Things turned out just the opposite. You might call the election "the coup that boomeranged." A referendum on Clinton became a mass rejection of Ken Starr. Clinton won a major victory, and his main opponent Gingrich, ended up quitting before being fired as Speaker of the House. The Democrats and Gore look like front runners in 2000, and the Republicans are stumbling around in an internal dogfight.
We couldn't care less which crowd of bosses has the upper hand at any given moment. They're all our class enemies. However, making sense of a significant political event like this is important. When thieves fall out, as the rulers are doing right now, we can take advantage of the situation to build our revolutionary forces and advance the struggle for communism. So what happened?
The workers who did vote overwhelmingly rejected Starr & Co.'s hypocritical, moralizing bullshit. Millions understood that the fight was about something more than Monica and Clinton's sexcapades. Those who voted against impeachment know that Starr, Gingrich, the holy rollers in Congress and the media are no friends of the working class. But only 36 percent of those eligible voted, the lowest total since 1942. Millions stayed away from the polls, disgusted by the politicians' antics and contempt for workers' aspirations and problems. Score half a point for our side: the pro-impeachment fascists failed to mobilize the working class.
But this wasn't just a vote against Starr. It was also a vote for Clinton. Before the Lewinsky scandal, Clinton had a better than 60 percent approval rating. During the scandal, this actually increased. And it stayed high after his sleazy confessions and promises to repent. As Challenge has pointed out many times, supporting Clinton is a deadly mistake. In many ways, Clinton and the liberals are far more dangerous than Gingrich and Starr. They are responsible for millions of layoffs (and counting), fascist prison slave labor, fascist Workfare, a drastic increase in racist police terror, beefed up border patrols and preparations for the next Middle East imperialist oil slaughter. Clinton and Starr are each other's enemies. But workers can't smash capitalism by choosing one gang of capitalists over another. The enemy of our enemy isn't our friend.
Until very shortly before the election, many forces in the Eastern Establishment were threatening Clinton's demise. But in the face of his continuing popularity, they scrambled back on board the Clinton bandwagon. There's a plus in this for us. This comedy of errors shows how alienated the big bosses are from workers, and how far they are from a mass base for their future plans. A revolutionary communist understanding of these events, and of what we must do, can turn this contradiction to our advantage.
The whole Clinton impeachment dogfight was over different ruling class strategies for war and fascism. Clinton's big win has given a shot in the arm to the Rockefeller oil interests, who are making long-range plans for ground war in the Middle East. The papers are now full of threats to use military force against Iraq soon. Even if the Iraqi and U.S. bosses come up with another temporary deal over weapons inspections, Rockefeller & Co. are moving steadily toward the invasion somewhere down the road.
The Rockefeller forces are moving to ruthlessly reassert their control over both political parties. The current reshuffling of Republican bigwigs has replaced Rockefeller enemies or sometime friends with more solid allies. Bob Livingston, the Louisiana representative who will replace Gingrich, is known as a "moderate deal maker." In concrete terms, this means that his district includes a shipbuilding company, Avondale Shipyards, that has a $1 billion contract to build several of the 19 giant troop transport ships the rulers are readying for their next oil butchery. The anti-Rockefeller, New Money/Oil Patch gang, took a hit in this election. The main Republican winners were forces like the Bush brothers in Texas and Florida, who are little more than Republican versions of Clinton and Gore.
The main thing about this election is the opportunity it offers us to build the PLP. Workers mass rejection of Starr is a window of political opportunity to raise sharp questions about a profit system that leads to fascism and war and that can't meet workers' needs. The bosses' dogfight will go on. Each of the factions is desperate to build a base in the working class. More than ever, we must win large numbers of workers to the need to seize power and smash all the bosses with communist revolution. This can best be accomplished by raising communist ideas while leading sharper class struggle against all the bosses, and starting now to build for May Day 1999.
It seems that every few months there is a threat to attack Iraq. While different factions of the U.S. ruling class debate whether another set of bombings or a ground war will have to take place, and as Saddam and Clinton play cat and mouse, the big bosses propaganda machine is working to win workers and youth to the oil war.
The Siege, starring superstars Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis, is the latest oil war propaganda tool. Arabs and others picketed this movie as it opened last weekend (and became number two in ticket sales behind Waterboy). The Siege is about Muslims terrorizing New York City, leading to a state of siege with scenes of hundreds of Arabs being rounded up in Brooklyn.
