Challenge, January 6 1999

The free-for-all over Clinton’s future reflects a complex and deadly struggle among billionaires over political power and how to use it. Workers have absolutely no stake in supporting any of these gangsters. No matter who wins, capitalism will remain bosses’ dictatorship. Our class interest lies in advancing the struggle for communism. We must build the PLP and prepare to seize political power to smash all bosses.

The vicious battle over the Clinton presidency exposes many of the rulers’ weaknesses, and creates opportunities for our movement to grow. Despite overwhelming popular opposition to Clinton’s impeachment or removal from office, the impeachment bandwagon is gaining momentum. We don’t know many of the specifics about this bosses’ dogfight, but something big is obviously at stake for the Republicans to stick their necks out this far. One educated guess might be to start with a look at the oil business.

The Exxon-Mobil merger has sharpened the split between the Rockefeller interests and the domestic Oil Patch bosses. This attempt at the fascist consolidation of the U.S. economy under Rockefeller & Co. will drive many less powerful domestic oil companies out of business. Fighting for their economic survival, these smaller billionaires are particularly desperate. Their key political spokesman is Tom DeLay, the Texas Republican leading the anti-Clinton charge, and a major opponent of federal environmental regulations that limit domestic oil drilling. It’s no accident that the House of Representatives is the frontline for the anti-Clinton forces. That’s where the Oil Patch has made its biggest political gains. DeLay’s ability to force the impeachment issue shows that Rockefeller & Co. still face serious Challenges.

But oil is not the only reason the bosses are at each other’s throats. Finance is another battleground. This struggle goes beyond the Oil Patch-Rockefeller rift. The Eastern Establishment moneybags are fighting among themselves. For example, a major issue underlying the recent New York Senate campaign between Democrat Schumer and Republican D’Amato had to do with regulating the banking industry (the Schumer-Rockefeller position) vs. letting it operate with few controls (the D’Amato-Citibank line).

Then there’s discontent with Clinton from within the Rockefeller camp itself. Clinton took campaign money from Chinese businessmen in return for promises to supply advanced technology. Giving military secrets to a strategic enemy is a no-no. Furthermore, Clinton has failed to put together a coherent Middle East policy, to mobilize for the next invasion of Iraq. That is why now seriously threatening to bomb Iraq.

Clinton has attacked the working class harder than any Democratic president since Woodrow Wilson, through increased police terror, racist Workfare/slave labor, mass layoffs in manufacturing (625,000 predicted by the end of 1998), anti-immigrant fascism, and ongoing war preparations. He has done all this in the service of his masters in Washington and on Wall Street. Clinton is not a "lesser evil." The billionaires who hate him have profit interests opposed to those of his masters. The billionaires behind him want a president who serves them better. All of these murderers care only about profits, so alliances and antagonisms can shift almost overnight.

One thing is certain. More turmoil among the rulers lies ahead. The Wall Street Journal warns: "…on the full range of social and international issues, the House may be as polarized as at any time since Reconstruction in the late 1860s…" (12/16). The Rockefeller agenda and the DeLay agenda can’t continue to co-exist indefinitely. The bosses’ main wing will have to discipline the upstarts. The upstarts can’t allow themselves to be driven out of business. Another civil war in some form or other is a distinct possibility.

Clinton may stay. He may go. The rulers’ dogfight will continue. The drive to fascism and war will continue, as Rockefeller, Inc. desperately try to force both the capitalist class and the working class under heel for the bloody global needs of U.S. imperialism. Our job remains the same. The bosses’ current disarray should be a green light for us to politicize workers and to advance the class struggle in the factories and mills, in the barracks, schools, and communities, and to prepare for the seizure of power with communist revolution.

Merger Another Step To War

The Exxon-Mobil merger is another major step towards the next Middle East oil war, and sharpens the rivalry between Exxon and European oil bosses. Exxon gobbled up Mobil shortly after British Petroleum (BP) had announced a merger with Amoco (a former Rockefeller oil company that slipped away).

BP-Amoco would be the world’s third biggest oil giant, after Exxon-Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell. The Exxon-Mobil merger seems to have the blessing of the federal government, as well as of The New York Times. But the BP-Amoco merger is now being delayed by U.S. antitrust regulators, "in order to study the competitive impact" of Exxon-Mobil (Reuters 12/14).

Maybe this is just coincidence, but Ken Starr’s Chicago law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, represents Amoco. The Exxon-Mobil caper will not only create the biggest oil company; it will also form a petrochemical giant capable of competing with DuPont and Dow, two Old Money firms that compete with Rockefeller interests.

Oppose Imperialist Bombing of Iraq!

Workers, soldiers and students must organize now against the bombing of Iraq, which will lead to a wider war. This bombing has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. The fight to control oil is behind the growing fight among the world’s imperialists and the internal dogfight among U.S. bosses. The crisis of overproduction forces the Rockefeller Inc. oil bosses not to allow Iraqi oil to flood the market or for this oil to fall into the hands of their rivals. That is why these big oil bosses, and their supporters in the unions and mass movement, are building support among workers and youth to oppose the anti-Clinton Republican/Oil Patch attack (see editorial). But marching for Clinton today means marching for massive bombing and then ground war for imperialist control of Middle East oil.

We must organize protests, rallies, strikes and other actions against the bombing. At any pro-Clinton rallies, on the job, in the barracks and in school, we’ll say, "No to the slaughter of workers for oil profits! March for an end to imperialism and racism. Don’t support racist Clinton who instituted Workfare, murder at the border, prison labor, and the murder of Iraqi workers! March for communism on May Day 1999!"

Re-Open the DC 37 Contract: Abolish Wage Slavery

NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 10 — "It feels like the revolution is coming to DC 37…who knows what’s going to happen?" (NY Times 11/26) These sentiments echo throughout the work sites of 120,000 union workers. We want change from the lavish and corrupt lifestyles of the DC 37 leadership, and the vote fraud used to pass our wage-freeze contract and union elections.

AFSCME has placed DC 37 in trusteeship, and Executive Director Stanley Hill was forced to step down. The president of the largest Local was ousted for embezzling $1.7 million, and two other corrupt local presidents have been removed. More will follow. But make no mistake, this is a fight among the millionaires who run the unions, on behalf of the rulers, not us! The main wing of the ruling class is disciplining its agents in the labor movement, so they can more effectively control the workers, undermine our struggles, and maintain our illusions in the profit system. UFT President Randy Weingarten, who replaced Hill as head of the 300,000 member Municipal Labor Committee said, "I am taking on this responsibility for one reason only: to help restore the integrity and credibility of the municipal movement in New York, which because of recent events, has been tarnished." (NY Times 12/4)

What Weingarten, International President McEntee, and the federal prosecutor won’t do, is restore the millions stolen by the illegally ratified contract, which set the pattern for 300,000 city workers. Weingarten said, "On balance, I would argue against a reopener..." A mere one percent raise in the first year of the contract would have meant $250 million (over $2,000 per worker). Not getting this raise meant the city bosses stole this money from the workers’ pockets. It may be chump-change for Hill, McEntee, and Weingarten, but it’s daily survival for city workers and our families. The contract included a two-year wage-freeze, and opened the door for slave labor/Workfare workers to replace union workers. The bosses need this money to pay for the next Middle East oil war, and Workfare means more fascist control of working class.

