All the bull thrown by Clinton and Albright about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" is a disgusting, hypocritical cover-up for one overwhelming fact of life. As the saying goes, "things ain't what they used to be" for the Rockefeller wing of the U.S. ruling class. Exxon & Co. can no longer rule over Middle Eastern oil with dictatorial authority. U.S. Big Oil's Western European Russian, and Chinese competitors are running rings around it to make deals with U.S. bosses' Iraqi and Iranian enemies. As far as "mass destruction" is concerned, U.S. imperialism is the world champion. U.S. air bombardment slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi working class civilians during the Gulf War of 1991, and U.S.-imposed sanctions continue to kill thousands more every month [See box]. When the Nimitz and George Washington unleash the newest round of terror, Clinton will rapidly overtake Bush as a mass murderer.
To judge by appearances, U.S. imperialism's growing political weakness might seem a reason to call off the dogs of war. And it is true that Clinton & Co. have suffered a number of strategic fiascoes over recent weeks. Here are the most significant:
* The feeble "coalition" Bush put together as a fig leaf for U.S. genocide in Iraq six years ago no longer exists even in name. French and Russian bosses are in open rebellion against U.S. policies. On November 15, the Russian Parliament voted overwhelmingly to end the sanctions and to oppose the use of force in Iraq. Most Arab bosses, including close U.S. pals the Saudis and Kuwaitis, oppose Clinton's saber-rattling because they correctly fear that will increase their own instability.
* The crown jewel of U.S. rulers' "new order" in the Middle East was supposed to be a burgeoning business relationship between various leading Arab companies and U.S. and Israeli capitalists. A big conference was slated to take place in Doha, Qatar, the week of November 17th to cement this alliance of greed. Guess what? It's not going to happen. Every major Arab country pulled out in protest of U.S. Middle Eastern policy. Even the Israelis downgraded their participation to avoid further humiliation. The really significant economic conference in the region will take place in December--in Teheran, Iran, with the U.S. out of the picture.
* The tactical split over Clinton/Rockefeller's pet "Fast Track" legislation ran afoul of a serious fight within the main wing of these gangsters. The AFL-CIO brass and the politicians like Gephardt whose profits and careers are tied to workers' dues, couldn't give the plan a green light in its present form. They will eventually make a deal, but in the meantime, the Fast Track debacle is another serious international setback for U.S. imperialism. The moment Clinton tabled it, the Mercosur trading bloc in South America announced plans to accept investment from the same European rivals who are giving Rockefeller fits in the Middle East.
* The New Money billionaires of the domestic Oil Patch have also been a thorn in the Eastern Establishment's side as the U.S. drive toward Middle Eastern war has sped up. The forces allied with the Oil Patch in the House of Representatives voted down a budget allocation that would have let Clinton pay off the U.S.' $1 billion debt to the UN--a major embarrassment in view of Clinton's need to lie about the UN as a fig leaf for U.S. imperialist aggression in the Gulf.
All of the above are sure signs that U.S. bosses' international isolation and internal disunity are rapidly sharpening. However, we should not interpret this decline to mean that their weakness will stop them from going to war. On the contrary! It makes war more likely than ever. Over the next few days or weeks, maneuvering in Moscow, Paris, New York, Washington, and Baghdad may produce some short-lived tactical compromises. But diplomacy can't abolish the essential inter-imperialist conflicts. Rockefeller needs to dominate the oil. U.S. rivals need to break free from this domination. The rulers of Iraq and Iran need to emerge as the dominant capitalist forces in the Middle East, beating out the pro-U.S. Saudis and defeating the U.S.' Israeli stooges. Not only will Iranian and Iraqi rulers continue to pose a serious threat to U.S. imperialist interests for the foreseeable future. Iran and Iraq, which already fought a devastating war during the 1980s, will also remain key strategic rivals for control of maximum oil and gas profits. Nothing here is a recipe for "peace in our time." U.S. imperialism's strategic weakness will lead it into acts of desperation and unparalleled cruelty. Nothing Clinton & Co. do in the coming period should surprise us.
Ironically, the holy rollers in Teheran have temporarily become U.S. bosses' only objective allies in the Middle East. The Ayatollahs must be licking their chops as they see U.S. aircraft carriers getting ready to bomb Baghdad and/or Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard. A weakened Iraq would help Iranian bosses' ambition to become top dog in the Persian Gulf. On the other hand, the strategic strengthening of Iranian capitalism would mean another serious setback for the U.S.--only this time, it would be self-inflicted. So when U.S. rulers start the war, in addition to the hundreds of thousands or workers they'll surely murder, they'll also inevitably shoot themselves in the foot.
So we must have no illusions about the period in which we live, and we mustn't allow ourselves to be fooled by the ups and downs of daily events. Forget the birds and bees. The real "facts of life" are the inevitability of oil wars and widening imperialist profit slaughters.
