Challenge, Nov. 5, 1997

Index

Only Communism Can Satisfy Workers’ Needs
Anatomy of a Crisis
Workers’ Pensions at Risk
LAPD Murders Deaf-Mute Father of 5
Taking The Fight Against Racist Police Terror To The Unions
Only Communist Revolution Can End Slave Labor!
Cops, Gangs: Real Halloween Terror for Youth
Boss Admits there’s a Crisis--Workers Take Opportunity to Build the Party
Chicago Bosses Build Fascism, Expose Own Weakness
Los Angeles-Merit System: ___Yes, ___No, X None at all!
The biggest teachers’ strike in recent history in North America
Nazis Again
Communist in Class Struggle Expose ‘ The Real’ Lessons of Capitalist Education
BACKPAGE: Communism Will Win!
PLP Brings Communism to the Million Women March
LETTERS:

Only Communism Can Satisfy Workers’ Needs

Capitalist Worldwide Crisis of Overproduction Behind Stock Market Chaos

Last week’s ten percent collapse in the Hong Kong stock market immediately provoked a sharp downturn in European markets and an 11 percent decline on Wall Street, including the biggest one-day loss in history. Some of these markets appear to be rebounding. However, the "recovery" is only an appearance. The main fundamental trend is clear: worldwide capitalism is growing more unstable every day. Three huge trading blocs -- Europe, Asia and the USA -- are waging a fiercer and fiercer trade war against each other.

As usual, workers will pay even more for the bosses’ crisis. As these trading blocs consolidate, the only capitalist solution will become clearer: fascism domestically and war internationally. The only solution for workers is to join PLP and fight for a society without bosses or stock markets. The fight for communism becomes urgent.

Crisis of Overproduction: Root of the Problem
As Challenge has pointed out many times over the last few years, the basic problem is what Karl Marx defined as a "crisis of overproduction." Competing bosses find newer, faster, cheaper ways of producing commodities, and then flood the market with them. The result is "overcapacity," a glut of merchandise that an increasingly impoverished working class can’t absorb. Under capitalism, technological advance always expands unemployment. This is happening with a vengeance today. Currently, over a billion of the world’s workers have no jobs. At the same time, as production is growing, real wages are declining, because in their drive for maximum profit, the greedy bosses constantly seek cheaper sources of labor power.

The state of the international automobile industry sums up the general crisis. Last year it had the capacity to build 68 million cars, but it only built 50 million. Add to that the woes of the USA’s Big Three. They used to see returns of 8% but now GM and Ford are living with returns below 5%. Their rate of profit is down. The same crisis affects the European and Asian car barons. (Economist May 10th). By the year 2000, the gap will widen: a capacity to produce 80 million cars for a market that can absorb only 60 million. At the same time, competition in the industry is becoming fiercer and fiercer. GM is launching a big international offensive. Toyota has plans to double its U.S. auto production. Korean auto companies’ strategy calls for cracking the top ten in the near future.

The same contradiction between increased production and the markets’ inability to absorb it characterizes all facets of the world capitalist economy. Name the industry and you’ll find overcapacity: steel, textiles, commercial aircraft, consumer electronics, computers. This is the real face of "globalization," which the Rockefeller-dominated U.S. media have been trumpeting as an engine for non-stop economic growth. The opposite is the case. As William Greider, a critic who follows the crisis, writes: "The fierce cost-price competition leads companies to take measures— cutting labor costs, modernizing production, trading jobs to gain access to hot markets— that both erode the worldwide consumption base and create excess output. As established companies struggle with the imbalances, new competitors enter the market" (New York Times, September 4, 1997)

."Tigers" Were Really Pussycats
The Hong Kong market’s crash is a result of this process. Only yesterday, pundits in the Western media were jealously admiring the economic achievements of the so-called "Asian Tigers." But this "miracle" was based on the same speculative frenzy that had already brought on a generalized crisis elsewhere. Sooner or later the Asian boom had to turn into its opposite. Asian currencies began collapsing in June. The financial collapse started in Thailand, then spread to Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. The stock markets followed in their wake. In an article entitled "Will Asia’s Malady Infect the World?" the New York Times spills the beans: "Details vary from country to country…but the region is characterized by excessive debt for many countries and gross overbuilding of some offices and of some industries" (October 26, 1997).

Capitalism is a vicious circle. The Asian markets’ collapse will obviously lead to more unemployment and an increased glut of commodities there. The Asian bosses’ "solution": devalue their currencies against the U.S. dollar and export more to the United States. If this happens, many of the pundits will applaud the maintenance of low inflation here. The cost to U.S. workers’ jobs will be enormous. The Asian Pacific region is the world’s biggest producer of cars (1/2 million more than North America last year) and is building new plants that will add six million more cars to the market. It is possible the present crisis will alter some of these plans, but the already existing combination of industrial capacity and a now-devalued currency poses a death threat to European and U.S. industries. If Japanese capitalists want to defend Asian markets from foreign speculators, you can bet European and U.S. industrialists will raise nationalist slogans too in defense of "their" turf. The competition between the major imperialist blocs is intensifying.

Wall Street is also eventually headed for a long collapse. Last week one trader, Andrew Smithers of Smithers & Co. admitted, "Wall Street is more overpriced than in 1929." For much of 1997 the Dow has hovered around 8,000. That figure implies that the value of U.S. companies had more than quadrupled in a decade. Of course, this is nonsense. The real economy is workers, the commodities they produce, and bosses. As Greider points out: "Bankers and investors are so busy lending and investing and bidding up prices that they don’t see that the new factories they’re financing may not be able to sell their output" (New York Times, September 4, 1997).(The much publicized U.S. stock market drop this Monday shook the market and the pundits but didn’t change the underlying crisis of overproduction.) Workers of the World Unite!

Whether we realize it or not, the working class is in this crisis up to our eyeballs. This raises a serious question, especially for communists in heavy industry around the world. The deepening crisis will immediately bring more death and destruction. No matter what country, the unions will refuse to blame capitalism for this misery. Who will they blame? "Foreigners" -- Europe, Japan, the USA. By denying a communist analysis, the unions (and other liberal institutions) will build a rabid nationalism and fascism. This is the heart of the struggle. Communists in the trade unions have to devote all their energies to organizing around the main contradictions in society.

