Challenge, January 7, 1998
This issue of Challenge is tri-weekly because of the Xmas holidays. We will return to our weekly schedule with the issue going to press on Jan. 7. We wish our readers a 1998 full of struggles for a new world without bosses, a communist world.
Index:
Editorial: Gephardt, Clinton Fight Over How Best To
Shove War-Fascism Down Workers’ Throats
All is not quiet on the Middle
Eastern Front
Youth Fight KKK, KKKops
Bosses’ Layoff of Hospital Workers: One More
Step On Road to War and Fascism
The New CCH: A Military Hospital?
Talking About War In The Steel Mill
No ‘Fair Share’ Under Capitalism
Trade Union Hacks Hamper Fighting Slave Labor
Youth Discuss Solutions to Imperialist War
Brazil Workers Refuse to Pay for VW Crisis
U.S., Japan Bosses Fight to Control Korean Economy
Book Review: Cover Up of TWA Flight 800: Deadly
Friendly Fire
Next to U.S. Plans for
Castro, Flight 800 is Child’s Play
‘Mother’ of all mothers
LETTERS
U.S. Rulers Need to Control Mideast Oil Will Make
It Kill More Children
Movie Review -- Starship Troopers:
Nazis in Space
Editorial: Gephardt, Clinton Fight Over How Best To Shove War-Fascism Down Workers’ Throats
A serious rift has developed within the main, Rockefeller wing of U.S. capitalists. Its current political form is the argument in the Democratic Party between Clinton/Gore and Missouri Representative Gephardt, who is now allied with the heads of key industrial unions. The crucial issue involves getting the union hacks to make the working class swallow the Eastern Establishment’s plans for fascism and imperialist war. This is a dispute within the Old Money camp of U.S. capital, whose bosses have the same fundamental interests but who disagree on how best to serve them. There are contradictions within everything, including the Rockefeller gang.
Clinton suffered a big defeat in November when his Fast Track trade bill went down the tubes. We analyzed Fast Track as a desperate gambit by U.S. imperialists to recover their dwindling share of world markets in the face of sharpening competition on all sides. But Fast Track wasn’t stymied by the America First, Buchanan-style isolationists and Oil Patch bosses alone. Leading the charge against it were Gephardt, South Dakota Senator Daschle, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, the bosses of the I.A.M., the U.A.W., and the United Steelworkers, as well as many leading economists and "experts" who have deep ties to the Eastern Establishment think-tanks.
These are all loyal servants of the largest U.S. capitalists. But they disagree about how to discipline the working class for imperialism’s goals in this period. Gephardt & Co. are hardly opposed to U.S. imperialist investment abroad. They killed this trade bill because they thought it was unworkable and unsellable to the trade union leaders. These sellouts of the working class saw this bill as cutting into their profits in the form of reduced union membership dues. "The real question involves not whether to be ‘internationalist,’ but on what terms—and with what effects on our society at home," writes Gephardt adviser Robert Kuttner (Economic Policy Network, Dec. 1997).
The Fast Track faction, led by Clinton and David Rockefeller, know that unregulated foreign investment will mean millions of U.S. job losses. Their plan is to shove layoffs down the workers’ throats and then pretend this is good for the economy. Gephardt and the faction he fronts for want to revive the language of the Roosevelt New Deal in an attempt to win workers’ allegiance by tossing out a few crumbs, like a minimum wage hike, some promises to protect pensions, as well as the maintenance of Social Security and Medicare as government-run programs.
The Gephardt camp thinks that a revived union movement is crucial to controlling the workers. When the New York Times and Washington Post praise the recent UPS strike to the skies and call the strikers heroes, you know that something rotten is afoot. On the other hand, Gephardt’s establishment opponents fear the rise of unions in any way and torpedo potential reformist misleaders like Teamster boss Carey, whose fundraising scandals were exposed in the Wall Street Journal.
The union hacks are businessmen first and foremost. They opposed Fast Track because it would cut the dues income that forms their economic base. They’ve allied with Gephardt because his plan gives them a better chance of stemming their losses and protecting their profit source.
The rise of Gephardt began before the 1996 presidential elections. The main think-tank associated with him is the Economic Policy Institute (E.P.I.), headquartered in Cambridge, MA, a stone’s throw from Harvard. In 1995, its president, Jeff Faux, started making the rounds of big union conferences, turning them into rallies for "pro-worker" Democrats. West Virginia’s Jay Rockefeller was a headline speaker at the United Mineworkers’ bash. Apparently, Jay and his uncle David are on opposite sides of this spat. Well, even Rockefellers can disagree sometimes, as long as the dividend checks keep coming in. Gephardt took over subsequently at the U.A.W., I.A.M. and steelworkers’ meetings.
In February 1996, the E.P.I. published Reclaiming Prosperity: A Blueprint for Progressive Economic Reform, by M.I.T. economist Lester Thurow. Gephardt donated a publicity blurb for this book. The E.P.I. was founded by Thurow, Robert Reich, and U.A.W. economist Barry Bluestone. Its main funders include the Rockefeller Foundation, the C.S. Mott Foundation (General Motors money), and the Russell Sage Foundation (Cabot gas and banking money).
Preparing for the 1996 elections, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, led by Gephardt and South Dakota Senator Daschle, launched the "Families First" initiative on behalf of "hard-working…Americans." Families First held a series of "hearings" about issues related to workers’ problems. The format included politicians, intellectuals, and rank-and-file workers. Jay Rockefeller turned up at one, as did Kennedy, Senator Joe Biden, Representative Barney Frank, and other liberals. The expert speaker on Medicare was Lawrence Chimerine, former head of Rockefeller’s Chase Econometrics.
Fresh from his recent victory over Fast Track, Gephardt went on the offensive again. Speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School for Government early this month, he said: "If you don’t temper capitalism, it’s a race to the bottom. Capitalism left alone will defeat itself…" (Boston Globe, 12/5).
So Gephardt & Co. see the stakes as nothing less than the survival of the profit system. By "tempering capitalism," he means to use pro-worker rhetoric as a cover for centralized state control over the economy at home and plans for war abroad. Thurow spells out the Gephardt economic program in his book. It includes proposals that sound like "all good things" but that really pave the way for state capitalism, i.e. fascism. For example: a single-payer health care system, the "constructive" use of federal spending for economic growth and "full employment," national initiatives for worker training, and a "businesslike" capital budgeting approach to federal spending. Thurow, Gephardt, et al. are all for a version of the current racist Clinton/Gore workfare scheme that "employs" former welfare clients at slave wages while laying off salaried workers.
But it gets worse. Funding for some of these programs will come from the $2.6 trillion invested in workers’ pensions. Until now, this treasure has been used largely to finance multi-billion dollar Wall St. speculation like corporate takeovers. But the more far-sighted capitalists behind Gephardt have a social-fascist agenda for these pensions. And the union piecards are 100% behind them. "In a scramble to build more clout, labor leaders [in 1998] will look less to the picket line and the bargaining table, and a whole lot more to the corporate boardroom" (Investors Business Daily, 12/11).
Until Gephardt entered politics, he worked from 1965 to 1977 for the St. Louis law firm, Thompson and Mitchell, whose key clients include American Express, Anheuser-Busch, Chrysler, Procter and Gamble, and Shell Oil. The firm’s specialty: defending these bosses before the Labor Department and representing them in suits over civil rights violations and employment discrimination.
In other words, the AFL-CIO’s new darling and the savior of the working class turns out to be a racist, strike-breaking union buster.
Gephardt’s voting record leaves no doubt about his support for U.S. imperialism’s military interventions. He backed Clinton’s invasion of Haiti. In 1995, he voted to keep U.S. troops in South Korea and Japan. Last year, he voted for a $245 billion 1997 military budget—$10.6 billion more than Clinton had requested. But that’s just for openers. Gephardt & Co. demand massive military action to defend the tottering Rockefeller Middle Eastern oil empire. The Gephardt E.P.I. think-tank is closely associated with the Eastern Establishment’s Brookings Institution, whose director of Foreign Policy Studies, Richard Haass, wrote: "…the United States will only have a limited number of occasions to use force against Iraq, and it must make the most of them…U.S. diplomacy can succeed only against a backdrop of the availability of military forces and the will to use them" (Brookings Policy Brief No. 7, 1996).
