UAW. He was Homer Martin, a former Baptist minister and Kansas City Chevrolet worker. Martin was long on oratory and had a flair for phrasing the workers’ aspirations, but he was short on organizing ability and on understanding the dynamics of industrial unionism. For these reasons, the AFL officials felt Martin was someone they could use, unlike the militant left-wing industrial unionists. Mortimer was elected first vice-president; Ed Hall, nearing 50. and having spent nearly all his life in Milwaukee’s auto plants, the possessor of a basic understanding of an auto worker’s problems, became second vice-president; and Walter Reuther was elected to the Executive Board from Detroit’s West Side, with what Mortimer charged were forged credentials.²¹

In June Mortimer was selected by the fledgling UAW to be its organizer in the heart of GM territory. Martin agreed to this because he thought Mortimer would be broken there and would cease to be a threat to Martin’s position in the union.²² Mortimer came from a union family; his father had been a leader of the central Pennsylvania Knights of Labor. UAW’s Flint organizer had been a miner, railroad brakeman, steel worker and machinist at White Motor.

When Mortimer arrived to begin his work in the summer of 1936, there were barely 100 union members in the city, and the majority of those were company spies.²³ All the others, 20,000 of them, had quit. The sellout policies of the AFL leadership and Roosevelt’s intervention had helped the auto companies destroy any union organization, however shaky, that had existed in Flint. Recognizing the stoolie-ridden, AFL-organized Flint local for what it was, Mortimer set about organizing a completely independent group, visiting workers from door to door, signing them up, and sending the records to UAW national headquarters. This enraged the GM labor spies, but, though tailed and watched at every turn, Mortimer succeeded in keeping membership lists out of their hands. He began publishing a newsletter which went out to 7,000 workers each week. He also organized a secret union group in the Fisher Body No. 1 "body-in-white" department, where the main soldering and welding was done. This group was led by Bud Simons, Walter Moore and Joe Devitt, a trio of close personal friends who shared progressive views. Moore was a communist and the other two were "political left-wingers."²⁴

When Martin saw Mortimer succeeding, the UAW president—backed by followers of the renegade Jay Lovestone who had been expelled from the Communist Party—pressed for his removal.²⁵ Mortimer succumbed, but managed to arrange for Robert Travis to take his place. In his early thirties, Travis had been successful in leading and organizing Toledo Chevrolet. He shared Mortimer’s left-wing views and was regarded as atop-flight organizer despite his youth.

Slowly but surely the UAW gained strength. The fact that the discredited AFL had suspended the CIO helped draw workers into the new industrial union. Seniority agreements were won at Chrysler Dodge. In Fisher Body, union stickers began to appear on auto bodies and carry their message the length of the assembly line. With GM supporting Landon for President but losing as the workers voted for Roosevelt overwhelmingly, the union began to resist the corporation more strongly. Seven stoppages, provoked by speed-up and wage cuts, occurred at Fisher Body No. 1 in the second week of November, 1936. When Travis asked Simons if the men were ready to strike, Simons said, "Ready? They’re like a pregnant woman in her tenth month."²⁶ On November 9th, Travis met with 40 members, key men from each department, to plan how to organize a sit-down should an incident occur. Three days later, on November 12, it did.

A foreman eliminated one man from a three-man unit and ordered the other two to do the work. Although the other two were not union members, they stopped working and were fired the next morning. Starting from Simons’ group on the incoming night shift, word spread through the 7,000-man plant—"Nobody starts working." The foreman seized the man who had been removed from the group and began to shove him toward the plant superintendent. Simons stepped in and stopped him while the entire assembly line watched. A committee was picked on the spot to meet with the boss as a committee—the first time this had ever happened at Fisher Body.

The super was stunned. He gave in and agreed to rehire the two workers who had been fired, but the men, in spite of an agreement that they would not be docked for time lost in the stoppage, still refused to go back to work. They demanded that the two workers be brought back to the plant. The company was forced to broadcast over local and police radio to find the two men, one of whom was on a date with his girl. No one started working until he had driven her home, changed his clothes and reported for work!

This story spread through Flint like wildfire. Workers began signing up by the hundreds. GM was forced to bargain with various units on day-to-day grievances. Although John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers and head of the new CIO, along with the other CIO leaders, had planned to organize the steel industry first, the young UAW organizers took the lead.

Among units of the GM empire, the Fisher Body "mother plants" in Flint and Cleveland were the heart. They produced dies and chassis on which three-fourths of GM production depended and the company found it too cumbersome to store chassis against a strike. Without the chassis there could be no automobile. Production was crippled if the supply was cut off at the source. Another key plant was Chevrolet No. 4 in Flint. Every engine for one million Chevrolets was assembled there each year. Chevy No. 4 was called the "the hellhole" by its 8,000 workers; it was dominated end to end by its manager, Arnold Lenz, a Hitler sympathizer. But when the union ferreted out and exposed a couple of stoolies at Chevy 4, respect for the union shot up and a rapid increase in membership followed.

Then auto strikers at Midland Steel, led by communists, beat the red scare and won union recognition. A sit-down at Bendix compelled the company to bargain with the union. Still, in the estimate of the UAW leadership, the situation was not yet ripe for a national struggle with GM. In fact, when Martin, on tour, threatened a nation-wide strike without consulting the executive board, he was stopped. He had made this threat after a November 18 walkout at a union weak spot, the Chevy plant in Atlanta, where four workers had been fired for wearing union buttons. From Detroit, UAW vice-president Ed Hall located Martin in Kansas City and told him: " You dumb son-of-a-bitch! You get your ass back here tonight or that’ll be the last trip you’ll ever take!" ²⁷

The decision was made by the UAW leadership not to call a national strike until Fisher Body in Flint and Cleveland were ready, which Travis estimated would take another month. Knowing this, GM tried to force the issue by provoking a strike on December 16 at Kansas City, a union weak spot as Atlanta was. GM hoped to lure the union into a national walkout when it wasn’t prepared. Again the union held firm and the Kansas City strike, later found to have been set off by a Pinkerton agent, was localized.

On December 17, Martin requested national collective bargaining in a telegram to GM management. Management, aiming to split the union into 69 parts, replied that it would bargain only on a plant-by-plant basis. On December 28, the first action occurred at Fisher Body in Cleveland where the workers in the quarter panel department yanked the power when the plant manager postponed a bargaining session for a few hours. All other departments followed and by one o’clock in the afternoon the plant was dead. Through the mediation of Mayor Harold Burton, later a Supreme Court justice, GM tried to bargain on a local basis; but the union turned down the ruse. A unanimous vote at a plant mass meeting decided the sit-down would be ended only as a part of a national settlement. This action had disrupted the timetable of even the UAW leadership, which had planned to begin strike action against GM in Flint. A few weeks later the Cleveland workers had to leave the plant and conduct their strike from the outside because they did not have the strength to maintain the sit-down. It was the Flint workers who had to carry the ball.

Their strike began at Fisher Body No. 1 on December 30, only two days after the start of the Cleveland sit-down. When the night shift came on at No. I on the 30th, they found that the company had backed up a string of railroad cars and was starting to move dies. This was GM’s version of the runaway shop, an open attempt to shift production to a plant where the union was weak and thus destroy Fisher Body No. 1 as a decisive unit. Travis was notified at the union office across the street. He immediately called the workers to a lunch-hour meeting by the pre-arranged signal of a 200-watt red lamp which the workers could see flickering in the union headquarters. When they had filled the hall, Travis said, "What do we do about the dies?" A worker answered: "Well, them’ s our jobs. We want them left right here in Flint."

Travis reviewed the company moves. He pointed out that the Cleveland workers were out on strike to save their jobs, and again he asked, "What do we do?’

"Shut her down! Shut the goddamn plant!" came the cry.²⁸

Henry Kraus, a UAW editor at the meeting, describes the scene: "The men stood still facing the door. It was like trying to chain a natural force. They couldn’t hold back and started crowding forward. Then suddenly they broke through the door and made a race for the plant gates, running in every direction towards the quarter-mile-long buildings." ²⁹

One group raced to the railroad dock where a plant manager was directing the coupling of loaded cars. "Strike on," yelled the men to the locomotive engineer. "Okay," he nodded, waved to the brakeman to stop the work and trotted off.

The workers inside immediately began to secure the plant against any attacker. They moved scores of unfinished Buick bodies in front of all entrances to form a gigantic barricade. With acetylene torches they welded a steel frame around every door. Bullet-proof metal sheets were put in position to cover every window, while holes were carved in them and threaded to allow the nozzles of fire hoses to be screwed into them. Wet clothes were kept in readiness to be placed on the face as protection against tear-gas attacks. Large supplies of metal parts were placed in strategic spots. Paint guns for spraying would be invaders were located throughout the plant.

The back-to-work whistle blew, but there was no movement. Suddenly the third-floor windows were flung open to reveal workers waving arms and shouting, "Hooray, Bob, she’s ours!" The women of the cut-and-sew department were told to report to union headquarters. Nearly all the remaining 3,000 night workers struck.

With a simultaneous sit-down in the smaller Fisher No. 2, GM body production ground to a halt. Thousands of stop-orders went out to suppliers and assembly plants all over the country. On January 1, all Chevrolet and Buick assembly plants were closed. By January 7, 100,000 GM workers were idle. On January 3, a national union conference of 300 from ten cities met in Flint and formulated demands: union recognition for the UAW, reinstatement of all workers fired because of union membership or activity, seniority to govern all layoffs, new wage minimums, a 30-hour, 5-day week with time and one-half for overtime, abolition of piece work, and a slowing down of the assembly line.

The press and the company raved and ranted about a "Soviet-style tyranny" being imposed on the country. The New York Times editorialized that it was "highly doubtful whether union leaders were speaking for the great mass of workers." They were striking "for an abstract principle of labor organization in an industry… (in which) earnings were 20% above the average." (January 4, 1937) There were constant references to "Lewis’ strike" and Lewis "ordering the men in or out" and "Lewis ordering the strike at strategic points,"³⁰ as if the rank and file had determined nothing. It continued to whine that a small minority coerces the majority."³¹ Headlines were constantly slanted against the strikers: "Ultimatum to Knudson by Auto Union;" "Sloan Bars Pact With ‘Dictators.’"³²

Sloan later reported to the GM stockholders that the sit-down "denies the right of dully constituted branches of government to interfere…It is revolutionary in its dangers and implications."³³

The workers in Fisher Body No. 1 paid little heed to the rantings of GM and its press. Once inside they set about organizing one of the most effective strike apparatuses ever seen in the United States. Immediately after securing the plant, they held a mass meeting and elected a committee of stewards and a strike strategy committee of five to govern the strike. Bud Simons was elected chairman, and Walter Moore and Joe Devitt, all leaders of the original sit-down on November 13, had central roles on this body. Then committees were organized: food, police, information, sanitation and health, safety, "kangaroo court," entertainment, education and athletics. Since all committees were democratically elected, their authority was unquestioned. The supreme body remained the 1,200 who stayed to hold the plant, the rest being sent outside to perform other tasks. Two meetings of the entire plant were held daily at which any change could be made in the administration.

The strike committee posted rules on all bulletin boards: smoking only in restricted areas, liquor and gambling banned, information given only through the regular committee and no phone calls by individuals. All questions from the press and "outside world" in general had to be written in advance and answered only in the presence of the strike strategy committee.

The police committee was responsible for guarding every entrance to the plant and posted the names and shifts of every man on the bulletin boards. Within this committee of 65 the most trusted workers constituted the Special Patrol. Their job was to make a complete 35-minute round of the plant every hour, 24 hours a day, throughout the entire strike. They would check out all rumors and report any violations of rules or discipline. Violators were tried by the "court" and initially given minor punishments. After three convictions a striker was sent out.

No one could enter or leave the plant unless checked out by the reception committee. One reporter among the hundreds covering the story describes this process:

A "reception committee of five searched my party and car for weapons outside the plant." Then "we walked up to the plant itself. All doors were shut and barricaded. I climbed onto a pile of packing bags and swung over a heavy horizontally-hinged steel door into the plant. On a platform inside there was another reception committee which checked credentials again."³⁴

Such care was necessary since the company was always attempting to spread rumors of scandals inside. They even smuggled a prostitute in another guise into the plant but she was discovered and sent packing.

Inside, every worker had a specific duty for six hours a day. They were on duty for three hours, off for nine, on three and off nine, in each 24-hour period. Every day at 3 P.M. there was a general cleanup. No matter how cold the weather, all windows were opened wide and teams of workers moved in waves on, and in between, the assembly lines for the entire length of the plant, leaving it spick-and-span. Personal cleanliness also took high priority, every worker taking a "shower a day."

