Challenge Newspaper - Progressive Labor Party

MAYWOOD, CA., Aug. 27 — The cry "Queremos un mundo sin fronteras" ("We want a world without borders") rang out as hundreds confronted the racist Minutemen when they appeared in a nearby town whose residents are overwhelmingly working-class Latinos. The racist group’s intent, protected by the cops, was to "punish" the small city for a recent declaration made by its liberal mayor that his town should be seen as a "sanctuary" for immigrants.

A protest countering the Minutemen drew several hundred community residents. The mayor decided to stage an event at a nearby local church, to take place at the same time as the protest, calling for "peace and unity" and encouraging residents to register to vote.

PLP helped lead the fight against the racists, sparking anti-racist chants and sharing our bullhorn with residents who were clearly outraged at the Minutemen. When some Minutemen tried to break through the crowd of anti-racists, PLP led the charge in confronting the racists.

To keep workers from militantly protesting, liberals tried to lure residents to the mayor’s church event, a "Citizenship Fair." A priest from there showed up at the anti-racist protest chanting "unity, unity…" in Spanish, calling on demonstrators to go back to the church.

A group of youth who apparently had come from playing soccer seemed unsure of what to do. A PLP comrade confronted the priest, declaring that we needed to militantly confront the Minutemen. The soccer players decided to stay. A group of students chanted, "No basta resar, hay que luchar!" ("It’s not enough to pray; we have to fight!"). Most of crowd took up the chant. The priest, having failed, left.

Eventually, the mayor himself appeared with a huge sound system to appeal to the protestors. Once again a comrade confronted him with a speech about how liberal members of the ruling class promise citizenship in exchange for an indentured servitude-type "guest worker" program and loyalty to the U.S. imperial agenda.

A student cited the importance of confronting the racists on our streets and not being fooled by liberal immigration "reforms" that Democrats, unions, and churches propose as solutions. These "reforms" aim to swell the military’s ranks with immigrant youth for U.S. imperialism’s future oil wars, while also creating a vast pool of loyal slave labor for the bosses’ factories. Many booed the mayor; others waved at him to leave.

Some nationalists raised the Mexican flag on the Post Office flagpole, trying to raise a cheer. A comrade noted that the Mexican flag represents racism, exploitation and capitalism. Some anti-racists attacked the flag-raising as support for the murderous Mexican government. Behind the chant, "Abajo Banderas, Afuera Fronteras!" ("Down with Flags, Away with Borders!"), workers and students fought these nationalist ideas, saying that workers only need the red flag of the international working class.

A small group of Mexican nationalists attacked that chant and tried to silence the bullhorn but the students stood their ground and the nationalists backed off. A comrade’s speech pointed to the Minutemen’s U.S. flag as the flag of U.S. imperialism, while the Mexican flag represented the interests of the Mexican bosses who are killing teachers and their supporters in the mass struggle in Oaxaca. All bosses’ flags stand for racism and exploitation. Only the red flag represents the working class worldwide in its fight for liberation from capitalism.

Militantly participating in the fight against anti-immigrant racism provides the opportunity to build revolutionary class-consciousness, teaching us to rely only on ourselves and our working-class brothers and sisters to fight for our interests, not on our most dangerous enemies — liberal politicians and nationalists.

At this demonstration the strength and importance of PL’s leadership was clear. Had we not been there with the workers, many would have been swayed to go to the church. A close friend said, "Where else, and from whom, are workers going to hear these ideas?" Fighting the nationalists deepens the understanding of our friends that we need workers’ internationalism and communist revolution.

Imperialists’ Fierce Rivalry Leading to: World War III

"Combustible fault lines [that] could trigger a third World War" are deepening throughout the Middle East warns Richard Holbrooke, a leading liberal U.S. strategist. (Council on Foreign Relations — CFR — website, 8/31) Regional feuds embroiling Syria and Lebanon, Lebanon and Israel, Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan and Afghanistan and Pakistan could spark global conflict "like Serbian Gavrilo Princip’s bullet in 1914," says Holbrooke. [The trigger for World War I]

The Dialectics Of ‘Necessity And Chance’

A devoted servant of U.S. imperialism, Holbrooke helped plan Kennedy’s and Johnson’s Vietnam genocide and Clinton’s bombing of Bosnia and Kosovo. But this dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, who once ran Wall Street’s Lehman Brothers investment house, unwittingly provides a Marxist dialectics lesson on necessity and chance. In this case, the necessity is that, to maximize profits, various sets of capitalists organized as nations must compete for the world’s resources, markets and labor. This competition, as Lenin pointed out, inevitably leads to war, eventually to world war. "Chance" represents the many different possibilities for war. The U.S. is on one collision course with China over oil and on another with Russia over dominance in Europe. We can’t predict precisely when, how, or where WW III will erupt. Its form and timing depend on a host of contingencies. We can, however, examine the forces at play and identify possible flashpoints.

Iran Now Chief Regional Threat To U.S. Oil Control

The U.S. vs. China and the U.S. vs. an alliance of Russia and Europe appear the most likely scenarios. All these bosses have vast military potential and increasingly clashing geopolitical interests. Fault lines are emerging in the Middle East, where the U.S. has an inexorable need to maintain a chokehold on oil supplies. As far back as 1992, Bernard Lewis, a Princeton-based "adviser to presidents," wrote that the U.S.’s main strategic goal was "to prevent the emergence...of a single regional power that could dominate the area and thus establish monopolistic control of Middle Eastern oil." (Foreign Affairs; Fall, 1992). The U.S. invaded Iraq twice when Saddam Hussein threatened to become the dominant local power in the Persian Gulf. Now the chief regional threat comes from Iran, which has close ties to both China and Russia. China, with its rampant energy thirst, has negotiated multi-billion-dollar gas deals with Iran. Russia is boosting Iran’s anti-U.S. influence by helping build its nuclear reactors, thus greasing its weapons program.

To the benefit of China and Russia, Iran is winning prestige well beyond its borders. Iranian-backed Hezbollah fundamentalists — another group of aspiring bosses — hold sway over much of Lebanon, after the bloody Israeli-U.S. attempt to crush them failed. As for Iraq, because of Bush’s bungled occupation, "Iran has now superseded the U.S. as the most influential power there." (Chatham House, August 2006) Saudi Arabia, home to the world’s greatest oil reserves, is also becoming a hot spot in the rivalry. China gets most of its oil imports from Saudi Arabia, which has long been the private preserve of U.S. companies. For now, Saudi crude reaches China without U.S. Navy interference. But tensions will soon heighten when China launches its own blue-water fleet.

Russia-Europe Alliance Blossoming

Bosses in Western Europe are rapidly tilting away from the U.S. In keeping with Putin’s policy of strategic business deals, Russia just bought a big chunk of European arms giant EADS, which owns Boeing-Lockheed rival Airbus. The Times of London (8/30) understatedly cautions, "The prospect of a Russian state interest in Europe’s biggest aerospace group may make the Pentagon pause before placing orders. Russia is no longer a Cold War adversary, but neither is it seen as a wholly reliable or benign ally....Russia still presents a formidable challenge to the West: its arms sales to the developing world are huge and of crucial importance in volatile areas such as the Middle East."

In the energy sector, "Europe is clamouring to become ever more dependent on Russian gas. A new pipeline will run from close to St. Petersburg along the Baltic seabed to Germany." (London Times, 9/3) Defying U.S. interests, France hopes to become China’s top fuel broker. The French firm Total holds contracts to develop Iran’s enormous South Pars oil and gas fields.

Imperialists Will Start World War Iii....

All the conditions for World War III are not yet in place. China’s and Russia’s outmoded militaries are at the moment no match for the U.S. war machine. But an infusion of European technology could quickly change that equation. We cannot pinpoint the act of war, as CFR planner Ted Carpenter did in "America’s Coming War with China" ("a Chinese submarine attack" on a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Taiwan Strait on June 2, 2013). Korea, the Caspian region and the Mid-East are just as probable. But we can say with deadly certainty that imperialist rivalry, inherent in the profit system, slaughtered hundreds of millions in the 20th Century and stands to outdo that horror in the 21st.

...Communist Soldiers And Workers Can Finish It

Ultimately, victory and defeat in war are determined not by technology but by politics, the motivation of those who do the actual fighting. The main ideas motivating soldiers in all armed struggles today are reactionary and anti-working-class: racism, nationalism and religion. This situation will not last. As the horrors of imperialist carnage increase, opportunities will increase for our Party to win workers, soldiers, and sailors to revolutionary communism, the only outlook worth fighting for.

PATCO Firings Marked Massive AFL-CIO Scabbing

August 5, 1981, marked somewhat of a turning point in the modern U.S. labor movement. On that day President Ronald Reagan fired 11,355 air controllers who had struck two days earlier and defied his 48-hour back-to-work ultimatum. The workers, members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), driven by inhuman hours and working conditions, were demanding shorter hours, increased work staff and wage hikes. Ironically, PATCO was one of only two unions that had endorsed Reagan in the 1980 elections. Their "reward"? Permanent dismissal, blacklisting, seizure of the union treasury and union decertification. Four leaders were jailed, convicted of felonies — striking against the government — fined and stripped of their civil rights. So much for "democracy" and a "friend in the White House."

Ten thousand military air controllers were hired to replace them (only 846 were allowed to return).

Such a fascist attack could not have happened without the complete cooperation of the sellouts that ran the AFL-CIO. Had the pilots, mechanics, baggage handlers and flight attendants refused to cross the PATCO picket lines, the entire airline industry would have been shut tight, and it wouldn’t have been so easy for Reagan to get 150,000 workers to replace them.

But at the very moment that Reagan was announcing the firing, United Auto Workers union president Douglas Fraser, at the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in Chicago, was denouncing the strike, declaring that "it could do massive damage to the labor movement." (This was the same Fraser that used 1,000 goons, many of them KKK members from UAW Local 22, to bust the first sit-down strike in auto since the 1930’s when in 1973 PLP led a shutdown of Chrysler’s Detroit Mack Avenue plant over safety issues.)

What did do "massive damage" was these labor fakers’ ordering all other airline workers to cross the PATCO picket lines. One month later, 500,000 U.S. workers descended on Washington in a Solidarity Day demonstration, but the AFL-CIO "leaders" had already given their definition of "solidarity" by helping Reagan crush this strike.

Prior to this, workers who crossed picket lines were universally labeled scabs. Now the term "replacement worker" came into fashion. Instead of fighting this strike-breaking maneuver, the labor "leaders" sought — unsuccessfully — to get Democratic-controlled Congresses to ban it. So much for relying on "friends" in Washington.

While this class collaboration had been preceded by mass layoffs resulting from the attack on NYC workers in the 1975 "fiscal crisis" — under Democratic Mayor Abe Beame, and later the Democratic president Carter’s government bailout of Chrysler — the 1981 strike-breaking of PATCO marked an even more decisive turn down the road of mass layoffs, huge pay cuts, billions in concessions in auto, steel and other basic industries, and destruction of social welfare programs. This continues now with the layoffs and pay cuts at GM, Ford and Delphi.

From 1950 to 1980, major strikes averaged 300 per year. Since 1980 that average has sunk to 46. In 1955, the AFL-CIO had 15 million members; now it has only 6 million. Only 7.8% of private sector workers are in unions now, the lowest percentage in 105 years.

The U.S. ruling class faces a crisis at home and abroad. Internationally, China is becoming a leading threat to U.S. imperialism, while the latter’s drive to control Middle East oil supplies — necessary for its world domination — are leading it into the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan, killing tens of thousands of workers along the way, not to mention those of working-class GI’s.

Corporations that must seek maximum profits to compete with their rivals cannot but help grind down the working class on behalf of the bosses’ "bottom line," and their labor lieutenants are greasing their path. By defending the capitalist profit system in an era of growing fascism, these labor misleaders must inevitably sell out the working class. There’s no more room for even temporary reforms. So the PATCO strike-breaking ushered in an intense attack on the entire working class.

Now the bosses are increasingly super-exploiting immigrant workers as well as using them as cannon fodder for their troop-short imperialist armies. But a labor "leadership" saturated for decades with racism — not having fought the mass layoffs in the basic industries in which the bulk of the victims were the "last-hired" black workers — is in no position to win the rank and file to fight anti-immigrant racism.

The after-effects of the PATCO strike-breaking and the class collaboration of the labor misleaders cry out for anti-racist red leadership of the working class. Militant and class conscious workers should join PLP to lead this fight against the bosses. We must up the ante of class struggle beyond the level of reforms — which, if forced to grant, the bosses can use their state power to always take away, as with PATCO. We must turn these struggles into schools for communism, winning workers to understand that only a communist revolution can solve this eternal problem of being on the losing side of the never-ending treadmill of capitalism.

When Wages Fall and Profits Rise, It's Capitalism

The way the capitalist economy functions never fails to prove what Karl Marx, the founder of communism, discovered over a century ago and what every worker knows in her or his gut: the capitalist class’s profits come from the working class’s labors. The latest figures (all quotes from NY Times, 8/28) clearly demonstrate this and show how capitalism is divided into two classes: workers and those who profit from them. They also show how the bosses continually drive workers’ wages down to increase their profits. Consider:

• "Wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product [GDP] since…1947" when the government first started compiling this data. Meanwhile, "corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s," producing "the golden era of profitability," according to the UBS investment bank.

• "The most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor’s share of national income," says Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs’ economists.

• Since 2001, the "growing share of the economy to go to companies instead of workers’ paychecks" has cost the working class $660 BILLION, stolen by the bosses directly from workers’ labors.

The Times reports that the U.S. is in "the first sustained period of growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers." Why? Because as hourly wages for U.S. workers have decreased since 2003, "productivity — the amount that an average worker produces in an hour…— has risen steadily over the same period." In other words, workers are working harder for lower wages, so — surprise — profits are skyrocketing.

On top of this is capitalism’s racism which produces super-profits for the bosses by paying black and Latino workers even less, lowering all workers’ wages — a condition which the pro-capitalist union hacks help to maintain by their defense of the profit system.

In a clear description of the existence of two antagonistic classes, the Times quotes political analyst Charles Cook as pointing to "two economies out there…" He says that one of these economies serves "the people who have benefited from globalization,…greater productivity and higher corporate earnings."

"And then there’s the working stiffs who just don’t feel they’re getting ahead despite the fact that they’re working very hard. And there are a lot more people in that group than the other group."

As Marx pointed out, when workers put in 8 hours on the job, the value produced in the first few hours covers their wages; the rest of the shift produces profits for the boss. The harder the boss can force the worker to work, and therefore the more value the worker produces, the less time it takes for the worker to produce the value of his or her wage and therefore the more value (profit) goes into the boss’s pocket. Marx called this the surplus value produced by the workers for the bosses.

As the bosses find themselves hard-pressed to pay out $8 billion a month to carry out their war in Iraq and protect their control of oil supplies in the Middle East, the tighter the squeeze they are driven to force upon workers at home (not to mention the more workers, Iraqis and GI’s, they kill in the process).

The only solution is a society with ONE class, the class that produces all value, the working class. When the working class controls what value they produce and how they produce it, we will be able to distribute resources according to need instead of allowing a small group to steal the value produced by our sweat. When workers control production they will be able to make decisions based on the common good, rather than on constantly increasing profits in the face of competition. That’s communism. Only revolution can eliminate the horrors of capitalist exploitation and endless imperialist wars. Join PLP and fight for it.

Class Struggle Amid Growing Fascism in Oaxaca Strike

Oaxaca, Mexico-Sept 2006-The three month old teachers' strike by Section 22 of the Education Workers' Union (SNTE) has become a mass movement against the cuts in the schools, demanding the resignation of the PRI governor. Hundreds of thousands are supporting the70, 000 teachers and other school workers who went on strike to demand a wage increase and better conditions for the students. Section 22 of the SNTE has been the most militant and active section of the Mexican Teachers' Union for many years.

After the defeat of the police forces sent by the fascist Governor of Oaxaca Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO) to remove the strikers and their supporters from the Central Plaza, on June 14, organizations of farm workers, housewives, university students, the Front of Democratic Unions of Oaxaca (FSODO) and workers in general, repudiating the repression and angry at the injustice of the capitalist system, joined in solidarity with the teachers' struggle, forming a collation to lead the struggle, called the Popular Assembly of the Oaxacan People (APPO).

In demanding higher wages for the teachers, better schools for the students, and the resignation of the Governor of Oaxaca, workers, students, and farm workers have basically taken over the city, including temporarily controlling several radio stations. Government offices are not functioning, the tourist center of the city has been converted into an encampment where thousands of teachers and their supporters are camped out. Many businesses, hotels, and restaurants are closed. In the city of Oaxaca there are burned out cars, streets blocked with rocks or burning tires. Police and paramilitary units have killed workers in the darkness of the night. This isn't Beirut or Baghdad. It's Oaxaca.

In the face of a series of actions carried out by the teachers and popular movement, the bosses and the PRI state governor have implemented a Machiavellian plan in the style of the Mexican and South American dictators from the 1960's and 1970's. Since their plan for massive repression temporarily failed, beginning on August 6 they began to implement a fascist "dirty war", selective repression, a "witch hunt", kidnapping and jailing leaders, indiscriminate assassinations, physiological harassment and persecution of the activists using paramilitaries in civilian clothes, delinquents freed from prison, and different agents in their service, using the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) for brutal mass repression .

At stake in this struggle are not only the reform demands of the teachers and other workers, but also involved is the fight among the Mexican bosses and the imperialists over the privatization of PEMEX vs. nationalist Mexican bosses controlling some of these oil profits; control of electrical energy (CFE), education, water, the historical centers, and how to put into effect the Plan Puebla Panama. All the bosses electoral parties, the PRI, PRD, and PAN, are directly or indirectly involved in this struggle.

The class struggle is sharpening in Oaxaca and throughout Mexico. The big bosses along with opportunist politicians are lining up with one side or another depending on their interests. The fascist federal government, led by Vicente Fox and his gang, have not wanted to openly participate in the repression or any solution to the problem in Oaxaca, as they government did in the mines of Michoacán. The PRI Governor tried to involve the fascist PAN government by inventing the lie that guerilla groups were involved in this struggle, but the Federal representatives immediately said that there was no proof of this and that this was a state wide teachers' problem. The PAN has thus far refused to save the unpopular PRI's fortunes in Oaxaca.

The current demands for the resignation of the PRI Governor and to improve the schools leaves the capitalist system in tact, with its brutal exploitation, repression and racism, deepening through all of Mexico. The working class of Oaxaca has gotten a taste of the potential power in its grasp. Limiting the struggle to reform capitalism allows the fascist state to continue to exploit and hunt down workers. Capitalism is the cause of the problems of the oppressed and exploited working class, the class of the teachers and all the workers.

PLP's role in this struggle is to show workers that the current struggle among the bosses over the control of the wealth created by the working class can and must be converted into a workers' struggle for power through the long term fight for communism. The workers of Oaxaca are among those in the forefront of the fight against the imperialist bosses. With modest steps in pointing out the workers' potential to take power and run society in our own interests, PLP can help create the conditions for the workers to actually take power and build a communist society that can meet the needs of the working class. Our communist press, study groups and actions need to reach as many workers students and farm workers as possible.

Capitalism and imperialism have led the Oaxacan workers to fight against the bosses' inevitable attacks. The situation is full of potential. It's difficult but not impossible to build a mass revolutionary communist party of the working class capable of destroying the enemy, the whole capitalist system, For this the participation of all sectors of the working class is needed, along with international solidarity. The success or failure of the movement in Oaxaca should be seen in the advance of communist ideas and practice because that is the only way to guarantee the destruction of the real source of our problems, the system of capitalism and imperialism. We must build the PLP among all the workers of the world to bury all the oppressors and their murderous system in order to build the system that will meet the needs of our class: COMMUNISM.

PLP calls on all workers to organize support for the struggle in Oaxaca, condemning the attacks on the teachers and their supporters while showing that whether the resources of Mexico are in the hands of one set of national bosses or in the hands of another set of imperialists and their local accomplices, the working class loses. The road to victory lies in supporting the militant teachers and showing that the actions they have taken can be expanded, in the long run, to actions against the whole racist, imperialist capitalist system and to power to the working class!

LA Workers Oust Racist and Attack Mayor's War Agenda

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 23 — Over 3,000 city workers — members of the Engineers and Architects Assn. — held a two-day strike to demand higher wages and benefits. Mayor Villaraigosa "offered" between zero and 2% increases. The union leaders had no serious plan nor even tacit support from other LA unions.

But the dead-end tactics and politics of the union leaders are only part of the story. The other part is that many of these strikers eagerly took CHALLENGE and a PLP leaflet. They expressed anger at the supposedly "progressive" Mayor who is cutting all City services while spending more money on jails, surveillance, police and City Council salaries.

Many agreed that the Democrats, like Villaraigosa, are just as pro-war as the Republicans — with different tactics. Recently Villaraigosa spoke at an Israeli consulate rally, supporting that fascist government’s attack on the Lebanese people. Coupled with his support of the Iraqi war means Villaraigosa cannot support the workers of Los Angeles or anyplace else, no matter what his rhetoric.

Workers had a sign listing the Mayor’s crimes. Many agreed with PL’ers that his support of both wars is his biggest crime. Villaraigosa was co-chairman of Kerry’s 2004 platform committee for the Democratic National Committee when he helped ensure that nothing was said opposing the U.S. war in Iraq.

One woman picket was holding a racist sign stating that the Mayor has no money for City workers but plenty for "illegal aliens." A PL’er asked a striker why that sign was permitted. After looking for the picket captain, the striker, already angry about the sign, confronted the woman, telling her the sign was not welcome because it divided the workers. Another worker who was picketing yelled at the racist, "The workers are one class!" Other strikers joined in and took the racist sign from the woman.

A PL’er said the sign was also a lie. The source of the cuts isn’t immigrants — it’s the war, Homeland Security and the capitalist system. The worker who yelled at the racist said he used to read CHALLENGE 30 years ago and was glad to see it again. The strikers thanked the PL’ers and took papers.

Many of these strikers were born here while others are immigrants from around the world. They were all angry, very open to our communist newspaper and to discussing the source of the attacks on them — a good sign.

Racist Bosses Turn Katrina into Fascist Carnage

In the year since hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the bosses’ local, state and national governments have turned a capitalist disaster into a fascist outrage. That is the inherent result of a system based on racism and war. U.S. rulers have refused to commit the resources to rebuild New Orleans, but have concentrated on keeping most displaced workers in exile and harassing and attacking those who have courageously returned.

A year ago, working-class neighborhoods were flooded out when levees that had repeatedly been declared inadequate failed to stem the hurricane’s force. Workers were given 24 hours to evacuate. Those with no independent means of transportation were forced to stay behind and suffer without food, water and sanitary facilities. The bosses’ previous refusal to fund the reinforcement of levees (while billions were "found" for imperialist oil war in Iraq) led to this failure to meet the most basic needs of workers and turned a hurricane into an on-going disaster. That’s capitalism.

One year later the bosses continue to attack the workers here, refusing to allow the poorest, mostly black workers to move back into their communities. Residents of the Lafitte and Iberville Projects have had their windows and doors sealed with steel plates and caged in with a barbed-wire fence. Workers whose homes were destroyed by 20 feet of flood-water have been given unrealistic deadlines for houses to be repaired or else be bulldozed. These workers are deliberately being prevented from returning so that the bosses can replace workers’ houses with casinos and high-income homes and apartments, all to benefit real estate speculators.

Increased fascism is the major tactic for keeping workers out and terrorizing those looking to return. Jet fighters fly overhead during the day while police helicopters carry out surveillance at night. Military police harass workers. The Blackwater security force — the same thugs being used in Iraq — has been hired to protect the bosses’ private property in and around the Ninth Ward, making it clear that residents are not welcome to return. The bosses’ vicious response stems from their fear workers will revolt against racist exploitation. The face of fascism is ugly and clear in New Orleans!

Trying to defeat working-class unity, the bosses have introduced a "guest-labor" program, with immigrant workers brought in to work for as little as $18 a week. Black workers here lost homes and were denied adequate relief funds. Now the bosses won’t hire them at decent wages to rebuild their own city, another inevitable product of capitalism’s racism.

This fight for jobs has created a racist, hostile environment that the ruling class needs and wants. Most workers are treated like prisoners penned up in barbed-wire-fenced trailer parks with security checkpoints for poor black and white residents or concentration-camp-style housing for immigrant workers. These workers need multi-racial, revolutionary communist ideology to recognize that the bosses, not each other, are the real enemy.

The many organizations in the city helping residents gut homes and move back into their communities only seek to reform capitalism, not to replace it with a system without racism and exploitation. PLP’ers volunteered to gut houses as well, but we also discussed racism, sexism, imperialist war and class consciousness with local residents and other volunteers. All comrades who participated in the New Orleans Summer Project displayed great collective leadership and total dedication to the working class.

Hundreds of CHALLENGE-DESAFIOS were distributed to workers at the oil refinery, in the remaining housing projects and to the super-exploited day-laborers. Most who accepted the paper strongly agreed with what we had to say, stating that they’ve always known the capitalist system was the problem.

We will continue to raise communist ideas in this ravaged city because the bosses are nowhere near finished terrorizing its workers, anymore than they’re about to end their imperialist war in the Middle-East. The volunteers who’ve joined with workers trying to reclaim their homes are showing the selflessness that is the foundation of communist cooperation. We must seize on this example and on the workers’ anger and build a movement aimed at destroying this profit system that turned a hurricane into ongoing fascist oppression.

Workers and Youth Ante Up, Now Need Revolutionary Politics

While the media portrays young people and workers as cynical, uncaring, even violent, tens of thousands of young people and workers, multi-racial, women and men, volunteered to help their brothers and sisters in New Orleans who were uprooted by the devastating policies of capitalism. They devoted their time, sweat and tears to gutting and rebuilding homes. They didn’t do it for money or special treatment. They saw the abandoned ruins, the decay and the pain on workers’ faces. They showed that workers and youth care about their class.

But it cannot end with just volunteerism.

Capitalism cannot be changed and disaster awaits the working class because the ruling class’ main concern is profits and control of markets. Rebuilding houses is a band-aid on a bleeding wound that is killing our class. We need to develop a protracted struggle among workers and volunteers in New Orleans that includes: (1) Building class consciousness — the idea that we, black, Latin, Asian and white, are part of the exploited class of workers used by the international rulers; (2) Fighting racism and nationalism as the main ruling class tools to divide and conquer workers; (3) Winning workers to the communist Progressive Labor Party — an organization that mobilizes for a complete change of system, not built upon the exploitation of one class by another. Until then, any short-term victories our class manages to squeeze out of the bosses will be reversed. Participating in the class struggle, we can develop ideas and minds that will change the future.µ

Workers Have Militant Anti-Racist History

New Orleans workers have given our class some amazing stories of multi-racial working-class unity. In the fight to return and rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, much can be learned from this history.

An 1865 united strike of black and white waterfront workers terrified New Orleans’ bosses, who fought this unity with racism and violence. During the 1873 depression, Democrats called on New Orleans bosses to "give preference to white over black labor." Starting in 1877, hundreds of black workers in Louisiana were tortured and lynched by mobs instigated by white landlords and bosses.

In 1887 the Knights of Labor organized a strike of nearly 10,000 Louisiana sugar workers (90% black). The state militia fired on the strikers, murdering 30 and wounding hundreds.

Then in November 1892 the New Orleans waterfront again exploded when thousands of teamsters, packers, and scalemen — black and white — organized a "Triple Alliance" demanding union recognition. Following their lead, other workers also organized bi-racial unions — usually separate black and white locals working together. The more advanced locals were multi-racial. Twenty-five thousand other workers — from railway porters to musicians — joined in an eleven-day general strike, one of the largest in U.S. history.

The bosses’ furious race-baiting failed to break the strikers’ unity, but the strike ended under the threat of federal military intervention. The militant, but reformist, trade-union movement was not prepared to confront the bosses’ state power. And the cotton union leaders (black and white) became the bosses’ junior partners. They refused to shut down this key economic sector, crippling the general strike and sending it down to defeat. Workers bitterly denounced this treachery, but in the absence of anti-capitalist political leadership they were unable to respond effectively.

New Orleans workers were also sidetracked by the Populist Party’s electoral politics. Initially challenging both Democrats and Republicans at the polls with an interracial alliance of workers and farmers, the Populists soon decided to ally with the "lesser-evil" Republicans and quickly caved in to racism.

Thus, in the mid-1890’s, the bosses used racism to divide and then smash the dockworkers’ unions. They provoked white workers into an anti-black strike, then imposed wage-cuts and work-rule changes that hurt white workers as well as black. Meanwhile, Homer Plessy’s brave effort to desegregate New Orleans streetcars was crushed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson which said that the U.S. Constitution permitted segregation. Another terrible racist riot in 1900 took a large toll among black workers.

Still, by 1902, the cotton unions had begun to rebuild interracial unity around demands that guaranteed a significant proportion of jobs for black workers, though the rules still favored whites.

When the interracial Brewery Workers Union was expelled from the openly racist AFL in 1907 they struck. Black waterfront locals supported them, along with some white labor delegates. Later that year, black and white workers together shut down the entire port for three weeks, winning many of their reform demands.

(Next issue: the emergence of the Industrial Workers of the World.)

U.S. Rulers' Education 'Reform Part of Plan for World Domination

(The previous article - August 2 - detailed the ruling class's liberal wing's division of labor among its various foundations, assigning specific aspects of "reforming" education directed at winning working-class parents to support its imperialist goals. These aspects include: training superintendents, senior administrators, teachers, school board members, parent groups, etc. The foundation sponsors and member include Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, GE, IBM and the presidents of the two teacher unions.)

The last time U.S. capitalism donned an anti-racist mask was to launch the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s, spurred by their rivalry with the Soviet Union. The masses in newly-independent African countries hated South Africa’s apartheid, which they identified as a step-child of Jim Crow segregation in the southern U.S. Consequently, U.S. rulers found themselves becoming isolated in areas like the United Nations while their Soviet rival reaped the benefits.

U.S. rulers responded with President Truman’s order to end segregation in the Army and court decisions "declaring" the end of public school segregation. Once this integration movement was released, however, the anti-racist anger of black workers took hold and through "ghetto" rebellions, anti-racist militancy and strikes — in the Army and in industry — the entire working class began flexing its muscles.

Forced to retreat somewhat, the capitalists re-grouped and then counter-attacked. Drugs and mass incarceration became their favored weapons, as U.S. rulers marched to their customary racist rhythm. The defeat of slavery had been followed by lynching and Jim Crow segregation. Now Jim Crow was replaced by mass imprisonment. A 1994 report titled "Cellblocks to Classrooms" noted, "...Society now spends about $2.8 billion to higher educate black males and $10 billion to lock them up."

Now this same capitalist class wants to drastically alter this trend. Driven by their bid to retain world "primacy" (as defined by the Rockefeller Council on Foreign Relations), they’ve taken direct control of K-12 education. A July 30th Los Angeles Times article calls Bill Gates "the nation’s superintendent of schools!" It points out that "with the ability to handle more than $1 billion [every year]... the Gates Foundation looms larger than even the U.S. Department of Education, which by comparison, has only $20 million in truly discretionary funds."

Bill Gates is no Lone Ranger. The education takeover is part of a deliberate ruling-class action involving co-coordinated foundation grants, major corporate sponsorship and armed forces representatives (retired generals, admirals and so on). Its urgency hints at the desperation the leaders of U.S. imperialism sense about the world. On the one hand, they want to reverse the sharpening trade wars, which they’re currently losing; on the other, they need to strengthen their military capabilities for the series of wars they project as necessary to maintain their "primacy" in Eurasia and that may well lead to world war.

In 2005, New York University issued an education report (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation) titled "With All Deliberate Speed." "According to the National Center on Education and the Economy," the report claimed, "by 2020, the US will need 14 million more college-trained workers than it will produce. Nowhere is college participation lower than among African-Americans and Hispanic youth; nowhere is the potential to meet our nation’s needs for college graduates greater."

It continues: "If this nation is to defend its long-term vital interests, [they call it world "primacy"; we say "world domination" — Ed.] we will continue to need a large pool of well-educated people who wish to volunteer [especially if college debts will be forgiven? — Ed.] to serve their country. Yet each year 1.2 million of our students do not graduate from high school, the majority of whom are minority [black and Latin—ed.]. If this dropout rate continues unabated over the next ten years, a total of twelve million young people in America will be unable to serve in our armed forces."

It’s clear: black and Latino college graduates are vital. The report continues: "The racial fragmentation of the American military in the Vietnam era had a profound impact on our nation’s military leaders. As a result our military leaders have made a deliberate commitment in the past 30 years to create a diverse officer corps that is of the highest standards."

The generals may understand that racism is the Achilles’ heel of U.S. imperialism, but affirmative action in their officer corps won’t fix their problem. Anti-racism springs from a deep commitment to value and respect of all workers internationally. Imperialist armies inevitably march to destroy and subjugate the masses. Imperialist armies can’t fly the flag of anti-racism with any conviction for long. They didn’t in Vietnam, in Grenada or in Panama and they certainly aren’t flying it in the Middle East.

On the other hand, communists champion both the education of the working class (workers can rule society) and the necessity to fight racism — without the unity of the world’s workers we are nothing. Furthermore, whenever U.S. capitalists have donned anti-racist masks they have unleashed forces they’re unable to control.

In the coming political storms we can expect new opportunities to advance the fight for communist revolution, especially among our youth. The generals might count on an extra twelve million young people "to serve in their [imperialist] armed forces"; we’ll bet on recruiting an extra twelve million young people "to serve the working class" and build a new communist revolutionary movement.

The 'Cap and Gown' Road to War

Because capitalist wars are prepared in secret, it’s easy to mis-read think-tank reports. When "With All Deliberate Speed" refers to U.S. industries projected need for 14 million college-trained workers by 2020, it conjures up more or less innocent images of commerce, trade and manufacturing. Coupled, however, with the International Association of Machinists' (IAM) Surge Report, it reveals the present K-12 education reforms as really war preparations.

"To President Franklin D. Roosevelt," the IAM report begins, "surge meant a ‘swift and driving increase in our armament production.’" The report then outlines how the U.S.’s shrinking industrial base threatens its capabilities to meet military surge requirements:

• One-third of the bullets used in Afghanistan and Iran are made overseas.

• The U.S. can no longer manufacture main battle tanks.

• The tungsten used in M-16 bullets can be found only in China.

• The Swiss government recently refused to sell component parts to Honeywell because the Swiss did not agree with the U.S. military stance in Iraq.

Anyone wanting more details should Google IAMSurge. The point is, it’s fatally easy to mis-read the deadly war intentions of U.S. imperialism.

There's No Ford in These Workers' Future

DETROIT, MI, August 18 — "You just have the feeling that all the air is going out of all four tires as well as the spare. You’re in a time of discontinuity and a sea change is at hand," said James P. Womack, co-founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute. He was responding to Ford’s slashing production by one-fifth for the final three months of the year, the deepest cuts since th 1980’s.

Ten plants in the U.S. and Canada will close temporarily, affecting supplier plants and other auto-related businesses. Ford workers who have transferred to new plants from the recently closed St. Louis assembly plant are getting a chilling feeling of déjà vu. With rising gas prices, more than half the cuts will come from the F-series pick-up truck, which constitutes almost one-third of Ford’s sales.

The production cuts come as Ford, GM and the UAW are eliminating over 60,000 jobs, closing more than two dozen plants and cutting billions of dollars in costs. Ford has already lost $1.5 billion this year. In July, Toyota passed Ford in monthly sales for the first time, to become the No. 2 auto company in the U.S. market (Ford is still ahead for the year). GM and Ford’s combined U.S. market share sank to an all-time low, 52%, while Asian companies took 42%, their biggest share ever. Chrysler sales slid 37% from last year and GM sales dropped by 22%.

Mark Fields, president of Ford’s Americas group, said the battle for the U.S. market is now among the

Global Six; GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and Nissan. Currently U.S. bosses are retreating while Asian bosses take the offensive. Tens of thousands of autoworkers are being given a check and then thrown overboard by the UAW to keep the U.S. bosses afloat. If they survive the fall they’ll find themselves standing on line with thousands more for $10-an-hour jobs.

Ultimately, the inter-imperialist rivalry for markets, resources and cheap labor can only be resolved through world war. The bosses must rely on the very workers they are brutally attacking to pull this off. That is the contradiction they cannot resolve. But we can. We can’t stop the fascist bloodletting of jobs and healthcare, but we can consolidate and expand a base for PLP among auto workers. We can unite with workers in supplier plants, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, VW and more, here and worldwide.

The auto bosses’ global rivalry has brought the international working class much closer together. Steeled in struggle and building a mass base for CHALLENGE and PLP will prepare the leadership for workers to take power with communist revolution.

LETTERS

Pro-Boss Union Hacks Help Dump 3,500 Workers

SABMiller, the German-based company operating in 40 countries acquired Bavaria Brewery, intensifying the attacks against the workers that had begun when Bavaria was solely owned by the multi-millionaire Santo Domingo family. It has pushed through a rotten contract because the sellout union leaders’ passivity enabled the bosses to take advantage of the lack of a real union. Mass layoffs, unjustified sanctions against workers and ideological pressure led to constant persecution of the workers.

The union’s executive committee did everything possible to curtail any workers’ fight-back, leaving them at the mercy of company fascism. The hacks sold their souls for a few crumbs for themselves, including loans from Bavaria, for their cooperation. According to rank-and-filers, one hack even got a commission for every sold-out worker! Now the company is trying to decertify the union altogether.

Workers are paying dearly after years of producing profits for Bavaria. One worker with cancer of the eye was fired and now has no pension. Other workers suffer horrible conditions until the company decides they’re no longer needed. Meanwhile, the judicial system completely supports Bavaria — 95% of all cases brought to the labor court are settled in the bosses’ favor, bankrupting the losing workers.

Again, the bosses’ state serves the capitalists, not the workers. Workers can expect only state terror in this bosses’ dictatorship. Over several years, 3,500 Bavaria workers have lost their jobs through the collaboration among the company, their lawyers and judges and the union hacks. We’re now part of the army of the unemployed, without a regular wage, forced to become street vendors to try to make ends meet. Many of these workers have died of heart attacks and even committed suicide, leaving families in total misery.

