Democrats’ Lovefest Deadly for Workers

In a spectacle worthy of rock stars, with 84,000 screaming fans and July 4th-style fireworks, the Democratic Party named Barack Obama and Joe Biden to its party’s ticket for the November elections. As we go to press, the Republican Convention has begun and will name John McCain and Sarah Palin (another “fresh face”) as their candidates.  Despite being bombarded by frenzied and non-stop media coverage of the campaigns, workers should understand that neither ticket offers anything to us except capitalist exploitation marked by endless wars, attacks on our living standards, and divide-and-rule racism against African Americans and Latinos. The Obama campaign, with its mass outreach to youth, black and Latin, and labor, dangerously misleads millions into supporting the ruling class.

Obama has captured the imagination of millions who want to believe that he will bring change that would help them in these tough times. But Obama has the same backers as President Bush and Dick Cheney! (See PLP Elections Pamphlet). He will serve the same interests! The rulers believe that Obama’s appeal will make the working class more enthusiastic about following U.S. rulers into continuing and expanding wars and inevitable cutbacks in wages, services, and social programs. Like Kennedy, Carter and Clinton before him, Obama represents false hope for change and is simply a front man for the ruling class, “fresh face” notwithstanding.

The Context:  War for Control over Energy Resources

U.S. imperialists lead a declining empire that defines the limits of any president’s initiatives.  U.S. power, while strong and doing great damage worldwide, is weakening relative to other rising powers including the European Union, Russia, China, and even some secondary capitalist powers like Iran and Venezuela that gain leverage by allying with the rising powers competing with the U.S. At the core of these disputes is control over the world’s energy resources, centered in the Middle East.

The Acceptance Speech and the Issues

Obama’s speech was standard liberal fare. His rhetoric was indistinguishable from his Democratic Party predecessors including John Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, John Kerry, or Bill Clinton. Like them, he promised improvements in all aspects of life (see box). Yet his predecessors have never achieved these goals and cannot because they interfere with the needs of the capitalists for profits.  In fact, Bill Clinton dismantled the welfare program so that now the poverty rate has increased dramatically while welfare rolls have fallen drastically!

Obama is tied to the ruling class by a hundred strings, as demonstrated by his selection of long-term Washington insider Joe Biden for Vice-President and his coterie of advisors who all belong to ruling-class think-tanks and policy institutes like the Council on Foreign Relations that ensure the continuity of U.S. imperialism regardless of who is president.

Dissent and Protest

At the convention, thousands rallied to attack the Democratic Party for its failure to champion working-class interests to end the wars and achieve social justice. However, it’s an illusion to think the Democrats, a ruling-class party, would ever truly represent workers’ interest.

The Iraq Veterans Against the War demanded to address the convention around the need to incorporate their goals — an immediate end to the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, better care for returning veterans and reparations for the Iraqi people.  Obama turned a deaf ear to these demands and others, relying on thousands of police armed with pepper spray, rubber bullets, and truncheons to threaten the demonstrators and move them far away from the convention, arresting over 130 and beating many. The cops did the same to protestors at the Republican Convention.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The Democratic and Republican conventions are clown shows to entertain and distract us while the country’s actual rulers, the rich capitalists, make sure that their every need is met by their faithful political servants in both parties. They use the political process, including the conventions, to deceive us into thinking that voting can significantly affect our interests. The ruling class wants to recruit millions of us into supporting U.S. imperialism by blunting our class-consciousness about our exploitation by the rich capitalists, bankers, developers and government officials.  The working class should instead attack these elections for the shell game they represent, and build a militant, internationalist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist opposition to capitalism. This approach is not “on the ballot” in this election — revolution for workers’ power and communism can never be won through a ballot, but only through revolution and armed struggle.

What does Obama stand for?

• JOBS — Obama promises “more jobs,” ending outsourcing of jobs overseas. But Obama cannot defy the laws of capitalism. They dictate that capitalists must drive for higher profits to survive and therefore seek out the lowest wage markets, whether they be in China, Mexico or Latin America, as the Japanese and European automakers do in seeking lower wages in the U.S.

• WAGES — Obama promises help for “hard-working Americans.” But again, capitalism dictates that U.S. bosses must drive down wages to be able to compete with rival bosses worldwide. So they “outsource” jobs to subcontractor shops from across the southern U.S. to California, jobs which pay $10 an hour, less than half of what workers in unionized factories like Boeing earn, leading to mass layoffs and mass unemployment.

• UNEMPLOYMENT — Because of the above two factors, capitalism must create a “reserve army of unemployed.” No president in history has ever ended unemployment because it’s built into capitalism’s drive for maximum profits which leads to “bubble-bursting” recessions and depressions.

• RACISM — Obama promises to “bring people together” while blaming victims, not racism, for their misery. But Obama won’t withdraw the 100,000 cops that Clinton put on the streets, cops who daily attack and murder black and Latino workers and youth. Again, Obama’s capitalism cannot function, and has never functioned, without the hundreds of billions in super-profits that the racist super-exploitation of black and Latino workers rakes in for the bosses.

