September 20, 1995
Capitalists divide the working class. Communists unite the working class. Capitalism needs racism in order to survive. Communism needs to smash racism in order to win. Communism, and only communism, can and will wipe out racism. Under communism, there will be no races.
The capitalists are vicious. They are greedy. They are foul. But stupid, they are not. When it comes to protecting their class interests, they can seem like geniuses. They know that most workers hate racism and want to fight it. So they give lip-service to opposing racism while hiding its essence and origin. That's why most working people wrongly believe it is just individual hate, unfairness, prejudice. And the capitalists come up with all sorts of tricks and diversions to fool and mislead workers.
Take Louis Farrakhan. The rulers have encouraged him and his nationalist Nation of Islam in a new twist on the old racist theme of "divide and conquer." This is Farrakhan's "Million Man March" on Washington DC. This is not an anti-racist march, as some believe. It is a racist march.
Farrakhan declares October 16 to be a "Holy Day of Atonement and Reconciliation." Atonement for what and reconciliation with whom? Farrakhan wants black male workers to feel guilty for "neglecting their responsibilities as men." He wants them to reconcile (make their peace) with the racist system by registering to vote. Farrakhan is leading black workers into the arms of their enemy. Workers can never make peace with the bosses.
One capitalist boss who endorsed the march is Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell. At least three members of his administration are helping to organize it. Rendell's Jewish supporters criticized him for supporting the anti-Semitic Farrakhan. The mayor (who is Jewish), replied that "Farrakhan is one of hundreds of thousands of people who are going to be in that march, and it's the purpose of the march that's important." That purpose is mainly voter registration. Rendell and Farrakhan speak for the whole capitalist class when they push voting as the way for workers to better themselves. Voting -- whether for Bill Clinton or Colin Powell or Bob Dole -- won't make a dime's worth of difference in workers' lives.
During the next two years in the US, budget cuts will hit workers with a vengeance. Thousands, tens of thousands will lose their jobs. Many more will see their wages to continue to fall below the cost of living. Hospitals, schools, day-care centers, etc. will close.
The rulers fear the militancy and class hatred of black workers who have led countless struggles against the bosses. The rulers know that the logical conclusion of this class hatred is to fight to smash class society, to destroy capitalism with communist revolution. Therefore, the rulers are offering Farrakhan and voter registration as a trap to sap and divert worker's militancy, and hopes for a society of equality.
Communists oppose this fascist mass mobilization. We will speak out, especially in our unions, fraternities, churches and community groups. Build international and multiracial unity of the working class to tear the racist system down! Fight to eliminate racism once and for all. Fight for communist revolution!
Presently, the U.S. ruling class is in a desperate competition with imperialists in Europe and Asia. Slowly but surely U.S. imperialism is losing in its fight for markets and resources to a combination of other imperialists; in particular, the Germans, Japanese, and the new big player on the block, the Chinese. In their desperation to survive international competition, and to better control the domestic market, U.S. bosses, out of weakness are being driven to become bigger. Eventually increased imperialist competition will lead to wars, small at first, but larger later.
An article titled "Land of the Giants" in Business Week (9/11), talked about the recent spate of mergers, particularly the merger of the Chase Manhattan Bank with Chemical Bank, saying "their goal: to acquire the size and resources to compete at home and abroad, to invest in new technology and new products to control distribution channels and guarantee access to markets."
Business Week might have added that the new mergers will be used to intensify the bosses attacks on workers. The Wall Street Journal (9/6) says that "layoff announcements increased 39% in August as merger activity picked up." Chase Manhattan and Chemical have already indicated they will lay off 12,000 workers as a result of their merger. In addition, the banks claim that the merger will result in savings of $1.5 billion.
The consolidation of various ruling class institutions, especially the corporations, along with the mergers of the major unions, are important steps in the fascist process. More consolidation means more control and more suppression of workers.
