January 27, 1999
Thousands of red flags will descend on the White House this May 1st. But it isn't yet clear who will be living there then. Whether Clinton survives or not, we will find a ruling class at war with itself, more isolated and desperate internationally, and attacking the workers from all sides to prop up the profit system's economic house of cards. We could very well be marching in the midst of another Middle East oil war, mass layoffs, increased police terror, sharpening racism, and wholesale deportations of immigrant workers. Capitalism is failing, but it will not die a natural death. The only solution is communist revolution. That is the message we will deliver on May Day!
Sometimes the odds seem overwhelming. The rulers flaunt their weapons of mass destruction, bombing Iraq at will. They gloat over their profits while wiping out over 600,000 industrial jobs. Their death-squad cops get away with murder, gunning down young black and Latin workers and filling the jails. But just as these odds may appear "overwhelming" today, that can change, perhaps even suddenly. Sooner or later, it will.
We can't kid ourselves about the long, hard road ahead of us. Making revolution is a complex, difficult, never-ending process. Class struggle will continue onto the furthest horizons of history. The working class faces a vicious, ruthless, and resourceful enemy. But it is an enemy with clay feet. The rulers are wracked by multiple crises. We can take advantage of their chaos to build a mass PLP now among workers, soldiers, and youth. Now is the time to prepare the working class and our Party for the seizure of power, however long that process ultimately takes. The rulers are in a race against time. They are more desperate to remove Saddam Hussein and install a pro-U.S. government in Iraq before the French, Russians, and Chinese succeed in lifting the sanctions and gaining a significant foothold in the Middle East. Unscom weapons inspections are dead, and the new U.S. policy is to remove Hussein from power.
What's missing from this plan is the massive use of ground forces. Why? Because the rulers can't trust their army to fight for them. Their military defeat, and mass GI rebellions in Vietnam, still haunt them. The Vietnam Syndrome is alive and well, and they may never field a reliable army again. But that doesn't mean they won't try. With all the rulers' internal weaknesses, a Middle East ground war for oil remains highly probable. This represents a tremendous opportunity to strike a blow for revolution. PLP is stepping up our military concentration to win millions of soldiers to join and build a Red Army that will turn the guns on the warmakers, and make and defend a workers' revolution.
The spreading crisis could slam into the U.S. like a tidal wave, dwarfing the tens of thousands of layoffs already announced at Boeing and GM. And it could happen just when all the major contracts expire at Boeing, in auto, and in steel. The PLP members in industrial concentration are making slow but steady progress. We are building a mass base for communism among auto, steel, and aerospace workers, while organizing to coordinate strike activity among these workers next fall. May Day will be a progress report on our efforts to build a mass, fighting PLP in basic industry, to prepare the workers to wield their class dictatorship.
If we follow Jesse to the White House today, it won't be long before we're following him and Clinton (or whomever) to Baghdad.By deepening our ties and expanding our activity in the mass movement, we will expose the wolves in sheep's clothing. The liberal politicians, and liberal ideology within our movement, are the main enemies of communist revolution.
As reported in last week's Challenge, when Ford here announced that it was laying off 2,800, the workers went to work every day, even though they had no jobs and the machines were idle. Ford has done nothing to stop the protesters because car sales are way down and the company has a two-month stockpile to play with.
The decline in sales is a result of the deepening crisis of capitalism. Just last week, Brazil followed the path of Asia and Russia, devaluing the Real (Brazil's currency) by 21%. This will deepen the crisis of overproduction, hitting workers first and foremost. ("We have guys who have had to postpone their weddings because they don't have a cent to spend anymore," one union official told the New York Times (1/17).
But this crisis in Brazil is also a growing danger for the imperialists (particularly U.S.) who have invested tens of billions of dollars in Brazil, lured by a potential market of 165 million, the largest population in Latin America. Brazil's auto production, once approaching two million is now down to barely half of that (1.19 million). Ford's sales plummeted 34% in 1998 alone.
This is all the result of the tremendous overproductive capacity of the auto industry worldwide. While this global capacity has risen to nearly 80 million, the market is at 60 million and dropping rapidly. Every auto boss tries to capture as large a share of the market as he thinks he can, driven by capitalism's bottom line--the drive for maximum profits. This lack of a plan [anarchy] leads to hundreds of factories being built without the ability to sell its production. So the first move the bosses make to save themselves from this crisis is to lay off workers and close factories.