• THE ENVIRONMENT — Obama promises to “be free of foreign oil in ten years.” (!) But U.S. capitalism needs to control that foreign oil as a lever in its battle with imperialist rivals in Europe, Russia, China and Japan.  Obama promises to put money into non-polluting energy sources, but he doesn’t tell us that no modern army or industry can exist without oil. You can’t drive a tank or fly a jet fighter on wind power.

• A DRAFT — Obama promises to “rebuild our military to meet future conflicts.” How? With the current depleted and exhausted U.S. Army? It can only be done by drafting millions, which Obama aims to accomplish through the back door of “National Service.” This would supposedly give youth a “choice” of “public service” or military service, and promise undocumented immigrant youth citizenship in exchange for becoming cannon fodder in his endless “future conflicts.” Where else will he get the troops he wants to put into Afghanistan?

• FASCISM — Obama complains about the Bush assault on civil liberties, but meanwhile votes for the latest Bush bill to tap an untold number of phone calls in the name of “national security.” And he hasn’t uttered a word about repealing the fascist Patriot Act. The rulers need such laws to put down potential rebellions by workers and youth fed up with all the attacks on their lives.

• WAR — Obama promises to gradually withdraw most (not all) troops from Iraq, but wants to enlarge the army by at least 92,000, sending more soldiers into Afghanistan to continue the killing of thousands of civilians in order to protect proposed oil pipelines in that area of Asia. And Obama’s pledge to handle “future conflicts” by definition must maintain and expand the hundreds of U.S. military bases throughout the world upon which U.S. capitalism depends to control the flow of oil. In defending his ability to be “commander-in-chief,” Obama proudly cites all the past U.S. wars that have seen Democrats in charge.
And Obama’s opponent, John McCain, is just as much a loyal servant of capitalism on every one of the above issues.

Ron Paul: Appearance, ‘Revolution’; Essence, Fascism

Although McCain is the Republican presidential nominee, Ron Paul still has support among some youth. Signs of “Ron Paul for President” appear in some anti-war activities. Paul was googled and seen on Youth Tube more than any other GOP candidate. The so-called Ron Paul “Revolution” attracted some working-class white youth because he opposed the Iraq war, globalization and a national ID system. But the real essence of Paul’s program is fascism and racism.

Alex Jones, an Austin, Texas, radio host, Minuteman supporter and leader of the “9/11 Truth Movement” has won some youth to Paul. The Truth Movement argues that 9/11 was an “inside job” perpetrated by Bush to justify war in the Middle-East and impose a police state at home.

But this is just a hook to attract people to Jones and others who spread the anti-Semitic filth of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a 1903 fakery circulated by the Czarist secret police. Henry Ford and Hitler also used the Protocols and racism to deflect working-class anger away from the real enemy, capitalism. Unfortunately, even some fake left-wingers in Latin America and elsewhere have spread the Protocols to give a false explanation of finance capital. (For more on Jones see the current issue of The Communist Magazine.)

Anti-immigrant racism is the real essence of Jones. He says immigration from Mexico is a “globalist” trick to erect a “Communist military dictatorship” in the U.S. Similarly, while Paul rails against a national ID card for citizens, he demands more racist police repression of the inner cities (asserting in 1996 that 95% of black men in Washington, D.C. were “criminals”). On immigration, he calls for a militarized border, intensified efforts to round up the undocumented and new rules to deny citizenship to their U.S.-born children.

At a minimum, the Paul campaign, like Obama’s and Clinton’s, brings anti-war youth into the electoral system and fascism. Beyond this, they divert youth from an understanding of capitalist exploitation and imperialist rivalries — the basis of all modern wars — into a traditional Nazi ideology that blames elite “conspirators” for the problems capitalism generates.

In 1902, Lenin warned communists not to rely on spontaneity. Workers tend to rebel spontaneously against the ravages of capitalism. But on their own, these struggles won’t create the political class consciousness needed to destroy capitalism.

Communists in PLP show that only knowing the historical role of the working class can transform spontaneous anger into the communist class consciousness necessary for revolutionary change. We must become involved with those youth mis-led by Ron Paul, Obama and Clinton, and use CHALLENGE as our ideological weapon to expose these politicians as tools of the racist capitalist war-making system.

RULING CLASS, NOT VOTERS, CALL SHOTS IN ELECTION

Like all elections, Obama’s, Clinton’s and McCain’s three-ring circus helps capitalists disguise the class nature of their dictatorship. The illusion is that voters, mainly workers, get to choose the nation’s leaders. In reality, a ruling class — led by powerful financiers — hand-picks, bankrolls and directs each of the candidates.

Sometimes, as with Clinton and Dole in 1996, the race reflects major divisions over policy between factions of U.S. capitalists, usually the main wing which advocates long-range imperialist investment abroad vs. the isolationists who oppose costly foreign profit wars, wanting to concentrate on immediate domestic profits. But this year, the front-runners all promote the main, imperialist wing’s agenda for a domestic police state and ever-expanding war. Campaign 2008 boils down to which candidate can most effectively mobilize the nation for the imperialists’ needs. In Texas recently, Obama and Clinton debated their relative fitness to be commander-in-chief.