The strikers divided themselves into social groups of 15, setting up "house" in some cozy corner and living family-style for the "duration." They made mattresses of car cushions, took out the seats and made beds of the car floors. Every visitor was impressed with the extreme neatness and the care taken with all plant property. The spirit and determination that developed among the workers was reflected in letters to their families:

"I don’t know how long we will be here but we will never give up. We are holding the fort strong and have everything we need. Cots and cigarettes and plenty of food. We sure done a thing. GM said it could never be done when we took possession…Drop me a line and send my union receipt."

A plant post office was established to handle all mail, which included censoring every letter. Daily visits were arranged whereby workers’ children could be handed through a window while workers talked to their wives as they stood outside. At one point the organization was so confident of its fortress that workers who lived nearby were allowed the liberty of going home for a day at a time.

The class consciousness and absolute rank-and-file democracy was at a peak during the sit-down, as the following story reveals. A cameraman for Hearst’s pro-GM Detroit Times presented his union card to the reception committee but it was torn up. He pleaded to be allowed inside to take pictures and appealed to higher union officials, but was told the plant committee would have to rule on it. A formal debate was held, the cameraman stating his own case, saying he was an "active union man," that he personally differed with his boss, and that "freedom of the press" should be respected. The strikers’ view was presented by one worker who simply said, "But goddamitall, his boss is Hearst!" The ballot was unanimous to keep him out.

The monotony and boredom, away from the family, was probably the most difficult problem to overcome. Calisthenics were organized daily. The entire plant was wired with a loudspeaker system. A 12-piece orchestra was organized from among the strikers and concerts were broadcast every evening. Each "social group" had either a radio or phonograph. Ping pong, checkers, chess, cards (using washers as "money") were provided. The bottoms were knocked out of two wastebaskets and a basketball court set up. Boxing and wrestling teams were organized. The strikers took to writing poems and songs, the best of which were published in the union paper. They put on skits lampooning the foremen, GM and its bosses.

Labor classes were held daily in the history of the labor movement and instructions given in parliamentary procedure, "how to run a union meeting" and in the union constitution. A "living newspaper" presented to allow the workers to act out the specific events of the strike as it went along. Dramatic groups were invited and Detroit’s Contemporary Theatre put on plays. One local movie owner sent entertainers and another who refused to help out was boycotted after the strike. Charlie Chaplin donated his current movie, Modern Times, and film showings were held. A writing class was led by a graduate student from the University of Michigan and workers took to writing plays.

The Women’s Auxiliary—which was to play a key role in the strike—organized dancing, representing all national groups, in front of the plant. They formed "living formations" or mass charades to describe phrases like "Solidarity Forever" or "Sole Collective Bargaining Agent." The strikers, in turn, serenaded them with their own band, whose theme song became "The Fisher Strike," written by the workers to the tune of the well-known southern ballad, "The Martins and the McCoys."

Gather round me and I’ll tell you all a story,
Of the Fisher Body Factory Number One:
When the dies they started moving,
The union men they had a meeting,
To decide right then and there what must be done.

Chorus

These four-thousand union boys,
Oh, they sure made lots of noise,
They decided then and there to shut down tight.
In the office they got snooty,
So we started picket duty,
Now the Fisher Body shop is on a strike.

Now this strike it started one bright Wednesday evening,
When they loaded up a box car full of dies;
When the union boys they stopped them
And the railroad workers backed them,
The officials in the office were surprised.

Now they really started out to strike in earnest.
They took possession of the gates and buildings too.
They placed a guard in either clockhouse
Just to keep the non-union men out,
And they took the keys and locked the gates up too.

Now you think that this union strike is ended,
And they’ll all go back to work just as before.
But the day shift men are "cuties,"
They relieve the night shift duties,
And we carry on this strike just as before.³⁵

The organization outside the plant was no less efficient and vital to the existence of the workers inside. Union headquarters .at Pengelly Hall was the hub. Committees were established for food preparation, publicity, welfare and relief, pickets and defense and union growth. The responsibility of feeding several thousand workers both inside and outside the plants was enormous. The union kitchen was headed by Dorothy Kraus, wife of the union editor, and a union chef from a large Detroit hotel. One day’s food supply included 500 pounds of meat, 100 pounds of potatoes, 300 loaves of bread, 100 pounds of coffee, 200 pounds of sugar, 30 gallons of milk and four cases of evaporated milk. Its transportation was handled by the city’s bus drivers who remembered the solidarity of the auto workers in the bus strike. Two hundred people, mostly women, prepared this food. Some crates of fruit were kept inside for snacks and carefully guarded against poisoning. As it later turned out, a Pinkerton agent was on the inside food committee.

Several hundred workers gave their cars for use by the union. Sound equipment, guarded day and night, was used to talk to the sit-downers from outside the plant. The Flint Auto Worker was distributed by the tens of thousands. A "chiseling" committee was set up to collect food and supplies. Two-thirds of what was needed was obtained in this fashion, the committee going from house to house and to small shopkeepers.

The union headquarters became the center of life for thousands of workers who streamed in and out, bringing their families along. A nursery was set up to take care of the children while their mothers were working for the strike.

There was constant communication between the outside strike leaders and the strike committee inside. Picketing took place around the, clock in front of the plant.

The fantastic spirit and organization of the workers spread across the nation. Sit-downs became a national phenomenon. Workers the country over grabbed newspapers each day to see "if the boys in Flint were still holding out." Companion strikes sparked new methods of organization.^* Only one reason could drag one sit-downer at the Philadelphia Exide Battery Co. outside—he was married at the plant gates. The entire country was union-conscious, A milk company inserted an advertisement in the Daily Worker saying:

"We take great pleasure In announcing that we have signed a closed shop contract with the Milk Wagon Drivers Union, Local 584. Now our milk will be delivered by UNION DRIVERS!"

Support poured in from all over the country. Despite the attempt of the national AFL to sabotage the strike, Its city central bodies in Flint, Detroit, Cleveland and Minneapolis backed the sit-downers with all sorts of aid.

The United Rubber Workers’ Goodyear local sent $3,000. Six thousand came from UAW at Studebaker. Trucks of food arrived from Akron. The Hudson and Chrysler workers began , a "one-hour-a-day club;" one hour’s wages each day donated to the strike fund. Veterans formed a Union Labor Post No. 1 to counteract the "patriotic scabbing" organized by flag-wavers. Even small businessmen joined the ranks, one drugstore owner telling a reporter:

"This whole block of stores is solid for the union. Hell, I never got anything out of GM dividends: a union victory is better for my business."³⁶

Based on the coordination inside and outside, the sit-downers felt as if they were building up an impregnable fortress against the company and police. They were not to wait too long be-fore the first attack was launched.

As production decreased daily, GM turned to their courts for an injunction with which to oust the strikers. It was a ticklish legal situation, since the workers were in no way harming the machinery, and, in fact, kept the plants in better shape than the company had. The tactic was "so new," said one observer, "that no existing law has any relevance in regard to it."³⁷ But that, of course, wouldn’t stop GM.

It got an, injunction from Genesee County Judge Edward D. Black. County Sheriff Tom Wolcott went to the plants to read it to the workers, ordering them out in 24 hours. As the nervous sheriff stood on a table in the Fisher No. I cafeteria reading the writ, workers laughed and kidded him and broke out into "Solidarity Forever" when he had finished. Needless to say, the workers refused to budge.

With GM set to request an order for removal, one of the union attorneys dug up information which proved to be a bombshell: Judge Black owned 3,665 shares of GM stock, worth $219,000.³⁸ Michigan law stated that "No judge of any court shall sit as such in any case or proceeding in which he is a party or, in which he is interested…" While the judge denied that his stock ownership would influence his decision, this was too blatant even for GM. Shamefaced, it forgot the Black injunction and allowed legal matters to cool awhile before seeking another one.

This exposure proved a boon to the workers’ cause as it hit the front pages of every paper in the country and exposed GM’s complete control of the political machinery of Flint. But the company had just started.

All of a sudden there appeared on the scene an organization called the Flint Alliance. It claimed to be composed of "loyal" GM workers who were laid off in other plants because of the Fisher Body strike and who were demanding an end to "minority rule." The president of this group turned out to be one George Boyson, a former Buick paymaster and then owner of a company manufacturing spark plugs—obviously loyal to GM. The treasurer was revealed as a former Flint city official who had been convicted of embezzling city funds. So "widespread" was the "anger" among the "loyal workers" that these two, were picked as the main officers of the Flint Alliance!

In reality, the Alliance was set up both as a strikebreaking group and to mobilize vigilante action against the sit-downers. It was composed principally of GM supervisors, of which there were hundreds, and businessmen. Foremen descended on non-struck plants with membership cards, attempting to intimidate workers into signing. Several received a "going over" when they refused to join. More than half the cards were filled out with "names" such as "John Fink" and "James Stoolpigeon" or "Strikebreaker" and "Mr. Sloan," with the comment added, "I own General Motors and its employees."

GM took pictures of "crowds" of workers supposedly demonstrating to go back to work. The "demonstrators" later turned out to be men waiting for their paychecks. The company was pushing its back-to-work movement through the Flint Alliance, claiming that a minority of strikers were "dictating" to a majority of non-strikers. Actually the union was signing up thousands of men and women into the UAW every day. Even those workers who were not on strike and not in the union let it be known, by their presence at demonstrations and picket lines, that their sympathies were with the sit-downers.

GM continued its refusal even to meet with the union unless the strikers vacated the plants. And, of course, the union said they would not do so unless guaranteed that the company would not fill them with scabs, a pledge which GM would never agree to. The tension mounted. Cries were heard in Congress for outlawing sit-down strikes. A Detroit clergyman saw "Soviet planning" behind the strike. The AFL leadership urged the workers to go back to work.

But the workers, marvelously organized and in high spirits, sat tight. So GM finally turned to violence.

THE BATTLE OF BULLS RUN

On the afternoon of January 11, as workers were handing food in through the main gate of Fisher Body No. 2, company guards suddenly appeared and overpowered them, closing the gate of the smaller plant. The workers quickly ran up a ladder to hoist the food to the second floor, but the guards hauled it down. At that moment, in 16 degree weather, the company turned off the heat.

Word was sent to union headquarters and hundreds of workers raced to the scene. Some were from Buick and Chevy, some were bus drivers who had been helped by the auto workers during their recent strike, some were "flying squads" in town from Toledo and Norwood, Ohio, to help out. The ever-present sound truck appeared in front of the plant. Immediately 20 outside pickets, Fisher No. 2 workers, advanced on the company guards with home-made billy clubs, took their keys and captured the gate, to guard against city cops entering. The company guards phoned the Flint cops and ran to the plant’s ladies’ room where they barricaded themselves and claimed they were kidnapped. It became obvious that the whole provocation had been prearranged.

The cops arrived in minutes, loaded down with revolvers, gas guns, grenades and supplies of tear and nauseating gas. They blockaded the streets, removed parked cars and then attacked the pickets guarding the gate. Women pickets deposited their children at the union hall and raced to the plant.

When the first gas bombs were thrown, the pickets outside retreated temporarily. The wind blew the gas back into the cops’ ranks. Inside the plant the sit-downers dragged fire hoses to the windows and began directing streams of water at the advancing cops. Two-pound door hinges began raining down from the roof. Within five minutes, the cops retreated.

The sit-downers started hauling out a supply of empty milk bottles and hinges to the pickets outside, preparing for a second attack. The cops began hurling gas bombs through the plant windows, which were not as well fortified as at Fisher No. 1. The workers grabbed them with gloved hands and quickly doused them in buckets of water located nearby for that purpose.

The cops then regrouped and made a second rush but were met with a volley of bottles, hinges and lumps of coal outside and water from the inside hoses. They couldn’t get close this time. The sound truck, manned by several organizers, was helping to direct the battle amid a barrage of tear gas. Again the cops retreated, this time with the workers in hot pursuit. The counter-attack was led by Travis, who was later treated for gas burns. The pickets were joined by scores of other workers who were part of a crowd watching the battle.

At that point the cops opened fire. Fourteen were wounded, one, a leader of the bus drivers’ union, critically. While fellow workers carried them off, the rest continued on the attack, overturning the sheriff’s car (with the sheriff inside) and spilling large quantities of gas and gas grenades out of the trunk. The cops continued to retreat up the hill, shooting at the windows of the plant.

