A mural of Archbishop Romero in El Salvador.El Salvador — This is the story of a comrade, an ex-commander in the FMLN guerilla army, who met the PLP through an old ex-fellow combatant with whom he shared many wartime experiences. His old friend related PLP’s communist ideas to him, how other workers internationally were organizing in the working class with PLP’s line. This gladdened him, but first he began reading CHALLENGE regularly before participating in discussions.

He was invited to several PLP club meetings but decided to take some time before actually joining due to all the experiences described below. Currently he attends meetings punctually. Initially he listened carefully to the analysis. His level of participation and responsibility in the armed struggle and his analysis of current events make him very prudent.

He has brought his wife (another ex-combatant) to recent meetings. He has been very honest and correct politically, open about his contradictions — the illusion in elections and the stages theory of es- tablishing communism, using Cuba’s example, and has helped the club to better explain PLP’s politics. His subordinates in the war in El Salvador were very approving of his participation in PLP. They asked him to write his history for CHALLENGE and he agreed, saying that he would try to write as honestly as possible about his life and his understanding of PLP’s politics:

Part I
I was born in the Department of Morazán. We lived in extreme poverty. In my village there were 85 houses, of tile with wooden walls, with approxi- mately 5 to 8 people per family in each. The situation was critical since we had no income. We lived by planting corn, beans and sorghum.

My father died when I was 3. I grew up alone with my mother who was accompanied by another man. When I was 8 I didn’t go to school because I had to work so my family could eat. That’s how most people lived in El Salvador. I made half a co- lon a day (20¢US). My mother was, and is, very religious. Luckily she still lives with us today.

In 1974 Miguel Ventura came to our village to take charge of the Catholic Parish. I liked how he discussed the bible’s themes and related them to our lives. He talked a lot about farm workers and the way our people lived in general.

In 1975, he sent two catechists (lay people who help teach the bible) to explain the gospel. I liked to accompany them. They assigned me, as a community leader, to motivate area youth for this religious movement. One day that year, the idea arose about the necessity to organize around other ideas because the bible alone could not help us. The church then was called “subversive,” especially because we exposed the injustice toward the farmworkers and the whole working class in the country.

Through questions about some of the themes in the bible, we understood that we live under a capitalist system that causes tremendous poverty and repression, and that the military only defends the interests of the rich. We then understood that we had to organize ourselves in groups and fight to change the situation. We also understood there were sectors of workers who were already organized.

One sector was Popular Leagues of the 28th of February (LP-28), and another was FAPU. These groups included university students. The right-wing government oppressed the working class, the students and the churches because it saw these groups were organizing to demand their rights. In 1975, through Miguel Ventura, we organized the Revolutionary Peoples’ Army (ERP) to which I belonged.

We organized with youth and older people. Our orientation with people was to form committees. This helped us coordinate the movements with both political and military preparation. One theme included topics like the international and national political situation. We also learned to use weapons — pistols, 22-caliber rifles and shotguns some neighbors owned.

In 1976 the organization asked me and six youth to join the army as infiltrators. Our mission was to learn the army’s policies, its military tactics using its different weapons and then to take some weapons and ammunition.

If needed, we could desert with all the assigned equipment, but it was better to stay in the army and serve our time. I served two years and then left with plenty of experience. When I left, my friends asked about everything I had learned about the military and the army’s political preparations.

Two months later the armed forces had an operation in our department of Morazán. They came to my house and took me and two other comrades away, detaining us for three days. They tortured me but didn’t kill me because they thought that I would give them a lot of information. On the third day they released me but continued to hold my comrades for a year. I went home to tell my mother I was free but that I had to leave because the army would come look for me to kill me. I told my family that when they came for me to say they hadn’t heard from me since the day I was captured.

A month later, the organization decided that six of us should go to Nicaragua because the Sandinista Liberation Front was in a critical phase of the war there. They were concentrated in the mountains and preparing to destroy the Somoza government and his army, that it was necessary to gain this useful experience because after Nicaragua was liberated, El Salvador would follow.