That is what capitalism has brought to hundreds of millions of workers worldwide in this age of endless wars and growing fascism. The billions Clinton and Bush sent to the Colombian army and government to fight "narco-trafficking" have been used to attack workers. More drugs are produced now in Colombia than before Plan Colombia began in the mid-1990’s.

We in PLP are fighting the passivity and demoralization of many workers here. We’re using CHALLENGE-DESAFIO to bring them our communist politics, emphasizing the need to smash capitalism and struggle for a society without bosses — communism. That’s the road for workers to battle for their class interests and against all their tormentors.

Comrade in Colombia

Airport Workers Back Oaxaca Strikers

Revolutionary greetings from a group of airport workers in a major U.S. city. Because of fascist Homeland Security we cannot say where we work. We’re from the US, Mexico, Central America and Africa, readers and distributors of CHALLENGE, where we learned about your struggle. The news media makes no mention of your 70,000-teacher strike, or the 300,000 supporters who have defended the movement against the police. They purposely black out the largest strike in North America because they fear the example you might set for workers here.

We’re sad to hear of the police murder of our brothers and sisters. Many black and Latino families here have suffered at the hands of the police as well. You are all heroes for fighting back against the government and their killer cops.

At our airport, most of us are new CHALLENGE readers and learning about communism. We like many things in the paper and have some disagreements and many questions. But we urge you to seek out the PLP in Oaxaca. If anyone can help you, they can.

Your struggle is an inspiration to workers worldwide. We have sent a resolution to our union supporting your strike. Fight on brothers and sisters!

A Group of Airport Workers

Evil, Yes; Lesser, No

An editorial on the Sept. 6 CHALLENGE front page refers to "Vietnam War criminal Lyndon Johnson who ran against pro-war Barry Goldwater" in warning that "lesser-evil" liberals are many times even more dangerous than outright reactionaries.

In the 1964 presidential elections, the liberals were falling all over Democrat Johnson as the candidate who would "save" us from the Republican Goldwater’s "finger on the nuclear trigger." The Democrats ran an ad — since selected as the "best" political ad of all time — which first depicted two little 3-year-old toddlers holding hands while walking into a sun-drenched forest, followed by the scene of a huge atomic mushroom cloud. The implication was clear: vote for Johnson and our children’s future is secure; vote for Goldwater and all you’ll get is war.

Johnson won in a landslide, and what happened? The 16,000 "advisors" Kennedy had sent to Vietnam was upped to a half million by Johnson. Based on the Johnson administration’s "report" that North Vietnamese "gunboats" had attacked U.S. ships in the Tonkin Gulf off Vietnam’s coast, the so-called Tonkin Gulf resolution swept through Congress authorizing Johnson to launch all-out war against the Vietnamese. (Shades of Congressional authorization for Bush’s invasion of Iraq!) But as it later turned out, the Tonkin Gulf "incident" was an outright lie. There had never been any attack.

The upshot was nearly 10 years of war, three million Vietnamese killed, 58,000 dead U.S. soldiers, tens of thousands wounded, napalming of civilians, blatant massacres of Vietnamese women and children, carpet bombing of North Vietnam — U.S. aircraft dropped more bombs on Vietnam than were used in all of World War II! — Vietnamese forests "defoliated" by U.S. Agent Orange. For decades afterwards thousands of U.S. soldiers developed cancer and many died from the effects of Agent Orange, while thousands of their children were born deformed.

In April 1965, Johnson ordered over 30,000 Marines to invade the Dominican Republic when a popular uprising was aimed at toppling a corrupt murderous military Junta. In 1967, about to order the 82nd Airborne to Vietnam, instead Johnson ordered them to "invade" Detroit to crush an anti-racist rebellion against police terror.

Johnson did exactly what the liberals were warning Goldwater "would do" if he became president. So much for the fraudulent electoral "solution" of voting for the liberal "lesser evil."

Old-time PL’er who remembers

Reforms Won't Beat Fascism, Only Reds Will

In a discussion with some friends who believe in reforms I explained why I dismissed reformism and embraced revolutionary communism. I said I supported communism not only because it’s a better idea but also because in the absence of a communist revolution, fascist barbarism would prevail, inciting genocide against Jews and black workers. This is not a prophecy but a position based on the study of history.

I said the failure of a workers’ revolution in Germany had opened the door to Nazism. The fact that vendors at the Clearfield, Pa. County Fair had been selling KKK and Nazi items and that blatant racists were enlisting in the armed forces to receive military training for a race war in the U.S. shows these guys are dead serious. The only real way to defeat fascism was to build a mass communist movement. Forget about liberal-reformist peace rallies which accomplish nothing. Fascism is growing here. To deny it is to capitulate to it. I think they definitely were considering what I had to say.

Red Coal

Trial by Fury Hits Bosses’ Courts

"Getting arrested is the easy part," commented one of my co-defendants back in the summer of 2005. "The hard part is waging a struggle around the case." He was referring to the trial of three anti-racists who were declared not guilty for having defended the rights of immigrant day-laborers in Farmingville, NY. That victory taught some important lessons for myself and others.

First, we should always try to fight the bosses and their fascist court system. During the case, some people suggested that we take the easy way out by accepting a bad deal, which the District Attorney quickly withdrew. However we developed a defense committee, raised funds and brought the case up on our jobs, in our unions and other mass organizations, and among circles of friends and families. This seemed like a more difficult road to travel, but ultimately we saw it as the only way. Instead of building cynicism among the defendants and within PLP, we learned about expanding limits and turning a bad thing (getting arrested) into a good thing — winning our friends and co-workers to fight against fascism, using the strength of the collective.

This trial is just one example of the increased ruling-class intimidation of the working class. Being fearful means understanding how hard the bosses will fight to preserve their system. However, surrendering to this fear is our worst enemy. Taking the offensive meant confronting our fears and helping to lead the Progressive Labor Party and our friends and families. There was nothing like being a co-defendant and witnessing, day after day, a courtroom filled with comrades, friends and family members (not to mention those waiting in the hallway for the next available seat). It takes a lot of people in many different places, working collectively, to develop such consistency.

Finally, we never know who we'll meet as we fight and reach out to the working class. A previous CHALLENGE article mentioned someone from an immigrant rights group who urged us to keep up the fight because she understands that the attacks against immigrant workers will only get worse. Two weeks later she called to tell us that the Suffolk County Police Department had falsely arrested 21 immigrant workers affiliated with a local and very active immigrant rights organization. She invited us to a picnic which was very spirited; workers were cordial and sympathetic to our recent struggle. She introduced me as one of the co-defendants in the Farmingville case and explained, "We have a lot to learn from these guys." Some workers, including a NYC transit worker, took copies of CHALLENGE. We're looking forward to continuing the struggle against fascism and deepening our ties with workers everywhere.

Farmingville Defendant

A Worker’s Questions Sparks A Communist Response

After a long night in our noisy factory, my friend Sarah and I went to talk in a nearby restaurant. We’ve done this before, but this time was somewhat more advanced politically. Sarah had seen CHALLENGE and we’d talked about revolution and the difference between socialism and communism. I thought she knew what PLP was about, but actually she didn’t. While waiting for our food, she asked, "I know you said the Party has people around the world, but what exactly are you organizing for?"

Thinking before I spoke, I said we’re organizing for revolution but we’re not ready yet; we need more masses of workers won to the politics of communism. She thought this was a dream, but that didn’t stop her from more questions.

"So how does it work? Is there a leader? What do you guys do?" No co-worker had ever asked such questions so directly. Seizing the opportunity, I replied, "Being a Party member means something different for each individual, depending on their work and commitment. There are leaders, and Party decisions are made by discussions in clubs and committees throughout the party so that everyone is involved in developing our political outlook. We think it’s better to include everyone, rather than just listen to a few leaders."

"I feel kind of ignorant about these things," remarked Sarah. "I want to know more about your group. Do you think I have anything to offer to the Party?" Sarah teaches classes regularly in her church and has organized a system of rotations that started with no participation and is now at 80% in less than a year and a half, so her question surprised me. "Look at what you’ve done in your church," I said. "And remember the time we organized the shop to confront the manager last year? Most of those people would have never gone if I was the only one saying it. People respect you for your ideas and your actions."

"You know," she said, "I never thought of myself that way, but you’re right."

"Sarah," I went on, "a lot of people told me the people in our shop would never come together, but they did because we worked together." This led me to explain that we all have different skills and when we team up we can become a more effective force. One conversation won’t change her mind completely about revolution being a dream but something I told her seemed to make it slightly more attainable. "It’s like setting up one of our machines at work. It may seem impossible sometimes but when we have the right tools, a good plan and the help of a friend, then we can do what we thought we couldn’t."

This conversation with Sarah reflects the plan my club has been developing, starting with building relationships in our shops around communist ideas and CHALLENGE. We’re trying to develop ourselves as leaders so over time people like Sarah will come closer to the Party as friends, eventually join and then help develop others to take the same path. It’s important to find ways for our friends and recruits to play this role. They will discover skills they never thought they had and be encouraged to continue developing for future roles in organizing for PLP. Sarah is excited about our next event which we’re organizing together, providing lessons to be learned and gains made.

Next Sarah must be won to a "school" we’re organizing containing politics and teaching work skills. This will show her one way we work in the Party. A study group we’re planning after that can help develop her political understanding. To reach these goals I plan to continue to bring communist politics to the forefront of our daily struggle with her and others.

Hundreds of Millions, Not 'Great Men,' Created Science

Book Review: A People’s History of Science, by Clifford D. Conner, Nation Books, New York, 2005.

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?

- Bertolt Brecht, "Questions From a Worker Who Reads"

Paying tribute to the history of world communism, PLP often says, "If we see this far, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants." This refers not only to the well-known individuals who founded our movement, but also to the tens of millions of unknown workers who fought for that movement. We stand on the shoulders of giants not only in the political arena, but in all areas of human knowledge, especially science. Communist theory developed from a scientific outlook, and most human progress depends on scientific discovery, so this is an important area to examine.

Conner describes this aspect of the history of science. Hundreds of millions of slaves, serfs and workers, over tens of thousands of years, who worked with both hands and brains, discovered and invented nearly everything that we take for granted today. They were craftsmen, artisans, engineers, toolmakers, blacksmiths, miners, peasants, sailors, midwives, healers, food gatherers, cooks, shepherds, and workers in literally thousands of other trades and professions.

Official science history says the "giants" are the "Great Men of Science" (virtually all said to be men) who worked mainly with their brains, and often on impractical projects. But the separation of manual and mental labor is a false notion created by ruling-class ideology. Everyone who works with their hands necessarily also works with their brains.

To their credit, some famous scientists, like Galileo, have acknowledged their debt to manual/brain laborers for the inventions and discoveries that formed the foundation of their own work (though most have claimed all the credit for themselves). However, science historians generally grant the intellectuals full credit for their incremental contributions, as though arising magically from isolated contemplation, and as though thousands could accomplish the task of hundreds of millions.

Conner guides us through practical work over the last several thousand years. Who, for example, invented the compass, printing press, spinning wheel, mechanical clock, suspension bridge, oil drilling techniques, steel, pottery, gunpowder, iron plow, ship rudder, agriculture, food preservation? Who discovered oxygen, algebra, decimal notation, navigation techniques? It was unnamed laborers, collectively, as this understanding was needed in their practical work. Yet particular — usually European — individuals are given the credit. Johann Gutenberg, for instance, is known as the inventor of the printing press. But movable type was invented over 400 years earlier, and the first iron printing press over 200 years earlier in China. In every case, Conner peels away the "great man" mythology to reveal realities of collective work by ordinary workers who helped create each famous discovery.

Prince Henry "the Navigator" of Portugal in the early 1400’s is credited with finding ways of exploring the world by sea, but he was a notorious thief of techniques and knowledge possessed only by sailors. His countryman, Ferdinand Magellan, in the early 1500’s, given credit for being the first person to sail around the world, relied on his navigator, a Filipino sailor named Enrique, whom he bought in a Malaysian slave market. And Magellan didn’t even complete the journey, killed by Enrique’s enraged allies in the Philippines when they arrived there. When the English captain James Cook explored the South Pacific in the 1700’s, he used Polynesian sailors who knew how to navigate to islands hundreds of miles away just by reading the wind, waves and ocean swells.

Conner also describes how the world’s ruling classes have controlled what science is allowed to develop and how those discoveries are used. Over the ages, these rulers have stolen from the working classes not only our labor and our dreams, but even our contributions to the understanding of the universe and our inventions that drive their profits. He shows clearly that the rulers could not survive without the workers. The (unintended) value of Conner’s work for revolutionaries is to help convince us, if we have any doubts, that the working class not only can run the world without the capitalists, but in fact has always created humanity’s advances behind the scenes.

Bosses Plot to Gain Workers Support for Bigger Wars

It’s not every day the bosses reveal their goals and strategy so clearly. The latest issue of Foreign Affairs, mouthpiece of the rulers’ premier think-tank, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), puts their cards on the table in a series of front-page articles. The ruling class must be worried about U.S. imperialism’s future.

In "What to Do In Iraq: A Roundtable," the magazine lays out big money’s strategy for the coming period. Five foreign policy heavyweights contribute, including Leslie Gelb, former New York Times international columnist and past CFR president. Each contributor presents his own tactics, but all favor some variation of strategic "redeployment": a tactical retreat from Iraq to regroup for bigger and bloodier wars to protect the U.S. bosses’ increasingly challenged grip on Mid-East oil.

"The Military’s Manpower Crisis" by Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute starts by bemoaning the short supply of infantry soldiers, but ends with a twist. After criticizing the administration for neglecting recruitment and retention of ground troops in favor of expensive "transformational" weapons systems, Kagan concludes: "but simply killing the transformational programs would be unwise." Beefing up recruitment and financing fancy new weapons will be expensive, but "…the absolute size of the defense budget, its percentage of the total U.S. budget, and its share of GDP [Gross Domestic Product] are ultimately irrelevant. What matters is whether or not the money is sufficient to pay for the kind of military the United States needs in order to prevail in current and future conflicts." "Current conflicts" refer to immediate needs in the Middle East; "future conflicts" include wars with what the Pentagon calls "near peer competitors," like China and Russia with tacit support from many European nations.

The foreign policy gurus vent their frustration with the Bush regime in "The End of the Bush Revolution." They note, "…The Bush doctrine has run up against reality and become unsustainable." But not before, "…squandering U.S. legitimacy, breaking the domestic bank, and getting the United States bogged down in an unsuccessful war." They are particularly concerned that, "Washington now lacks the reservoir of … domestic support to pursue other key national interests."

New Liberalism Modeled on Old Liberalism’s Anti-Communism

The front-page review of two books entitled "Authentically Liberal" by former U.N. representative Richard Holbrook offers a plan to regain this domestic support. Challenge already described how one, "The Good Fight" by Peter Beinart, advocates a new liberalism to develop a racist "warrior culture." Beinart and Holbrooke use the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), organized in 1947, as an organizational model to build this new liberal warrior culture.

"These liberal anti-communists [of the ADA] provided the seminal thinking and political muscle during the most creative period of U.S. foreign-policy making in history," writes Holbrooke. "In addition to [Senator, Vice-president and Presidential candidate] Humphrey, the ADA’s founding generation included Eleanor Roosevelt; [Kennedy administration historian and economist] Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. [and] John Kenneth Galbraith; [and] the great union leaders Walter Reuther and David Dubinsky…On domestic policy, members of the ADA were unabashed New Dealers…and on civil rights, they were well ahead of their time. But on foreign policy, the ADA members broke ranks declaring opposition to communism overseas, and its refusal to cooperate with communists at home. They altered American history and committed themselves to a new liberalism."

This "authentically liberal" plan reflects the bosses’ imminent need to move support for bigger wars and aggressive U.S. imperialism from think-tanks to mass organizations and broader political acceptance in the working class. (Next issue: the implications of this strategy).

Detroit And Gary Teachers Strike Against Racist War Budgets

DETROIT, MI, September 5 — As we go to press, the strike of 9,500 teachers and other school workers in the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) against the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) system is in its second week. "It's not just the money we're striking for," said a Central High English teacher. "We don't have supplies we need to educate the students."

Meanwhile, at the annual Labor Day Parade here, the AFL-CIO leaders turned their backs on the teachers, never once offering support for their strike. They turned the event into a campaign rally for the Democratic Party, whose two main Michigan politicians — Detroit’s Mayor Kilpatrick and the state’s Governor Granholm — threatened the teachers with a strike-breaking injunction and huge fines. The union hacks’ support for the Democrats puts them in head-on collision with the needs of the workers being victimized by those same Democrats.

The racist school bosses are demanding cuts of $88 million from teachers' salaries and benefits to cover a $105-million deficit. They rewarded administrators with raises and bonuses while DPS lost about 50,000 students over the last several years. The schools are in shambles while teachers dig into their own pockets to buy supplies and toilet paper for their students. According to the National Center of Education, Michigan graduated only 39% of black males during the 2003-2004 school year compared with 78% of white males. More than 80% of Detroit’s 129,000 students are black; two-thirds live below the poverty line.

Parents, Bus Drivers Back Gary Strikers

On September 1, more than 1,400 teachers and other school workers ended their one-week strike in Gary, Indiana. The school board vowed to break the strike, but parents supported the teachers and school bus drivers refused to cross the teachers’ picket lines.

Teachers have been without a contract since December 2004, and had not struck since 1984. There are 16,000 students in the district, down from 22,000 a decade ago. Like Detroit, the students are overwhelmingly black and live in poverty.

Gary and Detroit have both been decimated by the struggle among international steel and auto bosses for markets, resources and cheap labor. The students are the children and grandchildren of retired steel workers who’ve had their pensions and health care stripped away, and of laid-off auto workers who are lining up for $10-an-hour jobs with no benefits. The teachers, if not their union leaders, are clearly on the side of their students. A permanent war budget has written these students off. To the bosses, they are cannon fodder at best. (More next issue.)

Redeye On The News

Lebanon: part of U.S. war plan for Iran

According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel has advised a plan for attacking Hezbollah — and shared it with Bush Adminstration officials well before the July 25th kidnappings….

"The White House was more focused on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel."

"The Israelis tolds us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. "Why oppose it? We’ll be able to hunt down and bomb missles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran." (New Yorker, 8/21)

Israel cluster-bombs just before truce

The United Nations yesterday described as "shocking and immoral" the fact that Israel dropped over 90 per cent of its cluster munitions in Lebanon during the last three days of the conflict – when it was already clear there would be a cessation of hostilities….

102,000 unexploded small bombs continued to maim and kill people every day.

"Civilians will die disproportionately again, after the war….It’s an outrage." (FT, 8/31)

Phony unions for China’s Wal-Marts

The All-China Federation….in China ….In-house unions are established automatically…in many foreign enterprises such as Wal-Mart.

"Both sides will sit down to find the right person to head the union – there is no election….

China’s unions are welcomed, unlike their militant counterparts in other countries, because they operate unashamedly as partners of the management rather than as the representative of labour.

"We will never take a simplistic measure like launching a strike…." (FT, 8/26)

9/11 Motive was U.S. policy, not religion

The most comprehensive examination of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was conducted by the 9/11 commission….

Talking to the detainees….the staff found that religious orthodoxy was not a common denominator.…Instead, hatred of American foreign policy in the Middle East seemed to be the key factor….

"I believe they feel a sense of outrage against the United States….They identify with the Palestinian problem, they identify with people who oppose repressive regimes and I believe they tend to focus their anger on the United States." (NYT, 8/20)

Iranians know U.S. is no liberator

Iran’s constitutional revolution of 1905-11 was a national struggle for democratic government….But its democratic roots were stamped upon by Reza Pahlavi, a soldier backed by the British….

Almost 30 years after Pahlavi crowned himself shah in 1925, the Iranian people had another go at establishing democracy. From 1951-53 they backed Mohammad Mossadeq…who nationalized the Iranian oil industry….

But this democratic experiment was again thwarted, this time after Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and …the Central Intelligence Agency’s Middle East Division, backed by the British, engineered a coup to overthrow Mossadeq and put Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Reza Pahlavi’s son, on the Peacock throne….

For Iranians, democracy is not a new idea but an ongoing struggle…twice stamped out by western powers….

George W. Bush’s description of the US as "freedom-loving" is regarded as mere words….

Instead it is regarded in Iran as being in ruthless pursuit of its own interests, be those security of oil supplies or the promotion of its…arms program…. (FT, 8/31)

Capitalist China texts: No class struggle!

When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history text drops…Communist revolutions….

Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once — in a chapter on etiquette.

Nearly overnight the country’s most prosperous schools have shelved the Marxist [framework] that has dominated standard history texts since the 1950’s….

The French and Bolshevik Revolutions, once seen as turning points in world history, now get far less attention….

Some….speculated that the Shanghai textbooks reflected the political viewpoints of China’s top leaders….

Mr. Jiang’s "Three Represents" slogan aimed to broaden the Communist Party mandate and dilute its traditional emphasis on class struggle. (NYT, 9/1)

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, September 6, 2006

Information: 06 September 2006 782 hits

Whoever Wins Mexico's Election, Workers Lose
Liberals Cry `Out of Iraq' To:
PLOT MORE WAR
Lamont: A Billionaire Pedigree
Liberals' `Just War' Image Hides Racist Cause of Atrocities
Big Oil Ordered Iraq War;
Neo-Cons Just Followed Orders
`Peace Truce' Will Lead to Wider Wars
Victory Against Anti-Immigrant Kangaroo Court
As Copper Bosses' Profits Soar, Miners Strike
NYC Workers' War Contract Signals Need
to Mobilize vs. Profit System
Combine Re-building Tasks with Revolutionary Ideas
Class Outlook Takes On Divisive Black Nationalism
Racist Gov't Devastates More People Than Katrina
CHALLENGE Welcomed Amid Bosses' Attacks on Returnees
Oaxaca Teachers' Movement Holds Potential PLP Growth
Black Workers, Youth Hit Streets Over Racist Cop Killing of 14-Year-Old
Racist `Community Policing' Murders Newark Black Man
CHALLENGE Spurs Debate on Mid-East War
At Brooklyn Hospital
Deportation Raids Don't Intimidate Protestors
LETTERS
1. Multi-nationals Dangerous for Farm Workers
2. Winning Evangelicals To Oppose Iraq War
3. Anti-War Churchgoers Expose Pro-War Liberals
4. Rebel Soldiers Help Katrina Victims
5. Raising PLP's Ideas At Pro-Immigrant March, Union Convention
Ted Kennedy, AFT Leaders: Partners in Racism and Imperialist War
Spain: Anti-Franco Resistance Inspired World's Workers
`Popular Front' Did Not Lead to Revolution
Workers and Peasants Practiced Communism in the Chinese Revolution

Whoever Wins Mexico's Election, Workers Lose

MEXICO CITY, August 12 -- "Vote by Vote," demanded hundreds of thousands of supporters of liberal presidential candidate Andrés López Obrador in the streets of the capital and in many other cities nationwide. With huge demonstrations, seizures of streets, blocking bank entrances and even the stock exchange, many workers, students and people in general think the government's Institute of Federal Elections will give the Presidency to Lopez Obrador of the Party of Revolutionary Democracy over the right -wing party candidate Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN). This election dispute is a fight between various Mexican bosses to control the profits from oil (including oil giant PEMEX), minerals, energy, telecommunications and health care .

In these struggles and in discussions, Progressive Labor Party has strengthened new communist youth participating in these activities. These youth have distributed leaflets and CHALLENGE, attacking elections as a sham and calling for building a communist revolution. The workers have responded positively, although with much ideological struggle.

Workers around the world should oppose the capitalist electoral farce used to maintain the political system. Workers are won to think that by voting for one candidate or another capitalism can get better for workers, something that has never occurred in the history of capitalism.

Every presidential candidate represents one sector or another of the ruling class. The openly fascist Calderón has promised "jobs for all" and new foreign investments. Unemployment, however, is essential for capitalism because it uses the unemployed to pressure those who have jobs to work more for lower wages.

Other bosses like López Obrador use different tactics. His much more deadly battle slogan is to "defend the poor." But he has won the support of big capitalists. Using his populist image, he's evicted the poorest people from the center of Mexico City to make space for the historical center project led by Carlos Slim (Mexico's richest man and third richest in the world).

Slim owns TELMEX, of the Carso group, and much of the country's real property. Instead of expanding the metropolitan transport system, including the subway, he invests in road construction to promote private cars, benefiting corporations like Ford, GM, Volkswagen, Nissan, etc.

No electoral party anywhere will respond to the real interests of the working class. These ruling-class politicians look for solutions to their crises within the system, not to change it. The only solution for the working class is to eliminate capitalism, its markets and profits, and establish a society in which no one is exploited or oppressed. The great challenge is to organize ourselves with all the millions of the world's workers and students, not to chant "vote by vote," but "worker by worker" to forge a communist revolution and end this murderous capitalist system.

Liberals Cry `Out of Iraq' To:
PLOT MORE WAR

As killing fueled by U.S. imperialism rages and intensifies from Beirut to Baghdad to Kabul, Ned Lamont won the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary over incumbent Joe Lieberman on an "anti-war" platform. Lieberman backed the war in Iraq and ran for Vice President with Al Gore in 2000.

Their slugfest boils down to a dispute merely over the tactics for accomplishing U.S. rulers' two overriding tasks: battling increasingly militant Islamic forces for control of the Middle East and its oil and mobilizing the nation for a future conflict with a rival superpower. Lamont, in fact, poses the greater danger, because his phony "Out-of-Iraq" message can trick workers into supporting the rulers' agenda for broader wars.

George W. Bush's bungling is worsening matters for U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. The first U.S.-backed United Nations resolution aimed at ending Israel's war on Hezbollah quickly proved a deadly farce. Within hours of its first passage, Israeli air strikes murdered dozens more Lebanese civilians. The more U.S.-made bombs Israel drops, the more leverage Hezbollah and its Iranian backers gain. Even though there is a cease-fire now, that's no guarantee that the carnage will end anytime soon. Israeli leaders will pursue their self-interests no matter what Washington demands. Elsewhere, an increasingly lethal insurgency bordering on civil war prevents Exxon Mobil from pumping Iraqi crude. The Taliban remain at large in Afghanistan. And al Qaeda may have inspired a possible plot by British terrorists to try to blow up U.S. airliners.

This dismal picture has an important section of the ruling class saying it is time for Plan B: tactical retreat from Iraq followed by regrouping and a massive re-invasion of the entire Persian Gulf region by a wide U.S.-led coalition.

Lamont's exit timetable meshes with plans put forward by General William Odom, who complains that Bush's Iraq fiasco has the U.S. "paralyzed in managing the region from the eastern Mediterranean [Israel, Lebanon, and Syria] to Afghanistan." (Bloomberg Television, 8/11) Odom foresees a vast occupying force that includes European troops under U.S. command. "Upon our withdrawal, our allies will be far more likely to respond constructively to a U.S. bid to design a joint strategy for restoring regional stability in the Middle East." (Nieman Watchdog, Harvard University, 7/17)

Another anti-Bush general, Wesley Clark, who carried out Clinton's genocidal bombardment of Serbia, praised Lamont's success in steering workers down the dead-end road to the polling booth and patriotism. "Lieberman's defeat shows that the public is now engaged in politics." (Wall Street Journal, 8/10) Clark reassured Journal readers that Democrats, including Lamont, indeed had the more effective war plan. "The truth is the Democratic Party -- elected leaders, party regulars, and the big-time donors -- pretty much agree on the failures of the administration, and even on the policies that need to be adopted, like stronger diplomacy and more reliance on allies and international organizations, coupled with a willingness to fully fund, rearm, strengthen, and use America's armed forces."

As for galvanizing society for world war, Lamont has a less heavy-handed approach than Lieberman. Lieberman co-founded the Democratic Leadership Council, which in a recent book, "With All Our Might," espoused an openly-militarized Democratic Party and putting the economy "on a wartime footing." The ruling class dreams of both. But there's a hitch. As enlistment figures and opinion polls show, not many people so far, especially among traditionally Democratic voters, buy blatant militarism. Lieberman's voter base among munitions workers at Sikorsky and Electric Boat may do so, to a certain degree, but among the general public "Vietnam-Syndrome" mistrust of the Pentagon prevails. So Lamont tries the back door to fascism. His big push is for health care reform, which has two ulterior motives: tightening government control of a key industry and getting people to view the state as "protector."

For anyone who wants the bloodshed to stop, following Lamont and his ilk is a big mistake. "Peace" candidates turn out to be deadlier war-makers than "hawks." Look at President Woodrow "He-Kept-Us-Out-of-War" Wilson of World War I infamy or Vietnam War criminal Lyndon Johnson, who ran against pro-war Barry Goldwater in 1964. Votes only legitimize the imperialist butchers. The end of profit-driven wars lies outside the electoral system, down a long road of struggle to destroy capitalism itself.

Lamont: A Billionaire Pedigree

Ned Lamont's miraculous rise from nowhere bears all the signs of a full-court press by the liberal Eastern Establishment. First is his impeccable capitalist/imperialist pedigree. Lamont's great-grandfather Thomas W., a partner of J.P. Morgan, helped write the financial parts of the post-World War I Versailles Treaty in favor of the U.S. Next come liberal flunkies Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who stumped for Lamont among black workers in New Haven and Bridgeport. Moveon.org helped get out Lamont's middle-class vote. Internet-based Moveon was created by Larry Rockefeller and others in an attempt to limit the damage from Clinton's impeachment. The liberal New York Times endorsed Lamont in a July 30 editorial. A week later, it ran a column by Thomas Friedman entitled "Time for Plan B."

Liberals' `Just War' Image Hides Racist Cause of Atrocities

The U.S. Army's rape and torture of innocent people in Iraq should not be a shock to us. The extensive investigation and media coverage of 21-year-old Steven Green, the former private awaiting trial for the alleged murder and rape of an Iraqi family in Haditha, Iraq, is merely an attempt to re-mold the image of the U.S. military and scapegoat the lower-ranking troops.

This is not a case of a few "bad apples," but an inevitable consequence of imperialist war. Atrocities and genocide occur when working-class youth of one imperialist army is conditioned to view the "enemy" as inferior using nationalism, racism and sexism. So when the bosses' media starts decrying the very behavior it needs to field an army committed to its plans, we must look closely at, and understand, what the ideological differences among U.S. rulers mean for the working class.

Sections of the ruling class are furious at Bush & Co.'s method of handling the war, which is growing increasingly unpopular at home. The Bush administration's failures have energized the liberal wing of the rulers who are desperate to: (1) unite U.S. workers behind the war; and (2) divide the Arab peoples against each other. The liberals want to distance themselves from the Bush gang and prefer to win workers over to the notion of a "just war," that U.S. global dominance is not only necessary, but desirable for us and the world. They will spend time and money winning workers to the goals of U.S. imperialism -- domination of the world's resources, especially oil, and of cheap labor -- and will work with rulers from other countries to build the image of a "multilateral," international consensus on this agenda.

Yet the splits among U.S. rulers are purely tactical; they all agree with the greater imperialist goals. The liberal wing is angry at the Bush crowd's incompetence and recklessness in trying to run this war for oil on the cheap, economically and politically. The liberals and the Bush gang alike were mistaken in believing the war could be won as quickly as in 1991. However, the Bushites neglected to plan a long-term ideological campaign to win over U.S. workers and are now paying the political price. Here increasing numbers of working-class people are turning against the war; in the Middle East, various Arab groups have not only united against the U.S. but are being driven into the arms of Iran and China, two of the U.S. rulers' main competitors in the region.

To save the mess that Bush & Co. have made, the liberal sector of the U.S. ruling class will try to win over as many people in the anti-war movement as possible. Some in that movement are militantly opposed to imperialism, so the liberals want to channel their energy and militancy into various political campaigns within electoral politics instead of opposing imperialism itself.

Others reject the war because of individual acts of murder and gutter-racism such as the Abu-Ghraib prison tortures and the Haditha massacre, without rejecting the ruling class's greater imperialist goals. By attaching these crimes to Bush & Co. -- not tracing them to the inevitable consequences of capitalism itself -- the liberals will attempt to restore the image of "honor" and "integrity" to the U.S. armed forces, legitimizing this imperialist butchery as a "just war." However, the liberals' image neglects the military's long-standing complicated relationship with fascists such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis. After the white supremacist Aryan Nations' graffiti was discovered in Baghdad recently, Scott Barfield, a gang detective with the U.S. Department of Defense, told the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Intelligence Report": "It's not epidemic, but there is plenty of evidence we're talking numbers well into the thousands [of fascists], just in the Army.... Only two have been discharged."

The liberals' hopes to build the "just-war" image to U.S. workers and the world hide the disgusting reality of their reliance on racism to fight and win wars. The liberals are in a tricky and contradictory position, wanting it both ways: the honorable "just-war" imagery reminiscent of World War II on the one hand, and committed killers loyal to imperialism on the other.

The rape and murder of the Iraqi family is a horrifying addition to the daily terror not only in Iraq but in much of the rest of the world. As long as capitalism exists there will inevitably be workers dying from imperialist wars and/ or workers dying in the aftermath of disasters such as New Orleans. Workers should not support any sector of the ruling class, especially now that the liberals are on the offensive against Bush and trying to seize the anti-war feeling.

The Progressive Labor Party fights the ruling class no matter how much it hides its savage plans for the working class. Imperialism is necessary to capitalism. Ending imperialism means ending the nationalism, sexism and racism that keep the bosses' profits flowing. PLP unites workers, students and soldiers internationally to fight for communist revolution and dump this barbaric system into the garbage can of history.u

Big Oil Ordered Iraq War;
Neo-Cons Just Followed Orders

By now -- as CHALLENGE pointed out early on -- most people agree that the invasion of Iraq was about oil, not about "weapons of mass destruction" or "bringing democracy to the Middle East." But now it's coming out that the most powerful ruling class interests, especially among the oil sector, were plotting for such an invasion because of Saddam's "manipulation of oil markets," a "destabilizing influence...to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East." (As quoted from a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) report, in "Armed Madhouse -- Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf," by Greg Palast.) It was Big Oil, not the neocons, who conceived this war; the latter were just the instrument that carried it out, however ineptly.

Palast was able to get hold of a 323-page State Department report entitled, "Options for Iraqi Oil," which, according to Palast, "was crafted in Houston under the tutelage of the oil industry," organized by the James A. Baker III Institute. A former Secretary of State under Bush, Sr., Baker has as his "clients" the Rockefeller-owned Exxon Mobil (the world's largest oil company), the Republican National Committee and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Palast says the State Department report shows that Big Oil's decisive motive for invading Iraq was not so much its oil -- "the last thing the oil industry wanted from Iraq in 2001 was a lot more oil" -- nor "Saddam's affection for euro currency nor even panic over oil supply." Rather it was the fact that, "Tight markets have increased U.S. and global vulnerability to disruption and provided adversaries undue potential influence over the price of oil." Iraq was a "swing producer" of oil. "Saddam was jerking the oil market up and down. One week he's "supporting the Palestinian Intifada" and he cuts off oil shipments, spiking worldwide oil prices. Then he forgets the Intifada and pumps to the maximum allowed under the UN's Oil-for-Food Program, causing oil prices to plummet.

Up and down, up and down -- "Saddam was out of control." And "control is what it's all about," one oilman told Palast. "It's not about getting the oil, it's about controlling oil's price." Within days of Bush's November 2000 election, the Baker Institute warned: "In a market with so little cushion to cover unexpected events, oil prices become extremely sensitive to perceived supply risks. Such a market increases the potential leverage of [an] otherwise lesser producer such as Iraq...."

Falah Aljibury, an advisor to the Wall Street investment house Goldman Sachs, the Baker/Council on Foreign Relations group -- and host to the State Department's invasion-planning m'eetings in February 2001 -- told Palast that, "Iraq is not stable, a wild card." Saddam Hussein was, almost alone, setting the weekly world price of oil. He was driving the oil barons bonkers. So Rockefeller's CFR concluded it was time for a "military assessment," stating: "Saddam Hussein has demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon to manipulate oil markets.... [The] United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq, including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments."

This CFR/Baker report was delivered to the Pentagon by Dr. Edward Morse, chairman of the "Joint Task Force on Petroleum of the James A. Baker Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations." Palast reports that it was also "handed directly to Vice-President Dick Cheney" who "met secretly with CFR task force members...to go over the maps of Iraq's oil fields." Cheney than used the Baker/CFR recommendations "as his own plan" to "take out Saddam." (Interestingly, Palast says, "The cash for drafting the extravagant report that was so protective of OPEC and Saudi interests" came from none other than "Khalid al-Turki of Saudi Arabia...")

For all this, tens of thousands of Iraqis had to die, as well as thousands of GI's (and tens of thousands wounded and maimed for life). Still another reason to fight for communist revolution, to destroy the monster of capitalism.u

`Peace Truce' Will Lead to Wider Wars

After much haggling in the UN, particularly between France and the U.S., a "peace truce" has been imposed in the Israel-Lebanon war. Supposedly, the IDF (Israel "Defence" Forces) and the Hezbollah guerrillas will obey it. But the ceasefire has as much chance of making it as a cockroach in a chicken coop. Eventually, French troops will lead a UN "peacekeeping force" in Southern Lebanon. Meanwhile, several lessons can be drawn from this war:

* Israel's touted military invincibility has been heavily damaged -- 114 IDF soldiers killed in one month. Hezbollah and most observers are calling this a major defeat for the IDF. The NY Times (8/16) cited Hezbollah's "hard-won reputation as the only Arab force that fought Israel to a standstill." Already, the blame game is causing big rifts inside the Israeli ruling class about "Who lost Lebanon?" It's also led to rifts inside the White House. According to a Seymour Hersh New Yorker article, Dick Cheney, Bush and his national security advisor Elliot Abrams backed Israeli's failed blitzkrieg, but Rumsfeld wasn't 100% sure and Secy. of State Condi Rice was borderline.

* It has also caused rifts between the U.S. and the European bosses. A year ago, France and the U.S. united to kick the Syrians out of Lebanon and installed a "democratic" government in Beirut. Now U.S. rulers backed the Israeli air war which destroyed that whole U.S.-France plan.

* Bombings per se don't win wars, even though they cause huge damage (1,000 Lebanese killed, nearly all civilians and almost a million displaced from their homes; Lebanon's infrastructure smashed to smithereens by the Israeli Air Force). But still, Israel suffered a major defeat in the ground war at the hands of the well-trained and committed Hezbollah guerrillas.

