CHALLENGE, Dec. 17, 1997
Challenge is biweekly in December
Index:
Editorial: South Korea, one of the many capitalist dominoes
Communism: Workers Way Out of Bosses’ Crisis of
Overproduction
The general crisis of the international profit system sharpened
drastically during the last week of November. The clearest sign
was the collapse of the South Korean economy, the eleventh
largest in the world.
Basically, what happened is this: Over the last couple of decades, South Korean bosses decided to compete for a share of global markets. They borrowed billions from Japanese imperialists, who were only too glad to lend money for high rates of return. But as Karl Marx wrote over 130 years ago, capitalism is anarchy. South Korean industry was merely adding to the overproduction of commodities already on the market. For instance, Hyundai and Daewoo made plans to crack the top ten auto makers’ list by 2000. The only problem was that they were producing cars they couldn’t sell, because the international auto market was already overflowing by 35%.
In the wake of last month’s crisis that turned Asia’s smaller "tigers" into financial pussycats, South Korea’s banks suddenly couldn’t service their debts to the Japanese rulers. The old "domino" theory started coming true with a vengeance, only this time it applied to capitalism. Last week, the fourth largest Japanese brokerage house went belly-up, along with a regional bank. In order to avoid panic, the Japanese government had let these bosses count paper stock market gains as part of their real profits. The scheme worked, until the stock markets started nose-diving.
If South Korea can’t pay its debts to Japan, then Japan’s economy risks a melt down. Such a disaster for Japanese bosses would be as great as the collapse of the Mexican economy threatened to become for U.S. imperialists a few years ago. Japan is U.S. bosses’ chief foreign competitor, but its demise would boomerang on Rockefeller & Co., for a number of reasons. Japanese banks hold $230 billion of U.S. Treasury bonds and have an agreement that forces the U.S. Treasury to redeem this money if Japanese rulers call it in. The result would be a catastrophic liquidity crisis for the U.S. ruling class. In other words, the Eastern Establishment here has just as much interest as the Tokyo establishment in putting a Band-Aid on the South Korean cancer.
So on November 30th, the rulers of Japan, the U.S., and Europe announced the biggest bailout in history—$55 billion—to salvage the South Korean bosses’ debt payments. As we go to press, some details remain to be worked out, mainly concerning the scale of the economic attack that major imperialists can force the South Korean bosses to make on the working class. But the bailout will occur in one form or another. As Mexican workers have learned, and the South Korean working class will bear the brunt of such "assistance," in the form of mass layoffs and drastically lower wages.
But that’s only the beginning. The turn for the worse in this crisis will also significantly sharpen every one of today’s already intense inter-imperialist rivalries. Here’s one simple example, both Japanese and Korean bosses will be forced to lower the value of their currencies, just as Mexican bosses did. This move will slash workers’ buying power in Korea and Japan and will also keep Korean and Japanese merchandise competitive on the world’s markets. In turn, U.S.-produced goods will become more expensive abroad. More cheap Asian goods will flood the U.S. market, adding to the currently huge U.S. trade deficit and further sharpening conflict between U.S. imperialists and all their main competitors. No wonder Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury, Wall Streeter Robert Rubin, told the Japanese they had to open their markets to U.S. products.
Fat chance. Japanese imperialists have no interest in doing Rubin’s bidding. As their exports increase, the overall fight for a world market share will continue to sharpen. U.S. rulers, already stymied by Clinton/Rockefeller’s October defeat on "Fast Track" trade bill, will become increasingly desperate to compete on a global scale.
Yesterday, Mexico. Last month, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. Today, South Korea and Japan. Tomorrow, perhaps Russia or China, to say nothing of the U.S. The crisis of overproduction has become so vast that a financial collapse lies within the realm of possibility anywhere and, although we aren’t going to make exact predictions, almost at any time.
Historically, the world’s bosses have solved their crises only by going to war. War redivides the world’s markets, eliminates a few hundred million mouths to feed, and destroys the factories that lead to overproduction. This is the profit system’s best medicine for the diseases it creates. A hundred small wars all over the globe and the current U.S. threats to launch another slaughter in Iraq for Middle Eastern oil (See Box) should leave us with no illusions about the future the rulers have in mind.
The key variables in this situation in are the working class and the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party. All the imperialists’ wheeling and dealing assumes that workers will remain quiet or, if we do fight, that our struggles will stay within the limits of reformism. The New York Times (12/1) showed how clearly the specter of communism continues to haunt the international capitalist class. A front-page article entitled "Buffeted Asian Economies Are Raising Fears of Unrest" contemplated the imperialist nightmare of another revolutionary upsurge in China should China’s now-capitalist economy fall victim to the general crisis: " ‘The real question is China,’ said Michael Oksenberg, an Asia expert at Stanford University… ‘I do not think of the Chinese working class as (passive), and I think that’s what makes the regime nervous.’ "
This "expert" might as well have been speaking about workers in the U.S. or anywhere else, for that matter. We in the PLP should take the bosses’ fears very seriously. They reveal our Party’s potential to grow in every country where it has members. The bosses can neither wriggle nor fight their way out of their system’s deadly contradictions. Only communism can get rid of these parasites and the horrors they inflict upon us. As the crisis deepens and new wars loom, the opportunities for fighting for communism will increase every day.
Oil War Against Iraq Still Looms
Don’t be fooled by Clinton’s promise to use diplomacy
in Iraq. The only question is when, not whether, the bombs are
going to fall. The chief media mouthpieces of the Eastern
Establishment, with the liberal NY Times in the lead, have
raked him over the coals for not bombing Iraq out of the solar
system already. Times Op-Ed heavyweights A.M. Rosenthal
and William Safire weighed in with cries for blood during the
week of November 24th. In the pages of Newsweek (owned by
the Washington Post) former Clinton advisor George
Stephanopoulos, now a professor of something or other at Columbia
University, called on his old boss to take out a Mafia-style
assassination contract on Saddam Hussein. For good measure, the
front page article in the Sunday NY Times News of the Week
in Review Section (11/30) tried telling a Big Lie about how
anxious the U.S. working class was to go to war again in Iraq.
