Challenge, Oct. 14, 1998

EDITORIAL: Evil? Yes! Lesser? No! Clinton Is No Friend to Black and Women Workers

LETTERS

Dinner Raises Funds For Garfield Park Six

Why Workers Must Understand The Crisis of Overproduction

What Is To Fear?

When bosses fight among themselves, it would be a deadly mistake for the working class to take sides. Last week we explained why we think that Bill Clinton’s fate makes little or no difference to our class. Our fight is for communism.

Does Bill Clinton’s fate make any particular difference to the future of black, Latin, Asian or women workers? Both the pro-and anti-Clinton forces and the bosses’ mass media are trying hard to make us think so. In fact, they have made a big effort during the past few weeks to portray black and women workers as the most loyal and forgiving supporters of Bill Clinton. Several things appear to be going on here.

First, the leadership of most black, Latin, Asian, and women’s mass organizations (churches, Congressional Black Caucus, NOW, etc.) is pretty solidly allied with pro-Clinton sectors of the ruling class. These bosses’ flunkies misrepresent the attacks on Clinton as assaults by right wing extremists on a President who has been a friend of minority and women workers. So it is no big surprise that they have proclaimed their readiness to forgive and move on.

The Nobel prize winning black novelist, Toni Morrison, went even further. In the New Yorker magazine she claimed that Clinton is under attack because he is "our first black President." This fake-radical scribbler turns out to be just another Clinton apologist.

Second, the forces who have attacked Clinton are themselves profoundly racist and sexist, and their self-styled moral crusade fools few black workers. The Republican forces that initiated the attacks on Clinton have almost no supporters among the most oppressed workers, many of whom think that even a stupid sexist Clinton is a "lesser evil" than the forces trying to get rid of him.

Third, the bosses’ mass media appear to be making a particular effort to portray black people as easily duped by white politicians. They extensively covered Clinton’s friendly reception at a gala dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus. They took note of the public appeals made by Democratic women politicians to let Clinton get on with "doing the job he was elected to do." This cynical strategy of having black and women politicians defend a racist and sexist President conveys a double-edged message. Either you should support Clinton because he still has minority and women workers’ support. Or, you should oppose Clinton because he only has minority and women workers’ support.

Does keeping Bill Clinton in the White House protect minority and women workers from something even worse? We don’t think so.

• This same Clinton who objected to making his sex life public signed the welfare reform Personal Responsibility Act. It forces poor women to name the father of their children as a condition for receiving welfare, and it has forced millions off welfare into low wage jobs and slave labor workfare.

• This same Clinton who says he wants to preserve affirmative action has just issued a report on his yearlong White House Initiative on Race. Even his friends say it is an utterly useless document that makes pathetically weak recommendations. When Clinton and his friends like Jesse Jackson speak in defense of affirmative action, they say that it is a national security issue. That is, if the rulers expect black soldiers to die for U.S. imperialism, the system has to pretend to offer a few opportunities.

• This same Clinton "apologized" for the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which the U.S. government withheld treatment from hundreds of black men infected with syphilis from the 1930’s up to the 1970’s. Yet during the Clinton years, HMO’s have withheld treatment from millions, and over 40 million lack health insurance.

• This same Clinton played saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show to pretend he is down with black youth. Yet he has funneled billions of dollars to federal, state, and local governments to hire more cops, build more prisons, put more working class youth in prison for longer sentences, and put them in slave labor programs while in prison.

• This same Clinton made a trip to Africa where he said that slavery wasn’t so wonderful, claiming to promote democracy and economic prosperity. Yet every stop on his trip was a hoax. In Ghana he hailed economic growth, but free market structural adjustment in Ghana is impoverishing most Ghanaian workers and farmers. He supported the anti-AIDS campaign in Uganda, but structural adjustment has compelled African states to shut hospitals and curtail health care in order to shrink government expenditures. Meanwhile, imperialist super-exploitation is responsible for the concentration of some two-thirds of all known AIDS cases in Africa.

• This same Clinton, during a three-hour trip to Rwanda, apologized for the U.S. failure to intervene to prevent the 1994 genocide in which over half a million Rwandans were slaughtered. Yet Bill Clinton had been informed in advance by the CIA that this genocide was going to occur. His response was to order officials in his administration not to use the word "genocide," because its use would legally obligate the U.S. under the UN Genocide Convention to intervene to stop it. Can there be a more grotesque example of Clinton’s racist hypocrisy?

In sum, Clinton has made symbolic gestures to cover his miserable, lying racist policies. All these policies serve the bosses’ drive to stave off their crisis of overproduction by stepping up their super-exploitation of minority and women workers. That is "the business of running the country" that Clinton supporters want him to "get back to." Clinton is not a progressive alternative to conservatives and rightists. These terms confuse and mislead us into making a deadly mistake by supporting Clinton as a "lesser evil." The divisions in the ruling class between pro- and anti-Clinton forces are only about the different reasons and strategies to build fascism. The Clintonite forces need fascism to mobilize workers to accept an impending global depression and to fight in the world war that the bosses will launch to try to get out of that depression.

Like our entire class, black and women workers have nothing to gain and everything to lose by defending Clinton or allying with him. On the other hand, workers also have nothing to gain by supporting any of the forces trying to get rid of him. All of them—from Ken Starr to Pat Buchanan to the New Money billionaires of the domestic Oil Patch to Louis Farrakhan to the Rockefeller imperialists—are out only to feather their own profit nests. They are all our enemies. Our view of them should be: Evil? Yes! Lesser? No! Smash all bosses!

