Imperialism makes war inevitable. "Small" wars are erupting with increasing frequency worldwide. From U.S. imperialism's eight-year oil war against Iraq to the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo; from the 12 nations with troops in the Congo to the civil war in Colombia (and the threat of a U.S. invasion); from the slaughter in East Timor to the war against Chechnya--millions of workers are being sacrificed in the imperialist struggle for resources, markets and cheap labor. Eventually, and inevitably, these conflicts will lead to World War III. Only a mass communist movement among workers, soldiers and youth, under the leadership of an international PLP, can turn the guns around and lead the working class to power.
While this is easy to say, it isn't easy to see. In fact, it's very complicated. The ruling class and its mass media produce an avalanche of lies to cover their murderous tracks. After all, who would join the army to fight for Exxon-Mobil's profits? Who would build cruise missiles to kill our brothers and sisters for Boeing or GM? But PLP believes that millions of workers, soldiers and youth are capable of understanding and changing the world. This is the basic principal behind our Party, and our press. Self-critically, we must do better at exposing this main contradiction, especially in Challenge, and in our main concentrations.
But these illusions were shattered when Russian troops seized the Kosovo capital's airport, reflecting the rising aspirations of a major faction among the down-but-not-out Russian capitalists. When US General and NATO commander Wesley Clark ordered a military strike against these Russian troops, he was overruled by British general Michael Jackson. This dispute reflected deepening cracks within the NATO alliance. What's more, the European Union began discussions for an all-Europe defense force, without US involvement. When a massive earthquake recently struck Turkey, the US Energy Secretary was there discussing oil and gas pipelines.
Colombia is in the throes of a civil war, and US troops are on the ground. A full-scale invasion is a possibility. The bosses claim that this is mainly part of their "war on drugs," and have classified the leading guerilla groups as "narco-terrorists." But US imperialism is really concerned about keeping its international competitors out of Central and South America. The US now gets 28% of its crude oil from Venezuela and Mexico.
Venezuela's new president is threatening that oil-rich country's relationship with US imperialism. The Mercosur trade bloc, led by Brazil and Argentina, have more trade with Europe than with the US. Mexico and Central America have become an imperialist battleground, with increasing investments and political influence from US competitors. US rulers will not give up without a fight. If they can use local fascists, as in Chile and Nicaragua, they will. If the local fascists can't reliably serve US interests, the bosses will launch a massive invasion to save their profits.
The bloodletting in East Timor, in response to the vote on independence, is being portrayed as Indonesia's attempt to retain its rule over that former Portuguese colony (which Indonesia seized in 1976). Although it's true that Indonesian bosses are locked in a dogfight with each other over dwindling profit rates, the main conflict is the sharpening imperialist rivalry behind the scenes. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out (9/15), 40% of all the world's trade passes through sea lanes around Indonesia. As in Kosovo, a multi-national "peace keeping" force is digging in. This is one of a myriad of problems and contradictions sharpening in Asia, including the rise of Chinese imperialism, competition between North and South Korean bosses and the conflict between Chinese and Taiwanese moneybags.
But we have not been sharp enough politically in exposing the hand of the imperialists and in winning workers to see how "local" struggles are part of a bigger conflict that is slowly but unavoidably leading to world war. Our job as communists is difficult and complicated. It means exposing the leadership of these struggles, which is often not a popular position to take. And there are consequences. Exposing various nationalist leaders as imperialist pawns will have repercussions for our Party. We don't expect to win popularity contests for telling the truth about reformists disguised as revolutionaries. But there are far deadlier repercussions if we don't meet our political responsibilities, and if we mislead workers into the trap of supporting the "lesser-evil" imperialists against the "greater-evil" ones. The truth is that all bosses are bad. And the most dangerous are the ones who parade as friends of the working class.
The history of our Party is steeped in the struggle against right-wing opportunism and reformism. PLP is still standing today, after the old communist movement's collapse, only because our Party has constantly sought to reject all capitalist ideas. We were born in the struggle against revisionism and right opportunism. We cut our political teeth in the early 1960s by breaking with the pro-capitalist US "Communist" Party and the newly-imperialist Soviet Union. During the Vietnam War, we were attacked for criticizing the Vietnamese leadership when they chose to negotiate with the US while they were winning the war on the battlefield. (We warned that because they were not fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariat, they would eventually turn capitalist.) We were attacked for breaking with all forms of nationalism and the "two-stage" theory of revolution, and for breaking with the Chinese Communist Party even before they invited Nixon to dinner.