But our job as workers and communists isn't just to evaluate present conditions and estimate the future. Our job is to make the revolution that will abolish the profit system and the butcheries it needs. Clinton's Fast Track flop shows, among other things, that the big bosses worry all the time about losing political control over the working class. They are right! The pages of recent issues of Challenge are filled with stories about workers, soldiers, students, and professionals responding positively to our Party's ideas about imperialist war and the need for revolution to smash it. These initial reactions can become the germ of a vast mass movement against the bosses' wars and plans for fascism. Such a movement can provide fertile ground for winning workers and others to communism and the PLP. U.S. imperialism's basic weakness and the atrocities it is preparing to commit should embolden us to build our Party.
Regardless of whether Clinton unleashes his Luftwaffe on Iraq this time, U.S. imperialism's six-year old sanctions have already taken a genocidal toll on the Iraqi working class.
Between 1989, before Bush's Desert Slaughter, and 1994, rates of polio, post new-born tetanus, typhoid fever, cholera, and malaria doubled (or worse).
By 1995, child mortality had doubled from its pre-war rate. It had multiplied by 500% for children under the age of five.
Between August 1990 and December 1995, 567,000 Iraqi children died from direct consequences of U.S. imperialist bombings and sanctions.
In 1996, an average of 4,500 Iraqi children under five died every month. For 1997, that number has increased to an average of 6,500 a month. So, between 1990 and 1997, nearly 700,000 children died before reaching their fifth birthday--just to make sure that Exxon didn't have to worry about competing with Iraqi oil. (The Lancet, 12/5/95; The Irish Times, 11/10/97)
This is the awful truth behind Clinton's sickening statement on Nov. 17 that the purpose of the U.S. military buildup in the Gulf is to "save the children of the world." Clinton's lie brings back memories of the Vietnam war, when a U.S. officer justified a massacre he had ordered by saying: "In order to save the village, we had to destroy it."
On the other hand, nobody should underestimate the death and destruction the U.S. bosses can visit on the working class as they desperately hang on to their shaky empire. Every speech at a union meeting like the one last Thursday at Boeing, which called for a mass demonstration against prison labor and linking slave labor with the bosses' plan for a new oil war, hastens the day when we can put an end to the devastation of imperialism. There's not a minute to lose!
"They called it the Gulf war," said a machinist. "but that was only an abbreviation. It was really the Gulf, Exxon, Mobile... war."
In case any of us had any illusions about Boeing's role in all this, the company chose the very day of the union meeting to announce the appointment of William Perry, Clinton's former Secretary of Defense, to the Board of Directors. Perry is also a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Carnegie Endowment just published a thesis on America's manifest destiny in the greater Middle East (Strategic Geography and the Changing Middle East by Geoffrey Kemp and Robert Harkavy).
"How do you spell that?," asked another wag when he heard about the book. "Carnegie Endowment for P-I-E-C-E, as in Rocky wants a piece of the Middle East?!"
"You may be right about imperialism, but what's the alternative?" asked a third worker.
"Building for communist revolution is the only alternative we workers have," answered a comrade.
"But that hasn't worked," he objected. "How can you defend communism from those who would usurp all the power and turn it back into what we have now?"
"By having many more discussions like this. The Party will fight for millions of workers to think strategically. We'll have the tool of state power on our side. We're not stupid. We can understand these things as well as--even better--than the Ivy League educated mouthpieces of the bosses. We're taught to think only about our jobs and, at most, about our own families, but we are capable of much more than that. We can shape the world! In fact, we have no other choice."
Although he wasn't "ready to buy it" yet, it did give him pause to think. These discussions gave us the courage to raise the issue at the union meeting.
The speaker didn't stop there. Bush had compared Saddam Hussein to Hitler to justify Desert Slaughter in 1991. If you want to make comparisons to Hitler, what about slave prison labor! The Nazi regime was the most notorious example of using slave labor to build up a war machine. Just who is more like Hitler: Saddam or the Boeing Board of Directors?
The Boeing Board of Directors condones Nazi-like prison labor to build U.S. imperialism's war machine. That same Board is ruled by Rocky & Co., in whose interests our sons and daughters will be sent to kill and be killed in the Middle East.
By now, even the lower level union officials were hanging on every word. This was not the usual fare you hear at union meetings. The speaker summed up his remarks by repeating his call for a mass demonstration. He received more than polite applause.
Workers at both the meeting and in the shop want to follow up on this opening. When the bosses start their next oil war, we workers are preparing to finish it with communist revolution!
"For the past week and a half, top officials in the U.S. have been debating when to start dropping bombs on Iraq. As our students contend daily with a myriad of abuses from unemployment to police terror they must now add the sure threat of war. Just yesterday an Illinois National Guard unit was called up for desert training.
