But Clinton's initial bombing attacks will serve as a mere appetizer for the mass murders that lie ahead. As influential New York Times writer William Safire pointed out on February 2nd, the whole process may drag on for a while. The U.S. may pause, to see if Saddam Hussein blinks. He isn't likely to do so. He is just as ruthless as Rockefeller and just as determined to control the oil. He is prepared to see many thousands of Iraqi workers die for this goal. He also believes, with much logic, that U.S. imperialism is strategically weak, and that time is on his side.
More intensive bombing will probably follow any pause after the first wave. The story about Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" will be exposed as a Big Lie, when U.S. planes soon target oil and industrial facilities. Despite Clinton's cynical threat that Saddam Hussein may poison all of New York City and half the rest of the world, the Iraqi ruler's main military strength lies in his ability to hold power internally. He's not really a serious military threat beyond his own borders--at least not for the time being.
Remember: this is really all about keeping Iraqi oil off the market. That cat is already out of the bag. The UN's Richard Butler, a transparent lackey for Rockefeller, now sounds just like Madeline Albright. On January 31st, he told the Washington Post that "sealing off" (i.e. blasting to rubble) the Iraqi oil port of Basra may soon become necessary.
However, the U.S. rulers have learned something from previous defeats. They know that the main value of air assaults is to spread terror among a population and, at best, temporarily knock out parts of the infrastructure. But as "People's War" proved in Vietnam, workers can learn to fight back against terror, and installations can always be rebuilt. Air power can't ultimately determine a military conflict. Wars are won and lost on the ground. Oil doesn't get pumped from the air and air power can't prevent pumping it. Therefore, as Challenge has warned for several years, U.S. imperialism will be forced to launch another invasion of Iraq.
This isn't going to be easy, and the bosses know it. In the first place, the puny paper coalition that Bush put together in 1990-91 for Desert Oil Storm is dead and buried. U.S. pals, like the Saudi sheiks, are nervously distancing themselves from Exxon. The Saudis won't allow Clinton to use their air space this time. The Russians have rapidly emerged as the U.S.'s main international opponent over Iraq policy. Clinton managed a small tactical victory when Albright succeeded in bribing or threatening the French into temporarily toning down their objections to the imminent bombing.
So, other than symbolic support from British bosses, U.S. imperialism will have to go it alone this time. But bombing raids and invasion against a country Iraq's size are two different things. An invasion will require hundreds of thousands of troops. This is a huge logistical task. Five months were needed to send 500,000 U.S. troops to fight in Iraq seven years ago. Most importantly, such an undertaking is a major political commitment. From Rockefeller's point of view, failure to undertake it has been Clinton's main weakness. The current Clinton sex scandals must be interpreted both as punishment for this failure and arm-twisting calculated to force rapid change. "If it comes to [an invasion]," writes Safire, "are we ready? No; the ground troops are not in place, and the will to send ground troops is not yet in the Clinton administration."
However, the key words here are : "not yet." Clinton is getting the message from all sides. Republican Nazi Newt Gingrich spelled it out loud and clear on February 1st in a speech to an international meeting of corporate executives in Switzerland. Gingrich called for removing Saddam Hussein. Safire calls for "trying Saddam as a war criminal and showing Iraqis how to hold elections." This can mean only an extensive land war followed by a lengthy U.S. occupation. Safire understands that this won't be a cakewalk. He demands that Clinton "prepare Americans for sacrifices." The entire U.S. Establishment is rallying behind the invasion. The only significant opposition comes, as one would expect, from the Oil Patch billionaires, who want to increase domestic production for their own greedy reasons, and from the Buchanan isolationist wing of the Republican Party.
A secondary but important aspect of these developments is the U.S. bosses' failure to force a peace deal between their Israeli clients and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Both Netanyahu and Arafat are stalling, to see what Clinton does in Iraq. Palestinian workers hate U.S. imperialism, but this justifiable hatred is distorted by nationalism. For this reason, the murderer Hussein has emerged as somewhat of a hero within the Arab world, particularly among Palestinians, because he has successfully defied U.S. imperialism. When the bombs start falling, Arafat & Co. will therefore have a reduced incentive to put the finishing touches on any arrangement with the U.S. and Rockefeller's Israeli vassals.
As for the Israeli bosses, Bush twisted their arms in 1991 to keep them out of Desert Storm. Clinton doesn't have the same luxury. He had to give Netanyahu a green light to take independent military action if Saddam fires some Scud missiles over to Israel. Anything the Israelis do will be outside U.S. authority and can lead to unforeseen developments, like a wider escalation of the war. Yeltsin warned Clinton that the bombing of Iraq "could provoke a world war." (AP, 2/4).l.
The death-knell has sounded for U.S. imperialism's Middle East policy of the last ten years. It was known as "dual containment," a scheme to squelch both Iranian and Iraqi bosses. Obviously, it has failed. Now Rockefeller, Inc. have to snuggle up to the Iranian oil barons in order to gain some maneuvering room against Saddam. This is why Clinton sent a love letter to the Iranian ruling class last week, calling for "good relations with Iran." He needs to buy time to attack Iraq. But the long-range oil interests of Iranian and U.S. bosses remain fundamentally opposed.