As long as capitalism exists, the working class will be subjected to its instabilities and crashes. As we have frequently pointed out, the current crisis can only deepen. The crash of 1929 led to World War II. The latest round of overproduction has already led to many small and not-so-small wars. A Third World War is in the cards. The bosses simply can’t solve their problems any other way. Their sick, rotten system is a dead-end in more than one way. Increasing numbers of workers and others are open to the idea that the best investment we can make is a lifetime commitment to communist revolution and to the Party that aspires to lead it. This period of crisis, fascism, and war is also a period of great potential for the PLP’s growth.

Box: Anatomy of a Crisis

The Hong Kong stock market collapse has roots that date back nearly twenty years. Here are a few recent tremors leading up to the earthquake of international capitalism:

Ironically, when the "Asian Tigers" first started getting sick last spring, and the usual panic set in, the first response of many big investors was to take their capital to Latin America, of all places. Over the summer, the Latin American stock markets shot up. However, the Hong Kong stock market’s crumpling sparked a new panic, and the same investors, who figured that Latin America was a safe haven, began yanking their money out. So a new round of crashes in the Latin American stock and bond markets is in the cards. (Information from William Greider: One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism; Simon and Schuster, 1997).

Box: Workers’ Pensions at Risk

Not only is the capitalist profit system laying us off, shrinking the job market for youth, and driving down wages. It is also threatening the security of those lucky enough to have pensions. Our pensions have to be invested somewhere. Of the $4.7 trillion in existing pension funds, one third were in stocks and bonds in 1994. In the same year, pension funds held 26% of all corporate stock. From these figures alone, you can see how badly the system exposes our futures to the ups and downs of capitalist speculation. But the bad news doesn’t end there.

Our pensions are also the key source financing the most speculative investments of all, the so-called "Leveraged Buy-Outs" in which one giant corporation gobbles up another. According to the 1996 report by the AFL-CIO Public Employees Department: "LBOs are the investment of choice for pension funds, foundations and endowments." In other words, for example, when defense and communications industry consolidations lay off thousands in the process, even though we may be unaware of it, our pension funds help bankroll the job cuts. At the same time the LBOs deepen the crisis by sharpening competition.

It is not only pension funds at risk -- savings, IRAs, insurance, etc. All aspects of the capitalist economy are at risk. The stock market is the "tip of the iceberg." It is the sinkhole of capitalism. All capitalist society is tied to the stock market. When it crashes, down goes the whole economy, with its overproduction, including workers’ pensions, jobs, savings -- Depression.

LAPD Murders Deaf-Mute Father of 5

LOS ANGELES—On Saturday night, Oct. 18, 32 year old Kevin Robinson left a store and was walking down the street with his friend, pushing his bike, near 43rd and Compton. The cops ordered him and his friends to stop walking. Kevin kept walking and then ran. Kevin was deaf and mute. He couldn’t hear the cops or yell at them. A youth who was near Kevin yelled at the cops "He’s deaf. He can’t hear you. Don’t shoot." The cops shot Kevin in the BACK three times. The cops beat the youth who yelled at them not to shoot and took him to jail. When neighbors demanded they call an ambulance for Kevin, they did nothing. The neighbors called the ambulance anyway. But the cops let Kevin die in the street. They murdered him in cold blood—as they have many times.

Kevin Robinson, a black man, leaves 5 children and his wife, parents, sister and friends. The cops were from Newton Station—LAPD killers. When they found out that Kevin was deaf and mute, they made up the lie that Kevin had a gun. Many youth in the neighborhood saw what happened and know its a lie. Kevin’s long time friend, also deaf and mute, was with him when the cops killed Kevin. He and the youth in the neigborhood say that if the cops wanted to stop Kevin, they could have done it in a million ways without killing him. But the cops terrorize black workers and youth to make them an example to others. Capitalism rules through more and more terror. The bosses rule with an iron fist—the velvet glove covering the fist is coming off. Police terror is growing because the system is in crisis. The cops murdered Kevin as an example to make more people—especially black and latin youth-intimidated-to try to prevent rebellion and, ultimately, revolution. But the opposite is happening. More people are getting angry about growing fascist police terror and are open to the revolutionary solution of the PLP.

A woman who lives up the street from the place the cops shot Kevin spoke about the attack at a demonstration against police brutality on Oct. 22. No solution was offered at this demonstration to police terror. She was glad to meet with PLP members and agreed to set up a meeting with neighborhood youth who witnessed the cop murder for the next evening. A group of older and youth PLPers met with a group of youth from the neighborhood. They had set up a candlelight memorial to Kevin. They are very angry and want to organize a march. Many agreed that revolution was the only way to end cop terror. The next day, Kevin’s family contacted the Party. Party members met with the family members. The family is calling for a demonstration against police terror for next Sunday, Nov. 2nd, the day after Kevin’s funeral. The demonstration will start at 43rd and Compton, where the police killed Kevin Robinson, and march to the Newton Street police station. PLP is supporting this call and urging workers and youth throughout LA to come show our anger at the murder of Kevin Robinson and our determination to answer growing fascism by building a mass revolutionary movement for communism—to wipe racism and police terror off the face of the earth forever. We are urging members and friends to raise in their schools, unions, churches, and community groups the need to meet the bosses’ attacks with mass workers’ determination to turn the bosses’ fascism a preparations for war into a revolutionary movement to bury the bosses.

Taking The Fight Against Racist Police Terror To The Unions

CHICAGO, Oct. 6 — The fight against racist police terror was brought to the floor of Teamster local 743 tonight. The 16,000 member local is the second largest in the 1.5 million member International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Given the turmoil as different sections of the ruling class fight for control of the union, it was a raucous meeting. The Carey forces were arguing with the Hoffa forces who run the local. Also, the Hoffa forces were fighting among themselves as three different slates are being organized to run for the local leadership.

After about an hour and a half of this nonsense, we got to "New Business." A worker from University of Chicago Hospitals took the floor and spoke about the racist police beating of 18-year old Jeremiah Mearday. He said that racist police brutality was a nationwide, daily affair’; and that this directly affected the mostly black and Latin membership of our local. "Out of 16,000 members, how many of our children and grandchildren, or how many of our members, have been victimized by the police or are caught in the criminal justice system?" A good number of the 100 workers in attendance were shaking their heads in approval. He proposed that the union send $1,000 to Jeremiah’s family for medical and legal expenses, and that the union take a public stand against racist police brutality.