Even with the bank's mega-merger, the new Chase-Chemical combine will only be the 21st largest bank in the world; the top three banks are still Japanese. What these mega-mergers really mean to us is increased exploitation and more hardships for the working class. Unquestionably, workers in the U.S. and in other areas will resist and fight the bosses' cutbacks. Workers' actions, sometimes led by us, will be met with increased police terror and other armed action by the bosses. Right now, the rulers are frantically trying to distance themselves from their cultivated Mark Fuhrmans. However, in the not so distant future, Fuhrman will look like a pussycat as the rulers will be forced more and more to rely on open terror to oppress the workers.
Thus, the twin tasks of the workers, in their efforts to seize power, are at least to crush the armed terror of the rulers and to snuff out the economic terror against the workers. There is some truth in the common notion that the "root of all evil is money." One thing we surely must do when we achieve power is to smash "wage slavery." Wage slavery by the bosses forces us to sell our labor power so that the rulers can steal from us the fruits of our labor. The fact is that any system that can't provide jobs and forces workers to sell their labor doesn't deserve to exist. While it's useful to sharpen our fight for various reforms under capitalism, we should never have the illusion that our needs can ever be solved with capitalism.
In our efforts to grow we should learn that by placing communist solutions to the workers and winning them to our Party can we ever end the misery of capitalism. The reform battles in which we should be involved enables us to win workers to understand that "they no long live in the old way," and that they will see a "Red Dawn" on the horizon.
As part of a week-long PLP youth summer project concentrated at AC Transit (Alameda County) four pairs of youth rode on the buses of drivers who are friends of the Party. They discussed communist ideas on the buses. These conversations were very lively and both the drivers and the youth enjoyed them so much they want to do it again.
One driver wanted to join a PLP study group while one other brought up serious concerns about whether being a open communist isolated us from workers or students. A Party youth leader from the San Joaquin Valley told him that persistence and dedication to the working class brought her much admiration and respect from her fellow students. The driver commented that he felt the same way toward the PLP member at AC Transit.
Members of PLP often underestimate the value of our communist ideas and the need to build the Party. We get caught up in trying to be better reformers. We work hard building fights against cutbacks and become good union activists. But we don't work as hard to build the Party.
It's our communist training that keeps us in the fight when so many other workers have given up. Occasionally things happen like the summer project that reinforce our desire to build more communist leadership.
Red Driver
We had an experience this past week we wanted to tell everyone about. While selling Challenge-Desafío on a street corner we met three guys that were on strike at a local factory called Juno Lighting. We told them we wanted to help them win the strike and we got together later in the day to paint banners. The banners were for both the Labor Day march that the unions organized and for their picket line the next day.
Later that day we made a presentation to the youth group of a local church that we have been members of for two years. Through one member of the group, we were able to make contact with three other strikers in her family.
We took one of the signs we and the strikers had painted to the Labor Day march. It was big and it said, "Workers United in Support of the Juno Strike -- Fight for Communism." The workers loved it but the union said we couldn't march with the "C" word. "It's OK with us, but that word will scare the rest of the march." Our response, "Que, que dices?" [What, What are you saying?] Our friends stepped in and showed us where to hold the banner -- right in the middle of the group -- and there we stayed for the whole march.
See You in Church
It was a very hot summer and the workers at this Brooklyn hospital turned up the heat even more on the bosses. I was involved with many health care workers' day-to-day battles during most of the summer.
At the beginning of the summer, the hospital bosses announced the layoff of 100 health care workers, closing out positions that included nursing assistants and messengers. These workers all had five years or more seniority. The 1199 contract calls for those workers with two years or less to be laid off, in exchange for job security for workers with more than two years. But the bosses did not even play by their own rules.
Immediately, the union called a strategy meeting, calling for "meeting with the bosses and negotiating." Even though a worker put forward the position of mass action against the layoffs, calling for community and patient support, the union's plan was adopted.