The producers, trying to cover up their anti-Arab and anti-Muslim stereotypes, are saying that this movie dispels stereotypes rather than reinforcing them and that the movie takes pains to make a case for preserving people's civil liberties. But as an Op-Ed article in the New York Times (11/10) by Ibrahim Hooper, of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, says, "Producers of `The Siege' would have us believe that art is merely imitating life in the film's portrayal of crazed Muslims killing hundreds of innocent New Yorkers. I'm afraid that it is life that may imitate art...it seems likely that the average moviegoer may be slow in getting that message. One critic noted at a preview screening, the audience cheered as the military officer played by Bruce Willis `tortured a suspect and then calmly shot him.' "
Hollywood is not the only one helping the "oil war effort." When someone talks about terrorism, we'd better take a closer look at the CIA and other U.S. intelligence services' "dirty tricks." Last month, a former Green Beret sergeant and instructor was arrested secretly in connection with the bombing of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Ali A. Mohammed, the former Green Beret, was a long-time operative of the CIA. He served in the Egyptian army and then as a security officer for Egyptair. In 1985, he was brought to the U.S. under a special CIA program that provides visas and citizenships for key informants. From 1986 to 1989 he was a special instructor at Ft. Bragg, NC, training special forces who were to be sent to Afghanistan to fight on the side of the anti-Soviet forces. Mohammed appeared in a videotape used to train U.S. soldiers sent to the Persian Gulf War in 1990. He also helped train Afghan guerrilla fighters living in the U.S., including some of those arrested for the bombing of the World Trade Center.
And so it goes on and on, a key connection to the Osama bin Laden and the Afghan "freedom fighters" trained by the CIA, is now being secretly arrested and arraigned. This, plus reports that the U.S. intelligence services knew about the threats against the Kenya and Tanzania embassies, makes us think a lot.
Are these bombings part of a provocation by the U.S. intelligence to justify another oil war to protect the oil profits of the Rockefeller? Although it seems like something out of a Hollywood movie, reality is sometimes stranger than fiction in the world of U.S. imperialism. Let's not forget the Gulf of Tonkin incident, when the Lyndon B. Johnson administration fabricated an attack against U.S. ships to justify escalating the Vietnam War. And let's not forget all the recent revelations of the plans the Pentagon had to invade Cuba, including staging an attack against the Navy Guantanamo Base by U.S. mercenaries trained as Cuban soldiers. When it comes to terrorism and imperialist war, U.S. imperialism is number one.
All contributions to the Behind the News column should be sent to Challenge, 150 West 28th Street room 301, NYC 1001 or e-mail it to PLCD@Compuserve.com
The activists were attempting to unfurl banners and loudly protest the studies. They were charged with criminal trespassing. According to new Nazi police rules, persons charged with misdemeanors are no longer given summonses, but can be kept overnight before seeing a judge.
While in jail the activists told others what had happened. The fact that Daniel Pine is so defensive shows we're getting to him, one said. There was a lively discussion about fascism during this period, from the handling of the taxi strike to the Million Youth March. Plans were made to fight against HS Systems, the so-called clinic which oversees medical evaluations for welfare recipients who will be given forced labor WEP assignments. Debate ensued as we talked about the elections, the hated Giuliani and D'Amato, and whether lesser evil politicians are the solution for workers.
Meanwhile protesters who had been picketing outside the hotel earlier jumped into action. Some called friends in organizations they're members of--from the Association of Black Social Workers to churches to Columbia University student groups. Others called people we met from the protest. Others gave a radio interview and called the press. The effort to mobilize for another picket on November 7th where Pine was also speaking at a Conference sponsored by the New York State Psychiatric Institute gathered steam. A newly met public health student contacted a number of fellow students. Calls came from people, including a PTA organizer. Welfare workers in Local 371 distributed leaflets in their offices with open support. High school students did a class project about the research and plan to send letters to the organization.
On Saturday, at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, Pine was again met by protesters who loudly and enthusiastically denounced racist research and biological determinism as elements of fascism--U.S. style. Demonstrators then marched in the Washington Heights community distributing over 2,000 leaflets.