The hall was silent. The mostly black leadership was caught off guard, and so were the activists waiting to follow their lead. The silence was broken when a 60 year old black worker, sitting in the middle of the hall, applauded by himself. A couple of workers, who had agreed to second the motion and force discussion on it, never made it to the meeting, so the leadership was able to sidestep the issue, for the moment. They asked the worker to put the resolution in writing, and it would be taken up under "Old Business" at the November meeting, which should have about 300 workers at it. We’ll be ready, with more workers prepared to play a role in the meeting.

Self-critically, the resolution could have been sharper politically, making the connection between police terror, the crisis of capitalism, and the rise of fascism and war. Also, we didn’t involve enough workers in discussing the plan beforehand. We have about 50 regular Challenge readers at work, and a number of workers who distribute Challenge and other Party literature. We should have put out a flier about our intentions before the meeting, and made more of an effort to get more workers to attend. We also could have proposed that the local endorse the Rally Against Racist Police Terror on Oct. 22. Possibly we could have been part of a local organizing committee for the Rally and taken political leadership on this issue.

Despite the weaknesses, when the meeting adjourned, many workers came up to the speaker to shake hands and tell him, "That was good, what you did." One worker exchanged phone numbers with him. We should have more confidence in the workers, and in our Party, that we can put forward our line and grow in the enemy’s camp. Millions are alienated from this decaying system, outraged by racism and the cops. That is why millions have taken to the streets with the Million Man March, the Promise Keepers, and the Million Woman March. Probably thousands took part in the Oct. 22 rallies around the country. The bosses and their mis-leaders are trying to turn this mass anger back into the profit system. If we boldly fight for the leadership of the working class, and aren’t afraid to make mistakes, the results will surprise us. The political hold of the rulers is weak. That’s why they need mass terror. We should challenge them on every front for the political leadership of the workers.

Only Communist Revolution Can End Slave Labor!

CHICAGO, Oct. 25—"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." That’s about the best one can say about the Jobs with Justice (JWJ) Convention held here this weekend. Celebrating ten years of loyal service to the AFL-CIO, the Convention drew over 400 delegates, sent on union money, to focus on fighting the spread of workfare/slave labor. JWJ is a coalition of unions and community based groups, united around strike-support and now, fighting workfare.

JWJ was founded in Miami during the 1987 Eastern Air Lines strike, and is led by the opportunist Communist Party USA. They lead from their perches as leaders of local unions, community groups, and student organizations. Supporting strikes and organizing drives, they are the foot soldiers for the rulers in the labor movement. The Organizing Directors for the Teamsters’ and United Steel Workers’ unions spoke at one workshop, praising JWJ for their community support. A Unite organizer and a Guess? worker spoke about their efforts in LA’s garment center. In NYC, with ACORN’s help, they are involved in trying to unionize 35,000 slave-laborers, who have replaced 20,000 unionized city workers, and who are forced to work for their welfare checks.

Over the years JWJ has involved tens of thousands in various aspects of the class struggle. But their reformist outlook is focused on fighting "Corporate Greed," without any understanding of the crisis of capitalism, leaving their members to be blind-sided by the rise of fascism and threat of war. As one black woman from a Detroit UAW local said, "They don’t know what they’re up against."

The main focus of the Convention was to plan nation-wide actions against workfare/slave labor on December 10, although no specific plans were made. Because December 10 is a weekday, it will limit the number of workers and youth who attend. But we should anticipate a healthy turnout of workfare participants and community activists, especially in NYC where workfare workers just voted 17,000-300 for unionization in a straw poll.

The Day of Action Against Workfare can be an opportunity for us to build a real communist-led fight against fascism, and expose the dead-end trap being laid by the JWJ leadership. If we mobilize for this action on our jobs, high schools, and campuses, exposing workfare/slave labor as the road to fascism and world war and opening the door to communist revolution, we can have a dramatic impact on these actions and reach thousands of participants seeking a way out of the horrors of capitalism. We don’t want slave-labor with union cards. We don’t want a grievance procedure in the concentration camps. We want to abolish wage slavery, build a mass PLP, and fight for communist revolution. Let Dec. 10 be an open confrontation between reform and revolution. Let’s fight for the political leadership of our class.

Cops, Gangs: Real Halloween Terror for Youth

New York, Oct. 27.—The fascist war on our children continues as the NYPD announced they are "gearing up for a massive Halloween deployment of cops throughout the city." (New York Daily News, 10/26). Once again the terror of gang activity is being exploited by the vicious "gang in blue" to justify taking over of the security of public schools. They gloated that "the 1,200 rookies who graduated from the Police Academy last Friday" are ready to hit the streets.

The rulers aim to increase fascist terror against the working class. As their economy and stock market collapse, they must crush even more our standard of living to reap greater profits. They must use armed force to prevent any resistance. The cops are the stormtroopers of this fascism. But as they become increasingly discredited among workers, especially in black and Latin communities, the bosses need a scapegoat to make their fascist terror look acceptable: the gangs.

As we in the Progressive Labor Party launch our campaign against the cops and the gangs, we have seen that many honest workers are confused about this issue. For example, in one high school in the Bronx, where Challenge is distributed, a teacher described the dilemma of many of her students. "One student told me that after he was jumped by 6 to 8 youths, who weren't even identified as from a gang, he felt he had to form his own group just to feel safe on the streets. 'The cops just stood and watched what happened," he explained. "They are unreliable so what can I do?" So I asked him to take Challenge to the brothers and cousins in his group. I told him we must talk about what ideas guide us as we organize ways to protect ourselves."

She remembers what happened to her friends in the Dominican Republic in the early 1970's. At that time many young men who were leftists protesting against the system were sent to jail. In jail they were corrupted and returned to their old neighborhoods as armed allies of the police. Called La Banda, these thugs roamed the same barrios, identifying communists and community organizers for the police. Watching La Banda become traitors to their class led her to understand the need for a communist party that will win masses of workers to communist ideas in order to defeat the bosses.