Don’t expect "Peace on Earth" this Christmas. The sharpening crisis of overproduction increases Rockefeller & Co.’s desperation to keep Middle Eastern oil away from their rivals’ domination. For the foreseeable future, this means continuing to keep Iraqi oil off the market. No negotiation will accomplish this greedy goal. Another major U.S. imperialist adventure in Iraq is on the front burner. It will start very soon in the form of massive, genocidal bombardments and eventually escalate into a land war. Remember: oil can’t be pumped or controlled from the air. U.S. Big Oil’s drive to go for broke in the Middle East can only intensify in the wake of news that recent profit margins from domestic oil refining have actually been negative.
The urgency of bringing our Party’s line to the working class about imperialist war and the need for communist revolution to smash it is growing every moment. Instead of a Christmas card, we should give or sell a subscription to Challenge to our shopmates, schoolmates, neighbors, and fellow soldiers.
Why Carey Was Dumped by the
Justice Dept.; AFL-CIO Hacks
Heads Roll
Teamster president Ron Carey has been driven from power by the
same Justice Dept. that put him there. His election victory over
James Hoffa was overturned right after the UPS strike. He was
disqualified from running in a new election just days after the
AFL-CIO helped force a temporary retreat on
Clinton/Rockefeller’s "Fast Track" trade
legislation.
Rich Trumka and Gerald McEntee, who funneled $150,000 into Carey’s campaign, may be next to walk the plank. Trumka, former head of the United Mine Workers, is the AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer and possibly its next President. McEntee is the head of AFSCME, the largest public employee union in the U.S.
The fight for control of the unions reflects the deepening
crisis within the U.S. ruling class. It has direct implications
for our Party.
Goose-Stepping Into The Future
The Justice Department’s discipline of the capitalists’
"labor lieutenants" signals the rapid rise of fascism
in preparation for war. U.S. rulers face major war in the Middle
East, economic instability in Asia, and challenges in Europe,
Africa and South America. They are preparing for trade wars,
shooting wars and possible civil war. They cannot have their
labor leaders, politicians or generals vacillating or playing
fast and loose with money. That’s what is behind the Carey
affair, the Clinton scandals and the struggles in the Pentagon.
The rulers need total discipline and obedience. The working class
must be kept in line, producing more for less. If the current
union leaders can’t do it, they must be replaced.
Business Week (12/1) laid it out:
"All the talk about ‘revival’ involves a return to
the glorious past--when Big Labor had negotiating clout with
Corporate America and political clout in Washington. Nothing
wrong with that except the world has changed. Right now, labor is
absorbed in securing old jobs for aging workers in the auto
industry. Much more is required from a modern labor movement.
Unions should be actively preparing their members for the global
economy....They should be improving the productivity of their
members. Instead of battling new organizational techniques at
work, they should be inventing them...Ron Carey’s fall is an
opportunity for organized labor to take stock."
Carey and Hoffa represent warring capitalist factions: Carey, the Rockefeller-Wall St. billionaires; and Hoffa, the "New Money" bosses the Teamsters used to work for. These rulers are fighting over the Teamsters, a multi-billion dollar plum among mass movements, with 1.4 million members. After five years of government protection, Carey wasn’t doing the job; he was still vulnerable to the Hoffa forces who continued to challenge him. That was the reason behind the Carey campaign’s money-laundering scheme to steal a very close election: more than $2 million funneled to Carey from the Teamsters’ treasury, other unions and businesses.
Wall Street is consolidating its hold on the union. The government is investigating Hoffa’s campaign financing, and has taken direct control of the union’s finances. It can now approve or veto any financial transaction other than payrolls, rents and leases. Union officials who do not grant "unrestricted access to all IBT [Teamster] books, records and offices," or show "unreasonable failure to cooperate," can be expelled. This is fascism, big time, no matter how many elections the government and union hold.
Anti-Communist Witch-Hunts To Follow
The rulers’ intensified labor discipline will include a full-scale attack on communists, "leftists," and reformers, like those following World War II, when the rulers braced for war with the Soviet Union and China. New York Times columnist William Safire longs for "the clean-union, anti-communist era of George Meany and Lane Kirkland" (11/26). The Washington Post (10/26) writes that the Carey scandal "could damage a fragile alliance that has developed in recent years between labor and left-leaning outside political groups."
For the past 20 years, especially since Reagan fired the air traffic controllers in 1981, many Vietnam-era activists turned to the unions. PLP led bold anti-racist wildcat actions and plant takeovers, aimed at the bosses and union leaders, and was kicked out of the auto industry and the UAW for it. Meanwhile fake "leftists" worked their way up in the AFL-CIO as organizers, local leaders and International staffers. They served as foot soldiers for the Sweeneys, Trumkas and Careys, and were rewarded with a long leash in building various organizing projects. Carey could not have won in 1991 without the active campaigning of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU).
When Carey helped install Sweeney and Trumka into the AFL-CIO leadership, they took these forces along. The reformers and "leftists" were busy "rebuilding the labor movement" but never had the goal of communist revolution or abolishing wage slavery. They will soon find out, as Carey did, that when you march behind the bosses, you perish behind the bosses.
The main section of the U.S. ruling class must discipline Carey’s labor liberals when the petty corruption gets in their way of the need to terrorize workers, or win them to sacrifice for fascism and war. The big bosses must clean their own house before they can effectively go after their enemies. So the possibility of a new wave of anti-communist witchhunts in the labor movement is very real.
The PLP sheds no tears for Carey & Co. We represent a far greater threat to the fascist rulers and the attacks we are already facing—in Chicago and elsewhere—are what we expect. With a mass base among the workers, these attacks can be turned into mass recruitment of workers and the emergence of PLP as the revolutionary leadership of the working class. We are building a mass communist movement inside the enemy’s mass organizations to turn their next world war into their last.
Citizen Action: Labor Liberals Feed At Bosses’ Trough
A major source for Carey’s campaign scam was Citizen Action, which until recently protested plant closings and toxic waste sites. During the Carey campaign, the Teamsters gave them $450,000 for a get-out-the-vote drive in the November ’96 elections. The AFL-CIO sent a check for $150,000. Much of that money made its way back to Carey.
Citizen Action has close ties to the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party. Its president Ira Arlook is married to Karen Nussbaum, head of the AFL-CIO’s Women’s Department. Mike Podhorzer, a former national leader of Citizen Action, is married to Carol Browner, who recently joined the AFL-CIO’s political affairs department. Steve Rosenfield, once an organizer for the Communications Workers of America, was labor liaison at the Democratic National Committee and then became Sweeney’s political affairs director. His wife was a founder of Citizen Action of New Jersey. Heather Booth, a Citizen Action founder, is married to Paul Booth, director of organizing for AFSCME and a top adviser to its president, Gerald McEntee. From 1995 to 1996, the budget for Citizen Action rose from $4.7 million to $11.7 million.
