Capitalism has turned this planet into a hellhole.
* Two million children have been killed in wars in the last twenty years, according to a recent United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) report. Four to five million children have been disabled. Twelve million are homeless. More than a million are orphaned or unable to locate their parents. Girls are raped and forced into prostitution.
* The bosses of the U.S., France and other imperialist nations are directly responsible for most of these deaths. For example, UN-imposed sanctions have killed over 500,000 children in Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War.
* One out of every 100 adult males in the U.S. is in prison, according to the so-called "Justice" Department. This rate is four times the rate of 20 years ago. Because of racism, seven out of every hundred black men are in prison. The U.S. is Número Uno in the world when it comes to the prison industry.
* Conditions for workers in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have gone from bad to worse since the resurgence of open market capitalism there. A few have become super-rich while poverty, mass unemployment, crime, drugs, and nationalist wars plague the daily lives of the majority.
* The rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. This is just as true today as it was in 1848, when Marx spoke of the "absolute impoverishment of the working class." In Mexico, 2.5 million workers lost their jobs in 1995. Meanwhile, former Mexican President Carlos Salinas (a Harvard graduate and member of the Wall Street Journal-Dow Jones executive board) and his brother Raul stole $$billions.
But with all these marches and strikes, workers are still on the defensive. The capitalist bosses (bourgeoisie) still hold the world in the iron grip of their vicious dictatorship against the working class. As long as they rule, there will be wars and unemployment. There will be racism and fascist terror. There will be famine and genocide.
"There are such big problems in the world. It's too complicated for me to worry about," many workers say. But with the communist politics of the Progressive Labor Party and Challenge-Desafío, workers can understand the world -- and change it.
The only alternative to capitalist hell is communist revolution. We must destroy it in a revolutionary war for workers' power. We must create a dictatorship of the working class over the bosses. We must build a new communist society from the ground up.
Communism means "from each according to commitment, to each according to need." Communism means that no one will live better or worse than anyone else, anywhere in the world. Communism means an end to the "races" and "nations" invented by capitalists to divide the working class. Communism means workers making all decisions collectively, without bosses. Communism means that workers and their children will develop their full human potential.
The PLP calls on all workers and youth who read Challenge-Desafío to help strengthen the revolutionary movement for communism. Sell this paper to thousands more readers in mass organizations such as unions, community groups, and student clubs. Organize your friends to march with the red flag of communism on May Day this year.
In this way, you too will be part of making 1996 a "Happy New Year" for the international working class.
During the first week of December, some of America's elite troops from the 82nd Airborne Division murdered two black workers in Fayetteville, N.C. These three soldiers are members of a racist skinhead group. They are the offspring of the big Nazis in Washington, DC.
The U.S. Army is the leading fascist army in the world. This army wants troops dedicated to a racist outlook. The superiors of America's finest knew about the skinhead organization in the Army. One of the killers from Ft. Bragg had a Nazi flag above his bed in the barracks. The head of the Pentagon's Judge Advocate's Office explained the Army's position by saying, "The group didn't meet the Army criteria of extremism." The Army encourages racism. The airborne privates were only arrested because they jumped the gun and killed before getting the order.
Racism and murder are U.S. specialties. The Führer, Bill Clinton, is sending troops to Bosnia. In his speech to troops at a staging area in Germany, Clinton said that the U.S. Forces are going to "whack'em." That means intense bombing of Bosnian cities that will murder thousands of workers in this "peace keeping mission."
For more than 70 years Serbs, Croats, and Muslims lived together in Yugoslavia. But, Tito, who emerged as the leader Yugoslavia during W.W.II, became the first "communist" to try free-market capitalism. Yugoslavia allied itself in the late 1940s with U.S. imperialism against the then communist government of the Soviet Union, led by Stalin. Capitalism flourished early in Yugoslavia, along with its twins: racism and nationalism.
The combination of economic crisis and nationalism created civil war. Like vultures, small time nazis built nationalist armies to grab parts of the country. Big time bosses in Europe, the U.S. and Russia started backing different sides. The result has been 250,000 murdered for capitalist profits.
There is no short cut to peace. As long as there is one capitalist class alive anywhere in the world there will be war. Workers and soldiers must smash all the capitalists and build communism, a society run by the working class, for the working class. Then we will put an end to the perversion of capitalist war. Production for the needs of people, and commitment to the working class will replace profit and racism as the base of society.
The U.S. capitalist class is sending their army to "keep a piece" of the former Yugoslavia. These money hungry bosses are sending thousands of working class troops to die and kill for their profits.
During the scramble to stay in business the murderous capitalist system shows its true nature, fascism. The faces of fascism in the U.S. are racist cutbacks, unemployment and police brutality. Politicians attack poor women of every color. Black and latin youth are jailed in droves. Cuts in welfare and health care kill children in poor neighborhoods of U.S. cities. The racist lies used to justify these attacks on workers inspired the soldiers who killed in Ft. Bragg. Racist murder here, mass murder there, that's capitalism. The U.S. capitalists can't make peace, anymore than a leopard can change its spots.
We must sabotage the bosses' war and smash these gung-ho nazis in Special Forces. Fighting to rebuild a society in Yugoslavia that breeds war and skinheads will only prolong the hell that now exists. The fight for a decent life is the fight for communist revolution.