So the Gephardt forces pose a double threat. Their program is calculated to suck in many workers and thus prepare for a far wider and deadlier war than Clinton could ever hope to wage without mass political support. The new New Dealers specifically focus on winning the working class in basic war industries to support "pro-labor" Democrats. These murderers understand that you can’t make bombers, bombs, and tanks, without a reliable labor force in the airplane, automobile, steel, and coal industries. Gephardt and his advisors Thurow and Robert "Fourth" Reich want to ensure that U.S. imperialism’s basic arms-making capacity survives globalization.
But this wing of the Establishment is also severely limited by the current crisis of overproduction. U.S. capitalism is slipping. It doesn’t have the resources that made FDR’s New Deal viable. This is presumably one reason why these bosses are so anxious to control the pension funds.
Like the life and death fight between New and Old Money capitalists, the tactical rift within the Rockefeller camp exposes the rulers’ fundamental weakness. Let them squabble amongst each other! We will build our own revolutionary forces. These parasites and killers can all eventually be taken. Understanding the true class nature of the Gephardt forces is critical to our Party’s present organizing efforts. This is a curve ball the bosses have thrown at us. We must avoid swinging at it. The only New Deal workers need is communism. Perhaps Mao Zedong summed it up best when he was still a revolutionary communist: "Know yourself, and know your enemy; and you will win a hundred battles."
All is not quiet on the Middle Eastern Front
The drum beat for the next U.S. oil war in the Middle East gets louder every day. Clinton’s temporary inability in November to find a rationale for bombing Iraq to smithereens over Russian and French objections shouldn’t fool anyone. The aircraft carrier Nimitz remains at the head of a U.S. armada in the Persian Gulf, ready to slaughter thousands of Iraqi workers in defense of Exxon’s profits as soon as Clinton gets the green light from his Rockefeller bosses. On December 16th, the U.S. military announced a plan to inoculate all personnel against anthrax poison, which results from the chemical weapons in Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein’s arsenal. This is no accident.
At the same time, all the heavy policy hitters are weighing in with advice about when and how—not whether—U.S. imperialism should commit its next wave of genocide in Iraq. Richard Haass, director of foreign policy studies at the influential Brookings Institution, calls for "a sustained campaign of bombing to coerce Saddam" (Washington Times, 11/20). Hawk journalist Jim Hoagland labels Clinton’s failure to bomb Iraq "a big disaster" (Washington Post, 12/11). And veteran Rockefeller stooge Henry Kissinger calls another crisis over Iraq "highly probable" and orders: "No carrots for Saddam" (Washington Post, 12/7).
Meanwhile, contradictions are sharpening throughout the Middle East, as the sands of inter-imperialist rivalries and alliances shift almost from moment to moment:
• The recent conference of Islamic capitalists in Teheran saw a major rift within the Iranian holy-roller rulers, as President Khatami squared off against "Supreme Ruler" Khomeini and made pro-U.S. overtures. Khomeini has already launched a wave of religious violence against another of his critics, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri. Could a civil war be looming between factions who want to deal with U.S. imperialism and those who would rather throw in their lot with the Russians?
• Turkish and Israeli bosses just announced a new strategic military partnership, which doesn’t particularly benefit Rockefeller & Co. In fact, it appears to benefit the Russians. The Turkish government made a particular point of thumbing its nose at U.S. plans for NATO expansion. And if Bibi Netanyahu wants to continue breaking away from U.S. domination, he’s going to have to find another "protector." Who else but the Russians? Rockefeller & Co. would never accept such a defeat.
• The New York Post (12/16) reported that Saddam Hussein had slaughtered hundreds of his leading political opponents.
So the situation is getting more and more unstable. The one constant is U.S. imperialism’s need to control Middle Eastern oil and its growing inability to tolerate challenges to this control. Right now, this means keeping Iraqi oil off the market for the foreseeable future, a job that can be done only at gunpoint.
Perhaps 1997 will end without the massive U.S. bombing raids most of the liberal media are recommending, but don’t expect to wait too long. The imperialists can’t negotiate away their need to make maximum profit at each other’s—and the working class’—expense.
What can we do about this war? Build the PLP—in our shops and unions, our community organizations, our schools, and, above all, in the bosses’ armed forces. This ought to be every Party member’s New Year’s resolution for 1998!
BELOIT, WI, December 6 — "They arrested us and put us in the same police car with a Klan supporter. He was staring us down, but he knew he better not say nothing cause my foot [I was in handcuffs] would have been right inside his mouth." These words came from an angry high school student who made the trip to Beloit with 16 other PLP members to confront the KKK.
The KKK was granted a permit to hold a two-hour rally in this small town of 35,000 right on the Illinois border. Grand maggot Michael McQueeney of Wisconsin along with 12 other vermin from Illinois, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, and Indiana chose Beloit to kick-off a statewide recruitment drive. There was not much recruitment going on, but what the crowd of 600 anti-racist demonstrators did see were Klan supporters getting their butts kicked at different times throughout the rally.
Anti-Klan demonstrators started out with a rally in front of the police station. At first, the organizers were denied a permit to march to the courthouse site of the KKK rally—but then the city bosses softened, for a $7.00 fee per marcher, a permit could be bought. Like everything else under capitalism, free speech is for sale!
A PLP comrade spoke at the opening rally and explained the nature of capitalism and why the KKK in white and the KKKops in blue are only carrying out the bigger bosses fascist terror against the working class. The bosses’ system is in crisis and they are preparing for war. The rulers are fighting to keep black and white workers divided. Our message to all workers was to unite under communist leadership against our class enemies. The only solution to fascism and war is communist revolution.
The crowd took our glowing red "Death To The KKK With Communist Revolution" stickers and attached them to their clothes. We marched loud and boldly through the neighborhood chanting, "Death, death, death to the Klan, Power...to the workers." This drew many out of their homes either to get our literature or to join our march. At the courthouse we were greeted by 300 Klan in blue including SWAT teams in riot gear from neighboring counties. The anger of the swelling crowd of mainly white workers and students was immediately directed toward the police who stood between us and the Klan. The Party led hundreds to chant.
At one point, the PLPer on the bullhorn said, "The cops and fences you see before us will not contain the anger of the working class." Youth from Chicago and Beloit threw down one fence. The cops then rushed with mace and clubs to move the anti-Klan demonstrators back. Again two PLP high school students stood their ground when the cops pushed. They were forced to the ground by the cops and arrested. Then the protesters took up our chants, drowning out the Klan.
Even though the Klan, with armed protection from the bosses’ state, was able to have its rally, this day was a victory for our side. It was striking how many youth, black and white, responded to our call to build a movement that uses revolutionary mass violence to take on and destroy fascism. Their enormous hatred for the cops, Klan and all of capitalism, combined with an understanding of our fight for communism, and how building the Party all came together for some of the young people. The next day, one of the arrested young people at a PLP study group said, "I think I’m now ready to be a revolutionary. I want to join the Party."
Bosses’ Layoff of Hospital Workers: One More Step On Road to War and Fascism
CHICAGO, December 5 — Sally’s supervisor told her to come to the personnel department right away. Why? She’d "find out when she got there."
When she arrived in personnel, it didn’t look good. There were elevator operators, clerks, technicians, two women from the radiology school and others. Standing in the background were several County Security guards. When her turn came she was given a pink layoff notice and two weeks pay. Her job had been eliminated from the budget; after 17 years at Cook County Hospital, she was out on the street.
"Don’t worry," her boss told her. "You’ll probably be back to work next week; you’ve got enough time to bump somebody else!" "Oh, great," she thought as she headed out into the dreary, cold Chicago afternoon, "I might keep a job, but some young person will be out on the street with nothing!"