It is becoming increasingly evident that the options facing all workers are either to get sucked into the bosses’ fascist movements or to join the Progressive Labor Party and fight for a communist world.

Families of Police Murder Victims Help Lead PLP March

BRONX, Oct. 3 — Today, 60 demonstrators protested the murder of José Luis Zareta, a Mexican immigrant restaurant worker. He was shot on July 18th by racist cops William Maher and David Power of the 43rd precinct. In the early morning hours some drunk diners in the El Maguey II restaurant began fighting with restaurant employees. José Luis called the cops and went to help his co-workers. When he went to the front of the restaurant he found a gun on the floor that he picked up to put away where no one would use it. It was then that these racist cops showed up and asking no questions, shot Jose Luis dead.

This demonstration was the result of the PLP’s work in community mass organizations. When José Luis was murdered, the PLP Summer Project responded by leafleting in front of the El Maguey II restaurant. We visited José Luis’ widow and his brother and began to plan a response. Twenty-five people, including members of José Luis’ family, came on our first march. At a later meeting organized by PLP members of the family planned more actions. Two of José Luis’ cousins agreed to distribute flyers in their churches and communities announcing a rally. One of José Luis’ brothers, and a newly recruited PLP high school student agreed to write another leaflet.

José Luis’ brothers went with other friends and members of PLP to a fund-raising dinner held by the Anthony Baez Foundation. Anthony Baez was murdered by KKKop Frances Lavoti in the Bronx four years ago and we met his family then. But it was at a rally organized by a Brooklyn organization called Parents Against Police Brutaliy that we again met the Baez family.

Because several comrades have been active in this group we were not only welcomed at this dinner, but José Luis’ brothers spoke about our communist-led march, and we distributed leaflets and Challenges. We also met a parent whose son, Anthony Rosario was also killed by a cop. He is a member of Parents Against Police Brutality and agreed to help build for our demonstration. He said that he would bring the group’s banner.

The march on Saturday was attended by high school students and teachers from the Bronx, Brooklyn and Westchester County. More members of Jose Luis’ family came, members of the Anthony Baez Foundation, members of Parents Against Police Brutality, and the parents of Anthony Rosario came with a large banner that attacked police brutality. The Rosario’s, the Baez’s, and the Zarate’s were all in the front of our march exhibiting spirit and anger towards the racist cop terror that killed the members of their family.

We rallied in front of the restaurant where Jose Luis was murdered and marched up and down Westchester Avenue. Hundreds of Challenges and over 2,000 leaflets were distributed. People welcomed our march with applause, handshakes, "high five’s" and chanting along with us from the sidelines. The community we marched in is one that has been constantly terrorized by the cops. Almost everybody we talked to knew somebody that has been beaten, brutalized or killed by the cops.

We continued to the 43^rd Precinct where the KKKops Maher and Power are stationed, where we rallied and several communist and non-communists spoke including the families of the murder victims. One cousin ended with the rallying cry of "We will be back!".

We are learning how to bring communist ideas to people in these organizations in a mass way, struggling about our differences as comrades. The discussions with people over what to chant, what to say in speeches or even what order to march in have been open and positive.

The struggle against the racist cops who murdered Jose Luis murder is not over. In this struggle we will grow and turn this movement to one for communist revolution.

Children, Yes! Experiments, No! March Against Racist Research

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 4 — "Children, yes. Experiments, no. Racist research has got to go," "Niños, si. Racismo, no. Paren experimentos," chanted protesters who marched in Washington Heights to the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) today. Over 1,500 leaflets were distributed in the community warning working class families of the racist research going on at the Institute.

Studies headed by Gail Wasserman and Daniel Pine, of Columbia University, at the NYSPI, and Jeffrey Halperin, of Queens College, at Mt. Sinai Hospital, used black and Latin boys in experiments to find "biological markers" for aggression and future violence. Similar studies (as so far known) are ongoing until 2003 at these institutions with grants in part from the federal National Institute of Mental Health.

According to a public relations advertisement that white washed the hospital, which appeared in the New York Times, (10/4), the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center has spent $1.3 billion since the late 1980’s to upgrade its facility(New York Times 10/4). Columbia Presbyterian has spread its tentacles wide in the Washington Heights community. In 1921 Presbyterian Hospital joined with the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons to build the medical center. This year a new building opened which houses the NYSPI. The Institute, run by the New York State Office of Mental Health, is affiliated with the college.

The $79 million Institute is a six story building divided into South and North wings. The South wing has "22 beds for upper Manhattan residents, 36 beds for research programs and out-patient centers like an anxiety disorders clinic, a depression evaluation service and a children’s day program. The North part is largely for laboratories." (NY Times 10/4). Richard Herman, the administrator of the Washington Heights community service, which cares for 950 mostly impoverished immigrants from Upper Manhattan, says patients are "thrilled" with the new Institute. (NYT 10/4).

Maybe some. But as a woman in Upper Manhattan said to the October 4th protesters, "Columbia Presbyterian is where you can die waiting for emergency service or where they do research on you."

Thousands of workers have expressed alarm and anger as they learn of the racist research at the NYSPI, the fascist nature of biological determinist "science" and the complicity of city officials from the New York City Department of Probation and the Bronx special education department of the Board of Education who provided names of boys for researchers. Organizers of the October 4th protest plan to lead teach-ins and discussions in a number of schools, universities and churches in Harlem and Upper Manhattan.