"Clearly the Board of Education fully supports the use of our children as cannon fodder in this war for oil as the Chicago Educator newspaper recently announced the board's plans to cooperate in a joint effort with the Selective Service System (SSS) to register students for the draft.
"We can't stop this war from happening. Oil is the lifeblood of capitalism and these parasites will stop at nothing to control it. But as the bosses put guns into the hands of our students they also give them power.
"Rebelling Russian soldiers turned WWI into communist revolution. U.S. soldiers in Vietnam turned their guns on officers adding the word fragging to our vocabulary.
"As the Board has decided to cooperate with and facilitate the bosses' war plans, we should arm our students with the full knowledge of the power they have to turn capitalist war for profit into revolution for workers' power."
While the union officials did not respond, one delegate came up to the teacher after the meeting to debate why we couldn't leave out the "communist propaganda" and limit our comments to protesting the Board's cooperation with the SSS. However another Delegate who is much closer to the Party liked that we criticized the bosses' war without pushing pacifism. He plans to write a letter to the union president pressing him to respond to the comments and the Union's position.
Throughout the U.S. police terror has been put into overdrive. The working class, especially black and latin youth, is being terrorized and killed by the nazi-klan-in-blue. During the Summer of 1996, in this predominately, Caribbean working class neighborhood, Aswan Watson, a young black worker, was shot 24 times and killed by the cops. This past summer, Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant, was beat up and tortured with a plunger by the NYPD henchmen of the 70th precinct. These are only two examples of the racist capitalist system that has unleashed their dogs, the cops, to terrorize workers.
PLP has been organizing in this neighborhood for several years. The workers and youth of Flatbush were very receptive to our message of smashing the capitalist state with communist revolution.
The March began the corner of New York and Nostrand Avenue and continued all the way up to Flatbush Avenue. Even though it was cold out, workers came to their windows and stoops and bought Challenge when we passed by. Cars stopped and honked their horns once they saw our banners and heard our chants. One woman said, "You got it...we gotta get rid of them cops. They're killing our children."
She is absolutely correct. But to get rid of the bosses and their police terror and oil wars, we need millions of workers like this woman to join the PLP and build a mass revolutionary communist movement.
"Yeah, oil! That's what it's about!"
Philadelphia - Moe pounded the table with a passion he usually saved for sports or union activities. Philadelphia--"Saddam's a madman! We should nuke him!" So began the meeting with several hospital workers about the US confrontation with Iraq. After two meetings and many conversations, our PLP club's initial efforts to raise the politics of imperialist war with our members and base has produced some interesting results. We find a variety of opinions among the workers. Some accept the bosses' propaganda that the US should attack Iraq because Saddam is a madman with chemical weapons. But many others suspect that there must be more to this than what the government is telling us.
"Yeah, oil! That's what it's about!" declares Jane after a comrade replies to Moe. "There's more to this", Liza declares, "It's about power." One comrade explained the problem of oil overproduction and how the US bosses needed to control MidEast oil to control their competitors in Europe and Asia. "Where do you get your information?", Moe demanded. "Do you guys have access to information the rest of us don't have?" asked Malcom at another meeting.
These questions led us to put together a booklet of articles from the New York Times, Businessweek, and other sources. We think these articles support the analyses from Challenge and give some more depth to our arguments. In fact the analyses of some of these articles are so similar to earlier Challenge articles that maybe PLP should consider suing these ruling class hacks for plagiarism!
This week we are distributing the collection of articles to over a dozen workers. Afterwards we will continue meeting with the workers. The workers are enthusiastic about these meetings and we even have some new faces.
But as strong as the workers' opinions are about the causes of the confrontation with Iraq, their view of what impact we might have on the war is less clear. Should we fight for a union resolution against the war? "You know them, they won't do anything!" The idea of organizing the union members to fight for a statement by the union right now is received with skeptical eye-rolling. Yet everyone agrees to continue meeting to hash these things out.
These humble gatherings will lead to awakening the only force that can provide our class' answer to imperialist war: a working class armed with communist ideas and communist leadership.
Friends and neighbors explained that "Chubby" Hood was despondent at the loss of two family members recently.He had two BUTTER knives in his hands and was using them to jab himself in the neck and arms. An older resident of the project, and a friend of Hood, had just talked Hood into calming down and handing the knives over to him when the cops arrived. When Hood saw the cops, he backed away from his friend and started to panicked. His friend told the cops "I know this guy. Let me talk him down." The cops told him to "get out of the motherf-----ing way". Then they shot Chubby Hood twice-once in the leg and once in the arm. He went down, Then they shot him with a tazer gun and he stayed down for about 15 seconds. The cops could have taken him away, but instead, when Chubby got up, staggering from the effects of the tazer gun, they unloaded their guns into him. People were yelling "Stop! Don't shoot!" One worker said "it looked like they were having target practice." He died right there on the football field.