When she showed Challenge to her student he told her that his family were revolutionaries in their country! He agreed to distribute Challenge and invite the PLP to meet with his family. Several other students told similar stories. None of the incidents had anything to do with gang activity but there were attacks by groups of students against each other. One young man described being attacked by a group involving the brother of a girl who he has been dating and lying to by dating other girls. The brother was motivated by a desire to stop this guy's two-timing behavior. But that desire was turned into a plan to take his friends and beat the guy up.

Workers of all ages are struggling to figure out how to cope in this increasingly repressive climate of police terror. This is where communist ideas must lead these struggles and not the corrupt ideas of capitalism. A parent told another Party teacher, who has been organizing meetings in his school, "Well, the community will have to protect itself." He agreed. He also brought her Challenge to raise the question of what ideas will guide the community as it organizes itself.

Communists must be involved in all these struggles by our class. We want to organize the working class to seize power away from the capitalists, not just defend ourselves. By injecting communist ideas into the struggles of workers in this day-to-day way will bring us closer to that goal. In this way, a campaign against police terror becomes a campaign for communist leadership of our class. We invite all these forces to join us on Saturday Nov. 15th in our March Against Police Terror at Church and Nostrand in Brooklyn.

Boss Admits there’s a Crisis--Workers Take Opportunity to Build the Party

LOS ANGELES — "You don’t understand that there’s a crisis in California, there’s a big crisis! Either do the sewing for free or I’ll close the factory for a week and it will be your fault," yelled the owner of the garment factory at dozens of workers on strike. These workers produce for the Polo label. Every time there’s a new style of clothes, the bosses try to lower the price they pay for the sewing operation (by the piece). This time, workers had to add an additional operation, but the bosses wanted to pay the same price as before and the workers said "No! We want one cent more for the new operation." The bosses threatened that if the workers didn’t accept their price, they would be fired immediately and replaced by new workers. The strike continued all day.

The next day in the morning, the group of workers continued to demand "a penny more or we don’t work!" Other sections of the factory joined the strike, openly defying the bosses. The owner threatened to close the factory permanently. A supervisor yelled, "What are you workers doing? This isn’t your problem." A worker answered, "This is a worker. There is another worker, I am a worker. You see, we’re all workers. If today you attack him, tomorrow you attack me. That’s why we need to unite and support each other."

"Write down the names of all those who are on strike," yelled the bosses. Several workers raised their hands and said, "here I am, mark me down!" Others, not as convinced, started to murmur that the strike is a problem. Some workers explained that the problem isn’t the workers who are on strike, but the bosses and their crisis of overproduction.

Even the owner says that there is a crisis. He’s right. There’s a crisis of overproduction, caused by cutthroat capitalist competition, a dogfight between the bosses. But they want us workers to pay for their crisis. They want to continue making maximum profits, without caring that we workers leave our lives at the machines.

The garment bosses in California compete with bosses who pay workers from Asia, Mexico, and Central America $3 to $4 a day. The fight is to see who pays the least and produces the most for the most profit. The capitalists have produced enormous amounts of clothes, amounts never seen before, but still there are hundreds of millions of people who have very few clothes. In this factory we are producing clothes for next summer, but this winter people will die for lack of warm clothing.

This drive for maximum profits is part of the big bosses’ accelerating plans for world war. Garment, like all industries, is a tremendous source of wealth, in this case produced by immigrant workers. The bosses as a class use these profits to destroy workers and other bosses through wars and fascism.

The workers who read Challenge and friends of PLP in this factory need to form a PLP Committee of Struggle, and go to the mass organizations, churches, unions, etc. to organize other hundreds and thousands of workers, to lead struggles against the bosses and their capitalist system throughout the whole garment industry. Our goal must be to end the bosses’ crises once and for all by fighting for communism, where there won’t be yelling bosses, bosses, or money. Just workers producing to satisfy the needs of the whole international working class.

We shouldn’t have to live our whole lives fighting every day for a penny, while we produce millions of dollars in profits for the bosses. Even though, in this case, the workers had to eventually accept what the bosses imposed, that doesn’t mean we lost. In this struggle we built increased unity against the bosses. And we can turn this small defeat around and make it a big victory if we form a PLP committee and more workers read and sell Challenge. The bosses apparently won this battle, but we will certainly win the war if we fight for communist revolution.

Chicago Bosses Build Fascism, Expose Own Weakness

Chicago, Oct. 25¾ Word spread quickly last weekend that someone had vandalized Lowell Elementary School, on the city’s West Side. Hundreds of kids stayed away from school Monday morning. School chief Paul Vallas and police superintendent Matt Rodriguez were dismayed to discover that they were the last to know.

These bosses, and the bankers behind them, are in a bind. They know that fascist terror is the order of the day. They, themselves, are building fascism on the streets and in the schools. But they also know the deep hatred of the school system and the Nazi cops felt by many black workers and youth.

They have seen the mass outpouring of protest against the beating of 18-year-old Jeremiah Meariday, which took place just a mile away from Lowell Elementary. They know that the vandalism at Lowell Elementary reflects the same anti-racist anger. So Vallas and Rodriguez are looking for ways to mislead and confuse workers into trusting their fascist leadership.

You could see this strategy in action that same weekend, a little further west. The Democratic Party machine, together with "community policing" units, organized a mass march "against drugs and gangs." Even Mayor Daley showed up.

This march was in exactly the same place as the rally against police brutality, inspired by the Mearday case, that happened the previous Saturday. Many workers and youth joined in. Some were misled into thinking that fascist cops will help them stop the very real ravages of drugs and gang violence. Others were simply attracted by a free picnic..

Still others mistakenly thought this march was also against police brutality. ("But why would Daley march against police brutality?" a PLPer asked a student who’d seen this fascist demonstration. "Why wouldn’t he just stop it?" The student replied, "I was wondering that myself.")

Then, just a few days later, Rodriguez announced that two 25th District cops (both with previous complaints against them) would be suspended This threw their fascist buddies at the Grand Central station into an uproar. The thin blue line cracked, if only for a moment. So it’s becoming clearer that the bosses’ grip is not as firm as many of us believe. They are desperately struggling to win the loyalty of the black workers they have screwed for years, and whose children they are grooming as potential cannon fodder. That’s part of the reason for Vallas’s "school reform" and Rodriguez’s "police reform." Like "welfare reform," these programs will take something bad and replace it with something worse. Worse for the workers, that is -- the bosses hope it will allow them to control us better!