I asked when will I leave here and they replied, “This has to be done quickly.” Shortly we were in Honduras and then passed to the mountains of Nicaragua. Three of us, including me, were sent to the northern zone at Estelí. The other three were sent to the capital, Managua.

(Next issue: Part II; the battles in Nicaragua and El Salvador and moving from the reformist FMLN to the revolutionary PLP)

U.S. troops patrol the business district in Sar Hawza, Afghanistan.At West Point on December 1, Obama announced a major “jobs program.” He’s sending 30,000 more troops (and as many mercenaries) to “work” in Afghanistan. His coming force of over 200,000 (including “battlefield contractors”) must perform several critical tasks for U.S. imperialism. One is securing the ground for a gas pipeline planned to bypass both Iran and Russia (see below). Another involves spreading combat operations into neighboring Pakistan.

But Obama’s ultimate goal is making Afghanistan a strategic beachhead against the rising strength of U.S. rivals, Iran, China and Russia. Afghanistan borders Iran to the west and China to the east. To the north lie Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, former Soviet states that Putin is determined to reunite in a new Russian Empire.

At Stake for U.S. Rulers: Afghan Pipeline to Spoil Iranian, Russian Gas Dominance

According to the NY Times (12/2/09), “The bulk of new combat forces approved by President Obama would be sent to southern Afghanistan, an area including Helmand and Kandahar Provinces.” It just so happens that the proposed U.S.-funded Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline route runs right through Helmand and Kandahar.

Raja Karthikeya, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank which aided Obama’s lengthy Afghan deliberations, wrote, “Tapping into the energy resources of Central Asia (for example, through the trans-Afghanistan or TAPI pipeline) would help cater to [India’s and Pakistan’s] energy demand and also reduce their disproportionate dependence on the Middle East” [that is, Iran]. India and Pakistan already get the bulk of their gas imports from Iran. And a proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas line, competing head to head with TAPI, is much closer to completion.

Obama also wants TAPI, and the armed force to guarantee it, to thwart Russia’s efforts to control Turkmen gas exports.

Obama couldn’t mention U.S. rulers’ blatant pipeline profit motive. But he had plenty to say about preventing Islamic militants from taking over nuclear-armed Pakistan. And two days later the Times (12/3/09) reported, “The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan’s lawless tribal area.”

Obama’s West Point speech referred obliquely but unmistakably to his readiness to wage war on Islamists for that grand prize of energy resources, Saudi Arabia. “We will have to be nimble and precise in our use of military power. Where al Qaeda and its allies attempt to establish a foothold — whether in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere — they must be confronted by growing pressure and strong partnerships.” Recent pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia starkly dramatize the strategic position of Somalia in commanding shipping lanes for Saudi crude. And Yemen sits on the Arabian Peninsula itself, just miles from the vast Saudi oil fields.

Another topic Obama omitted was Afghanistan’s geo-strategic importance. The Pentagon hopes to make its Bagram base and 30 others in Afghanistan — like Ramstein in Germany, Okinawa in Japan, Bondsteel in Kosovo and its string of bases in Iraq — a vast outpost of U.S. military might aimed directly at potential foes in a Third World War. The rulers of Iran, China and Russia are all targeting Afghanistan’s vast mineral riches and its geo-strategic position.

Obama Lies, Workers Die

Balancing this lie by omission in his West Point manifesto, Obama openly fabricated history on behalf of U.S. imperialism. He said, “Unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation’s resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours.”

But the unvarnished truth is the U.S. Constitution was founded on oppression, enslaving millions of Africans and on genocidal wars against Native Americans. Through its War of Independence it shifted slave-trading and slave-holding profits from Britain to Boston, New York and Virginia.

