Many workers hoped it was true. They know now, what we knew then. The AFL-CIO will do whatever it takes to help the ruling class compete against their Asian and European rivals. The new auto industry contracts, the Teamsters union elections, and the new "workfare" contract between TWU Local 100 and New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority, are all markers on the AFL-CIO's long march to deliver the working class to fascism.
In NYC, the TWU agreed to replace 500 car cleaners making $16/hr. plus benefits, with thousands of slave labor "workfare" workers. More than 35,000 workers are in NYC's workfare program, and more than 100,000 have passed through it. The program will expand to about 60,000 by 1998.
Increasing at 4-5,000 a month, these workers are replacing thousands of former union members who have been sacrificed so the city can make payments to Rockefeller's banks.
In the recent auto contracts between the Big 3 and 400,000 UAW workers, the union agreed to permanently low wages and benefits for hundreds of thousands of workers in auto parts plants. This was their latest contribution to the Big 3's war effort, for super profits, cheap labor, and markets. In return, GM, Ford and Chrysler will help to see that these low paid workers pay union dues.
The ballots have gone out to 1.4 million Teamsters, who are being asked to choose between "reformer" Ron Carey, and lawyer James Hoffa. Carey is backed by the AFL-CIO leadership and the US Justice Department. Hoffa represents the "old guard" mobsters the Justice Dept. left in office. Both are running on identical programs of no dues hikes, no corruption, and no government control of the union. You will never know by looking at the workplace, which one won. Both are loyal to the profit system of wage slavery. Both have left the Detroit Newspaper strikers to twist in the wind for more than a year, and both "represent" workers who pay dues while living below the poverty line.
US bosses find themselves is in a state of crisis and decline. Too many capitalist powers dot a globe with too few markets. US imperialism's reach is being challenged in every corner of the world. The certain result is fascism at home, and war abroad. The bosses have issued the orders; the union leaders are good soldiers.
Today's politics is different from when the world center for communism was in the Soviet Union or China and capitalists everywhere had to grant concessions to workers in order to detour them from communist revolution. None of the politicians in the recent US elections offered even a scent of reform. Even the word "reform," ala Clinton's welfare reform, has become to mean worse, not better. The center for the world communist movement is in the too few hands of PLP, and the ruling classes of the world feel free to go at each others throats.
In addition to the stiffer competition in world capitalism, the US has a ruling class that is also fighting itself, "new money vs. old," "multi-nationals vs. isolationists." That is the politics of the day.
Despite some minor differences, like over NAFTA, the union leaders are lining up with the main wing of the ruling class, the old money multi-nationals. The union leaders have tightly woven ties to the titans of Wall Street. They will live and die with the profit system, but we don't have to follow them.
Sharpening contradictions are giving rise to an avalanche of attacks. Multi-tiered wage contracts, even more speed-up, more part-time and low wages jobs, along with slave labor workfare schemes, more prison labor, mass unemployment and other fascist conditions are the future for the working class. Workers are awakening to these realities. The union leadership find it increasingly difficult to deliver workers, conscious and full of anti-fascist hatred, to the bosses. Out of this, a mass PLP will emerge, leading millions on the road to communist revolution. Then we will set the politics of the day, before, during, and after the revolution.
What the Post Office bosses are worried about is the abundance of communist literature seen around the station. 20% of the workforce buys Challenge and last week two Challenge flyers got around inside the station. They see communism as a direct threat to their control over the workers at the station. So they've mounted a scare campaign, threatening suspensions or firing to anyone caught reading or distributing Challenge. But they can not stop the growth of communism at that station, because they're ruthless oppression is what is making the workforce search out communism.
The Post Office is in a fierce fight to remain competitive and provide the lowest rates possible to their business customers. To accomplish that, they must get more and more production out of their workforce. At this station, the attacks against the workers have increased dramatically in the last year. It was bad before, but now it's worse. At least 10% of the workforce has left through transfers, etc. and have not been replaced. Meanwhile, the mail volume goes up every year. Workers are being written up for attendance infractions and for not finishing routes. They've started to check up on carriers out on the street.
Carriers are harassed into feeling guilty about not cleaning up the routes, and threatened not to bring back any mail at the end of the day. The work environment is chaotic, and routes are all messed up because the bosses are short "bodies." And on the horizon is D.P.S. (automation) which will force carriers to spend more time on the street, and eventually the routes will be lengthened.
With all this happening, it's no wonder the Challenge flyer calling the boss a slavemaster was so popular. The reason they've been getting the cold shoulder with their interrogations is because these workers are open to communism. They're open to communism because it's obvious to everyone except Slavemaster Tate that this system can not serve our needs.
The slavemasters of the world dig their own graves. But they won't just jump in. Bosses' attacks make workers look to communism for answers and leadership. Now it's our responsibility to strengthen the Party and make communist revolution a larger force inside the station.
12-22-95: Kaiser: Dose of Reality...HMO Comes to Grips with Cutthroat Competition (Orange County Register)
2-8-96: Kaiser Says It Will Use Independent Hospitals (LA Times)
4-11-96: Kaiser Weighs Closing Sunset Blvd. Hospital (LA Times)
9-17-96: Health Net Parent, Foundation Reportedly Talking Merger (LA Times)
10-24-96: "Kaiser will be closing its Sunset Hospital and contracting our hospital services. Other Kaiser hospitals may also be closing." (Memo to Glendale Community College employees)
11-5-96: "No final announcements or decisions have been made." (Memo to Kaiser supervisors)
Los Angeles, Nov. 12-- The cat is out of the bag. Kaiser Sunset Hospital is going to close. To thousands of workers this decision will mean the end of their working life, or the end of their lives, period.
To Kaiser bosses this is nothing more than a shrewd business decision. Profit is everything to them. It's cheaper to see patients only in clinics, give them Tylenol and send the sickest home to die.
Ten year old Te-jen is only one of many Kaiser victims. For five months his mother took him to various Kaiser hospitals with stomach ache, diarrhea, chest pain and weight loss. No blood tests of any kind were ordered. He was diagnosed with various minor ailments and sent home. By the time a blood count was finally ordered, his white cell count was 610,000. He was very ill with leukemia. Te-jen died two months after his diagnosis, a victim of cutbacks, understaffing and racist medical care.
Workers at Kaiser Sunset and even many administrators and chiefs haven't been told yet that the hospital will close. But the patients are already being prepared, so it's clearly a done deal. Kaiser knows that we will be angry at the loss of thousands of jobs. The bosses hope to deliver the blow and get away with it before we know what's hit us.
