Sometimes you hear people say, "Communism sounds like a good idea, but it can never work. After all, didn't they already try it?" In the final years of the millennium, that seems to be the conventional wisdom: they tried communism,* but it didn't work. Well, it may be conventional, but it has nothing to do with wisdom.

You don't try on a new social system like you try on a new jacket. The revolutions in Russia and China took place over a span of three or four generations and involved over a billion people, one out of every three humans on the planet. These were social transformations which were larger and more important than anything else mankind has undertaken in several thousand years of recorded history. These revolutions represented the first attempts to take entire nations and continents to a social order free of exploitation. The complexity and richness of this historical experience is such that no person can comprehend it. However, a large collective of people, with consistent study and practical experience, can come to understand the most important themes and experiences from this period. Developing and applying this understanding is the role of a revolutionary party such as PLP.

Every worker who has ever felt like seeing her boss strung up, every worker who has ever dreamed of being his own boss, every person who sees the corruption and despair of capitalist society needs to know something about revolutionary history. These revolutions provide us with a glimpse of what is possible. In the U.S., the very heart of the imperialist beast and one of the richest nations on earth, millions are homeless and hundreds die of cold exposure each winter, huddled over grates and in doorways in the major northern cities. Over 30,000 people commit suicide each year in the U.S. -- some years more, some less, depending on the unemployment rate. To deny working people the history of our class, of the revolutions carried out by others like us in other times and places, is to deny us vision and hope. In many cases, it is to deny life itself.

This little pamphlet can't fill in all the information blacked out by the capitalist filter over all the years of your life. It will try to point you toward some of the most useful sources and relate a few accounts so you will at least see these revolutions were not just a little glitch in history. Rather they were the first breakthroughs into a new world. For the moment the passage seems to have collapsed and all is darkness. But there is a way through. The first step toward finding it is to know there is another side.

1. Based on successes of earlier revolutions, how would we organize society if we had power today?

Communism is about organizing society to meet human needs rather than organizing society to produce goods for individual profit. Communist revolutions in the past have begun by trusting ordinary people to identify their greatest needs. For example, early in the Chinese revolution, the most "urgent demand" of the peasantry in communist controlled areas was for the redistribution of land so that every person could earn a decent living from the land which she or he tilled. As a result, land was confiscated from landlords and rich peasants, leaving them only as much as they themselves could farm. The poorest farmers, tenants and farm laborers were all provided with enough land to provide a livelihood for their families. It became illegal to make a living off the labor of others, by just owning land for example. Everyone was expected to work to eat, but everyone was guaranteed a share of land, tools and animals so they could work.

The Chinese revolution was a great experiment in a new form of social organization that underwent many changes as people tried to learn how to most effectively meet their own needs. The organizational changes reflected an evolving sense of what was possible through cooperation and a reliance on the abilities of ordinary members of society to accomplish great things.

Following land redistribution in China, the cooperative movement emerged as an example of a socialist society. Agricultural cooperatives were formed by pooling the resources (land, farm equipment, labor power, etc) of individual farmers. Membership in a collective farm was voluntary. Guidance in formation and governance was given by experienced leaders to ensure success. Individuals, such as widows or orphans, who had no land to contribute were given membership in the cooperative. This was done as "a form of social insurance or social security, doing for friends and neighbors what one hopes they would do for you under the same circumstances." (Shenfan, p118) Members' rights and duties were clearly outlined. Cooperative members were paid according to their work - that is, more work, more pay. Successful production depended on the ability to work together cooperatively. Overall, agricultural output increased with this collective effort.

Because of the success of the cooperative farms, the Chinese Communist Party tried to move to a more advanced form of social organization. Cooperatives merged to form communes. This pooling of land, resources and labor power on a large scale made projects that had been impossible suddenly become practical (Shenfan, p206). Communes were as large as towns and counties and took on the function of government. During the years in which communes operated successfully, China's social and economic development rapidly moved forward. Most communes provided their members with the seven basic requirements of life: food, clothing, childbirth expenses, education, medical care, marriage and funeral expenses. These things were provided to all members of the commune based on need, the so-called "supply system." Some of the more successful communes additionally provided housing, fuel for winter heating, provision of baths and haircuts as well as plays and films. The communist principle of "from each according to commitment, to each according to need" was actually practiced.

A description of the "supply system" of food distribution in one northern Chinese village is provided by William Hinton in his book, Shenfan:

The community dining room, set up at the same time as the nursery [1958], lasted much longer, through July, 1962. At first each of the six teams in Long Bow [Village] opened a dining room but later they paired off, two teams sharing one. Thus three public kitchens operated throughout most of the period. At the start, in spite of mobilization meetings to explain the advantages of collective dining, only a minority of the peasants ate there. Any family that could spare a member to do the cooking at home did so. But later, as the food and the service improved in the dining rooms, almost everyone came. (p. 230)

What made the dining rooms so popular, once they got on their feet, was, first, convenience and, second, free supply. ... Obviously this was not free food in any ordinary sense. Long Bow people ate no grain stocks produced by other people's labor. They consumed no foods that were not paid for with money they themselves had earned. The more food and money they allocated to the dining rooms, the less food and money was distributed as family shares. What free supply meant in this context was that the food was supplied, in part or in whole, equally to all on a per capita basis without regard to work points earned, that is, in part or in whole, on the basis of need and not on the basis of work performed. In regard to food then, the community jumped ... to the Communist principle of distribution according to need. (p. 231)

Obviously the dining rooms set up in 1958 answered a real need. Many social innovations created during the Great Leap collapsed long before the public dining rooms did [under 1962 instructions from central authorities to return to more capitalist methods]. ... They lasted longer in Long Bow than in many other brigades. In at least one other brigade under the Changchih administration they never collapsed at all. (p. 232)

Our party's outlook is that communism offers the best possibility for a good life for the majority of people on earth. What would such a society look like in an industrialized country today? The primary difference between what we have now and the society we envision is that communism would bring true equality. There would be no difference in social standing or getting what we need because of race, job title, gender or type of education. Equal access to opportunities and the basic requirements of daily life for all would be the goal. Many would agree that this is the ideal society, so why shouldn't it be possible? Millions of Chinese collective farmers before us have showed that, in fact, it is possible -- they lived and produced for years under a system of communist economic relations. With dedication and hard work we can build on their accomplishments.

What would it look like? It is hard to say exactly, but a communist revolution would profoundly change how we produce things as well as how we divide up the products. Let's indulge in a little fantasy. Imagine organizing clothing production in the garment shops of Los Angeles after the working class has seized power. We have already eliminated wages and money. Food distribution has been converted to the "supply system" -- groceries are being distributed according to family size. Now stocks of clothing are running low and people must have clothing. So the Party clubs in the garment industry have been asked to reopen as many factories as possible and reestablish production, which was shut down during the past months of civil war. Our comrades there are in touch with hundreds of close supporters. We call a series of meetings, beginning with the people we know who have shown themselves capable of giving leadership. We begin developing a plan for collective management of the shops. We explain the situation of clothing supply around the liberated areas, where the needs are most acute, where stocks remain. Together with comrades and friends from the factories, the Party leadership puts forward a plan for what the collective of garment workers might be able to contribute to the clothing needs of the people. We discuss problems. How many hours should we work? Who else can we recruit to help? How desperate is the need? How should the work be reorganized to make it more interesting and safer?

Workers immediately take on the organizational tasks that used to be reserved for "skilled managers" under capitalism. So the old shop bosses are gone, but what about the clothing designers? Some do have useful skills. Will they come back to the re-opened factories, even though they will get nothing special for working, just their share of food, etc., like everyone else who shows up at the food distribution site, regardless of work. As in earlier revolutions, a small percentage of the skilled work force (people like designers, engineers, architects, doctors and computer programmers) will join the revolution early on to help any way they can. Others will join more reluctantly or try to demand special treatment because they have certain skills.

The workers on the garment factory steering committee put out a leaflet to all who had a role in actually producing clothes before the revolution, even the designers, inviting them back to the factory, now re-opened "under new (workers') management." They welcome those who want to serve the working class and struggle against the elitist ideas of others. First and foremost we put our confidence in ordinary workers, not specialists. The working class has the most to gain from revolution and is always the driving force behind social change that benefits the mass of the population. Among those tens of thousands of garment workers who will eventually come under our lead, there will be many who now become designers-- those who have not been allowed to develop their skills and potentials as designers under capitalism.

The response is slow at first. Only the Party comrades and our immediate base of a few dozen show up on the designated day to start production. But we make some pants. After a day or two workers see what it's like to work in a shop which they organize themselves, and they see that the clothes they sew are being used by other workers who need them, not to make somebody rich. The word starts to get around and others come to check it out. Within a month we have seven shops up and running with close 500 workers and a handful of designers, machine repair people and office staff. Workers who are interested are encouraged to work with the specialists, learning to repair or build machinery, design the patterns or do other work requiring special skills. The schedules, output plans and the choice of clothing to be produced are all discussed at lively meeting of the workers. Party members among them try to keep people thinking about how this particular shop fits into the overall revolutionary effort in the garment district, in L.A., and in the world.

This little fantasy could be something like what will happen one day in Los Angeles, or it could be way off. The degree of upheaval, the incredible release of energy, the nearly super-human efforts and accomplishments of regular people in a revolutionary situation make it hard for a person growing up under dying capitalism to imagine just what it will be like. But we understand certain principles from the way earlier revolutions have unfolded and the way our Party works. "From each according to commitment" does work. Commitment comes from understanding what is necessary and what is possible. Communists lead by example: the first to volunteer, the last to eat, the most dependable when the group is faced with a difficult or dangerous job. Many details of the communist world we can only guess at for now, but we know which direction we are headed.

2. What are some examples of people working without personal gain?

During the Great Leap Forward in China, "people went out by the millions from quiet villages and carefully tended fields to build dams in the wilderness, dig canals that changed the course of rivers, open mines wherever ore or coal could be found, and smelt iron and steel on the spot. With full stomachs, high hopes and infectious zeal, they challenged nature. Never had China's future seemed so bright." (Shenfan, p208) Chao T'ung-min, the first member of a Chinese village to join the iron smelting effort said, "Every time I recall those days I am filled with happiness". (Shenfan p218).

Millions of Chinese participated in the historic changes of that era with enthusiasm and determination. They did it because they had a goal and a belief that their efforts were important in achieving that goal. They did it for the same reasons that parents care for their children, for the same reasons that people volunteer for the PTA, or that church members deliver meals to invalids. All share a sense of commitment and responsibility, a belief that what they are doing is not only right, but necessary.

Earlier it was said that communism is about organizing society to meet human needs. Not all human needs are material. Humans need to believe that who they are and what they do matters. This need, when tapped, unleashes enormous energy. Think about your workplace. If the employees were free to organize the work in such a way that they knew that their input made a difference in the way the job was done, or that they, or people like them, directly benefited from the goods they were producing, how much more enthusiasm and dedication they would have for their work. In a sense, this is personal gain. It's got nothing to do with money. It's a meaningful existence.

An example from the Soviet Union during World War II brings this idea to life. It is taken from a book by Alexander Werth, a British correspondent who was in the USSR during the war. He described the amazing feats performed by Soviet workers when their socialist country, which they had built with their own hands over the past 24 years, was being invaded by the Nazi army in 1941. In order to prevent the Nazis from capturing factories needed to supply the front, workers packed up entire plants, put them on railroad cars, and moved them to safe locations a thousand miles behind the front lines.

Altogether between July and November 1941 no fewer than 1,523 industrial enterprises, including 1,360 large war plants had been moved to the east ... a total of one and a half million railway wagon-loads. (Russia at War, p. 216)

During the war, I had the opportunity of talking to many workers, both men and women, who had been evacuated to the Urals or Siberia during the grim autumn or early winter months of 1941. The story of how whole industries and millions of people had been moved to the east, of how industries were set up in a minimum of time, in appallingly difficult conditions, and of how these industries managed to increase production to an enormous extent during 1942, was, above all, a story of incredible endurance. ... People worked because they knew that it was absolutely necessary--they worked twelve, thirteen, sometimes fourteen or fifteen hours a day; they "lived on their nerves"; they knew that never was their work more urgently needed than now. ... while the soldiers were suffering and risking so much [fighting against the Nazis] it was not for the civilians to shirk even the most crippling, most heartbreaking work.

[He goes on to quote a local newspaper account from Sverdlovsk, a city in the Ural mountains:]

Winter had already come when Sverdlovsk received Comrade Stalin's order to erect two buildings for the plant evacuated from the south. The trains packed with machinery and people were on the way. The war factory had to start production in its new home--and it had to do so in not more than a fortnight. Fourteen days, and not an hour more! It was then that the people of the Urals came to this spot with shovels, bars and pickaxes: students, typists, accountants, shop assistants, housewives, artists, teachers. The earth was like stone, frozen hard by our fierce Siberian frost. Axes and pickaxes could not break the stony soil. In the light of arc-lamps people hacked at the earth all night. They blew up the stones and the frozen earth, and they laid the foundations. ... Their feet and hands were swollen with frostbite, but they did not leave work. Over the charts and blueprints laid out on packing cases, the blizzard was raging. Hundreds of trucks kept rolling up with the building materials... On the twelfth day, into the new buildings with their glass roofs, the machinery, covered with hoar-frost, began to arrive. Braziers were kept alight to unfreeze the machines. ...And two days later, the war factory began production. (p. 219)

Capitalists boast about how much work they can get out of their employees with strict supervisors and "modern, scientific" management techniques. But only believing in what you are doing can really unlock people's creative energy.

3. When workers took power, how did they do at running things?

Capitalists would like us to believe that without their organizational skill and their technical experts, workers would just run around bumping into each other, never accomplishing anything. During the decades that workers controlled the governments of Russia and China, this lie was disproved on a grand scale. The communist parties in these countries drew most of their members from the ranks of factory workers, peasants and those intellectuals (teachers, engineers, etc.) who identified with the cause of the masses. In 1933, 89% of the members of the Soviet Communist Party were workers or peasants. During the decade of the 30s, this party organized and led the most rapid and thoroughgoing industrialization of any country in history, with annual industrial growth rates of around 15%. (U.S. industrial output was actually shrinking during the depression of the 30s, and during "recoveries" U.S. economic growth rarely exceeds 2-3% per year.) Workers under the leadership of this worker and peasant party built the factories - steel, petroleum, machinery - that would equip and mechanize the Red Army for its amazing defeat of the "invincible" Nazi army a few years later. Rather than bumping into each other, it turned out that Russian workers performed much better than their counterparts in capitalist factories in the US and Europe. It turned out that workers worked better where they were led by the most advanced and committed from their own ranks, by other workers. They worked best when they knew they were building their own society, for the good of themselves and their children, rather than to make some boss rich.