1199 Delegates led workers to the bosses' office peacefully demanding a stop to the layoff. Meetings were held with the bosses as workers expressed concern for patient care. Many workers, seeing that the bosses would not give in to the demands, became very passive. The bosses then went on the attack, and blamed the union, dividing the workers. The bosses were telling them that they could use their "bumping rights," in which workers with more seniority could take the jobs of workers with less seniority. However, bumping rights are racist because most of the workers who would be bumped are black and latin.
The union, seeing that their plan had failed and the bosses had gained ground in weakening the struggle, then adopted the mass action approach. This resulted in the bosses back-peddling and stopping the mass layoffs.
On our first lunchtime picket, workers from all departments came out. We were joined by community people and patients. Leaflets were distributed throughout the community with the CEO's telephone number on it for all those who wanted to call and protest the layoffs directly to him.
The bosses, seeing that the workers had taken the offensive, called out the cops. At that first demonstration, they were frightened at the thought that workers would storm the hospital and take it over. This would have been a good idea if we had more militant workers and support from the union. But even the small militant mass action we did, saved many jobs and just a few workers were laid off.
A Challenge-Desafío Readers' Group met four times over the summer consisting of four workers from the hospital. We had three Challenge-Desafío sales outside the hospital, and at one sale, a comrade sold 20 copies.
The class struggle continues...
A Brooklyn Red
Willie Williams, LA's police chief, is promising to "root out every racist in the LAPD's ranks." What a joke! He said he made a list of 100 suspected racist cops to keep tabs on. Then it came out that he just made this up. There is no such list.
LA cops continue to attack black and latin youth, as they gunned down Jose Guitierrez in Lincoln Heights this summer. The job of the cops is to protect and serve a racist system. Wringing their hands about Furhman's racism, the bosses are trying to hide the fact that all cops, white, black, latin, men and women have the job of protecting profits and property, while attacking striking workers, unemployed youth and workers, the homeless, workers fighting clinic closings, etc.
LA Red
Unemployment is an attack against workers' worldwide. It is an issue our Party is using to build international unity among workers from London to Mexico City to Los Angeles. The bosses and their agents inside the labor movement are quite aware of the trouble unemployment can cause. Last week, a poll of 800 people in Britain showed one in three was afraid to take time off work if they were sick because they feared it would count against them.
Two out of five said they felt pressured into working late or through their lunch hour and another 50% were afraid to criticize their managers.
Workers' anger is so strong that the leader of Britain's Trade Union Congress (TUC) is afraid of a rank-and-file upsurge and is warning the bosses of an increase in union militancy. TUC General Secretary John Monks said the poll, published on the eve of TUC congress in Brighton, was "shocking."
The main thing worrying the hacks is if this militancy gets out of their control. Monks said that "militancy reminds us not to be too complacent. Trade unions will challenge injustice and the policy of greed that has suffused British boardrooms. So some of this militancy is to be welcomed. The only reason we have not seen a lot more militancy has been the high level of unemployment and job security."
The main roadblock for workers to fight for jobs and the bosses is the sellout pro-capitalist policies of Mr. Monks and the TUC hierarchy.
A Reader in Britain
But following two rallies over the Labor Day weekend that saw thousands of workers fight the cops and strike-breaking Knuckles security guards, blocking scab trucks for 12 hours, the plot has thickened. The bosses upped-the-ante, using helicopters to airlift scab papers, and the union leaders have resorted to policing the picket lines.
The strike against the Detroit News, owned by Gannet, and the Detroit Free Press, owned by Knight Ridder, began July 13, with the bosses demanding 600 job cuts despite making over $56 million profit. About 1000 scabs are producing scab editions of the papers, including half the members of the Newspaper Guild, who crossed their own union's picket lines. They are mostly feature columnists and reporters.
