Arsonists paint racist slogans on the interracial Inner City Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. Then burn it to the ground. Amid the ashes there remained a sign depicting a black hand clasping a white one, with the slogan: "Together We Can Make a Change."
Since 1990, at least 57 black churches have been burned or vandalized in the South. Thirty-six such attacks have taken place in the last year alone. Most were in rural areas and small towns, but some in large cities such as Richmond, Virginia and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The arson attacks are partly coordinated through the KKK/Nazi/Skinhead/Militia network. More important: they are coordinated with the racist attacks orchestrated by the ruling class. Abolition of welfare, outsourcing of jobs, and the publication of racist books and articles, are all part of the strategy that the bosses must follow to maximize profits. They work very hard to convince black and white workers that capitalism is basically good and that the problems are due to certain "races." We must show workers that capitalism can never work for our class and must be destroyed.
FBI and ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) agents were assigned to investigate these bombings. Two of the ATF investigators participated regularly in the crudely racist Tennessee "Good Ol' Boy Roundups." They were probably there with some of their buddies like the Montana Freemen; the racists that the bosses are handling with kid gloves. The bosses will not rashly attack violently racist organizations, because they need them to implement their plans for racist attacks on black workers.
Reformists, from liberal Rev. Jesse Jackson to conservative Rev. Ralph Reed, have criticized Federal agencies for a lack of "vigorous pursuit of these arson terrorists." Last week the U.S. House Judiciary Committee held hearings in Atlanta on the "epidemic of terror" in the South. Jesse Jackson attributes racist arson to a "cultural conspiracy," in which "the clouds are seeded with scapegoat politics." This is an understatement. These racist attacks are not the result of a small group of conspirators. They result from the system of class dictatorship of capitalists over workers.
It is a deadly illusion to believe that the Federal Government will punish racist violence or protect black working people. The U.S. government is responsible for more racist violence than anyone else. Federal cops (FBI, ATF and INS) and local police have always been instruments of racist terror and repression. To demand that they go after racist terrorists is like demanding that corporate bosses stop down-sizing or that politicians stop taking campaign money. But this should come as no surprise. U.S. capitalism has used racist terror against black workers from the days of slavery to todays' wage slavery.
In the 1960's the ruling class reined in the KKK and other violent racists and encouraged liberal reformists to lure anti-racists into desegregation, civil rights, voting rights, pacifism, and black power. The liberals' slogan was "full inclusion in the system."
The ruling class could afford to offer a few crumbs then because it did not face intense international competition the way it does now. Today U.S. bosses have to squeeze every drop of blood out of the workers to maintain profitability. Now they rely mainly on terror.
A leader of the liberal Center for Constitutional Rights asserted that racists who burn down black churches are "burning symbols of resistance and community and hope and refuge." SCLC's president Joseph Lowery said that the arsonists "are attacking the soul of the black community." These statements misrepresent the role of black church leaders from the 1960s to today.
Many church leaders hesitated to support even mild civil rights activism. Those who became involved labored mainly to win workers to anti-communist ideas like non-violence and reformism. When a racist jury found the cops who beat Rodney King not guilty, black and latin church leaders throughout Los Angeles tried unsuccessfully to cool off angry workers and prevent rebellion. Ironically, these leaders are now being terrorized by the very system of which they wanted to be a part.
Religious leaders urge workers to love their capitalist exploiters, to trust in god and the law, and to seek justice through prayer and the vote. They promise rewards in heaven, while bitterly opposing the revolutionary class struggle of workers to establish a communist society that will meet our needs.
"Together we can make a change." "We" is a united working class led by Progressive Labor Party. Change will come only through revolutionary war in which we destroy the bosses, their armies and their racist goons. You can start today to bring an end to racist terror. Share this newspaper with people you know. Join PLP.
Marian Wright Edelman and the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) are leading a rally in Washington, D.C. on June 1st to "Stand for Children." These liberals cry for rich and poor alike to stand together. They try to hide that the rich and their capitalist system cause the suffering of the children of the working class. The organizers of this march try to lure us into a deadly trap: Unity with our oppressors, our class enemy.