The same sort of thing went even further in China during the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s. Edoarda Masi, an Italian writer who lived in China for many years, described Chinese factories in her 1981 book, China Winter:

The freedom enjoyed by the workers was incredible-- scandalous for those managers accustomed to our factory system. The workplace seemed to be a continuation of the personal world of the workers. In Luoyang, in the famous tractor factory, a worker's family came and went during work hours without the slightest inhibition. On the assembly line, workers would shift and switch duties by mutual consent without awaiting directions from on high. ... in Peking, in the automobile factory, I remembered the Italian diplomat who was stupefied to see coming out of such a madhouse cars produced perfectly down to the last bolt. (p. 292)

Throughout this city [Shanghai] and in many places elsewhere in China, for ten years factories functioned without even the routine rules... there were no controls, people could stop work to carry out some cultural activity, groups took time out of the working day to study; there was a true rejection of supervisory authority. For the first time, workers were for ten years without bosses in the factories. ... [Growth in production] was certainly not slowed down in absolute terms, for starting with the Cultural Revolution there was, on the whole and everywhere, a notable increase in production. (p.295)

This doesn't mean that they did not use the specialized skills of engineers and others we would call "white collar" workers. But it means the factory dictatorship by a small group of owners, managers and their privileged experts could be abolished and perfect tractors kept rolling off the lines in increasing numbers. Engineers added their know-how as equal partners, not as mini-bosses. Scheduling and organizing production was done by the workers themselves. We can do the same.

4. How does revolution tap the unused talents of workers?

AC:

- diagnosis of the ox's hernia ('Away with all pests')

- human relations in the hospital (Pests)

5. Why does our Party believe communism is "human nature"?

We often hear that communism is impossible because it is against "human nature." According to this point of view, human nature, supposedly a permanent quality of all people, is identical to the behavior of capitalists in the marketplace. In other words, human nature is selfish. While most people have their selfish side, saying that people are "naturally selfish" is the opposite of the truth.

On the contrary, history and pre-history show human beings are social creatures. The period of "primitive communism" actually represents most of our time on earth as a species, beginning with the first humans around 250,000 years ago. The long early epoch of human life characterized by hunter-gather society was not a time of solitary cave men, each defending his private territory. Rather, humans lived in groups where the work of food acquisition (gathering edible plants and hunting) was done cooperatively. Sharing was the norm, which is how this early system got the name primitive communism. With the development of agriculture 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, more and more humans began to live concentrated together in larger communities. Hunter-gatherer societies faded, but a few survived into this century, permitting us to learn from them.

It is important to realize that humans have lived over 90% of our existence as a species in communistic hunter-gatherer tribes. Sharing is clearly central to our nature. But can these communal instincts survive in a complex society? Or are people inevitably transformed into more selfish creatures as the community grows beyond the size of a hunter-gatherer tribe?

Several of the examples you have read in the earlier sections of this pamphlet make it clear that size alone does not necessarily lead to increased selfishness: ordinary citizens pouring out of the shops and offices to construct a war factory in the middle of the Siberian winter, tens of millions of collective farmers forgoing private grain payments in favor of public food for all, not to mention the countless selfless acts, small and large, that go into the monumental task of building a country. Groups of people can and have shared and cooperated on a mass scale spanning decades and continents. In fact, the societies based on exploitation which arose in the last few thousand years represent a recent invention, a deviation, not our underlying biological nature as a species. The construction of a society based on sharing and cooperation to satisfy human needs is a return to our true nature.

6. If communism has so much to offer, why did capitalism return to Russia and China?

This is the most important question facing humankind at the close of the 20th century. Progressive Labor Party has an answer. We believe that earlier revolutions didn't go far enough. Socialism, although a vast improvement over capitalism, does not develop into communism, the desired society of complete equality. Is that because most people don't want equality, because most don't want to share with others?

That is the Big Lie the capitalists put forward. The capitalists say workers hate communism and love capitalism. This is not only incorrect, it's downright silly when you think about it. As we pointed out earlier, the communist-led revolutions of the past 75 years established socialist, not communist, systems in the various countries. Under socialism everyone was guaranteed a job. Private ownership of factories was outlawed, but there was still money and some workers got higher wages than others. Still, all the value produced in a factory went to the workers -- either as wages or as investment in other things that would benefit the working class (schools, hospitals, new factories, roads, etc.) Under socialism there was much less inequality than under capitalism. It took a generation or two for the small bit of capitalism (differences in private wages) carried forward into the new socialist society to grow into a new exploiting class. Was it the greater equality, the workers' control of government, in short, was it the revolutionary aspects of socialism that workers rejected? Of course not. The rejection would have happened at the time of the revolutions not a generation or two later had that been the case. Those who actually lived through the revolutions, those who helped build the new socialist societies, were willing to defend them--with their lives if necessary.

As the Nazi troops closed in on Moscow, threatening the heart of the first socialist country the world had seen, the determination of the rank-and-file Russians was remarkable:

There were countless stories of regular soldiers and even opolchentsy [civilian volunteers] attacking German tanks with hand grenades and with "petrol bottles", and other "last ditch" exploits. The morale of the fighting forces certainly did not crack.... Secondly, there was the Moscow working-class; most of them were ready to put in long hours of overtime in factories producing armaments and ammunition; to build defenses; to fight the Germans inside Moscow should they break through, or, if all failed, to "follow the Red Army to the east". [Russia at War, p. 234]

And the Nazis were stopped. They were turned back from the gates of Moscow that year (1941) and the main force of their army was broken a year later at Stalingrad. The Russian working class defeated Nazi fascism at great cost. Fifteen years later capitalism in a new, more insidious form had defeated the Russian revolution.

The process of re-growth of capitalism out of socialism (it's called "state capitalism") was full-blown in the Soviet Union by the late 1950s and in China by the mid 1970s. This transformation came from the very center of the revolutions themselves, from the very communist parties which had lead the building of socialism earlier. But these transformations were also not without struggle. The Cultural Revolution in China was the biggest and longest such battle. The PLP came into existence in the US as the embodiment of the struggle against capitalist ideas inside the old communist movement in this country.

For 40 years in the USSR and 25 years in China, several hundred million people lived under governments controlled by the working class. Nearly a billion working people experienced socialism over a period of decades, but they never tried communism, much less rejected it. As for loving capitalism, the popular anti-government movements in the USSR and Eastern Europe beginning in the late 1980s brought about a change in the form of capitalism from a state monopoly capitalism to "free market" capitalism. It is crucial to understand, however, that the essence of capitalism, exploitation of the working class by a privileged elite (capitalists), had returned to these countries with the development of state capitalism in the 1950s. There had been no socialist society in Eastern Europe for at least a generation by the time the Berlin wall fell in 1991.

Many skilled workers and professionals in Eastern Europe saw the conversion from state capitalism to a more open market capitalism beginning in the late 80s as an opportunity to break the monopoly on power and profits held by Breshnev-era technocrats--a group who have nothing to do with socialism, much less communism. After all, does anyone maintain that these guys believed in the principle of communism stated by Karl Marx: "from each according to ability, to each according to need?" Of course not. They wore the mantle of socialism as long as it could keep them in limousines and caviar, then they became "democrats" faster than you could sell bad stock! And those who led the popular uprisings which overthrew these cynical crooks are every bit as cynical and crooked, as workers throughout the formerly socialist countries are learning.

So what would happen if workers tried actual communism? Where workers came closest to a system of real economic and political equality (egalitarian communism) they liked it and resisted changing back to more capitalistic forms. These struggles are, of course, not well publicized in the West, but they have been recorded by reliable observers. The dismantling of a "higher level socialist cooperative farm" in Shansi province in northern China (similar to the communes discussed under question No. 1) was described by another section of Hinton's Shenfan:

[T]he Changchih City Party Committee did mobilize Veteran Wang, working in the rural affairs department of the city, to dissolve coops that he himself had set up. He recalled this, in 1971, as a bitter experience.

"When asked to organize coops we were determined to get them running well. We all worked hard and did good work. When higher-ups suddenly ordered us to do the opposite, to go out and dissolve coops, we went out with a heavy heart." (p. 161)

The P'ingshun County Committee put great pressure on labor hero Li Hsun-ta's West Gully coop ... to break into smaller units. ... but the people of West Gully refused to abandon what they had already built. "We joined together of our own free will," they said. "If we split that must also be voluntary. Nobody can force us to separate." ...

The struggle at the Central Committee level over the pace and scale of the cooperative movement in the countryside was in reality only one facet of a more fundamental struggle concerning the whole course of the revolution. ... (p. 162)

The same sort of thing happened in the cities. In China Winter Masi describes the "sullen" and dejected attitude among workers in the factories where workers' rule (described under No.3) was dismantled and replaced by Western-style labor discipline. Such discipline was the price that had to be paid to make Chinese factories attractive to Western capital.

As mentioned in the excerpt from Hinton's book, there was a struggle throughout the Chinese Communist Party between the left, who wanted to push on towards communism and the right, who believed that developing technology and industrial might was most important. This was really the issue underlying the Cultural Revolution. A glance at China today makes it clear who won.

Our Party has drawn conclusions from these earlier attempts to build communism. These are presented in earlier PLP writings, the most important being Road to Revolution III (1971)and Road to Revolution IV: A Communist Manifesto (1981). A few of the points developed in these works are:

1. Socialism does not lead to communism; socialism retains the seeds of class society (different wages for different work) which grow into a new class of exploiters over a generation or two.

2. Nationalism is a reactionary ideology; "national liberation struggles" promote capitalism, not communism.

3. Workers under PLP's leadership need to institute communist economic relations when we seize power; we will organize according to the principle, "from each according to commitment, to each according to needs."

4. The only way to keep from moving backward toward capitalism is to move forward toward communism.

7. How does PLP know it can lead a successful revolution?

The short answer to this question is because others have done it before us.

A myth of invincibility is maintained by the wealthy 1% of U.S. society who run the government, control the media and supervise education. That myth is maintained by making sure that certain parts of the world's history are hidden from most people. When is the last time you saw a feature movie about the Chinese revolution? In 1992 the 75th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution came and went with no big TV specials. When the mass media do mention these earth shaking events, easily the most important history of the 20th century, they do so in a negative light. In other words, capitalists use the apparatus of mass communication to keep working people in the dark about what workers before them accomplished.

So that doesn't answer the question. In fact, it enlarges the question: add "without control of the mass media." But still our Party is confident that we will make revolution here and around the world. That's because we do have the two key things that the Russian and Chinese working people had. We have numbers and we have the truth. Working class people outnumber the wealthy class of parasites who employ us by about 100 to 1. It is true that most workers have never even heard of PLP at this point and, if asked, would not immediately identify communism as the way forward. However, the objective fact is that capitalism cannot work for the vast majority of people inhabiting the earth, and sooner or later (this part depends on us) they will understand that overthrowing capitalism is necessary for the survival of our class.

Truth is a stubborn thing. No matter how many commercials you watch or how much distorted information the mass media spews out in front of you, you also have the experience of your life. And life under capitalism is simply not what the bosses' media says it is. The reality for the vast majority is unemployment or the threat of it, a falling standard of living, an uncertain future for our kids and worsening racism. We experience repression by brutal police in our neighborhoods and constantly fear that our young people will be sent to die in some foreign war for profits. They don't tell it like that on TV, but that's the way it is. People see it.

The truth is, the communists in Russia, who numbered only a few thousand in the years leading up to the revolution, organized tens of thousands of workers and soldiers around a political program which offered people what they needed. In opposition to the rulers of their day (who, by the way, controlled the printing presses, the universities, and so forth), this small and poor party changed the thinking of masses of people. Sailors in the Baltic fleet, Russian soldiers at the front (this was during World War I), employees at the armaments factories in Petrograd and thousands more united around a program of ending the imperialist war, land to the tiller and political power to the workers' councils (elected factory committees, also known by their Russian name, 'soviets'), all under the open leadership of the communists, known at the time as 'Bolsheviks.' At a critical point, the Russian government got to the point where most of its armed forces were either unreliable or openly under Bolshevik leadership and unwilling to obey their officers. At this moment, the communists mobilized their forces to seize the key centers of power.

The determination of the masses under communist leadership was captured in an exchange between a sophisticated crowd supporting the old regime and an uneducated but determined working class soldier.

A tall young man with a supercilious expression, dressed in the uniform of a student, was leading the attack.

"You realize, I presume," he said insolently, "that by taking up arms against your brothers you are making yourselves the tools of murderers and traitors?"

"Now brother," answered the soldier earnestly, "you don't understand. There are two classes, don't you see, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. We--"

"Oh, I know that silly talk!" broke in the student rudely. "A bunch of ignorant peasants like you hear somebody bawling a few catch-words. You don't understand what they mean. You just echo them like a lot of parrots." The crowd laughed. "I am a Marxian student. And I tell you that this isn't Socialism you are fighting for. It's just plain pro-German anarchy!"

"Oh, yes, I know," answered the soldier, with sweat dripping from his brow. "You are an educated man, that is easy to see. But it seems to me--"

"I suppose," interrupted the other contemptuously, "that you believe Lenin is a real friend of the proletariat?"

"Yes, I do," answered the soldier, suffering.

"Well, my friend, do you know that Lenin was sent through Germany in a closed car? Do you know that Lenin took money from the Germans?"

"Well, I don't know much about that," answered the soldier stubbornly, "but it seems to me that what he says is what I want to hear, and all the simple men like me. Now there are two classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat--"

"You are a fool! Why, my friend, I spent two years in Schlüsselburg [prison] for revolutionary activity, when you were still shooting down revolutionists and singing `God Save the Czar!' My name is Vasili Georgevitch Panyin. Didn't you ever hear of me?"

`I'm sorry to say I never did," answered the soldier with humility. "But then, I am not an educated man. You are probably a great hero."

"I am," said the student with conviction. "And I am opposed to the Bolsheviki, who are destroying our Russia, our free revolution. Now how do you account for that?"

The soldier scratched his head. "I can't account for it all," he said grimacing with the pain of his intellectual processes. "To me it seems perfectly simple--but then I'm not well educated. It seems like there are only two classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie----"

"There you go again with your silly formula!" cried the student.

"----only two classes," went on the soldier, doggedly." And whoever isn't on one side is on the other ..."

This pamphlet is only a short introduction to a new world.

As we dig around in the reports of the many eyewitnesses to the revolutions in Russia and China we get more of a feel for how huge and important these transformations were. Workers throughout the world owe a debt to those who went before us, not whining, "nobody's done this before," but instead stating simply, "This must be done." We must not belittle their sacrifice by failing to study the lessons they learned through experience--sometimes thrilling, sometimes bitter. We must repay them in the only way possible, by taking the revolutionary struggle to the next level.

Several useful books are listed below. They provide a fascinating glimpse of the future, as seen through the window of the past. When we pull our noses out of the numbing day-to-day experience of life under a dying system we can begin to see the big picture: "...a better world's in birth."