Communists in PLP are focusing on building a base in this movement by thoroughly exposing growing capitalist crisis as the ruling class lunges towards fascism and war. We aim to expand and intensify the class struggle. We need to strengthen communist collectives to recruit new communists within the movement and train them for leadership. There are many questions about how to accomplish our goals. There is no better way to learn than by doing it.

Challenge has learned that on November 7th Daniel Pine, Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, will be speaking on "Psychobiology and Pharmacotherapy of Anxiety Disorders in Youth." His remarks are part of a program sponsored by the Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics and the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry supported in part by an "unrestricted educational grant from Solvay Pharmaceuticals" to be held at the Hotel Pennsylvania at 33rd Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan. We’ll be there!

OAKLAND, CA, Oct. 5 — ATU 192 (Transit Union) is engaging rank-and-file workers in a flurry of activity. The Union leadership has appointed workers to attend various conferences and workshops on safety, conflict resolution, workplace violence, workfare and others. They’ve even endorsed job actions—like the upcoming Safety Days—which attempt to fight tight, stressful schedules by having drivers slow down to the speed limit and strictly follow other safety rules. This represents a change from a primarily legalistic union strategy that discouraged rank-and-file action.

Many more workers are becoming involved in these activities than ever before. It has given communists at AC the opportunity to discuss the impossibility of reform under capitalism and the necessity for revolution. And we’ve seized this opportunity. A small PLP faction has developed and promises to grow. The new supporters bring a wealth of past revolutionary experience while reflecting our own development too.

Our first meetings examined the world crisis, capitalist instability and capitalist preparations for war. It was from this perspective that we discussed how to join in the upcoming Union activities.

Most activist workers are not aware of it—but they are being used—and they should be pissed off. The union leaders have a hidden agenda. They want to look legitimate so workers will vote for the Democrats whose policies include extending fascist workfare, hiring 100,000 more cops and building more prisons, as well as war for oil profits. They want workers to support capitalism in its period of crisis by actively administrating fascist policies such as workfare hiring, and the monitoring of youth fare evasion and vandalism.

We are involved in the "Safety Day" struggle. Our point of unity with workers is to fight the impossible schedules maintained by AC Transit for decades. They lead to killing by stress (two women drivers, one in her late 30’s and the other age 51, have recently died from heart attack and stroke, respectively), bad backs and legs, accidents, and altercations with passengers and co-workers. We agree that direct class struggle against the bosses can energize workers.

Our point of struggle is that the Union is not serious about challenging the bosses but wants to appear militant. The Union contract has never specifically guaranteed decent running, layover or lunch-break time. Fixing the schedules will require AC bosses to add many more buses and jobs that will cost millions of dollars. The crisis-ridden capitalists won’t spend millions of dollars on higher workers’ wages or decent services for low-paid workers and the unemployed. Clinton and the Democrats have eliminated all Federal operating subsidies (wages and benefits). They are satisfied if stressed-out drivers carry workers crammed into buses like cattle. They also don’t want more $19/hr bus drivers at the same time they expect new auto workers to work for $12/hr.

We want to push this struggle beyond the limits imposed by the Union to show workers that the Union is essentially a defender of capitalism We are struggling with our friends and supporters to take safety really seriously. Without a mass revolutionary communist Party this capitalist system is deadly and dangerous to the working class every day of our lives.

Worker Dies of Worse Disease: Capitalism

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 6 — Maria died a few days ago. Since she was a garment worker her name won’t be mentioned in the bosses’ media. Officially her death certificate will state that she died of pneumonia. But her family and coworkers know that pneumonia was just the end result. The real cause was a blow she received about three months ago while working in the shipping department of Mr. O’s garment factory.

The blow affected her chest, her neck and her back, making it difficult for her to breathe. When she came down with a bad flu, her lungs couldn’t work properly and the flu turned into pneumonia and eventually killed her. "Carelessness! Plain and simple, carelessness!" some would say. "Why didn’t she go to the doctor in time?" Because Mr. O didn’t provide her, or any of his more than 150 workers, with any health insurance. And with her meager salary and the high cost of doctors, it would be a luxury to go see a doctor just because of an injured knee. Besides, she would have had to ask the foreman for time off and he was a despot that reported workers to the office for taking extra minutes in the bathroom!

In retrospect, we could come up with many things that Maria could have or not have done. But the sad reality is that she is dead. A victim of Mr. O’s, and the capitalist system’s greed that allows a few exploiters to amass huge fortunes while countless workers go without even the most basic necessities of life. This is was what doomed Maria to a premature death.

But Maria is not the first and she won’t be the last victim. World capitalism is in the throes of a profound crisis of overproduction that is inflicting death and misery on the world’s workers. Hoping to sell more than his competitor, the bosses produce more than what the market can absorb. The stores are overflowing with clothes and there is no end to the "Sales." The competition is tough. The bosses who can sell cheaper will survive, the others will be eliminated. This means lowering the piece rate, not paying the minimum wage, not giving any benefits; and when this is not enough, moving the factories overseas where they can pay $2 to $3 a day.

This is what Mr. O did—he moved his factory to Aguascalientes, Mexico. Mr. O will save millions and Calvin Klein for whom he is a contractor, will also save millions but more important he will be able undersell the competition. But other factories like Guess have also moved to Mexico. Thus the competition sharpens, forcing them to look for even cheaper labor or to lower the wages of already low paid workers. It is a vicious circle, in which workers are being driven more and more into the depths of the most hideous exploitation and poverty.