At the same time, though, these same bosses need the open fascism of Nazi police to terrorize workers and youth. Behind the destruction of West Side workers’ lives is the capitalist bosses’ crisis of overproduction. The bosses can no longer extract maximum profits from these workers’ labor-- as they once did in the factories of companies like Westinghouse, General Electric, and International Harvester -- so they sweep them aside, often into prison. Fascism has become so much a way of life on Chicago’s West Side that residents refer casually to these police "sweeps" as a routine occurrence. The bosses can’t do without their beasts in blue.

As workers and youth begin to fight back against racist police terror on the West Side, the cracks and the weaknesses in the bosses’ fascist system reveal themselves. We have seen this in the struggle against the torturers of Jeremiah Mearday, a struggle that PLPers have become involved in through our work at Cook County Hospital, at Foreman High School, and in the community. We have begun to see it, too, as we step up the political and legal fight around the case of the six comrades still facing charges from the Garfield Park PLP demonstration a year ago against Clinton’s welfare repeal.

We will return to the scene of that demonstration with a PLP march for communism and against fascist police terror on Saturday, November 15. The march will start at the corner of Madison and Pulaski, where hundreds of workers have been taking Challenge and PLP leaflets. Through anti-fascist actions like this, building toward sharper actions at our jobs and schools, our Party and our class will come to see more clearly both the need and the possibility of communist revolution.

Los Angeles-Merit System: ___Yes, ___No, X None at all!

Bosses at Santa Monica College want to dump the Merit System, a civil service system that supposedly protects non-faculty workers at this college from political patronage in hiring, firing and promotion. The administration, headed by former Massachusetts Secretary of Education Piedad Robertson, has manipulated the staff into calling for a vote to end the Merit System. The administration figures that with no civil service, they and the union (CSEA, the California School Employees Association) can control the workers without interference.

Neither the Merit System nor the union can protect the workers from a capitalist system that is in sharp crisis. Capitalism has proven in world wars and regional wars such as Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War that it will sacrifice the lives of millions of students and workers to win. Communists in Progressive Labor Party are organizing to dump capitalism and build a communist political system.

The global crisis of capitalism is reflected at SMC in several ways:

· Attack on the working class: Understaffing continues with multiple assignments, increased use of part-time workers, temporary workers and students in classified jobs.

· Attack on students: The college is preparing for a sharp increase in enrollment. It prides itself on the number of students in transfers to the Cal State and UC (University of California) systems but its success rate for retention of under prepared students and foreign students is abysmal. The college promotes the idea that anyone can make it to a high paying job if they try hard enough, but does not prepare them for the difficulties they will face in finding and keeping such jobs. Most of these students want to get out of minimum wage and blue collar jobs. Many are finding that that is where they will wind up, there or in the armed services fighting in another war!

· Attack on faculty: The majority of the teachers are part-timers, "freeway flyers" who commute between two or three community colleges trying to make a living.

Workers at Santa Monica College will not escape these attacks by arguing over whether the Merit System should be saved or dumped. In another article in this series, we will discuss how classified staff, students and faculty can turn these attacks around.

TORONTO, Canada, Oct. 28—The biggest teachers’ strike in recent history in North America, affecting 126,000 teachers and 2.1 million students, began yesterday in Ontario. The strike is against Bill 160, which will give the government more control over public schools, increasing the workload of teachers and eliminating up to 10,000 teaching jobs. This is part of the fascist "reform" of public education wanted by rulers on both sides of the border. Ontario Premier Mike Harris has already vowed to seek a court injunction to break the strike.

Teachers all over the continent should support these strikers. But most important, teachers must understand why these "reforms" are taking place. They are not caused by "bad politicians" as the Ontario Teachers Federation leadership says, but by the need of capitalism to attack all workers even more in this age of growing capitalist instability, war and fascism. The best lesson these teachers must learn from this struggle is the need to fight for a society without bosses, a communist society. That is the goal of PLP.

Nazis Again

This movie shows German soldiers shouting anti-Semite slogans, listening to fascist songs and giving the Sieg Heil salute. Is it a historical film from the III Reich? No! The 5-hour long video was taken in 1994-1995, involving a mountain battalion of the German Army in the state of Saxony.

The newspaper Berliner Zeitung reported that up to mid-Sept. 88 pro-Nazi incidents involving German soldiers have taken place, compared to 46 such incidents in 1996.

The Red Army crushed the Nazis in 1945. Communists will lead workers again to smash the new Nazis.

Communist in Class Struggle Expose ‘ The Real’ Lessons of Capitalist Education

Newark, NJ—Last week, thirty parents, teachers and community members received a real lesson in what capitalist education is all about. They went to a "public" meeting of Newark’s state operated school advisory board to press their demand for the removal of Mt. Vernon school’s racist and fascist principal, Frank Perez. Two and a half years ago when the State of New Jersey took over the Newark schools, they replaced the elected school board with an appointed "advisory" board. That board has no power to vote on anything. Absolute control of the entire 48,000 student school district rests in the hands of one person, Superintendent Beverly Hall. And Hall answers only to the State Commissioner of Education, who answers only to the very Old Money governor; Christie Whitman. That’s quite a lesson in democracy!

Hall knew we were coming in numbers to that advisory board meeting. Fourteen teachers and parents had even signed up ahead of time to speak at the meeting. But when we arrived, we were met at the front door by a slew of security guards who told us only 14 of us could go up to the meeting room because that’s how many seats were available. The parents and teachers responded without a moment’s thought. "We came together and we’ll all go up together. If all of us can’t go up, none of us will." Now that’s a real lesson, a lesson in working class solidarity!

This year the advisory board meetings have been moved from local schools around the city, with convenience and seats for hundreds, to the district’s downtown central offices where there is no parking and not enough seats. All but 14 of the seats that were available were filled with Queen Beverly and her top administrators. Although it was a cold night, we weren’t even allowed into the building lobby to wait. Beverly thought that might violate the fire code and was concerned that we might wreck the lobby. So 30 members of the working class were kept outside in the cold for an hour before being let in to speak at the bosses’ "public" meeting. And when we finally did get to speak, the assistant superintendent for Mt. Vernon school responded with lies and irrelevant issues, and Beverly promptly adjourned the meeting without discussion. What a lesson in ruling class contempt for the working class and how fascism is growing and spreading!