One woman, Genora Johnson, whose husband was inside the plant, grabbed the mike in the sound truck and cried:

"Cowards! Cowards! Shooting unarmed and defenseless men! Women of Flint! This is your fight! Join the picket line and defend your jobs, your husband’s job and your children’ s home."³⁹

As the cops stayed on top of the hill, men and women began to organize an all-night vigil. Victor Reuther, manning the sound truck, pointed out that it was not the peaceful workers but GM’s cops who were responsible for the destruction. He told the workers that "they must now fight not only for their jobs but for their very lives. Let General Motors be warned; the patience of these men is not inexhaustible. If there is further bloodshed…we will not be responsible for what the workers do in their rage! There are costly machines in that plant. Let the corporation and their thugs remember that!"⁴⁰

The workers outside barricaded both ends of the plant with abandoned cars. Gov. Frank Murphy arrived in Flint and said he was holding the National Guard "in readiness." But GM’s strategy had failed, for the moment. Attempting to counteract the character of a peaceful sit-down, it had provoked violence at Fisher No. 2, much smaller than its sister plant. It wanted to create a situation whereby the Guard would be ordered in and martial law declared. Its hope was to starve out the workers and eventually evict them, thereby giving impetus to a back-to-work’ movement led by the Flint Alliance.

The courage, organization and solidarity of the workers had overcome this strategy. The "Battle of Bulls Run," as it later came to be known, had ended. The "bulls" had run.

The next day, January 12, 8,000 workers massed in front of Fisher No. 2 to celebrate the victory. No cops were in sight as they poured in from Lansing, Detroit, Pontiac, Saginaw, Toledo, Cleveland, South Bend. and Norwood to visit the scene of the battle. Thousands were signing up in the UAW every day. Fisher No. 1 shored up its defenses against the mobilization of 1,500 National Guardsmen. The huge crane whistle was set to blow at the first sign of attack. The boiler was adjusted at full force to hurl water at an invader. One hose was attached to an air line to blow away possible gas fumes. Workers were practicing heaving the two-pound door hinges at beaverboard targets. Morale was high, especially since many felt Murphy would not use the Guard against the strikers, that he was on their side.

GM had claimed that the battle had been between the cops and the workers; the corporation had "nothing to do with it." But still GM had seven of the wounded men arrested when they were released from the hospital. The very next day, 1,200 "John Doe" warrants were made out to be served on the strikers, charging them with "criminal syndicalism, felonious assault, riot, destruction of property and kidnapping." The last charge was based on the company guards who had run to the women’s room..

One of the results of the victory of Bulls Run was the new importance it gave to women in the strike. Up to that time, though joining outside picket lines, most had been involved in preparing food. Many wives of sit-downers had been the victims of malicious anonymous letters telling them their husbands inside the plant were sick. Some women were tricked into demanding that their husbands and sons be brought home. But Bulls Run turned the tide.

Genora Johnson, who had spoken out so militantly in the heat of the battle, began organizing the Women’s Emergency Brigade, as a vanguard detachment of the Women’s Auxiliary. It was composed of volunteers, mostly veterans of the previous battle, organized along semi-military lines. Squad captains (usually those with phones and cars) were leaders of groups of women whom they were expected to roundup for any emergency on a moment’s notice and transport to the scene of action. One failure to respond meant suspension from the Brigade.

Mrs. Johnson, 23, told them they should expect to face tear gas and bullets on the picket line...be beaten and killed by police attacks" and by "attempts to break the strike." Applications poured in. The Brigade began wearing red berets and armbands to identify themselves as they prepared to answer any attack.

"If we go into battle, will we be armed?" Mrs. Johnson asked. "Yes." she said, "with rolling pins, brooms, mops and anything we can get.." They began carrying long "two-by-fours" whittled down at one end for easy handling. The members of the Brigade were described by Mary Heaton Vorse, noted women’s leader of the day, as "strikers’ wives and mothers, normally ‘homebodies,’ mature women, the majority married, ranging from young mothers to grandmothers."⁴¹ Mrs. Vorse remarked that the women were "doing this because they have come to the conclusion it must be done if they and their children are to have a decent life."

The workers began holding mass meetings, bombarding Governor Murphy with reminders of his election promises, demanding that no troops be used against the strikers. Although Murphy had raised the National Guard complement to 3,000, acting on an "unlawful seizure" definition of the strike, he was extremely wary about appearing to be taking sides. He declared that the troops were there as much to protect against the vigilante Flint Alliance as against violence from the strikers. Some Guardsmen, workers themselves, wore union buttons, vowing they wouldn’t allow themselves to be used as strikebreakers. Murphy was "the man in the middle," trying to bring about a settlement without harming his political future. He had just been elected by an overwhelming workers’ vote two months before.

With the help of the CIO’ s Phillip Murray, an end was being sought to the glass industry strike, which would enable Chrysler and Ford production to shoot back up. This would put pressure on GM, where production had sunk from 50,000 to 1,500 cars per week. The union took the offensive. CIO president Lewis launched a broadside against the corporation, demanding an investigation of its ownership. He pledged full CIO support until the auto workers won their strike, realizing the noticeable effect it was having on the steel organizing campaign. Flying squads of organizers were signing up thousands of steel workers into the CIO’s Steel Workers Organizing Committee.

On January 13, Murphy called both sides into conference and two days later GM agreed to a truce. National bargaining would begin on the l8th—solely with the UAW—-on all eight issues. Seventeen struck plants would remain closed pending a settlement. There would be no discrimination against any worker because of union membership. Neither side could break off negotiations for at least 15 days. The sit-downers would evacuate the plants before the 18th but GM would not remove tools, dies or materials from any of the struck plants. The key issue was that the UAW would be the sole bargaining agent.

The rank-and-file sit-downers didn’t like the smell of it, although GM had finally been forced to sip something. (Prior to that the corporation said they would not even negotiate unless the plants were evacuated first, and had always maintained that the UAW only represented a small "minority.") Travis and the Flint leadership had not been involved in the negotiations leading to this agreement and didn’t like it either. They felt it put GM on the offensive again, since with every passing day in the 15-day period there would be increasing pressure on the union to accept less and less of what it wanted before GM would be able to break off negotiations. Travis pointed out that the strike was built around the occupation of the plants and to evacuate them without a contract would appear to be backing down. Adding to these misgivings was the fact that Travis, Kraus and two Reuther brothers (Roy and Victor) were arrested just at that time for "unlawful assembly" (because of their leadership at Bulls Run). Despite this, the union kept its end of the bargain. Guide Lamp in Anderson, Indiana was evacuated first (and the outside pickets were attacked immediately afterwards by vigilantes); then came Cadillac and Fleetwood on Detroit’s West Side, marching out with banners flying, "Today GM, Tomorrow Ford!"^*

For the rank and file it "was difficult to accept a truce"⁴² rather than definite victory and outright union recognition. Nevertheless, plans were made for Fisher Nos. 1 and 2 to march out in a body on Sunday, January 17, after a special chicken dinner inside. Everything was cleaned up, the workers had their bags packed and Fisher No. 1 was about ready to parade to the buses that would take them to No. 2 for a mass demonstration when the hitch came.

Bill Lawrence, a United Press reporter, happened to hand Henry Kraus a press release which he had taken from George Boyson’s desk, and asked for the union’s comment. The release, scheduled for issuance after the evacuation of the plants, announced that GM had agreed to meet with the Flint Alliance on Tuesday to discuss "representation" and recognition by the company. This was a direct violation of the agreement to bargain solely with the UAW. Travis sent runners immediately to both body plants to halt the evacuations while the workers discussed the new turn of events. Although UAW president Martin, when notified, saw "nothing wrong" in the development, CIO director Brophy and Vice-President Mortimer agreed with Travis’ move.

When the proposal was made to remain inside Fisher No. 1, the workers cheered. A roaring crowd of 5,000 outside applauded wildly when they heard the decision ten minutes after the sit-downers had been scheduled to leave. Horns honked for five minutes as the men lined the windows of the plant, waving to their fami1ies and fellow strikers. A dummy figure labeled "GM stoolpigeon" was lowered to the ground and torn to shreds. Another rally of 10,000 at Fisher No. 2 also cheered Mortimer’s announcement that the sit-downers had decided to stick it out in the face of GM’s doublecross.

There was a victory air at Pengelly Hall. "The strike and the union had suddenly attained full maturity."⁴³ The workers felt GM couldn’t bargain with two unions—"You can’t have an eight-hour shift on one end of an assembly line and six on another."

GM then walked out of the negotiations and the workers tightened their lines once more. It was back to scratch again.

On January 20, all Buick plants were forced to close. New negotiations were undertaken in Washington at Roosevelt’s request. However, GM quit those parleys two days later and, with production virtually at a standstill, vowed to reopen its struck plants. At that point Lewis demanded that Roosevelt enforce collective bargaining under the law and force GM to negotiate. Roosevelt refused to do this, answering: "I think in the interests of peace there come moments when statements, conversations and headlines are not in order."⁴⁴

GM chose to interpret these remarks as a go-ahead signal to open a strike-breaking drive. Economic conditions were worsening, a time when anti-strike movements flourish. While the UAW was fighting to relieve these hardships by getting relief for its members, and was signing up new members all the time, the corporation launched its drive.

It announced that 79 per cent of its workers had "voted to return to work." Since GM was very "concerned" about its workers, it would "make work" for them and get them off welfare. On the 25th the union answered this with a strike in the Oakland plant, one of the few places where actual assembly work was taking place.

On that same day Boyson announced that the Flint Alliance would "take an active part in efforts to reopen the plants." On the 26th GM refused to attend a meeting called by Secretary of Labor Perkins In Washington, which Roosevelt termed "unfortunate."⁴⁵ Then the company launched an all-out drive to break the strike.

Vigilantes smashed UAW headquarters at Anderson, Indiana and ran the union organizers out of town. Five pickets were clubbed by cops on a line in front of the Cadillac plant in Detroit. Mrs. Agnes Gotten, wife of a striker, sought to block police from escorting scabs inside and was clubbed from behind, requiring five stitches in her head. But 1,500 pickets succeeded in preventing any strikebreakers from entering, despite the presence of 200 hose-carrying cops. The Flint Alliance met to whip up a frenzy against the strikers.

The state legislature sponsored a bill to outlaw sit-down strikes. The Alliance besieged four union officials in Saginaw and beat them up, nearly murdering them. Finally, on the 27th, GM reopened non-struck plants, mostly in Chevrolet, employing 40,000 workers. Although it had actually closed them prematurely, to throw workers on the street and blame the UAW for their plight, it was now opening them with no real chance of assembling cars. About all that could be done was to build up an inventory of parts. Travis felt, however, that it wasn’t the worst thing for a lot of laid-off members to be working as long as the body plants were closed and GM couldn’t start actual production.

But the corporation wasn’t content with these counter-moves. It sought out a judge who didn’t own GM stock and filed for an injunction, on grounds—true, of course—that it was losing money to Ford and Chrysler. It demanded immediate evacuation of the Fisher Body plants and prohibition of outside picketing. On February 1st the union was served with a show-cause order to explain why it should not bow to the injunction. On the same day a march to Saginaw protesting the beating of the four union officials was countermanded by national UAW headquarters at Murphy’s request. Travis, angry, pointed out that Murphy could have protected the officials but didn’t.

GM had effectively seized the offensive: it had reopened its non-striking plants, and the union appeared powerless to prevent it. Having passed its peak, the union would inevitably fall back and grow weaker, with the chance that the strike might be lost or demands watered down beyond recognition, unless a counter-offensive were launched. That is exactly what Travis and the strikers produced.

THE CAPTURE OF CHEVY 4

Across Chevrolet Avenue from Fisher Body No. 2, spread out on 80 acres and bisected by the Flint River, stood nine Chevrolet factories. At 3:30 every afternoon 7,000 night-shift workers replaced the 7,000 on the day shift. Half of the 14,000 total worked in one factory—Chevy No. 4, the motor assembly plant which produced all one million Chevrolet engines each year. It was the largest single unit of the GM empire. To seize it would remove the struggle from the courts and put it back in the plants where the workers had an even chance. Yet, to capture it appeared nearly impossible.

The plant superintendent, storm trooper Arnold Lenz, had instituted a reign of terror. He had concentrated an army of armed guards inside to patrol day and night. The union was growing, and Lenz was firing workers left and right for union activities.

As it happened, the union had uncovered a Pinkerton agent, "Frenchy" DuBuc, and was holding and using him to get information. Travis ordered the stoolie to call his Pinkerton boss and tell him that Travis had asked him directly about Chevy No.4—about the docks, the approaches, whether or not a boat could be brought up the Flint River to the plant, etc.

The Pinkerton boss told DuBuc that Travis was kidding him. "He knows goddamn well the union couldn’t take Chevy 4"⁴⁶ Thus Travis established in his own mind that GM was confident the union would not be so foolhardy as to try to sit down in No. 4.