The war-making billionaires have high hopes for Obama and Clinton. Both are luring more black and Latino, female and young workers to express patriotic loyalty to the rulers, more so this year to gain support for wider war. Both want health plans that maintain drug and insurance profits, racist plans which will fall most heavily on lower-income black and Latino families who can least afford to pay anything into such schemes. Both advocate “national service” — mandatory drafting of all youth for two years, many of whom (especially black and Latino youth) will serve that time in the military. Both will make workers will pay heavily for the rulers’ domestic and global aims. But both promise to impose wartime economic discipline on reluctant capitalists, eliminating tax cuts on the rich in order to rein in the excesses of the corporations and CEOs in the drive to pay for the racist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But, if the imperialists fail to sell the Democrats’ plans for war taxes and regulation, they can fall back on Nazi goose-stepping militarist McCain. All three candidates get their main funding from the sector of U.S. finance capital that has the greatest interest in broadening the U.S. war machine’s field of operation. [See page 7.] Taking no chances, imperialist Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs backs all three contenders.

YES, VIRGINIA (AND TEXAS AND OHIO), THERE IS A RULING CLASS

The New York Times (2/10) proclaimed that the 2008 campaign proves that a king-making elite does not exist: “This season’s primaries have made the idea of a political establishment, whether Republican or Democratic, hard to take seriously.” Even harder to take seriously is the Times’ denial, given the candidates’ backers and advisers:

• Zbigniew Brzezinski headlines Obama’s cast of counselors. Brzezinski has served as director of the elite, banker-backed Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission. He helped Carter frame his infamous 1979 Doctrine, which vowed permanent occupation of Mid-East oilfields.

• Clinton’s handlers, mainly war criminals from husband Bill’s days, including Madeleine Albright and William Perry, have formed their own think-tank, the Center for a New American Security. Clinton’s CNAS has now joined with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to study U.S. military readiness for challenges from Iran, Pakistan, China and beyond. Hillary’s “peacenik” supporters at Carnegie take “generous financial support” from the A-list of U.S. imperialism: BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, the Rockefellers, Shell and the Pentagon.

• One-time “maverick” McCain now has Establishment CFR pundit Max Boot in his corner pushing for a U.S. Foreign Legion. Boot joins McCain advisors Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft (Bush, Sr.’s National Security Advisor) and Colin Powell.C

RULING CLASS’S TOP
THINK-TANKS DICTATE POLICY

The dominant faction of U.S. imperialists is determined to control the policy of whoever wins in November. The CFR and the Brookings Institution “are undertaking an ambitious initiative to develop a nonpartisan blueprint for the next U.S. president, one which can be used as the foundation for the new administration’s Middle-East policy.” (CFR website) The CFR team has representation from all three camps: Sandy Berger (Clinton), Brzezinski (Obama), and Scowcroft (McCain). Not coincidentally, all three candidates have — in the CFR’s Foreign Affairs journal — pledged to vastly enlarge the U.S. Army. It is these think-tank policy-makers, bankers and heads of the largest corporations who form the ruling class that runs the country, no matter who sits in the White House.

As popular interest in the elections heightens, it is crucial to expose the candidates’ class allegiance. They all defend a racist profit system that systematically and brutally exploits workers, often through war, and is long overdue for extinction. But the working class cannot just vote away its tormentors. Capitalism’s destruction can only be achieved through the long-term, painstaking building of a revolutionary communist party — PLP — that will ultimately put an armed working class in power.

Pakistani Bosses’ Election Won’t Solve Workers’ Problems

  Those Pakistanis who did vote in the country’s recent national assembly elections registered their disgust with current president and military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, soundly rejecting his ruling party, (the Pakistani Muslim League, PML-Q). An even greater disbelief in the ability of elections to solve the problems faced by Pakistan’s working class was mirrored in the great majority who didn’t vote. In a country where workers struggle with double-digit inflation and face daily shortages of basic necessities like wheat flour and sugar, barely 20 million — of a possible 100 million+ eligible voters — went to the polls.

  The entire electoral system is thoroughly corrupt, a condition endemic to capitalism. Although winners included the Pakistani People’s Party (PPP), led by Asif Ali Zardari, husband of the recently-assassinated Benazir Bhutto, and ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League–N, the low vote could easily reflect a protest against the big spending of the candidates. They criss-crossed the country in private jets, helicopters, bullet-proof 4-wheelers, protected by heavily-armed private security guards and poured money into extravagant TV and print ads. This campaign blitz cost 200 billion rupees, according to the Times of India. (1,000 rupees roughly equals $16.)

