NEW YORK CITY, Jan. 8 - Over 30,000 building and maintenance workers are striking in a fight for their lives against the multi-billion dollar real estate bosses. These bosses, through their ownership of 1,000 commercial buildings, are able to steal millions in profits from the labor of these workers. After all, where do these bosses' profits come from? From the value produced by these workers, as with all productive workers. Without these workers, there would be no profits for these bosses.
Not content with what they are already stealing, these bosses want a two-tier wage system, cutting wages and benefits of newly-hired workers by $350 a week! These new workers would not reach the current wage scale for six years. This would put tens of millions of more profits into the bosses' pockets. It would become the incentive for every building owner to get rid of as many regular scale workers as possible, replacing them with new workers at half the pay and less benefits. Workers who moved from one owner to another would see their wages take a nose dive. What robbery!
The Local 32B workers' struggle is part of a larger picture. All the bosses - the whole ruling class - are aiming to lower the wages of the entire working class and lay off as many as possible, speeding up the remaining workers. U.S. bosses are locked in a fierce global struggle with bosses in other parts of the world. They are driven to save their profit system on the backs of workers everywhere. AT&T just ordered layoffs of 40,000 white collar workers who thought they had "jobs for life." No worker is exempt from the bosses' axe. Farmland Dairy strikers in N.J. are fighting a three-tier wage system!
The bosses are trying to divide the strikers - "blue collar" workers - from those who work in the offices of these buildings - "white collar" workers. In fact, they are demanding that the office workers scab and perform part of the strikers' jobs to keep the buildings running to help the bosses break the strike. They want both groups of workers to look at each other as "different." But essentially, all workers are the same. We all are wage slaves. We all must try to make ends meet, pay bills, support our families. And we're all being screwed by our bosses.
The bosses and their media paint a picture of a janitor or cleaning person as a "lowly" job that "anyone can do." This becomes just another justification to slash these workers' wages. The fact is, these buildings could not operate very long if nobody cleaned, repaired and fixed them, and yes, "threw out the garbage." In fact, these workers are absolutely vital to the operation of these buildings, as many of the office workers are finding out. And the bosses know this, too.
NEW YORK CITY - A great part of the Northeast and part of the South of the U.S. was paralyzed by the "Blizzard of '96." The capitalist rulers again showed that when it comes to serving workers, their system sucks. The federal, state and municipal services were at a standstill because of the snow.
But one thing Mother Nature can't stop is the bosses' scabbing. As soon as the snow came down, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani warned Local 32B striking maintenance workers that if they interfered with snow clean-up in front of commercial buildings, they would be arrested. Giuliani said police will be posted outside the 1,000 affected buildings to make sure there are no "problems."
Even before the snowfall, the State showed which side it is on. On Fri., Jan. 5, a Federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring strikers at the World Trade Center from tossing eggs, garbage cans, blocking exit ramps or protesting. Thirty-four strikers have been arrested for anti-scab actions.
A strike means that no one is allowed to cross the picket lines. These workers have to defend their jobs from the low-life scabs. But this is capitalism in 1996; scabbing and all aspects of fascism are on the rise.
The work of all workers is important. As workers, we are all equal, or should be. If there were no bosses around to exploit us, if workers ran the show, we would be the ones to decide how all value we produce should be distributed. None of it would go to bosses who steal most of this value in the form of their profits. Under such a worker-run system, we wouldn't need wages or a wage system. There would be jobs for all and we would distribute the value we produce to each according to need.
That's communism! A "dirty word"? Yes, to bosses who want their two-tier wage-cutting systems, higher profits, racism to set one group of workers against another, and who use our youth in imperialist war adventures around the world to kill other workers to protect their global profit efforts. All this adds up to fascism at home - mass unemployment, millions in poverty and homelessness, racist cops who brutalize all workers, especially non-white workers, malnourished children who attend schools that are falling apart.
We, the working class, don't need that kind of misery and exploitation. We need power over our own lives. That's communism.
It is in the interests of the entire working class to back these strikers all the way, especially on their picket lines. No worker should cross those lines! Solidarity is one of our most important weapons. Raise money and support resolutions in our shops and unions. Join the strikers' picket lines to help them shut it tight! Fight for workers' power!
AT&T, the telecommunications giant, will eliminate 40,000 jobs, 13% of their workforce, over the next three years. They have already wiped out 100,000 jobs during the past 12 years. AT&T's profits are soaring, about $6 billion last year. When the news of the job cuts hit Wall St., AT&T stock jumped higher!
The cuts are mainly the result of automation, technological advances in the industry. They come as AT&T prepares for increased competition from regional Baby Bells (which split off from AT&T in the 1980's), for the long distance market. AT&T will also enter the market for local calls. Workers are always the casualties when the bosses fight over markets.
The latest 40,000 bodies to be tossed on the scrap heap of capitalism are relatively well paid, mostly white collar workers, and largely college educated. They have "played by all the rules." They believed that working for AT&T offered security for their families, their futures, and their retirements. They believed that the "American dream" was for them. However, that dream has turned into a nightmare. Especially for their children who hoped to follow their parents into middle class security.
When these workers get to the unemployment office, they will find themselves on line behind hundreds of thousands of others with similar degrees and skills. They will also be behind millions of workers tossed on the streets from steel mills, auto plants, and aerospace factories, from state and city offices, from schools and hospitals. All of these workers are frightfully closer to the millions of homeless than they ever dreamed possible.
Most will never again work in jobs that pay as much money, have as much job security, or the same stature in society. Many older workers will never find jobs again.