300 Angry Marchers Confront LAPD Death Squad
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 2 — When the Party got word of the murder of Darryl "Chubby" Hood who was shot down in cold blood by the police in full view of dozens of witnesses, we went with copies of Challenge to the candlelight vigil held in the Jordan Downs Housing Project where Darryl was killed. We showed residents the article about the march after the cops murdered Kevin Robinson. We said that this killing is part of the bosses’ plan to increase racist terror nationwide. Several residents proposed a march to the police station and many said they would help.
A multi-racial group of Party members, including teachers, students, and relatives of other victims of police abuse organized this march together with members of the family. As we were organizing the march, some fake leftists tried to take over and attack our Party. We know some of Darryl’s relatives, and the family was open to working with us.
300 March Against Killer KKKops
The day of the march (Nov. 22), we gathered at the site of Darryl’s murder. Residents spoke condemning the racist murder of Darryl, who was shot 11 times by the cops. Many angry youth came. A minister spoke demanding justice and love. Party members spoke condemning not only police terror but the capitalist system that requires it. "This system only has racist police murder and more prisons. It can’t meet our needs. Now they want us to fight for this racist system in Iraq to protect their oil interest and here they are making war against us to keep us down, controlled and oppressed. We need to fight for a system—communism—that will meet people’s needs not the profits of the rulers."
We marched through Jordan Downs and then the Nickerson Gardens Housing Project, two different gang turfs. Many residents from both projects joined the march, which grew to over 300. There were times when demonstrators took over the middle of the street and marched militantly, shoving signs at police squad cars and yelling at them. The cops kept trying to keep us on the sidewalk, but they failed. We distributed 1,000 leaflets and over 300 Challenges. At the police station, the demonstrators went around the barricades the police had put up, directly to the front of the station. Here we confronted the cops who formed a police line at the entrance, continuing to chant. Several people took the microphone, including Darryl’s uncle demanding that the police chief come out, "I want answers and I want them now!"
Finally the police captain came out and escorted the uncle into the station to talk. An angry marcher said, "You don’t need to tell us to calm down. I have children at home and I am scared that one of these killer cops is going to shoot them down. We are not going to take this anymore." A Party member said, "We need a mass movement against the bosses’ terror—in the schools, in the factories and in the neighborhoods. This system has to go. We need to organize a revolutionary movement to build a system of communism."
Some said we need to rely on the courts and liberals like Jesse Jackson to "get rid of the bad cops" and reform the police departments. But the police departments and courts can’t be reformed to serve our needs. They exist to terrorize the working class—especially as the big bosses downsize, layoff, and go to war. In fact, the bosses are trying to win workers to accept fascist police terror as being necessary.
Others want to fight police terror by individual or small group actions against the police. Some were frustrated that the demonstration didn’t take on the cops. The LA Times quoted a gang member threatening the cops. But we need to win thousands of workers to fight the bosses’ racism—a few won’t do. We don’t need individual revenge—we need strikes and other mass actions at our schools and jobs, a mass movement against racist terror, led by communists, that will not only challenge the system but organize to get rid of it. The more communists there are, the more people we can move against the bosses’ racist terror, for revolution.
Smash Racist Terror Fighting for Communism
Organizing for this march strengthened the Party in several areas of concentration. Some black workers and students who have just started working with the Party took leadership before and during the march.
The role of cops is to protect the bosses and their dictatorship over workers. And this period of capitalist crisis of overproduction and war, the cops are needed to enforce mass layoffs and cutbacks to make workers pay for the bosses’ crisis.
Marches by themselves won’t stop the cops from murdering our brothers and sisters in the streets. But they can show angry workers and youth that the working class can and will end police terror—by building a mass Party which will smash police terror with revolution, and set up a communist system—the dictatorship of workers—which meets our needs.
War, Racist Terror Show We Need Mass PLP
OAKLAND, CA — "It’s an honor to be asked and, although I’ve said, ‘No,’ in the past, I’m going to think about it." The Alameda County (AC) Transit driver had just been asked to join PLP. He was one of several drivers approached as a result of the sharpening tensions in the Middle East and the deepening domestic crisis. So far four have agreed to come to study groups, while another five are taking subs to Challenge.
Times are a-changin'. There is a growing awareness that whether it’s "boom or bust on Wall St.," for the working class it’s still an economic slump in a bottomless pit.
In addition, there is seething anger at the increased racism that is being unleashed. (The Oakland Chamber of Commerce, for example, has asked AC to change its bus routes because now they bring "too many of the wrong types" into the renovated downtown!) Spurred by the union leadership’s sly dealings there is more activism in the union, too. And among seniors and disabled riders there is a growing riders union.
Some realize these assaults are part of a deadly capitalist crisis, but feel that too many of their co-workers don’t yet grasp the big picture. "Convince me revolution will work," one driver continually asks, although he helps distribute Challenge and has thrown his considerable energy into the union. "Convince us reforms work," we challenge him back, "400 years of capitalism and black youth still aren’t welcome in any numbers downtown!"
Yet another driver needs no convincing about U.S. capitalism and its hunger for war. Politically well read, he alerts us about a wide range of issues from U.S. Marines in Kazakhstan to details of Oakland’s political scene. This driver is convinced of U.S. imperialism’s decline, hates racism and is taking a more positive turn toward Challenge after the paper began some months ago to talk more aggressively about communism. He has agreed to meet with us in a study group. His life is full, though, with family and side jobs. Finding time for us is difficult. That is one reason why we call our paper Challenge!
Don’t Underestimate Workers’ Understanding
"The French want the oil," one of our comrades was explaining to a driver who reads but does not sell Challenge, "The U.S. doesn’t want the Iraqis to sell it, but the French want to buy it."
"No," replied the driver, "the French don’t want it. They need it. They need the profits from it." He understood the situation was more critical and volatile than we were explaining.
Underestimating the working class remains a constant error in our work. But again and again workers’ respect for the Party and understanding of the world, hammer into us that there is a base for revolution and communism. The challenge that faces us today is how well are we going to organize that base.
Another worker takes five papers—three for his nephews and two for co-workers. Though born and brought up in the area he has had to move over 50 miles away. What a commute! The fascist Oakland cops have targeted his teenage son who is black (the "profile that the Oakland Chamber of Commerce doesn’t want downtown"). "Capitalists," he once told us, "don’t give a damn whether you and I live or die. All they care about is profits."
