Challenge, March 17, 1999

U.S. rulers love to scream about "human rights" abuses by rival imperialists. Their main culprit these days is China. But the U.S. is by far the world’s worst police state in terms of putting workers in jail. And the recent racist atrocities committed by cops, from NYC to California, are just the tip of a growing fascist iceberg.

A New York Times article (3/7) gives the grim details about how rapidly the U.S. is transforming into a giant concentration camp:

• Nearly one of every 150 people is in prison or jail, the highest percentage in the world.

• The total number held in Federal and state prisons and local jails will soon reach two million, almost twice as many as in 1989. No industrial country in the world comes close to this figure.

• A baby born in the U.S. this year has a one in 20 chance of spending some part of its life in a prison or jail. A black baby’s chance is one in four.

• Prisons are being constructed at a rate of one a week. The Corrections Corporation of America’s stock price has increased 1000 percent since 1994.

• In many states, prison guard unions are the fastest growing public employee associations. The job pays well. The goons who do it in California just got a 12 percent raise and can earn as much as $51,000 (New York Times News of the Week in Review, 3/7).

The Times and other mouthpieces for the liberal bosses are disgusting hypocrites. In the wake of Amadou Diallo’s murder and others like it, they’re faking concern over "abuses" by the cops and the criminal (in)justice system. Their real worry is that racist terror will provoke mass anti-racist uprisings like those of the 1960’s and early 1970’s. But the facts reveal the liberals as the instigators of both racist terror on the streets and the epidemic of racist, anti-working class imprisonments.

Ivy Walls And Iron Bars

The prison population has doubled as a result of conscious fascist policing strategies developed during the 1980’s in major liberal think tanks. As usual, Harvard University was among the leaders of the rat pack. In 1982, the Atlantic Monthly published an article called "The Police and Neighborhood Safety," by James W. Wilson, a "political scientist," and George Kelling, a "criminologist" who had studied foot patrols in Newark, NJ. Kelling now has a chair at the Newark campus of Rutgers University, where he’s using the city as a laboratory for his "community policing" theories. Both had and still maintain close ties to Harvard. The article called for massive and immediate police terror against even the most minor "disorder." Wilson and Kelling disguised their fascism as an attempt to reduce street crime. Hitler did the same thing.

These "scholars" quickly caught the politicians’ eye. NYC Mayor Giuliani’s first police commissioner, William Bratton, is a Kelling disciple. Bratton and Giuliani later had a falling out over how much of a smiling face to put on fascist police thuggery, but the results are clear. Since Giuliani started the "Zero Tolerance" policy, civilian complaints of police brutality have increased 41 percent—three out of four are filed by black or Latin workers. "Zero Tolerance" is a fancy way of giving the cops a license to kill. The Diallo atrocity, and many others like it, are the direct results of this reign of terror.

But New York was just a start. Kelling’s "Zero Tolerance" viciousness is sweeping the U.S. For example, the Houston cops have increased their blatantly racist neighborhood sweeps. In Pittsburgh, cop terror has become so widespread that the U.S. "Justice" Department had to file a civil rights lawsuit to create the illusion of "concern." "Zero Tolerance" means that a young black man like Johnny Gamage can be strangled to death in Pittsburgh for an alleged traffic violation. It means that Archie Elliot of Prince George’s County, Maryland, can be shot 14 times in the back while handcuffed for being drunk. It means that Ricardo Close can be shot 38 times by LA Sheriffs. (See article page 3)

Bratton asks in the pages of Newsweek: "Is the level of complaints an appropriate trade-off (for supposed reduction in street crime)? I think so" (see Nation writer Bruce Shapiro’s "Zero Tolerance Gospel" on the Internet). And remember: Bratton’s a liberal.

A Mass Plp Will Tear Down The Prison Walls

So Amadou Diallo is a trend, not an exception. One could ask, "What else is new?" After all, police terror, long prison sentences, and the capitalist system go hand-in-hand. The police form the front line of the bosses’ self-defense in the class war against workers. They are the most vicious and bloody expression of the violence the bosses need to hold political power and keep making profits. This has always been true, and will remain true as long as capitalism exists.

But the rate at which police and prison terror have increased over the last ten years indicates how rapidly fascism is spreading throughout the U.S. Kelling & Co. first became prominent under the Republican Reagan and Bush presidencies. They are enjoying their greatest success under the liberal Democrat Clinton, who has put 100,000 killer cops on the streets and plans to add 50,000 more.

With each racist atrocity like the Diallo murder, the bosses shed a few crocodile tears and then carry out a fresh wave of racist terror against our class. Shootings, beatings, and jailings will only increase as fascism deepens and the rulers escalate their oil war. Asking for "kinder, gentler" cops or a "fair" prison system is a deadly mistake. Regardless of the masks they wear, the Kellings, Giulianis, and Brattons of this world represent the liberal rulers’ iron fist. We must act on the principle: "Zero Tolerance for capitalism and its murderous state apparatus." Mass May Day marches this year will bring us closer to tearing down the prison walls of capitalism, and building a workers’ world.

MTA Bus Mechanics...