Lenz fired three more men for union activities on Friday, January 29. Travis called a Chevrolet membership meeting for Sunday night and 1, 500 workers responded. He told them the situation, outlined the goon attacks, and said the union must demand that the UAW members be rehired. The meeting roared approval. He then told the workers to "keep your eyes open" and "you’ll know what to do." The meeting was adjourned, but 150 stewards and organizers were told to remain. Travis, Kraus and Roy Reuther went into a nearby darkened room, lighted only by a candle. The men were told to enter one by one. As they did, the three-man committee selected 30 of the "most trusted," sending the rest home with slips of paper containing "secret orders:" "follow the man who takes the lead."

The 30 who remained were told that at exactly 3:20 the next afternoon there would be a sit-down in Chevy NINE. Those in Chevy plants Nos. 4 and 6 were told to sit tight and remain at work, not to help out at No. 9. When some voiced objections to striking No. 9, they were satisfied with the answer that No. 9 was stronger in union membership and "easier to defend."

Travis then took aside the two most trusted union leaders from No. 9 and told them that they had to hold the plant just until 4:10, until Chevy No. 6 was "taken," that No. 6 was the "real target." Meanwhile Travis had told three leaders from No. 6 and No. 4—Ed Cronk, Howard Foster and Kermit Johnson—that No. 9 was only to be used as a decoy; that Cronk in No. 6 was to rally his men and then take them over to No. 4 and help the other two pull it down. Thus, only six people—Travis, Kraus, Reuther, Cronk, Foster and Johnson—knew that No. 4 was the actual target.

But what about the armed camp in No. 4? Reuther and Kraus told Travis they were a bit dubious about some of the 30 "select few" he had picked to tell about the plan to take No. 9. They said they were sure the information would get back to Lenz through at least one stoolie. That, Travis said, was precisely what he wanted. He felt that whatever these 30 men were told would be all over the company in the morning. The only way to defeat the company’s stoolpigeon system was to use it—to go through an intricate, elaborate "secret" procedure, with "darkened rooms," "secret orders" on slips of paper, and the rest.

In this way, when the few "dubious" choices among the 30 brought the news back to Lenz about Chevy No. 9 being the target, Travis reasoned, the "super" would believe it, first, because of the extreme measures taken to keep it a secret, and second because Lenz and the Pinkertons were sure the union would never make an attempt to capture the "impregnable" No. 4. Travis was counting on the GM spy system to give the company the wrong information. In this manner No. 9 was set up as a decoy to draw all the company guards away from No. 4 and allow its seizure by the workers.

The next afternoon, February 1, at the very moment the hearings were taking place in court on GM’s new injunction bid, Travis called a mass meeting at the union hall, billed as a mobilization for a "protest march" on the courthouse. Thousands showed up and the Women’s Emergency Brigade appeared in force. Meanwhile the union sound trucks circled the city, surrounded by union guards, and finally, through devious routes, at 3:05 came to rest facing Nos. 9 and 6.

Five minutes later at the union hall Dorothy Kraus rushed up to Travis "breathlessly" and handed him a slip of paper. Travis turned grimly to the crowd gathered to march to the courthouse and said "They’re beating up our boys at Chevy Nine. I suggest we go right down there." Unknown to the workers, the slip of paper was blank.

The crowd made a mad rush for the stairs and outside a long line of cars was waiting with motors running. The workers were at No. 9 in a few minutes. Newsmen, who had been "tipped off" earlier, were already there. And, sure enough, there was "trouble."

Lenz had fallen into the trap completely. The entire armed force from the whole Chevrolet division had been stationed at the personnel building next to No. 9. At 3:20, when the night shift marched in yelling "Strike"’ the guards closed the doors and rushed in, with Lenz in the lead, shouting "Reds! Communists!" The outnumbered workers fought valiantly. When one woman saw her husband’s bloody head gasping for air at an open window she yelled to the "red berets," "They’re smothering them! Let’s give them air." The women proceeded methodically to break all the windows in the plant. One of the women later described the scene:

"They were fighting inside and outside the plant. The fighting would have been much worse if it hadn’t been for us. We walked right along with our flag at our head. The gas floated right out towards us. But we have been gassed before and we went right on.

"We had to break the windows… to get air to the boys who were being gassed inside. We just want to protect our husbands and we are going to."⁴⁸

When the whistle blew at 3:30, the fighting was at its fiercest. The men were using anything they could lay their hands on against the goons’ clubs and gas guns. At 3:45 the plant manager at No. 4 ran down the lines tapping all the company men and ordering them over to No. 9 leaving No. 4 virtually devoid of any pro-company force. Finally at 4:10, the two inside leaders, Ted La Duke and Tom Klasey, figured they had "done our job" and ordered the men to march out, bleeding and "defeated." The injunction was still being argued at the court.

Then, as Kraus describes it, in "crankshafts" Gib Rose "reached up and pulled the switch and conveyor A-1 was dead. This was the signal for Dow Kehler who headed conveyor A-2. In five seconds she was down too. Kelly Malone… pulled the switch on conveyor A-3 and the entire division was frozen."

Many workers, being "threatened" with dismissal by foremen and straw bosses, wavered as union men marched around shouting: "Strike is on’! Come on and help us!" As the number of strikers grew, "courage added to courage." There was practically no physical violence… Kelly Malone, with wrench in hand (went) tearing down the lines and yelling: "Get off your job, you dirty scab!" Yet he never touched a man—all melted with fright before him."⁵⁰

Soon the strikers were hundreds strong. "Everywhere at key conveyors, squads of union men were stationed. Others were set to guard gates and mount lookout." With several departments still to be shut, "the united union forces… like a swarm of locusts passed among the machines, leaving silence and inertness where they went."⁵¹

When the foremen tried to regroup and one official urged the more passive workers to retake the plant "Joe Sayen ran perilously along the narrow balcony railing and leaping to a cafeteria table right in the midst of the listeners began shouting to drown the plant official out." The foremen retreated to the superintendent’s office and locked the door, but Cronk and his men broke it open and told them, "You’ve got five minutes to get out!" One official tried to call for reinforcements but Cronk pushed him aside and ripped the phone from the wall. The company men fled.

"The fight was over; the enormous plant was dead. The vast complex with its dizzying profusion of conveyors and machines was sprawled out like a wounded giant. The unionists were in complete control. Everywhere they were speaking to undecided workers.

" ‘ We want you boys to stay with us,. It won’t be long and everything will be settled. Then we’ll have a union and things will be different.’

"Many of the workers reached their decision in this moment. Others went home, undeterred by the strikers. About two thousand remained and an equal number went off. But as they left… the majority of them, following an impulse of incipient solidarity, dropped their lunches into huge gondolas, half filling several of them with what proved to be a much needed extra supply of food."⁵²

When, at about 4:15, they "had driven the foremen out, they began barricading the plant exits… The plant guards returning from Chevy 9 after the battle tried to enter by the northeast gate but the men drove them off with pistons, connecting rods and rocker arm rods while others brought fire hoses and squirted water and foamite at the would-be invaders."⁵³

By this time pickets and a sound truck came over from Fisher No. 2 across Chevrolet Avenue. A member of the Women’s Emergency Brigade jumped to the mike and reported that the women from Chevy No. 9’s battle "have gone to the auxiliary hall to wipe their eyes clear of the tear gas and will soon be back. We don’t want violence… but we are going to protect our husbands."⁵⁴

Soon down the hill they came, a procession of women hundreds strong in bright red caps, singing "Hold the Fort for we are coming…" They spread out in front of the plant gates, amid cheers from the men inside and the watching crowd, and locked arms. If any cops or troops were to attempt to break into the plant, it was plain they would first have to go over these women’s bodies. Not one attempt was made as the women entrenched themselves, preparing to stay the night.

Inside the plant, workers were busily filling huge gondola cars with stock, parts and weights. Then electric trucks were hitched to them and dragged the 8,000-pound loads against the rear doors. A crane was used to lift a second layer of loaded gondolas on top of the first and then still a third layer was hoisted into place. At 4:45 P.M. on February 1, Chevrolet plant No. 4, producer of a million motors a year, largest unit in the world-wide General Motors empire, "impregnable" against attack, had been secured by the men of the UAW-CIO. The women were standing in front of them, daring any cop, company goon or National Guardsman to retake it. The brilliant plan conceived by Travis and the ingenuity and heroism of the strikers had stabbed at the very heart of the billion-dollar auto giant.

As darkness descended, Joe Sayen, who shortly before had acted so heroically inside the plant, climbed the fence and addressed the throng:

" We want the whole world to understand what we are fighting for. We are fighting for freedom and life and liberty. This is our one great opportunity. What if we should be defeated? What if we should be killed? We have only one life. That’s all we can lose and we might as well die like heroes than like slaves."⁵⁵

On the 34th day of the great Flint sit-down, the workers had once again taken the offensive.

The GM "back-to-work movement had been stopped in its tracks. Murphy was furious. Negotiations had been "wrecked," he said. Privately, he had "violently castigated" the use of the sit-down tactic.⁵⁶ He ordered troops into the area around Chevy No. 4. They were partly under the command of Captain Henry McNaughton, who had served in the U.S. force that had invaded the Soviet Union after World War I. The troops took possession of all streets and approaches, isolating both the Chevy plant and Fisher Body No. 2 across the street. Virtual martial law was declared. Guards with fixed bayonets surrounded No. 4. Eight machine guns and 37 mm. howitzers were mounted on the hill overlooking both plants. Tear gas was held in reserve. No one was allowed into the plants, which effectively shut off the food supply. Fisher No. 2 was completely sealed off from both union contact and from visits by the strikers’ families. The National Guard was upped to 2,300 and finally to 4,000. An injunction signed by Judge Gladola on February 2 ordered the workers to abandon the plants or face "ejection" in 24 hours. The writ also forbade street picketing. The Women’s Emergency Brigade was forced out of the area.

Then the heat was shut off in the two plants. The workers immediately threatened to start huge bonfires to warm themselves. On went the heat. Next the lights were shut. Again the workers warned that every one of the 3,000 men now inside would light a torch of waste paper in order to "see." On went the lights. On February 3 the National Guard was forced to lift the food ban, under dire threats of "damage" inside the plants. The lunches left by those workers who had not stayed in Chevy Four proved invaluable during those first two days.

This war of nerves was too much for GM. With hundreds of millions of dollars worth of machinery at stake, on February 4 it agreed to resume negotiations. By agreeing to talk while the workers remained in possession of the plants, the corporation was making a fundamental concession. Earlier it had refused to negotiate unless the plants were evacuated.

On February 7 Lewis joined the talks in Detroit, along with Mortimer and attorney Lee Pressman. Mortimer replaced Martin who had been sent on tour to prevent him from fouling up the negotiations. The union reduced its "recognition" demand to one of sole bargaining agent in the 20 struck plants, which included the key ones, and agent for its members only in the rest.

Meanwhile, the AFL continued its treachery. Having previously wired GM its support, and labeled the strike a "defeat," it now "demanded" that the company reopen its plants. Its own craft members had "never voted" for a strike, whined the AFL "leaders," and therefore they were being "ordered" back to work. Cleveland’s Fisher Body plant had six AFL members. When Lewis was asked what effect this "order" might have on the strike he replied, "Did that man go back to work?"⁵⁷

AFL President William Green had reportedly received a promise from Roosevelt that the President would not intervene in the strike on behalf of the CIO.⁵⁸ Now Green asked GM not to recognize the UAW. This AFL scabbing had about as much effect on the UAW as a worm attempting to stop a Mack truck.^*

The tension continued to mount. The sheriff read the injunction order to the sit-downers, demanding they leave the plants. After the workers refused, he asked Murphy for aid in ousting them and arresting their leaders.^** By now Fisher No. 1—-free from Guard patrol, two miles from the besieged plants—had 3, 000 men on the inside. Murphy kept holding off, hoping he could get an agreement and maintain an untarnished image. But the company forces would not let him rest easily.

City officials continued to recruit vigilantes. By February 8 there existed an armed force of 4,000 National Guardsmen, 1,000 deputized vigilantes, the Flint cops and the Flint. Alliance, all "ready to move." The Michigan Sheriff’s Association offered 1,300 additional deputies.

The vigilantes were being put through "dress rehearsals" by the sheriff and city officials. Plans were discussed about how to oust the strikers. Many of these forces were among the lesser lights in the company scheme of things and felt a UAW victory would mean the end of their "cut of the pie."