* The U.S, Israel and their allies in the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have been exposed as the real Axis of Evil. Meanwhile, given the Israeli failure to destroy Hezbollah, its Iranian and Syrian backers have emerged as winners.

* The White House-Tel Aviv plan to bomb Iranian nuclear bunkers -- Israel has acquired a load of U.S. bunker-buster bombs -- must now be rethought. If the air war failed in tiny Lebanon, Iran, with 70 million people, much bigger and more powerful, could create a lot of problems for the U.S. in Iraq as well as for Israel in Lebanon and in Palestine's Gaza and West Bank. The U.S. liberal rulers' drive for more ground troops for all these potential wars will now be pushed more intensely. U.S. imperialists will need millions of soldiers to protect their oil empire from their rivals (Iran and its allies in Russia and China). Will a military draft follow?

Many in recent international anti-war demonstrations have been chanting "Hezbollah" as a response to the U.S.-Israeli fascist war-makers. This is a deadly mistake. Hezbollah is a reactionary organization which wants to impose an Iranian-type anti-worker fundamentalist system. From Teheran to NYC to Baghdad to Tel Aviv, workers, students and soldiers must organize to turn these wars into revolutionary struggles to get rid of their cause: capitalism and imperialism. That's the goal of the communist PLP. Join us!

Victory Against Anti-Immigrant Kangaroo Court

After the month-long trial of three anti-racists (see CHALLENGE, 8/16), Judge Toni Bean, her voice quivering, mumbling and hesitating between each word, gave her verdict. She surveyed a courtroom packed with supporters for the defendants. High school students and teachers, clergy from an activist church, trade unionists, family, friends and members of a Farmingville area immigrant support group squeezed into the courtroom listening to her every word, with more supporters outside for lack of space.

This is not what Suffolk County bosses intended when they relentlessly pursued a trial of the three anti-racists arrested on July 16, 2005. Local politicians get elected exploiting racism and anti-immigrant hatred. They were determined to be tough on anti-racist supporters of immigrant workers.

These bosses, however, underestimated the working class when organized for class struggle. PLP members, who had participated in the original demonstration, acted, understanding that an attack on any worker is an opportunity for struggle in which communist ideas flourish and new members can be recruited.

For nearly a year communists publicized this case -- and the courts' racist, fascist character -- in countless mass organizations. Resolutions were raised in several unions. Fundraisers were organized involving many new people. Contacts were made with the pro-immigrant organizations within Suffolk County. Attorneys were hired who live and work in the area but willing to take a stand in support of anti-racist protests. This struggle exposed thousands of workers to the case.

With the steady, dedicated effort of many comrades, hundreds of workers attended the month-long trial. The Judge, the prosecution and even the court officers were very aware of the daily presence of this multi-racial force. They're used to operating in private, their courtroom an inner sanctum never feeling working-class anger. Well, we brought in the light.

Everyone joining us in court found it unnerving and enlightening. People were shocked at the arrogant, racist treatment of everyone called before the Judge. Many who had promised to attend for just one day returned again and again to stand by the defendants. As one high school student told her teacher on the long drive home one day, "Now I understand what you mean by state power!"

Listening to Judge Bean's verdict we knew the essential purpose of the trial -- to terrify workers and keep them out of Suffolk County -- had been defeated. Whatever the verdict (though we are delighted it was "not guilty") the victory was ours. We had exposed the illusions many people had about "civil rights." We had recruited new members to PLP and to study groups and had developed and strengthened the leadership of the defendants who came through the process with a deeper commitment to the working class.

Outside the courthouse after the verdict, a woman from an immigrant rights group explained why all that we had done was so necessary: "I'm glad to see this victory today," she said, "for there are more battles coming. Soon it might be illegal to allow an undocumented worker to stay in your house. I'm sorry to say it, but there are bad things coming."

This worker understands the long road ahead. Our job is to bring her, and all workers, into PLP to help build the fight for communism.

As Copper Bosses' Profits Soar, Miners Strike

CHILE -- On August 7, 2000 miners struck La Escondida, the world's largest private copper mine, mostly owned by two UK-Australian companies, BHP and Rio Tinto. La Escondida produces 8% of world production. The miners are demanding a 13% wage increase and a 16 million pesos bonus ($29,400). The bosses' final offer was a 3% wage "hike" plus a $5,500 low-interest loan, which amounts to a wage-cut since the loan will be re-paid from that 3%. The bosses also offered a $15,600 lump-sum bonus.

The strike has impacted commodity markets. A prolonged disruption threatens copper availability worldwide when supplies are already tight.

The miners say soaring global copper prices, which have boosted mining profits, justifies their pay demand. The mine owners have invoked "force majeure," a procedure which gives them legal protection from being sued if they fail to live up to delivery contracts, such as for copper concentrate.

The Socialist Chilean government has sent riot cops to intimidate miners and their demonstrations. These bosses are worried since this company represents 2% of the country's economic output. The bosses' press has joined the anti-worker attacks, saying the miners are already the "best-paid" workers in Chile (El Mercurio, 8/8). But the bosses are making out like bandits, reaping super-profits from growing world demand, particularly from China. The workers' demands represent only 1% of the mine's profits since 2005. And recently, high school students in Chile waged militant protests fighting the cops for their own demands. The "Socialist" government has been exposed as just another capitalist State.

Other workers are looking to follow these miners in setting their own bargaining goals. "It looks likely that there could be copy-cat action, especially in Mexico and at other mines in Chile," said John Meyer, a mining analyst at Numis Securities in London. "This could be quite long-running, which is why the market is taking notice of it." (London Financial Times, 8/9)

Even though the strikers halted 60% of La Escondida production, it's using 2,000 contract workers to get out the remaining 40%. The strikers must win these contract workers to join the walkout. They can forge this unity by fighting for permanent jobs for these contract workers.

The miners need international solidarity from workers who face the same bosses' attacks: they make huge profits but want workers to make more sacrifices while the bosses use contract workers to divide us all and lower everyone's wages.

Capitalism has proven to be a dead-end worldwide even for the so-called high-paid. Workers must learn from struggles like these that without our labor power, the bosses cannot produce anything. Workers don't need bosses; they need to turn these struggles into a school for forging a revolutionary leadership to fight for communism.

NYC Workers' War Contract Signals Need
to Mobilize vs. Profit System

NEW YORK CITY, August 11 -- "When the hell will she retire?" is the endlessly repeated question among workers in AFSCME's District Council 37. "She" is Lillian Roberts, the overtly corrupt and autocratic executive director of DC 37, the City's largest municipal union, with 120,000 members. The Council leadership negotiated a thoroughly mediocre deal with the City, after 13 months without a contract. Frustration is near universal within the union over the Roberts' regime's endless petty power plays, open collaboration with billionaire union-busting mayor Michael Bloomberg, and shameless sponging of union dues.

But the rank and file must see the contract struggle not just as ridding ourselves of one corrupt misleader but as a fight against capitalist attacks, war and rising fascism. With U.S. rulers facing stiff competition worldwide, they're looking to smash even the few organized workers that still have even meager benefits. These cuts finance defense of their empire. In reality every contract is a war contract.

The union misleaders' job is to stifle struggle, not lead it. They paint Bush as the sole source of all workers' problems and rally behind the Democratic bosses. None of them ever criticize capitalism, even supposed "militants" like the Transit Workers' Roger Toussaint or Andy Stern, head of the recent split-off from the AFL-CIA. They still treat unions as a business.

The DC 37 contract is nearly as bad as the last one. Disgust with the leadership is still entrenched. The union leadership put nothing on the table for the workers during the entire ten-month negotiations. Instead, Roberts orchestrated a sham behind-the-scenes vote to "endorse" Bloomberg's re-election and then threw millions in dues money into his $70-million campaign.

True to form, they went hat in hand to the City and didn't hold a single rally or work action, or reach out to any other workers for support. In effect, the new DC 37 contract is a pay-cut, falling below inflation, and continues the same two-year, two-tier wage system for new hires they shamelessly agreed to last time, while pension and health benefit cuts wait in the wings.

The lack of mobilization against the City infuriated many workers, especially in the wake of the City's $5 billion surplus and last December's militant three-day transit strike which shut down the city. Although many workers were ready for action, the union refused to lead any fight-backs in the face of on-going cuts, like surrounding City Hall, holding daily pickets, organizing workers to slow down, walk off the job or strike despite the state's fascist Taylor Law banning them. Nor did they expose how the City bosses use their surplus to benefit big business and developers while maintaining long-standing cuts and layoffs. And the Council certainly didn't expose the squeeze on workers to pay for the oil war in Iraq.

With the industrial unions increasingly in the bosses' hip pocket, the ruling class is stepping up its attack on municipal unions. Last year government workers in three states lost collective bargaining rights, bringing the total to 15. As with United Airlines and GM, civil service pensions are being gutted. This isn't about a regime change in DC 37, it's about fighting the brutal effects of the profit system. It's about the City bosses and the union uniting to preserve capitalism and squeeze the city workers. Workers have no "friends in high places" on either side of the bargaining table.

Moving the struggle forward means PLP'ers and other militant workers expanding the contract struggle to fight the brutal oil war, not pinning our hopes on yet another corrupt union election. We must mobilize workers against racist cuts, against slashing school lunches to fund war profiteers and against the profit system -- the cause of all our problems. Turning the struggle into a "school for communism" would be the biggest victory workers could win.

Combine Re-building Tasks with Revolutionary Ideas

A group of students and teachers from LA had a great experience in New Orleans gutting houses, organizing residents and having a CHALLENGE sale. It revealed the great potential for bringing the paper to workers here.

This city gives us an opportunity to build the international working-class movement for communism. From the detention camps where thousands of residents are held in trailers surrounded by barbwire and armed government patrols, to the thousands of furious residents whose houses the government is seizing, residents and volunteers need communist vision, practice and politics along with involvement in the day-to-day organizational, survival and rebuilding tasks.

In barely half an hour, volunteers distributed 42 CHALLENGES to black and Latino immigrant workers at a local building and construction store. They donated over $13. Few refused the paper. Many angry workers agreed that capitalism is the problem. The more areas CHALLENGE reaches -- while we involve ourselves in the day-to-day rebuilding tasks -- the more ahead of the game we'll be. Ideas can become a material force to change the world. So discussions about the role of racism, nationalism, fascism, the government and working-class unity are very useful. While we were only there briefly, this work must continue and deepen. Without debates about the nature of the State, imperialism, and the abolition of wages, people will become bogged down on the treadmill of reform and oblivious to a revolutionary solution.

One young volunteer from LA Said, "I learned a lot of things about how the government works in New Orleans and what the system does. The government was late in helping the impoverished. They didn't provide any aid and stole the communities' money. If I go back, I'll take lots of CHALLENGES and information on what the government is doing. I'll help show people what to do to fight back. I'll tell them that when we fight as a group we're unstoppable. I would really like to see the people join and destroy the system."

Class Outlook Takes On Divisive Black Nationalism

My experience in New Orleans had its ups and its downs. From sweating while banging down walls, to crying from heart-breaking stories, to ideological struggles, at the end of the day I had a wonderful awakening experience.

The first day blew my mind away. We went on a levee tour that contrasted the 8-foot levees in the working-class neighborhood to the double walls of the wealthier neighborhoods. The orientation of the mass organization we were working with began with a question: "what does leadership look like?" After everybody gave their input, the leader of the meeting asked why no one said black in their definition of leadership. I figured it was the same reason no one said white: race doesn't matter when it comes to true leadership. He elaborated on why black leadership is good, beginning to piss me off with his Black Nationalist point of view. We had spoken about Black Nationalism before the trip, but I didn't expect it to be so blunt and open.

After orientation, we were off to the hard work of gutting homes and canvassing. I was extremely excited to be canvassing, but when that sun hit me and I began to feel dizzy, it wasn't as exciting anymore. We took an opportunity to talk to immigrant workers we met on the street. Using my knowledge of Spanish, I asked them about their living situation in New Orleans. They told us they get paid about $100 every week when they work, but work is not guaranteed. We spoke to them about capitalism causing their current situation and explained the ideas of communism. They seemed open to the ideas and gratefully accepted CHALLENGE. This day I felt that I actually did some good.

One night during debriefing, a debate started on what affected us primarily, race or class and what people meant by "us." Was "us" just blacks or was "us" the working class. That's when the ideological struggle between communist ideas and black nationalist ideas sharpened. I expressed my class ideas while learning more about the shallowness of the Black Nationalist point of view. I was trying to make the point that unity around race is not going to defeat capitalism, but that only by uniting as a class can we truly smash racism and capitalism.

A few days later we had a mass sale of CHALLENGE in public housing. Residents told us that they took back their homes without the government's permission. That's what I like to hear. I basically had an amazing time in New Orleans and learned tremendously. I wouldn't have traded this experience for the world. I encourage every CHALLENGE reader to join PLP and go down to New Orleans and get involved in the fight against racism.

High School Projecteer

Racist Gov't Devastates More People Than Katrina

The gutting of the house was awesome. We were all excited to empty the place to prevent it from being bulldozed, so my partner and I gutted two rooms in a day. We should have gutted every other day and gone organizing on the alternate days because both were really important.

When we went into the neighborhood, people related how the government didn't help them during or after they were flooded. Some agreed with us and said things like the government is "a "piece of shit."

One unemployed worker who was staying with his mother said he had a "beef with the government." Before the flood he was a renter and the government wasn't giving him any money. He didn't own a home so he knew the government didn't want him back -- what importance is a renter in New Orleans' poor neighborhoods?

Many young people made the connection about the lack of help and having deadlines for gutting their houses. One guy felt the government wants to bulldoze their houses and claim the homeowners' land. His friend agreed but he didn't want to fight for anything because the results would be the same -- nothing.

Another man who didn't live in the house he was gutting was strongly against the government. He, along with a few others volunteered with, and attended Survivor Council meetings where residents discussed their problems and results they sought.

I learned it wasn't Katrina that devastated people and their communities as much as it was the racist capitalists who left people to suffer, many with no financial help from FEMA. I understand more why we cannot rely on this capitalist system changing for our benefit. If PLP'ers stay in New Orleans for a longer period, we could really sharpen the ideas many workers and students already have, possibly winning them to our communist ideas.

A young comrade

CHALLENGE Welcomed Amid Bosses' Attacks on Returnees

After an exhausting day of "gutting" a home in New Orleans's Lower 9th Ward, a few comrades sold CHALLENGE at a housing community downtown. The residents were happy to receive the paper and were eager to discuss their struggle to survive after the hurricane.

According to the residents, Military Police have been patrolling the community since they arrived in June. Although they were originally stationed in New Orleans to "protect" the 9th Ward, they seem to be patrolling poor black neighborhoods all across the city. On any given night, MP's can be seen interrogating youth and giving them full cavity searches.

Upon finally arriving home this summer, residents claimed that they were forced to pay nine months back pay for rent. Almost immediately after the hurricane the bosses decided that the housing community was livable and yet failed to notify the residents. Many residents could not afford their payments and were forced onto the streets. Considering the community is located near the French Quarter, it is clear that the bosses want to bulldoze the community to build more expensive apartments.

This is another example of the racist bosses' persistent attack on the poor returning to their homes in New Orleans. The ruling class is vehemently attempting to remove black-working class communities. Yet their attacks have been met with powerful resistance. Many of the residents receive CHALLENGE and have joined the fight against ruling-class oppression of workers. The oppression in New Orleans resembles that of capitalist imperialism all across the world. Support for communism grows as more and more workers receive CHALLENGE. Eventually the working class, with communist leadership, will eliminate the ruling class and destroy capitalism forever!

Oaxaca Teachers' Movement Holds Potential PLP Growth

OAXACA, MEXICO, Aug. 14 -- After almost three months of struggle by 70,000 education workers -- initially for a wage increase and better conditions for the students -- now hundreds of thousands have joined the movement. They're demanding the Governor resign, while many question whether changing one politician for another is enough. Some blame the whole capitalist system for the oppression of the workers.

Here, and world-wide, the system uses all its ideological weapons: the bosses' media, religion, their educational institutions and the whole state apparatus to oppress us. But when workers begin to break these chains, question the system and organize to fight it, the rulers show their true fascist nature -- outright violence through their control of the police and the army. Young PLP'ers have brought communist ideas to many teachers through CHALLENGE and leaflets. (Full story next issue.)

Black Workers, Youth Hit Streets Over Racist Cop Killing of 14-Year-Old

CHICAGO, IL, August 11 -- Last Monday (8/7) the racist Chicago Police Department shot a 14-year-old boy, Ellis Woodland Jr., in the Cabrini Green neighborhood. While Ellis is surviving in critical condition at a local hospital, the police are claiming they shot in "self-defense," since the boy had been playing BB guns with friends. However, many from the neighborhood said Ellis was already on his knees when the cops fired five bullets in his direction with the intent to kill. This action is part of the ongoing police terror in Cabrini, from which the city is looking to displace public housing residents.

Black workers and youth responded by taking to the streets. Many workers understood the importance of young people standing up and fighting back. This is a much safer tactic than simply trying to avoid the cops' continued attacks. On Wednesday hundreds took to the streets, despite a heavy police presence, to challenge the cops.

On Thursday, when many young people again marched, PLP members joined their ranks. CHALLENGES and leaflets condemning the police as tools of the ruling class who will always carry out racist terror were well-received around the neighborhood and within the march. Many took up our chants: "White cop, black cop, all the same! Racist terror is the name of their game!" and "Racist cops get off scot free, while workers live in misery!"

The march continued to city hall where the mayor sat in his office and refused us entry. When PLP'ers returned to the neighborhood on Friday, young people had developed a better understanding of the system we live under. "Yeah, I think Mayor Daley is racist," said one. The politicians and police act for the rich. This small rebellion has instilled in many the sense that we'll need to overthrow capitalism in order to really improve workers' lives.

Racist `Community Policing' Murders Newark Black Man

NEWARK, NJ July 30 - A 26-year-old black man was murdered by a plainclothes Newark cop. Eyewitnesses, including a 10-year-old girl, saw the cops shoot Chakhan Nance when he was down on the ground and handcuffed. The cops claim that that Nance was a drug dealer who drew a gun. Everyone knows this is a bald face lie. Neighbors said that Nance looked out for local kids and would sometimes walk them home at night (Star-Ledger, 7/31/06).

This killing closely follows the inauguration of Mayor Corey Booker, 37, who became the top politician of New Jersey's largest city. The Star Ledger, voice of the big bosses like Prudential Insurance, backed Booker. Like Barack Obama, Booker is being touted as a young, black political superstar for the bosses.

Booker's key campaign promise was to fight crime. As soon as he took office, he announced a "safe summer" initiative, flooding the streets with cops. His supporters called for a major "community policing" offensive. Community policing plans have always been used tactically by the bosses to convince workers to participate in and feel responsible for the fascist oppression going on in their neighborhoods instead of getting angry at the "outside" forces of a traditional police department.

Newark happens to be the home of community policing guru George Kelling, who teaches at Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice. Recall that Kelling wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the shooting of Amadou Diallo by NYPD cops was justified. This happened just before the jury let all of the murders off. Two years ago, Kelling went further by linking his "Counter-terrorism Information Sharing Consortium" with the latest "homeland security" plans of the ruling class.

The killing of many young people in Newark over the past eighteen months has given Booker, the cops, and ultimately the rulers, the pretext they need to put Kelling's ideas into practice. It is true that we should be struggling with our young working-class brothers and sisters not to fall into gangs and drug dealing. These activities are anti-working class, and spring from the bosses' idea of "me first and screw everybody else".

But we must remember who the real criminals are as we fight to involve these young people in positive political and social activities. The reason young people are caught in this hell with all bad choices is because of the racist, profit-driven greed of the bosses. After a mass exodus of manufacturing and other jobs from urban areas, the bosses left these cities to rot with lousy health care and jobs, deteriorating housing and schools and wide-scale police terror. These horrible social conditions have borne the poisoned fruit of gang activity and drug dealing as a false solution to this misery.

Youth are the future. In contrast to the capitalist system now oppressing them, communism will not beat down working-class youth. We will make them the centerpiece of our plan to overthrow this monstrous system, and build something much better for humanity. Kellings of the world beware: our day will come.

CHALLENGE Spurs Debate on Mid-East War
At Brooklyn Hospital

BROOKLYN, NY -- At a hospital here, workers friendly to PLP responded to the latest crisis in the Middle East by increasing CHALLENGE sales. Workers contributed $80, $10 coming from a part-time environmental services worker who's a regular reader. A leaflet based upon CHALLENGE editorials analyzing the war was also distributed.

A call for a union meeting to discuss the current crisis encountered problems in finding a common time and place. So we went to each of our departments and raised the issue with our co-workers. Many were confused about the reasons for the war between Israel and Hamas in Palestine and Hezobollah in Lebanon. Getting their information from the capitalist newspapers and TV newscasts, workers couldn't understand the underlying crisis. The leaflet helped clarify it.

A few workers stated that the politicians are always misleading us to support their views about the Middle East crisis. Surely, the politicians' interests don't represent the working class.

A few Jewish workers argued heatedly about the right of Israel to exist as a state. One worker cried, "Israel wants to live in peace." Another replied, "The Palestinian workers also wanted to live in peace." Still another worker stated that the only road to peace in the Middle East is the destruction of the profit wars for oil.So far, several workers expressed interest in joining a study group to learn more about PLP and the role of the past communist parties in that region.

Deportation Raids Don't Intimidate Protestors

HEMPSTEAD, L.I., NY, Aug. 7 -- "No human being is illegal" read signs carried by dozens of residents here during a protest against raids by government immigration and custom agents. Several area workers have been arrested during these raids and face deportation. The agents come with photos of people they're looking for. If they don't find them, others without "proper" documents are arrested anyway.

One demonstrator said that since these raids occurred, people fear even taking the bus. That's why protesting against these fascist, racist raids is so important, to show that terror won't stop workers from fighting back. (See article on Farmingville for PLP's analysis of the fight against racist anti-immigrant terror.)

LETTERS

Multi-nationals Dangerous for Farm Workers

Recently we visited a Mazahua community in the northern part of the state of Mexico. A farm worker agreed with us that we need a change in the economic system, since this one exploits and impoverishes farm workers.

Multi-national corporations like Wal-Mart are forcing a group of small producers here to sign a document mandating that their products be sold only in Wal-Mart stores, preventing them from finding best market price. Is this the "liberty of the free market"? The capitalists threaten not to give an allotment for starting production of organic products not yet planted if you don't give in to their price. These are products the multi-nationals already want to buy.

Some think that unity of the community can stop this. But the reality of the profit system is that the bigger fish eat the smaller ones.

What happens when those who supposedly should support these same producers are pressured from above or by their bosses to convince the producers to give in? Where is the independence of the farm workers or of the indigenous towns that the government always brags it's defending? The reality is, big capital rules, whether national or foreign.

University students have a great responsibility to farm workers, and not because some of us study nursing, mechanics, teaching, communication, sustainable development, etc. Without an understanding of what's happening, we'll be used to trap our communities and present them on a silver platter to the bosses, enabling them to continue to exploit farmworkers through the multi-nationals.

Students, just because we sit in an armchair, are we learning? Is life still rosy? Is the moon made out of cheese? What's happened to critical thinking, and the consciousness to fight for a world where everything is for everyone? Mystical, cosmic vision won't help us much, the god of the wind will not emancipate us, but the power we can build among all of us will. Long live Communism!

Young red student

Winning Evangelicals To Oppose Iraq War

In May, 17 members of our small conservative church openly called for immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq/Afghanistan and against any attack on Iran (letter, CHALLENGE, 6/6)). We mailed letters to 150 other churches of the same denomination in our area (rather than to the bosses' politicians), asking them to join us.

One woman in our group took leadership and suggested that we hold a public forum (on June 27) to broaden the effort.

Hard work by the whole group, including ads in the weeklies, lots of fliers posted ("Who Would Jesus Bomb?"), refreshments and paid child care drew an integrated audience of nearly 100 people, mostly from the surrounding community. The panel included an imam from a neighboring mosque, the woman rabbi of a nearby synagogue, a woman soldier from Iraq Veterans Against the War, and a woman church member whose fiancée just returned from Iraq. One of the church's two pastors was moderator.

Considering the extent of anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic attacks in the U.S., the presence of a Muslim and a Jew speaking against the war in this church made a strong anti-racist statement. Also, the forum benefited considerably from the strong presence of women panelists. A lengthy period of questions and discussion followed, with all panel members engaged by people from the audience afterwards.

We're proud that a strong voice in the church on the war has now been heard, involving the community in a small but significant way. Although the forum's tone was pacifist, the racist, imperialist nature of the war was exposed. The original group of 17 has grown somewhat since May. All receive CHALLENGE regularly.

Red Churchgoer

Anti-War Churchgoers Expose Pro-War Liberals

I'm a comrade working in the social justice section of a large, inter-racial, politically "liberal" church. Days after the Israeli bombing of Lebanon began, the senior minister preached about good and evil, weakly referring to Israel, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and the U.S. in this vein.

My friends and I began talking about a response to the killing and to highlight key political ideas, such as the role of oil and imperialism in the Mid-East, the political consequences of U.S. occupation of Iraq and Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and the negative role of nationalism and religion in the region. We proposed a forum about the situation to the minister in charge of our section, to be held the following week, and requested an announcement in the church bulletin and from the pulpit. Foreseeing this was unlikely to happen, we distributed 400 notices about the forum after service.

The following Sunday the senior minister preached about God as our "soul's roommate," not mentioning the Mid-East. Some people in social justice were dismayed. I responded that his silence indicated his support for the ruling-class position coming from Congress and both Democratic and Republican politicians.

The Sunday of the forum the senior minister mentioned a growing "conflagration that could lead to nuclear war" without naming the U.S. or any particular place in the Mid-East. Then he introduced his invited guests, referring to their "important contributions" -- Democrats Charles Rangel and Nancy Pelosi (who supported the House vote the week before to give India nuclear technology and information).

Following the service over 40 people attended the social justice forum at which comrades and friends effectively put forward our political perspective. The group agreed to organize a larger forum in the fall and to picket the U.S. Mission to the UN the following week.

A small group did picket the Mission, holding signs saying, "Stop the wars in Iraq and Lebanon"; "U.S. Out of the Middle East"; "No attack on Iran," and others. The police reacted quickly to our group because we hadn't "asked for permission in advance." In other words, the police hadn't been able to barricade us and divide us from the mostly friendly passers-by. They will no doubt call the church to "request" advance notice next time.

The contradictions between the church higher-ups and our political ideas will sharpen. Comrades working in ruling-class organizations and institutions can expect a long and difficult struggle as many people begin to question what's happening in the world, draw political lessons from the strengths and weaknesses of the old communist movement and realize that communism is not dead. PLP'ers' consistent efforts to raise our ideas and give political leadership in many arenas will lead to smaller and larger victories along the way to overthrowing capitalism worldwide and fighting for a communist society.

A Comrade

Rebel Soldiers Help Katrina Victims

Although it has been almost a year since hurricane Katrina hit, New Orleans still looks like the cities currently being devastated by the imperialism in the Middle East. With police and National Guard patrolling the desolate streets, graffiti-marked homes saying "Baghdad" and "FEMA Kills" remind residents and volunteers that New Orleans is still a war zone.

Recently a group of volunteers organized a "gutting block party" to help gut homes in order meet a deadline set by the city that threatens to seize and demolish the homes.

Despite the vacant streets and a lack of electricity or running water, the local community center was alive with volunteers and residents celebrating a revival of working-class solidarity. The aroma of good food and the echo of music flooded the streets as everyone geared up to gut homes.

To the dismay of many, the National Guard showed up to inspect the celebration. While many were angered by their presence, one PL'er struggled with two soldiers about what the organization was doing. Soon the soldiers became eager to help, and eventually brought water and ice that they stole from their barracks. This act of insubordination demonstrates the potential to win soldiers to the PLP to help fight for communism. The more soldiers are won to fight for communism, the fewer workers will die for the bosses' profits.

Gutting homes proved to be even more trying. Many homes had not been entered since Katrina. In some, the debris was so great that the doors would not open. Many residents requested that sentimental items such as photos be recovered, but once inside it became clear that the destruction left little to nothing that was recoverable. The destruction was a living testament to the fact that capitalism, whether it is in the Middle East or in New Orleans, destroys the lives of workers.

In the end, there wasn't much that could have dampened the spirits of the clean-up effort. Working side-by-side with the residents provided inspiration by reminding everyone of the direct impact they were having on the lives of their working-class brothers and sisters in New Orleans. Despite the alienation felt by many of the Katrina survivors trying to rebuild their lives, alienation paled in the face of working-class solidarity that day. PL must continue to work directly with residents bringing not only their communist message, but also their willingness to share in the hard work of rebuilding the lives of workers in New Orleans.

Southern Red

Raising PLP's Ideas At Pro-Immigrant March, Union Convention

On July 19, three of us, teachers in the same union, joined the rally at the end of the latest march for immigration reform in Chicago. Over 10,000 workers and youth listened to Democratic Congressman Luis Gutierrez, who wants to be mayor, and others speak in favor of legalization for all undocumented immigrants and suspension of all deportations.

The crowd was much smaller than the 400,000 who marched May 1. However, it had the same patriotic display of thousands of U.S. flags and a speakers' platform loaded with labor leaders and Democrats. More marches are being planned for September in Chicago and on the East and West coasts. We need to prepare now to be part of these mass, multi-racial marches of workers and to have a clearly identified Party presence to expose the liberals' plans to lead us to more fascism and war.

Self-critically, we didn't have a PLP contingent there with red flags, revolutionary chants and speeches, leaflets and CHALLENGES, as we did on May 1. We must seize these opportunities to reach out to masses of workers with our revolutionary line.

We were at this rally to sharpen the contradiction between reform and revolution. I raised this issue within my union's executive committee and with friends in two other locals. As elected delegates to our recent national convention, we fought to get our union on record in opposition to "any immigration policy that further militarizes the U.S. border, hinders workers' abilities to organize, imposes high fees and fines on those seeking legalization, pushes immigrant youth into the military as a path to legalization and citizenship or criminalizes individuals or groups who support or assist immigrants regardless of their status." Although this was not adopted, it showed that by continuing the struggle and sharpening our communist line within it, we can return stronger to the next convention.

Given the limits of the convention, we were still able to explain the need for communist revolution to many delegates, held a small dinner/forum which included three new delegates and distributed 200 CHALLENGES. About 2,000 leaflets placed immigration reform and other struggles in the context of the inter-imperialist rivalry: main contradiction moving events in the world today.

Whether it's immigration reform, education reform, or the Iraq war, the U.S. ruling class must bend every aspect of society toward maintaining its current dominant position among the world's capitalist powers. Workers will never gain this understanding from the liberal Gutierrez, who wants to guarantee the continued exploitation of immigrants for cheap labor and to increase the number of immigrant youth in the military. No matter what legislation is adopted, immigrants and citizens alike will be sacrificed to keep U.S. bosses the number one super-power. PLP can only bring this understanding to other workers if we're embedded in this movement, fighting for our politics.

After our convention experience, we needed no convincing to join the July 19 marchers. At the final rally, we used the time during the speeches to discuss two letters in the July 19 CHALLENGE. They described the New Orleans Summer Project, including how imported immigrant labor is being used there to pit black and Latino workers against one another. Afterwards we made plans to invite other friends and co-workers to a meeting to bring them into our discussion. Introducing communist ideas into our reform struggles now will make next year's convention an even greater opportunity to build our Party.

Red Teacher

Ted Kennedy, AFT Leaders: Partners in Racism and Imperialist War

[The last issue described the anti-imperialist struggle at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention.]

When Peace and Justice Caucus members heard that Senator Ted Kennedy would speak, many argued that, "He's so popular, we can't demonstrate against him." A few called him "anti-war" although he votes for every war-spending bill. Most thought he was "not very strong" on immigration. But Kennedy's special role is to get immigrant youth into the armed forces. At the AFT convention he put a liberal face on the AFT leaders' pro-imperialist policies. Right after his speech they trotted out their "special order" supporting Israel's attack on Lebanon.

The Kennedy family has carried out and supported every imperialist adventure since JFK sent 16,000 "advisors" to Vietnam to jumpstart the Vietnam War. Ted Kennedy backed Clinton's bombing of Kosovo. Criticizing Bush for not taking sufficient advantage of 9/11, he called for "multi-lateral" imperialism in order to project U.S. power far into the future.

Kennedy's AFT convention speech was mostly "motherhood and apple pie" -- higher minimum wage, women's rights, etc. But he emphasized his solidarity with AFT founder Albert Shanker, who led a racist "strike" in 1968, pitting mostly white teachers against black and Latino working-class parents. Kennedy also praised former AFT President Sandra Feldman, a member of the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations.

One AFT member recalled that, "When the racists were organizing against school integration in Boston 30 years ago and PLP was fighting them in the streets, Kennedy met with them and concluded they weren't racist at all."

Unfortunately, many delegates thought Kennedy's position on immigration -- reflected in Resolution #1 -- was also "motherhood and apple pie," a dangerous illusion! Said Kennedy (May 2006):

"60,000 immigrants are fighting in the U.S. armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan today....The [immigration] reform debate is [about]... the even stronger America we hope to become....[O]ur military leaders ... are recruiting a diverse fighting force to think in new ways as we deal with our dangerous world." He has bragged that his immigration bill would send many more immigrant youth into the military. He also supports:

* Doubling the U.S. border patrol within five years and using more National Guard troops to police the borders;

* Fortifying U.S. borders with fences, high-tech devices and vehicle barriers, and placing permanent checkpoints on highways inside the U.S.;

* Biometric ID for immigrants and a universal electronic eligibility system for all U.S. employers;

* A "guest worker" program to provide cheap labor for the bosses;

* A "path to citizenship" so filled with obstacles (thousands in fines, requirement of continuous employment, etc.) that few will gain it, but will build patriotism among immigrants;

* Denying legalization to anyone who belongs to a "totalitarian" [read: communist] party or whom the Attorney General "believes" (no evidence required!) to be a "terrorist" or a relative of a "terrorist"; and,

* The DREAM ACT which offers the bait of citizenship for undocumented youth who join the military.

Kennedy's stance reflects a critical shortage in the U.S. military. "The long-term neglect of U.S. ground forces has caused serious problems in the Iraqi and Afghan campaigns. If not corrected,... this neglect will cause even worse problems in the future." (Frederick Kagan, Foreign Affairs, 6/2006)

The number of non-citizens in the military has nearly tripled since 1999. Non-citizens are half as likely as the U.S.-born to leave before completing their enlistment.

Kennedy notes that "immigration will be the only source of growth in the prime age labor force in America in the next two decades." Of the 36.6 million 18- to 24-year-old potential recruits nationwide, about 1.5 million, or 4%, are legal residents but not citizens. About 400,000 undocumented youth are also in that age group. "No doubt many would be willing to serve for some set period in return for one of the world's most precious commodities -- U.S. citizenship," wrote Council on Foreign Relations fellow Max Boot ( LA Times, 2/2006)

Paul Bucha, Congressional Medal of Honor Society President, sums it up:

"[T]here is a standard by which to judge whether America is correct to maintain a generous legal immigration policy: Have immigrants and their children and grandchildren been willing to fight and die for the United States of America? The answer... remains a resounding `yes.'"

Young immigrant and black soldiers face racist treatment from the brass, who also bombard them with racist stereotypes of workers from other countries to justify killing as acceptable. Communist leadership within the ranks will build the fight against racism, help sharpen these contradictions and point the way forward to revolution.

Along the way, no task will be more important than tearing the sheep's clothing off liberal wolves like Ted Kennedy.

Spain: Anti-Franco Resistance Inspired World's Workers

(Part I described the Asturian Miners revolutionary uprising and commune in October 1934, which was viciously crushed by troops led by the fascist general Francisco Franco.)

On July 18, 1936, less than two years after the Asturian miners' insurrection, Franco and other fascist generals led an attempted coup against the Republican government elected five months earlier. This led to the bloody three-year-long Civil War.

The Republican government was a united front composed of social-democrats, liberals and leftists, including the PCE (Communist Party of Spain). At the beginning of the war, the PCE was relatively small, but it correctly stated that the government's hesitation to jail and punish the fascist generals like Franco, responsible for the bloody repression of the Asturian miners, was one reason for the attempted coup. The PSOE (Socialist Party) was the main force in the government. It was a social-democratic party which treated the fascist forces with kid gloves. It did nothing to purge the Franco-led Colonial Army which brutally put down rebellion in Spain's African colonies. (See box on the Popular Front.)

During the Civil War that followed the failed coup, nearly a million people were killed. The fascist Axis (Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy) helped the fascist forces with all their might. Mussolini sent up to 70,000 Italian troops to fight alongside Franco. The Nazis sent Franco its latest weapons (including Stuka dive-bombers and pilots to fly them) to test their latest weapons and its blitzkrieg war strategy, later used against the rest of Europe and the Soviet Union during World War II.

Only the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent Mexico's nationalist government of Lazaro Cárdenas (which had nationalized its foreign-owned oil companies), helped the Republican side. Thousands of communists, socialists and other anti-fascists from 70 countries volunteered to fight in the International Brigades alongside the Republican forces, 2,500 (mostly communists) coming from the U.S. in the Lincoln Brigade.

Meanwhile, the Western "democracies" -- supposedly "neutral" -- really helped the fascists. France closed its borders, forcing the Soviets to send help on ships, which were attacked and many sunk by Mussolini's submarines. Franco's forces got all the supplies they needed through Portugal, the latter being ruled by fascist dictator Salazar. The U.S. "neutrality" did not stop Texaco from selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil to Franco's army.

Many, including Trotskyites, anarchists and others, have always attacked the Soviet Union's role during the Civil War. But the fact is that without Soviet help, the war would probably have been lost much earlier. The Soviets supplied 750 fighter planes to the Republican side (200 built in Catalonia in the middle of the war). These planes were crucial in the important battle of the Ebro River.

After three years of heroic defense by the workers of Spain and their internationalist supporters, the fascists won. The imperialist "democracies" that helped Franco were also helping Hitler, hoping he would destroy the Soviet Union. But after taking most of Europe from 1939 to 1941 with relative ease, Hitler hoped to do the same with the then communist-led Soviet Union. He organized the largest invasion force in history, a four-million-strong army, including troops from many other European countries (including Franco's Blue Legion) to try to crush the Soviets. After initial Nazi successes, the Soviet Red Army and masses of people fought back, and, at the Battle of Stalingrad the entire German 6th Army was encircled and surrendered to the Soviets in February, 1943. They then defeated the Nazis in the battle of the Kursk Salient, involving over 7,000 tanks, the largest such battle in the history of warfare. After the Soviets defeated the bulk of the Nazi war machine, the Allies finally launched the Second Front in France on June 6, 1944, fighting a much-weakened Nazi army.

