Challenge, Sept. 17, 1997
Index
Bosses Prepare Oil War—Workers, Organize for Communist Revolution!
U.S. rulers must have gotten advice on their Middle East policy from Princess Diana’s chauffeur. Every move they make to preserve their oil empire blows up in their faces. Rockefeller & Co. will soon launch another Persian Gulf war in a desperate attempt to reverse this record of failure.
The so-called "peace process," brokered by Clinton between Israeli and Palestinian bosses, has been exposed as a feeble joke. The Netanyahu gang represents a faction of Israeli capitalists who don’t want to remain gunslingers for U.S. imperialism. Arafat would sell his grandmother but doesn’t have enough political clout to mislead the Palestinian working class. Hamas nationalists continue their terror bombings in Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s commandos just suffered a humiliating, bloody defeat in Jordan. The situation could escalate at any time, forcing U.S. bosses to intervene militarily. Israel remains crucial to their plans and if they can’t make Netanyahu knuckle under, they may have to get rid of him one way or another.
But the Israeli-Palestinian "peace" fiasco is small potatoes compared to Rockefeller’s ongoing problems with Iraq. Six years ago U.S. imperialism massacred 500,000 Iraqi workers to prevent Saddam Hussein from making separate deals with the European and Japanese rivals of Mobil and Exxon and to keep Iraqi oil off the market. Here are some of the results:
• Non-U.S. oil companies are more determined than ever to break away from Rockefeller’s choke hold;
• Conflicts within the Saudi Arabian ruling class are threatening yet another U.S. vassal, whose loss would cost Rockefeller even more than the 1979 debacle in Iran;
• Iraqi oil is back on the market, and Saddam Hussein’s ability to affect world prices is growing;
• Former enemies Iran and Iraq are uniting against U.S. imperialism, and Iraqi bosses have put out feelers to the Saudis and Syrians. That’s 0-for-4.
Most significantly, the competition among the major imperialists for Iraqi oil has reached a new stage. Until now, the world’s oil barons fought just to control Iraqi sales. Now the struggle has extended to Iraqi production. The French newspaper La Tribune (8/14/97) calls Iraq’s estimated 112 billion barrels of oil reserves second only to those of Saudi Arabia. Not only is Iraqi oil plentiful, it’s also close to the ground and therefore can be exploited today, unlike the oil in central Asia and the Caspian.
Clinton/Rockefeller’s embargo has so far limited exploration for Iraqi oil. But U.S. imperialism can’t enforce the embargo forever. French oil companies Elf and Total have contracts for two of Iraq’s biggest oil fields ready for signing the moment the embargo ends. Spain’s Reposol and Italy’s Agip are dangling billions to get the franchise on a third. Russian and Chinese companies are showing interest. So is the British-Dutch Shell, to the tune of $2 billion. Some U.S. companies have started to slither in behind Canadian fronts. Others, like Mobil, are trying a joint venture with Elf.
The current stage of economic free-for-all can’t last, because Exxon and Mobil can’t win under these conditions. And because imperialism is based on the drive for maximum profit, Rockefeller & Co. can’t accept anything less than a monopoly over world oil. Another war to control or destroy Iraqi oil production is therefore on the horizon.
Related oil defeats for U.S. imperialism are hastening the day. The most recent of these has occurred in Russia, where nationalist oil executives and generals just revoked billion-dollar projects with Exxon and Conoco. According to Business Week, all hope to turn Russia into a core U.S. oil area is "on ice" (9/15/97). Russian rulers want their empire back. They figure they’re strong enough to thumb their noses at U.S. partnerships and technology. They’re demanding — and getting — a cut on every deal U.S. companies make in the oil-rich regions of the former Soviet-controlled Caspian Sea.
No wonder hardly a week goes by without another Rockefeller media mouthpiece explaining why the U.S. military has to prepare for a massive Middle East ground war and to expect far higher casualties than in the Desert Storm cake-walk. The latest comes in the September 9th Wall Street Journal, where Steven Biddle of the Institute for Defense Analyses warns against learning the "wrong lessons from the Gulf War." "…we ought to be very skeptical of (those who) argue that we must quickly move away from heavy ground forces…and replace them with a wholly new generation of…warfare technologies."
Biddle’s article reflects a deepening split among U.S. rulers. As Challenge has frequently pointed out, domestic oil bosses have interests diametrically opposed to Rockefeller’s. The "Oil Patch" billionaires want to promote their own product. This means breaking with a foreign policy based on controlling Middle Eastern oil and instead developing U.S. petroleum production, particularly in Alaska. They support Netanyahu’s attempt to sabotage the Rockefeller Middle Eastern strategy. The conflict over these two lines is sharpening and affects every aspect of political life and class struggle here. Needless to say, Rockefeller & Co. won’t brook the upstarts’ opposition and will stop at nothing to defend their tottering Middle Eastern sovereignty. The "Oil Patch" billionaires and their allies won’t passively accept being driven out of business by Exxon. The two sets of gangsters could eventually wind up in a civil war.
Many people, including some of our own members, discount the imminence of Middle Eastern oil war and think that civil war within the U.S. is an absurdity. Well, we aren’t prophets. We can’t predict the date when U.S. imperialism will launch its next bloodbath. And perhaps Rockefeller & Co. can defeat their domestic rivals without armed struggle. But don’t bet your next paycheck on it—if you’re lucky enough to get one.
The hard fact of life is that the profit system makes war inevitable. "Local" wars for oil, other raw materials, and markets, will ultimately lead to world war. This is the lesson of capitalism’s history. We had better get it through our heads.