As the opportunities increase, so does a certain risk. But the casualties will be incalculably greater if we fail to do our job. Tens of millions of workers have died because communists fought for the illusion of a "lesser-evil" profit system. Millions are dying today for the same reason. Ask the workers in Kosovo, Colombia and East Timor. Our class still has a world to win. But we can win it only by freeing ourselves from all forms of capitalist thinking.
One of their victims, Javier Francisco Ovando, was just released from prison after serving three years of a 23-year term for crimes he didn't commit. Now ex-cop Raphael A. Perez has admitted--as part of a plea bargain for stealing cocaine from the LAPD--that he and his partner shot Ovando in the back, hip and head, planted a gun on him and then lied to put him jail for 23 years. The paralyzed Ovando has been released from prison only to be held for deportation!
Twelve of the Rampart Division cops will be fired or re-assigned. A widening investigation is exposing false testimony, police murder and more rampant corruption in the Rampart Division. This is especially true in the "CRASH" unit, the anti-gang task force, that has been given the green light to deprive all youth in "gang-related" areas of any rights.
The entire criminal justice system--from the cops to the prosecutors to the judges--is corrupt from top to bottom. No reform can change it.
The papers here are calling for "strong civilian control over the police." The City Council has said the civilian police commission, composed of capitalist politicians, will control the LAPD. The FBI and US Attorney are investigating. An Inspector General will supposedly investigate the cops. The LA Times calls this "the worst scandal since the 1930's." Why is the corrupt, racist and fascist LAPD being exposed?
There has been a battle over control of the LAPD for some time, part of the bosses' dogfight nationally. After the 1992 rebellion, Police Chief Darryl Gates was dumped for Chief Willie Williams on the orders of the Christopher Commission, led by Clinton buddy Warren Christopher. The commission was created to propose changes in the LAPD after the Rodney King case and the rebellion protesting the acquittal of the cops who beat him. Williams was supposed to clean the open racists out of the department and bring in "community policing" (a plan to make cops more "accessible" and to try to win workers to support them). Instead, Williams was cleaned out of the department. Under Williams' tenure, killer cops continued to attack black and latin workers and youth.
The current chief, Bernard Parks, was part of the Darryl Gates inside group. He's against community policing. But whether Parks stays in power or is replaced by another fascist with a commitment to community policing, the bosses will use their cops, their courts and their whole corrupt criminal justice system to terrorize the working class! The Christopher Commission strongly recommended that the Police Commission assert control over the LAPD. Now the City Council is forced to do this. This will not change the racist and brutal nature of the LAPD.
The rulers know that the working class has grasped the fact that the cops are murderers. The LAPD has damaged and destroyed countless lives! What about Margaret Mitchell, the homeless woman gunned down recently? Or Joe Joshua, the older man who was riding his bicycle when the police gunned him down. Will these cops all be fired or imprisoned? Or the murderers of Tyisha Miller, Ricardo Close, and Mario Paz by the same killers in blue in nearby cities? The Riverside cops who murdered Tyisha Miller made racist joke after joke about it after riddling her body with bullets. The job of the gang in blue is supposedly to patrol and keep our neighborhoods safe. Actually the LAPD is patrolling the streets looking for targets.
Last Saturday, the PLP organized a demonstration where Mario Paz was murdered in his house by El Monte police officers. Many people told of stories involving racist cops. One man who bought Challenge said, "The cops are like the Nazis who they tried at Nuremberg." A few cases are getting media attention because the rulers want us to think the problem is just a few corrupt cops. Remember the Nazi Fuhrman at the O.J. trial? He, too, was "only on e rotten apple." Not true. The whole police force is corrupt. All the cops are Fuhrmans!
In New York they prosecuted the cops who sodomized Abner Louima with a plunger. But the next week, the NYPD killed somebody else. They are willing to sacrifice the most outrageously corrupt and vicious cops when the heat is on. And when they do, they do it to win the working class to the "justice system."
They want us to hire fancy lawyers instead of demonstrating in the street. They want us to support turning over the El Monte Police Dept. (whose SWAT team killed Mario Paz) to the Sheriffs--the biggest gang in LA County. They want us to call for a federal investigation, to believe the FBI will protect us. They want us to trust the federal government to clean up the LAPD, and to believe that we owe our loyalty and even our lives to the US government. They want us to join the military and fight for the US bosses' interests.