That same afternoon, in front of the hospital’s main building, members of PLP and workers from the hospital held a rally against the layoffs. Despite the row of cops guarding the main entrance, several workers—nurses, a worker from central supply and doctors—denounced the bosses’ cuts. Over 2,500 leaflets had been distributed inside the hospital that day, and several hundred Challenges were sold hand-to-hand that week. Hundreds of workers were wearing buttons declaring, "Downsizing = Murder—Resist, Refuse, Organize!" Many workers watched the rally from the windows.
Sally was one of approximately 50 CCH workers receiving layoff notices along with two weeks pay. After years of work at CCH these workers were told to leave the premises and not to return! CCH bosses are engaged in a frenzy of murderous cuts to save as much money as possible for the rulers.
Under this same war budget, the bosses eliminated 300 positions through their early retirement scheme and 200 more that had been left vacant because of the bosses’ long hiring freeze. For the last several years the bosses have striven mightily to force workers to quit or resign. As a last resort they used firings to cut as many positions as possible. Many CCH workers will be "celebrating" the holidays on the unemployment lines. Because of these cuts, an entire generation of young people may never find work, left to fend for themselves on the streets. They will face joblessness, crime and poverty. Many will be forced into the bosses’ military.
Under capitalism, one day you have a job, health insurance and benefits, and the next day, if the bosses can’t make a profit off your labor, you’re out on the streets! The "lucky" remaining workers will be doing the work of two or three. More patients will suffer and die due to these brutal cuts.
Ironically, CCH bosses had just handed out huge amounts of overtime in preparation for a major hospital inspection. A few days later many of these same workers were laid off. This layoff is just one more step towards closing CCH. If you weren’t laid off now, you may be on their list for next year! More cuts will certainly follow these as the bosses continue chopping to bail out their lousy profit system. Consider this:
• U.S. bosses are spending $50 billion annually to maintain a huge naval armada in the Persian Gulf, ready to defend their oil empire. Millions of working class youth will die in this war.
• The U.S. and its international monetary fund are sending over $100 billion to shore up the economies of Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia to prevent a worldwide stock market collapse.
• The bosses are spending billions on cops, courts and jails to keep the working class under control. The prisons, bursting with a majority of young black and latin men, will be used for slave labor. This is a fascist police state.
• The Cook County budget for health care has been cut, but the budget for cops and the County jail has been increased by $45 million.
Only Communism Can Provide Jobs and Health Care For Workers
The bosses have plenty of money for projects that will increase their profit and maintain their racist system. Jobs and health care for workers don’t figure into this picture. Capitalism has never provided for workers’ needs. If it ain’t profitable, the bosses won’t do it! They throw us crumbs to pacify us in times of "plenty," and bullets and jails to control us when their system is in crisis. That’s why we must organize to destroy this racist profit system and replace it with communism.
During the week leading up to the layoffs, many workers were really listening when we talked about the need for communism. Many understood there is no way we can reform capitalism. Crumbs are not enough. Layoffs have a way of getting workers’ attention. It’s up to us to use this opportunity to organize workers to fight within their unions, community groups and other organizations to expose the bosses’ system and raise the need for communism.
The New CCH: A Military Hospital?
The bosses’ priority is for a new, small CCH full of intensive care, burn and trauma units, run by private and research doctors from Rush University, not for free, accessible health care to the hundreds of thousands of workers who live in Cook County who need it.
Why so much emphasis on their trauma unit? Because CCH is one of the few places they can teach surgeons how to sew up people who have been injured by gunshot and stab wounds—in short, the kinds of injuries seen in a war. They can’t do that at private hospitals; there aren’t enough businessmen getting shot.
The burn unit is also a priority because many soldiers will receive burn injuries in this next war. CCH beds are also being reserved for military use when war breaks out. As Europe’s hospitals fill up with military casualties, they’ll use public hospitals like CCH and the VA. They plan to use the "new CCH"—and its poor patients—to teach the next generation of doctors the skills needed for military and research purposes. CCH bosses eliminated the nurses on the Diabetic Teaching Team. They see no use in caring for workers with diabetes, cancer and high blood pressure!
Talking About War In The Steel Mill
Although the "war fever" has receded a little as an isolated U.S. has backed down from Saddam and his friends in Russia and France, the U.S. will certainly, sooner or later, send hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers to fight a land war over oil and who controls it. Recently, workers at an Indiana steel mill were talking in the canteen and it went something like this:
JJ (a Challenge reader): This Iraqi thing is all about oil. And I look for the U.S. to cook up something, bomb one of their own ships, so they can bomb Saddam. But this time it won’t be so easy—we’re gonna see body bags coming back this time.
PLer: Sure you’re right. But my question is—why is the U.S. so concerned about Iraq? We know it’s not about democracy, and there’s no oil shortage, so what’s up? And what can we do about it?
The Rev: Well read your bible; it’s all coming to pass, wars and rumors of wars—Armageddon! You better get on the good side.
JJ: Rev, that is so much BS. Maybe it’s a personal, ego thing between Clinton and Saddam. No, forget that.
PLer: Look here, the U.S. is in a life and death struggle with all these other bosses, and they want France, Japan and other countries, depending on them for oil, not getting it from Saddam or anyone else, so the U.S can run the show.
JJ: That makes sense, all the U.S. cares about is controlling people and making money. From slavery, to the Indians, to Vietnam, to steelworkers.
The Rev: There you go again, both of you. running down this country. How come you never, not once support the U.S. when it goes to war? Huh?
JJ: What? So Rockefeller can get richer? This country ain’t done nothing for me as a black man. I don’t buy it.
PLer: Every bosses’ war is about workers dying for the rich man. Now if we had a war to stop child labor or racism, that would make sense. But the bosses won’t ever do it, will they? The working class has to do it.
JJ: Well you’re talking revolution, turn the guns around. I don’t know...the U.S., the bosses are really strong. It all sounds good, but can you do it?
PLer: If people like you, who know the system sucks, join the fight for communism, yes we can do it. Things getting worse everywhere you look, what other choice is there?
JJ: Yeah, my nephew will be in Iraq, and after the ’99 contract, I’ll be making less money, or out on the street. This system is insane, let’s keep talking.
PLer: The bosses only look strong, they’re really weak, that’s why they’re going to war, to save what they’ve got.
No ‘Fair Share’ Under Capitalism
PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 10—"We want three things," declared a speaker from the AFL-CIO at the Philadelphia demonstration against workfare. "We want jobs, jobs, and jobs!"
The audience of about 100 was composed mostly of local union leaders and their staff, the leaders of the few small reform organizations that called for the demonstration and revisionists from several so-called communist groups who enthusiastically applauded every speech.
Also in the audience were a few hospital workers. One of them was a black worker, Cary, who was laid off just over a year ago from his housekeeping job at Jefferson Hospital. Cary’s seniority allowed him to bump another worker in another department.
This week Jefferson announced that their laundry would close in three to six months. Jefferson plans to contract out their laundry with a company that pays their workers $5.00 an hour less than the Jefferson laundry workers. At least 40 to 60 laundry workers will be laid off. Many of these workers have more seniority than Cary. Cary now faces the possibility of being bumped from his current job to the unemployment rolls.
Like millions of other workers, Cary is caught in the capitalist crisis of overproduction. This crisis will force Cary and many others to lose their jobs, or at best end up in lower paying ones. As in the past, the bosses will have no choice but to try to resolve the overproduction crisis with larger and larger wars. Millions of workers will die.
At the rally, speakers appealed to justice, decency and fairness, but the contradictions and crises of capitalism don’t allow the working class such idealistic notions. We can’t afford to be led by these banners because they cover up the capitalist root of our problems and keep us tied to the liberal servants of the Old Money bosses. In fact, the horrors of the present crisis unmasks all the phony ideas and illusions the capitalists use to keep us enslaved.
This presents PLP communists with tremendous opportunities. If we’re involved in unions and campaigns like this one against workfare, we can widen and escalate the struggle for communist ideas. As each rally speaker called for workers to get a "fair share," Cary would glance at his hospital co-worker and shake his head skeptically. In one sense Cary, and there are millions like him, knows that workers, especially black and latin workers, can never get a "fair share" under capitalism. There can never be a "fair share" for the working class in capitalism because the profit system keeps us as wage slaves. Slaves can never get a fair share.