The imminent bombing of Iraq is a sure step along the road to World War III. It is also an opportunity to build the biggest May Day in years and advance along the road to communist revolution. Taking that step is within our power. The stakes are increasing every day.
And so the discussion went. For two days over 100 participants, high school and college students, teachers, and young workers, met in an international youth cadre school organized by the PLP.
The goal of the school was to advance the political understanding of our members. "We must," explained one young leader in her introductory speech, "understand the period in which we live. We must understand how fascism develops and why. We must understand the crisis of overproduction and how it will lead to war. Then we must figure out how to raise this understanding and the solution of communism, in all our work."
The school began Friday night when the first arrivals got right into the task of political study. Building a mass Party means we have confidence that all workers can, and will, grasp complex ideas. Led by a 14-year-old comrade, a group of 25 students read aloud and discussed the article from the Communist magazine titled, "Defeating Right Opportunism Opens the Door to Revolution--Make Communist Politics Primary." This was followed on Saturday morning with a report about this article from one of its authors who encouraged questions, answers and discussion.
Throughout the weekend there was significant struggle among the comrades. Capitalist ideas infect us all. Flushing them out and retraining ourselves with communist ideas is a major task. "I learned this weekend about how a collective should work. I learned that it takes a collective to bring about change in me and to help me change others." Every aspect of the school was examined as a political question. When some members of one workshop fell asleep, the two workshop leaders, high school students themselves, did not accept that they must be tired. "Yo, wake up," they called out. "Hiding under your coat and going to sleep is what capitalism taught you. We aren't having it. You are leaders. You have to participate."
Saturday afternoon the entire school marched against U.S. imperialism's coming war in Iraq over oil, and fascist police terror in the U.S. The anger, energy and fighting spirit of the march could be heard and felt blocks away. Workers in the Flatbush, Brooklyn, community where we marched, and where PLP has been organizing for many years, raised their fists, waved, and grabbed Challenges. We distributed 887 Challenges. This, too, was led by young comrades who put bold, communist ideas in the forefront of the activity.
As we ended on Sunday afternoon, one participant said, "I think we need to immediately go home and raise money because we need to do this again!" Many described how the school gave them confidence in our ability to raise communist ideas in our organizing. Building in a mass way, for a mass May Day, became not just a political slogan but a practical possibility. Every area made plans for how to go forth between now and May 2nd and turn that possibility into a reality. It was a good beginning. With persistent, consistent leadership, we will develop into the mass Party that leads to communist revolution.
One sharp discussion was about the specifics of why it is important to study the splits in the ruling class. We prepared for this cadre school by reading the articles in the Communist magazine, "Defeating Right Opportunism" and "Splits in the Ruling Class." Some comrades still see very mechanically [how does that relate to "my work"?] the importance of understanding why the rulers fight with each other both domestically and internationally.
Even though there were different campuses represented, many of the reform struggles were similar. Comrades at the University of Illinois at Chicago discussed how priority registration had been a struggle on their campus. This was similar to the struggle taking place at CUNY School in New York with the ending of open admissions. We made a commitment from the cadre school to find out more about why the ruling class is imposing these fascist policies.
Everyone who was in our workshop left invigorated with plans to struggle for the Party's line. In the past, college students have played an important role in the fight against imperialist war and the role of universities as think-tank for the Pentagon. Today, as the bosses prepare for Gulf War II, communist college students can mobilize for May Day and win masses of youth to understand that capitalism makes war inevitable and that the only solution is to join the PLP and smash the warmakers with communist revolution.
Pete "Warden" George, head of the Light Structures, Fabrication and Assembly (LSFA) unit in Auburn, outlined the picture this past month. Workers are being written up for everything, from taking a five-minute-smoke-break to eating a candy bar at their machines. Supervisors have posted warnings threatening us if we are caught "walking around."
When workers complained that they felt like they were in a prison being watched every minute, the boss snapped, "Yes, I'm watching you." The Monroe prison production facility that manufactures Boeing parts is the new example to follow. Prison slave labor has become the benchmark as fascism intensifies.
That day was immediately christened S.A.D. (Suck Ass Day) Wednesday. Hundreds of leaflets proclaiming "S.A.D. Wednesday" were quickly, massively and secretly distributed throughout the building, urging workers to: "Wear your green LSFA shirt if you love it here....Or black like the rest of us!"
Nearly half the workers in the shop wore black; many dressed completely in black. Besides supervisors, only a handful wore the company shirts. A hundred "TPS!" buttons became the fashion accessory of choice. "This Place Sucks!" was the greeting of the day.
Brothers and sisters gave the thumbs-up sign or raised a clenched fist as they passed each other in the aisle. Workers made new friends as they sought out others wearing black.
"I knew I wasn't going to wear their shirt," said a machinist. "Next thing you know, they'll be forcing us to wear prison pinstripes!" Warden" George definitely took a hit on Wednesday.