PLP is helping lead the fight to re-open the contract, and fighting against racist slave labor/Workfare. We are active in the petition drive throughout DC 37 to re-open the contract and uniting with Workfare workers at our jobs and in various organizations. We will organize protests at DC 37 headquarters, and form job site committees that can become the backbone of larger strike committees.

We can take advantage of the turmoil in the union leadership to build a mass PLP. Our goal is more than a raise, it’s abolishing wage slavery with communist revolution. Where we have regular Challenge readers, we can develop networks of distributors. Where we have friends of the Party, we can recruit new members. Our Party, and the revolutionary communist movement, can grow significantly and emerge as a leading force among city workers. But this can only happen if we are mass organizers, improve our basebuilding among the workers and lead struggle in the unions. The process of change is unfolding amongst city workers. We can build a mass PLP in the heat of class struggle.

Building PLP Among Mexican Auto Workers

MEXICO, Dec. 14 — Twenty five workers met to build a fighting PLP among autoworkers. Autoworkers organized the meeting, through discussions with their co-workers and other friends of the Party, without the knowledge of the bosses, police, or union goons. They organized, and gave political leadership, to all aspects of the meeting, from securing a meeting place to the wonderful meal that followed at another location. The meeting included workers from Ford and Volvo, and a former GM worker.

Spirits were high and the questions raised were not just for idle curiosity. They were profound political questions that go into building the revolutionary communist movement among industrial workers in pro-capitalist unions. One worker asked, "Who is the main enemy, the bosses, the police, or the government?" We pointed out that when we fight Ford’s layoffs and speed-up they use the government to declare our strike illegal, and use the army and cops to attack us. This gives us the opportunity to win thousands of workers to see how Ford enforces their class dictatorship, and why workers must join PLP to replace the dictatorship of the bosses with the dictatorship of the workers.

We talked about making Challenge the "strong foundation" on which we build our movement. By writing more about the struggles we’re involved in, Challenge can expose the capitalist crisis, link our struggle to a fighting PLP in other cities and industries, and speed up the revolutionary process. If everyone at the meeting distributes 5 to 10 Challenges to friends, family, and co-workers, our readership will increase by more than 200. This is the key to developing mass communist leadership among the workers.

We also talked about putting internationalism at the center of our work. We reported on PLP’s involvement in the international auto workers’ conference in Germany last October, and that we have contacts in South Africa, Europe, and South America. We said that we need more regular contacts with U.S. autoworkers, organizing international support for each others’ struggles. We used the example of the worker from Germany speaking at the PLP rally at the DaimlerChrysler plant in Detroit a few weeks ago. One worker asked, "How much of this can we really do?" "All of it," we replied.

One worker asked about the difference between the socialism of the old communist movement, and the communism the PLP fights for. We explained that the giants that came before us thought that socialism was the "first stage" of communism, but mistakenly maintained money and wages. They focused more on producing enough goods for the workers, than on developing mass communist consciousness. We believe that communism will grow from the conscious political will of the masses. Workers can understand communist ideas and be trusted to build a communist world. Producing goods will be secondary to producing communists. Four more workers joined PLP at the meeting.

Ford workers will be reaching out to VW workers here who are fighting for their jobs. Also, our contract with Ford expires in March, and the U.S. auto contracts expire next September. The international crisis of capitalism is deepening, and the bosses will be attacking us harder than ever. This meeting is a clear example that we can turn these attacks into their opposites.

Steel Workers Discuss Contract Fight

EAST CHICAGO, Dec. 9 — Tonight steel workers from LTV, Inland and LaSalle steel met to discuss the upcoming contract, the crisis of overproduction in the industry, and the right-wing "Stand Up for Steel" campaign of the union and steel bosses. It was a modest, but good beginning to mounting a fight that can lead workers to "Stand Up to the Steel Crisis."

Workers wanted to know whether the crisis was real, or just a ploy by the bosses to get us to take concessions. There was a lively discussion about how the increasing competition among the world’s bosses had created the crisis, and how the collapse of the Asian and Russian economies have made it worse. We pointed out that the crisis was real, and that the bosses want us to pay for it. But it’s not our crisis! We didn’t create it, and we should fight to make them pay for it.

We discussed the splits among the bosses. While the steel bosses are demanding an end to cheap steel imports, the auto industry is all for it. The U.S. agreed to import great amounts this steel as part of the IMF bailout of U.S. banks that stand to take huge losses on their loans to Asia and Russia. While the bosses are fighting for markets and profits, workers around the world are suffering rising unemployment and mass poverty. The USW wants us to support the U.S. steel bosses. Instead, we must unite with steel workers in Korea, Russia and Mexico against all the bosses and their global crisis.

Workers were very much aware of the crisis, and especially the 48,000 Boeing layoffs. One worker said, "I just don’t know what we can do!" That’s where the meeting was weak. We didn’t fight hard enough to outline how to prepare a political base in the mills for sharp actions, leading to strikes next August. We did say we would try to make international contacts with other steel workers, and meet again to involve more workers in building an alternative to the nationalist "Stand Up for Steel" campaign. We also started a Christmas collection for the 90 LaSalle Steel strikers who lost their jobs during the strike last Summer. This is a way to build the unity that is necessary for the coming battle.

This meeting had its limits, but reflects the opportunities for PLP to grow in this coming period. The crisis is forcing steelworkers to think about the world, and the bosses and union hacks are forced to organize right-wing, fascist movements to derail our anger. They want us to support them in their economic wars, and the shooting wars that are to follow. The workers are searching for answers, and there is a real leadership vacuum that we can fill. We must fight to double the distribution of Challenge in the next few months, to create a solid political base to lead sharp class struggle. By linking our fight to the struggle of auto and aerospace workers, we can expose the crisis to thousands of workers, develop the revolutionary potential of industrial workers and recruit to PLP steel clubs in various mills. This is how we can begin to prepare steelworkers for the seizure of power.

Fight Ford In Every Corner Of The World!

The capitalist crisis of overproduction is causing unemployment, extreme poverty and hunger for the world’s workers. But, not only do the workers have problems. So do the bosses. Their thirst for profits is making them attack each other in their competition for markets.