There’s a side to Cary that knows this but only communist ideas can give him a scientific understanding of why we must overthrow capitalism and how communism is the only path that allows the working class real liberation. Cary’s continuing participation in PL discussion groups can help develop him into a leader that will help the working class get our real "fair share:" the world that we make!
Trade Union Hacks Hamper Fighting Slave Labor
NEW YORK CITY, December 19 — Perhaps 700 workfare participants, unionists, and members of social welfare advocacy groups as well as church groups marched from City Hall Park through the civic center area to a rally on the steps of the NYC Municipal Building.
Trade union functionaries played the biggest role in organizing the chants and in limiting the militancy of the protest. Organizations like ACORN, which has signed up thousands to the workfare workers’ union, became recognized which was the major demand of the day. They led chants like "Union yes! Workfare no!" which reflected ACORN’s strategy of reforming and institutionalizing fascist workfare. PLP’ers in the march sought to encourage chants like "Jobs, Yes! Slave Labor, No!," which appealed to those who want to see the entire workfare program crushed.
We tried to link workfare, which is a slave labor scheme, and police terror to the development of fascism in the U.S. and to the increasing threat of war via our placards and in discussions during and after the march.
Youth Discuss Solutions to Imperialist War
BROOKLYN, NY — After our Party section had a recent Forum on Oil, War and Imperialism, a young comrade wrote: "This meeting was very interesting. We discussed the conditions people live in and how the United States and other world bosses are preparing for war in the Middle East." We also discussed the solution: winning workers and youth to the communist PLP.
People at the Forum talked about inter-imperialist rivalry and the U.S. Army’s strengths and weaknesses. They dealt with the splits in the U.S. ruling class and the crisis of overproduction. Comrades and friends really wanted to figure out whether the Party could recruit, and build a strong revolutionary movement for communism. How can we say that the bosses are strategically weak and we are strategically strong?
Going home a young comrade said, "I want this revolution to happen right away. I can’t stand it. I just hate capitalism." That’s the question—how can we make this revolution happen sooner rather than later?
A young woman at her first meeting wrote: "I hope that the communist revolution happens before the U.S. goes to war, because a lot of people will die innocently. I also believe that if schools begin to have programs about this problem, a lot of changes could happen."
Well, unfortunately various imperialist bosses run the world and their vicious competition for profits will lead to war. War is inevitable as long as capitalism exists. What we in PLP can do prepare our class to turn imperialist war into class war. Everything each one of us does makes a big difference. For instance, who else but us can organize "programs" in the schools about imperialist war? We must organize various activities in mass organizations and have communist ideas debated by lots of people. High school and college students want to hear about issues such as the imperialist war plans of the U.S. bosses. We have to improve at bringing such communist "programs" to thousands of students everywhere.
"Well," said another young comrade, even though we in the Party accept that war is coming, we have problems in saying when it will happen. We have trouble in recruiting workers faster. And most of the youth aren’t experienced in leadership and aren’t willing to practice."
Even though we can’t predict when the war will happen, we must expose the bosses’ war plans more clearly and also explain the Party’s ideas better. It’s not enough to just talk and have meetings. Practice is primary. We must make a plan, even if it’s very modest, and then have the will to carry it out.
One comrade said, "We must get serious." His younger brother, who knows very little about the Party, said: "To make communist ideas work in my position in the Air Force ROTC, maybe I can talk to some of my fellow classmates and try to change their minds....It will be hard, but so is life."
Sounds right! Talk to those friends in ROTC. Then discuss the questions; study up on the answers; and return to your friends to raise some more ideas.
A weakness at the Forum and in our clubs is not dealing with the process of base-building, of raising ideas and answering questions. What’s the Party’s line on a particular situation and what’s the best way to raise it? What do we do in various groups? How do we sell more Challenges? We did not get into some of the nuts and bolts of daily base-building and organizing. It would have been useful to talk about problems we encountered at school or at work.
After the meeting two young comrades wrote: "The workers who work harder get paid much less, while millionaires sit home and collect more money. If you are tired of this, you should consider doing something about it. Join the Progressive Labor Party. It’s a long road to a communist society, but eventually the working class will rise up and the ruling class will be destroyed."
We do have a ways to go, but this Forum was a useful step. Now let’s practice what we preach!
Brazil Workers Refuse to Pay for VW Crisis
SAO PAULO, Dec. 17 — It won’t be a happy Xmas for autoworkers here, thanks to Volkswagen and the international crisis of capitalism. Last week, 10,000-day shift workers at the VW plant in Sao Bernardo do Campo, near this city, booed the bosses, rejecting their "choices" of either take a 20% pay cut or face 10,000 layoffs. Workers say that they are ready to take over the plant to stop this attack.
These workers, like their brothers in Korea, are the victims of the capitalist crisis of overproduction. The union hacks are helping the bosses attack the workers. One union, Tradeunion Force (FS), said it will accept a wage cut if work-hours are reduced. Meanwhile, the social-democratic CUT union is offering to "negotiate" the level of the attack, demanding a government-union-bosses commission to reduce taxes and keep the same level of production.
But this won’t work. VW is using the latest world capitalist crisis (which has hit Brazil the hardest in South America) to make its workers produce more in order to compete better with Fiat and GM. Fiat and GM are new arrivals to the Brazil market who pay their workers less than VW and whose plants are more state of the art.
If VW gets away with this attack, Fiat, GM and Ford will also demand pay cuts, since the car sales have plunged 38% since the crisis exploded. The auto bosses of the world know that there is a big crisis. Brazil and Argentina were expected to produce four million cars by the year 2000, but sales are now expected to reach only 2.8 million in the region. The surplus was meant to be exported, but where to? South Korea was expecting to produce 6 million cars by the year 2000, with a domestic market that could buy only 1.2 million units. Meanwhile, the world’s bosses are building newer plants in these "emerging" markets. That is the irrationality of this capitalist "model" industry and of the entire system.
Eventually, the only "solution" the bosses have is to attack workers with even more fascist conditions, to attack the capitalist competition—like Japan and the U.S. are doing with South Korea. Then the big bosses will go to war to destroy their competitors’ factories and market share.
VW workers should take over the plant and fight for their jobs, against the union hacks and politicians, and against the capitalist system. They need to prepare to make revolutionary war on the imperialist warmakers. The building of a mass communist Party is key to carry on that fight. Join the PLP to turn the bosses’ crisis into a revolutionary war to destroy capitalism.
U.S., Japan Bosses Fight to Control Korean Economy
The South Korean financial crisis shows that the capitalist crisis of overproduction is deepening. The effects of the crisis and the IMF "solution" will mean mass unemployment and a huge cut in the wages of workers in Korea, Thailand and other countries. It is also dashing the hopes of the Korean bosses to compete with the big imperialists:
• Following the financial crisis in Mexico and the peso devaluation, workers lost 30% of their buying power, leading to growing malnutrition, homelessness, and police terror. Workers in Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia face the same or worse. Business Week predicts that two million Asian workers will lose their jobs.
• Remember a few short years ago we were being told about the Asian Tigers, about the miracles of capitalist expansion and development? That has all turned into its opposite! The Imperialist bosses of the U.S. and Japan are fighting for control of Korea, and the shrinking markets of the world. GM, Ford, Toyota, Nissan would be happy to destroy Hyundai and other Korean car manufacturers which compete for the world’s car market. In doing so, they will close factories and lay off more workers.
The worldwide crisis of capitalism is spreading fascist conditions and war to every corner of the globe. Capitalism is a disaster for workers, from Seoul to Detroit. Build a mass communist party to turn these attacks around with communist revolution.