But whose children are homeless and hungry? They're not the children of the politicians or the bankers or the Edelmans. They're children of the working class, every one.
Millions of workers' children are being cut off from the basic necessities of life by welfare reform, immigration reform, juvenile justice reform, and every other reform that the bosses can think of to boost their sagging profits. The children of the working class don't need reform. They need revolution.
The bourgeois press touts the CDF as the leading advocate for young people. But which children does the CDF really defend? Not ours!
Marian Edelman and her husband Peter are long-time close friends and political allies of the Clintons. Hillary Clinton worked as a lawyer for CDF and eventually became chairman of its board. Peter Edelman is a senior official with the Department of Health and Human Services. This is the branch of the federal government that's pushing racist welfare reform right now.
Edelman's coalition claims to be non-political and promises that no politicians will speak at the rally. But these organizers know that Bill Clinton has scheduled a speech on "children and family issues" for the very next day. Edelman herself is working hard to exclude from the march anything that might embarrass Clinton or contradict the policies he plans to announce.
She might as well call it a rally to "Stand for the Clintons."
This is the Bill Clinton who just approved Wisconsin's welfare program that will cut off benefits to families if the parents can't find jobs after a few years. The Bill Clinton who will starve kids to feed the economy. If Marian Wright Edelman were honest, she'd call it a rally to "Stand on the Necks of the Children."
There was a rally in Washington not long ago that stood up for what our children really need. It was the PLP May Day March for communism.
Capitalism provides none of the things that millions upon millions of working class children need even for survival: food, shelter, clothing, sanitation, health care. It forces hundreds of thousands of children worldwide into backbreaking labor in garment sweatshops and carpet factories, into prostitution and the streets. Meanwhile the capitalists' own children are waited on hand and foot, wear designer clothes, and have closets stuffed with the latest and most expensive toys.
There is no way to defend the children of the working class except by smashing this ugly capitalist system. Our children need to learn to defend themselves and their class by fighting for communism.
Under communism, all children will grow up with the confidence that their physical and social needs will be met and that every one of them is valued by society. They will learn the skills they need to contribute to that society, and they will develop comradely relationships with their peers and with adults.
Children, in order to have a chance to develop their real potential, need a society based on collectivity and the needs of the working class. A society without exploitation, national borders and imperialist wars. A society that has abolished the material basis for racism and sexism.
The Progressive Labor Party works now to develop communist consciousness and a revolutionary force to defeat the capitalist predators and create a society in which our children, and their children, will flourish.
We said that the capitalists couldn't profit if workers seized capital--the factories and the bus barns--to serve the needs of the working class. We called for eliminating the wage system and private profit with communist revolution.
Last week a friend of PLP, active in the fight against service cuts at Alameda County (AC) Transit, called to ask us to get "back on the streets." She was frustrated with the uninspiring, passive lobbying efforts of the Alliance for AC Transit and yearned for the mass, working class approach PLP brought to last year's "United Riders and Transitworkers" (URAT) movement.
When told PLP wanted to get "back on the streets" too--with communist revolution, class consciousness, and building the PLP as the leading messages--she disagreed. She felt that "fighting the cuts" would unite workers easier and that communism was OK if it stayed in the background. We said we need more communists to unite workers.
Our own experiences prove fighting for reforms creates disillusionment and disunity. Two years ago PLP and friends led a "No OverTime (NOT)" job action that forced AC to convert some part-timers to full-time. Now, part-timers are again not being converted. We rallied for a better contract, even entering AC's headquarters chanting "Full-time Jobs--Now!" Well, two years later, we have 150 fewer full-time jobs.
Last year, we led hundreds to "Stop the Cutbacks!" at rallies and public hearings. As leaders of URAT we involved scores of workers in collecting thousands of names on petitions; and $4 million was "found" to delay night and weekend cuts until June. Now AC threatens to close divisions and raise fares, again. Privatization and/or wage cuts hang menacingly over our heads. Yet many friends still want us to keep communism in the background and continue to hope that organizing to vote or "embarrassing the corporations" will get workers what they need.