In the liberal, Rockefeller-based institution to which the two arrested people belong, talk of the research and the arrests took center stage. Parts of the leaflet were read at a large gathering and Kristalnacht was remembered. This anti-fascist, activist fight, based on multi-racial unity and the unity of workers, students and professionals, has become a small, but recognizable trend next to the "We hope, we pray, we vote" trend. The contradictions will continue to sharpen as more people in this institution openly debate fascism, the roots of poverty, the need for workers' power and "social" revolution.
The stage is set for the next court appearance to turn the trial into one against the real criminal trespassers. These include the racist researchers who trespassed into the bodies of black and Latin boys, their rich supporters who criminally support fascist "science," and the Giuliani administration which criminally trespassed into the homes of the boys' families by ordering the Department of Probation to release their names to researchers, Gail Wasserman and Daniel Pine. Let the fight go onto Round Two. It won't be easy, or without casualties, but eventually we'll knock them out.
The majority of workers in this factory have been working for these Korean bosses for about three or four years. For each of them the severance pay is about 15,000 colones. No bosses of any nationality care about leaving thousands of workers who depend on these jobs without a job or food. They only care about making maximum profits and reducing costs in the sharpening competition for market share. As a result, there are garment workers who make 600 colones per month (about US$70).
The class hatred of these women workers against the bosses was clear to see when the bosses attacked them. One of the bosses tried to hit a woman worker because she was explaining how he made high profits from stealing their labor power for so long. In solidarity, the other workers started stoning this rotten boss.
After this action, the workers tried to take over the factory and were cowardly attacked with tear gas and savagely beaten by the anti-riot National Civil Police, a repressive police force created by the peace agreement between the FMLN and the Armed Forces. Many of these women workers had to be hospitalized because of the blows and the tear gas intoxication they suffered. These attacks expose the fascist ideology that police the world over are imbued with to defend the rulers. These servants of capitalism have to be exterminated together with their capitalist masters.
This example of workers' struggle will be repeated over and over, so that bosses from El Salvador to Los Angeles, to India, China and Mexico understand that the workers are organizing; and that, sooner rather than later, these blows from the bosses will be answered by revolutionary workers fighting to end the bosses' rule.
Now over 90 percent of the workers at two factories have joined the struggle against these bosses and have paralyzed production. One of them is Amitex, with over 500 workers, and the other is Apple, with over 300 workers.
Juan Jose Huezo, head of the union, Fenastras, was arrested in this confrontation against the police. But Huezo is a rabid defender of the U.S. textile bosses and opposes the Asian capitalists who are building these garment factories. That's why he's involved in these struggles in the maquiladora factories.
In the garment factories in El Salvador, the U.S. and Asian bosses are in a fight to the death for who will produce more at lower costs. They have set up "free trade zones" in countries like El Salvador and Honduras to further exploit the workers.
PLP supports the struggle of these workers. Our job is to fight together with them and form PLP clubs among them. Members of these clubs can serve as the leaders of the struggle and, more important, learn the lessons of these struggles--workers must get rid of all the capitalists and build a society where our interests are met. We invite them to join our Party to fight to end the physical and mental abuse that workers suffer in the maquillas with communist revolution. The growth of PLP among these militant workers and their families will mean that our class will free itself from the hell of capitalism.
"To produce a pair of pants in Mexico costs us 35 cents...here it costs us an average of $3.00. With what we pay a worker for a day's work here, we can pay for three weeks' work in Mexico," said a supervisor, shamelessly. Wanting to make a joke about the situation, she said, "I feel very Mexican, because I work among many Mexicans. Are you going to go with me...should I wait for you there?" For the workers, this is not a funny situation. It's a future of more poverty, unemployment and racism. Some of these workers have huge debts on cars or houses. Many are the sources of support for their families in Mexico and Central America. "The bosses have given us a bitter Christmas," said a worker. "Someday they'll pay--all together," said another.
Koos Company, another factory with hundreds of garment workers in LA, has threatened to close if the workers don't produce more and better for lower wages. The supervisor got all the workers together and told them, "We have to produce more, because the bosses want to send the work to places where they pay less than in Mexico." And the clothing manufacturer Levi's announced that they will close seven plants for two months (December and January), leaving more than 4,000 workers unemployed.