The striker quoted above told a PLP member on the line, that he had argued with a co-worker who crossed the line. The reporter said he was returning to work because if he didn't, his kid would have to drop out of college. The striker argued, "So, let him get a job and pay for his own college, while he joins us on the picket line. He'd learn a lot more out here anyway. There's no way I'm going back until this thing is over."
Apparently, the mass violence directed at the scabs and cops the week before, appealed to many workers, and struck fear in both the bosses and union hacks. While the bosses spent a small fortune on the scab airlift, the union leaders turned their attention on stopping militancy on the picket lines. About 400 strikers at Gate 1 were directed by their strike leaders to allow five trucks into the plant, which they did over some modest protests. At all the gates, picket marshals, many members of the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute's RADD (civil disobedience) team, told the workers to put down rocks, stop shaking the fences and taunting the guards. At one point, when pickets tried to start a fire to keep warm in the cold night air, the fire department was called to put it out!
PLP members from Chicago and Detroit joined the picket lines, and along with the many strikers and supporters we talked with, felt a unity and solidarity that has not been felt here in a long time. At one gate, we led the chant, "Shut it Down, Shut it Tight, The Bosses Can't Profit When the Workers Unite!" It was picked up by hundreds of workers, and was very inspiring. In contrast, when a group of workers tried to lead everyone in singing the national anthem, no one joined in, and the song died early. There was more open anti-communism, instigated in part by an obnoxious Trotskyite sect, but very few American flags.
At one gate, an anti-communist worker attacked PLP members, yelling like a madman to get the communists off the picket line. We moved to another gate, talked to the workers, and led chants. When the same anti-communist tried to move us away from that gate, the other pickets sent him packing. Political struggle in the trenches!
UAW Region IA and the Organizing Institute (OI) are two of the main organizers of these weekend rallies. The OI is trying to attract some of the more militant workers, and make them picket line cops. The anger of the workers won't be so easy to control. As the steady stream of helicopters came and went, the anger grew. A UAW member in the OI told a comrade, "We've got to stop them here. [Gannet and Knight Ridder]..are going to Texas next. We've got to stop them here."
At about 4:00 am, a convoy of scab trucks came barreling out of Gate 1. Anyone caught in their way would have been killed. By the time they got to Gate 3, they were pelted with a barrage of rocks, bottles, and anything that wasn't nailed down.
The strikers are up against the whole capitalist system. Cops protect the bosses, scabs, and thugs. The bosses are out to bust the unions, and the courts are threatening an injunction against mass picketing if the unions can't control the workers. The unions are fighting for survival, while trying to control the workers and work within the bosses' laws. The workers have already shown a willingness to engage in mass violence, and an openness to our Party. This is a dangerous mix for the bosses and union hacks. This strike provides us with an opportunity to expose the development of fascism, and how obeying the bosses' laws is a loser. The heat of class war will shed more light on the road to revolution.
War for profit is the calling card of capitalism. The rulers who run our world from their ivory halls may run around in circles trying to figure out what to do, but all their roads eventually lead to war.
The carnage in Bosnia is the fifth war in six years that the U.S. has fought with small time nationalists. Coming on the heels of Haiti, Somalia, Iraq, and Panama the Bosnian Serb leaders freely thumb their noses at the big powers. Once able to rule by merely glancing at a corner of the globe, the U.S. must now break out big guns to fight little capitalists.
While this may remain a limited war, and it may even end soon, the escalation of bombing also raises the possibilities of an expanded war, involving more bombs and even U.S. ground troops. While Clinton and the US bosses don't want to escalate, they are clearly not in control in the former Yugoslavia.
In this period of war amongst nationalists as in Somalia, Iraq, etc., it is in the U.S. capitalists interest is to contain these wars from spilling over into larger wars that would threaten the general stability of their ``new world order,'' and would the stem flow of profits.