So the workers appear to have won something. In reality, however, they haven't won very much. Capitalism still stands in France. Therefore, the conditions which the workers struck about will only continue to worsen. Capitalism created France's $65 billion budget deficit. Imperialist competition led to the idea of a single European currency, and to the budget cuts that German bosses want from all European bosses, including the French.
The profit motive caused French rulers to modernize and privatize their industries in the 1980s, and to productivity "gains" at the expense of hundreds of thousands of jobs. Capitalist greed has made official unemployment in France the highest in Europe at 12% overall and 25% for youth. Capitalist racism has meant the rise of the most powerful fascist party in Europe, France's "National Front," and to a suicidal lack of unity between French citizen and immigrant workers. Inter-imperialist rivalry has made French arms industry one of the world's leading death merchants and has brought France to the forefront of a developing scenario for major war.
The French strikes had a number of important positive aspects. They showed that working class militancy is on the rise in France, as well as the rest of Europe and elsewhere. They proved, once again, that only workers have the power to shut down a modern society. They exposed the weakness of the French bosses and their German masters.
PLP salutes the fighting spirit of the French strikers. But we don't endorse the reformist political line that led them. The answer is not to fight against budget cuts but to smash the profit system that makes them inevitable. This means fighting for communism. Most immediately, it means developing a basis to build our Party in France.
What I want to know is, what happened to the budget deficit? What happened to the fact that there's no money in the cities' budgets to pay to fix up the schools or hire teachers or janitors? What happened to the fact that public hospitals have to be closed because there's not enough money?
Gary?? Like Gary has money to throw around, while the city is crumbling and the steelworkers are losing their jobs for over a decade!
Did you know that Gary plans to force the workers to pay for the stadium if they get the contract? An income tax just for the Bears. If you make $20,000, you will spend $100 per year on the Bears stadium -- and you don't even get a ticket with that money! Of course, they can't raise taxes for schools, welfare or anything else that the workers need. According to them, people would never stand for it.
What the hell is going on? The federal government has to cut Medicare -- I guess old people should just die off to save the money -- and Baltimore has $200,000,000 to play with for a rent-free football stadium.
Liberals tear their hair at these facts. "Where are our priorities?" they ask. But in truth it's not a matter of "our" priorities. It's the bosses' priorities we're looking at. And their priority (there's really only one!) is profit. Sick old people aren't profitable enough: major league sports is -- big time.
You think the bosses aren't aware of these comparisons? They have no compassion for the working class. They're just taking a page out of Hitler's journal. He actually did kill off sick people and old people -- called them "nonproductive eaters." (When a communist in 1937 predicted that this would happen, a lot of people laughed at him.)
They know exactly what they're doing. They're making money. They're positioning themselves in the battle for high profit rates. They have to cut our wages and services to make themselves competitive with capitalists around the world, to stay top dog.
Well, we've got to wake up. How many thousand workers crowd into stadiums to watch sports? Imagine those tens of thousands of workers angrily storming the government, demanding what we need. Imagine those tens of thousands of workers realizing their unity and power as a class.
Whoa! say the bosses. Nightmare time! They'd rather we stand in line for season tickets; they'd rather we turn on the tube and tune out reality. They'd rather we get all heated up about which team plays for which city.
Now, I like sports. I watch my share, especially my high school son's basketball games. But we've got to see this stuff for what it is: profits for the bosses, and mind control for us.
I'll tell you what I want to see. I want to see the bosses' worst nightmare become reality.
The most outrageous of these attacks is the claim of fraud against tenants, who, for whatever the reasons, don't report their full income, or don't tell if a new relative or friend comes to live with them. Tenants are even threatened if one child is involved in gang activity. There are so many rules and regulations, many of them imposed by police investigators, that tenants say, "We feel like we are living in Nazi concentration camps."
Public housing for low-income workers was a reform won by workers in the middle of the Great Depression during the FDR administration when millions were striking, protesting, etc. The old Communist Party (CP) led many of those struggles. The bosses saw those reforms as a way of stopping the growth of the CP.
Unfortunately, the CP limited itself to fighting for militant reforms, instead of fighting for the destruction of capitalism. After WW II, when the U.S. bosses began the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and U.S. imperialism came out as the dominant imperialist power (most of Europe, Japan and the USSR were destroyed by the war), the old CP lost its influence in the mass movement. This happened because of its reformism and attacks by the rulers. In the last 25 years, the U.S. bosses have begun to dismantle most of the gains won by workers during the struggles of the past.
We have to learn the lessons from the past. The communist members of PLP have. We participate in the struggle of the Rosa Vista tenants to show workers that no reform won from the capitalist Kern bosses can change the nature of the beast. Only under a communist society run by workers, we can have decent housing for all workers, without rent, lousy conditions, etc. Rosa Vista tenants must show their anger at the Kern bosses joining the PLP.
Corruption affects every aspect of the government. Cops in Mexico are known as the worst criminals. Just recently, all the federal police officers in the state of Baja California were transferred because they not only protected a Caravelle jet full of drugs from the Cali Cartel of Colombia, but helped unload it from the plane.