Stand up to these murderers of children and workers by joining with the PLP to build for a demonstration at Kaiser Sunset on Thursday, Nov. 21, from 4:00-5:30 p.m. Demonstrate against the closing of the hospital, and for an end to the profit system. Demonstrate in memory of Te-jen Chung and all other Kaiser casualties, past, present and future.
The news of Kaiser Sunset closing doesn't come as a surprise to the PLP. We understand that when capitalism is in crisis, there are only two kinds of medical care for the workers: the cost-effective kind, and none at all. Capitalism cannot provide the health care workers need because it's not profitable enough. To an HMO like Kaiser, the sickest patients--like Te-jen Chung--are better off dead because their injuries and illnesses cost a lot of money. Capitalism turns everything upside down: instead of the sickest getting the best care, they get the worst.
The only winning fight is one that will turn things rightside up by getting rid of capitalism. For years PLP has been building a revolutionary communist party that organizes workers not to get caught up in reforming the system, but to make plans to end it. Now Kaiser has given workers yet another reason to prepare to seize power with communist revolution.
Philadelphia, November 11 "Jefferson thinks that once we stop producing for them, they don't have any responsibility to us," a housekeeping worker said when she heard about Ann.
Ann worked in the Laundry of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital for over eighteen years. She folded tens of thousands of sheets, gowns, uniforms, and scrubs that were used by hundreds of doctors, nurses, and patients.
For Ann, the job was a step up from garment work. The union wages were higher and there were benefits. As hard as the job was, it attracted many black workers like Ann, and many white workers who lost factory jobs.
In February Ann learned she had colon cancer and needed immediate surgery. She had to take a medical leave from work. Six months later, her disability pay and medical benefits were cut off. These benefits ended when she was in the middle of Chemotherapy treatments and another tumor was found. For a short time Ann was without any pain medicine.
Right now Ann has no income. She is using her little savings to pay $289 monthly for continued health coverage through the Hospital Workers Union 1199C.
The Jefferson PLP club is organizing workers to demand that Jefferson and 1199C continue Ann's disability benefits until she receives long-term Social Security benefits. We will hold a protest outside the hospital on Monday, December 2.
Jefferson Hospital made a profit of $19,408,700 in 1995 alone from the labor of Ann and thousands of other workers. That profit went to the bankers and insurance executives who control Jefferson. This contradiction between the many Jefferson workers who make the health care "product" and the few capitalists who take the profits is the basis of all capitalist industry. Ann is in the same boat as Ford workers in Mexico who cannot afford to buy the cars they make.
This same contradiction drives capitalism ever deeper into fascism. Jefferson bosses cannot rest with $19 million a year. The greater the crisis, the greater their need to compete for maximum profits by constantly squeezing the working class to lower the cost of production. Unemployment rises, workers' purchasing power falls, markets shrink, and the crisis intensifies. Capitalism has way out of this crisis except mass destruction. Fascism in health care is the mass destruction of human life.
Ann joined the Progressive Labor Party years ago because she realized that communism is the only way out. She is not the only Jefferson worker this happened to, and it will happen to many more.
Philadelphia-11/3: The Allegheny Health hospital chain, is pressuring the 1199C Hospital Workers Union for wage cuts. The last "great deal" the union made for us, creating the position of Care Support Associates (CSA), to do the work of 4-6 different job classifications for less money. CSA layoffs are also rumored.
Hahnemann workers want to fight, and several hundred responded to the union's call for a demonstration on October 25. But the union leadership called for "equal suffering," and "profit sharing."
What is "equal suffering?" Does "equal suffering" mean that a few managers will be laid off along with hundreds of workers? Douglas Danforth, Vice Chairman of the Board of Allegheny Health, was also Chairman of the Board and CEO of Westinghouse Electric from 1955-88. Will this fat cat go hungry from "equal suffering"? William Penn Snyder III is Chairman of the Board of Allegheny. He was also a Director of the HJ Heinz Company and Whitney National Bank. Will his family go without because of "equal suffering"? W. Bruce Thomas is on the Board of Directors of Allegheny. He was an executive with USX (formerly US Steel) and is presently a director of Chemical Banking and Chemical Bank. Will "equal suffering" wipe out his savings?
And what about "profit sharing?" Allegheny can only profit by attacking patient care through layoffs and wage cuts. The union leaders' demand for this dirty money can only divide worker against worker against patient. Should we support patient care cuts and layoffs, because it means more "profits?" The union leaders come up with these ridiculous ideas because they accept capitalism, the source of all our suffering.
Communists don't accept workers suffering. We will do away with bosses and profits, wages and money. Communism means working together to build a society based on need. Everyone will share society's benefits and burdens. A number of Hahnemann workers read Challenge, some take papers for their friends. We must recruit them, and many more, to PLP.
At the very least, we need to strike against any layoffs or reductions in patient care. We should use the strike to build the Party and advance the fight for communism. This means all workers, union and non-union, striking and using any means, including violence, to protect the strike. We should spread the strike to other hospitals and industries, towards a general strike,
defying the bosses' injunctions and laws. The goal is not just winning the strike, but preparing the working class to overthrow capitalism.
Sosinavage ordered Spencer to raise his hands. The cops said that Spencer obeyed, but moved his hand near his belt area. Sosinavage immediately shot Spencer twice, killing him. Spencer's family later overheard the Camden cops making racist remarks at Cooper Hospital, where Spencer was pronounced dead.
The workers of Camden, most of whom are black and latin, are angry at the cops for the racist terror they spread here. Some workers said that violent racist acts such as those committed against Spencer happen all the time in Camden.
Workers in Camden welcomed the rally against racist cop terror and our line of smashing racism through revolution. We distributed 25 Challenges and several "Smash Racism" pamphlets. The residents of the neighborhood said they would support further actions protesting Spencer's killing. The Haverford PLP club is returning to Camden this Wednesday to continue the struggle.
Many students at Haverford College are also angered by the racist cop shooting of Spencer and want to get involved with us.
Communist, anti-racist actions such as these enable us to learn and teach about how to fight the bosses, why we need revolution, and how to win.
All of these "alternative uses" involve making profits for the ruling class. That's the main point of doing anything under capitalism. Even though some of this property is being held by the government it is still being developed for the money it can make. UIC can make more money by charging students to live in dorms. The Habitat Company can make millions by renting and or selling housing. Politicians get payoffs from developers for greasing the wheels of government because the main function of the government is to protect the capitalists' ability to make profits.
The needs of the workers in public housing don't mean anything to the ruling class. These workers, the majority of whom are black, are subjected to the worst capitalism has to offer. As one resident put it, "CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) would not do the repairs that were needed...It was as if they wanted the buildings to deteriorate. We marched. We held meetings...We got shit, they got sugar...one day we looked up and we we're living in hell. We had security guards that were good for nothing. We could have done better ourselves."