The real question which has to be asked is why the ruling class is fighting so hard to keep an open racist and fascist like Frank Perez as principal. The answer is clear. He serves the purposes of the ruling class well by actively trying to divide workers along racial lines and instituting a campaign of intimidation and fear against them. The ruling class knows very well that only by keeping workers divided and frightened can they continue their attacks on our lives. Frank Perez is the perfect person to do their dirty work for them.

The Mt. Vernon parents, teachers, custodians, cafeteria workers, nurses, office workers and security guards will not be turned around. They are ready to do whatever is necessary to remove the parasite Frank Perez from Mt. Vernon school. But the most important lesson to be learned here is that the removal of Frank Perez, or even Beverly Hall and Christie Whitman, will not be enough. This profit-driven system, with its rapidly developing fascism, can never meet the needs of the working class. It doesn’t matter whether the person in charge is a Democrat or Republican; man or woman; black, white or Hispanic.

Our interests will be met only by a communist system in which workers produce for need, not for the profit of others. In a communist system, our children will receive a real education, one in which they learn the values of collectively, not competition. We will utilize the yet untapped creative energies of all the world’s children. The ruling class will soon learn the lesson that the working class cannot be stopped. We will achieve our goal -a communist society.

BACKPAGE: Communism Will Win!

Can we win? Believe it or not, we are winning. Ultimately we will go all the way, to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and seize state power. Just as long as one of us puts our line into practice, leading to the building of the party, we are winning. As long as there is one copy of the Communist Manifesto in existence we are winning. Just as long as one worker fights back against the boss, our class is winning.

Winning could be briefly described as fighting back against the ruling class, building the party and enriching Marxism-Leninism. Well, many more than one of us is doing just that. Of course we are winning.

If we weren’t winning, how can you explain the imperialists’ endless multibillion-dollar campaign of anti-communism? Is the "specter" of communism still haunting the bosses? Have the rulers solved all their contradictions? The imperialists and their agents are many things, from barbarous to devious, but they aren’t crazy. They realize "which side their bread is buttered on." Communism will strip their bread of the butter and eliminate world capitalism as a system.

It is not accidental that when we boldly put our line forward it usually receives a positive response. While the masses are not wildly lining up to join our party, tens of thousands of workers and others are drawing closer to our party. Even at the latest holy roller million men and women marches, thousands of participants took our leaflets and reacted positively to our banners. At the Million Women March we sold every one of the 1200 papers we brought.

Are the rulers on the ropes? Strategically they are. This is because capitalism flies in the face of workers’ aspirations. Capitalism can never satisfy the needs of the working class. Only communism can.

But the rulers are strong tactically. We must take that into account and realize we are in for a long, hard struggle. We are winning, but it isn’t a pushover. Our party has existed for 36 years. In that time we have witnessed the extinction of the old international communist movement. Not a pretty sight. To hear so-called communist leaders claim that "to be rich is to be glorious" is sickening. But facts are "stubborn things." To be a communist is glorious. Capitalism will not fall by itself. But we will win. Our victory is inevitable: the building of a mass communist movement that opts for state power.

The rulers and their mouthpieces all cry that "communism is dead." If this is true why are we here and slowly growing? It is the ruling class that is dying. Just view its unstable worldwide economy. It is their markets that are falling, not ours. The RED STAR IS RISING just as long as we are out there—in the mass movement placing our line into practice.

PLP proves that communism never died; "It is alive as you and I." We exist and develop in many places. Sooner or later "you will find us in every mine and mill." The future belongs to the workers. Use communist practice and theory that flows out of the continuous class battle with the rulers. Sometimes this battle ebbs and flows. And just when you might think it’s all over, the class struggle hits you in the mouth like a wet fish. Remember, "you can’t stop the workers." You can’t halt the red tide of communism.

Now is the Time for Revolution! PLP Brings Communism to the Million Women March

Philadelphia, Oct. 25—Hundreds of thousands of black women from all over the U.S. came here today to participate in the Million Women March (MWM). Progressive Labor Party members and friends came as part of different organizations and independently to put forward our revolutionary communist line. Over twelve hundred 0Challenge/Desafios were sold and over four thousand leaflets were distributed.

The MWM was based in three main slogans: Repentance, Restoration, and Resurrection. Most of the attendees came to find solutions to the oppressive, racist and sexist system of capitalism. The leadership who organized the event is trying to mislead these workers into believing that some reforms to capitalism can make it work for them.

One of the main ways that they organized this event was through the church and winning workers to religious ideas. But the rulers use religion mainly to make workers blame themselves for their problems, instead of the system. Several weeks ago the Promise Keepers, a right wing religious group, organized hundreds of thousands of men to repent and "take back the family." The PKs used sexism, saying women should be subservient to their husbands, and most of their problems would be solved once they took control of their families.

The MWM also blamed workers for their own problems, instead of blaming the racism and sexism of the capitalist system. The MWM also used nationalism,. The leadership wants these workers to support black capitalism. These are schemes pushed by Farrakhan and other reactionaries as part of the solution to the oppression of black women. But in this age of capitalist crisis, these solutions lead even more to support of one set of fascist bosses or another.

Revolution welcomed and applauded
PLP countered this poison with its communist politics. When we arrived we set the stage by displaying a large red banner that said "Now is the time for Revolution, Communist Revolution!" Many of our members spoke on our bullhorn applauding the unity that was being shown by the hundreds of thousands who had come here. Many marchers raised their fists when they saw the colorful banner of revolution and heard our communist speeches. Thousands took our literature.

One woman who was walking by with her young daughter said, "that’s exactly what we need in this country, a revolution. We gotta get rid of this racist system and their racist thugs the cops. Revolution, I’m all for it!" Other expressed the same. Others asked us what we meant by getting rid of the whole system.

One PLP member on the bullhorn said we have to unite workers around the world to fight the bosses who only offer workers war, fascism and stock market crashes. Workers are experiencing in their daily lives the increase in police brutality, the loss of jobs and workfare/slave labor. When we boldly offer them our politics that communism, a system run by the working class for the working class, is the solution to war and fascism, they welcome us.