In light of this, we must ask why the bosses' press in and out Mexico have made such a big deal about the corruption of Raul Salinas de Gortari, brother of the former President Calors. Even the FBI has joined the "investigation" of Raul's dirty millions in Swiss banks.
Many sections of the Mexican ruling class, and their partners in the U.S., are ready to dump the PRI (the party which has ruled Mexico for some 60 years). These bosses are ready to put a "cleaner" bunch of fascists in power, mainly the rightwing PAN (National Action Party), which now rules many cities and states. PAN is leading the investigations of the Salinas brothers.
The situation here cries out for a revolutionary communist. organization. PLP must show workers that to choose any side in this bosses' dogfight is to tighten the noose around our necks. PLP members must bring our communist politics to workers and youth, showing that the only way to end this capitalist hell is through a communist revolution that will get rid of all the bosses.
George Fisher of Eastman Kodak cut 14,100 jobs from 1993 to 1994 and went from a salary of $1,890,000 before the layoffs to a salary of $3,901,000 after the layoffs. Albert Dunlap of Scott Paper cut 10,500 jobs in 1994 and went from $618,000 to $3,575,000. Louis Gerstner of IBM cut 36,000 jobs in 1994 and went from $2,800,000 to $4,600,000. Michael Jordan of Westinghouse Electric cut 4,900 jobs in 1994-5 and went from $713,000 to $1,357,000,. Jordan commented, "it's not just today's purge or tomorrow's purge. Each business has to continually redefine itself to be competitive, more competitive on a go-forward basis. So people want to know when is this going to stop? The answer is: never."
Generally, you get what you pay for. Right now American CEO's are raking in millions of dollars in huge salaries and bonuses. It is so obscene that even some Japanese executives (who generally make about $1/2 million) are criticizing them.
But if you get what you pay for, why are these American executives getting so much money?
Well there are two ways for a company to make money. They can either expand their investment and produce more stuff to sell, or they can lay off workers and get the same production out of fewer workers.
The Japanese are doing the first. For the first time ever Japanese businesses invested more money last year than US businesses did.
The US is doing the second. For an example, suppose one company pays their CEO an extra $1 million for laying off 5,000 employees. Now if you figure these employees made $20,000 each last year, he saved the company $100 million. Isn't that worth a million dollar bonus?
But why isn't the US investing more? Because capitalists around the world can now produce more than they can sell and since they are in the business of selling there is a problem. Actually it is a crisis, a crisis of overproduction.
They are trying to solve their crisis by attacking the standard of living of the working class and they will continue to do so until we organize a system which is not based on selling for the profit of a few, but is based on the needs of the working class. This system, our system, is called communism. Without it, we will continue to be attacked by the capitalists. With communism, we will make our own decisions based on helping people to achieve a satisfying life, a life without exploitation.
The key provision in this contract states: "employees whose work is subcontracted will be reassigned, or retrained, for available work...." Furthermore, the union can "suggest alternatives that would allow the retention of work." Since the bosses decide what work is "available," the company can do what it wants to eliminate jobs. The union, for its part, can propose ways to cut costs (i.e. cut jobs) and/or wages. This "breakthrough" came after an 11th-hour phone call between Boeing CEO Frank Schrontz and International Association of Machinists (IAM) president George "Let's-Be-Partners With the Boss" Kourpias. Too many victories like these and we'll be lucky to find a decent job in a museum case.
To add insult to injury, this contract lasts four years instead of three. As longer contracts become the norm, we'll be forced to abandon the conventional means of struggle. More and more, we must prepare ourselves to break the law and wildcat against the contract. That's why the strike settlement included a new provision for disciplining strikers who are convicted of a penal offense. In the past, there was no company discipline for activities occurring during a strike. While paying lip service to the militancy of the strikers, the union hacks accommodated the company's attempt to intimidate those workers who see the need for mass illegal class struggle. Any attempts to discipline workers for their leadership during the strike must be met with rolling thunder!
"I think we both [Schrontz and Kourpias] agreed that when this contract is ratified and people get back to work that the healing process must begin and we have a closer relationship than...before. The union is not out to destroy the company..." said Kourpias.
The Seattle Times said it perhaps most clearly: "Ironically, the union and the company may need each other more than ever, as Boeing makes the difficult transition to...a competitive global economy." The same front-page article praises Schrontz and Kourpias for "recognizing the need for less antagonism and more cooperation."
But the interests of workers and bosses are antagonistic. The laws of capitalism demand profits, not cooperation. They demand Boeing exploit workers to get its profits. They demand Boeing lay off workers and subcontract work to low-cost labor -- just to protect those profits.
This antagonistic contradiction can only be resolved by destroying capitalism and the Boeing Corporation along with it. Then -- and only then--can we build a society based on production for need, not profit. Then -- and only then -- can we build a society based on cooperation between workers, not competition.
The name for a society based on production for need and collectivity among workers is communism. Today, subcontracting means fewer jobs and downward pressure on our wages. In a communist society, we would welcome more helping hands. We could use the extra time -- provided by the extra help -- to decide what to produce, not only how to produce it. In the competitive capitalist system, sharing our knowledge with other workers puts our jobs in jeopardy. Under communism, we will have nothing to fear from "exporting technology." Since we will not be competing with other firms to maximize profits, sharing our knowledge will only make it easier to provide for the workers' needs. Communism changes the rules, making our survival possible. The rules of capitalism -- which every reform movement must obey -- threatens our class with unemployment and impoverishment. Cooperation with capitalism kills; communist revolution means life!