Fighting Police Terror In The Unions

LOS ANGELES, March 2 ž As reported in last weeks’ Challenge, truck mechanic Ricardo Close was murdered by LA Sheriffs who shot him 38 times. At this morning’s ATU union Local meeting, a friend of Ricardo’s came to talk to the MTA bus mechanics. After waiting for an hour with his two-year-old son, the speaker, Gerardo, was introduced by a shop steward as a fellow transportation worker who had something important to say about the brutal murder of Ricardo Close. Gerardo described the events leading up to the murder and answered questions from the 30 union members. He asked the Local to support the next march protesting the murder. After this, the steward made a motion for the Local to condemn the Los Angeles County Sheriffs for racist murder and to donate $250 to Ricardo’s family.

The members were very interested in the presentation by the trucker and the discussion of the motion. People in front turned completely around in their seats to look at both speakers. It was the opposite of an earlier presentation, where the president droned on and on about failing to organize a union drive for supervisors.

The clear and simple motion was too much for the Executive Board. One after another they spoke against the motion. But they were unable to stop a vote of approval to give $250 to Mrs. Close. Thirty workers supported it. All five Executive Board members voted against it. They postponed the resolution condemning the killer cops until the April meeting. After the meeting, several workers said they were glad we brought it up.

The Executive Board was better prepared for the evening meeting. The shop steward, who is the son of the vice president, passed his slimy motion to table the vote until next month’s meeting, so the resolution and the money are held up until then. This gives us an opportunity to expose how the leadership does everything in its power to hold back the initiative of the workers to fight against these growing fascist attacks. One active worker said, "This gives us a month to really get this thing organized."

Many workers at RRC (bus maintenance station) who heard about the racist police murder after the union meeting supported the resolution against the cops. The U.S. ruling class is exposing itself by using its armed guardsž the copsž to terrorize the working class. We plan to circulate a petition and build for the next union meeting, and the next march against police terror.

The heart of this campaign is struggling with our coworkers to march on May Day. The bosses at Vecta trucking company laid off Ricardo Close, one of their most conscientious mechanics who took the safety of the truckers as his own. For the bosses from Vecta to Foothill Transit to MTA, the bottom line is profits and production—at the expense of workers’ safety. The same is true for Tosco, where four workers were burned to death when an unsafe refinery blew up.

When the friends of Tyisha Miller or the wife of Ricardo Close call 911 for medical help and get a death squad instead, the bosses are sending all workers a message: accept whatever is dished out. Capitalism is a killer-from LA and Riverside to Iraq. PLP is organizing workers to take power and build a communist society dedicated to the health and future of the working class. March on May Day against fascist terror and for communism.

Red Teachers Confront Uft Leaders On Racist Police Terror

NEW YORK CITY, March 3 ž The murder of West African immigrant Amadou Diallo by the cops has tapped broad working class anger over racist police brutality. This has provided the framework for militant opposition to the fascist leadership of the liberal teachers’ union at its monthly Delegate Assembly meeting. PLP delegates handed out several hundred leaflets and sold 37 Challenges to incoming delegates on the racist murder of Diallo.

The leadership revealed early in the meeting which side it was on. During the Question and Answer period a PLP delegate asked, "Why not get rid of the real gangs in the schools, the cops?" UFT President Weingarten responded, "I assume that’s a rhetorical question." "It’s not rhetorical! Answer it!" came the call from our delegates. Of course, she couldn’t answer without revealing how pro-cop she really is.

One resolution condemning the use of the public schools for "research" on the racist violence initiative was passed, although amended. (See letter this page). Then the Weingarten leadership offered its resolution to address the Diallo murderž a liberal prescription for fascism. It included: union help in training school security guards to become full-fledged cops; programs to recruit more black and Latin cops (to do the bosses’ dirty work); "sensitivity training"; and expansion of "community policing." It called for the formation of a High School for Public Safety. The chair barred any discussion and called for an immediate vote. Many of the nearly 700 teachers present were angry over the ban on discussion, but the resolution carried anyway.

Near the end of the meeting, the leadership raised a resolution to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the UFT. A PLP delegate offered an "amendment" to the resolution, and proceeded to discuss the Diallo murder. He declared that Diallo was killed by capitalism. "The police are an arm of the bosses and they are there to protect the bosses’ property." He said that by definition, "The cops are anti-working class. I myself have been beaten up by the cops during strikes both in England and the U.S. You can’t change the cops with ‘sensitivity training’ since when they engage in racist murders, they are only doing the job the bosses pay them to do—attack workers."

Weingarten declared the delegate out of order, and answered that many cops are working class and not racist. This was the tip-off to the majority of delegates, who are members of Weingarten’s Unity Caucus, to vote down the amendment. Despite this steamroller, 20 delegates openly defied the leadership by voting for the amendment and many didn’t vote at all.

This led to discussions during the meeting—was it capitalism that killed Diallo or racism? After the meeting, a number of delegates approached the PLP delegate to discuss the Diallo murder and expressed interest in the Party’s views. As objective conditions sharpen and affect these teachers even more directly, the communist ideas of PLP will increasingly be seen as the true representative of workers’ class interests, in sharp contrast to the union leaders’ defense of capitalism and their moves to fascism.

Liberal Union Leadership Is Workers’ Enemy

Dear Challenge:

I was coming home from the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) Delegate Assembly the other night, reading the agenda items, when I noticed something very interesting. Earlier, delegates had unanimously passed a resolution condemning the bio-determinist research into violence that is taking place in New York and many other U.S. cities. It was exciting to see the delegates unite around a good issue for a change (Ed: See accompanying article). Then I noticed that the resolution we passed was actually a substitute for the original resolution proposed by the rank-and-file. Why the change? After reading the original, it became obvious. The leadership had simply taken out many of the sharper political points from the original.