Mr. O made a couple million dollars profit last year. He left for Mexico, leaving Maria and his 150 workers to fend for themselves. Mr. O began his factory with very little and ended up a millionaire. For the more than 12 years of her life that she gave to Mr. O, all she got was an injury that took her to her grave. The rest of the workers ended up on the streets. Mr. O had no problem moving to Mexico. Maria’s family is having a hard time paying for the funeral expenses and sending the body to her native Honduras. But her co-workers are helping raise this money, acting like a large, united family. And they’re deepening their understanding of this rotten system.

A CEO of a large corporation, as he announced plans for layoffs and budgets cuts, had this to say, "When it comes to money there are no friends or relatives. Money goes where it is treated best." This could also be said of Mr. O and all garment bosses. A system that treats money better than workers doesn’t deserve to exist. Maria’s case should serve as a wake up call to the need to join PLP to put an end to this system where workers will always be wage slaves and cannon fodder for the bosses’ imperialist wars to control the world’s markets.

Visit To Flint, MI: Communists Welcomed To Auto ‘Country’

FLINT, MI, Oct. 5 — Last weekend, members of PLP from Detroit and Chicago combined forces to visit GM autoworkers here. We were inspired by the welcoming arms of many interested workers. We had discussions which focused on the need for communist revolution in order to solve workers’ problems. This experience showed us how open workers are to the Party’s ideas, and how important it is to follow-up the contacts we make on the picket line and in the plants.

Since the settlement of the Flint GM strike last July, conditions have deteriorated. Older workers are being made to do multiple jobs, including working on the assembly line. Those hurt on the job must return to work or risk being denied all pay and benefits. Job accidents are always blamed on the workers. A worker with 33 years on the job told us: "The bosses are making us police ourselves by using the team concept. This means that if a group of 7 out of 12 on a team decide you are not working hard enough, they can have you transferred out. The union and the bosses are working together to screw us over. Give me 15 or 20 Challenges, and I’ll give them out at work. I used to be active in the union, but I dropped out. I could tell that the union was not helping the workers."

Another worker said: "I took a Challenge from someone on the picket line and read it. I passed it around to some of the guys in the plant." When we asked him to take some new Challenges and leaflets, he said: "Sure, I’ll take ten papers."

The crisis of overproduction is causing the automakers to compete in a life-and-death struggle for the highest profits. This conflict will lead to war and the slaughter of millions of workers. Winning more autoworkers to PLP will help speed the day when we can crush these warmakers and establish a communist society that is organized to meet the needs of the working class. Autoworkers are preparing for a strike next year, when their contract expires. We think that the best preparation for them would be to join PLP. We will continue to visit them to make sure this happens.

MEXICO CITY, Oct. 3 — The student movement of 1968 was the second largest mass movement n Mexico this century. Only the armed movement of 1910 to 1922, which left a million dead, was larger. In 1968, hundreds of thousands participated mainly students, but also teachers, squatters and workers. The movement started against police repression and turned into a struggle for democracy, for "national liberation" and against the PRI (the ruling party) dictatorship.

The year was marked with mass student movements all over the world, inspired by the Cuban revolution and the workers’ struggle in Vietnam against the U.S. invasion. In Mexico there had been several significant strikes of railroad workers, doctors and teachers during the years prior to 1968. These strikes were mass and militant, but they ended by being attacked by the police and the army—their leaders jailed. To a large extent, these workers’ strikes sowed the seeds for the rebellion against the PRI dictatorship, exposing it as an accomplice of U.S. imperialism.

The movement lasted three months. The Mexican Communist Party tailed the masses from the beginning. Thousands of students gave life to the movement by going out every day with literature to all sections of Mexico City, in the neighborhoods, in the markets, and outside the factories. Little by little the movement attracted the workers. The Olympics were to be held in Mexico City in the following weeks and would be converted into a showcase confronting the government before the eyes of the world. Diaz Ordaz and Echeverria, who led the government, with advisors from the CIA, decided to stop the movement by killing 700 students and jailing their leaders.

By then, the worldwide communist movement had become a revisionist mummy and gave no leadership or continuity to the movement against our capitalist oppressors. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of students, who didn’t find any alternative except that of Che Guevara Focist theory of revolution, spent the whole decade of the ’70s involved in the guerrilla groups.

Today, even those who were most rabidly opposed to that movement, like the PRI and Televisa are now condemning the massacre that took place at Tlatelolco. Why? Because by canonizing the 1968 student movement they think they can win students and workers to participate in the Mexican bosses’ electoral circus, to draw them away from a truly revolutionary communist alternative. Also, that movement is now being praised to the sky by the bosses because there is an internal power struggle. The whole blame of the massacre is being placed on Echeverria, the Secretary of State who ordered the massacre, whom they are now trying to get rid of because he heads a bourgeois group inside the PRI that is opposed to the current ruling clique.

Because Mexico City’s government, headed by Cuactemoc Cardenas, has some members who were student leaders in 1968, and also because Cardenas is preparing to run for president in 2000, the City Hall declared a national day of mourning and stood at the commemorating ceremonies taking credit for the struggle. The fascist PRI and PAN parties have had to follow suit condemning the massacre, to prevent the PRD from stealing all the credit.