We think she's right. The workers can do better for themselves. The only way that that is going to happen is if they join PLP and build for communist revolution.
UIC's plan for a great city means devastating the lives of the poor to make room for the rich. It means destroying affordable housing to build quarter-million dollar townhouses and condos. Communism will meet the workers' needs for everything including housing, food, clothing, and without any consideration of profits or money. Which city will you help build?
The Times especially wants to refute the charge of CIA involvement. Everytime they deny something, they look more guilty. They show that Blandon, Menesis, and Ross (the three main figures in the Contra-Cocaine sales) weren't the only cocaine dealers in LA (no! Shock!) or even the first. They say that rock cocaine was not developed by the Nicaraguans. It was first developed by two white scientists at Cal Berkeley. (some research!) No one ever said that the Nicaraguans invented crack. The charge is that they mass marketed it through LA street gangs. The LA Times doesn't dispute this. The Times has elaborate maps showing exactly how the cocaine got to the US through routes other than Los Angeles, especialy Miami. No big news. A resonable person could ask--if they know so much about this, why didn't they stop it?
The Times quotes the head and former head of the CIA to "prove" the CIA innocent. Is the CIA leadership going to say, "Yes, we did it"? Several CIA operatives said, "we weren't allowed to look into the backgrounds of people living in the US, so we don't know if any of the people who supported the Contras were dealing drugs." (Now, there's a convincing argument. )
But glimmers of the truth come through. Jack Blum, chief investigator for a Senate panel in 1989 on charges of CIA-sanctioned drug-trafficing concluded:
"If you ask: In the process of fighting a war against the Sandinistas, did people connected with the US government open channels which allowed drug trafficers to move drugs to the United States, did they know the drug trafficers were doing it, and did they protect them from law enforcement? The answer to all those questions is yes." (Some refutation of the charges!)
The Times claims that Norvin Menesis only donated $50,000 ("tops") to the Contras through his drug dealings. But in 1986, the San Fransisco Examiner reported otherwise. Menesis headed a massive drug ring. He started dealing cocaine back in Managua where his brother was the chief of police under Somoza. Calero (head of the Contras) tried to deny knowing Menesis personally but the Examiner shows that Menesis was the main organizer of various Contra meetings in San Fransico and Los Angeles for Calero, that he met with the head of the Contras several times in Honduras, and that he was considered by other Contras to be their fundraiser in California. There were suggestions that maybe Menesis was on the DEA payroll for a time, like his drug dealing partner Blandon.
The Times article has the tone of a wounded beast who has to defend itself, its bosses and their system, at all costs. Clearly, the bosses MUST discredit this story. They've jailed so many youth, passed so many laws against crack use, had so many racist attacks on black youth, their battering rams, and so much hypocritical garbage about gangs and drugs--this story makes them look very bad. The more they try to hide their filth, the dirtier they look! They hint that black people in the US are somehow "prone" to believe "conspiracy theories". (Yeah--like the Tuskeegee experiment or LAPD Chief Darryl Gates' statement that somenthing about black men makes them die from the choke hold more often than others!) This racist slander is meant to isolate black workers from the rest of the working class. The fact is that most latin and white workers also believe that the CIA dealt drugs, and that the cops deal drugs. As one white worker put it to a PLP member, "we're all `paranoid'". Most workers hate the cops and the system they defend.
The LA Times points out that crack was around in the late 70's, but that it became a mass phenomenon in the 1980's. Neither the Mercury News nor the LA Times will link this to the massive closing of factories and huge rise in unemployment among industrial workers in general and black workers in particular, to the bosses' fear of rebellion and revolution, and to the workers' frustration with capitalism.
They won't say that the bosses' hated the youth who rebelled against Somoza in Nicaragua and feared youth in LA could do the same. Only Challenge will do that. The communist line of PLP will replace the scourge of drugs and hoplessess among the youth with a burning desire for revolution. When youth don't have a solution, the bosses can get away with murder. The most dangerous drug is anticommunism. Challenge is the antidote! Challenge is the only newspaper that represents the interests of the working class!
And neither the News nor the Times will draw the complete map. The Times drew maps of drug routes to the US. and details how the gangs distributed the crack. But where are the details about what happened to the profits, which banks laundered the dirty money, how many $billions they made? The drug trade is a trade of the enitre capitalist class--the government, banks the cops. The gangs get the smallest cut in this filthy business.
Seeing the complete map makes you realize that only a revolution aimed at destroying capitalism can eliminate the drug trade. The LA Times and the San Jose Mercury News have their differences, but niether want to spark revolutionary consciousness. That's why Challenge is so important, and why we need more communist organizers and Challenge sellers today. We have a communist revolution to make!
The polls opened at 6 a.m. and the party forces in Chicago were out at four south side train stations and a north side shopping area at 6:30. Our message was clear, "Don't Vote--Fight for Communist Revolution".
The cops were removed from their early morning Dunkin Doughnut spots and reassigned to us. Distributors of our flyer were harassed all over the city. One woman, a resident of Robert Taylor Homes was prevented from leafleting by the police under the threat of arrest!
Many workers didn't think voting would make a big change, but something had to be done. There was a lot of political struggle about whether fighting for communist revolution was possible.
The afternoon agitation was focused at our Party's concentrations. There too the ideological struggle was sharp and welcomed. 183 papers were sold at the USX steel mill and 7 new contacts were made. At Chicago State University (CSU) a small group of black nationalists defending voting, held an hour standoff with the Party. 114 C-D's were sold at the campus.
All told we distributed 13,000 leaflets, sold 780 C-D's, and made 40 contacts.
Comrades thought the day was good and we should think about planning days that are connected to other capitalist mass issues that we can counter pose with communism. However, in organizing for these events we must understand that things are sharpening. The police, an atmosphere of intimidation, and right wing students and workers will all be a force to reckon with.
"Can I get some more copies of that flyer?" was a question we heard over and over as many people wanted copies to pass on to their friends. Clearly, many workers understand that slave labor workfare exists to drive down the wages of all workers. We called on these workers, both salaried and recipients, to join PLP and help build and lead a Red Army to fight back against the bosses' attacks and explained that the battle we fight today prepare us to win communist revolution.
Under capitalism all workers are wage slaves, we must sell our labor power to capitalists in order to survive. Workfare advocates assume that welfare recipients must be forced to work under threat of denial of their meager allotments. Otherwise the argument goes a cycle of dependency will exist keeping people on welfare their entire lives. The dependency argument relies on racist and sexist myths which can be disproved by several simple facts. First, most people remain on welfare for less 3 years. Second, most have worked before being forced, by job loss or illness, to apply for assistance. Third, the vast majority 80% of welfare recipients are mothers and their children. In these cases, the mother is already working raising her children.
