ATHENS, March 29 — The class struggle is raging in Greece, and the working class is beginning to advance against the bosses’ cutbacks. The working class shut Greece down on Thursday, March 11, for the second time in less than a month (see CHALLENGE 3/17). Planes didn’t fly, factories and schools were closed and the Corinth Canal was shut down. TV, Radio, electronic news websites, and the press — the whole country was brought to a standstill. Over 100,000 workers marched, possibly the largest demonstration in 15 years. Some factories that did try to stay open were forcibly shut down by protesters and striking workers, with many scabs being stopped from entering.

Earlier in the week, the striking workers attempted to storm parliament. When one of the major union leaders tried to stop them, they beat the snot out of him. It’s inspiring to see the bosses’ dogs get stomped. A few days later, the union put up wanted posters of the workers who beat him up, echoing one of the Nazi’s favorite tactics. 

During an event organized by the Ministry of Education, teachers invaded the conference room while the Minister of Education was speaking. The teachers unfolded a big banner against the measures and chanted slogans against the regime. When a plain-clothes policeman tried to stop them, the teachers surrounded the man, disarmed him, and beat him, culminating with the man crawling on the floor towards the exit. The teachers then continued to chant slogans against the Minister. 

Greece is suffering from massive budget cuts being inflicted upon it by the international capitalist class — the bosses. The Socialist government is crying that they must inflict these cuts on the working class and that it’s out of their hands. These bootlickers are not saying that capitalism cannot meet the needs of the working class. They can’t, because they are not against capitalism. They want to control it so that they can continue to sell out the working class for their capitalist masters. Socialists will always betray the working class because they don’t fight directly for communism, even if they pay lip service to wanting to fight for it at all. 

The communist movement in Greece has been diverted down two dead-ends: anarchism and socialism.  The socialist parties, many of whom call themselves “communist,” are saturated with false ideas that capitalism can be reformed.  The anarchists are saturated with the false idea that communism can be achieved without a centralized party apparatus to organize the revolution and society. The anarchists led attacks on police stations, luxury shops, representations of wealth, banks, and the police themselves, and leftists did lead the one-day strike, but it will not be enough to stop the socialist PASOK government from instituting the cuts that the capitalist bosses need.

It is amazing to see the photos of brave workers fighting against the cops. A favorite chant is “Cops are not children of the working class, they are dogs of the capitalists.” It is exciting to see class consciousness inspire the strikes. It should inspire us all to step up our attacks on the capitalist state as they continue to attack us.

Examples of Greek students being attacked by cops on motorcycles trying to encircle them, and then encircling the cops, smashing their motorcycles and sending over 15 of them to the hospital after they beat them up, should inspire us to not fear the state and its armed apparatus. When the working class faces increasing repression, they begin to resist the new social order that the rulers try to impose. But, without communist leadership, that resistance will be co-opted into narrow reform movements and one-day strikes.

It will take a lot more than a one-day strike to stop the capitalists from trying to preserve their profit rate on the backs of the working class, both in Greece and internationally. The same enemy is attacking workers in Haiti with hundreds of thousands dead, and soldiers walking around with weapons instead of food. The same enemy is attacking the workers in Afghanistan with radioactive weaponry and paying for the war by cutting services and education of students from New York City to Los Angeles.

If workers around the world shared the Greek workers’ anger and class consciousness the rulers would be shaking in their shoes. However, we know that anger, militant action and reform demands are not enough to change the system to meet the needs of the working class. We need communist leadership from the PLP to make a revolution to wrest state power from the capitalists. 

Hundreds Sit In at UCLA

LOS ANGELES, March 4 — Today several hundred students rallied and sat in at UCLA’s administration building, backing the state-wide March 4th day of action against education cut-backs. Leading up to March 4, discussion within the student groups organizing for it exposed the cuts to the state budget and public education as being essentially racist, since they disproportionately affect low-income working-class black and Latino students the most.

These cuts in public education were linked to the U.S. ruling class’s need to devote hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out its financial system and for imperialist wars that mass murder our working-class brothers and sisters in the Middle East and Central Asia. A speaker at the main rally declared, “A capitalist system that bails out the banks and funds imperialist wars for oil” must be destroyed!

The same speaker also said the state cuts writing and retention programs on university campuses while exempting military research labs like U.C. Berkley’s Lawrence Livermore Lab and UCLA’s School of Engineering Center of Innovating Nano-science for Defense. Therefore, students must realize when defending “public education” against privatization that public universities are also an essential part of the U.S. imperialist infrastructure.