These bosses are not the only ones who are moving to places where they pay as little as 73cents a day. There is sharp competition among the bosses to make more profits and kill other bosses. The bosses are killing thousands of workers worldwide in their race for profits.
"They should all go to hell," said a worker with a lot of resentment. But, unfortunately, the bosses will not go by themselves. We have to get rid of them by organizing a communist revolution. Several of these workers are denouncing these attacks in churches and unions. In Belgium, hundreds of workers protested against the closing of a Levi's clothing factory. In Los Angeles, workers should do the same.
Many of these workers read Challenge, and Party leaflets. The factories move to another country, but the workers stay. We have an enormous potential to build the PLP among these workers. These struggles will sharpen as our friendships with these workers deepen. We can win these workers to see that the solution isn't only to denounce the bosses and demand a severance package, but to end this capitalist system and build a communist society based on meeting the needs of workers worldwide. PLP must take the responsibility and guarantee that the more the bosses attack the workers, the more the PLP will grow.
The union just held its election of new officers, and the outcome was predictable. The company played a role in bringing about a new, more right wing executive board that is more to their liking. The old officers who led the strike, and lost the super-seniority that comes with union office, were laid off unless they were held for skill. One that comes to mind more than others is the old Treasurer. He was laid off last Monday, and probably will never enter the plant again. He was attacked during the strike, in the Post Tribune and Hammond Times, by owner Michael Scharf who said the treasurer "should go back to LTV [steel company] if he is so unhappy at Niagara-LaSalle Steel." So it is no surprise that he was the first to be booted out. As for the new officers, it is no surprise how they got elected. When you look at the family trees of the President and Vice-President, you find that both are related to management in one way or another.
The supervisors' cuts came first with the new ownership, and they also are not happy with its current owner. Even our last CEO, who retired with the new ownership at LaSalle, said, "I could not work here because I don't like the owner." Other supervisors tell us that the owner is driving the plant into the ground so he can make huge, quick profits for himself and his small pool of investors, and move on. He's done this at other companies before he got here. This is how the current capitalists make their money on the backs of its workers. This cannot be considered as anything but a crime against the workers past, present and future, of Niagara-LaSalle Steel. And the bosses will be held accountable for their crimes.
Slowly but surely, the PLP is sinking roots among LaSalle workers, mainly with a growing Challenge readership. We are trying to involve more LaSalle workers in our activities around the national steel contracts that expire next summer. This includes visiting other steelworkers from Bethlehem, USX, and LTV. We need to keep fighting at LaSalle. This should include involving the many laid-off workers. The PLP was established here through the strike. A fighting PLP, that has as its goal winning more workers to our ranks, will grow and flourish, even under more fascist conditions.
There was a lot of enthusiasm in this fight. A PLP member from MUNI presented a petition signed by his co-workers supporting the General Assistance (GA) workers demands for jobs. When the Commissioners tried to silence the workers, POWER got in the last word. We all stood up and chanted, "Rising up as one, Rising up as one, we are city workers, we won't quit until we've won! JOBS!!"
Stealing a few SF City jobs from MUNI or General Hospital may not look like fascism, but a look at the bigger picture makes the case. The NY Times recently reported that the combined wealth of fewer than 300 of the world's richest individuals is equal to the wealth of 47 percent of the rest of the world's population. Over a billion people or one-third of the human race is unemployed or under-employed.
The richest 1 percent have no plans for sharing their wealth but have lots of plans to increase it. They use racist terror to crush any rebellion. In the U.S. they are putting more workers in prison, making it one of the fastest growing industries. Fortifying the Mexican border is criminalizing immigrants and the same with black and Latin youth. The use of prison labor is increasing. All are signs of fascism.
Fascism comes out of capitalism in decline. Worldwide capitalism is in a crisis of overproduction and a declining rate of profit. War is closer as competition intensifies over shrinking markets. Workfare is creating a massive slave labor workforce while driving down the wages of all workers. This is a page out of Hitler's playbook.
One driver agreed with the whole idea of the crisis of overproduction, and said he was sure his wife is a communist because she likes our ideas. Several car cleaners talked about how big corporations attack workers everywhere and don't give a damn about anything except making money. Another driver said that the year 2000 (Y2K) problem would probably bring everything crashing down anyway.