They don't tell us that Hitler organized the first workfare program: slave labor concentration camps to produce for the Nazi war machine. (Twenty thousand slave laborers were at the heart of Hitler's rocket program.)
Ultimately the fierce world-wide capitalist competition can only be settled as imperialist rivalry has been decided in the past - by war. Hitler, acting for the German capitalists, used fascist slave labor to rearm and prepare for world war... The US ruling class must institute fascism as a way to try to discipline the working class...Workfare slave labor is one more fascist weapon in the bosses' arsenal to prepare us for a war to save their profit system.
Workfare fascism is not a "future program in the US it's well under way. In NYC, the Dept. of Social Services lost 5,000 full-time jobs and added over 2,000 slave laborers. Certain titles are no longer filled. The bosses just hire workfare workers. Sanitation lost at least 1,500 jobs since 1993 while adding 4,000 slave laborers. The Parks Dept. dropped 760 full-time jobs but uses about 5,400 slave laborers." (The above are excerpts from the new PLP pamphlet on workfare which will be available by Dec. 1.)
In the fightback PLP members will introduce and popularize communist ideas and goals with thousands of workers and youth. Goals like the necessity to eliminate racism, fascism and war with communist revolution, to destroy the capitalist society of rich and poor and grinding exploitation by abolishing the wage system and money, and to give all power to the international working class led by its mass communist party.
Work under capitalism is slavery, exploitation, drudgery. Under communism we will work for the common well being of the working class, to meet our needs. Work will give us the opportunity to develop, to learn, to serve. It will not be useful or desirable to divide work into mental and manual, technical and non-technical, "professional" and "blue collar" categories. Therefore, work will dignify and give purpose to life.
The goal of the campaign is to mobilize our 400 members and friends to lead thousands. We can expect to greatly expand the circulation of C-D and Party membership up to and through May Day, 1997.
In NYC PLP has issued a pledge to "Stop fascist slave labor workfare" which our members, friends and Challenge-Desafío readers are using at the workplace, in the unions, among WEP (workfare) workers, among the unemployed, in the schools and universities, professional organizations and communities to organize rank and file workers and youth to join the fight, read CHALLENGE-DESAFIO and join PLP. We are sending the pledge to 1,400 1996 May Day marchers to get their help.
Our members and friends are introducing resolutions in the unions to unite union workers and WEP workers to fight Nazi workfare, modeled on the one passed by the Delegate Assembly of Local 371 of AFCSME's DC 37. (SEE BOX 2). Already we are engaging in debates and struggles with our friends and co-workers. Visits to workers' homes, study groups, dinners, CHALLENGE-DESAFIO readers groups on the job, public forums, posters and buttons: all these activities can produce new activists and communists.
The pledge calls for strikes, protests, marches, general strikes against fascist slave labor workfare. On Election Day, Nov. 5th, PLPers picketed the Transit Authority in downtown Brooklyn, chanting "Hitler rose, Hitler fell, Racist workfare, go to hell." On Nov. 7th, PLPers rallied at the Bushwick Income Maintenance Center where 80 workers are on WEP and 60 are salaried. Within an hour we sold 54 Challenges. On Nov. 18 PLPers will protest at the Public Health Association where Giuliani (Ghouliani as he's called here) will be the guest speaker. Our activity must increase and intensify.
In Dec. NYC PLP will call for a protest at City Hall in early March. This will be followed by the mass May Day march to the White House on May 3, 1997.
Can the Party organize thousands in this campaign? Can we recruit 200 new PLP members in NY-NJ by May Day 1997 and 300 more on May Day? Can we double the circulation of CHALLENGE-DESAFIO by May Day and fill the pages of the paper with stories of our fight against fascist slave labor workfare? The answer must be YES!
The stakes are high - slave labor workfare, fascism and war or communist revolution and workers power. Let everyone contribute what they can to the struggle, according to commitment. What you do counts! Expect the leadership to lead by being clear about our strategy and tactics, being mass organizers and being both persistent and patient. This process will build collective communist consciousness and responsibility to the Party and the working class.
Whereas "Welfare Reform" with its 5 year lifetime limits for receiving benefits, workfare provisions, and denial of benefits to virtually all immigrants is an attack on the working class, and
Whereas "Welfare Reform" is a method of lowering wages similar to union busting, contracting out, and two-tier wages and benefit systems, and
Whereas racist slave labor workfare is akin to the development of slave labor in Europe during the rise of fascism,
Therefore be it resolved that the position of SSEU Local 371 shall be to:
1. Publicize its opposition to "welfare reform" and particularly to workfare and its expansion.
2. To work with student, professional, community, and labor groupings to build opposition to "welfare reform" and workfare
3. To support and sponsor demonstrations against "welfare reform" and workfare.
Yet the protests raised many contradictions. Activists who had spent weeks getting people to vote were complaining their strategy failed! While anti-racist in their hearts, their heads have not yet grasped the reality. Capitalism creates racism. The capitalist State legalizes it. Affirmative Action only existed because the anti-racist ghetto rebellions of the 60s threatened the very foundations of U.S. capitalism. As city after city burned, the gutter racist Richard Nixon devised Affirmative Action as a desperate stop gap.
While last Tuesday's vote buried it in California, the truth is, it had long been toothless. What the capitalist Legislature had reluctantly passed, the `checks and balances' of the capitalist courts had already taken the bite out of. A series of court decisions like Bakke, Weber and J.A. Colson (government construction) made sure racism would not be threatened even if Affirmative Action was on the 'books.'
Little wonder, then, that there were comparatively few Black students demonstrating last Wednesday. In part this was the fault of the liberal racism within the electoral campaign which had emphasized that the Proposition mainly attacked (white) women. But in part this reflected the harsh reality of capitalist economic crisis. Fee hikes in successive years have eliminated most Black, Latin and working class students from even dreaming about college.
Yet in spite of these weaknesses, the demonstrations attracted hundreds of honest, anti-racist students who in the coming weeks will prove themselves open to the revolutionary communists message of PLP.
As communists we know that the working class does all the constructive labor in society, physical and mental. Not only is the current technology dependent on the working class to keep it going, but, furthermore, the working class, guided by the communist perspective, can create science and technology beyond what any capitalist could even dream of. Want some proof?