Among these left-wing drivers, illusions about capitalism are not so strong. Instead they share with Party members an illusion we have got to eliminate—that workers cannot be won to communist revolution en masse.
Our organizing around the developments in Iraq has been too slow to get off the ground. "Why?" we ask ourselves. The answer we arrived at shocked us. We had, we concluded, fallen out of the habit of struggling with our co-workers to join the Party. Our habits must change. "It’s not so much," to echo an AC driver, "that we want a mass communist Party. It’s that we need one!"
Workers Discuss Oil War and Needs to Build PLP
NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 25 — "Oil is black gold." "Oil is to present day imperialists what gold was to European rulers who pillaged and massacred indigenous peoples in Central and South America in the late 1400’s and 1500’s." "As long as there’s oil in the Middle East, there will be war." "War and capitalism go together."
"Yes, but Saddam is bad. He won’t let anyone see the biological weapons he has. He doesn’t care about the Iraqi people." "That’s true, but the U.S. has more weapons of mass destruction (nuclear) and has murdered half a million people in Iraq either in the Desert Storm war or through sanctions." "All the world’s capitalists are murderers and many have weapons of mass destruction."
"Workers and youth need to unite and be organized." "Then we can vote for candidates who will be good for us." "Think of this. We workers are the majority. The rulers are a few. We make everything in society. When we become conscious and unite, then we will be able to make a revolution for communism. Voting under this capitalist system is not the solution."
"How will we be able to make a revolution?" "By focusing on organizing workers, students and soldiers. Soldiers who understand why they should not be cannon fodder for the billionaire oil bosses can unite with workers to turn the guns around and turn capitalist war into revolution for workers’ power."
"Human beings are too greedy and selfish. We need religion to change people’s ways." "No, religion obscures class divisions under capitalism and claims that evil is part of being human." "It is capitalism that trains people to be greedy and selfish. The rulers are that way because that is how they keep their power and wealth. It’s not religion and blind faith that will change people’s ways but learning about communism and the kind of values that can serve the interests of the vast majority of the people in the world."
"How can we reach workers, students and soldiers with these ideas?" "On my job a co-worker is clear about what’s happening in the Persian Gulf because he regularly reads Challenge. Maybe he’ll take extra Challenges for his friends." "I’m new to PLP. I’d like to get Challenge every week." "We’ve been working a lot of overtime. But in December I’d like to have a dinner for my co-workers to talk about these ideas and how this affects what’s going on in the factory."
"We know some young people in the Army. Let’s figure out how we can write to them about our ideas, maybe see them when they return for the holidays. We can see reservists now." "It’s also important to reach students in high school and college to orient them before they become soldiers or are drafted." "I’m circulating Challenges to classmates and professors in my college. I want to invite them to our club so they will join PLP. I also want to bring students to the march against slave labor workfare. My daughter can make signs."
Many were the debates and plans made last weekend as about two dozen workers and youth gathered at our PLP club meetings in Upper Manhattan to discuss the situation in the Persian Gulf. We have mailed hundreds of letters and leaflets about the Middle East to Party members, friends and Challenge distributors in our area.
During the last two months our clubs have grown modestly and we’re circulating 50 more Challenges, 25 more this last week. We have raised our ideas about oil war on the job, in classrooms, churches and at two conferences our members have attended. We could be much more vigorous. While there is improvement, self critically there is still not enough leadership developed to take full advantage of the possibilities to build the Party and consolidate new members here.
As our Party Section enters the May Day organizing period, related to Party-wide campaigns against police terror, slave labor workfare and oil war in the Middle East, our goals is to double our membership and get 175 new Challenge readers. More ideological struggle and more activity in our clubs, together with more leadership, will make these goals become reality. The future is in our hands.
‘Where There Are Six Of Us, There Are Twelve’
Chicago, Dec. 2 — "I stand before us unafraid," a young communist declared as comrades and friends picketed the Cook County Courthouse, where six face trumped-up felony charges stemming from an August, 1996 PLP march against Clinton’s fascist welfare cuts. "We need to make a revolution," he continued. "Their system is that weak. They arrested six of us but where there are six there are twelve, and where there are twelve there are twenty-four. We can rid our streets of fascist cops and racism. We can and we will."
Inside the courtroom, fifty supporters stood up with the defendants when the judge called our case. You could feel the change like a breath of fresh air in the halls of injustice: from passivity and despair to unity and a spirit of fight-back. We left, all together, resolving to bring word of the case more boldly to unions, churches and other organizations, to raise money for legal expenses, and to come back to court on January 20th in even greater numbers.
Crisis of Overproduction Hits Aerospace Bosses
SEATTLE — At a glance the aerospace industry seems to have avoided the current worldwide crisis of overproduction. But, if you look below the surface, you can see a crisis brewing here. We workers ignore the warning signs at our own peril.
It was only a few years ago when firms like Boeing were discharging workers by the hundreds of thousands. "That’s Boeing," say veteran employees, "up and down." Unfortunately, "up and down" doesn’t get at the inherent instability of capitalism.
Commercial aircraft production capacity has been increasing worldwide—outstripping the ability of increasingly impoverished workers to buy airline tickets. Ironically, it was this increased production capacity that led to Boeing’s current production troubles. (The company can’t meet delivery dates so it faces fines and billions in lost revenues.) Boeing offered deep discounts and gobbled up every order it could because it knew Airbus would build anything Boeing didn’t. Twenty years ago Airbus didn’t exist; 99% of the West’s commercial production was in the U.S. Boeing, the last commercial manufacturer in the U.S., will probably get less than 50% of the 1997 commercial jet orders. "Boeing executives say they had little choice," but to accept every order no matter how far it stretched the production lines (New York Times 11/14/).
Boeing bosses had to believe they could produce three times as many planes in a quarter of the time for less money to justify accepting these orders. "This was sort of the four-and-a-half somersault off a 50-foot board into a pail of water," said James Womack, the author and champion of "lean manufacturing," who worked as a consultant to Boeing. Well, they missed!
Disciplining California’s Aerospace Workers
So, how is Boeing going to get out of this mess—other than working us overtime till we drop?! Is the company going to shift production to Southern California where they just announced the company would no longer produce two commercial jet models made by the former McDonnell Douglas? Apparently not! California workers make too much money for Boeing.
