Vol. 36, No. 5 Oct. 27, 1999
Few U.S. presidents have suffered defeats as humiliating as Clinton's failure last week to get the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) through the Senate. This fiasco reflects two realities. On the one hand, specific factions among the bosses have certain differences over foreign policy and the use of state power. This is always the case. Capitalism is based on competition, and billionaires constantly squabble among each other over profits. Sometimes these fights get very nasty. There was an unsuccessful assassination attempt against FDR in 1933, during which the Democratic mayor of Chicago was killed. JFK was bumped off in 1963 by a wing of the Oil Patch bosses. And Clinton just got impeached.
On the other hand, in this particular case, the differences over the CTBT weren't that fundamental. Neither the treaty's supporters nor its opponents want to do away with nukes. Neither side wants the U.S. to stop looting the world's workers for imperialist super-profits. This wasn't really an argument over strategy. It certainly wasn't a debate about peace vs. war. Since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, U.S. military forces have carried out over 90 operations (Wall Street Journal, Sept. 22), each of them backed more or less enthusiastically by all the main forces within the ruling class.
Clinton's latest flop speaks volumes about the state of the U.S. presidency. The "world's most powerful nation" has a leader whose closest allies have nothing but contempt for him and whose loyal opposition despises him enough to refuse compromise even when it's possible. The presidency is crucial to the rulers.
Their agenda for war and fascism requires a politician who can do a better balancing act among their competing factions than the crude, blundering Clinton gang, which back-stabs even its friends.
The key think tank behind the defeat of the CTBT was the Center for Security Policy (CSP). The CSP had led the fight against the Chemical Weapons Treaty, which Clinton managed to pass a couple of years ago. CSP board members include many members of the "military-industrial complex," such as Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, Halliburton, Rand Corporation, and MITRE. The CSP organized an anti-CTBT letter to Senators Lott and Daschle signed by six former Defense secretaries with strong ties to the arms industry. They were looking to protect a profit racket that would shrink if the "lean and mean" plan for the military were to go through without compromise.
So the argument over the CTBT has some substance to it. But not that much. Capitalists are deal makers, and the anti-CBTB crew probably could have cut a bargain over the arms industry profit pie if they hadn't wanted to cripple Clinton for the remainder of his presidency. In fact, such a deal will probably emerge under the next president. John McCain, a mainstream Republican who has some differences with the Eastern Establishment but still remains fundamentally loyal to U.S. imperialism's main goals, implied this, when he told the New York Times: "I have every confidence the majority [of the Republican Party] will take an international viewpoint" (Oct. 17).
That's because when push comes to shove, Bush, like McCain, Gore and Bradley, will try to limit the fighting among the leading factions of the ruling class. Although these bosses will continue to argue over profit-sharing and the use of political power, they'll probably settle the minor squabble reflected in the disagreement over the CTBT. These mass murderers have bigger fish to fry. They have a declining empire to shore up and defend. They all know that sooner or later, U.S. imperialism will need to fight a major war. Some of them, like the Rockefellers, have a Middle Eastern oil racket to preserve. Others, like the Bechtel-Halliburton clique, have billion-dollar foreign construction deals to make and rivals to beat out. Sometimes these bosses' interests converge; sometimes they clash. Challenge has often exposed the conflicts, in order to clarify the profit motive behind the politicians' lies. A recent example was the rulers' disagreement over air war vs. ground war in Kosovo.
None of the main bosses wants to ban nuclear weapons. Remember that the U.S. is the only imperialist that has already dropped nukes on a civilian population. Eventually, U.S. rulers will use nukes again, as U.S. "super-power" status declines over the long haul and the U.S. isolates itself in a series of "conventional" wars. Capitalism won't be defeated by its own internal contradictions. Only a mass, communist working class under the leadership of its revolutionary Party can destroy this murderous profit system. The PLP's job remains the same, no matter who sits in the White House.
The 2000 election has a somewhat different character. Now the main forces among the ruling class are trying to get their act together. Swatting down the upstarts is part of the process. There's a precedent. It took FDR from 1933 until 1941 and U.S. imperialism's entry into World War II to reach a similar goal.
The leading candidates for the 2000 Democratic and Republican nominations all represent shaky coalitions of one kind or another. Bush unites elements of the Oil Patch and the Eastern Establishment. Gore attempts to bring high-tech-Microsoft and others-into the fold. McCain wants to smooth over the split between Wall Street's goldman Sachs and Chase/Morgan over foreign investment and keep the military-industrial complex happy. Bradley seeks consensus on Wall Street. As we pointed out two weeks ago, his backers include Goldman, Chase, and Citicorp.