The struggle for democracy and the formation of new electoral parties have brought no benefits to the workers and students. On the contrary, the army imposes its control in the states of Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca. The UN and Amnesty International have listed Mexico as one of the countries where human rights are systematically violated and where the majority of its population live in extreme poverty.

The demonstration this year commemorating the massacre was huge. PLP was there distributing Challenge, putting forward the communist alternative that was lacking in 1968. To get off the treadmill of elections, workers and students need to join PLP and help build the fight for communism to take power away from these bosses once and for all.

How Fidel Betrayed the 1968 Student Movement

The Mexican student movement of 1968 began with a demonstration in Mexico City on July 26th. Some students wanted to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the armed assault on the Moncada Army Post in Santiago de Cuba, Fidel Castro’s first attempt to overthrow the dictator Batista. The demonstration was attacked by the cops. The students demonstrated again. The more they got attacked by the cops, the more the student movement grew.

Fearing that gigantic demonstrations would prevent the Olympics scheduled in October from taking place, the then President Diaz Ordaz ordered his Secretary of State Luis Echeverria to drown the demonstration in blood. The result was the Massacre of Tlatelolco.

Mexico was the only Latin American country that had diplomatic relations with Cuba. But with this massacre the liberal Mexican bourgeoisie was removing its liberal mask and revealing its fascist iron fist. For his own political and economic reasons, Fidel kept silent about this criminal act. But, he did something even worse, he supported the Mexican bosses by guaranteeing the participation of the Cuban athletic delegation in the Olympics.

Years later, having been paid off with the presidency for carrying out the massacre, Echeverria visited Cuba and Fidel gave him the red carpet treatment. And Fidel even gave him the Medal of José Marti, the highest honor given to heroes of the Cuban people. This is a small example that Fidel always was a bourgeois opportunist politician disguised as a revolutionary. It is also a reflection of how opportunist the old communist movement had become. PLP is building a new international communist movement based on fighting all capitalists.

Ecuador: PLP Fights to Turn General Strike Into School for Communism

Ecuador: PLP Fights to Turn General Strike Into Schools for Communism

ECUADOR—The capitalist crisis of overproduction, particularly the oil glut, has made life even more miserable for workers here. It has also sharpened the infighting among different bosses.

In February, 1997, President Bucaram was forced to quit and leave the country after the U.S. embassy and local capitalists became angry at his plan to give part of the nation’s oil to some of his buddies. He was succeeded by Alarcón, a loyal puppet of U.S. imperialism and local capitalists. In the Spring of 1998, elections were held and a new President came to power. As soon as President Mahuad took office he followed the IMF’s and the World Bank’s orders to pay off its debt to imperialist banks. Mahuad imposed price increases on gas and fuel, mass layoffs of government workers and cutbacks on social services.

Workers and students immediately began to fight back. A general strike was called on October 1st demanding an end to Mahuad’s austerity package. Workers and students in the cities, along with people from the Indian communities, protested. The government sent cops and the army to attack workers and students. Three workers were killed, 10 were injured and hundreds were arrested. But the bosses did not only rely on brute force, they also used their agents to cool down the anger of the population. Union hacks did everything to keep the protests peaceful. The bosses’ press did its best to pretend that the protests were peaceful, saying that only a few "hot heads" reacted violently.

But the reality is that mass anger is growing. Workers, peasants and students are fed up with the bosses’ attacks. The small PLP grouping here did its best to spread communist ideas. We gave out 10,000 leaflets and several comrades gave leadership to different groups of demonstrators. But we need more struggles and more communists to turn these strikes into schools for communism to dump all the bosses and their imperialism once and for all.

MOSCOW, Oct. 7—The general strike organized by trade unions affiliated with Zyuganov’s "Communist"Party (CP) of the Russian Federation did not turn our as big as expected. But still thousands demonstrated in cities all over Russia demanding the resignation of Yeltsin and an end to the misery of the lives of most Russian workers. There were more young demonstrators than in the past. The main roadblock to fight the hell capitalism has brought to workers here is Zyuganov’s fake CP and the union hacks. Their aim is not to a worker-led society but to to offer workers some illusions about a "better capitalism," so that they can support the capitalist faction Zyuganov supports.

Hedge Fund: No Merry Weather Under Capitalism

After the I929 stock market crash, the economic-apologists for capitalism analyzed that the markets crashed because they were largely unregulated. Led by Keynes and others, they made rules that would supposedly prevent further severe crashes and economic melt down. The Federal Reserve Board and other government intervention would keep the fluctuation in the market within limits that can be handled.

John Meriwether’s hedge fund recently collapsed almost causing a worldwide economic meltdown before the major banks bailed it out. What is a hedge fund? It is precisely an investment pool of the very wealthiest parasites which is outside these rules and regulations—so that it is free to gamble huge amounts of money, much of it borrowed from the world’s biggest banks, on tiny changes in the markets. Meriwether and friends thought they could buy low and sell high, betting that the markets would go back to "normal" prices. Said Sunday’s New York Times (10/4), "In normal times, this works...it’s just that these aren’t normal times...they didn’t predict the continued lack of confidence in the economy." They didn’t predict the worldwide crisis of overproduction.