  For many months Pakistani army officers have been moving away from Musharraf as their front-man. His overly-obvious bowing to U.S. orders, plus personal power-grabbing, made it more difficult for the army to control the Pakistani masses. The appearance of a “fair” election was necessary to downgrade the increasingly unpopular general. But “choosing” between the same small group of elites who, using elections, coups or assassinations, have bounced in and out of power for the past 40 years, reflects the “choices” under capitalism where all parties represent the ruling class.

  It was also the most expensive election in the country’s history, completely controlled by those who financed the campaigns, with money mostly coming from wealthy industrialists, stock brokers and real estate businessmen whose “investments” will require pay-offs. This means the same old corrupt government, run on contracts, kickbacks and patronage.

  No party won an outright majority. Power-sharing deals involve U.S.-backed dictator Musharraf, who retains the presidency illegally; PPP leader, Asif Ali Zardari, unable to assume office because of his criminal past, having served eight years in prison on embezzlement charges; and Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistani Muslim League-N,  also barred from office because of past convictions for hijacking, terrorism and attempted murder.

  These two parties engineered a coalition government that excludes Musharraf, who remains president, for now. Meanwhile, the lawyers, journalists, NGO’s, human rights activists and students of the “Democracy Movement“ are pressuring the coalition for a place in the new government.

  One young activist lawyer was skeptical of the movement’s call for “democracy” — as if the state was neutral, above class interests, instead of being an instrument for the ruling class to exploit the working class. Doubtful of producing any lasting changes through a capitalist government, he said, “Nevertheless we’re in this movement, fighting the anti-working class labor laws. As capitalists fight with each other, and show their many weaknesses, we have an opportunity to build a mass party for revolutionary change.” 

  But the U.S. is the main player pulling the strings in Pakistani politics. Shortly after the elections, the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad summoned the PPP’s Asif Ali Zardari to the U.S. embassy. The PPP now says the new government won’t seek Musharraf’s immediate impeachment. The U.S. indicates it will continue working with Musharraf.

  Pakistan, a center of competition among world powers, occupies a position of great geo-strategic importance, bordered by Iran, Afghanistan, China, India and the Arabian Sea. It is crucial to strengthening the U.S. hold on the Middle East. Already the U.S. has four army bases in Pakistan, and launches Predator missile attacks on insurgents from a secret base in Pakistan.

Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the UN, says, “We will look back 10 years from now and say that Af/Pak was even more important to our national security than Iraq.” Both Obama and Clinton favor expanding the “war on terror” in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The search for Al Qaeda and Bin Laden will be used to justify keeping the U.S in the area for a long time. U.S, Pakistani and Afghan workers and youth will be dragged into fighting more wars. Therefore, the most important task is to build a revolutionary party to lead the working class out of the endless horrors of capitalism. This is PLP’s aim in Pakistan and worldwide. Fight for Communism.

Top Five Big Business Contributors to the Leading Candidates

Barack Obama:

* Goldman Sachs (Wall Street’s top power broker, whose “alumni” include U.S. Treasury-Secy. Henry Paulson, Citigroup chairman Robert Rubin, British Petroleum CEO Peter Sutherland, and Jon Corzine, New Jersey’s Governor)

* UBS (world’s largest wealth manager, largely owned by Saudi royal family)

* J.P. Morgan Chase (“Rockefeller’s bank,” closely tied to Exxon Mobil)

* Exelon (nuclear power company; ultra-imperialist Cabot family has big stake)

* Kirkland & Ellis (BP’s U.S. law firm)

Hillary Clinton:

* Goldman Sachs

* Citigroup (U.S.’s and world’s biggest bank; Saudi prince main shareholder)

* Morgan Stanley (Wall Street bank, deeply invested in Middle East)

* DLA Piper (world’s biggest law firm, with offices throughout Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the U.S.)

* J.P. Morgan Chase

John McCain:

* Citigroup

* Bank Rome (lobbyists for Shell Oil and Chiquita Banana)

*Greenberg Traurig (law firm representing Alcoa worldwide)

* Merrill Lynch (U.S. richest investment firm whose biggest holdings are war beneficiaries GE and Exxon Mobil)

* Goldman Sachs

(Source: Center for Responsive Politics)

Obama Checks Out While Chicago Workers Die

CHICAGO, IL February 8 — “My patients are dying! My patients are dying because of your racist cutbacks,” declared a Latino health care worker who treats TB patients. “You’re a murderer and I charge you with genocide!” was her “greeting” to fascist Dr. Robert Simon, interim health chief of the Cook County Bureau of Health Services (CCBHS). She stormed out as he, a guest of SEIU Local 20, began to speak at their Town Hall meeting.

Simon said, “I’m not a politician,” but another worker shouted from the floor, “You’re a racist murderer.” Simon, who once said, “To me, society wastes enormous energy, money and resources on [the homeless],” announced that the County health system was “on the verge of collapse if any further cuts are made.” He was supporting SEIU’s push for a tax increase.

The commissioners who approved over $100 million in racist cutbacks during last year’s budget crisis sat on SEIU’s stage then and now. With Simon wielding the knife, they closed half of the 26 neighborhood clinics and laid off 1,000 doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers.