The original resolution compared this dangerous present-day research with "the research that justified the Holocaust." The substitute we passed just called the research "highly questionable," and refused to clearly attack it.

Although the original didn’t openly call the research fascist (it should have), it did have plenty of references to show the current rise of fascism in the U.S. The resolution criticized "the current trend to blame students for ‘increasing’ violence." It also showed how this research could identify students who could then be targeted by the school administration and the police. The substitute resolution mentions none of this.

Finally, where the original resolution called for the UFT to "oppose racist bio-determinist research," the substitute dropped any form of the word racism. It asked only that the UFT oppose "such research being conducted in New York City’s public schools." In other words, the leadership thinks it’s OK if they experiment on our youth, as long as they do it outside of school!

What the union leadership did was to take a more militant, pro-working-class resolution and turn it into a soft, liberal, do-gooder document. Why won’t the UFT leadership attack—or even mention—racism? Why won’t they make the connections between the fascist threat these experiments pose to the working class and the fascist assassination of Amadou Diallo? Why won’t they lead teachers, parents and students to stop this dangerous research? Because the leadership serves capitalism, that’s why.

Tens of thousands of teachers acting as one is a powerful force which could mobilize—in solidarity with other workers—to serve the interests of the working class, but the union leadership’s only concern is to mobilize them to serve the Democratic Party liberal bosses. They take our anger against capitalism—racist police terror, fascist bio-determinist experiments—and manipulate it into something that serves their interests and the interests of their liberal masters. The UFT leadership wants us to think they’re on our side, but they really are our enemy!

I’m still glad the delegates passed the resolution, but we have to be more aggressive—myself included—in exposing the role of these liberal wolves in sheep’s clothing. It’s up to communists to expose the role of liberals in the development of fascism. As the capitalist crisis deepens, liberals will be called upon more and more to "convince" us workers to accept fascism. WE MUST NOT BE FOOLED! As we carry on discussions with our friends, we can use these examples to show that fascism is an integral part of capitalism, and that the only way to destroy fascism is to destroy capitalism itself with revolution.

UFT Delegate

U.S. Bosses Organize For Draftž PLP Organizes For Revolution!

As the bombing of Iraq continues the bosses are grappling with how to field an Army that will be able to carry out the kind of invasion this "low level" war is a substitution for.

In the New York Times (2/7) the bosses are confessing to what PLP been saying for a while now. The military still suffers from the Vietnam syndrome and is now considering re-instituting the draft. The bosses have been able to get away with attacking Iraq and killing literally hundreds of thousands with bombs and sanctions, but this recent talk of the draft indicates that the bosses are strategically in a position of weakness. One major reason for this is that they don’t have enough people who want to enlist.

The article exposed that in the past year, despite new ads, bonuses, and increased college aid promised to enlisted personnel, the Army, Navy, and for the first time in history, the Air Force fell short of their recruiting goals.

Even though the Times didn’t state it explicitly, the article revealed that there is disagreement within the ruling class on what to about this low enlistment. Thomas E. Ricks, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, wrote a book about the Marines in which he argues that the draft would restore to American society a sense of collective duty and sacrifice that was lost after the draft ended in 1973. So in other words, Ricks is justifying the necessity for the draft by promoting American patriotism and the illusion of a common American identity. This is a blatant example of fascism pushed by liberals. Other spokesmen for the ruling class are much more hesitant about re-instituting the draft. Recruiting women into the military complicates the use of the draft because as the Pentagon official stated, "Is anybody going to support sending their daughters?"

The mass cynicism built by a capitalist "me-first" society cuts both ways. On the one hand it has allowed the ruling class to get away with attacking workers both here and around the world: cutting welfare, shooting down workers in the street, starving Iraqi children, cutting wages. On the other hand it has built a culture where few are willing to die for the greater good of the capitalists. They try to portray Hussein as Hitler, but what has Hussein done compared to the U.S. ruling class. The recent revelations about the U.S. complicity in the slaughter in Guatemala alone far surpass any act of anti-working class brutality by Hussein.

So given the cynicism among soldiers the bosses have been able to keep the war going only as long as U.S. casualties remain low, but this strategy has little chance of success. And it’s certainly a problem for a U.S. ruling class that is trying to militarily control the world.

The ruling class is more fearful than ever, that as the contradictions sharpen internationally, the working class in the U.S. will not be ideologically won to joining the army and fighting their wars. They have tried the economic lure of college benefits and retirement policies, but this hasn’t been good enough. And it also causes other problems as workers who join the military for self-serving reasons are also hesitant to die for the bosses; while those who can, leave the military as soon as something better comes along.

This is a difficult period for the working class. We have responded well to the murder of Amadou Diallo, but we are still not on the offensive enough. The ruling class is also having many problems and the military is one of their weak spots. They have developed low-level wars as a sort of holding pattern while they try to get around or resolve their many contradictions.

This period is an opportunity for us to put our class on the offensive by building class-consciousness and revolutionary communist fervor among soldiers and sailors. The slaughter that has gone on in Iraq will go down as one of the great atrocities of capitalism, and more and larger wars are on the way. We will be judged as a class as to how we respond to this attack.