Members of PLP made a strong impact on everyone we came in contact with—on buses and in cars that we came in and on the street. The worldwide crisis of capitalism has sharpened the infighting among different capitalist factions in the U.S., who use their agents inside the mass movement to win support for their different sides. We must win the workers, women and men, to PLP and not to ally with any of these crooks who want to use us for profits, war, and fascism. Communism will smash the racist-sexist bosses once and for all

LETTERS

Talking to Fellow GIs about war and communism

Dear Challenge:
The articles on how the splits in the ruling class apply to the military started us thinking. Although on the surface it seems like the bosses are arguing about whether women should be in the army, actually they have already invested millions of dollars into training women. Why would they waste all that money? My company is half men and half women. The article in Challenge suggested that they are really arguing about the quality of the army.

The bosses who want to go to war in the Middle East are worried about the willingness of the troops to fight and die for college money. Over half of the military is reserves or National Guard. Right now it is a nice part time job and a soldier told me "the benefits are great." They are until you have to go to war. That is when everything will change and that is what the bosses are afraid of.

There have been many criticisms of the army for lowering its standards to admit women. In fact, the physical training standards for women today are higher then the standards for men were thirty years ago. So what is going on? They are really arguing about the reliability of an "all-volunteer army."

The members of a "volunteer army" are homeless, jobless or trying to escape the drugs and crime that capitalism drowns them in. Or the army was their only opportunity to go to college. Once they are sent overseas, the "benefits" aren't so great.

The U.S. army is still reeling from the affects of the Vietnam War. Masses of soldiers refused to fight and killed their officers. It is a struggle to win soldiers to communism. You have to talk to them about communism, get involved in their daily lives and be in struggles against capitalism with them, just like workers everywhere. Soldiers are vital to PLP making a communist revolution and our experiences show us soldiers can be won.

Right now I am talking to three soldiers about communism. One of them is very outspoken and when she talks everyone listens. I am trying to get to know her. She is thinking about our ideas and said she would let me know what she thinks. She said this other guy and I are the only people she respects. Sometime this week we are having a day off and all of us are going to hang out. I am still trying to think what I am going to talk about. I think I will try to talk to them about how some of the bosses want to go to war for oil and some of them don't.
Red Soldier

New Research Pokes Another Hole in Racist Theory

Dear Challenge:
Shanelle reached through the porthole of the incubator to stroke the tiny hand of her baby. He only weighed 2 pounds and 4 ounces. Would he ever make it out of the newborn intensive care unit? Why was her baby born so prematurely, anyway? Why is it that black mothers in this country are three times as likely as white mothers to give birth to babies under three pounds?

There are a lot of wrong answers to that question. Black mothers have smaller babies than white women even if they are married and well educated. They had more tiny babies even before the crack epidemic. They suffer more prematurity even if they eat right, don’t smoke and get early prenatal care. Why?

For as long as this question has been around, some racists have answered, "It’s genetic. Black babies are supposed to be smaller." The defenders of the racist system push this idea to make it look like it’s an inescapable fact of nature when 6,000 more black babies die each year as a direct result of their higher prematurity rate.

An article just published in the New England Journal of Medicine blows a big hole in that racist theory. The authors, two Chicago newborn specialists, looked at birth weights of 90,000 babies born over the last 15 years. They questioned the racist theory which says low birth weight comes from African genes. People we call "black" or "African American" on the average get about 3/4 of their genetic inheritance from African ancestors and 1/4 from European, Native American or other groups. In the article, the babies of these US black mothers were compared with babies born to women who have recently immigrated here from West Africa, the same area that was called the "Slave Coast" 300 years ago. The ancestry of the Africans is nearly 100% African.

If genes controlled birth weight, and African genes led to lower birth weight, then the African babies should have been the smallest in the study. What the researchers found was the opposite: the African babies are about as big as the white babies –– and half a pound heavier than the US black infants. And the babies of African mothers are close in weight to white babies even when you take education and other factors into account.

The truth is, differences between the so-called "races" in health –– whether you look at high blood pressure, infant mortality or heart attacks –– can all be traced to racism, not "race" per se. In fact, there is no such thing as race if you’re talking about biology or genetics. Race is a social category which has been part of capitalism for hundreds of years. Ever since the first English planter profited from the first cotton harvested by a kidnapped African in the seventeenth century, race labels have been used to justify unequal treatment of people. This was very profitable then, and it still is today. Black and immigrant workers earn less than whites for similar work, and capitalists pocket the difference.

As one of the authors said, "The excess low birth weight among African Americans –– and the excess deaths that come with it –– are caused by a social system, not by genetics."
Red Docs

Students Support Victim of Police Brutality

Dear Challenge:
We are students from Foreman High School. When we learned what happened to Jeremiah Mearday, we decided to make a card for him and had people sign it all around school. It was interesting to us because we see the police violence everyday, and it was fun to be a part of a group who was trying to do something about it, the PLP.

We organized a group to go over to his house and take him the card. We were only three students and a teacher, but more kids would have liked to come and meet him if their schedules were different. But just a few of us did make a difference because he and his family were proud to see that other people cared and the problem wasn’t going away.

We talked to him and his father about Challenge. You would think that a man who knows nothing about PLP would be afraid of communism, but he wasn’t - he wanted to learn more about it. Maybe in the future he’ll become a member of PLP. When his son was beaten and taken to the hospital, you would think there’s nothing wrong with taking pictures of your own son, but in this capitalist world we live in it’s a problem to do anything the bosses don’t approve of. So they took him to jail because he refused to give up the pictures he took. He couldn’t take pictures, but the police could and we’re supposed to believe this is a world of equal rights!

The youth we’ve talked to don’t have such high opinions of the cops right now. Some say all cops are bad and others say that only a select few are bad. We pointed out that if one cop knows about a bad cop and doesn’t speak out he’s just as guilty.

Some students at Foreman think the problem is just white cops, and some think it’s just the black cops. We tell them that it doesn’t matter what color they are, they’re all blue.
In struggle, FHS students

Communism Yes! Black Capitalism No!