Does free speech apply to these scum who preach and carry out racist murder? Some thought so, but mostly not. What would happen if they were just ignored? Many students thought this would allow the KKK to grow stronger. What if these racist scum were bloodied and sent running? This would certainly be a good message for all. Every racist in NYC would know to shut up and back off. Every anti-racist would be bolder. And the fear of the KKK would be that much less. They would be exposed as the cowards they are.
But the KKK will most likely be protected by their fellow Klansmen in blue, the NYPD. Mayor Giuliani has already built up an atmosphere of fear and intimidation throughout the city. In the Party we say this is part of the growing fascism throughout the country. Everyone is told to shut up, do what the government or your boss says and don't protest or fight back. This is what millions of people did in Nazi Germany. We have to fight this fascist trend here. This KKK rally is a great opportunity to do just that: kick the Klan's ass and give a boost to the movement against racism and fascism.
BROOKLYN, NY, Oct. 20 -- As we go to press it becomes clear what the differences are between the liberal Democrats (Scott Stringer, Al Sharpton, etc.) and communists? The Democrats say that even if their message is disgusting, the KKK has the "right to free speech." So they propose to share a rally permit with the Klan (the politicians will have theirs from 2 to 3 pm and the KKK will rally from 3 to 4 pm).
The communists in the PLP say "no free speech for racists who murder with a lynch mob." Workers are agreeing with us. A Local 1199 union meeting endorsed an anti-Klan rally, while leaflets circulated at a Brooklyn hospital are calling on workers to come out to oppose the Klan.
The planned Klan rally only follows in the footsteps of the racist terror unleashed by the rulers' fascist cops--brutalizing Abner Louima and executing Amadou Diallo and Gideon Busch--making the Klan Killers think they can now freely march through the city.
NEWARK, NJ, Oct. 18 -- PLP members here are on the move, organizing our friends and co-workers to join hundreds of others to smash the racist Ku Klux Klan. Word that the KKK is planning a rally in Manhattan caused one Party member to immediately call all her close friends, and plan to raise the issue in a neighborhood organization and a PTA. It was already raised in a welfare advocacy group, where several members said they wanted to come. We also plan to bring it up among airline and other NJ workers.
Communist leadership in the fight against growing fascism will lead to more recruitment to PLP.
NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 19 -- "I was watching a TV interview of the Klansman in his robe. I was thinking I should just ignore the Klan rally. Then I noticed the insignia of a noose on the Klan robe. They mean to lynch people. That's when I knew I had to fight the Klan."
These sentiments, voiced by a veteran union activist, will be brought to the delegates meeting of AFSCME Local 371 here, in an effort to gain union endorsement of a demonstration to counter the planned KKK rally.
PLP points out that the Klan in their racist robes are but a small part of the growth of fascism in the U.S. The greater threat is the Klan in three-piece suits. Fascism is seen in the growth of slave labor Workfare and the wholesale denial of benefits to families in financial need. We will point out that the hundreds of millions of dollars saved in such budget cuts are used to fuel the U.S. imperialist war machine.
The liberal rulers want cosmetic reform, like community policing. "The police cannot be effective if their actions are not perceived as legitimate by the community...In the struggle against crime, the police...need the cooperation of community leaders." (The Public Citizen, Summer 1999).
Community policing is a way of getting workers and youth to support the fascist cops. Nothing can change the nature of cops--to defend the racist profit system. As long as we have a system where workers are forced to work for less to make a few bosses richer, the bosses will use their cops against us. We'll end racist police terror by organizing PLP and building a mass fight for workers' power, and a system that serves the workers instead of the bosses.
Mumia is a specific example of racist injustice in the U.S. of how there can be no justice for workers in the bosses' courts.
The Mumia case is also a prime focus for those who want to see the criminal INjustice system reformed for poor defendants. Like tens of thousands of others, Mumia had an incompetent public defender at his trial, and his appeals have been thwarted.
Mumia's case has become an international embarrassment for the U.S. rulers. The main French liberal newspaper, Le Monde, published a special edition about the injustice of his case, and of the way the U.S. system disposes of poor (read: working-class) defendants. Ramsey Clark's International Action Center is active on the case. The Trotskyite group, the Spartacists, have made Mumia a major thrust of their organizing one of the main defense committees. But,they are very unprincipled in this defense, too, never criticizing Mumia's nationalist politics.