Like all capitalists, Boeing bosses have to look for ways to do more with less: less workers and less pay. They’ve already offloaded work to low wage areas in Mexico and China. Now they are looking to Russia. "Boeing is looking at plans to assemble 737’s at Aviakor, said Aviakor vice president Leonid Komm, and Maxim Sysoyev, Boeing spokesman in Moscow," reports Russian Highlights, the bi-weekly newsletter of Boeing’s Russian Strategy Development team.
Unfortunately for the Boeing bosses, Airbus has already beat them to the punch. The European consortium has made deals to produce wing sections and landing gear for the new super jumbos in Russia and the Ukraine.
Russian workers make next to nothing—when they get paid. They’re not going to be buying many airline tickets. The aerospace bosses are setting the stage for the next crisis of overproduction.
Such is the nature of capitalism: one crisis after another, each worse than the last. Apologists for capitalism talk about reform to boost demand by increasing wages, but that can’t be sustained in this system. In the real capitalist world, "overcapacity" is eliminated by destroying capital—first through layoffs, then war.
The only solution to capitalism’s instability is political. Jets must no longer be made to be sold, but should be produced for needs of the working class. Communist production for need is only possible after a communist revolution. Help build the political movement necessary to make that revolution by joining the Progressive Labor Party today!
Talking to GIs About Why U.S. Rulers Need Another Oil War
The threat of another oil war forces most soldiers to think about why the U.S. needs them versus why they joined in the first place. Most soldiers join the military for college tuition, vocational training, or merely because of lack of jobs in the civilian world. Very few join because they are patriotic or want to be the cannon fodder that the capitalists will use to protect their oil. Herein lies the great contradiction that soldiers are being forced to deal with and the great opportunity for the Party to build for communist revolution.
Many soldiers think that they can either fight for the bosses’ profits or resist on an individual basis: go AWOL. Refusing to fight in itself won’t end capitalist wars and won’t put power into the hands of the working class. Without the destruction of capitalism, the cause of these wars, millions will continue to be killed for the bosses’ profits. Many soldiers know that they do not want to fight the bosses, as the Party brings them the plan of turning the bosses’ war into armed revolution for communism.
One soldier who has expressed strong agreement with the Party says that this conflict in the Middle East is over control of the oil markets. We talked about how Saddam Hussein knew what he was doing in terms of widening the split in the UN. Although these countries have a united front coalition within the UN, they are also steeped in competition for markets around the world. France and the U.S. continually go at it in Africa. He thinks that many people are programmed to go along with capitalism’s horrors and need to be deprogrammed. He asked, "How are we going to deprogram these millions of people? What should we do now?" We suggested that we discuss what is really happening in Iraq with other people in our unit and at work. At drill a few weekends later, he explained to other questioning soldiers that China’s growing strength is playing a major part in the U.S. weakness.
Soldiers wanted to know what the Party thought about Iraq and what our plan was if we got called up. One guy said, "Over half of what Challenge says is right," but it’s essential to keep it from the eyes of the officers. A soldier said, "The U.S. is not weak right now and that at most the U.S. will only have to bomb Iraq, they definitely won’t use ground troops." Another comments that, "Challenge makes me think about things I’ve never thought about before." Even the most anti-communist guy in our platoon wanted to find out what we thought was going to happen and if Party members would be going if the unit got called. We have been able to convince soldiers that this is a crisis of capitalism and that the war will be about which countries are going to be the dominant forces in the world economy through control of the oil in Iraq. War is soldiers’ opportunity to turn the guns around for revolution so the working class can win control of society. How we will actually do this needs to be clearly laid out for soldiers.
University HS Students Rebel Against Jail-like Conditions
NEWARK, NJ, Dec. 1 — On Friday, November 21st, students at University High School staged a rebellion against the growing fascism in school. Throughout the school year, the new principal and vice-principal have been instituting oppressive rules. They are making these rules to get the students in line and under control. For the first time we have to have color-coded passes, show picture ID’s while walking through a metal detector, and stand for the flag salute and the singing of the National Anthem or be excluded from the assembly. The principal also announced she wants to bring in a chapter of Junior ROTC.
The last straw was when the administration decided three months into the school year that all the students had to move their belongings to new assigned lockers. This cut time out of second period and the extra work for the janitors and security was never ending. Students were outraged by this and refused to move their lockers. A group of us began to bang on the lockers chanting, "Hell No We Won’t Go!" All the students who did not move their lockers eventually got their locks popped and their old lockers locked.
As a PLP member stood up on a table in the cafeteria to give a speech, the administration was there with threats of suspension. They were very nervous since a large crowd had begun to form around the speaker, chanting "Walk Out!" The sixth period bell had rung, but all the students remained and more students poured in. After the vice principal agreed to meet with five students, the protest ended.
To continue the struggle a petition was drawn up entitled "Students Aren’t Criminals—Schools Should Not Be Jails". First thing Monday morning, the same five students were called to the principal’s office. There the principal tried to pit the students against the teachers and the PLP member was again threatened with suspension or expulsion. However, students have not been intimidated; so far 310 out of 550 total student body have signed the petition.
All the students were very upset about what was going on in school. More students began to realize the real purpose of schools under capitalism. Most students see UHS as a jail. Now more than ever students are agreeing with the communist analysis of what schools are used for: to teach ruling class ideas and to keep kids in "their place." More and more students are also beginning to realize that the school bosses, not the teachers, are the enemy.
Through this struggle the Party has gotten stronger. More people agree with our ideas and many have come closer to us. One thing we have to do better is to connect the fascism within the school to the developing war and fascism. We must put forward communism no matter what, but especially within intense struggles such as these. Schools under communism will not be jails, so fight for communism and build the Party!
We Won’t Be Slaves for Capitalism
NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 1 — 200 people, including workfare participants, unionists, lawyers, as well as members of social welfare advocacy and church groups met in the WEP Coalition Conference to discuss workfare and strategies for fighting it. PLP wants to encourage workers to become active in the struggle against this racist slave labor scheme. We believe that in the course of this struggle many workers can be won to understand the need for communist revolution.
The main point of unity at the conference was that participants would help build the December 10th march across the Brooklyn Bridge called to fight workfare. Speakers from various organizations were challenged to turn out hundreds to walk with workfare participants to their work sites.