We don't think so! First, capitalism is in crisis and is mercilessly eliminating basic needs for workers, like 7-day, 24 hour bus service--unless there's a big private profit in it. Private profit is why AC Transit service is being cut back while shuttle service to high-tech workers in Emeryville is expanding. Private profit is why fares are increasing for the mostly black and latin workers, seniors, and youth riders in Oakland, while high tech workers in Berkeley and Emeryville get a free ride. Private profit is why layoffs are increasing for $17.49/hr AC bus drivers, while Emeryville, Berkeley, Air BART and several private employee shuttles are hiring drivers at $9/hr. $Billions in private profit await BART subway and highway contractors to serve suburban commuters and San Francisco finance capitalists. Voting has nothing to do with it.
Second, reform struggle divides workers. Stranded riders say it's OK to raise fares to retain service. Threatened workers say it's OK to raise fares to save jobs. Disabled riders say it's OK to raise fares to implement para-transit service. Employed workers say service cuts are OK if no current worker gets laid off. The poorest workers continue to get screwed and the capitalist system gets off the hook again and again!
Being good reformers not only won little or nothing, but most importantly won no new communists to fight to end this capitalist system.
Gifford, a TV celebrity, made $10 million profit last year from the blouses and skirts workers produced under her name for Wal-Mart.
When Gifford was confronted with the facts of the exploitation of Honduran children, she wept on TV, and demanded that Wal-Mart stop manufacturing there. And when she was confronted with the fact that workers at the Kyung Seo sweatshop on 38 St. here had not been paid for four weeks, she sent her husband, Frank Gifford, a millionaire ex-football star and TV personality, to deal with the "bad publicity." He met with the 25 women and gave them $300 each.
"I'm confused," said one worker, who had been trying to get her back pay for weeks, "I felt like it was charity." These 25 workers had produced 50,000 blouses in April and May for Kathy Lee Gifford and were owed $600 each--slave wages of $150 a week.
"Kathy and I had no knowledge of this," Gifford told the unpaid workers; "She is sick about it." But not "sick" enough to change their poverty-level wages; workers typically work a 60-hour week, and still can't make ends meet. Nor does she cry about the 31cents hourly "wage" paid to workers in the Honduran factory, a wage so low parents are forced to send their children to work for their family's survival. Gifford may weep in public but she's laughing all the way to the bank.
Gifford and Wal-Mart blame their hired contractors for child labor and unpaid workers but this is just a public relations smokescreen. They know their super-profits come from the brutal exploitation of workers. When they're exposed in one factory, they move down the block or to another one of the thousands of sweatshops around the world. All these bosses, the small-time contractors as well as Wal-Mart and Gifford, are tied together in a system of exploitation. Each gets a cut of the profits made by garment workers, with the ones at the top getting the biggest cut.
We can't rely on unions like UNITE, the garment workers' union, who participated in the Giffords' hypocrisy. We have to build our own Party. Unions defend capitalism by functioning within the system. But the bosses can't pay us all enough to have a decent life. To keep ahead of their competitors and stay in business, they must drive for maximum profits. Therefore, they must pay workers as little as possible. Under capitalism there will always be super-exploitation and poverty.
The only way we can stop this exploitation is by getting rid of the wage system, by getting rid of capitalism. That means fighting for communism--a system without wages and profits and bosses, where workers produce for workers' needs, not to put money into some boss' pockets.
There will be a PLP garment rally on Thurs., May 30, 4:30 PM, at 38 St. & 8 Ave. in Manhattan. Join us! Fight to end wage slavery.
Those of us in PLP, garment workers and other workers, here and around the world, are organizing to get rid of these exploiters with a communist revolution.
We rely on the strength and wisdom of the working class. In the past we in PLP have made errors in calling for a program to reform capitalism, thinking that such a fightback would prepare the working class to become communists in the future. We are learning from our past practice. The Party issued a document called Road to Revolution 4.5 (RR4.5) last January which outlines our current thinking. There has been much debate as members and friends reviewed international communist history, PLP's experience in the class struggle and our development.