Useful Reading

John Reed: Ten Days That Shook the World.
John Reed, a writer and journalist from Seattle, described the first successful insurrection by the working class in this classic book. It has the energy and immediacy of a first hand account.

Alexander Werth: Russia At War: 1939-45.
Werth was a teenager when his family fled the Russian revolution and moved the family from St. Petersburg to England. When he returned to the Soviet Union as a correspondent for the BBC during World War II, he had the advantage of speaking Russian, Polish and Ukranian so he was able to talk with ordinary citizens and soldiers and give a ground-up view of the huge human drama unfolding on the Eastern Front.

Edoarda Masi: China Winter: Workers, Mandarins, and the Purge of the Gang of Four. E.P.Dutton, New York, 1981.
Masi, an Italian writer and translator, lived in China as a student in the 1950s, then returned 18 years later, at the time of Mao's death, as a visiting lecturer. Her book describes what she called "the end of a great revolution" in somber terms.

Strong: Communes

Red Star Over China

William Hinton: Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village.
Hinton was working for an international agricultural releif organization in pre-revolutionary China when the Eighth Route (Red) Army swept through the province seizing the estates of rich landlords and redistributing the land to poor peasants. He requested permission from the new communist authorities to remain in the area and write a detailed history of the events in one village. He makes the process of transformation of people and society real by his careful and detailed account.

Also by Hinton: Shenfan

Twenty years after he left Long Bow Village in northern Shansi Province, Hinton was able to return to see how the village had fared under communist leadership. He describes the history of those turbulent and exhilarating times through the eyes of his old friends, the farmers and organizers of Long Bow.

Away With All Pests

Joshua Horn, a British orthopedist, emmigrated to China in the early 1950s and worked in one of the teaching hospitals in Shanghai. He wrote this book during the height of the Cultural Revolution and it reflects some of the most profound themes of that period. In his introduction he reveals his dislike for the arrogance of senior physicians in the hospitals where he trained in Britain. In socialist China the relations between experts and the masses have been transformed. Patients and orderlies accompany the doctors on rounds and the physicians learn from and serve the people. A remarkable account.

* Words and phrases which may need some explanation are listed in a glossary at the end of the pamphlet. Each of these terms is underlined the first time it appears in the pamphlet. There is also a list of books and articles for the interested reader, including sources quoted in the text.

Glossary

Some words used in definitions will themselves need defining. These terms are underlined and have their own glossary entries.

base - The political use of this word refers to the group of political friends and supporters around an organizer or a party unit

Berlin wall - A wall built in 1961 between the Soviet controlled sector of Berlin and the section controlled by western capitalist powers. Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany, had been conquered by the Soviet Red Army in the closing months of World War II (May, 1945). The city was divided in two, and half of it was placed under the control of the US, Britain and France (the major capitalist powers at that time). The wall came to symbolize the "cold war" between the Soviet Union and the US. It was torn down in 1991 after state capitalism was relaced by market capitalism in Eastern Europe and the two sectors of Germany, East and West, were reunited economically and politically.

Bolsheviks, Bolshevik revolution - The original name for the communist party in Russia, established in the early 1900s, which overthrew the old government of the czar in 1917. After the revolution the party was renamed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or CPSU . The Russian revolution they led, sometimes called the "Bolshevik revolution" established a socialist political-economic system and the first worker-controlled nation in the history of the world (see Soviet Union). Important early leaders included V. I. Lenin and Josef Stalin.

bourgeoisie - Another word for the capitalist class (French). Adjective form: bourgeois.

Breshnev - Leader of the CPSU (see Bolsheviks) from 19 to 19 , during the hayday of state capitalism in the formerly socialist USSR. He lived like a typical capitalist politician with luxurious mansions, many automobiles, etc., while the workers made do with second-rate and overcrowded accomodations.

capital - Money or property used to produce other goods. E.g., a shop with sewing machines. See also industrialization. Note that most of what we think about as private property is not capital, e.g., a home, our clothing, a TV set. A capitlist is not distinguished so much by how much property he or she owns as by the type of property: capitalists own property which, by the application of labor, can generate more property.

capitalism - A political-economic system in which a small class of people owns or controls the vast majority of capital. The two major forms of capitalism seen in the 20th century are market capitalism (also called free market capitalism) and state capitalism (or state monopoly capitalism). The two forms differ in how openly different groups of capitalists fight for control of the government and how completely the dominant group of capitalists can eliminate the competition. The forms can be mixed (government appointed capitalists have the monopoly on electricity, railroads or banks, say, while a tiny number of billionaires not directly appointed by the government compete in automobile production). The key feature of all forms of capitalism: the working class has no political power and controls no capital.

capitalist - A person who owns capital; a boss, a member of the capitalist class. Capitalists make their money by exploiting the labor of others (workers). (See class). The word capitalist is also used as an adjective to describe the political-economic system run by and for wealthy capitalists. (Synonyms: bourgeois [adj.], bourgeoisie [n.])

Central Committee - The leading group in a party organized along the lines of the Bolsheviks. This group consults with the broader membership of the party, develops the political strategy and overall plan for the party and leads it in putting this plan into practice.

China - The most populous country in the world, located in eastern Asia. It has an area slightly larger than the US and three to four times the population of the US. The old capitalist regime in China (backed by the US) was overthrown by a peasant and worker revolution led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, and socialism was established. The left within the CCP tried to push on toward communism through various struggles (see Cultural Revolution) up through the early 1970s, but the pro-capitalist elements within the Party won out and the country had a system of state capitalism from the early 70s until the move toward market capitalism beginning in the late 1980s.

class - A social group within the population the members of which share a common way of earning a living, in a general sense. People who earn a living working for wages (who can only make money by working) are working class (or workers). Those who earn money by owning capital are capitalists. A third group in capitalist society, neither working class nor capitalists, is called petit bourguisie or middle class (see also intellectuals).Most people are born into a class and remain in that class all their life, as do their children. In the US and similar industrialized capitalist countries, the capitalists make up about 1% of the population, the working class about 80% and the petit bourgeoisie (professionals plus managers) the remaining 19%.

collective - Something held in common by many people (e.g., a collective farm). Also a group of people who work together on a common project, making decisions by discussion and consensus.

commune - See People's Communes.

communism - The political-economic system in which people share whatever they produce, with distribution according to need. Under communism each person contributes according to their commitment to the common good. Under communism there would be no wages. No fully communist country has been established up to this time.

communist - Related to communism or the beliefs espoused by Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, V.I. Lenin. Sometimes "Marxist" is used as a synonym. Also, a person who believes in communism. The term is often used loosely. For example, political parties which advocate socialism rather than communism, or which oppose revolution sometimes call themselves "communist." Bosses often call anyone who fights against them a communist.

coop - or cooperative - An enterprise in which the means of producing something (e.g., a factory, a store) is jointly held by a group of people who make decisions functioning as a collective.

cooperative farm - The form of farm organized in Chinese villages in the early 1950s. The early coop farms involved families pooling their land, draft animals and tools and farming all the land together in work teams, instead of each family farming their own tiny plot. The coops were more efficient and produced more than the sum of the individual plots.

Cultural Revolution - A massive political upheaval in China lasting from 1965 to the early 70s. The conflict underlying this outbreak of political strife was based on two competing theories inside the Chinese Communist Party about how to build socialism, and eventually communism. One theory held that the technical level of society and its ability to produce things people needed had to reach a fairly high level before people could be expected to share with each other, and that too much emphasis on sharing early on would take away people's incentive to produce and to innovate. Their slogan was "Technique is primary." Others disagreed with this view and called the believers in technique "right wingers." These leftist opponents said the other side was "taking the capitalist road." The leftists pointed to the collective organization of farming and other enterprises as proof that even very poor peasant farmers could be won to communist principles of sharing. Their slogan was "Politics is primary" and they emphasized political control by the masses and downplaying of technical experts.

czar - (also spelled tsar) The Russian king

democracy - One of the political forms used by capitalists to organize the government they use to rule over the workers (see class). This form features elections in which non-capitalists (the other 99% of us) get to cast votes for individuals running for office. Different groups of capitalists may back particular candidates, or, more often, most big capitalists back all candidates. All elected officials end up owing their jobs to people with big money. Important issues are often talked about in campaigns, but no big decisions are made by workers' votes.

democrat - Democrat with a small "d" is someone who espouses democracy.

depression - An economic crisis in a capitalist economy in which unemployment rises and personal income and production fall. Depressions (also called "contractions" or "recessions") occur at various intervals, usually about every 5 to 15 years, in all capitalist economies. In particularly deep and long-lasting depressions recovery may be incomplete before the next downturn develops. Thus in the Great Depression (1929-1940) official unemployment remained over 10% until World War II began (1940). In the current depression in the US (1974-present) there have been official "recoveries" but the number of real jobs has continued to decrease relative to the population.

Eastern Europe - That part of Europe which was allied with or controlled by the Soviet Union from the end of World War II in 1945, until the collapse of state monopoly capitalism in 1991. Important countries in this area, not counting the European portion of the USSR, are Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria and Albania.

economic relations - The relations between people which determine how they divide wealth produced by the group to which they belong. Capitalist economic relations are built on private ownership and exploitation of the majority by a minority which owns capital. Communist economic relations are collective or group ownership, sharing of resources and working for the common good. The economic relations are a component of the social system or political-economic system.

egalitarian - Based on complete equality of access to resources, independent of one's position in society; communistic.

exploitation - The process of taking advantage of someone for personal gain. This usually refers to economic gain (e.g., getting rich off of someone else's work) but can also apply to interpersonal matters, such as taking public credit for the efforts of others or pretending to like someone just to get them to do something for you. Capitalist social and economic relations are based on exploitation (that's what working for someone is all about), while communist relations must be based on mutual trust, collective effort and collective reward.

fascist - Related to the political system of fascism in which capitalists rule a country using tactics of extreme police repression and enforced "cooperation" between workers and their employers. It is false cooperation because the workers do the work, fight and die in the wars and take orders while the capitalists make decisions and profit. Fascist ideology uses extreme racism and nationalism to fool workers into participating. (See also Nazi.)

Five Year Plans - The economic plans used by socialist (planned) economies to coordinate the development of projects and to allocate resources.

foreign war for profits - See imperialism.

free market capitalism - See capitalism.

Great Leap Forward - The political-economic campaign in China in the late 1950s during which the left wing of the Central Committee held sway. They tried to develop more communist economic relations in agriculture (see also People's Communes) and pooled the volunteer labor of millions to increase the amount of land under cultivation, carry out flood control projects and build infrastructure (roads, electric production, communication facilities, etc.) There was a thrust to teach everyone basics of an industrial society and to break down the mystique of industrial technology by such campaigns as the back-yard iron smelters and home made ball-bearing production.

history - See recorded history

hunter-gatherer society - A form of primitive human society in which a social group (generally an extended family group of fewer than 200) lives by gathering plants that grow naturally and hunting for game. The group moves about, following the food supply. Decision making can take many forms, but group consensus and acknowledgment of age and experience are common themes in many of the societies studied. Food production and distribution are done collectively, although there is often division of labor based on age or sex. Sometimes referred to as "primitive communism".

ideology - A set of beliefs dealing with basic issues such as how people should treat each other or how the world works; a philosophy.

imperialism - A political-economic system based on the domination of one nation or community of people by another so that the dominant group can exploit or take advantage of the oppressed group; the system of an empire and its colonies or conquered lands. Ancient empires included Rome and Byzantium. In the era of capitalism, imperialism often means economic and political domination without formal colony status, such as the relationship of the US to much of Latin America; Japan to much of Pacific Asia; or Russia to the former Soviet Republics.

intellectuals - Class societies have generally separated "mental" from "manual" work, although obviously no physical labor is without a mental component. The term intellectual refers to people who make their living performing mostly or entirely mental labor. Examples include architects, teachers and writers. Under capitalism, most of these people belong to one of two economic classes. Some, who can only make a living working for wages (most teachers, for example) are working class. Others, can be self-employed (e.g., doctors) and are in a different class (called the petit bourgeoisie).

industrial growth rates - The percent increase in the industrial portion of an economy over a specified period of time. The industrial portion is that part of an economy which deals with manufacturing, mining, power generation, transportation and related fields, that is, the entire economy minus agriculture and services.

industrialization - The process of building up the "means of production," that is, the factories, mines, railroads, electricity production and so forth, all the capital assets needed to produce finished products.

labor discipline - Rules and regulations applied to workers in the workplace. This usually implies regulation by, or at least in the interests of, someone besides the workers themselves, i.e., bosses.

`land to the tiller' - This slogan was used by the Bolsheviks to describe their program of land reform in the Russian revolution. Large estates were seized from the gentry and the land was distributed to the landless or land-poor peasants (farmers). These poor farmers had been working the land before the revolution but they had to turn over most of what they produced in rent or taxes prior to the land reform.

left - When used as a political term, left refers to the more egalitarian, pro-communist or anti-capitalist position in a controversy. Related terms are leftist and left-wing.

market capitalism - See under capitalism.

masses - The most numerous class or classes in a society, making up the bulk of the population. In the US this would mean the working class. In China in 1949 this meant the peasants (probably over 80% of the people) and the urban working class (maybe 10%).

middle class - A loosely applied term with a variety of meanings. Used in a Marxist or communist analysis of classes it refers to the group, making up about 15-20% of the population which is neither capitalist nor worker. These people may be managers who organize the exploitation of workers on behalf of some capitalist, or they may function independently, owning and operating their own means of production. Examples include a shop owner who works in the shop waiting on customers, a farmer who owns and works his own land, or a person who "owns" certain skills, like an architect. Used in the capitalist press, "middle class" is anybody in between an unemployeed homeless person and a multi-millionaire. In other words, in capitalist popular sociology, there is no such thing as a the working class and the scientific meaning of class is eliminated by calling everyone "middle class".

nationalism - The political ideology which says the "nation" is the most important thing. This outlook says that class membership is unimportant (or doesn't exist), so that a person should be on the same side as you if they are your nationality, even though that person may be your boss and exploit you every day. According to nationalism, workers of different national or ethnic groups are natural enemies.

Nazi - The fascist political party which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. Nazi is short for the German name of the party (Nazional Sozialistiche Deutche Arbeiters Partei, NSDAP). The leader of the party was Adolf Hitler. The party's ideology was extreme nationalism, blaming all problems of the German masses on other ethnic and national groups, notably Jews and Slavs (Russians, Poles, etc.) The Nazi army defeated French, British, Czech, Polish and other armies before they invaded the Soviet Union in World War II. They were turned back and eventually crushed by the Soviet Red Army, which took Berlin, the Nazi capital, in May, 1945.

party or Party - A political grouping generally representing the interests of one class in society which organizes members of that class (and others if it can) to pursue goals which are in that class's interest. When written with a capital "P" it refers to a particular party. When we write about a party leading class struggle on behalf of the working class today, we often write "the Party," meaning Progressive Labor Party.

peasant - A subsistence farmer, that is, a person who farms a small plot of land by hand or with draft animals and lives on the food he or she produces. Most peasant farmers must pay part of their crop to others, such as landlords, tax collectors, banks, etc. The term peasant implies a system of farming in which most of the land farmed is in small plots which are farmed by a family. This is different from most farming in the world today, which involves large tracts of land worked by farm laborers who own little or no land or farm implements of their own and who must therefore sell their labor to wealthy land owners to survive. That part of society made up of peasants is called the peasantry.