A difference that emerged was between those who discussed how to reform the workfare rules and establish WEP union grievance procedures and those who said that we should fight against the existence of the WEP program. Those who argued for reform of the workfare system reflected the ideas of the main wing of the U.S. ruling class. These included several leaders of NYC unions and the head of the NYC Central Labor Council, Brian McLaughlin and spokespersons for the social welfare establishment like the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies.
The Old Money forces have a long range view of control of the working class. They encourage a reformist outlook that doesn’t challenge the basic premises of their wealth and power. The religious/moral outlook of those who advocate the WEP ledge of resistance seeks to block the growth of WEP by having institutions and organizations refuse to become work sites. This view seeks to negate the needs and plans of the ruling class but underestimates the magnitude of capitalism’s viciousness.
Responding to the panel discussing an overview of workfare, a welfare worker pointed out that the racist and sexist propaganda campaign that has accompanied the changes in welfare law and the increase in workfare were steps in the development of fascism in the U.S. He pointed out similarities between the growth of fascism in Europe in the 1930s and the U.S. In each case, there was an international economic crisis and a slave labor system was used to help develop a war chest for the military. Money saved by welfare cuts and workfare, the speaker said, would sooner rather than later be used to pay for a war for oil profits in the Middle East.
World capitalism is in the midst of a crisis of overproduction. East national ruling class is seeking to prepare itself to win against its rivals. We don’t want to be capitalism’s slaves nor its cannon fodder. Our answer to capitalism’s crisis is communist revolution!
How do you spell sweatshops: C-A-P-I-T-A-L-I-S-M
NEW YORK, Nov. 29—Some 200 people protested today in Midtown Manhattan, in the middle of the busiest shopping days of the season, against sweatshops. The protestors picket K-Mart, for superexploiting garment workers in Nicaragua. Chentex Garment Factory, which produces clothes for K-Mart in Nicaragua, employ workers younger than 15, mainly women, forcing them to work up to 13 hours a day, seven days a week.
The demonstrators also denounced Disney, which pay workers in Haiti 28 cents an hour, to make Lion Kings, Pocahontas and other Disney figures. Victoria’s Secret was also attacked for treating its workers in Dominican Republic as slaves. Its contractors there lock the shop to force workers to work overtime. Workers cannot leave until the boss decides them to leave.
One point not mentioned by the organizers of the demonstration, the World Coalition against Sweatshops, is that capitalism requires this fascist sweatshop condition more and more to compete in this period of growing war and overproduction. Bosses need to turn the entire world into a giant sweatshop to get maximum profits. And the only solution is for workers of the world to unite and smash capitalism and build a communist society. Then, production will be based on needs and sweatshops, Disney, Victoria’s Secret will be horrors of the past.
LETTERS
Workers study philosophy to change the world
Dear Challenge:
On Nov. 22nd, a group of workers, members of PLP in Colombia, S.A., participated in a school to study dialectical materialism. As Marx said, we don’t want just to interpret the world, we want to change it.
We analyzed our work as being idealist since we don’t see that the problems in our particular jobs are related to the global crisis of capitalism. For example, mass layoffs in different factories are due to the capitalist crisis of overproduction and the new war threat in the Persian Gulf.
We also dealt with the erroneous idea that workers are not capable of understanding Marxist philosophy (dialectical materialism). The way to correct this is to show workers the material basis behind their anger at the bosses’ attacks. The material basis is the bosses’ drive for maximum profit and the only way to end this is by building a mass revolutionary communist movement, by joining PLP to change the world.
A worker new to the Party said that he was going to negate the ignorance capitalism has kept him in, by participating in the life of the Party and winning other workers to join us.
The school ended with all the participants pledging to build a stronger PLP in Colombia, based on the anti-reformist political line of Road to Revolution 4.5 and the PLP short pamphlet on dialectics, Escaping from Jail. The participants also congratulated the new comrades who led this successful school. Again, these workers showed that it is a lie that philosophy is only for intellectuals. These workers, in spite of leading tough lives, working long hours, showed that their commitment to the Party collective could overcome many obstacles.
Again, they showed that communist revolution is possible as long as we have confidence in the working class.
PLP Comrades, Colombia
UPS mechanics lose contract, gain Challenge
Dear Challenge:
On Nov. 23, UPS and IAM Local 701 bosses barely averted a strike of 300 mechanics, when the contract was ratified 114-112. The new five year contract is a money maker for UPS, which will put the 65 mechanics at the CACH truck repair center on four 10-hour days. It might also be the last contract for the UPS mechanics, as the company is looking for a way to farm out the work to sub-contractors.
The mechanics overwhelmingly rejected the first contract offer, 275-12. Local 701 hacks tried to intimidate the workers by calling a strike vote while telling the workers that a strike would cost them all their jobs! The strike vote passed 273-19! The union went back to negotiations, trying to spread fear and disunity among the workers and gave the company the 10-day strike notice. The new offer was the same as the first, with an added paid personal day and a small increase in overtime pay for those working the 10-hour days, and won’t see any overtime.
The union campaigned for the contract, telling the mechanics there would be no more coming from the company, and if the mechanics struck, UPS would bring in scabs. UPS is a multi-billion dollar business, with over 60% of the package delivery market. The recent strike by UPS drivers and loaders, which was honored by the mechanics, put UPS on the defensive. When mechanics said the drivers would support them, the union hacks said it would never happen. With all this intimidation, the hacks barely got the contract ratified.
During the UPS strike last summer, we began to get Challenge into one of the mechanic shops. The workers were struck by the difference between Challenge, which explained how the strikers were being used in a struggle between billionaires for control of the Teamster pension fund and all the phony "leftist" papers that were calling the strike a great victory for the workers. Since then, a small readership has developed, as Challenge is being passed from one mechanic to the next. This budding Challenge readership has the potential to influence many workers at UPS and beyond. Local 701 has a few thousand members, including all the CTA mechanics.
In this period of war and fascism, when the union leaders tell us, "this is the best we can get," they are right. Capitalism in decline offers us a future of slave labor and wage-slavery. The alternative for workers is to start meeting with PLP and distributing Challenge, so we can understand the depth of the crisis and how to take action against it. We should organize in our unions to fight these attacks, and the build a mass PLP.
