Challenge, November 19, 1997
Index:
U.S. Will Go It Alone
Saddam Crazy Like A Fox: U.S. and Iraqi Rulers:
Two Sets of Thieves Fighting for Oil Profits
Cop Terror Continues…Real
Terrorism—Mock Terrorism
Workers’ Anger Grows Against Cop Terror
Bosses’ Greed Kills Four Workers in Toy Factory
Boeing Workers Talk About Oil War
Capitalism Causes Imperialist War; Communism Will
End It
Oil War Still on U.S. Agenda
An Incident Waiting To Happen....
A good teacher shows youth the future under
capitalism: War or Jail
200 Workers, Students and Faculty March Against
Cops
Smash Workfare, Don’t Institutionalize It
LETTERS
The Hollywood Anti-Red Witchhunt
Hundreds of Thousands Protest Capitalism, Remember
1917 Revolution
It appears that the U.S "allies" have forced the U.S. to temporarily back down from a military solution in Iraq. But, let us not make the mistake of thinking that the isolation and weakness of the U.S. rulers will prevent them from launching a full-scale war in the Middle East, without its "allies." The U.S needs to control the flow of oil and its billions in profits, and the Middle East remains central to this.
This century has shown us that imperialism and war go hand-in-hand. And when it comes to imperialist war, the U.S. is still Numero Uno.
Workers and youth, who die and kill in the bosses’ wars, must not to be lulled by what the rulers appear to be doing. We need to go on the offensive to organize our class to make the most of the opportunity that imperialist war opens to us for building the PLP and organizing for communist revolution. We must organize lunch-time meetings and rallies of our fellow workers and students. We need to propose anti-imperialist resolutions and actions in the trade unions; by leading sit-ins at recruiting stations and factories and walk outs in the high schools to oppose the bosses’ inevitable war and to turn the guns around on the capitalist system.
Saddam Crazy Like A Fox: U.S. and Iraqi Rulers: Two Sets of Thieves Fighting for Oil Profits
Is Saddam crazy? The media love to picture him in that way. In reality, he is simply playing the other side of the same game played by the U.S. For years, through war and diplomatic and military pressures, the clique around Saddam has been trying to emerge as the number one power in the Mideast. Iraqi bosses want to control, and seek maximum profits from, Mideast oil. (Everyone wants to get into the act.).
In the mid-1980’s, Iraq went to war against Iran. Up to the late 1970’s, Iran had been one of the twin pillars of U.S. power in the Mideast. The U.S. had used the Shah of Iran and various Israeli fascists in their two-pronged axis to help secure Mideast oil profits and control. When the Khomeini Islamic Fundamentalist fascists reversed the pro-U.S. policies of the Shah, the U.S. did not complain about Iraq going to war against Iran.
When the Iran-Iraq war ended, Saddam sent his army to invade Kuwait in an effort to dominate Mideast oil profits. But Iraqi bosses miscalculated U.S. intentions; they thought they had a green light from the Bush Administration. This was underlined by the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, when she as much as told the Iraqis it was O.K. for them to attack Kuwait.
But Saddam & Co. didn’t understand the relationship of forces in the U.S. The Eastern banking interests, (Old Money forces) who dominated Mideast oil twisted Bush’s arm and forced him to reverse the U.S. position on Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. After the bloody war, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Iraq. The U.S. set up various methods of inspections and military harassment of Iraq to prevent a repeat Iraqi effort to get at Mideast oil.
In the past few years the U.S. position in the Mideast has been weakening. The French, Russians, Chinese and others made deals with Iraq to get its oil when sanctions were lifted. Saddam thinks he sees erosion of U.S. control in the Mideast.
He is correct. The Iraqis believe now is the time to act and destroy what’s left of the tottering U.S. alliance. Most important, if Iraq succeeds it will achieve a significant portion of control of all Mideast oil. Obviously, they think their trillion-dollar gamble is worth the risk of pushing the U.S. to the wall or to war.
Make no mistake: Saddam & Co. are butchers who slaughter—and have killed—untold numbers to maintain power. Iraq and the U.S. are in a classic struggle between thieves. Of course, the U.S. is a bigger danger to the world’s workers than Iraq. But we can have no sympathy for Hussein. The Iraqi workers must dump him and establish communism. A communist Mideast should be the aim of all workers internationally.
Cop Terror Continues…Real Terrorism—Mock Terrorism
NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 10 — Real terrorist attacks happen every day against the working class by the Nazi-crew-in-blue. On Saturday, Nov. 8th, Andre Burgess, a 17-year-old soccer player, was shot and wounded by federal marshals. Burgess was walking down the street when he walked by the police cruiser. The marshals say they mistook Burgess for a drug dealer and went after him. The cops thought that the youth had a gun but in fact, all he had was a Three Musketeer candy bar. The cops yelled at Burgess to stop. When he turned around, frightened and surprised, the marshals shot him in the leg. After the shooting, the cops wrestled him to the ground even though he was wounded!
Events like these happen too often. The bosses have unleashed their dogs, the cops, on workers and youth. Their so-called "quality of life" laws give the cops the permission to harass, arrest and execute. The premise of these laws is that all working class youth, especially black and Latin, are criminals.
Lots of bad apples in a capitalist bowl
Police terror is natural under capitalism. Today they terrorize our youth on the streets. When they shot Andre Burgess, the marshals were doing their duty. In South Africa, a Nazi cop who terrorized and tortured political prisoners and workers, using suffocation and electric shocks, is crying to the court that he was just following orders. The cops are always used to protect and serve the bosses precious property and interests. When workers strike on the job and rebellions break out, the cops are used to suppress the anger and frustration of the workers. Plain and simple, they are the hired hit men for the ruling class. There are no good apples, just one bad system.