The leaflets hit hard at the capitalist system as they related how the bosses profit from workers' labor and that PLP aims to abolish wage slavery. At one factory the boss came out threatening us and taking our pictures. The workers' interest grew.
In the garment center PLP'ers were joined by garment workers in denouncing immigration raids and deportations. Our banner said, "Communism Will Sweep Away All Borders." We asked for, and workers gave us, their names as we openly called on them to join PLP and march on May Day. At the same time that Challenge-Desafío began to more clearly put forward communist ideas and goals the public sales of the paper increased. The club noted the change; enthusiasm was generated.
Can all workers become communists? At what level of commitment can they join PLP? How can workers get to know PLP and participate in it? What is communist class struggle? Our club and study group discussed these questions and agreed to ask all May Day marchers on the buses and at the march to join PLP. The same discussion took place in different sections of the Party. A special Red membership card was made.
How can communist consciousness be raised on a mass scale, within the clubs, in the factories and on the streets? How can we help our new members build a base for communist ideas on the job? What is the special role of Challenge-Desafío? How can our area triple the circulation of the newspaper inside and outside the shops, as well as increased financial support for the Party? How will we build communist class struggle, not reformist class struggle led by communists? We have a long way to go, a lot to learn.
The mobilization of new members and friends depends on leadership. We have set up five new club/study groups with new leadership and secondary leadership. We have our doubts and hesitations. But in carrying out our work, evaluating it and learning from our mistakes, we will build commitment and confidence in the Party and the working class.
So, you see. As you, along with hundreds, thousands and millions of workers and youth join PLP, we are changing the world.
The package this hospital worker is talking about is the "Voluntary Quit" program being offered to the workers of Jefferson Hospital. Floor closings and layoffs have taken the jobs of nearly 150 nurses and a smaller number of union and non-union workers. The Voluntary Quit program is meant to help the bosses reach their goal of cutting $75 million from the hospital budget. These days the package is the talk of the hospital.
In typical capitalist fashion, different packages are being offered to different groups. Administrators, professionals, and nurses--most of them white--are offered more money, better benefits. Union members and the lower paid non-union workers--including most of the hospital's black and other minority workers--are offered less money, less benefits.
One likely reason for the Jefferson bosses to offer these buyouts is to allow them to manage a smooth transition to a reduced, leaner work force. Also, they fear workers' reactions to continuing mass layoffs.
Until recently, most workers thought that capitalism could be successfully reformed. Many, especially the black workers, did make their lives a little better. Jefferson offered relatively good wages and benefits. Families moved to better housing, children went to less disgusting schools, workers received education to get higher paying jobs, people bought new cars. Many older black workers hold dear the predominantly black union as the tool that allowed them to get a "bigger piece of the pie."
Now things have significantly changed on and off the job. The better jobs and higher wages are disappearing. The neighborhoods and schools that workers escaped to are becoming as bad as the ones they left. Now many workers see the union as powerless at best, and corrupt and incompetent at worst.
In other words, workers are shedding their illusions that reforming capitalism could permanently improve their lives and those of their children. Yes, there is widespread fear and cynicism. But there are also more workers questioning why the system is destroying their dreams and their lives.
The Jefferson PLP club has its greatest potential ever to recruit. Our May Day organizing produced a small increase in Challenge readership and a new member. For the first time we have a number of Challenge discussion groups we can integrate into our mass work, and more workers are joining them. We plan to issue monthly PLP Newsletters at the hospital.
PLP is the package that Jefferson workers really need. Our package includes bundles of newsletters and Challenge, and an invitation to our "Voluntary Join" program. Take it and make it yours.
Initially most of the discussion centered on plans for changing the union leadership in next year's election, building a stronger union, and fighting back against the bosses' attacks. The group led campaigns against bus service cuts, layoffs, suspensions for accidents, and sicknesses.