Book Review: Cover Up of TWA Flight 800: Deadly Friendly Fire
U.S. rulers know that TWA Flight 800 was shot down "accidentally" by an unarmed Navy missile during a military exercise testing a new weapon slated for use in the next Persian Gulf war. It was the result of the Navy "using innocent civilians as human guinea pigs as they rushed a multibillion-dollar weapons system into its final certification test before it was ready," according to investigator James Sanders’ book, The Downing of TWA Flight 800 (ZEBRA Books/Kensington Publishing Co., New York; 1997).
Far-fetched? The book is filled with conclusive evidence, never challenged by the FBI, other government agencies nor the bosses’ media, which has been quick to brand all such proof the work of "conspiracy nuts." They are so "nuts" that the FBI has arrested Sanders and his wife for "illegally receiving crash evidence" and Sanders’ informant (a top TWA pilot) for "stealing" it. So "nuts" that a six-day "hearing" was barred by the FBI from "public discussion or publication of the interviews conducted with witnesses to the crash...[nor] reference to the search for residue of explosives on the wreckage." (N. Y. Times, Dec. 10) This despite the fact that, "Many TWA employees and others in the industry contended...that a missile was the most plausible explanation...because they found it difficult to believe that a 747 could be subject to such a catastrophic mechanical failure." (N. Y. Times, Dec. 8)
The Missile Theory
The following are the main points of Sanders’ book, none of which have been addressed publicly by FBI "investigators."
Ever since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the U.S. military has been developing a highly complex, multi-billion-dollar radar tracking system to make possible a defensive "envelope" extending more than 30 miles over the horizon, even in the most dangerous of coastal battle theaters (like the Persian Gulf), despite the foulest weather and the darkest night.
This new tracking system was designed to enable the Navy to enter such a hostile environment as the Persian Gulf, tracking all commercial airlines and friendly military surface and air traffic in and out of countries bordering the Gulf while on the lookout for hostile cruise and ballistic missiles launched from any direction. (This effort was a partial reaction to the Iraqi missile attack on the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. It had been nearly impossible for U.S. ships escorting oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz to distinguish between heavy air traffic, friend and foe.)
At 8:00 P.M. on July 17, 1996, just as TWA Flight 800 was in its final boarding process, military zone W-105, thousands of square miles south and southeast of Long Island, was activated by the U.S. Navy. Zone W-105 was selected for this final testing of the new tracking system
because the complexity of the area was as close to the Persian Gulf environment as the Navy could get without leaving U.S. coastal waters. Long Island offered dense ground clutter, and a constant flow of commercial air traffic out of Kennedy airport, giving the Navy "neutral" radar blips to test the discriminatory skills of its new targeting software.
The "hostile" target would be a Navy drone missile—the BQM-74E. It was launched at 8:30 P.M. near Shinnecock Bay east of Riverhead, L.I. (at about the same time Flight 800 was leaving Kennedy). Unbeknownst to the Navy, at that very moment, Linda Kabot was snapping party photos at a Republican Party fund-raising event from a restaurant deck overlooking the Bay. The streak of light in the background of one of her pictures turned out to be the Navy drone missile, racing at the speed of a jet airliner and heading toward the Navy task force over the horizon.
A Navy Standard anti-missile missile with an inert warhead was then launched from the East, headed Westward in the general direction of the "attacking" drone missile. Its on-board computer was supposed to make a mid-course correction to lock in on the drone target. At least that was the plan.
As TWA Flight 800 climbed towards 14,000 feet, heading Eastbound to Paris, it crossed into the warning zone of the military exercise and technically became a "neutral." Simultaneously the Navy Standard missile’s on-board electronic receiver waited for the course correction commands from the Navy task force below, beyond the horizon, which would enable it to "lock in" on the "attacking" drone.
But suddenly the Navy radar tracking system, operating through heavy electronic jamming, went blind. (In two earlier tests, all but one radar had been put out of action by electronic jamming.) At that point the Standard anti-missile missile was no long under the control of the Navy tracking system. Following its internal programming, it continued on its Westerly course at 3,000 feet per second actively searching for a target.
Instantly the Standard’s internal radar locked in on TWA Flight 800. It turned sharply to the right, aimed its inert warhead at the 747, painting an electronic bull’s-eye on an area just in front of the right wing. Then at full speed it slammed into the fuselage just below the passenger cabin, slicing through it and exiting the left side of the plane, depositing a reddish-orange residue in its wake.
Moments earlier a Long Island Federal Aviation radar technician saw on his electronic view screen "conflicting radar tracks that indicated a missile" approaching Flight 800 just before it disappeared from the radar. He filed a report to that effect.
At the same moment two officers of the New York Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing piloting an HH-606 helicopter (as they later told an Aviation Week interviewer) saw "something" traveling from East to West slam into Flight 800 and saw it immediately break up in flight and crash into the ocean. They said they were close enough to the crash to actually see bodies falling into the ocean.
An Immediate Cover Up Began at the White House
When word of all this reached the White House, an immediate cover-up began. With the re-nomination of Clinton at the Democratic Convention only a few weeks away, it would have been devastating to have it revealed that a mis-directed Navy missile had caused the death of 230 U.S. and French citizens. A coordinated program of leaks appeared to gradually neutralize the few clues being discovered by a few reporters. Credible witnesses had to be explained away. The FBI began removing as much missile evidence from the scene as possible. It all culminated in the recent FBI release of a CIA computer-programmed "picture" of Flight 800 "breaking up" because of "mechanical causes."
Sanders (himself an ex-cop) was subjected to intensive FBI harassment as he drew closer to the truth (culminating in his recent arrest, facing a 10-year prison). Sanders’ informant (the now-arrested TWA pilot) inside the Calverton, L.I. hangar where the 747 was being "reconstructed" gave Sanders swatches of the plane’s seats containing the missile’s tell-tale reddish-orange residue. When he gave his last sample to the 60 Minutes TV show for a possible program on the missile theory, government agents got wind of it and demanded the evidence be turned over to them. 60 Minutes complied (at first denying they ever had it, but later admitting they had done it, "in the interests of a federal investigation"). Such was the fate of the last bit of evidence outside government control.
While the FBI tried to discount the above evidence and forced the Congressional "public hearing" to concentrate on mechanical failure as the cause, the hearing ended without any conclusion. It or the FBI never answered Sanders’ evidence of a military exercise, of the launching of a drone and an anti-missile missile, nor of the two airborne Air National Guard helicopter pilots who saw "something" hit Flight 800 and were close enough to see "bodies falling in the water."
Certainly a ruling class capable of planning the blow-up of one of its own warships in Guantanamo Bay or the crash of a chartered civilian airplane as pretexts to invade Cuba (see box); certainly a government responsible for the killing of a half million Iraqi civilians in the 1991 Gulf War invasion; certainly such a government could easily use 230 innocent civilians as guinea pigs in its development of a weapons systems aimed at killing still more millions to protect and expand its profit system against its capitalist competitors.
Next to U.S. Plans for Castro, Flight 800 is Child’s Play
After reading the latest revelations about government attempts to manufacture pretexts to invade Cuba and topple Fidel Castro, one must conclude that these fascist bosses are capable of anything.
According to two recent articles in the N. Y. Times (11/19 and 11/23), the CIA had devised 33 different plans to justify destroying Cuba, including:
• "Blowing up a U.S. warship in Guantanamo Bay" as a cover for a "devastating U.S. military assault on Havana";
•·"Develop a Cuban terror campaign against Americans and anti-Castro Cubans in Miami...and even in Washington";
• "Sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida";
• Attack Cuba’s sugar crop with biological weapons;
• "Create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civilian airliner";
• Blame Castro if a 1962 space flight commanded by astronaut John Glenn crashes;
• Hiring Mafia hit men to assassinate Castro (causing then Vice-President Lyndon Johnson to declare that the Kennedys were "operating a damned Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean."
On March 13, 1967, the Joint Chiefs of Staff endorsed all these and other ideas as "suitable for planning purposes." These kinds of plans make the "accidental" downing of Flight 800 mere child’s play.