The struggle to explain the racist nature of the cuts impelled two young black women to speak at a teach-in (during the sit-in held just outside the Chancellor’s office) about the need to build multi-racial unity against racist attacks on working-class black and Latino students. These comments were especially important in lieu of the student fraternity at UC San Diego that recently held a sarcastically-themed “Black History Month” party in which it celebrated racist portrayals of black people. Soon afterwards a noose was hung from a tree, further highlighting the racism existing on public university campuses.

Today there were also efforts to occupy buildings, a popular tactic lately at California universities. But the sit-in at the administration lasted longer than expected, so no buildings were occupied. However, these events have contained confused politics that don’t clearly explain the purpose of occupations. This time there were many discussions at several meetings analyzing the university’s role in supporting imperialism and capitalism by generating racist ideology and war research.

Students concluded that strategic occupations of buildings conducting such research would disrupt the university’s ability to produce for war and fascism while also making a political statement about the tie-in between the cuts and imperialist war. PL’ers are active within this movement to win students to see that the only solution to the crisis-caused cutbacks is to smash capitalism and fight for communist revolution.

Much has been learned in organizing the March 4 events. Mobilizations of students and workers are positive, but fulfilling their revolutionary potential can only occur through consistent ideological struggle for a communist analysis of the racist nature of capitalism and its natural connection to imperialism. PLP’s effort to organize students to fight back must be oriented to see the limits of reform and the ultimate need for communist revolution. J

H.S. Students Stand Ground, Lead Walkout

LOS ANGELES, March 4 — At 7:15 A.M., about 100 teachers, staff and students rallied today in front of the high school where I work as a part of a national call to action to protest budget cuts in education. We carried signs, chanted and distributed information to parents.

The majority of the teachers in our school district have wanted to strike since the end of the last school year. Last year we lost almost 3,000 teachers and more than 1,500 staff positions to mass layoffs district-wide. Consequently, class sizes have increased, counselors have more students to program, school office staff had their workloads doubled, janitorial duties became impossible, the classrooms have been left dirty and school supplies have long since been used up without being replaced.

The teachers and staff at the school sites are
angry, but the union has repeatedly backed down from confronting the district. They keep repeating that “We have to work together in order to deal with the results of the current economic crisis.” In the schools that means we must accept the cuts, take on an impossible workload and watch our students suffer while the district bureaucrats spend money on million-dollar security systems and “consultants.”

It’s always the same story under capitalism. The working class must work harder with fewer resources while the rich bosses get richer. If we ask for support, they hire someone to “research” how to make us work even harder with still less resources. All this is heaped on an overwhelmingly black, Latino and Asian student population suffering these racist cuts while hundreds of billions are spent on Obama’s imperialist Mid-East and Asian wars — in which they hope to use these youth to kill and die to maintain their oil empire.

8:00 A.M. — As the teachers and staff walked back into school to begin the school day, many
students stayed outside to continue the rally. They were organized and motivated, even marching through the school buildings convincing other students to walk out of class to join them in a rally and march. The teachers were so proud!

The administrators, security and police harassed the students as they demonstrated, but they stood their ground and refused to return to class until the end of second period. Even though the school itself wasn’t shut down, it really taught them a lot of
lessons. They learned how to organize and what to expect from the state apparatus when they start fighting back. Many of my students returned to class energized and confident that “next time will be even better.”

3:00 P.M. — Many students and teachers were inspired by the morning’s events, but it was difficult convincing anyone from my school — in the city’s southern section — to travel all the way downtown to march with the colleges and unions. More than 5,000 people demonstrated that day throughout the city.

I’m continuing the struggle with my coworkers and students by working to build a worker-student alliance with the staff on campus and other workers from transit and industry.  We will build on the actions and bring into this struggle the ideas of communism: class consciousness, working-class power and the
urgent need for revolution.

Red Teacher

The scandal involving NY State Governor David Paterson is far broader than the Empire State. It represents the attempt by the main section of the capitalist class to exercise more direct control of the government — a hallmark of fascism — in order to serve its needs domestically and its war-making abroad. Meanwhile, it exposes its electoral system as a farce and reveals once again that choosing “black representation” (Paterson is the state’s first black governor) merely continues the rulers’ racist oppression of the whole working class, black and white.