Meanwhile, as Barack Obama tours the country with hypocritical calls for “change” and “healthcare for all,” he has done nothing against the racist cutbacks that are killing patients and closing public hospitals in his own neighborhood.

More cuts are threatened for March 1. County Finance chief John Daley said he was proposing 13% cuts ($108 million), closing Provident and Oak Forest hospitals, all remaining clinics and a center that treats one-third of the area’s HIV patients. Only Stroger Hospital and the Cermak clinic that treats County Jail inmates will remain.

A young worker yelled, “Are you saying we have to raise taxes on the poorest people, our patients, in order to give them health care?” “That’s right,” Daley replied.

Over 1.2 million people are uninsured in Cook County. Our patients are 85% black and Latino. No one knows how many patients have died, but last year’s cuts cost almost 2,000 jobs. Stroger patients aren’t getting discharge medications and the pharmacy is down to one shift.

Less than 100 people attended the meeting, with only a few from Stroger, even though it’s nearby. Most workers couldn’t come because cutbacks have generated outrageous workloads. Many who could weren’t interested because they have no respect for the union leadership and the local politicians it serves.

PLP members at Stroger organized some workers to confront the racist budget-cutters face-to-face. The bosses and union leaders got a small taste of the workers’ and patients’ hatred for them. Most important, we and our co-workers distributed hundreds of leaflets at work, showing how racist terror and cutbacks are financing the two-BILLION-dollar-a-week war in Iraq.

While we can’t stop the current slaughter in Iraq or Chicago with reforms, by fighting back we can expand the base for CHALLENGE, strengthen our ties to workers and patients and build a fighting PLP that will eventually lead the working class from fascist terror and war to communist revolution.

Charity Hospital in New Orleans and King Hospital in Los Angeles are CLOSED! Grady Hospital in Atlanta is in critical condition. The CCBHS is already more than half closed, and Bush’s Medicare and Medicaid cuts will mean another $60 million cut on July 1! We’re in a fight for our lives. Build PLP and a mass May Day!

RACIST BUDGET CUTS MURDER BLACK AND LATIN WOMEN

Because of budget cuts and staff reductions, almost 1,000 women with abnormal Pap smears, unusual bleeding, pelvic masses and other symptoms are waiting months to see gynecologists in the Cook County health system. The longer they’re forced to wait, the greater the risk of severe pain, cancers and life-threatening emergencies. A May 2007 report from the Chicago Foundation for Women reports more than 450,000 women in this area are uninsured, and many depend on county hospitals and clinics. The vast majority are black and Latino.

A young West Side black woman had a Pap smear performed at a clinic last April; learned in June it was positive, suggesting possible cervical cancer; and has been unable to get an appointment at Stroger Hospital for follow-up tests and evaluation. Another patient had a positive Pap smear in September and just got word she could see a Stroger gynecologist in April.

Last year, half of the community and urgent-care clinics were closed, leading to even longer waits, patients being harassed by bill-collection agencies and rumored threats of immigration raids. As a result, there were 100,000 fewer patient visits last year than in 2006, when there were 101 doctors, nurses and physician’s assistants providing basic medical services at the clinics. Today there are only 44 medical providers working longer hours, to serve hundreds of thousands of patients.

Electoral-Circus Stirs Intense Debate in Church

My church youth group has talked a lot about the elections lately. These young adults used to be reluctant to talk about politics, but now there is lots of enthusiasm, especially among the first-time voters. Several waited for hours to see Clinton and reported happily that they had seen CHALLENGE sellers there, too. Many are enthralled by Obama.

This is the savvy “YouTube generation,” but their reasons were incredibly superficial: “I just like him” or “She won the debate.” Nobody seemed to know the candidates’ positions, other than “she’s for health care, he’s for change,” or whether they differ on anything substantial. One older adult was the most enthusiastic, saying that “Obama is inspiring a whole generation of youth to get involved in the electoral process.” About half of the young people just listened, and one said later that she “wasn’t really into the elections.”

Another adult, known as a radical, was pressed to say who she really wanted to be president. She replied, “We’re on an out-of-control runaway train with no brakes, headed toward a cliff, and you are asking who I want to drive it. I think we should all get off the train, as quickly as we can!” Several young CHALLENGE readers said, “yeah, but communism didn’t work.” But they agreed to invite a student comrade to talk with the group later.

One of the sharper exchanges came when someone offered to bet on the return of a military draft within the first term of any Democratic administration. “Why do you think Obama would do that?” someone asked. “Because the main message of his campaign is to get young people to feel that ‘we’re all in this together, part of a liberal multi-racial, anti-sexist America’ and the logical conclusion is ‘everybody should do National Service’ which would turn into a draft” she said. Most looked unhappy with this idea, but nobody argued against it.

In an anti-racism class at the church on election night, almost everyone self-identified as a Democrat and seemed to agree when the minister said whichever Democrat won would be wonderful. But nobody actually claimed that the Democrats would improve things. Instead they talked about how a black or female president would be a “symbol” of change for the better. Several were excited that Internet developments have “democratized American politics.” On the other hand, several people pointed out that the constant media talk about the “black vote” and “Latin vote” and the “female vote” builds even more racism.