These beliefs are wrong. As long as we have class society, with the capitalist class getting rich off the working class, we'll have racism and we'll have cops and a justice system to enforce class rule. The cops and the justice system exist to keep the working class from taking back what the bosses have stolen from us. No federal investigation, no police review board kicking out "a few bad apples," is going to change that. Only the workers and youth, organized to take power and run the system for our class, can end racist police terror once and for all. Then no force on earth can stop us.
The Rampart Division is the tip of the iceberg. All the cops and the whole justice system are hired thugs for the rulers, paid by money stolen from the workers. We need to unite against these killers and join PLP to fight to wipe out the bloody profit system they are trained to defend.
We marched up and down the block. One young speaker pointed out that it's only in working class neighborhoods, especially where black and latin workers live, that the cops make "unfortunate mistakes" (that's what they called it) like the brutal murder of Mario Paz.
The family had been told by their lawyers and the Mexican Consulate not to demonstrate with us, but the family thanked us for demonstrating. Many neighbors bought Challenge. We then rallied in a nearby shopping center where we denounced the killing of Mr. Paz and all the other recent victims of the racist cops. We invited everyone to march with PLP in the Oct. 22 demonstration against police terror, to help us bring the message of communist revolution to that demonstration.
University for the "smartest," the "most capable," for those who demonstrate "academic excellence." These are racist, fascist concepts that the UNAM authorities are using to justify their rules. This fascist bureaucracy controlling UNAM is following the academic fascism used in the most elite U.S. universities for decades to justify their racism and elitism. Led by Wilson, Hernstein, Bloom, Murray and Jensen, they've pushed sociobiology, intelligence testing and eugenics. These right-wingers have been rejected by the majority of students, but supported and financed by the big corporations and their foundations, like the Rockefellers.
PLP has led the most decisive attacks on these apologists for racism and capitalism. Their "theories" are being used by UNAM director Barnes and his followers. His pseudo-scientific studies try to justify inequality and elitism. IQ tests, based on lies rather than science, are one of their favorite tools to attack students. CENEVAL (National Testing Center) is the body putting these methods into practice. The UNAM student strike is demanding that UNAM cut all ties to the National Testing Center.
Fascism doesn't arise by accident. It's a necessity for capitalism in crisis. It only benefits a smaller and smaller group which sees the need to attack the majority, many of whom don't even have jobs. War is another vital need for the capitalists....War will be the only alternative to re-divide the world's [markets]. PLP calls on the strikers to discuss communism, because it's the only alternative for students and workers.
But the U.S. capitalist economy appears strong because U.S. workers in general are being exploited more. What are the facts? The income gap between the obscenely wealthy top 1% and the workers widens; 69% of "individual income" in the U.S. is under $50,000, with 14% earning $20,000 to $30,000 and 34% earning less than $20,000. Only 2% of "individual income" exceed $200,000. (N.Y. Times 7/26/99)
By 6 AM from Monday through Friday, hundreds of Dominican immigrants line up at the George Washington bridge to pay $4 to $6 for a round-trip to factory jobs in New Jersey where take-home pay is about $170 a week, less than $10,000 annually. (Family apartments in the area commonly rent for $600 to $1000 a month.) "Deyaniris Minaya, 27, and Zenobia Vargas, 51, package sponges at Tempo Systems in Hackensack, New Jersey. `We're temporary workers, so there are a lot of layoffs,' Ms. Minaya said. `I've worked in 10 companies in the last eight months.'" (N.Y. Times 9/5/99)
About nine months ago at a New Jersey food-processing factory, the bosses installed new machines to bottle spices more rapidly. Given almost no training, workers soon began to cut, mash and lose fingers. The bosses lost an important contract, then blamed the workers for shoddy work. Many workers were laid off or fired. The bosses regained their lost contract. With fewer workers, "productivity" has increased and new supervisors have been hired to enforce the rules. Unionized workers here more than 10 years don't even earn $6 an hour.
PLP has a small group in this factory. We didn't fight hard enough against the injuries last winter. However, we have led some struggles there and have 20 regular readers of Challenge. We can help workers prepare to strike when the contract expires next summer.
Workers from this factory and others are represented on the PLP factory committee in Upper Manhattan. If we in PLP think big enough, we can both spread word of our committee and increase the circulation of Challenge among the thousands of immigrant factory workers in Upper Manhattan. This can lead to new members and leaders of our Party. We can't afford to settle for anything less!
