On June 11, the World Cup of Soccer began in South Africa. It is the world’s largest sporting event, watched by billions around the globe. Ideologically, the World Cup is fueled by the deadly nationalism of the imperialist epoch. Imperialism has left its mark all over the event. The biggest imperialist powers’ soccer teams are overwhelmingly filled with players from their former colonies and the African teams are all coached by Europeans.

In South Africa one-third of all workers are unemployed and nearly 70 percent of South African children live in poverty but yet the ANC government found $107 billion to host the event. After construction workers building the stadiums went on strike, the ANC moved to ban strikes during the World Cup.

But as soon as the games started the security guards that work the stadiums struck over low wages at Durban’s Moses Mabhida Stadium — and were met by police firing teargas and rubber bullets. The security guards said their take-home pay was just R135 ($17.68) per match — working 12-16 hour days on average — and they had to fork over R1,200 ($157.62) for uniforms. The players have continued to play, effectively scabbing on the workers.

Thousands of people marched in Durban on June 16th, the 34th anniversary of the Soweto uprising against apartheid (see page 8) — in solidarity with Stallon Security workers. Demonstrators also highlighted the treatment of traders who have been forcibly removed from the FIFA exclusion zones in which only licensed traders were allowed to operate. Chants of “Get out FIFA mafia” echoed through the streets.

Other workers complained of being forced away from their normal fishing grounds near luxury hotels and the Durban seafront. Rajeen Inderjeeth held a handwritten sign saying, “We will fish against your rules.”

Sections of Johannesburg’s bus drivers held a wildcat strike at the start of the week over unilateral route changes.

Hundreds of people marched on the United States consulate in Johannesburg protesting cuts in international funding to prevent HIV/Aids in Africa. Activists wearing green T-shirts and carrying placards took part. Several organizations, including the Treatment Action Campaign and Cosatu, are leading the protest over cuts in HIV/Aids funding.

Workers worldwide should shoot down the bosses’ nationalism with internationalism — the idea that workers everywhere have the same class interest in opposing the world’s bosses, no matter what their origin. Capitalism caused the poverty — now exacerbated by the World Cup — that has wrecked South Africa. The nationalism promoted in part by the World Cup fuels capitalism’s imperialist adventures all around the world and exploitation at home. The workers’ real goal worth shooting for isn’t a World Cup victory, but communism. 

PONTCHATEAU, FRANCE, June 18 — Striking factory workers here held the Bobcat France chairman, four other Directors and a court bailiff hostage all day until management agreed to an extraordinary meeting of the works council.

The 297 workers are fighting for higher layoff compensation for 130 co-workers scheduled for layoff this month. The workers are demanding $76,740 for each worker plus $3,960 for each year of seniority; the company is offering one-fourth of that. These workers, who make telescoping forklifts, have already suffered 19 months of short time.

Bobcat France is a subsidiary of the Bobcat Company, a U.S.-based subsidiary of the South Korean conglomerate Doosan Infracore International. Doosan’s annual report boasted having “recently acquired Bobcat, which enjoys the world’s highest competitiveness in compact construction equipment.” But Doosan reported a $245.8 million net loss in fiscal 2009 so it plans to make its workers pay.

Doosan claims its “business philosophy” is to do “our part to care for communities [and] protect life.” But it seems that such “care” and “protection” doesn’t extend to its workers. Indeed, Doosan’s strategy for Bobcat is to raise competitiveness “by constantly reducing fixed costs, raising operational efficiency, maximizing productivity, and improving business fundamentals.”

Consequently, Bobcat France plans relocating its research and development department to the Czech Republic, where average annual income in 2004 was roughly one-third of that in France.

The militancy and solidarity that leads workers to break the bosses’ laws and take them hostage is positive, but it takes communist leadership to break the bonds of reformism and aim for workers’ power and communist revolution — the only goal that will eliminate the bosses and these attacks for good. 