This is affecting workers in the factories in Mexico and around the world. These attacks show that workers of the world are one class, and can fight as one against the capitalists. At the Ford plant in Valencia, Spain, the bosses threatened to send production to other factories in Europe if the union leadership didn’t come to a favorable agreement with the company. They met with resistance by the workers. In Argentina, Ford has threatened to fire 1,400 workers and slash production because the economic crisis in Brazil has greatly reduced the market. In Cuautitl�n, Mexico, the company is introducing "new" production systems to "reduce costs." This means firings, "voluntary" retirement, and speed-up for those who keep their jobs. A fight is brewing here, when the contract expires in March.

Workers are suffering the effects of globalization, where the bosses can move production around the world, to whichever factory best meets their rotten needs. We can, and must coordinate our responses to these attacks internationally. In this period of capitalist crisis, it’s very difficult for workers to improve our living conditions. On the contrary, they are getting worse and worse. The pro-capitalist unions and the electoral parties, who want to save the capitalist system that causes these crises, end up allying with the exploiting ruling class.

That’s why we need to build the PLP and fight in the interests of the workers of the world. Companies like Ford have built their factories in many countries. We have the need and opportunity, to unite with workers throughout the world to abolish class society, borders and capitalist crises. Organized into one international communist PLP, workers of the world can build a communist society where we produce for the needs of the working class and not for the bosses’ profits. Workers of the World, Unite! Join PLP.

The Modern Berlin Wall

Dear Challenge:

Recently I participated in a protest organized by PLP at the San Ysidro-Tijuana border. Being in front of the wall, looking at workers who, with anxious and desperate looks, were waiting for an opportunity to jump over the wall knowing that they risked their lives, made me think.

In the past, the majority who crossed over were certain they would find work, and that if the Migra arrested them (which was less likely), they only had to try again. Many were aided by family members and friends. But today the situation is very different. Today they risk their lives. Today they face more armed agents of the Migra, soldiers stationed at the border, the racist gangs that beat and kill workers, or dehydration in the desert. Today the penalties for friends and family members who attempt to help them are more severe. Jobs are more scarce and the legal requirements make it more difficult for the undocumented worker to survive. Over 300,000 immigrants were deported in the last two years. Even so, the workers on the other side are willing to try their luck.

Anti-immigrant racism has suffered a qualitative, brutal change. From racism that mainly consisted of exploiting immigrants inside the U.S., it has changed to a racism that intends to exploit these workers in their countries of origin. It’s enough to see the huge transfer of U.S. factories, for now mainly to Mexico and Central America, but more and more to all of Latin America. Also, there is an increase in the open involvement of U.S. imperialism in the internal political affairs of Latin America. The policies of the governments in Mexico and Central America are designed in Washington, and in European capitals. These policies create conditions of slave labor exploitation, and often have to be carried out with blood and fire by fascist governments. If we look from the wall that serves as the U.S. border to the South, we see a huge concentration camp of slave labor.

This change of U.S. strategy required that the wall change from one that served to regulate the flow of immigrants to a wall that doesn’t allow anyone to escape from the slave labor concentration camp where they live. But didn’t the U.S. government endlessly attack the famous Berlin Wall for supposedly being a wall that kept people as slaves in East Berlin?

The U.S. bosses received our protest with all kinds of police: uniformed, and undercover, on horse back, on foot, and in cars, armed with guns, rifles, clubs, a helicopter, and video cameras. They even closed the border for a while to stop workers from getting our message. This huge show of state power on the part of the imperialists is a clear sign that anti-immigrant racism is one of the weakest links of U.S. imperialism. The panic that the capitalist rulers feel when we chant "Down with borders, Down with fascism," shows the masses that the imperialists are slave masters, while the communists are the true fighters for liberty. Down with Wage Slavery!

A California Farm Worker

Students, Teachers, Parents Oppose Police Takeover of NYC Schools!

BROOKLYN, NY, Dec. 15 — "The cops behave worse than any student here!" exclaimed a Brooklyn high school teacher this week in anticipation of the NYPD takeover of School Security. At many Brooklyn high schools, PLP members have been active in leading the fight against this invasion. Not only is the ruling class pushing cops in the school, but also a new plan calling for DNA testing of every person arrested! Police Commissioner Safir spoke at Bronx Science high school unveiling his plan.

It is clear how fascism is being built in the schools Board of Ed chief Rudy Crew pushed through this "merger" in the fall against the wishes of angry parents and teachers who walked out of the Board of Education meeting. Whatever guidelines have been written point to the fact that students will be treated even more as criminals. Teachers will be asked to function as informants giving names over to the cops. Breaking a school rule will become the same as breaking the law! Eventually cops will be all over the school, not just outside. In many schools there is so much chaos and disorder, that some teachers are actually welcoming this takeover. But we in the PLP believe that allowing these schools to deteriorate has been the deliberate policy of those in power who are now conveniently calling in the cops to restore "law and order". These same cops who murdered more than a dozen people since the torture of Abner Louima, who shot Michael Jones 17 times and who routinely handcuff, search and brutalize our youth will be "training" school security! What a joke! In fact, they will be finalizing the process of turning schools into jails, students into suspects. As one teacher said, "they will be creating a larger pool of black and brown suspects." Of course, communists and those who fight for the working class must take leadership in this struggle, especially in standing up to administrators and union hacks.

Progressive Labor Party members are supporting A Day Of Action all around Brooklyn High Schools. This includes leafleting, wearing buttons, organizing meetings, forums and demonstrations.

At Wingate High School in Brooklyn, teachers and students have been meeting since September in a union caucus discussing how to advocate for the students and respond to issues of police terror and the growth of gangs. This caucus has taken a lot 0� leadership in the school by speaking up at union meetings and faculty meetings, supporting hurricane relief efforts and organizing support for a student who was shot by the cops. There are over 20 teachers and a few students who meet in the building. They have circulated a statement opposing the police presence in the school and have asked the entire union to endorse our position. The group is calling for a demonstration outside of the PTA meeting this week to "unwelcome" the Chief of Police. They will learn a lot by organizing people to fight back at a time when some teachers have resigned themselves to accepting every fascist attack!

At Erasmus High, students are very excited about organizing a protest in the cafeteria as part of A Day Of Action. They are planning a protest in the cafeteria, including leafleting, wearing buttons and unfurling a banner, which is being endorsed by the student government. Teachers are being asked to support the students by wearing buttons and going to the cafeteria on their free periods. In fact, there has been a big struggle in many teacher committees there against the frequent handcuffing of students who do not move away from the building fast enough or are in the vicinity of a fight. There are many new student leaders and members of PLP who have come forward to rake action!