Only a working class won to communist revolution can change this history. Our labor power produces everything, including the weapons the bosses use in their military holocausts. Our bodies supply the cannon fodder. What we do or don’t do as a class determines everything. Will we kill and die for the greedy bosses, or will we turn the guns around and fight for communism?
This is the most burning question of our time. Imperialism’s next oil war will produce hundreds of thousands of casualties. Its consequences will lead to millions more. We can’t prevent this process from starting. But we can determine the end. Everything we do to build the PLP today, tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future is crucial. Let imperialism start its oil wars, civil wars, and world wars. Communist revolution will finish them!
BART Strike: Whose Leader Will Workers Follow?
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 9 — Who should workers look to for leadership? The Willie Browns, Bank of America’s Mayor of San Francisco? The union leaders who are committed to playing by the bosses’ rules and laws and refuse to even admit there is a crisis in U.S. capitalism? Or will it be transit workers in the Progressive Labor Party who expose these mouthpieces for capitalism?
The fact that capitalism IS in crisis is reflected in workers’ anger at the bosses’ attacks on us. So the union lieutenants of the bosses set out to control this anger, lower our expectations and deliver us into the jaws of the capitalist state.
This past week-end, 2,600 workers struck BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). On Monday morning there was a 25-mile-long traffic jam on one of the freeways leading into the city. Even Mr. Magoo could see the working class has power.
Monday should have been the day when that power was used to break the bosses’ laws. This political question was forced on the union by communist strikers. With BART shut down, the bosses planned to run extra city buses — scab buses. At the two lines from which the scab busses were to depart a huge furor arose as workers who read and distribute Challenge struggled over political ideas. They agitated and debated about scabbing, traitorous unions and the need to change the system.
Why not, for example, expand the strike to include the Para-transit drivers who bring the disabled to and from BART? These drivers are forced to exist on a poverty wage of about $7 per hour. Given the high cost of living in the Bay Area it is doubtful Mother Teresa herself would have applied for the job!
The union leaders, terrified of using this working class power, acted as if it was a hot potato. They handed it over to the "Mayor of Bank of America," Willie Brown (who also "moonlights" as the Mayor for San Francisco). At a BART rally on Monday in the East Bay the union fakers led the chant, "We want Willie!" to channel support over to their fellow class collaborator. However, when an AC Transit driver exposed the role of Willie Brown and all politicians as mouthpieces for capitalism you "could hear a pin drop" among the workers. This reflects the eagerness of workers to act in a class conscious way when given the leadership.
Amazing! The unions have narrowed the demands of the strike down to two issues: (1) a wage increase, and (2) an end to the two-tier system where new workers get paid 75% less and catch up only after seven years. Yet it was their buddy Willie Brown who intervened in the MUNI (San Francisco Transit) contract negotiations to extend (not eliminate) the two-tier system!
Whatever actually happens to the official demands, by the end of the strike a tighter partnership will emerge between the management apparatus and the union structure.
The trend today is for a tighter, more fascist control over the working class. And the unions, where they exist, are a key element in this bosses’ strategy. Communists must counterattack through tighter bonds between our party and the working class. Leading our class, like the struggles at the MUNI barns, takes years of building ties, raising ideas and leading struggles among workers.
Certainly this was the pattern at MUNI. Following the successful threat of a work stoppage some months ago when a safe driver had been threatened with dismissal for a non-injury accident, the union and management have tightened their co-operation.
Whatever the outcome of this strike, the development of communist ideas and organization will advance. That’s a victory for the workers the bosses can’t negotiate away. (More next week.)
Chicago Aug. 7— During the past week the Progressive Labor Party in Chicago has continued to work against the racist police murder of Andrew Durham. One of Nu-nu’s cousins went to Chicago State University to talk to several classes and to participate in a rally sponsored by the Party. We have visited and followed up some of the contacts that we made in the march distributing many Challenges in the process. We are bringing up this racist murder in as many of our concentrations as possible. We have written and are distributing an extremely sharp flyer about the nature of the fascist period that is affecting the whole West Side. We held a lively forum about police brutality that featured a very sharp and clear analysis and a dynamic debate. And we are continuing to work with the family with their on-going struggle against the police.
One of the main disagreements that has surfaced with one of his aunts and in our base is the idea of getting justice for Nu-nu and the role of cops. In one conversation this aunt pointed out that what "justice" meant was to get the cop that shot Nu-nu in jail. We pointed out that that would still leave thousands of other cops out in the street that the working class had to deal with. Among our base there’s a persistent mistrust of the police. In the forum we heard a story from a young student who said she hated the police but still called them one time for help. Predictably she was the one that was almost arrested for disorderly conduct. There was another story very similar to that one from Evanston but in that case the cops brutalized the women who had called them for assistance. In both cases the victims were black.
Much of the confusion toward the cops which includes on the one hand hatred for their vicious racism and on the other a sense that they’re the only ones we can call when we are in trouble stems from not grasping the role of the police in a dictatorship of the capitalist class.
The police can never be any good for the working class. Their main role is to enforce the bosses dictatorship over our class. Their very existence is one of the main material force that the working class has to deal with before it can liberate itself from capitalist brutality. Their role is to maintain the profits rolling in for the ruling class through the exploitation of our labor. They are the front line troops the bosses have at their disposal. Their numbers grow daily. Clinton’s new 100,000 cops are just the tip of the iceberg. There has been an increasing militarization of US society especially in working class neighborhoods. The schools, buses, trains, hospitals and just about every other capitalist institution down to the Board of Education has increased security in the form of cops or guards. The capitalist themselves have their own private cops for some of their more sensitive industries and buildings.