The same is true with the Communist Party and other so-called "left" forces in this movement. (Mumia is a member of MOVE, a black nationalist group. Philadelphia Mayor Goode, himself black, organized the assault on their headquarters which led to the firebombing the whole neighborhood and the death of many of their members, including children, back in 1985. This was after Mumia had been arrested. A principled position would oppose Mumia's execution, and would point out that:
* Tens of thousands, at least, of mainly non-white (but white as well) working-class defendants have been treated similarly. Many have been executed, and have later been found to be innocent. In this sense, Mumia is no different from all other victims of this racist system.
* The system cannot be reformed, since it is a system that does not define as criminal the biggest crimes of all: war, the exploitation and murder of workers on the job.
* This kind of criminal INjustice system is DESIGNED to inflict racist and anti-working class INjustice, so a society led by the working class--communism--is the only proper response.
* Despite the focus of most of the pro-Mumia forces on the "conservative" judges, this INjustice system is characteristic of the U.S. as a whole, which executes more prisoners than any other country except fascist China.
At Westinghouse High School, a PLP teacher who has led struggles around vocational education and been active in the union was transferred last Friday to another school. This came after he had been at the school for 13 years! He's the leader of a teachers' group that has functioned as a union caucus, fighting for the students as they have faced everything from police brutality to the restructuring of the school. Rather than cower in fear as the administration and the union hacks attack teachers who are active in the caucus, teachers and parents are taking the offensive. They are organizing protests at different union and Board of Education offices, demanding the immediate removal of their union "fink" leader and the re-hiring of the PLP teacher! The PTA president told the group "Talk is great--but now is time for action!"
At Erasmus High, we are continuing a campaign to re-instate a PLP member who was transferred and to oppose the security guards who have been attacking students. Last week, two students were grabbed and beaten up by guards in the hallway in full view of students and teachers. Over a dozen angry students attended our PLP youth meeting and made plans to build an ongoing campaign against these attacks. They confronted the principal the following day in school, are circulating petitions and are planning a protest on Open School Night. This struggle has been led by young people in the building.
At Wingate High, students are facing a double-whammy of seeing one of the most substantial programs in the school being cut and having to face humiliation every day with electronic scanning that requires them to remove their belts. Students and teachers are up in arms about the loss of funding to the popular Flight program. PLP teachers and students are participating in the fight to restore funds. The Student Government, the debate team and the Progressive Teachers Caucus, are participating in activities fighting these attacks.
In all of these schools, we have met great teachers who want to fight for their students and speak out against the racism, injustice and hypocrisy they see everyday in the schools. We have been increasing the CHALLENGE sales as we learn to use it to bring discussion of communist politics into these struggles. We've been organizing to unite with students to attend the upcoming demonstrations against police brutality and the Klan rally in Manhattan. The PLP Education Conference will be a great place for these teacher activists to meet with students and parents and help determine how to advance the ideas and practice of PLP in the schools. On to the Conference!
This shows the bankruptcy of voting for capitalist politicians to protect our jobs. Workers must rely on our own class,-not our exploiters! In fact, the reason the bosses can get away with murder is because there is no movement to stop them. Building a mass PLP at MTA is the main victory we can achieve in this coming struggle.
Most MTA workers were stunned when they read the news. Many believed the union's lie that Democratic Party politicians will fight for our interests. ATU Local 1277 Pres. Silver was "shocked and extremely disappointed, " saying, "I can't believe the Governor doesn't care about working men and women."
Contrast this pathetic whining with a mechanic's comment: "Even if the governor had signed the bill, these bosses would have found another way to screw us." This woman is right on target. Some still cling to the "lesser evil" idea. "The Governor must be a Republican pretending to be a Democrat." The union leaders put a noose around our necks when they tie us to the Democratic Party.
Most workers are disgusted with Davis. "He's an asshole," or "Screw Gray Davis" are typical comments. Others are asking, "What is the union's Plan B?" Still others are saying, "We should do something."
In this swamp of treachery, we are pointing out that the capitalist crisis affecting all workers has come sharply to the MTA. The politicians are working to maximize the bosses' profits at our expense. While they privatize and cut bus lines, they also plan to start using Workfare workers to clean buses for their welfare checks! Workers have to fight these attacks as a class. Our goal must be communist revolution.
Patient explanation of the capitalist crisis is being coupled with an urgent campaign to build a demonstration against the Governor's blatant attack. Davis just left on a tour of Europe and Egypt with his millionaire backers, so he won't see the demonstration. But our success will be measured by the number of Challenges sold, and by PLP leading more workers from this struggle to communist revolution.