The police invasion of the schools makes it clear to us that those who run the schools have no interest in our youth. Students, teachers and parents should support our Days 0f Action campaign and join Progressive Labor Party for a bright future!

PLP’er Cheered At UFT Delegate Assembly

NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 2 — Theleadership of the United Federation of Teachers (the NYC teachers’ union) accepted an amendment from a communist PLP delegate to a resolution calling for more classroom resources needed to meet the new standards. This amendment to the motion passed overwhelmingly, and was greeted with thunderous applause. The amendment required the union leadership to report to the Delegate Assembly every three months on the progress of this motion. The amendment had been proposed by a PLP delegate who usually raises anti-capitalist, pro-working class, communist points at the Assembly—for which the delegate usually receives small applause. What was different this time? Did it reflect a gain for communist ideas?

The union’s motion dealt with a series of reforms: smaller classes, more materials, more teachers, more real training periods for teachers, more help for students, individual tutors, etc. But the union leadership never wants to be made accountable—by having to report to the membership on a regular basis—and never accepts amendments, which require them to be accountable. In this case union president Weingarten accepted the amendment as "friendly," therefore freeing up her caucus members (the Unity Caucus) to vote their conscience. However, the cheering for the amendment was spontaneous, long and loud. Nobody controls that. And that was in part a response to the teachers’ enormous frustration at higher standards planned without the means to attain them. It was also a response to the lack of fight-back being organized by the leadership.

PLP members who are teachers and delegates have been attending the Delegate Assembly for many years. We sell Challenge to delegates entering the Assembly, hand out PLP leaflets and raise anti-capitalist/communist ideas on the union floor. A Vietnam vet who is a delegate and has refused most of our leaflets, shook the delegate’s hand and said, "Great job!" Many others expressed support. But when a union vice-president hugged him, we knew we hadn’t gone far enough.

We are just learning how to use the meeting floor and to develop a mass base in the Delegate Assembly for sharpening the class struggle while fighting for communist ideas. We should have included a call for a strike against the increasingly rotten schools or exposed how "standards" have failure built into them and will be used to flunk hundreds of thousands of black and Latin students. "Standards" are part of the internal struggle among ruling class forces, while honest people want all students to be adequately educated, the Eastern Establishment (Old Money, Rockefeller) forces want to tighten control of education which is needed to develop fascism. They are using the rhetoric of educating all "kids" to implement "standards" and programs that will intensify the tracking of working class kids into the army and/or slave labor.

But the discussions we had with delegates after the vote made it clear that part of the applause was because the amendment allowed delegates to cheer for a proponent of anti-capitalist ideas who they normally would not have felt free to publicly support.

Comments made by people to the PLP delegates and others included:

"That’s precisely what we need, a way of checking up on the union leadership." "Great work." "Persistence pays off, eh?" "I hope you don’t have such a big victory next time." "Maybe communism is better than smaller classes." Clearly, many people saw this amendment as positive.

As we work in this union, "victory" will mean winning groups of workers to move against the capitalists, not just winning a vote to reform a resolution. Over the years of working here we have made many contacts but cannot yet claim any great victories. We must be more serious about basebuilding among the delegates, rank-and-file teachers and our coworkers. But we are persistent and aggressive, and will continue to be so. We must figure out how we can continue to put the leadership on the hot seat, while putting forward communist ideas. This is not a simple thing, but fighting a school system that treats most of its students like criminals, and against the hacks who support the system, has never been easy.

Since the Assembly, the delegate has put out a newsletter at work describing the events at the meeting. After reading the report, several teachers reminded the delegate that they hadn’t received their Challenge this week.

Smash Racist Testing of Teachers

NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 14 — "It seems like we are going around in a circle!" That was the reaction of an angry teacher, during a Sunday afternoon meeting, to a so-called liberal judge’s rejection of a discrimination lawsuit brought against the Board of Education (BOE) by teachers dismissed for failing a test. These teachers, most of them with master degrees and at least seven years of satisfactory classroom evaluation, are required by the New York State Education Department and the BOE to pass a test in order to keep their jobs.

The test was designed to measure a candidate’s knowledge and skills in relation to an established standard rather than to a teacher’s performance in class. The purpose of this test, according to the National Evaluation System that compiles it, is to help prospective teachers graduating college to obtain their certification. Many teachers with seniority, who are also mostly white, were never evaluated with this kind of test; they received certification when they obtained their Masters. Those who are required to take the test are newer teachers, predominantly black and Latin.

At the meeting, teachers condemned the Board’s hypocrisy: while they say they need bilingual, special education, math and science teachers, these are the very ones losing their jobs. Meanwhile the BOE is trying to pit immigrant and citizen teachers against each other. Hundreds of teachers have held three protest demonstrations at BOE headquarters. They have also organized two demonstrations outside the union’s Delegate Assembly meetings to protest the United Federation of Teacher’s (UFT) collaboration with the Board on this issue. AFT President Sandra Feldman has already labeled these accomplished teachers "incompetent." Of course, the union has been quite "competent" in taking these teachers’ dues, in some cases for up to fifteen years, while aiding and abetting the Board’s policy.

This racist lack of support for the mostly black and Latin members widens the already existing gap among teachers, weakening their unity and leaving them more vulnerable to any attack. How ironic that the main faction controlling the UFT is called the "Unity" Caucus. The victimized teachers have organized their own slate—the Progressive Action Caucus—to oppose the Disunity Caucus misleadership

Adding to their problems, many teachers who lose their licenses are denied unemployment benefits. "We feel we’re hitting our heads against the wall," said another teacher at the meeting, explaining the difficulties she has gone through with the BOE, the union and the two-year court battle. The woman, from a working class background, thought that having a Masters degree would give her the security many other workers lacked. But she’s learning there is a war against all workers. Making profit is the basis of capitalism. It exploits all workers, regardless of nationality, color or whether or not one has a Masters. Black and Latino workers are the hardest hit.

In the seven-year existence of the new licensing requirements, approximately 10,000 teachers have earned between $10,000 and $15,000 less than their years of service would warrant. Many are forced into per diem status, taking a 50% pay cut, with no benefits! (Again, BOE hypocrisy: lay off teachers "because" of test failure; then re-hire them to teach the very same classes—at half the pay!) This effectively cut millions from the school budget, stolen from the paychecks of these minority teachers.

The licensing requirements continue the racist attacks engineered by the bosses for hundreds of years. From U.S. imperialist invasions of Panama, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Puerto Rico to the enslavement of millions of Africans, racism has been intrinsic to U.S. capitalism. Even if the teachers win a legal decision, they (along with all workers) will face continuous attack as long as racist capitalism exists. The global economic crisis can only get worse. Capitalists will squeeze the working class harder and use fascism to maintain their profits. Already we see cops in the schools controlling the students, more restrictions placed on teachers, and parents barred from the classrooms.