Although the workers and allies of Spain lost to Franco's fascist hordes, they showed the world that fascism could be taken on. Their example inspired all the anti-fascist forces which, led by the Red Army, eventually crushed the Nazis.

`Popular Front' Did Not Lead to Revolution

In February, 1936, Spain's leftist parties formed a so-called "Popular Front," which included communists in the capitalist government. The Popular Front advocated that -- with the advent of fascism and imperialist war -- communists should form an alliance with social-democrats and some "good" bosses to preserve capitalist democracy and peace. That meant communists gave up fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and limited the fight against fascism to what the social democrats agreed to.

In Spain, this ruled out an alliance of the anti-fascist forces with the anti-colonial rebels in Spanish Morocco, to avoid offending French colonialism. It meant going along with the social-democrats' half-hearted and incompetent leadership of the war. They were more anxious to hold back communists than to defeat fascists. It meant not organizing guerilla war in fascist-held areas. Thus, the communists didn't try to take power, even when there was no other hope to defeat fascism. So, in this first "trial run" of the Popular Front, signs were clear that this strategy cannot achieve communist workers' power, the only way to defeat capitalism -- the cause of fascism -- once and for all.

Workers and Peasants Practiced Communism in the Chinese Revolution

Communism means a society where people work for the collective welfare and get back what they need from society, and in which classes have been abolished. To accomplish this goal fully will require a long period of working-class power. Marx and the majority in the old communist movement believed that even beginning to move toward this goal -- by immediately ending the wage system that is inherited from capitalism and distributing according to need -- should also be put off to the distant future. Some communists, however, argued for replacing wages immediately with distribution according to need.

During its fight for power, the Communist Party of China (CPC) did just that within the Party, Red Army, and CPC-run factories, distributing food, clothes and incidentals mainly on the basis of need -- the so-called "supply system." They did, however, allow small differences based on rank or assignment [1]. The Japanese army observed, "If [a captured Chinese soldier] willingly gives the good food to others and quietly takes the worst, generally he will be a Communist."[2]

Several years after the CPC victory, they returned to wages. While many resisted this decision, CPC leaders believed that the promotion of production should be their main goal, and that the only way to promote production was to ally with local capitalists and rich peasants -- a policy called "New Democracy." New Democracy ended up by strengthening pro-capitalist forces and leading to the future restoration of capitalism, as alliances with the enemy always does.[3]

To achieve their goal, the CPC attempted a massive increase in industrial production with the "Great Leap Forward," and large-scale people's communes were formed. Many included communal meals, a step in the direction of distribution according to need. Inspired by the communes, Mao and other party leaders discussed returning to the supply system:

"Why must we grasp a wages system? This is offering concessions to the bourgeoisie .... For a long time [our Party] has implemented the free supply system. From several tens of thousands of persons it grew to several million, right up to liberation.... In work everyone was industrious and in warfare all were courageous. There was absolutely no reliance on material incentives, but rather a reliance on the drumbeat of revolutionary spirit." [4]

The idea that the communes could lead to communism was also discussed in the press in 1958. The People's Daily published an article calling for the return of the supply system,[5] and a big Shanghai paper argued that the idea that communism leads to laziness is a capitalist and feudal point of view.[6] Despite the promise of the people's communes, the Great Leap eventually led to a famine in which many people died. This failure was based in part on mistakes in economic planning by the left-wing forces and in part on floods and drought, and was used by the right-wing CPC leaders to attack the Great Leap as a whole and to undermine egalitarianism in the peoples' communes.[7]

In May 1966, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) began and "was officially directed against" the "few" people in the party and the government who were "taking the capitalist road." Many workers, students, and peasants fought to overthrow the revisionist "red bourgeoisie" that was running China, and some wanted to go directly to communism.[8] In 1967, worker activists in Shanghai, moving in the direction of distribution according to need, demanded an end to the division into permanent and part-time workers, and demanded "equal pay for workers irrespective of individual productivity."

After years of mass movements, including some armed struggle, the Left was defeated in the GPCR. Deng Xiaoping, chief of the CPC capitalist-roaders came to power in 1978, dismantled the communes, and restored capitalism in China.

Despite this defeat, the experience gained from the monumental struggles of Chinese workers, students and peasants show us the way forward to communism: Distribution according to need, which necessitates the abolition of wages, is not only possible, but nothing else can prevent the rise of a new capitalist class and rid the world of capitalism -- forever.

Footnotes:
[1] Mark Selden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China, Cambridge: Harvard University, 1971, pp. 152 - 157.
[2] Kitahara Tatsuo, Japanese army specialist on communism, quoted in Saburo Ienaga, The Pacific War, 1931-1945, New York: Pantheon, 1978, p. 94.
[3] See the PLP article "The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the Reversal of Worker's Power in China," http://www.plp.org/rr3/gpcr.html.
[4] Miscellany of Mao Tse-Tung Thought (1949-1968), Joint Publications Research Service, JPRS 61269-2, 20 Feb. 1974, vol. I, p. 233.
[5] L. Dittmer, Liu Shao-ch'i and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Berkeley: University of California, 1974, p. 186.
[6] "Disprove the `Communism Breeds Laziness' Theory," Wen Hui Bao, October 23, 1958, translated in Survey of China Mainland Press, #1900.
[7] F. Teiwes and W. Sun, China's Road to Disaster: Mao, Central Politicians, and Provincial Leaders in the Unfolding of the Great Leap Forward 1955-1959, Armonk: M. E. Sharp, 1999, pp. 213 - 222.
[8] See "Whither China?" by the "Ultra-Left" group Shengwulian, in K. Mehnert, Peking and the New Left, Berkeley, University of California, 1969.
[9] J. Daubier, A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, New York: Vintage, 1974, pp. 124 - 131; J. Domes, China After the Cultural Revolution, Berkeley: University of California, 1977, pp. 85 - 88.

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CHALLENGE, August 16, 2006

Information: 16 August 2006 622 hits

Religion, Oil Pipelines and Bosses' Dogfight
Imperialist War Massacres Workers and Their Children

In attacking Hezbollah, Israel's fascist leaders further intensified both regional conflicts and the global rivalry among imperialists. The Israelis bit off more than they could chew. Having underestimated the resiliency of Hezbollah's underground network and the size of its arsenal, Israel's top brass now know that they need a ground war, not just air strikes, and have called up thousands of reservists.

Bombing Lebanese civilians has only inflamed hatred of Israel and its U.S. backers and built pro-Hezbollah sentiment from Gaza to Indonesia. [Supporting Hezbollah, however, is a grave political mistake. Hezbollah is a racist and fundamentally capitalist organization that takes orders from Iranian oil billionaires cloaked as ayatollahs.] In addition, with arms flowing from the U.S. to Israel and from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah, the local clash is rapidly evolving into an escalating proxy war that deepens the divide between U.S. imperialists mired in Iraq and a host of challengers. At stake in the broader struggle are control of the entire Middle East and its oil and the lives of millions -- as cannon fodder or "collateral damage."

"The United States is already at war with Iran; but for the time being the battle is being fought through surrogates," wrote former ABC-TV news anchor Ted Koppel in the New York Times (7/21) citing, a "senior Jordanian intelligence official." Koppel and the Jordanian spy chief note Iran's gift of 12,000 rockets to Hezbollah and "more than $300 million in cash" to Hamas, "funneled through Syria" (although they fail to mention the U.S. rulers' annual $3 billion "contribution" to the Israeli war machine).

But the real cause of the current crisis, Koppel says, is the botched U.S. invasion of Iraq. Failing to replace Saddam Hussein with an effective occupying regime meant "tearing down the wall that had kept Iran in check." That failure has had other destabilizing effects.

While Israel and Hezbollah were busy murdering children, Iraq's oil minister Husain Al Shahristani met in Washington with executives of Exxon Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, Shell and BP (France's oil giant Total was conspicuously absent). Assuring the U.S. and British oil barons of first crack "in expanding Iraq's oil sector and developing new fields" (Associated Press, 7/28), he lamented that it would take at least four years to bring production even to pre-war peaks of four million barrels a day (mbd). U.S. rulers, represented by the Establishment's Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), as well as Bush's neocons, had projected a 6-mbd post-invasion output that would help spread prosperity, tranquility and pro-U.S. politics throughout the Mideast.

Leslie Gelb, ex-president of the CFR, calls Bush's Iraq fiasco the U.S.'s chief obstacle in dealing with Lebanon. "Mr. Bush has to restore America's military credibility....[H]e is so bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan that he cannot and will not take strong military action anywhere else." (Wall Street Journal, 7/28) Gelb says, "If Syria or Iran...stepped up unacceptable military operations in either Iraq or Lebanon, the U.S. could threaten...air attacks against Iranian and Syrian air-defense missiles and radars, air strikes against Iranian naval forces and oil depots, and cross-boarder raids into Syria to disrupt support of Iraqi insurgents."

Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, also sees Iraq policy as key to the problem but draws a different conclusion. "It is precisely our actions in Iraq that have opened the door for Iran and Syria to support Hezbollah and Hamas actions without much to fear from the U.S." ("Nieman Watch," Harvard University, 7/17) But Odom (like Rep. Murtha) calls for a U.S. "tactical retreat" from Iraq followed by a wider "counter-offensive" in the Mid-East, uniting the U.S. and "a coalition of the major states of Europe and East Asia."

In fact, U.S. rulers may not be sure of what to do. It's not strategic vision they lack; they have oil on the brain. What's missing for them are masses of people willing to shed blood for U.S. imperialism. Israel's bosses have the same problem and hesitate to send reservists into Lebanon.

An overlooked aspect of the fighting in Lebanon is the emergence of the eastern Mediterranean as a major oil transit hub. July 13 marked the opening of a U.S.-sponsored one-million-barrel-a-day oil pipeline, originating in the Caspian region and deliberately by-passing Russia, which ends at the Turkish port of Ceyhan, directly north of Israel, Lebanon and Syria. But more important is the 1.6-mbd pipeline from Kirkuk in Iraq that also discharges in Ceyhan. Although insurgents have severely damaged the pipeline, Exxon Mobil lifted 2.1 million barrels of Iraqi crude from Ceyhan in one recent week. (Reuters, 7/29)

Washington, no doubt, expects Israel -- which now gets a fifth of its oil through Ceyhan -- to increase its naval influence over adjacent shores. The Russians, however, much of whose oil exports enter the Mediterranean through Turkey's nearby Bosporus strait, have conflicting ideas. They're dredging Syria's Mediterranean port at Tartus, preparing to move the bulk of their Black Sea fleet there from Sevastopol (Kommerzant, Moscow, translated by Global Research, 7/28).

One trap for workers to avoid is rooting for the phony "anti-imperialists" like Hezbollah and Hamas, who actually abet the imperialist designs of Iran, Russia, China and the European Union (EU). Another is falling for the "peace" plans proposed at the UN. The U.S. wants Hezbollah disarmed, and NATO to occupy southern Lebanon. The EU, seconded by Russia and China, wants a UN force, and Hezbollah retained as a foil to Israel and the U.S. All the players here are acting in the deadly self-interests of various sets of capitalists.

As we've constantly pointed out, the international working class has absolutely no interest in siding with any of these murderous bosses. War is widening. We must raise this issue in all our shops, unions, campuses and mass organizations. Building a mass PLP and winning workers in all these areas to red politics is the order of the day. The only road to ending these killer wars is the one leading to communist revolution. Join us.

Anti-Racists Victorious In Showdown With Fascist Court System

FARMINGVILLE, NY, July 31 -- Attacks against Latino workers continue apace in Suffolk County, Long Island. Day laborers evicted from their homes continue to camp in the woods near Farmingville and allies of the fascist Minutemen continue to harass them and their prospective employers with photo and video cameras.

One year ago three anti-racist fighters were arrested for the "crime" of demonstrating in solidarity with these workers, under attack from a leader of the fascist anti-immigrant Sachem Quality of Life organization. Our militant picket line put him and his group -- openly affiliated with other anti-immigrant racists such as the Minutemen -- on the defensive. Workers that day appreciated our anti-racist presence and responded to our call for international working-class unity by joining our demonstration.

Our counter-attack against these arrests has seen that call spread more widely, growing out of this struggle. Hundreds of students and workers have packed the courtroom and seen the criminal INjustice system for what it is -- fascism at work. The cops themselves openly declared that they can arrest anyone they want at any time during any demonstration they don't like. The deep truth of our slogan, "The Cops, The Courts, The Ku Klux Klan, All a Part of the Bosses' Plan, has become apparent to more of our friends.

We took the offensive by reaching out to our base in the mass organizations and they responded by filling the courtroom every day. Some days we had 60 people for a courtroom made for 36 and some had to sit outside the courtroom. Other days we squeezed up to 50 people into the small room. We provided the political leadership for our attorneys who were ultimately won to the outlook of fighting for all three defendants as a whole, of jamming the courtroom with supporters and of making our politics primary throughout the entire trial. After one year, momentum continues to build (see box page 3).

At the close of the trial, after forty court appearances, all the defendants were found not guilty on all charges.

But the real victory here is the deepened political understanding we developed, a victory beyond the influence of any judge's decision. It belongs to ALL workers.

Interaction with workers on Long Island confirms that despite the constant bombardment of patriotic garbage generated by rulers both here and in Latin America, a deep reserve of internationalist sentiment persists in the broader working class. A creeping suspicion of liberals and Congress also persists. We must substantiate this through painstaking base-building in the heat of struggle.

We don't welcome arrests but neither shall fear of them paralyze us. To be attacked by the enemy is a good thing. We're learning that workers won to communist ideas are the ultimate and only power which can smash the capitalists and their courts, cops and jails. Each fight is an opportunity to reveal the enemy's weaknesses, a chance to learn and grow on a more solid basis than before. u

LATINO WORKERS REJECT LIBERALS, PLEDGE TO PACK COURTROOM

On July 14, two defendants and several friends were well-received at an action meeting/forum organized by the Workplace Project, an organization providing legal and other services to workers on Long Island. Panelists reviewed legislation pending in Congress as well as urged voting and unity between blacks and Latinos.

One defendant questioned the panelists as to why they recommended voting as the next phase of the "migrants' rights movement" if the same imperialists who want to send Latino youth to the Mid-East and who exploit Latin America are the ones who will pass the more liberal immigration bill some hope for. While the workers gathered that evening applauded the question delivered in Spanish), the same wasn't true for any of the panelists' answers.

Several attendees agreed to help pack the courtroom for the defense case and closing arguments and they did.

French-U.S. Bosses' Current Love Affair

Flashback: February 17, 2003. In San Francisco, 150,000 people rally against the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq. David Harris, a founder of the Vietnam War draft resistance, tells the crowd: "We're here to say `Thank you, France.'"

Maybe it seemed like the right thing to say. After all, just three days earlier French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin won an ovation when he told the UN Security Council that the use of force against Iraq was unjustified. Within a month, French president Jacques Chirac would threaten to veto UN support for the U.S. invasion.

But today the opposite seems true. France backs the U.S. on every important foreign policy issue: Israel, Iran, North Korea.... On Feb. 9, 2005, the French elite applauded Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice when she affirmed U.S. police power over "states where corruption and chaos and cruelty reign." That day, a Radio France Internationale reporter summed up France's new position: no timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, support for the Iraqi elections and for NATO intervention in Iraq.

Clearly, the French ruling class was never really committed to fighting against war and imperialism. But French bosses did see the invasion of Iraq as part of a plan to establish uncontested U.S. hegemony worldwide, and leave French bosses with a smaller slice of the world pie, according to Jean-Paul Hébert, a researcher at the school of higher studies in social sciences.

The French bosses thought their European counterparts would follow their lead in opposing the U.S. They were wrong. Former French foreign minister Hubert Védrine ruefully told a Le Monde-hosted internet chat, "The great majority of Europeans [i.e. European bosses] do not want to enter into a logic of being a counterweight [to the U.S.]. They think it's preferable to have good relations with the U.S. in the hope of influencing the U.S., even though that hope is illusory."

When French bosses saw which way the wind was blowing, they then ditched the anti-war movement and buddied up to the U.S. bosses. This proves, once again, that the anti-war movement can only rely on the working class and its soldier and student allies, because they're the sole groups in whose class interest it is to oppose imperialist war.

Any lingering doubts about the bosses' cynicism should consider how the France-U.S. rapprochement evolved, as laid out in a two-page spread in the April 6 Le Monde (the bosses' main newspaper for communicating their ideas to the French elites).

In the Fall of 2003 -- just months after the invasion of Iraq -- French president Chirac became worried about Syrian efforts to muscle the French bosses out of Lebanon. When Syrian president Bashar al-Assad turned a deaf ear to his protests, Chirac hinted to George Bush at the June 2004 D-Day commemoration that Lebanon needed "democracy." Within two months, Maurice Gourdault-Montague, Chirac's diplomatic advisor, and Condoleeza Rice, then Bush's national security advisor, were huddled together over Rice's laptop, pounding out the UN resolution that forced Syrian troops out of Lebanon.

Ever since, France has been playing "good cop" in the Arab world to the U.S. "bad cop," according to an unnamed French diplomat quoted in Le Monde. French diplomats advise Arab rulers that they [the French] are "restraining" the U.S., but the Arab rulers must toe the line because otherwise the U.S. will clobber them. The French bosses flatter themselves, that they're playing a role in world affairs by acting as U.S. messenger boy (although the destruction of "democratic" Lebanon by the U.S.-backed Israeli fascists might put a glitch in this love affair).

Nevertheless, Le Monde warns that the rapprochement is just a marriage of convenience. And Hubert Védrine warns that "China is...a future major world pole...an increasingly formidable trade rival, maybe an eventual military threat..." Védrine admonishes European bosses to "abandon their naivety" about U.S. intentions because "the world is changing before our eyes: new powers are emerging, a multi-polar world that excludes Europe could develop, China is growing in strength, with all that that implies, etc." Some French bosses want to be free to choose sides in a U.S.-China confrontation.

The front-runner for the "Socialist" Party nomination, and odds-on winner in next year's French presidential elections, is Ségolène Royale. She advanced her foreign policy aims in a June 22 interview in Le Monde. "Europe must not be on the defensive, but on the offensive," she said, "I deplore the defeatist talk of certain elites."

Once burnt, twice shy: If the French bosses think it's in their interest, they will again break with U.S. imperialism, and again pose as "friends" of the anti-war movement. No imperialist is truly against spilling workers' blood in endless wars for control of the oil that fuels their profit machines. Wars can't be fought by allying with one imperialist gang against another. It can only be done by ending its causes -- capitalism and imperialism -- and by building a mass revolutionary communist movement.

Whither Cuba?
State Capitalism or Back to a U.S. Colony?

Fidel Castro ceded power to his brother Raul Castro after undergoing surgery for intestinal bleeding. Many, particularly in the Bush administration and among Miami's right-wing Cuban exiles, have already announced his death. The question is, whither Cuba after Fidel?

Cuba is not a communist country but rather is state-capitalist retaining some concessions won by workers from the revolution's early stages. But workers don't run Cuba; it is run by the state-capitalist rulers led by Fidel (and now Raúl).

The Miami exiles and the Bush gang want to turn Cuba into a U.S. colony as it was from the 1898 U.S.-Spain war until 1959, when U.S.-backed dictator Batista was ousted. But this scenario is not exactly a given because the world today is not what it used to be 50 years ago when U.S. imperialism basically ruled Latin America and the Caribbean as its backyard. Now many other rivals have landed there: China, European bosses and even Russia -- which Fidel turned to when Washington began trying to oust and/or kill him. Russia is making a comeback; witness the recent billion-dollar weapon and trade deal with Venezuela. And local bosses are grabbing their cut, as evidenced by a meeting last month in Argentina of Mercosur, a Latin American free trade group. In Cuba itself, recent discoveries of huge offshore oil reserves have attracted oil company investments from Norway to China (with U.S. oil moguls shut out).

The most probable scenario of a post-Fidel Cuba more likely resembles China or Vietnam, with the current state-capitalist ruling class maintaining power and opening the economy to even more imperialist investments. Some in Miami hope the U.S. will invade Cuba if Fidel dies and provoke chaos there. This could happen, but with the U.S. quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan (and possibly Lebanon since their Israeli ally's "blitzkrieg" seems to be backfiring), this scenario is not a given either.

Whatever happens, Cuba's workers will not emerge winning. The key element needed right now is a real revolutionary communist leadership to fight for true workers' power.

Wildcat Strikers Take Over Barcelona
Airport, Fight Job Cuts

BARCELONA, Spain, July 31 -- Facing the contracting out of 4,000 jobs nationwide, and a do-nothing union leadership, on July 28 hundreds of baggage handlers took matter into their own hands and wildcatted, taking over the El Prat airport here -- one of Spain's largest -- blocking runways and preventing all flights from landing or departing.

This was the workers' answer to the growing attacks against their jobs -- similar to those suffered by airport and airline workers and other workers worldwide. AENA, the airport authority, ended its contract with Iberia Airlines. Union leaders told the workers about the looming job losses but didn't lift a finger to stop it. Coming smack in the middle of the high summer season, the militant action had a maximum effect, forcing cancellation of hundreds of flights until the bosses agreed to workers' demands.

Immediately, the bosses took the offensive. An editorial in El País, Spain's leading liberal newspaper, basically labeled the workers "terrorists," stating such "savage actions" should be banned. A judge is now threatening the workers with "crimes against airport security."

The workers did the right thing, not waiting passively for their union hacks to make a sweetheart deal with the bosses. While the union leaders were holding mass meetings, the workers ran them out and took over the hall, deciding on the wildcat strike.

Workers are fed up with capitalism, making them pay for the bosses' crises and endless wars. This kind of militant action can become a school for communism if a revolutionary leadership is built among such militant workers.

Hotel Union Uses Immigration `Reform' to Sidetrack Potential Walkout

LOS ANGELES -- Hotel workers in the LAX airport corridor are preparing for a strike this fall, probably together with those in other cities. But the UNITE-HERE union leaders are building a political movement that only benefits the bosses and their war plans.

Hotels like the LAX Hilton pay immigrant workers less than a living wage to boost profits. Housekeepers, servers and others -- many from Mexico and Central America -- make as little as $7.60/hour even after 20 years. Health insurance costs up to $300 monthly. "We want to change the community," said a server with 19 years on the job. "We want to work one job instead of two, we want to have more time with our families. It's not just for us, it's for our kids."

Hilton and Westin workers are becoming leaders, defying bosses who charge them with "insubordination" for "crimes" like requesting a rule book. When a union activist was suspended recently, 75 co-workers sat down in the cafeteria to support him. When they, too, were suspended for six days, they picketed the hotel daily until the suspensions were lifted.

"People are scared -- not of a strike, but of other employees staying inside," said a union organizer. The union exploits that fear by building reliance on clergy and politicians instead of on the workers themselves. A recent march began with hundreds of enthusiastic workers chanting loudly but ended with staged arrests of a dozen clergy and other supporters in front of the Hilton, amid a massive, intimidating police presence. As the hotel workers drifted away, most of the energy disappeared.

UNITE-HERE doesn't expect a strike to win anything so they work closely with the City Council to legally extend the "living wage" ordinance now covering the airport to cover the nearby hotels. At best, that could raise wages to $10/hour -- still not enough to support a family here, even with two wage-earners working full time!

This small step -- which the bosses can wipe out easily by raising health premiums -- would come at tremendous political cost. When workers rely on politicians, they tie themselves to the same capitalist system that causes their exploitation. This is UNITE-HERE's plan for LAX hotel workers.

So far, it has mobilized workers around immediate issues: insufficient staff or equipment, speed-up, no breaks, no respect, high cost of health insurance. But with a multi-state hotel strike likely, union leaders are redirecting workers' militancy into supporting liberal rulers' "immigration reform."

New union literature highlights the "American Dream," denied to hotel workers, and calls for a "pathway to citizenship" to supposedly make this dream a reality. What lies! Across the U.S., tens of millions of citizen-workers realize that life under capitalism is a nightmare, not a dream.

This "pathway to citizenship" (actually an obstacle course) is the main distinction between the Hagel-Martinez Senate immigration bill and the Sensenbrenner House bill. It's a cruel trick designed to build patriotism among immigrant workers so they'll fill the huge holes in the bosses' military. As CHALLENGE has noted, the U.S. military desperately needs "more boots on the ground" and immigration is likely to be the only source of population growth in the 18-24 age group for some time. UNITE-HERE's "American Dream" campaign is playing right into their hands. Witness the "democracy" U.S. rulers and their Israeli lieutenants are bringing to workers from Baghdad to Beirut!

"I never thought of the connection between immigration and war before," said one hotel worker, "but it really does make sense." Imperialist wars and all other curses of capitalism can only be ended with communist revolution. That's why CHALLENGE readers must spread this paper to more hotel workers. We must mobilize our friends and co-workers to bring these important ideas to the picket lines, to workers' homes, and to the September 28 march on the Hilton headquarters in Beverly Hills. The bosses are fighting for the loyalty of these workers. We must fight back.

THOUSANDS OF DISSIDENT WORKERS MARCH IN VENEZUELA

CARACAS, July 19 -- Thousands of trade unionists marched to the National Assembly today, demanding respect for workers' rights. This was not a right-wing action but one organized by a militant caucus opposing the hacks leading the UNT (the Union Federation formed by pro-Chavez union leaders to counter the CTV, the virtually defunct pro-U.S. and pro-AFL-CIO federation). Other mass organizations joined the march.

The workers were protesting the constant violations of union contracts by private and government bosses, firings, low wages and the lack of job security. They also opposed joint ventures by the government with private international oil companies which attack energy workers. The marchers also defended workers who have seized plants abandoned by their bosses.

However, these workers, including the dissident militant C-CURA caucus inside the UNT), still have many illusions in Chavez's so-called "Bolivarian Socialism of the 21st Century." This is a deadly mistake. Workers need to build their own revolutionary leadership and fight for real workers power without any bosses -- communism.

CHALLENGE A Weapon to Unite Workers, Reject Divisive Nationalism

Seven young Washington, D.C. students and workers went to New Orleans with a group that prioritizes resident empowerment and brings displaced residents back to the city.

We had many sharp political discussions. The highlights of the trip were the levee tour (see next issue) and CHALLENGE sales.

We sold CHALLENGE to day laborers at Lowe's Hardware store, speaking to several workers about uniting black residents with super-exploited workers from Latin America. Anxieties over our Spanish skills dissolved once we began talking with the workers. Although not everyone in our group spoke Spanish, the workers still appreciated the effort and support from everyone. They were very receptive to the ideas and took about 10 papers for fellow workers. One man from Mexico said, "So how do we get together to work on this?" He gave us his name and number, as did two other workers.

The Iberville Project residents were also very receptive. Some had already seen the paper, giving us hope for sustainable Party work here. We spoke with some young men interested in the Middle East situation and in growing fascism here. They said the U.S. was trying to "take over" resources there. One talked about the cops' harassment of black people, specifically of those in the projects. We distributed 15 CHALLENGES. Three people asked us to contact them about talking politics and taking action.

We also discussed black nationalism and fighting racism. Some volunteers we met have a black nationalist outlook. One stressed that black people should do most of the talking with residents door to door, while white workers in the group should stay in the background taking notes. Our multi-racial group was turned off by this idea. Some people thought black residents wouldn't talk to white workers. This directly contradicted our positive experience with Latino workers at Lowe's and black workers at the Iberville Projects.

While the group we worked in focuses on building black leadership, an important goal, and while black workers will surely be leaders of the revolutionary communist struggle, no revolution can succeed without a unified multi-racial fight against racism and capitalism. Hopefully, as the organization develops able black leadership, a sharp political struggle for communist politics within the organization will point in a winning direction.

This experience strengthened our collective and built communist ideas in the future PLP'ers who came with us. We encourage everyone considering going to New Orleans to go, not only with the idea of easing suffering, but of ending it altogether with communist revolution.

Power of Working Class Shines Amid Fascist Repression

July 28 -- "I think the whole system is designed to keep us down -- from the schools to the jails -- not just FEMA and the storm. It's the whole rotten system." So declared an angry black working-class resident in the devastated area called New Orleans East.A group of teachers, parents and student volunteers traveled to this city to work, learn and participate in its sharp class struggle. Our multi-racial contingent spent a week gutting homes, visiting displaced residents, viewing Katrina's destruction and getting to know other volunteers.

We learned many valuable political lessons, the key one being the power of the working class. We saw what we could do by sharing tasks, helping each other and making decisions collectively. We also saw how strong many of the residents were who continue to fight, organize and speak their minds as they try to rebuild their lives and communities.

We met residents from the Iberville Projects who took back their apartments, and residents from New Orleans East whose homes were demolished and who were open to organizing groups such as the Survivors Councils. We met others who were courageous during Katrina and who saved neighbors' and friends' lives, contrary to the racist images the media portrayed.

We saw the growth of fascism with our own eyes -- while much of the city is abandoned and strewn with debris (including asbestos), the National Guard is patrolling in army vehicles, pulling over residents, mostly young black men. There's a curfew and few if any services for those who have returned. While there is a growing grassroots movement to encourage residents to come home ("the right of return"), it's clear that the ruling class continues to force those who do return to live in deplorable conditions.

The majority of homes in the Lower Ninth Ward are still abandoned and have signs spray-painted on them by FEMA marking the number of dead and living people and animals found upon inspection last September.

We also had great discussions with volunteers, residents and Summer Project staff at work sites and at daily evening meetings on grassroots organizing, a vanguard movement, nationalism and class, and about what it means to devote your life to changing society. High schools students led an evening workshop on the role of sexism.

The Project here is very much focused on high school students, revealing how they are an important ally of the working class and how willing some young people are to do hard work, to grapple with political ideas and to fight back! We pledged to return to New Orleans this winter with even larger contingents and to continue to show our solidarity with the struggling workers there.

PLP Anti-Racist Base Can Unite Katrina Victims Against Bosses' System

New Orleans is symbolic of both the utter callousness of the capitalists and the matchless collective spirit of the working class. It's a situation which exemplifies both the challenges and the opportunities that lie ahead to winning working people to PLP's communist politics.

Terry, a woman living here in the middle-income neighborhood of Gentilly, told us her story. Because Gentilly is not on a flood plain, Terry and some of her neighbors stayed to wait for Katrina to pass. They'd been through hurricanes before. However, they hadn't known that the canals surrounding the neighborhood would overflow when the levee broke several miles away.

As Terry walked through her house to get her family out, the water rose from her knees to her neck in minutes. Her family, along with about 50 neighbors, took shelter in a two-story house. Her son and his friend, both over 6 feet, rescued 17 people, including three children, one a baby. Terry and her neighbors were rescued from the second floor and taken to the Superdome.

She described the conditions we've all heard about: no bathrooms, no food, no water. National Guardsmen first told them they couldn't leave but later, when they managed to get outside, they were told they couldn't go back in. They slept on the sidewalk. Eventually, they were bussed to San Antonio. She said she would have stayed there, but her mother wanted to come "home."

Many New Orleanians want to return to the only home they've ever known. However, the city, state, and federal governments -- racist to the core -- are making that next to impossible for poor black people.

Several Chicago students and teachers traveled here recently to help organize people who want to fight for the right of return. It was an amazing experience.

In addition to Terry, we heard many other stories highlighting the complete disregard by the ruling class towards people in the path of Katrina, especially the most disadvantaged. Those left behind to die were the same people who this system has always treated as disposable -- not just here, but everywhere. Many Chicagoans noted the similarities between the plan to use Katrina to turn New Orleans into a whiter, wealthier city and Mayor Daley's gentrification schemes for Chicago.

Although we saw many horrors and heard many stories of governmental abuse and neglect, we also had reason for hope. Thousands of volunteers are here from across the U.S. Despite living under a capitalist system, where profits are valued above people, these volunteers have come during the hot Gulf Coast summer to help gut houses, feed people, and provide other services. Many New Orleanians are fighting the government's refusal to let them rebuild their homes. There are beginnings of unity between black and immigrant workers. Building an anti-racist base for PLP can solidify this unity and point out to Katrina's victims both the source of their plight -- capitalism -- and the solution: workers power.

Teachers Challenge Pro-War AFT Hacks

BOSTON, July 25 -- The leadership of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) used the union's international convention here to justify the bombing and invasion of Lebanon by Israel, helping to pave the way for major war in the Middle East. More than 1,000 delegates voted against the leadership's pro-war proposal.

Many had read the 500 CHALLENGES and 5,000 daily CHALLENGE flyers distributed by PLP'ers, with an editorial each day on that day's topic. The literature included PLP's advocacy of revolutionary communism and our position on many other issues like inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S. and China; liberal politicians as the main fascist danger; and the racist nature of the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) as well as of the debate on immigration. CHALLENGE was well-received by the delegates; when one resolution (on China) was being debated on the floor, many delegates were poring over our newspaper.

More than 3,000 delegates were in the hall when the President introduced a special order of business on "State-Sponsored Terrorism and the Crisis in the Middle East." Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran were criticized and the right and responsibility of Israel to defend its borders were affirmed. It ignored the acts of the world's biggest terrorists, Bush, Rumsfeld & Co. and their junior partners in the Israeli government.

Delegates lined up at the microphones but debate was shut down in fifteen minutes. The leadership's move follows its consistent support for U.S. imperialist foreign policy by promoting patriotism and anti-communism while trying to steer the membership into the arms of the Democratic Party. Sen. Edward Kennedy was a featured speaker and was introduced as "a great friend of labor," a "friend" who is one of the main sponsors of legislation viciously attacking immigrant workers and whose colleagues like Hillary Clinton want to send even more troops into the Iraq quagmire. (More on Kennedy's role in our next issue.)

During the past two years anti-war sentiment has grown within the union and resolutions condemning the war in Iraq have been presented at state and national conventions. This year four locals submitted resolutions which not only criticized the Bush administration but also the various ways the U.S. is trying to control the Middle East for economic and political reasons. They called for immediate withdrawal.

Right-wing forces centered in the New York State delegation tried to counter these efforts by introducing Resolution #31 which criticizes Bush but not the system. Progressive forces could not defeat #31 within committee but, after sharp debate, amended it to include the phrase "oppose the war" and to call for the removal of all U.S. bases and troops in Iraq.

The passage of amended #31 produced mixed reactions, some feeling that in and of itself this was a victory but actually the real victory was PLP'ers influencing the debate with our anti-imperialist communist position. A major step forward was the formation at this convention of an AFT Peace and Justice Caucus with 130 delegates signing up. This new group has the potential to become a significant mass organization if it reaches out to union members, engaging in anti-war struggles in the schools in between conventions, as well as fighting the racist educational system which, in NYC for instance, had produced the most segregated schools in the country.

PLP members must introduce communist politics into this Caucus, championing reliance on the masses, not on the AFT leadership and their friends in the Democratic Party. (More next issue.)u

Anti-Racist, Anti-War Resolutions At AFSCME Convention

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees' (AFSCME) international leadership plans to spend the second week of August at its Chicago convention fighting to get a dues increase. Although U.S. workers face the growth of fascism and the specter of more and wider imperialist wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, the pro-capitalist union "leaders" agenda is about fattening their business's bottom line.

Many workers understand the need to speak about, and act against, the horrors confronting our class here and worldwide. In AFSCME's New York City District Council 37, affiliated locals have passed several resolutions on such issues as the ongoing racist disaster in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast; immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq; and supporting immigrant rights while attacking both the Sensenbrenner and McCain-Kennedy Bills.

Such resolutions, even if passed, won't change the world, but the struggle over what ideas should lead the working class is part of that change. Many delegates, like those in the locals which passed these three resolutions, honestly want to act on the problems we face.

Therefore, it is crucial for our co-workers to understand that these problems cannot be solved by electing "good politicians," or by trying to reform that which can't be reformed. They are inherent in the profit system. Our goal must be to destroy it. Progressive Labor Party will be offering our revolutionary communist solutions for their consideration.

DeMOCKracy in Iraq:
Three Strikers Murdered in Kurdistan

Iraqi Kurdistan, run by pro-U.S. hacks, has a reputation for being free of the daily butchery flooding the rest of the U.S.-occupied country. But it seems this doesn't apply to workers fighting back. On July 27, police and "security" forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) opened fire on 700 workers on strike against the Tasloja Cement Factory near Suleiumanyian. Three workers were murdered and 16 were injured.

The strikers were demanding higher wages and the re-hiring of 300 fired workers. The cops and security forces dealt with these workers as if they were "insurgents."

But what else can be expected from the (PUK) rulers? They've committed the same atrocities for years against anyone opposing their capitalist masters (several of the PUK leaders are millionaires).

This is the kind of "democratic freedom" the U.S. imperialists and their lackeys are imposing on the workers of the Middle East.

NY City Workers:
Red Politics Can Expose `Coalition of Sellouts' and War Contract

NEW YORK CITY, July 18 -- When District Council 37 of AFSCME announced a new contract covering nearly half the city's workforce, it signaled an attempt by the Bloomberg administration to impose its terms on all other city unions. Its 10% wage increase over 32 months barely keeps pace with inflation, and only seems like an "advance" when compared to the last contract -- ZERO percent for one year. Although touted as a "no-give-back" contract, it retains the two-tier give-back initiated in the last contract which pays new workers lower wages for their first two years. All this clears the decks for billionaire mayor Bloomberg to launch a campaign to wring give-backs from pensions and health benefits down the road.

Bloomberg's ruling class is driven to force such cuts in workers' conditions because of U.S. capitalism's problems worldwide: competition from imperialist rivals in Europe, China and Japan; a huge trade deficit; a losing quagmire in Iraq costing hundreds of billions; and an exploding war in the Middle East by imperialist clients sending the cost of oil skyrocketing. All this is impelling the ruling class to break unions and make workers pay for the bosses' crisis. This is fascism at the workplace.

The rulers' primary defense against working-class revolt is their state power -- laws, courts, police, military -- and their ideological control through their media and schools. But to avoid exposing the state (their government) as a dictatorship of capital, they have the union leaders to contain class struggle within the limits of the contract, head off or limit strikes and win workers to think they must accept their lot.