Expose Racist Police Terror and Build For Communism
Andre Burgess is not the first and certainly not the last worker or youth to get shot by the cops. The splits within the ruling class, between Old Money Rockefeller interests and New Money, domestic oil interests, and the increased rivalry from other imperialists to the U.S., lead to more wars and fascism. The U.S. bosses have a dilemma. On one side, they need to win certain sections of working class youth to kill and die in the Middle East or any other part of the world, to protect the bosses’ profits. On the other hand, they also understand that the only thing the system has to offer most workers and youth is wage cuts slave labor, etc. And the cops are the "hired goons" who protect and serve the racist bosses.
Bang! Was heard through the downtown streets of Manhattan. Suddenly people were wondering what was going on. Windows were smashed; sirens rang. Someone had detonated a small bomb at a bank. While, at the same time, about 20 blocks away several units of the NYPD fascist crew and federal agencies were running a mock terrorist attack. The bosses are preparing for war and feel the necessity to act out a gas attack on a building.
The PLP Nov. 15th march against police terror is therefore very important. The march will be held in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where some of the most barbaric acts of police terror have taken place recently including the torture with a plunger of Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima by cops in the 70th precinct. Our march will show tens of thousands that racist police terror, war and capitalism go together. And that the only long-range solution to the bosses’ dictatorship that requires such fascist methods is to fight for a worker-led communist society: the dictatorship of the working class.
Workers’ Anger Grows Against Cop Terror
CHICAGO, Nov. 11 — Six weeks after he was attacked by flashlight wielding Chicago police Jeremiah Mearday is again front page news. On Friday, Nov.7th, 200 cops crowded into a court hearing for Jeremiah and stood silently in support of his attackers.
Many workers support Jeremiah and are outraged at the racist police terror against him. . Workers at Cook County Hospital initially helped to smuggle his father and a news photographer into the hospital to document Jeremiah’s broken jaw. These workers also raised this issue in their union local, as did Teamsters in local #743. The almost universal hatred of the police has brought many other workers to recent marches and rallies against police brutality.
As a response to this furor, Mayor Richard Daley and Police Superintendent Matt Rodriguez have announced their fake plan to "improve" the ranks of Chicago’s police. . This plan is being met with open hostility by a significant section of rank-and-file officers. Daley and Rodriguez want to change the way promotions to sergeant are made in order to achieve more racial balance on the force. In addition, Rodriguez identified and suspended (without pay) cops Matthew Thiel and James Comito, Jr, for the beating of Jeremiah Mearday. Rodriguez also recommended Thiel and Comito be fired.
On Monday, November 3, 300 members of the Fraternal Order of Police (F.O.P.) voted unanimously to send Rodriguez a letter of "no confidence". Prior to their demonstration at the Mearday hearing these racist cops also circulated a "no-confidence" petition, adding more names to Monday’s F.O.P. vote. Many of the cops (nearly all white) were obviously attempting to intimidate Jeremiah Mearday, but their action was just as much a criticism of Rodriguez.
Communists know that a primary characteristic of fascism is the need of the ruling capitalists to discipline their own class and to bring their troops into line. Daley and Rodriguez are not trying to end police terror or corruption on the force. But they would like to be able to count on the support of some workers for the terrorism of the cops.
In February, Daley appointed a task force on police corruption, following a string of scandals in the department. The task force’s report (released Nov. 6th) calls for tougher hiring requirements, stricter accountability and continual ethics training for Chicago’s police force. In other words, city bosses would like us to believe that they want tighter control over their shock troops, but no matter what, they need more terrorist cops. We need to be alert to ways of taking advantage of this momentary disarray in the bosses’ ranks. How can we explain these events to co-workers and classmates in order to help them reach a better understanding of fascism, especially its weaknesses? We must draw them into discussions about the nature of capitalist state power, and about the need and the possibility for workers to seize power from the bosses. We can raise topics like: "will there be police under communism?" We must use every opportunity to sharpen our counterattacks against racist police terror and to step-up our efforts to strengthen our own forces. Build the PLP!
Bosses’ Greed Kills Four Workers in Toy Factory
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 11 — "She’ll never again be able to see her children and her husband," said a weeping mother of one of the workers who died in an explosion at the toy factory, Imperial Toys, in downtown LA. The same is true of three other young women workers who were killed in the explosion. Each leaves children and friends grieving for them. There were also another 25 workers who were hurt, and hundreds of other workers, relatives, and friends affected emotionally.
"Why did this happen?" Was it an accident or was it capitalist murder? It was murder, caused by capitalist greed and worldwide competition for maximum profit. Fred Kort, owner of the factory, and the capitalist system are guilty of murder.
Several workers had complained a few days before the explosion that the machine had been having electrical problems, and that they weren’t satisfied with the safety measures in the factory. But the bosses did nothing. They refused to stop the machine to repair it.
After the explosion hypocritical politicians like Mayor Richard Riordan and City Councilman Richard Alatorre came to the factory to give their "condolences." But when have these servants of the bosses worried about the working conditions of the workers? Never!
There are hundreds of thousands of people working in similar conditions who have the constant nightmare that one day this will happen to them. For example, there are hundreds of buildings in the garment industry, which, in case of a fire or earthquake, will become tombs for thousands of workers.
There are duck and chicken processing plants in downtown LA where there are "accidents" every day, where workers get lung diseases and where supposedly everything is fine, under the bosses’ rules for "health and safety." There are also dozens of shops where workers work with acids and flammable chemicals and the workers are forced to work with no protection.