The outbreak of St. Louis encephalitis was caused by a combination of the drought that affected the region, followed by a heavy rain late in August, which bred the mosquitoes. What allowed this to happen? The NY Times (Sept. 19) says:
"...budget cuts in the early 1990s included a sharp reduction in staff for the Health Department's pest-control unit, despite dire warnings of the health risks that could result, documents show. The failure to monitor the state's mosquito population may have led to this and other outbreaks, like a small malaria outbreak on Long island last month...And another recent health concern--a big E. coli outbreak upstate that stemmed from contaminated water, for example--raises questions about the state's preparedness for potential threats."
And now the rulers' solution for the problem their cutbacks caused is more harmful than helpful. They are spraying the city with Malathion, which, according to Mayor Giuliani, is "harmless" and "safe." Malathion is a nerve gas that causes a wide range of immediate side effects as well as long-term genetic and organ damage. Children are very much at risk from exposure to this toxic chemical and are especially susceptible to suffering these long-term effects. (See "Malathion Fact Sheet," Loretta Brenner. Journal of Pesticide Reform, Winter 1992.)
And the mosquitoes will become immune to Malathion, so next time an outbreak happens, a stronger chemical might have to be used.
Budget cuts, which attack mainly black and Latin workers and their families, are now causing health problems for all eight million New Yorkers. Capitalism is indeed dangerous to workers' health.
Our involvement in the ASA and some of its subgroups over the years enabled us to help lead this struggle and to move its politics to the left. For example, our participation in the 350-member section on Marxist Sociology led to that group's adoption of a strong resolution condemning the ASA leadership. The Marxist section won greater respect and support from many other sociologists for its bold anti-racist stand and its sharp attack on the ASA leadership. While many sociologists criticized ASA leaders for being undemocratic and bureaucratic, PLP attacked them as racists and linked their actions against Walter Allen to their close ties to the Clinton administration and their refusal to oppose racist welfare "reform" and the recent U.S./NATO war in Kosovo. Thus, we used the immediate issue of Allen's rejection to raise the broader, more significant question of official ASA support for U.S. imperialism.
The sociologist who played the leading role in defeating Allen's nomination was Douglas Massey, a University of Pennsylvania professor. He is the co-author of a 1993 book titled, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, published by Harvard University Press. Massey is a liberal who has a reputation as an anti-racist. However, his main argument in his book is that racial segregation has created a black underclass, which lives in a "culture of segregation." This is "an environment where male joblessness, female welfare dependency, crime, drug abuse, teenage child-bearing, and single motherhood are common or even normative." Massey advocates fair housing reforms and, in a bow to Daniel P. Moynihan, author of the racist 1965 report The Crumbling Negro Family: The Case for National Action, Massey titles the last section of his book, "The Case for National Action."
Massey thus offers a new wrinkle on the racist "culture of poverty" theory, which has been used for decades by racist liberals to claim that black and poor workers are "culturally inferior." Massey and other liberals deny they are racists and claim that the "inferior counterculture" of the "underclass" is a reaction to the structure of poverty and segregation, not the cause of it. However, when he led the opposition to the appointment of a black sociologist as editor of ASR, Massey made it clear that his liberal position is just as racist as those of conservatives like Charles Murray (author of "The Bell Curve"), who claim that the "underclass" is "genetically inferior." In fact, liberals like Massey have a more dangerous influence among social scientists because their cultural/structural arguments and reformist stance fool many honest people who think they are adopting an anti-racist position.
By sharpening our attack on the liberal racists, we are gradually helping masses of people see that racism and reformism go together. This helps pave the way for anti-racists to join with communists for a more profound and radical solution to racism.
At University Hospital here we're fighting such conditions. Understaffing and mandatory overtime were also the main issues in the recent narrowly-averted nurses' strike at Columbia Presbyterian in Manhattan. Why are hospital workers and patients being squeezed more at this time?
These conditions are symptoms of how the crisis of capitalism is affecting health care. The dominant wing of the U.S. ruling class is desperate to maximize profits to compete in a global economy. Part of their strategy is to save money by slashing funds spent on workers' health. This will cut the benefits they must pay their workforces. Decreasing healthcare spending will also increase the federal budget allotted to maintaining their world dominance. This "save-money" group has been pushing the managed-care movement from the beginning, but is finding it harder to cut costs.