We've already had many management changes at LSFA--each for the worse. It's no accident that each management change attacks us workers.
The problem is capitalism. In particular, it is a system in a crisis of overproduction. The bosses' capacity to produce exceeds what we workers can buy. The bosses' only solution? Fascist attacks on the working class and ultimately destroy their rivals' productive capacity through war.
If we doubt the real meaning of Condit's and Stonecipher's bottom-line edict, check the call for "agile" manufacturing in the Boeing News (1/23). Based on the military model, agile manufacturing will maintain a small "cadre" of skilled workers. Then Boeing will assemble a team when it needs to complete a project. The net effect? A few full-time workers surrounded by a large pool of contingency workers.
"That's the bosses' family values, all right!" joked an expediter. "You send your kid off to kill or be slaughtered in some foreign war, so you can live in poverty as a temporary worker."
Unfortunately, this scenario is more than a joke. Right now the Rockefeller forces are pressuring Clinton to start bombing Iraq. They are desperate to keep Iraqi oil off the market and out of their rivals' hands. This same group of warmakers are the wardens who run the Boeing Board of Directors.
We say keep your eye on May Day. This year's May Day march (and the events leading up to it) are designed to build the movement for communist revolution. Communism is the only way to eliminate the bottom line. Communism focuses on the needs of the working class. The bottom line means war and fascism. The needs of the working class demand a mass May Day and a mass Progressive Labor Party. This year the "Men in Black" should march as a group at May Day proudly waving the Red Flag.
The IMF (International Monetary Fund) ordered South Korea to its budget. The government proposed a modest 10% cut in military spending. Cohen had a fit! "The cuts would send the wrong message to North Korea," he warned. The South Korean government restored the cuts, no doubt to be made up by attacking workers even more!
The same bloody scenario was repeated in every country on Cohen's itinerary--prepare for war by reducing the working class to destitution.
These questions and others are being discussed with workers in PLP study groups and being raised by us in workers' mass organizations.
Our discussions sharpened when nearly 500 hospital workers blocked rush hour traffic to protest an October 13th announcement by the Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health, Education and Research Foundation (AHERF) that 1,200 workers would be laid off from 10 hospitals in their statewide system. AHERF says the layoffs are "because of decreasing Medicare reimbursements."
The 1199C union's main response was to hold a rally outside Hahnemann Hospital. It was then that workers blocked Philadelphia rush-hour traffic. After the workers had exhausted their energy marching for almost an hour, each of the head hacks of almost a dozen Philadelphia unions gave a 10-second speech demonstrating their "support" for the workers. Chief union leader Henry Nicholas said he would "work with" Mayor Ed Rendell and form a "committee" to deal with the problem.
Some workers still believe they can escape the crisis and find a "good job" somewhere else. Other workers find solace in religion. A recent Party study-action group focused on religion. Some of the workers there stated that all the changes at Hahnemann had been predicted in the Book of Revelations.
But running away will not solve the problem; the "good job" no longer exists, and never will again, under the bosses' system. And god plays no role in the layoffs; attributing them to a "higher power" only creates passivity in the face of real opportunity for building a communist future.
Although these workers still cling to religious ideas, many are still involved in struggles on the job. This contradiction between the passivity of religion and the need for activism leaves open the possibility of winning them away from religious consciousness.
The Party tries to convince workers that capitalism causes all this chaos and suffering. In a capitalist economy, human labor is organized to produce commodities which are sold for profit. The capitalists enrich themselves by stealing the surplus value that human labor creates in these commodities. Health care becomes a commodity under capitalism and patients are treated as "cardiac caths" and "coronary bypasses."
The current capitalist crisis of overproduction extends to health care. So many workers are unemployed and without health care coverage that there is an oversupply of 7,000 hospital beds in Philadelphia. The bosses have announced that they intend to eliminate these beds. This will mean more layoffs and hospital closings. And then even more workers will be unable to pay for hospital care.
Individualism and religion aside, many workers are looking for answers to the problems of capitalist health care. Once anti-union, nurses are now beginning to turn toward organizing a union. We communists are actively involved in this drive, seeing another opportunity to build the Party (and the need to steer workers away from the trap of reformism). The Party's effort can only be strengthened by the fact that many AHERF workers are turned off to the health care unions and their response to the cuts.
An Allegheny nurse, looking for a way to fight back, approached a comrade about the past experience with a union drive in which the union leaders admitted there was little or nothing they could do to stop layoffs. These union leaders only said that with a union contract, the layoffs would be according to seniority. Since this nurse has little seniority, this "solution" won't help her. The comrade told her that all workers should fight for communist revolution, so that all can have useful and meaningful work.
She said in a later discussion that she wasn't the person to talk to about fighting because she believes that no matter what we do, things will get worse. But the lines of communication are still open to struggle with her about this cynicism.
So if there is nowhere to run, if there is no real chance of individual survival, if the reformist unions have become completely irrelevant and ineffectual in this crisis, then workers must build the communist Progressive Labor Party. We can do so by solidifying our ties to workers and by bringing communist ideas to them.