When the cops called in reinforcements against the angry crowd, Daryl Carter said, "They were in full riot gear. It was like we were in Beirut." Another man disagreed, "No, it was like we were in Watts, he said. This police attack was led by a black police sergeant. The new police chief is another black chief, Bernard Parks, who was Darryl Gates' right hand killer. "We are at the boiling point", said one resident of the Jordan Downs project. Progressive Labor Party is callling on workers and youth throughout Los Angeles to demonstrate against these killer cops and the capitalist system which is incapable of providing decent jobs and only capable of more and more racist terror and war. From Watts, to Beirut, to Iraq--the bosses' racist terror can be ended with revolution.
This case is recieving more publicity in the bosses' media than other recent LAPD killings. There may be calls to "reform" the LAPD. Hogwash! Racist police terror will continue and increase because the capitalist system has nothing to offer the youth except low paying jobs, jail and war. Avenge the death of Darrel "Chubby" Hood and so many victims of racist police terror! Join PLP and fight to end police terror with communist revolution!
During the previous two days, some teachers showed the movie Panama Deception and discussed it in class. The comparison between the way the U.S. press made Manuel Noriega public enemy #1 as a justification for the U.S. invasion of Panama--and the way the press is making Saddam Hussein public enemy #1 as a justification for invading Iraq was clear to everyone. Twenty-five out of 125 students of one teacher said that they had relatives or friends in the military--and didn't want their friends or loved ones to kill or die for the bosses' oil profits. Several more teachers may show the movie to their classes.
The bosses' propaganda about how Saddam is preparing weapons of mass destruction has had an effect on our friends. But young people are concerned about the war on the streets where they live. When we show that it's not Saddam Hussein, but the cops under orders from Clinton, who put youth in jail by the thousands, many agree. The bosses' propaganda is just an excuse to start a war to control all the oil in the Middle East. The most vicious murderers are the ones that the young people we know face every day--the cops and the bosses who order them to terrorize us.
On Saturday we had a forum linking the increase in police terror with the sharpening imperialist fight for oil. Representatives of the family of Kevin Robinson, killed by the police last month, spoke about the way the police are stonewalling the investigation. In spite of pressure by some so-called community representatives, they want to continue to work with the party. Those at the forum agreed that we should link the fight against police terror to the fight against bosses war, and the need for communism. Students talked about the increase of police repression represented by the gang sweeps and the massive increase in prison construction and prison labor. The racist attack on black workers, especially the three strikes law, is spreading to all workers.
The current LAPD racist rampage, the spread of the gang injunction and curfew, and the build up to war are all caused by the crisis of capitalism. The bosses have run out of options. Instead of social programs and decent jobs, they have layoffs, cops, jails and gangs. In a desperate attempt to maintain their control of the world, they will be forced to go to war in the Middle East. This is the strategic weakness of the bosses--they need the same working class that they are terrorizing, downsizing, and putting in prison to help them terrorize and dominate the rest of the world.
Communists can win our fellow workers, students and soldiers to see that instead of passively accepting attacks, killing our fellow workers for the bosses or dying for the bosses' profits, we can join together and fight for communism. W.W.I and W.W.II led to revolutions. We will use the coming bosses' slaughter as an opportunity to organize for communist revolution--to put an end to the warmakers once and for all. After the forum, some people showed their agreement by joining PLP.
This week we will bring the question of war, mass murder for capitalist
profit, more strongly to the mass organizations in which we are a part. We
will propose teach-ins and a demonstration against the war in Iraq and police
terror in LA to the student government and other groups we're in--including
the teachers' union.
This struggle will help many people to see that its up
to our class to fight the bosses' fascist attacks by building a revolutionary
movement for communism.
Many workers sat at their machines and began to cry with anger, to see how the bosses, once again, are turning their dreams of a secure future into a nightmare. "Throw them out into the street," was the Christmas present that the millionaire-owners of Levis gave to workers like Willie de Laney who had worked for the company for 12 years. Levis will now produce most of its clothes outside the U.S.
Far from Tennessee--in Los Angeles--Aztec Finishing, contractor for Calvin Klein, told 300 workers, "This is your last check...there's no more work....the factory is going to Juarez, Mexico."
When they collected their last check, many workers cried, others consoled them and most were very angry, looking for a last minute alternative of what to do, "Let's go to the Labor Commission," said some. Others said, "Let's go to immigration or some other government agency to sue them for discrimination." Other workers called the Spanish TV stations to denounce the bosses. None of this changed the bosses' plans. They said that by January, 1998, they would layoff the other 200 workers that are still employed!
"Why did this happen?" asked a worker who still had her job. "The bosses are looking for cheaper labor to compete with other bosses and to make maximum profit. Our lives are worth nothing to them, they only see us as a pair of arms to exploit. That's why we have to organize and fight against the whole capitalist system," answered a comrade.