Chicago UPS Worker
U.S., Britain: Champs in using biological-chemical weapons
Dear Challenge:
A few days ago, The New York Times revealed how close the U.S. was to launching major strikes against Iraq. The U.S. military command center in Saudi Arabia was prepared to launch hundreds of missiles and bombs against numerous military and non-military cites if the Iraqis had fired on the U.S. U-2 spy plane. Furthermore, hawkish Secretary of State Albright even inquired, at a high level planning session with Clinton and his top aides, about the possibility of launching a ground war and toppling Hussein. Apparently that was ruled out at this time because the U.S. is so damned isolated, with virtually no support from the other imperialist powers and little support among Arab nations.
The contradiction, as Challenge has pointed out, is that missile strikes, while they do a great deal of damage, don’t usually lead governments to change their policies. Even if Hussein was to die, it might backfire on the U.S. if Iraq is balkanized, with Iran taking over a large piece of the country. In the long run, only a ground war can give the U.S. the kind of control it wants.
Many workers have been won to support the U.S. position because of their fear of Saddam Hussein developing chemical and biological weapons. We need to point out to people that:
The U.S. has been the leader in the development of chemical and germ warfare, producing massive quantities of such weapons. In 1969, the U.S. voted against a ban on the use of herbicides and tear gas in war, because at the time it was dropping tons of Agent Orange, (a defoliant that causes sickness in humans) on Vietnam. The U.S. used chemical and biological warfare against Cuba, introducing viruses and germs that caused massive crop losses and animal deaths (William Blum, Killing Hope, 1995)
When Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran and then later against Kurdish rebels, the U.S. refused to take any action against him, because then Saddam was serving U.S. interests.
The first to use chemical weapons in Iraq was the British imperialism, currently the only ally of the U.S. in urging military action against Iraq. Britain used poison gas against the Kurds in the 1920’s, a weapon it had perfected in northern Russia when British forces used it against the Red Army. Winston Churchill wrote: "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes...."
A Queens, NY Reader
Challenge Responds: Let’s not forget that the U.S. ruling class was the first ever to use the mother of all weapons of mass destruction: dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, even though the Japanese fascists were ready to surrender after the bulk of their forces was crushed by the Red Army in Manchuria. Also, the only Middle East country now with nuclear weapons is Israel, the U.S. greatest ally in the region. Somehow, the U.S. media have chose to ignore the fact that Israel has over 200 nuclear warheads.
Police brutality in Twin Cities
Dear Challenge:
Let me first congratulate you on constantly putting out a superb news publication. I have an addition for you. You would think that here in Minnesota the amount of police brutality would be low given the fact that there are many foreigners here right? Wrong. A black youth was shot in the back by a cop. The following information comes from a flyer that was distributed around the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis) campus:
On Aug. 16th, an unarmed youth, Lawrence Miles, was shot in the back by a Minneapolis cop. The victim’s name is now added to the long list of innocent victims of police abuse in the Twin Cities. He was in critical condition and suffered major injuries. Charles Storlie, the cop who committed this crime, remains free while Mike Freeman, Henneppin County Attorney, chooses to charge 15-year-old Lawrence Miles with two felony assaults. In other words an innocent Lawrence Miles could end up in prison while the real criminal -the cop who shot him—goes free.
Call Mike Freeman and protest the charges! 612-348-5550 and
come to a rally on Fri., Dec. 5th, Noon at Hennepin County Gov't
Center. 300 S. 6th St. on the 2nd floor by the fountain. Fight
Police Brutality!!
Thank you for your time,
Minneapolis Sympathizer
Students begin struggle about coming U.S./Iraq war
Dear Challenge:
"Why don’t we discuss the U.S. invasions of other countries like Panama and Grenada?
"What about the chemical weapons that Iraq has amassed since the Gulf War?
"If we call a forum, would other viewpoints besides yours be presented?"
When we urged an organization of 30 to 40 students at a Community College to sponsor a campus-wide forum on the U.S.-Iraq crisis, they wanted to have a discussion right then. We planned a brief presentation, but it lengthened into a half hour discussion. Although the questions were as varied as the ones above, the group wanted to hear more about why the U.S. felt so threatened by Saddam Hussein.
These students and campus workers were responding to a letter that appeared in the student newspaper, that said in part:
"It looks like the U.S. is about to start another war with Iraq. The last one...resulted in the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqis. It’s really about oil. The U.S. gets only 14 percent of its oil from the Middle East, but competitors Japan and Germany get almost all of theirs from the Middle East. Big U.S. oil companies and the banks...want to keep control of this oil. France, Germany, Russia and China are busy making separate deals with Iran and Iraq. By taking over Iraq, and maybe even destroying the oil wells again, the U.S. is aiming to prevent such deals.
"...no bombs should be dropped and no soldiers should be sent. There are plenty of things to fight about right here, such as decent jobs, education and police brutality….A Gulf war will affect every student and worker....Student organizations and staff and faculty unions should organize a campus-wide forum to discuss these issues."
One of the signers of this letter led the student club forum that included 40 students. The same issue of this student paper reported that homeless workers and students protested their lack of winter shelter, claiming, "…the U.S. is [guilty of] human rights violations during a time of pre-war build-up with Iraq, and people stay outside...in a wealthy American city." Their posters read, "Food Not Bombs." PLP will try to win these protesters to say, "A society that makes war on the world’s workers and creates more homelessness should not exist. Fight for Communism. Power to the Workers!"
College Students
BACKPAGE: Bosses Oil Conflicts Lead to Imperialist War
Geologists and roughnecks are not enough; nor are derricks or semi-submersible rigs. Even lawyers in the International Courts in the Hague cannot do the job. Today, if you want oil you need tanks, bombs and armed forces ready to kill for it.
In the oil rich Spratley Islands in the South China Sea naval power will decide the issue. In the Caucasus, and the region around it, tanks, helicopters and rockets are already making the arguments.
Between 1991 and 1995 over 2 million refugees were created just from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Neighboring areas like Chechnya and Afghanistan saw full-scale war. At least 50,000 (out of a population of 400,000) were killed in 15 months in Chechnya. Grozny, the capital, was reduced to rubble by the Russian imperialists. Other forces have likewise reduced Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Two cities destroyed in regions that do not even produce oil. The fight here has been over pipelines that either do, or might, pass through the area!
Add the refugees from these wars to the 2 million plus from the Caucasus and you can argue that so far, pound for pound, more living human beings have been exported than oil. Capitalism has outlived its usefulness.