Even if a settlement can be reached in ex-Yugoslovia, not a sure thing, how long before the next one? A few years ago, who would have predicted the U.S. getting run out of Somalia. The weakness of the U.S. and the collapse of the U.S.S.R. are encouraging small wars all over the world, as any boss who can put an army together is trying to claim some piece of land. Borders are changing rapidly. New countries are appearing. From the Caucuses to Tahiti, nationalism is rampant and capitalism is begetting more nationalist war. If Aideed in Somalia was encouraged by watching Hussein in Iraq, who will be encouraged by watching Miladic in Bosnia, who has spent four years making fools of the NATO countries.
The capitalists have no choice but to wage these bloody wars. Because if you're not king in some part, someone else is. For the U.S. this means someone else gets to open the franchises, sell the cars, get oil out of the ground.
The capitalists have become like caged beasts with no new turf to take over. So they keep scrambling and killing to redivide what there is. The U.S. is like the little boy at the dike. Constantly trying to stick fingers in holes in their empire around the world. But they only have so many fingers. Too many holes, too many little wars that eventually will explode into major war between the imperialists.
What are the results of capitalist wars? Panama is a haven for drug dealers, Tens of thousands of children in Iraq have been starved to death over the last five years, and 100 Haitian "boat people"drowned last week fleeing the growing misery and unemployment there; and those were the wars the U.S. won. Capitalism cannot offer a future of peace and prosperity to the working class.
Workers should not be dragged into fighting and dying in these nationalist wars. Make war on the warmakers. Wars should only be fought to rid us of these nationalists and bosses. Workers should only fight a war for communism.
The protests began on Sept. 7 at the Ozama mill, 10 miles from Santo Domingo. Cops used tear gas on the workers and 62-year old Ramona Soriano choked to death. On Sept. 8, 20-year old Juan A. Garcia was shot in the back of the neck by an Air Force captain, when soldiers and cops raided houses arresting young people involved in the protests. Angry sugar mill workers burned four cane fields in protests of these murders.
On Sept. 12, thousands of sugar cane workers demonstrated in all the state-owned mills. Workers wanted to march to the capital city, but the union leadership stopped them from doing it.<%0>
The Dominican Republic is in the middle of a pre-electoral campaign. The discredited right-wing Balaguer government has basically bankrupted state industries. Meanwhile, the leading opposition candidates, Peña Gómez and Leonel Fernández, offer solutions based on a ``better capitalist government'' They won't solve the problem of mass unemployment and misery. The only solution is to fight for communism.
Meanwhile, one hundred cops from the new "democratic" National Police Force stormed a Social Security building in the Atlacatl neighborhood and tear gassed strikers occupying it. The strikers, demanding that the Social Security bosses negotiate a new labor contract, barricaded the building and defended themselves with rocks. The cops' attacks was so vicious that patients and even health workers who came to help those injured were attacked.
The Tanzanian feminist Gertrude Mongella is secretary-general of the Beijing women's conference. She thinks that tens of millions of impoverished women around the world need to start businesses instead of revolutions. " `What benefit does the gun hold for the women?' she asked rhetorically. No woman needs a gun. But give her a hoe or a water pump and `she will make a change.' " (New York Times, 9/10)
This is good news for the imperialists. The World Bank now earmarks about a third of its funds (some $3.5 billion) for what they call "improving the status of women." More than half goes to tiny loans to women without collateral. They are supposed to use the money to buy a pushcart, a market stall, or a sewing machine. This might, if they are lucky, allow them to eke out a living on the fringes of the capitalist economy. It might, if the bosses are lucky, keep them from organizing alongside other workers to smash the capitalist system of exploitation.
Bosses the world over depend on the super-exploitation of women workers in order to maximize their profits. Women make up about 70% of the workforce in the Mexican maquiladoras, 80% of the Asian electronics industry, a majority in the garment sweatshops in New York and LA, while asian women work and live in slave-like conditions in the U.S. "Poor women turn out to be surprisingly good investments everywhere," crowed the New York Times (9/10).