The question arose among the union strategists of what to do in case of a full-scale attack. Initially, when the Guard had surrounded the two plants, Walter Reuther (who had come aver from Detroit where he headed the West Side Local 174) "felt that the workers should be told not to resist the Guards actively but to sprawl out on the floors and force the troops to carry them bodily out of the plant."⁵⁹ Kraus and others had disagreed with this idea. When "passive resistance" or a "short protest and then surrender" proposal was raised again, Travis shot back:

‘You’ re not going to tell workers to fight five minutes and then stop… They’ve either got to fight or give in—there’s no two ways about it. Well, suppose we tell them not to fight because it’s impossible defeating such a superior force? Do you know what will happen? They’ll march out of those plants like whipped dogs. Not all the talk in the world afterwards is going to change that. By taking the plants away from those boys now it would mean tearing the heart right out of them."⁶⁰

The strike leader then declared that "we’ve got to tell them to be prepared to fight… I don’t think it’ll ever come to that point because Governor Murphy isn’t going to be responsible for bloodshed at this late date. But the only way to assure that is to take the attitude that we won’t surrender to anybody. We fought the cops, we fought the company thugs and we can fight the National Guard, too, the way we did in Toledo… (author’s emphasis) No one challenged this strategy.

Rumors spread that an attack was imminent, that Murphy would finally use the Guard. Inside Fisher Body No. 2, one worker, Francis O’Rourke, had been keeping a day-by-day diary:

"Injunction has been granted and Sheriff Wolcott is coming down to take us out. We’re not coming out. Waiting, waiting, waiting, won’t he ever come.? We can’t get news from the outside and can’t get news out. It’s nerve wracking. Just waiting for the sheriff and wondering when we go into action. I hope none of us get hurt. All good men, they are and don’t want violence. We’re not coming out though…"

Inside Fisher No. 1, 3,000 workers were preparing for the worst. Daily drills were being held, with an "Officer of the Day" in command in case of attack. A certain crane whistle was to signal a call to arms. Everyone had his orders. Four men were to attach each hose to the openings in the sheet-metal plates, already fitted with nozzles in place. Water was kept at full pressure at all times. On February 5 a shanty with pickets inside was placed over a nearby manhole cover, guarding the on1y spot from which the city water supply could be turned off. Foamite guns mounted on two wheels, resembling cannon, were rolled into place. Although banned, there were some rifles and revolvers on hand. The ventilators were plugged to prevent gas from being poured in through them.

A majority’ of the strikers signed up in a fight-to-the-death committee. Their plan was to battle any attacker on a floor-to-floor basis, right up to the roof. They felt they could hold out indefinitely. A two-week supply of canned food had been shifted upstairs. On February 2, the men in bath Fisher Body plants then sent wires to Murphy:

"…The police of the city of Flint belong to General Motors. The sheriff of Genesee County belongs to General Motors, The judges of Genesee County belong to General Motors.... It remains to be seen whether the governor of the State also belongs to General Motors. Governor, we have decided to stay in the plant. We have no illusions about the sacrifices which this decision will entail. We fully expect that if a violent effort is made to oust us many of us will be killed and we take this means of making it known to our wives, to our children, to the people of the state of Michigan and the country, that if this result follows from the attempt to eject us, you are the one who must be held responsible for our deaths!"⁶³

That was the answer of the strikers inside. Outside, the preparations were no less militant. Travis had requested mass assistance for a possible showdown. Locals in his Toledo home base immediately began sending five hundred to a thousand men ready to remain in Flint at least an entire week. Auto-Lite and other plants shut down because so many workers had left their jobs to go to the aid of their brothers and sisters in Flint. Cars were streaming in from all over Michigan. Thousands of workers were pouring over the roads leading from Detroit to the embattled workers. Ten thousand came from that. city’s Dodge and Chrysler plants alone. Kelsey-Hayes had to shut its doors because its workers were marching to Fisher Body. And 20,000 of Flint’s own had begun massing at the two Body plants. Chevy No. 4 had been captured after the injunction had been issued, and therefore was not included in the ouster order.

The union declared February 3 "Women’s Day." Hundreds of women began arriving from Detroit, Toledo, Lansing, and Pontiac. The Flint Women’s Emergency Brigade started massing 5,000 women for the occasion.

The women decided to demonstrate right in the heart of Flint. Parading with their children they carried signs reading: "We Stand by Our Heroes in the Plants;" "Our Daddies Fight for Us Little Tykes." As the deadline neared the women marched to Fisher No. 1, merging with the thousands already there and encircled the entire length and breadth of the plant, six abreast In a loop both ways, the biggest picket line in Flint’s history. There was to be no last-minute surrender. As the 5,000 women wearing their bright red berets arrived at the plant carrying clubs, stove pokers, crowbars and lead pipes the sit-downers inside went wild. A Chevy No. 4 worker aptly described their feelings:

"It was like we was soldiers holding the fort. It was war. The guys with me became my buddies. I remember as a kid in school readin’ about Davey Crockett and the last stand at the Alamo. You know, mister, that’s how I felt. Yes, sir, Chevy No. 4 was my Alamo."⁶⁴

With world-wide interest focused on that "war," the stage was set for a showdown.

Murphy had reached the end of his rope. On the evening of February 10 he brought the injunction order to Lewis’ hotel room to tell him it would be served to oust the sit-downers. Lewis replied that if that happened he would march straight to the plant and go inside to face the Guard alongside the workers.^*65

With tens of thousands of workers in Flint surrounding the plants and refusing to surrender, with the heat and light at Chevy 4 turned off on February 9 and 10, and nearly 5,000 sit-downers prepared to "fight to the death," on February 11, the 44th day of the sit-down, General Motors gave up. It signed a contract with the UAW, recognizing the union as sole bargaining agent in the 20 struck plants, and for all its members in the other plants, and agreed not to deal with any other group for at least six months. The union felt confident—and was later proved correct—that this was enough time to assure an overwhelming UAW majority in the GM chain. All union members were to be rehired and would suffer no discrimination because of union activity. Union buttons, a real organizing tool at that time, were permitted to be worn inside the plants. Formerly, workers had been fired on the spot for pinning one on. The injunctions were dropped. Negotiations would begin in five days on wages and working conditions. GM immediately raised wages 5c an hour in the hope of "taking the play away from the union," but nearly all the workers traced this $25 million raise directly to the UAW victory.

When the settlement was brought to the sit-downers for ratification, sharp discussion ensued. Chevy No. 4 workers were somewhat disappointed because they were not included in the sole bargaining provision, but it was felt that this certainly would be achieved in less than six months. The workers at Fisher Body No. 2 approved it after a long discussion. But at Fisher Body No. 1 the men began firing questions at their leaders: "How about the speed of the line? How about the bosses—will they be as tough as ever?"

Finally, one striker summed it up when he said: "What’s the use of kidding ourselves. All that piece of paper means is that we got a union. The rest depends on us!"⁶⁶

The Flint workers had "struck the blow which shattered the shackles of open shop tyranny!"’

Now the workers prepared to leave the plants that had been their home for 44 long days. One of them—John Thrasher of Standard Cotton, a small feeder plant for Fisher One, where the sit-down closely paralleled that of the major unit"—set down his thoughts on this occasion:

"As the exhilaration of our first union victory wore off the gang was occupied with thoughts of leaving the silent factory....

"One found himself wondering what home life would be like again. Nothing that happened before the strike began seemed to register in the mind any more. It is as if time itself started with this strike.

"What will it be like to go home and to come back tomorrow with motors running and the long-silenced machines roaring again? But that is for the future....

"One must pack. Into a paper shopping bag I place the things which helped make my ‘house’ a place to live in: house slippers, extra shirts, sox and underwear; razor and shaving equipment; two books; a reading lamp; and the picture of my wife that hung above my bed...

"It is near time to go. Already there is a goodly number of cars and people outside, brother workers who have come to escort us out of the plant. The first victory has been ours but the war is not over. We were strong enough to win over all the combined forces of our enemies and we shall continue to win only if we remember that through Solidarity we have been made free.

"Now the door is opening."⁶⁷

At 5 P.M. on February 11 the whistle sounded full blast and the evacuation of Fisher Body No. I began. The thousands waiting outside cheered as Bud Simons headed up the line of workers coming out under a huge sign bearing the declaration, "Victory Is Ours!" All the strikers carried bundles of belongings on their backs. Waves of deafening cheers resounded as entire families leaped at the men, marching like a conquering army. Lines formed and the two-mile parade to the other plants began. As the double row of marchers reached the top of the hill facing Fisher No. 2 and Chevy No. 4, great flares lit up the area. Confetti poured down and the huge gates of No. 4 opened.

As editor Kraus described it: "Lungs that were already spent with cheering found new strength as the brave men whose brilliant coup had turned the strike to definite victory began to descend the stairs. They looked haggard with exhaustion. The mark of suffering was on them. Yet their collective joy and pride submerged all this. As they came out, wives and children rushed to husbands and fathers who had not been seen for ten fear-filled days. Strong, heavily-bearded men were unashamed of tears. Then someone began to sing Solidarity:

Solidarity forever!

Solidarity forever!

Solidarity forever!

For the Union makes us strong!

and as all joined in, the moment was carried beyond its almost unbearable tenseness and emotion.’’ When Fisher No. 2 had emptied, the cheering and noise "exceeded all bounds of hearing."

The thousands sang "Solidarity Forever" as they surged into Third Avenue, a human flood headed for the center of the city. They had made Flint a union town.

As UAW editor Kraus noted,⁶⁸ the spirit of the time was expressed perfectly by one slightly tipsy worker to another celebrating later in the wee hours of the morning: "Emmet, you gotta believe me’. It ain’t me that’s talkin’, it’s the CIO in me."

The immediate effects of this victory were enormous. Although AFL head Green called the settlement "a blow at all labor," a wave of strikes and sit-downs rolled across the country. In Detroit alone, in the next two weeks 87 sit-downs were begun, Packard, Goodyear, Goodrich and General Electric’s Lynn, Massachusetts plant and announced immediate wage increases. Four days after the workers had marched out of GM’s plants UAW membership reached 200,000. Another 100,000 were signed up in the next few months.

Briggs and Murray, two body manufacturers, gave wage hikes on the 15th; Nash-Kelvinator settled the next day; a second Briggs plant in Flint won time and one-half for overtime and a wage increase after a 7½--hour sit-down on the 17th; 3,000 women in various factories sat down in Detroit on the 18th; 2,000 more joined them the next day. By the 22nd there were 75,000 auto workers in the UAW in Detroit alone, and $75 million had been added to auto workers’ wages in that model year. On the 23rd ten strikes were won in a single day and Chrysler offered increases in all departments, while agreeing to negotiate a contract with the UAW for its 75,000 -workers.

On the 24th, less than two weeks after the Flint sit-down had ended, United Press estimated that a minimum of 30,000 workers were sitting in across the country. Seventeen strikes were in progress in Detroit and 9,000 New England shoe workers had just walked out. The next day 14 new sit-downs began in Detroit. And then came the big one.

On March 2, United States Steel—the largest steel company in the world and the other giant bastion of the open shop alongside GM—signed a contract with the CIO’s Steel Workers Organizing Committee—WITHOUT A STRIKE! After long and bloody battles dating back to the l9th century, a union had come to steel. During the auto strike, flying squads of organizers had been blanketing the steel towns of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and other states signing up workers by the thousands. The giant monopoly apparently saw the handwriting on the wall and wanted no part of a Flint-style offensive in its own mills.

The next day General Electric announced it would meet with the United Electrical Workers, CIO, to discuss a contract for its 60,000 workers. By March 3, 47 sit-down strikes had been won in Detroit, and young women working in Woolworth’s had smuggled cots into the stores to attempt to bring down that million-dollar corporation.

The CIO had set its sights on organizing five million workers, a task which was virtually accomplished in less than four years. A half century of battles, of Homestead, Haymarket 1877, Pullman, packinghouse, 1919 in steel, finally came to fruition in the greatest industrial organizing drive the nation had ever seen. It had been nurtured in Akron, spread to Toledo and Cleveland, and then, when the CIO leadership set its sights on steel as the kingpin, the auto workers had come along to upset the timetable. They had determined that GM would be the kingpin, and within GM it was to be Flint, "the belly of the monster." There is hardly any doubt that the 44 days spent inside of Fisher Body Nos. I and 2 and Chevrolet Assembly No. 4 vas the turning point for the unionization at the mass-production industries in the United States. As one observer declared when the strike was barely ten days old: "The future of the Committee for Industrial Organization, most hopeful development in the history of the American labor movement, lies in the hands of the sit-down strikers who have occupied Fisher Body Plant No. I at Flint, Michigan."⁶⁹

That this was a turning point is easily demonstrated: It was the first time that a national union had thrown all its weight behind one of its sections. It represented the triumph of industrial unionism aver the more divisive AFL craft-type unionism. As noted previously, it was the most important single factor in spurring the unionization of Big Steel. It was "the first major test of the industrial union drive… moving forward in steel and other mass production industries.’’⁷⁰ Shortly afterwards, the Supreme Court, "coincidentally," reversed its previous position and declared the Wagner Act constitutional, making certain basic workers’ rights legal.