As "leaders" who defend the profit system, they are pro-capitalist agents of the bosses in the workers' ranks. Therefore, they must get workers to knuckle under to the bosses' need to save their system on the workers' backs. Knowing that there is "widespread grumbling among municipal workers" (NY Times, 7/13), these union lieutenants of the bosses look for ways to keep the wraps on this anger. So 20 other unions in the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC) -- about half the city's workforce -- declared they will bargain "together" to counter any "pattern" set by DC 37. Already the city bosses are hinting they might not even negotiate with such a "coalition."

But this dancing back and forth between these two "sides" is designed to try to pull the wool over the rank-and-file's eyes. As the Times says, this MLC move "is partly a response to" that "widespread grumbling." When bargaining individually, union leaders like Randi Weingarten, MLC head and president of the teachers union, have been selling out their membership for years. A big coalition of 20 such hacks will only produce a bigger sellout.

Riding off the rank-and-file unity that developed in the transit strike, these union fakers hope that putting forward the tactic of 20 unions bargaining together will lead workers to think such unity will produce a better contract. But this is not rank-and-file unity; it is unity of the bosses' agents to head off workers' anger and save the "leaders" skins.

Real working-class unity can only flow from leadership that defies the bosses' system, red leadership. Some of that has been provided among city workers throughout PLP's existence. This is leadership that not only stands ready to break the bosses' laws, but also points out that reforms cannot solve problems inherent in capitalism, a system that puts profits first and workers on the garbage heap.

This unity also includes multi-racial unity, and a fight against racism, given that a huge number, if not a majority, of the city workers are black and Latino. These union misleaders have never led a concerted struggle against the racist bosses who have oppressed city workers and students, especially the black and Latino majority.

Victory in this contract struggle means spreading the revolutionary ideas of CHALLENGE which will help workers unite to fight the bosses, not bow to them, and will win workers to understand that only destroying the system and replacing it with workers power -- communism -- can solve our problems. This means expanding the circulation of the paper, developing more networks of CHALLENGE distributors, recruiting more workers to study-action groups and to joining PLP. Unity growing out of that kind of struggle is the opposite of the union leaders' "unity," which unites with the bosses' system.

LETTERS

Con Ed Profits From Workers Misery

The suffering, hardship and death in Queens, NY, along with new outages on NYC's Staten Island and the over 100 heat-related deaths in California all due to power blackouts continue the bosses' war on the working class. The growing fascist control and manipulation of the news we get turns the world upside down and distorts the truth, from Iraq to New Orleans to Queens. What about the thousands of 100-year-old feeder cables rotting because of no repair or replacement? What about the billions Con Ed bills us for while they warn us of power shortages and tell us to cut back on our use of electricity, a basic need to sustain life in the cities?

In a city boasting one of the greatest concentrations of wealth in the world, with the country's biggest utility -- possessing $25 billion in assets and $12 billion in annual revenues -- working-class families are forced to throw out food and go without lights or air conditioning in 95-degree weather, especially the aged and sick.

Electric power, like all capitalist products, is a commodity sold for profit. When the cost of building new generation plants and maintaining the infrastructure cuts into profits, the utilities slash supply and have reduced the workforce by 35% over 20 years, down to skeleton crews barely capable of making repairs when neglected equipment fails. When the City-owned, bondholder-controlled transit system was denied fare increases, it followed the same scenario until major derailments and service disruptions forced workers to approve a staggering bond issue providing billions in new taxes to rebuild the system.

Now it seems Con Ed may be going the same route. Money the government used to give them and other utilities now finances dozens of wars launched or sponsored by the U.S. ruling class to protect their profits and dominance.

Fascism is increasing because the bosses fear workers' growing unrest and anger at their rotten system that extracts profits from workers' misery and death. Con Ed fed us misinformation for almost two weeks, saying the power loss was a "minor problem" involving a few hundred people; then it became 1,800; then 25,000 and finally 100,000. If one adds homes and apartments with reduced voltage affecting lights, air conditioning and elevators, the figures reach 200,000 victims of Con Ed profiteering. But just as Con Ed turns truth from day to night, workers organizing for revolution will change capitalist night into a communist day.

A Comrade

Campus Workers Unite Against Boss's Squeeze

The class struggle is picking up at my NYC campus. The bosses are squeezing the workers -- what few remain after a round of firings -- for more and more work. The bosses are also using all their tricks to reduce costs.

However, recently all the members of one crew began fighting back, signing a letter to the "big boss" complaining about the workload. Standing together will make us stronger and enable us to resist attacks. The "big boss" sent quite a nasty letter in return, but our point got across.

At this jobsite a modest number of workers are reading CHALLENGE and being confronted with revolutionary communist ideas. Although this reform struggle seems small, the ideas in CHALLENGE are shaping this into a revolutionary one. While the class struggle continues with or without communist ideas, the responsibility lies with communists to bring red ideas to the fore and fight for political leadership of the working class.

For example, in this struggle it is crucial to point out that given the new social contract (fascism) under which we live, conditions will worsen. No matter how hard we fight or what few reforms we may win, our gains will be taken away. Workers here and everywhere must realize that only through communist revolution can we end the misery we face on and off the job.

Young Red Worker

Reds True Fighters Against Anti-Semitism

The Sunday NY Times Book Review (7/23) carried a review of Jan Gross's book, "Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz," by David Margolick, which slandered communists, the real fighters against anti-Semitism. The review says the following about the July 4, 1946 murderous anti-Semitic attack, or "pogrom," when Poles murdered 42 Jews in the Polish city of Kielce, a year after World War II ended:

"Days before the pogrom, the Polish primate, Cardinal August Hlold, had spurned Jewish entreaties to condemn Roman Catholic anti-Semitism. Afterward, he charged that by leading the effort to impose Communism on Poland -- Jews were in fact prominent in the party, though hardly in control -- the Jews had only themselves to blame. The point was seconded by the bishop of Kielce, who suggested that Jews had actually orchestrated the unrest to persuade Britain to hand over Palestine. It was a neat trick: being Communists and Zionists simultaneously. Only the bishop of Czestochowa condemned the killings, and was promptly reprimanded by his colleagues. One wonders how Karol Wojtyla, then a young seminarian, later Pope John Paul II, viewed this cesspool of ignorance and intolerance."

So the Roman Catholic Church, evidently including the later "saintly" Pope Karol Wojtyla, either did nothing or actively blamed the Jews themselves!

Then Margolick says, "If the Church gave the Jews short shrift, the same was true of the Communists, even the Jewish ones. For them, ignoring the Jewish plight, as well as Polish complicity in wartime atrocities, offered a way to ingratiate themselves with a wary nation."

This is a lie. The communists did NOT "ignore the Jewish plight."

Margolick has to know -- but fails to mention -- that Polish and Soviet communist leaders moved swiftly to severely punish those responsible for the murderous anti-Semitic pogrom. They compelled everyone in Kielce, 10,000 people, to watch the funeral procession for those murdered Jews.

Five days later, the communists put 38 pogrom participants on trial. Nine were sentenced to death and executed on July 12, 1946. (*See bottom for website source.)

Evidently the Times' reviewer felt compelled to hide the fact that the communists fought anti-Semitism with a determination unmatched by the Western Allies.

Like Poland, pre-war Hungary was a fascist dictatorship in which anti-Semitism, along with other forms of racism against minorities (Rumanians in Hungary, Ukrainians in Poland) was institutionalized. During the 1930's and '40's the communist movement) opposed anti-Semitism more strongly than any other political force (including the Zionist movement). As former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin wrote in 1951: "The Soviet Government fought anti-Semitism with characteristic pertinacity....The truth is that the Soviet Government is anti-anti-Semitic."

Naturally many Jews were attracted to the communist movement. Many welcomed the Red Army after the war and joined various communist parties. Many communist leaders in Hungary as elsewhere were Jewish. Historically, communists have always led the fight against all forms of racism.

A Red History Buff

French Reader Gets Kick Out of Anti-Racist Football Article

When the latest issue of CHALLENGE arrived, I told my usually apolitical 18-year-old son about the article on the soccer star Zidane, and he said, "You're putting me on." I said, "No," and we immediately read the article together.

We discussed it -- he knows all about the racism of the Italian soccer clubs -- and I didn't even know he took an interest in the matter! So, one small testimony that printing this story was an excellent idea.

Zidane's backing off from charging racism breaks the rhythm of the article, but facts are stubborn things; we live in a complex world. It's important to know that there are limits to how far millionaire soccer players will go.

A Friend in France

Israeli Move Part of U.S. Plan?

I believe the Aug. 2 CHALLENGE editorial contains a misunderstanding

of Israeli motives for invading Lebanon. Israel has not acted on its own volition. Since mounting an action of this magnitude requires extensive organization, it is likely that this conflict is the U.S.-planned prelude to the bombing and subsequent invasion of Iran. When Israel "decides" to pursue Hezbollah into Syria, the U.S. hopes to draw Syria into the war; Iran has a defense agreement with Syria. Once Iran enters the war, the U.S. would mount its own invasion from Iraq. This plan is predicated on the "cooperation" of the ruling classes in Syria and Iran.

Long-time reader

CHALLENGE Comment: The U.S. does not seem to be prepared to invade Iran at this point, considering its problems controlling Iraq (having to send still more troops into Baghdad). While your predictions about the consequences of these attacks are true, it's difficult to be certain whether the U.S. is behind the attacks or whether Israel is acting for its own interests and hoping the U.S. will allow them to continue, assuming it benefits the U.S. ruling class.

Communist School Stresses Crucial Role of Industrial Workers

LOS ANGELES, July 31 -- The last three weeks of our 2006 Summer Project demonstrated the potential for organizing a revolution and a communist society through a series of communist schools, study groups, leafleting, CHALLENGE sales and developing closer ties. The schools were memorable and vital, attended by up to 30-plus people at each. Two people joined PLP; many others are seriously considering it.

In one school, an industrial worker stressed the importance of young comrades becoming factory workers, citing the revolutionary potential of industrial workers. This coincided with our leafleting at many plants. He also suggested a "work-in," where those interested would find temporary factory jobs for a better understanding of industrial work, even if not doing it long-term. His description of developing ties with co-workers provided a better feel for doing industrial work.

We also heard presentations on the history of PLP, on immigration, and on racism and its roots in capitalism and imperialism. We discussed New Orleans and the need for multi-racial unity against racism, an attack on the whole working class as well as the need for communism and dialectics. We also analyzed the current Middle East crisis -- a sharpening quagmire rooted in inter-imperialist rivalry and many local bosses' greed for more oil profits. The war in Lebanon is a murderous example of this rivalry and possible omen of a coming world war. All this highlighted the necessity for even more dedication in building our party.

We had struggles over collectivity and contradiction between reform and revolution, understanding that while participating in reform struggles, it's an illusion to think they'll lead to revolution.

With consistent, day-to-day, hard work of building personal-political relationships and with genuine political and ideological struggle for communism (including a wider distribution of CHALLENGE), we will be able to bring our friends closer to the party. We're learning that it's not enough to just push for militant anti-imperialist politics. Grasping the primacy of a communist outlook will increase participation in events such as the Summer Project and building networks of CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, necessary to sustain our Party and movement. Many of us are realizing that fighting for communism is not a sacrifice -- it's in our class interest. We will lead more fulfilling lives from our experiences as communist organizers. A proper struggle can only strengthen us on an individual level and as a Party on a collective level.

Our communist school has inspired future study groups with more widespread leadership from among our comrades and our close friends as a result of these struggles here. We plan more anti-racist activity and will emerge from this even stronger.

Mexican Elections Won't Change Workers' Lives

[The following was accidentally omitted from our last issue -- Ed.]

Oaxaca's militant teachers have returned to work. They were pressured by the media's claim that if the teachers "care" about the students, they'll go back to work while negotiating their contract. The section below was written while the strike was still on.)

OAXACA, MEXICO, July 14 --"The Teachers' Struggle is Also the Workers' Struggle!"; "Long live Communism; Death to Capitalism!"olk,0

These were some of the slogans chanted by many people in the mega-march of 500,000 people in Oaxaca supporting the teachers.

The PRD and its candidate, Obrador Lopez, have promised to spend more money on education, scholarships for the poor, and pensions for the elderly and other reforms. Even if he had won the election and slightly limited the huge profits of Mexico's bosses and the imperialists, the lives of Mexican workers would not be changed significantly. As the competition increases between local capitalists on the one hand and the imperialists on the other, workers are sinking into greater poverty.

REDEYE

Officers's order in Iraqi: kill all able men

Military prosecutors last month accused four soldiers in the unit of releasing three Iraqi men they captured that day, only to kill them....

But the lawyers are...making a more startling claim: that the soldiers were given explicit orders before the raid to "kill all military-age males" they encountered.

The lawyers say that two senior officers -- a colonel and a captain -- have acknowledged that they gave that order, as have other men in the same company. (NYT, 7/23)

Imperialist boundaries poison Mid-East

...For the optimists hoping that war in the Middle East will soon end so the rebuilding can commence, there is a serious problem....

Boundaries between many countries of the Middle East, like those in Africa, were...put together...by European colonizers who...lumped enemies together on purpose, hoping that ethic hatreds might reduce anticolonial feelings...A new study....compares the performance of countries with natural borders to those with artificial ones and finds, overwhelmingly that artificial nations suffer terribly -- lower income, horribly ineffective and corrupt governments, less respect for the law, low literacy, limited access to clean water, poor health care, you name it.

...And having oil wealth is unlikely to save the day. Fragmented countries with natural resources often do worse because civil war rages over who gets to keep the money. Some of the poorest countries in Africa, for example, are actually quite well endowed with diamonds and other resources. (NYT, 7/20)

Nixon adviser says fascism is real threat

John Dean, the White House counsel who warned Richard Nixon 32 years ago that Watergate was "a cancer growing on the presidency," was back in town the other night....

"What is at the end of the road in America," he said, "is a proto-fascist type attitude.".... "We have a very real possibility in this country of getting on that road. We're not very far from it. It wouldn't take a very sharp turn."

His observations, Dean said, are based on many discussions with social scientists... (Tribune Media SVC., 7/16)

`For a good person to do evil, takes religion?'

In "Breaking the spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon," Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher and theorist of cognition at Tufts, refers again and again to the "brave" researchers (including himself) who challenge religion. In " The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins, a professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford, once again likens religious faith to a disease and sets as his goal convincing his readers that atheism is "a brave" aspiration....

...As the (atheist) physicist Steven Weinberg has famously put it,...good people tend to do good, evil people tend to do evil, but for a good person to do evil -- "that takes religion." (NYT, 7/25)

Dixie Chicks say religion keeps us down

The Dixie Chicks...Lead singer Natalie Maines belts it out: "Dust bowl. Bible Belt. Got more churches than trees. Raise me, praise me, couldn't save me. Couldn't keep me on my knees." (Liberal opinion, 7/26)

Judge bars Wal-Mart workers' health $

Wal-mart won a major legal victory when a federal judge in the US struck down a Maryland state law requiring large retailers to provide minimal levels of health insurance. (GW, 8/3)

IRS firing auditors who find rich cheaters

The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes....

Estate tax Lawyers are the most productive tax law enforcement personnel at the I.R.S.,...For each hour they work, they find an average of $2,200 of taxes that people owe the government. (NYT, 7/23)

US-Israel axis devastates Lebanon

The United Nations estimates that between 500,000 and 700,000 Lebanese have been displaced, a giant number for a country of 3.5 million....people are stranded without food, power and in some towns ,clean water.

"we have between 20 and 25 percent of our population that is turned into refugees. What government can cope with that?" (NYT, 7/29)

The poor pay extra for what they buy

Drivers from low-income neighborhoods of New York, Hartford and Baltimore, insuring identical cars and with the same driving records as those from middle-class neighborhoods, paid $400 more on average for a year's insurance.

The poor are also the main customers for appliances and furniture at "rent to own" stores, where payments are stretched out at very high interest rates; in Wisconsin, a $200 television can end up costing $700.

Those were just two examples among several cited in a report Tuesday showing that poor urban residents frequently pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year in extra costs for everyday necessities... a "ghetto tax." (NYT, 7/19)

70 Years Ago Spain's Workers Led Fight Against Fascism

July 18 marked the 70th anniversary of the fascist uprising begun by Franco and other generals against Spain's Republican government. The Spanish Civil War was the first harbinger in Europe of World War II (along with Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia and the Japanese fascist's attack on Manchuria in the early 1930's).

Even though Spain was a weak capitalist country, its banking system was very strong (as it is now). And the banks extended its capital to all branches of production. Spain's colonies in Africa and it's neutrality during World War I helped create huge financial institutions like Hispano Americano Bank, Bank Vizcaya and Bank Bilbao. The merging of finance capital with the landed aristocracy created a financial oligarchy, turning Spain into a small imperialist country (so labeled by Spain's Communist Party in the 1920's and '30's).

But this capitalist development also sparked a very militant and class-conscious working class. In Oct. 1934, the fascist CEDA party entered the government. CEDA didn't hide its sympathy for the Nazis. It was widely expected that CEDA would follow Hitler's example in using parliament to introduce an authoritarian regime. But many Spanish workers were determined not to fall prey to the disaster that had divided the German labor movement.

Following the heroic February 1934 uprising of Austrian workers in Vienna, in a vain attempt to stop the semi-fascist Dollfuss from entering that government, the watchword of Spanish anti-fascists had become "Better Vienna than Berlin", referring to Hitler's rise to power by parlimentary maneuvers. Nowhere was the radicalization of the Spanish workers movement clearer than in the ranks of the Socialist Party (PSOE). Under rank-and-file pressure, its strategy of reformist gradualism was being replaced by calls for revolution.

.A general strike was called. In Asturias, in northern Spain, miners rose in armed insurrection and formed militias which laid siege to most of the province's Civil Guard (police) posts. In the mining town of Mieres, the Provincial Revolutionary Committee announced to a wildly enthusiastic crowd the founding of the Socialist Republic.

The local Workers' Alliance Committees organized every aspect of life, from food distribution and hospitals to transport and communications. A makeshift war industry was rapidly established. Factories began to turn out armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition. The workers even produced a benzol substitute for petrol, made from coal. "Red Guards" were organized to ensure revolutionary order, looters were strictly dealt with and well-known right-wingers were arrested.

Women were heavily involved at all levels, many joining the militias. The miners had few arms and relied on those captured from government forces or arms factories; they suffered from a chronic shortage of ammunition. The insurrection's principal weapon was dynamite; its adept use enabled the miners to inflict humiliating defeats on the opposing army.

In the mountain passes, giant catapults hurled the dynamite at the enemy. In the cities, the dynamiters crept forward while smoking cigars, using them to light hand-held explosive sticks. Once the mining areas had been secured, a column of 1,000 militias was sent to seize the provincial capital of Oviedo. Here, where the local party and union bureaucracy was more dominant, the workers had been slow to rise, but the miners' arrival established revolutionary power in the city's streets. The government forces were quickly driven into a few isolated strongholds.

Meanwhile, troops sent from the capital in Madrid to deal with the rebels met stiff resistance in the region's southern mountain passes. Several hundred miners, armed mainly with dynamite, pinned down one such government force for 12 days. However, the Asturian Commune remained isolated. Much of the Socialist leaders' new-found militancy was only hot air.

Elsewhere in Spain the general strike soon collapsed due to the passivity of the PSOE leadership and the lack of anarchist union federation support. Only in Catalonia, under revolutionary socialist influence, did the strike begin to take on insurrectionary proportions before being undermined by the half-heartedness of the left nationalists and anarchists.

Such was the optimism of the Asturian workers that news of the failure of the movement elsewhere in Spain was dismissed as government lies. After ten days of desperate resistance, gradually the enemy forces pushed back the 20,000 militias. The government soon decided to smash the movement at all costs. Franco's advancing troops, who had experience crushing colonial revolts in Northern Africa, used prisoners to form human shields and bombed food lines. On October 18, after protracted negotiations, the revolutionaries surrendered. Many workers refused to hand over their arms, either hiding them or fleeing to the mountains to begin a guerrilla struggle.

(Next: the 1936-39 Civil War and how the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent Mexico, were the only forces helping the Republican government, while the U.S., France, Britain, fascist Germany and Italy helped Franco.)u

Years After `Peace Accords' Death Squads Back in El Salvador

EL SALVADOR -- On July 5, hundreds of high school students took to the streets protesting a bus fare increase and the high cost of living. They demanded fares be cut in half for students and for people over 60. When the students neared the National University, security police -- the UMO (Unit for Maintenance of Order -- assaulted them.

The students defended themselves and a big fight ensued. Police sharpshooters were stationed on adjacent buildings, helicopters flew over the students' heads, shooting indiscriminately, while other cops beat and arrested them. Hundreds from the National Civil Police, including the Group of Police Resistance, surrounded the University, arresting and beating more students.

In the end, two cops were fatally shot and many students and teachers were wounded. Dozens of students were arrested, beaten and tortured in the jails; many have disappeared. The government of Antonio Saca immediately accused the FMLN of being responsible for the demonstrations and the police deaths. But they ignored the poverty, unemployment and repression caused by the government and by capitalism itself.

Ironically, these police units that attacked the demonstrators were created after the "peace" accords between the FMLN leadership and the fascist Salvadoran government. The #2 police official is an ex-guerilla commander and many of the cops are former guerrillas, who today openly defend the murderous capitalist system. They are just like the old death squads.

"Now we live in a country where democracy is the main achievement of the peace accords," scream the FMLN leaders. Clearly, since these leaders are paid $4,000 a month, compared to a farm worker's $76, it's obvious which class and system they defend.

The Salvadoran working class is fed up with their inhuman conditions. There are daily demonstrations, protests, strikes and confrontations. The working class must understand that the capitalist rulers will do everything possible to keep workers on their knees, including building supposed "leftist" tendencies to confuse them.

Experience has exposed the FMLN's objective of "national liberation" as just another way to exploit and repress the working class. The attack on this and other demonstrations shows how capitalism meets workers' demands: with bullets. This system cannot meet our needs. The fight between workers and bosses is a fight to the death. Our only alternative is the direct fight for communism.

We support the struggles in the streets, strikes and demonstrations against the bosses. There we can expose capitalism and the phony left. Many of these angry workers and students know true communist ideas through our paper, CHALLENGE/DESAFIO , and that future struggles should be not only for fare reductions but for working-class power. Then all wealth we produce will be distributed according to the needs of these same workers, not for the profits of capitalist bosses.

U.S. Rulers Killed 1,000 World War 1 Vets in 1935 `Katrina'

The genocidal response of the Bush administration to Katrina is not new for the U.S. ruling class. And talk about putting soldiers and unemployed veterans in harm's way....

On September 2, 1935, what became known as the Great Labor Day Hurricane ravaged the Florida Keys with winds of 160 miles per hour and gusts up to 200 mph. Between 400 and 600 people, perhaps over a thousand, perished. Among the dead were hundreds of World War I veterans. At the height of the Great Depression these vets had been sent to build a road on the low-lying islands of the Florida Keys as part of the Public Works for Veterans program. While working, they were housed in inadequate tent-like structures provided by the Roosevelt administration. When the National Weather Bureau issued warnings for a hurricane, they were not evacuated.

Shortly afterwards, the editors of the communist literary magazine New Masses asked Ernest Hemingway to write an account of the storm from an insider's perspective. He was living in the area at the time and knew it intimately. Hemingway's response was the article, "Who Murdered the Vets? A First-Hand Report on the Florida Hurricane," published September 17, 1935. Excerpts follow:

Whom did they annoy and to whom was their possible presence a political danger?

Who sent them down to the Florida Keys and left them there in hurricane months?

Who is responsible for their deaths?

The writer of this article lives a long way from Washington.... But he does know that wealthy people, yachtsmen, fisherman such as President Hoover and President Roosevelt do not come to the Florida Keys in hurricane months....because [they] know there would be great danger, inescapable danger, to their property if a storm should come.... But veterans, especially the bonus-marching variety...are not property. They are human beings...and all they have to lose is their lives. They are doing coolie labor for a top wage of $45 a month and they have been put down on the Florida Keys where they can't make trouble....

As this is written five days after the storm, nobody knows how many are dead...but the total of veterans dead and missing alone numbers 442.... The total of dead may well pass a thousand, as many bodies were swept out to sea and never will be found.... But the veterans had been sent there; they had no opportunity to leave, nor any protection against hurricanes; and they never had a chance for their lives....

Who sent nearly a thousand war veterans, many of them husky, hard-working and simply out of luck...to live in frame shacks on the Florida Keys in hurricane months?

Why were the men not evacuated on Sunday, or at least Monday morning, when it was known there was a possibility of a hurricane striking the Keys and evacuation was their only possible protection?

Who advised against sending the train from Miami to evacuate the veterans until four-thirty o'clock on Monday so that it was blown off the tracks before it ever reached the lower camps?....

Now it's calm and clear and blue and almost the way it is when the millionaires come down in the winter...except for the smell of the dead that always smell the same in all countries that you go to.... Or is it just that dead soldiers smell the same no matter what their nationality or who sends them to die?....

You're dead now, brother, but who left you there in the hurricane months on the Keys where a thousand men died before you when they were building the same road that's now washed out?

Who left you there? And what's the punishment for manslaughter now?

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, August 2, 2006

Information: 02 August 2006 735 hits

From Mumbai to Lebanon . . . US Iraq War Fiasco Causes Endless Bloody Crisis

2,000 Arab-Jewish Protestors Slam War

‘Butt’ Heard ‘Round the World Exposes Racism at World Cup

PL’ers Spark Fight on War, Immigration ‘Reform’ at NEA Convention

UAW Leaders ‘Choice’ to Auto Workers: Unemployment Now, or Later

Oaxaca Teachers’ Strike and Miltant Class Struggle

Unite Against Guest Worker Slavery

Collective Clean-up — A Microcosm of Communism

Miami Arrests Signal Mass Racist Terror

Brooklynites Protest Ratner Housing Rip-off

Education ‘Reform’ Masks Aim for Schools to Serve Ruling Class Even More

LETTERS

India’s ‘Miracle’ Enslaves 6-year-olds

Workers Seeing Through Capitalism’s Illusions

Steel Bosses Fight Dog Eat Dog

Immigrant Airport Workers Study Red Ideas

Mexico Electoral Fraud: Millionaires Vs. Millionaires

UMW Reform Fight Fertile Ground for PLP

Non-Profits Build Fascism

REDEYE

US torture is an old story to Latinos
Imperialism gives marines grim mission
That day seems a long way off….
Liberals also want US to rule the world
Neo-Nazis joining Army in race-war plan
Need cheap labor? Just fill your prisons!
Top brains’ miracle solution to poverty!
Hey, how did Buffet get all that money?

Forward to Communism: In the 1930’s Soviet Union, Many Workers Organized for Communism Rather than Socialism

Liberal Bosses Showing Their True ( WAR ) Colors

From Mumbai to Lebanon . . . US Iraq War Fiasco Causes Endless Bloody Crisis

Israel’s raids into Lebanon and Gaza have killed hundreds of non-combatants, as of July 14. Terrorists’ bombs killed 200 commuters in Mumbai, India, on July 11. North Korea had test-fired seven missiles in Japan’s direction the week before. While rooted in separate regional rivalries, these acts and threats of mass murder all reflect increasing challenges to U.S. imperialism’s supremacy.

Among the U.S.’s foes here, however, there are no good guys, just capitalists seeking a bigger piece of the profit pie for themselves. Hamas’s leaders, for example, despite being underdogs, are perfectly willing to lob rockets onto children to maintain control of the Palestinian Authority’s cheap labor racket, once run by Arafat.

Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s ties to Iran, not their seizure of Israeli soldiers, motivate Israel’s massive assault on Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. In the past, Israel settled such kidnappings through prisoner swaps, including the exchange of 436 Hezbollah supporters for a single Israeli intelligence agent in 2004. But now, with Iran’s ayatollahs threatening to wipe Israel off the map and developing the nuclear means that could threaten Israeli’s nuclear monopoly in the region (Israel has more than 200 nuclear weapons), Israeli rulers have decided to strike pre-emptively. They deliberately provoked the hostage-taking to furnish phony grounds for crushing the Teheran-backed forces in their midst. Although Washington bankrolls Israel’s war machine with $3 billion a year, the Israeli brass moved apparently without U.S. approval. The gunslinger hired to patrol the heart of the U.S. oil empire is once again proving highly unreliable.

Iran’s newfound boldness towards Israel stems from Bush’s bungling in Iraq. The Wall Street Journal (7/14) reports, "The Iraq war has made Israel significantly less safe....Iran has used the conflict to project its influence across Iraq and the Persian Gulf region." The Iraq fiasco also underlies the "world’s sole superpower’s" relative powerlessness in the crisis. "With U.S. troops tied down in Iraq...the White House has little desire for a broader regional conflict that could bring a head-on clash with Iran right now." (WSJ, 7/14) Along with Iran, the big winners here are Russia, which is helping Iran build its nuke program, and China, Iran’s top oil and gas customer. For now, the U.S., though a pariah in world opinion, must counter Iran’s rise through diplomacy. Exploiting U.S. weakness, Russia and China recently killed "a U.S.-backed [UN] measure demanding that Iran stop enrichment activities and threatening sanctions and the use of armed force." (Bloomberg News, 7/12) Iran’s buddies succeeded in substituting "a package of incentives."

No matter who perpetrated the Mumbai massacre, it sets back U.S. plans to enlist India as a bulwark against Russia and China. As various sources blame Kashmir-based Islamists and Pakistani intelligence, tensions heighten between India and Pakistan, shifting India’s focus toward nuclear-armed Pakistan and away from its blossoming love-fest with the U.S. Bills that would bless "atomic trade" between the U.S. and India await passage on Capitol Hill. India-British-U.S. Mittal is concluding its takeover of Europe’s Arcelor, making Mittal the world’s largest producer of steel, crucial to both industry and war-making.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) focuses its July/August issue of Foreign Affairs on India with articles like "India and the Balance of Power" and "America’s New Strategic Partner?" But the Boston Globe editorialized (7/14) that the train bombers’ goal may have been "to punish India for entering into a strategic alliance with the United States." Along with its rosy forecasts for the subcontinent, Foreign Affairs warns, "the dispute over Kashmir could still spark a war between India and Pakistan." The CFR website highlights an article predicting nearly 3 million deaths at the outset of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.

In return for $2 billion in aid since 2003, North Korea allies with China, just as U.S. rulers had hoped Israel would serve them, but both these "junior partners" also have their own interests as well. "With the U.S. preoccupied in Iraq, China embarked on a quiet policy of self-interest: to strengthen North Korea as a ‘buffer state’ between China and South Korea. China does not want the North to collapse, and for U.S. troops to fill the vacuum and appear on its northeast border." (Christian Science Monitor, 7/10)

China contributed generously to the creation of the long- and longer-range Korean missiles that help tie up over 100,000 U.S. ground troops in South Korea and Japan and make the entire U.S. Seventh Fleet unavailable for Mid-East action. China’s Korea strategy buttresses its ongoing plan to challenge the U.S. for control of Persian Gulf oil.

We should not conclude that the U.S., handcuffed militarily at present, will shy from war. Quite the opposite. Even before the recent escalation in killing in Iraq, the CFR boasted that the U.S. campaign was slaughtering "between fifty and a hundred a day." (CFR, 6/15/06) U.S. rulers know they have much more to do — seizing the entire Middle East and its oil and preparing to take on China and Russia. Their problem is mobilizing the nation to do it.

One tack they’re trying is anti-Arab racist militarism. (See page 5) But that appeals only to a segment of the population, like the gang of U.S. soldiers — the leader a born-again Christian — who raped an Iraqi girl and then killed her and her family. The rulers are also trying to promote Al Gore’s environmentalism to promote the government as savior and protector. [See article next issue.] But the Green Movement doesn’t produce the killers the bosses need. The Vietnam Syndrome, essentially mass opposition to profit-driven wars, continues to haunt them.

Organizing soldiers to join workers and students in the fight against U.S. imperialism is the main way to fight U.S. war-makers, not relying on U.S. capitalist rivals like Hezbollah or Iran or China. This latest Middle-East explosion has the potential to escalate at some point into a much wider war. This will accelerate the bosses’ need to militarize society and put more "boots on the ground." It is incumbent to raise, and oppose, this looming attack on the working class in unions, campus groups, churches, parent associations, and all other mass organizations.

As the world’s bosses create one crisis after another, the opportunity for us to mobilize millions in a revolutionary communist movement against the profit system’s endless wars lies open.

2,000 Arab-Jewish Protestors Slam War*

Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in Israel supports the war-making rulers. On July 16, some 2,000 Arab and Jewish anti-war demonstrators rallied in Tel Aviv to protest the Israeli bosses’ military strikes in Southern Lebanon. Police arrested three protesters, claiming they were holding a demonstration without a permit. (NY Times, 7/17)

According to YNet, an Israeli web service, the protesters, who marched from Hen Boulevards toward King George Street, chanted slogans such as "Olmert agreed with Bush: War and occupation"; "Stop the war monstrosity"; and, "Say no to the brutal bombardments on Gaza." They also accused Defense Minister Amir Peretz (a Labor Party leader who joined the government) of murdering children in Gaza, and recited: "Peretz, don’t worry, we’ll be seeing you at The Hague." (Site of the war crimes tribunals)

Hours after the attack on Lebanon began, 200 demonstrators picketed Peretz’s Jerusalem office. Also on July 16, a smaller protest occurred in the Haifa Central Train Depot where a Hezbollah rocket had landed shortly before.

‘Butt’ Heard ‘Round the World Exposes Racism at World Cup

Just like in the U.S., racism is growing across Europe, especially against immigrants, and a major expression of it was seen by more than a billion people watching the recent World Cup of Football. The racist attack on France’s star football player Zinedine Zidane proves once again that whenever racists spew their filth they’re protected while when anti-racists fight back, they’re condemned by the rulers’ media.

In the Cup finals, Zidane, playing his last professional match, was ejected when he flattened the Italian player Marco Materazzi. Italy went on to win the Cup in penalty kicks and immediately the pundits denounced Zidane for a "classless act." But of course, as in many such incidents, there’s appearance and there’s essence.

Zidane was reacting to the most revolting racist attack by Materazzi. According to a transcript recorded by an employee of FIFA (Federation of International Football Association), Materazzi called Zidane a "big Algerian shit." The French anti-racist organization SOS-Racism said Materazzi also labeled Zidane a "dirty terrorist." And a Brazilian TV station that hired lip-readers to watch the video of the confrontation reported that Materazzi called Zidane’s sister "a prostitute."

Less noted was the grabbing, kicking and fouling of Zidane all game long by Italy’s defenders. Said French defender William Gallas, "The Italians did everything they could to provoke Zidane." (NY Post, 7/11) Obviously their racism was designed to get Zidane to explode, with the hope that it would get him ejected and give Italy a better chance to win the Cup — which is exactly what happened.

Lately it was reported that Zidane is saying the attack didn’t involve racism; rather it was "personal," against his "manhood." Whether this is because Zidane feels that labeling it a racist attack will reduce his corporate sponsorship earning power or because the French government is pressuring him to play down the racism for fear of sparking the kind of anti-racist rebellions that erupted last fall, the fact remains that there’s too much evidence to indicate racism is at the heart of it.

Racist insults by right-wing fans against non-white players are very common throughout Europe. Soccer in Italy itself "has a long history of racist behavior…. Materazzi’s father…managed Lazio, an infamously right-wing racist club…[whose] players openly have used the fascist stiff-arm salute at games." (NY Post) Materazzi will be playing for Lazio this year. Its "fan club, The Ultras, are notorious for their Fascist-friendly politics" and "have members in Italy’s extra-parliamentary far right…. The group has frequently used racist and anti-Semitic banners, one…50-foot banner [saying]…their opponents were a "team of n------." (Dave Zirin’s weekly column; available by e-mailing: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Now, "during post-game festivities, Roberto Calderoli, the former minister of reform and a member of the right-wing National Alliance Party,…[said] Italy had vanquished a French team made up of ‘Negroes, Communists and Muslims.’" (NY Times, 7/12)

In a recent match in Sicily, Messina’s star African player Marc Zoro picked up the ball and walked off the field, protesting the racist chants raining down on him. Many of his opponent players showed support for him, except one who yelled, "Stop that, Zoro, you’re just trying to make a name for yourself." It was none other than this same racist, Marco Materazzi.

Zidane himself, whose parents immigrated to France from Algeria, grew up poor in Marseille’s housing projects and was often taunted for his Algerian roots. It was this kind of racism that sparked last year’s youth rebellions in France. Zidane "has sparred verbally with Europe’s far-right political machine for more than a decade. He is an outspoken anti-racist on a team…[that] stands up against bigotry both inside and outside the sport." (Zirin) Zidane was ejected twice "for striking foes who had taunted his religion or ‘race.’"

Given all this, the "butt heard ’round the world" was only a token of what pro-fascist racists like Materazzi really deserve.

PL’ers Spark Fight on War, Immigration ‘Reform’ at NEA Convention

ORLANDO, FL., July 12 — Last week, almost 10,000 teachers and educational professionals met here at the Convention of the National Education Association (NEA). PLP members have raised — and won friends to — communist ideas at these meetings for many years.

This year the PL contingent’s key issues to discuss with teachers were imperialist war, immigration reform policy, the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and support for the teachers’ strike in Oaxaca, Mexico. While we raised the need for that support, we lost control of the motion, and were unable to include language saying that the PRD candidate for President of Mexico, Lopez Obrador, would not solve the problems faced by teachers and students. But the convention did act in international solidarity by voting to send $10,000 to Section 22 of the teachers’ union in Oaxaca to help with the medical bills of teachers and their supporters attacked by the police.

Through distribution of more than 2,000 leaflets and 200 CHALLENGES, discussions and floor activity we argued that inter-imperialist rivalry — the main contradiction in the world today — must be seen as the primary reason for the fights over immigration and education reform. We explained that the U.S. ruling class is worried that its industrial base and troop levels here are dismally low for their future imperialist needs. (A colleague from the Peace and Justice Caucus told one comrade she would like to send her daughter to work with us to learn what communists do.)

We noted that war and fascism are the order of the day now; that both the McCain-Kennedy and Hagel-Martinez immigration reform acts are attempts to win immigrants to patriotism and, through the DREAM Act and similar language, compel immigrant students to enter the armed forces to obtain "legal" status. We addressed this on the floor and also in our state delegations and caucus meetings. Many teachers were totally unaware of how the DREAM Act pushes immigrant youth into the military, and were interested in PL’s ideas on the Act’s link to widening war and inter-imperialist rivalry.