People's Commune - The name of the large cooperative farms organized out of smaller coops in rural China in the late 1950s. A typical commune was made up of several villages (tens of thousands of people) who farmed on a large scale using a system of work points to assign a share of the crop to each family. Communes also ran small industries (e.g., brick kilns, cement factories, electric generating plants), organized education, housing, health care, etc.

petit bougeoisie - The class of people who own a small amount of capital and make their living working that capital themselves. E.g., owner of a print shop who owns the equipment and runs the machines personally. As a class the petit bourgeoisie fall between the capitalists (also known as bourgeoisie) who own capital but hire others to work it for their profit, and the working class, who own no capital and must sell their labor to capitalists in order to survive.

Petrograd - The 1914-1924 name for a city in northwestern Russia, also known by its English name, St. Petersburg. It was the capital of the Russian empire from 1712-1917. It was the center of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 and was renamed Leningrad after the Bolshevik party's leader from 1924 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

PLP - Progressive Labor Party, the revolutionary party organized in New York in 1965 by communists, many of whom had constituted the left within the old Communist Party of the United States of America, CPUSA. After the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its US affiliate, the CPUSA, abandoned the cause of revolution, PLP was formed to pick up the fight for workers' power.

pre-history - See recorded history

primitive communism - The name sometimes used to describe simple hunter gatherer societies in which the economic life of the group (collecting and hunting food) was done in a collective fashion.

reactionary - One who favors returning to older political or social forms; an extreme conservative. The term implies return to a more exploitative, hierarchical system.

recorded history - Human history since the development of written language (the past 5,000 years or so). Most of human history (sometimes called "pre-history" or "prehistoric times") was not recorded, since it occurred between the time human beings evolved as a species (around 250,000 years ago) and when writing was first developed, about 3,000 BC.

Red Army - A communist army, under the leadership of a communist party. The Soviet Red Army is given credit for destroying at least 80% of Hitler's Nazi army, even by capitalist historians. The other major communist army was the Chinese People's Army (or Red Army) which drove the Japanese fascists out of China and defeated the Chinese Nationalist Army in the mid- to late-1940s.

revolutionary party - A political party which advocates violent overthrow of the government to place a different class in power.

revolution - The complete, generally violent, overthrow of a government.

right - When this word is used to mean one side in a political struggle or controversy, it indicates the more conservative, hierarchical, exploitative, anti-communist or pro-capitalist position. See also reactionary. Related terms are right-wing, rightist.

Russia - A large country spanning eastern Europe and all of nothern Asia with a population roughly equal to the United States. From the 1700s until 1917 it was an empire ruled by a king (called the Czar). In 1917, after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, the Russian empire was converted into the first socialist country, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR (see Soviet Union). The largest of the 15 constituent republics of the USSR, with three quarters of the land and over half the population, was the Russian Republic. After the transition from state capitalism to market capitalism in the USSR in the late 1980s followed by the official dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Republic renamed itself Russia again.

Russian revolution - Another name for the Bolskevik revolution of 1917, in which the working class took power in Russia and set up a socialist society.

Shanghai - Large port city on the eastern coast of China. It has been a leading industrial and trade center for over a century. Many of the most radical changes seen in any Chinese city during the Cultural Revolution occurred in Shanghai.

socialism - A political-economic system in which the working class holds political power through its party and all are guaranteed jobs. The pay for different jobs varies, based on how socially useful that particular work is. This was the system established after the revolutions in Russia (1917) and China (1949).

soviet - The Russian word for the workers' councils established in every factory and army unit in Russia leading up the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. Representatives of the soviets met in congresses. The socialist government set up in Russia was based on these soviets, with the highest policy-making organ being the Supreme Soviet, a body of several hundred representatives of geographic areas. The word "soviet" is also used as an adjective to describe anything related to the USSR (Soviet Union).

Soviet Union - The commonly used name for the country created by the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, properly, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR. The country was formally dissolved into component republics in 1991. The political-economic system of the USSR was socialist from 1917 until the mid-1950s; from then until its dissolution in 1991, a system of state capitalism prevailed until the 1980s when forms of market capitalism began to be introduced. (See also Russia.)

Stalingrad - The name given to an industrial city on the Volga river in south central Russia during the 1930s and 40s (now Volgagrad). The Battle of Stalingrad in World War II was one of the turning points of the war. The Nazi army fought their way into the city but could never take more than half of Stalingrad. The Nazis's final offensive was stopped in mid-October, 1942, and a counter-offensive by the Red Army the next month resulted in the capture and killing of over half a million Nazi soldiers and a dozen of their generals. The Nazis were in retreat from the Red Army for the next two and a half years, right up until the capture of the German capital, Berlin, in 1945.

state capitalism - See capitalism.

state monopoly capitalism - See capitalism

supply system - The system for distribution of goods and services used in the height of the People's Commune movement in China by which members of a commune received food, medical care, and other things they required according to need, without regard to money or money equivalents (work points). How much and what parts of a commune's economy came under the supply system depended on the decision of the commune members. In some, as much as 85% of the commune's economy was under the supply system. This system approaches communist economic relations.

technocrat - A derogatory term derived from "technician" plus "bureaucrat." It means a technical specialist of some sort who exerts control over other people to advance his or her own position socially or economically. The theory of socialist economic development which places a primary emphasis on technological refinement (as more important than workers' control over social decisions) leads to placing more power in the hands of technical experts and managers who are no longer accountable to the masses, i.e., technocrats. (See also Cultural Revolution.)

USSR - Abbreviation for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. See Soviet Union.

work points - Cooperative farms and other collective production units in China often used work points in place of money to assign a portion of the total output of the group (e.g., the fall grain harvest) to a worker or a family of workers.

worker - When used politically, this word means a member of the working class, whether or not employed at the moment. It does not refer to the self-employed (actually or potentially). See under class.

working class - The political-economic class of people who survive by selling their work for wages. This class makes up the vast majority of the population of the world.

workers' councils - See soviet.

World War I - The first worldwide war between the various imperialist powers, running from 1914 to 1918. The underlying conflict had to do with competition for control of economic spheres of influence.

World War II - The second war involving most of the largest countries of the world, running from 1939 until 1945. The Axis powers (Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan), all fascist countries, fought against "the Allies," principally the Soviet Union, Britain and the US. About 35-60 million people died as a result of this war, the largest losses being in the Soviet Union where 18-20 million people were killed, half of them civilians. The capitalist Allies (US and Britain) let their socialist ally, the USSR, bear the brunt of Hitler's army, as reflected by the loss of life. US and Britain together lost about 655,000 people, mostly soldiers, a two-country total amounting to only one thirtieth of the soviet losses. After the war, US influence as an imperialist power was greatly enhanced, since it suffered no battles on its shores and US loss of life was relatively light.

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DEFEND ANTI-RACIST TEACHERS!

In January, 1999, the racist Board of Education removed Moises Bernal from Chicago Vocational Career Academy. He had been teaching there since the fall of 1997. A year later, Carol Caref, was pulled out of her teaching assignment at the same school. Bernal and Caref are revolutionary communists and members of Progressive Labor Party.

The Board of Education is trying to fire them for political reasons. Bernal took students to a rally against police brutality. Caref took students to a demonstration against the KKK. They should be applauded-- not fired!

WHAT IS RACIST SCHOOL REFORM?

The plan to overhaul the public schools was hatched about ten years ago, when then-President Bush convened a meeting with the heads of Ford, GM, IBM, and others. US bosses are facing stiffer competition from other capitalist powers in Europe and Asia. The world is more unstable, with new wars popping up almost daily.

In order to meet this intensifying rivalry, both in the factories and on the battlefield, the bosses need a new generation of loyal, highly productive, low-paid workers, who will kill and die to keep the economic "boom" alive. That’s what’s behind Daley and Vallas’ racist "School Reform."

In 1997, seven predominately black schools were "reconstituted." All the teachers were fired and had to re-interview to get their jobs back. Many veteran teachers lost their jobs or were bumped to other schools. In January 1999, 137 were terminated.

The Board was sending a fascist message: "Do what you are told or else. Get higher test scores or you will be reconstituted. Use Zero Tolerance to get rid of ‘problem’ students."

Since 1997, 42,255 K-8 students, and 33,887 high school students have been suspended. Only one percent was suspended for weapons: only three percent for drugs.

In this same period, 1,537 students have been expelled; 1,128 are black, only 69 are white. Black students are 54 percent of the student body, but 72 percent of all expulsions. This system is racist to the core. (All figures from Chicago Public Schools, End of Year Reports to Illinois State Board of Education)

At the same time, teachers are forced to teach to the invalid and racist measure of standardized tests. The Amendatory Act made it illegal for teachers to strike. Health plan options were reduced, and teachers were forced to pay for part of the cost.

The union leadership formally signed on as a partner to this fascist scheme. CTU president Tom Reece confessed, "If one partner had been uncooperative, we never would have been able to come this far. The key to [our] success…has been the willingness of the union, the superintendent and the mayor to work as full partners."

"Restructuring" is now called "reengineering," but it’s the same old garbage. Clinton, who wiped out welfare, put 100,000 more killer cops on the streets, doubled the Border Patrol and the prison population, has used the Chicago schools as "the model for the rest of the country."

RED TEACHERS FIGHT BACK!

As you can see, the two PLP members facing termination are just a small fraction of the number of students and teachers thrown out of school. The racist Board knows they are hated by those they rule over, and even two communists is too many for them to tolerate.

Communist teachers tell their students, "Fight to Learn, Learn to Fight!" Bernal and Caref have been good teachers, in and out of the classroom. They have been caring and committed to their students and have encouraged them to become active fighters for a world without racism and poverty, borders or oil wars. For the bosses to succeed in winning our youth to fascist ideas, they must get rid of communists. They attack us because they fear you!

ORGANIZE!

We can build a movement that can take on the Board and the city bosses. We can turn their racist attacks against them. Ultimately, the only lasting victory will be when the working class, led by PLP, seizes power from the bosses with communist revolution.

Only when we have a system that produces for the needs of the international working class, instead of the profits of the billionaires, will we be able to fully realize the true potential of our beautiful youth.

What can you do to help?

Contribute generously to the Caref-Bernal Legal Defense Fund

Join the Caref-Bernal Defense Committee

Invite Caref or Bernal to your church, group, school, PTA, LSC, block club, etc. to build support for their case.

Participate in Demonstrations protesting these firings

Distribute Challenge and other PLP literature

KNOW YOUR ENEMY: CAPITALISM

Throughout the world, hundreds of thousands of students, workers, and professionals have mobilized in opposition to globalization, focusing on institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), World Bank (WB), and International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the destructive vanguard of the world’s corporate elite.

The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) welcomes and participates in the bold energy and enthusiasm of the rank and file of this new movement. The emerging alliance between workers and students is especially heartening. At the same time, a careful analysis of the world situation and how this new movement fits reveals that there are friends and enemies, good strategies and bad, inside this movement. We offer this analysis to encourage the youth in this movement to develop the skills to help build a world-wide anti-imperialist, anti-racist movement which can, under the leadership of the PLP, defeat capitalism in all of its forms once and for all and build a communist world.

During Fall 1999, before the WTO protests, demonstrators greeted Secretary of Commerce William M. Daley at every stop of his national "free" trade road show. He usually politely debates "responsible" proponents of "fair" trade, including leaders of the AFL-CIO. However, in LA, he finally lost his cool. A clever worker folded over a sign that read "Globalization of Capitalism Sucks!" so that it read simply, "Capitalism Sucks!" As Daley left the debate, he demanded of his "responsible" opponent, "That sign has got to go!"

Why did the omission of just two words send this top ruling class agent into such frenzy? Because Daley knows that the "responsible" [read: loyal] opposition, despite any tactical differences with the Clinton administration, aims to build a pro-U.S. nationalist/patriotic movement. They don’t want to destroy capitalism; they want to reform it for their profit interests.

The leadership of the organizations involved in these protests, from the national unions to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), are trying to channel the anger of honest, principled workers and students against exploitation and oppression into support for U.S. imperialism. Even many of big labor’s own bureaucracy see the language in the WTO protocols for what it is. "If the AFL-CIO thinks the WTO is going to [enforce] workers rights and [prohibitions against] child labor, they are living on another planet," said King County Labor Council fair trade representative Martha Baskin. She was promptly fired.

This kind of movement can be used by the rulers to prepare for future wars. More than likely, that war will be a ground war in the Middle East to secure oil profits. Yet, as long as capitalism reigns, no wars in any region of the world can be ruled out. By focusing on only globalization and the WTO, IMF, and WB, the AFL-CIO and its allies among the environmental and other NGOs purposely direct attention away from the capitalist system which is the real cause of unemployment, sweatshop and prison labor, racist police terror, and the rise of fascism and imperialist war.

 GLOBALIZATION IS STILL IMPERIALISM

Throughout the last 25 years, the worldwide system of production for profit has created an insane crisis: one unique to capitalism, where there is too much steel, too many autos and too many manufactured products to sell at a profit (1, 2, 3). This is a crisis of overproduction.

As profit rates decline and more goods are produced than can be sold, competition among capitalists intensifies. Fascism is monopoly capitalism in crisis, which drives more and more capitalists to increase the degree of exploitation of workers by driving down wages and benefits as far as possible. Moreover, they must increase the use of racist police terror and mass imprisonment to break the resistance of the working class.

Today, over 1 billion workers, 1/3 of the world's labor force, are unemployed or underemployed. U.S. workers have been devastated by an astronomical growth of ‘temporary,’ part-time and low wage jobs and forced labor: workfare and prison labor (U.S. jails account for 1 out of every 4 prisoners in the world!; see PLP pamphlets: Workfare: Slave Labor U.S. Style and Prison Labor: Fascism U.S. Style). A typical U.S. married couple had to work 247 hours (over six weeks) more per year in 1996 than in 1989, despite an 8% rise in the economy's productive capacity (4). Throughout the world, nearly 1.3 billion people live on less than a dollar a day, and close to 1 billion cannot meet their consumption requirements (5).