(Next issue: What Workers Won During The Boeing Strike.)
The so-called Communists in Russia who won the elections last week are about as communist as Newt Gingrich. Leader Gennadi Zyuganov has nothing against capitalism. Zyuganov is the Bill Clinton of Russia. One day he is assuring businessmen that they can keep their factories and investments. The next day he is telling unemployed workers and pensioners that he won't let the International Monetary Fund and western governments push Russia around anymore. He himself said, "To be an effective politician you have to have different messages for different people."
Since the Soviet Union broke up into Russia and several different independent states life has gone from bad to worse. Workers, particularly older workers, are suffering.
Older workers, who fought the Nazis and sacrificed so much, are now trying to survive on a few pennies a month. People who once had complete, free health care are now unable to get the most basic medicines and procedures.
Alcoholism has reached new heights. Where once everyone had a place to live, the homeless now fill the streets of every major city.
Meanwhile a handful have become millionaires. Capitalists who drive fancy cars and change fur coats like other people change underwear.
Millions who once lived a relatively decent life hate the thievery of the parasitic rich. Russian workers need the Progressive Labor Party as much as anyone. Without a revolutionary outlook or Party, workers are left with voting for admitted liars as the means to fight back.
Politicians are the front men for the capitalists. They are puppets, set up to give the appearance that workers can participate in decision making. Equality and a decent life can never be voted in under capitalism. The very nature of the system is to promote a few people getting rich from the work of the majority.
One thing is certain, even though there is a certain novelty to voting in Russia, there is a mass hatred for capitalism. To get elected the politicians had to play to this hatred of the system. Those politicians who openly championed capitalism didn't do so well.
U.S. bosses sent about half their direct foreign investments to Europe in the first six months of 1995. They can't and won't turn their backs on Europe. Their need to protect this investment is bringing them into sharper conflict with German rulers.
On the face of things, U.S. and German bosses are cooperating with each other. U.S. and German money and weapons, as well as their political support enabled Croatian fascists to take the key region of Krajina away from their Serbian rivals last August. That battle killed tens of thousands of workers and turned 200,000 into refugees. This Croatian victory tipped the balance in the Balkan war and led to the U.S.-brokered Dayton-Paris deal. Backed by the big gangsters in Washington and Bonn, Croatia has emerged as an important regional power in the Balkans.
By sending troops to Bosnia, U.S. imperialists hope to create a buffer between Germany's ally Croatia in the west and Russia's pal Serbia in the east. Included in their key goals is the prevention of a united military front between the German and Russian rulers, who have developed a vast trade network over the last 25 years. The Clinton crowd's strategy is that any march from Croatia to Serbia will have to cross swords with the U.S. military.
U.S. imperialists are too weak to impose their unilateral will, but they're strong enough to remain a significant force. They seem to be aiming for a permanent ground force in or near the Balkans. It's a scenario for a lot more fighting in the not-so long run. German imperialism needs to break away from U.S. domination of Middle Eastern oil, and U.S. imperialism needs just as badly to remain in control. The irresistible force is setting its sights on the immovable object.
The new Nazis are reversing the Hitler blueprint for empire-building. Rather than expanding economically after military conquest, they want their growing armies to protect already existing economic turf. They know perfectly well that their worldwide reach is going to need lots of muscle to defend it. Last Sept., the German air force (the "Luftwaffe") flew its first missions since World War II -- over Croatia. German ground troops are already stationed in Bosnia.
More significantly, the German ruling class plans to build Europe's largest military within the next five years. Daimler-Benz and other German industrial giants have revealed plans to compete on a global scale with U.S. defense companies. And although the Germans don't officially have a nuclear arsenal, they could develop one overnight.
Even though their growth rate has slowed to 1.5% in the wake of the world economic crisis, German bosses are the dominant force in Western Europe. To bring down the value of the Deutschmark and make German exports affordable, they forced the budget-cutting scheme that led to the recent strike wave in France. These strikes and similar potential struggles in other western European countries may kill the idea of European monetary union by 1999. But with or without the "single European currency," and despite German rulers' serious troubles, German economic and political power is on the rise internationally.
Hovering in the background over the Bosnia non-settlement is the eventuality of another U.S. imperialist war for control over the Pacific. As we have often pointed out in these pages, a fourth Asian war is only a matter of time. Part of the Clinton gamble in Bosnia is the hope that stabilizing the region will allow the U.S. time to prepare a military strategy to deal with Japan and China. (China is rapidly equaling Japan as a balance of trade headache for Wall Street.) Here again, they'll come into conflict with German capital, which has huge two-way investment deals in Japan, and is knocking loudly on the door in China.
So the scene is rapidly being set for a major showdown to decide the pecking order among the world's imperialists. The main lesson for workers is that imperialism always leads to war, eventually world war, and that only communist revolution can stop this vicious circle. The seeds of World War III are present in the cynical Dayton deal, just as World War II emerged almost full-blown from the cynical Munich deal of 1938.