Another group of capitalists lick their lips to "make money" from the one trillion-dollar healthcare pot. They are symbolized by Columbia HCA, the for-profit hospital chain founded by some wealthy Texans. It also includes the for-profit HMOs, health insurance companies and the drug manufacturers. Today most healthcare issues reflect the battle between these save-money and make-money capitalists.
Currently, the save-money capitalists are on top. They engineered the federal crackdown on Columbia HCA for massive Medicare/Medicaid fraud. The recent battle in Congress--supposedly over patients' rights--was a skirmish in this war. (Additional information at www.plp.org/pamphlets.html.)
But while they're fighting up there, we're dying down here. Over 41 million people have no health insurance. It's estimated that 100,000 people die yearly in the U.S. from lack of coverage. The U.S. has the worst infant mortality, highest percentage of low-birthweight babies, shortest male life-span, second-shortest female life-span and second-lowest visits-to-doctors per person of all industrialized countries. We who work in health care are being worked to death.
Meanwhile, the value of the stock owned by just the top 25 healthcare executives could provide health insurance for nearly six million people! ("California Nurse," March 1996) The cash and stock bonus paid to U.S. Healthcare's CEO was more than the entire 1996 health budget for L.A. County! The abuses by the "for-profits" are murderous. But the save-money capitalists (who the unions often support as the "lesser evil") are just as bad. Their plan is some kind of government/not-for-profit HMO system mandating some form of healthcare rationing. Under capitalism we workers lose either way.
At University Hospital we fight against what capitalism does daily in worsening conditions for ourselves and our patients. But if we fail to look at the big picture and fight to overthrow this dead-end system, we will wind up backing one killer boss or another--truly a dead end.
"The Sixth Sense," a movie starring Bruce Willis and child actor Haley Joel Osment, had topped the list of movies with the greatest box office receipts for weeks. The plot is well developed, and the movie well acted and highly emotional, with a surprise ending and a suprisingly good 11-year-old star.
However, it is important to carefully analyze the movie's message.
Osment plays Cole, the troubled son of a divorced mother. Cole is labeled a "freak" by his fellow students, tormented and singled out because he talks to thin air, and claims to be able to see in his mind events that happened in the past to other people, both living and dead.
Willis plays Malcolm Crowe, an award-winning child psychologist who, at the beginning of the movie is shot in front of his wife by a disgruntled former patient (who then commits suicide), and whose marriage falls apart in the aftermath of the shooting. In what appears to be an effort to regain his stability, he takes on Cole as a patient, and develops a bond with him. This eventually leads to Cole confiding in Crowe about what troubles him so.
Cole's "secret" is that he can see dead people and talk to them. The only thing that seems to save Cole from these visits is his use of small religious figures, which he keeps with him for protection. At first Crowe does not believe him, but gradually comes to think that Cole is telling the truth, especially after he hears strange voices on an old tape he had made during a session with the suicidal patient. Finally, Crowe tells Cole that the dead people may be asking for help from him, and he should not be afraid of them. Without giving away the ending, Crowe's advice is able to cure Cole of his fear, but as to his own marital and other problems, that's another story.
This movie has a "deadly" ideological message--that religion is correct in predicting that there is an after life and that ghosts are real. In order to convey this message, the movie twists the viewer's positive response to the deep emotional ties developed between the main characters--the bonds between Cole and Crowe; the deep but troubled love between Cole and his mother; and finally, the constant reminder of the wonderful marriage which Crowe and his wife had before the shooting incident and the suicide of his former patient--into an acceptance of the truth of Cole's secret.
When viewed in the light of many other social and cultural phenomena, it is clear that this movie is part of a pattern. The promotion of "creationism" as science, the obsession with witches and the supernatural, psychic and astrology hotlines, the development of racist and other cults--these all reflect a capitalist system in extreme crisis. Without a communist worldview, it is hard to understand or explain events that occur today. Some people are easy prey for many varieties of irrationality. This in turn opens people to a fascist worldview. Fascist ideas are based on the irrational- a superhuman "race," the "omnipotence" of imperial power, a ruler "chosen by God, etc.
It is not enough for communists to criticize the development of fascist culture. Our job as communists must be to develop our culture as well as our analysis. This culture must link positive emotional ties between working class people to our need to fight for a communist world. This will help open people to our worldview. Without revolutionary culture, communism cannot flourish.