Under capitalism, where money is key and the lives of workers are expendable, the bosses make the machines and us workers work until we collapse. Of course the bosses didn’t want to stop the machine to fix it because that would mean failure to complete their orders on time, less profit.
Now there’s a big trade war between manufacturers from the U.S., Europe, Taiwan, China, Mexico and others. Not only for toys that kill, but also for every kind of commodity, including oil. Most oil workers, especially those in the Middle East, are paid very low wages, like the workers in this toy factory who are paid minimum wage. All the bosses try to get the maximum production with the worst conditions for the workers. This commercial war is leading to a shooting war, where deaths are counted in the thousands and millions. Can you guess from where these deaths will come? From us, the workers! Those who die in these wars are our children, brothers, sisters and parents. Today the bosses are killing workers in the factories and hospitals with cuts in services, and in the streets with deportations and police terror. Tomorrow the bosses will be killing workers in the oil fields in the Middle East.
PLP calls on workers in LA to support the fight of the workers at Imperial Toys. We should participate in the collections in the factories, churches, and community organizations and take this aid to the families. Garment workers are calling on their co-workers to organize meetings, work stoppages, and discussions about these deaths in the toy factory and about the millions who the big bosses are planning to kill in the next oil war.
This capitalist system doesn’t work for the workers. This capitalist system must be destroyed. The workers as a class can organize and fight to turn the bosses’ war against the workers into a war against the bosses, to build a communist system with no money or bosses’ greed that kills workers. Only communism will end wars for profit. In a communist system, we will work to satisfy the needs of all the workers. The life of any worker is worth more than all the machines in the factories and all the oil in the Middle East!
We must avenge these deaths from the explosion, and the thousands of workers deported and sent to die slowly of hunger. We will avenge the deaths of those murdered by police terror. And we will avenge the deaths of those who have died and will die in the bosses’ wars. We will avenge these deaths by joining the Progressive Labor Party and fighting for communism!
Boeing Workers Talk About Oil War
Somewhere on the freeway in Washington between home and the Boeing plant, Nov. 5th — The very whiff of war sparks heated discussion among workers. The first discussion was on the way to work between a union official and me.
"What’s got into Saddam?" the Council representative asked me, after I brought up the TV CNN report on the Iraqi crisis broadcast the night before.
"The most important question isn’t what’s got into Saddam," I ventured. "The most important question is what has Rockefeller been planning for the last year. The Eastern Establishment Old Money needs that oil. Saddam continues to threaten the stability of Rocky’s client states like Saudi Arabia. We’ve been talking about the bosses’ invasion plans for nearly a year now in Challenge. I’ve got a copy of their own plans to invade that was written six months ago for the Council of Foreign Relations—the Rockefeller think-tank. The U.S. is planning to invade no matter what Saddam does."
"So, what you’re telling me is that Rockefeller runs the country," he said.
"Well, there are other groups of bosses, but when push comes to shove…"
"Rockefeller’s name is right in the center of it!" he finished the sentence for me.
This was the first of more than a dozen discussions and debates that day at lunch, breaks and even at our machines. You can imagine I was a little "drained" by the time it came to ride home.
Yet, there is no rest for the weary! No sooner had we hit the freeway going home than two friends at the back of the bus started a conversation about Saddam.
"He’s crazy!" said one.
"We should have got him when we could, now we’re going to have to go back in to finish the job," said the other.
"Now, wait just a minute!" interrupted the Council rep. "Me and Sam [that’s me] have been talking about this. Rockefeller’s been planning this shit for a long time. All that stuff you hear on the TV about how crazy Saddam is just a cover. The bosses’ media will find some excuse to start this war. They’ve done it before—like the Gulf of Tonkin [Ed: An incident the government made up to justify the Vietnam War]. The big oil bosses just want that oil and they are ready to kill any number of us to get it!"
The discussion went on for the ride home. We pointed out how the U.S. imperialists killed over a half a million during the Persian Gulf war. They continue the slaughter of Iraqi children to this day with the sanctions. Everyone thought an occupation of Iraq would result in a lot of our children being brought home in body bags. The reality of imperialism set in. Even the two at the back of the bus had a change of heart. "It’s a real shame," said one, before stepping off the bus. "The U.S. is always butting its nose in where it doesn’t belong."
Capitalism Causes Imperialist War; Communism Will End It
The bosses’ media have pushed the line that this crisis is caused by that crazy, demonic Saddam. CNN went so far as to say the next Persian Gulf war would be brought about by Saddam’s desire to be on center stage. The logic of this argument is that you get rid of war when you get rid of a few (anti-U.S.) crazies.
In reality, the absolute necessity for Rockefeller to maintain a chokehold on Middle Eastern Oil is what will cause the next world war. The inherent instability of capitalism forces the rivalry between imperialists to erupt into war. You end war by ending its cause—capitalism.
The same ruling class that plans the war in the Middle East is the same class that rules Boeing. Rockefeller’s agents on the Boeing Board of Directors demand we work excessive overtime, exploit prison labor to build their war machine, and send our sons and daughters to die in a war against the sons and daughters of Iraqi workers. We will all be sacrificed on the altar of profits if we allow this system to exist.
Resources like oil are extracted, refined and transported by the collective effort of millions of workers. Yet, the wealth produced is appropriated by a small group of bosses. Each competing oil block must amass maximum profits or be driven from existence. War results. Communism would allot resources for the needs of the working class, not for the private accumulation of vast wealth and power. Competition would be replaced by collectivity; imperialist war would be replaced by international solidarity in defense of workers’ needs. The only sane reaction to the bosses’ oil wars is to join the Progressive Labor Party to build for communist revolution.