Within the first five minutes of the movie “Iron Man II,” Tony Stark declares that his wonderful suit of iron has guaranteed world peace. In doing so, he pushes one of the foremost lies that form the foundation of capitalist ideology: that true peace for workers can exist alongside the profit motive. In this grotesque film, which is filled with sexism, the glorification of the U.S. military and Cold War anti-communism, this deception is perhaps the worst. Capitalism only offers ceaseless violence, from domestic abuse to nuclear war, for the world’s workers. No “Iron Man” can do what communist revolution can: consign capitalism to the dustbin of history and usher in a society based on workers’ needs and hopes.

In the first film, Stark is kidnapped and forced to build a super weapon for terrorists, portrayed by Arab-looking actors (thus fulfilling the film industry’s role as a source of racist, imperialist ideology). Instead of developing a weapon for his captors, Stark builds a metal suit that allows him to fly, shoot and generally wreak havoc on the “bad guys.”

The film begins with the U.S. government demanding Stark hand over the suit to the military. Defiantly invoking his “right to private property” and declaring that he has “privatized world peace,” Stark refuses. In this Libertarian fantasy Tony Stark, the super-capitalist, provides for the needs of the working class (who suffer most from the ceaseless violence of capitalism and would thus benefit most from true peace). Libertarianism is the belief that capitalist markets are completely self-regulating and that there is no need for government. Accordingly, the state in the movie, rather than being shown as an instrument of the capitalist class, is shown as a bumbling bureaucracy separate from the capitalist class.

Through a montage of magazine covers and a brief self-congratulatory speech from Stark himself, we learn that the invention of the Iron Man suit has led to five years of “peace and prosperity.” Stark reveals the nature of this “peace” when he declares himself a modern “nuclear deterrent,” a clear allusion to the “peace” of the Cold War era. The U.S. appears to still be an imperialist power and people like Tony Stark still live in utter wealth, meaning that many more have to live in desperate poverty.

The Iron Man is clearly being used not as a weapon of liberation but a weapon of intimidation. The Iron Man has not brought world peace, but rather world domination by U.S. imperialism. By the end of the movie, the reality that the so-called “free market” hero is in service to the U.S. war machine is apparent: Tony Stark is fighting alongside his friend and U.S. Army Colonel, James Rhodes. Stark Industries, his company, may be the hot company, but it still needs the might of the U.S. military to allow it access to markets. (Replace Stark Industries with ExxonMobil and you’d have a movie about the invasion of Iraq.)

Along with a U.S. superhero, this film gives us the proto-typical Russian villain, Ivan Vanko or “Whiplash.” Vanko’s father was a Russian scientist who worked with Stark’s father, but was deported by the elder Stark back to the USSR because Vanko was too greedy (which is rich, coming from a Pentagon contractor).

Vanko is a physicist (with a gym membership himself) incapable of comprehending Stark’s technological advancements. He can only mimic advancements, not develop his own, thus fulfilling the stereotype of the overly mechanical Russian scientist not privy to the “freedom” of U.S. capitalism.

Of course belief in this myth requires forgetting that in many scientific fields the Soviet Union was far ahead of the “liberated” U.S. The specter of communism still haunts the bosses and their film industry.

“Iron Man II” will clearly be one of the biggest blockbusters of the year (in its first two days it made over $327 million worldwide). And it is not hard to see why: good actors put in strong performances and top-of-the-line special effects highlight an action-packed script. But every aspect of capitalist media is designed to reinforce capitalist ideas and we should be critical of these underlying lessons. “Iron Man II,” at its core, is a celebration of capitalist individualism and U.S. nationalism simply wrapped in a sleek, glamorous shell. 

Since their founding by Spain and Portugal the history of Latin American states has been a history of imperialism. Today Russia, China, and the European Union (E.U.) all fight over the abundant natural resources of the region, challenging the traditional dominance of the U.S. ruling class. The opportunist native bosses in Latin America have begun to re-orient their economies and populations to reflect this struggle, choosing their favored imperialist master.