Why U.S. Bosses Could Not Find Its Luftwaffe Pilots Guilty

Dear Challenge:

There was anger and shock in Italy after a military trial at Camp Lejeune, NC, found Marine pilot Richard Ashby not guilty. Ashby was the pilot of the plane that on February 3, 1998, cut a sky lift cable in Calavese, in the Italian Alps, murdering 20 skiers. The military court found Ashby not guilty even though the plane, flying from the air base in Aviano, Northern Italy, was flying too low, violating all military rules, when it broke the cables.

The only reason the trial took place was because of international pressure to do it; the Pentagon had no intentions of finding one of the members of the U.S. bosses’ Luftwaffe guilty. After all, these pilots are in the forefront of murdering hundreds if not thousands in Iraq in the air war the U.S. and British rulers are waging against Saddam Hussein. A guilty verdict could open the gates for a possible trial for murder of those pilots. The role of pilots is to kill for their bosses. This is what Marshall Goring’s Nazi Luftwaffe did from Guernica, Spain to Stalingrad, and what the U.S. pilots have been doing from Hanoi to Baghdad.

Not The Red Baron

Phony British Labour Government’s Anti-Racism:

Cover For Embracing Euro Foreign Policy

Is the British Government for real? It’s difficult to know whether their attack on the Fascist group Combat 18, operating in the British Army, is for real or just for show.

Certainly, the well-publicized and shameful bungling in the Steve Lawrence case points the other way. Steve Lawrence, a black youth, was stabbed to death by a racist gang in London. The cops who arrived on the scene let him bleed to death and the detectives investigating the incident afterwards bungled the case (What does this mean? Did they cover for their comrades?). After five years and an official Inquiry not one cop has been charged.

The Lawrence case makes it clear that the Labour Government is committed to racism. Why then, should we take them seriously when they announce plans to attack units of Combat 18 in the British Army? It is possible that the attack on Combat 18 has little to do with fighting racism and much to do with integrating the British Armed Forces into the European Union. By and large the fascist groups in Britain are anti-Europe. Purging them from the ranks of the Army would be another signal that the Government is intent on joining Europe as a full member and embracing the Euro and its foreign policy.

Indonesia: No Communist Leadership, Workers’ Struggles Go to Waste

It’s been at least two years since the economic crisis in Indonesia and other South East Asian countries, and now it might help to take a brief look at Indonesia to draw some lessons.

In the last year general strikes, mass rebellions and demonstrations swept across Indonesia to protest the extreme economic oppression caused by the capitalist crisis. This political and economic crisis resulted in the unemployment of millions and countless other hardships to workers in Indonesia.

The crisis of overproduction, which led to this economic depression, swept away the fascist Suharto government. Millions of angry protesters forced his resignation of Suharto. Vice President Habibie replaced him, promised elections and many other reforms. The strikes and mass rebellion against the Suharto group showed the fighting spirit and revolutionary potential of the workers and others in Indonesian. However, these actions, in and of themselves, change nothing.

Current information reflects this lack of significant change. According to the latest figures, 15.4 million are unemployed and 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. In a recent speech President Habibie stated that the per capita income had plummeted from US$1, 055 in 1997 to just US$400 last year.

Feverish maneuvering behind the scenes is going on to save some of the private banks which are being squeezed by the U.S.-controlled IMF which has ordered restructuring and the repayment of debts; and it appears that 50, 000 more bank workers will lose their jobs because of the IMF.

We can see that strikes by themselves do not fundamentally offset or stop oppression. In fact, without communist leadership and without the growth of revolutionary forces, strikes can lead to mass cynicism and defeatism.

Workers Need A Strategy

The mass movement must be strengthened to avoid the growth of defeatism and cynicism. Workers and others can be won to pursuing the fight no matter how long it takes as long as the goal is clear and the forces for that effort continue to grow. The goalž the dictatorship of the proletariatž should always be present. It must continually be made clear that change for workers can only happen when there is a complete change in the system. Only a growing communist Party can do this. In this way old leaders can stand firm and new leaders will come forward. Previous revolutions in China and Russia have proven that workers can win with red leadership.

It has been said that strikes "are schools for communism." They can be provided that there is participation in the militant class struggle and the building of the communist movement. Otherwise, communist lessons from mass struggles are not likely to be drawn. As Lenin and others have said "spontaneity" cannot be relied upon to result in communist revolution. Communist ideas must be brought into the mass movement. Without communist ideas and communist leadership things will remain the same. Capitalism must be consciously defeated by workers and others led by a communist vanguard.

This ‘Best’ Capitalism Offersž The Worst For Workers

Dear Challenge:

A front page article by the NY Times "economic expert" Sylvia Nasar claimed that economically for the U.S. this is the "best of all times." Well, in spite of an expanding economy which is creating jobs in some areas, U.S. job cuts so far in 1999 total 141,537, not including the thousands of Sony workers around the world who will lose their jobs. This pace is faster than in 1998, which was the heaviest layoff year in a decade. If this is the best capitalism can offer workers, we communists have a lot of opportunities to organize workers and youth to fight for a world without bosses and unemploymentž communism.

The grim reality of the crisis of overproduction and its relationship to war and fascism cannot be wished away by any capitalist economic "expert." Some like Geoffrey Colvin writing in Fortune magazine (1/11) takes a different approach. He analyzes the current global crisis of overproduction and the many corporate mergers it is spawning worldwide. The article has a tone of cautious optimism, despite several obvious contradictions concerning the stability of the global economy. It reveals the increasing limits of capitalism, and some of its fundamental weaknesses, although it’s doubtful this was the intent.