During this period, U.S. workers living standards continue to plummet. Layoffs, speedup and overtime are increasingly the norm for all workers. Real wages have fallen about 40% since the 1970s. Unemployment may look low, but the jobs generated by the "new economy" are mostly in the low-paying service sector (6). The massive layoff trend in manufacturing continues. Additionally, 2 million prisoners are not counted in the numbers of unemployed workers. They would add nearly 2% to the unemployment rate for all workers, and over 10% to the unemployment rate for black workers (7). Poverty rates have increased in the 1990s. In 1996, over 20% of U.S. children were officially "poor" with poverty rates for black and Hispanic children around 40% (8). Yet, a CEO’s compensation has grown to an average of $6 million per year.

In a world where the capacity exists to make far more steel, autos and commercial planes (and everything else) than the market can possibly buy, labor contracts are manipulated to give the bosses a freer hand to cut the workforce and to get lower wages, etc. The general reality of over-production means the total jobs of the world’s workers have to go down. The big capitalists and union bosses know this. They must acknowledge working class consciousness and anger about lower wages, job cuts, etc. even as they try to pacify and prevent that anger and class consciousness from spreading or direct that anger towards U.S. imperialist rivals (such as China or Russia). Thus, big union (AFL-CIO, UAW, IAM, USWA, Teamsters) leadership spreads passivity and nationalism among the U.S. working class.

 What is the Greatest ‘Evil’?

The liberals are asking us to see the IMF and the WTO as the root of all evil. As revolutionary communists, on the other hand, we want to show a wider panorama: the inter-connection between the IMF, the World Bank, the military, the AFL-CIO, NGOs and the Government itself. In short the whole array of institutions at the service of capitalist domination and exploitation both in the U.S. and the world.

For example, take Mark Weisbrot writing a liberal Znet commentary (3/23/2000). He claims "The IMF…is arguably the most powerful institution of its kind in terms of its impact on the lives of hundreds of millions - and indirectly billions - of people." However, the IMF could not run a country without the capacity of U.S. imperialism to bomb, embargo or occupy it militarily. Without that military, the IMF would have no clout.

Spending more than France, Britain, Japan, China and Germany together the U.S. military budget is enormous. Projected at $1.2 trillion between 2000-2004, it dwarfs any call for debt cancellation. Thomas Friedman in a moment of candor pointed out: "The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell-Douglas, the designer of the F15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technology is called the United States Army, Airforce, Navy and Marine Corps (9)." Liberal analysis continually loses sight of the ‘hidden fist,’ glossing over the essentially dictatorial - not democratic - nature of capitalism.

"The IMF," the Znet commentary goes on, "does all the things that NAFTA did, in dozens of countries, making it labor’s most powerful adversary." The IMF is an enemy all right, but sadly, labor has far more direct and powerful adversaries. The AFL-CIO, for example, sits like a Trojan horse right in the center of our working class movement. The U.S. working class has experienced and continues to experience increased exploitation and oppression but the AFL-CIO has not mounted one strike or, even, a mass political campaign against any of these attacks against workers.

 History of Globalization (or more importantly Imperialism)

Long before the advent of the WTO in 1995 and the IMF/WB in the 1940s, capitalism had spread its greedy tentacles throughout the world. Capitalism has been a worldwide system for several centuries. It arose through global conquest, slavery, genocide, and plunder, as Marx demonstrated in his analysis of "primitive accumulation" in Capital. It divided up the world among the leading imperialist powers during the late 19th century. And early in the 20th century, a decade before World War I, Marxists, led by V.I. Lenin and Karl Kautsky, engaged in an important debate over the nature of imperialism (see Lenin’s Imperialism: Highest Stage of Capitalism).

Kautsky argued that imperialists could and would unite in one globalized elite to prevent future world wars and workers’ revolutions, while Lenin argued that inter-imperialist conflict would manifest themselves through war. World Wars I and II (which killed over 100 million people) settled this important debate for most of the 20th century.

After WWII, the U.S. ruling class was financially, economically and militarily in a position to dominate the non-socialist world. And that is what they set out to do, creating along the way economic institutions like the IMF and WB to complement their military might. Since WWII, U.S. imperialism fought many more "lesser" wars to protect its profits. From Vietnam to Iraq to Kosovo and Chechnya, tens of millions have died from imperialist and inter-imperialist wars to divide up the world. Now anti-WTO/IMF/WB groups have rekindled that debate. They are (unknowingly) recycling Kautsky’s flawed argument when they claim that the WTO/IMF/WB represents a new capitalist consensus to override national sovereignty and democracy.

The WTO emerged as the dominant forum for trade matters as the Soviet Union imploded. With their main enemy gone, the liberal Rockefeller wing of the U.S. ruling class (Eastern Establishment capitalists such as Exxon/Mobil, GM, GE, AT&T, IBM, Chase Manhattan, Citigroup, and the larger Wall Street houses) hoped the WTO would usher in the era of U.S. imperialism’s economic dominance of the world—the New World Order. Rockefeller, Inc., also, wanted to use the WTO as a tool against its domestic enemies in the U.S. congress. Unfortunately for the U.S. ruling class, the New World Order was shorter than the Third Reich.

Today, the world is racked by capitalist economic and political crisis—anything but order. The WTO and IMF have turned into another huge battleground of inter-imperialist rivalry. As pointed out by Laura D’Andrea Tyson, Dean of U.C.-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business: "The failure of the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle has been interpreted by the opponents of globalization as a David-and-Goliath battle, with small non-governmental organizations as the victorious David and huge multinational corporations and their governmental champions as the vanquished Goliath. This interpretation is wrong. The meetings broke down not because the opponents of globalization protested outside on the streets. The proponents themselves were unable to reach a compromise on a negotiating agenda within the allotted time (10)." Walter Russell Mead, in "Skewered in Seattle", was even more blunt (11). He argued that without one demonstrator, the WTO meeting would have failed because of serious disagreements over trade between the three emerging trading blocks: Asia, North and South America, and Europe.

Starting in 1999, as an international currency, the Dollar has a new rival in the Euro. But the Euro has one major disadvantage: the European Armed forces are divided and comparatively weak. So while the German ruling class can nominate their candidate to head up the IMF, in the end, they have to agree on a compromise. The U.S. ruling class, still, has the final say. However, the U.S. ruling class, also, faces a challenge from Asia. In response to the recent Asian financial crisis, Japan floated the idea of creating an Asian Monetary Fund. China immediately seconded the idea. And now, in order to keep the IMF and U.S. leadership together, the U.S. is seeking to divide China from Japan. Thus, the fight around the IMF is a fight around imperialist leadership!

In 1999, the WTO told the European Union to open its markets to hormone-raised beef from the U.S. The EU countered by getting the WTO to declare the U.S. was giving unfair tax subsidies to Boeing and Microsoft. Up to the WTO meetings in November 1999, the EU refused to accept the proposed agenda for the Seattle meeting, saying it was highjacked by US service and health industries. Meanwhile, the bosses in weaker countries say the whole thing is just a charade for the bigger imperialists to dominate third-world economies which also significantly contributed to the failure of the WTO to even agree on meeting agendas.

Brewing Military Divisions

The widening splits in the WTO take on added significance with the emergence of new military blocks. The fallout from the Kosovo war has already started to change the military map. Within days of the completion of the Kosovo debacle, the EU decided it needed its own military machine, independent of NATO. Furthermore, in 1999, the merger of Germany’s Daimler and France’s Aerospatiale into a military and commercial behemoth capable of challenging Boeing and Lockheed Martin was the first concrete step. The Pentagon is not pleased. "We favor an evolution toward a trans-Atlantic model of defense industries," whined Cheryl Irwin, a Pentagon spokesperson.

The Brookings Institution, which represents virtually the same Rockefeller-dominated bloc of capital as the Fortune 500 firms operating in China but focuses on the long term, not bottom line of immediate profits, foresees armed conflict with China: "The most significant long-term security issue facing the two powers may prove to be China’s attitude toward America’s continuing military presence in East Asia and the Pacific. The United States would strongly resent Chinese pressure on local states to weaken their ties to the United States. The United States is and will remain a Pacific power and presence, and that its regional profile includes, but is not limited to, U.S. forces in Japan and in Korea, even after unification....The United States might one day find itself in the position of having to contain an expansionist, hostile China (12).

To make matters worse for U.S. imperialism, as China shifts into modern capitalism, its oil consumption will rise by 2010 from some 600,000 barrels a day today to 3 million barrels, nearly half Saudi Arabia’s current production. East Asia now counts on the Mideast for 70% of its oil which will jump to 95% in the first decade of this next century. To assure their supplies, Chinese bosses are implementing a two-fold strategy of armed confrontation with the U.S. Foreign Affairs magazine reports: "The new energy realities contribute to China’s aspirations to develop a blue-water navy capable of force projection in the South and East China seas, the Indian Ocean and beyond." Closer to the oil wells, "The heart of the dependence could increasingly be China’s relations with Iraq and Iran—two countries accounting for nearly 20% of proven global oil reserves—which in the past have involved significant arms transfers (13)."

Therefore, the main danger posed by global capitalism in coming decades will not come from capitalist unity through the corporate managed trade of the WTO or the IMF. The real danger is the sharpening competition and conflict among capitalists. It cannot be overcome by either the Free Traders of the WTO or the reformed trade rules and "high road development standards" recently advocated in Davos, Switzerland by Fair Trade spokesperson and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney (14).

 Can Capitalism Be Nice?

Participants in the Fair Trade movement should consider this question: Suppose your anti-WTO/IMF actions succeeded in producing corporate accountability, an open WTO or IMF, and fair trade? How much of a difference will these reforms actually make?

Corporations will still exist to extract surplus value from workers and transfer it to investors-owners. Corporations will still produce for profit rather than to meet human need. Corporations will still ruin the health of workers by maintaining unsafe workplaces and despoiling the global environment, will still plunge the economy into periodic crises of overproduction and would still maintain a reserve army of labor as a whip over the working class, using racism, nationalism, and sexism to divide us. An open WTO or IMF that allows "progressives" on its boards will still be like a university board of trustees or regents committee with its student representative. The student is allowed a voice and a vote, but the trustees or regents still hold power.

Put more urgently, the fair trade/anti-globalization movement is already on a slippery slope. Organizations like the WTO and IMF have gone from the business pages to the front pages, indicating the imperialists can no longer contain their rivalry to meeting rooms. The WTO, like the UN, has become another arena of sharpening fights between the US, their European rivals and other up-and-coming capitalist powers. While each imperialist aims to pay the lowest wages possible, they fight each other to wrest market share, sources of labor and natural resources from their competitors. Today’s trade disputes will inevitably turn into trade wars, and these trade wars will inevitably turn into shooting wars and ultimately, world war. If the anti-WTO/IMF/WB protesters remain in the grip of the fair trade/anti-globalization movement’s patriotic outlook, they will eventually become supporters of and cannon fodder in an imperialist war. But if they adopt an internationalist and anti-capitalist position, they could help build a movement that can put an end to capitalism.

 Sweatshops Right Here in the U.S.

United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) doesn’t have to go to Latin America or Asia to fight against sweatshops. In the Los Angeles, CA garment district, workers are constantly struggling against increased exploitation. As the following example from the recent experience in 1999 of a LA garment worker shows: "Soon there’ll be a lot of work, but you’re going to have to do your part," said the supervisor. "What do you mean by that?" a garment worker asked. "That you’re going to have to accept the new piece rates," answered the supervisor. "Go to hell. We’re not going to accept that. If you want a strike, a strike is what you’ll get" the worker ended by saying.

These struggles and confrontations are constant in the garment industry. On the one hand, the bosses try to get every last penny out of the workers. On the other hand, the workers try to survive and adjust to the constant lowering of wages. A large number of the more than 100,000 garment workers in LA earn less than the minimum wage. Estimates for the number of undocumented immigrants in the LA garment district range from 50%-75%. Even though the capitalist law says that they must pay the minimum wage, along with other small improvements, the reality is that these factories are an oppressive battleground, everyday. In fact, the conditions in the garment industry in LA are as horrific as in many of the foreign sweat-shops that Global Exchange and USAS target: no unions, sub-minimum wages, no benefits, no overtime, buildings full of code violations, and workers subject to physical abuse by their bosses.

Furthermore, U.S. immigration laws help in the exploitation and oppression of undocumented immigrant workers. The employer sanctions law is part of the latest US immigration law. The law makes "knowingly" hiring undocumented workers a federal crime. This law was supposedly going to stop employers from hiring undocumented workers. The penalty includes fines and even jail for repeated violations. However, it helps create an "underground" economy. The bosses will hire undocumented workers and "look the other way" or "play dumb" when they bring in false documents. But since the whole thing is "illegal", the boss acts as if he or she is doing the worker a big favor by hiring him or her. The boss then makes the workers work overtime without pay, and/or work for less than the minimum while reporting that the worker makes the minimum.

A major fascist, anti-immigrant program implemented by the Clinton administration is Operation Gatekeeper. This program doubled the number of border patrol guards at major border crossings, like El Paso and San Diego, to capture undocumented workers trying to cross at these crossings. However, people still try to cross the border because economic crisis and imperialism in Latin America continues to force them to come to look for work to help their families eat and survive. Thus, because more of them try to cross in areas farther from these major crossings, they are forced to cross in the desert and mountains, which has resulted in an increasing number of deaths from the heat, the cold and drowning. Programs like Operation Gatekeeper have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of workers and the deportation of 500,000 workers in the last three years (15).

 The Truth About Non Governmental Organizations (NGO)

Public Citizen Global Trade Watch

In addition to the AFL-CIO, liberal non-governmental organizations like Global Exchange, and Ralph Nader's Public Citizen Global Trade Watch (GTW) play a key role in the leadership of the fair trade/anti-globalization movement. Consumer activist and NGO bigwig and presidential candidate Ralph Nader has made common cause with Hitler-clone Pat Buchanan, and his backers include none other than textile billionaire Roger Milliken (16, 17).

Nader’s supposed reason for uniting with an open fascist like Buchanan is their shared opposition to free trade. Mike Dolan, Public Citizen’s field director for trade issues, who has helped lead GTW’s anti-China crusade (see China box), gives a "left" cover to pro-U.S. nationalism. When Buchanan announced his decision to run for president in March 1999, Dolan wrote in an e-mail on Public Citizen’s private trade-strategy discussion group, "[W]hatever else you say about Pat Buchanan, he will be the only candidate in the 2000 presidential sweepstakes who will passionately and unconditionally defend the legitimate expectations of working families in the global economy (17)." The subject line of the e-mail read: "Trade Patriot Buchanan." Others report that, privately, Nader has spoken positively of a Buchanan candidacy, arguing that Buchanan will raise important global-economy issues rather than dwelling on social issues (17).

However, this unprincipled opportunist alliance of convenience speaks more about Nader's true political nature than anything else. Roger Milliken has financed the anti-globalization efforts of Nader’s Public Citizen and related organizations (17). Milliken has been a key financial backer of fascists William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, the John Birch Society, the Heritage Foundation, and Pat Buchanan (17). And now Milliken and Ralph Nader have formed a "tactical alliance" to oppose free trade. A tactical alliance of progressive anti-WTO forces with some of the most openly racist forces in the U.S. ruling class reveals most clearly the danger of a populist movement that fails to repudiate nationalism and racism. The only thing worse than a scenario in which masses of environmentalist students and masses of unionized workers are fighting each other is a scenario in which they are united with each other in a fascist crusade under the leadership of Roger Milliken.