The explanations for the financial crisis in Asia ("crony capitalism"), Russia ("run by the Mafia"), Brazil and Mexico (don’t know how to manage their money), and now in the U.S. would be funny, except for the fact that these crises have ruined the lives of millions of workers worldwide, much as a war does. Hunger and malnutrition are rampant, form Russia to Mexico to Thailand. "Nobody’s in charge" whined the New York Times. Capitalist mouthpieces have said that world leaders aren’t dynamic enough, that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) needs major changes. Clinton is proposing that the IMF open a new avenue of credit to save emerging markets. U.S. rulers are fighting to keep their dominance while The European calls on European leaders to take the lead to "save" the global economy. The 100-day countdown to launch the euro as Europe’s monetary unit has begun. "Some of the citadels of American power are shaken, and the Europeans are now in a position to be a check and balance on American influence," said Stephan-Gotz Richter, a consultant to track European and American relations (New York Times, 10/7).

Clinton’s plan to extend more credit to emerging nations will mean further superexploitation of the workers in the U.S. and throughout the world to pay the bill. There will be greater debt burdens on workers. The bosses may resort to printing money and cause high inflation.

Henry Kissinger wrote in the LA Times called for structural changes in the IMF to regulate investors, to soften the devastating effects of speculation, and austerity measures.

But none of these explanations is correct, and none of the solutions will solve these problems. They will not bring stability to world capitalist markets, and they most certainly won’t bring good jobs, or enough food, housing and medical care to the workers of the world.

The problem isn’t that John Meriwether is a cocky asshole, or that he bet wrong or even that he was too greedy (all of which is true). The problem is that the capitalist mode of production makes crisis inevitable.

The world economy is experiencing a deepening crisis of overproduction. Because of cutthroat competition for maximum profits, manufacturers have mechanized more and more. They need more and more capital to produce goods, and they have to sell more of them to make a profit. Big companies merge to better compete against the others. There are fewer auto manufacturers today that in the past 25 years, for example. Only two major aerospace companies exist today, and Airbus has overcome Boeing in the production of commercial airplanes. Workers cannot buy all these products. Fewer investors are investing in production—more invest in speculation, because in production they face a declining rate of profit (return on investment). In speculation, they have been able to make a fast return on their investment. Speculation may have produced huge temporary profits for the investors, but it has left much of the world in deep crisis, as the investors first saturate a market with their investments, and then pull out their money, leaving banks and business to become bankrupt, laying off thousands of workers, impoverishing millions. The bosses will increase their fascist attacks on the workers of the world.

The debacle of Meriwether’s Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) will create more capitalist instability. It has left the main wing of the U.S. ruling class weaker in competition with their rivals. The euro and the dollar will be locked in sharpening competition to dominate the world’s capitalist system. Said Walter Russell Mead (senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations) "the main result of the 1929 stock market crash wasn’t the loss off money—it was the loss of blood...World War II...When economic crisis and collapse appear, all the rules change". The bosses ultimate solution to capitalist instability is fascism and war. But by the end of World War II, the bosses’ main worry was that the communist movement threatened world capitalism. Millions of workers followed the leadership of and joined the communist movement as the only solution to the horrors of capitalism.

For the working class today, trying to make capitalism work is like tying a noose around our own necks. The liberal union leaders don’t prepare us to fight for our class in the face of the bosses’ deepening crisis of overproduction. Capitalism is hurling workers into more poverty and war. The future of the world’s workers depends on building the revolutionary communist PLP. Only communist revolution can end capitalist crisis by eliminating production for profit. Communism is a system of collective production and distribution to meet the needs of the world’s workers. Capitalism is a system of dog-eat-dog competition to meet the needs of a tiny group of bloodthirsty parasites. It has to be destroyed before it destroys us!

BOOK REVIEW

Alexander Saxton, The Great Midland, University of Illinois Press, 1997

In 1948, Alexander Saxton, a carpenter and member of the U.S. Communist Party (CP), wrote this unique novel, one that accurately and sympathetically describes the lives of three CP members active in the struggles of the 1930’s and early 1940’s. There are militant strikes of CIO unions fighting for recognition, on-the-job battles against racial discrimination, the fight against fascism—as well as the anti-sexist struggle to maintain a marriage between committed Reds who often have too little time for one another.

Pledger McAdams, a veteran of WWI, is a black worker for the Great Midland Company in Chicago. Pledger’s reward for fighting in an imperialist war is to be attacked by a white mob during the Chicago race riots of 1919, and then be demoted from his skilled job. Blacks, not just on the railroads but in steel and every other industry, were excluded from the better jobs and were not permitted to be members of the AFL unions. It is small wonder, then, that Pledger distrusts whites.

Years later, in the 1930’s, Pledger meets Dave Spaas, a young member of the CP in his early twenties, who wants Pledger and his friends to work with him and other white workers in an Unemployed Council. Pledger initially refuses, but then watches Dave’s tireless efforts, on behalf of both blacks and whites, to stop evictions, organize rent strikes, and demand greater relief benefits. After a while, he and Dave become close friends and Pledger also joins the CP, and becomes a teacher in the Communist Party’s Chicago school.

Dave travels to Spain to fight in the International Brigades against the fascists in Spain. When he returns, he also gets a job at the Great Midland, where he and Pledger start a campaign for higher wages, organize railroad workers to support a nearby CIO strike, and work to have black workers accepted into the union and be promoted to the better jobs in the yard. The novel has a thrilling description of a militant, mass demonstration to stop the entry of scabs in the nearby can factory, and it also describes tumultuous meetings at which angry workers take on their sellout union leaders.