SEATTLE, Nov. 8 — Some Boeing workers have argued that major war is not an option since the U.S. is so dominant militarily. At most, they think, the U.S. will drop a few bombs and it will be all over. In fact, just the opposite is the case.
Pressure is building up on the U.S. bosses to quickly invade Iraq. "The U. S. will get only one good military shot at Saddam before everyone at the UN starts...rushing to his defense," writes Thomas Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times.
Friedman’s fears are more than tactical and diplomatic. They represent strategic economic, political and military trends that point to eroding U.S. power. "He [Saddam] smells where the wind is blowing in the Middle East—in America’s face," Friedman concludes.
Challenge has written extensively about the economic and political erosion of Rockefeller’s oil empire. U.S. military dominance is also being challenged.
"France and Britain’s defense ministers are inviting the giant Russian-Ukrainian aircraft builder Antonio to join west Europe’s ambitious Future Large Aircraft (FLA) program," reports Boeing’s Washington D.C. Office. " ‘We have already spoken with the Germans,’ said a senior French defense official. ‘The idea is cooperation with Antonio, who has extensive experience in producing large military transport aircraft, in view of producing what we need.’ Estimates are a single FLA would cost $75 million with initial orders for 300 aircraft."
The European/Russian program to develop the largest airborne troop and equipment carriers in the world is a direct challenge to U.S. military power in the Middle East. Europe and Russia are closer to the Middle East than the U.S. The FLA will give them the means to move soldiers and material much more quickly into areas of potential combat.
The leadership that led the U.S. Air Force during Desert Storm has been sacked. The new Air Force Generals agree with Rockefeller that bombs alone don’t secure oil wells. The history of the Persian Gulf since the war provides the proof. Rockefeller, Inc. want the Air Force to primarily provide logistic support to a ground invasion.
The significance of the FLA has not been lost on the Pentagon. In fact, the day after the FLA contracts became public, the Air Force added more C-17 transports to its budgetary request.
Any strategic military advantage the U.S. has in the Middle East is likely to be short-lived. Pressure for a major invasion in the near future mounts. A ground assault and occupation of Iraq could readily spread into a world war.
We also have to act quickly. Action and ideological struggle will offer our revolutionary alternative to many workers, students and soldiers in the mass organizations to which we belong. Building our Party to turn the bosses’ imperialist war into a revolutionary war for communism is the order of the day.
An Incident Waiting To Happen....
The USS Nimiety is a gigantic carrier. The Persian Gulf is a tiny enclosed sea. One coast, the Iranian coast, is lined with dramatic cliffs, giving Iran a natural military advantage. No ship can enter or escape the Gulf except by passing through the extremely narrow Straits of Hormuz.
It would be easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for the USS Nimiety to pass unharmed through the Straits if the world, or part of it, turned hostile to the U.S. mission in the Gulf.
The Nimitz was sent to the Gulf as a show of force. It was met by Iranian naval maneuvers—a show of counter force. If it sails away without any demonstration of that force, it will be seen as a sign of weakness and a major setback for U.S. imperialism.
Rockefeller’s trouble is the isolation of the U.S. Of the major imperialist powers only perhaps Britain supports them. On top of that the U.S. ruling class is itself split, with the "oil-patch" section being absolutely opposed to any sustained military action. It is a serious situation.
Only a dramatic turn of events could shift things Rockefeller’s way. Imagine a major attack on the Nimitz or a terrorist bomb on the Brooklyn Bridge that was blamed on Iraq. It has happened before. "Remember the Maine" became the battle cry of the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American war. The Battleship Maine exploded in the Cuban Harbor in 1898. The Captain and the First Officer were sure the Spanish had nothing to do with it. That didn’t stop the Hearst Newspapers, which were looking for an excuse to start a war with the weakened Spanish Empire. The U.S. was at war within the month of this fabricated incident. The sinking of the Trans-Atlantic passenger liner Lusitania brought the U.S. into World War I on Britain’s side. The fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident justified U.S. troops being sent to Vietnam. We should not be surprised and we should not be fooled by horrific incidents in the days ahead. Rockefeller and his clique of Old Money will stop at nothing to maintain their profits and power.
A good teacher shows youth the future under capitalism: War or Jail On Sat. evening, Nov. 8th, we had a fundraiser for Mary Lonergan’s legal case. She is the Brooklyn teacher who was fired for bringing students to May Day 1996.
The first thing we did was read excerpts from the depositions [pre-trial statements] of the Brooklyn High School Superintendent Joyce Coppin and her principal Jerry Cioffi. The teachers and friends in the audience had a great laugh when they heard the school bosses squirming and lying and saying "I don’t know" and "I can’t remember" and "I don’t understand the question." But the best part of the evening was when Mary talked about why she was fired. She recalled being a substitute teacher at Edison High School in Philadelphia. Then she remembered seeing a plaque in the high school lobby that contained the names of the young men who had died in Vietnam. Edison High has the largest number of graduates who are mainly black and Latin, killed in Vietnam. After remembering the plaque, she spoke about the Gulf of Tonkin hoax. Early in the Vietnam War the U.S. government wanted to bomb North Vietnam, so they faked this incident where the North Vietnamese were supposed to have fired on a big navy ship from a little PT boat. It was all a lie, but they used it to justify bombing North Vietnam. Then Mary talked about the current U.S. threats toward a war with Iraq. It’s obvious that the U.S. bosses are trying to set up a confrontation so they can justify bombing and invading Iraq. She pointed out that our young children are being groomed and prepared for war. Period.