However, the state capitalists in Russia did not disappear. The recent rise to power of Prime Minister Valdimir Putin signals their re-emergence and a heightening of Russia's rivalry with the U.S.
Stratfor Inc., a Texas-based intelligence bureau, gave this analysis of the infighting in Russia (8/23/99): "The faction that has dominated Russia since the fall of Gorbachev, is the Russia of the...Westernizers. Their intention was to transform Russia into a constitutional democracy with a functioning market economy...Intimately linked to Western academics and bankers, this...faction intended to transform Russia into a modern European state."
This gang is the Yeltsin camp, which is rapidly losing out because it lined its own pockets and ignored the needs of the Russian capitalist class as a whole. "Vast amounts of Western investment and aid was stolen by leading reformers [i.e. pro-U.S. Russian capitalists--Ed.], moved out of Russia and invested in the West...The second faction might be called Gorbachev's heirs, of whom Putin is a prime specimen. Putin has spent his career in the state security apparatus. Putin...represents the men interested in reform as a means to preservation of the state apparatus and the national interest."
The money-laundering scandal, which targets the pro-Western privatizers, also shows a shift toward the state capitalists. So does the Russian flip-flop on Kosovo. The U.S.-led International Monetary Fund had Yeltsin salivating over a promised $4.5 billion loan, which he and his buddies would be able to plunder. In return, Yeltsin promised the U.S. and NATO he would not come to the aid of Russia's supposed ally Milosevic. But Putin's imperialist faction gained the upper hand, sent in ground troops and seized the Pristina airport in open defiance of the U.S.
U.S. backers of the Yeltsin gang had hoped to create a huge colony where U.S. firms would employ skilled Russian workers for pennies a day. But capitalist competition dashed that dream. For U.S. bosses, Russia is daily becoming a more menacing adversary. The ultimate confrontation may take years to develop, but the general direction is clear now.
"Why do you look so serious?" my friend asked, coming over to me near the rear of the union hall.
"I'm trying to think of what to say when the president recommends we donate money to the LAPD," I replied.
"You know you can't prevail. Why bother?" he asked. At that moment, the president started reading the agenda.
"Point number six. We received an invitation to a golf tournament sponsored by the Los Angeles Police Department, Labor Relations Division's 24th Annual Turkey Shoot. It is a charity event and the cost is $110.00. This is sort of a way to `grease the skids' with the police so that they won't harass us so much when we're on a picket line. Any discussion on this?"
I raised my hand and waited to be recognized. "Turkey shoot is an appropriate name for what the police are doing on our streets in poor and working class neighborhoods all throughout the city. There are dozens of names of workers who've been shot and killed by the police just this year. I'll mention two Mario Paz: a 65-year-old man, unarmed, shot dead in his bedroom by the LAPD after they broke down his front and back doors in the middle of the night; and Ricardo Close, an unarmed worker executed on his front step by the LAPD earlier this year. Fifteen bullets entered the back of his head in a downward direction. Our union should not he involved in giving money and even less, honor, to the very organization that is terrorizing workers throughout our city."
Hands went up throughout the hall. The president began recognizing people in order. "I think we should support the motion to give money to the Labor Division because they have helped us in the past by acting as a buffer between ourselves and the patrolmen," said the international union representative assigned to keep tabs on our Local's activities. "I agree," said another. "If we participate in this police event, maybe it will give the police a better opinion of us and will foster better relations." "Look folks," the president said, "I'm not a big fan of the LAPD, but we need to participate in this event so they don't get offended and treat us badly the next time we're out on a picket line."
My hand was back up. "When I go home tonight, I'm sure that I'll see what I see most nights: young men facing walls in handcuffs. The other day on my way home I saw three squad cars up on the curb against traffic and three young boys, about 8, 10 and 12 years old, off their bikes being interrogated by the police. The Anti-Labor Division, because that's what it really is, is just as much a part of the police as the patrol cars who are out harassing, terrorizing and shooting people. It is a statement in itself that we feel we have to bribe the police not to harass us by `greasing the skids' with money. I am voting against this motion because we should not be part of giving support and money to an organization that terrorizes workers."
Back and forth it went and no one spoke against the police but myself. The president called for all those in favor of the motion for the police to vote "aye" and those opposed to vote "nay." The room was divided and the president had to go to a hand count! There was not enough opposition to over-ride the president's pro-police motion, but there was enough to have to go to a hand count (virtually unheard of at our union meetings).