The bosses see their profits dropping when here in the U.S. they pay $5 an hour and in Mexico they can superexploit workers, paying them $4 a day, or in Nicaragua where the brand "Route 66" pays 10 cents an hour to 15-year-old young women.
The bosses are like vultures, they live at the expense of workers' misery. Their global competition is turning the lives of millions into a fascist hell and is leading towards war for oil, other raw material and for cheaper labor.
Dozens of Aztec workers have bought Challenge and supported PLP actions outside the shop. Now, this anger against Aztec must be turned into mass action to organize a revolutionary movement among garment workers. Many of the fired workers will end up in other shops, and even other industries where they can bring revolutionary ideas to thousands of other workers. Distributing Challenge is key to that effort.
"I have several fellow workers who want to get together," said one worker when we asked her to form a committee to fight back inside the shop. Workers are looking for a way to fight and we in PLP must be bold and offer them our communist politics. The more bosses that attack workers, will result in more workers asking, "Why?" PLP has the answer and the solution: Smash the bosses and fight for a society where workers rule and the only downsizing will be done to the Levi's, Aztec and all bosses.
How does the struggle at Santa Monica College against understaffing and for job security relate to pending war in the Middle East and the sharpening attacks on the working class? How can 400 workers at a community college in California prepare themselves for the coming struggle against war and fascist attacks? We can fight against war and fascism by organizing for communist revolution!
Neither the Merit System nor the CSEA will protect the jobs of workers at Santa Monica College. Understaffing and low wages have been kept for years and are getting worse. The Personnel Commission, a state-appointed group of three, which administers the Merit system, has worked closely with the administration to keep the staff confused in a maze of rules and regulations.
That situation has changed with the administration of Pied Robertson, because she and the Secretary of the Personnel Commission are in a struggle for power, her move in the latest contract was to get the union negotiating team to agree to adopt some of the merit rules in the contract. Her next move was to convince some staff to call for a petition to vote on the elimination of the Merit System. The administration figures that with no civil service, they and the union can control the workers without interference.
Does this threat mean that we should struggle to maintain the merit system? Will a vote for the merit system mean a vote in favor of fair hiring, promotion and firing? No! Will a vote against the merit system mean that we can win a contract with full staffing and job security the next time around? No! Santa Monica College workers cannot win the fight for job security by playing by the rules imposed on us by the administration or by the Personnel Commission or by the union. In fact, capitalism cannot provide job security. The capitalist system depends on maximizing its profits, and it cannot do this without reducing its labor costs. Only communism can provide secure lives for workers.
At the lunch table at work last week I brought in two articles from the bosses' papers to discuss with some of my co-workers. One article was about how Hussein was dividing the U.S. from its allies and the other was about the overproduction in the auto industry in Asia.
I showed the articles to people at the table and explained how the crisis of overproduction was leading to the war in Iraq and bigger wars to come. This led to a whole discussion about the crisis. Was it economic? Was it war? What causes it? Then one guy just says, "They're going to go to war and we're going to be doing more work for less money."
I said he was right and tried to explain why that happens; how the competition among the capitalists leads them to drive down wages and that more of what the system produces has to go to the war effort, like the $50 billion dollars a year the U.S. now spends on military activity in the Gulf.
Then two days later we were at lunch and the company passed out a paper that began, "Because of extreme competition in our industry we need to all pull together. Our competition is constantly striving to produce higher quality at a lower cost and we have to do the same." The letter went on to talk about the necessity of mandatory overtime and all the bad things that will happen to us if we don't show up for work on Saturdays.
I held up the company's paper and said, "See, this is what we were talking about. This is why they're going to war." Then another guy who hadn't been in the earlier discussion said he didn't think the U.S. was going to go to war because the economy was bad, so who was going to pay for it. So I said, `You're going to pay for it." Then another guy says "Yeah, next thing they will want us to work eight hours for the company and give two free hours so they can attack Hussein."
Most people need overtime because the pay is so low, but people got mad about the letter when we figured out how it was connected to the needs of the bosses' system and the war. Then it wasn't just our boss, but the whole system that people got mad at.
The next day people were still talking about the war. This time it was about who's going to fight. Most of the guys around the table were older but every time a young guy would walk by they started talking. When a big kid came by they said, "Hey, you're good to carry a bazooka." When a little guy came in they said "Hey, you're good to fit in a tank." It was kind of funny, but for these young guys it was the first time most of them had even thought about the possibility of getting sent to war. And they were listening because they respect some of these older workers.
Some people started talking about what Mohammed Ali had done during Vietnam and one guy who reads Challenge asked me what would you do if they called you. I told the people at the table how communists in Russia in the military turned WWI into communist revolution and that we should learn from them.
Having these discussions with people has given me confidence that we can lead actions against the bosses that will raise our politics and win many of these workers into the Party.