When visiting GTW’s website (www.citizen.org), one finds that it supports "Stand up for Steel." Indeed it proclaims: "More than 10,000 high-wage, high-tech workers in the U.S. steel industry lost their jobs this past year as U.S. factories laid off workers in response to a surge of imports from Japan, Russia, and Brazil. This import surge was caused in part by the WTO's equally problematic "cousin" organization, the IMF, which pushed countries to increase their exports to the U.S. as a way to get out of the financial crisis caused in part by past IMF policies. The United Steelworker's of America (USWA) joined with steel industry leaders to ask the President for emergency relief. The President said he would not help because WTO rules forbid such action." GTW explicitly blames "a surge of imports" for layoffs of U.S. steelworkers. However, the layoffs of U.S. steelworkers are due to new high tech mini steel mills (which cut costs by using new technology to get fewer workers to do the same amount of work) not imported steel (18). Protectionism—blaming foreign imports for job losses and adding tariffs to imports—does not stop layoffs but does build nationalism (i.e., patriotism).

With "Stand up for Steel," the GTW joins with the USWA leadership to win U.S. steelworkers to the lie that the cause for layoffs is "cheap foreign" steel rather than all steel capitalists of the world including U.S. capitalists who lay off their workers to cut costs. "Stand up for Steel" tries to convince U.S. workers (and students) that they have more in common with U.S. bosses than they do with workers from other countries, particularly Japan and Russia. Furthermore, pro-U.S. nationalism among U.S. workers aids the main wing of the U.S. ruling class in it's preparations for the inevitable wars it knows it must fight, particularly in the Middle East. However, one of the main topics of GTW’s web-site is concerned with copious denunciations of China. An entire section of the GTW web-site aims to drum up opposition to the granting of permanent most favorite nation (PMFN) trading status for China.

GTW laments the feudal slave-master Dalai Lama and his supporters' loss of Tibet. The fascist, free-Tibet movement portrays pre-1950s Tibet as a "happy" place. In reality, the then socialist (but, now, turned fascist) Chinese government freed the 99% of the population who were serfs or slaves from the feudal theocracy. In fact, the Chinese government built the few roads, hospitals and schools, which still exist in Tibet today. The Dalai Lama received $186,000 annually from U.S. intelligence agencies during the 1960s (19). The CIA also created and supported the Tibetan contra movement during this period (20). The complete lack of popular support for this movement in Tibet is revealed by the fact that it had to base itself in Nepal, and its subsequent complete collapse when the CIA stopped giving it money and arms.

 Global Exchange

Another NGO active in the fight against giving China PMFN trading status and in the anti-WTO/IMF/WB, anti-sweatshop movement is Global Exchange (GEX), an organization founded in 1988 by Medea Benjamin, a self-described ex-hippie. GEX’s most recent campaign has centered on a class-action lawsuit filed in 1999 that targeted 18 American companies using mostly Chinese subcontractors in Saipan, U.S. Mariana’s Islands. The suit, which was filed jointly with the garment union UNITE, alleged that these subcontractors violated U.S. labor laws by forcing workers to work twelve-hour days, seven days a week and by subjecting them to verbal and physical abuse. While Saipan contractors could place a "made in the USA" label on their products, they paid an hourly wage of only $3.05 (not the U.S. minimum of $5.25). Targeted companies have been settling with GEX (21).

On March 29, 2000, Global Exchange announced that eight more major US clothing retailers (including Calvin Klein, Sears, and Tommy Hilfiger) have agreed to settle the class action lawsuit brought by GEX and others over sweatshop conditions in Saipan. The Gap still refuses to settle. GEX praised the settlement, which was described as follows: "The settlement provides that in future contracts, retailers will require factories to comply with strict employment standards, including guaranteeing overtime pay, providing safe food and drinking water, and agreeing to honor employees’ basic human rights." These modest improvements in Saipan workers’ conditions will make production in domestic U.S. sweatshops and prisons cheaper (and, thus, more attractive to U.S. garment bosses) than production carried out in Saipan. However, they will not reduce sweatshop labor either in Saipan or in California.

The lawsuit, which ignores the brutal treatment of garment workers in the United States (such as in Los Angeles or New York), earned GEX a telling ally, the huge U.S. garment manufacturer Levi Strauss & Co, that indicates the limits of "fair" and "living" wage demands. Levi Strauss endorsed the 1999 class action suit, and later that year Levi Strauss, Mattel, and Reebok joined with GEX to establish human rights principles for manufacturing in China (22, 23).

GEX has also received support from the San Francisco and James Irvine Foundations, both of which are tied to Levi-Strauss. Peter Haas, director and major stockholder of Levi Strauss and a member of the San Francisco ruling class, is a trustee of the San Francisco Foundation. James Gaither, a former advisor of Lyndon Johnson (whose administration orchestrated the murder of millions of Vietnamese as part of the Vietnam war) is a director of Levi Strauss and a trustee of the Irvine Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, RAND, and Stanford University (24).

Clearly, some of the U.S. ruling class see the GEX program as beneficial. Why? Because its fair wage program provides a liberal cover for exploitation and serves as a tool in competition among capitalists.

Consider the case of Levi Strauss. Levi Strauss terminated its relationship with Saipan contractors in 1992 and now takes the high road by promoting itself as a "fair" employer. Levi’s insists that subcontractors pay the "prevailing" local wage and limit the workweek to sixty hours (25). In 1996, this meant that Levi-Strauss paid its Mexican workers $4 a day, the Mexican minimum wage (as if that was not bad enough, Levi also made these workers pay for their own water and toilet paper). And, Levi’s, like its competitors attacked by GEX, not only manufactures overseas but constantly relocates its factories to find the lowest wages and, thus, to earn the highest profits. In 1999, right after endorsing the GEX lawsuit, Levi Strauss & Co announced that it was closing down eleven factories in the U.S. and Canada and laying off 5,900 workers (30% of its North American work force). Having lost 13% of its sales to competitors, like the Gap, Tommy Hilfinger and WalMart, it was moving its production to areas with lower labor costs and planning to increase its spending on advertising (26).

Levi-Strauss made huge profits off its low-wage workers in the U.S. In 1994, its profits from sales in the United States increased from 47% to 50%; and Robert Haas, then CEO of Levi Strauss, earned $4,765,624 (27). But, driven to maximize its profits and market share against other capitalists, it shut down U.S. factories to go to countries where the prevailing standard of living was even lower and where the profits it could extract were even higher.

The lesson here is that capitalism is a system based on exploitation. All capitalists exploit workers, paying them only enough to reproduce themselves according to the socially necessary living standards. Employers steal most of the value that workers produce. It goes into the pockets of owners and bankers as profits and interest.

Yet, Medea Benjamin and GEX have repeatedly endorsed capitalism, what they call "cool capitalism." In fact, while GEX receives some foundation funding, it earns most of its money from its own businesses. It operates a tourism business, which conducts "reality" or adventure tours of impoverished areas of the United States, Latin America, and Asia, and sells ethnic crafts through stores in Northern California. Benjamin sees these businesses as models for "how ‘we’ like to see big business operate."

When asked how people could best help the poor, Benjamin suggested that concerned students study accounting and get MBA’s so they could help the poor set up small businesses (28). While smaller incomes for corporate CEOs might seem more "fair," and small businesses might provide an income for some, such reforms and "cool capitalism" will not end exploitation, economic crises or capitalism’s inherent drive to maximize profits.

All the exploitative conditions that GEX condemns in Saipan and other locations in Asia and Latin America exist right here in the U.S. GEX and its allies campaign against exploitative conditions in off-shore production while ignoring and denying the widespread and growing existence of these same conditions in the U.S. When GEX joins with the leadership of UNITE in opposing sweatshops in Saipan, with the leadership of the Teamsters who oppose Mexican truck drivers entering the U.S., with the leadership of the USWA in opposing importation of steel from Brazil and Russia, they are not building solidarity with workers in Saipan, Mexico, Brazil, and Russia. Instead, they are uniting with U.S. bosses against the workers of those countries. That road leads not to international workers’ solidarity, but to nationalism and ultimately to fascism.

RELEVANCE FOR STUDENTS

Across the country, tens of thousands of students are involved with the anti-globalization movement. Additionally, many more are involved with the National Student Labor Alliance (NSLA). This group backs United Students against Sweatshops (USAS), and the campaigns for a "living wage" for campus workers, as well as other campaigns. Of all the student campaigns, the largest currently going on nationwide is the anti-sweatshop campaign led by USAS. USAS works closely with Global Exchange. The latter sponsors the tours of workers from Latin America and Asia, who speak against the horrible conditions they work under. GEX helped draw up many university codes of conduct. They also support the Workers' Rights Consortium (WRC). The WRC is a group, of an increasing number (currently 17), of universities which have joined for the purposes of enforcing university codes of conduct. In short, the WRC is supposed to be an enforcement mechanism for these codes. Its board includes Steve Weingarten of UNITE and U.S. representative George Miller of California. The same Miller who was involved with the deal worked out in 1999 between GEX and some garment corporations.

Despite these apparent good deeds, GEX, as well as the other unions and NGOS, in no way have workers and students best interests at heart. A major financial backer of GEX is James Gaither, who, among other things, sits on the board of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 1992, Carnegie joined the Brookings Institution (a U.S. Rockefeller et al./Eastern Establishment ruling class think-tank) in publishing a blueprint for war and fascism, entitled "Changing Our Ways" (29). This document calls for state capitalism, winning workers to the idea of keeping America number one, and war preparations "against a major hostile power...in Europe or Asia." Indeed it states, "The U.S. is the world's leading military power. We must keep it that way. No nation should be able to threaten the world the way the Soviet Union did (Pg. 56)." Part of these war preparations involves making workers and students think a liberal U.S. government cares about the plights of workers. The U.S. ruling class worries that extreme individualism and deep cynicism hamper winning students and workers to fight for the "greater good of the nation" interests of U.S. capitalists. Their worry is behind the recent media support for the National Student Labor Alliance (particularly the anti-sweatshop campaign), even as they promote proposals for restoring the draft.

One of the ruling class supporters for USAS is U.S. Senator Tom Harkin. He supported the students sitting in and occupying the administration buildings at University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and University of Wisconsin-Madison in February 2000. Also, among them are Democratic Reps. David Bonier and minority leader Richard Gephardt, who signed a letter in support of USAS' demands (30).

All of these ruling class liberals (including Clinton and Gore) support U.S. bosses' plans for oil war in the Middle East. Gephardt’s voting record leaves no doubt about his support for U.S. imperialism’s military interventions. He backed Clinton’s invasion of Haiti. In 1995, he voted to keep U.S. troops in South Korea and Japan. He voted for a $245 billion 1997 military budget—$10.6 billion more than Clinton had requested (31). But that’s just for openers. Gephardt & Co. demand massive military action to defend the tottering Rockefeller et al. Middle Eastern oil empire. All of these liberal ruling class warmakers are closely associated with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, which in turn, has many links to the Brookings Institution. Brookings' director of Foreign Policy Studies, Richard Haas, has written: "…the United States will only have a limited number of occasions to use force against Iraq, and it must make the most of them…U.S. diplomacy can succeed only against a backdrop of the availability of military forces and the will to use them" (32).

Furthermore, in a recent article, Haas describes the most important lessons the bosses should draw from the first ten years after the so-called end of the Cold War. They are: 1) "...military intervention remains a central feature of American foreign policy." 2) "Decisiveness is almost always preferable to gradualism." [Don't talk, shoot!] 3) "Both Iraq and Kosovo suggest that short of occupation, military force is not a very good tool for changing regimes." Therefore: 4) "...only ground forces will be able to protect [U.S.] interests." "Domestic opposition to such a commitment can be reduced and overcome by concerted presidential effort (33)."

 AFL-CIO: FRIENDS OR FOES OF WORKERS?

Racism and nationalism put forward the lie that workers have more in common with bosses of the same skin color or nationality than they do with other workers. The bosses use racism to make hundreds of billions every year in extra profits. More importantly, racism and nationalism within the working class hinder or destroy workers' ability to unite and seize state power from the bosses.

A workers movement must fight tooth and nail against racism and nationalism wherever they occur. The AFL-CIO leadership does just the opposite! Sometimes, their promotion of racism is open, and, sometimes, it is done passively. For example, black and immigrant workers (as well as women workers) were originally excluded from the AFL-CIO and its predecessors (34).

Rather than attacking slave labor workfare, as a fascist attack against workers, the AFL-CIO is attempting to organize workfare workers (35, 36). In fact, the UAW openly proclaims its support for the idea of welfare recipients working for their welfare checks (37). Among other things, this supports the racist, sexist lie that women, particularly women of color, taking care of their children are not working. It also sustains the lie that capitalism can ever have enough jobs for everyone. On the contrary, capitalism depends on a reserve army of unemployed workers to keep workers wages low (or using forced labor at lower wages such as in sweatshops or prisons). By not challenging this kind of systematic attack on the working class, the AFL-CIO bosses only further help to institutionalize this fascist program.

A further example of the AFL-CIO's support for racism and fascism is their support for U.S. prison labor. In 1998, when activist workers at Boeing discovered that Boeing was using prison labor, Tom Johnson, head of their IAM local, goose-stepped behind the bosses' line that Boeing's use of prison/slave labor was "community service." According to the AFL-CIO, social justice means attacking China for using prison labor, but here in the U.S. it's a different story. The Wall Street Journal reported: "The AFL-CIO backs the idea of inmates [in the U.S.] working but wants it done 'carefully' (38)." What does carefully mean? Does it mean that they want to organize the prisoners? If so, it is literally organizing inside the concentration camps! This statement of endorsement is nothing less than blatant support for U.S. bosses using concentration camps for black and Latin workers!

As the most oppressed workers, black and immigrant workers are generally the most militant fighters against the bosses. The AFL-CIO leadership now claims to be the friends of immigrants. They make much ado of their supposed support for amnesty for undocumented immigrants. They point to their recent reversal on the Employer Sanctions law (which, in addition to supporting, they strongly encouraged its passage into law) as an example of how they are now the "champions" of undocumented workers. Yet, even though the bosses pay immigrants less than they pay U.S. born workers (recent immigrants on average make 58% of what U.S. born workers made, 39), the AFL-CIO has never fought against these racist wage differentials, which are an attack on all workers.