Several workers expressed the idea that if there was communist leadership in the union we would be better off. To the workers communist leadership means an honest, militant, and committed person leading the union.
It was clear from these discussions that the group was e winning the workers to militant reformism, not communist revolution. Party members in the group are now attempting to shift the focus of the discussion to communism and Party building. Initially several workers resented this effort saying it would isolate us from most Metro workers. They were underestimating the workers' class hatred that exists on the job.
Although most of us are relatively well paid ($18-$21 per hour) and there is plenty of overtime, capitalism has hurt many of us. Many lost friends in the Vietnam war, while others have had their children gunned down on the streets of Washington. Nearly all have been the direct victims of racism.
What does he want to say here? Call him?Once we got through this discussion, several workers began to raise their own objections to communism.
This was a big step forward since it showed people were taking communist ideas seriously.
One woman operator asked about workers who, through their own efforts managed to escape from the working class either by setting up a small business, by inventing something, or by having entertaining or athletic skills. Will communism deny them this opportunity?
Yes! Under capitalism very few workers "make it" on their own. It is usually done on the backs of their family, friends or co-workers. Secondly, the chances of "making it" are so slim that the opportunity becomes merely an ideological prop keeping the system going and the workers passive. (To be continued.)
While the miners strike, union leaders are busy building illusions in the system. They brought a letter to President Eduardo Frei in the La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago, asking him to intercede with ENACAR to hire the workers back.
The problems of the coal industry are caused by the crisis of overproduction of capitalism in Chile and worldwide. The bosses want to solve this crisis by attacking workers even more, also by attacking the competition in other countries. This means more fascism against workers and war among capitalist countries.
That is why the only solution for workers is to fight for a society without capitalists, where production will be organized according to the needs of workers, and not for the profits of a few bosses. This society is called communism That is what PLP fights for--Join us!
Ed: They really need to do something about all the immigrants coming to this country.
Red: Why?
Ed: Nothing personal against them, but they do take our jobs.
Red: Looks to me like they're the bosses' jobs, not ours. They're the ones who create them and wipe them out and move them all over the place.
Ed: Maybe so, but don't we still have to worry about letting in too many immigrants?
Red: I'm not worried. A worker's a worker, to me at least.
Ed: You know I'm not prejudiced, either. But look, there aren't enough jobs as it is. All these people going after them, willing to work for peanuts, what'll happen to us?
Red: Yeah, cheap labor is what it's all about. That's why the bosses are worried. For them, it's a matter of profits.
Ed: There you go again with the bosses, like it's some sort of conspiracy. Seems to me that this is something the politicians really disagree on.
Red: You're right about that. Some capitalists need a lot of low-paid workers at home. So they favor liberal immigration rules. Or else prison labor. Others have factories abroad. They tend to want tighter immigration rules, so that workers will have to stay and work for low wages there.
Ed: So it's low wages for all of us any way you slice it. Too bad that "no wages" communist stuff you're always talking about won't work. I sure don't see high wages in our future.
Red: It'll work. And there won't be all that unemployment and lousy social services that the bosses always blame on immigrants.
Ed: Yeah, they do that. You hear that a lot.
Red: Divide us up, so we fight one another.
Ed: But if we let people go wherever they want, won't we have chaos?
Red: We have chaos now. Tens of thousands of immigrants locked up in camps, drowning in escape boats, getting blown up in bosses' wars. For workers, the bosses' immigration rules are just nuts.
Ed: So you want to change the rules?
Red: We don't get to change them just like that, not until we take power.
Ed: So then you'll change them.
Red: Not just change `em. Scrap `em altogether. Get rid of national borders. No nations, no immigrants. Under communism, you'll just have workers traveling wherever and whenever they're needed.
Ed: Isn't that what they do now? Go where the jobs are?
Red: But the way things are now, workers have to go where the capitalists need them.
Ed: The low wages thing again.
Red: Yeah. And still they get hassled, and worse. Under communism, we'll scrap all these artificial national borders. Workers will come and go, to wherever they can best serve the needs of our class.