An Avid Reader
The ruling class has given more than hints that war with Iraq is possible, even likely. It is obvious that in the church I attend, I must raise the issues of the danger and the opportunity that imperialist conflict presents. The new journal my church is publishing is the most immediate vehicle in which to do this.
In the first edition, I wrote an article linking the terror of cops killing inner-city youth with the terror that has been brought on by welfare "reform". The response was generally positive--only one woman thought, "people should be made to work for their checks." But I think raising imperialist war may be more controversial.
One of the more dedicated members of the journal committee thinks, "it's time to show Saddam that we mean business!" She is a strongly anti-racist, liberal teacher who seems open--just the kind of person we need to focus on. I should also work with the mother and son who read poems in church last week that they dedicated to his older brother who is in the Marines in Georgia.
To begin broadly to raise the issue, I am going to mail out a draft of an anti-imperialist article (for the Dec.-Feb. edition) to the eight members of the journal committee and all the other people for whom I have addresses. I will explain that I think that what is really going on here is that this is the dominant section of the U.S. ruling class' desperate try at controlling Middle East oil flow and pricing. I will also point out that most Iraqi people have suffered continuing terror for years, not only from their own fascist regime but from imperialist "sanctions" as well. I will then link up this terror to the racist war now being waged against U.S. working people, particularly centered in our inner cities.
With the draft I will issue a call for a meeting to discuss these issues, and then rework the article to reflect the questions raised at the meeting. Most important, the response to this effort will show me who to concentrate on for involvement in more militant mass actions. And I will find more people to share Challenge-Desafío with on a more regular basis. Some of these will be asked to join an inter-church Party study group.
A Red Churchmouse
Recent articles in Challenge about the Party's campaign against racist police terror have focused primarily on the dictatorship of the capitalists. In the Oct. 22nd editorial, for example, Challenge says, "Capitalism holds power at gunpoint. The cops defend the bosses' dictatorship over the working class. Only communist revolution will end this dictatorship and the police terror it requires."
Why not take the opportunity here to say more about workers' dictatorship? For example, we say communism will get rid of police terror. That raises a question that may be on the minds of workers fighting cop terror: will there be police under communism? This is really a question about workers dictatorship. Here's one answer:
After communist revolutionary wars have ended, our Party will still have will have plenty of fascists and racists to deal with. Many fascists and anti-communists will perish in revolution (good!). But some of them will survive to spread their poisonous ideas to others and even organize actively against communism and the Party. Our Party will likely organize some sort of security forces (`police') to take care of these scum--with terror. That's the dictatorship of the working class. But the ones dishing out the terror will be communists committed to the well-being of the whole working class. Those on the receiving end will be bosses along with the cops, military officers, and fascists who kept them in power. These are not nice people, and terror (as in fists, jails, bullets) is likely to be the only way to deal with some of them.
Perhaps Challenge could link its coverage of the police terror campaign to some articles on how security was carried out by communists after the Russian and Chinese revolutions. For example, we could contrast the dedicated "Cheka" men (and women?) in the post-revolutionary Soviet Union with the self-serving, corrupt, boss-loving cops of the 90's.
What about crime itself? The bosses claim (and some workers probably believe this) that the main reason for cops is to stop crime. So, what's a crime? And who are the real criminals? Is it a crime to beat up scabs? What about "stealing" a box of cereal for some hungry kids? Or is it a crime to protect private property and profits no matter who starves or gets hurt?
More questions (and some quick answers): Will there be crime under communism?
(Yes. Racism will be a crime. Organizing against the Party will be a crime.) What about crimes like stealing, drug-dealing, prostitution. (Communism will eliminate the poverty, alienation, and sexism that lead to these "crimes.".) Workers surely will have a lot more to say on these issues.
These are not new questions. The Party and Challenge have discussed them in the past. The campaign against police terror seems like a critical opportunity to bring them up again.
A Comrade
In the last issue of Challenge-Desafío (11/19) there is a good letter titled, "Anti-terrorism law can easily be used against communists." However, there is a bad sentence that can be construed in a wrong way...."But when Timothy McVeigh gets executed for his acts of sedition and mass terror, he will follow in the steps of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the only people ever executed by the U.S. Federal Court System...."
I'm sure the writer didn't mean to imply any connection or similarity between the Rosenbergs and McVeigh. McVeigh is a two-bit fascist. The Rosenbergs were loyal and dedicated communists willing to fight and die for what they believed.
The analogy between McVeigh and the Rosenbergs is historically and politically very, very wrong. The Rosenbergs were murdered (executed) during the height of the Cold War by U.S. rulers. They were used to stimulate anti-USSR, anti-Stalin and anti-Semitic sentiments.
McVeigh was used by the New Money forces in their battle for power and economic supremacy over Old Money who now dominate the state. So, McVeigh is a murderous thug for one set of bosses. The Rosenbergs were true supporters of the international working class.