Why so many mergers? The world has more financial capital which generally comes from constantly increased exploitation than it can use. This overabundance of capital has financed "overcapacity" in almost every industry. "The world can crank out way more steel, paper, chemicals, and cloth than the world wants...There are too many airline seats in the air and too many cars, car dealers, and gas stations on the ground. There’s too much gold, silver, aluminum and copper, and too many ships hauling it all around. There are too many hogs. Too many companies sell financial services, telecommunications services, and most things that get retailed. There are still too many banks. Overcapacity leads to brutal price competition, which leads to consolidation."

Much of this surplus capital has also gone into stocks that are inflated in value, creating currency to finance the deals. During the last merger craze in 1988, stock accounted for 7% of the value of deals. In 1998 it was 67%, the highest level in the past decade, according to J.P. Morgan.

Two of the largest policy trends of the past decade, deregulation and privatization, free up capital as companies are forced to operate more efficiently. This is good for the bosses and bad for the working class. It means escalating racism, lost jobs, more fascism, and leads to fascist workfare and prison labor. Deregulation, lowering trade barriers, is "…liberating more capital by exposing overcapacity that used to be protected." This is one aspect of the current steel, auto and aerospace industry crises.

There are similarities between today’s mergers and investment patterns right before the stock market crashes and depressions. The current rate of mergers—200 a week—and the huge amounts of capital circulating around the globe at high-tech speed is something capitalism has never seen before. This current pattern may open a possibility for a global depression on a scale that has never been experienced before. Capitalism offers sporadic booms, but despite the bosses’ attempt to tinker with the system, capitalism can only offer overproduction and economic collapse, which make fascism and war are inevitable solutions for the bosses as they try to weather the crisis and maintain political power.

The article ends on an upbeat note, stating that the economy is still strong in spite of this unusual year of the mega-mergers. Merger value in 1998 expressed as a percentage of GNP was $1.7 trillion dollars. This upbeat tone is more like whistling in the dark. Most of these dollars represent no real or very little value at all, only the bosses with their fingers crossed, hoping not too many industries will go down the financial tubes and cause the whole structure to collapse. Current global overproduction is a serious limit to the capitalists’ ability to sell enough commodities to actually shore up so many pie in the sky deals.

The Missing Link For Workers: Strong Communist Movement

One reason capitalism appears to be strong is because the bosses are getting away with murder worldwide on a massive scale. This is due to the fact that there is no a strong communist movement to lead workers. In addition, many stockholders involved in these mergers are making little or no profit on their investments.

Capitalism will not die a natural death. As long as the bosses hold political power, the working class will continue to suffer, and millions more will lose their lives. In the mass organizations, we must offer communist ideas as alternatives to those workers who believe that capitalism can be reformed. We must win these workers to see that only through a communist-led revolution we can end this nightmare of layoffs, war and fascism. Building a mass May Day March in your part of the world, led by PLP, will build a strong, international, revolutionary communist party. See you there.

Midwest Red

Drug Companies Bribe Doctors To Help Bosses Control Rebellious Youth

NEW YORK CITY, March 6 — The Progressive Labor Party is building a mass communist party that has the ability to lead the movement to fight fascism now and to eventually destroy it with communist revolution. In order to carry out this long-range strategy we must constantly educate and reeducate ourselves, workers, youth and professionals, to understand the class nature of society; how various capitalist institutions and ideas serve the ruling class. An opportunity to do this presented itself last week.

As Challenge readers know, there is a movement in NYC led by a Coalition to oppose racist "research" at Columbia Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI). Experiments are being done on black and Latin children, as young as six years, to prove they are biologically programmed to be violent, anxious, or depressed. Over the past several months, the newspaper the NY Post has printed a series of articles exposing this research. Most of all they have wanted the names of victims in order to publish more sensational stories. On Sunday, February 28th, the whole front page of the paper was a story called "Shrinks for Sale," which disclosed that many NYSPI scientists take large sums of money from the same drug companies whose drugs they are studying. The story correctly pointed out that a conflict of interest is unavoidable.

What this story did not say is that there is nothing unique about this arrangement. Drug companies pay for huge amounts of research in all medical fields. In fact, five major NY medical schools are forming an alliance solely to capture drug money for themselves. Millions more are spent bribing doctors with lecture fees, gifts, travel and free samples. The price of drugs is markedly increased by these practices and out of the range of many patients. Older, less profitable medicines are shoved aside and sometimes not manufactured when desperately needed, as has happened periodically with TB medications. There is also tremendous pressure to treat every malady with pills, instead of healthy life practices. Providing people with a safe work place, decent housing, good diet and exercise facilities would be much too expensive for capitalism.

The Post article also failed to discuss the purpose of the broad testing of psychoactive drugs on black and Latin children. By both NYSPI and the Institute of Mental Health declaring that about 18% of children are mentally ill, they are setting the stage for the massive medication of young people with Prozac, Ritalin, and other drugs. This is a way to control the anger and rebelliousness of youth who are denied a decent education or jobs. Just as the psychiatrists in Nazi Germany led the way to fascism, American psychiatrists, with their emphasis on social control, are in danger of doing tine same.