Ed: And who's gonna be in charge of all this coming and going? Who's gonna say what's needed?
Red: The workers--through their Party. Say we need decent housing somewhere, say, in Central Asia, and we need it fast.
Ed: OK, so maybe you need a few thousand workers to help build this housing.
Red: So, the Party organizes workers from everywhere--North America, Europe, Africa, wherever--and flies them to central Asia. And maybe some of them stay on, live there for a while. Just like that. Because it's needed.
Ed: No quotas or border-crossing hassles, huh?
Red: You got it. That's all a thing of the past. Under communism, there is no immigration. Just travel.
INDIA -- Armed government troops went house-to-house forcing people to vote in recent elections. The government was eager to show that rebellious workers in Kashmir had bought into the electoral system. Democracy in action.
I read the letters in Challenge-Desafío debating the role of black workers in the capitalist and racist U.S. I would like to add one more point about how the fight against the racist bosses moves white and other workers to the left.
The largest, most militant and only nationwide strike by government workers in U.S., history took place in 1970, when 200,000 postal workers shut down the country's postal service and many vital parts of the economy with a wildcat walkout. Hundreds of thousands of black, latin and white postal workers defied the government strike ban, their union hacks, the U.S. Army and the National Guard.
The strike was triggered by the actions of scores of young black workers at the most tumultuous union meeting in postal labor history. The Manhattan-Bronx Postal Clerks Local (the largest in the U.S.) had a scheduled meeting on March 18 at the Statler-Hilton Hotel in Manhattan to discuss the government's foot-dragging over the latest inadequate contract offer.
The ballroom normally held 2,000 people but 6,500 showed up for the meeting. Union president Moe Biller proposed a "secret ballot" to strike, but the workers were in no mood for delays. Demanding an immediate voice vote, scores of angry black workers leaped to the stage surrounding Biller. He fled through the hotel kitchen, escorted by city cops. The young black workers took over the mike and called for an immediate strike. The thousands of black and white workers massed in the hall leaped to their feet with clenched fists, yelling, "Strike! Strike! Strike!"
"City Economy Sapped By Postal Strike," screamed the N. Y. Times headline. The newspaper reported bankers were losing $300 million a day in credit card and other payments normally sent to post office boxes. The phone company was losing $7 million daily in unpaid bills and Con Edison was losing $3 million a day. The city's garment industry faced "catastrophic problems" because orders for Easter business were buried on post office floors.
The Wall Street stock exchanges were on the verge of shutting down and the banking system was in danger of breaking down. The head of the big bosses' Commerce & Industry Association whined that, "For big business,...the mails are our lifestream."
Within 48 hours, the wildcat that had been sparked by those few dozen militant black workers who had run the union leaders out of the hall had spread across the country as postal workers in Newark, N.J., New England, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco shouted down their union leaders and voted overwhelmingly to strike. It was in these largest cities where there was the largest concentrations of black workers.
President Nixon declared a State of National Emergency and ordered out 2,500 U.S. Army troops and 16,000 National Guardsmen into New York City, the center of the strike. However, because of the militancy of the workers, the troops were unarmed and ordered not to attempt to deliver the mail, limiting their scabbing to sorting the mail. The strikers, especially the black workers, showed their high degree of consciousness by calling on the Guardsmen not to scab.
That this momentous uprising of postal workers occurred following six years of anti-racist rebellions by black workers, starting in Harlem in 1964 and spreading to most other large cities, was no accident. The leadership of black workers, especially the youth, in those rebellions was a thread running through the postal service. Many of the black rebels of the Sixties were working in the post offices in 1970. One of the national union leaders, Rademacher, even accused the Students For A Democratic Society (SDS) of having gotten jobs in the post office and then "inflaming members" to strike. The workers' answer to Rademacher was to hang him in effigy at a NYC armory meeting.
Truly, the actions of the black workers in the Sixties' rebellions and their leadership in the 1970 postal strike shook up the ruling class.