Yet the fury of the U.S. assault on Iraq during Desert Storm surpassed even these horrors. More explosives were dropped in the 43 days of the war than were dropped during the whole of World War II. Bridges, dams, hospitals were leveled. The U.S. even buried Iraqi troops alive! According to UN estimates over a million Iraqis have died (half of them children) as a result of the embargo enforced on the country since the end of the war.
The conditions surrounding the production of oil in today’s world bring us face to face with he inescapable need for communist revolution. "At a certain stage of development," Marx wrote," the material forces of production come into conflict with the existing relations of production....Then begins an era of social revolution."
Are not the forces of production (the skills and courage of the crews who drill for oil) crying out against the relations of production (the system of private ownership that unleashes bombs and rockets in pursuit of its ‘legal’ title to that oil)? Isn’t this a world crying out for a real communist revolution to replace capitalism? How about the abolition of money and the filthy rich and their replacement by a society where the skills of the working class operate solely for the needs of the masses?
And, if we can draw that conclusion from the past seven years, you can bet we will not be able to escape it as the next bloody chapter of inter-imperialist rivalry over oil opens up.
The November issue of the French paper, Le Monde Diplomatique, claims in a detailed article that U.S. military planners are discussing a new strategic outlook. Instead of preparing to fight two regional wars against minor forces (e.g. in the Persian Gulf and North Korea), the U.S. must now prepare to fight major regional powers—Russia for control of oil in the Caucasus and China for control of the South China Sea.
As if to underline Le Monde, the New York Times (11/10) carried an Op-Ed article declaring "The United States [i.e. the Rockefeller group of capitalists] simply cannot afford to allow Russia and Iran to dominate the energy resources of the Caspian (the Caucasus), with the enormous political leverage that would confer in the region and even in Europe."
Among other things, they are talking about the $2 billion pipeline that Gazprom (Russia), Total (France) and Shell (Holland) are planning to build from Turkmenistan in the Caucasus through Iran and into Turkey. To stop or limit this pipeline is one of the key reasons the U.S. is picking a fight with Saddam Hussein. They need an excuse to transfer thousands of U.S. troops to occupy the region.
But that is not the only pipeline in the region. They have been exporting oil from Azerbaijan for 2,500 years. Today, though, along with that oil they are exporting a massive military conflagration. Here is how the Armenian journalist Avet Demourian describes it:
"Azerbaijan does not want the oil to go through Russia. Russia does not want the oil to go through Georgia (to Turkey). Whichever way they pump the oil it will be a provocation. Either way the pipeline is going to pass close to the Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan of Nagorno-Karabach. The Armenian army here is third only to Russia’s and the Ukraine’s."
Journalist Demourian reports "Nagorno-Karabach is preparing to defend itself not only, nor primarily, against Azerbaijan, but in readiness for what many see there as inevitable: the involvement of the international community—the West, NATO and Turkey—in a wide ranging war..." (Index 4/97).
Add this to a Russian journalist writing in Nezavisimaya Gazeta (3/26) who concludes: "As things now stand , only the prospect of destabilization in Georgia and Azerbaijan can prevent the consolidation of State power in these countries on an anti-Russian basis...And only then can Russia’s final expulsion (from the Caucasus) be prevented." Destabilization is, of course, a code name for nationalist wars and terrorism.
It is no longer Challenge alone that is warning of the development of World War III. Now elements in the U.S. Pentagon are openly strategizing about it. Journalists from France, Armenia and Russia are writing about it. But only this paper and PLP offer the solution to workers: turn the imperialist wars into revolutionary wars for communism.
Capitalism Cannot Organize The World: It Can Only Organize Wars!
"The tendencies to pessimistic speculations on the present period are widespread at present. They are the appropriate expression of the mood of a dying class. But they are of little practical value. The process of history is working itself out, through all the chaos and conflicts.
"The antagonisms are brought out more sharply than ever before, in order that they be resolved. The forces that can solve them are arising. It is for all who are concerned for the future of human life to understand their part in the world historical process. But this requires a revolution in traditional modes of thought and outlook.
"The unification of the world, the growing interdependence and interrelation of human activity and development all over the world, are to-day becoming more and more a reality. This is a new chapter in human history.
"The unification of the world is in the first stage the work of capitalism. Capitalism creates the world market. As capitalism develops to imperialism, it draws the whole world still closer in an network of economic relations, even though these relations are still based on slavery and exploitation.
"But this unification of capitalism is built on an antagonistic basis. The inner division of competitive anarchy and class subjection, which constitute the heart of capitalism, is reproduced on a world scale.
"Hence, while capitalism has laid the basis for world unity by its own inner law is incapable of realizing world unity.
"It remains for the new social order which is succeeding capitalism to realize the world unity for which capitalism has laid the basis." Palme Dutt World Politics
That new social order is workers’ power—communism. Workers of the world, unite and build the PLP!
U.S. Bosses Need Mideast Oil For World Strategic Control
Only 15 % of the total amount of petroleum products imported into the U.S. in 1996 were from the Persian Gulf area (12.5% from Saudi Arabia and 2.5% from Kuwait). The other 85% comes from many other oil exporting countries, including 17% from Venezuela. But the Big U.S. Oil Companies are the main purchasers of Middle Eastern oil, which they then resell to other countries, especially Asia and Europe. This control enables the U.S. to dictate the price and the conditions under which its main industrial competitors get their energy. This gives the U.S. a strategic advantage over them. U.S. control over this oil also allows it to force the Arab bosses to invest in the U.S. the billions of petrodollars they receive
For these reasons the vast oil reserves in the US and other places go untapped. What’s more, Big Oil’s control of this oil means that they set prices and use this as a weapon, not only against its foreign industrial competitors, but also against its internal rivals, domestic oil producers of the oil patch, New Money capitalists.
As a New York Times editorial said (11/17/97), "there is no strategic justification for favors, like reduced royalty payments, that the Administration and Congress have been lavishing on domestic producers. The United States (read: Exxon, etc.) can retain its energy independence while relying on foreign sources of supply, leaving much of its own untapped wealth in the ground as a strategic reserve." Old money wants to discipline New Money AND the Iraqis.
As we can see, the fight to control oil in the Middle East is not a fight over oil to meet the needs of the working class in the US or anywhere else. Its a fight over control of the markets and resources of the world. Its a fight for oil profit and world domination. Capitalism and imperialism require that different capitalists and imperialists fight to the death for control of the worlds’ markets. Capitalism is a deadly system. Only communist revolution can end wars for profit by destroying the profit system itself. If you are against wars for profit, you should join PLP and fight for communism