Communists stopped nazi fascism in World War II. Communist PLP understands that war is going to be with us as long as capitalism survives. In World War II, the old communist movement made the deadly error of uniting with one group of bosses against another. The international working class has paid a terrible price for communists to learn not to repeat that mistake. Therefore, our job now and in the future is not just to warn of war but to organize workers to smash its cause -- the profit system. The imperialists will start their war. Led by the PLP, a communist working class can finish it, and all of them.
"Yes it is, you old devil, what do you want?"
"Three of my boys went missing near...and I want to find out what happened to them."
"I think they're all dead."
"I've got one of their parents on to me about it, so I can tell them for certain that they're gone?"
"Yep, certain. You have my word. By the way. how's the family?"
"Oh not so bad. thanks. How about yours?"
"They're doing just fine, we're managing pretty well."
"Glad to hear it. By the way, now I've got you on the line, we've got about twenty bodies of yours near the front and they've been stripped bare. We slung them into a mass grave and they're stinking to high heaven. Any chance of you coming to pick them up because they really are becoming unbearable...?"
This is a telephone conversation between General Mladic, Serb commander of the army corps in Knin and the head of the Croat Interior Ministry (MUP) force in Split. This conversation between two men who apparently know each other well (having had the same career in the Yugoslav National Army) was reported by the BBC correspondent, Misha Glenny, in his book "The Fall of Yugoslavia".
"Sixteen people made up the group I was in. The Coyote [the person the immigrants pay to get them across the border] gave one of the young women a marijuana joint glazed with heroin to calm her fears. Hallucinating, she began to desperately yell! The Coyote left her there and continued on with the rest of the group. The border patrol (and possibly some of the fascist militias that also patrol the border) continued to fire their guns blindly. I survived but many around me fell. One 12-year old boy was shot in the ear and was left there bleeding. I do not know what happened to all those people." This is the story of a young immigrant worker who crossed the border a few days ago and is a friend of PLP
Borders were created by the capitalists to divide and exploit the working class. These divisions are used by the capitalist state to indoctrinate workers with patriotism and nationalism. The bosses use these borders to make us believe that we are different from the people on the other side, "those from the other side of the border are our enemies." The capitalist's corporations do not have borders. They move their money to any part of the world to continue to exploit the workers. Borders between countries only serve the bosses' needs. We must destroy them!
When workers cross the border, it is in search of better living conditions. In Latin America, as well as in other places, the illusion of the U.S. as the land of "Great Opportunity and Democracy" is pushed. The economic crisis in these countries, caused by capitalism, has increased to such a degree that millions of young adults have no hope of finding a job at home. Millions risk their lives crossing the border. Upon arrival these workers are faced with the crude reality of unemployment, racism, and poverty-level wages.
Capitalist greed creates the problems for the immigrant and for all workers. Immigrant workers are used to increase the pool of cheaply paid labor. This gives the boss one more excuse to justify paying low wages to U.S. citizen workers. The boss tell the workers, "In case you have any complaints about the working conditions here, there are hundreds of workers out there who would be willing to take your job for the same or lower wage!"
When the bosses need immigrant workers they bring them to the U.S. or look the other way at the border. When there's high unemployment and they no longer need the immigrants, they throw them out and patrol the borders. Immigrant workers then get blamed for the unemployment caused by capitalism
Under a communist society, as workers, we will not have to continue to sell our labor power. We will not have to emigrate from one place to another because we will produce and distribute among all workers whatever we need to survive. The workers' dictatorship will bury money, just like the Coyotes, the fascist border patrol, and the bosses -- and will guarantee equality for the working class.
* A legal resident cannot petition to legalize his/her spouse without first becoming a citizen.
* Children will have to present a green card and a social security number to register for public school.
* A national ID will be created for employment eligibility, to be verified through Government computers.
The welfare reform bill also has anti-immigrant provisions.
The adoption of Prop. 187 in California triggered similar policies in other states. In New York, a bill which will be signed by Governor Pataki in April includes the following repressive measures, to be enforced within 30 to 90 days:
* Undocumented adults are excluded from public colleges and universities.
* Schools must verify the legal status of each child including those already enrolled.
* State and municipal employees are deputized to turn in immigrants on suspicion of being here illegally.
* Undocumented workers are denied public health care, and hospitals are required to report anyone suspected of being undocumented.
* State police will now turn in to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) anyone arrested who is suspected of being here illegally.
The Lamar-Smith bill isn't law yet, but INS activity has already been stepped up. Between Jan. 1 and June 30, 1995, there were 183 INS factory raids in New York City -- roughly one a day. The INS has been barging into public school classrooms in Albuquerque, Denver, Rochester, Potsdam and New Orleans.
In California, 100,000 marched against the anti-immigrant Prop. 187. In Chicago poultry workers answered an INS raid on the factory with a militant strike. After 100 workers from JCG Poultry were arrested in an immigration raid, the workers who watched their friends being dragged away organized a union drive against the boss. They also had a wildcat strike when the union cut a deal with the company.