But, as one Ford worker declared, "If all of us are unemployed, who is going to buy the products these companies make?" So the crisis deepens. Despite the laid-off workers protest, as one striker pointed out, "If nobody is spending any money [has none to spend], management is not going to take us back and we're not going to find jobs anywhere else. It's a real mess." And it's the anarchy of capitalism that produces that mess.
This mess is not confined to Brazil. This country has been one of the fastest growing markets for U.S. goods. Over 2,000 U.S. companies--including Ford, GM, GE, Whirlpool, Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, Motorola, Qualcom, among others--have invested $27 billion here. Leading U.S. banks like Citicorp, Chase, and BankAmerica have $16.7 billion in loans and other assets here, "a higher profile," says the Times, "than in Russia or Southeast Asia." So the crisis in Brazil means a spreading crisis to the U.S., European and Japanese companies with huge production here and no one to sell to. (Volkswagen tries to "solve" its problems by cutting workers' wages 15%--engineered by the union in collaboration with the bosses--which only deepens the crisis: less income to buy back what's already overproduced.)
Second, we would link the struggle of Ford workers in Brazil to those of Argentina, Mexico, the U.S., Europe, South Africa, etc. We would take advantage of the growing inter-imperialist rivalry for the control of the shrinking world's markets, to build a red-led international movement to turn the coming imperialist war into a fight for workers' power.
That's why we say we need a revolution; when we say "revolution," we mean first and foremost destroying the bosses' state power and replacing it with communist-led working class state power. Then we can plan production according to workers' needs, and not based on capitalism's drive for profits.
The working class doesn't accept the bosses' view that we're on the right road. According to a London Economist survey, Mexico's population is most skeptical of any solution to the economic crisis. Unfortunately, the working class, disappointed that socialism did not liberate the working class, has become cynical and/or follows that section of the capitalists hurt by neo-liberalism. Neo-liberalism (promoted by the U.S.) is "free market" economics, where finance capital is completely unregulated. The opponents of the neo-liberals claim the solution to the crisis lies in "national economic development"--where the State governs the market economy, an old version of the European "third way."
As the worldwide capitalist crisis sharpens, all bosses look to ally with one or another imperialist gang. In Mexico, the dominant rulers have tied themselves to U.S. imperialism. This has created a huge concentration of wealth in a handful of bankers, criminally impoverishing the working class. But it has also hurt a broad section of small and big capitalists, who control most of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and sections of the PRI (the government party). These groups, fighting for power, are trying to win the workers to their side.
Last month, in Mexico City 50 Army officers--members of the "Patriotic Command," inside the bosses' army--demonstrated to demand creation of a military ombudsman who could break the fascist discipline exercised over the medium level officers and the troops. These officers are siding with those capitalists who are trying to break the alliance between the top military hierarchy and the dominant rulers allied with U.S. imperialism. This significant event indicates that the split in the Mexican ruling class is reflected within the Army leadership.
Cardenas, the liberal mayor of Mexico City, is using his "new" city budget and the state apparatus to "reactivate" the economy, developing a broad program of capitalist investment in public works, transportation and construction, involving both domestic and foreign groups (especially European). Of course, this benefits the anti-U.S./PRI sections of the bourgeoisie, but not the workers.
Polls show Cardenas the most credible candidate in the race for the presidency in the year 2000. The struggle with the PRI for leadership of Mexico will sharpen even more. The Zapatistas (EZLN) have refused to negotiate with Zedillo, awaiting the presidential campaign to launch their peace program with Cardenas.
Meanwhile, all bosses will be welcoming the Pope, hoping his visit will pacify the tremendous anger among masses of workers here. But the Pope will also bring his own agenda to develop among the different conflicting groups of bosses. He will condemn, and blame neo-liberalism (but not capitalism) for Mexico's growing poverty, with the goal of winning back 30% of the workers who have abandoned the church for other, equally reactionary, religions. The latter are funded by the CIA and U.S. imperialism, to win workers away from the pro-European Vatican.