The elimination of these jobs are just the middle of a huge cutback of workers in telecommunications. There are predictions that the industry will layoff an additional 100,000 jobs in the next five years. No job is secure under the chaos of capitalism, a system that destroys life to maximize profits. Such a system must be destroyed. The crisis stricken bosses ruthlessly slash wages, jobs, and benefits, while increasing productivity, all to beat the competition.
If there is going to be a war for telecommunications markets, the only sure thing is that before it's over, hundreds of thousands more will be tossed on the scrap heap. The law of capitalism is "expand or die." With few new markets, the bosses must fight over existing ones. The strong eat the weak. The consolidation of capital into fewer and fewer hands is one sure sign of developing U.S. fascism. And as these battles for markets are carried out on an international scale, they inevitably lead to world war. In either case, the pile of bodies grows.
Communism is the only system that makes sense for the international working class. When our class seizes power, and we control all of society, there will be no competition for profit. There will be no bosses, no profits, no money. We will provide for the needs of our class. Technological advances will benefit all of us, providing more time to study, learn, and advance the revolutionary movement. The sooner we put capitalism on the scrap heap, the better off we will be.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador, Jan. 7 - "Other demonstrations of democracy are fine with me, but I don't agree with taking over the cathedral...this is an extremely grave offense to God." said the archbishop of El Salvador, Fernando Sáenz, to hundreds of public employees who since Thursday, Jan. 4, occupied the cathedral. Sáenz, ardent servant of capitalism, says that there is democracy for workers--but not in his church.
The occupation of the cathedral was to demand that the fascist government of Calderon Sol rehire the 15,000 workers fired at the beginning of January. The firings are based on the new law of Economic Compensation, democratically approved by the government in October 1995.
Ten of these workers who took over the cathedral started a hunger strike on the same day. This was organized by the union leaders who are pushing passivity among the workers, making them think that this hunger strike will either persuade the bosses or "morally" expose them and make them give in to their demands. These are the same fascist bosses who have been killing thousands of workers with starvation and repression.
These attacks of unemployment, poverty, repression, imperialist wars, must be answered by organizing PLP in a mass way and spreading communist ideas of social equality among millions of workers from El Salvador to New York, from Colombia to India.
Since the beginning of class society, the ruling class has forced the workers to suffer hunger! We don't need to put ourselves on a hunger strike. We need to take power and force the bosses to die of hunger.
The economic crisis of capitalism in El Salvador and around the world is forcing the bosses into bloodthirsty competition for markets and profits. A hunger strike, a building take over, a demonstration, won't make the bosses change their plans of squeezing the last drop of blood and sweat they can from the workers. These actions only maintain the illusion that the capitalist system can be reformed or "democratized". But this system has never served the workers' interests.
Bourgeois democracy doesn't help workers. In a communist society, under the dictatorship of the workers, there won't be bosses or bloody profits, and the workers' needs will be primary. These will be guaranteed by a mass PLP, based on the slogan, "Each will work according to his/her commitment, each will receive according to his/her needs". The fight for communist revolution and to build a society of equality is the only alternative we workers have. Join PLP.
CHICAGO, IL., Jan. 9 - Leaky roofs; broken windows; lead paint; filthy bathrooms with sinks that don't work and stalls without doors; athletic fields that are little more than vacant lots; cafeterias that couldn't pass a health inspection; children getting lunches in the hallway because two classes have to meet in the cafeteria - no wonder that Chicago public school students are angry. Even their most basic material needs are not being met. And their need to develop to their fullest human potential? No way, under the capitalist dictatorship we call democracy.
Most of the 550 public schools in Chicago are overcrowded or falling apart - or both. The Board of Education estimates that it would cost $1.9 billion to fix them all up and build extra classrooms. But the Board is only planning to spend $784 million over the next five years. That means - using their own numbers - that more than half the schools will still be overcrowded and falling apart at the end of the century.
So the Board of Education holds public hearings. People from the different schools are supposed to come and stand up on their hind legs and beg. Each school wants to be put at the top of the list.
Nobody is supposed to ask why Chicago is only planning to fix 40% of the schools. They wouldn't build 40% of a domed stadium or a convention center or a bank. Nobody is supposed to question the Board's right to make decisions that affect the lives of thousands of students and their families.
If the Board of Education really wanted to put "children first" (its slogan) they would make the banks wait for their interest payments on outstanding loans. Instead they make children wait for leaky roofs to be fixed. But the Board can't put workers' children first. The Board plans to get the $780 million by borrowing more money from the banks. If they did put children first, there would no interest payments, no more loans. But, under capitalism the banks come first.
"We can't vote. That's why they do whatever they want," a student remarked. But nobody voted for the bankers - nobody but their stockholders.
"They're rich themselves, so they don't care about us," said an angry student. True. But even the bankers can't change the ground rules of their own game. If they don't maximize profits, they'll soon be out of the banking business - and some other bankers will rule. So the capitalist system, from the principal to the top bankers, is actually a class dictatorship. This system maintains capitalist profits at the expense of working class needs.
In school they teach you that America is a democracy. Their democracy is really a dictatorship. Teachers tell students what to do - and with most of them you'd better not argue, or even try to explain. The principal tells the school workers, the teachers, and the students what to do. The Board of Education tells the principals what to do. And the banks tell the Board of Education what to do.
That's democracy for you.
The main job of the police is to terrorize workers. The bosses use them especially against black and latin workers and youth who are oppressed most by capitalism. The cop's job is to keep these super-oppressed workers from being the most militant fighters against the bosses. Racism goes with the uniform! But some cops qualify for the Mark Fuhrman Award because of their exceptional racism and brutality.
This week's Mark Fuhrman Award goes to the LAPD for their attack on a hip hop club in Leimert Park. This area located near Crenshaw and Vernon in South Central LA has attracted people of all races despite the media's racist lies about South Central residents.