Furthermore, in the same resolution which supported amnesty for undocumented workers (and the reversal of the employer sanctions law), the AFL-CIO "called on the federal government to maintain efforts to keep illegal immigrants [undocumented workers] out of the country (40)." These efforts which the AFL-CIO supports, include but are not limited to, the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border with programs like "Operation Gatekeeper", the U.S. fascist crackdown on illegal immigration. The AFL-CIO endorsed Vice-President Gore for president in 2000 and has always supported the Clinton administration which means supporting Operation Gatekeeper and other anti-immigrant laws. By supporting these racist attacks, the AFL-CIO builds further divisions among the working class, aiding the U.S. bosses’ ability to drive down workers' wages.

The AFL-CIO call for amnesty serves the U.S. bosses' need for soldiers. U.S. bosses are increasingly running short of potential recruits for the armed forces, particularly the army. Since they will soon have to fight an oil war in the Middle East, they need every worker they can get to join. Moreover, a call to bring immigrant workers under the umbrella of the AFL-CIO, wins them to feel part of this country, vote, and look to politicians to solve their problems.

 WHAT IT IS TO BE DONE?

Tens of thousands of young student and worker activists have become involved in new movements against exploitation of workers. They want to take part in a struggle to create a better world. They must not be misled into a patriotic campaign that objectively serves the interests of US imperialism. The AFL-CIO, GEX and GTW help the bosses by directing the anger of workers and students against ALL exploitation > toward other bosses. U.S. workers and students must fight against racist prison labor, workfare, and exploitation of immigrant workers here in the U.S. We must fight against the U.S. ruling class in order to unite with workers fighting oppression in other countries.

 One Working Class

The fight to smash prison and sweatshop labor must not be a nationalistic fight against certain foreign countries, but an international fight against the system that requires extreme exploitation. We must unite all the workers and students of the world under one banner to fight against all prison labor and sweatshop conditions. We should protest racist police terror wherever it occurs because it helps keep workers passive and enforces low wages and sweatshop conditions. We must fight all aspects of developing fascism and imperialist war.

It is inspiring to see students and workers uniting to fight against the bosses' attacks. More of this unity is necessary. However, following liberal fascists like John Sweeney or Ralph Nader is not the answer. The answer is to fight for a world without racism, sexism, imperialist war, fascism, and exploitation. What kind of system keeps 1 billion people unemployed or under-employed while forcing hundreds of millions of others to work long grueling hours? What kind of system allows 100 million people to die each year of starvation and starvation-related disease when there is more than enough food to feed everyone? The system is capitalism, and the time to get rid of it is now!

The crisis of over-production and imperialist war will not eliminate capitalism. Only a mass international revolutionary communist party dedicated to eradicating the capitalist system and replacing it with a communist society run by workers can eliminate the profit system. Under communism, all poverty or wealth will be shared with distribution according to need, not profit. Decision-making will be collective and everybody will be asked to participate in running society. We invite you to join us in this struggle!

 We march against imperialism, the real global economy!

We say workers of the world unite, not workers of the U.S.A. unite.

We march for neither "free" nor "fair" trade, but for production and distribution according to need: abolish wage slavery!

We march on May Day against all bosses and for our class, the international working class!

We march against racist police terror and prison slave labor.

FOOTNOTES

The Economist. 5/10/98.

Greider, William. The Nation. 4/10/2000.

Wall Street Journal. 8/7/1997.

Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The State of Working America. Washington D.C. 1999.

UN Human Development Report. 1999.

Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Ibid.

Left Business Observer. 2/25/99.

Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Ibid.

New York Times. 3/28/1999.

Business Week. 2/7/2000.

Los Angeles Times. 12/5/1999.

Brookings. October 1997.

Foreign Affairs. March 1996.

International Herald Tribune. 1/29/ 2000.

Amnesty International Report on Operation Gatekeeper. 5/1999.

Nation. 3/20/2000.

New Republic. 1/10/2000.

New York Times. 4/29/1999.

New York Times. 10/1/1998.

Outlook. Indian English Language Weekly. 2/15/1999.

Seattle Times. 8/9/99.

San Francisco Chronicle. 2/15/99.

San Francisco Chronicle. 6/14/99.

Foundation Grant Index. 1999. Who’s Who in America.

Fortune. 1/5/92.

New York Times. 2/23/99.

SEC report, Compact-D Disclosure

Los Angeles Times. 6/23/99.

Changing our Ways. 1992. Brookings/Carnegie. Washington D.C.

Gephardt et al. letter to USAS. 2/25/1999.

"Clinton and Gephardt, Splits Within Splits." Communist. a PLP magazine. January 1998.

Brookings Policy Brief No. 7. 1996.

Brookings. The Use and abuse of Military Force. 1999.

Rich Gibson. Labor History: A Short Outline. http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/labhist.htm.

New York Times. 4/13/1998.

New York Times. 2/19/1997.

UAW. Solidarity. 1/1998.

Wall Street Journal. 6/29/1999.

Meisenheimer, R.R. "How do immigrants fare in the US labor market?" Monthly Labor Review. Bureau of Labor Statistics. December 1992. pp. 3-19.

New York Times. 2/17/2000.

FRONTLINE OF FASCISM: KKKOPS

One of the most overt examples of developing fascism lately has been the increase in cold-blooded murders and terror by the police. Fascist cops have murdered thousands of workers and youth and increasing numbers are murdered every year (Stolen Lives Project). During 1997 and 1998, over half a million workers in New York city alone were stopped and frisked for no reason by the cops (Pacifica Radio, 3/5/2000). Many, though but by no means all, of the victims of police terror are black and Latin workers and youth. The police are also the main defense for the bosses against the wrath of the working class. Ask any worker on strike who the cops serve! As wages fall and living standards worsen, the police' job is to increasingly terrorize workers to keep them from fighting back. Indeed, the fascist crackdown against the mostly white workers and students demonstrating in Seattle in 1999 was but a small taste of the treatment experienced every day in black and Latin communities.

WHY DEBT RELIEF FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES?

On January 21^st, 2000, German Chancellor Schroeder used a Financial Times article to call for 100% cancellation of debts for the most indebted countries. Then Britain’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair, called Jubilee 2000 ‘a great campaign’, and his number two man, Gordon Brown, said it had ‘A vision…of justice that will liberate nations (i.e., the organized capitalist class) from unsustainable debt.’ The ball was rolling. Canada, France and even Clinton joined in. ‘No debt’ was chic among the chic.

Yet, debt is useful to capitalism. Marx described it as "one of the most powerful levers of primitive accumulation." His analysis still hits the target. "In late 1990," writes Susan George in The Debt Boomerang, "Citicorp made the biggest single debt-equity deal in history buying 60% of (Argentina’s) ENTel’s southern division…for $114 million in cash and $2.7 billion in debt (page 75)." It matters nothing to the working class whether the wealth they created is appropriated via debt payment or corporate profit, it still comes from the exploitation of their labor. A system like imperialism that is built on racist exploitation can not liberate the working class. Why, then, are the likes of Blair, Brown, Clinton and Schroeder calling for debt cancellation?

Part of the answer lies in places like the Ivory Coast, a country saddled with debts that amount to 200% of its Gross National Product (GNP). In 1999, an Army coup bought a new regime to power. They immediately announced that there was not enough money in the national budget to pay both the interest on the debt and the civil service. Furthermore they declared they were going to pay the civil service! The government in Paris (France owns 40% of debt in Africa) went berserk and the Ivory Coast backed off, but, clearly, the level of debt was so burdensome that anti-imperialist rebellion was in the air.

Besides, debt was already contributing to the poverty, pestilence and warfare that was triggering instability in region after region. Debt, at least in the most oppressive cases, was outliving its usefulness. For a country like the Congo, with a debt level equivalent to 450% of its GNP, debt cancellation is not even an liberal proposal. It is a simple accounting matter. As Gordon Brown said, debt is only useful as long as it is "sustainable." Unsustainable debt is dangerous.

Yet, a big part of the answer lies in the Asian crisis, which triggered crises in Brazil and Russia. Although the US gained some, Europe and Japan were hit hard by this crisis. The Japanese, backed by the Chinese, began to talk of an AMF (Asian Monetary Fund) replacing the IMF, while the Financial Times reported (9/21/1998): "It is an unfortunate fact that some sections of the German financial establishment look on the IMF as a gang of economic terrorists." Estimates vary but Europe in particular has lost billions in exports as a result of the crisis. Canceling debts would free up some capital to buy manufactured goods from the major powers and be a (small) compensation for the hit world capitalism has taken. Debt cancellation, then, is the cry of a whole section of capitalists anxious to hold together the post World War II imperialist alliance led by the US.

WHY CHINA?
The hypocrisy of the unions and NGOs

On April 12, 2000, the anti-globalization/free-trade forces led by the AFL-CIO, Nader’s Global Trade Watch (GTW) and others are demonstrating against admitting China into the WTO. Specifically, the demonstration is to show opposition to the U.S. granting permanent "most favored nation" (PMFN) trading status to China (a condition for entry into the WTO). Moreover, the AFL-CIO is intensively lobbying investors to not buy PetroChina Company stock (on 3/30/2000, Goldman Sachs & Company set the price for its initial public offering of the PetroChina Company, China’s dominant oil and gas producer). Recently, the Teamsters in their union paper claim (referring to a picture of man facing a Chinese tank): "if he can stand up to communist China, so can you." They then go on to urge Teamster workers to tell their congressmen to vote no to permanent normal trade relations with China.

Congress is scheduled to vote (probably by May 2000) on the China Trade bill which (among other things) would give China PMFN trading status. Currently, congress votes every year to renew normal trade relations with China which give China low tariff access to U.S. markets, the same treatment that most other trading partners receive (New York Times, 3/29/2000). U.S. corporations and the Clinton Administration favor granting China PMFN trading status as part of recent trade deals with China which include supporting China’s membership in the WTO. The China trade deal gives China PFMN trading status but, also, gives U.S. capitalists unprecedented access to Chinese markets. So, why are groups like the AFL-CIO, Teamsters, and GTW (among others) so concerned about China’s trading status with the U.S.?

First, the union and NGO anti-China campaigns bring leverage against U.S. corporate competitors in China as this Boston Globe article (2/2/2000) reveals: "They [the union and NGO leadership] see this as an opportunity to construct a political bargain in which they eventually support Chinese membership in exchange for introducing environmental conditions and labor rights into the WTO rules. Such a change in rules eventually would allow the United States to block imports from a country that does not meet environmental and labor standards." While many U.S. capitalists support more free trade with China, they need to gain as much of an advantage in trade with China as possible. A 1999 U.S. Department of Commerce study found: "relatively few U.S. companies are realizing profits or even a return on their investments, (in China)." In 2000, the U.S. is actually buying more from China than ever before with the trade deficit at about $70 to $80 billion.

Second, while most U.S. bosses focus on the immediate profits from increased trade, the more long-term capitalist thinkers > understand that Chinese bosses are a long-term strategic threat to U.S. imperialism. China is becoming a major economic and military power. It is increasingly challenging U.S. imperialism not only in Asia but the rest of the world. Building up the economy and infrastructure of places like China cuts two ways for U.S. bosses. The profits enhance U.S. firms’ quarterly balance sheets, but trade surpluses, airplanes, roads, satellites, and other improvements only serve to increase China’s economic and military threat as a rival to the U.S. The American Prospect, published by the Economic Policy Institute, identified some of the huge U.S. corporations promoting shortsighted involvement in China: "The leading organization of the new China lobby is the ad hoc Business Coalition for U.S.-China Trade. The coalition is coordinated by the Emergency Committee for American Trade, a $1 trillion bloc of 55 major U.S. companies, including General Motors, Mobil, Exxon, Caterpillar, … , Boeing, … , Procter and Gamble, …, IBM, … (January 1997)."

The AFL-CIO and GTW (among others) say China violates human rights and treats its workers and environment terribly. Thus, their argument is the U.S. government should not reward China with PMFN and entry into the WTO. China, like the U.S., does exploit and oppress its workers (and entry into the WTO may speed up this process in both the U.S. and China). The Chinese government is "communist" in name only. China was once socialist but has long returned to open capitalism (see Road to Revolution IV, a communist manifesto by PLP). In fact, like in much of the world, fascism is intensifying more in China. However, as stated earlier, fascism is developing in the U.S. too.

In fact, the hypocrisy of the AFL-CIO and GTW (among others) is hypocritical and disgusting. For example, at the GTW website (www.citizen.org), as of January 2000, they say: "…China continues to ignore its 1992 Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. prohibiting trade in prison labor products." Yet, nothing is said about the many products made with prison labor by U.S. capitalists IN the U.S. both for export and domestic use! In fact, the U.S. has incarcerated more people (about 2/3 are black and Latin) than any other nation, a half million more than China (which has nearly FIVE times the population of the U.S.).

By ignoring racist prison labor in the U.S., the AFL-CIO and NGOs help support it. Moreover, > they clearly help U.S. bosses be more competitive by targeting > Chinese companies use of cheap prison labor while ignoring U.S. corporate use of cheap prison labor. Finally, by hypocritically crying about Chinese prison labor, they are > helping the U.S. bosses to whip up racist, patriotic, anticommunist support for > trade wars today, and shooting wars tomorrow!

 THE AFL-CIO AND U.S. IMPERIALISM

The AFL-CIO leadership has had close links with U.S. intelligence agencies (thus the name AFL-CIA). Since WWII, the AFL-CIO has supported every imperialist war the U.S. has been involved with: from the Korean War, to Vietnam, to Iraq with its continuing murderous sanctions, to the war in Kosovo. During the Cold War, says NY Post columnist Ben Wattenberg (9/6/1999), "the AFL-CIO was the most stalwart institutional bastion of anti-communism in America." The AFL-CIO’s international department set up four regional "institutes," one each for Latin-America, Europe, Africa and Asia. These institutes would create "free" trade unions backed by CIA funds to mobilize the election of U.S.-backed candidates or the overthrow of those governments who opposed Washington: in France and Italy in the late 1940s, Brazil (1964), Chile (1973), El Salvador (1985-1990), Panama (1984), Nicaragua (1980s), Grenada (1983), the Philippines (1991). The AFL-CIO also backed foreign unions which would attack militant anti-U.S. unions. From 1984 to 1990, the Reagan-Bush Administrations handed over $54.6 million directly to these four AFL-CIO institutes to promote approval of U.S. foreign policies; at the very same time that Kirkland-Sweeney & Co. were calling these administrations "devils to be defeated at all costs."

At this time, Sweeney led the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and sat on the board of the AFL-CIO and the League for Industrial Democracy (LIND). The LIND is a think-tank that is strongly interlocked with the AFL-CIO international institutes. Many LIND board members are also on the boards of the international institutes (LIND Program Summary 1985-1989). The LIND published many papers in support of U.S. imperialist foreign policy. Sweeney and his "new labor" regime claim to have broken with the AFL-CIA’s past. However, as a board member of the LIND, Sweeney, even when not directly involved, at least supported U.S. imperialism's attacks against workers.