In case anyone was glad to the see the Post exposé, such as it was, three days later a Post editorial took the opposite position and praised the drug companies and the doctors they support for the wonderful advances they have made. In support of their position, they quoted Frederick Goodwin, the founder of the Violence Initiative and such a gross racist (comparing urban black and Latin working class neighborhoods to jungles) that he had to be fired from a high government position. We must never forget that the media is owned and controlled by the same large corporate interests that control the rest of capitalism. Even if an idealistic reporter manages to publish a good article every once and a while, the role of the media is to control what is news and what we think. Sometimes supposed exposés make it appear that workers’ problem are being addressed, but in the end we must build our own movement and rely on our own media, Challenge. Significantly, the Coalition is concentrating on reaching students, parents and teachers to build resistance to participating in and drugging children. At the same time we in the Progressive Labor Party are winning them to fight for a society where all children will be valued and given the opportunity to lead a productive life under communism.

August 1966, PLP WHACKED HUAC

(Filmmaker Elia Kazan will be given a "lifetime achievement" award at the Academy Awards this month. Kazan is a stool pigeon and a rat, who made his career by turning in his friends and comrades, in the old Communist Party. The following story shows how PLP finished off the committee that Kazan groveled beforež the House Un-American Activities Committee. With this article we begin a series titled, ‘THE BEST IS YET TO COME,’ about some of the major fights and achievements of the international working class and the communist movement that shook capitalism and imperialism during this century. These struggles are the basis to fight for a world without capitalism in the 21st century).

From August 16-19, 1966, TV news and front pages around the world featured the investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) of the growing movement against the Vietnam War.

HUAC subpoenaed 13 witnesses from the most militant section of the anti-Vietnam-war movement, including five PLP student organizers. The fascist Committee was following a script developed by attacking others in unions, the film industry, and the 1950’s peace movement.

It went like this. "Friendly" anti-Communist witnesses told about "the evil manipulative communists." "Unfriendly" members and supporters of the old Communist Party refused to say whether they were communists, and refused to inform on others or answer any Committee questions. They followed the Committee’s rules, relying on legal arguments and lawyers. PLP refused to follow this script. From Boston, New York and other cities, we brought 800 anti-Vietnam war workers and students to Washington.

On the first day, hundreds were able to get seats in the House Committee room. Philip Luce, an ex-PLP member exposed as an under-cover cop, was HUAC’s star witness and an anti-communist spokesman. A few minutes into Luce’s testimony, a PLP member shouted, "You’re a paid liar," and demanded that the U.S. get out of Vietnam. The Capitol Police dragged him out. Immediately another in the audience jumped up and attacked Luce, the Committee and the war. A total of 48 anti-war students and workers were arrested that day. While waiting to be bailed out of jail, several joined PLP.

HUAC wanted Luce’s tales about PLP to make the headlines. Instead, most of the media focused on the communist-led anti-war forces disrupting the hearing. A picture of the PLP’er dragged out was on the front page of every major newspaper in the country.

On the second day, the Committee devised a way to keep most of the anti-war forces out of the hearing room. Congressional staffers with special white cards were required to attend. About 10 white-card holders were admitted to one of everyone else.

The lawyer for the first PLP witness objected to the proceedings. He was put into a chokehold by the cops and dragged out. Joe Pool, the drunkard Texas Congressman who led the HUAC subcommittee, justified the dragging and choking. Even the Congressional staffers laughed at him. As the hearings continued, a number of these white cardholders, including many clerks and secretaries, told us they supported our attacks on the Committee, and our opposition to the war.

After our lawyer had been arrested, all the other lawyers walked out in protest. We were offered a delay in the hearings to seek alternative counsel. The "radical" non-communist witnesses urged us to accept the offer and rely on a lawsuit against HUAC. But no way were we going to let HUAC off the hook and pass up a golden opportunity to build the anti-war movement.

We used every question from HUAC to attack them. Joe Pool was constantly banging his gavel in an attempt to shut us up. When we named names, they were President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Joe Pool. We attacked the liberal Democratics for starting and expanding the Vietnam War, and urged all students, workers and soldiers to join the anti-war movement.

Proud To Be A Communist

Pool and the Committee became increasingly rattled. The second PLP witness was asked whether he was paid to be a student organizer. He replied, "I notice you didn’t ask Luce who paid him." Then he was asked who had recruited him to PLP. He refused to talk about other people, but asked if the Committee would like to know if he was a communist. Pool said yes. The witness said he was proud to be a communist, and that PLP believed the only solution to imperialist wars like the one in Vietnam and other evils of capitalism, such as racism, was workers’ revolution. The witness read two paragraphs from PLP’s founding constitution into the Congressional record. Several Committee members looked like they would drop dead when many of the white-card people applauded us. Pool pounded his gavel and the cops went to work clearing the room.

A PLP West Coast student organizer was asked to inform on his friends. "I’d vomit on this table first," he said. The Committee was now in serious disarray. They couldn’t wait to end his testimony and the hearings. But it was too late.

The Committee, and behind it U.S. capitalism, had made a major error. Carl Rowan, a liberal, anti-communist syndicated columnist, summed it up this way. "The HUAC hearings made it seem that everyone who supports the Vietnam War is a fascist." And Murray Kempton, the liberal syndicated columnist wrote a column that attacked the Committee and began "They finally got what they deserved." Neither Rowan nor any of the other mainstream liberals had written a word against the hearings before they started. It was only after PLP had dealt a fatal blow to the Committee that these hypocrites suddenly turned on their fellow anti-communists in HUAC.