This increased state has many different levels such as municipal, county, state, and federal cops. The federal branch itself is comprised of the FBI, ATF, DEA, the and INS Border Patrol, all of which have been increasing. Many of these cops are the jailers of an entire generation of minority urban youth and the killers of 5,000-10,000 workers each year. Add to that all of the workers they injure through their brutality and the nature of their brutal fascist dictatorship begins to unfold.
And as we said before this is just their front line troops in a pinch the National Guard and Army are called into action to suppress workers. All of this could lead us to the mistake of thinking that the bosses are strong. Apparently so, but the essence of fascism is growing decay and desperation. A system that cannot fool people any longer into thinking that it’s fair and right must brutalize into submission those it hasn’t drugged out or incarcerated or killed.
Comrades and friends let us be as clear on cops as we are on the Nazis. Sure maybe a Nazi stormtrooper helped an old lady to cross the street. This didn’t persuade anyone that there were any good Nazis. Let’s not perpetuate any illusions about the defenders of this dying system. There are no good cops! Let us also be clear on the period we are in and what we face mainly fascism and war. Our revolutionary goals and aspirations for communism demands the cops’ removal by force and their complete eradication. Then and only then will we have the opportunity to realize and develop any semblance of justice for the entire working class.
DELANO, CA, Sept. 5 — Racist terror is not only increasing in NYC, Chicago, LA and other big cities. Cops also kill workers and youth in small agricultural towns like Delano.
Vicente Alorca, a 20-year old youth, was shot in the back by Delano cops. According to eyewitnesses travelling in the same car with Vicente, the cops flashed their lights, telling Vicente’s car to stop, but Vicente continued driving. He was chased by cops and his car hit a fence on the corner of Albany and County Lane, and Vicente ran away. The cop shot him in the back.
Vicente, badly hurt, was able to reach his home. His mother went for help, but all she found was a lot of cops. She begged them to call an ambulance. One cop entered the house, and without caring that Vicente was dying, shook him up and yelled "Why did you run, you stupid idiot?" When the firemen finally came and tried to give Vicente oxygen, the equipment failed and Vicente died.
Many people are angry, and ask why didn’t the cops shoot at the tires of Vicente’s car? Why didn’t they try something else besides shooting Vicente in the back?
But this is not an isolated incident. Not too long ago, there was a protest in Dinuba, after a cop went into a man’s home and shot him for no apparent reason. A few months ago, the cops killed another man in McFarland, when they could have used other methods of restraint. Last year, one person was murdered by cops in Lamont, and another one was killed this year. There have also been murders by cops in Wasco and Earlimart.
Police terror has increased in the small agricultural towns of California. People are afraid of cops and run away from them like Vicente did.
Police terror has increased as racism against immigrant workers has grown. Politicians blame immigrants, workers on welfare and youth for all the problems caused by capitalism. Cops, the goons of the bosses, totally believe these lies and execute the "troublemakers." All those murdered recently are poor workers, immigrants and youth like Vicente.
People are mad and want to do something. PLP says that this is good and we should protest. But workers and youth must understand and it is not just a matter of a few bad cops, all the cops protect the bosses and their racist system gearing for war and fascism. Joining the PLP is the best weapon to end these racist murderers and the system behind them.
Trusting Politicians to Fight Cop Terror Is a Deadly Error
BROOKLYN, NY, Sept. 8 — The events within the mass movement to protest the NYPD torture of Abner Louima again prove that workers must break with all the bosses’ agents who claim to be "our friends." The Democratic Party has seized on this spontaneous honest anger to win the mayoral election in November.
This would not be possible without the willing collaboration of mayoral candidate, Al Sharpton, and nationalist leaders in the Haitian community in Brooklyn, who called for more Haitian cops to be assigned to the 70th Precinct. These traitors immediately turned the workers’ anger against the cops towards voting, and a trust in the electoral system. Sharpton, the supposed militant, called for the federal government to intervene. Sharpton started his career as an FBI informer within the civil rights movement. He still speaks for his fascist masters.
The sweep of traitorous leaders includes the trade unions. Many unions led their members in handing out literature to vote Democratic in the mass march across the Brooklyn Bridge on August 29th and at the Labor Day parade on Sept. 6th.
As the Democrats get their act together, and they seem to be positioning themselves to exploit this issue well for the November election, our Party must fight for the political leadership of the masses. We have been too hesitant in grasping this task.
Only our Party can take this issue to its logical conclusion — revolution for communism. The nationwide wave of fascist brutality by the police opens questions about revolution and state power. It can lead workers to discuss the real role of the cops to protect the system and the nature of the society we should live in. We must lead those discussions and the struggles around them.
Liberals, politicians, and union leaders are terrified of this possibility. They hate and fear communism because the working class, whom they have betrayed, will rule this system. Communists serve the workers. We can, and will, lead our class to revolution and to the development of a communist world.
Mark Fuhrman Award for Racist Cops
Puerto Rico Cops, INS Murder Dominican Immigrant
The NYPD is not alone in murdering and torturing immigrant workers. This week’s Mark Furhman Award for racist police terror goes to the INS and the Puerto Rico Police Department. On Sept. 3, fifty demonstrators picketed the police headquarters in Hato Rey denouncing the murder by the cops and the INS of Rafael Herrera. "Here in P.R. there is a pattern of harassment against Dominicans. This has to end," said one of the demonstrators.