We fought to include international solidarity with Iraqi teachers, students and parents in the motion calling for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, leaving no bases behind. The Convention didn’t consider this motion, although a voice vote clearly supported doing so. In both this vote and in the discussion of the DREAM Act, the NEA leadership used parliamentary maneuvers to ensure that the Convention would not discuss main issues putting the union in opposition to the Democrats and the liberal bosses.

We attacked the role of the Broad and Gates Foundations in preparing schools for war, as well as the broader implications of NCLB, saying that under capitalism all educational reform legislation, serves the ruling class’s need to train loyal soldiers and workers for imperialist war. Again, delegates thanked us for connecting the dots, and explaining the links between these issues.

Hundreds of delegates read leaflets with these positions, but we also discussed them with our close friends over dinner, at which delegates — both PL’ers and friends — reviewed our political ideas and convention strategy to implement them at the convention. This work here reflects years of activity in our union locals.

Our co-workers attend these conventions to fight attacks on their livelihood and on public education. Teachers nationwide, including from rural states in which we have very little contact, go to these conventions looking for leadership. Many are open to our point of view. The convention allows us to spend more time at social events and during boring floor speeches better acquainting ourselves with teachers from home and from around the country, and engaging in more political discussion with them. As the crisis of capitalism sharpens, more of these teachers can be won to join PLP in fighting for communist revolution as the only solution to this system of war, racism and exploitation.

UAW Leaders ‘Choice’ to Auto Workers: Unemployment Now, or Later

DETROIT, MI, June 27 — At the United Auto Workers convention in Las Vegas, June 11-16, the union leadership rewarded itself with pay hikes while giving auto bosses over $15 billion in wage and healthcare concessions from active and retired workers and agreeing to the possible elimination of more than 40 plants and 80,000 jobs. GM and Ford market share has dropped and UAW membership has sunk to one-third of its former peak. While GM and Ford close plants, Honda, Toyota and Mercedes are opening new non-union shops in the U.S.

While about 2,000 delegates and staff let the good times roll, 12,600 at Delphi and 35,000 at GM were abandoning ship, taking buyouts and early retirements negotiated by the union. Meanwhile, a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved Delphi's plan that could eliminate nearly all 33,000 U.S. hourly workers within six months. At the convention, former UAW President Doug Fraser said that the "beauty" of the buyout agreement is that "it leaves it up to ‘personal choice.’ That way, it doesn’t look like the union is 100% on the side of the company."

"Personal choice" under capitalism means unemployment now or unemployment a little later.

More than one-third of all U.S. GM and Delphi hourly workers will be gone by the end of the year, allowing GM to beat its target of cutting 30,000 jobs in North America more than two years ahead of schedule and reducing its production capacity to reflect its shrinking U.S. market share. The job and health care cuts for retirees and other sweeping measures will save GM $8 billion annually after losing $10.6 billion last year.

In April, UAW Vice-President Bob King told a conference sponsored by the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank that the union "made a conscious choice to put aside the adversarial approach. We believe adversarial relationships drive manufacturing jobs out of the country." (Detroit News, 4/20) Next summer, he will "put aside the adversarial approach" and lead the contract bargaining at Ford. He also tried to stop a picket line at Ford World Headquarters over the firing of some black engineers. He said, "We don’t need that kind of publicity. We’re trying to sell cars." Union "leaders" turned car salesmen!

Replacing King as VP in charge of National Organizing, Terry Thurman is the former director of Region 3 in Indiana and Kentucky. It was in Indiana that Chrysler sold a parts plant to Metaldyne, and King and Thurman teamed up to force workers into accepting more than $10/hour pay cuts so that Metaldyne would "recognize" the union.

Black workers and youth in Detroit, Flint, Toledo and other cities have been devastated by the retreat of the U.S. auto bosses — driven by capitalism’s inherent competition for maximum profits — leaving behind crumbling schools, few if any public services, poverty and police terror. Racist unemployment for black workers is still double what it is for whites, and the income gap is growing.

Capitalism’s contradictions and inter-imperialist rivalry cannot be resolved at the bargaining table — ultimately only by imperialist war. The union leaders want us to follow the Democrats to bigger and deadlier wars. For the international working class, the only solution is communist revolution. We will prepare for the 2007 contract talks by expanding the base of CHALLENGE readers and distributors and adding layers of class struggle and personal ties.

Oaxaca Teachers’ Strike and Miltant Class Struggle

OAXACA, MEXICO, July 10 — The teachers and the workers here are writing one of the most militant pages in the history of class struggle in this Mexican state. The fight for better living conditions and against Governor Ulises Ruiz — signified y the mega march of 500,000 workers supporting the striking teachers — showed a desire for a minimum of dignity for the workers of Oaxaca. But our struggle must be for everything because we the workers create everything.

Oaxaca’s teachers face great obstacles. The federal government won’t grant teacher demands for higher wages despite reaping millions from rising oil prices. Oaxaca’s teachers’ movement has the potential to affect workers’ wages nationwide. A wage hike for Oaxaca teachers could spark similar demands from more than a million other teachers and from tens of millions of other workers. This would wreck the bosses’ and politicians’ plans to maintain current starvation wages. Capitalism and its government exist to exploit the working class.

That’s why mass support is needed from their fellow teachers and other workers across the country. Workers in the fields and the cities must stand in solidarity with this struggle. We’re all part of the same working class and affected by this struggle. There are no isolated problems or solutions. The attacks on the Oaxaca teachers are an assault on the entire international working class.

The workers in the area must understand that using the vote to "punish" the PRI and PAN parties for their dirty role in repressing the Oaxaca striking teachers only benefits another part of the entire capitalist election scam, the PRD. The root of our problems is this whole profit system in which the governments and its electoral parties faithfully represent and defend the bosses’ interests. They hardly care about the welfare of the working class.

As workers our main objective in these struggles must be exposure of these forces since their main function is to divide the working class and legitimize its exploitation. Our main job — be it teachers, miners, factory workers or farm workers — must be to organize the entire exploited class to destroy this capitalist system with communist revolution, led by the Progressive Labor Party.

Our participation in these class struggles is crucial to achieving this. We, the working class, don’t need anyone to rule over us, since we are the only ones who create wealth. We can change the world and establish workers’ power.

PLP members stand in solidarity with the Oaxaca teachers and with the rest of the struggles of the international working class.

Unite Against Guest Worker Slavery

July 12 — We live in a diabolical country in a diabolical time, and New Orleans has become a laboratory for crushing the working class in the U.S. The rulers are importing "guest workers" to do the jobs low-paid black workers had before Hurricane Katrina.

If they don’t substantially lower our wages, they won’t be able to compete worldwide. If they don’t win us to fight their wars, they won’t be able to stay top imperialist dog. We must help people understand that the working class needs to unite and fight racism against black and immigrants workers, and against imperialist wars. Eventually workers will have to take matters — and power — into our own hands by fighting for communism: a world with no exploitation, racism and endless wars.

The Democratic Party and some immigrant rights groups are promoting the H2B or Guest Worker program. What guest workers face in New Orleans is a window to the future they want for everyone.

XXXXX Hotels recruits unemployed workers from Peru, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic, workers who see an opportunity to work for maybe ten months at U.S. wages and send money home to their struggling families. They’re told that for an up-front investment of $5,000-$10,000, they will get the necessary papers and transportation. They sign long contracts written in English, agreeing to work for $6.39 per hour for 60-80 hour a week with time-and-one-half for overtime, totaling $25,000. They’re promised rooms in the hotels where they work, with swimming pools. They borrow the up-front money and plan to work very hard.

But upon arrival they’re charged $50 a week for a bunk bed in a room with four workers designed for two and no pool access. The rent plus $8 per meal (about four hour’s labor per day) and employee taxes are deducted directly from their paychecks. They pay into Medicare but have no healthcare coverage. They are moved frequently from hotel to hotel and have no phones to contact their families. They get 24-40 hours of work per week ($6,000-$10,000 for the contract). They work, eat and sleep under the eye of the boss. If they leave, they’re automatically "illegal" and can be deported. When they eventually return home, they’re still in debt for at least the original $5,000 -$10,000. This forced labor is slavery!

Other immigrants are working all sorts of jobs under similar conditions. Day laborers hang around building-supply stores and street corners, hoping for a day’s work. XXXXX Hotels rents these workers cots in their parking lot for $50 a week. Before Katrina this city was 70% black. Now, immigrants work on construction sites and on sanitation crews and do landscaping for less wages than black workers used to earn.

The bosses want black workers to blame immigrants for "stealing" their jobs. But many black workers understand that the same bosses who left them to die are now preventing them from coming home while bringing guest workers into the city.

There are many lessons to be learned from the fascist laboratory that is New Orleans. The main one is that this city can also be a place to build a mass integrated, international PLP. Our Summer Project here in this epicenter of racism is energizing our members and friends, winning new recruits and developing more leaders, especially among black and Latin youth.

Collective Clean-up — A Microcosm of Communism

The New Orleans government has warned that it will completely demolish all homes not gutted by August 29, the anniversary of Katrina. The city’s poorest areas, including the hardest-hit 9th Ward, ironically have the highest number per capita of completely paid-off homes of any area in the U.S. So, in order not to lose them completely to government bulldozers, the owners are highly motivated to gut their ruined houses of moldy walls and water-logged furniture, the only way they can be repaired and made habitable.

But a gutting crew costs $6,000, plus repairs. Residents will need to use their pensions (if any), savings (if any) and Social Security for rebuilding materials, which have doubled in cost since Katrina. Meanwhile, there’s nowhere to live, since homes are unsafe until gutted. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) temporary trailer parks provided after Katrina are literally concentration camps — surrounded by police forces — and too far from people’s homes or jobs, whatever few jobs are available. Residents say the lack of FEMA funding and scarcity of trailers has made FEMA a "four letter word not to be used."

Not only are government bureaucracies like FEMA incompetent, but rebuilding projects have been deliberately designed to fail. Grossly inadequate one-foot-thick new levees built in working-class neighborhoods are in blatant contrast with levees half-a-football-field-thick built to protect commercial areas, the French Quarter and the Garden District’s rich mansions.

Volunteers, mostly young people, from all around the country, donate their vacation time from high school and college.Five to twelve in a crew perform this serious task. The work is truly "from each according to commitment" since both men and women wield sledgehammers; the heavy lifting requires teamwork. First, the appliances and flood-soaked beds and sofas are carried to the curb. The stench of maggot-infested food and refrigerant flow from refrigerators. Volunteers suffer nausea, often vomiting, and must bear the continuous smell of mold until the walls are demolished.

We wear heavy work boots, donated Teflon suits, masks, goggles, rubber gloves under work gloves, in 100-degree heat and virtually 100% humidity, producing instant sweat, immediate mold smell inside the mask and fogged goggles. Yet, we are in this as a unit. We work as one: carrying and pushing, the whole crew lifting sodden, plaster-filled carpets together. Then some break the sheet rock with sledgehammers, others with crowbars and others climb to the second floor to kick down the ceiling, the molding and the ventilating system and fans. Almost everything goes into wheelbarrows, pushed through sludge to the street. Insulation is lifted from between the frame. We remove the last of the clothing — still on hangers — the cookware from kitchen drawers and the soaked books and teddy bears.

Then hundreds of nails are tediously removed from the frame, sometimes taking two days. The floors are then swept clean.

One volunteer said this process of working together was a little like building communism: always listening when someone asks for help, taking breaks when needed for water and meals and working for as long as needed.

The way we share the sandwiches, the food at the volunteer shelter, cooking there and cleaning collectively, gives us a glimpse of a future society. The willingness and motivation to work hard for the common good, and completely without pay, shows us that many people are made of the "right stuff" for communism.

Mass Sale of CHALLENGE At Housing Complex

On a recent trip to New Orleans to participate in the fight against racism — to help Katrina victims move back home — a group of PLP’ers sold CHALLENGE at a local public housing complex. Residents received us warmly. They had made a militant struggle to re-enter their homes and now live under the threat of being forced out by capitalist shock troops — cops and the National Guard. We developed contacts among the residents, who wanted to know more about PLP. A local bodega agreed to take a bundle of CHALLENGES regularly.

We raised many aspects of our revolutionary communist ideas with volunteers as well as residents, but we need to achieve a more mass distribution of CHALLENGE. Some of us were working under conditions we were unaccustomed to, but this main task sometimes got lost in all our other activities.

This project is good training in trying to emphasize revolutionary ideas as opposed to liberal reform, especially as fascism grows throughout the U.S., helping us learn how to function in fascist-like conditions.

A Project Participant

Miami Arrests Signal Mass Racist Terror

The arrest of seven young black men in Miami for allegedly plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago is the latest stop on the U.S. rulers’ road to fascism. The U.S. Attorney for South Florida, R. Alexander Acosta, told the media that these confused young men had "developed a hatred of America." Yes, they probably did hate the racist and oppressive conditions experienced by millions of black workers and youth in ghettos nationwide. That’s now become a terrorist crime, punishable under the fascist Patriot Act.

Photographs of these black men, some Haitian immigrants, some in dreadlocks, were plastered on every major newspaper’s front page. Ten years ago, the headlines would have read, "Predators" or Wolf Pack." Today they’re branded as "terrorists" and charged with having planned an event as big as 9/11, all to inspire racist terror in the population.

The racist rulers need fascism to mobilize the population for bigger and deadlier wars, and to crush any potential resistance to their increasing attacks on workers. These arrests reflect the merger of the racist "war on crime/war on drugs," which imprisoned over one million black workers and youth, with the "war on terror."

Those arrested are from Miami’s Liberty City section, a ghetto of mostly black workers with high unemployment, plenty of racist police terror and the scene of numerous rebellions. Dozens of federal cops in fatigues with automatic weapons swarmed over the neighborhood. Bush’s Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claims these young men swore an oath to Al Qaeda, and planned to wage "a full ground war against the United States." (Miami Herald, 6/23)

However, the Herald also says, "[A]fter sweeps of various locations in Miami, government agents found no explosives or weapons." And according to one defense attorney, an undercover FBI agent was the only person who ever claimed any connection to Al Qaeda. Those arrested didn’t have the money to buy cars, radios, uniforms, guns or boots. According to the indictment, they allegedly asked the FBI agent for $50,000 and gave him their shoe sizes.

The FBI has a long history of infiltration and cold-blooded murder. In the 1960’s, FBI informers inside the KKK, acting on orders from their FBI handlers, participated in the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young black girls, and in the murders of Civil Rights workers, from Viola Liuzzo to Goodman, Cheney and Schwerner. In 1980, an FBI informant was in the lead car of a KKK caravan that killed and wounded about a dozen members of the Communist Workers Party in Greensboro, N.C.

In the 1970’s, FBI agents played a major role in the trial of the "Panther 21" in NYC. Like the Miami 7, the "Panther 21" were on trial for "planning" to blow up the NYC subway, the Bronx Zoo and other sites. At the trial, FBI infiltrators, some actually leaders of the Panther Party, testified that they in fact, had "planned" everything and couldn’t get the "21" to cooperate. The "21" were acquitted, but the exposure of the degree of infiltration quickened the Panthers’ downfall.

The FBI, Homeland Security, local "Red Squads" and other cops are all busy making plans to attack and undermine any threats to the ruling class, real or imagined. The main antidote to police infiltration and provocation is to have solid personal/political ties among many workers and youth. Having a mass base for PLP makes it harder for "strangers" to appear and suggest something crazy. And when they do, they will stand out like a sore thumb. Our response to this fascist attack should be to work harder to build a mass PLP.

Brooklynites Protest Ratner Housing Rip-off

BROOKLYN, NY, July 10 — My church’s Social Club hosted a panel discussion on a massive, controversial $3.4 billion development project called Atlantic Yards, to be built in the center of Brooklyn. All but one speaker opposed the project even though 40 proponents were invited. The opposing speakers presented a horror story of the destruction of the neighborhood at taxpayers’ expense, to benefit corporate developer Bruce Ratner. They exposed secrecy, lies and false promises of jobs and affordable housing. The way this project is being jammed through against popular will is one sign of growing fascism.

Atlantic Yards encompasses 22 acres for a New Jersey NETS basketball arena, seventeen 40-story luxury buildings and a showcase "Miss Brooklyn" building shaped like a 62-story wedding dress! The project will destroy a working-class neighborhood. Vehicular traffic would increase 50% while the main arteries are now at 100% of capacity. There are no plans to increase already overcrowded subway lines in the area.

For Ratner to seize thousands of existing households, the Supreme Court had to redefine "eminent domain" — "commercial gain" rather than public good "now rules over personal property." The proposal is in the State Legislature’s hands, by-passing city regulations.

There has been no popular input, only closed-door meetings. Other contractors were barred from offering bids. Ratner has bought off opposition groups like ACORN with large donations. They and others say they believe Ratner’s claim of "making progress" and "improving the lives of the needy," by his commitment to 3,800 permanent "minority" jobs and 1,800 affordable housing units. But Ratner won’t commit to numbers in writing, and his track record is the opposite. Because there is an affordable-housing component, the project gets heavy State subsidies and Ratner gets the billions.

One panelist charged that the affordable housing would be built off-site, belying the dream of some workers receiving the same housing benefits as the rich by living next door. Another speaker declared there is no future here, just minimal jobs.

The room was filled with anger at the process allowing this project, and also great appreciation for those who are tirelessly trying to stop it. DDDB (Develop, Don’t Destroy Brooklyn) has 400 active volunteers. Local community papers, musicians and movie celebrities have voiced opposition.

But a friend asked, "What’s PLP’s view on this project?" We say this struggle rips the mask off the so-called democratic process, where billions of public monies are funneled to greedy capitalists, a clear example of fascist assault on working-class needs. As long as capitalism exists we can expect more such assaults.

Currently we probably don’t have the strength to halt this luxury housing scheme built at working-class expense, just as we can’t stop Halliburton profiteering from "cleaning up" New Orleans or Iraq. It may be that more powerful capitalists will stop Ratner because they can’t afford to give this petty contractor billions, needing to fortify their position while being chased from Iraq to China. The ruling class makes the decisions because they have State power. A victory in this struggle is winning our friends to understand that logic and debate will not stop capitalism. We need workers’ power and communist revolution to wrest state power from the bosses; therefore, we need to win our friends to see that they must join PLP to strive towards this goal.

Education ‘Reform’ Masks Aim for Schools to Serve Ruling Class Even More

Modern war, when unleashed on a world scale, is total war. It requires detailed preparation by the state or government. The current quest by the liberal wing of the U.S. ruling class — the Rockefeller-led grouping - for domination of the world’s oil —reserves is not yet war on a world scale. They themselves say it could require 30 years of war. Since no major imperialist power besides Britain has signed on to it, it could unleash world war at any time — one launched by an imperialist power which, while dominating in military hardware, is rapidly losing its industrial or manufacturing prowess. In short, there’s a certain desperation in this quest.

"Meet Donald Fisher," says the San Francisco Weekly, "the private billionaire with unprecedented sway over ordinary San Franciscans’ lives." Fisher is the retired founder of GAP stores. According to Forbes magazine his family fortune places him among the world’s top 120 billionaires.

So far, he’s donated some $46 million to the 52 Charter schools organized by KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program). In addition, KIPP received some $7.9 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Joined by venture capitalist John Doerr, Netflix launcher, Reed Hastings and the California Teachers Association (CTA), Fisher also backed a California State ballot initiative that requires school districts to provide free facilities to charter schools.

According to Business Week (6/26), Education Secretary Margaret Spellings claims, "Business is becoming the voice of reform." The magazine lists the main contributors: the Gates Foundation is the largest (even before Warren Buffet’s "donation"), followed by the Eli Broad Foundation, the Milken Family Foundation, the G.E. Foundation and companies like IBM.

This effort contains a division of labor. The Walton Family Foundation concentrates on providing low-income families a choice among schools; the Milkens on training and retaining teachers; the Gates push small schools and technology; and the Broad Foundation trains District Superintendents, senior management, newly-elected school board members and even parent groups.

Co-ordination on this scale is not spontaneous. Yet where and when these decisions were made remains an unreported mystery. Therefore, it’s easy to underestimate these foundations’ grip on education. Take the Broad Foundation for example: it has trained Superintendents or senior executives in 38 school districts; placed senior management trainees in 15 major districts; and trained 109 new school-board members in 29 districts representing some 2.7 million students. In addition, they fund grass-root parent groups.

Much of this "reform" is aimed at winning and mobilizing working-class parents and students, especially black and Latino families in the big cities, to support "better education" with the sinister underlying plan being to win them to support the racist, imperialist U.S. bosses, the source of the very racism that continues to viciously attack these same families.

Advisors to the Broad Education Foundation include United Federation of Teachers union President Randi Weingarten and CTA President Barbara Kerr. They urgently tell us, "We are convinced that as a country we face a crisis of epic proportions, one that threatens our economy, our democracy and our very standard of living."

What emerges in this orchestrated rule of foundations is a strengthening of the direct dictatorship of capital. Communists have always pointed out that "democratic government" is primarily a mask hiding the actual class dictatorship of capital. It is a mask, though, that in normal times serves the real function of allowing the various factions of capital to argue out their differences, gaining or losing advantages through legislation. For them that’s "the rule of law."

But at other times — notably in war economies or severe economic crises — they choose varying degrees of a more direct and unified class dictatorship of capital. Today, foundations and grant-giving are the mechanisms for this direct control. Like its twin, immigration "reform," school reform represents a sharpening of class dictatorship in preparation for extended war, and sooner or later, world war.

(Next: How the bosses fight to change the world views of students and their parents and win their allegiance to U.S. imperialism.)

LETTERS

India’s ‘Miracle’ Enslaves 6-year-olds

Mumbai, India, made the news when terrorists attacked commuter trains recently, murdering over 200. Mumbai is touted as India’s financial center, representing the country’s supposed "capitalist miracle." But the fact is India remains one of the world’s most exploitative and poorest countries. Mumbai is no exception.

India’s weekly Frontline Magazine (3/25-4/07, 2006) reported on child bonded [slave] labor in Mumbai, stating:

"Maharashtra state is officially child labour-free but the exploitation of children continues in Mumbai, the state capital.

"Bits of fabric, gold threads, glitter beads and tiny fake pearls are some signs that invariably guide you to the dens of misery called ‘zari factories.’ Steep staircases lead to a trapdoor, which open into hovel-like rooms that house the zari units. Until recently, boys between the ages of six and 14 were found kneeling at low work-tables sewing beads and coloured threads on to vast lengths of fabric. There are thousands of these factories in Mumbai spread across not just Govandi but other slums such as Dharavi and Madanpura.

"The boys work 20-hour days, seven days a week, in dingy minute-sized rooms…. [with] hardly any ventilation and the floors are grimy. Each room has a small smelly bathroom located in one corner. Another corner serves as a basic cooking area. They sleep, bathe and eat in this same room. They are given two meals a day and, if lucky, two cups of tea. ‘It’s a life of wretchedness,’ says Satish Kasbe, a social worker with Pratham, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works in rescue and rehabilitation of child labour.

"The boys are rarely allowed to leave the room. If they must, they do so with an older boy who is a karigar (craftsman). And if they are lucky, the owner takes them on an occasional Sunday outing. Sometimes the owner locks the trapdoor, to open it only the next morning. Some rooms have two trapdoors. So if there is a raid, the children are shunted down the other one, which is then covered with a workbench.

"‘When we return the kids, we ask the parents why they sent them,’ says Kasbe. Many say they cannot afford to look after them. Some believe that by sending the children they save them from a miserable life in the village."

Again, when the rulers talk about "capitalist revival," they mean more misery and super-exploitation of all workers.

An Internationalist

Workers Seeing Through Capitalism’s Illusions

Recently, when paying for a doctor visit, the clerk behind the counter expressed outrage at my being charged $60 for a two-minute follow-up consultation, where the doctor merely said, "Everything looks good." She said she thought the fee was ridiculous since I was a "cash-paying" customer and had already paid a large sum for the original visit.

Frustrated by the lack of medical insurance for herself and her young daughter — despite having a full-time job — she said she was struggling to pay for just food and shelter, let alone for the high cost of healthcare. She had been covered by Medi-cal but the government canceled it. Now to get any medical assistance she must qualify for welfare.

Feeling helpless with this lack of options, she told me that "the system certainly doesn’t work for us." A simple statement, but very revealing of the frustration and helplessness most workers feel struggling daily to survive under capitalism.

As imperialist rivalry sharpens abroad, the bosses’ fascism at home grows, too. Capitalism forces all workers and their families to pay — financially as well as with their lives — for the ruling class’s oil wars and profits. Examples of these abuses are visible in every aspect of capitalist daily life. That’s why it’s important to find the communist ideas behind every-day problems and constantly raise communist politics, wherever we might find ourselves.

I couldn’t help but relate this incident to a recent anti-Minuteman counter-demonstration I attended in the downtown garment district. A small group of anti-racist activists confronted a handful of Minuteklan racists yelling racist slurs and trying to intimidate a crowd of shoppers and workers. The workers’ anger was clear; some joined the activists.

After the protest, one worker approached us, asking for more leaflets for his co-workers. He was irate about the racists holding a march in downtown, where mostly immigrants work and shop. He couldn’t understand why some would scapegoat immigrant workers by saying things like, "they’re taking our jobs," when he sees the opposite in his daily life. Immigrants, he thought, are forced to "take" jobs paying poverty wages, in conditions sometimes three times as hard as citizen workers. Although not defining it, this worker saw the faulty logic in blaming fellow workers for the bosses’ racism and exploitation. Immigrant labor doesn’t "steal" jobs, but instead bosses use racism and nationalism to justify the super-exploitation of immigrant workers — as well as workers abroad — and to get citizens to blame their fellow working-class brothers and sisters.

He then told us about an Immigration Service (INS) raid at a nearby sweatshop. The INS (now under Homeland Security) tried to arrest several workers. Word spread quickly. By the time the agents tried to leave, workers from other factories had surrounded the building, ready to challenge the agents. Frightened by the large crowd and seeing the potential power of these workers, the agents released those they had detained and left.

The two events, although seemingly unrelated, indicate workers are frustrated with a system that claims to meet their needs but actually exploits, terrorizes and vilifies them! We must make these connections. The belief that by "doing your part," contributing to and complying with the bosses’ system, you will get rewarded is simply an illusion. Increasingly workers worldwide are running into the dead-ends of capitalism and imperialism. What isn’t an illusion is the potential power workers possess as a class to change society. We must fight to reveal the communist truths in every one of capitalism’s evils in order to build a movement and a Party that will make the power of workers an actuality.

A Comrade

Steel Bosses Fight Dog Eat Dog

The CHALLENGE editorial about "Sharpening Imperialist Dogfight" (6/21), clearly exposed the increasing challenges to U.S. imperialism, the growing threat of war and the urgent need to build a mass PLP. In part, it focused on the struggle between Mittal Steel and Russia’s Severstal steel giant to acquire Arcelor, the giant European steel company. At the time of the writing, Severstal and Arcelor had a deal and CHALLENGE correctly pointed out the growing isolation of U.S. imperialism and the growing ties between France, Germany and Russia.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the bank. It now appears that Mittal will get Arcelor for $33 billion, making it by far the biggest steel company in the world. The New York Times (6/26) reported, "The fight for Arcelor was closely watched around the world, as it evolved into a clash between two major forces shaping the world economy: the ascendancy of India and China as sources of new business models and ambitious new companies, and a rising tide of protectionism in the West, fueled by anxiety that new competition will erode a way of life.

"‘These are all tremors of the fact that the world system, which has been maintained by the United States and Europe, has suddenly got to adjust to the rise of China and India, and it ain’t going to be easy,’ said Kishore Mahbubani, a former Singaporean ambassador to the United Nations."

CHALLENGE implied that because Mittal is "backed by U.S. and British based investors," it is more an asset of U.S. imperialism while the Times views it more as part of the rise of Indian and Chinese imperialism. This further underlines the point that CHALLENGE made about the growing threats to U.S. imperialism, which will inevitably lead to World War and if we build a mass PLP, open the door to communist revolution.

A Reader

Immigrant Airport Workers Study Red Ideas

Airport workers are responding to revolutionary politics. We have been fighting racism and sexism on the job, and now we’ve begun a PLP study group among mostly immigrant workers from Africa. They’re really on the ball, with many questions for the Party.

Since these workers emigrated from Africa, amid so much poverty, war and AIDS, it’s only fitting we study imperialism first. We’ve been discussing why the U.S., with only 6% of the world’s population, uses about 50% of the world’s resources. This outright thievery by U.S. bosses is enforced either militarily, as in Iraq, or by pro-U.S. flunkies, as in Africa. The study group agreed that workers starve in places like Africa because local capitalists work hand in hand with the imperialists.

We’re studying from CHALLENGE, from the book "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" by Walter Rodney, and even from the bosses’ newspapers. We also noted how the imperialists use racism against the world’s workers. The current sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry is leading to World War III; only communist revolution by the international working class, led by a mass PLP, can destroy imperialism.

Over the coming period we’ll study dialectical materialism, the struggle against racism and sexism, and the fight for communism.

Red Airport Study Group

Mexico Electoral Fraud: Millionaires Vs. Millionaires

On July 16, 1.5 million people rallied in Mexico City to protest the fraud their candidate López Obrador suffered in the July 2 presidential elections. Millions of workers believe that López Obrador and his PRD party would reduce their poverty.

During and after the election, the big millionaires of the Business Coordinating Council said they would continue meeting in order to see the matter to its conclusion. The week before the election they paid for radio and TV spots telling people not to be fooled and to "keep what has been accomplished."

These bosses are at war with their counterparts who support López Obrador. He believes the reforms capitalism needs cannot be implemented without a tiny loosening of the noose they've tied around our necks.

The bosses supporting PAN candidate Calderón have fought to prevent López Obrador's millionaire supporters from winning the election. The dogfight continues as the PRD demands a recount before leaving the decision to the Electoral Tribune.

As PLP has said, the workers have nothing to gain from supporting one politician over another. However, the bosses continue to swindle millions of workers, who participate in politics only by choosing one oppressor over another.

Unfortunately, past revolutionaries opted for the "lesser evil" until finally abandoning the path of revolution altogether.

Now we must take the communist banners to all the exploited and oppressed who feel frustrated by the probable electoral defeat of the PRD.

The bosses who support López Obrador are not lesser evils. They merely have different tactics in their war against the working class. They want to use small reforms in order to win workers' loyalty to that sector of Mexican bosses who seek more independence from the U.S. imperialists. But no matter who the bosses are, their loyalty is to their profits - always at the expense of the working class.

In coming protests, we invite workers to march with PLP. The working class can only be truly conscious when it organizes itself as a party. PLP has that goal. Join us!

Comrades from Mexico

UMW Reform Fight Fertile Ground for PLP

The July 19 letter from "Red Industrial Fighter" (RIF) questions my view that miners would struggle for a United Mine Workers (UMW) local. RIF wants to know why I reached that conclusion, asking, concerning my claim, "Is it just because of the increased exploitation and oppression or have plans been made?"

But U.S. labor history demonstrates that miners, and workers in general, are more than willing to fight their oppressors. I don't think miners and other workers will continue taking this bosses' class war on their living and working conditions. If U.S. workers are unwilling to fight oppression and battle for a union, etc., then communists are up shit's creek without a paddle. In other words, we would be forced to re-evaluate our whole perspective which relies on the position that oppression and exploitation breeds working-class resistance. Without this resistance, we will have one helluva job winning this apparently defeated working class to communist revolution. If the miners and other workers fail to mount fight-backs, independent from the bourgeois state and parties, how and where will we intervene with red ideas?

Therefore, I support any miners' battle for a union since this would provide an opening for such intervention. Also, I still believe it's better for miners to have a union then not. Think about it: suppose the only job one could find was in an unsafe, non-union mine in backwoods Appalachia where you witnessed fellow miners lose their lives? Suppose you knew next to nothing about communism (and can't arrive at communist consciousness spontaneously; if that were possible, there would be no need for a revolutionary party)?

But suppose you did possess trade union consciousness and wanted to organize a UMW local, and were prepared to fight for it? If this was the only way you knew to fight your oppression and the exploitation, wouldn't this be a positive development and one that communists would support? If these miners are unwilling to become involved in a fight-back, then what hope is there to win them to revolution?

Consider: prior to the 1905 Russian Revolution, Russian Orthodox priest Father Gapon organized his Assembly of Factory and Mill Workers of St. Petersburg, a reformist working-class organization. Several thousand workers joined. Initially, the Bolsheviks denounced Gapon, but then Lenin fought to win the Bolsheviks to intervene aggressively in this movement. It only makes sense. If you want to win workers to a revolutionary position, you must meet them where they're at. In many ways, it was positive that the Gapon movement existed, since it opened the door to Bolshevik agitation.

Eventually, especially after Bloody Sunday when the Tsar's police slaughtered 1,000 workers, others began to listen closely to the Bolsheviks. Russian workers attempted to fight their oppression by joining a reform organization, and this involvement in Gapon's group led to the openness of workers to revolutionary Bolshevik ideas. As Lenin knew, there is a relationship between reform movements and revolution. That's why he wrote, "Left-wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder."

Take the immigrant rights movement. Its leadership is rotten to the core and is attempting to steer it in the wrong direction. Still, the emergence of this movement is a positive development since it made it possible for PLP communists to aggressively intervene.

RIF wants to destroy all reformist illusions. I would contend that if miners fail to rise against their oppressors and exploitation, even in a reformist fashion, then communist revolution might just be an illusion. From a study of miners' history and my own personal experience in the coalfields, I think they will fight back and I would welcome and support them.

Red Coal

Non-Profits Build Fascism

Today, non-profit organizations in the U.S. help build fascism by inhibiting working-class consciousness of the need to destroy the profit system with a communist revolution to build a society where everyone shares the hardships and the wealth. Instead, they push the Big Lie that you can improve capitalism if one makes a patriotic sacrifice through donations. They also hide continuing cuts in welfare, retirement plans, legal aid, migrant worker assistance and other programs. Even more important, now they’re administering the government’s new openly fascist projects.

For example, the Catholic Church is a major sub-contractor to the U.S. government, helping supervise many new concentration camps — "juvenile facilities" — in which undocumented youth are held before deportation. Many good people work in this youth program, believing that at least conditions are slightly better for the imprisoned youth because they’re no longer held in the adult lock-ups. But the number of such youth crossing the border and being arrested is skyrocketing. Meanwhile, the church and many decent social-worker types are enabling it to happen by helping run the jails. These people think they’re improving capitalism but instead they’re building 21st century fascism.

Another example: the government is hard at work imprisoning and deporting many undocumented workers while planning to import many more in slave-worker capacities — "guest worker" or "temporary worker" or "blue-card worker." Meanwhile, it has allocated millions of dollars to various non-profits to stop "trafficking in humans," women, young girls and youth brought into the U.S. for prostitution and slave labor. Yet, in six years these programs have helped less than 200 people escape. In reality, the program is a sham to deceive people into believing that at least the U.S. is protecting women and children even as it imports huge numbers of undocumented workers to face wage slavery.

Actually, non-profits are private versions of "national service," which U.S. capitalists talk about using to restore the military draft. They ask people to sacrifice to help do "good things" while really strengthening the U.S. war machine. Simultaneously, they conceal the worsening living standards which allows the rulers to divert profits and taxes to pay for the war effort. Even though people employed in the non-profits oppose exploitation and might be anti-war, big shots from the corporate and legal communities run these outfits. Liberals sitting on local non-profit boards of directors are very committed to the Democratic Party and electoral reform, another reason why the non-profits will always serve the interests of their capitalist masters.

However, volunteering and working in these organizations can be very important, since these are the remaining organizations — besides schools, unions and churches — which the rulers still permit to exist while creating a fascist war machine.

The clients of these non-profit organizations and the decent-hearted, pro-working-class people employed in them can be organized to fight back. Many are ready to do just that. But it is crucial to develop that desire into the need to join PLP and organize a revolution to destroy capitalism. It’s becoming easier to explain that fighting for reforms in a non-profit will soon see funds cut off and workers fired. But, if one fights back and builds PLP simultaneously, it will enhance the ability of workers to rise up and destroy capitalism. The goal of communism, a sharing society, where exploitation and bosses are banned, is what many people in non-profits already want.

REDEYE

US torture is an old story to Latinos

The recent United Nations report that the United States military is torturing detainees at the Guantánamo military base is profoundly troubling….

…U.S. government-sanctioned brutality [is]…not surprising to the people of Latin America. Since 1946, the United States has put its official seal of approval on torture by Latin American militaries at the Army’s School of the Americas (SOA). There, the United States has trained more than 60,000 members of Latin American militaries in torture, psychological warfare, interrogation, and counterinsurgency…..

SOA graduates are integral to the …suffering of thousands at the hands of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, the systemic torture under General Ríos Montt in Guatemala, or the atrocities that continue to be committed by the Colombia military. (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Imperialism gives marines grim mission

"We go out and kill these people," said Captain Del Gaudio, the commander here.

"I define success as continuing to kill the enemy to allow the government to work and for the Iraqi Army to take over."

That day seems a long way off….

One of the "habits of mind" drilled into the marines from posters hung up inside: "Be polite, be professional and have a plan to kill everyone you meet." (NYT, 7/5)

Liberals also want US to rule the world

…America’s difficulties are tied to deeper forces than the acts of a single president. There is not much daylight, after all, between Bill Clinton’s "indispensable" nation and Bush’s insistence that "the only alternative to American leadership is a dramatically more dangerous and anxious world."

…The country’s military, economic and cultural sway is overwhelming. Neither Clinton nor Bush favored retreat, strategic or moral….

Any American president must now confront a central question: How should power unprecedented in its international scope be exercised so as to minimize the alienation it stirs…. (NYT, 7/16)

Neo-Nazis joining Army in race-war plan

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racial hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military….The numbers could run into the thousands….

"We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad…."

Neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance …sought to enroll followers in the Army to get training for a race war….

"Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces….

An article in the National Alliance magazine Resistance urged skinheads to join the Army and insist on being assigned to light infantry units….

"…As trained infantrymen, you will join the ranks of the Aryan warrior brotherhood." (NYT, 7/7)

Need cheap labor? Just fill your prisons!