In early December two U.S. soldiers in Fayetteville, North Carolina, killed two black people. One killer, "...made no secret of his racist views. He had a Nazi flag above his bed in the barracks, dressed as a skinhead and talked openly with...soldiers about what he called the inferiority of blacks and other minorities,..."(New York Times, 12/11/95, p. A11)
This is not an isolated incident. It is connected to the fact that the U.S. Army is a capitalist army. Therefore, racism is allowed and promoted within it. When trainees go out to run together, the drill sergeants lead them in songs like, "I wanna go to a foreign land. I wanna kill me a foreign man."
Communist internationalism is suppressed and oppressed by the bosses' army. We have to build a Communist Red Army that will fight for the working class all over the world. This Army will fight for workers' power and not for the interests of the capitalists.
I discovered from my own experience that the promotion of racism/patriotism is an important tool in U.S. army training. About one week after I arrived at basic training, I got into a discussion with a group of soldiers about the similarities of patriotism and racism. I asked the group, "Why should we go and kill soldiers from another country?" One person replied, "Because they are the enemy." I asked, "Why does the fact that someone is from another country make them an enemy?" Isn't that very similar to saying that someone is an enemy just because their skin is a different color?" "Who does more damage to you, workers from another country or corporate bosses in the U.S.?" Many soldiers expressed some agreement with this argument. From then on we had many discussions about politics.
The next night, one sergeant called our platoon into a meeting. "I heard that there has been some racist talk in this platoon. That is not allowed here. This is the U.S. Army we all wear green." Some soldiers looked shocked. Some wondered aloud, "Who has been saying racist things?" Then the sergeant said, "Lights out! Everybody go to bed. Everybody but you, private!" The sergeant was pointing to me.
When we got outside the sergeant said, "Look private, we heard that you have made treasonous statements. This is the U.S. Army. You can't start a revolution here. It's been tried before. Keep it up and you could wind up in a lot of trouble!" How do you like that? Under capitalism anti-racism is anti-nationalism -- and anti-nationalism is treason!
The KKK'ers at Fort Bragg were known as racists but the Army let them get away with it. Being openly racist is no crime in the bosses' army,.
About 1:00 in the morning a soldier woke me up and said he and four others were writing a letter and a petition to the company commander requesting that any charges of racism against me be dropped. After finishing the letter they awakened almost every troop in the platoon (over 50 soldiers) and got their signatures. The petition was given to the company commander and I heard nothing else from the sergeants. The bosses fear workers who are united under communist leadership.
The lesson in this is the importance of building a base. We can have confidence that the working class, including those in the armed forces, can be (must be) won to our politics. The workers will advance but they must have communist leadership.
Red soldier
The private in 82nd Airborne Unit of the U.S. Army who killed the two black workers in Fayetteville was a known racist in the unit. He had a Nazi flag above his bed in the barracks. The unit brass knew that he wore a swastika pendent around his neck, and that he had his nose broken in a fight with a black soldier. (In an Army where it is illegal to even hint that the brass is racist, what would happen if a soldier hung the red banner of communism above his bed and wore a hammer and sickle around his neck?)
While the Army doesn't consider being a white supremacist extreme, anti racism in the military is a crime of the highest order. During the 60's and 70's there were thousands of GIs who demonstrated against racism in the military. The fight against racism in the military was inseparable from the fight against the racism of the Vietnam War. Many of these soldiers went to jail for fighting racism and sabotaging the war effort. These rebellious soldiers shook the Army from top to bottom.
When I was a GI stationed in Germany in the early 1980's my unit had four platoons. I was in the platoon where they put most of the black soldiers. We also had a black platoon sergeant and all of our squad leaders were black. Everyone recognized that we got all the worst jobs. Garbage details, KP, guard duty, were always given to us.
One day in the chow line I said to a friend of mine "You ever notice that we get all the shitty details?" He said, "You know why that is." An NCO overheard us and after the next formation we had our heels locked in front of the First Sergeant's desk. "If I ever hear you spreading rumors about the Army again, I'll have you two charged with treason."
The Army has allowed racism to flourish in its ranks because it is scared of anti-racist soldiers. From the Mexican-American war to the Persian Gulf, the military has used racism to motivate soldiers to kill workers from other countries.
The Army will now use its black secretary, Togo West, to cover its racist ass. He will complete an investigation and surely say racism is a minor problem. The military will try to put a collar on guys like the three paratroopers from Ft. Bragg. Then they will get back to the business of racist murder on a grand scale in Bosnia, Haiti, and the rest of the world.
A proud extremist
I was disappointed in last issue's article about the Mayoral race in San Francisco. The article missed the main communist point we should be making about bosses' elections. That is, we live under a dictatorship -- the capitalists own and control everything important in society including the political process. Besides their control of the wealth, production, education, entertainment and culture, they completely command the army, police, judiciary and more. This is called "state power."
This electoral contest, like every election under capitalism, has little consequence for the working class. No matter who wins, we lose. Or, as Karl Marx said years ago, "every four years workers get to choose from their oppressors." Workers who vote (and fewer and fewer are because they realize the futility of it) are voting for the capitalist system which exploits them.
Workers do want some say over their lives. They do want some "input." Some workers are lured into voting because one candidate seems a lesser evil than the other crook. Our job is to point out that the whole system is evil, innately exploitative, needs to be smashed. Then the working class through their Party, PLP, will call the shots. This will only happen under communism. Only when we seize power and establish the dictatorship of the working class, will our class be able to exercise its authority and make decisions that benefit the masses of workers.