Rath points out what CHALLENGE has always maintained: "Hitler's rise to power was not an accident of history, but he was a deliberate puppet of giant German corporations who wanted to conquer Europe and ultimately control the world and its resources....These German corporations...[were] the driving force behind Hitler and the organizers of Auschwitz and the Second World War."
The Auschwitz concentration camp was not just a part of Hitler's "final solution" to exterminate Jews. It was actually set up as a forced labor camp of the industrial plant IG Auschwitz, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the chemical/drug conglomerate of Bayer, BASF and Hoechst. It was financed by the Deutsche Bank (now merged with Bankers Trust here in New York).
According to another NY Times advertisement ((Oct. 5) sponsored by a group of U.S. and German Jewish and Polish organizations, the infamous Nazi SS doctor Josef Mengele used thousands of concentration camp inmates as guinea pigs in "tortuous and lethal experiments...directed by large German pharmaceutical companies to test new drugs...for profit. Some of these drugs are still on the market today."
"Bayer executives explicitly directed Nazi doctors to perform specific experiments with their products. Bayer...exploited slave and forced labor on the floor of its plants."
"Auschwitz survivors tell of Bayer delivering drugs to the camp's `health clinic'....that were injected into victims who had been deliberately infected with TB, typhus and other diseases."
Correspondence reveals that Bayer actually "haggled over the purchase price of 150 female prisoners on whom to test a sleeping medication. Bayer found $80 per woman too high a price. They ultimately bought them for less. Every one of those women died within weeks."
Today Bayer is a $31 billion corporate giant, with part of its wealth derived directly from these experiments on concentration camp inmates. Hermann Schmitz, a Board member of the outfit owning Auschwitz, is now on the Board of the Deutsche Bank (which financed it). Another Auschwitz owner, Fritz Ter Meer, became Chairman of the Board of Bayer. It is these slave-owning capitalist mass murderers who the Clinton gang now wants to protect from law suits by concentration camp survivors.
The Nazi overseers of these camps are now receiving salaries and pensions for their "good works." But the survivors of the forced and slave labor are being offered a few hundred dollars in "final settlement" by Clinton and his Nazi friends--"while most victims would be ignored."
Clinton is following some of the pro-Nazi policies of his predecessors. In the Oct. 14 NY Daily News, columnist Sidney Zion relates the following from his recent visit to Auschwitz: In the Spring of 1944, an I.G. Farben chemical factory only five miles from Auschwitz was bombed four days in a row and destroyed. Over 12,000 Jews were being killed daily by poison gas in Auschwitz's crematorium. When the Emergency Committee to Save the Jews of Europe pleaded with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to bomb these gas chambers, he refused, saying U.S. planes could not be diverted [five miles!] from the war effort.
When Zion asked an Auschwitz guide if the Nazis could have re-built the gas chambers had they been bombed, she replied, "No, too much money, impossible." The immediate consequences of Roosevelt's refusal? In the summer of 1944, 400,000 Hungarian Jews died in those Auschwitz gas chambers.
From the rise of fascism in Germany in 1933 to the reconstruction of Germany in the post-World War II era, the U.S. ruling class--for the most part--backed the Nazis. Until U.S. entry into the war in 1941, U.S. bosses and their counterparts in Britain and France figured Hitler would move East and destroy capitalism's main enemy, the socialist Soviet Union. But the German ruling class double-crossed the West and captured virtually all of Western Europe before invading the Soviet Union. So for the next four years, Hitler replaced the communists as the main enemy of the U.S. ruling class, since German fascism temporarily became the main danger.
Even throughout World War II, Britain's Churchill wanted to beat the Soviets to the Balkans, rather than invade France. And as soon as the war ended, the U.S. began using the Nazis in their Cold War against the Soviets. They spirited thousands out of Germany to save them from any war crimes trials. General Reinhard Gehlen, the Nazis' espionage chief, "changed sides without changing enemies...After the war, he continued using the same Nazi spy system against the Soviets."(wrote Markus Wolf, in "El Mundo," Madrid, Oct. 17).
The U.S. installed John J. McCloy, from Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank, as U.S. High Commissioner for West Germany, which placed thousands of Nazis back into the courts, the legislatures and the corporations running Germany. (The DE-Nazification of Germany became its RE-Nazification.) They brought Werner Von Braun and 400 Nazi rocket scientists (who had headed the Nazi V-2 rocket program during the war) to the U.S. to build weaponry that could deliver nuclear bombs against the Soviets. Von Braun's Nazi rocket program had its own "private" concentration camp to use in human "experiments" that eventually killed 20,000 inmates.