Shocking political scandals, like Watergate and the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, generally reflect power struggles among competing capitalists with stakes far graver than the alleged offenses. The case of New York’s embattled governor follows the pattern. His misdeeds — trying to free an aide from an assault charge, and accepting free World Series tickets — are relatively minor. His real crime, according to the liberal-imperialist bosses’ NY Times editorial (3/3), lies in failing to correct a “dysfunctional and frequently corrupt Legislature.”

The Rockefeller-led dominant faction — and its servant Obama — that the Times represents, faces exploding military expenses for its widening wars amid domestic economic catastrophe, especially its racist super-exploitation of black and Latino workers. It needs swift enactment of job- and service-slashing state budgets along with tax hikes.

But Paterson hasn’t managed to squash organized opposition from smaller, “business-as-usual” bosses who have no stake in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. Their leader is anti-tax magnate Tom Golisano, who owns a payroll-services firm tied to small businesses. Last year, Golisano created a logjam in Albany by bribing two Democratic state senators, Hiram Monserrate and Pedro Espada, to turn Republican.

Warmaking Bosses Target
Ineffective Gov

At first, the imperialist wing enlisted liberal New York attorney-general (and former Kennedy-in-law) Andrew Cuomo as Paterson’s grand inquisitor, either to oust him or, at least, get him to toe the ruling-class line. But Cuomo’s gubernatorial ambitions created a blatant conflict of interest. So, Cuomo has handed the Paterson prosecution to “independent counsel” Judith Kaye. Some “independent”!

The state’s former Chief Judge, Kaye now works for the top ruling-class law firm Skadden Arps, which “ranked first among law firms representing Fortune 100 companies” in 2009, according to the National Law Journal. Thus, Kaye’s clientele includes Exxon Mobil, Chevron, JP MorganChase, Citigroup, Halliburton and other beneficiaries of Obama’s ever-expanding war efforts.

Domestically-oriented banks were rankled by Paterson predecessor Eliot Spitzer’s pro-imperialist, wartime regulation regime which disciplined those Wall Street banks that, in pursuit of immediate profits, were completely disregarding the long-range interests of their class, leading to economic chaos.  This gang brought Spitzer down by exposing his prostitute habit. Now the defenders of the U.S. overseas empire are striking back.

Ravitch Plan for Rulers’ Rescue: Sell State to Banks, Give Unelected Capitalists Open State Power

The Times editorial, demanding that Paterson resign if things get too ugly, reminded readers that “Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch is highly capable.” Ravitch is also highly loyal to the imperialist rulers. Days later (3/11), a Times editorial trumpeted his “way to bail out New York.”

Ravitch’s scheme involves selling bonds to the likes of JP MorganChase and Goldman Sachs and creating “an independent board of highly-respected private citizens to assess the progress toward a balanced budget.” This panel could only represent the bondholders. Ravitch aims ultimately at anti-worker “painful but necessary budget cuts.”

Titans of capitalism inspire (and pay) him. “Ravitch has approached the Rockefeller Foundation [and] the New York Community Trust... to provide research grants to...support his work.” (NY Daily News, 12/15/09) The friendly-sounding Community Trust in fact comprises ruling-class predators like JP MorganChase, Citigroup, and Bank of New York.

Boston Model: Bankers, Other War Profiteers ‘Advising’ Politicians

Ravitch’s empowered “respected citizens” would closely resemble the newly-formed Massachusetts Competiveness Partnership (MCP), which soon will be “providing advice to Beacon Hill lawmakers.” The Times-owned Boston Globe editorialized (3/8) that the partnership “brings hope for a new era of civic leadership.” (Our emphasis — Ed.)

This shadow state legislature boasts Raytheon chief William Swanson and State Street Bank CEO Ronald Logue as directors. Raytheon, a leading “merchant of death,” sells the Pentagon much of its indiscriminately murderous missile systems. Arch-imperialist State Street holds over $10 trillion in global assets in custody, including many so-called “sovereign” wealth funds of foreign governments. The Globe favorably likened MCP to the “Vault,” a similarly unelected, anti-working-class, banker-led group that dominated policy in the 1960s and 1970s.

Replacing Paterson with such “civic-minded reformers” would only strengthen the war-making imperialists. The Albany circus, like Obama’s shattering of his anti-war campaign promises and his protection of bankers at the expense of increasingly unemployed workers, exposes the futility of voting.

All politicians serve one capitalist faction or another. True freedom from exploitation can only follow a worker-led communist revolution that destroys the profit system and its billionaire parasites. This is PLP’s long-term goal.