Even more fundamentally, "the attack on GM was basically an attack on one of the important sectors of Wall Street,"⁷¹ a point well understood by many of Its leaders. Mortimer had told the Fisher Body workers:

"This thing is deeper than most people realize. Behind GM is the Steel Institute. Behind the Steel Institute are the DuPonts. It is a fight between the American working class and the tap root of American capitalism."⁷²

And behind GM was also the fascist Liberty League and Black Legion, spawned by some of the biggest corporate interests in the country. The auto monopoly represented a financial power that was interlocked with finance capital throughout the world. In organizing GM, the auto workers were breaking through the enemy line at one of its strongest points, which is why the repercussions spread throughout the country. While it was not a revolution—it did not, nor was its aim to, transfer state power into the hands of the working class—it was a major confrontation in the struggle between property rights and workers’ rights, and many of the laws established by the ruling class to keep the workers in check were broken. GM’s president, Alfred Sloan, himself recognized this new-found power of the workers when he said:

" Through the… Courts the Illegality of the ‘sit-down’ was established. The strikers were ordered out of the Corporation’s plants. They deliberately refused to obey the orders of the Court. They were found in contempt of the Court. No effort was made by the local enforcement authorities to enforce the orders of the Court and the State itself took no action toward maintaining the authority of the law. (Sloan should have said no successful effort or action was taken, since they certainly tried—author’s note) Under such circumstances, the Corporation stood powerless. Manifestly, it became a matter beyond its power to control."⁷³

What exactly was this power that could strike at the "tap root" of capitalism and render GM "powerless?’

In the first place it was the overwhelming rank-and-file character of the strike. It should be remembered what the workers would have faced in a prolonged organizing struggle: company spies, blacklists, strikebreaking, firing due to union activity, tear gas, etc. The sit-down overcame all of these obstacles. But almost by definition it is in the nature of a sit-down that the rank and file must run it. It cannot succeed otherwise. The sit-down has been described as sort of a "domestic poll of the workers," Solidarity and unity are the cornerstones of its success.

Through such participation of the mass, many things became possible: demonstrations; mass picketing barring entry and discouraging attack through active defense; 24-hour picket lines; agitation through bulletins, newspapers, sound trucks, and mass singing of labor songs to bolster morale; a democratically-run strike committee with direct and large rank-and-file representation and therefore control; relief committees; free food supply, etc. It was this mass participation that enabled the workers to "take possession" of the plants and gain backing from the working-class population of a company town. This helped provide the strong outside support necessary to guarantee the existence of the sit-downers inside. Many times It was the overwhelming, all-pervasive character of the mass in motion that was largely responsible for the tremendous rapid growth of the union. Workers seeing the power of the organized group found it irresistible, especially as it accumulated victories over a heretofore-unbeatable enemy.

So predominant was this rank-and-file character that it moved in advance of the CIO leaders: "It is probably true that if… the CIO had been entirely free to pick (its) own time and place, the struggle in automobiles would have come somewhat later, might even have been postponed until after a victory had been won in steel or in rubber or in coal. The auto workers’ strike was primarily a rank and file movement."⁷⁴

The success of the rank and file and its sit-down was also based on the interlocking nature of the assembly line. On the one hand the corporations had constructed a method of production that set men "apart," concentrating on their "own" job, as a cog in a wheel, what many called "dehumanization;" on the other hand, the assembly line contained within itself the seeds of power to conquer its owners. The key to its operation was usually contained within a few departments, and the organizers set about developing a strong core of union men in those departments, vital links in a spiraling chain. The soldering and welding department, "body-in-white," was a key link in Fisher Body as was Fisher Body itself in the over-all GM empire. The belt is an interlocking form. Once cut at certain spots it becomes inoperative, as was certainly demonstrated in the lightning-like actions involved in closing down Chevy Nos. 4 and 6.

To start a sit-down, a highly organized core was all that was necessary. But a participating and supporting mass was necessary to win it.

The importance of the workers to the assembly line operation-who individually were cogs in the wheel but who collectively were the wheel itself was no better described than in the reactions of one of the sit-downers after the plants were shut: "Now we know our labor is more important than the money of the stockholders, than the gambling on Wall Street, than the doings of the managers and foremen."

But it was not some amorphous, "pure" rank and file that created the victory on its own. There was a core of leadership, and immersed in this core were the communists.

Typical was a worker like Walter Moore, Communist Party section organizer for auto in Flint, an integral member of the five-man strike strategy committee inside Fisher Body No. 1. Communists were permeating the working class, fighting for their long-advocated policy of industrial unionism to break the open shop in the citadels of monopoly capital. As Lewis’ biographer, Saul Alinsky, no friend of the Left, points out in reluctant admiration:

In 1933-34 "when the AFL smashed the spirit of unionism, it was the left-wingers who zealously worked day and night picking up the pieces… and putting them together…

"When the auto workers, filled with disgust, built bonfires with their AFL membership cards, it was the left-wingers mainly who kept fighting against the disillusionment and cynicism that swept the workers. It was they who kept organizing and organizing and organizing.

"The leaders and organizers of the UAW group in General Motors were the left-wingers, Wyndham Mortimer and Robert Travis. These two built the union inside the great GM empire…

"Every place where new industrial unions were being formed, young and middle-aged Communists were working tirelessly…

"The fact is that the Communist Party made a major contribution in the organizing of the unorganized for the CIO."⁷⁵

The Party had organized shop clubs in the auto plants before the strike. During the course of the sit-down they distributed 150,000 copies of the Daily Worker inside and outside the plants, with special sections devoted to the auto workers. Where these shop clubs existed, the strike was at its strongest. The effectiveness of the shop unit of the Communist Party, said William Weinstone, Party Secretary for the State of Michigan, was proven in the Flint sit-down.⁷⁶

The leadership position of communists in these strike struggles was reflected in such situations as the one at Midland Steel, which manufactured frames for Plymouth and Lincoln. Prior to the union victory there, the company tried to bar strike organizer John Anderson from the negotiations because he had been the Communist Party candidate for governor of Michigan in 1934.

It has been generally recognized that communists built such unions as National Maritime, Transport Workers, Food and Tobacco Workers, West Coast Longshoremen and Warehousemen, the old Local (now District) 65, United Electrical Workers, Rubber Workers, and many more. Sixty of the 200 organizers sent out by the CIO’ s Steel Workers Organizing Committee were members of the Communist Party.

The question arises, therefore: If the communists played such a central role in this period, why was the struggle not carried beyond unionization of the mass production industries, as necessary and magnificent a contribution as that was? What permitted the once-great CIO to sink into the morass of business unionism a generation later?

While there is no one simple answer, fundamental weaknesses existed in the Party in particular, and the left wing in general, that had great bearing on the question.

Perhaps the most important was the lack of a forthright position concerning the role of the state, of the Roosevelt-Murphy government. A class analysis of its function was sorely confused.

Not only did the Party fail to explain the class nature of the state, one that represented the ruling class and its laws against the workers, but the C.P. actually called for the use of the bosses’ army, the National Guard, to protect the workers!

After the Battle of Bulls Run, the Daily Worker editorialized:

"The people of Michigan certainly cannot be pleased with his (Murphy’s) initial statement: ‘State authorities under no condition are going to take sides in this controversy.’ Will the Governor not take sides in the issue of justice vs. injustice? Will he not take sides in the question of that degree of industrial democracy which unionization affords as against the black industrial autocracy of the General Motors Corporation ?…

"The progressive forces of this country expect the Governor to use the National Guard, now that it is in Flint, for the protection of the rights of the workers… (Murphy and Roosevelt) must compel the General Motors Corporation to recognize the union…"⁷⁷

Certainly the communists must have known what Mortimer later reported, that "the Roosevelt Administration tried to pressure the negotiating committee into settlement on terms favorable to GM."^*78 And they most definitely knew of Roosevelt’s role in 1934 when he obstructed the auto workers’ efforts to organize their own union under the NRA.

Consider the fact that Roosevelt, the supposed champion of collective bargaining under the New Deal, failed to enforce even this law that his own administration had established. When Lewis demanded that "the law of the land" be carried out, Roosevelt avoided the issue, saying it was "not the time for headlines." This enabled GM to feel even more secure in. attempting to terrorize the workers into submission shortly after that. Roosevelt and Murphy certainly did nothing important to impede GM’s use of armed company thugs, the local police, the Flint Alliance, tear gas, labor spies and other assorted standard ruling class practices. Rather, it was the workers holding the plant machinery as "hostage" that was decisive.

While on the one hand, Michigan Party secretary Weinstone did give a clear analysis in a pamphlet published after the sit-down of why Roosevelt drew back from using federal troops against the strikers, on the other, hand, in a Daily Worker article (Jan. 16, 1937) distributed to possibly 50,000 auto workers, he said that "The people now look to Governor Murphy to fulfill the pledges which elected him to office."

Further illusions on the role of the government along these lines were contained in the aforementioned Daily Worker editorial: "The Federal government and its spokesman in the Governorship of Michigan (must) compel the General Motors Corporation to recognize the union, to accept a national agreement and…the strikers’ demands." Although the Party publication said it had warned the workers previously not to rely on Roosevelt, it continued to talk of the Roosevelt Administration as if it could represent the workers if enough pressure was put on it. In its January 14th editorial it reiterated that the election "mandate was violated again." And again, on the next day it demanded that the "75th Congress… bring out into the light of day sinister details of this giant trust," meaning GM.

In the last analysis, when Murphy said he was sworn to "uphold. the law," whose "law" did it become? Obviously GM’s law, since to carry it out he felt duty-bound to remove the workers from the plants. It was never a question of "upholding the law" by telling GM’s thugs, police and vigilantes would have to fight the National Guard if they attempted to invade the struck plants.

The Party failed to explain the class nature of the law, at a time when hundreds of thousands of workers, inside and outside the plants, were reading its publications, * The fact is that the sit-downers DID break the ruling class’s laws in occupying the factories. This presented an opportunity to explain the nature of the law and WHY it was unjust, what class had enacted it and for whose benefit.

The murky nature of the Party’s attitude on the question of the class nature of the state was clearly revealed in its position on Roosevelt’s "court-packing" plan. When the Supreme Court repeatedly struck down New Deal legislation, Roosevelt proposed to expand the body to fifteen by adding six new justices to what was referred to as the "nine old men." In supporting this plan,, the Party referred to the "nine old men" as "puppets of Wall Street"⁷⁹ It thereby implied that the new Roosevelt-appointed justices might serve the people rather than Wall Street. While the people may certainly conduct a fight for their rights through the courts as one avenue of struggle, certainly the Communist Party was feeding illusions in what could be gained from the Court in a capitalist society, by labeling one set of justices "Wall Street puppets" who could conceivably be overcome by "better" ones who wouldn’t serve the ruling class.

And just in case the new court didn’t do the right thing, the Party declared that the "main job will not be done until the White House and Congress REPUDIATE COMPLETELY the usurped powers of the Supreme Court." (Worker, Feb. 8, 1937) This implied that somehow the White House and Congress might be inclined to "protect" the people against the Court’s arbitrary actions—feeding the belief in the effectiveness of the so-called checks and balances of the three branches of the ruling class government.

Despite the fact that the Party ran a candidate for President in 1936, for the most part it pushed a position that tailed Roosevelt. It put its main blast on the Republican candidate, Alf Landon, labeling him the representative of the most reactionary open-shoppers, like GM and U.S. Steel, who might move to fascism. Even if that were true, the C.P. clearly implied that the Roosevelt Administration would somehow take the workers’ side if "Pushed" hard enough, just the way It implies now (1968—editor’s note) that Johnson would if freed from the Pentagon’s "chains."

The post-war assault on the left-wing leaders of the CIO succeeded, in part, because the Party had failed to give the ideological leadership necessary to withstand such an attack.

The fact is that Roosevelt did not use Federal troops to intervene on the side of GM because of a chain of reasons: 1) The workers had announced in advance that they would offer stiff resistance to any such attempts, and a bloodbath would follow. This would have seriously damaged1the image of the "democratic" New Deal which Roosevelt was so carefully nurturing to save the system during the disastrous depression. 2) Such open intervention would arouse the entire working class against both the corporations and the Administration. 3) These first two reactions would be a severe blow to the Democratic Party, and therefore to the two-party system inside of which the workers were bound so securely. And 4), the final result might become a strong case for an independent workers’ party to challenge the ruling-class parties on a higher level, possibly even having a socialist goal—or at least some form of "public ownership" of the means of production.

Roosevelt (and Murphy) were caught in this contradiction and kept holding off the use of troops because the risk of exposure of the true nature of the state was too great, especially following so closely on the heels of the 1936 Democratic landslide.