Rafael Herrera was one of the thousands of Dominican "boat people" who have fled in the last decade from the mass poverty and unemployment in the Dominican Republic. Over 1,000 have died crossing the treacherous Mona Channel into Puerto Rico in the last decade, either when their fragile boat sinks or when they are thrown overboard by the smugglers, or murdered by the INS and the cops.
Rafael suffered from sickle cell anemia. When the boat arrived in P.R. he was chased by the cops and the INS. He ran fast until his strength ran out. He was caught by the cops, weakened because of exhaustion caused by the sickle cell disease. Instead of helping him, the cops beat him up savagely. On August 16, he died because of the beating.
Racism and brutality come with the badge, but some cops are so vicious they deserve the Mark Fuhrman award. If you have a candidate for the award, send it to Challenge.
Firing of Teachers Helped Advance Fight for Communism
New York—The struggle over the firing of communist teacher Mary Lonergan is entering it’s second year. Mary was fired from Prospect Heights High School in Brooklyn for organizing students to march on May Day 1996. Through the many twists and turns of the fight since then we have learned alot about turning reform struggles into opportunities for advancing communism.
When Mary came under at the school, she was pressured by the liberals in her union to sign a contract that would extend her probation (she was due for tenure), and waive all her legal and union contract rights. Yet the bosses never charged her with anything. In other words, she should act as if the May Day trip was a mistake on her part while the bosses’terrorizing tactics against her, her students and other teachers were correct. She refused to bend to this fascism cloaked in anti-communism. She refused to sign the contract. At the time, many teachers and students doubted that decision. They could not see anyway to fight this system. And they felt that you could trust the bosses offering the deal.
Such disagreements between communists and the workers around us on our job are inevitable. It is our view that we are fighting as the working class against our class enemy, the capitalist class, and it’s stooges like the Brooklyn Superintendet and the school principal. It is our task to make this clear to workers. To do this we must keep politics primary.
With this in mind, Mary filed union grievances,and a federal lawsuit as ways to use legal means as part of the fight. The schools’collective met regularly to keep on eye on the political struggle. They increased the sale of Challenge, linked her case to other struggles in the schools, and looked for ways to bring communist ideas to many more students, teachers and parents.
The developments in the lawsuit therefore have consistently been part of a broader process. When the lawsuit allowed each side to take depositions, sworn statements from the bosses, we were able to think about how to use that politically. This became an opportunity to put these thugs under fire. When word of this got around to teachers many came forward with suggested questions and with information. This turned the questioning into a collective opportunity to watch these arrogant racists squirm just a bit.
Word of these depositions has spread throughout the district. Many teachers hate these bosses and are excited by the news that they can be touched at all. Many have requested copies of the depositons. We hope to make it the most popular reading in the schools, after Challenge. Now, we understand that this does not translate into agreement with the need for communist revolution. But it does open the door to engage in such discussions and have concrete evidence in hand to use. It has brought several teachers into a party study group and helped us recruit many students.
For example, Mary was contacted by teachers who had signed the very contract she had refused. Many of them were subsequently fired. One said, "You know, a year ago I thought you were crazy for not signing. Now I’m not so sure!". Through this contact we have learned that the contract is used as a means of controlling teachers all over New York. We have made contact with teachers in other school districts who are fighting back against them in court. This too has opened up many discussions about the role of bosses, trusting the system and communism.
Meanwhile, the bosses are reading Challenge. The lawsuit has revealed that the Prospect Heights principal keeps a file of relevant articles and sends them on to his boss. Among teachers at the school, there are more readers. Many disagree with every word in it but are interested in it’s viewpoint. This is significant. This reflects the development of respect for communist ideas.
The same tale can be told about the struggles around this case within the UFT (United Federation of Teachers). Our comrades within the Delegates Assembly kept the pressure on the union to not drop Mary’s grievances. They forced several votes on the Assembly floor about communism. When one comrade marched and distributed Challenge last week in the New York Labor Day parade he was recognized by many delegates as, "that fellow always raising red ideas in our Assembly". Such respect is based on the year of struggle, the ability to keep up personal ties, and the revelations about the inner workings of the system that have developed throughout this work.
These experiences have built the party in Brooklyn. We are all strengthened by this development. Too often a firing feels like the end of a struggle. We have learned that it is just the beginning!
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 9 — "We took on a major Los Angeles street gang," brags the LA Times in a full page ad. Never has the role of the bosses’ media in putting forward fascism been more obvious than in their vendetta against the 18th Street gang. They claim it has 20,000 members, 60% of them undocumented immigrants. They launched their campaign of fascist terror by linking 18th street to criminal activity in Los Angeles, and stressing its "international" links to criminal activity in Tijuana. Under cover of fighting crime the bosses have unleashed greater terror on the working class. They had an editorial calling for more interagency police cooperation, including cooperation with the immigration department. Everybody from the governor to the mayor, from liberals to nationalists to open fascists, calls for a crackdown directed by the very KKKlan in blue that directed the Rodney King torture.
The increase of fascism means that courts now grant injunctions, like one imposed in San Jose in January that was upheld by the California Supreme Court, that say that two young men can not associate on the street, that minors have to be in the house by 8 p.m., and that named individuals need identification showing that they live or work in the neighborhood to be on the street. So far two such injunctions have been granted in Los Angeles against members of 18th Street, as well as other injunctions, including one against a black gang in Inglewood. The similarity of these injunctions to the pass-book rule against blacks being in certain sections of south Africa under apartheid is striking. It is open season on young people in these neighborhoods--anyone is subject to being stopped, forced to show ID to prove who he is, being harassed and arrested for violating the court order.