She related this to the explosion in the U.S. prison population. We’ve all heard the numbers—how there are so many more people in prison today than 20 years ago, but the one statistic she read was shocking. In California in 1979 there were 19,000 people in prison and in 1992 there were 110,000—a 400% increase. And most of the prisoners are black & Latin men and women. So that is the future that capitalism is offering working class youth: prison or the military, and that is why they fired a communist. Mary taught the students the truth about their future; she told them about what the system has in store for them. The school bosses knew she was dangerous from the beginning and they used the May Day trip as an excuse to get rid of her.
And that is why we need to shake off our lethargy and our fear of being disciplined or fired at work, and to speak out against the plans to send a whole generation of working class youth, not only here in the U.S., but mostly in the Middle East, to kill workers for the bosses’ oil profits in the Middle East. Attacks on Mary or other teachers are really attacks on the students. They are the ones who suffer. The bosses will keep on attacking teachers who resist grooming the students for war and instilling rah-rah patriotism, saluting the flag, etc. It was a very moving talk, and we all left the party motivated to fight a lot harder against system.
200 Workers, Students and Faculty March Against Cops
NEW JERSEY, Nov. 11 — On Saturday Nov. 9th, students and faculty from Drew University, Saint Elizabeth’s College, and Farleigh Dickinson University marched in unity with residents of Madison, NJ against police brutality. Young and old, men and women, black, Latin, Asian, and white marched, chanting "Racist Police Terror Means Fight Back." Many more carried homemade signs and banners as the march descended on the streets of Madison. The march of 200 was sparked by the recent beating of four black men in the public housing area of Madison by racist cops.
The four black men were sitting in front of their apartment building. Police officers came to the scene and started talking to the men. Apparently one cop knew one of them. The man had his arm on the shoulder of the cop he knew when suddenly another officer clubbed and knocked the man to the ground and maced him. At this point, friends of the assaulted man came to protect him and they got knocked around and maced by the cops as well.
The four black men were harassed, beaten, maced and arrested by the two racist cops as family members and friends watched in anger. Some suffered serious injuries and had to be treated later at a local hospital. They were attacked because the police have the go-ahead from the ruling class to impose racist anti-working class "quality of life laws," but the truth is that these laws make it even easier for cops to harass black and Latin youth.
Unfortunately, the organizers of the march did not relate the police terror to the crisis of capitalism and the bosses’ growing need for fascism and war. We in PLP must bring this understanding to the working class by participating in the growing mass movement against police terror. Only by building a mass communist movement do workers have a chance to defeat the fascist bosses and their storm troopers, the cops.
Smash Workfare, Don’t Institutionalize It
NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 11 — The debate is sharpening in AFSCME Local 371 over how the local should participate in the fight against workfare. PLP members hope to win many union members to become active in the struggle against this slave labor scheme. We also want to expose the role of union leaders in the development of U.S. fascism and explain why joining the communist PLP is the way to fight the bosses’ drive for war and fascism!
At the Local’s October Delegate Assembly, a Delegate challenged the union’s plan-to-negotiate "workfare-to-work" proposals with the city bosses. He argued that plans like hiring school lunch helpers only after a "successful" (docile) workfare (slave labor) "Experience," actually institutionalizes rather than fights workfare. It was pointed out that AFSCME’s refusal to support last summer’s anti-workfare march from Philadelphia to New York also reflected the institutionalized don’t-fight outlook. A call was made for this Local to support the Dec. 10th nationwide actions against workfare/slave labor.
Throughout NYC, similar struggles are occurring as members of non-profit organizations and religious congregations debate if they should become Work Experience program (WEP) sites for workfare expansion. A WEP pledge of resistance is being circulated in such organizations. A Sept. 29th request for proposals for 8 contracted-out "multi-service" centers included the requirement that each multi-service center be a workfare/WEP site, thus expanding and codifying slave labor workfare.
The bosses are debating how best and how quickly to build fascism in the U.S. Exposés like the NY Times article about the abuses in the workfare program as well as NYC AFSCME and Acorn’s efforts to represent WEP workers in grievances represent attempts by the main section of the ruling class to take the hard edge off developing fascism. But be it Old Money or New Money, the bosses agree they need to impose fascist conditions on the working class.
We cannot rely on them or any of the ruling class led organizations that promote the bosses’ agenda. We want to unite with the millions who are seeking a way out of the horrors of capitalism. We want them to join PLP. We don’t want slave labor with union cards. We don’t want a grievance procedure in the concentration camps. We will abolish racist slave labor workfare and all wage slavery with communist revolution!
LETTERS
Ideas in PLP flyer flies at MWM
Dear Challenge:
A young woman called the Chicago PLP office last week, having
gotten a Party leaflet at the Million Woman March. The caller
identified herself as a young mother who is homeless, and now
living in a hotel with her husband, and four children.
She said, "Hi, I’m calling about the flyer that says it’s looking for men and women to fight for Communist Revolution. I’ve just now had the time to go over all the literature that was given to me on the march. Your flyer was the only one that asked people to be part of and join something. I would like to find out more about your group, and see if it is possible if we can network together. I live in Michigan, and things are really bad here for black people.
I’ve tried to write to the local newspapers about the
racism that exist here, but they won’t print it. I see how
the black politicians are just out for themselves, and how the
white ones want to find out just how much you really know about
what’s going on. I’m known around here as a fighter,
and maybe I can write something for your newspaper so I can let
people know what’s going on.
M.A.D.