Recently a group of us (PLP members and friends) in New York went to see an Off-Broadway production of Bertolt Brecht’s "The Mother" (not to be confused with his "Mother Courage") put on by The Irondale Ensemble Project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
At first glance, one might describe the production as "agit-prop" (meaning agitation/propaganda) a play used as a medium to put forward ideology in speeches and such). But that would be selling the play short. Brecht traces the development of the central character of the mother from one of an uneducated woman concerned only with how to put bread on the table for herself and her son to a woman who eventually understands the root cause for her lack of bread—capitalism—and joins her son in the movement to destroy that system.
The eight actors and actresses each perform several roles in the course of the play, all with talent and tremendous enthusiasm. Numerous songs add to the quality of the production. While the time period is the 1905 Russian Revolution and its series of general strikes, many references are made to draw the parallels between then and now—mass layoffs and downsizing, anti-communist witchhunts, etc. In fact, the current production is titled, "The Mother" by Bertolt Brecht, with: "J. Edgar Hoover Explains It All To You." (And "Edgar" appears at the beginning and narrates periodically, engaging in humorous exchanges with the audience throughout.)
Each scene is preceded by a scrolled "lesson" on the side of the stage, and each is a well-explained lesson in class understanding. The singing of The Internationale and the May Day march led by the red flag, all of which occurs as part of the development of the struggle described in the play, add to the enjoyment.
While a case is made in the play itself for the need for revolution and the "building of a movement" to accomplish that, the newsletter distributed at the theater deals with the necessity of a "mass party" to topple capitalism—"it will not happen on its own"—and erect "socialism." All in all a thoroughly enjoyable evening and definitely recommended.
The production is at Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue (near 10th St.) in Manhattan, New York City. It will run until Dec. 20; reservations at 212-633-1292.
LETTERS
Spreading revolution in the heart of the working class
Dear Challenge:
I felt especially subversive the other day on my job. A fellow worker and I were going down the hall to our supervisor’s office talking about events in the Middle East. This was the Friday before the temporary settlement was made to let the U.S. inspectors back into Iraq.
We agreed that the whole conflict was about war. I pointed out that many of the homeless in our country are Vietnam War veterans. I also said that countries are just lines in the sand where one set of bosses gets workers to fight for them. My point was that wars like the one developing in Iraq only benefit the bosses. He agreed.
But I also said that workers had a way out. It was much the same in WWI. Everyone agrees that WWI was just a bloodbath. Well the workers in the Russian army, led by the Bolsheviks, argued with their fellow soldiers about what they were fighting for. Their kids were home barefoot and hungry while the Czar lived in a mansion and ordered the soldiers into the field to kill other workers. The Bolsheviks argued that the real enemy was not other workers across the battle line, but the Czar back at home. They were able to lead workers to turn the guns around to overthrow the Czar and take power.
My co-worker nodded his head. I think he understood, but I’m not sure he agreed. We didn’t have time for him to respond. But I felt like this is what I am made for, the role of a communist, to spread revolutionary ideas in the heart of the working class. At a time of crisis, it made the words that I have spoken many times before, take on added significance.
A few days later I was able to get together with him and show him Challenge, explaining where our line comes from. I read the speech that the teacher made at the Chicago Teachers Union meeting. I tried to make a couple of other points, but I also wanted to know where he stood. The main point he made was that conflict with Iraq was over oil and money. He took Challenge to consider it some more.
Veteran Comrade
Racism shortens life expectancy
Dear Challenge:
Our Party has constantly pointed out that the fight against growing fascism and racism is a matter of life and death for workers. A recent study by a Harvard scientist, Dr. Christopher Murray, starkly confirms this. (NY Times 12/4/97, p. A14).
Murray studied average life expectancy in different areas within the U.S. Women lived longest, an average of 83 years, in Stearns Co., Minnesota. Men lived an average of 77 years in Cache and Rich counties in Utah. In five neighboring counties in South Dakota, where two Native American "reservations" are located, the average life expectancy was 61 for men, and 70 for women. Male Native Americans living anywhere in South Dakota had an average life expectancy of 56.5 years! And black males living in Washington, DC have an average life expectancy of 57.9 years!
So in the national capital of the biggest imperialist power in the world, the rulers’ racist system shaves 15 or more years off the average black man’s life. And this goes on in the same city where Clinton has the audacity to call for a "dialogue" on race. Nothing could show more clearly that Clinton/ Rockefeller & Co. are only interested in cynically using the open racism of the New Money forces to win people to their phony "anti-racism".
On another front, a recent Pacifica Radio story exposed a campaign of racism directed against black workers at Bell Atlantic in North Philadelphia. Three black workers there have committed suicide in the last few months as a result of the constant harassment from supervisors there. At the funeral of one of the three workers, the supervisors took attendance to make sure that all the workers who took company time to go to the funeral actually went! These supervisors were attacked by one of the speakers at the funeral as being responsible for the death of this worker.
The PLP workers’ club in New Jersey is planning on making the deaths of these Bell Atlantic workers an issue on our jobs. We are going to point out the connection between these deaths, the racist differences in life expectancy, the rise of fascism in the U.S., and the need for communist revolution as the only answer to a system that is killing us more and more.
NJ Comrades
Dear Challenge:
The mass media can’t stop frothing about the "miracle" of the Iowa couple who gave birth to seven babies, who all survived, thanks to modern medical science. Meanwhile, the number of children who die from lack of a nourishing diet or from missed immunizations is rising throughout the world, including the U.S. If every single baby born in Chicago this year, over 30,000, were to die, that would equal the number of children dying from malnutrition in a single day worldwide.
This does not mean that high tech newborn intensive care is useless. But if there is a miracle in modern capitalism, it is that the mass awareness of these seven infants can blind so many people to the misery of millions. The rulers of the U.S. made a conscious decision years ago to put resources into hi-tech care that would help that 1 baby in 100 who is born prematurely. This makes sense for the richest 5-10% of society. They have enough money to guarantee a good diet, skilled and courteous prenatal care and a low-stress life experience. But the mass of working people, even if fed a lot, can count on being stressed out on the job (which they can’t afford to lose) and in coping with bill collectors, drug-infested neighborhoods and arrogant doctors who, if they see them at all, often treat them like dirt.
All of this is three times as bad if you are black. That’s why, as racism has grown and real wages have shrunk over the past 25 years, U.S. infant mortality statistics have deteriorated compared to other industrialized countries. Black babies used to have a 60% higher death rate than whites. Now it’s 130% higher. The U.S. used to rank 6th in the world for infant mortality rates. Now it ranks 22nd. But the U.S. is #1 in newborn intensive care beds.
Medical care under communism will be required less often because the causes of many stress-related diseases will no longer exist. But when a worker becomes sick or delivers a premature baby, the medical team will be there to serve them, not to use them for glory or profit as the big-shot specialists do today.
Hospital Comrade
A story versus material reality!
Dear Challenge:
Gephardt’s campaign is aimed at the industrial working class, especially white workers. [See Editorial, p.2] The non-college educated section of the working class make up 71% of the voters. They have deserted the Democratic Party in droves—going Republican, or to Perot or Buchanan. This reflects their anger at the attack that capitalism, because of its economic crisis, has made upon them.
While Gephardt’s campaign will be electoral, we should not be fooled by its form. Its content is aimed at the whole working class (even though non-voters are the majority). Its aim is to win the allegiance of the working class to the Rockefeller capitalists by presenting a "liberal story" about capitalism, while demonizing certain (i.e. non-Rockefeller) capitalists.
Just how cynical their message is can be glimpsed by reading Reclaiming Prosperity—the book produced by their think-tank, the Economic Policy Institute.
"The long-term political successes of both liberal and Democrats," they write, "will be determined by which story [our emphasis] voters believe about their eroding living standards." Capitalist Democracy is all about choice; some choice, Buchanan’s story of Rockefeller’s story!
In place of inventive stories the communist PLP looks squarely at material reality. It’s neither the Government, nor some particular capitalists that have eroded the standards and quality of working class life. It is the capitalist system as a whole. And the specific trigger is its sustained general crisis, marked by ever sharpening cries of overproduction.
Of course since Buchanan and Gephardt don’t talk about the real crisis, they cannot offer real solutions. Capitalism is the problem. Communism is the solution. Material reality, not stories will win the day. There is a massive angry working class out there. Our job is to organize it to make the revolution we need.