This attack on black and latin youth is a campaign of police terror and prisons. The prison population in California has doubled in the past decade--and latino men are the largest group in the California prisons. This is where the bosses build the 18th St. gang. Two thirds of all black and latin young men in California will be arrested at least once before they reach the age of thirty.
But this campaign is also meant to build support for massive deportations by portraying immigrants as criminals. Migra agents have begun to go out into the neighborhoods to round up undocumented immigrants. The bosses are proud that they have already deported 75,000 people this year. They expect to deport 93,000 people during the current fiscal year--35% more than last year (which was an all time record.) And one third of them live in Southern California. Deportations lower wages of all workers, and terrorize and divide workers.
Portraying youth as criminals and increasing fascist terror in the neighborhoods is a necessary part of mass attacks on immigrants and part of tightening the hold of the ruling class on youth as well. Both immigrants and black and latin youth have long revolutionary pasts, in the United States and around the world. The rulers have much to fear from them, and they use terror in the form of deportations and prisons to try to prevent rebellion.
But fascist terror creates as both anger as fear. When the Los Angeles Summer Project demonstrated in the neighborhood of one injunction this summer, we had a great response from black and latin neighbors of all ages. The racism and police terror exposes capitalism as a dismal failure for millions of workers. When our party offers communism as a real alternative we find workers very open to our leadership.
. Some say, "the gangs are here to stay. The cops can’t stop them." But the gangs are tools of the capitalist system--the cops don’t want to stop them. They need them as the excuse for their ongoing reign of terror. Many youth who hate the cops and the racist system look to the gangs as an alternative. This benefits the bosses.
PLP is fighting to give youth the only alternative to racist cop terror and to this capitalist system: a mass party that unites the working class to fight for communist revolution. The growing anger against police terror must become anger against the whole capitalist system and determination to build a world free of racism, cops and bosses. It’s our job to teach those lessons, focus that anger, and organize for revolution. PLP is planning a series of rallies against cop terror-from LA to New York, and against racist deportations. Join us!
Mexico: PRD FIGHTS FOR THE BOSSES; PLP FIGHTS FOR THE WORKERS
.MEXICO — Cuauhtémoc Cardenas and the PRD won the July election in Mexico City. The biggest winner, temporarily, was Old Money capital, Rockefeller &Co. The biggest losers of the bosses’ electoral circus continue to be the workers. Unfortunately, many workers in Mexico were fooled into thinking this election had something to do with improving their lives. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Angry at so much poverty, unemployment, low wages, injustice and corruption caused by capitalism, the majority voted for the nationalist liberals of the PRD (Party of Democratic Revolution) with the illusion that things would change. Those who put their hope in Cardenas were either forgetting and ignoring that the PRD was founded and led by two bourgeois ex-PRIistas: Cuauhtémoc Cardenas and Profirio Muños Ledo. The PRD has been a refuge for resentful members of the PRI and small capitalists hurt by NAFTA. Their goal is to get back in to share the huge profits made by exploiting Mexican workers, which NAFTA has cut them out of.
Behind the Cardenas victory was a fierce fight between the imperialists of the U.S., Europe and Japan for markets, cheap labor and the natural resources of Mexico, especially its oil. The fights within the ruling class of Mexico itself are an extension of the inter-imperialist international rivalry — as different groups of Mexican bosses fight to the death over control of the state and over alliances with the competing imperialists.
The victory of the PRD is a victory for the Old Money in the U.S., which was able to "democratically" kick the PRI group, the "dinosaurs," out of the main industrial and finance center of Latin America and the heart of the Mexican capitalism. The PRI group of the "dinosaurs"(as also known as the "State of Mexico" group) is led by the industrial and finance capitalist named Carlos Hank, who is German. His business associates are German and Japanese capitalists. The "dinosaurs" have been the obstacle to the "barbarians of the north"(the Monterey Group) from the Party of National Action (PAN), taking economic and political control of the country. In the short run the strategy of Rockefeller is to confront and politically destroy the "dinosaurs" of the PRI, and then the liberal democrats of the PRD can open the way for the PAN to win the next Presidency of Mexico. The PAN will guarantee the imperialist interests of the U.S. For starters, they offer up Pemex to the U.S. banks.
Many Mexican workers see that capitalism is failing them, but look for ways to reform capitalism. Each group of capitalists is fighting to win the workers to side with them in their fight against the other. For their goals, the capitalist dogs don’t even leave the children alone. They involved more than 3 million children in their election circus. They want to manipulate their thinking beginning when they are young!
The "technocrats" of the PRI have formulated their strategy to take on the PRD and make up their losses in 2000. That’s why they talk of a National Program of Education, Health, and Nutrition in the 12 poorest states. They also aim to prevent possible social upheavals that the PRD won’t be able to control,
The program of the PRD is a trick. They can’t develop the national economy and get back workers’ purchasing power, which is the victim of the worldwide crisis of overproduction of capitalism, of the globalization of the economy and of national and international capitalist rivalry. They will have to resort to the European and Japanese imperialists or the New Money capitalists in the U.S. to negotiate loans to fight to save their big backers who lost out to NAFTA. The defense of the "sovereignty of the nation" (that is, the control of the oil) is only a slogan in the PRI speeches. The workers will continue to be the target of all the capitalists’ economic plans.