When it was all over, my friend, who asked me why I was even bothering to oppose the police, looked over at me and said, "Good discussion. We didn't win, but the point got across and a lot of workers are with us." "Exactly," I told him.
L. A. Worker
The educational policy of the ruling capitalist faction of Mexico, represented by the UNAM (National Autonomous Univ.) administration, is being opposed by the politics of the "moderates" from the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the "ultras" (as militant leaders of the strike leadership body are called). The CGH (the strike leadership body), socialists and Trotskyites as the main currents, also includes many honest, angry students and teachers.
The PRD supports less severe reform than the Administration. This explains why the PRD also wants to bring the strikers to their knees. They want an education that serves capitalism, with more participation of the state, to strengthen the national ruling class. The PRD politicians present themselves as democratic and populist, but they use fascist force against the strikers when they feel they need to, sending the cops in on August 4. They will try at any time to smash the strike, as opportunists (who later became PRD cadre) did during the 1986 UNAM strike. Following their political line is deadly for the students. We shouldn't support any group of bosses. We have to destroy all of them with communist revolution.
"A Popular University for the Masses" is the goal of the other current inside the movement. The assumption is that this represents a social advance and that, eventually, when socialism triumphs, it will be extended to the whole population. But studying the history of the communist movement, we can see that bourgeois culture was extended to the masses in the Soviet Union, and that this contributed in a fundamental way to the failure of socialism. Therefore, this goal means putting a noose around our necks.
Bourgeois culture must be destroyed, but this will only happen when we destroy capitalism and build a communist society, when, based on new relations among people, we can build a communist culture.
Communist revolution is possible and necessary for all workers in the world. It's a protracted process and that's why we have to start now forming communist clubs and study groups, to study and distribute Challenge. These are the key tasks ahead.
The main weakness of the UNAM strike, like the rest of the struggles of the working class, is the lack of enough communist leaders to win workers to direct our struggle against the main enemy, the capitalists. We need a mass PLP to spread the struggle to all sectors of the working class and prepare workers to take power. Join PLP.
Mexico City Comrade
Some questions and observations about the UNAM article in the September 22 issue of Challenge.
The piece needs to be labeled an editorial and it needs to be more to the point. It takes on too many aspects of the struggle to be able to make any one point strongly enough.
Was it written with, or to, the comrades in the struggle? The subtitle, "University of Mexico Strikers Must Learn..." is preaching and puts activists on the defensive even before they begin to read it.
With the specifics of the struggle, the given list of demands and the leadership's support of the Zapatistas, it is only the support of the Zapatistas and the democratic congress demand that represent a deadly illusion. The rest of the demands represent what workers would call "work rules."
A more profound disagreement seems to be that workers, via their young people, can find an individual based solution to capitalism's crisis through higher education. While education is crucial to our fight for communism, part of its purpose under capitalism is to be a ticket to a better job and position in society. This will not change the facts, and the results, of the crisis of capitalism.
Access to education is not a bad demand, it just doesn't address the main problem. In their tactics the strikers have promoted worker-student unity, which is good. But if it is only a tactic and not an outlook, it is opportunistic from a communist point of view. It uses the power of the working class to advance only a part of the class.
If the students are fighting for power within the framework of the University, what are their motives? If it is to win a measure of control for the working class, that is not a bad intention; it can be a step towards workers' power. But if it doesn't become part of a revolutionary strategy, it is a futile effort.
That the students and leadership do not see this fight in the context of one very important aspect of the current crisis--inter-imperialist rivalry--is probably most important and should have been the main, and perhaps the only point of the editorial.
San Francisco Reader
I have read your articles about the situation in East Timor and agree that one reason the imperialists are worried is because 40% of the world trade passes through the Indonesian archipelago. But I want to expand a bit more on the point made by the Challenge article (9/22) in relation to the demonstrations held at the Indonesian consulate in LA, where some of the demonstrators were demanding UN intervention in East Timor.
There have been demonstrations in many parts of the world demanding UN troops to "stop the massacre." Tens of thousands including many unions have demonstrated in Australia. The Australian military is leading the UN contingent in East Timor. The illusion that UN troops or other imperialist troops can save people from their torturers is very common and wrong.