The Pope will support and meet with, Cuahutemoc, receiving the keys to the city (already agreed to during Cardenas' recent trip to the Vatican). He'll also support the EZLN, and the indigenous people in Chiapas. The Pope has become a major promoter of "Christian Democracy," allied to European social democracy, both aiming to increase their presence and influence in U.S. imperialism's backyard. The Pope's trip coincides with completion of a major commercial agreement between Mexico and the European Union.
PLP reaffirms that no bosses can solve capitalism's crisis and its effect on the working class--neither U.S. imperialism nor the Pope nor the `third way" of the Europeans. That's why they are all sharpening their bloody war for control of the market. The socialist road leading back to capitalism did nothing to wipe out exploitation, but it did lead to the understanding that wage slavery must be destroyed, along with the capitalist market.
PLP will continue to develop unbreakable ties in the working class. We are winning workers to PLP. We are preparing our class to take power. We fight to establish communist economic and political relations, to end--once and for all--the wars for profit, the hunger and poverty created by capitalism. The bosses' crisis is an opportunity to build the PLP among masses of workers who hate capitalist exploitation.
A few weeks ago, this same white worker had said that the war against Iraq was "for democracy" and against dictator Saddam Hussein. But because of political discussions, and reading Challenge and leaflets about the crisis of overproduction, his opinion has changed. He has a better understanding that the war's cause is the bosses' drive for profits from, and control over, oil.
Many times appearances fool us. We hear some wrong idea and we generalize, thinking that some group of workers is all reactionary. Sometimes we work with them without the real conviction that they can be won to communist ideas. In many cases we even give up the political struggle.
We should understand that wrong ideas--ruling class ideology--stem from the conscious propaganda of the bosses and their agents--the media, sellout union leaders, politicians and religious leaders. We must develop a bold, consistent ideological struggle to win the workers to see the need to build the PLP into a mass Party capable of ending capitalist exploitation and wars for profit.
His speech sharpened the struggle against the Old Money camp's main antagonists, both internal and external. For an analysis of "The State of the Working Class"--how communists are building a movement to respond to the growing attacks by capitalism, see the editorial this issue.
Racist attempts to outlaw affirmative action began in California two years ago, and have passed in several other states. New York's Governor Pataki and Mayor Giuliani have attacked remedial courses at City University of New York (CUNY), blaming black, Latin and working class students for "bringing down the quality" of higher education. The U.S. ruling class is cutting back on higher education, attacking the living standards of workers and the middle-class, while trying to divide white students against non-whites.
Some members of the Radical Caucus, the Graduate Student Caucus, and the Marxist Literary Group--raised aspects of a communist analysis of the crisis in higher education. But there was a lack of clarity about the nature of this crisis, the inter-imperialist rivalry, the role of higher education under capitalism, and the need for militant fight-back to organize for communist revolution.
PLP members attended two rallies--at which we sold about 30 Challenges-- protesting the bombing of Iraq and supporting students striking for union recognition in the University of California system. Demonstrators marched through the lobby of the Hilton, where other MLA'ers watched with interest while security guards panicked. We repeated the rally and the march the next day! This was the first time in many years that an MLA convention has witnessed this degree of militancy. A number of panels and papers raised criticisms of capitalism and exposed the role of higher education as the "ideology factory" for racism, sexism, inequality and anti-communism.
Aside from the rallies, the most significant political struggle was at the Delegate Assembly meetings of several hundred delegates. The emergency resolution condemning the bombing of Iraq was greeted with much support among the delegates. But it was attacked by the right wing of the Graduate Student Caucus, who feared that a lengthy debate on Iraq would postpone their motions for proportional representation for graduate students until next year. The MLA leadership is terrified of attacks by the open reactionaries, who oppose raising important political matters. The Iraq resolution was defeated, but not by much!
The Chair of the panel, Edward Said, the well-known Arab-American anti-imperialist, went from "very sympathetic" to the Iraq resolution, to a phony "neutrality," to supporting the bombing, and refused to promote the resolution in any way. This points up the ideological mysticism that "professional" organizations can be "neutral" in the class struggle--a battle against which must be raised more strongly by activist MLA'ers.