Observer
Global warming heats up capitalism’s contradictions
Dear Challenge:
The politics of the global climate treaty fiasco which has just ended in Japan demonstrate contradictions between Old and New Money, within Old Money forces, between global imperialists and the declining world position of the U.S., showing the anarchy of global capitalism.
The Kyoto agreement supposedly binds industrialized nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses by the year 2010. U.S. negotiators agreed to reductions of 7% below 1990 levels, Japan to 6%, and Europe to 15% below 1990 levels. Unlike the U.S. had originally insisted, developing nations will not participate in reductions. Less than 24 hours after this agreement, Vice President Gore said the White House would not even submit the treaty to the Senate until developing nations agreed to play a larger role!
What is going on!? Environmentalists are concerned that some gaseous by-products of industrial activity are accumulating in large enough quantities in the atmosphere to affect the climate, causing major weather changes including the melting of polar ice caps and subsequent flooding of low-lying coastal areas.
These greenhouse gasses prevent reflected solar rays from escaping into the atmosphere thus causing the underlying air to warm. However, bourgeois scientists do not fully understand the dynamics of the carbon cycle, and thus there are uncertainties about the possible consequences of increasing levels of greenhouse gasses. From a dialectical materialist point of view, quantities (small increases in carbon dioxide concentrations) do turn into qualities (increases in global temperature).
Decisions about greenhouse gasses are not being based on science. They are based on politics and on economic interests and the ruling class is now divided in these interests. Al Gore is supposed to be an environmentalist. Global warming is his "signature" issue. He is also a member of the ruling class, coming from a family that made its money in coal and iron production in Tennessee. He was sent to Kyoto when it looked like the talks might fail and when it became clear that the U.S. had no allies there. But Gore’s environmental constituency expected an agreement to be reached.
However as a representative of Old Money, Gore would not accept just any agreement. The reductions, though greater than what the U.S. wanted, are being criticized by some environmentalists as too small to stop global warming. The concession made by negotiators on involvement of developing countries does not appear to be one that Gore or the Senate, is willing to accept, because it means that industry there will be operating at a competitive advantage over U.S. industry. This is unacceptable in the current economic crisis.
Historically, the environmental movement has been used by Old Money against New. Old Money foundations spend $40 million annually supporting environmental organizations like the World Watch Foundation, Sierra Club, and Environmental Defense Fund, which support the reduction of greenhouse gasses. The largest fine ever levied under the Clean Water Act was against New Money giant Koch Industries for $55 million.
The division between Old Money and New is apparent in the alliances formed to address Global Warming. The Global Climate Coalition, consisting of 55 companies and trade associations in oil, coal, utilities, chemicals and auto, spends a million dollars annually for more studies before acting. The Global Climate Information Project, which spent around $15 million on TV ads warning of 50 cent/gallon taxes on gasoline if reductions are mandated, includes the National Association of Manufacturers, the Air Transport Association of America, the National Cattleman's and Beef Association, and the United Mine Workers of America.
Business support for climate accords came from The Business Council for Sustainable Energy, consisting of small companies looking to export new technologies for energy efficiency, and The International Climate Change Partnership, which includes GE, AT&T and Enron, the world's biggest natural gas company, which is venturing into solar energy with AMOCO.
Old Money does not unanimously support the treaty. The CEO of Exxon, speaking at the World Petroleum Conference in Beijing, called upon Asian countries to increase fossil fuel use and work with Exxon to oppose any international agreement on greenhouse gasses.
Workers and students who are concerned about environmental issues should understand that the environmental "movement" is used to co-opt thousands into following one politician or another. The only environmental reforms that will come under capitalism will be those that are in the interests of the dominant capitalist group. When we have a communist society will environmental policies be made in the interests of the international working class.
Red Prof
Dear Challenge:
The following letter was written by an Indian friend currently living in Europe. He has been corresponding by e-mail with me.—NYC Comrade
I wish you and PLP a fruitful new year in building class solidarity in the U.S. and elsewhere. I have gained a lot from our discussions over the Internet and I hope you have taken my criticisms as constructive even if some of them sounded pretty silly and amateur to you.
Let me tell you about the massacre in November of about 65 people in the state of Bihar where feudal landlords still call the shots. For many years, after the peasant uprising inspired by the Communist Party of India M-L, these landlords were attacked many times by the poor peasants. But in the last eight years or so the landlords have created their own private armies (Sena as they are known in Hindi). These goon squads in Bihar are called "Sunlight Sena," "Diamond Sena," "Ranvir Sena," etc. , It was the Ranvir Sena who massacred the 65 peasants, who were supposedly supporters of Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), the strongest Naxalite (Maoist) organization in Bihar.
There is also a division of castes here. The victims of Ranvir Sena were of the "lower caste," or the landless peasants, and workers who are forced to work under horrible conditions for wages as low as five to seven rupees a day.(15¢). These Dalits (low caste people) often look to the extreme left parties as their saviors against the rich upper caste landlords. The MCC has been able to force some changes in such conditions over the years.
A large part of North India is still in the clutches of feudal landlords. Their private armies also use guns to capture election booths and scare people into voting en masse for the candidates of the landlords. That is the kind of democracy we have.
To understand this you should also have a basic knowledge of caste system of hierarchies perpetrated by Hinduism from the old days. It is based on four classes: the priestly class, the ruling class of the kings, the trading class and the working class known as the shudras. Incidentally, most of the working class were considered low caste and even untouchable until about 45-50 years ago. After independence, realizing the voting potential of these people, they were divided into scheduled caste and tribes and given certain benefits like job reservations etc.
Even after all this in most parts of India, especially in the North, they continue to live in extreme poverty. The upper castes constitute only 7% of the total Hindu population in India. In the case of Bihar, the landless happen to be lower caste Dalits and the landlords happen to be upper caste Hindus.
Also take into consideration that such incidents are increasing in a bid to polarize the people along communal and caste lines as the general election scheduled for March comes closer.
Red Salute, SS
The following is taken from a letter recently sent to PLP from Germany.
Dear Challenge:
Today I’m going to a mass demonstration in Bonn. Tens of thousands of students are protesting. We have a base for Marxist-Leninist groups in several cities. PLP has some sympathizers in different places, and I consider myself a cadre.
The PLP Internet homepage needs to be improved. It needs more information about the theories of Marxism-Leninism. The Party must build mass, working class culture and institutions to fight against the fascists and support each other. Party members should struggle for revolution 24 hours each day and devote ourselves completely to the Party. This means building a well-rounded communist culture including films, theater, and ways of organizing for a communist world.
We are an organization of workers and students for a modern communist society. PLP must be a big tree with revolutionary roots in all parts of imperialist society. A mass Party PLP can crush U.S. imperialism with violence and build revolutionary struggle to destroy the old system all over the world!
German Comrade
Dear Challenge,
Once again the mouthpiece for the Rockefeller wing of the U.S. ruling class --the New York Times -- reveals the true nature of "democracy" as a dictatorship of the capitalist class. Two articles in the Dec. 15 issue about the financial crisis in Thailand. One, by chief foreign correspondent Robert Friedman, says that while "A majority of Thais still live in poverty....To participate in the global economy you have to have a well-managed country and democracy."
But now that the International Monetary Fund, led by U.S. bankers, has "offered" to bail out the Thai ruling class in exchange for opening up the country to more concentrated world capitalist exploitation, "The critical question," says Friedman, "is whether the Thais will ‘stick’ with ‘liberalization’ six months from now, after the crisis has created two million unemployed."
The Thai "financial miracle" has created millionaires at the top, because (says the report on page 6) "The role of the poor in the boom has been to create wealth." (Marx was right again.) One woman garment worker interviewed said she was making $3.50 a day but under the latest "liberalization" she has been left jobless and in debt.
Coming to work a few weeks ago, she saw a sign saying "Company Closed." With no place to go, and no money, the workers were left "sleeping on straw mats on the sidewalk by the factory gate." And "jobs are being lost by the hundreds of thousands."