The bosses have taken notice of this area where youth from all parts of the city have been coming to share music and fun. The bosses are using the police to increase racial tension in the area. The riot police showed up last week at the hip hop club to close it down due to "overcrowding." There were undercover cops planted in this club to view the scene. At first the police started shoving the attendees onto the street. When they didn't move fast enough for the racist police, they began to beat the youth with their billy clubs - especially the young black women. The other youths who were there started picking up chairs, rocks, and bottles to stop the police from hurting their friends.
The Leimert Park area didn't get the attention of the bosses and the police until it started attracting Angelenos of all groups. This and other such actions are used to divide and terrorize the working class. But these actions also add fuel to the hatred many people feel against this dying racist system. We cannot allow the nationalist spokespersons of the bosses to use this and other racist incidents to build segregation. PLP must continue to fight racism and build unity among all workers to terminate this racist system.The bosses are right to fear a united working class! Lets make their worst fears come true.
Do you know a racist cop who deserves a Mark Fuhrman Award? Send his or her name and description to this newspaper. If there have been protests against this racist cop, let us know about that, too.
The PLP organizes for communist revolution to put the working class in charge. Under communism, Red-led workers' militias and the communist Red army will terrorize and suppress the racists and wanna-be exploiters. There will be no racist cops under communism.
Don't let the cops get away with racist murder. Organize, organize, organize!
Dear Challenge:
I work for a salary (wage). I rent out 8 hours of my time every day. They pay me a wage that keeps me alive and ready to go back to work the next day. I can't afford the luxury of not going to work one day because the boss would take away one day's pay, which I need to pay rent, food, gas for the car, etc. etc. Sometimes I feel like a dog tied to a leash that only lets me go where the boss wants. I'm a wage slave.
For 20 years I've been a wage slave. In my latest job, I assemble boxes, all day I do the same thing. I've been doing it for 8 years. Sometimes I ask myself if I'll be here for the rest of my life. That's when I feel like a dog on a leash.
A few years ago the factory didn't produce so much. Everything was slower. We had time to talk. I remember then that one of the bosses passed us and smiled at us in a strange way. Now I understand that his smile was a warning, "You'll see!" And now the factory has greatly improved its production techniques. Now we produce so much that we're busy producing every minute that they pay us. Now there is time only to say two things to our co-workers: "Good morning", and "See you tomorrow."
My work is so bad that the most important thing to me is the clock. I constantly look at the clock! The clock moves very slowly when I'm working, and very fast during my break. And don't ask me anything about how our work is planned, because I don't know. The bosses decide everything: what time we come to work, what time we leave, how much they pay us, what changes are coming in the factory, how we should do the work, etc. I am only here to follow orders.
But I do know some things: every year the factory improves production and this means that I barely have time to breathe. I also know that every year the boss gets richer and we continue to be poor and even worse off than before.
My life begins when I leave work. I enjoy being with my wife, with my children, with my friends. I enjoy organizing the Progressive Labor Party. When my friends see me selling Challenge-Desafío or doing other work to organize the Party, they ask me, "Aren't you tired?" "Yes", I answer, "but I like doing this work."
Sometimes I start to write something. My goal is to be creative in writing a message to the workers, something that touches their hearts, something that helps them embrace the fight for communism. Then I don't feel the hours pass. Fatigue comes more like something delicious. It is satisfying to be concentrating on producing something useful, something I want to do, something the workers need. Of course, I'm never satisfied. I always think that the next time I'll do it better.
Under communism, all production will be organized and carried out without any wages to imprison us. We will all work knowing that the product of our work will be enjoyed equally by all the workers. Our goal won't be individual but collective: how to produce more food for all, how to guarantee the health of all, how to build better homes for all, etc., etc. We won't be wage slaves anymore!
Red worker
Dear Challenge:
Students gathered in Chicago the weekend of Jan 6 to plan actions to build communism in their high schools and colleges. One of the questions discussed was: How do we give our friends a vision of what communism is going to be like? My answer is: Attend a PLP conference.
Communism is workers coming together and struggling with each other to make decisions and plans based on the needs of the working class. A key aspect is the making of decisions using the practical knowledge and thought of the collective based on their own experiences. That means 10 or 20 minds working together towards the same goal, so we are able to make much more informed, scientific, and objective decisions.
In the case of this conference, students gave reports on their activities. We asked both political and strategic questions that while were specific to the particular student, could also be applied to the other students' situations.
One of the main issues at the conference was whether we as communists should build a Spring Offensive Against Racism (SOAR) or a Spring Offensive for Communism. Using the reports from the previous semester, we came to the conclusion that at different schools, different strategies would be most effective, depending on the situation. At schools where there are other mass organizations that will build for a SOAR, the PLP'ers will support that by putting forward that the only way to fight racism is by smashing capitalism and building communism. At schools where there are no mass organizations that will build a SOAR, PL students will build only for a Spring Offensive for Communism.
No matter what situation we are in, we now understand more clearly that we must be sharper in putting forward that the only way to get rid of tuition hikes, budget cuts, affirmative action, and racism, we must smash the system. Our plan for the spring is to build a mass day of action, and to be pushing communism all the way.
With the help of the collective, we came away with a clearer understanding that in order to build PLP, we have to act as communists, and that means carrying out the plan that was decided on as a collective. In doing that, we are able to demonstrate to our friends that communism serves us in a way that capitalism never can.
Red Student
I understand that it's our job as Party members to bring communist ideas to the workers and I don't mean to sound idealistic or romantic. But like many Challenge-Desafío readers, I get awful tired of hearing how racism, sexism, and selfishness are "human nature." Sometimes the workers around us show their wonderful unity and collectivity, and dammit, it should be noticed!