How will this work? A good question, something we need to work on more. But one part of the answer is that it would be similar to the Party today. Every worker would be assigned to a Party club. Probably this would be by job (we would all do some useful work) or possibly by community.
In any event, every worker would be in direct contact with the Party. Active workers would discuss and act on the most varied of Party decisions from the questions of war and peace in the fight to spread communism to what kind of production, housing, transportation, distribution of goods and food, etc.
The Party would lead communist society. There would be no "state" or government over workers. As today, democratic centralism, the process by which decisions are made engaging the whole Party, with the leadership having the final say, will lead communist society. These, in brief, are some of the points we should be writing and discussing about elections.
Chicago comrade
After reading the article in the 12/20 issue of Challenge-Desafío about the San Francisco mayoral candidate, Willie Brown, I was left with more questions than answers.
The attack on Willie Brown is almost completely in the form of questions that are not answered with any explanation. We cannot just say that Willie Brown will not be able to provide the reforms he promises without explaining why. We need to explain how it's not just him but anyone working within the system of capitalism cannot provide a real change for workers.
The fact is that Willie Brown may be able to provide a few reforms for the workers of San Francisco. The question is not a matter of whether he can provide these reforms but do reforms change the nature of capitalism? No, reforms do not change the fundamental base of capitalism. Reforms never change the fact that every bit of profit made in this system is stolen from the workers, and Willie Brown will never change this.
The article also blamed Frank Jordan for "running transit and health care into the ground." I think that this was a huge mistake. Frank Jordan did not run transit or health care into the ground, capitalism did. Capitalism caused the crisis of overproduction that is causing the world's bosses to take out their profit losses on the backs of the workers through things like transit and health care cuts.
I know that it is necessary to expose individual liberals who have cooped workers' anger, but we should expose them for their part in capitalism, not for the fact that they as an individuals cannot provide the reforms workers want.
NYC comrade
On the Sunday following the fire and shooting on 125 St., the pastor at my church read a letter from the United House of Prayer for All People. The letter was being sent to a number of Harlem congregations asking people to attend a memorial service for the people who died at Freddy's Fashion Mart
What hypocrisy! What gall! The United House of Prayer for All People owns the building which houses this store. The church was founded by Daddy Grace in 1920's. Up to the 1960's he ran the church, and, with donations from a basically working class congregation, he speculated in real estate, mainly in Harlem and on the West Side. In fact, when this church owned the Eldorado, a fancy apartment building on Central Park West, no blacks were allowed to live there.
The church was, and still is, the source of this 125 St. real estate operation. When the prior tenant, a butcher shop, moved out in 1993, the church brought in Freddy's Fashion Mart at a very high rent. They allowed Freddy's Fashion Mart to raise the rent of its sub-tenant, the Record Shack, which could not afford this high rent, permitting Freddy's Fashions to evict the Record Shack.
Upper Manhattan comrade
Last week, during the voting on the New York City teachers' contract, I heard a brief report on the radio that workers from the Elmhurst Hospital (a city hospital in Queens) had gone to some schools near the hospital to urge teachers to reject the racist sellout contract.
We too often get the idea pushed at us that we should "mind our own business," and not interfere in other people's contracts. But that's just another bosses' lie to say that we don't all have the same interests as other workers, namely getting rid of this rotten system.
As it happens, other city workers, including the hospital workers, are voting now on contracts more or less like the one teachers rejected, complete with wage freezes, givebacks, and in the case of the hospital workers, not even a no-layoff clause.
Come to think of it, we teachers should head to the hospitals and other city offices tomorrow, and urge workers there to join us in rejecting sellouts.
NYC teacher
I am a fifth year student at the Faculty of Law of Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia.
I consider myself a Marxist and as such I would like to become a member of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). I want to contribute my share towards the realization of Marxist ideals and play an active role in the international proletarian revolutionary movement.
I want you to write me on what I should do to become a member of the PLP. I also want to subscribe to your newspaper, Challenge-Desafío.
New comrade in Ethiopia
I would like to express appreciation for the revolutionary viewpoint that your publication pursues, a perspective that can't be found anywhere else. With analysis of a variety of issues, those specifically of interest to the working class, your publication is a lone Red star in an empty sky.
Capitalism has proven, time and again, and especially today, that the path it must follow leads to its demise and lifts us, its oppressed, to a world that will be of our own making -- communism. Although delayed by war, fascism, and the compromises made by workers during modem capitalism, a mass, communist-led workers revolt against the tyranny of privately owned profit, for the sake of the whole rather than the individual, is a necessity that will be faced by workers.
Why must people work, producing capital and profit, not for each other, but to meet the ends of an individual capitalist? When the masses must work to spend their lives in deprivation and toil, while the capitalist, like a slave-master, has a whip of coercion, and lives free of all want from what rightfully belongs to the workers?
Challenge-Desafío puts everyday issues into perspective and draws them all together, showing that only through communism can workers ever expect to have an equitable system that meets the needs of all to improve the living conditions and quality of life for all. Keep up the good fight!