I was a little surprised when some CHALLENGE readers shared the general hopefulness about the elections, because these good friends are open to the ideas that capitalism can’t be reformed and that we can’t end racism without ending capitalism. But their idea of having a “long-term perspective” is that incremental “gains” made through electoral politics will lead eventually to revolutionary developments.

Now a long-term perspective depends on understanding that small changes can create conditions for a revolution. But what kind of changes? Not winning small reforms but winning people - by ones and twos and in larger groups – little by little, closer to the communist movement PLP is building.

Most of my friends don’t yet fully agree that it’s meaningless to talk about “democracy” when we live under a capitalist dictatorship. And we need to talk more about what real mass participation will be like under a revolutionary dictatorship of the working class.

These conversations have led to a new regular CHALLENGE reader, with plans to show the paper to four more people. Being deeply involved in this church has created wonderful opportunities for sharp, friendly, long-term political struggle over racism, the bosses’ electoral circus and for communism.

Obama’s ‘Change’:Be All You Can Be For U.S. Imperialism

This year the celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, Black History Month and Barack Obama’s presidential run are combining to create a lethal brew for U.S. workers. Every year on King’s birthday we hear how racial harmony is just around the corner if we workers can only be true to his pacifist legacy. Black History Month, while highlighting great contributions made by black writers, scientists and artists (although notably excluding working-class heroes), also builds the illusion that capitalism provides unlimited opportunities for black workers.

These events combined push the lie that racism is declining in the U.S. However, the media blitz can’t hide the fact that racism is alive and well in the U.S. and worldwide.

Now Barack Obama’s bid is pushing two big lies: (1) simply voting for a politician or law can reform capitalism; and (2) the working class, especially black workers, will be better off with a black President.

Yet the reality is that even in the Democratic primaries themselves “race” and racism have emerged front and center, with Clinton and Obama trading barbs about it and appealing to black and white constituencies. And anti-immigrant racism plays a major role in the Republican primaries as well.

The bosses use racism to divide the working class and extract even more profit from our labor. By nearly every measure — employment, incarceration rates, healthcare, education, poverty levels, wages, the Katrina horror, racist police murders and frame-ups like the Jena Six and anti-immigrant raids — black and Latino workers are victims of a brutal racist system. According to 2006 U.S. Census statistics, the poverty rate for blacks was 24.3% compared to 3.5% for whites. (The federal poverty rate is set at a level –– $20,650 for a family of four –– that is horrendously low. This means that tens of thousands of families are living in poverty conditions, even if they aren’t counted as such by the government.) The U.S. prison population (the highest in the world) contains 2.4 million people, 70% black and Latino, with millions more on probation, parole or awaiting trial, much of it due to racism.

The fact is, capitalism cannot exist without racism. The concepts of “race” and racism were developed as an ideology just as capitalist economies began to dominate world markets. Then, as now, it was used both to divide and weaken the working class, and to justify paying lower wages to black and Latino workers.

Under capitalism, workers must compete for jobs. On average, according to the Census Bureau, black workers are paid about 70¢ in wages for every dollar paid to white workers. (For Latino workers it’s about 60¢.) Bosses use this differential to threaten white workers not to ask for higher pay or be replaced by lower-paid black and Latino workers. White workers are thus forced to accept lower wages based on the racist exploitation of black and Latin labor. This historical analysis has led PLP to consistently make the fight against racism central to the struggle against capitalist oppression. As Karl Marx said, “The labor in white skin can never be free so long as the labor in black skin is branded.”

The Danger of Elections

Along with the usual lies about how capitalism can be reformed to eliminate racism, the presence of the first legitimate black contender for president, Barack Obama, makes this a particularly dangerous year for workers. Since his break-out speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, Obama has become another face of the liberal wing of the ruling class, along with Hillary Clinton (see editorial page 2). This Rockefeller-led faction pushes a “friendlier” capitalism, where the war in Iraq would be fought with more allies, Guantanamo Bay would be reformed or closed, and “civil liberties” would be protected (“liberties” which are revoked whenever the ruling class feels threatened). Even if these changes are made, however, it will not lead to a system that satisfies the needs of workers. In reality, the liberals are attempting to use these ideas to build even greater patriotic loyalty to their imperialist aims worldwide.

Obama neatly fits another part of the liberals’ strategy. He talks about “change” and “hope” and other wonderful-sounding ideas. And as the higher (though limited) voter turnouts in Iowa and New Hampshire demonstrate, his ideas (along with the other candidates’) are inspiring many more people to get involved in capitalist politics. Yet Obama has clear ties to the ruling class and has proven that he will place the goals of the U.S. imperialists over the needs of the working class (see box below for his links to the bosses):

• He voted billions more for the war in Iraq and has threatened military action against Iran;
• He supports expanding the murderous war in Afghanistan;
• He voted for building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, to make it even more dangerous for super-exploited Mexican workers trying to enter the U.S.