As a result of the hearings PLP grew, especially on college campuses. The base for the Party and communism expanded within the ranks of anti-War movement. The struggle between communists and liberals within the movement became sharper. HUAC never recovered. By 1968, the Committee was replaced by a "cleaned-up" House Internal Security Subcommittee (HISS).

Internal Struggle Against Revisionism Led To Crushing HUAC

PLP’s politics, strategy, and tactics at HUAC reflected our Party’s roots. PLP’s founders broke with the old Communist Party USA in 1961 because they saw the necessity of openly advocating armed struggle for the seizure of power, and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

El Salvador:

‘Election Of The Century’ Really Election Of The Hangman

SAN SALVADOR, March 10 ž In the elections held on March 7th, Francisco Flores, of the ARENA party, was elected president. ARENA is the party of the death squads that, with the help of the CIA and the U.S. rulers, killed more than 100,000 workers during the 1970’s.

Nearly 70 percent of the workers who could have voted did not. They showed disdain or little interest in capitalist democracy, where no matter which party wins, ARENA or the FMLN, the workers lose. The two main contenders for the presidency are both supporters of U.S. imperialism. The U.S. embassy personnel met constantly with both candidates. But in both these parties, there are growing forces that support the European imperialists. The fight for power between the different gangs of bosses will not end here. It will sharpen, creating more unemployment, poverty and repression.

The fact that most workers did not participate in the elections has two aspects. One side is thinking that nothing can change, which can lead to passivity. The other is that many of these workers can be more open to a new revolutionary alternative. The members of PLP must guarantee a mass struggle to show that these "elections of the century" are really "elections of the hangman" in a situation of growing fascism worldwide. The best way to respond is to organize for communist revolution in the factories, schools, hospitals and the fields.

In the coming May Day March, workers will have the opportunity to show our anger against the capitalist system and all its poverty, and to show that we are organizing workers and students to destroy it, not through elections, but through communist revolution with millions of workers.

LETTERS

Capitalist Competition Leads to Death

Dear Challenge,

In the February 10th issue of Challenge a letter by Brooklyn Red Teacher (BRT) described the senseless killing of high school student Michael Bennett over a basketball game. BRT correctly made the point that capitalist competition was ultimately responsible for this killing. This point was made more fully in an earlier draft of the Party’s new Political Economy pamphlet at the end of Section IV, but it was severely shortened in the final draft to save space. The original version, reproduced below, gives further support to BRT’s point:

In addition to singing the praises of the profit motive, capitalists also like to tell us that competition is healthy—whether in sports or the economy. They say that it guarantees the continual improvement of ourselves and of commodities, though they never say which commodities—in particular, whether it guarantees the production of commodities which people really need. In fact, however, when competition is based on life or death, as it is for the capitalist corporation, it must continually lead to death—on smaller or larger scales.

In sports, competition can usually be kept within bounds when the stakes are mainly psychological (such as school rivalries), though even here money plays a role, and cheating and illegal payments to athletes often result. But when the stakes are mainly monetary (as in professional sports), violence and illegalities (fixed matches, steroid use, etc.) become commonplace. When the stakes are life and death (as they were, for example, in gladiatorial events in ancient Rome), then death inevitably results. In each case, rules ultimately are powerless to contain the forces of the competition itself.

A system based upon competition for survival, such as capitalism, bursts its legal bonds with a regularity and a violence which consume not just scores of businesses, but tens of thousands of lives every day and millions to tens of millions of lives from time to time. Local wars, robbery, assault, and murder are the everyday results of capitalist competition. All of these take both legal and illegal forms, but the more destructive by far are the legal forms: for example, 300,000 Iraqis killed by U.S. bombs and bullets in 1991, the continual robbery of the working class through the private appropriation of surplus value, the jailing of hundreds of thousands of unemployed, mainly black and Latin workers, and the daily deaths from poverty, racism, and malnutrition. All of these are legal!

From time to time the instabilities of world-wide competition necessarily lead to crises of overproduction and eventually to world wars. All rules are broken in the all-consuming struggle for survival of corporations and nations of capitalists. Treaties, pacts, agreements, alliances are all attempts to keep the struggle within bounds, which at best prove to be temporary as the desperation of losing groups becomes impossible to contain. Since capitalists cannot fight each other on such scales, they enlist the working class to fight their battles for them, and the result is millions upon millions of deaths and mutilations, with no lives left untouched. Such are the benefits of competition.

The senseless killing of Michael Bennett is part and parcel of the senselessness of capitalist competition. His blood is on the hands of the capitalists. The only way to avenge his death, and the deaths of hundreds of millions of other working class people, and most importantly to prevent millions more deaths of workers, is through the violent overthrow of capitalism by billions of workers around the world. Communism means no more Michael Bennetts.

A Comrade

Reaching Out to Enraged Youth

Dear Challenge,

This is in response to a May 3 letter to Challenge by Long Island Red who claims that the rock band, Rage Against the Machine, should be condemned and is dangerous. I could find no logic in his position.

But I would like to approach this issue from the standpoint of Marxism-Leninism.

"Rage Against The Machine" is a very popular rock-rap band to thousands of young people, white and black. This is a band which screams in one song, "Anyone who tells you this is the land of the free is your enemy." In a new song, the band sings or raps, "There be no shelter here. The front lines are everywhere. Fouth Reich culture. Americana. There be no shelter here..."