San Jose, CA. friend
Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges, nationally recognized liberal institutions, are revealing showing their pro-ruling class face. Today more than 200 construction workers from Montgomery County, Pa. demonstrated against Bryn Mawr's decision to hire a non-union company.
The union demonstrators were protesting the hiring last May of Wohlsen Construction Corp. by Bryn Mawr to build a new library. Wohlsen hires non-union workers, pays below union scale and offers no health benefits. The college said that Wohlsen was the lowest bidder for the project.
Recently, Haverford hired Wohlsen to build a $10 million Campus Center. The roof shingles are already falling off, the roof is leaking, and the stones are discolored because of faulty construction.
Bryn Mawr's decision to hire this construction firm hurts not only the workers' standard of living, but students also pay the price. Like Haverford, the construction is fraught with many problems. Bryn Mawr apparently does not care about the working class as much as its bottom line.
As the protest went on, many anti-working class intellectuals converged upon Haverford. They talked about workers' needs except, of course, communism. Two openly anti-communists, CNN commentator Bob Novak, and Chinese dissident Harry Wu, came and spoke of the "evils of both Stalin and Mao."
Two other renowned liberal intellectuals, Cornell West and Manning Marable, came. When asked if communism was the way to make a "democratic transformation" or to have a "critical thinking" society, both answered with a big no. They contend that workers cannot lead society to establish "economic and social justice."
Haverford and Bryn Mawr bring these anti-communists to speak because colleges are pro-ruling class institutions. The present case with the workers show that these colleges will never challenge capitalism. They are here to defend capitalism, not destroy it.
Communism -- workers leading society -- is the solution to the anti-worker and student policies at Bryn Mawr and Haverford. Not only will there be no union-busting institutions, but there will also be no use for unions. Unions are pro-capitalist organizations set up to ask bosses for more crumbs.
Under communism workers will own the whole pie. Furthermore, under communism colleges will serve the interest of workers. There will be classes on communism--how to make society more cooperative and egalitarian.
Pennsylvania students
I teach English As A Second Language to workers in a union organized program. Thanks to some friends and some readings they suggested, I have been pursuing a primarily conversational approach based on using vocabulary, situations and events from the lives of the students.
The students have growing comprehension and conversational skills, but they still think in Spanish, and then speak in English. As part of my lesson, I ask "do you agree or disagree and why?" The students or I think up issues we feel strongly about and make a statement, which launches discussion in English. The interest and controversy generated cause them to struggle, looking for the English vocabulary and grammar in their desire to express their ideas.
Last class I said "We are workers, the human race, not black, latin, Asian and white races." This is what one student wrote, the class collectively corrected the English:
"I agree with this, because we are the same. We are different in religion, social position, legal status, profession, etc. Today there is racism; this is ignorance. We are all God's children."
For the next hour and a half we struggled to have a discussion in English. The following is a brief report of that discussion.
First we all agreed with what Maria wrote. Then why does this society call us "races". "It's here on the form you filled out for this class," I said.
"In Honduras, I'm black. In the U.S. I'm latin, but I'm black."
"Well, it's like the census. They ask for race to know how many people come from different countries."
I said, "Dividing us into races has to do with how the system practices and benefits from racism. How does racism affect you?"
Many examples came then from experiences in the U.S., the Dominican Republic and Honduras.
"But racism is not the country; it's the people."
"I disagree. It's the government."
"The people, not the government, can change the system. We can vote."
"The Republicans, like Gingrich, are making all these budget cuts." (She showed the union poster of Gingrich)
"The white people have money. They pay for their jobs. They get all the good jobs."
"It's not the white people. It's the people with money, they have the power. Money talks."
"But look at Mandela. He's black, but he acts white. He doesn't do anything for the people like get jobs and housing."
I said, "The same thing can be said about Clinton and Dinkins and they are white and black. If you think they're the good guys, then why do they do pretty much the same thing as the Republicans? I don't think they're good guys, but even if they were, it's the system that doesn't serve the workers."
The classroom certainly does lend itself to discussion of communist ideas on some level, whether done in a public or a non-public way.
NYC PLP'er
The latest news is that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spent something like $20 million to pay psychics to use their phony nonsense to help them.
Apparently, they used psychics to try to gather information about Khadaffi of Libya and other so-called "enemies." According to the report, none of the information was at all accurate or useful.
People sometimes debate: "Do the bosses believe their own nutty ideology?" This has to be understood in dialectical, rather than one-sided ways. If you say "yes," the bosses are nuts, then it could lead to saying that all we have to do is to get rid of the nutty bosses and find some intelligent bosses. Wrong!
If you say "no, the bosses just use their lies to trick us, but they don't believe them at all," then it overestimates the bosses and ignores the reality that they become corrupted by their own lies. It makes them out to be sensible folks. Wrong!
In general, the biggest bosses don't start out believing the craziest ideas; they just try to sell us their stupid ideas. But as the system gets more weak, rotten, and decadent, many of the bosses also come to accept some of the stupid, sick ideas they have been trying to sell to the working class. A realistic view would make the truth of capitalism's collapse clearer and more painful to them as their system declines. CIA psychics -- what a joke!
Working class people don't need psychics to predict the future. We can predict the future because we will make the future -- a future of working class liberation and communist equality!
Midwest reader