This stepped-up fascism by the ruling class highlights the need to fight for a communist society without bosses and their racist ideology.

Build A Mass PLP Through The PTA!

CHICAGO, Dec. 3 — "I saw kids that wouldn’t say two words to each other in the halls, playing on the same team. This was good." "I’m going to tell the principal how well the Sports Night went, and how well the students behaved." The Bogan HS PTA sponsored Sports Night for students to play basketball and volleyball in the school gym, and to broaden the base of the PTA among students, parents, and teachers.

Our small PTA, whose membership is 74, six of whom are active, has taken up the issue of growing fascism against the students. Our first general meeting dealt with the "Beeper Law." Students are arrested and suspended for 10 days just for having a beeper. During the 1992-1993 school year, 358 students were caught with beepers citywide. By the end of the 1997-98 school year, 1,087 students had been arrested and suspended (Chicago Public Schools Uniform Discipline Code Summary).

After a meeting to which we invited the State Representative who sponsored the law, the Principal, and a PLP teacher from Foreman HS, word spread like wildfire that the PTA was challenging the Uniform Discipline Code (UDC). One teacher complained that this was not why she joined the PTA, but with a PLP member as president, we have not backed down. We met and discussed why we must get more parents to fight against the UDC. Everyone at the meeting got a Challenge. We worked hard to get parents to come to the next Local School Council (LSC), to address the Safety and Discipline Committee. Only three parents showed, but with a community representative, a Cook County Hospital worker and a student representative on the LSC, we forced them to establish a committee that would include parents.

Sports Night was an opportunity for us to get to know teachers and students better, and get parents signed up for this committee. The principal, "Warden" Pierzchalski, opposes parent involvement at the school. She gave "her permission" for Sports Night, but no support. We asked the football coach to bring the team. The teachers that sponsor the Pom-Pom and Cheerleader squads were glad to have the students perform. A student from the Modern Dance club asked if they could perform, too. We knew they would be there, but what about other students?

One quick-thinking PTA member signed up students to be on the planning committee. Five students attended the planning meeting. Just days before the event, there were rumblings that students just might be coming. A teacher, who was helping out, was worried that security wasn’t organized. She was a wreck as she learned that students were inviting their friends who didn’t go to Bogan.

Sports Night was like, "The 12 Days of Christmas." Six PTA members, five very nervous teachers, 10 parents standing, and 200 students (not including the football team, the Pom-Pom and Cheerleader squads, and the modern dancers)! Warden Pierzchalski had to act quickly. Students, parents and teachers having a good time together? Without security? Never!

The PTA submitted the names of five parents to sit on the Safety & Discipline committee. At the LSC meeting on December 10th, Warden Pierzchalski organized over 30 teachers to come to support her, and the fascist discipline code. Self critically, we were not prepared for this one. She was pitting teachers against parents to attack our PTA. Some teachers spoke in favor of the UDC, but most were silent. The school disciplinarian announced that he had chosen a committee of eight teachers and one student, since he had received no names of parents. All hell broke loose, and we were able to win three parents to sit on the committee.

The PTA president/PLP member said that capitalist discipline means that youth are treated like criminals until it is time for them to become soldiers to fight and die for the bosses’ profits. Confronted with racism at every turn, many will end up in prison because there are no jobs in a system riddled with uncertainty. But afterward, you always think about all the things you should have said! The ruling class is disciplining the teachers, who just had a fascist contract shoved down their throats. Students and parents are not responsible for this. The ruling class needs to discipline the working class, to survive the crisis of capitalism. Teachers should not be disciplining students, instead they should be organizing them to destroy capitalism!

The PTA is going to issue an open letter to the teachers, asking them "Which side are they on?" Our January meeting will discuss the current threat of war in Iraq. Since Sports Night, some students are interested in turning the PTA into a PTSA. There is a real opportunity to build a mass PLP at Bogan. We have to expand the Challenge readership, and spend more time with key people.

Organize Against Garment Shop Closing and Fight For Communism

LOS ANGELES, CA, Dec. 14 — "What do communists propose to do about the plant closing?" a worker from the Azteca garment factory asked. "We have to organize a mass movement of workers to fight these attacks and, in the long run, fight to take state power, and lead society for the benefit of the workers," answered a PLP member. But until this happens, what should we do? We’ll go to the community organizations, churches or unions to organize actions against the closings, up to and including taking over factories.

That day members of PLP had passed out a leaflet in front of the factory where about 400 work left from the original 1,000 workers. This factory is moving the production of Calvin Klein clothes to Mexico where they pay from $3 to $4 a day. The leaflet said that the bosses and their crisis of overproduction are the causes of this closing. This contradicts the rumors, that it is the result of huge legal fees due so many lawsuits that they had to declare bankruptcy. These false rumors blamed these workers, in a veiled way, for the closing.

Several workers who are active in different community organizations have tried to mobilize organizations to support, or organize struggles against, these attacks on the workers. But the role of these organizations has been to calm down workers’ anger, and to see these attacks as the natural result of NAFTA. Self critically, we have not yet organized workers to lead militant actions against the closing or for a decent severance package, either inside or outside these organizations. Many of the fired workers think that nothing can be done against the capitalists. Others think they’ll be able to find a new job quickly. But unfortunately, finding a new job won’t be easy, especially at this time when many factories are closing or moving their production to other countries, in their drive to pay the lowest possible wage and make the maximum profit.

This situation has helped us discuss the need to fight these attacks and build the fight for communism—a society without money or exploitation, where we’ll all work to produce for the wellbeing of the working class, not for any capitalist boss. Some of the workers who have joined the long lines of the unemployed have exchanged phone numbers with us so we can stay in contact with them and continue to fight this bloodthirsty system.

Modern Language Association Convention in San Francisco:
Crisis in the Humanities: A Communist View

From December 27th-30th, English and foreign language professors, graduate students and adjuncts will be crowding the halls of the San Francisco Hilton at the yearly convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA). Some will look merry, but most will be feeling depressed, even desperate, at the crisis into which higher education in the humanities has been plunged.

Why? Because many public universities and colleges—like CUNY, the University of Texas, etc.—have been under racist assault. Even as college-age black and Latin youth swell the prisons, budgets have been slashed; affirmative action has been gutted, bleaching out many four-year colleges. Graduate students have gone tens of thousands of dollars into debt to get a Ph.D., and slaved as teaching assistants, only to find no jobs. Tenure lines are being eliminated, with up to 60 percent of English courses at some campuses being taught by adjuncts earning poverty-level wages.