September 19 marks the fifth anniversary U.S.-led international force that went into Haiti to dump General Cedras and the TonTons Macoute who were massacring Haitian workers and to put Aristide back in power. Aristide, the priest turned politician, was elected President and was later overthrown by the military. A lot of people thought that the return of Aristide, the end of the reign of terror of the TonTons Macoute and the arrival of U.S. troops were going to turn Haiti around, ending the misery and oppression of its population.
Aristide served until 1996, when elections were held and his ally René Preval was elected President. But Preval had his own plans, he and Aristide had a bitter fallout. Although the TonTons Macoute are no longer terrorizing workers, things have not changed much for Haitians, and economically the situation has gone from worse to rotten. The per capita income of Haitians is $250 a year.
Political terror by government forces is rampant. Rene Preval dissolved the parliament. Senator Jean-Yvon Toussaint, an Aristide ally, was gunned down last March. Two months later, President Preval's wife was injured and her bodyguard killed on a street in Port-Au-Prince.
Corruption is also rampant. Haitian politicians and military officers are deeply involved in drug trafficking, and Haiti has become an important part of the Colombia to U.S. drug route.
Although the U.S. Marines left long ago and have been replaced by a UN Civilian Police Mission, there has been no relief at all for Haitians.
A Comrade
Sexism and racism rear their ugly heads in many ways, sometimes separately, sometimes together, sometimes blatantly and sometimes in subtle, almost hidden ways. This is the short version of a story involving the not-so-subtle oppression of a young black worker.
Shawne (not her real name) is a single mother in her early twenties who has worked for more than one year for the United States Postal Service (USPS), an "equal opportunity employer." Shawne is a "Part-time Flexible Sub-Clerk" who is required to work six hours a day, six days a week with no lunch break. (Sub-clerks usually become full time "Regular" clerks within a few years.)
Shawne's young son is receiving treatment for a disorder which, among other things, has forced Shawne to be late a few times a month and/or take off from work unexpectedly. Add to this several absences for her own illnesses and Shawne was absent about 15 days this year. The bosses consider this to be in violation of the USPS requirement that employees must "be regular in attendance."
Yes, all postal workers are required to be "regular in attendance." No, the written rules do not say women in general, nor black women in particular, should be singled out in applying rules governing attendance. However, Shawne and thousands of women like her, face difficulties which make it more likely for them to have "irregular" attendance. Most readers of Challenge are well aware of the fact that our capitalist society has placed an unfair burden on women to be primarily responsible for child rearing, especially among single parents. Also, racism has caused tremendous hardships for many blacks.
Given this larger reality and her son's illness, what has USPS management done to help Shawne? Months ago Shawne was placed on "Restriction" and she was just given a "Letter of Warning," an official disciplinary action which stays on her record for at least two years. If her attendance record does not "improve," Shawne will eventually be suspended without pay and then fired. This type of treatment is not uncommon in the USPS, and is probably common in most workplaces. (Please note that if Shawne left her young child unattended to go to work, she would likely be charged and convicted of neglect in a court of law AND THEN fired by USPS management for "conduct unbecoming a postal employee!")
Certainly, efforts should and will be made to fight back against this type of treatment. However, the bottom line is that as long as this capitalist system exists workers will be abused like this. The "needs of the Postal Service" (money, obedient/subservient workers, productivity and more money) take priority over the needs of workers.
Things would be different in a system run of, by and for workers (communism). First, free child-care would be provided for all either in the community or at work; those in need of special care would receive it without hassles. Second, free medical care would be provided for all workers and children. Third, where necessary, committees of workers would be organized to assist individuals to cope with serious responsibilities and problems. This would be possible because communism requires that all workers share according to need, and that acts of sexism and racism would be considered serious crimes to be dealt with firmly.
Postal Worker
In the September 15 issue, the article on creationism makes the erroneous assertion that "all religions" teach "that god created life." The fact is, many, if not most, religions contain no concept of an omnipotent creator deity. Buddhism and Jainism, at least in their original forms, are non-theistic or atheistic. Taoism, another East Asian belief system, believes in an abstract ideal referred to as the Tao, a far cry from the incarnate man-god of Christianity-Polytheistic religions; Wicca and the ancient pagan tradition of Rome would find the monotheistic fixation of the Abrahamic faiths bizarre and untenable.
The fact that Challenge makes the false assumption that "all religions" are based on Judeo-Christian theology reflects an unfortunately widespread misunderstanding among Western communists. This reader can understand PLP's desire to debunk organized religion, but please try to be accurate in your portrayal of non-Christian belief systems.
Massachusetts Reader