Today the U.S. war machine has a half million troops in 737 overseas bases in 130 countries and a 300-plus-ship navy to help Exxon Mobil and JP Morgan dominate captive foreign “customers.” U.S. troops not only effectively occupy Iraq and Afghanistan but maintain 50,000 troops and six bases in South Korea, six military bases in Japan-Okinawa and 50,000 troops on 16 military bases in Germany.

President Jimmy Carter made seizing other nations’
vital resources — especially oil — an official U.S. doctrine, as U.S.-led invasions of Kuwait and Iraq (twice) prove. And U.S. imperialists have long used racism to target “others,” from nuclear genocide at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to further anti-Asian racist atrocities in Korea and Vietnam to the anti-Islamic indoctrination of today’s GIs.

Obama Invokes World War II ‘Sacrifice’ that Led to U.S. Rulers’
Global Supremacy — but
Can’t Yet Enforce It

Obama said, “Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, and the service and sacrifice of our grandparents, our country has borne a special burden in global affairs.” But since Kennedy’s assassination, deep partisan differences have made it very hard for presidents to coerce the entire U.S. capitalist class to act in the interests of its imperialist wing. It has been more than four decades since Kennedy, seeking capital for his Vietnam War, forcibly reversed U.S. Steel’s price-hikes.

For now the Obama administration allows obscene bonuses for Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan bankers. Although U.S. imperialism’s wars require tapping into their trillions, these bankers don’t seem to want to “sacrifice” for the long-term class interests of U.S. capitalism.

As for winning the working class to sacrifice for this same U.S. imperialism, insufficient communist leadership in the working-class movement eases Obama’s assault on jobs and wages, the harshest since the Great Depression.

Furthermore, Obama finds it difficult to restore the draft. Ultra-liberal and ultra-imperialist (they go together) NY Times columnist Frank Rich, lamented this problem (12/6/09): “We’d need a minimal force of 568,000...to fight a proper counterinsurgency in Afghanistan” but “the president conspicuously left unmentioned...the draft.” Imperialist U.S. rulers must find a way to restore it despite widespread anti-draft sentiment persisting since the Vietnam War era.

Danger and Opportunity

The full-scale military mobilization Obama and his masters are aiming for holds both danger and opportunity for the working class. Pay cuts, police-state racist terror, and forced, deadly overseas deployments await us. So do openings for us to organize militant anti-imperialist, anti-racist, pro-worker actions against these attacks.

We can expose the war-makers’ profit motive and help build a new international communist movement. Mass-murdering U.S. imperialists will likely launch global war someday. This would create the conditions for a working-class revolution, but that’s not automatic. It depends on PLP doing our job of winning masses of workers, soldiers and students to communism. Everything we do today comprises the necessary building blocks towards that future. 

Undocumented Workers Deal Bosses Blow for Blow

Immigrant workers sit by the fire in a "jungle" encampment in Calais, France.PARIS, December 4 — The two-month strike of 5,500 undocumented workers fighting for immigrants’ rights has been a shining light in a depressed French labor movement. Consequently, the bosses and their government have concentrated their attacks on these workers, but the latter have been returning blow for blow.

In their latest action, on December 2, 80 undocumented restaurant workers occupied the tax collection office in Nice on the French Riviera to underline the fact that these workers — many of African origin — pay taxes. Later the police cleared the workers from the building.

That morning, 150 undocumented workers — dishwashers, kitchen assistants, chambermaids and office workers at some of the swankiest hotels and restaurants on the French Riviera — rallied, demanding “legalization.” Of 450 such requests over the past 18 months the Nice prefect has barely granted 40.

Four days earlier, 10,000 people, mostly striking undocumented workers, marched through Paris to the Immigration Ministry chanting, “We’re staying here, we live here! ‘Legalization’ of all undocumented immigrants!” This was in response to an immigration minister circular limiting conditions for “legalization” to less than one in five of the striking workers, and then only on a case-by-case basis.