Tuesday evening I came home from work tired as hell. The "Blizzard of '96" dropped 30" of snow on Philadelphia and getting to work is an ordeal in itself. Working class neighborhoods like mine naturally don't get plowed. Things are so bad that the Mayor went on TV saying that streets like mine won't be plowed. Our street had four foot drifts, so I figured I wouldn't be using my car for the next three weeks at least.
However, when I rounded the corner to my street on my way home, I was stunned! My street had miraculously been plowed! Then I noticed thirty people in the street in the middle of the block laughing and joking and shoveling snow like they were possessed. It was the neighbors in our Block Club. Black and white, young and old, men and women, they all pitched in to clean our street.
As tired as I was, I suddenly felt full of energy. The camaraderie was infectious! Just hearing the mixture of different accents from the U.S., the Caribbean, Italy, and other places, was incredible. There were struggles with other neighbors to join us. Some of these struggles were successful and some weren't. But nothing, not even the beginning of yet another snowfall, could dampen our spirits.
We completed our street around pm. Our block captain gave a nice speech on the power of unity, and then for some reason a spontaneous line dance started in the middle of the street. As we walked to our homes after the dance, one of my neighbors who has read Challenge said to me, "Well, this evening was certainly in line with your philosophy wasn't it?" "It sure was," I answered, "It's just a little taste of what we can do!" Fight for communism!
Philly Red
Dear Challenge:
The blizzard of '96 stranded some East Coast PLP'ers in Chicago, and made me think about snow, capitalism and communism.
Blizzards, like earthquakes and hurricanes, are currently beyond people's control . But they are not beyond human response and preparation. The relationship between humans and the rest of nature is at the heart of all societies; "natural" crises highlight many of the contradictions inherent in capitalism. Technologically, humanity can deal with snow. There's snow removers, bulldozers, and 4-wheel drive vehicles aplenty to handle the biggest blizzard in the U.S., but using this technology depends, like everything else, on extracting profits from workers.
The bosses often can't negotiate the deal fast enough to really get things under control. You want to use my equipment? Pay through the nose or forget it, say the capitalist bulldozer owners. So folks can't get to work or school, airports close, and planes get put in hangars instead of the air. This goes on for days instead of hours. And how do bosses treat the workers who get snowed in? Most of them get docked or are forced to take their paltry few vacation days.
Communism will be so different! The PLP will organize workers to pool all of their equipment and personnel to get things moving again. No profit calculation will be involved, just the needs of the people. Just like a guy in Washington, DC who decided to use his own snowblower to clear off a pedestrian pathway when the town said the county should do it and vice versa, and neither did it. Instead of relying on a guy spontaneously deciding to do the right thing, communist society will have made it second nature for everyone to join in emergency clean-up efforts, and the communist party leadership will coordinate such an effort through its complete integration in the population.
Whatever delays or closings happen (after all, there are limits to human control of nature at this stage of history), there won't be foreclosure threats, hunger, or insecurity coming as a result of missing a paycheck. Workers could enjoy the unexpected holiday and celebrate their collective power in society with the confidence that the producers - the working class which will be ruling society under the leadership of its communist party - will make sure that all needs of all workers are met.
Meanwhile, a bunch of the stranded students, while waiting for the airports to re-open, made it out to the University of Illinois and sold many Challenge-Desafíos to other students, so maybe the capitalists' inept response to the blizzard helped us build the movement to bury them - under more than two feet of snow!
Red east coast strandee
Dear Challenge:
Revolutionary greeting to you all. I am a Marxist activist from Bangladesh, presently living in Japan.
Back in Bangladesh, I was jailed and tortured for my political activities.
Recently I saw your publication, Challenge, in Japanese. My Japanese is too poor to have understood all the articles, I was able to comprehend some of them.
I am very much interested in your politics. I would like to get your publications and documents for futher study. I am looking for your material on the following topics: Mao's China and present-day China; The destruction of the Soviet Union; Disarmament; Trotskyism; any literature in Bengali; and black liberation.
It would be a great pleasure and fruitful to me, if you included my name on your mailing list.
All the best in your activities,
Fraternally, a Bangladeshi in Japan
Jack Anderson's column in The Washington Post (12/14/95) exemplifies why the only solution for the working class is communist revolution and the destruction of the wage system.
The Republicans and Democrats are engaged in budget negotiations; the real debate is how deep the cuts will be. The partial government shutdown provides a glimpse of the future. There is no question that the working class will suffer. Many programs and services will be cut while our taxes go up and our wages fall.
Anderson's column discusses a little-known $300 million program called the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit (TJTC). The program was meant to give companies incentives to hire working class "at risk" youth, in entry level jobs. Minimum-wage companies such as McDonald's, Taco Bell, and Southland Corp. (7-Eleven) were the major benefactors. For each youth hired, the company would get a tax credit to subsidize their wages. This reduces the company's labor cost to less than the minimum wage.
In 1993, the Labor Dept. auditors reviewed the TJTC and discovered that 92% of the workers hired under this program would have been hired anyway. This means that more than $2.5 million went directly into the bosses' pockets. This publicity forced Congress to eliminate the program in 1995.
The media has worked hard to convince workers that it is in their best interests to tighten their belts, so that Congress can achieve a balanced budget. Politicians have been whining about how Congress is being forced to cut back programs to balance the budget. One would think that programs such as TJTC are the perfect candidates since cutting them would not hurt workers. Wrong! Remember, we live under capitalism where the bosses' profits come first and directly from exploiting the working class.
Anderson revealed that the TJTC is back in the Labor Dept.'s 1996 budget, at the insistence of liberal Congressman Charles Rangel. Naturally, the Republicrats supported the reinstatement because 900 corporations signed a letter of support sent to all politicians. Congress tried to hide this by renaming TJTC as the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. What a joke, calling minimum wage, dead end jobs at McDonald's a "work opportunity."