NYC Comrade
Last issue of Challenge (11/19) called the conflict between the U.S. rulers and Saddam Hussein a "fight between big and little terrorists." It correctly said that the U.S. bosses are world champions when it comes to terrorism.
Of course, the hypocrisy of the U.S. bosses and media around the terrorism question knows no bounds. According to the bosses and their media, terrorism is equated with Islamic fundamentalists, revolutionaries, etc. Two recent examples show how true are Challenge statements about terrorism.
The FBI finally came out with its findings on the explosion of TWA Flight 800 that killed more than 230 passengers. When Flight 800 exploded outside Long Island, NY, the bosses' media blamed it on "terrorists." Clinton used this to pass his fascist, anti-terrorist law. Now, the FBI tells us that the real cause of this tragedy was the airplane's "mechanical failures" (some still believe this is just a cover up, that a "friendly fire" missile destroyed the plane). Anyway, if the FBI is right, the real terrorist was the drive for maximum profits by the TWA bosses who has downsized so much (like other airlines), cutting on maintenance workers, or Boeing, which builds defective planes to cut costs. Will the FBI arrest the CEO's of these corporations for this "terrorist" act? Don't hold your breath.
At the same time the FBI was issuing this report, the Miami Herald was reporting what almost everyone knew: that the 11 bombs placed in tourist hotels in Havana in the last few months (murdering one Italian tourist and injuring six others) were organized by anti-Castro exiles in Miami.
Luis Posada Carriles raised the $15,000 among "high ranking exile leaders" in Miami that was used to pay the former Salvadoran soldier who was part of the group that placed the bombs. Carriles is a veteran of terrorism. In the 1970's he spent nine years in jail in Venezuela, along with Orlando Bosch (a known CIA agent) for blowing up a Cubana Airlines plane, murdering 73 passengers and crew. Nevertheless, this mass terrorist was allowed to operate in Miami, obviously with the support of the CIA.
Indeed, the U.S. bosses and their agents are numero uno when it comes to terrorism.
M. Aceo
If ever an election proved the fraudulence of "democracy," it was the recent NYC mayoralty campaign. The media hype proclaimed the results a "landslide endorsement" of Rudolph Giuliani. But consider the following:
* Only one in seven eligible voters voted for Giuliani; that means 85% of the city's adult population over 18 did not vote for him.
* Giuliani's 757,000 total was actually 22% less than the amount he received in his victory four years ago. In fact, he even got 119,000 less than the loser (Dinkins) did in 1993!
* It was the lowest total vote in 72 years.
The only "ringing endorsement" here was for the idea that neither candidate was worth going to the polls for. That was the only "choice" workers were given. This only indicates that under capitalism, where all candidates are pledged to enforce the profit system, it is impossible for workers to get a fair shake from a system that only endorses bosses.
But this month's elections did reflect the fight occurring among the rulers themselves. Both Giuliani in NYC and Christine Whitman (re-elected Governor in New Jersey by a 1% margin)) serve the Rockefeller wing of the ruling class. This Old Money Eastern Establishment group, the dominant section of the bosses, is fighting for control of the Republican Party (they already own the Democrats). Their antagonist is the New Money group (centered in the South and West).
As it turns out, the Christian Coalition right-wing opposed Giuliani and Whitman, ostensibly for their pro-abortion stand (a Rockefeller plank). But actually the Giuliani/Whitman opponents in the GOP are fighting for New Money control of the party. In fact, Frank Rich reported in the N. Y. Times (11/8) a "well-financed effort by her [Whitman's] own party's right wing to destroy her....The Christian Coalition gave its tacit support to...third-party candidate Murray Sabrin, who drew nearly 114,000 votes--virtually all of them at Mrs. Whitman's expense."
Both wings of the ruling class are in a desperate fight for control over the "right" to exploit the working class and usher in their respective brands of fascism. In the final analysis, the only real choice workers have is to destroy capitalism with communist revolution, a system in which all bosses and profits (and their phony "elections") are eliminated and workers rule. Then every workers' decision is a landslide.
Brooklyn Non-voting Red
Mass layoffs have returned with a vengeance. In October Citicorp announced plans to wipe out a net of 7,500 jobs worldwide. During the second week of November, while Clinton was sending more ships to the Persian Gulf to bomb Iraq, big corporations were busy bombarding workers with mass layoffs. Within just 24 hours, on November 11th, Eastman Kodak announced it was "re-restructuring" and getting rid of 10,000 workers; Fruit of the Loom axed 2,900 workers; Donna Karan International got rid of 15% of its workforce (285 workers); and GM announced it would close a number of plants to cut $3 billion in costs. A week earlier Levi Strauss had said it would eliminate 34% of its domestic personnel (6,395 jobs). And a few days later, IBM announced it wouldlay off hundred of workers. Even before all this, the U.S. layoffs totaled 47,320 in October--an increase of 128% over September.