The lead singer, Zach de la Rocha was arrested in California for protesting sweat shops, and lead guitarist Tommy Morello had his picture in a popular guitar magazine surrounded by a poster of Lenin and Mao. On his guitar, the words "Arm the Homeless" are painted.

I really do not believe that the ruling class wants thousands of alienated youth listening to the lyrics of this group. They would prefer that the youth be brain dead generation x types, drug addicts, or neo-Nazi skinheads, who have their own record company called Stormfront where a person can order a rock albumn by one of the numerous neo-Nazi rock bands that are out there.

Long Island Red claims that anyone who is not fighting for communism is for capitalism. Certainly the thousands of youth who listen to RAGM and other political groups are not won to fighting for a revolution against capitalism, and many workers have also not been won to this position. Many of them out here in the coalfields listen to country music, which is just escapism for them and a release from their oppressed lives. But should they all be condemned and called dangerous?

This is where Marxism-Leninism comes into the picture. Why did Lenin preach continuously about the need for a revolutionary party? Of course, the revoluionary party must raise the consciousness of workers and others to the need for a revolution against captialism and for communism.

So instead of condemning a group such as Rage Against the Machine, a group that is making anti-racist, anti-police brutality, anti-capitalist exploitaiton statements, Communists should be attempting to raise the consciousness of those youth who listen to this music. Why alienate already alienated young people by condemning their music which is a helluva alot better than having them go to the fascist right?

If a mass party is to be built, then all sorts of people, working people and oppressed, will have to join it. This is not a religion where everyone must be perfect and listen to the correct music and thump the Red Bible before they can see the need for fighting racism and ultimately capitalism and joining a mass communist party. Such a belief is pure idealism.

Marxist-Leninists are historical materialists, and realize that people are born into a particular socio-economic system and really have no choice in the matter. Under American capitalism, working people, young people, and others are bombarded with capitalist ideology and that is why there is a need for a party.

So instead of condemning some rock bands, this party should be reaching out to these youth, discuss the lyrics of these bands, and explain that the solution to the dilemmas they face can be only resolved through a Communist revolution.

Red Rocker

It’s A Puzzlement

Dear Challenge:

I’ve been trying to make sense of the recent article in Challenge about Kosovo and I appreciate the difficulty of describing imperialist/nationalist rivalries because of their many contradictions and shifting alliances but I think our present line about this area should consider the following:

If Germany’s access to Mideast oil is through Serbia, U.S. bombing of Serbia will weaken it and thereby help Germany’s plans for access.

If Germany is competing with the U.S. for Mideast oil and is arming Kosovo (KLA), why is the U.S. threatening to bomb Serbia which seem willing and capable of smashing the KLA?

If the U.S. has tried to hold Yugoslavia together and the Germans have been trying to fragment it (Kosovo, Croatia, Slovenia), why is the U.S. set to bomb Serbia which seems able to dominate Kosovo and keep it as part of Yugoslavia if not interfered with by the U.S.?

Are the Trepca mines (valued at $4 billion) a more valuable goal than making German and euro market access to cheap Mideast oil easier via a weakened and fragmented Serbia?

If the U.S. wants NATO beachhead in the Balkans to limit German imperialism, wouldn’t that be a problem because Germany is a sizeable part of NATO?

I understand that imperialist-driven war is the order of the day and that the U.S. will need a number of beachheads to protect its Mideast oil control.

I also realize the growing euro capitalist bloc (led by Germany) is beginning to flex its imperialist muscles, but it seems to me that the main contradiction in the Balkans area is more likely U.S. vs. Russia/Serbia rather than U.S. vs. German imperialism.

Regular Reader

Unions Keep Macy’s War on Narrow Path

Dear Challenge:

I keep reading in the papers about how the "new" AFL-CIO is going back to the old days of militancy, but their idea of militancy not only doesn’t mean workers fighting together against the bosses, but in some cases, it doesn’t look like fighting at all. In fact, in some of the old unionized jobs, it looks like it’s going the other way

Case in point. I was talking this week with a young worker at Macy’s, the big department store chain. It seems that there’s a real possibility of a strike there—the company is trying to take back sick days, take back personal days, and kill the annual cost-of-living increase. That’s not the sort of stuff you can let happen, but the union is not doing much to stop it. They’re calling for a strike, but they haven’t prepared to win one. Like in other unions, the union "leaders" don’t have to live on the wages the workers do, and they’re too damn comfortable with the bosses (hey, they can share the same lifestyle).

The Macy’s bosses are running a real tough game. They’ve promised some workers promotions—and then threatened to take them back if the workers don’t cross picket lines—and threatening others with losing their jobs. Company propaganda promises scabs they’ll still have jobs after the strike. They’re doing their best to push a wedge between the older workers, and younger workers who can barely make the rent on their pay. This disunity makes a strike perhaps more dangerous to the workers than to the bosses.

If this is the new militancy of the AFL-CIO, who needs it? Well, all right, the bosses do. Real militancy isn’t when the union leaders talk big to the NY Times about how things are changing. Real militancy is when workers organize to fight not only for wages and benefits, but for what we need most—revolution. The first union at Macy’s, back in the 1930’s, resulted from a sit-down strike, modeled after the Great Flint Sit-down that organized GM.

It’s time for the Macy’s workers and millions of others to start acting that way again, with communist leadership. Unions today mostly keep us thinking on the bosses’ narrow path rather than the road to revolution.

Red Shopper