The next day there was another story in the news. The Pentagon, headquarters for the entire U.S. military machine, admitted that last year there were 250,000 successful attempts by outsiders to break into their secret computers, and that there may actually have been TEN times that many more break-ins which they are not even aware of! They suspect that these were carried out, not only by foreign governments but also by tens of thousands of amateurs, hackers, college students, high school age kids and who knows who else. So I guess their computers aren't all powerful after all! It reminds me of a story about how the U.S. military has satellites that are supposed to be able to take a picture of a golf ball on the ground from outer space. But if that is true, how come they couldn't figure out that Saddam Hussein was moving 150 tanks across the desert in Northern Iraq? Capitalist technology is powerful, but very limited.
The capitalist class is powerful because they are organized, but they would be powerless against the working class led by a genuine communist party. Communist theory is not based on "faith" in the future, it is based on confidence in the working class. That is why we build the PLP.
**********************************************************************
Herbert is right. If the liberal media are spilling rivers of ink over racism at Texaco, something big must be up. It is, and it has little to do with the obvious.
The real story is the ongoing fight between factions of the US ruling class over control of the oil industry. On the one hand stand the major oil companies run by the Rockefeller-dominated wing of the Eastern Establishment. On the other are domestic oil barons. Led by Exxon and Mobil, the "majors" basic strategy is to dominate the world's oil supplies by dictating the conditions under which Middle Eastern oil is obtained, shipped, refined and sold. Rockefeller & Co. want to be able to use this oil as a weapon over the European and Asian competitors.
The tycoons of the domestic "Oil Patch" have narrower interests. They don't have enough capital to try ruling the world. They just want to defend their own turf. They want tax , environmental, and other concessions that will enable them to profit from expanded drilling within the US, particularly the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) in Alaska. The Rockefeller-run Clinton White House, which happily protects polluters allied with the Eastern Establishment, has hypocritically passed all sorts of environmental regulations against oil drilling in Alaska. The fight between the two groups of oil bosses over ANWR is getting much sharper.
The Texaco "scandal" is a case in point. Texaco is an Eastern Establishment company. However, it also obeys the rule of any capitalist firm in competition with others: grab a profit when you get a chance. And the split between the two groups of oil bosses evidently has found its way into the Texaco boardroom. Caltex, a joint venture between Texaco and oil giant Chevron, recently announced a deal -- concluded months ago -- to buy Alaskan oil from British Petroleum, a non-US company. That's a slap in the face to the Rockefeller interests.
The deal lets Caltex buy oil from BP and then sell it to LG-Caltex, a South Korean company. LG-Caltex will import 10.6 million barrels of oil a year, making it Asia's largest long-term buyer of Alaskan North Slope crude oil.
Exporting from Alaska to Asia increases the likelihood of opening the state, including the ANWR bonanza, to more oil drilling -- exactly what Rockefeller & Co. don't want and what their oil patch rivals are demanding.
But this is only the secondary aspect of the problems the Texaco dealing creates. Alaska is geographically closer to South Korea than Middle Eastern countries. Shipping crude from there takes 12 days as opposed to 22-27 days from the Persian Gulf. At present, Middle Eastern suppliers provide South Korea with 70 percent of its crude demand. The Caltex deal could reduce that figure to 50 percent. In other words, Texaco is helping Korea break free of Rockefeller/Mideast oil domination.
So from Rockefeller's viewpoint, Texaco is committing treason. But the damage gets worse. One could ask why British Petroleum needed Caltex as an intermediary for its Alaskan crude sales to Korea. Well, the British imperialists don't have 35,000 troops stationed in Korea, as does the U.S. The U.S. ruling class has fought three wars in the Twentieth Century to protect and expand its Asian trade links and its hold over oil supplies to its Asian competitors. By going after its own narrow profit interests as a company, Texaco has spat in the face of the Rockefeller grand strategy for world domination, the strategy that has determined U.S. foreign policy and every U.S. military adventure in Asia and the Mideast since well before World War II.
The exposure of the Texaco executives' racism has to be interpreted in this light. Two weeks ago, Texaco's brass underwent a purge at the top. The Chief Financial Officer took early retirement, and a half-dozen heads of international departments, especially the Mideast, got leading company-wide jobs. The message is clear: the Rockefellers are reasserting their control over a prodigal child. They will not allow Texaco's operations to shift from the Middle East towards Alaska.
The campaign against Texaco racism blends in perfectly with this shake-up. The Rockefeller old-money forces are using their state power to swat down upstart rivals known for their own blatant racism. The Oil Patch billionaires, led by Koch Industries, fund openly fascist politicians like Buchanan, and also directly or indirectly bankroll the John Birch Society, the Christian Right, the KKK, and many of the neo-nazi militias. These forces are vulnerable to exposure as racists.
But the main racists are the main rulers of the US -- the Rockefellers and their allies. They own the major industries that superexploit black and hispanic workers. Their politicians, like Clinton, pass and implement slave labor welfare schemes. And their wars slaughter millions of workers internationally, all to keep the world safe for US imperialist investment.
Workers mustn't fall for Rockefeller & Co.'s dirty scheme to parade as anti-racists. Make no mistake about it. The Clinton administration and the corporations and financial houses whose bidding it does are gearing up for genocidal profit wars in both the Middle East and Asia. As the Texaco purge shows, they will brook no opposition from their Oil Patch rivals and no dissension within their own family. Conflicts among U.S. bosses are going to get sharper. They already have a bloody history. Another civil war is in the making. Communists have to be prepared to turn that war into a war for communism.
I'm in the reserves. Some people in my unit were sent to Bosnia. They saw that the people there are poor and miserable and that most blame their problems on the presence of the US and other troops there. A few of the soldiers who came back think the US is there to solve the people's problems. Most think they just had to go to Bosnia because they are in the reserves and its not helping the people there at all.
One weekend last summer Party members passed out a leaflet about Bosnia and communism outside the base, and they sold Challenge. One of my drill sergeants got a leaflet. After formation he went crazy. He said anyone who had the leaflet should give it to him immediately. He said the people who wrote the leaflet and who had ideas like this shouldn't be living in the US. Then he said, "this is a free country. Its a democracy. Communism is enslavement. We don't want that. If anyone is involved with groups like this, or racist groups like the KKK, they'll get kicked out of the army. These are illegal activities." Free country? Illegal activities? At the time, this kind of intimidated me. But thinking back on it, the interesting thing is that not one soldier turned in the leaflet, even though most of them had it. I talked with some about the leaflet.
Two drills later, 21 soldiers bought Challenge before drill from outside sellers.