All this talk about,sacrifice is directed at the workers, not the bosses. After all, the very purpose of Congress is to serve the bosses' interests, which is-why TJTC came back as the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. The working class cannot rely on capitalism or any politicians. We need a communist society where there is no wage system and no bosses, and all balancing is done by workers.
Red observer
Dear Challenge:
The article on the PLP rally in Harlem in Challenge-Desafío (1/10) contained the sentence, "However having more black-owned businesses will not change the fact that workers will be buying back what they produced for more than what they were paid to produce it."
Although this is relatively true, it gives the impression that even though workers are exploited, they can still buy what they produce. This idea misses the more important contradiction between labor and capitalism. The fact that workers are paid progressively less that the value they produce (the capitalists' need for higher profits) means that workers can never buy back what they produce. This basic fact is the reason behind the periodic capitalist crises of overproduction, worldwide unemployment, the competition for markets, and the resulting wars to wipe out the competition.
I would like to congratulate the writers of recent Challenge-Desafío articles who are relating communist politics to their struggles on the job and to the topics they write about - we can all learn from them. I believe that PLP will be built by communist practice and stressing communist ideas such as: work and health care as communist rights, the end of wages, profits and money, where racism and sexism come from, egalitarianism, and the dictatorship of the working class, etc.
NYC comrade
Dear Challenge:
I would like to comment on the article in Challenge about NYC teachers rejecting the UFT contract I thought it was very weak in two areas:
In the first place, it failed to explicitly make the point that white workers (the majority of teachers) are eventually hurt by their failure to confront racism (in this case the planned deterioration of the NYC schools, populated mostly by black and latin students). There was no way that the bourgeoisie could succeed in cutting $2.5 billion from the school budget over the last few years and not have teachers affected. The article didn't make this point, which would make fighting racism more than just something morally good to do.
But, worst of all, the article had absolutely no suggestions as to what teachers should do in the current situation. Does the Party not have a strategy for how to work in the union, or is the strategy only to call for communist revolution? What about calling for committees of city worker to propagandize against accepting the contract?
Voting is being conducted now and teachers are in an excellent position to reach people from D.C. 37 unions who work in their schools, who are the parents of their students, and who often work in buildings nearby the schools. What about calling for a mass rally of city unions at City Hall against the contract and deteriorating conditions? What about calling for job actions against the contract, and finally, what about calling for a general strike of all city unions? The UFT leaders used to say that only communists called for general strikes - there's some truth to that.
Personally, I think some of the teacher work is still affected by the ludicrous notion that fighting for reforms in the schools - better pay, smaller class size, better facilities, more services - just helps to build a better capitalist propaganda machine. There's so much wrong with this idea, it's hard to know where to begin. For one, the lousy conditions in the schools is an ideological message itself - it tells students they're not worth spending money on, that their education doesn't matter because they're not going to succeed anyway. Also ideological is the lack of struggle against these conditions - it tells the students (and parents and teachers) that "nothing can be done." A mass struggle for better schools would be a context for communists to organize, pointing out that the schools will never be the way working people want them, not under capitalism.
NYC teacher
On Jan. 8, they announced a $500 million deal to build a missile defense system for their client state Israel. A day earlier, near the end of a trip through the Middle East and Europe, Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry finalized a plan to give the U.S. and Israeli's new buddy, Jordan, a supply of F-16 fighter planes. This is in addition to another $300 million worth of military equipment.
Clinton's foreign policy pea-brains are also working overtime to broker a treaty between Israel and Syria that will allow the U.S. military to police the Golan Heights.
Most significantly, on Jan. 6, Perry announced a plan to expand the already massive U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf. To the 13,000 soldiers, sailors, and marines already stationed there, Perry-Clinton intend to add a full brigade's worth of armor in Kuwait, equipment for an armored battalion in Qatar, "pre-positioned" ammunition in Oman, Marine battle gear in the Gulf, and a beefed up air presence there. (Associated Press, 1/6).
Iranian bosses are the main immediate targets of this buildup. They are the key local force hostile to U.S. imperialist oil influence, and Clinton & Co. are prepared to spill seas of workers' blood to prevent them from making separate deals with the U.S., European and Asian rivals. The big stick is clearly the order of the day. Several months ago, Clinton forced U.S. oil giant Conoco to give up a $1 billion deal in Iran, rather than make an exception to the U.S. boycott on trade with Iranian bosses. Provoking a military confrontation with Iranian rulers is one way to limit the flow of Iranian oil and to keep it off the market.
U.S. imperialism has Iran in its first line of sight, but the long-range targets are still German, French, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese bosses. Asian capitalists will need dramatically increasing quantities of Middle Eastern oil over the next two decades. German and French industry get most of their oil from the Middle East. Russian petroleum deposits are expensive to reach. The Middle East will remain the eye of the world's oil storm for the foreseeable future. And U.S. imperialists are determined to dictate the conditions under which their rivals get this oil and the prices they pay for it. This is hardly a scenario for peace.
As Challenge has pointed out several times in the past, Clinton's decision to send troops to Bosnia was at least partly influenced by the U.S. bosses' need to rule the Middle Eastern oil patch. As Jacob Heilbrunn and Michael Lind point out in a New York Times op-ed article (1/2/96), the Balkans should be viewed as "the western frontier of America's rapidly expanding sphere of influence in the Middle East."
Heilbrunn and Lind neglect to mention that this geography is based on U.S. imperialist decline. In the 1960s and 1970s, U.S. strategy in the Middle East involved a pincer approach of maintaining two heavily armed client states: Israel in the west and Iran in the east. Then all of a sudden, the U.S. Iranian puppet, the fascist Shah, got the heave-ho and was replaced by the equally fascist but anti-U.S. Ayatollahs.