The leadership of the Graduate Student Caucus (GSC) believes that "proportional representation" for grad students in MLA is an answer to the crisis they are in. Gone were calls for strike support (like the Yale strike in 1995), or union organizing by grad assistants, or sanctions against universities which continue to replace full-time jobs with slave-wage grad assistants and part-timers. There was not even a whisper of uniting with students in other countries--for example, Indonesia, where students are battling the fascist military, or with part-timers and campus workers in their own campuses!
Phony "leftists" have emerged as "champions" of the grad assistants, pushing them away from class struggle and towards accommodation with the MLA leadership. PLP-led forces have to be in the forefront of class struggle. Otherwise, the GSC will turn into a group that gets jobs for its officers in return for keeping the super-exploited grad students passive. Grad students are organizing unions around the country, often in the teeth of fierce opposition from university administrators, courts and cops. This is just a start! PLP supports unionization as "schools for revolution." The corrupt, pro-capitalist unions can never answer the needs of workers or teachers--only communism can do that.
There are many good forces in the MLA. What they lack is a communist outlook which unites struggles on campus with the broader fights against capitalism. We must expose the universities as war-makers and strike-breakers, and build a worker-student alliance for communist revolution.
A small group of friends of the Party in Madison worked with us to make plans, produce leaflets and posters, and distribute literature. One, a long-time revolutionary who has only recently contacted the Party, said, "Well, I guess you can talk to more people than I thought about this." Another, a long-time friend, brought his wife and another friend to the march. With better planning, we could have involved others. The march emphasized that we can't ignore fascism, we have to fight it. But many mistakenly believed they had won a big victory because a few KKK'ers decided not to show up. If only it were so easy to stop fascism!
Many in the march and on the streets took seriously what our Party said about the most dangerous fascists not being the KKK or even the cops who would have protected them, but the capitalists themselves. And why it will take communist revolution to defeat fascism. One woman, who had lived through the 1979 overthrow of the Shah in Iran, was especially eager to understand our line and strategy.
Later we went to the Labor Temple. Usually the Party ignores gatherings like this, which are set up to keep people from facing off against the Klan. Several dozen Chicago comrades and friends had planned to confront the Klan, but canceled the trip when the Klan canceled. That was too bad, because there was plenty of work to do, and plenty to learn from doing it. It was a good thing some of us went.
One workshop, with about 75 people, was about "the growing divide" between rich and poor in the U.S. The organizers dramatized how 10% of the population owns 70% of the wealth, and that the top 1% alone owns 40%. They asked why this is, and what could be done. A PLP comrade explained that inequality comes from capitalist exploitation, and can't be ended with reform, only with revolution. Her comments were applauded and discussed for much of the remaining workshop time. Our new friend handed out leaflets afterward, even though he had been skeptical about middle-class people. We got out Challenges and made a few contacts.
At the Board, he was told that he could not go near CVS HS. The "ongoing investigation" is a fascist witch hunt about Moises "taking students in his car across state lines." Many students were called into the principal's office and interrogated by the Board's investigator. One of the principal's flunkeys produced a list of "students in PLP." This teacher pulled students out of the lunchroom to be questioned by the investigators. This anti-communist is exposing herself as an agent of the principal and an enemy of students and teachers.
The removal may have been in response to our opposition to the standardized CASE exams, which were given that week. These tests are being used to force black and Latin students out of school. It is also an attempt to control what we teach. They want to make sure it's pro-war patriotic garbage. PLP has been fighting against Clinton's plans for another oil war in the Middle East. Just weeks ago, this principal interrupted a film showing in Moises' class, and wrote him up for showing a movie, El Norte, that was sympathetic to the struggle of undocumented immigrants coming to the U.S. She also tried to bribe a student with promises of college tuition if he would become an informant for her. She needs to be fired, and then some.
We are fighting these attacks in many ways. We are calling for a special union meeting, and several teachers have expressed their support. Another is refusing to cooperate with a student who wants to get information. Students have collected over 300 signatures on a petition supporting Moises, and we are planning two demonstrations. Parents are calling to complain against the principal, and we will visit all parents and students who want to help.