So Clinton, Rockefeller's representative in the White House, is merely continuing these policies. Is it any wonder that we in PLP always say that only communists can lead the defeat of fascism?
--Pat Davis, Seattle Port Commissioner
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has gone from the business pages to the front pages. It has become another arena of sharpening fights between the US, European, and other capitalist powers, fighting over market share, cheap labor and natural resources. The imperialists can no longer confine their rivalry to conference rooms. The WTO's predecessor, GATT (see below) hardly provoked any popular interest, let alone demonstrations. The very fact that the WTO is now in the public eye reflects these sharpening conflicts--leading to war, and ultimately to World War.
Tens of thousands from labor, environmental, consumer and liberal immigrant groups, will demonstrate against the WTO in Seattle, November 27-30. An organizer with United for a Fair Economy boasts, "Seattle will be the birthplace of a mass movement against corporate globalism." In fact, it will be a stepping stone to World War III.
Clinton is offering the "responsible opposition" in the AFL-CIO and environmental movement a forum to "voice their concerns" to the WTO delegates. The pro-capitalist leadership of these protests support one or another section of the bosses. Like the WTO conference itself, the protesters' demands also pave the way to imperialist war.
Our job as communists is to tell the truth to the masses, and shatter the myths hustled by these wolves in sheep's clothing. The central truth of these times is that our very survival demands we build the revolutionary alternative to imperialism. Building the revolutionary communist PLP is the main task at hand.
Last year, the WTO told the European Union (EU) to open its markets to hormone-raised beef from the US. The EU countered by getting the WTO to rule that the US is giving unfair tax subsidies to Boeing and Microsoft. Last week, the EU refused to accept the proposed agenda for the November Seattle meeting. The bosses in weaker countries say the whole thing is a charade for the bigger imperialists to dominate world's poorer economies.
The widening splits in the WTO take on added significance with the emergence of new military blocs. Within days of the completion of the Kosovo war, the EU decided it needed its own military machine, independent of NATO. Last week's merger of Germany's Daimler and France's Aerospatiale, a military and commercial challenge to Boeing and Lockheed Martin, was the first concrete step.
Firstly, the WTO does not represent some monolithic "corporate rule." On the contrary, it is a public forum to sell the political line and interests of competing imperialists. They use the WTO to fight each other.
Secondly, the call for "democratic elections" hides ever more deadly illusions. Elections are merely a way for the biggest imperialist blocs to consolidate political support among the masses for their latest imperialist adventures. A "democratic vote" could never end capitalist world rivalry. That is why the communist PLP calls on workers and soldiers to organize to turn the imperialist war into a massive revolutionary struggle to bury the warmakers.
The AFL-CIO calls for workers' rights and environmental protection are mainly aimed at winning workers to support US imperialism. Even King County Labor Council fair trade representative Martha Baskin said, "If the AFL-CIO thinks the WTO is going to [enforce] workers rights and [prohibit] child labor, they are living on another planet." She was promptly fired. (So much for democracy!) They don't call it the AFL-CIA for nothing!
(Myth #4--"Our Only Choice Is Between Free Trade and Fair Trade"--and Myth #5--"There's Never Been Anything Like This Before"--will appear in our next issue.)
A driver said he liked individual PLP members, but did not like the communism. Our friend asked him, "What do you really know about communism?" "I know it's not good for us," the driver said.
"I really don't care if someone is green, brown, or black, what their political affiliation is, or what their sexual orientation is. But, you know, we here in America really don't know anything about communism. All we know is what the U.S. Government tells us. We are not encouraged to investigate different systems....in fact we are not encouraged to think about anything different. I do know a few things about communism--I know that it is for equality...I know that it is for poor people and working people. I know that it is the youngest system around.
"There is something else. I bet none of you know that the biggest migration of blacks to another country was to the Soviet Union in the 1920s and '30s and after World War II."
The instructor replied, "I never really looked at it that way." This started a longer discussion in the class.
Later our friend told us that her mother never wanted her children to live in America. Her great-grandmother was a slave. She thought there had to be something better than a system built on slavery. When our friend was little, her mother used to get papers in the mail about communism and socialism. Her mom was never in any kind of party, but she liked socialism and hated America.