The majority of the world's women work hard but receive no wages at all. In Latin America, 60% of urban workers can't get permanent jobs. They barely survive as peddlers, traders, and craft workers. Most rural laborers work for wages when they can, farm the land, and engage in petty craft production. Women are already over-represented at this level of poverty. What they need are steady jobs at a living wage. What they need even more is communist revolution. Only communism can put an end to this system of grinding exploitation.
"Hypocritical Hillary" Clinton gave the keynote address in Beijing. She cried crocodile tears about female infanticide. Meanwhile the Clinton administration kills babies in the U.S. with cutbacks in health care, WIC, and welfare. Many capitalists are eager to bring the World Bank brand of feminism to impoverished urban and rural communities in the U.S. No wonder that the bosses are happy to shell out big bucks for feminists like Hillary Clinton and Gertrude Mongella to hobnob in Beijing.
Feminism is anti-working class. That goes for the academic U.S. variety and the economic variety dominant at the UN conference on women, too. Women of the working class need to unite with their class brothers, not their so-called "sisters" in the capitalist enemy camp.
The People's Commune movement of 1958 was a great leap forward for working women. "With Liberation we received legal and political equality," they told reporter Anna Louise Strong, "but only this past year did we attain real equality with the coming of the commune."
Women workers, not their in-laws, received wages for their own work. Girls and women learned jobs once reserved for males. Relations between husbands and wives improved. "Since I don't have to cook anymore, Fan and I go to meetings and study together," explained one young mother.
The People's Communes distributed many resources according to need instead of according to work. The most common "free things" were food, maternity care, nurseries, kindergartens, schools, and housing for the elderly. Even more than "equal pay," this equalized the positions of women and men.
Within a decade, the "capitalist-roaders" won out in China. Women's hard-won gains went down the drain. As capitalism has taken root, the worst abuses of pre-Revolutionary China have returned. Communism, and only communism, can defeat sexism.
Dr. Robert Simon wrote in the Chicago Reader (8/4): "Most of the homeless really don't care about themselves or are psychiatrically impaired. You can give them any opportunity in the world and they would not take advantage of it. They could do things for themselves, but they won't. So who the hell cares about them? To me, society wastes enormous amounts of energy, money and resources on them."
The powers that be, first speaking through their mouthpiece, Ruth Rothstein (CCH Director) backed Simon up. The position was that his comments were unfortunate, but that he's "a good doctor." And then another said, "He may hate poor people, but he makes the ER run on time." What does it mean to be a good doctor? As more brutal fascism develops in the U.S., a "good" doctor helps to cut the budget. One very cost-effective technique is to kick homeless people out of the ER.
Wrong! Workers have another choice. We must fight against the capitalist system before it kills too many more of us. A step in that direction is reading and selling Challenge-Desafío, to learn how workers around the world are organizing for workers' power. Communism is the rule of the workers. That kind of medicine is sorely needed today.
Cop Becker, who is white, did not report the shooting or call an ambulance for Gould, a black man. Becker disappeared until he "was tracked down ... after witnesses reported his plate number. to the police." (NYT) Rallies and vigils were held, building up to Becker's court date last week. On September 6, a judge dropped all serious charges against Becker.
More rallies are being planned to protest the way the State's Attorney failed to pursue the case. The main politician organizing against the State's Attorney is a former Black Panther, now Congressman Bobby Rush. He blames the killing on "a small but significant and potent cell of rogue cops."
But the problem is much deeper. The whole system is rotten. When the profit system is in crisis, those who provide no profit for the bosses (people the Nazis called "useless eaters") like Joseph Gould, will be crushed and discarded like so much trash.
Nazi Germany coined the term, "useless eaters," Simon calls the unemployed, "a waste." KKKop Becker doesn't say much; he just shoots them down.
If they had met in the 1850's, they probably would have debated whether black people were "naturally" suited to be slaves. If this were Germany in the 1930's, they would probably be discussing the "Jewish Question."