These fights among the bosses show the inability of capitalism to solve it problems. They give us the opportunities to expose its nature and advance our movement to bury it and on its ashes to build a new communist society. In this new system the working class will govern society and all the bosses will be made extinct like the dinosaurs of the past. There will be no money, wages, or national borders. Everyone will work and the products of our collective work will be distributed to satisfy the needs of the whole population of the entire world. This is the communist program of the Progressive Labor Party. Workers and students, join the PLP!
Mother Teresa: Guardian Angel or Angel of Death?
Mother Teresa is hailed as an example of someone who dedicated her life to the "less fortunate ones" of the world. Again, it is up to Challenge to present the truth about this woman who devoted her long life to serving capitalism. Encouraged by Pope Pius XII (a loyal friend of the Nazis and Mussolini), Mother Teresa founded her missionary order in Calcutta in 1950, appropriately in an old abandoned temple of Kali, the Hindu goddess of death. To the poor, Mother Teresa became the Angel of Death.
The recent revolution in China and the Soviet triumph over fascism were drawing millions of Indian workers to communism. To help save India for Western imperialism, the Missionaries of Charity preached a particularly hard-line anti-communist catholicism. Poverty and disease, Mother Teresa told the captive audiences at her missions, were not products of the profit system but blessings from God. For conveying her, "Don’t fight back", message around the world, Mother Teresa will no doubt receive sainthood.
Mother Teresa turned suffering into a multimillion-dollar tax-free industry. Forty thousand employees toil in the institutions she set up. They range from a home for battered women in New York, which provides shelter and religious indoctrination, to a merciless hospice in Calcutta. A horrified volunteer compared conditions there to a Nazi extermination camp, "It looked a bit like the photos of Belsen. All patients had shaved heads; there were old stretcher beds, no chairs, and not much medical care or painkillers" (in Christopher Hitchens’ The Missionary Position, 1995). The money making racket worked like this: Mother Teresa would spend as little as possible on the patients, publicize the wretched conditions in pleas for donations, and, following one of the church’s most sacred traditions, hide the money in untraceable accounts.
Sometimes the future saint’s tightfistedness had an even darker purpose. When her hellhole in Calcutta reused dirty needles or kept the heat off in winter, "for budgetary reasons," infections ran rampant and inmates rejoined their creator at a quickened rate. Capitalism has no use for the infirm. Neither did Mother Teresa, nor Hitler, nor do the politicians slashing Medicare and Social Security.
But Mother Teresa had great compassion for capitalist mass murderers. On a visit to Haiti under the Duvalier regime she called the brutal dictator a "friend of the poor." When the chemical spill at Bhopal, India, killed thousands of workers, she urged the grieving and maimed survivors to "Forgive, forgive, forgive" the Union Carbide bosses who had caused the massacre. And there was always a special place in the good sister’s heart for the swindler--if he donated some of his loot to her cause. When Charles Keating was on trial for his role in the half-trillion dollar savings and loan scandal, Mother Teresa, in return for $1.2 million from Keating, wrote a letter to the court seeking clemency for the defendant.
The current pope, himself a member of the church’s openly fascist Opus Dei sect, will spare no effort to elevate Mother Teresa to the canon of saints. But the profit system that produced this deadly hypocrite should be condemned to the fires of communist revolution. This is the Progressive Labor Party’s goal. No small part of reaching it is to keep exposing phony "humanitarians" like Mother Teresa.
‘You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time’.
400 Haitians die because a greedy ferryboat owner overloaded it. The drowning of the Haitians got some secondary headlines. But, the "World’s Princess" days after her death with her billionaire boyfriend, still prevails in the media hype game. Obviously the deaths of 400 black workers count far less to the bosses than the death of one princess.
The media-driven madness about the death of the princess stimulated millions of people into participating, to one degree or another, in the Di frenzy. Why were millions so caught up in this media circus? For most people, especially workers, capitalist life is barren. Capitalist society is sick! In order to divert workers and other from fighting back or fighting for a communist society the rulers elevate celebrities like Michael Jordan to Princess Di. They want us to focus on celebrities, make them our heroes, and not take action against capitalism. So Jordan’s baskets or Di’s dresses or boyfriends are created as the center of our universe. In the absence of a strong international communist movement, many people are easily caught up in the hoopla created by the ruler’s media. Obviously, the bosses would much prefer us to be crying about Di than organizing against them for communist revolution.
As long as their isn’t a clear alternative to capitalism, people will often seize on some ridiculous phenomenon in order to escape the misery of capitalism. Values under capitalism are totally distorted. Nonsense is made primary. Serious thought is discouraged.
It wasn’t too long ago that the media blitz focused on those who were seeking a better planet by killing themselves. Those who committed suicide described it as taking a spaceship to a better world. And that is the point: Many people mistakenly get caught up in baloney to escape their circumstances. Baskets, funerals, suicides, religion, whatever, emerge in a society that has nothing to offer. The millions that foolishly wallowed in Di’s death only prove the shallowness or the degeneracy of capitalism.
Of course, not all workers were suckered into the Di follies. There were many who were contemptuous or cynical about Di’s death. That is why we have to bring Challenge to thousands more workers so that most will be able to see through the bosses’ ploys of fooling workers into feeling sympathy for the enemy and instead organize to destroy them all.
Dear Challenge:
"Workers, Don’t Cry for Diana!" in last week’s Challenge exposed this filthy-rich selfish woman and the way she helped win workers to support their capitalist enemies. It also showed her role in supporting the Labour Party-pro European Union faction of the British ruling class. The article then went on to make an absurd leap, as follows: "Her death might become compared with the Archduke Ferdinand. It was his assassination that triggered World War I!"