I said that I had heard about Paul Robeson and Richard Wright visiting the Soviet Union and writing about the absence of racism in the new socialist countries. From reading the books, "The Hammer and the Hoe," and "The Narrative of Hosea Hudson," I knew there was a big communist movement among sharecroppers and steel workers in Alabama. But I had not known about black workers migrating to the Soviet Union.
I learned something from this conversation. With all of its problems, the old communist movement influenced millions and gave hope to workers all around that world. There is "something better," and racism can be destroyed. Some history is in books. But most of it is in family stories and traditions.
Red Tran
NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 18 -- A U.S.-wide committee of doctors, professors and graduate students in PLP met last weekend to discuss building the Party. The meeting deepened our line on conducting communist work in the mass movements and reaffirmed the importance of CHALLENGE distribution networks, as well as recruitment to the Party. It decided:
* PLP must increase efforts to recruit young college students. Professors must play a key role in this process. Militant, revolutionary student movements often sow the seeds for subsequent upsurge among workers. For the same reasons, doctors in PLP should make an effort to recruit medical students and residents, angered at a system that has proletarianized them. They are open to our ideas.
* We should expand our participation in the mass movements. This means both leading sharp struggle against the rulers over specific issues and skillfully raising our revolutionary politics at all times. We should join the growing campus movement against sweatshops like Nike's slave labor athletic gear factories in Indonesia. But we can't parrot the liberal position. The anti-sweatshop movement was started by liberal Eastern Establishment money. Its main goal is to mislead workers and students into supporting the rulers' fascist, pro-war policies. We should expose the lie that capitalism can exist without super-exploiting large sections of the international working class. We should unmask the rulers' plans for oil war in the Middle East. We should show that the same labor bureaucrats who claim to oppose Indonesian sweatshops also support racist super-profits from prison labor and give thumbs up to liberal "humanitarian" genocide like Clinton's air war over Yugoslavia.
* Beefing up our anti-racist mass work in groups like the Modern Language Association and the American Public Health Association (APHA) can move this process forward. As previous efforts demonstrated, communist organizing inevitably brings us into conflict with the leadership of these organizations. This is good! It helps draw a line between the Party and the masses on the one hand and the bosses on the other. This is particularly clear in the Party's current fight within the APHA to smash the bosses' viciously racist "Violence Initiative." Our members and friends are waging a battle to end research into the so-called "violence gene" among black children and the Hitler-like spinal-tap experiments that torture six-year-olds. As we fight the liberal APHA bureaucracy that defends these atrocities, we can also explain why the bosses' class needs make them resort to such fascist tactics in the current period. The upcoming APHA convention in Chicago should see a sharpening of this struggle. CHALLENGE readers should stay tuned.
Increasing CHALLENGE networks isn't just a "numbers game" or a tactical question. Winning more professionals, students and professors to read and distribute a revolutionary communist newspaper is crucial to developing a mass base among these vital potential allies of the working class. We spent a healthy chunk of the meeting analyzing our use of the Party press and making plans to rely on our base for increased circulation.
The meeting was a sign of clear progress in our collective grasp of the line and our understanding of how to struggle constructively with each other to improve our practice. The next meeting, in the spring of 2000, will discuss building the Party in the classroom.
The film says most soldiers are in the military for their own reasons, not out of patriotism. Also, that many U.S. soldiers go overseas willingly to "see some action," but once bullets start flying their loyalty to the U.S. government is exposed as paper thin.
The three main characters start out looking for gold but once they see how much the Iraqi people are suffering, their main goal becomes to save those who rose up against Hussein. The movie says repeatedly that U.S. foreign policy left the Iraqi people twisting in the wind.
The bombing is constantly criticized as being worthless. Numerous burned bodies are shown. Pelicans are drowning in oil. The people are starving, vividly shown when a milk truck is shot at and people desperately attempt to drink the milk that pours out of the truck. The movie is filled with many powerful images.
My favorite part is when an Iraqi soldier asks the U.S. soldier he is torturing, "So, why are you here?" The GI begins to spout the usual rhetoric about saving Kuwait from being invaded by the evil dictator Saddam. The Iraqi soldier says, "This is what the war was really about," and pours motor oil down the U.S. soldier's throat. I could not believe it. We are always so hesitant to say the U.S. foreign policy is all about oil. So, why is a mainstream movie saying this?
Then it gets even better. This same U.S. soldier visualizes his wife being blown up by a smart bomb as the Iraqi soldier is describing watching his own wife being annihilated. The U.S. soldier says we are both fathers and it is a moving moment as they both realize their common interests. They both describe how they joined their country's army for a little extra cash and what a big mistake it was. Later in the movie, when the U.S. soldier is freed from his captors and has the chance to kill the Iraqi soldier, he doesn't.