When the drill sergeant says these things, it appears that people accept it, but the Challenge sale shows that they don't necessarily accept it. Every drill, I try to talk to some soldiers about politics. I'm going to push the issues with more of them and see what they think. Even though the drill sergeants talk tough, they're afraid of the soldiers. When we're training in the field and we have loaded weapons, they're much nicer to us. They don't yell as much.
Red GI
An article on the LA Times editorial page exclaimed that "Local organized labor leaders have been emulating Sweeney's political activism". It praises these leaders for "fighting" prop 209 (the anti-affirmative action initiative) and sponsoring an initiative to raise the state's minimum wage to $5.75 an hour by 1998. Does "fight" meant organizing demonstrations or strikes against racism, and striking against wage cuts? No. The Times praised the SEIU for spending $50,000 to deliver newly nationalized citizens in LA to the polls on election day and all the unions for producing 150,000 pieces of campaign literature for the election. UNITE spent half a million dollars on the initiative to raise the minimum wage. It passed. For the top bosses, this is not a problem. They're forcing more and more workers to work for the minimum. Workfare pays $2.47.
"Labor can no longer simply represent its members at the bargaining table. They must also try to influence the political debate." The union leaders are supposed to get the workers to peacefully accept cuts in our wages, layoffs, and speedup, and at the same time get us to accept the capitalist laws and voting as the way out of a situation that's becoming less and less bearable. More latino workers voted this time.
The new "activism" the article praises is a dangerous thing! As the bosses attack workers harder and harder, as they pass laws attacking welfare recipients and immigrants and blame them for the crisis, the labor leaders are telling the victims of these attacks to play by the bosses' rules, vote, and everything will be all right. The union leaders' "activism" is meant to lull the working class into pacifism. It is a deadly illusion that we can vote away the murderous effects of capitalist competition. The bosses are using the union leaders to try to get workers to go along with the dominant bosses' fascism without a fight. These "activists" are leaving a huge opening for the communist PLP which will organize workers to crush fascism with communist revolution.
The election "debates" carried in the papers and on the TV assumed minorities and immigrants were the cause of the attacks on workers. These fascist debates sparked the following argument the day after the elections at my break table.
"How do you like having to share everything with your neighbors?," said an ex-supervisor. "That's communism for ya." Now, many of my neighbors are minorities and immigrants, while some are on welfare. The point was clear.
"Yeah, that's what's wrong with this capitalist society," I shot back. "We workers have to share everything with the filthy rich bosses. Everyday, we give the better part of the value of our labor to the filthy rich capitalists."
"The top 1% of the U. S. population owns 48% of the wealth; the top 20% owns 94%," I continued. "Don't talk to me about my neighbors! My neighbors and I own less than a percent of a percent. All the immigrants and all the workers on welfare own less than a percent of a percent. You want to complain about parasites: look to where the real wealth is!"
There were nods of approval around the table and questions about how we ended up paying the bosses.
The elections spread fascist ideas, even among workers. Otherwise, this guy wouldn't have been so bold. On the other hand, the support for fascist ideology is still weak. It can be beaten if we answer quickly and decisively. .And, I think, we can win more workers to communism as the bosses' "freedom to vote" becomes more obviously a vehicle to push racism and repression.
Red aerospace worker
When Clinton abolished welfare and imposed workfare slavery on thousands of welfare recipients, many union carpenters applauded. These workers had fallen for the bosses propaganda that "lazy" welfare recipients are the cause of high taxes. Also, these workers thought that, since we're "skilled," there was no way that workfare slave labor would replace us. Well, they were wrong.
According to an article in the Chief a newspaper the bosses publish for municipal workers in New York, the NYC Parks Dept. has replaced most of its carpenters, painters, plumbers and electricians with workfare workers. Since the Parks Dept. exploits more workfare workers than any other city department--7,696 out of 28,000 workers citywide--they had found a number of unemployed construction trades people among these workers. So they created a "training program," and these "trainees" were put to work. In the process, 36 carpenters, 30 painters and numerous other Parks Dept. workers were laid off.
The response from the unions? Carpenters' union Business Agent Mike Powers and Painters' union Business Agent Stephen Melish, Jr. wrote angry letters to the Parks Dept. bosses. Union bosses Powers and Melish, in their letters, accepted the bosses enslaving 7,696 unemployed workers and even accepted the bosses laying off thousand of "unskilled" City Parks workers and seasonal parks' helpers. They only cared about their own members.
The lesson in this is that all workers must unite--"skilled" and "unskilled," high paid and low paid, to destroy workfare slave labor and wage slavery. We don't need reformist union bosses to "represent" us and bargain with our enslavers. We need a communist revolution, to destroy the bosses' dictatorship, with its war, racism and impoverishment, and replace it with a workers' dictatorship, with productive labor for all and privileges for none.
Red Carpenter
There were torrents of words from "analysts" about the election results. But as the great master put it: "Tis a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." However, a couple of significant lines appeared in a New York Times (11/8) which said a lot. The editorial was commenting on the myriad of Republican charges about questionable Democratic political fundraising. The Times in a counter-charge aimed at the Republicans said, "But there is plenty to look at on the Republican side. Consider, for example, the GOP attempts to open up public lands to drilling and mining, weaken environmental regulations and protect businesses from lawsuits. Was there any connection between those actions [pressure] and subsequent fundraising by the Republican National Committee in the oil and gas industry and other businesses?"
So, the central issue--unspoken--in the election was not about Medicare, welfare, immigration, etc. As Challenge has pointed out, there is little or no differences between the parties on these well-publicized issues. But there are sharpening differences between the multi-nationalist forces in the ruling class and the more isolationist forces. This is an ongoing struggle between business interests who rely heavily on world-wide markets, trade, resources and labor and capitalists whose markets and needs are more limited within the US.
The large native oil producers who exert more and more control over the Republican Party want to open potential, protected oil fields in Alaska and elsewhere. The Democrats, led by Clinton, want to prohibit more domestic oil drilling. They were more than happy with their Mid-East oil wells. More domestic oil would only lead to dropping the price of oil, cutting into trillions of profits.
Dole has, at best, his foot in both camps. Generally he, like Clinton, went down the line on international trade treaties like NAFTA and GATT. Big US oil producers punished Dole by running Perot to take votes away from Dole. In the same way they used Perot against Bush to punish him for his flip-flopping support of Hussein.
Both Perot and Pat Buchanan are important ruling class forces in the continuing battle between "old and new money." While Buchanan lost the primaries to Dole he initiated a bold effort to build a mass Republican base among workers. This quickly influenced Dole and Clinton to do likewise. It was Buchanan and others who pushed both Republican and Democratic platforms and actions further to the right. Ultimately these forces in the ruling class will end up in a civil war. Such a war will enable the Party to transform the bosses' civil war into a civil war for communism.