Dear Challenge,
Last weekend a group of party members, and friends went to the Million Women March (MWM) from Chicago. We made a plan to go with different organizations that we were in someway connected to. The trip started out with a few hitches. First, some workers paid extra money to ride roomier buses. Second, there was a problem when we stopped for gas in the early morning. We were told by the driver that we had twenty minutes to freshen up. When we returned to the bus we found out that the driver was unable to get gas, because the check that he had gotten from the bus company owner (Pollard) was not accepted there. So on down the road we went. The third sign came when we got to the gas station, and the assistant driver had to use his own personal charge card to put gas in the bus. Later we were at a toll booth for about 15 minutes. We found out the assistant driver again had to come out of his own pocket to pay the toll.

On the way home that’s when all hell broke loose! We were lost for two hours. When we finally arrived at a truck stop in Pennsylvania when we were told that we had to make room for some more women whose bus had broken down earlier. Leaving Pennsylvania, again we were held up at another toll booth. This time a much aggravated driver asked women on the bus to contribute money for the toll. The bus driver never told us that we were low on fuel, but kept driving. We soon found out. In Indianapolis, the bus came to a slow grinding stop under a viaduct. The driver was able to get a ride from a worker who took him to a gas station where he filled up a gas can. Now the trick was not to run out of gas again before we could get to a gas station who would take his check before we ran out of gas again. By this time everyone’s temper on the bus was boiling. Some wanted to take out their frustrations on the driver, however most put the blame on the bus company owner where it belonged. Pollard is a black owned bus company. He does not have CB’s in any of his busses ( let alone road atlases.)

Part of the platform the MWM was pushing was the creation of more black entrepreneurs. Well, no thanks. Capitalism has one purpose only, and that is to keep profits high and overhead low. The workers are the ones who suffer every time. Self-critically we could have used this opportunity to explain why only communism is the solution, not more black capitalism. Considering all the headaches, we were lucky. A Chicago newspaper reported the next day, a bus returning from the MWM slid into a guardrail near Gastonia, North Carolina and seventeen people were injured.
Chicago Red

Clarify Communist Line on Sexism, War

Dear Challenge:
Last week’s editorial centers on an important idea: that only communist revolution can destroy the triple-exploitation and oppression of black women workers. In the process, though, the piece inadvertently misrepresents our Party’s line on sexism and how to fight it.

Because black mothers have seen racism damage and destroy their own children, the piece argues, they "can identify with the Iraqi mother whose children die because Rockefeller & Co. want to protect their oil profits." When ground war begins, "the children of black women -- and white and latin and Asian -- will be coming home in body bags!"

This line of argument reinforces a particularly reactionary form of feminism (shared by some extreme sexists) that sees war as a "male thing" versus childraising as a "female thing." The Iraqi children killed by U.S. imperialism have fathers as well as mothers. So do the young U.S. workers who will come home in body bags. Economic sanctions against Iraq have killed male workers as well as "thousands of women and children."

During the Vietnam War, pacifist groups like the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom put forward slogans like "war is unhealthy for children and other living things." Our Party, in contrast, is not against war. We know that imperialist war, which is an inescapable result of capitalism, will open the door for revolutionary war which will destroy capitalism. Many black women will fight on the front lines of this struggle for communism.

The editorial rightly criticizes the pro-capitalist ideology that encourages black women to identify only with other black women. But it does so only in a limited way, putting forward that black women should see connections between their experiences and those of latin, white, Asian, Indian, and Thai women workers. The logic of this paragraph does not lead to the "class solidarity" mentioned in the last sentence, but to the multi-cultural feminism currently being pushed hard by academic liberals and their corporate backers.

A more effective way to link the issue of imperialist war to the Million Women March (MWM) would have been to show how the Old Money bosses are trying to make the army "female-friendly." They are exposing sexual harassment and rape scandals, and building the idea of the U.S. Army as the model of an "equal opportunity employer." They push multi-culturalism to encourage workers, including black women, to feel that "we’re all Americans" in order to build up pro-war patriotism.

This multi-culturalism can make use of the identity politics ("speaking as a black woman, I....") that underlie the MWM. However, New Money bosses are also experimenting with ways to use cultural nationalism and cultural feminism to build movements opposing Old Money’s oil wars, which contradict their own drive for maximum profits and political power.

Under these circumstances, it’s important that we explain our Party’s line as clearly as possible, sharply differentiating ourselves from feminists, nationalists, and multiculturalists of all stripes.
Chicago comrade

Che Guevara Article Confusing, Reader Says

Dear Challenge:
The article about Che Guevara in the October 29, 1997 issue of Challenge is very confusing. In the headline it explains the failure of Guevara’s "foco" theory and in the first paragraph of the article blames Castro for using Che’s revolutionary example to get Cuban workers to work for free. The writer also says perhaps the thing that Castro wants to exploit the most about Che is his fame as an anti-imperialist fighter.

But as I read in PL Magazine in May, 1969, in an article title "Guevara’s Great Adventure," Che had no concept of a mass line. He did not agree with the aim of communists to unite and organize the masses against their class enemies. He was very individualistic and believed a few brave men--elite men on the mountain--could do the job. He didn’t believe the working class can make a revolution. Quoting from the May, 1969 article, "Che opposes the need for a proletarian party, totally rejects all the theories of people’s war, the ideas of creating bases among the masses, the Marxist concept that the masses make history; and appears to be totally unaware of the class struggle around him." So if Che’s stand is crystal clear, what kind of tribute can communists offer him, and what kind of good points does he have to learn from?
A comrade

PLP'ers on Vacation Meet Communists in Germany

Dear Challenge,
On a recent vacation trip to Germany, we met some comrades who work for an auto factory and members of the MLPD (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany) Over a typical German meal we made friends and exchanged stories. They were interested in the UPS Strike and the BART strike. They listened intently as we relayed the stories from Challenge about both strikes. They asked us about our May Day celebrations and marches is the U.S.

Before the meal, we visited a cemetery where there were 11 tombstones remembering 11 communist comrades who worked in secret from 1934 to 1944. He told us that they put out a paper to workers in an auto plant until they were discovered and executed in 1944.

W. told us a story about his grandfather. It seems that Adolph Hitler was getting ready to make his first nationwide radio address, but W’s grandfather along with some other communist workers had made a plan with an ax, and cut the transmission line and Hitler’s speech.

We plan to stay in touch and discuss the similarities and differences in our lines.

Vacationing Reds.