It's no accident that Clinton's State of the Union speech called for more federal control of local schools, 50,000 more killer cops in black and Latin neighborhoods and cracking down on domestic "terrorism." His New Money Republican rivals want their own brand of fascism. Workers will lose if we are fooled by liberals pretending to be our friends. Clinton will never tell the truth about capitalism and imperialism, or his plan for a deadly ground war in the Middle East. The bosses fear working class students. That's why they have spent the past few years trying to throw PLP teachers out of the schools. They want total control of the schools and the workers. We need communist revolution to destroy the fascist warmakers. They started this fight. We will finish it.
Trading With the Enemy, by Charles Higham, introduces us to "The Fraternity," a group of U.S. and German corporate leaders represented by Rockefeller's National City and Chase National banks, and Nazi attorneys Gerhardt Westrick and Dr. Heinrich Albert. All had connections to Hitler's Reichsbank, and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
In the early part of the war, they pushed for a negotiated peace with Germany. They preferred a police state that put them in postwar possession of industry, finance, and government. They were united in their desire to destroy the Soviet Union. When it was clear that Germany was losing the war, the U.S. bosses in this group became more "loyal." When the war ended, they moved into Germany, protected their assets, restored Nazi friends to high office, and helped provoke the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Here are some highlights from the book:
ü A Presidential edict six days after Pearl Harbor allowed licensing arrangements for trading with the enemy (Germany or Japan). When the U.S. entered World War II, U.S. investments in Germany were $475 million. Standard Oil of New Jersey. had $120 million; GM, $35 million; ITT, $30 million; Ford, $17.5 million. (These investments would be worth many times more in today's dollars.)
ü The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) was set up in 1930 by the world's central banks (including Morgan-affiliated First National Bank of NY and the Federal Reserve Bank of NY). It was led by Hjalmar Schacht, the Nazi Minister of Economics and president of the Reichsbank, who had powerful Wall Street connections. This institution would retain ties among the world's financial leaders in the event of international war. Its charter said that it was immune from seizure, closure, or censure whether or not its owners were at war.
ü The BIS, supposedly created to provide the Allies with German reparations for World War I, soon became a way to funnel American and British funds into Nazi coffers and its war machine. When the Nazis took over Austria and Czechoslovakia, their gold reserves were looted and packed into vaults controlled by the BIS. BIS director Thomas McKittrick was appointed by the Rockefellers as vice-president of Chase National Bank. Chase Manhattan Bank and the Morgan-affiliated bank remained open in Nazi-occupied Paris throughout WWII. Chase froze Jewish accounts for the Nazis.
ü Joseph P. Larkin, a trusted vice-president under Winthrop Aldrich, John D. Rockefeller's brother-in-law in charge of European affairs, was a supporter of Franco and Hitler. He closed an anti-fascist account, but took on accounts for Franco and Hitler's Reichsbank.
ü Six months before the war, Larkin, Aldrich, and Schröder (a big German banker connected with BIS) supplied Germany with a detailed record of the assets and background of 10,000 Nazi sympathizers in the U.S. Chase distributed pamphlets suggesting that Germany was a good investment opportunity. After the war Chase was tried in Federal Court for violating the Trading with the Enemy Act. The bank was acquitted, and none Chase's wartime Nazi connections were ever made public or investigated.
ü In 1941 Standard Oil of NJ was the largest oil company in the world, owned by Rockefeller and Chase. Chairman Walter C. Teagle was friendly in the 1930's with Hermann Schmitz, head of IG Farben, and pro-Nazi Sir Henri Deterding of Royal Dutch Shell. They wanted to destroy the Soviet Union, and keep Europe under capitalist domination. Teagle hired Ivy Lee, a Rockefeller PR man, who advised keeping the public in the dark about the evils of Hitler's regime. Teagle arranged the sale of tetraethyl lead to the Germans, an additive used in aviation gasoline. Goring's air force couldn't fly without it. The patent rights were held by Standard Oil, DuPont, and GM.
ü Standard Oil executives managed to get oil to Nazi Germany through Nazi-occupied Soviet Russia, Nazi-controlled Vichy North Africa, and the Standard Oil fields in fascist Rumania. Standard Oil sent oil to fascist Spain throughout WWII (more gasoline went to Spain than to U.S. consumers). Standard Oil made a deal for Hitler to obtain certain kinds of artificial rubber. Standard Oil arranged to have German patents locked into Standard agreements so they couldn't be seized during wartime. They were to go back to IG Farben after the war.