If you believe the bosses' media, workers are "very understanding" of the new round of layoffs, because eventually it will be for everyone's "well-being." The New York Times ran a long article on how Kodak workers who could lose their jobs "understand" the current wave of mass downsizing because it will help Kodak compete with Fuji, and will keep it in Rochester, N.Y., a Kodak company town.
What is behind the current wave of downsizing? A phrase you could previously only read in Challenge is now seeping into the mass media--the crisis of overproduction. "There is excess global capacity in almost every industry," Jack Welch, General Electric CEO, told the Financial Times. "Now a new word for nervous investors to learn: overcapacity," is the way the N.Y. Times put it (Sun., Nov. 16).
Pro-capitalist economists are now "discovering" the capitalist crisis of overproduction that Marx described over a century ago. The Times quotes William Greider, whose book One World, Ready or Not warns that the global economy (imperialism) "produces more and more goods even as it suppresses wages at both ends of the world, in industrial as well as developing countries. You cannot do that forever--producing more and cutting wages of those who buy--without some collapse."
That "collapse" is war, as one group of capitalists tries to put the competition out of business, whether it be Saddam Hussein endangering U.S. Big Oil by putting more oil on the world market, or his allies in Russia, France and China doing the same thing.
But war also creates the conditions for workers to put an end to this murderous downsizing, warmaking system and to build a new, one world: where production is not for sale and for the benefit of a group of capitalists, but rather serves the needs of the billions of workers who now have nothing. This new society is called communism. That is why PLP participates in the fight against downsizing, imperialist war, racist terror, etc.: to show our co-workers that the only way out of the hell of capitalism and its countless crises is to smash it with communist revolution.
IBM and its allies (Sun, Oracle, and Netscape) have banded together, but it seems unlikely that they can beat Microsoft/Intel in ordinary business competition. The latest release of Microsoft's Explorer browser has Netscape on the run. The NT version of Windows is starting to beat out UNIX for high-end machines--a mortal threat to Sun Microsystems. And Apple, once part of the Old Money alliance, is now owned partly by Microsoft, which now has all its patents.
The IBM group is now desperately calling on the Justice Department to help Netscape compete against Microsoft. In fact, Old Money spokespaper, The NY Times (11/18) attacks Microsoft and Bill Gates and calls on the government to regulate Microsoft's growth.
However, Bill Gates has powerful friends of his own. Bill may not get invited to the White House very often, but when he travels abroad he's often treated like a head of state. Earlier this year he warned European bosses that they were falling behind the U.S. in computer technology. The result is that now Microsoft has deals with the French and German telecommunications companies.
Microsoft's ally, Intel, is investing heavily in Israel--site of their first foreign development center and component plant. Intel apparently feels a lot happier now that the Old Money enemy, Netanyahu, is running the country.
Gate's latest unpatriotic business coup is a deal with Japan's Sony Music. Sony will start including a copy of Microsoft's Explorer browser in their audio CD's. When the browser is installed and launched, up pops Sony's web site!
Old Money's propaganda war against Microsoft has escalated sharply in the last few weeks. In mid-November in Washington DC, the reliable Ralph Nader hosted a conference of Microsoft's competitors and critics. They lined up to denounce Gates as an unfair competitor, an evil monopolist, an enemy of democracy, and so on. Sun's boss warned that the courts and Congress move too slowly to be of much help.
One of the speakers even compared Gates to Saddam Hussein. To Old Money loyalists, this remark is not as ridiculous as it seems. The Rockefeller group is forced to act now in the Mideast, but they must feel very nervous leaving a militarily vital sector of the economy in the hands of a New Money rival with connections to their foreign foes. On the other hand, they don't have the power to secure their hold on the computer industry by breaking up Microsoft and Intel. In fact, under the normal rules of the game they couldn't do it at all--they don't have complete control of the Federal Government.
It seems that the Eastern Establishment has decided to fight a war on two fronts, taking on Saddam Hussein and Bill Gates at the same time. They could use the excuse of a wartime emergency to expropriate Microsoft and Intel without going through Congress and the courts. What else could the boss of Sun have in mind?
Gates and the other New Money forces must have plans of their own. They may see a Mid-East war as giving them the chance to topple the Eastern Establishment. That might mean civil war in the U.S., but both groups prefer any war, no matter how destructive, to losing all their billions and all their power to their rivals.
Computer technology has been hailed by many different prophets as leading to a new age in which all of humankind will be linked by a global network. But only communism can make these visions come true. As long as computer technology (and everything else) is in the hands of the capitalist class, it just gives them one more reason to devastate the planet in a battle for control of the wealth that technology and labor produce.
The only way to end these battles is to take advantage of the resulting chaos and put all the Money factions out of business forever.