We are spreading the readership for Challenge to increase the influence of the communist movement. Working class revolution, organized with Challenge's communist ideas, will bring capitalism crashing down--not computer glitches. We don't have to choose between mass unemployment and Workfare/slave labor programs. We have confidence that a revolutionary movement that smashes the whole system of wage-slavery will organize work based on the needs of the working class, not the profits of the bosses. As POWER said, we will be "Rising up as One."
Several comrades of PLP are working in different organizations and while we help pack the food for workers in Central America, we also discuss the situation. Many people are angry and understand that the poorest workers are always the most affected. They also see that in these disasters, the bosses always take advantage of workers. Every time that we're with these workers, there are thousands of opportunities to show that capitalism doesn't work, that is should be destroyed. Also, friends and members of PLP who are students and teachers are participating in collecting food and taking it to these organizations.
In Honduras, the banana crop is one of the major sources of income. The companies, Chiquita and Standard Fruit, which for decades have made millions off the super-exploitation of workers here, instead of paying their workers extra to help in these dire times, have announced that together more that 15,000 workers will be laid off for several months or even years; and that it is possible, due to the hurricane damage and the oversupply of bananas, they may go out of production altogether. That is capitalism!
In Nicaragua, the workers forced President Arnaldo Alemán to flee in the city of Leon. Workers threw rocks at him and called him a "murderer" for not warning people to evacuate before Mitch struck.
In El Salvador, the people chased President Calderon Sol from the city of Jiquilisco, in Usulutan, one of the areas most affected in the Eastern part of the country. In his haste to leave, he left the governor, Julio Cesar Portillo behind. Portillo had to protect himself by climbing into the car of some TV reporters who were covering the visit of Calderon Sol. Equally, many people accused the government of having opened the dam of the Rio Lempa without warning the people ahead of time, killing many people as the river flooded their homes.
Mitch has also sharpened the battle between the European imperialists and the U.S. For example, Spain sent its Foreign Minister, Abel Matutes, together with a warship with helicopters and planes loaded with aid, military and civilian personnel, as well as millions of dollars in "humanitarian" aid. The Spanish government opened more than 30 accounts in different banks and organizations, where people can deposit financial aid. Japan and Germany, among others, sent aid in order to gain influence and protect their interests.
On the other hand, when the U.S. saw this, they decided to send Tipper Gore, Al Gore's wife, Ex-President Bush, some more planes, helicopters and hundreds of soldiers. All with the promise that they will send millions of dollars in aid to rebuild the roads and centers of capitalist production. Mexico, ally of the U.S., but with its own interests in mind, was the first to send four airplanes and several buses with medicine, food and building material. "Many workers in Oaxaca and Chiapas thought this aid would go to them...but it's only propaganda to win markets in Central America," said a worker.
As we can see, there are many points to expose the hypocrisy and murderous acts of the capitalists. They stand in sharp contrast to the thousands of workers who are collecting and donating food and medicine for the people of Central America. Our talks give us the opportunity to get to know many workers, and win them to the fight for revolution.
But while the Fundamentalists pretend to be against the Establishment and for the working class, their very rich leaders, such as Pat Robertson, are working for certain groups of billionaires who are in competition with the billionaires and banks that support the Pope. Even as they sometimes co-operate, big conflicts between the Roman Catholic Church and various groups of Fundamentalists are developing in Asia, Africa and Europe, and especially in Latin America and the U.S.--from the Congo to Mexico City to East Los Angeles. This splitting apart of capitalist interests is part of the splitting apart, the chaos, that develops as capitalism sinks into crisis. The Pope is trying to rally his forces against these new capitalist forces.
Another reason for the Pope's criticism of extreme anti-science trends is that some Roman Catholics are leaving that Church because they are seeking more scientific answers to the problems of modern life. If the Vatican appears to be more reasonable, they could hold onto some of those followers in order to keep them as part of their own "Faithful Flock."
He also repeats the lie that communism and Nazism are the same. He hides the truth of the many ways that the Vatican helped the Nazis, including the plans this year towards making a pro-Nazi Croatian priest into a "Saint." And he seems to have forgotten (covering up) how many people have been murdered in the name of religion, including by the Roman Catholic Church, from the Crusades to the Inquisition to genocide against Africans and Native Americans to the current massacres in Yugoslavia and a hundred other places.