Several years ago, mass protests and the threat of disruption forced the University of Maryland and the Federal government to cancel this conference. Now organizer David Wasserman has regrouped his forces to try again. He has moved the conference away from the Washington, DC area, to a remote site on Maryland's eastern shore. In this way, he hopes to avoid disruptive demonstrations. But the PLP and other groups plan to be there. You can run, but you can't hide from the working class!
Wasserman has carefully excluded the most openly racist and the most obviously bogus members of the "Genes `R' Us" crowd. His guests will include representatives from the Department of Justice, the National Institute for Mental Health, the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and other Federal agencies. He has also invited leading science writers to make sure the line of the conference gets out to the rest of us.
This lineup makes it clear that the Federal "Violence Initiative" is not dead. This racist program includes dozens of federally and privately funded projects. Some seek genetic "roots" of crime. Others explore ways to drug "potentially violent" young people, including children as young as three years old. All blame the victims of a racist system for the problems caused by the system itself.
The Aspen Institute offered the use of its conference center. This is a Rockefeller-funded outfit with ties to Chemical Bank. The National Institutes of Health have put up the money. The U.S. ruling class is trying to make fascist pseudo-science respectable. Workers and students should shut this conference down.
Wasserman also invited a number of professors who are highly critical of so-called violence research. These academic critics must understand that this research is racist and anti-working class to the core. It has nothing to do with science. The rulers plan to use it to develop and justify further repression, especially of young black workers. Those who understand this should denounce the conference and join PLP in protesting it.
It comes as no surprise to AC transit workers that the labor leaders are committed to following the lead of the Board of Directors. They are so ideologically enslaved to capitalism, that they can't understand the basic fact that the working class' need for jobs and decent wages are diametrically opposed to the capitalists' need for profits.
The politicians are the loyal servants of the bankers and businessmen who created the budget crisis in the first place. San Francisco Mayor Jordan, and AC Director and Oakland City Council candidate Clinton Killian, use the press to mold public opinion against the workers. Jordan wants to change work rules, while Killian wants AC workers to reopen contracts to cut medical benefits.
Factories in AC, like Mothers' Cookies and Laura Scudder, are closing left and right. In addition to 200 layoffs at AC Transit, there are 350 layoffs at Highland (County) Hospital, 100 Oakland City workers, and 60 East Bay MUD workers have already been laid off.
While the Alameda Central Labor Council begs the bosses and politicians for mercy, communists in PLP are organizing a growing movement of workers for a general strike for jobs and 6 hours work for 8 hours pay. In the face of the crisis of capitalism, the only hope for job security is in the creation of millions of new jobs.
By leading the fight of transit workers and others against layoffs and service cuts, we are exposing the labor leaders as servants of the bosses, spreading class consciousness and communist ideas, and pointing the way forward to communist revolution. Join PLP!
In the last 20 years workers are working an amount of hours equal to one month more per year while during the same period real wages have fallen 20 percent. Again, longer hours, less pay.
The bosses are using their servants in Congress to try to push through this kind of law, much as Hitler enforced fascism legally by passing similar anti-worker laws. This is the role of the state apparatus under capitalism: crush the workers.
The 8-hour day and 40-hour week, with overtime for any hours worked in excess of these limits, was won by the mass struggle of millions of workers led by communists in the 1930's, which also forced enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Now that the AFL-CIO has abandoned mass struggle (once the communists were ousted from leadership in the late 1940's), the workers are left in a weakened position to lose the 40-hour week. This is the result of the union lieutenants of the bosses defending capitalism and the idea of helping make U.S. bosses "globally competitive."
Our goal must be to ditch these sellout artists, organize ourselves in mass struggle to fight for "6 for 8," the 6-hour day at 8-hours pay. In the course of such struggles, workers can learn that the only "good capitalist" is a dead one. Only a workers' communist system without profits stolen from wage slavery can free workers from the constant destruction of our lives.