Yes, another world war between the imperialist powers remains inevitable as long as capitalism exists. But 1997 is not 1914, and Princess Di is not the Archduke Ferdinand.
When Ferdinand was assassinated, he was heir-apparent to the Emperor of Austria-Hungary, the 84-year-old Francis Joseph. Both the Emperor and the Archduke opposed Serbia’s plans to create a Greater Serbia, with territory carved out of their Empire. Serbia had increased in size and power in 1913 as a result of its victory against the Turks in the Second Balkan War. This alarmed the ruling class of Austria-Hungary. Then Serbian nationalists assassinated Ferdinand. Austria-Hungary used this to whip up nationalism at home and demanded impossible concessions from Serbia, and within a month declared war on Serbia when the concessions were not met. The other European powers were also poised for war. At least since 1900 they had been forming alliances and strengthening their armies and navies. Everyone knew that German industrial strength had grown tremendously, but Germany was locked out of most of Africa and Asia by British and French colonial domination of those continents. Germany had to make a move to continue its profitable expansion. All the other imperialists had to defend their turf and had their eyes on prizes of their own. So shortly after the war started between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, Germany, Italy, France, Russia, Britain and others were embroiled in a World War.
Historically, the assassination of the Archduke is used as a classic case to illustrate how something small in itself can unleash enormous evens such as world war, when the event is on the verge of happening and all it needs it the slightest push. Thus the use of "trigger" in Challenge’s reference to the death of Di. A slight event (the pull on the trigger) leading to a big, immediate result: the explosion of the cartridge.
It is meaningless to compare Di’s death to that of the Archduke Ferdinand unless Challenge is suggesting that World War III is about to break out. And while a capitalist Third World War is inevitable, it is not imminent.
Replying, "Well, you obviously do not agree with Lenin on the inevitability of capitalist world war!" is not responsive to my point. Let me offer an analogy. You and I will, inevitably, die. But if I tell you that you are going to die tomorrow, or in six months, or even in five years, I think you would demand hard, scientific evidence, or dismiss me as a crackpot.
Challenge must likewise stick to claims for which there is hard, scientific evidence ("Concrete analysis of concrete events," as Lenin called it). After all, we publish Challenge to win people to our Party and our line, not to have them dismiss us for lack of credibility.
So how is the death of Diana comparable to the assassination of the Archduke as a trigger for World War? First of all, while the Challenge article suggests it might have been an accident or an assassination, there is no evidence that Di was assassinated. More importantly, if England, which is already a member of the European Union, moves more firmly in that direction, is the US about to bomb London or use its bases in England as launching pads for an invasion and takeover of England? Or are we more likely to see sharper trade sanctions, demands for concessions about airport gates, and so on, the stuff that’s been going on between Japan and the US for over a decade (most recently the US is requiring Japanese freighters to pay $100,000 fees in certain US ports until a trade dispute is settled)? Even if England and the rest of Europe move more quickly to a separate mideast policy, and the US therefore moves more quickly to say, make war on Iraq and install a pro-US regime there, do you think the European armed forces, now allied with the US against still-nuclear Russia in an expanding NATO, are suddenly going to destroy NATO , send their troops to the middle East, and attack the US forces there? Do we have the balance of military alliances that led to World War I? Or will it take years of militarization for Germany, England and France to be ready to take on the US? And years of looking for alliances, say with Russia and Japan?
Some such scenarios will play out as World War III develops, but they don’t happen overnight or without evidence, and they are not triggered by an idiot princess and a Dodo billionaire who are dead because they didn’t wear seat belts and ordered or allowed a drunk chauffeur to speed at over 100 mph to avoid having their pictures taken.
LA Comrade
CHALLENGE RESPONDS: The comrade asks for "evidence" as though we were in a court of law. Perhaps Diana and her billionaire fascist playmate died in the way the bourgeois press describes. Perhaps, as the article suggested, a faction of the British ruling class decided to knock them off. It really doesn’t matter. What does matter is the sharpening of inter-imperialist rivalry and the deepening splits among the world’s bosses, all of which are leading sooner rather than later to war and fascism, and some of which are reflected in the deaths of the parasitic princess and her pal. This was the main political point the article tried to make.
Perhaps the comparison between Diana and Archduke Ferdinand was a bit of a stretch. However, our comrade mistakenly spills a lot of ink to imply that the next world war lies in a future too remote to consider and that a minor event couldn’t possibly trigger it.
We agree that the build-up to world war among the main imperialists will be a process. But that process is speeding up every day. The next oil war, which is both inevitable and imminent, will go a long way toward intensifying the drive to world war.
The comrade makes a serious mistake by discounting that a contingency the imperialists don’t control could set off world war, even nuclear war. Consider the number of times the bosses have brought us to the brink of nuclear war since Hiroshima. The fascist U.S. general MacArthur wanted to drop an A-bomb on China to reverse US defeats during the Korean War. Eisenhower’s secretary of state Dulles seriously considered nuking Hanoi in 1954 to stop the Vietnminh nationalists from ending French colonialism. According to a new book about "Cuban missile crisis," entitled One Hell of a Gamble, "the world came very close to holocaust (in 1962)…at one point, the Kremlin signed orders allowing the Soviet commander in Cuba to use tactical nuclear weapons in the event of a U.S. invasion" (review in Business Week, 9/1/97). Most recently, as the U.S. bosses’ military situation was growing more desperate in Vietnam, a number of politicians openly discussed the use of nuclear weapons. In 12983, during the Falkland War, Thatcher had ordered a British nuclear sub to nuke Cordoba, the Argentinian industrial city, if the Argentinian Air Force sank another British boat. If any of these possibilities had materialized, world war could have erupted on the spot. The potential is even greater today.