So communism is his main target. While the capitalists pretend that nobody is interested in communism, they still have to attack it again and again, because they realize that communist revolution is the way the working class will end hunger, racism, war and all capitalist oppression once and for all!
(To be continued in next issue))
Dear Challenge:
Yesterday a group of us fanned out over two counties in the steel-producing region of Northwest Indiana to follow up PLP contacts from past struggles. I went to see an old friend. He had become less active in recent years, in part because his job at Bethlehem Steel now demands forced overtime. It seems like he's working all the time. I was joined there by a new comrade who got to know our Party when some of our people were doing picket line support during the LaSalle Steel strike this summer. He was one of the workers who called back after the strike settled, but he is bitter about the fate of his co-workers. A hundred are still laid off, their jobs occupied by scabs.
As we talked, my old friend said, "It seems to me that we can't fix these problems unless we completely get rid of money. It has to be eliminated." My new friend agreed that money was "the root of all evil," but said we need a more immediate plan. "Why not make it illegal for any company that's making a profit to close its doors and lay off workers? They should just be locked up when they do that!" I pointed out that the bosses have to obey a higher law, the law of maximum profit. If they don't exploit us maximally, a competitor who exploits his workers more intensely will end up buying them out. But even though this gets back to the need to abolish money and capitalism, a struggle for a reform like my new friend's idea be a useful way to raise communist ideas with other steel workers. The new comrade observed: "Yeah, it's a process."
We talked for about three hours. My old friend sounded like he might come to the next meeting of the steelworkers club. As the overproduction crisis sharpens and trade war looms, these industrial workers are developing the outlook of recruiting many others to a communist outlook. It is not an easy process, but we can win.
Midwest Comrade
Steelworker: A two-tier wage system where new workers will make much less than current workers and will achieve parity after three or more years.
PLP: Will the USWA (union) strike?
Steelworker: I doubt it. They work for the company and will accept the deal, whatever it is.
PLP: What do you think about revolution?
Steelworker: It's hard for me to see this without a working model of communism. Things are bad, but I think they can be improved. I just need six more years and I can retire. I hate the mill. I've been here 22 years. When I was off for over one and a half years, over trumped-up charges, no one came to my aid. They were glad to see me get my job back, but like in the Bible, people tend to be like sheep and don't fight back.
PLP: Historically industrial workers, especially auto and steelworkers, are among the most militant.
Steelworker: That's true. But now there's more drugs. The government insures passivity by pushing drugs in my community. A lot of guys in the mill try to escape from the oppressive conditions by using drugs and alcohol. We have to build a movement to oppose this capitalist system. Here's a $5 donation, and be sure to stay in touch. I'm with you, and support you.
In the recent period, we have made some modest gains in our industrial work. We want to expand that! The current editorial indicates opportunities for recruiting more industrial workers into our party.
To accomplish this we must improve our work among industrial workers. We want to win them to a communist outlook and into PLP. There's no question that the opportunity is there. But to take advantage of this opportunity, we must become very involved in the workers' lives on and off the job. Using the corny Lotto commercial, "You have to be in it to win it."
How can our involvement bring out communist politics, which will lead to recruitment? If a worker has a grievance, you cannot simply tell him or her about the "crisis of overproduction." One must fight, together with the worker and others in the department, to bring maximum pressure on the boss and the union leaders and try to satisfy--win--worker's grievance. If the workers strike, you can't simply dismiss or ignore it just because a strike won't solve the workers' problems. While this is true, to establish that fact you must be involved in, or for, the strike. This usually means taking on the union leaders as well as the company.
Contract negotiations between the union and the boss only serves to establish the limits, or terms, of our wage slavery. Pointing this out is good, but insufficient. We should fight vigorously for the "best" possible contract. Workers should understand that we are not windbags but are militant class fighters in workers' interests. Winning the respect and confidence of the workers enables us to raise every important communist position. We can only resolve the contradiction between being active in the reform struggle and raising--and winning workers to--communist ideas by being one of the best fighters for what workers perceive to be in their interests, short- and long-term. To expose the futility of reforms requires us to be in reform struggles. This is a contradiction. It can only be resolved by winning workers to the Party.
But if you want to raise advanced political ideas, or organize to spread a strike and make the class struggle more militant, you must know workers OFF the job, not just on the shop floor. Your co-workers must be at the center of your life. As they become your friends and comrades-in-arms in class battle, it will enable you to raise, and win on, advanced political ideas.