Stephanie Koviak, who is married to Dave, is also a member of the CP. Although she teaches classes at the CP school, and is a member of a neighborhood CP branch, Stephanie is wracked with doubt and confusion. Her father and brother work in the railyard and Stephanie wants a world without capitalist exploitation. Yet she is also a scientist and dreams of escaping the class struggle and obtaining a safe teaching job at the University. She admires Dave for his dedication and perseverance, yet questions whether the personal sacrifices involved—loss of time together, being fired, get beaten by the police—is worth it. As the struggle intensifies, Stephanie and Dave’s marriage is deeply threatened.

The weaknesses of the novel are the weaknesses of the old CP movement that PLP is trying to avoid. Saxton himself admits "there is not much about socialism in The Great Midland." He’s right and that’s a shame, because it reflects the fact that CP members like Pledger, Dave and Stephanie dedicated countless hours to building unions and fighting for reforms and not much time explaining to other workers that the primary goal is to destroy capitalism and build a society that is organized to meet the needs of the working class. Failure to do this meant that these admirable activists, like Saxton himself, weren’t prepared for the redbaiting and blacklisting of the 1950’s, during which time the Communist Party began to wither.

The great strength of The Great Midland, however, is that, without hiding any of the difficulties involved in participation in the class struggle, it dispels cynicism about the possibilities of organizing large numbers of workers in a class-conscious fight against racism. Indeed, it restores to us crucial moments in the history of the U.S. working class that are stolen from us by the bourgeois history books, which particularly make a point of obscuring the crucial role played by communists in the U. S. anti-racist struggle. Another strength is that the novel shows how the life of a communist is rendered deeper and more emotionally rewarding through participation in the struggle to make a better world. Anti-communist stereotypes of reds as hard-bitten, uncaring and manipulative bite the dust for readers of this novel.

A System with 1 Billion Jobless Must Be Smashed

"Give free rein to the free market," say the bosses and their media "and all will be well with the world." "Well" for whom? The capitalist free market has produced unemployment or underemployment for more than one billion workers—one-third of the world’s labor force; 150 million workers are without jobs and another 900 million involuntarily work part-time or are paid less than a living wage. (Report of the UN’s International Labor Organization)

Meanwhile, the world’s 225 richest individuals have a combined wealth exceeding ONE TRILLION DOLLARS, equaling the income of the poorest 47% of the entire world population! (New York Times, 9/27) That 47% includes those one billion unemployed and underemployed. Get the connection? These 225 bloodsuckers (60 are in the U.S. with assets of $311 billion) are able to steal much of these astronomical profits out of the below-poverty wages of the underemployed and the 150 million unemployed who act as a brake on the wage levels of the employed.

This joblessness is built into the profit system. The bosses’ first line of defense against their global economic crisis is to lay off millions of workers (or, in Russia’s new brand of capitalism, just don’t pay them, even if they’re still working!).

Right now 15,000 jobs are being destroyed in Indonesia every day. Eighteen million are out of work in Western Europe, and that doesn’t include workers who have given up looking for non-existent jobs or those working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs. The jobless rate in Russia and Eastern Europe went from zero in 1989 to 9% now; in Poland 10.4%; in Bulgaria 13.2%; in Croatia 17.6%.

The economic "growth" in Latin America has led to a 15% jobless rate in Argentina; in Asia, Africa and Latin-America youth unemployment is over 30%. At least 3.5 million will lose their jobs in China this year alone.

Here is a system in which the assets of the THREE richest bosses in the world exceeds the combined gross domestic product of the 49 poorest COUNTRIES! Is it any wonder that we say that such an exploitative system must be destroyed and replaced by communism?

PLP stands for the dictatorship of the proletariat, the working class. The bosses and their "presstitutes" claim that communism is "undemocratic." Damn straight! We stand for a workers’ dictatorship over the bosses and their rotten dictatorial profit system which steals trillions from the working class while impoverishing billions of workers and their families. Mass unemployment and poverty can only be eliminated by crushing the system that creates it and erecting a workers’ society in which all value produced by the working class is divided among that same class according to need. That’s communism.

Capitalism + ‘Too Much’ Wheat = Mass Hunger

UNDER COMMUNISM WE WILL FEED ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD

Capitalism is killing workers around the world. The sooner we dump the profit system—the better! According to the website of the American Dietetic Association (ADA):

"Chronic hunger due to poverty is much more widespread than hunger due to famine. About 36% of preschool-aged children in developing countries are moderately or severely malnourished...Each day an estimated 35,000 (14 million per year) die of malnutrition and related preventable disease....The world has both the food and the technical expertise to end hunger. What is lacking is the political will."

In this regard the ADA and many other humanitarians are wrong. It is the worldwide capitalist system not some nebulous "political will" that is responsible for starvation. In a New York Times (NYT) article on October 1st, a Northwest wheat farmer sums up the problem, "Excellent yield, terrible price, no profit." As a result of the Asian economic crisis, demand for U.S. exports ranging from wheat and apples to computers and airplanes is down. Despite the fact that the price of wheat is at a 21 year low, workers in many countries cannot afford to buy it.

The U.S. economy is quite dependent on foreign sales to stay in business. The biggest employer in the Northwest is Boeing which sells about one third of its planes to Asian countries. Almost 90% of the Northwest’s wheat crop is normally exported to Asia. A stockpile of 340 million bushels, enough to fill a line of railroad cars stretching from Seattle to Chicago, has accumulated.