ü ITT contracted with the Nazis during the war for switchboards and phones, alarm gongs, buoys, air raid warning devices, radar, and fuses for artillery shells. NBC and David Sarnoff were part of this business.
ü SKF Corporation, maker of much of the world's ball bearings, was headed by Sven Winquist, a friend of Goring and other Nazis. The U.S. president of SKF, Batt, was vice-chairman of the War Production Board. SKF met their orders to the Nazis, but failed to meet even minimum requirements for U.S.
ü Sterling Products would not release the drug Atabrine, an anti-malaria substitute for quinine. (Quinine was in short supply after the Japanese seized Malaya and the Dutch East Indies). Sterling, a branch of IG Farben (and owner of Bayer) was financed by National City Bank. U.S. Attorney General Biddle opposed putting pressure on Sterling. When the Atabrine scandal was exposed, Biddle quietly resigned, turning up later as a Nuremburg war criminals prosecutor. A second Nuremburg trial, to deal with corporate leaders involved with Nazis, never took place.
ü Ford in France (the Poissy plant) built airplane engines, trucks, and automobiles for the German government. After Pearl Harbor, Edsel Ford operated the plant for the Nazis. In North Africa, Ford built trucks and armored cars for Rommel's Nazi army.
ü GM was controlled by the Duponts, with heavy investments by GAF (General Aniline and Film, IG Farben's U.S. subsidiary). By the mid-1930's, GM head Alfred P. Sloan was committed to full-scale production of trucks, armored cars, and tanks in Nazi Germany. A vice-president of GM, Graeme Howard, wrote a fascist book, America and the New World Order, with a doctrine identical to Hitler. GM produced the Messerschmitt engine for the first jet fighter, giving the Germans an advantage over US planes.
ü The Duponts (who financed the fascist Liberty League and the Black Legion in the U.S.) and the Morgans, planned a coup d'etat against Roosevelt. They settled on ex-Marine General Smedley Butler as dictator, who spilled the beans to Roosevelt. Roosevelt didn't arrest the Duponts and Morgans, fearing economic chaos.
PLP has long pointed out that the main danger from fascism comes from the liberals. Before World War II, the U.S. rulers' main goal was to use Hitler to destroy the then communist-led Soviet Union After World War II, the dominant wing of U.S. capital adopted a liberal perspective, even appearing to become pro-civil rights, as they fought the Soviet Union for political leadership of workers around the world. This useful book reminds us that some of these bosses wear liberal masks but are outright fascists and were Nazi collaborators not so very long ago.
Now even the bosses' press is spilling the beans about the crisis of overproduction in world capitalism. The Wall Street Journal (11/30/98) ran a revealing article entitled, "More manufacturers face race to survive as cup runs over in the industrial world".
Some big industries, like steel, auto, and semiconductors have been dealing with this problem for years. Now overproduction (you could also call it `overinvestment') is more widespread. Too many tanks and armored-personnel-carrier plans in Europe. So many textile factories in China that the country could practically clothe its entire population out of inventory. Idle golf courses in Thailand. Underused hotel rooms on Hawaiian beaches. More gold and diamonds coming out of South African mines than "the bejeweled classes want" (at least at current prices). More than 100 U.S. cities soon will have six or more competing wireless-telephone providers.
The article predicts that "a reckoning looms." Manufacturers and service companies build too much capacity (to produce more goods than the market needs). They also create oversupply, in which industry is making or delivering more than the market needs.
Surplus goods tend to fall in price, which makes it less profitable to produce them. So bosses try producing more to lower the cost-of-production-per-item price. But prices shrink, sometimes below the level producers need to stay profitable. The result is mergers, layoffs, and bankruptcies.
What's new, the article goes on, is the international dimension of this crisis. Competition is not only between industries in one country but between industries in countries all over the world. Auto is an example. Country after country, especially in Asia, has a domestic auto industry. The result is excess capacity equal to 18 million cars worldwide--more than the annual U.S. demand of 15 million cars and light trucks. (Former Chrysler chairman Robert Eaton used this overinvestment as an excuse for merging with Germany's Daimler-Benz.)