There is fight-back, however. Teaching assistants and adjuncts are unionizing and striking—as at all the University of California (UC) campuses this semester—and increasingly seeing themselves as workers rather than professionals. The MLA Graduate Student Caucus and Radical Caucus are bringing sharp anti-racist and pro-working class debate to the MLA Delegate Assembly and rallying in support of the UC strikers.

In order for such struggles not to fall back into the arms of the bosses, however, a communist class analysis is needed, and MLA members need to work with and join PLP.

What are the ingredients of this analysis?

• It is crucial to banish liberal illusions about universities.

There is much talk about the "corporatization" of higher education, as if there were a "golden age" in the past when universities did not serve as ideology factories to reproduce the class stratification of capitalist society. Even as we fight against downsizing, we must keep in view that, in a communist society education will take place in a very different way, and universities as we know them will cease to exist.

• We must realize that the drastic downsizing in public higher education is not being done by "the Right" (the Republicans) alone. The opening phases of the abolition of open admissions at CUNY took place on the watch of liberal Democrats. The cutbacks are occurring not because some conservative legislators have it in for feminism and postmodernism and lesbian-gay studies and multiculturalism (which most often reaffirm capitalist democracy in any event) but because the ruling elite wants to cut the cost of labor wherever it can. Hence the super-exploitation of graduate student and adjunct labor; hence the de-credentialing of large sectors of the working class so that they don’t even have the illusion that "good" jobs are out there for them.

• The role of racism here is critical. The attack on students of color serves to soften up all students and teachers for the across-the-board cuts that affect everyone. The fight to defend affirmative action, then, must be undertaken with class-based rather than liberal arguments: racism hurts all members of the working class. The point is not to get a few more working-class people of color into the so-called "middle class" (a false expectation in most cases anyway) but to fight the racism that consigns people of color to the worst jobs and lowest wages and depresses the standard of living of all workers. We must bear in mind that ultimately, what we need is a society without money—or wages—at all, and that this is unattainable unless workers of all "races" unite against not just discrimination but capitalism.

• Even as we fight to unionize academic labor, particularly its most exploited sectors, we must realize that unionization in itself will bring us not closer to the social revolution that we need. College teachers can look upon themselves as workers and still fulfill their primary function—from the bosses’ standpoint—of producing a credentialed workforce imbued with elitist, sexist, homophobic, nationalistic, and racist ideology.

A positive aspect of the current academic crisis is that the ruling class has, through its attacks on us, shown its authoritarian hand. While some academics—primarily those with tenure—remain complacent and careerist, many are seeing that there is something rotten in the state of higher education and are increasingly open to a revolutionary communist analysis.

If our members and friends involve themselves deeply in struggles against downsizing and for unionization, bringing to bear communist rather than liberal politics, PLP should grow significantly in the MLA in the coming period.

Venezuela: Chavez Election Reflects Rivalry Among World’s Imperialists

When Hugo Chavez was 16, he joined the Venezuelan army to become a baseball player. In 1992, he led a failed military coup to become president. He landed in jail for 28 months. He was pardoned by President Caldera and he began his presidential electoral campaign, getting elected on December 6th. What is his victory so important?

Chavez’ election sharpens the competition among the world’s imperialists, mainly around oil, of which Venezuela has an abundance. U.S., Canadian, British, French, and Chinese oil companies are investing furiously here, building pipe lines and an ultra modern $20 billion port to export the oil.

The U.S. imports 20 percent of its oil from Venezuela, so the goal of the main wing of the U.S. ruling class here is not only to ace out other imperialists but to use this oil as a club against the ever more unreliable Saudi rulers. At the same time, the European bosses view Venezuelan oil as a way to break the U.S. chokehold over their oil supplies. Therefore, the European bosses are making Latin America one of the main targets in their fight to replace the U.S. dollar with the euro as the leading world currency. "....the strategy is to flood the Mercosur (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile) area with euros," says Bolko Schwanecke of the Dresner Bank Lateinamerika, headquartered in Hamburg, "Because of the huge European investment in the area, it will be simple to position the currency." (El Financiero, Mexico City, 12/14/98).

Hugo Chavez, in spite of all his populist rhetoric, is nothing but a pawn in this dogfight among the big imperialists.. When he started campaigning he talked about a moratorium on the national debt, reviewing privatization and nationalizing the basic industries. As he got closer to being elected, he spoke about renegotiating the debt and not nationalizing anything. He said, "We don’t want a communist model...but with the same intensity we don’t want the free market model either. We are for a third way, a middle road between capitalism and socialism." The third way politics puts him in the same camp as England’s Blair and other European politicians, in opposition to the U.S. and the IMF’s free market capitalism and austerity programs. The U.S. bosses are trying to win him back, granting him a visa, which they had previously denied, to enter the country.

Chavez’ promises will be nothing but hot air. Venezuela is broke, the ruling class and its politicians have squandered or stolen over $250 billion in petrodollars between 1970 and 1990. In the same period the middle class has lost 70% of its buying power and 85% of the population has been driven into poverty. Chavez won’t reverse this. His strategy is to produce and sell more oil and to open the country to foreign investors. This will only add to the worldwide crisis of overproduction and intesify inter-imperialist rivalry. U.S. imperialism won’t allow Venezuelan oil or any part of Latin America to pass peacefully into the hands of its rivals.

Third way capitalism will never free the working class. European imperialism has a long history of genocide against the workers of the world. The result of this dogfight will be war. In 1990 workers in Venezuela showed how to fight their oppressors, with a massive rebellion (known as the Caracazo) against the mass cutbacks ordered by the IMF and imposed by Social-Democrat President Carlos Andres Perez, the mother of all crooked Venezuelan Presidents. The army was sent to crush the rebellion and hundreds were murdered. With red leadership, a new rebellion will follow—the only way to free workers from capitalism, communist revolution.

150th Anniversary of Communist Manifesto Honored by PLP
Organize Soldiers, Key Allies of Workers, to Fight Against Imperialist War

NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 14 — Last week, PLP honored the 150^th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto, written in 1848 by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels. Workers and youth packed the hall and enjoyed delicious food, songs and speeches about the fight against fascist police terror, the importance to the revolution of the industrial working class sector, and some updates on current struggles of the working class.

The most encouraging part of the evening was when a high school comrade from Brooklyn spoke about her experiences traveling to Flint, Michigan to give support to auto strikers during the Summer. With great courage in the face of her shyness, she explained the reactions she got from the workers on strike.