Who has been exploiting this woman and her co-workers, in the name of "globalization" (read, imperialism)? Says the Times reporter, "She could not read the labels on the garments she made for GAP and Nike." So much for "democracy."
--A Brooklyn Comrade
Peace on Earth; Goodwill towards all: Not a capitalist motto: U.S. Rulers Need to Control Mideast Oil Will Make It Kill More Children
This holiday season U.S. imperialism continues to murder children—hundreds of thousands. The British medical journal, Lancet, reports 671,000 Iraqi children have perished because of the sanctions imposed at the end of the Gulf war.
While the U.S. bosses’ press censors the details, the wholesale annihilation of a generation of Iraqi working class youth continues unabated. Infant mortality has nearly doubled in the last six years—from 61 per thousand births in 1991 to 117 per thousand today. The number of children under five killed by respiratory infections, malnutrition and diarrheal illnesses has skyrocketed from 500 a month to 8,000 a month during the same period. Polluted drinking water has become the "deadliest weapon of mass destruction" in the Middle East leading to the reappearance of malaria and typhoid fever.
Officials responsible for United Nations relief operations, commonly known as the food-for-oil program, "recently reported that a million Iraqi children are suffering from stunted growth due to chronic malnutrition and that continuing deterioration is creating long-term problems that will affect several generations." (Le Monde Diplomatique, 12/97)
"The meager rations given to the Iraqis under the UN program were simply not enough," said Eric Falt, spokesman for the relief operations.
When confronted with this carnage, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright responded, "We knew we would have to pay a high price when we started this thing and we are willing to pay that price."
A Shaky Empire
Rockefeller & Co. wanted to invade Iraq to prop up its shaky empire, but ran into stiff resistance from its enemies abroad and at home. Former Secretary of State Henry KKKissinger complained of the "emerging Teheran-Moscow-Paris axis" that thwarted U.S. plans. This anti-U.S. axis got help from the deadly sanctions and the refusal of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to play ball for the Clinton/Rockefeller forces.
But the U.S. rulers have not given up their Mideast war plans. A.M. Rosenthal—former editor of Old Money’s mouthpiece, the New York Times—wants Clinton to blame Saddam for the death of the Iraqi children. "Get up there and tell the world who is killing the children!" orders Rosenthal employing the Hitlerite big lie technique (New York Times, 12/9/97).
War…By Any Other Name: Boeing Workers Talk About Sanctions
Unfortunately, for Rocky and Co. this lie rings hollow for many workers. One Boeing worker put it this way:
"What if two guys come to an intersection. One says to the other, ‘I will kill your kids if you don’t move.’ The other guy says, ‘O.K., kill my kids.’ A decent person would respond, ‘All right then, I won’t kill your kids.’ But not U.S. imperialism! They go on and kill the kids!"
If the history of the 20th century has taught us anything, it is that there is nothing the capitalists won’t do to secure their profits. Kissinger put it bluntly. Let’s be "honest with ourselves," he writes, "humanitarian sanctions are a contradiction in terms." More Iraqi children have been killed in this capitalist peace, than during the entire Gulf War.
Capitalism means millions starve so a few can profit. The billions in profit made in the last six years by Exxon and Mobil have been paid for with lives of millions of workers and their children. Competing capitalist oil firms like the French Total and the Russian Gazprom now want in on the action. This holocaust is only beginning. The logic of private profit must be replaced with the logic of production for workers’ need. Communist revolution is the only answer to the bosses’ genocide.
No Mistake
Many workers at Boeing—when they face the horror of the situation—see the sanctions as a mistake. "I originally supported the sanctions," said a friend, "but you just can’t go on killing kids. Clinton made a mistake, a miscalculation."
Many groups will call for the end of sanctions based on the idea that they are a mistake, but we should have no such illusions. We should tell our friends in these groups that the sanctions are no mistake, rather they are the outgrowth of the logic of capitalism. The logic of profit must be replaced with the logic of production for need. Communist revolution is the only answer to the bosses’ genocide.
Let Them Eat Bombs
UN chief Cofi Anan promised to propose an increase in the food-for-oil program in early January. France and Russia have already suggested the UN double the amount to $4 billion. Private groups in Europe and even the U.S. have brought medical supplies to Iraq, breaking the ban. Even arch-reactionary Farrakhan is getting into the act. He and his entourage of 50 have made the trek to Baghdad this holiday season. Noticeably absent from this crowd are the main line (Old Money) reformers and churches in the U.S.
But U.S. imperialism cannot just afford to stop murdering these children. As Kissinger puts it: let the Iraqi children eat bombs!
"We should refuse any modification in the food-for-oil program," he rants. "We should prepare for military action!"
Emotions rose when we discussed the sanctions on the Boeing shop floor—all to the good. The question of sanctions will continue to be in the forefront as the inter-imperialist battle for Middle Eastern oil heats up over the next two months. We should raise this issue in the unions, shops, welfare reform groups, schools and churches, etc. One thoughtful machinist showed how workers link this issue with their more local concerns. "The bosses’ cops killed four black kids in Los Angeles last week," he said. "This week the bosses will kill 6,500 kids in Iraq. When is it going to end!"
Genocide is synonymous with capitalism, genocide will only end when capitalism ends. Trying to do Goebbels one better, Clinton is planning to talk about making the 21st century safe for children in his January State-of-the-Union address. Clinton’s hands are dripping with the blood of children from around the globe. We should answer this executioner by building for communist revolution. The world’s children demand no less!
Movie Review -- Starship Troopers: Nazis in Space
Almost all Hollywood films are propaganda pieces, pushing empty, often dangerous capitalist values such as individualism, hedonism, greed, racism, sexism, and patriotism. Starship Troopers ushers in a completely new stage of propaganda, which parallels the movement towards fascism that the U.S. bosses are taking. It is, without question, the most blatantly fascist film that has ever come out of the American cinema. Symbols of Nazism are present throughout this movie. Although, in some instances, the filmmaker seems to ridicule its fascist tendencies, the overriding message is quite clear.
At the film’s outset, we are introduced to a military-style dictatorship with several parallels to Nazi-era Germany. Its flag is an eagle, a familiar symbol of Nazism. Its population is divided into two categories, "citizens," or those who undertake military service, and "civilians"—"citizens" are clearly superior. Also, it is no coincidence that the beginning of this film is set in Buenos Aires, and that most of the major characters hail from there. Argentina was a popular retreat for Nazi war criminals. The young, Americanized, fair-skinned, fair-haired heroes and heroines could very well have been the descendants of Nazis. They believe in the rulers’ fascist ideology unquestioningly, and they all strive to be citizens. It is clearly the intent of the filmmaker to make the audience sympathize with these storm troopers in training.
The hated and feared enemy of this regime is an alien race of "bugs". The propaganda machine states clearly that it is the intent of the government to obliterate these "bugs" and take over their planet. The propaganda machine states that they are attempting to "infest" humankind. Needless to say, the Nazi portrayal of the Jews was similar to this literal menace of horrifying giant mutant insects, and the language used by the Nazis to describe the Jews was identical.
A conflict is provoked when a young pilot flies into alien space on a military maneuver. The aliens respond by launching an asteroid onto Earth, destroying Buenos Aires. A great deal of government propaganda propels our young "heroes" into action. They suffer heavy casualties before their eventual victory. Their "valorous" efforts are seen as honorable, and their conquest is celebrated. Of course, the pilot who started the war in the first place feels no remorse for her actions, and she and her commanders are never censured.
Which leads us to one decidedly modern twist that reflects a vision that the original novel’s author, Robert Heinlein, shares with the U.S. bosses. According to Nazi propaganda, it was the woman’s duty to be baby makers for the Reich. Starship Troopers reflects a more modern view of fascism:
Women fight alongside men (and even shower with them, in a scene that is reminiscent of the Nazi glorification of the body). It is the need of U.S. fascists to have a working-class, multi-racial, mixed-gender military to do their bidding, and they are willing to use the tactics of their Nazi forbears to achieve it.