…In the…northeastern corner of Louisiana….the prison system converts a substantial segment of the population into a commodity that is in desperately short supply — cheap labor….

There is little in the state rules to limit potential for a sheriff to use his inmate flock to curry favor or to reap personal benefit.

"If you talk to people around here, it is jokingly referred to as rent-a-convict…."

Many here view the inmates essentially as commodities, who can be returned behind bars after the agricultural season is over, and the need for labor is reduced.

"Good thing about it, wintertime you can lock them up — put them in cold storage,"… (NYT, 7/5)

Top brains’ miracle solution to poverty!

It is a group drawn from the upper echelons of New York City’s business, nonprofit, academic and social services sectors….

For the last four months, the group has been focused on solving a perplexing riddle: the problem of rising poverty in a city as wealthy as New York. They analyzed data about who is poor in the city and why….

The thinking behind them has narrowed to a central notion: the solution to poverty is employment. (NYT, 7/17)

Hey, how did Buffet get all that money?

When the world’s second-richest man gives most of his money to the world’s richest man we do well to count our spoons. Warren Buffett has given $31bn to Bill Gates to add to his $29bn foundation. Gates replied with a quote from Adam Smith on the virtue of philanthropy. He omitted another quote from the great man, that merchants "seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public". (GW, 7/13)

Forward to Communism

In the 1930’s Soviet Union, Many Workers Organized for Communism Rather than Socialism

In the late 1920’s, following World War I and the failed attempt to destroy the first workers’ state, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) knew that Germany and the other imperialist powers were preparing a renewed attempt to destroy the revolutionary USSR, an attempt that became World War II. To defend workers’ power, the CPSU had to increase industrial development.

Until then, the so-called "New Economic Policy" had allowed private trade and given rural capitalists (kulaks) control over the food supply. To prevent the kulaks from starving the workers, collectivization put agriculture in the hands of the peasants.

As part of the first Five Year Plan, the CPSU mobilized millions of workers and peasants to build new factories from scratch. Many worker "shock brigades" committed themselves to high production targets.

Initially, the rapid expansion caused a sharp drop in workers’ standard of living1 — with food rationing and scarce housing — and production was often disrupted. In response, many workers pooled their wages in "communes" and "collectives." Communes distributed wages equally or by family size, while collectives paid skilled workers somewhat more, though even collectives limited the wage spread. Organized by the rank and file, rather than the CPSU leadership 2, they contained many CPSU members and recruited many from shock brigades.

Communes were often explicitly intended to develop a new communist form of labor 3. From 1929 to 1931, they expanded rapidly, reaching over 7% of the industrial workforce. Meanwhile Party publications criticized them for undermining the policy of "material incentives" — especially higher wages for skilled workers – saying they were inappropriate for the current level of industrial development.

At a Party Conference in June 1930, Kaganovich, a CPSU leader, attacked the "excesses" of those who wanted "complete collectivization of the shops," though some delegates defended the idea 4. Party publications said communes should only be formed if they advanced labor productivity 5, but available facts showed that workers in communes and collectives were very productive 6.

This conflict arose because, rather than constructing communism, the line of the communist movement then was to build socialism first — but now we see that socialism turned back into capitalism since it is a system that tries to combine workers’ political power with a capitalist wage system. They thought communist labor organization required a much higher level of industrialization and was something for the very far future.

Thus, the CPSU rejected rank-and-file initiatives for communes. Rather, they tried to solve production problems such as workers’ frequent job changes by increasing skilled workers’ pay, instead of winning people politically to communist policies, and fixing the shortages of housing and consumer goods.

In June 1931, Party leader Stalin, representing the majority of CPSU leaders, spoke against "the ‘Leftist’ practice of wage equalization," blaming it, rather than the low level of political understanding, for frequent job changes by workers 7. Still missing the point (which history has taught PLP was the main one), he admitted that, "In order to retain the workers in the factories we must still further improve the supply of goods and the housing conditions of the workers."

Believing that the only way to convince workers to acquire greater skills was to pay skilled workers more, Stalin said, "We cannot tolerate a situation where a locomotive driver earns only as much as a copying clerk." With this speech, the CPSU put an end to the communes and collectives in Soviet industry. Moreover, they were never re-introduced, even after industrialization. Worse yet, increasing wage inequality failed to prevent frequent job changes 8.

We have much to learn from the fierce commitment of Stalin and the other CPSU leaders to strengthen the worker’s state and defend it from the onslaught of World War II fascism looming within a decade. However, with hindsight, PLP can see that material incentives (like wage inequality), even when combined with political struggle and commitment, laid the basis for the later return of full-blown capitalism in the USSR.

Although the commune movement did not develop further after 1931, we in PLP have learned from those many Soviet workers who wanted communes — and from the Cultural Revolution in China when many workers and students advanced the idea of political rather than material incentives — that communist organization of society should not be put off for the future. Hindsight shows that, on this score, those CPSU rank-and-filers were right and the leadership was wrong.

FOOTNOTES:

(1) Lewis Siegelbaum, "Production Collectives and Communes and the ‘Imperatives’ of Soviet Industrialization, 1929-1931," Slavic Review, vol. 45, no. 1, 1986, p. 66; Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928-1932, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 228-235.

(2) I. Zaromskii, "Production collectives — new forms of the organization of labor," Labor Questions (in Russian), 1930, no. 4, pp. 18-29; Siegelbaum article cited above; Lewis Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the politics of productivity in the USSR, 1935-1941, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 46-48.

(3) Zaromskii, p. 18; Siegelbaum article, p. 68.

(4) Siegelbaum article, p. 69.

(5) Zaromskii, p. 27.

(6) Siegelbaum article, Table 4, p. 78.

(7) J. V. Stalin, "New Conditions — New Tasks in Economic Construction. Speech Delivered at a Conference of Economic Executives, June 23, 1931," Problems of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1976, pp. 537-539.

(8) Vladimir Andrle, Workers in Stalin’s Russia: Industrialization and Social Change in a Planned Economy, New York: Harvester Press, pp. 126-176.

Liberal Bosses Showing Their True ( WAR ) Colors

U.S. rulers have a serious ideological problem. Intensifying international conflicts require them to rally the nation for ever widening wars. But recruiting shortfalls and growing opposition to the Iraq fiasco reveal a public insufficiently motivated by the Bush gang’s crude "Dead or Alive" rhetoric. The liberal wing of U.S. capitalists thinks it has the answer. As recent books show, it involves racism, Democrats and militarism.

Peter Beinart, a Brookings Institution protégé, has just written "The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again." First, says Beinart, the "war on terror" should become more specifically a war against "jihadist terrorism" or "salafist totalitarianism." While careful to mention that Islam has some good aspects, Beinart demonizes anti-U.S. Arabs and Muslims as backward and morally inferior.

Promoting the view that Muslims’ lives are essentially worthless, he excuses the U.S. for "killing [Afghan] civilians...in the process of installing a vastly more humane government." (p. 172) Beinart updates the racist contempt of the U.S. commander in Vietnam who declared, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it." His take is, "America could not have built schools for Afghan girls had it not bombed the Taliban first" (p. 197). Beinart "forgets" to mention that the bombing killed hundreds of non-combatants, including schoolgirls.

Liberal Democrats, says Beinart, should embrace racism and reclaim their identity as the "Party of War." They should make jihadism what Soviet "communism" was during the Cold War—Public Enemy No. 1—the party’s prime focus. (U.S. rulers used the term "communism’ long after the Soviet Union had reverted to capitalism.) Beinart’s greatest heroes are Presidents Truman and Kennedy who convinced much of the public that invading Korea and Vietnam would safeguard "freedom."

Beinart assigns today’s Democrats the task of winning the nation to a crusade of genocidal ethno-religious cleansing, followed by military occupation, throughout the world’s main oil regions and shipping routes. "From the Middle East to Southeast Asia, from the Horn of Africa to the Sahel, the United States may need to enter stateless zones, capture or kill the jihadists...and stay long enough to begin rebuilding." (p. 196)

The key to renewing greatness, says Beinart, is for liberals to adopt a warrior culture that welcomes and even glorifies killing and dying in service to the U.S. empire. He decries "anti-imperialist liberals" who "have been tempted by the hope that humanitarian methods could fully substitute for violent ones." (p. 197) He lambastes as cowards some liberal Democratic donors who said they could not support the capture or killing of Bin Laden if it "would cost the lives of 500 to 5,000 U.S. troops." (p. 197)

Through its Progressive Policy Institute, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC — the party’s Clinton-Lieberman wing) has published "With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty." It puts more stock in humanitarian fig leaves for war than Beinart does but, like him, insists on militarizing society, and especially the Democratic Party itself. One chapter, "Reconciling Democrats and the Military" calls on liberal politicians to "appreciate...the warrior ethos." Democratic leaders, it said, should be veterans, or at least have veterans as top staff members. Until they implement a "national service" smokescreen for a draft, politicians should encourage youth, including their own children, to enlist.

"AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country" comes from Kathy Roth-Douquet, a DLC member and Clinton aide, and Frank Shaeffer, an ex-Marine novelist/artist discovered by Peggy Rockefeller. Its chief focus, which the other two books also emphasize, is fully restoring ROTC in Ivy League colleges. Larry Summers got fired for not getting this job done at Harvard. Presiding over a Harvard Yard ceremony in which nine graduates of a non-credit, off-campus ROTC program received commissions, Summers said "we still have some ways to go." Now that’s an understatement. Fifty years ago Harvard graduated hundreds of officers every June.

Summers’ and the rulers’ unfinished business is our opportunity. Among the millions not supporting U.S. imperialism’s wars, we can spread the idea — inside and outside the military — that there is a far better fight to be waged: the lifelong struggle to build a working-class party with a revolutionary, communist outlook, the PLP.

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, July 19, 2006

Information: 19 July 2006 741 hits

ISRAELI RULERS APE NAZIS' COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT
1. Israeli Offensive Helps U.S. Rivals
ISRAELI FASCISTS TOP THEM ALL
FIGHT RACISM
Bosses' Tool Used Against All Workers
Mexico's Election Only Serves Bosses, Not Workers
Buffet-Gates `Charity': Another Rulers' Tool to Suck Workers' Blood
1. And how did Buffet acquire his billions?
  Buffett Bilked Billions from Workers' Misery
Angry Workers Don't Buy Los Angeles Mayor's War Contract
Cops Tell Bosses' Court Anti-Racism Is Illegal!
International Solidarity:
CUNY Teachers Back Oaxaca Strikers
AFT Convention: Leadership's Liberalism Masks Pro-Boss Stance
Anti-Racist Legal Workers Expose Anti-Immigrant Lawyers
Spreading Red Ideas Inside and Outside the Factories
GI's Must Reject Politics of Passivism, Patriotism and Nationalism
Debunk Democrats As War Party At Church Conference
1. MINISTER O.K.'S Lenin
LETTERS
Bosses' Profit Drive Murders Young Worker
REDEYE
Rulers Use Non-Profit Groups vs. Workers' Class Consiousness
1. How It Works on the Ground
Peru: Bosses' Dogfight Sharpens; Crook Back in Power
Note to Readers:

ISRAELI RULERS APE NAZIS' COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT

On May 29, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia -- seized by Germany in 1939 -- was gunned down by two resistance fighters. Heydrich-- who only four months before had organized the Wannsee Conference that planned the Holocaust-- was the third highest ranking Nazi after Hitler and Himmler. Hitler then ordered a massive retaliation.

The Nazis surrounded the village of Lidice (in what is now the Czech Republic) and eventually killed 340 men, women and children, who were sent to death camps. Lidice was wiped off the map. Another small village, Lezhaky, was also destroyed two weeks later. Both men and women were shot, and children were sent to concentration camps. The Nazis murdered 1,300 civilians to avenge Heydrich's death.

Now Israeli rulers are following the Nazi model of collective punishment. Recently the Israeli "Defense" Force (IDF) began a massive attack on Palestinian Gaza, with tanks, helicopters, fighter planes and artillery. They bombarded a university and destroyed bridges and a power station supplying electricity to 700,000 Palestinians. This was Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's response to a Palestinian guerrilla attack on a border post and the kidnapping of a 19-year-old Israel soldier while killing two others.

However, as some elements of the Israeli media have admitted, this massive assault and the arrest of Palestinian leaders were organized well in advance. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz (6/25) said that Shin Bet, the Israeli intelligence service, had warned that gunmen were planning to attack a border post. The IDF did nothing to combat it. And the Israeli government has several times in the past negotiated prisoner exchanges, notably in 1985, when the Israelis freed 1,150 Palestinian prisoners to recover three soldiers, and again in 2004, when they swapped 400 Palestinians for one Israeli colonel and the corpses of three Israeli soldiers (Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2006).

London's Financial Times notes that Fatah's "Mahmoud Abbas, the nationalist [Palestinian] president.... [and] Hamas...reached a national unity pact that, by accepting a two-state solution, meant the Islamists implicitly recognized Israel...." So the Israeli attack is really an attempt "to sabotage the Hamas-Fatah agreement."

The Israeli government is forcing over one million Gaza Palestinians to suffer for the border attack. The destruction of the power station halts running water, electricity, and cooling ventilation during the summer heat for hundreds of thousands. The IDF has closed access roads bringing basic supplies to Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is trying to execute a plan concocted in 1998 by his predecessor, mass butcher Ariel Sharon. Their idea is to build a "Greater Israel," by herding the Palestinian population into four walled-off concentration camp enclaves in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank, giving Israel all the rest -- 80% of the area's territory. The provocation by a Hamas Military Wing group was just the excuse needed. (One should note that early on Israeli rulers built Hamas as a bulwark against the first Intifada.)

Although Bush press spokesman Tony Snow and Secy. of State Condi Rice have said Israel has the right of "self-defense," this IDF fascist military offensive won't help the already shaky U.S. position in the Middle East. Increasingly Arabs and Moslems will see the U.S. hand behind this. (All the tanks, aircraft and other weapons are U.S.-supplied.)

Israeli Offensive Helps U.S. Rivals

The Russian government, while having normal relations with Israel, invited a Hamas delegation to Moscow soon after their election. Russia, just like China, is strengthening relations with Iran. And in early June, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Moscow's decision to establish naval bases in the Syrian ports of Tartus and Latakia. According to http://www.pinr.com:

"As part of the plan, the port of Tartus would be transformed into a naval base for Russia's Black Sea Fleet when it is away from the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. The Russian plan involves the installation of an air defense system with S-300PMU-2 Favorit ballistic missiles. The missiles have a range of 200 kilometers (124 miles), allow a larger warhead and are equipped with a better guidance system than the previous version. The air defense system would be operated by Russia for the defense of the Tartus base and would provide potential protection for a large part of Syria. Through these initiatives, it is clear that Russia wants to strengthen its position in the Middle East."

Workers in the Middle East are being sacrificed on the altar of imperialist and local dogfights for the control of the region's oil wealth. The multi-ethnic workers of the Middle East -- from Syria to Iran to Iraq to what is now Palestine-Israel -- have a long history of supporting communists. Unfortunately, the opportunist and nationalist errors of the old international communist movement led to its own destruction. It's time to build a new international movement based on fighting all the bosses, local and imperialist, including fundamentalists from all religions, and uniting all workers to fight for communism.

ISRAELI FASCISTS TOP THEM ALL

"Consider, for a moment, what would have happened if, in reaction to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) [long considered a terrorist group by the British ruling class] seizing a British soldier, the British government had: invaded Northern Ireland; punished its people by destroying its electricity supply, transport links and government offices; shelled Belfast and Derry from land, sea and air; cratered the Falls Road; used the Royal Air Force to buzz the offices of the Taoiseach in Dublin; and arrested every IRA Republican it could lay its hands on.

"There would rightly have been an international outcry -- and so there should be in this case." (London Financial Times, July 1)

FIGHT RACISM
Bosses' Tool Used Against All Workers

New debates about racism are raging in today's news. The front pages are full of reports on Arab detainees unfairly held in the Guantanamo Bay torture camp, the genocidal devastation to black workers in New Orleans and multiple plans to redefine the status of "illegal" immigrants. The ruling class -- the class of land and factory owners who exploit workers for profits --works mightily to control workers' thoughts on these issues. They hammer us, the working class, with capitalist ideology through the schools, advertising and the media we watch, listen to and read. The most dangerous messages come from the ruling class's liberal wing. They seek to turn our best instincts of anti-racism and unity into nationalist loyalty towards them.

The ruling class has spent centuries pushing individualism and passivity in the working class. They needed these ideas to defuse the anger that led to the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. But they face growing competition from imperialist rivals like China and have difficulty maintaining control of Mid-East oil. They cannot hope to win their wars without winning workers to nationalist unity and a willingness to fight for U.S. imperialism.

One attempt to build this ideological commitment is revealed in a recent N.Y. Times' column (6/7) by liberal Thomas Friedman. He adds an insidious twist to the body of ideology about immigration. Friedman acknowledges that "[t]here is a lot to be worried about in America today," referring to the war in Iraq and to the many problems workers have at home, like failing schools. However, his answer is not the openly fascist Minuteman type -- if we just kept "America for Americans" we'd be stronger. Instead, Friedman celebrates the "stunning diversity" and "freedom" in the U.S.

So far this sounds like the same old melting-pot story taught in school. But Friedman goes a step further, directly addressing the rulers' needs in their struggle for imperialist supremacy: "Our Chinese will still beat their Chinese." [!]

Friedman stresses that the U.S. needs immigrant minds and bodies to fight its wars and to serve as a cheap labor pool at home. He calls for a "free flow of legal immigration" to ensure the "influx of brainy and brawny immigrants." He compares this to an "oil well -- one that never runs dry." These points are buried in the deceptive liberal platitudes about "diversity" and "democracy."

Friedman acknowledges the workers' right to be angry at the system. But then he proposes ideas to divert us from recognizing the injustice of capitalism. He calls on workers to be loyal to the U.S. in its competition with rivals like the afore-mentioned Chinese and the "enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan" he calls "totalitarians." He tries to use the anti-racist sentiments and anger that once moved workers to create mass reform movements in an attempt to build nationalism and support for imperialism.

We must not be duped by such slick packaging of rotten ideas. We must analyze what the liberal politicians and media say about the world to ferret out the real core of fascism under the nice words about "diversity" and "aspiration." In New Orleans black and immigrant workers are being held in separate guarded camps, and on Long Island anti-racists are put on trial for defending immigrant day-laborers. When liberals talk about immigrants joining forces with "native" citizens to fight our enemies, we must be clear that the "enemies" they're talking about are other workers just like us, with our same class interests.

We must fight for the true unity of internationalism, the only kind of "diversity" that will allow us to defeat the real enemy, the capitalist system with its borders and wars which serve only to oppress workers.

Mexico's Election Only Serves Bosses, Not Workers

As we go to press, the Mexican election results are in dispute. Calderón, candidate of PAN, the right-wing party of current President Fox, is leading López Obrador, the nationalist-populist candidate, by 1%. His supporters insist there was wide-spread fraud. The biggest fraud, however, is the one all the bosses promote against the working class -- the dangerous illusion that capitalist elections can end mass unemployment and poverty. The only real alternative for workers is organizing a mass revolutionary communist party to smash all the capitalists and their wage-slavery system.

López Obrador might offer workers some more crumbs than Calderón, but what's really at stake are the interests of various factions of the Mexican and imperialist bosses. Calderón and PAN represent those Mexican bosses who support the U.S. neo-liberal economic model, NAFTA and the privatization of the energy sector. López Obrador, with a social-democratic program á la Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, represents Mexican bosses NAFTA screwed, and who want tighter government control over the oil industry. They want to retain import restrictions on crops like rice and beans which NAFTA will lift in 2008.

Many militant workers and their allies have illusions that electing López Obrador will help them. López Obrador and his PRD party won the most votes in areas of recent sharp class struggle -- in Oaxaca, where striking teachers are occupying the city's center; and in Michoacán where striking miners and steel workers beat back a massive police attack in April.

Workers must break with the deadly illusion that there are "lesser-evil" bosses. The PRD wants to tie the working class to the supposedly "progressive" sector of the ruling class, those Mexican bosses who want a bigger share of the profits for themselves. The PRD controls Zacatecas where the cops attacked striking miners. It was also under a PRD mayor that the cops viciously attacked striking National University students in 2000.

Serving U.S. imperialism, Calderón said the government-owned "Pemex should be given the freedom to buy the technology or put together the contracts necessary to be able to increase reserves and production." However, Lopez Obrador defends the ban on foreign investments in Pemex, and pledges to build three gasoline refineries and boost Mexico's petrochemical production.

Lopez Obrador claimed he would limit the rate of oil exploitation; stop the country's annual imports of $14.5 billion worth of gasoline and petrochemicals, create desperately needed jobs and get additional revenues to finance his "poor first" programs. But his real aim is social "peace" and to save Mexican bosses' profits. They know their oil supply is declining and that working-class militancy is rising.

Workers should take no side in the current bosses' dogfight. We should understand that capitalist "democracy" is a huge fraud, under which bosses fight over the "right" to exploit workers for their particular interests. The main lesson for workers and their allies is that capitalism in any form will never serve our interests. This opens more opportunities for PLP to spread our politics of fighting for workers' power -- communism. (More next issue.)

Buffet-Gates `Charity': Another Rulers' Tool to Suck Workers' Blood

Warren Buffet's $31-billion pledge to Bill Gates' $30-billion foundation has nothing to do with charity. Philanthropy's most insidious purpose is to legitimize atrocities inherent in the profit system. The rulers want us to think that Buffet's, Gates' and Rockefeller's missionary crumb-tossing will somehow alleviate extreme poverty and the plagues it causes. They would have us believe that supporting billionaire George Soros's Human Rights Watch can curb the U.S. military's torture and massacres. Above all, the "philanthropic" rulers seek to turn us away from the one road to the working class's betterment, communist revolution.

These foundations have become a major part of the state apparatus, functioning in many ways to perpetuate the capitalists' class dictatorship, with all its miseries for workers. (See article page 8) Ultra-rich families establish foundations to pass their stolen billions from one generation to the next tax-free.

Through foundations, leading capitalists wield tremendous influence in setting policy. Foundations funnel smaller bosses' money into serving the big boys' purposes. At times, the rulers employ foundations to seize the fortunes of renegade capitalists. Finally, foundations put a humanitarian fig leaf over outrages ranging from racist exploitation to imperialist war.

Buffet and Gates trail the Rockefellers in using philanthropy to shelter their wealth and steer society. A century ago, the latter established the General Education Board, which effectively bought control of Harvard University and other important ideology foundries. The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission aimed at eradicating debilitating diseases like hookworm in the South. Prefiguring Gates' campaign against AIDS and malaria in Africa, its ulterior motive was to create a low-wage workforce healthy enough to toil in the region's new industries. The Rockefeller Foundation continues to bankroll the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations, which, respectively, lead in planning domestic police-state measures and overseas military adventures.

Although the media like to describe Buffet, of Omaha, and Gates, of Seattle, as "self-made" billionaires, their foundation deal actually represents a consolidation of Eastern Establishment power. The big shots forced Gates into his charitable pursuits, many of which operate jointly with the Rockefeller Foundation. Gates started his foundation in 2000 under the gun of liberal Clinton's anti-trust prosecution of Microsoft. Gates' Microsoft was running afoul of U.S. imperialism by indiscriminately peddling strategic technology to -- and boosting the economic and military capacity of -- potential foes like China. Battered by the courts (another instrument of the state), Gates finally heeded his masters, investing millions, for example, into the shipyard that builds Navy aircraft carriers.

In 2001, Gates' father joined George Soros, Buffet, and two Rockefellers in a full-page New York Times ad protesting a Republican proposal to repeal the estate tax. The tax, the ad read, "exerts a powerful and positive effect on charitable giving." Inheritance levies running to 55% compel the moderately rich to donate to tax-free ruling-class philanthropies. The conservative editors of the Wall Street Journal whined that Buffet favors "death taxes only for those whose estates are too small to hide in foundation tax shelters." (6/28/06)

Gates' forcible conversion to "charity" recalls earlier confiscations by foundations. Henry Ford, a vicious anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer, opposed U.S. entry into World War II. Upon his son Edsel's death in 1943, the family began shifting Ford Motor stock to the Ford Foundation rather than cough up the 77% wartime estate tax. When Henry himself died in 1947, Wall Street-based trustees took over the foundation, the nation's richest at the time, devoting it to a host of liberal causes, pointedly including "international affairs."

When Time-Warner bought out Turner Broadcasting in 1995, the rulers attached a slight hitch to loose cannon Ted Turner's $1-billion personal payout: he couldn't keep it. Turner immediately pledged the same sum to an offshoot of the Establishment United Nations Association, which advances U.S. goals at the UN.

And how did Buffet acquire his billions?
Buffett Bilked Billions from Workers' Misery

The wealth amassed by the world's three richest capitalists -- two of whom are Warren Buffett and Bill Gates -- exceeds the combined gross domestic product of the world's 48 poorest countries. In 1983, Buffet's net worth was a "mere" $620 million. With the ruling class's downsizing, wage-cutting and mass layoff assault on the working class in the 1980's, Buffett upped his riches to $3.8 billion in six years. Since then it has multiplied 1,000%, to $38 billion! How?

First he bought Dempster, a windmill manufacturing company, cut costs and laid off workers, generating enough cash to buy the textile firm Berkshire Hathaway, which became his springboard to empire. In 1985, he shut down its New Bedford, Mass. Plant, dumping 425 workers on the street. Buffett continued along these lines, buying one outfit, reaping profits, selling it to generate more profits. That same year he engineered a deal to buy ABC-TV. Rounds of budget-cutting and layoffs followed.

Five years later he purchased U.S. Gypsum which, facing asbestos suits from workers, sought bankruptcy protection against the misery and disease it had brought to thousands of workers.

In August 2004, the Berkshire Hathaway-owned Fruit of the Loom moved its Cameron County, Texas production to Honduras, eliminating 800 workers' jobs, in a county that had double-digit unemployment and a 33% poverty rate. This was followed by shutting its Rabun Gap, Georgia yarn facility, dumping another 930 workers.

Then last year Buffet, being Gillette's largest stockholder, merged it with Proctor & Gamble, netting Buffett another $645 million, all of which sparked a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions that led to P&G cutting 6,000 jobs.

Buffett's drive to increase Berkshire Hathaway's per-share value at any cost left a trail of closed plants and ruined communities behind him. These mechanisms which created his billion-dollar wealth contributed greatly to the poverty which he now says his stolen billions will "solve."

Such is the fraud that media like the N.Y. Times peddles as "magnanimous philanthropy" by the "captains of industry."

Angry Workers Don't Buy Los Angeles Mayor's War Contract

LOS ANGELES, CA. June 29 -- "There are a lot of workers here whose disappointment has turned to anger," a transit worker calmly told a meeting of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) local discussing the latest sellout contract offer brought back by Business Agent Neil Silver.

"That's why there's so much yelling," he continued. "This company has shorted us money contract after contract and we`re tired of it. Now this war that will never end is bleeding us and everyone else and we're tired of that too. The mayor and the rest of the Democrats have no answers except a larger, bloodier, more expensive war. And you come with a contract that won't even pay our bill at the gas pump. We say no to this contract, no to MTA and no to the war you want us to take a hit for."

This impassioned speech produced a burst of applause.

As workers entered the hall to vote, one mechanic took a PLP leaflet and jabbed at the headline reading, "REJECT THE CONTRACT," exclaiming, "This is how I'm voting!"

The leaflet labeled it a war contract and called on workers to build the long-term fight for workers' power, explaining that the union leaders have no answer to wage- and benefit-cuts and the widening Mid-East oil war.

Four months ago Business Agent Neil Silver told the workers he would fight for a "significant wage increase." Then he came up against the growing needs of wartime U.S. capitalism for cheap labor. While his friend, liberal Democrat Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, heads the Transit Authority's Board of Directors, this offer was only half of what Silver had promised.

Many workers had the illusion that Villaraigosa was a "mayor of all the people." This ATU local had launched his political career over a decade ago with a very large political donation and the press built him up, so some workers were taken in.

But as one rank-and-filer said, Villaraigosa brokered a lousy contract the last time and repeated it now. "He's not our friend, he's our enemy, said one worker. "His friends are the big businessmen who run L.A." Villaraigosa's biggest backer, billionaire liberal Eli Broad, is helping to concentrate L.A.'s political power in the office of the mayor.

Their tight grip on the city uses pro-Democratic party labor leaders to saddle workers with war contracts. All three transit unions simultaneously announced "good responsible" tentative agreements, but none cover inflation.

These capitalists don't need an efficient transit system and a more co-operative world. They DO urgently need: (1) a public transit with loyal, experienced workers paid cheaply without strikes; and, (2) tens of thousands of even lower- paid workers to swell the ranks of industry and seek to maintain U.S. imperialism's supremacy.

Their most cost-effective aim is a large, flexible, part-time workforce (United Transportation Union drivers), putting in longer, more intense hours and paying more of our own medical plans and pensions (all three unions).

The ratification meeting was rowdy and angry throughout. It was after Silver announced the offer would use money slated for our medical plan and to pay us a _ of 1% wage "increase." The worker who gave the afore-mentioned impassioned speech challenged Silver to square an expected 20% wage package with this meager result and with no explanation why.

Silver sidestepped the war issue: "This package is equal to what everyone [else] in transit is getting." Instead of the vote passing by the 10 to 1 margin of the last lousy contract, this one got by at 243 to 146 -- almost two votes against for every three in favor. It is becoming clearer to groups of workers that this system has nothing to offer except exploitation and war. PLP's answer -- to fight for power for the working class -- is ringing true to more workers.

The 2009 contract will undoubtedly be worse as the U.S. is forced to up the ante of wider imperialist wars against their Chinese, Russian and European rivals. In this period of widening war, building now for that contract fight means a greater commitment for our Party's forces among these transit unions. We aim to build the PLP and win workers to understand that the answer to all these attacks is to organize for communist revolution to destroy the system of exploitation and imperialism for good.

Cops Tell Bosses' Court Anti-Racism Is Illegal!

FARMINGVILLE, NY, July 3 -- Three anti-racists are on trial in Suffolk County criminal court for defending workers from racists one year ago.

In a militant demonstration, a local racist, David Drutarovsky, was surrounded and chanted down by demonstrators and 30 day laborers who joined this action. This demonstration, in solidarity with day-laborers, was organized by anti-racist teachers and students from New York City. These workers face daily harassment and even assault. The bosses use them to drive down wages and divide the working class, using racism to attack them.

Drutarovsky picketed on a regular basis at the corner where day laborers have gathered to wait for work six days a week for at least six years. He tapes and photographs the workers and their prospective employers to intimidate them. Once he even showed up in a gas mask "to protect himself from the germs" he says Mexican immigrants carry.

Drutarovsky got far less than he deserved that day. The cops, seeing the unity of workers opposing this racist, started arresting demonstrators who they saw as the "leaders": those who spoke Spanish, gave speeches and chanted the loudest.

On that same day, July 16, 2005, two racist thugs posing as employers called a day laborer over to their truck and smashed a bottle into the worker's face, sending him to the hospital. In October, the district attorney offered those two scumbags non-criminal deals. The courts clearly serve the capitalist class; the racists got off with a slap on the wrist.

We have fought to maintain the offensive in all our legal proceedings. Our motions to dismiss all charges generated 15 court appearances before trial even began. We have organized to pack the courtroom to capacity. Police testimony given at earlier hearings is coming back to bite the prosecutor in the ass. It is clear that the cops are racists and liars. They have proven this on the witness stand when the sergeant, their key witness, testified that yelling the word "racists" is a crime! He contradicted himself several times.

In the bosses' eyes, the real "crime" we committed that day was traveling to support Suffolk County's most super-exploited workers with militant anti-racist and communist leadership. These workers responded by joining our demonstration. Even if only for a few minutes, they rocked the local racists and their cops back on their heels.

The bosses are using their courts to deter us from future actions. Their schemes will fail. Every friend and member who shows up at our trial turns the bosses' attack into its opposite.

International Solidarity:
CUNY Teachers Back Oaxaca Strikers

NEW YORK CITY, June 28 -- Today 70 teachers and students picketed the Mexican consulate to support striking teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico. Militant chants rang out in Spanish and English: "When the police attack, Teachers fight back!"; "Teachers' struggles have no borders."

Local 2334, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) comprising the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) at the City University of NY (CUNY) organized the rally, joined by a dozen rank-and-filers from AFT Local 2 and some CUNY students. The Labor Council for Latin-American Advancement, a Latino labor group, co-sponsored it.

The PSC Delegate Assembly unanimously passed an Oaxaca support resolution -- calling for a halt to police attacks on the strikers -- which was delivered to the Mexican consul. He said he would convey the resolution to Mexican government officials but claimed the federal police in Oaxaca were there to "keep the peace" during the elections.

He understood that unionized teachers here wouldn't let this issue drop, and would react to any more police assaults. Of course, the consul simply represents the Mexican capitalist state and can't influence policy. Bosses everywhere use state violence against strikers, but the Oaxaca teachers had asked for this form of pressure to put the government on the defensive.

Outside, the rally roared on. The delegation reported this meeting. PSC members in Oaxaca have also been meeting with the teachers there, establishing direct ties and sending reports back to the New York local.

One speaker noted that the strikers' demands were essentially the same as those here, and that with the same enemy, "Mexican and U.S. teachers must unite." Another said that just as capitalists in Mexico and the U.S. are increasingly linked to each other, so too must Mexican and U.S. workers stand together.

PSC leaders are committed to international labor solidarity, but the union movement is dominated by the bosses' patriotic imperialism. The leadership New Caucus won a recent election with 55% of the vote, embracing worker solidarity in the teeth of right-wing attacks. The PSC local brought about 100 members to the transit workers' picket lines last winter. But many more PSC members must be won to this position.

The AFT national leadership and the National Education Association have done little to back the strikers. Only one other AFT local has taken action, Local 2121 at the City College of San Francisco. International teacher solidarity will have to grow from the ground up, combating pro-boss union leaders, here and in Mexico, where the national union (SNTE) leader Gordillo distanced herself from the strike and red-baited its leadership.

Ultimately teachers and all workers must not merely defend strikes and fight the capitalist educational system, but fight to turn strikes into schools for communism. As the PLP leaflet in Oaxaca declared: "PLP, faced with the failure of Socialism, today fights directly for Communism, in order to bury once and for all this unjust and murderous system."

PLP invites militant teachers and "all conscious and determined workers" in New York, and Oaxaca to join our ranks. All reforms are eventually reversed by capitalism. Teachers need to fight for a communist society that meets workers' needs.

AFT Convention: Leadership's Liberalism Masks Pro-Boss Stance

NEW YORK CITY, July 3 -- At thecomng July 19-23 AFT Convention in Boston, the war in Iraq, the genocide in New Orleans and immigration reform are some key issues that delegates will be discussing, only because of long struggle by rank-and-file delegates to get them on the table. The AFT leadership is more interested in big words about education reform, endorsing electoral candidates and lining up education workers behind the bosses' foreign policy. Many teachers think of the AFT leadership as "good guys" on many issues, but in reality the leaders are members of the ruling class's Council on Foreign Relations and other think-tanks committed to running and saving this system. The AFT has always been a pro-boss, anti-communist union, helping the CIA build just such "unions" in many other countries. And it's not changing now.

What it will do is attempt to mislead teachers by passing a mild resolution that seems to oppose the U.S. rulers' plans. In reality, though, it lines the AFT up with the forces in the ruling class who don't like how Bush is conducting this war. The leadership wants to stop a majority of the delegates who actually oppose the war from supporting an anti-imperialist resolution. None of the AFT leadership opposes U.S. imperialism.

PLP members, along with many other rank-and-filers, have been involved in struggles against the war, at conventions and in our locals. We know too well that the ruling class liberals use education "reform" to mask the fascist nature of the schools: the metal detectors, the military recruiting in the schools, the prison-like atmosphere, the complete racist neglect of working-class students, especially black and Latino students, and the use of No Child Left Behind garbage to do just that -- leave our class's children way behind, set for unemployment, poverty-level jobs and cannon fodder in the bosses' wars. The AFT leadership does nothing to oppose this rising fascism in the schools.

PL'ers have called for support for workers in New Orleans and helped expose most "education reform" as part of the bosses' agenda. The AFT leaders rely on speakers like Teddy Kennedy to try to deceive us on this. But PL'ers have advanced an outlook which attacks these liberal pro-capitalists because there is no way under a profit system to end the misery of the working class. We call for the fight for communism.

At the convention and afterwards, we will fight for that idea -- among the emerging anti-war forces within the AFT, in our locals and with the parents, students and co-workers in our schools. The working class with communist leadership, not the liberals of AFT, has the answer to the crises we face today.

Anti-Racist Legal Workers Expose Anti-Immigrant Lawyers

PLP has often said that fascism is growing here and elsewhere. How? As members of organizations like unions, we see capitalist political control and fascist ideology being promoted by leaders of those groups. One of the bosses' current goals is to use these leaders to convince workers, professionals and others to support the legalization of a Homeland Security police state.

These ruling class plans -- especially among its liberal proponents -- as related to immigration "reform" became clearer for several people who recently attended the annual national conference of the American Immigration Lawyers' Association (AILA), an organization of 10,000 lawyers and paralegals. Interestingly, 7,000 represent the immigration interests of business. Many of the remainder deal with undocumented workers, asylum seekers, detainees and people facing deportation.

AILA employs lobbyists who are working overtime these days to ensure that the liberal Senate version of immigration "reform" is enacted. But it's clear that AILA, like the majority of its members, sees this issue only in terms of its benefit to business people. AILA is urging its members to tell their business clients to push their elected officials to support immigration "reform" because it's "good for business."

AILA lobbyists are not concerned that the "guest worker" proposal would relegate those "guests" to virtual slave labor, because any worker who becomes unemployed and can't find another job within 60 days will be deported. With that threat hanging over their head, many workers will be reluctant to organize on the job against exploitation and terror. One workshop speaker praised capitalism's ability to create a "dynamic and flexible" labor pool. No concern was paid to the working conditions, benefits or job security of that "labor pool."

At the same workshop, billed as a "pro-immigrant" response to right-wing propaganda, an immigration lawyer, an Army Lt. Colonel teaching at West Point, proudly stated that she doesn't use the term "undocumented worker," but calls "them" illegal immigrants. She joked: "They're not `undocumented.' They have plenty of documents, all of them fake." One person in that workshop exposed this speaker's racist use of language and sick sense of humor.