As the class struggle sharpens and the capitalist system sinks, our possibilities will mount steadily. Workers will always gravitate to a militant fighter and a friend. This formula will seriously reduce our contradictions with other workers, as well as lessening the contradiction between reform and revolution. The sky's the limit if this formula is placed in the forefront of our practice. Raising issues like the dictatorship of the proletariat, communism, the need for a revolutionary party, war and fascism, the crisis of overproduction, etc., can only seriously be done by having a base among workers.
Veteran NYC Comrade
Dear Challenge:
Last week I attended a conference on mood and anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. The fact that millions of young people suffer from psychiatric conditions is evidence of a singularly brutal social milieu for child rearing, of course. Moreover, one of the presenters showed data "proving" that the onset of disabling mental-emotional problems is occurring at younger and younger ages. [We should not unquestionably accept such "data," or their definition of what constitutes "disabling" problems.] The only solutions these "experts" put forward were to counsel and drug young people into "adapting" to the competitive, racist and sexist world they were born into.
However, there was a challenge to one of the worst researchers. I asked Daniel Pine what information he had given parents about fenfluramine dangers before he had used it in experiments on their children. He passed over the question as irrelevant to the immediate topic. Then a very gutsy pediatrician said he was treating one of the children who was injured by Pine's unethical experiments. The doctor demanded an explanation for research that both stigmatizes and physically harms inner city youth. He said the research was pseudo-science that was reminiscent of Tuskegee and Auschwitz. Pine stammered a defense: this was done four years ago, he wasn't doing it anymore, and he couldn't comment on any particular case.
Three conference members thanked us for raising these important issues, and one--a school psychologist--asked to receive a packet of information on Pine's racist research. Many more anti-racist organizers should attend these conferences as participants!
A Mental Health Advocate
A century and a half after Marx and Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto, the specter of working class struggles and communism haunt the bosses in this day and age of deep capitalist crisis. Here in Colombia, public workers struck for several weeks against the government's free market policies which plan to make workers pay even more for the crisis.
PLP members participated in several of the activities of the strikers. On October 23rd teachers, hospital workers, phone workers, oil workers, students, etc, marched through the streets of Bogotá. PLP members distributed Challenge-Desafíos and over 2,000 communist leaflets calling for the intensification of the struggle and linking it to the worldwide crisis of overproduction.
PLP members have also carried out other activities (video showings, talks about communism, classes on historical materialism and debates on shop floors) to build our Party.
Indeed, little by little we are making sure that the specter of communism haunts the bosses until they are buried forever.
A Proletariat, Colombia
I am a student at the State University of Ecuador. Like any other center of "higher education," students are prepared to become a future part of the capitalist machinery. Approximately 97 percent of all careers at this university are in the so-called exact sciences, and only 3 percent in social sciences. And the professors involved in that 3 percent spend most of their time trying to brainwash us, attacking communism and building illusions of how we can reform capitalism to make it better for workers.
In one class, I began to argue against this. I said that this is impossible, that it represents a lack of political knowledge to say capitalism can be made to serve workers since this rotten system is based on just the opposite--exploiting workers. I added that reforming capitalism was already tried, in the old socialist countries, which just helped to stop them from moving towards communism. The concessions made to capitalism under socialism led to the collapse of the old socialist bloc. I said the "technical" education we are now getting is just aimed to creating cheap labor for the bosses and make students be mechanical and apathetic towards the reality of misery suffered by most people in Ecuador.
I said communism is the answer, the building of a society based on the needs of workers and their families. It was a good experience for me and has strengthened my commitment to build the PLP here.
Red Student, Ecuador
Dear Challenge:
Let me tell you a story. My parents were in the Communist Party before I was born, in 1951. They continued to be active in community organizing, the Democratic Party and in the schools after they left the party. They were really scared during the McCarthy era--they, and many of their friends, were harassed and intimidated. As a result of this harassment my parents became the owners of the complete works of Thomas Jefferson.