The filthy bosses would rather let this food rot than give it away to the workers around the world who are starving to death. U.S. workers soon will also be hit harder with unemployment as a result of this crisis. Karl Marx, who developed communist theory, pointed out 150 years ago that capitalism was fated to have crises of overproduction when the workers would not be able to buy from the bosses the products they produced. He was 100% right!

While capitalism will have endless crisis, murdering millions, it won’t die by itself. It is our job in PLP to organize the workers of the world to bury capitalism and build a communist world where the needs of the workers not the profits of a few is the driving force of society.

Dinner Raises Funds For Garfield Park Six

Dear Challenge:

On September 28th, the Upper Manhattan PLP club held a dinner to help raise funds for the Garfield Park Six (comrades in Chicago facing trumped-up charges after the cops attacked a PLP demonstration during the Democratic Party Convention in 1996 that nominated Clinton). Approximately 35 people came. They were mostly factory workers.

A comrade spoke about the case, about the threat of war and fascism, and the need for workers to be prepared to fight the bosses. He gave some historical examples of how workers in Germany and the old Soviet Union confronted war and fascism, and talked about how our Party today is being attacked by the bosses and how we are preparing ourselves to confront these attacks.

Other participants at the dinner talked about the different forms that fascist and racist attacks take. Someone raised the child victims of chemical experiments in NYC hospitals, and called on people to join a protest march to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital on October 4th.

There was also entertainment. A comrade sang the old Italian communist song, Bella Ciao, while everyone joined the chorus of "Soy comunista toda la vida y comunista he de morir"(I am a communist for life and I will die as a communist).

The people who came contributed money to fight for the Garfield Six, and even after the event was officially over many stayed to talk. These small events, multiplied in communities all over the country, are important steps to help fight the attacks against our comrades in Chicago and to build our revolutionary communist movement to fight the bosses and their fascism.

Upper Manhattan Comrades

Why Workers Must Understand The Crisis of Overproduction

Dear Challenge:

I thought the first editorial in the October 7th Challenge made correct political points but essentially missed explaining it from a revolutionary perspective because not once did it talk about the crisis of overproduction as the central point of the present crisis. Every unfolding event gives us an opportunity to clearly explain to the masses why it is absolutely essential to understand the crisis of overproduction. If we don’t do that, our explanations will remain mechanical and rely on bourgeois economists to support it. To take a direct quote from the editorial, ‘Differences arose within the Clinton gang over whether, or how, the U.S. bosses should use the International Monetary Fund to bail out these economies.’ Only the ruling class bloodsuckers talk about the "bail outs."

Talk about the millions who die, lose jobs, lose pensions, are ravaged by wars, mass starvation, child pornography, diseases, plunder and pillage from Russia to Brazil as a result of the "bail outs." Not one worker will use the word "bail out" for the IMF action. It is outrageous to read such a sentences in Challenge editorial. There are many such examples in the editorial like referring to the KKKlinton administration’s fascist attacks on the workers as ‘Clinton’s domestic reform plans for health care, welfare, and education all essentially flopped....Welfare reform, which Clinton copied from the Republicans, doesn’t work.’ This gives illusion that those severe fascist attacks have undermined the alliance between the Union bosses and the Eastern Establishment and that, as a result, may-be less severe attacks on the workers will be a preferred way that a section of the ruling class will prepare for war and fascism. In the midst of the most serious crisis of overproduction, we see no evidence of the bosses throwing crumbs at the workers. As the crisis deepens, we will see intensification of the bosses greed and frenzy with which they will unleash mass terror, brutality that will dwarf anything the Hitlerites did. The workers must end this with violent communist revolution.

It would also be very useful to do an article on how the domestic and international bosses are fighting about the role of IMF/World bank and its implications for the international working class.

Santa Cruz Comrade

What Is To Fear?

Dear Challenge:

On October 7th Red Rocker wrote a letter, "What Are We Fighting For?" that makes some excellent points about how communism will improve life for workers and provide more opportunities for them to develop their individuality than is now possible under capitalism. I enthusiastically agree with the comrade that these ideas should be dealt with more often in Challenge articles and letters.

In the last part of the comrade’s letter, he/she expresses doubt (and the comrades base expresses fear) about the concept of one communist Party running society. If we think about this, there is only one party in power running the world today—the capitalist party.

That party, representing millions of capitalists, is responsible for the misery of billions of workers. Today over one billion are unemployed, 1.2 billion suffer a pitiful existence on wages of a dollar a day, billions more workers must endure sexism, racism, fascism and countless war while being deprived of education, medical care and housing. Just clean water, food and medicine could save more than 50 million children who die each year of preventable diseases. How many of these workers are free to enjoy life even with a vote and free speech?

So what is to fear if those billions of workers formed their communist Party to turn the world around and run it based on their needs such as ending disease, exploitation, homelessness, hunger, sexism, racism, fascism, nationalist borders and wars for profit? What is to fear if billions of workers who are alienated from society would be invited to join it, give their input of ideas and needs and become conscious of themselves collectively? Some of the doubts and fears concerning communism are probably due to anxiety about the loss of "freedom" of a privileged position in society. Privileged positions exist because of the coercive capitalist state where the freedom of the few is built on the unfreedom of the many. Communist freedom, on the other hand, is based on the international social consciousness of necessity which is a threat to privileged positions. I think that the working class can only obtain real freedom by (as the comrade in his/her letter said) "developing their individuality in accordance with the collective" (Party).

A Comrade