A lot of the worldwide overinvestment took place in Japan and later in other Asian countries. Low interest rates there made it easy to get capital to build factories. There was a big stock market run-up.
But, the article says, if you take a progressive investment boom and then you hit it with a demand downturn, you're heading for trouble." Investments went bad. Shipping lines ordered too many vessels, airlines bought too many planes. Even new industries, like semiconductors and service industries, suffered from overinvestment.
This being the bosses' press, the article concludes that the crisis has an upside: the "Darwinian" struggle among bosses leaves "low-cost, efficient factories in business". No mention is made of the many millions of workers' lives that are being ruined by layoffs and unemployment. Nor the millions of workers' lives chewed up in the wars resulting from the "Darwinian" competition among major capitalist powers.
Our Party has a better idea: communist revolution. Under communism workers will collectively figure out what they need and then produce to meet those needs. No more crises of "overcapacity" while billions live in poverty.
Midwest Comrade
A recently released movie at video stores and a highly acclaimed one, The Truman Show starring Jim Carey and directed by Peter Weir, offers the viewer a rather bizarre and Rod Serlingesque view of the world. It is like an episode from Sterling's Twilight Zone without the message that Sterling offered on issues such as war and social ignorance.
In the Truman Show, a baby is adopted by a mega-corporation and placed in an artificial world called Paradise which becomes the basis for a TV show that is aired 24 hours a day. The main character, Truman Burbanks, played by Carey, is the only one in Paradise that doesn't know that it is a TV show. His entire life for 30 years is filmed by hidden cameras and becomes one of the most popular TV shows in the world.
In a sense, I suppose that a person could find some social satire here as mergers continue and corporate fascism seems to be the latest trend. It is also certainly true that TV, through mind numbing sit-coms and commercials, has been successful in instilling a false and absurd view of reality in the minds of people. TV attempts to make us believe that we are living in Paradise where everyone is happy and lives in a nice house and if you buy this commodity or that one you too can become even happier.
If you are not happy, well, then, it is probably because you are a loser who can't buy the necessary goods that promise you a great sex life and status and respect. In other words, it all depends on the individual and the reality of a class-divided capitalist society has no part in your oppression.
But, I believe that one would have to dig deep to even get this message from The Truman Show.
Eventually, Truman Burbanks begins to realize that something is just not quite right in Paradise when his father, a character who had supposedly died in an earlier episode of the show, reappears. In other words, the actor who played the father somehow manages to sneak back onto the movie set and approaches Truman. Truman also begins to see things that he had never seen before, as his consciousness about the true reality of his situation begins to develop.
A Marxist might say that his false consciousness about the world he lived in was beginning to erode and he began to glimpse his true situation. At this point, Truman attempts to escape from Paradise and eventually finds the exit door. The mastermind behind this show attempts to convince Truman that he should stay in Paradise, but Truman walks out the exit door, as his fans watching the show all over the world cheer him on. But that's all. The movie ends abruptly and we really have no clue what happens to this guy after he leaves Paradise for the real world of capitalism.
In conclusion, this is another film that is being hailed by some critics as "miraculous" and is up for awards. It is a film that disguises itself as something out of the ordinary, but in the end, doesn't have all that much to say of any significance to working people and the oppressed. When the film ends, you just kind of sit there scratching your head, hoping that someone will explain the point of the whole thing.
Red Rocker
At a recent meeting to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the case of Mumia Abul Jamal was raised. Jamal is on death row in Pennsylvania after being convicted of killing a Philadelphia policeman in the early 1980's. Jamal had been under FBI scrutiny since the age of 15, when he helped found the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party, and was beaten so badly by the police that his own mother could not recognize him at the hospital.
Later Jamal became a well-known journalist who wrote against police brutality in Philadelphia and was very outspoken when the Philadelphia police bombed an entire city block to destroy the rather strange black group called MOVE. Eleven people died in the bombing, including some children in the MOVE house.
Most of the left has been active in various "Free Mumia" campaigns, and there is almost a "cult of the personality" around this man in some circles. Meanwhile, the fascist Fraternal Order of Police has been rallying for his execution. I noticed that Challenge never mentions this case.