The five trade union confederations and six associations that are organizing and supporting the undocumented workers associations rejected this as “unacceptable.” They particularly attacked the minister’s five-year residence requirement, the exclusion of Algerians and Tunisians, and of those who work as personal-care providers, many of whom are women.

A strikers’ spokesman declared: “We’ve come here to condemn this half-assed circular, which in no way responds to our demands. Our movement will continue stronger than ever. Already, 5,500 of us are on strike, manning 60 picket lines. We’re more determined than ever, and nothing will cause us to lower the intensity [of our struggle]. We also want to condemn the attacks on the right to strike, with the boss just needing to make a simple phone call to have a picket line lifted, without any court decision.”

The 11 organizations also denounced the labor minister’s new measures to punish the employers of workers in the “underground economy.” This was a ploy to play on the racist stereotype promoted by the French fascists, who say immigrant workers are “bankrupting the social security system.” Quite the contrary, undocumented workers make social security payments but cannot use social services.

Racism — The Bosses’ Tool

In a new version of “blame the victim,” on November 28 French president Nicolas Sarkozy told his UMP party that the undocumented workers’ demand for “legalization” was stirring up anti-foreigner feelings and breathing new life into the fascist National Front party!

Racism remains a weakness in the French labor movement. According to a public opinion poll published on November 30, 78% of the population recognizes that entire industries could not function without immigrant workers. Nevertheless, only 24% favor across-the-board “legalization,” while 64% back the government’s racist policy of “case-by-case ‘legalization.’”

However, some sentiment is represented by a 33-year-old youth worker,
Karima, who told an interviewer: “I feel ashamed of the way undocumented workers are treated in France.... This government is continually stigmatizing not just immigrants, but also the poor and minorities. It’s the same thing with the debate on national identity ; they’re trying to pit people against one another. Unfortunately, some French people fall into the trap.”

And a 22-year-old student, Antonin, who joined the march through Paris, said : “I support the undocumented workers.... It’s about time their demands were met. These workers have been living in France for years and are obliged to live in hiding and are subject to all the pressures of the employers.’’

The only road for the working class to answer capitalism’s attacks is to unite all these movements — undocumented workers, the unemployed, rail and auto workers, teamsters, teachers in France with the workers in Guadeloupe and Mayotte (see articles this page) — into an anti-racist groundswell. This has the potential to turn these fight-backs into schools for communism, leading to the only solution: destroy capitalism with communist revolution. 

Asan Bibi, 9, burned when a US helicopter fired into her family's tent.The U.S. rulers claim to be champions of “human rights” and throw around charges against China and other countries which they say are violating “human rights.” This is a sick joke. The “human rights” movement was created by the ruling class to divert workers’ anger away from blaming the bosses for the atrocities of capitalism.  

Eleanor Roosevelt and other prominent U.S. ruling-class figures initiated the modern “human rights” movement in the form of a U.N. resolution in 1949. It was part of the U.S. rulers’ attempts to build all-class unity — when the ruling class tries to convince workers that they have the same interest — out of fear of the growing world communist movement. The movement was based on the lie that there are “human rights” that are not based on class struggle, and people who wanted to fight for a decent life for all people didn’t have to join the communist movement to do that.

Today the bosses use the “human rights” movements to mobilize people to fight other capitalists. Whoever is the main competitor of the U.S. these days, China, Russia, Iran and a few others, are endlessly charged with “human rights” violations. While friends of the U.S. rulers, like Saudi Arabia, get a free pass.

Now after sixty years we can see where following the capitalists “human rights” movement has been selective. They plan demonstrations and mass outcry about atrocities in Darfur, where China has oil interests, while ignoring imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where U.S. interests lie. 