(CHALLENGE has leveled these criticisms at Hillary Clinton, who is just as much an enemy of the working class as Obama. (See editorial page 2) Workers will not benefit from an Obama presidency any more than from Clinton or McCain or any of the others.

Militant Struggle, Not Elections, Led to Change

In fact, workers have never won real social, political and economic changes through voting. The so-called “examples” of voting bringing reforms ignores the intensive militant, violent struggles that preceded the vote. The anti-slavery Thirteenth Amendment passed only after years of fight-back by abolitionists, more than 400 slave revolts and a Civil War in which 600,000 soldiers, mostly workers, died.

The 40-hour work-week and labor reform followed a decade of sit-down strikes, often pitting armed workers, led by communist organizers, against the army, cops, National Guard and other bosses’ agents. Even the Voting Rights Act resulted from years of bloody struggle against the KKK and Jim Crow racism. History clearly shows that the bosses only make concessions to the working class when forced to do so by mass, militant action.

But the bosses use their state power to reverse these reforms. And current economic conditions show this is especially true during times of intense inter-imperialist rivalry. As U.S. rulers struggle to solidify control of Iraqi oil and contain their imperialist rivals in Europe and Asia, workers increasingly feel the squeeze. For more and more workers, the 40-hour work-week is a distant memory. The Labor Department recently reported that in 2007 inflation was 4.1% while real wages dropped 0.9%, making necessities such as food, energy and healthcare more expensive. Due to racist discrimination, all this disproportionately affects black and Latino workers.

Capitalism is a system with laws that cannot be changed by electing a black or woman president or through reforms. These laws dictate that racism will always be used to extract super-profits from the labor of workers and that any reforms the working class does win will eventually be taken back. Only revolutionary communist change will emancipate the working class from capitalist wage slavery which is the basis of racism. Only with communism will all aspects of society meet the needs of the working class, while the profit-driven bosses are destroyed. Progressive Labor Party constantly and consistently works toward this goal.

Big Bosses Back Barack

Barack Obama portrays himself as a servant of the working class, but his ties to the biggest capitalists are clear. Among Obama’s top contributors are :
§    Wall Street financial houses, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan-Chase, and Citigroup, the world’s largest bank, all of whom undoubtedly liked his Senate vote against capping credit-card interest rates at 30% ;
§ Exelon Corporation, the nation’s leading nuclear-power-plant operator and Obama’s fourth largest patron, have donated $74,350 to his campaigns.
§    A leading corporate law firm, Skadden Arps — which defends major financial firms against consumer class-action suits — is one of Obama’s leading career patrons;
§    Rich Tarplin, a lobbyist for Chevron, the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Association of Manufacturers, is one of his biggest individual donors.

Rulers’ Subprime Fiasco Slams Workers, Spurs Fascist Solution

The subprime mortgage fiasco has highlighted a huge problem for the U.S. ruling class, even as it comes down like a sledgehammer on the working class. Since January 1, in the firestorm roaring through stock markets worldwide, capitalists have destroyed $5 trillion worth of value created by workers’ labor power. As the subprime cancer spreads, workers in the U.S., where it began, face mass foreclosures, layoffs and wage and service cuts, with black and Latino workers hardest hit because of racist discrimination.

U.S. rulers, on the other hand, while trying to make workers at home pay for the crisis, have fears going far beyond the domestic lending and spending crunch. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the rulers’ leading think-tank, worries about “the geopolitical and geoeconomic effects a U.S. downturn might bring, particularly at a time that finds other powers [ruling classes — Ed.] on the rise, the price of vital commodities spiking and U.S. prestige in question.” (CFR website, 1/18/08) The threatened recession makes U.S. imperialism and its war machine all the more desperate for cash.

“War at Any Price?” — a report released by Congressional Democrats in November — shows that Iraq and Afghanistan will have cost $1.6 trillion by the end of 2008. It says that even with a drawdown to 55,000 troops in Iraq by 2013 (indicating a long-term occupation) the price tag will reach $3.5 trillion by 2017.

The rulers’ huge problem stems from the fact that they have nowhere near prepared the U.S. for all-out imperialist war. During World War II, the Roosevelt-led capitalist class mounted such an all-out mobilization by: (1) drafting 14 million youth into the armed forces (in a population barely one-third of the present 300 million); (2) instituted rationing of gas and food (each family had to present coupons at the store to buy meat — limited to 4 oz. per person daily — sugar, butter, etc.;  (3) decreed a government-imposed wage freeze and price controls; and (4) banned all strikes. Not one new car, washing machine or radio was manufactured in the U.S. for four years — all the factories were producing tanks, bombers and weapons of war. Tax rates topped out at 94%! (It’s 35% now.)

Compare this to Bush’s “war on terror.” His advice: “go shopping; don’t let the terrorists win.”
U.S. rulers approached the war against Nazi Germany and fascist Japan with total reality. While the Democrats decry the Iraq-Afghanistan price tags mentioned above, they don’t mention the fantastic sums a Middle-East re-invasion or war with China would require.