Capitalist culture censors U.S. history
Dear Challenge:
The garment industry was thrown into a tizzy when it heard that
the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American
History has scheduled an exhibition for April called,
"Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A Dialogue on American
Sweatshops, 1820 to the Present." The curators plan to
explore issues like the historic relationship between immigration
and sweatshops. The exhibition is to include a re-creation of the
El Monte sweatshop where illegal Thai immigrants worked in slave
conditions behind barbed wire in 1995.
Apparel and retail trade groups first enlisted politicians to pressure the Smithsonian Institution (which is run by the federal government) to back off. Such a move succeed a few years ago when curators at the Museum of Air and Space (another Smithsonian Institution) planned an exhibition on the Enola Gay that questioned the necessity of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
The garment bosses (members of the National Retail Federation, the American Apparel Manufacturers Association and the California Fashion Association) complain that the proposed sweatshop exhibition is "unbalanced and negative." They refuse to cooperate with Clinton’s White House task force (the Apparel Industry Partnership) which plans to develop a voluntary anti-sweatshop code of conduct.
But Clinton’s task force won’t do anything about the real conditions for workers in the garment industry; it is a smoke and mirrors trick to give the illusion that Clinton "cares." Even Nike—which pays its Vietnamese workers $47 a month for a 66-hour week—could sign such a code and shed a few crocodile tears.
The controversy is nevertheless heating up. Forty-five Democrats in Congress signed a letter of support for the exhibition. Clearly the bosses disagree more sharply about this than they did about the Enola Gay.
The fact is that the U.S. bosses need docile workers, whether the sweatshops are in the U.S. or in other countries such as Mexico, where the NAFTA agreement allows U.S. bosses to move easily. There is a heated struggle in the U.S. ruling class as to how far to suppress pro-working class views.
Obviously, the bosses are afraid that people will learn the
truth. Culture, which often seems frivolous, helps the ruling
classes to maintain state power. Museums and the arts help to
sanitize the bosses’ reputations, and that’s why the
bosses have to control curators and museum workers.
Boston Reader
General strike in DR, war in Iraq and poverty in U.S.
Dear Challenge:
The following is a leaflet we gave out in NYC. Please print it in
Challenge. Thank you.! PLP Workers’ Club
What do they have in common? A general strike has been called for Nov. 11th and 12th in the Dominican Republic. The strike is against the high cost of living, union busting, the constant blackouts which make life even more unbearable, etc. President Leonel Fernandez, who used to live on Manhattan’s West Side, was elected because he promised quick solutions to many of these problems. But he has been in power for over a year now and nothing has changed. In response to the general strike, the government has responded by mass arrests and denouncing youth who have been organizing protests in the working class areas of the major cities as "terrorists," "gang-members", etc.
The reason this regime has no solutions is because capitalism is incapable of supplying the basic needs of workers anywhere. Giuliani just got re-elected by claiming things are "great" for everyone. Meanwhile, a report has just come out showing that living conditions for Dominican immigrants in New York have worsened. Dominicans are poorer than they used to be because of a lack of jobs that pay living wages, worsening housing conditions and cutbacks in social services. Police terror is used by the rulers try to stop these workers from fighting back.
Indeed, things are bound to get worse for everyone. We are in the middle of another major international economic crisis, with up and downs in the stock market and a worldwide crisis of overproduction. The Clinton administration is offering the solution U.S. rulers always use in an attempt to save their systems: war. This time it’s war against Iraq. We are being told that the reason they are going to bomb Iraq is because Saddam Hussein is a "bad guy." But if that was a reason, all countries should be bombed because they are all ruled by "bad guys" as far as workers are concerned. The real reason Clinton is threatening Iraq is control over oil. Hussein is now making deals with French, Russian, Chinese and Malaysian oil companies, threatening to undermine the control of Exxon and other U.S. oil companies in the region.
Police terror, poverty and war are the trademarks of capitalism from New York to Santo Domingo. We in Progressive Labor Party have a solution—communism. We are fighting for a world without any bosses, without fascist terror, where production will be according to need. If you agree that there can be something better than police terror, poverty and join, you belong in PLP
Bosses now want women on welfare to stay home
Dear Challenge:
The front page of the Nov. 3rd Washington Post carried a
story so blatantly distorted and racist it deserves a Bullshitzer
prize.
First of all, any article on welfare is racist if, like this one, it lets readers believe the lie that the majority of welfare recipients are black, rather than white. Second, after decades of blaming welfare recipients for being lazy and refusing to work, the Post now blames them for precisely the opposite—for working. It was a story about how women on welfare in Massachusetts are doing occasional odd jobs in order to earn a few extra bucks to keep them and their families (barely) alive. So how could you find fault with that? Only the bosses' own media and servants in government could twist this into an act deserving of condemnation.
The article claims that working odd jobs is virtually universal among welfare recipients, and it even grants that the amount of money involved is "relatively small." Then it quotes Claire Mclntire, the welfare commissioner in Massachusetts, as saying, "I don't think of it as petty. Fraud is fraud."
Why is it fraud? Because the women are not reporting the income from these occasional odd jobs to their caseworkers. I call it not fraud, but an act of the purest common sense and self-preservation. If the women were to report this petty extra income, many of the caseworkers would take it away from them. Would either of the two reporters or any of the caseworkers do any differently in similar circumstances? And this they call an incentive to work?
Well, the government and the Post want it both ways. Either women on welfare don't want to work and have to be forced to, or they do want to work, in which case, they are committing a crime. The Post never asks the question whether those politicians in Congress and the state legislatures, the president, and the governors, who made this minor act of self-preservation a "crime," are themselves committing a crime against the working class. The Post never asks whether those caseworkers who would take this petty amount of money away from welfare recipients are themselves committing the crime of theft. The Post never asks whether the capitalist ruling class, whose profits depend on maximally impoverishing the working class, are themselves committing the crime of exploitation and theft. And the Post never asks whether the Post, which covers for all these parasites, is itself committing the crime of fraud.