A glance at “life in these United States” shows any tears the U.S. rulers’ shed over the condition of the working class to be a farce:

• Racist attacks against and murders of black, Latino, Arab and south Asian workers are increasing. They are openly encouraged by “conservative” radio and TV;

• Workers have few rights to organize unions. When they do, the unions are bought off by the bosses, and end up representing the unions’ and bosses’ interests, not “their” members;

• Forty percent of the population, and the majority of the working class, have little or no health care;

• Unemployment is over 20% (when underemployed, the military “economic draft” and those no longer looking for work are counted). Loss of a job is a threat hanging over every worker’s head;

• Essential public services — such as public schools, recreation, unemployment insurance, retirement pensions, and the ability to go to college — all are being dismantled. These cuts amount to a huge DECREASE in the real wages of all workers;

• U.S. jails and prisons hold more than two million, 25% of all the prisoners in the world. Most of them were convicted of non-violent “crimes,” for possession of tiny amounts of drugs and are in jail because they’re black or Latino. (In Western Europe such people are directed to rehab programs.) The difference between jail or no jail often rests with the racist views of the cops and judges, and the ability to pay for a high-priced defense lawyer. Prisoners work for pennies a day, producing goods that, through competition, lower the wages of all other workers and make billions for bosses off this cheap labor;

• Immigrants from Latin America, South Asia, and the Mid-East are being swept up and indefinitely locked away in a growing network of immigration prisons.

Internationally the U.S. is the most murderous, aggressive power in the post-Hitler period:

• Over 2.5 million Koreans killed during the Korean War, 1950-1953, most of them by U.S. carpet bombing of North Korea;

• Between 3 to 4 million Vietnamese killed by the U.S. and allies during the Vietnam War, 1961-1975;

• A million or more civilians killed by U.S.-funded death squads, military and police to make Latin America “safe for democracy,” 1950-1990;

• One million Iraqis dead because of the U.S. blockade and sanctions, 1991-2003, including medical supplies and water-purification equipment;

• Over 1.5 million Iraqis killed as a result of the U.S. invasion and “war on terror,” against civilians, 2003-2009; four million more have been displaced and are refugees.

• More than 30,000 Afghan civilians killed (the racist U.S. media do not report these figures);

• The U.S. “renders” — kidnaps for secret torture — hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people and uses “drone” missiles to kill anybody it suspects of being hostile.

These figures do not include millions killed by U.S.-backed and –funded allies, such as the over one million Indonesians killed by the fascist regime in the 1960s to 1970s.

An even bigger holocaust is the millions — mostly children — who die of completely preventable hunger and disease throughout the world every year, preventable because the world produces enough food and medicine to stop this slaughter. But since half the world’s six billion people live in brutal poverty, they can’t pay for what they need, and these children die.

From U.S. to China, Capitalism
is the Enemy

Today the U.S. government is attacking the Chinese capitalists for what they call “violations of human rights.” Chinese bosses certainly are guilty of exploiting workers. Socialism has long been overthrown in China and replaced by a very brutal form of state capitalism. Behind this “holier-than-thou” performance are the growing economic and political contradictions between the U.S. and Chinese ruling classes.

Workers in China have few rights. Workers’ and farmers’ protests are severely repressed by the Chinese state. Right-wing, nationalist misleaders try to direct non-Han workers’ and farmers’ anger against Han workers, instead of uniting with them.

Farmers are driven off their land with little compensation to make way for industrial projects that make billions for capitalists while polluting the earth, air, and water. Education and medical care are only for those who can pay, which means most workers get far too little of either.

Sound Familiar? Workers in the U.S. Face Similar Conditions!

U.S. bosses claim that the U.S. is “democratic” while China is not. Western capitalists long ago figured out that permitting workers to “vote” is helpful in disguising the fact that the country is really a dictatorship. It is a dictatorship because the capitalists run the country in their own class interest. Workers can vote because the capitalists control everything — all the political parties, plus the mass media, plus the money needed to carry on elections.

A communist society, run by the workers, would be based on production for need rather than production for profits. Only communism can possibly provide these basic needs for the working people of the world. Only under communism will every person be a worker, contributing towards the common good.