BERKELEY, CA, Feb. 1 -- "Politics," they say, "makes strange bedfellows." On January 29th and 30th the AFL-CIO and the liberal Universities UC (Berkeley) and UCLA called a conference to organize grassroots international support for U.S. imperialism. Of course, the pro-U.S. imperialism was disguised.
Called "Working in the Pacific Rim," it brought together honest, active people from No's (Non Governmental Organizations) like Global Exchange, and unions from the U.S., Korea and Burma and professors from the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.
The first session set its eyes on building a Trade Union internationalism. "Economic nationalism," we were told, "doesn't work." A new internationalism was needed and it was going to rest on two things. First, a strong labor movement and secondly an insistence that all U.S. trade agreements carry with them demands for labor rights. Workers from countries that trade with the U.S. should have the same protections as U.S. workers.
A strong U.S. labor movement? Presumably that means that in order for Airbus to sell planes in the U.S., they must allow prison slave labor to be used in building them just as Boeing and its strong IAM Union do in the U.S.! In reality, this is a back-handed "righteous" way of developing trade protectionism.
Although we had to wait to be called on, the PLP countered. Speaking from the floor we explained the crisis of overproduction, using the arguments developed on the backpage of Challenge (2/4). We showed how, even with good intentions, unions that are forced to fight for jobs in fact build nationalism. We talked then about nationalism, crisis and world war and showed how communist revolution was the only answer.
John Henning, the patriarch (some say "left-wing") of the California AFL-CIO was called on to counter us. He couldn't. His head sank into his hands. The Challenge backpage argument was too vivid (See Box). This later had an unexpected result. The Burmese delegate threw away his prepared text. Instead took up the question of what to do. He pointed out that the crisis would result in mass layoffs through out Asia in the next three months. With the layoffs union membership would plummet. The crisis threatened the very unions the conference was built around unifying. This delegate was looking for answers.
In the afternoon session we took a serious look at the Greider book, One World Ready or Not, which the unions were promoting. The sessions dealt with independent union movements and we were treated to a riveting account of an eight-year battle to build a general strike in Korea. Clearly the Korean Trade Union movement is the most advanced in the world. We focused, however, on references the U.S. unionists had made to Greider. This was our way of introducing the question of fascism, war and revolution. Simple words, yet only the PLP speaker used them. Greider, we said, is very good at exposing the scale and seriousness of the crisis of overproduction. It is very bad because it builds illusions about a capitalism being rational. In this scenario an enlightened trade union campaign raises wages and purchasing power and saves capitalism from crisis. But capitalism, we pointed out, is irrational. Based on an unworkable contradiction--social labor for private profit--sooner or later it develops crisis. And modern capitalism's way out of crisis is fascism and World War. We pointed out how peacetime USA 1998 was to the right of peacetime Nazi Germany of the '30's in a host of key social and industrial policies. These, we explained, were the conditions in which we saw the necessity to re-build an international revolutionary communist movement.
Our critique of Greider struck a chord. Even the platform modified their original position. Our themes of fascism, war and revolution were being pondered.
In the final session we spoke after the AFL-CIO representative for Southeast Asia. A feature of the Conference had been the union suit against UNOCAL for building a pipeline through Burma and thus supporting the fascist military regime there.
We started by taking an image the Global Exchange organizer had presented. "Nike," she had explained, "want our youth to think of themselves as a pair of shoes!" Capitalism in general, we pointed out, has an even more deadly image it wants to foist on us. "It wants us to think of ourselves as Americans, as Burmese, as Korean, as black, as white--nationalism!" You could hear chairs shuffling forward. Part of the audience was interested. "This Conference is about building internationalism, but in one and a half days we haven't said a word about U.S. imperialism's plans to bomb the hell out of Iraq, murdering hundreds of thousands of Iraqi workers in the process." The expressions of approval turned to wide grins as we pointed out that around the world the AFL-CIO was known as the AFL-CIA! The communist movement PLP is building wants us to realize we are all workers of the world. That's internationalism and that's why everyone is invited to PLP's May Day March in Los Angeles. And despite the interruption from the platform there was solid applause from a section of the Conference.
Apart from finding new supporters, other positive developments took place. Our friends, for example, were excited to see who bought Challenge. However, had we prepared more seriously, we could have reaped much greater results. We underestimated our line, our abilities and our enemy. The AFL-CIA still holds sway over many honest forces. Our activity might have modestly advanced the Party, but the Conference also advanced U.S. imperialism. We cannot be content with that. We have to defeat these Conferences. The Party cannot afford to be so casual in the future, and we won't be!
The photo (above) of the South Vietnamese police chief, General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, executing a bound NLF fighter, became famous worldwide. It won Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams a Pulitzer Prize. It clearly exposed to the world the fascist nature of the U.S. imperialism and its lackeys. The war caused 5 million casualties, half of them died by the massive bombardment and others by the many massacres carried out by the U.S. war machine.