In both tone and substance, the comrade suggests that our party’s persistent warning about world war is alarmist and therefore incorrect. He wants "proof." Well, we aren’t mathematicians. Our job as communists includes making accurate estimates about the period in which we live. Our operating estimate remains that this is the period of fascism, sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry, and world war that only communist revolution can turn into its opposite. It’s never too soon to warn the working class about the inevitability of world war. It’s never too soon to prepare for this inevitability. The more we "over"-prepare, the better! As our party’s sharpening internal struggle against right opportunism shows, fighting too hard for our line on war and fascism is hardly the main danger we face today.
Dear Challenge:
Since I wrote the article in last week’s Challenge about Lady Di, I’d like to reply to the comrade who complains the article "made an absurd leap" in comparing Diana’s death to Archduke Ferninand’s assassination. It is possible the comparison overstates the case somewhat, however it was preceded by one "If" and two "mights." In other words it was more a cautious, hesitant comparison than the bold "leap" our comrade claims. Perhaps we could have chosen a better comparison.
The feed back I’ve received on the leaflet (it was a leaflet before it a Challenge article) suggests that people did not "dismiss us for lack of credibility." In fact, the opposite. Two non-party members of my base actually went to the trouble to phone me their thanks. One reprinted the leaflet and distributed it at her gym. Other comrades have reported it created useful discussions at work. If the comparison was an error, it was not as disastrous as our comrade feared. Explaining the dangers of war and fascism does not isolate us. On the contrary people thank us.
That said, our comrade does have substantive differences. War is closer than peace. Quantitative changes result in qualitative leaps. The disputes that have been going on with Japan ‘for over a decade’ now will not work out in the same leisurely way with Europe. Among other differences Europe has spent $billions developing Airbus, which we have pointed out is a definite military decision. Besides, the crisis has sharpened all around. For example, no-one claims the US could lead another alliance of the sort it lead in Desert Storm, just a few years ago.
We differ with our comrade. Capitalists spend inordinate amount of time hiding their war preparations, not advertising them for all to see. Speaking of the 1914 war the British communist Palme Dutt points out "All in the inner councils of the ruling class knew since 1905 that it (World War 1) was approaching and were preparing for it to the last detail..." The British Communist Party itself began warning of World War 2 in 1929 and the Soviets began in 1928.
And , of course, we differ with the assertion that "1997 is not 1914." The thrust of our recent inner party struggles has been that we are indeed in the midst of a period where capitalism has nothing to offer but war and fascism. A period we are, self-critically, not prepared well enough for. Our editorials correctly highlight the growing dangers of war in the Mid-East, the unstable crisis ridden world economy and the determined development of fascism. These are not signs of peace and stability, but of war, crisis and the opportunity to lead revolution. The lessons I draw from the leaflet are that the more clearly we put that forward, the more thanks we’ll get and the more active our base will become.
Bay Area Historian
Only communism can provide decent housing
Dear Challenge:
I live in an apartment building where this winter we had no heat or hot water for a month and where, during the heavy summer rains, water flooded into 15 apartments because the roof has gone unrepaired. These aren’t normal maintenance problems because the landlord knew about the faulty boiler and leaking roof for many months. We may have a rent strike, but I write this letter because, like wage slavery, the basic property relationship will not change with a change for reform. The landlord will still own the building (and 29 others).
And the laws are on the side of the landlords. We understand that he has not paid the mortgage or taxes, and a management company is collecting the rent now. If any of us had not paid taxes or rent and ruined an apartment, we would be evicted and jailed. During a rent strike, we must put aside the money legally, so the money is not our "own" to spend on other necessities. Like any reform under capitalism, there is no guarantee that we will ever win anything but a leaky roof over our heads.
This landlord collects $18,000 a month from this one building. With the amount of wages represented in our monthly rent we could have had a new boiler and roof long ago as well as paint and beautiful landscaping. Under communism, families living in a building would check a boiler before winter and regularly maintain the roof and plumbing. We would combine the skills and materials of the surrounding community and share the work of repairs on all housing.
What we have gained over the years is regular readers of Challenge, and meeting together has overcome some of our individual isolation and racism. One woman had never before seen herself living with black people, and she has changed her mind. Two neighbors have said that communism makes a lot more sense than paying all this rent to one rotten landlord.
New Jersey Comrade
Dear Challenge:
Many years ago a friend exclaimed to me, upon learning that I was a communist, "but those are all leather men in leather jackets!" He was expressing the anti-communist lie, spread by capitalists, that communists are unfeeling. Our reports on the deaths of Di, Mother Teresa and Mobutu in Challenge reminded me of this.
Human emotions are real but they can be manipulated just as surely as the stock market or the price of gas. This is what capitalists do. The world’s bosses bomb, starve, torture and exploit our class every day in the interest of profits and imperialist control. They haven’t an ounce of genuine emotion towards workers. We must have none towards them.
The only true emotions for our class come from our class. Workers should cry and grieve for our brothers and sisters who died in Haiti, and who suffer everyday. But our Party leads by turning these tears into anger against the class that causes these deaths, primarily into class hatred against the bosses. Emotions misdirected by the bosses into despair and passivity will crush us as surely as saturation bombing.
The articles in Challenge on these deaths have helped make this clear for many of us. Against the enemy — bring on the leather jackets. In fact, better make them jackets of steel! For our class our hearts are full of love and armed for revolution.
No Crying Communist
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