The movie's primary weakness is that it is not anti-imperialist but only against U.S. foreign policy. Throughout the movie the U.S. soldiers are asking, "Why are we here?" The movie makes clear that to have an effective ground war the military must tighten its ideological hold on the soldiers. U.S. soldiers have to believe they are helping someone in order to risk their lives in a war..
Stand up and take notice because this "humanitarianism" propaganda is what a significant section of the U.S. ruling class intends to use to mobilize the working class for a ground war. This movie argues that invading a country and occupying it is humanitarian; however, bombing civilians from the air is morally wrong. But killing our class brothers and sisters for oil--whether by air, sea or land--is wrong.
Right after I saw this movie I found the task of struggling over some of these ideas with other workers very difficult because of the movie's contradictory messages. But as I talked with more people, I realized that the infighting within the ruling class forces them to expose each other. This is why some truths are revealed. (Iraq was, and is, really about oil). It is up to us to use their half-truths to win workers to understand that real class consciousness means fighting side by side with East Timorans, Kosovars and Iraqi workers to defeat Clinton, Bush and Hussein and all bosses. Workers should not shed a drop of blood for their oil.
Red GI
Sgt. Prick is very intimidating. He speaks disrespectfully to us. He can never speak without saying the word "fuck" in every sentence, We all dislike him--I hate him. Whenever he talks to me he wants me to respond with a "Yes, Sergeant," "No, Sergeant" not a "yeah" or a "no." Yet, he refers to us as if we were a piece of shit. One day my buddy was painting a tool truck and Sergeant Prick walks to him and tells him that his work looked like "shit on a wet dog."
We are fed up with how our section is run. There were two occasions where we took action. One day a specialist with whom I work decided to call the IG (Inspection of the Guard) to complain about Sgt. Prick making us work later than we had to. The IG called Sgt. Prick and immediately had us released. We all thanked the Specialist for taking action. I really admired his courage.
The next time, we decided to confront Sgt. Prick all together about certain issues. All the soldiers gathered in the office and spoke up. He used every excuse he could to justify himself, but we kept up our list of complaints.
Actions like this are needed in the Army. Although the IG is formed to make silent and peaceful complaints, the group grew to demand to confront Sgt. Prick. He's cooled off a little. But there are new issues that pop up all the time.
Every single soldier has reason to complain. The most important organization for war is really unorganized and the morale is really low. Organizing for the Party in the military isn't easy. But it's something that I struggle with myself to do, and the above actions that we have taken open doors to the Party. A couple of soldiers are reading CHALLENGE and know about the Party.
Conflicts at our jobs are direct effects of the organization that we belong to, with contradicting policies that drive the enlisted servicemen and women to bate it, The same higher ranking officials want us to go to war and kill and die. I say many times that if we are going to have to give our lives, let's give it fighting for something necessary for us: communism. As we did when we confronted the Sergeant let's triumph together.
A Red Soldier
I belong to the Latin American Society (LAS). Coming early to the first meeting with CHALLENGE enabled me to discuss current events and articles in the paper with my friends.
In discussing the agenda, one person suggested talking about the Oct. 22 march against police brutality." Another asked, "Is anyone planning to attend the WTO protest in Seattle?" I added that we should organize a forum about the UNAM (Univ. of Mexico) strike.
CHALLENGE, and the discussion around it, prompted the things these students raised. A friend and seven-month reader of CHALLENGE nominated me to lead next week's meeting.
That meeting began with several people reading a letter from CHALLENGE involving Cal State students. As more people came, they all expressed interest in "that paper that everyone is reading," as one member put it. One took six to give to friends; another took five. The meeting's agenda included the Oct. 22 march, the possible UNAM forum and the relief help for the victims suffering from Mexico's earthquake. Reading CHALLENGE before the meeting made people very open to the agenda and sharpened the level of ideological struggle, especially around PLP's ideas.
I opened with the Oct. 22 March. People were enthusiastic about going as a contingent, holding the group's banner and wearing red shirts. The red-shirt idea arose after I raised the need to see police brutality as part of the global rise of fascism. This internationalized the struggle of the world's workers' fight against state police terror. PLP's red shirts will proclaim the international working class's need for revolutionary communism.
Next I declared that, as an act of solidarity, we should hold a forum to inform students here about the inspiring militancy of the striking students in Mexico City, facing daily attacks from their government. Many strikers see this as a fight against U.S. imperialism. As U.S. students, we must not be passive when the bosses attack people in Mexico or Iraq or anywhere.