All and all, a feeling of camaraderie was felt throughout the room, and it was not just because of the great food prepared by workers from the Upper West Side. The following is one of the speeches given at the event:

"Throughout the history of capitalism, workers have been made to fight and die in wars to increase the profits of the ruling class. Well, here is a little history of when the workers said, "NO!" Our quest begins in June 1905 on the battleship Potemkin. The Potemkin was a part of the Russian Czar’s imperialist Black Sea Fleet. However, it was soon to become part of the revolutionary fleet.

"The sailors on the Potemkin were getting served rotten meat. This sparked a revolt on board the Potemkin. However, it was driven by the revolutionary fervor that characterized all of Czarist Russia at the time. The Czar tried to regain control of the vessel by sending reinforcements. This proved to be ineffective; the sailors on these ships refused to fire on their revolutionary comrades on the Potemkin.

While the sailors on the Potemkin eventually surrendered, this revolt marked the first time a large unit of the Czar’s army sided with the revolution. The revolt on the Potemkin caused workers, peasants, sailors, and soldiers of Russia to begin to believe in their hearts that the army and navy could be won to the revolution.

"More recently, during the Vietnam War there was a strike of soldiers in the 1^st Air Cavalry unit because they were not getting enough writing paper. And they weren’t getting their mail. They started to refuse to fly air missions, but they still didn’t get writing paper. Finally they razor-wired the windows and the door of the command tent and dropped CS gas (tear gas) down the smokestack. After that they got all the paper they wanted and regular mail delivery.

"On one mission they were flying they came across a big open area in the middle of the jungle and there was a huge Exxon sign. As one of the guys on the mission described it "it was then that we all realized what this war was really about, and from then on Exxon was known as the sign of the double cross (eXXon)."

"During the Gulf War PLP was active in a National Guard unit. At the time rumors were flying that the unit was going to be mobilized and sent to Saudi Arabia. At one early morning formation, a soldier broke ranks and turned to address the whole platoon, another soldier went up next to him as a sort of bodyguard. The soldier proceeded to urge the platoon to refuse to be killers for the oil bosses. Another soldier secretly snapped pictures of the event. The unit was never mobilized, but the soldiers who took this stand and the PLP earned a tremendous amount of respect from the rest of the unit. The pictures went out to thousands of soldiers when they were published in a soldiers’ newsletter put out by PLP called, Rebellion.

"A year or so ago during one of the mobilizations against Iraq, a sailor on one of the main U.S. aircraft carriers in the Gulf received a letter from his girlfriend. When he opened the letter sitting among his fellow sailors he started to read it out loud. He didn’t know what he was reading but his girlfriend had sent him a PLP newsletter for soldiers. Soon sailors, poised to launch destruction against fellow workers, had gathered around him listening as he read. The letter told about how this war in Iraq was an oil war being fought in the interests of the biggest Rockefeller-backed bosses, and how soldiers could turn it into a revolutionary war for communism by joining PLP and organizing to turn the guns around. The first letter he wrote to his girlfriend said something to the effect of: "What, are you crazy sending me that?" but his second letter home said, "You know, that thing makes a lot of good points."

"Several months ago a unit where there is some PLP activity was sent to Egypt. Soldiers were put to work in the hot sun and 100+ temperatures while NCO’s sat around in the shade all day. After a couple of weeks of this, soldiers became fed up. And, in an action reminiscent of Vietnam, tabasco sauce was put into the air conditioning unit of the NCO sleeping quarters spewing a hot sauce tear gas throughout the tent. NCO’s went scrambling out into the middle of the night, eyes watering and cursing the troops. All of these stories show us that we (PLP) can and will turn the guns around, and shoot the bosses down!"

This was just one of the speeches given at a forum commemorating 150 years of the Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

Organized Chaos: The Capitalist Balancing Act

(In the first article of this series we outlined how the Pope issued a major statement (encyclical) criticizing three cultural ideas: we discussed extreme anti-scientific Fundamentalism vs. scientific materialism. Last issue we dealt with the crisis of capitalism and fascist philosophy and how liberalism strengthens fascism. Below is the conclusion of this series.)

Organized Chaos: The Capitalist Balancing Act

Capitalists have no consistent philosophy. They only want to stay rich and in power. They will say the most contradictory things to keep the working class under control. The traditionally powerful sections of capitalism—including the European capitalist interests represented by the Pope and some U.S. interests such as the Rockefeller family/Chase Manhattan group—support traditional authority and oppose the fragmentation that is a part of nihilism and post-modernism. These views that claim to reject both religion and science.

But an examination of media and educational funding shows that sometimes these Eastern Establishment interests promote the politics and culture of post-modernism and fragmentation. Why would they do that? Because they want to appear to be more for "individual freedom" in their battles with other capitalists and because they want to build up a liberal-reformist movement to oppose working class communist revolution.

Capitalism in crisis develops more and more intense forms of fascism. The crisis can be understood as "organized chaos." The disorder that is at the core of capitalism is a form of chaos. The "organized" part is how the capitalists try to impose intense forms of dictatorship and dogmatic, narrow-minded philosophy on the working class. They create the chaos with their economic and social policies; they force their "order" on us to try to control the chaos they created. And they sometimes promote individualism, post-modernism, and even nihilism to use against their capitalist opponents and to win workers and youth to oppose communism.

Conclusion: Fight For Communism!

The Papal Encyclical is important—but not for the advice that the Pope has for the working class. He just wants us to surrender to his group. But it is important to understand different aspects of capitalism’s crisis and to be aware of the ways that the different sections of the capitalist class use different types of ideas to control us:

The Pope criticizes extreme religious fundamentalism not because he wants us to be scientific thinkers, but to protect the interests he represents.

The Pope’s attack on materialist science is not because he wants people to be "moral" and oppose so-called "immoral," socially destructive behavior or political dictatorships. The economic interests of the Catholic Church create policies that force people into prostitution, drug abuse and all sorts of socially destructive behavior. The Church has supported murderous dictatorships for a thousand years!

The Pope’s attack on nihilism and post-modernism is not because the Catholic Church wants the working class to struggle to create a better world (which really means fighting for communism); it’s part of his battle to hold onto followers who have developed great distrust of the Vatican establishment.

Communists are building a Party, a revolution, and eventually a world that will end economic exploitation and build a culture that enhances human relationships, rather than corrupting them as capitalism does. But to build this Party and make this revolution, we must learn how to analyze events and the lies of the capitalists more accurately. This will come from participating in active class struggle against the capitalists, from building strong personal ties with our co-workers, learning from the insights and experiences of the working class, and from consciously studying our science, our revolutionary working class history and literature, and our scientific method, dialectical materialism.

Discuss these ideas with your co-workers and friends, and share your ideas with thousands of others by sending them to Challenge!