I wonder what the Post will call it when the working
class takes power away from the capitalists and their government
with communist revolution. I guess I'll never find out, because
the Post and the rest of the ruling class media will no
longer exist. But that's all right. I don't mind wondering.
A Comrade
Anti-terrorist law can easily be used against communists
Dear Challenge:
The recent Anti-Terrorism law is a major threat to our Party and
to working people in general, but your recent article,
"Fight Rulers Anti-Terrorist Law: War and Fascism—Two
Peas in a Pod," 10/29) was misleading.
The article lists the organizations that the U.S. currently classifies as "terrorist," which are primarily Middle Eastern groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Jihad. It states, almost in passing, that other groups can be added to this list. It goes on to stress how non-citizen members of these organizations who are in the U.S. can be jailed or deported.
My specific objection to this article is that the true dangers of the Anti-Terrorism law are not pointed out clearly enough. Also, it could give readers the mistaken impression that we support the nationalist, extremist groups that are named.
My Party club leader made a vital point: Not only can people who belong to, or financially support these organizations, be punished, but honest Middle-Eastern workers who sympathize with them could also be deported. While we must clarify that under no conditions do we support these groups, we must defend innocent workers who are so attacked (as well as try to win them to our line).
We have stated before that there is a strong possibility that
in the future, PLP can be added to the list of organizations
considered to be "terrorist." It is impossible to
over-emphasize this point, because the dangers involved are very
real. According to the U.S. Constitution, only one
"crime" warrants execution under the Federal Court
System—that is sedition, or plotting to overthrow the U.S.
Government. Our "founding fathers" were so intent on
protecting their precious bourgeois republic that they considered
sedition to be a more serious crime than mass murder—and, of
course, they did not consider exploitation to be a crime at all!
Other crimes have been added to the list. But when Timothy
McVeigh gets executed for his acts of sedition and mass terror,
he will follow in the footsteps of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,
the only people ever executed by the U.S. Federal Court system.
The Rosenbergs were branded as traitors based not on their
actions, but on their beliefs as members of the Communist Party.
They were assassinated by the true terrorists— the U.S.
government and capitalism, American style.
Boston Comrade
PLP internationalism: only way to win
Dear Challenge:
Like many new students at University of California, Berkeley, I
am currently struggling to find my special niche in a group that
I feel has personal and political relevance to life. On this
campus, I’ve found so many dozens of "activist"
groups that offer dozens of causes and answers for the wide-eyed
youth to get involved with. However, I find it very disappointing
that all these groups have one focus and one answer. This is one
of the major attractions that I find with the PLP. It
doesn’t limit itself by taking a stance on one political
topic like racism, police brutality, sexism, or the rich
exploiting the poor, etc. and then offer a superficial solution
(Prop 209, for example) that has no real changes or long term
plans. This group seems to include all of these subjects and more
to bring the student a deeper understanding of the whole picture
and real solutions.
I am pretty new to this Party. I’ve only been to a few
study groups so far, but plan on going to many more. Last Friday
night we had a study group in the Bay area that helped me to
better understand the essence of capitalism. I look forward to
having a better understanding of the world in which we live.
A Friend of the Party
Ford, Nike Super-exploit Workers in Vietnam
Dear Challenge:
The letter from a comrade in the Nov. 12th Challenge
regarding auto-overproduction in the capitalist world referred to
a Nov. 5th NY Times article about various imperialists
constructing plants in Southeast Asia. One of the main reasons
for the spread of foreign-owned factories in this region is the
slave-type wages and conditions forced on the workers, earning a
few dollars a day, and the huge profits resulting from this
super-exploitation.
Interestingly, the Times reports a Ford plant opening in Vietnam on Nov. 6th and "the Government allow[ing] a dozen other auto makers to build assembly plants" there.
Then another Times article (11/8) reports on a Nike plant 25 miles north of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) in which 9,200 workers produce 5 million pairs of athletic shoes annually. It is a picture of "thousands of young women, mostly under 25, laboring 10.5 hours a day, six days a week, in excessive heat and noise and in foul air, for slightly more than $10 a week." And 77% suffer from respiratory problems, being exposed to carcinogens that damage the liver, kidneys and central nervous system. Meanwhile, Nike netted $800 million profits last year.
All this brings to mind events occurring 30 years ago during the Vietnam War. PLP was the first group in the U.S. to demonstrate against the U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam. We were the first to demand that U.S. imperialism "Get Out Of Vietnam!" At the time Vietnamese workers and peasants were fighting a remarkable battle against the invading troops, attempting to free themselves from a century-long imperialist exploitation. They had already smashed the French and now were handing out the same medicine to U.S. bosses.
The Vietnamese leaders called themselves communists fighting for national liberation. While we in PLP supported the heroic fight against U.S. imperialism, we criticized the fact that these leaders did not put forward replacing the bosses’ dictatorship with workers’ power—the dictatorship of the proletariat. We warned that anything short of the latter would end up maintaining capitalism. We traced the Vietnamese leaders’ position partially to their alliance with the Soviet Union, which had already abandoned workers’ rule and restored capitalism in the USSR.
We were attacked for this position by a whole host of "peace now" liberals and pseudo-leftists who said we had no right to criticize the Vietnamese "who were waging people’s war against U.S. imperialism." We answered that it would be a crime for the workers and peasants of Vietnam to have fought so hard and long, with millions of casualties, and then to wind up with the same capitalist exploitation they had had for a century or more.