General Loan is now 70 years old and dying of cancer in Northern Virginia. And photographer Adams says "he is sorry" his picture exposed the general as a monster to the world. General Loan, U.S. General Westmoreland, Presidents Johnson and Nixon and all those responsible for the millions of deaths in that war behaved like monsters. The only thing to feel sorry about is that General Loan and other mass murderers were not punished for their crimes.
Unfortunately, the NLF and the North Vietnamese Communist Party which led the war against U.S. imperialism did not fight for a communist society without any bosses and, now has led Vietnam into full-blown capitalism. Many of the imperialist companies which benefited from the war are back in Vietnam. As U.S. imperialism gets ready for Gulf War II, the working class of the world, from Hanoi to Baghdad to Washington needs a new Tet Offensive, this time to smash the imperialist warmakers and fascist butchers with communist revolution.
During the entire World War II, more than 70% of the active fascist troops in Europe were fighting the Red Army. From 1941 to 1944, while the U.S. and Britain imperialists' strategy was to wait for the Nazis and the Red Army to destroy each other as they planned to come in for a quick victory, the Red Army and the communist-led partisans were blasting fascists to bits. When the Allies landed in Normandy in 1944, only three German divisions faced them, because more than 100 Nazi divisions from all over Europe had to be rushed to Byelorussia and the South Ukraine where the Red Army had crushed all the fascist forces.
On February 2, 1943, the Battle of Stalingrad ended, marking the turning point of World War II and the beginning of the end of the Nazis Today as the imperialists prepare for more wars for oil and to redivide the world, PLP is fighting to rebuild the international communist movement, this time to crush all the warmakers with communist revolution, . Below we reprint an excerpt from the Challenge Supplement (May 17, 1995) marking the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII:
"Here [in Stalingrad], heavily outnumbered and outgunned, Soviet defenders fought battles house-to-house. It was in that city that workers, men and women, were won to the necessity of defending their new workers' society. They voluntarily remained at their machines making tanks for the battlefield just outside their factory while bombs fell all around them. If ever an example is needed of the Communist spirit, it is Stalingrad. These defenders had courage, sacrifice, determination and camaraderie--what a boundless sea of what's best in humanity! Stalingrad is also an example of the brilliant planning and strategy of the Soviet High Command headed by Stalin. The Soviets surrounded and destroyed three fascist armies, causing 1.5 million Nazi casualties."
The international atmosphere of the evening was clearly evident as workers from several countries brought revolutionary greetings and urged all present to carry on the struggle for communism. A young comrade spoke about the need to fight right opportunism--why we need to make revolution primary over reform.
The Party's main speaker, a worker at a Brooklyn hospital, gave a sharp and moving speech about the life and death nature of the struggle for communism. He reviewed the horrors that capitalism's financial crises have brought to Asia and Latin America, to Africa with the series of genocidal civil wars inspired by imperialism, and to the Middle East with the specter of a U.S. carpet-bombing/invasion of Iraq looming large. He was applauded heartily when he called for workers to take matters into our own hands by making a communist revolution.
After the speech, several workers got up and described their plans to brings large numbers of people to May Day. The evening also featured a number of revolutionary communist songs by the PLP chorus, both in Spanish and English, and a delicious dinner. The evening closed with everyone singing "The Internationale," the worldwide communist anthem.
We have a lot of work to do to turn this May Day into the biggest one yet. These times call for nothing less. The bosses are out for the blood of our class as never before. Tonight's dinner was a step in the right direction. On to May Day!
The workers were fired because of the bosses' negligence in not securing an oxygen tank (not chaining it to the wall) in the MRI Center. This was a violation of standard safety procedures.
The workers were transporting a patient to have an MRI. Inside the room, the patient needed oxygen. Lacking a non-metallic oxygen-supplier, the oxygen tank was moved closer to the patient. But then the 500-pound steel tank, attracted by the large magnet in the MRI, flew into, and damaged, the machine. Luckily, the two workers and the patient were not injured or killed.
The hospital bosses fired the two workers, blaming them for the bosses' negligence. Under capitalism, profits come first, ahead of the lives of the working class. In the capitalist-run hospital, safety is ignored at the expense of workers and patients. Only in a communist society with no bosses or profit motive, will workers' safety get top priority.
At this hospital, many hazardous conditions exist. When the State Joint Inspection Commission gives notice to inspect the hospital, the bosses clean up some of their violations. But these inspections are a sham. Hospital bosses pay this Commission to inspect their institutions so they can tell the patients how "good" they are.
The fight to re-hire the workers has been a passive one, led by the 1199 union. First, the workers had to rely on the contract's grievance procedures, which failed to win the jobs back. At a meeting, many workers were angry because the firings had been kept quiet for two weeks. One worker declared, "As soon as the firings occurred, we should have called for a general walkout, especially since the day they got fired was the day of the Joint Commission inspection."
Leaflets about the firings were distributed in the community. A small group of workers marched to the CEO's office, but were told he was "at a meeting." One worker said we should have a sit-in until he comes out. This didn't happen.