NYC old-timer PL'er who remembers
The New York/New Jersey PLP had a successful Memorial Day weekend. It began with a rally on Thursday in Staten Island supporting the rebellion that occurred a few days before against racist cops. (See Challenge 5/29). Then on Friday afternoon, we had a rally outside WOR Radio in Midtown Manhattan attacking racist radio jock Bob Grant, and sold 98 Challenges there.
On Saturday, there was a PL youth cadre school. It was an opportunity for newer recruits and more experienced members to meet each other on a more personal level. This allowed everyone, particularly the newcomers, to easily discuss their questions about communism and how best to build the Party, in their youth-led workshops.
One high school comrade commented that "this cadre school is an example of the Party making communist ideas a reality."
Because the cadre school was planned somewhat at the last minute, many of the new recruits for whom the weekend was designed, did not come. In the workshops many of the more talkative and experienced comrades were grouped together with the more hesitant new members. This prevented a variety of ideas and experiences from being shared between these two groups, which also affected the workshop discussions.
Overall, the new recruits cadre school was a tremendous success. Our more mass approach to recruitment, among youth especially, has brought us in touch with many more angry and revolutionary youth than ever. This cadre school allowed communist ideas to be actively put into practice and also provided an opportunity for youth to relate on a more personal level.
It is this individual basebuilding and one-on-one interaction that is primary if these 75 new youth recruits are to be consolidated into communists. Even when we are a Party of millions, and mass cadre schools such as this one are routine, the continual individual basebuilding and development of our members will be what holds us together for the revolution.
NJ HS student
In the editorial in Challenge-Desafío (5/29) there is a sentence that needs clarification. "They'll let us change the managers in City Hall or the White House every four years." This sentence is wrong!
It creates the illusion that we can actually change things. Why not pick a better manager? The truth is that the candidates are carefully selected and packaged for us. The voter can't really change managers, only big money determines who can run.
The rest of the editorial is good because it clearly points out the ruler's dictatorship over the workers. The article implies the need for proletarian dictatorship over the ruling class and all its various agents. This editorial doesn't try to cover all aspects, such as the importance of the elections to the bosses. Elections, while not offering workers a choice, are important to the bosses. The elections indicate serious divisions within the ruling class about the best way to control society, and make more profits. Eventually, these divisions between the bosses' factions will lead to civil war.
Challenge-Desafío might consider the many civil wars going on around the world from Russia to Africa. Communists will have to turn these civil wars into wars for communist revolution.
NYC comrade
After having slaughtered Lebanese workers and their families, the Israeli bosses are now engaged in a campaign which will decide which gang will enjoy the profits made through exploitation of Arab and Jewish workers for the next four years.
To make bourgeois democracy look real, Israeli bosses came up with a new idea. For the first time Israelis will elect their Prime Minister directly, and cast a separate vote for the Parliament. The current Prime Minister, Shimon Peres is representing the "left" (in Israel every liberal who understands that Palestinian workers can be better exploited if they have their own self-rule or independence, is considered to be "left") and Bibi Netanyahu is representing the "right" (those who wish to exploit Palestinian workers without the middle man Yassir Arafat and his PLO).
To Arab and Jewish workers the result of these elections will be the same--more poverty, lower wages, more exploitation less personal security--more terrorist activities by fundamentalists from both sides, Jews and Moslems and more acts of aggression by the Israeli army against Arab workers in the region.
The main architect behind the so called "peace process" is U.S. chief Bill Clinton who will take U. S. workers money and, under the slogan of "peace," invest it in the newly created Palestinian entity. The main beneficiaries of this plan will be big American and Western enterprises, the Palestinian ruling class represented through the PLO and Israeli bosses.
For Palestinian workers this means more exploitation, more misery and worse living conditions. It is no wonder that Mr. Clinton's support is given to Shimon Peres, as Netanyahu wants it all for the local bosses and is not willing to share the profits. For Middle East workers the results of the elections will be the same no matter who wins.
Workers in the region must build the PLP--a communist Party that will lead them to the ultimate goal of building a communist society free of exploitation. This is the only peace process they should embark on.
Israeli Red