In reading more than 100 issues of the Daily Worker, from December, 1936 to March, 1937, one finds no real exposure of the relationship of the state to the ruling class. The Party’s own members, for the most part, were part of a united front behind Roosevelt. It criticized him mainly from the point of view that he either "made mistakes," as with an embargo on aid to anti-fascist forces in Spain, or he didn’t go "far enough" in championing the workers’ cause. The Party rarely declared that Roosevelt was following the age-old policy of the "carrot and the stick," that is, allowing some labor reform while at the same time permitting all kinds of locally, and company-inspired violence to be used against the workers all across the country. Certainly the defense measures taken by the sit-downers in the final days were in expectation that if the National Guard was used at all it would be used against them. From their own experience, that was the only possible conclusion they could reach.

The C.P. based its support of the New Deal on a united front against fascism and monopoly. But by relying on the Democrats, it fed the illusion that a ruling-class party could give this kind of leadership. It left the working class, and its own members, totally ill-prepared for the shift in emphasis from the carrot to the stick that occurred after World War 11, when the left-wing movement and the progressive nature of the CIO were virtually wiped out by a big business, Cold War offensive.

One could say that the sweep of events was so swift and overwhelming that no one could have been prepared to gauge fully its implications and act to guarantee against backsliding. Although a socialist revolution was not necessarily the order of the day, the ruling class greatly feared the working masses might approach that idea if they broke out of the two-party, "state-is-neutral" box. It was precisely this fact that Roosevelt recognized and the C.P. glossed over.

One might conclude that at least the working class could have emerged from this struggle with the conviction that it needed an independent political party (if it didn’t actually bring one into being) and with a much greater understanding of the rule of the state, class society, and "the law." These were functions which the C.P. could have performed but apparently neglected at best, and thus many times fed illusions to the workers on these fundamental questions.

Had the communists developed a long-range strategy for socialist revolution, or at least stuck to the concept that a working-class smashing of the ruling-class state was necessary, along with establishment of a workers’ state apparatus, then they and thousands of workers would not have fallen into the trap of reasoning that events would depend on who pushed the "neutral," "democratic" Roosevelt harder, GM or the auto workers.

Despite any shortcomings afterwards, the Flint Sit-down and its stimulus to the CIO was an historic victory for the U.S. working class. Without it, the ability of the workers in the mass production industries to fight big business would have been severely hampered. The story of how this advance was sold out by "leaders" such as Walter Reuther is a subject in itself. However, the recent period has seen the greatest wave of wildcat strikes in auto in many years. The failure of the Reuther leadership to fight the auto companies is being exposed more and more. Rebellious workers who refuse to be saddled with sellouts under three and five-year contracts are increasingly coming to the fore. Part of the answer to these problems is a program consisting of a thirty-hour week for forty hours pay; an end .to speed-up; worker control of production standards; a worker-enforced safety code; a ban on compulsory overtime; a grievance procedure which can be backed up by strikes in the face of company refusal to settle; and a healthy wage increase to meet the rising cost of living caused by skyrocketing profits.

To fight for such a program not only is the "spirit of 1937" needed, but also a core of rank-and-file militants to organize a national rank-and-file movement on a plant-by-plant basis around the country, similar to the kind of organization Mortimer and Travis brought to fruition in Flint, Cleveland and Detroit. And what is needed to sustain such a movement is true communist leadership with a working-class ideology.

As the sit-downer noted when he left the plant, "The first victory has been ours but the war is not over." To win that "war," the power of the working class must be correctly estimated. If there is one overriding lesson to be learned from the Great Flint Sit-Down, it is that workers acting in unity and solidarity can triumph over the most powerful weapons the ruling class throws against them. Certainly the’ National Guard had an overwhelming superiority in arms with which to slaughter the auto workers. But the strikers won because of the very contradictions created by the system, itself: the Guard would have destroyed not only General Motors if it invaded the plants, but the illusion that workers have something to gain from a bosses’ state, bosses’ laws and a bosses’ party. Superiority of arms could not triumph because the profit system had created an interlocking assembly line, dependent on thousands of workers for its operation, which, if destroyed, would cause a breakdown in that very profit system. Taking advantage of this contradiction, the workers perfected the sit-down tactic and "the door opened" slightly.

It remains for the present members of the UAW-CIO, heirs to an inspiring heritage, to fling that door wide open, letting in the sun of a rank-and-file-led union once more. It could fall to the auto workers to again take the lead—setting the pace for similar movements all over the country—but this time to build a society in which the workers’ law, the workers’ party and the workers’ state is supreme.

A ELECTION CIRCUS MASKS CLASS DICTATORSHIP

No matter how the 2004 electoral circus turns out, the United States is and will remain a class dictatorship. Under the profit system, political parties exist for two primary reasons. The first is to serve individual groups of bosses in the pursuit of their particular profit goals. The second is to mislead workers into backing these profit goals with the illusion that the right to cast a ballot means the U.S. is a democracy.

Many people correctly saw through the crude, racist swindle that enabled Bush Jr. to steal the White House in 2000 by denying black workers the right to vote in Florida. But this isn’t the main reason to call the present government a dictatorship. Swindles and voting fraud are as American as apple pie. In 1960, the Democrat John Kennedy won out over Nixon because the Democratic political machine in Chicago had handed him the Illinois electoral vote on a platter by counting the votes of dead people.

The main lesson for workers in this election is the nature of state power in a class society. By "state," communists mean the entire government apparatus that enables the bosses to rule at the federal, state, and local levels. The state includes all levels of the three so-called "branches" of government. Every elected official, from Bush to the mayor of the least populated city or town belongs to it. Every legislative body, from the U.S. Senate down to the smallest state legislature belongs to it. So do all four branches of the military and every cop, judge, and immigration officer.

The capitalist state apparatus exists to prolong and protect the profit system. This is its role regardless of the party in power at any given moment. The state in this sense came into existence long ago, as a product of society’s first historical division into antagonistic social classes. Under slavery, the state existed to protect the privileges of the slave-owning class. Under feudalism, it served kings and lords, helping them rule over serfs and bondsmen. Now, under the capitalism, it protects the profits and private property of the wealthiest bosses, primarily against the working class, but also against real and potential rivals to U.S. imperialism.

The capitalist state therefore reflects the essential class violence of the system itself. This is perhaps less obvious today in a temporary period of relatively low class struggle, but even under present conditions, we see the class role of the police, for example in their systematic racist war of terror against workers living in the most oppressed sections of U.S. cities. The moment class struggle sharpens, the role of the police becomes crystal clear, as they protect bosses’ interests at gunpoint, shooting workers, protecting scabs, and enforcing back-to-work court injunctions. A classic recent example of the state’s role in class struggle was the decision by the Republican president Reagan to fire striking air traffic controllers in 1981. This fascistic action set the tone for the increasingly virulent anti-worker policies the bosses have been implementing ever since. The Democrat Clinton followed suit with his racist "welfare reform," which was a thinly disguised union-busting, slave labor scheme. The entire ruling class now agrees with the need for cloaking its post 9/11 moves toward a police state in the form of "anti-terror" measures. Anti-Bush squawking from the Democrats has to do with their discontent over Ashcroft’s clumsy, inept tactics rather than over goals. The real purpose of these measures is to discipline our class by preparing it for the sacrifice in blood and living conditions that the rulers’ long range war plans will require. All the rulers agree on this question.

In foreign policy, none of the big bosses in any significant section of the Republican or Democratic parties disputes the U.S. imperialism’s need to rule the world by force, to control the flow and pricing of all major sources of petroleum, particularly in the Persian Gulf, or to prevent the rise of a serious imperialist rival in Asia or Europe. The rulers differ only on methods and approach.

The post-World War II history of U.S. Middle Eastern policy reflects the consistency of the class role the bosses’ state apparatus has played with regard to this issue.

• Immediately after World War II, key U.S. advisor George Kennan warned the Democratic Truman administration that control of Middle Eastern oil must become and remain an absolute priority for Washington and Wall Street.
• The Republican Eisenhower organized a coup to overthrow a nationalist government in oil-rich Iran and replace it with the nazi-loving, pro-U.S. Shah. Eisenhower also forced British, French, and Israeli bosses to back down when their 1956 invasion of the Suez Canal threatened potential U.S. hegemony in the Middle East.
• After the Israeli fascists proved the strength of their military in the 1967 Six Day War, every U.S. president from Johnson through Bush Jr. has armed Israel to the teeth and given it the assignment of serving as U.S. imperialism’s local gunslinger.
• In 1980, when a nationalist-Islamic fundamentalist uprising overthrew the Shah, Democrat Jimmy Carter announced the "Carter Doctrine," which stated that the U.S. would consider any attempt to wrest control of Persian Gulf oil from U.S. companies as a cause for war. Every U.S. president since then has followed this strategic line. The cost in human life has been staggering. The U.S. cynically backed both sides of the murderous 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Bush Sr.’s 1991 Desert Storm I in Iraq slaughtered hundreds of thousands. A million people, mostly young Iraqi children, died in the wake of Clinton’s brutal sanctions and bombings. And now the Bush-Cheney war is adding to the toll.

As the Progressive Labor Party has often pointed out, the biggest mistake workers can make is to choose among supposed "lesser evils" under capitalism. Understanding the class nature of the state helps us avoid this error. As long as classes exist, a state apparatus will exist, and its role will be to keep one class in power to rule over the class that directly antagonizes and threatens it.

Communists have an alternative to the bosses’ dictatorship. We call it the Dictatorship of the Working Class (or Dictatorship of the Proletariat). But the working class cannot seize political power by voting for it. Only a prolonged, violent revolution supported by communist workers and led by a communist party can achieve this goal. History teaches us that even when the first stage of the goal is achieved, keeping power and building communism is even harder than the seizure of power. Nonetheless, the future of humanity and the survival of the working class demand nothing less.

These are the goals that our Party expects to win, despite all obstacles and the time needed to win them. As the rulers’ presidential circus unfolds, workers can take an important step in the right direction by shedding their illusions about capitalist elections and the capitalist state and by joining with the PLP to sharpen the class struggle and carry our class forward on the long, violent, and inevitably victorious road to revolution.

ELECTION IS BATTLE OVER TACTICS AND TAXES;
BOTH PARTIES' GRAND STRATEGY IS U.S. WORLD DOMINATION

Just days after George Bush took office in 2001, the Hart-Rudman commission handed him its final, 148-page report. This document outlined the measures the U.S. ruling class deemed necessary for maintaining U.S. capitalism’s worldwide dominance for the next quarter century. It proposed expanding the military, launching oil wars in the Middle East, creating a police state at home, centralizing the state apparatus, and linking business more closely with government. Carrying out Hart-Rudman’s provisions became job one for the U.S. president. Bush’s failures and shortcomings inthis regard, and Kerry’s shaky promise, are, for the rulers, central issues in the coming election.

Hart-Rudman said a terrorist attack on the U.S. would provide an invaluable recruiting tool for the military. Bush squandered that opportunity, was forced to send inadequate forces to Iraq, and now faces the rulers’ wrath for the quagmire there. Hart-Rudman said the National Guard should serve as a homeland police force. Bush sent the Guard to Iraq to bolster the overstretched regular army. Hart-Rudman called for a sweeping restructuring of federal agencies. Bush set up the Homeland Defense Department only grudgingly and is balking at revamping intelligence services.

Hart-Rudman urges that leaders prepare citizens to give up "blood and treasure" in the cause of U.S. imperialism. Bush has spilled the blood of a thousand working-class GIs and many thousands of Iraqis but hasn’t managed, or even tried, to shift capitalists’ profits from their pockets to the war effort. Thus, the Bush-Kerry race represents a conflict inherent in the profit system: the capitalist class’s need to defend itself militarily against foreign rivals cuts into the short-term gains of individual capitalists. Despite its glaring deficiencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush team remains adamant that U.S. capitalists can benefit from both war and tax cuts at the same time. Rumsfeld in particular believes that the U.S. war machine's vast technological superiority makes adding troops, and paying for them, unnecessary.

But capitalists focused on protecting the U.S. empire over the long haul are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with Bush & Co.'s ineffective imperialism "on the cheap." The Council on Foreign Relations, the foremost of the think-tanks that help formulate U.S. imperial strategy, recently complained, "the Bush administration was never willing to commit anything like the forces necessary to ensure order in postwar Iraq. From the beginning, military experts warned Washington that the task would require, as Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki told Congress in February 2003, 'hundreds of thousands' of troops. For the United States to deploy forces in Iraq at the same ratio to population as NATO had in Bosnia would have required half a million troops. Yet the coalition force level never reached even a third of that figure. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his senior civilian deputies rejected every call for a much larger commitment....In truth, around 300,000 troops might have been enough to make Iraq largely secure after the war" (the CFR's Foreign Affairs, Sept./Oct. 04). While the CFR ceaselessly demanded an Iraq invasion, it called for attacking in the Fall of 2003, not the Spring, to give the Pentagon time to assemble a far larger force of U.S. troops and allies. As for paying the bill, CFR director and Goldman Sachs International vice-chairman Robert Hormats warned on the eve of the invasion: "We can afford a war, we can afford domestic programs and we can afford tax cuts. The problem is we probably can't afford all of them at once" (ABC 3/21/03).