What, you ask, is the connection between Thomas Jefferson and the Communist Party? Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder and a racist. Now we've had confirmation what many have always known--he was also a rapist who had several children with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. For reasons I can only guess at--for some reasons I've never asked--the Communist Party loved this guy. They named their bookstore after Jefferson. They named their school after Jefferson. And, during the McCarthy era, when the ruling class was hunting down communists wherever they could, my parents' friend was terrified to own these books. To own the works of Jefferson marked someone as a red!
As a member of PLP for many years I find this so amazing. We would never idolize a member of the bourgeoisie, let alone a slaveholder and defender of slavery. Jefferson was a hypocrite and liar. Anyone who argues otherwise is only apologizing for and hiding this scumbag.
A Comrade in Brooklyn
Dear Challenge:
In a recent issue of Challenge, there was a letter about some young people who were disgusted by the fact that a man at their school had a Confederate Flag on his truck. The man claimed that it was part of his heritage.
I live in the North, coalfields of Pennsylvania, and I am amazed at how popular the Confederate Flag has become in recent years. I often see trucks go by with a Confederate Flag license plate, and usually an NRA (National Rifle Association) sticker on the window. Of course, none of this has anything to do with heritage, whatever that may be, and it is no coincidence that the KKK carries the Confederate Flag and that neo-Nazi skin heads out here have it on their jackets.
Recently, the grossly over-rated Southern rock band, Lynard Skynard, played a concert at Penn State University, and I saw some young folks wearing shirts they had purchased at the concert. And guess what? There was a big old Confederate Flag on the back of them.
Personally, I believe that someone is promoting this shit along with country music, all white singers who are making a mint singing about nothing at all, line dancing, the cowboy look and other nonsense like this is being pushed as culture.
There is a group called The Southern League, on the internet which claims that there are still two nations here and that the South is under the control of Yankee Imperialism and that cultural genocide is being committed against them because they are being prevented from flying the Confederate Flag on public buildings. Of course, they are a bunch of crackpots but they are a part of the New Money fascist segment of the ruling class. They claim that slavery was not the issue in the Civil War but state's rights, which has always been a code word for maintaining racism.
When we held an anti-Klan counter rally earlier this year, we decided to burn a Confederate Flag right in the Klan's face and we did. They went apeshit. We bought the flag at a store which turned out to be a front for the Klan and Nazi skinheads. We had no idea of this when we entered the store, but the guy behind the counter stated: "I think that the Rebel flag is the purtiest flag a-flyin' these days and I got three in my house. One in my gun case. One in the living room, and one in my bedroom." Then he told us that he had Nazi flags and Klan flags for sale also and that his store was a popular hangout for skinheads. I keep my eyes on that store and wonder what that fascist would think if he knew we burned that "purty" flag?
So I applaud the young people who stood up to that clown with the flag of slavery on his truck. He was probably a Klansman anyway. Personally, I carry a can of black spray paint with me, and when I see a truck or car with one of those flags on the bumper parked somewhere, I look around and then spray paint an X over it.
Red Rocker
Dear Challenge:
The past two issues of the Challenge had an article and series of letters from Chicago State University (CSU), dealing with mobilizing 50 or more black students to force three white pipe fitters to move a truck that had confederate flag decals on it. The article was titled, "Racists Routed!"
First of all, let me say that I thought I was experiencing déja-vu, until another comrade told me, "We did the same thing last year." This raises two questions in my mind. Were the racists routed? What else are we doing there?
I don't want to be one-sided, but I think we made a mistake. Attacking three white workers, not organized fascists, but campus workers who have more in common with us than the bosses, is not routing the racists. True, these guys must be struggled with about racism, but are they the enemy? How do we know that? Do we know them? Are we building a worker-student alliance at CSU to unite workers and students against our common enemy and for communist revolution? What if we saw a truck with a "Buy Black" bumper sticker, or a CAPS (Community Policing) decal?
I think that if our only mass fight on an all-black campus is against three white workers, we're doing something wrong. It's too easy, and probably reflects very opportunist relationships between the Party and the students, who clearly do want to fight racism.
If we really want to rout the racists, we better set our sights on the administration building, and the school of Criminal Justice (a very appropriate name). Racism is not a question of color, but a question of class. In the past, we have led mass struggles against the CSU administration, over racist English exams, and withholding student funds. The comrades there can do much better. A fighting PLP can win many young black students into the Party, and into leadership of the Party. We need it as much as they do. Let's stop attacking the workers, and focus our fire where it belongs.
A Reader