This struggle produced three new Challenge readers, adding to our expanding list. The fight continues to reverse the firings and to win still more workers to communist ideas.
On the weekend of Jan. 30-Feb. 1st, I participated in the communist cadre school in Brooklyn. To me it was very motivating because I saw in a clearer way what has been part of my life. My parents are PLP members and I have been to many demonstrations and sales of the paper, but I always saw it as my parents' "thing."
In Colombia, the schools taught us nothing that had to do with real life and only that god and Simón Bolívar must be our only heroes and that workers have never done anything for us.
They don't teach you anything about May Day, the Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolutions, and what communists have done all over the world.
The cadre school helped us understand why youth must play a leading role in the building of the Party. We are the future of the revolution because we are the workers of the future. We also talked about how not to be cannon fodder in the capitalist world and how to organize inside the army to turn the guns around. Many children are ready because they are being exploited all over the world. In Colombia, there are over 3,000 children working in mines, picking coffee, etc. There are many more homeless children starving to death. Capitalist schools just train us for capitalism. We learn how to become gang members and join satanic or religion sects or become obedient soldiers in imperialist armies.
They build all that by building anti-communism. That is why many kids hate school. We'd rather watch TV than do schoolwork. Indeed, we have a long way to go to undo the damage that capitalism has done to our lives. We must step up the process to build a mass May Day, and mass communist party, so we can destroy capitalism once and for all.
Young Colombian Comrade
How ironic is this? As Clinton is preparing to bomb Iraq, he has invited (at Hillary's urging) representatives of two Los Angeles-based groups, the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Muslim Women's League, to celebrate the end of Ramadan at the White House. These two groups, made up mostly of black American Muslims are overjoyed to be "included" in the White House's guest list, and will happily go to the White House to help Clinton mend fences both with Muslims and black Americans.
Alam Al-Marayati, the director of the MPAC, says, "organizations in Southern California's Muslim community have `established a strong record of commitment to the national interests of the United States, along with a really deep-seated allegiance to our faith.' " I guess that means that when Clinton sends the U.S. Army--30% of which is black, to kill Muslims in Iraq, Al-Marayati will be right there supporting him. Multi-culturalism in the service of imperialism--at its most overt.
LA Comrade
The letter from Chicago Comrades in Challenge (1/4) expressed a dangerous misstatement of our Party's line. It stated, "These courts are their playing field. They have state power. When they force us to play by their rules we often lose." What part of capitalist society is not "their playing field?" When do they not try to "force us to play by their rules?" Is there some neutral or level playing field? Of course not!
Communists must fight back in every situation. Tactics may vary but our strategy is to be on the offensive. We understand that fascism and imperialist war reflect the strategic weakness of the capitalist system and open opportunities for communists to go on the offensive in leading the working class towards revolution. The comrades in Chicago are waging a court battle around the arrests at the Democratic Convention in 1996 and we have been self-critical about our failure to fight back on this case earlier.
The communist movement has a proud tradition of turning the bosses' attacks into attacks on the capitalist system--including in their courts. The Abolitionists used the Amistad trial to attack slavery and build their movement to end it. Dimitroff made an important speech during his trial by the Nazis, accusing the Nazi's of burning down the Reichstag, proudly proclaiming that he was a communist and calling on workers to unite against fascism. The Communist Party USA defended the Scottsboro boys in the streets and in courts, putting the capitalist system on trial for racism. Our Party turned the HUAC investigations into an attack on the U.S. bosses' anti-communism and genocide in Vietnam. This attack signaled the end of HUAC. We should use all opportunities presented to us to attack the bosses and show the need for communism.
New York Teacher
I would appreciate some enlightenment about the Zippergate editorial. I agree with its main line but I'm having trouble understanding the Rubin/Brookings contradiction within the Rockefeller Eastern Establishment. According to the editorial, the Clinton/Rubin line is huge IMF loans to keep Asian banks from failing and helping them meet their interest payments to the same banks that issue the loans. This tactic is conceded to be only a temporary cure and carries the threat of another debt meltdown soon. The Kissinger line seems to be saying the same thing that IMF loans are "taking their toll on New York investment houses" but are necessary to prevent the "risk (of) growing nationalism in Asia and class anger among workers in the U.S." It seems to me that both the Rubin and Kissinger lines are saying that the Rockefeller bosses are taking a calculated risk. But then the editorial says the Kissinger line echoes the opposing Brookings line which is vaguely described as discipline within the Eastern Establishment ranks to force fascism on the working class and prepare for world war." This "discipline" requires sacrifices like "hurt somebody fast" and suggests Wall Street targets which confuses me even more. What do they mean? What is their line? Let the banks take the hit? Abandon IMF bailouts? Let the worldwide crisis of overproduction go into freefall? I think I need some clarification.