I have my own views on this case. Did Mumia Abul Jamal receive a fair trial, whether he killed this policeman or not? Of course not, since he was high on the hit list of the cops. But then again, how many poor people really get a fair trial in capitalist Amerikkka? How many rich people are on death row? Will the movements around this issue win him another trial? Doubtful. For the most part, the movement is a liberal reformist movement that is attempting to build a large movement to pressure the henchmen in the capitalist state to give Jamal justice. Fat chance.
As far as Jamal ever being freed, I really can't see that. He was convicted of killing one the bosses' hired thugs, men who are there to terrorize and brutalize the oppressed and workers. Almost like someone demanding that the Nazi Regime in Germany release a Jewish man convicted of killing a member of the Gestapo. At best, the movement might prevent his execution, since that execution might lead to a Flaming Philadelphia.
So is the movement an exercise in futility? Will this movement lead to the destruction of the oppressive capitalist system which is filling its prisons with poor blacks and others at a rapid pace? Will pigs learn to speak in the near future? Will cows grow wings?
Personally, I believe that it is necessary to speak out against the racist death penalty, while pointing out that the only real solution to these issues will come with a proletarian revolution.
Red Rocker
I'm writing about all the hoopla around Michael Jordan's retirement last week. On the news they interviewed workers around the world--on the street, in the sports bars, and youth balling in the gyms. All singing praises, "There's only one Mike and he's the greatest. What a career!" He opened up his hour-and-a-half-long press conference by sending his condolences to the family of a Chicago cop who was killed earlier in the week.
The night before his press conference however, three railroad workers were electrocuted in a Chicago railroad yard. A crane used to lift trailers and container cars off flat cars to load them onto the tractors of the truck drivers hit a power line. The crane operator was electrocuted instantly. Two co-workers immediately ran over to help their friend. But when they reached to pull him out of the cab of the crane they too were immediately electrocuted and died. That evening the local news interviewed one of the devastated family members of the two coworkers. "That's how John was, always helping someone. He would see you stranded on the street and he would always pull over and stop and help."
Michael never mentioned these two heroic workers in his press conference. The media herald Jordan and how he turned the game of basketball around by his talent on the court and his ability to make millions of dollars from endorsements. Thieves like Nike who super-exploit women workers in Asia ($7.00 a week) to make Air Jordan's then to further steal $150 out of the pockets of youths and their parents to pay for the privilege of having Jordan's on their feet is capitalism at its sickest. Michael is worth over $50 million, in his lifetime of being the greatest, he's given away about $1 million (for tax purposes mainly!) What a guy! I wonder what Mike would have done that night in the rail yard? Would he have glided through the air like he does on the court to help that worker out the crane? I don't think so! Those two coworkers did not want to "be like Mike" and that says a lot for our class.
Ex-Chicago Rail-Worker.
Dear Challenge:
So Michael Jordan has retired and at first glance this seems like a bad thing for the so-called "End of History" crowd, but what it said to me was how the great athletes of today have become nothing but entertainers. And as such are gone from our class.
I look at it in terms of the waste of so much surplus value is going to these entertainers who are unproductive in Marxist terms. It is something like the health care industry where too much surplus value has been going to doctors HMO's etc. Meanwhile, the auto, steel, oil, coal industries, etc. shrink so much that less and less surplus value is being created and the rate of profit falls more and more. This happens not mainly because of underconsumption but because of the changing organic composition of capital (whereby technology increasingly and increasingly replaces the workers -so clearly seen in auto, steel , oil and other big industries).
Meanwhile, increasingly workers get angered over the excessive salaries (part of the general surplus value in society) which the basketball, baseball, tennis, golf, football ,etc. players receive. There was no sympathy for the NBA players in this recent lockout. Sure we know that the owners belong in prison like all other bosses but these players are not better in their outlook or material positions Whatever their backgrounds. They are no longer workers and hope that they never again will be whether they help the "less fortunate" or not.
Yes, I loved watching Michael Jordan play. No one could do it better. It will take many of us who love sports, communists included, a while to forget his exploits. But the fantastic thing about being a communist is that the attempt at a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist analysis of this sport's Jordan thing far exceeds the joy of watching Michael Jordan hit the winning basket with five seconds to play.
New York Knick Fan