The Army officer also said the military fully supports immigration "reform," and is actively recruiting amongst the immigrant population. The Army, she said, believes that immigrants "adapt better" to the military environment and are more compliant with military rules. The anti-racist person in the workshop then warned that the so-called "Dream Act," which many immigrants and legal workers naively support, is really just another ruling-class tool to force immigrants into joining the military to fight for the bosses' profits.

It's clear to those of us who attended this conference that there is no "reform" of immigration law which will serve workers' interests. As another workshop speaker pointed out, U.S. rulers have historically used fascist immigration laws and policies in order to attack all workers. Only a communist system, which abolishes borders, nations and wages, will truly liberate ourselves and our immigrant brothers and sisters.

Spreading Red Ideas Inside and Outside the Factories

Almost ten years ago, a worker at my high school gave me a leaflet from the racist Voices of Citizens Together (VCT) presenting their thoughts on immigrants and what they planned for July 4, 1996. He said we should fight these guys, but I couldn't; I was headed for a MEChA ( a Chicano student organization) conference. When I returned, I discovered that the VCT rally was practically destroyed, with some of their membership bloodied from the confrontation.

The worker brought me to a PL forum about the action and gave me a CHALLENGE and soon took me to PL study groups.

Later I participated in a Summer Project in a city with a U.S. Army base and a huge network of Boeing plants employing over 40,000 workers, members of the local machinists' union.

We were students and teachers conducting mass CHALLENGE-DESAFIO sales at the plants and the Army Base; holding discussions about political economy, dialectical materialism, and the importance of organizing industrial workers and soldiers; and having barbeques along with visits at the workers' and soldiers' homes.

I remember then CHALLENGE pointing to the inevitability of imperialist war in the Middle East, saying that in order to launch that war for oil, the U.S. ruling class needed to squeeze vast resources out of its own workers. The main segment that produces everything -- the industrial workers -- were some of the first targets. At that time the U.S. military was using Boeing-made aircraft to bomb the Balkans because U.S. rulers wanted control over the areas where pipelines brought the oil out of the Mid-East. Simultaneously, they were demanding greater concessions from the Boeing workers.

CHALLENGE and the 1999 Summer Project taught me how important the allegiance of industrial workers and rank-and-file soldiers is for the U.S. imperialists. Secondly, the direct experience in agitation among these two groups showed me they were both definitely open to communism and to joining PLP.

The oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made the industrial working class increasingly important to U.S. imperialism. This has become even clearer with the latest growth in hiring of manufacturing workers. But to fund the war, U.S. bosses must maximize profit and slash conditions for workers, using racism and state terror and cutting benefits like healthcare, pensions and education.

As a student I thought agitating from the outside was important. Now dialectical materialism has taught me that the internal is primary, that without struggle inside to develop the ideas, agitation is limited. I realized that to really change things I had to be inside the factory, because the politics of the industrial working class is crucial. I decided to become a machinist in order to be an active organizer for the Party inside the factory.

Once inside, I understood that I underestimated the significance of the mass CHALLENGE sales. Class struggle within the working class is a daily and constant ideological struggle. It's like war. To recruit, to gather the most strength, consolidate and spread beyond my immediate circle, I must make broader contacts within my factory.

Our goal is to change the common fight over grievances into one for the seizure of state power led by our working-class party. This has been the main aspect of class struggle in which CHALLENGE engages. I'm slowly building a base around the ideas of anti-capitalism, anti-racism and communism. Challenge is key in this struggle, but must coincide with my first building trust and friendship among a close circle of workers. This takes patience and a long-term perspective.

Recently a worker told me that when he was younger he believed the president, that communism was the enemy -- it was bad. When the communists fell, everyone clapped. "But now, when I talk with you guys, I think communism is good."

Without CHALLENGE, a permanent revolutionary organization of the working class will never advance.

Agitation through distributing the paper and leaflets means that a network of workers can develop within the factory which can maintain contact with one another. They can follow political events carefully, tracing their effect on the working class, and help us develop ways for our Party to influence those events. This will sharpen the general class struggle, leading towards the seizure of state power in a communist revolution.

It's very important that youth and others participate in the 2006 Summer Project to bring communist ideas to the industrial working class. This will help intensify the struggle inside the factories and also should lead to more youth working in these plants.

GI's Must Reject Politics of Passivism, Patriotism and Nationalism

SEATTLE, WA.,June 25 -- Over 200 people attended the speech of U.S. Army First Lt. Ehren Watada who refused to return to Iraq for a second tour of duty, when his Stryker brigade received orders to redeploy. Lt. Watada is stationed at Ft. Lewis, Washington. He spoke publicly around the Seattle-Tacoma area before he was required to report to duty.

In his statement, Watada said that he wasn't opposed to all wars, just the Iraq war because it was illegal and based on lies. Since killing Iraqis went against international treaties and conventions, his moral and legal obligation to defend the U.S. constitution prevented him from fighting. The case of Lt. Watada has caused sharp struggle within Military Families Speak Out and other Veteran groups.

Watada's opinions echo ruling class strategists that say the fiasco in Iraq is hurting U.S. imperialism's ability to wage bigger wars in the future. He is highly supported by peace and psuedo-left groups, such as the Seattle Draft and Military Counseling Center (SDMCC), who openly back the bosses' message of passivism, patriotism, and nationalism. They build the illusion that if we fight for the "right reform" or vote in "progressive candidates" the war will end.

The liberal Watada movement is a dead end for all workers and will not spontaneously develop into a rank-and-file rebellion against the system. It will take an understanding of the nature of the bosses' legal system to convince workers, students and soldiers that laws are there to keep us down. The ruling class makes the law and they break the law. They control the cops and the legal system. And even if they are forced to withdraw from Iraq, they will continue to send troops to other hot spots in the Middle East and Asia or South America, because they need to control the oil flow to keep their system going.

Masses of workers, students and soldiers need to reject the politics surrounding Watada's case. The young people that are attracted to these groups need a communist perspective in order to intensify revolutionary class consciousness, defeat the empty promises of reform and put an end to all imperialist wars. We need to become more active in these organizations so that we can win people to join the PLP and lay the ground-work for future generations to get rid of capitalism for good.

Debunk Democrats As War Party At Church Conference

The CHALLENGE editorial "All Warmakers" (7/5) -- which exposed the Democrats as just as much a war party as the Republicans -- was right on time. I read it just before attending a national church conference. I was in a group planning a resolution for the church to endorse an interfaith "Out of Iraq timetable" campaign, with escalating non-violent protests if the pullout hasn't begun by September.

After reading the CHALLENGE editorial, and a Time Magazine article describing the Democrats' infighting and horse-trading, I began to feel this "timetable" campaign -- and me with it -- were being used to strengthen the Kerry-Feingold faction.

To deal with this contradiction, I had to find a way to attack the ruling-class liberals while participating in this reform "timetable" program.

So, while circulating the petition I warned signers to beware of Democrats who want withdrawal from Iraq to move forces into Iran, and who want a tactical retreat in order to strengthen the military for an eventual war with China. I had similar conversations with about 100 in our group.

While distributing copies of our resolution, I also gave out hundreds of leaflets explaining that the Democratic Party has no anti-war faction. The leaflet called for discussion of imperialism and for building an anti-war movement independent of the Democrats, among civilians and people in the military.

Some folks agreed when I said, "The Democrats are a war party, not a peace party." Others didn't. "Not my Senator Feingold," someone said. So I quoted Feingold: "I am only referring to a time frame for the military mission in Iraq, not for our broader political and other missions" and bemoaning "our failure to prioritize military spending." The leaflet also quoted Kerry, Hart and Murtha (who said on "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation," "Let's reduce our presence in Iraq; let's start to rebuild the Army.")

Several dozen of us worked on petitions and speeches supporting the resolution. We joined forces with some veterans, adding to our resolution their proposal that the church work for better benefits for vets, active-duty and military families. A delegate -- a GI -- helped distribute leaflets but didn't want to speak publicly. So, on his behalf, I read a short speech that he wrote. "We are pre-positioning troops in Iran right now and plans are being made to send more military personnel into the region despite what you may hear in the media about troop reductions," he warned. Then I met a Vietnam vet who'd been active in the GI anti-war movement. Both took extra literature and want to stay in touch.

Several dozen people in my church have read CHALLENGE, though none attended this out-of-town conference. As follow-up, I plan to show this issue to all of them and to several others who were delegates, plus some old friends I saw there. I will also work in my church to build anti-war activity around this "peace" campaign.

The resolution passed almost unanimously. In the airport, on my way home, CNN was interviewing a U.S. general in Iraq who said he already has a "timetable" for troop withdrawal, and I thought about what the rank-and-file soldier had written.

The Kerry-Feingold crowd masquerades as a "peace" movement but this "near enemy" (see box) is truly a greater danger than the "far enemy" of the Bush-Clinton "stay-the-course" crowd. Exposing their attempts to win mass organizations (like our church) to a disguised war program was a small step toward building our Party, inside and outside the military. We cannot keep saying each war "was a mistake." We need to understand that we're dealing with a war system, imperialism that capitalism makes inevitable. Workers and soldiers fighting against this bloody system with communist revolution is the only way to end it.

MINISTER O.K.'S Lenin

I had lunch with two ministers who were chatting about the Buddhist concept of "near enemy" and "far enemy." The "far enemy" is something's opposite - for example, Buddhists say the "far enemy" of compassion is cruelty. The "near enemy" is a quality that masquerades as the original, but is not the original: the "near enemy" of compassion is pity.

A speaker had argued that the "near enemy" was more dangerous and needed more attention. "So was Lenin studying Buddhism?" I joked. "He didn't polemicize against the Czar; he wrote pamphlets against enemies within the workers' movement." One minister thought for a moment, then laughed. "That's about right," she said.

LETTERS

Bosses Use Racism to Divide Katrina Victims

Nine months after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is still a city of ruin, racism and destructive divisions among workers. As part of a group of college students in the PLP Summer Project there, we found black working-class communities still destroyed. We also discovered local residents imprisoned by capitalist ideology, pitting them against people who actually share their class interests: immigrant workers, mainly from South America and Mexico, brought there to clean up this gigantic mess.

On our first day, we talked to a black woman who was working with the student volunteers. When asked about the arrival of Latino workers, she replied that they would never "take over New Orleans like they have in the rest of the country," and that Spanish would never be the main language in Louisiana.

This woman's outlook was shared by a number of working-class black residents. Thus, the bosses first use immigrants as cheap labor under the worst conditions, and then use the scarcity of jobs to divide workers.

The bosses brought these newcomers here for the dirtiest work -- such as cleaning mold toxins from streets and houses -- while promising them high wages and housing. Soon the wages were cut. In some cases contractors didn't pay them at all. After the immigrants' safety equipment broke or was used up it wasn't replaced. Eventually they lost their housing and their jobs, and were stuck in New Orleans with no support. Meanwhile, local black workers, also victims of the city's high unemployment rate, were misled into thinking that the few immigrant workers who still had jobs had stolen their means of a livelihood. But workers never create unemployment; it's capitalism that requires a vast army of unemployed and racist divisions to gain its maximum profit.

As communists, we understand that black and immigrant workers are part of one class. Their true enemies are the bosses of the capitalist system, from the politicians who are content to see black neighborhoods washed away to the corporate profiteers making a fast buck from the federal disaster relief bonanza.

Our experience in New Orleans reinforced the idea that the working class must not allow racism or capitalist borders to separate us. Because the woman we met was confused by the classic capitalist set-up -- inducing different groups of workers to fight for crumbs -- she failed to see the essence of how all workers are exploited. Even though we didn't convince this particular woman, we gave her a lot to think about.

This Summer Project will continue to give us opportunities to build a base for communism among the whole working class of New Orleans.

Two Volunteers

`Welcome to the United States of Slavery!'

I'm in New Orleans participating in the PLP Summer Project, and getting some education just being here. Fascism is running New Orleans, an occupied city like Baghdad.

When I went out for a hamburger late one night, Hummers with tinted windows were slowly prowling the neighborhood. One gas station was crowded with Blackwater mercenaries [contracted security]. The next one was crawling with cops, who were ordering people to move their cars here or there. National Guard vehicles were driving around downtown.

On Canal Street, one of the main downtown thoroughfares, the median strip was filled with a long line of parked state trooper cars. At one intersection near the French Quarter, cops had two black people out of their vehicle and were searching it. This is an everyday occurrence.

It's evident that the bosses here are trying hard to pit black and immigrant workers against each other. They've managed to get 80% of the black workers out of the city, and now are replacing them with "guest workers" -- immigrants recruited mostly from Central and South America. The hotels have replaced black staffs with "guest workers" at $6 an hour. On a morning walk I saw immigrant workers operating the Waste Management garbage trucks and cleaning the grounds outside a high school. There was barely any Latino community here before Katrina.

Some Central American workers told about being brought to New Orleans to work, and on their first night were taken to a hotel. A black man was behind the reception counter, also a recent immigrant, not from New Orleans. When they entered, he stood up and said, in Spanish, "Welcome to the United States of Slavery!" At the time, they didn't understand what he meant, but now, three months later, they do.

The ruling class is replacing the previous wage-slaves--who had a history of militancy-- with new, even lower-paid ones.

I encourage whoever is dedicated to learning about and fighting racism and fascism to come here for a while, and then return to teach what you've learned -- and organize!

A Project Participant

Reform Won't Build GI Movement

It's good to see several articles on PLP's political activity among GI's. PLP has long been aware that this is essential in building for revolution, as the Bolsheviks and Chinese communists have shown. We have much to learn from our present-day military comrades. It's heartening to read about soldiers building a base for communism among GI's by making it clear to them that capitalism is the enemy, not Iraqis or immigrant workers. It helps combat the cynicism of the bosses' media, both about the soldiers and about the possibility for change.

We know it's important for communists to work in reform organizations in order to expose the hypocrisy of capitalism and win workers to revolution. It's essential to show the contradiction between revolution and reform, so that workers, students or soldiers we're working with will understand that the reform movement can never win for them. Unless we show this irreconcilable contradiction, we may build reform movements rather than our revolutionary Party. I don't think the article "GI Movement Stirs from its Slumber" (6/21) makes this contradiction clear.

The PLP'er is quoted as saying many true and important things. It's great that 50% of the meeting took CHALLENGE. However, the article quotes Cortright on the need for "reform and revolution," but doesn't explain that they are in direct contradiction with each other. Our Party's value to soldiers is that we fight to make revolutionary communism primary in our political activity and the networks we build -- one example, CHALLENGE networks.

More than half of the "GI Movement" article describes the reform organization. It's very important to know the history of GI resistance. But when the author writes about Cortright's answer to GI repression (substantial groups, lawyers and publicity), he leaves the impression that these tactics deserve equal billing to our revolutionary goal. This is not our idea about work among GI's, nor do we agree with Cortright's outlook on elections. Do we really want to urge more people to apply for conscientious objector status? (Not surprisingly, Cortright's book gives short shrift to PL's military work during the Vietnam era.) If Cortright really is a friend, then we must vigorously struggle with him around these ideas; if he's an enemy, then we should attack him.

The article would be more useful if it limited the description of Cortright and his ideas to one paragraph and devoted the remainder to how we advanced our ideas, the GI's response, how/if we plan to work in the organization, etc. To help our membership and friends worldwide, we must be consistently clear that while reforms may look good and seem worth fighting for, ultimately they will lead to more betrayal, destruction and death as capitalism tries to deceive workers into believing it can meet their needs. Patience and persistence in presenting PL's ideas and struggling every day with our friends/co-workers/fellow GI's/ students for communist revolution is what will win workers and ultimately what will win for our class.

A Comrade

Colombia Vote A Sham

Elections are over. The president spent over 700 million pesos in his dirty campaign. For the ruling class, voting is one way to legitimize "democracy." Sixty percent of the potential voters didn't show up.

Fascist Uribe changed the constitution so he could be re-elected. He received 23% of the potential electoral vote. None of the other parties could beat that -- the conservatives, the weakened liberal party, nor the democrats and their lackeys who ALL manipulate workers.

The majority of workers have no faith in the government, despite the propaganda spread by the churches and media, who serve the murderous ruling class.

Politicians have deceived us with false promises for many years. Lying is the government's art. Politicians have institutionalized the lie that they represent us. It is the bosses' philosophy. They impose these lies upon us with violence, and the perverse culture of the wage system.

Over 16 million people in Colombia didn't vote. We need to organize these workers into a truly revolutionary communist party of the working class to defend the real truth of dialectical materialism.

We workers need to channel our anger and discontent from long years of famine, war, unemployment and repression and direct it against the capitalists and their politicians who disarm our struggles and try to convert us into their followers.

Comrades in Colombia

War Criminal Murtha Spurs Anti-Arab Racism

I've always believed the war in Iraq -- the first Gulf War, the economic sanctions, Clinton's bombings, the current war and occupation -- was laced with anti-Arab racism. It's obvious that the Iraqi people are not viewed as human, and this explains the torture at Abu Ghraib, the execution of Iraqi men, women and children by Marines at Haditha and the widespread bombing.

Even those who call for withdrawal of U.S. troops do so to get "our" troops out of harm's way. Rep. John Murtha barely mentions the deaths of Iraqis when he argues for troop withdrawal. Concerning the massacre by Marines in Haditha, Murtha attempted to provide an excuse for the racially-motivated killers, stating, "Marines over-reacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

Well, Mr. Murtha, U.S. imperialism has been killing workers in cold blood for years. And yes, Mr. Murtha, you won your medals in the criminal war on the Vietnamese workers and peasants, who heroically resisted the imperialist intervention there. And finally, Mr. Murtha, it was you who closed your eyes to the murderous death-squad regime in El Salvador in the 1980's.

Personally, I do not consider U.S. imperialist troops to be my troops and I don't give a damn for this "support our troops" nationalistic campaign. If they get their ass kicked in Iraq, so be it.

Red Coal

CHALLENGE Comment:

Generally we heartily agree with the writer, although we would add that most U.S. GI's are working-class brothers and sisters who can be won to PLP's ideas and are a necessary part of our goals.

Pro-War Union Hacks Won't Make Mines Safe

"Red Coal's" letter (7/5) got me thinking. Red Coal wants "to win miners to communist ideas and struggle for workers' power, only possible when the bosses and their state are smashed." Great!

"However." the comrade continues, "a communist revolution is not around the corner and miners are dying right now." All true!

Red Coal "think[s] there will be a renewed struggle for unionization" and that "most of those interviewed stated that maintaining job safety lies in organizing a union."

Why does the comrade think there will be "a renewed struggle for unionization"? Is it just because of the increased exploitation and oppression or have particular plans been made?

As to union "maintaining job safety," my experience over the years with this in another industrial union has seen the union and the company set up an extensive joint "institute" supposedly to address safety. The contract provides that the company give this institute many million$. Scores, if not hundreds, of well-paid full-time and part-time positions have been created. The union misleaders reward their political operatives with these cushy jobs -- funded by the company! In fact, a number of rank-and-filers have sued, claiming this set-up gives the company direct control over the union.

Nationally, my union is financing and organizing with the bosses and the ruling-class think-tanks to push for a war economy. The union misleaders' plans for fascist collusion fit in nicely with the bosses' need for a dedicated workforce for expanded imperialist wars. How can one talk about safety for the working class when big capitalist wars are on the agenda? Could a similar motivation be involved in the United Mine Workers union leadership?

I think all workers, including rank-and-file miners, should discuss questions like these. I don't think reform and revolution travel along parallel paths. Presently, the reform agenda of the union misleaders is being molded to serve the bosses' imperialist aims. "Support for the miner's battle," like support for the workers' battle, objectively requires winning our class to reject reformist illusions.

Red Industrial Fighter

Bosses' Profit Drive Murders Young Worker

PHILADELPHIA, PA., June 18 -- The May 30th murder of 18-year-old William Palmer shocked Hahnemann hospital workers. A recent graduate of Roman Catholic High School, William was shot and killed while working at the hospital parking lot during a failed robbery attempt.

The same petty criminals committed another robbery only two weeks before at the same parking lot. The parking attendant who had been robbed then quit on the spot. William replaced him and began working extra hours to save money for college. The two criminals returned and, seeing the same lax security, attempted another robbery. William refused to give them the money. The bosses had told him he was safe behind bullet-proof glass -- a deadly lie and the bosses knew it. One of the thieves shot William through the glass. He died in the operating room barely an hour later.

According to Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, William Palmer "was killed by someone who wanted to take a short-cut -- to get money without working for it." This hypocritical cop hit the nail on the head. William Palmer was killed both by the little criminals who shot him AND by the big criminals, Tenet Health Care and U.S. Security Associates, who left him unprotected. They are all guilty of murder!

Little Criminals, Big Criminals

Our bosses take the wealth created by us workers and keep it as their profit. They "get money without working for it." Communist founder Karl Marx discovered that the whole capitalist system is based on stealing. Workers receive only a small portion of the value they create in the course of production. The bosses keep the rest and re-invest some of it to make still more profit. To compete, each capitalist must bleed the workers to maximize profits in order to stay in business. Internationally, such a system breeds endless wars. This class of big criminals has created enormous suffering and death for the working class worldwide.

Capitalist culture glorifies individual success, but under capitalism only a tiny minority can achieve this "success." For one boss to succeed, he must steal from many workers. When some workers realize they have no "legal" way to steal, they turn to crime to "get money without working for it." These little criminals are only imitating on a small scale the really huge criminal actions of the big capitalists.

William Palmer would be alive today if the bosses had beefed up security in that parking lot. But this would have cut into their lousy profits. The capitalists have always sacrificed workers' lives to increase profits. A recent example: the wave of murdered coal miners because of the bosses' neglect of safety.

To William's family and friends we say: we will build our revolutionary Party to destroy the system that murdered him. Only then will he have not died in vain.

REDEYE

Suicides triple amid New Orleans debris

Last Tuesday in the French Quarter, Sergeant Glaudi's small staff was challenged by a man who strode straight into the roaring currents of the Mississippi River, hoping to drown. As the water threatened to suck him under, the man used the last of his strength to fight the rescuers, refusing to be saved....

New Orleans is experiencing...a suicide rate that state and local officials describe as close to triple what it was before Hurricane Katrina struck and the levees broke 10 months ago.

Many people who are not at serious risk of suicide are nonetheless seeing their lives eroded by lowgrade but persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness and stress-related illnesses, doctors and researchers say. All this goes beyond the effects of 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing, Mr. Curie said. Beyond those of Hurricanes Andrew, Hugo and Ivan....

"You ride around and all you see is debris, debris, debris," he said.

And that is a major part of the problem, experts agree: the people of New Orleans are traumatized again every time they look around.

"This is a trauma that didn't last 24 hours, then go away," said Dr. Crapanzano, the Louisiana mental health official. "It goes on and on." (NYT, 6/21)

Workers may have to consider revolution

...The president of the United Auto Workers, Ron Gettelfinger, issued a...somber report to his union....

"The kind of challenges we face aren't the kind that can be ridden out," said Gettlelfinger, who has seen his union's membership drop from 1.5 million in 1979 to 600,000 last year. "They...require new and farsighted solutions."

...The June 10 issue of National Journal...argues that "the global economy's job machine may be breaking down, again."

...Alan Blinder, a Princeton economist and former vice chairman at the Federal Reserve, was right to warn us about how many jobs are in danger....In an article in Foreign Affairs earlier this year, he wrote that "we have so far barely seen the tip of the offshoring iceberg, the eventual dimensions of which may be staggering." (Washington. Post, 6/13)

Supreme Court says money = free speech

To the Editor:

Re "Justices Reject Campaign Limits in Vermont Case" (Front page, June 27):

In its decision on Vermont's campaign finance restriction, the Supreme Court has again equated "money" with "free speech,"....

The larger your wallet, the larger your voice; the smaller your wallet, the smaller your voice....the court's decision says that you have less free speech when you have less money. (NYT, 7/3)

Non-red revolution leaves S.Africans jobless

Three decades later South Africa has been celebrating the [Soweto] uprising as the turning point at which black people seized the initiative. Ceremonies Last Week honored the students as heroes who laid the foundations for freedom....

The rethoric and pomp, however, masked a new struggle that is dividing former classmates in a way few imagined all those years ago when they stood shoulder to shoulder against dogs, bullets and teargas.

Some emerged from the tumult wealthy and successful...Others emerged impoverished and bitter, members of an underclass that feels abandoned.

South Africa is one of the world's most unequal societies...millions remain mired in unemployment and appalling living conditions....

Unemployment, which stands officially at 26.7% is really closer to 40%, one of the highest rates in the world...Not enough jobs have been created for those who reached working age in the past 20 years, forcing millions into an "informal" economy of activities not far removed from begging....

"My boy might benefit from the freedom we won, but I'm not. I have not eaten today. Visitors to this place think black people are free now -- they don't understand the economic struggle goes on." (GW, 6/29)

Rulers Use Non-Profit Groups vs. Workers' Class Consiousness

(Part I)

Today, "non-profit" foundations and organizations help capitalism's rulers hide wealth stolen from cuts in benefits and living standards which working people won through fierce battles against their bosses for over a century. "Non-profits" also delude many young and liberal-minded people into believing that capitalism can be reformed and improved.

From the Salvation Army to the NAACP, from the Green Party in Europe to the World Social Forum in Pakistan, the world's capitalist rulers build organizations that appear to help people but actually do the opposite, pushing nationalist divisions, pacifism and belief in reform instead of revolution. Because these "NPOs" and "NGOs" (non-governmental organizations) are all controlled by each country's rulers, their real goal is to destroy the working-class consciousness which induces workers to unite and fight capitalism directly.

In the U.S., big non-profits like the Salvation Army and Red Cross organized assistance for Katrina victims. Although millions of workers and students contributed time and money, what happened? New Orleans is still wrecked, except for construction to build a playground for the rich. Clearly the U.S. government wanted the racist elimination of New Orleans' poor population. But the non-profits helped do it. They moved and trapped people far from Louisiana and then provided no assistance to enable the city's workers to return and rebuild their neighborhoods.

The Catholic Church has food and housing assistance programs everywhere, and Immigration Clinics to help non-citizens in many cities. Decent people work and volunteer in these programs. But the bosses running these facilities guarantee that very few people receive real help. At the Immigration Clinics, often foreign workers' lives are wrecked because the bosses won't allow enough time for clinic workers to learn the law. In other poverty legal clinics, federal law forbids serious organizing and outlaws certain kinds of law suits, like class actions.

Most problems in non-profits appear to come from under-staffing and lack of funding. But that's only a cover story. The "non-profit" administrators measure success by meeting "grant requirements." Often they force poor workers to pay for their help, but then send the money "up the chain" to pay for "other services" which nobody ever sees.

These bosses pay themselves enormous salaries and get promoted if their "grant numbers" look good. Often these numbers are falsified. Also, the "grant" money comes from rulers' organizations like the Ford or Rockefeller Foundations or the government. These funding sources are "class conscious" -- they understand and work for the rulers' goals to subjugate people and prevent class struggle. They "succeed" if people believe the non-profits are "helping the poor" even when they're not.

Because of these non-profits' volunteers' and workers' efforts, some people are helped. But mostly the non-profits are doing their job for the rulers by pretending help is available when it isn't, and inducing honest liberal people to believe the rough edges can be taken off capitalism. Actually, these programs prompt workers to tolerate developing fascism while maintaining some faith in the capitalists' profit system.

How It Works on the Ground

The writer of this article just lost his job in a church-sponsored legal clinic after organizing co-workers to attend marches for immigrants' rights. His clinic charges every client $25 before deciding whether to help them. Since the boss wants large numbers of clients to pay the $25, there is little time left to really help anyone. The boss kept the writer in his office to take in the $25 fees rather than go to court with clients who were being evicted.

The boss threatened to fire the writer so he resigned before being sacked. His three co-workers suggested he "stay and make them fire you." One newly-hired co-worker had offered to work on a protest letter or force a meeting with the bosses. The writer should have done that, but everyone knew that an earlier group of workers had been fired for protesting before, many others had since quit and only three were left. The writer and his friends have lunch every week and still plan to protest and expose the problems. Other friends are demanding the writer be re-hired. Three people attended the immigration protest march. One co-worker will be a CHALLENGE reader soon.

Peru: Bosses' Dogfight Sharpens; Crook Back in Power

On June 4, the Social Democrat candidate Alan Garcia defeated Ollanta Humala of the Peru Union Party in a runoff election that Humala labeled "everyone against Humala." All the right-wing parties backed Garcia. Both candidates have hands bloody from killing peasants and workers during the dirty war against the Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path") Maoist guerillas. This election reflected the sharpening rivalry among Peruvian capitalists and between imperialists over control of the resources and the value produced by the workers of South America. All these vultures are mortal enemies of the working class.

Garcia, when president from 1985-1990, was vocally anti-U.S.; prohibited foreign companies from off-shoring their profits; opposed the International Monetary Fund; and voiced support for the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. Nationally his policies, benefiting only a handful of bosses, tripled poverty, destroyed over a million jobs, and increased inflation 7,000%. He ordered the murder of hundreds of political prisoners. When his term expired, he fled the country under accusations of rampant corruption. The U.S. bosses' current acceptance of Garcia only shows their economic and political weakness. They and some Peruvian bosses "preferred" him over Humala, fearing that the latter would become anti-U.S. like Venezuela's Chavez or Bolivia's Morales. Rightist Lourdes Flores was the Peruvian and U.S. bosses' candidate.

Morales and Chavez are nationalist reformers; both support Fidel Castro and spout vague "socialist slogans" and try to appear as a revolutionary alternative in order to deceive the oppressed masses. Both represent a section of Latin-American bosses who want to break with the U.S., hoping for a better deal with the European Union (EU), China and even Russia. The latter is selling weapons to Chavez and is investing heavily in Bolivia's gas industry.

Humala was an army officer who killed many peasants in the war against the Maoist Sendero guerrillas. He is supported by Chavez and projects himself as another Morales or Chavez, meaning nationalizing the energy sector, raising taxes on foreign corporations, renegotiating their contracts and using some of the proceeds to fund social programs.

Fearing this, the U.S. and Spain supported Garcia; Brazil withdrew its support for Humala. The U.S. and Spain are big investors in Peru's energy and mineral sectors. Brazil has huge investments in Bolivia where Morales just seized the gas industry. Since Brazil wants to be the over-riding power in the South America bloc that's trying to break U.S. domination, it fears the popularity, influence and wealth that Chavez is wielding. Brazilian bosses fear Peru under Humala would join Chavez, helping to consolidate his influence.

Meanwhile, the EU bosses, like all bosses, are constantly driving for maximum profits and would like more subservient South American bosses. Thus, though they have significantly increased their trade and investment in the region at U.S. imperialism's expense, they don't want tax increases on their profits. Therefore, they supported Garcia.

But there is a flaw in both imperialists' plans: Chinese imperialism. China has become the second trading partner of Peru and is investing heavily in its energy and mineral sectors. Even more important, China is forging closer ties with Venezuela. China now imports 160,000 barrels of oil a day from Venezuela. This is expected to double by year's end and increase to 1.6 million barrels a day by 2007. To help Venezuela produce and transport it, China has sold Chavez 18 oil rigs and 18 oil tankers (costing $1.3 billion). Chavez has also granted China National Petroleum Corporation development rights in the Zumano oil fields and its 400 million barrels of light oil and four trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Therefore, "The significance of Peru's presidential election....is not Garcia's victory, but the politicization of Peru's social divide and especially the rise of Humala and the U.P.P. [his party]." (www.pinr.com, 6/9/06) Humala increased his 30% support from the first election round to 47%, winning 14 of Peru's 24 departments and capturing 45 seats, the largest bloc in Peru's legislature. Garcia has 36.

In the southern highlands, where the poor and indigenous population is concentrated, he received 80% percent of the vote. PINR says that the latter groups have, "for the first time, been organized electorally and are poised to become a permanent force in Peru's politics, just as....in Bolivia and Ecuador." Evo Morales, like Humala, lost his first presidential bid but gained a foothold in parliament and used that to successfully run a second time. Humala could do the same.

The struggle between the regional bosses, and between the world's imperialists, is sharpening. Reformers like Humala, Chavez and Morales, are only fronting for one or another set of local bosses and imperialists. They will lead the working class into the jaws of fascism and genocidal wars. That's the nature of the profit system. The only way to end exploitation is to build a mass-based communist party -- including a big presence in the armed forces -- to overthrow this exploitative system.

The potential for the growth of a real revolutionary communist party, capable of leading the Latin-American working class to state power and the building of a communist society, exists throughout Latin America, and the rulers know it. That's why they need these reformists, sellouts who promise the masses, "We can do it for you under a new socialism of the 21st century!" But workers don't need reformism or socialism. We need communism. We need PLP. We must build it in Latin America and the world.

Note to Readers:

The "Forward To Communism" column has been temporarily suspended to take into account critical letters received by

CHALLENGE.

Page 787 of 824

CHALLENGE, September 20, 2006

PLP’ers Lead Confrontation vs. Racist Minutemen; Upstage Liberals

Imperialists’ Fierce Rivalry Leading to: World War III

The Dialectics Of ‘Necessity And Chance’

Iran Now Chief Regional Threat To U.S. Oil Control

Russia-Europe Alliance Blossoming

Imperialists Will Start World War Iii....

...Communist Soldiers And Workers Can Finish It

PATCO Firings Marked Massive AFL-CIO Scabbing

When Wages Fall and Profits Rise, It's Capitalism

Class Struggle Amid Growing Fascism in Oaxaca Strike

LA Workers Oust Racist and Attack Mayor's War Agenda

Racist Bosses Turn Katrina into Fascist Carnage

Workers and Youth Ante Up, Now Need Revolutionary Politics

Workers Have Militant Anti-Racist History

U.S. Rulers' Education 'Reform Part of Plan for World Domination

The 'Cap and Gown' Road to War

There's No Ford in These Workers' Future

LETTERS

Pro-Boss Union Hacks Help Dump 3,500 Workers

Airport Workers Back Oaxaca Strikers

Evil, Yes; Lesser, No

Reforms Won't Beat Fascism, Only Reds Will

Trial by Fury Hits Bosses’ Courts

A Worker’s Questions Sparks A Communist Response

Hundreds of Millions, Not 'Great Men,' Created Science

Bosses Plot to Gain Workers Support for Bigger Wars

New Liberalism Modeled on Old Liberalism’s Anti-Communism

Detroit And Gary Teachers Strike Against Racist War Budgets

Parents, Bus Drivers Back Gary Strikers

Redeye On The News

Lebanon: part of U.S. war plan for Iran

Israel cluster-bombs just before truce

Phony unions for China’s Wal-Marts

9/11 Motive was U.S. policy, not religion

Iranians know U.S. is no liberator

Capitalist China texts: No class struggle!

CHALLENGE, September 6, 2006

Whoever Wins Mexico's Election, Workers Lose

Liberals Cry `Out of Iraq' To:PLOT MORE WAR

Lamont: A Billionaire Pedigree

Liberals' `Just War' Image Hides Racist Cause of Atrocities

Big Oil Ordered Iraq War;Neo-Cons Just Followed Orders

`Peace Truce' Will Lead to Wider Wars

Victory Against Anti-Immigrant Kangaroo Court

As Copper Bosses' Profits Soar, Miners Strike

NYC Workers' War Contract Signals Need to Mobilize vs. Profit System

Combine Re-building Tasks with Revolutionary Ideas

Class Outlook Takes On Divisive Black Nationalism

Racist Gov't Devastates More People Than Katrina

CHALLENGE Welcomed Amid Bosses' Attacks on Returnees

Oaxaca Teachers' Movement Holds Potential PLP Growth

Black Workers, Youth Hit Streets Over Racist Cop Killing of 14-Year-Old

Racist `Community Policing' Murders Newark Black Man

CHALLENGE Spurs Debate on Mid-East War At Brooklyn Hospital

Deportation Raids Don't Intimidate Protestors

LETTERS

Multi-nationals Dangerous for Farm Workers

Winning Evangelicals To Oppose Iraq War

Anti-War Churchgoers Expose Pro-War Liberals

Rebel Soldiers Help Katrina Victims

Raising PLP's Ideas At Pro-Immigrant March, Union Convention

Ted Kennedy, AFT Leaders: Partners in Racism and Imperialist War

Spain: Anti-Franco Resistance Inspired World's Workers

`Popular Front' Did Not Lead to Revolution

Workers and Peasants Practiced Communism in the Chinese Revolution

CHALLENGE, August 16, 2006

Religion, Oil Pipelines and Bosses' DogfightImperialist War Massacres Workers and Their Children

Anti-Racists Victorious In Showdown With Fascist Court System

LATINO WORKERS REJECT LIBERALS, PLEDGE TO PACK COURTROOM

French-U.S. Bosses' Current Love Affair

Whither Cuba? State Capitalism or Back to a U.S. Colony?

Wildcat Strikers Take Over Barcelona Airport, Fight Job Cuts

Hotel Union Uses Immigration `Reform' to Sidetrack Potential Walkout

THOUSANDS OF DISSIDENT WORKERS MARCH IN VENEZUELA

CHALLENGE A Weapon to Unite Workers, Reject Divisive Nationalism

Power of Working Class Shines Amid Fascist Repression

PLP Anti-Racist Base Can Unite Katrina Victims Against Bosses' System

Teachers Challenge Pro-War AFT Hacks

Anti-Racist, Anti-War Resolutions At AFSCME Convention

Liberals Cry `Out of Iraq' To:
PLOT MORE WAR

Big Oil Ordered Iraq War;
Neo-Cons Just Followed Orders

NYC Workers' War Contract Signals Need
to Mobilize vs. Profit System

CHALLENGE Spurs Debate on Mid-East War
At Brooklyn Hospital

Religion, Oil Pipelines and Bosses' Dogfight
Imperialist War Massacres Workers and Their Children

Whither Cuba?
State Capitalism or Back to a U.S. Colony?

Wildcat Strikers Take Over Barcelona
Airport, Fight Job Cuts

DeMOCKracy in Iraq:
Three Strikers Murdered in Kurdistan

NY City Workers:
Red Politics Can Expose `Coalition of Sellouts' and War Contract

FIGHT RACISM
Bosses' Tool Used Against All Workers

And how did Buffet acquire his billions?
Buffett Bilked Billions from Workers' Misery

International Solidarity:
CUNY Teachers Back Oaxaca Strikers