A Comrade
Challenge Responds: The letter by "NYC comrade" raises a valid point. The main differences in the ruling groups relating to the Asian economic crisis boils down to the following: a complete bailout of the big banks and investors in the afflicted Asian countries is not prudent. It would encourage sharper class struggle in these countries. Presently, thousands of Indonesian workers are protesting IMF policies, which would force workers and some others to take all the suffering. The IMF policies now underwrite the banks and investors. The billions of IMF loans comes from taxes workers pay in the U.S. That is why workers see the big boys getting off the hook in their failed policies.
Those that suggest that the IMF don't give banks and investors anything risk the U.S. economy. There are those who believe that these policies will lead to a bad case of the "Asian flu" which will undermine the U.S. economy. Then there is the view that was put forward by Thomas Friedman in a recent NY Times article titled "Haircut Time," that proposes a halfway house that hopes to limit class struggle and imprudent investments. Friedman says: "An IMF bailout that makes reckless banks and investors whole again will never fly. An IMF bailout that punishes both reckless banks and investors, but still leaves them some space and buys them some time to make real business and governance reforms, is both good economics and good politics."
Just a small contribution to the current discussion in Challenge about the crisis of overproduction. Marx wrote numerous works about business cycles, but not much that was explicitly about economic crisis. In Theories of Surplus Value, Marx wrote a more developed explanation, entitled "Crisis Theory." In it, Marx attacks various bourgeois economists (Ricardo, Say, and Mill), who claimed that a general crisis of overproduction was impossible.
In "Crisis Theory," Marx demolishes these bourgeois apologists by showing that crisis is inherent in the contradictions inherent in commodity exchange and money. He shows that crises, far from being impossible, become inevitable at certain key points. These crises, according to Marx, bring out all the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist economy:
"In world market crises, all the contradictions of bourgeois production erupt collectively;....Over-production is specifically conditioned by the general law of the production of capital: to produce to the limit set by the productive forces, that is to say, to exploit the maximum amount of labor with the given amount of capital, without any consideration for the actual limits of the market or the needs backed by the ability to pay; and this is carried out through continuous expansion of reproduction and accumulation, and therefore constant reconversion of revenue into capital, while on the other hand, the mass of the producers remain tied to the average level of needs, and must remain tied to it according to the nature of capitalist production."
In other words, capitalism produces too much food while millions starve. Capitalism produces too much housing material, while millions are homeless. Capitalism produces too much clothing, while millions are unclothed. Books like The Grapes of Wrath moved millions about this fundamental contradiction of capitalist economy.
And how does capitalism solve this contradiction? Through war and fascism. Listen to R. Palme Dutt, an Indian communist, writing in 1934, in Fascism and Social Revolution: "Today they are burning wheat and grain, the means of human life. Tomorrow they will be burning living human bodies." Understanding that we are in a crisis of overproduction today is key to understanding the Party's line on war and fascism.
New Jersey Comrades
The article in the Challenge (2/4), "Communist Politics Raised in the Fight against Fascist Workfare" was right on the button. It connected Roosevelt's New Deal version of slave labor with Hitler's and Mussolini's that would lead to deaths through ill health, starvation and outright murder.
Fully right. Then, the article clearly states "Communists must patiently and persistently lay bare the historical facts."
For this reason, I want to make a minor correction, but one I feel strongly about. I refer to the writer's declaration that the "Emancipation From Poverty program would gladden the hearts of the Hitler-Mussolini Roosevelt Axis that created the original model 70 years ago."
The inaccurate fact within the accurate political concept, is that Roosevelt was part of the Axis. Yes, Roosevelt was a fascist disguised as a liberal or was what was then called a social fascist which was not applied to him at that time nor to any capitalists. But he was aligned or came to be aligned with Churchill, and his faction came to be known as the Allies. The actual Axis that existed was Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo or Germany, Italy and Japan.
All the nations of that period were training their workers to kill their fellow workers in the two opposing coalitions. Only the Soviet union was not capitalist and did not have some form of slave labor workfare process gong on. They had no unemployment and their five year plans were succeeding as was proved by how they smashed the Nazis.
It is harder for less politically sophisticated students of history or current events to understand how Roosevelt, Hitler and Mussolini were more alike than different if we are careless
with big facts like such a word like "Axis." After all, between the Axis and the Allies, more than 100 million people were killed. It sounds pedantic, but let's get it right anyway. Otherwise readers might think that the writer didn't know there was a real axis though my guess is the writer knew.
NYC Former Welfare Worker
An episode happened in the "maximum security" pediatrics building at Cook County Hospital which was very bad for the staff and for the patient's family. It began with the stupid new rules about ID. checks on visitors to the newborn unit.
"Could you show me your ID., please?" The baby's mother pulled out her driver's license and handed it to the nurse. "Hmmm, You know, this doesn't really look like you." "It's me," the woman replied. "But still, I'm afraid it doesn't look like you. Do you have another...?"
"Wait a second," the woman said, looking around, a little embarrassed. Then she reached up and pulled off her wig. "Oh...! I'm sorry! I'm very sorry! Of course, I see."
What could the nurse say. She felt terribly embarrassed and very sorry she had pushed the new rules so hard. What a humiliating experience for the patient's mother, and for the nurse!