The trustees of the AFL-CIO's institute for Latin-America (the AIFLD) read like a Who’s Who of corporate America: Rockefeller, ITT, Exxon, Shell, and IBM, among nearly 100 corporations. All of them donated money to the AIFLD. All of them pay Latin-American workers slave wages. AIFLD chief, LIND board member, and CIA agent William Doherty told Congress that, "Our [the AFL-CIO’s] collaboration [with business] takes the form of trying to make the investment climate more attractive."

A Challenge-Desafio series by Progressive Labor Party

(from the September 13, September 20, and November 1, 2000 issues of Challenge-Desafio, weekly newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Progressive Labor Party)

Part 1: King Leopold’s Legacy: Imperialism and the Origin of AIDS

"I can choose to die of starvation now, or of AIDS later"—Prostitute in Harare, Zimbabwe

Reports to the 13th International AIDS Conference last month in South Africa described a holocaust of mind-numbing dimensions. Fifteen million have already died. Thirty-four million are HIV-infected, including 25 million in sub-Saharan Africa. HIV/AIDS will kill 67% of today’s teenagers in some African countries. Women are twice as likely as men to become infected. Thirty million African orphans are predicted by 2010, life expectancies dropping from 70 years to 30 in some countries. If neutron bombs were dropped on the dozen biggest cities of Africa, the damage could not be worse. International response to this crisis has been obscene. Bosses and politicians fight over drug prices and profits, while they spend much more on Viagra and baldness remedies ($333 million QUARTERLY earnings, according to Pfizer), than on all international HIV programs in sub-Saharan Africa ($600 million YEARLY of international aid for HIV/AIDS).

Though many see the AIDS pandemic either as a "natural" disaster or as a biological warfare conspiracy, it is actually rooted in the devastation imperialism has inflicted on African societies. This first of a series of articles on the political economy of AIDS will discuss where the HIV virus and the AIDS pandemic in Africa came from.

い

Scientists have recently learned much about the origin of HIV. Like influenza and rabies, AIDS is a disease transmitted from animals to humans. The closest relatives of HIV are SIVs, viruses carried by apes and monkeys. HIV-1 most resembles a chimpanzee SIV, found in rain forests of coastal West Africa. HIV-2, a milder West African virus, is nearly identical to a monkey SIV. These viruses have lived in their natural hosts for millions of years and don’t make them sick. Among scientists, the currently favored idea of how the viruses jumped into humans is that people hunted chimps and monkeys for meat, and cut themselves while butchering.

HIV is relatively new to humans. The earliest verified HIV case was in 1959, in Kinshasa, Congo; African blood samples from earlier times are free of the virus. HIV exploded in Africa during the early 1970’s, just before it spread to the U.S. and Europe. Very early cases were found near the borders of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. From there it quickly spread to Zambia and Tanzania. Before the 1970’s, AIDS was as unknown in Africa as in the U.S.

HIV evolves rapidly. Its gene sequences accumulate mutations in a steady, clock-like manner. The more differences, the more time has passed since viruses had a common ancestor. By comparing the genes of currently circulating viruses, it is possible to make an informed guess as to when the common M type of HIV-1, the one responsible for the worldwide pandemic, began. The best guess is in the 1930’s.

HIVs not only jumped from animals to humans recently; they also did so OFTEN, at least four times. This is inferred from the fact that some HIV strains are genetically more similar to SIVs than to each other. So it seems that HIV is relatively easy to catch from animals, and that no special mutations are needed to make it virulent in humans. In fact, a lab worker recently developed AIDS from a monkey SIV after an accidental needle stick.

So, if the virus jumps easily to humans, why did the pandemic not start until the late 20th century? What changed that made repeated transfer to humans more likely and explosive growth a certainty?

Until the late 19th century, most Africans farmed and lived in rural villages. Then feverish land grabs among imperialists—seeking rubber, gold, ivory and diamonds—created the largest forced labor system since African-American slavery. For example, King Leopold II of Belgium seized the Congo and ruled it for years as his personal rubber plantation. Fifteen million Congolese died in this genocidal holocaust. Forced labor was the rule in colonial Africa. Copper mines in Katanga (Congo) rounded up miners from Zambia, Rwanda, Angola and Mozambique. Colonial armies drafted millions of Africans during both world wars. During the 1930’s, the French built a railroad through coastal West Africa, drafting hundreds of thousands of African laborers from distant locations and marching them through the rain forest under appalling conditions of near-starvation. According to one theory, it is here that Africans first were exposed to SIVs, as workers made desperate by starvation had to hunt apes as food.

Another theory places the origin of AIDS in the Belgian Congo and neighboring countries. In his thoughtful book, The River, Edward Hooper argues that HIV spread to humans through racist trials of polio vaccines. During the late 1950’s, Hilary Koprowski of Philadelphia’s Wistar Institute gave an experimental oral vaccine to over 300,000 Africans, using them as guinea pigs. Hooper suggests that Koprowski may have grown vaccine poliovirus in chimp cells contaminated with the SIV ancestor of HIV. Hooper’s ideas lack solid evidence, but they are being taken seriously enough to prompt testing of remnant vaccine stocks.

Whichever theory turns out to be true, it is clear that the crossover of the virus was a result of conditions created by colonialism. But what caused HIV’s later explosive growth?

Part 2: Imperialism Program for Africa: Billions in Profits, Pennies for AIDS

Starting in the 1960's, African societies changed from colonialism to rule by indigenous nationalist or fascist rulers allied with imperialism. For example, the Belgian Congo became Zaire. Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by the CIA. They installed Mobuto, a worthy successor to King Leopold in greed and bloodthirstiness. South Africa and Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) remained under fascist apartheid throughout this period. Armies of male migrant workers left the countryside for the newly-crowded cities, while their wives remained behind in remote rural areas. Prostitution became a major growth industry, some European companies even setting up whorehouses near their factories for their workers. A seemingly endless series of nationalist and inter-imperialist wars sent millions of soldiers and refugees all over central Africa.

Enslaved by the global market economy, conditions created by colonialism continued and worsened in "post-colonial" African societies. HIV spread like wildfire through populations ravaged by poverty, war, famine and disease. HIV spread to Europe and the U.S., and then to Haiti and Thailand, primarily through sex tourism, often child prostitution. Prostitution and dirty needles spread it to Latin America, India and Eastern Europe, centers of new epidemics. The IMF's (International Monetary Fund) stranglehold on poor countries caused massive unemployment, promoted prostitution, imposed cutbacks in health care and education and made life-saving drugs unaffordable.

Sexism kills, just as surely as--and combined with--racism. In Africa, traditional oppression of women has meshed with new, profit-driven forms of oppression. In southern Africa, married women often don't dare ask their husbands to wear condoms, and are pressured by relatives to stay unprotected for maximum fertility. Husbands are expected to have many sex partners while their wives are expected to be monogamous.

Some day the HIV pandemic will be known as one of imperialism's worst crimes. Rulers in both Africa and the U.S. claim that the situation is hopeless, and that millions are doomed. Yet the money it would take to provide effective prevention and therapy now ($100 billion yearly) is only a small fraction of what imperialists spent on wars against Iraq and Vietnam. It is an even smaller fraction of the profits they've made from African rubber, diamonds, gold, copper, oil and slave labor. In a few countries (like Uganda and Thailand) even simple prevention campaigns have had a big impact. So building a larger movement now, that refuses to accept rules protecting the bosses' profits, can save many more lives. Mass production and distribution of pirated anti-AIDS drugs, in collaboration with medical workers in Africa, can prevent transmission and provide treatment for millions.

A larger movement must also lead a sharp and prolonged struggle against sexism in order to transform relationships between men, women and children, ending prostitution and sex slavery. It must fight to end the super-exploitation of migrant labor. These goals can only be achieved through the revolutionary destruction of capitalism. The experience of once socialist China in eradicating prostitution, syphilis and drug addiction (which have all returned in now capitalist China) shows that revolutionary communism can, even in poor societies, solve massive public health problems.

Sources: Hahn, B.H. et al. (2000); Korber et al. (2000); Science 287: 607 Chitnis et al. (2000), AIDS Res. Hum. Retroviruses 16: 5-8; Gao et al. (1999) Nature 397: 436-441; Hooper, E.M. (1999) The River; Schoofs (2000) "The Agony of Africa" (at http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/africa) ScientificAmerican, January 2000; New York Times, 6/28/00 and 7/9/00. Recommended background: A. Hochschild King Leopold's Ghost; W. Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa; B. Davidson, "The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State"

Part 3: Apartheid Continues: AIDS and South African Capitalism

"That mother is going to die and that HIV-negative child will be an orphan. That child must be brought up. Who is going to bring the child up? It’s the state, the state. That’s resources, you see."—Parks Mankahlana, spokesperson for South African president Thabo Mbeki, explains why his government won’t provide nevirapine to prevent mother to child transmission of AIDS. The government would rather have the child die of AIDS than use state resources.

During the recent AIDS conference in Durban, South Africa (SA), Pres. Thabo Mbeki questioned whether HIV causes AIDS, and invited a group of crackpot "AIDS dissidents" from the U.S. to serve on an AIDS panel. The South African AIDS calamity is part of a general catastrophic failure to improve workers’ lives since the end of apartheid. International corporations and banks, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank, together with South Africa’s reconfigured post-apartheid black and white ruling class, have preserved the worst features of apartheid.

In 1991, a CIA document predicted 45 million HIV infections by 2000, the majority in Africa. (Present over 50 million people are believed to have been infected; 19 million have died.) Faced with these figures, the U.S. rulers cold-bloodedly debated whether it was "worth" it, from a military standpoint, to combat AIDS. One security official commented, "Oh, it [AIDS] will be good, because Africa is overpopulated anyway." This became the unofficial line of USAID, the State Department’s international "aid" agency, and of the World Bank. When it became obvious the U.S. didn’t face a runaway heterosexual epidemic, further action was shelved. The World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control and the UN all actively resisted paying for AIDS prevention.¹ People who believe HIV is a CIA plot are wrong about the facts, but they’re right that capitalists consider millions of African workers expendable.

Why has Mbeki lent an ear to HIV deniers? The initial quote above suggests he’s trying to save money by preventing the birth of HIV-negative orphans. Last year Mbeki’s government refused to spend nearly half of the money in its AIDS budget and blocked the purchase of relatively cheap drugs that prevent maternal transmission of AIDS. Or Mbeki, by appearing stubborn, may be jockeying for a better deal in international aid and drug prices. Either or both of these cynical motives would be consistent with Mbeki’s role in the "new" South Africa.

Liberals praise SA’s "peaceful transition" from apartheid, as though power had actually changed hands in 1994. Power never changed hands. The heroic struggle against apartheid was co-opted to smooth the re-entry of SA’s biggest bosses into global capitalism. By 1990, the more powerful, "forward-looking" wing of the SA capitalists were frustrated by a recession brought on by international sanctions. Led by Harry Oppenheimer (owner of de Beers diamonds and SA’s gold mines), they made a deal with leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) to dismantle the surface aspects of apartheid, while leaving its base in super-exploitation intact.² By assuring stability, Mandela and Mbeki made SA safer for capitalism.

Mandela, of course, was a hero to millions, and had spent 30 years in prison for defying a fascist court. Like Mandela, Mbeki was a leader of the ANC, then influenced by the SA Communist Party. In 1970 Mbeki visited the Soviet Union for military training. By the 1990s, Mbeki had morphed into a business technocrat. According to a pro-ANC commentator, "Mbeki had been the darling of South Africa’s business community for years, a champion of the type of neo-liberal economics that pleases cheerleaders for globalization. A close friend of the Clinton Administration, Mbeki was considered a man ‘we’ could work with."³

When Oppenheimer died this year, Mandela and Mbeki eulogized him in glowing terms. But Oppenheimer was apartheid’s biggest profiteer, notorious for racist wage differentials and appalling working conditions. Oppenheimer’s gold mines set the pattern for migrant industrial labor that first spread the AIDS pandemic. Men were recruited from all over SA to work in the mines and housed in single-sex hostels. Their wives had to stay behind in the so-called homelands. The bosses encouraged prostitution, and men who became infected with HIV took it home to their wives in remote rural areas.

Life for SA workers has become ever more desperate. Apartheid still rules in the townships, where red-lining (racist housing practices) and loan-sharking have deepened the housing crisis. As formal apartheid ended, South Africa was already in debt slavery to the IMF and World Bank. "Structural adjustment" programs forced dismantling of the public health system and provoked mass unemployment (and prostitution). As a good businessman, Mbeki cheerfully enforced the "belt-tightening."⁴

These actions fueled the skyrocketing AIDS epidemic. Despite warnings from SA physicians and scientists, Mandela ignored the growing HIV danger, scuttling even safe-sex messages when he was advised that it would be political suicide to mention AIDS. From 1990 to 1999, HIV infection increased from 0.8% to 22%, until today SA has over 10% of the world’s infections.⁵

Most drugs used to treat HIV are vastly over-priced and out of reach in the developing world. As an HIV-positive SA judge said recently, "On a continent in which 290 million Africans survive on less than one U.S. dollar a day, I can afford monthly medication costs of approximately $400 per month.…I am here because I can pay for life itself. To me this seems a shocking and monstrous iniquity."⁶

Gore Pimps For Pfizer

Pfizer’s fluconazole is used to treat cryptococcal meningitis, a brain infection in people whose immune system has been weakened by HIV. In 1997, South Africa tried to buy an equivalent drug from Thailand at 1/20^th the cost, challenging World Trade Organization patent rules. Al Gore acted as Pfizer’s pimp, threatening trade sanctions if SA didn’t respect patents. Recently, Clinton-Gore, drug companies and Mbeki have been performing a complicated dance. The U.S. has backed down somewhat, as Gore pretends to campaign against "big drug companies" in the election follies. Drug mult-inationals have started to offer South Africa special deals and give-aways, none of which has yet materialized.⁷

The decades-long struggle against South African apartheid, which was led by millions of SA workers and students, inspired the world. Many of the most committed leaders were black and white communists, but their goal was "black majority rule." They believed that fighting for socialism and then communism would have to come at a "later stage." This reformist and nationalist "stage theory" undermined the possibility of workers’ revolution and is now contributing to tens of millions of deaths. AIDS and poverty holocausts in South Africa and the rest of the world can only end with communist revolution.

1. Gellman, WASHINGTON POST, 7/5/2000, p. AO1

2. Patrick Bond (July 2000), "A Political Economy of South African AIDS" (http://www.zmag.org/AIDspage.htm)

3. Danny Schechter, "Mbeki’s Muddle.

4. Patrick Bond (2000) Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa

5. Jon Cohen (2000) SCIENCE, 288: 2168-2170

6. Speech by Edwin Cameron, Durban conference, 7/10/2000

7. Chirac, et al. 8/5/2000 — AIDS: patent rights versus patients’ rights, The Lancet, volume 356, number 9228