A comrade
I am a student in high school and I have been attending PLP discussions for about a year. These discussions have taught me a great deal about communism. Before, I really didn't know the truth about communism. I thought it was a bad thing that only people outside the US believed in.
In school, the teachers always compare capitalism with communism. They compare it in such a way that made communism look bad. They never say that under communism there won't be any racism, sexism or any other things like that.
I don't consider myself as a communist because I don't know everything about it. I think it is good that Challenge is here to inform the working class of all the hidden injustices.
NYC HS Student
A friend of mine at Franklin high told me, "I don't agree with that Don't Vote for Your Oppressors--Overthrow Them slogan on the back of a Challenge." "Why not?" I said. "Too many of my [black] people fought for the right to vote for me not to vote. It would be like taking their lives in vain." I learned that we can't confront this as if we have no sympathy for those struggles. Those people, our people (Asian, Latin, Black and White workers) fought hard and heroically. Many of them died for that cause. Now, it's our job to advance the struggle. "We stand on the shoulders of great people," a comrade always use to say. "No more blood spilt for chump change." It's time to stop fighting for these reforms and start fight for the real deal--communism.
We've had our chance to vote. There still is rampant police brutality, drugs on the street, hungry children dying of starvation, no jobs, etc. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and the many other people fighting to allow black people to vote in the 60's have given us the chance to make the decision many of them couldn't make. We can either choose to make the next step in the struggle and fight for something better then voting or get suckered into believing in the bosses' democracy front.
I'm sure many of the activists involved in these past struggles would be mad if they saw us voting for these two assholes--Clinton, the eliminator of welfare and Dole, the racist anti-immigration supporter. They would want us to continue the fight for power. Now, we know the only way to working class power is through armed struggle for a working class system--communism. You can't win a revolution by voting.
Franklin High Student
The Challenge (Oct. 30) article about the Cook County Hospital union delegate who quit as shop steward because she was fed up with the do-nothing union hacks was not very useful for workers and honest union delegates in similar situation. The article should have told the fed up delegate that quitting as shop steward was not enough. As a matter a fact, her quitting can be seen by many as giving up the struggle if that is all she did.
The article should had called on the delegate to continue the struggle against racist cutbacks and the hacks joining the PLP, the only way to indeed fight the racist bosses and their attacks. Otherwise, the only thing coming out of her action is the cynical "You can't fight city hall."
Never Give Up Sally
So wrote the Canadian surgeon Norman Bethune nearly fifty years ago. The communist Bethune knew it wasn't microorganisms or risky individual behaviors that primarily caused disease. It was the capitalist profit system that generated the differential burdens of disease and suffering.
Today, even the British Medical Journal writes that "what matters in determining mortality and health in a society is how evenly wealth is distributed. The more equally wealth is distributed the better the health of that society."
No wonder, then, that illness and early death are on the rise. Lester Thurow, dean of the MIT business school, documents in his recent book the "surging inequality" in income in the US. In recent years the average Fortune 500 Chief Executive Officer's pay increased to 157 times the pay of the average production worker.
The assault on public health is no less devastating to the working class. Close to fifty million people will be uninsured by 2002, primarily due to the increase in part-time workers. Managed-care companies are restrict clinicians from choosing the best medical services for their patients and from seeing patients who cannot pay. Government policies enacted by a Democratic-Republican coalition are denying public health services to immigrants.
The capitalists scramble to maximize profits and compete worldwide, and other industrial countries spend smaller percentages of their gross domestic product on health care benefits. Thus the trend to reduce public health expenditures will accelerate, whichever political party is in power. All the electoral parties represent capitalist interests.
Communist revolution will happen sooner than you think. Millions will decide they can't live under this deadly capitalist system any more. They will develop the courage and will to fight to change it. The expression of this determination is the decision to join the Progressive Labor Party and build a mass communist movement to rid the world of the scourge of capitalism
PLP collectives organize our colleagues, co-workers and classmates to resist assaults on health care. We expose and attack the racism that dumps the greatest burden of health care cuts on the backs of black, latin, and immigrant workers. We build unity of the working class across the lines of "race" and "nationality" that the capitalist system needs in order to divide and conquer for profits. Most important, we work to convince others that communism is both necessary and possible, and to win them to join our Party.
Millions have joined militant movements -- often under communist leadership -- to fight for reforms such as disability and unemployment insurance, for community health services, Medicare and Medicaid. Now many of these reforms, the so-called safety net, have been fundamentally destroyed. The needs of corporate leaders and their politicians to maximize profits are in direct contradiction to the needs of the masses for healthy conditions and accessible health care.
As Dr. Bethune told the Canadian Medical Society: "The best form of providing health protection would be to change the economic system which produces ill health. Let us take the profit out of medicine."
The Nazi Doctor Trial at Nuremberg began fifty years ago, in December 1946. This was a show trial of a handful of Nazi medical leaders. Most were either acquitted or rapidly pardoned. But nearly half of all German physicians had joined the Nazi party, more than from any other profession. Many were highly respected doctors, professors and researchers. They were not mainly influenced by force, but voluntarily embraced fascist policies. Many rose to prominent post-war positions and are still revered as great physicians.
Fascism at its worst yet was instituted by the German Nazis in 1933. The Nazi social doctrine relied on classic techniques designed to divide and conquer the working class. These included suppression of communists and of trade unions, and attacks against Jews, Catholics, Gypsies and other minorities. Nazi policy drove down workers' wages down, even down to zero in the labor camps. Attacks on public health were justified by an ideological buildup of nationalism and "master-race" theories, as well as blaming "nonproductive" elements for social problems caused by capitalism itself.
Was Nazi medicine a bizarre historical phenomenon, or will it happen again?
In Germany, before the concentration camp atrocities, came:
<- Increased doctor fees and prescription costs, cutbacks in milk for poor children, pre-hospitalization approval requirements, and increased use of ambulatory and home care
<- Health care providers trained to see duty to the nation and consideration of economic costs ahead of responsibility to patients
<- Emphasis on the genetic basis of illness and behavior replaced earlier socially-based explanations
<- Genetic arguments used to justify controls on poor and minority populations
<- Public health leaders advocated sterilization of poor, minority and genetically inferior individuals
<- Assisted suicide urged on chronically ill and institutionalized patients, viewed as burdens to society
<- Breach of confidentiality of patient records, as physicians required to provide data to government and regulatory agencies
<- Many unemployed doctors, who gladly take over the practices of displaced minority physicians
<- Naturopathic cults thrive and blame patients for their illnesses
Doesn't this sound all too familiar? Do we need to wait until the ovens are fired up to see the writing on the wall?