These new rules in the pediatrics building are supposed to "protect" the patients, but how can ruining the relationship between nurses and mothers be a good thing? The mothers would be perfectly justified if they demanded that we show them our nursing school diplomas!
When I moved to the U.S. as a young nurse, I thought I was moving from a dictatorship to a democracy. In the last two weeks I have learned once again how wrong I was.
Angry Neonatal ICU Nurse
That's a description by the chief of undercover activities for the Haifa police of the profits from forced prostitution. "Throughout the world," says a report in the New York Times (1/11), "selling naive and desperate young women into sexual bondage has become one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises in the robust [!] global economy."
What's this got to do with the criminal U.S. ruling class? Recently Jerry Falwell and leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention (great "upholders" of "family values" and the "sanctity of women") met with fascist Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to tell him they would mobilize "200,000 evangelical pastors in America...to go to their pulpits and use their influence in support of the state of Israel and the Prime Minister."
The Falwell group is part of the New Money forces in the U.S., based in the South and West, who are locked in a death struggle with the Eastern Establishment's Rockefeller Old Money wing of the ruling class for control of U.S. capitalism. Netanyahu defeated the Rockefeller-Clinton puppet Peres in the last Israeli election. He is not under the Rockefeller thumb in the Mideast political scene. So the Falwell/New Money forces are courting him. Their hypocrisy about "family values"--as well as Clinton's (even when his pants are zipped)--is exposed in their fight to control Israel where thousands of women are kept in sexual slavery for the greater glory of the profit system.
According to the UN, this is the fate of four million women worldwide every year, 500,000 brought into Western Europe alone. A UN spokesman declared that "200 million people are victims...of slavery....children in sweatshops, domestic workers, migrants. During four centuries, 12 million people were...involved in the slave trade between Africa and the New World. The 200 million--and many are women who are trafficked for sex--is a current figure. It's happening now. Today."
According to the Times, the restoration of full-blown capitalism in the old Soviet Union--and its interaction with world capitalism--"have opened...the most lucrative market of all to criminal gangs that have flourished since the fall of Communism." This "market" is composed of Russian and Ukrainian women facing complete destitution in their homeland. Over 400,000 Ukrainian women under 30 have left in the past decade. Among those who have lost their jobs since the dissolution of the USSR, 80% are women. In the Ukraine, there are 30 applicants for every job. Two-thirds of those unemployed are women. No wonder a woman forced into sexual slavery in a massage parlor near Tel Aviv's old Central Bus Station told the Times reporter, "I'm not sure I would go back now if I could. What would I do there, stand on a bread line or work in a factory for no wages?"
These are the "choices" capitalism has offered tens of millions of women. Centered in Moscow and Kiev, the sophisticated global operation trafficking women runs east to Japan and Thailand, where thousands of young Slavic women now work against their will as prostitutes, and west to the Adriatic Coast and beyond. In Milan, Italy, women abducted from the old Soviet Union are put on auction blocks, half naked, and sold at an average price of just under $1,000.
Says the UN spokesman, "The (Russian) mafia is not stupid....The earnings are incredible. The overhead is low--you don't have to buy cars and guns. Drugs you sell once and they're gone. Women can earn money for a long time."
With "village life disintegrating throughout much of the former Soviet world," young women are lured by advertisements about "a good life, high wages and steady employment." When they arrive at a destination like Israel (where neither prostitution nor the sale of human beings is illegal), their new employer immediately takes what little money they have, rips up their passport before their eyes and orders them to work as prostitutes. They cannot speak the language, are in immediate danger of deportation, have no friends or relatives and are completely at the mercy of their new exploiters.
If they balk, "many end up like Irina. Stunned and outraged by the sudden order to prostitute herself, she simply refused. She was beaten and raped before she succumbed." In Israel, they are held in apartments, bars and makeshift brothels, "service" 15 clients a day and sleep in shifts, four to a bed. Their "best hope" is deportation, if the police ever catch up with their captors (and many times cops are in the pockets of the brothels). But few women will testify against them. "Last year in Istanbul, Turkey...two women were thrown to their deaths from a balcony while six of their Russian friends watched." The global economy of capitalist exploitation at its "finest."
"The Tropicana, in Tel Aviv's bustling business district, is one of the busiest bordellos. The women...like nearly all prostitutes in Israel today, are Russian....There are 12 cubicles where 20 women work in shifts, 8 during the daytime, 12 at night. Business is always booming....Israeli soldiers, with rifles on their shoulders, frequent the place, as do business executives and tourists." Police estimate that there are 25,000 paid sexual transactions in Israel every day.
Such is the life of forced prostitution that the profit motive has visited on at least four million women, not to mention the 200 million others held in slavery in sweatshops and as domestic workers and migrants. It is a natural outgrowth of capitalism and its global economy. Only under communism, where workers rule, where there are no bosses or profits, where women are equals and men and women of the working class share production, distribution according to need and their total lives -- only under such a system can there be liberation from outright slavery and wage slavery. Could there be a better reason to destroy capitalism with communist revolution?