LETTERS

From Post To Post, Communism Must Be Won

Dear Challenge:

I’ve been recently receiving Challenge and strongly agree with most of what I’ve been reading. Many other trustworthy brothers/soldiers I’ve discussed matters with and issues have agreed. We basically understand that you wish to rally up, basically organize the working class of the armed forces to fight for the beliefs of the PLP.

Well you would think that would be easy, seeing that most of our military are non-patriots basically in it for school money or just in it because society has them in a two-way trap. What I mean by that is the bosses say: listen we’ll give you a little chump change and family support if you would fight our wars or you may be homeless and later we will take your kids away from you anyway. I hope you understand that for this to be organized from within, one must take drastic measures. Continue hitting them with what you have. A little publicity helps—continue printing and sending out this newspaper to soldiers. Do not use the Internet though, because what seems to be your friend may turn out to be your worst enemy (a true silent weapon). If you honestly wish for this to work to succeed, PLP must organize and recruit in a way that the brass doesn’t know or there will be nothing but a major bloodbath setting us all back.

Many of us soldiers wish to help but at the same time don’t wish to be the POW’s of this struggle. What I’m referring to are the many men and women who are still serving time for the movement doing what was not only needed but for doing something they believed in. To tell the truth there’s not a damn thing the military does that I agree with and I’ve been in the military since 1990 and I dream and await for the day that like hands across American soldiers from post to post just say no and go on strike. Then and only then could one’s communist revolution take effect.

GI Friend of PLP

LaSalle Steel Workers Still Fighting

Dear Challenge:

The battle of LaSalle continues with a never-ending string of skirmishes every day. There are many forces at work in this battle, and the bosses have turned this plant into a nightmare. When I go around talking with everyone, it seems that no one is happy. But the one who is most unhappy is the owner of Niagara/LaSalle. The outlook at the beginning of the year was the great expectation of the stock rising to $20/share. But the strike and its aftermath have it back where it started almost 18 months ago. I remember Michael J. who owned Niagara said it was his dream to buy LaSalle. He thought our little union would be easy pickings.

It seems the owner can’t understand why his scab replacement workers have not worked out to his satisfaction. He wanted to keep a hundred of them so his profits could keep piling up. But many have either quit or been fired. There are still 70 replacement workers in the plant, and 90 union workers still on layoff. The replacement workers are coming to see that things are not what they were supposed to be—a good job with decent pay. Bonus plans have been taken away, and they are starting to understand the truth of the devastation that has occurred this year at Niagara/LaSalle. Even the scabs are participating in the plant slowdown, showing their distaste for the treatment handed out by Michael J.

The company lost half of its business and is in danger of losing more, with the high level of returned goods every day. This plant is turning into a never-ending nightmare for the bosses who make rules they cannot enforce, because they would have to fire another scab. The plant has turned into total anarchy. Rules are interpreted differently every day. This could actually work to our advantage in fighting grievances, but it means the union has to be willing to spend the money to take all firings to arbitration, with the likelihood of winning 95 percent of the cases.

The president of the Progressive Steelworkers discussed the possibility of affiliating with the United SteelWorkers of America, but the outcome was not good. It turns out that the Steelworkers fought Michael J. before, and lost the whole plant. Michael J. has also fought the Teamsters, and again the Teamsters lost the whole plant. What chance has this little union got against so powerful a boss? The PLP is working inside the plant to win workers to revolution, and the deliverance of the Second Coming of Communism. The road to revolution is a long and hard process, but for the good of all the workers this fight must be fought.

LaSalle Red

‘Thinking Bigger’ In Communist Ways

Dear Challenge:

Several teachers were reading the article (Challenge 12/17) about Foreman High School in Chicago during lunch today. Two of them raised the same question:

"Why do you call the sweeps racist, as if they are aimed only at minority students? When the police come in, they search all the students."

A comrade replied, "They target the city schools, where there is a concentration of black and Latin students. They don’t have sweeps like this in the suburbs. Would it be clearer if we called it ‘institutional’ racism?"

Both teachers agreed he had a point, but they were still critical. "You shouldn’t print things like that without explaining them," they said. One had another question. "Do you think that the ‘lazy public defender’ union person will ever help you again, after you described her like that?" he asked. "You know, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." Before the PLP teachers could answer, another friend called out from a different table, "Actually, you catch the most flies with s—t." Nobody could top that, though nobody could figure out the point of it, either.

The question about the union official made me think, though. I guess I would have answered that the readership we have in mind when we produce Challenge is mainly the workers and students, not union bureaucrats. Still, we are beginning to organize more seriously within unions and similar groups. And so we should probably be "thinking bigger" about the potential audience for the paper, and our line.

PLP Teacher

More On Counter-Terrorism

Dear Challenge:

An earlier letter (Challenge 12/2) discussed the bosses’ plans to use their "counter-terrorism" program to build a fascist apparatus in the U.S. government. That letter focused mainly on the FBI’s efforts against "foreign" groups. It concluded that the U.S. government’s anti-terrorism is really a military response to various smaller bosses around the world.

We shouldn’t lose sight, however, of the FBI’s mobilization against "domestic" terrorism, and how this ties in with battles among the bosses. The FBI counter-terrorism operation has a "domestic" as well as a "foreign" component. The number of people working on foreign terrorism is greater, but some agents are beginning to look into homegrown groups.

The NY Times (11/15) reported that the FBI has begun investigating anti-abortion groups after the assassination in upstate New York of Dr. Barnett Slepian, an obstetrician who performed abortions. The FBI has also become involved with anti-government militias, environmental and Christian extremists, white separatists, and animal rights activists (and that’s just what was reported).

The article is careful to point out that this new investigation of domestic groups is causing FBI leaders some concern. "Bureau officials fear that expanding the investigation could drive the agency over the ill-defined boundary that separates inquiries into criminal activity from those into political causes and unpopular ideas." Apparently today’s agents want to "dissociate themselves from the old J. Edgar Hoover days of trampling the civil rights of political dissidents in the guise of serious investigations." Current officials, like FBI head Louis Freeh, were very unhappy about damage to the Bureau’s reputation resulting from revelations about COINTELPRO, an earlier FBI effort to target civil rights groups with dirty-tricks campaigns.

In other words, today’s officials recognize the political nature of what they’re doing. They just want to be sure to do it carefully to minimize political opposition. Once they establish the precedent of dealing with domestic right-wing groups, it’s not that far to move on to our Party and workers’ organizations allied with us.

The FBI under Freeh represents the interests of the dominant "Old Money" wing of the U.S. ruling class. It appears that the FBI’s counter-terrorism campaign will target not only smaller bosses around the world (Iran, Iraq, bin Laden) but also the potential right-wing military arm (militias, violent anti-abortionists, etc.) of the "New Money" bosses in the U.S.

A Comrade