Leaders of the American Public Health Association, like those of other professional groups and unions, respond to the rise of fascism by telling us to beg the government for crumbs. But the source of fascism is the capitalist system itself. Fascism, with its tactics of building fear through brutal suppression, is the way capitalists exercise power in a period of domestic and international crisis. This crisis is now a permanent condition of world capitalism. Liberalism is no longer a serious option, either for the rulers or for the working class. The only alternative to fascism is communism.
Health workers can choose to participate in American fascism in destroying the public's health, or we can choose to oppose it by organizing to destroy capitalism.
Several states, including New York, are near to passing statutes making it legal for doctors to help kill their patients at the patient's request. This isn't happening just because of Kevorkian and the favorable publicity he gets. The "Right to Die" movement is a way for the capitalist system to reduce the cost of caring for workers who will no longer be productive.
Capitalism has long guaranteed workers the right to die, especially super-exploited black and immigrant workers. Hazardous working conditions, stress, drugs, alcohol and cigarettes are readily available. Preventive care, adequate housing and diet, and insurance coverage for acute and chronic illnesses are not. About 46 million workers in the US have no health insurance at all. Managed care, soon to monopolize coverage of employed workers as well as Medicaid and Medicare recipients, increasingly restricts the care available to the rest of us.
What capitalism has never allowed workers is life with dignity. As a system, capitalism is driven by the quest for maximum profits. Workers are necessary to capitalism because the exploitation of their labor is the source of all profits. But from the capitalist viewpoint, a patient who cannot be profitably employed is better off dead.
Under communism, the burden of providing care for those near the end of life will not fall only on their immediate families. It will be a collective responsibility to provide social support and pain relief, and to make difficult decisions about stopping or continuing treatment. It is hard to imagine circumstances in which workers' lives would be actively terminated in a society where care for people is the main goal.
Today the US capitalists are facing increasing worldwide competition. They need to decrease the work-force and intensify the exploitation of those who remain. Assisted suicide is a way to limit the cost of care for the terminally ill. When the value of worker's lives is so openly calculated in terms of dollars for the bosses, this is truly fascism in health care.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Nazi physicians gradually led the German public to accept the notion of "life not worth living." Doctors killed thousands of mentally or congenitally ill adults and children even before the death camps opened. When the Nazis invaded Holland, Dutch doctors refused en masse to sign a Nazi decree of allegiance to the state. One hundred of them died for this, but no euthanasia occurred in Holland during World War II.
It seems that Dutch doctors now are more trusting of their government. They do not question why adequate resources for pain relief, psychological care, and family support are not present. In the US, resources for health care are less and disparities between rich and poor are greater than in Holland. American physicians who trust in the capitalists' government and their system, and who do not question the reasons behind patients' desperation, could unwittingly be leading the way down a similar slippery slope.
Now workers hold power nowhere, and concessions won in past struggles are disappearing fast. Cook County Hospital is being "downsized" even as the tuberculosis epidemic grows, stress-related diseases like high blood pressure and stroke are on the rise, and tens of thousands of Chicagoans lose health benefits. The liberal, Democratic and black-led Cook County Board has announced plans to cut 100 beds this year, then another 50 annually until the hospital is down to 464 beds. They say they'll build a new facility that size. The cuts are easy to believe -- they've already begun. But a new hospital? "I'll believe it when I see it," one worker said.
Chicagoans who can no longer get care at County Hospital are among the millions of workers experiencing illness, pain and early death brought on by the "new world order" of global competition. Capitalism offers no remedy for this health care crisis other than "managed care": more management, less care.
This deadly system exists only for the purpose of accumulating profit (capital). It cannot be reformed. It must be destroyed. The vast mass of the population, the working class, must take control of the means of production (factories, mines, land, hospitals) through armed revolution. We need to prepare now to build a new system based on producing and sharing what we need: communism.
The pipe dream is that unions or liberal politicians will somehow save the day. Unions can't afford to attack capitalism. They only exist to negotiate the terms of labor's exploitation. Destroying capitalism would put them out of business and destroy the leaders' privileged positions.
At Cook County Hospital, the unions don't even offer token resistance to cuts. Two comrades in Local 73, SEIU, who are stewards and members of the negotiating committee, repeatedly attacked the union hierarchy's complicity with capitalism during recent contract negotiations. After the union big wigs accepted massive layoffs for a few pennies' raise, the chief steward resigned her post of many years. She said, "I can't live with myself and stay a chief steward for the union." Our comrades then sold 50 Challenges at a shop stewards' meeting.
Thousands chose to work in public hospitals -- despite the difficulties -- because the patients who use these facilities are clearly in great need. Now hospital workers and patients alike are under increasing attack. The patients' needs? "Not our problem," the administrators say, and they drum this fascist idea into the heads of the new staff.
The only system that can meet the needs of the workers, in sickness and in health, is communism.
But the socialist system of producing capital ended up producing capitalists, even if they belonged to a "communist" party. These parties therefore turned themselves into a new capitalist class. We see the tragic results today in China, eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union.
That's why the PLP today fights for communism, not for socialism.
The cops had to come out with something to make themselves look good and discredit those who fight racist police terror and cutbacks. They used the excuse of a child being abused by a group in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and raided it finding hidden weapons and a so-called leftwing political cult.
The mass media played their role, givimg a lot of publicity to the presence of this "cult." Newsday even claimed that they are linked to our group, the communist Progressive Labor Party. THIS IS A LIE. Real communists are not landlords who own buildings and harrass tenants.
Now with the "cult" finding in Crown Heights, the bosses, and their press, are trying to confuse people. They are trying to hide who are the big terrorists against workers and youth: racist cops who murder workers and youth from St. Petersburg to Flatbush, Clinton, Giuliani, Pataki, etc. who close down hospitals and force tens of thousands onto slave labor programs like workfare, the school officials who have turned schools into prisons.
The PLP has been active in communities like Crown Heights for many years.We've led campaigns against all these attacks. We openly sell thousands of our newspaper Challenge-Desafío. We don't hide our politics and our goals: building a mass communist movement that will end capitalism and its racist anti-working class system of exploitation. We aim to build a society without wage slavery, without racist terror and where productions will not be for the profits of a few bosses, but for the needs of the vast majority of people.
So they spread anti-communism. They spread lies about bizarre cults and ïndoctrinating youth. Don't be fooled by our real enemies - Guliani, Crew, the NYPD and the capitalist ruling class. Join the fight for communism.
Issued by Progressive Labor Party
and its newspaper Challenge-Desafío
(1 212 255 3959, + GPO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202