U.S. bosses had to scramble around for a new plan. Its present version involves three components: desperately gambling on unreliable new clients (Arafat, King Hussein of Jordan, and possibly Assad of Syria); propping up the regimes of shaky U.S. pals (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, all of whom face internal rebellion from religious nationalist movements); and, finally, increasing the direct U.S. military role.
As Bush's Desert Genocide of 1991 proved, when push comes to shove, U.S. bosses have no real military alliances. The best they can hope for is to use their clients' territories as launching pads for imperialist aggression.
This increasing isolation will become clearer as the U.S. military commitment deepens in Bosnia. Already, the U.S.-dictated Dayton deal is beginning to fray at the seams. As we go to press, Croat and Muslim forces in Mostar are shooting at each other in defiance of the U.S. plan to split 51% of Bosnia between them. U.S. troops will get dragged into this escalating struggle, which can only sharpen the contradiction between U.S. imperialists and their German rivals.
The next oil war in the Middle East will qualitatively sharpen the conflict between U.S. bosses and every one of their competitors. Especially against the Chinese and Japanese capitalists, who are both developing long-range strategies to make their own deals for Middle Eastern oil. This is the nature of imperialism. Competition for maximum profit leads to crisis, and crisis leads to war, eventually world war. The details may change, but the essential nature of the process remains the same - as long as capitalism exists and capitalists hold state power.
Can workers do better than this murderous treadmill of boom, bust, and war? You bet we can! We have the alternative to capitalist greed and warfare. It's called communist revolution, and the seeds for it are slowly but surely ripening in our Party.
Bon debarras! That phrase means "good riddance" in French, and it sums up what workers everywhere ought to say about the recent death of France's ex-president, François Mitterrand.
Mitterrand devoted his entire life to serving France's big bosses. During the early stages of World War II, when the main wing of the French ruling class decided to let Hitler occupy the country without a fight, the young Mitterrand worked closely with the pro-Nazi Vichy government.
He did this while millions of communists in the Soviet Union and thousands of French communists were risking and sacrificing their lives to defeat the Nazi beasts. Mitterrand preferred to play it safe. Only when Hitler's defeat began to appear inevitable did he slither over to the anti-fascist side. After the war, the French bosses rewarded him by allowing him to wipe his filthy slate clean and to launch a new political career.
Miterrand called himself a "socialist." In reality, he was a Social Fascist. When the Algerian war broke out in 1954, he was Minister of the Interior, in other words, France's top cop. Since French colonialism maintained the fiction that Algeria belonged to France, Mitterrand was entrusted with leading the first wave of genocidal repression against Algeria's workers, picking up where he had left off as a Nazi collaborator.
He enjoyed a long career as an advocate of state capitalism. His masters rewarded him by allowing him to become president for two seven-year terms. Illness prevented him from finishing last term. Nonetheless, Mitterrand was a key force in France's emergence as a major industrial capitalist power in the second half of the 20th century. He helped French imperialism rake in super-profits from former colonies in north and west Africa. He broke strikes. He promoted anti-communism. When the crisis of capitalism began hitting France in earnest, he oversaw the rise of the National Front, a viciously racist anti-immigrant political party that has had the greatest electoral success of any western European political organization since Hitler.
Mitterrand was the kind of vermin that only the profit system can produce. The only regret we can have about his passing is that he died in bed, unpunished for his crimes. When the working class seizes power, it will know how to administer communist justice to his ilk. Bring back the guillotine!
NEW YORK CITY, Jan. 8 - Over 120,000 members of AFSCME D.C. 37 (American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees) are currently voting on a proposed contract with their boss, the City of New York.
As previously, reported in Challenge-Desafío, this contract would be a further step towards developing fascism. It allows the bosses to greatly increase the slave labor C-WEP welfare program, to dismantle the municipal hospital system, and to continue the shrinking of city jobs and services. The money these cuts save will be used to fill the war chests for imperialist wars as in Bosnia.
Many workers correctly doubt that the high-paid leadership of D.C. 37 (whose secret negotiations produced such a rotten contract) can be trusted to count the ratification vote honestly. This leads to many discussions about the need for greater democracy in the unions.
What is meant by "democracy" in the union is a tricky business. Communists are opposed to the type of democracy practiced in capitalist countries, which we call bourgeois democracy. It's "democracy" for the bosses but a dictatorship over the workers. This kind of "democracy," as practiced in the union, limits workers' choices and activities.
For example, in the current contract vote the "choice" is to accept or reject. The "argument" amongst the reformist union leaders is over the conditions of our exploitation. Local 1549 President Al Diop, who is paid about 10 times the average salary of the members, seems ready to steal a "yes" vote by having his Local's vote counted in-house by the leaders of D.C. 37. Meanwhile, Local 371 head Charles Ensley is organizing for a "no" vote to be counted by an independent company. But neither offers workers the real choice: fighting against the bosses' system.
Bourgeois democracy promotes elitism and individualism. Rank-and-file workers are asked only to periodically vote for leaders who then make all the important decisions for them. This promotes the idea that most of us are too dumb to know what's going on, or what's good for us. In Local 372, which includes D.C. 37's lowest-paid workers, president Charles Hughes, in charge of the union's political arm and an expert in bourgeois democracy, organized a 99% acceptance vote for the contract. Only 350 members of this 19,000-member Local voted.
Members of the Progressive Labor Party fight for a society where there are no bosses and profits, where working people run everything in the interests of the entire working class. This can only succeed if every worker becomes involved in running society and understands that it is in his or her self-interest to act for the common good. Putting self-interest above the common good becomes selfish interest - a hallmark of capitalist ideology - and would be punished.