Latin America serves as a major source of raw materials for the imperialist powers. Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia are all major exporters of oil, with Mexico being the second largest source of U.S. oil. The recent find of fresh oil reserves in Colombia’s Cusiana fields guarantees a continued imperialist presence in the region. Large mining operations, like the copper mines in Chile, are vital to U.S., Chinese, and Russian manufacturing.

The Southern Common Market, MERCOSUR, plays an important role in regulating South American trade for the benefit of the imperialist powers. Since its inception in 1991 it has been successful in fixing resource prices so low that producing states cannot even maintain themselves.

The U.S. dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) uses oppressive conditional loans to regulate Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, as the local bosses struggle for autonomy and profits. To escape the U.S. imperialists, Venezuela makes oil deals with Chinese and Russian bosses. As a result, Ecuador and close ally Venezuela are the only Latin American countries that participate in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a longtime thorn in the U.S. bosses’ side.

In many parts of Latin America, capitalist profits revolve around the growing drug trade. Although U.S. bosses have frequently touted their “war on drugs,” they have orchestrated and encouraged drug trafficking and the armed gangs which run the trade. The U.S. built and funded the Contras in Nicaragua and paramilitary groups in Colombia, Guatemala and El Salvador that form the vital drug pipeline between Colombia and the U.S. These fascist gangs were created in the 1980s to brutalize workers and discourage communist organizing, all the while funded by the largest market of narcotics users in the world, the U.S. After the leftists were killed, the drugs kept flowing.

The imperialist powers do not fight over Latin America because it is poor. Latin America is rich; only the people are poor. More than 500 million live in extreme poverty, while 36 local billionaires (and more imperialist bosses) reap increasing profits from their labor.

Both local capitalists and imperialists have no interest in addressing the deteriorating situation of workers in Latin America. As the extraction of wealth from Latin America becomes more frenzied the people become more impoverished. For example, in garment factories owned by Korean, French and Spanish capitalists in Bolivia, children work 16 hours a day under sweatshop conditions. Whenever workers in Latin America fight back against such oppression, the U.S. and its corporate interests have funded police and military repression to bring workers back in line.

In recent years, leaders have emerged in Latin America who have tried to win workers with claims of “socialism” and false promises to free their countries from the yoke of U.S. imperialism. Some prominent examples include Chavez in Venezuela, Lula Da Silva in Brazil and Correa in Ecuador.  These leaders wrest control of their countries from the U.S. by making deals with other imperialist powers like China and Russia. Merely changing the face of their master they are repositioning their workers to be exploited by a different side of the growing inter-imperialist dogfight.

Host to nine U.S. military bases, Colombia remains firmly under the control of the U.S. bosses. In addition to its wealth of natural resources Colombia is a vital strategic interest to the U.S. since it is geographically positioned to easily control the rest of the region. The government, hopelessly tied to the drug trade, is known for brutalizing workers and destroying unions by murdering organizers.

The Colombian government also serves as America’s pit-bull in the region, using its military to intervene in other parts of Latin America.  In 2008 Colombia almost sparked a war with Venezuela and Ecuador when Colombian and U.S. troops crossed into Ecuador to assassinate Raul Reyes, leader of the FARC guerillas.

Despite these horrific conditions bred by imperialism, workers continue to fight back. On May 1st millions of workers all over Latin America marched against capitalism. In some of the marches, the slogan of down with capitalism and long live communism was heard. In Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba and Honduras, the workers remembered the martyrs of Chicago and called for a fight against the imperialists punitive system of control.

PLP was present in many of these marches raising the communist flag, declaring that we have a world to win. Workers have broken barriers by joining the Party of the working class, as they see people suffering the same injustices from Mexico to Afghanistan to Brazil. On May Day they raised the only flag of the international working class, the communist flag, and called for revolution. Only one Party, the PLP, is capable of destroying capitalism and the deadly imperialism it breeds!