John Kerry allies himself with Hart-Rudman/CFR camp. His campaign advisors include Gary Hart, co-chairman of the Hart-Rudman commission, and Leslie Gelb, one of its 12 members, who once headed the CFR. In December 2003, Kerry presented his blueprint for war and fascism (basically the Democratic platform) to the leaders of the CFR in a speech at its New York headquarters. The rulers and their agents applauded when Kerry demanded adding 40,000 soldiers to the army immediately and a national service program to provide cannon fodder for future wars. He also pledged to fulfill Clinton's promise of 100,000 more cops. The New York Times, the rulers’ leading media outlet, expressed delight that "Mr. Kerry instantly embraced every recommendation of the 9/11 Commission"(8/15/04). It called for a sweeping reorganization of the CIA, FBI, NSA, and Defense spy agencies into a centralized police-state apparatus.

Until that CFR speech, Howard Dean had been the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Dean had some public support but no program to further U.S. imperialism’s strategy. After the speech, Kerry leapt ahead in the bosses’ polls and shortly thereafter locked up the Democratic nomination, paving the way for an undisputed July convention that turned into a pro-war festival.

Kerry knows that war and fascism don't come cheap. He plans to increase the top income tax bracket to its Clintonian level of 39.6% from the present 35% to help foot the bill. Roosevelt jacked up the top tax rate to 91% during World War II. Though with plenty of loopholes, Kennedy kept it there throughout his launching of the Vietnam genocide until his sudden demise at the hands of rival U.S. bosses. High taxes serve the main, imperialist U.S. rulers not only as a source of funds for their overseas military forays but as a form of control over their domestic competitors. John Forbes Kerry dreams of exerting the kind of domestic economic discipline that his idol JFK did.

Another insight into Kerry's outlook comes from his adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a CFR headliner, who served as Carter's national security chief. Brzezinski's 1996 book, The Grand Chessboard, calls for the military encirclement of all of Eurasia by the United States. That is why Clinton created so many military bases in and near the former Soviet Union. Brzezinski's idea is that the 21st Century will be a second "American Century," if the U.S. can command the world's chief oil sources via military control of the Eurasian land mass. Brezezinski hopes that U.S. troops in the Middle East and the ex-Soviet Union can block the next threat to U.S. hegemony--an alliance of any two of China, Russia, and the European Union powerful enough to defeat the U.S. in war. The CFR warlords are blasting Rumsfeld's cost-saving plan to shift troops from Europe and Asia back to the U.S. Replacing two U.S. heavy divisions in Germany with Rumsfeld's smaller high tech forces would embolden France as well as Russia, they fear. Richard Holbrooke, a likely Kerry pick for Secretary of State, cautioned, "this is exactly what Chirac wants" (CFR website, 8/17/04). Kerry counselor Brzezinski stresses the need for U.S.-controlled oil pipelines through the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. He also sees the importance of alliances in military actions to prevent isolation of the U.S.

Currently, Brzezinski, the New York Times, and other liberal spokesmen are beating up on Bush for lying about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. These Kerry backers are attacking Bush because they want a change in the way the U.S. is occupying Iraq, not because they disagree with the war or the occupation itself. The liberals want to put a humanitarian face on the occupation and gain the acceptance of more Iraqis. They want to placate the French and Russians, for now, with junior-partner oil deals, with the U.S. calling the shots on the price and flow of Iraqi crude. And they want some co-operation from the Syrians, Turks, Saudis, and Iranians in stopping support for the resistance movements and building acceptance for the U.S.'s hand-picked Iraqi government. This, not objection to the war, is what lies behind the increasing attacks by the Democrats on Bush’s war policy as the election nears.

But while Kerry's proposed policies generally mesh with the needs of the dominant, liberal wing of U.S. capitalists, they worry about his opportunistic flip-flopping. The New York Times (8/15/04) editorialized, "Mr. Kerry, who voted against the first Persian Gulf war, tailored his positions on this one to his presidential ambitions. He was more hawkish when the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination seemed to be Richard Gephardt, and more dovish when Howard Dean picked up momentum. At the height of the Dean insurgency, both Mr. Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, decided to oppose spending $87 billion to underwrite the occupation of Iraq that they both voted to authorize."

With Bush and Kerry as their best offerings, the rulers are having trouble producing a leader as galvanizing as an FDR or a Hitler. But that doesn’t lessen their need to destroy foreign rivals or crack down on workers at home. Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Patriot Act show that the capitalists’ warmaking and fascism are deadly under inept leadership. If a President Kerry should prove more capable than Bush, the working class would suffer even more.

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS PROTEST BUSH BUT DEMOCRATS ARE NO LESSER EVIL

On August 29, about 500,000 people marched in New York against Bush and his wars. Spirited demonstrators took on the NYPD in clashes throughout the Republican convention. They represented millions who reject Bush’s wasting of human lives for oil and his pandering to greedy corporations. While the protests are encouraging, the rulers are hoping to direct these protests into the voting booths for the equally deadly Democrat Kerry. Bush and Kerry both serve the capitalist class that requires expanding imperialist wars and tightening control over the workers. They appeal to different voting bases and have some serious tactical differences over how to maintain U.S. world domination. But their essence is the same.

Democrats and Republicans support U.S. imperialism’s strategic objectives, including an all-powerful U.S. military and control of the Middle East. In July 2003, the Senate voted 95-0 to support President Bush’s $368 billion military appropriation. In July 2004 they voted 96-0 for a $425 billion military appropriation. Like the resolution authorizing the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, not one Democratic Senator stood in opposition.

Democrats and Republicans share U.S. military policy in the Middle East, including annually voting to award Israel $3 billion to oppress Palestinian workers, threaten surrounding countries, and maintain an enormous arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons to act as U.S. imperialism’s hired gun protecting the oil-rich region’s western flank.

The Democrats supported the Iraq war from build-up to actual attack. Those who conditioned their support on multilateral approval through the United Nations dropped their reservations like a hot potato once the war began. Most Democrats unconditionally supported the war, and as with Vietnam, began to ask questions only when the mission began to falter. Now they want to capitalize on mass opposition to the war to win the election.

Imperialist war is not result of the bad policies of diabolical politicians that we can vote out of office. It is the nature of the capitalist beast. Wars for oil and other resources, for access to markets and cheap labor, and for depriving other capitalists of these things are inevitable as long as capitalism exists. Elections and mass reform movements cannot end imperialism since they just provide a band-aid solution to a deadly cancer.

Only a mass communist movement can organize workers, soldiers and students to wipe out the imperialist warmakers and replace their dictatorship with the revolutionary dictatorship of the working class, abolishing their racist profit system. The bosses won’t give up their profits peacefully, That is why the most important thing we can do is to build a mass international PLP as a way to wage the long and difficult struggle to put an end to the hell of capitalism.

Armed with communist politics, we can turn the horrors of the capitalists’ wars against them. The torture and murder of prisoners at Abu Ghraib disgusted millions. On the job, barracks and schools, in the unions and mass organizations, we could have responded with more demonstrations, forums, and literature. We have the opportunity to transform widespread outrage at these atrocities into a mass movement against the capitalist dictatorship that commits them, at home and around the world.

The enemy isn’t far to seek. On the job, we can attack war profiteering corporations and union bosses who try to sell us out to the imperialist Democrats. The schools and universities are crawling with military recruiters and ROTC programs. We can expose the universities’ role in military research and in shaping the racist, fascistic ideology that leads U.S. imperialism. In the community, we can target politicians who dismantle social programs to fund the war effort. But we can never think that an end to imperialist war will come before the working class, led by a mass international PLP, seizes power with communist revolution.

Democrats’ War Crimes

• Wilson led the U.S. into World War I, making it a full-fledged imperialist power.
• Roosevelt and Truman directed the unnecessary murders of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Tokyo, Dresden, Frankfurt, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki during World War II.
• In the Cold War, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter armed and funded pro-U.S. dictators and insurgencies around the world.
• Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson wasted millions of workers’ lives trying to defend U.S. imperialism in Korea and Vietnam.
• Kennedy invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
• Johnson invaded the Dominican Republic supporting a rightwing military Junta about to be overthrown by a popular rebellion. LBJ actually diverted thousands of U.S. troops bound to Vietnam to invade the Caribbean island claiming "communists were about to take over the rebellion.".
• Carter, who today goes around "overseeing democratic elections," praised Somoza, the Nicaraguan dictator, for his "progress in human rights," just a year or so before he was forced to flee by a mass insurrection. It was also Carter, preaching his "Blood for Oil Profits" Doctrine, who began the U.S. military build-up in the Middle East.
• Clinton dropped more bombs on Yugoslavia than his predecessors did on Vietnam.
• Clinton enforced U.S. sanctions and "no-fly" zones, starving, bombing and killing over 500,000 Iraqis.
• Democrats’ Domestic Crimes
• Wilson used the Sedition Acts during WWI and imprisoned thousands for opposing the war and the draft.
• After the war, Wilson launched the notorious Palmer Raids jailing and deporting thousands of leftist immigrant workers.
• Wilson’s racist Immigration Act of 1917 kept out Asians.
• Roosevelt herded Japanese-Americans into concentration camps.
• Truman approved the anti-Communist legislation and purges of the McCarthy era.
• Johnson diverted troops of the 82nd Airborne from going to Vietnam to brutally put down rebelling workers in Detroit in 1967.
• In Operation Cointelpro, Johnson unleashed the FBI on anti-Vietnam War activists.
• Clinton signed "anti-terrorist" legislation that sharply curtails workers’ civil liberties.
• Under Clinton, the prison population doubled to over 2 million, the highest in the world, especially among black workers.
• Gary Hart helped create the imperialist, fascist manifesto known as the Hart-Rudman reports.

Virtually all Democrats in Congress voted for the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security.

Rock Capitalism

My college campus recently had a "Rock the Vote" rally. A good friend and regular CHALLENGE reader encouraged me to attend and struggle to get on stage. Through friendships I made in an anti-war coalition, I was able to get to speak, and did so about the need for revolution.

I began by saying, "Most people who will speak today will say that the most important thing you can do to change the world is to vote on November 2. I disagree." No one booed. I explained that voting will never bring the social change necessary to end the war and create peace. History proves that such change only happens through massive social movements of organized people who have no interest in maintaining a system that is killing them.

I said whoever’s elected will not only continue the war, but also the massive racist cuts to education and healthcare, because they serve the capitalist system which needs inequality and war. They will cut these services to finance ever-widening war. I said I don’t believe peace and capitalism can ever co-exist. Capitalism breeds terrorism.

I reminded people that the county government recently closed another hospital in our city, and is threatening to close a trauma center, built after a black rebellion, which treats predominantly black and Latin workers. "Every one of us will know someone who dies because of that closure. Closing hospitals is an act of racist terrorism." The audience, especially black and Latin students, loudly cheered and clapped in agreement.

My friends thanked me and I made sure they all received a copy of CHALLENGE. I told them that’s where I learn how the working class fights back.

Later, a man I didn’t know thanked, saying, "You actually talked about something real. Everyone else was just saying the same empty things." I gave him the paper.

PLP’s line contrasts sharply contrast with some famous "anti-war" intellectuals, who are madly trying to convince many honest people that "anybody but Bush" will be better. The Democrats’ record of vicious imperialist war mirrors the Republicans. Kerry promises to manage the war better than Bush, not to end it. In 1964 some urged voting for Johnson during the Vietnam War "because Goldwater would bomb Vietnam into the Stone Age." Johnson was elected and proceeded to bomb Vietnam unmercifully.

The most recent example of this mis-leadership is Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn supporting Kerry with the petition "Vote to Stop Bush": "For people seeking progressive social change in the United States, removing George W. Bush from office should be the top priority." Marxist scholars like Michael Parenti ignore their own understanding of imperialism and openly back Kerry.

Communists’ main job is to serve the workers. That means being the first to speak up when the working class is being misled. Fear of isolation should not stop us. My experience at the Rock the Vote rally showed this.

PLP will not compromise our principles. Especially when there is such a vacuum, we must keep raising our anti-imperialist line and actions. Even if our friends don’t agree with us now, they’ll respect us, and when our analysis proves correct, will move closer to PL. My main error, which I will correct, was not to fight for action against the war and the war budget. As U.S. rulers prepare for greater attacks on workers in Iraq and in the local hospital closing, we must fight for leadership by organizing against them, presenting the alternative to capitalism.

Fight for Communism; we have a world to win!