When workers are organized based on these principles, we are better prepared to fight in the class struggle. Capitalists try to destroy working-class unity by causing divisions according to skin color, gender, place of birth, or type of occupation. Communism will do away with these divisions. As each misery caused by capitalism is both explained and fought against, then the class struggle becomes a school for communism.
OAKLAND, CA., Jan. 9 - The fate of the working class isn't written in tea leaves or in the stars. It's in the bosses' budgets - or in our own hands.
On New Year's Eve, Alameda Contra County (AC) Transit, cut 40 bus driver jobs and 240 hours per day of bus service. Drivers need jobs. Workers need mass transit. But the budget needed cuts.
The big lie of democracy is that decisions are made "by the people and for the people." But who voted to cut 40 union-scale jobs in the depressed East Bay? There's no way these cuts were made "by the people." They certainly weren't "for the people."
All the democratic elections in the world amount to hot air. The reality is that the bosses' drive for profit decides our fate. Politicians and governments today exist mainly to care for the health and welfare of big money - of capital. They hide this truth behind innocent-sounding phrases like "fiscal responsibility" or "needs of the budget."
It was the budget that cut the jobs. Next to the needs of the budget, the needs of the people - the workers - have again proved to be nothing in the bosses' eyes.
Behind the government budget crisis is the fact that U.S. capitalists need higher profits. They need to boost profits in order to compete. One way to do this is to cut corporate taxes still further. The hell with workers' needs, they say.
That's why both Gingrich and Clinton chose to cut operating subsidies for public transit. Gingrich cut $310 million where Clinton proposed cutting $210 million. Anything to balance the almighty budget.
In the Bay Area thousands protested angrily for months against proposed transit cutbacks and layoffs. But AC Transit announced major service cuts anyway. Several small lines were totally eliminated. Night and week-end service disappeared on other lines. Even some peak-hour service was cut in half, and more cuts will probably come in June.
While Willie Brown, San Francisco's mayor-elect, will spend a quarter of a million dollars on his inauguration party, the cuts are going through. Who are the people e bearing the brunt of the transit cuts? A legally blind woman who would have no choice but to start driving; a youth who saw that transit cuts will effectively enforce the racist curfew laws; the old woman who would become a weekend prisoner in her own home; the unemployed man near the top of the AC hiring list and desperate for any work. These are workers with real needs that the dictatorship of capital can never satisfy.
Let the bosses' politicians be responsible to the budget. The Progressive Labor Party is responsible to the working class. Our job is to build a revolutionary organization - now.
Join us in working to increase the political consciousness of riders and drivers. Sell this newspaper, Challenge-Desafío. Read it, subscribe to it, write for it. As workers mobilize against the next round of transit cuts, work with us amongst them to build for the communist May Day demonstration. Only communism, the dictatorship of the working class, can make it possible for the working class to translate our needs into political reality.
SPAIN, Jan. 8 - Workers of the Santa Barbara plant in La Coruña have been waging a militant struggle against the company's restructuring plan that would eliminate 189 jobs. Workers have fought the cops, blockaded highways, and tried to storm city hall, etc. Santa Barbara is a state-owned factory which manufactures weapons. The company wants to diversify into the computer-market (which means job losses), at the expense of the workers.
Many of these workers thought they had "secure" jobs producing weapons for the bosses. But in capitalism weapons, although an important commodity needed to maintain state power, they are still commodities. And like any commodity, if it can be produced by cheaper labor, workers' jobs become casualties in the class war.
On Jan. 3, several hundred workers of Galerias Preciados, a department store chain that went bankrupt and was taken over by El Corte Inglés department stores, took several union hacks as hostages in Madrid. The workers accused the union leaders of betraying them. Last August, the three unions (CCOO, UGT and Fogasa) representing the workers, signed a deal with the Ministry of Labor by which older workers close to retirement will get their pension benefits, while the rest of the workers will get hired by Cortes Inglés. So far, according to Mercedes Molinas, representing the workers, 1,841 workers have not gotten any jobs.
The few illusions that workers all over the world had about capitalism and its charade of democracy are being shattered by massive job cuts, wage cuts, etc. Militant workers like those of Galerias Preciados and Santa Barbara must realize that capitalism is nothing but a bosses' dictatorship. They must also see that the only antidote to this anti-working class dictatorship is to fight for the dictatorship of workers to wipe out all bosses and their agents (like union hacks). That is what the communist PLP fights for. Join us!
LOS ANGELES, CA., Jan 9 - "We are the ones who do the work. You don't do nothing, you just sit in your air-conditioned office," declared a worker confronting the boss of A & A Fashions, a pants factory that has 150 workers.
Last week, workers at A&A stopped working when the boss tried to lower their pay by cutting piece rates. Workers are paid a set price for work they do on each piece, from putting in zippers to sewing pockets and closing seams. Depending on how long it takes to complete the operation workers get paid at a rate of 2¢ to 20¢ per piece. Average pay comes out to about $5 an hour.
At 12:30pm, all 150 workers stopped production and sat at their machines. They refused to either go home or work until the boss agreed to restore the old piece rates.
A worker proposed to "call the ILGWU or the Labor Commission for help." One of his comrades replied, "the last time we went with 80 workers to ask for help, the Labor Commission did nothing."
Another worker told a group of friends, "Since capitalism was born 500 years ago, we have been fighting against the bosses for crumbs. If we don't organize and fight for communism we are going to be like this for another 500 years."
By 2pm the boss was getting nervous. He started offering individual workers $7, $9, even $12 an hour if they went back to work. Not one worker accepted his bribe.