To prepare for World War III and endless imperialist wars against rising rivals in the European Union, China and Russia, U.S. rulers must exercise all-out control not only over the working class — fascism — but also over those members of their own class who guard  their own short-term profits at the expense of the long-range survival of their system as a whole, as they did in World War II.

While Obama’s camp has been slow in divulging its fiscal program, it can’t be far removed from Hillary Clinton’s who claims to have the solution. She intends to use the state apparatus to force reluctant capitalists to give up some of their profits to meet the main bosses’ war needs — the “sacrifice” of “treasure” called for in her husband’s Hart-Rudman Commission reports. Clinton told the New York Times (1/21/08) she would immediately raise the top income tax rate from 35% to 39.6%.

She also seeks to slash exorbitant executive pay, which would steer more profit to the ruling-class billionaires and banks that own companies. Hillary decries “professional corporate managers who are not the creators of the corporation.” She’ll protect billionaires like George Soros, the Rockefellers, Warren Buffet and others, who see the need to discipline their class to save their system’s top-dog status. Bill Clinton robbed the poor — by dismantling Welfare — to finance the Pentagon. Hillary would continue that crime, and the racist super-exploitation of black and Latino workers, intensifying Workfare to lower wage levels of all workers.

RULERS ‘GIVE’ WORKERS $1,200 TO SPEND, THEN DEMANDS MOST OF OUR PAY FOR WAR

Given actual military expenditures, proposed bipartisan “economic stimulus” packages, topping out at $1,200 per household, come off as a cheap election-year bribe, with each side trying to take credit for a paltry payoff. In reality, the rulers’ oil wars are robbing workers blind, while they slaughter working-class youth by the hundreds of thousands. The Democrats’ report cited above admits, with anti-Bush dismay, that from 2002 to 2008, “The total economic cost of the war in Iraq [and Afghanistan] to a family of four is a shocking…$20,900.”…. The future impact on a family of four skyrockets to…$46,400 for Iraq and Afghanistan when all potential costs from 2002 to 2017 are included.”

MAIN CLINTON FACTION WANTS POLICE STATE FOR BOSSES, TOO

Clinton plans to clean up the subprime mess with a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures and a freeze on subprime mortgage rates. Her purpose is more political than economic. She wants to impose police-state control over finance and industry. She’s following Franklin Roosevelt’s severe disciplining of U.S. capitalists in the run-up to World War II. Clinton promises “the toughest regulatory scrutiny of any president in a generation.”

It was financial deregulation, prompted by inter-imperialist rivalry in the 1980s and 1990s, which set the stage for the subprime debacle. At that time U.S. banks needed to consolidate and grow in order to compete with giant European and Japanese counterparts. Citibank led the charge against regulation and in 1999 succeeded in shattering the main regulatory obstacle to bank expansion, the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which had kept commercial and investment banks separate. Today Citi is perhaps the world’s biggest bank but holds yet untotaled billions of worthless subprime debt.

Capitalism by its very nature must create economic boom-and-bust cycles as well as imperialist wars in its insatiable competition for maximum profits. In the current era, it must impose fascism on the working class as well as discipline its own class to be able to preserve its system. Clinton, Obama and the rest of the candidates are dedicated to promoting and defending this bosses’ dictatorship over the working class. Supporting any one of them would be a serious mistake. Rather we should join and build the Progressive Labor Party, which has the long-term goal of communist revolution, enabling the working class to collectively decide how to apportion, according to need, the social value it alone collectively produces.

Clinton, Obama Advisors: All War, All the Time

With Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama falling all over each other posing as “anti-war” candidates, take a look at their pro-war advisors.
Clinton has:
• Madeleine Albright, Bill’s Secretary of State, the main force behind her husband’s Iraq sanctions that the UN says killed up to one million Iraqi civilians (half of them children). When asked about those sanction-caused child deaths, Albright told “60 Minutes,”: “We think the price was worth it.”
• General Wesley Clark, architect of the bombing of Serbia, who publicly stated the U.S. would bomb civilian targets regardless of “collateral damage” — civilian casualties.
• Richard Holbrooke, a Jimmy Carter aide, oversaw weapons shipment to dictator Suharto’s Indonesian military (see page 7) during the latter’s invasion and massacre of 200,000 people in East Timor.
Obama has:
• Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Advisor, who boasted responsibility for the $3 billion CIA creation of the Afghan jihadist movement in 1979 which produced Osama bin Laden. When asked about its “negative consequences,” he replied, “What’s a few riled-up Muslims?”
• Anthony Lake, a Bill Clinton aide who played a key role in the U.S. invasion of Haiti.
• Sarah Sewall, author of the introduction to Bush’s General Petraeus’s Army Counterinsurgency Manual which U.S. troops use worldwide in imperialist oil wars.

Such is the motley crew that will spread wider wars no matter who’s elected president. They’re all defenders of U.S. imperialism.
the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Association of Manufacturers, is one of his biggest individual donors.