LAS wanted the forum. Only one student was critical, saying that the UNAM strike has prevented many students from attending school and being "serious" about finding a job. Another student (and friend of the party), who distributes five CHALLENGES a week, said that "what the government is doing in Mexico to the people is brutal and these students are fighting back. Student scabs hurt the strike just as scabs do against workers who go on strike." This expression of class-consciousness won the day! People voted for the forum on Nov. 2. PLP will have a few speakers. It's an opportunity to expand our campus base.
When discussing aiding the victims of Mexico's earthquake, a few members remembered the PLP leaflet and CHALLENGE articles on hurricane Mitch, blaming the death and destruction on capitalism. The idea that the U.S. spent more money in the first few hours of the war in Kosovo then in aid to the Central American victims of hurricane Mitch was an important reason why LAS passed the anti-war resolution last quarter.
One woman said passionately, "The Mexican Government says they don't need help from outside, that they will take care of those suffering. Well, they haven't. When the elites in Mexico suffered from the economic collapse they begged for help and the bailout came. Now the poor need help and the rich could care less. It's so disgusting." We made a plan to hold a support meeting, both to help collect aid as well as have a political discussion with students about how the profit system is responsible for the death and destruction that follows these "natural" disasters.
I was excited at the discussion and the plans made. I need to build up a CHALLENGE network in LAS; 172 CHALLENGES were distributed and sold this past week here. This can help lead the Party's work and encourage students to raise internationalism, working-class solidarity and revolutionary politics and communism on these campuses, and in our lives. We will deepen our commitment to the urgent need of fighting capitalism and fascism.
LA Comrade
This DC 37 caucus offers both political opportunities and dangers. PLP members can help lead bigger struggles against slave labor Workfare and raise a wide array of anti-fascist ideas. Communist ideas will have to contend with the bosses' and reformist ideas within the CRC that always lead workers back into the bosses' arms. CRC leaders have already petitioned the Manhattan D.A. for help in getting rid of corrupt DC 37 officials. Others tout Democratic Party hacks as our saviors.
City workers are increasingly angry and willing to fight. We must respond by plunging into this emerging class struggle with the goal of winning masses of workers away from the liberal traps laid by the rulers and their lieutenants in the unions.
A NYC worker
The Party, in CHALLENGE, leaflets, official speeches and personal struggles made by Party members should definitely oppose and attack the NOI. Also some members should definitely join some of those activities. In addition to passing out literature attacking the right-wing leadership, members should integrate themselves into all kinds of organizations to build close ties with those workers who are potential communists but are currently being led by the right-wingers.
Are universities, public schools and unions reactionary? Isn't the military a pro-capitalist, anti-working class organization? Of course. Should our members quit those organizations because they are led by pro-capitalist forces? Of course not. We enter those organizations to win groups of workers to communism--both by talking to individuals, but also by generating class struggle to expose the leadership.
These struggles don't happen by waving a red flag although appropriate in some circumstances. They happen through a painstaking, long-term approach, really getting to know workers and allowing them to know the Party deeply through the work we do together with them. We can't do that by staying away from those activities. Of course the NOI is a pro-fascist organization. But singling that organization out as one we should avoid is NOT a "super-left" position. In fact, it reflects a soft line towards all the other liberal pro-fascist organizations, such as unions and schools.
We must have one foot on each side of the river to help people move from the capitalist side to the communist side. Opportunists, liberal socialists, and reformists find the capitalist side comfortable. But staying with both feet on what you believe is the communist side and not getting involved in the struggles of the working class is not being on the communist side at all. It is hiding in a ghetto. This allows the capitalists to more easily to control the working class.
Indiana Red
The Social Security tax deduction rate is 7.65% on incomes up to $61,200 per year, or a maximum of $4,681 annually. If you're a CEO making a million a year, your Social Security tax is still limited to $4,681 a year. But that millionaire's tax RATE is less than one-half of one percent! In other words, the average worker is taxed at 15 to 20 times the rate of an average millionaire!
If total yearly income from wages were taxed (not just up to $61,200), it would bring in another $100 BILLION a year, basically from the rich--which it exactly why it's not done. And that amount is limited to taxing income solely from wages. If Social Security taxes were applied to total income--stocks, bonds, capital gains, real estate, etc., and all the other ways the rich steal from workers--the working class would have a much more secure pension. But, then again, that's not the point of capitalism, is it? To allow workers to feel secure....
NYC Comrade