The workers insisted they would stay at their machines until closing time. At 3:15pm the boss turned off the lights. The workers waited, and left together at 3:30
The work stoppage was caused by the worsening conditions of capitalism. With massive unemployment and sharper competition in LA and all over the world, the bosses are driving the piece rate down everyday. The piece rates are lower today than they were ten years ago!
The next morning some of the operations were restored to the old rate, others were not. The workers decided to go back to work. This short action may have had an affect on some people. One striker said to a friend, "We should be in control, we produce all the wealth."
The cut in piece rates at A & A was 1 cent a piece on most of the operations. After the work stoppage the boss lessened the cut on some of the jobs to 1/2 cent a piece. These cuts amounted to $30 or $40 a week.
Why should we have to fight over half a penny while the garment bosses make billions of dollars from the sale of the clothes we produce.
The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party calls on all garment workers to join us. Communist revolution and the building of a society without wages will free us from the daily struggle to make enough to stay alive.
The owner of A&A is cutting piece rates because he is competing with other manufacturers. The boss is driving down pay to keep his business going. He's able to do it because there are so many unemployed people.
It's true we can quit, but we have to work some place. So we fight to survive. But in spite of thousands of fights to get a few pennies more, our wages keep going down below what we need to live.
Capitalism steals everything we make, and all we get is a "wage" - the bare minimum the boss can get away with paying us and still keep people coming back to work. The rest of what we produce goes into the businesses of the rich, and to pay for their yachts and mansions.
As long as the wage system exists we will be slaves. Our goal is to destroy the wage system and replace it with communism. In communist society all will produce and all will share in the products of our labor.
A comment on Boston PLP member's letter in 1/10 issue. The tone of the Boston letter is hostile to many important advances made by the Russian Revolution.
And is at least, fuzzy on the facts. The letter goes back to the decline of worker's power since 1917. It is true that the PLP has made criticisms of the -initial line of the old international movement. The main point of the criticism is that as early as Marx's writing of the "Gotha Program" early communists mistakenly believed that it was not possible to go directly from capitalism to communism, but needed a transitional program called socialism.
But let's be clear, the Russian Revolution with all its weaknesses was the. most profound event of the 20th century. It led to the most significant reforms the world had ever seen. Every aspect of life in the Soviet Union was improved. The 'Soviet workers and their communist party defended the Russian Revolution with their lives. After taking power in 1917 the heroic Soviet people, the fledgling Red Army, and the communist party of Lenin and Stalin turned back and crushed massive imperialist intervention.
Under the Churchillian slogan of "strangle the baby in its cradle" the world's Capitalists hurled millions of troops, including the U.S.A., into the new Soviet state to destroy it. The communists and the Red Army rose to defeat the White Army, and capitalist intervention. But this was done at great cost. What was left of much of the country was destroyed by the world's bosses. Millions of Soviet people, Red Army forces, and communists died.
Despite their crushing defeat the capitalists never stopped their efforts to destroy the Revolution. Following the Dulles plan for encirclement and eventual invasion the Soviet Union was encircled on all sides. The world capitalists built a super-fascist state in Germany. The Germans were assigned to invade the struggling Soviet Union.
But "thieves fell out." The Germans wanted it all. and invaded the rest of Europe first. After they overran their capitalist allies the Germans turned to the Soviet union.
The Germans with the help of world imperialism had amassed the most powerful army the world had ever seen. Once again the Soviet people, their Red Army and the communist leadership, led by Josef Stalin had to repel the Nazi invasion-At the time, the New York Times military expert claimed the "Nazis would defeat the Soviets in six weeks." He was wrong! Thirty to forty million Soviet people died in the war against fascism. Millions of Red Army troops and millions of dedicated communists died in this titanic battle against fascism. Once again the Soviet people proved they were ready, willing and able to defend their new life and system against world imperialism. They proved that only communism could defeat fascism. Most of the capitalist world collapsed in the face of fascism. And the U.S. and Britain provided, at best limited rear guard, foot-dragging resistance to the Nazi onslaught.
But again a fearsome price had to be paid for Soviet anti-fascist victory. Much of the cities and countryside was destroyed. Millions lived in dire circumstances a result of World War II. The country had to be rapidly rebuilt. They had no Marshall Plan. Mass housing had to be rebuilt. The cheap housing referred to by the Boston writer, was an effort by the Soviet leadership to provide some housing for everyone. And to some extent they succeeded. Even the notorious Trotskyite Isaac Deutcher in one of his many anti-communist ravings had to write a chapter in his book called the "Miracle of Reconstruction."
As the world knows, the workers of the world had to pay for the initial and subsequent errors of the early communists. Eventually capitalist corruption inevitably followed. Of course the working class was not going to fight to defend a new capitalist state. But recent elections in Russia show that despite colossal errors the Soviet workers seem to think that an ounce of communism is better than a ton of capitalism.
Sooner or later Russians and other workers will once again realize that you can't vote communism in. Only violent revolution can succeed. By going directly to communism much of the capitalist corruption exhibited in the old and the new Russia will be eliminated.
Despite all the warts, I for one am proud to have been a member of the communist movement led by Josef Stalin and the millions that gave their blood for a new, better life. I am proud to be a member of the PLP. Our time for greater sacrifice is coming. Let's hope that I and the Boston comrade will be ready to die for communist revolution. The PLP is in a constant battle to prevent capitalist ideas from triumphing in our Party. As part of this ongoing struggle, we are attempting again to move our Party to the left. But we can never succeed unless we fully appreciate the efforts of those who practiced before us. Our Party has the serious duty of defending and carrying forward the Russian Revolution all its advances. And, we also have the obligation of casting off all its mistakes. Our Party is the "negation of the negation" of the old international communist movement.
World War II vet