While we don’t believe in gloating or crying, "we
told you so," suffice it to say that Ford and Nike have not
been welcomed into Vietnam today to bring workers power to that
country.
Brooklyn Comrade
The Hollywood Anti-Red Witchhunt, 50 Years Later : Movies Are Still Anti-Communist and Reactionary
HOLLYWOOD—Last week the Screenwriters Guild and other movie unions honored the witchhunt victims of the House Un-American Activities Committee’s crusade against communists and leftists in the movie industry. HUAC’s redbaiting attack ended what many considered to be Hollywood’s classical era, banning many of its best artists.
They invited the few survivors of the Hollywood Ten (those imprisoned for contempt for refusing to cooperate with HUAC). Ring Lardner Jr., (scriptwriter for Laura and Woman of the Year) came. Edward Dmytryk (The Caine Mutiny) declined. Although he was one of the original Ten, he later collaborated with the witchhunt.
Screenwriter Paul Jarrico, another of the Hollywood Ten, died in a car accident on his way home from the commemoration. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his script of Tom, Dick and Harry (1941). He was one of the few who both admitted membership in the Communist Party, and refused to cooperate with the Committee.
In 1954, defying the witchhunt mentality, Jarrico and other blacklisted writers, actors and the blacklisted director, Herbert Biberman, made Salt of the Earth, a pro-working class, anti-sexist movie. It was based on the true story of a strike by Mexican and white miners in New Mexico. The union that led the strike had also been attacked for its communist leadership. (TNT will be showing this movie in the next few weeks, check your TV listings).
Bertolt Brecht also told HUAC to go to hell and was forced to leave the U.S. Many were not as principled as Brecht. Elia Kazan, Sterling Hayden and others openly betrayed their fellow Hollywood actors, scriptwriters, etc. Ronald Reagan, as head of the Screen Actors Guild, openly helped HUAC. Even Humphrey Bogart, who along with Lauren Bacall, joined the first anti-witchhunt protest in 1947, later backed down under the pressure of the anti-Communist crusaders.
Ironically, while U.S. capitalism and Hollywood, always attack communists for "censoring" artists, the Hollywood Ten showed the whole world who the real fascist censors are. Actress Patricia Bosworth, a daughter of one of the Ten, recently wrote a book describing what it meant to be on the blacklisted: writing under fake names, being unable to open a bank account or even buy life insurance. It meant having your telephone bugged by the FBI and being on a concentration camp list should there be a war against the USSR. For many years, the Hollywood studios wiped out the blacklisted names from the movies already produced.
PLP Smashes HUAC Terror
The Hollywood witchhunt continued unabated. In the 1950’s, the Senate set up a parallel committee. Senator Joseph McCarthy and his aide, Richard Nixon, led a rampage against "reds in the government." HUAC terror reigned until 1964, when they called members of the Progressive Labor Movement (predecessor of PLP) to testify. PL’ers not only proudly declared being communists, and denounced HUAC as fascist, but also held a sit-in in the halls of Congress, foreshadowing the demise of HUAC.
Have things changed? Communism is still taboo in Hollywood, and anti-communism reigns supreme (witness Richard Gere’s Red Corner). But even more, as the Spanish newspaper, El País, points out, "Some…denounce that today…the ideological dictatorship of McCarthy has been replaced by moral and economic censorship."
And it couldn’t be any other way. Hollywood is the major propaganda machine for U.S. capitalism. And in this period of preparations for another war and more fascism, the "entertainment" industry is one of the leading opinion makers for the rulers’ anti-Communist, anti-working class and racist ideas.
Hollywood’s Anti-Communist Legacy
One may argue that Hollywood movies today are the bottom of the barrel (fascist films like Starship Troopers, Independence Day, Red Corner, and pro-Nazi films like Seven Days in Tibet, etc.), and argue that when communists and leftists wrote scripts, it was "the golden era" of Hollywood. Although it was an era that produced many good films, anti-Nazi movies like Watch on the Rhine, North Star, Seventh Cross, Mission to Moscow, etc., the essence of Hollywood films has always been to produce mindless, pro-capitalist garbage.
Zyuganov-Yeltsin: Capitalist Vultures -- Hundreds of Thousands Protest Capitalism, Remember 1917 Revolution
MOSCOW, Nov. 7—Several hundred thousand workers and others marched today here in the biggest anti-Yeltsin protest in many years, to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. Hundreds of thousands more marched in several other cities in Russia and in the former Soviet Republics.
In spite of all the anti-communism coming from the government, there are millions who hate capitalism which has turned the former Soviet Union into a land of poverty for the masses while a few bosses and gangsters live like kings. (Yeltsin’s speech today called for honoring those who opposed the Revolution and caused the 1918-1921 civil war that led to the invasion by 17 imperialist armies, including the U.S., that vainly tried to crush the Bolsheviks. Millions died in that invasion-civil war).
But the main hindrance to crushing capitalism comes from those who led the protest today. Zyuganov, the head of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, was the main speaker in Moscow. He gave a very revolutionary-sounding speech, calling for "kicking out the ruling clique." But his militancy was only aimed at diverting the anger of his political enemies and workers who consider him a traitor. Just a few weeks ago, Zyuganov, whose Party controls the Parliament, refused to declare Yeltsin’s rule illegal.
The reasons are very simple. Zyuganov and the deputies of his Party enjoy a lot of privileges as members of Parliament, including political patronage. Indeed, they don’t want to rock the boat too much.
Workers in the former Soviet Union need to break with the fake communists like Zyuganov if they want to turn their desire to end capitalism into reality.