Salvadoran Bosses’ ‘Lesser Evil’ Preserves Profit System

EL SALVADOR — “If Funes wins, we’ll be more controlled by the right and the fake left,” remarked a comrade at a PLP communist school.

In the recent Presidential election, the FMLN’s Mauricio Funes won with 1,350,000 votes, 51.2% of the electorate. Thousands of workers celebrated in the streets of the country’s main cities, shouting, “Yes we could”; “The people united will never be defeated”; and, “Today is different. Funes is President.”

When Funes and the FMLN’s political commission declared victory, they said there were no winners or losers in this election — the victory was “for everyone”; that change had come and there were no distinctions between right and left.

It was very different from the speech people expected, which is why the right celebrated too. That same week, Vice-President-elect Sánchez Ceren stated, “Not all the promises made by the FMLN during the election can be fulfilled.”

The liberal rulers paid for much of Funes’ electoral campaign. They represented the group “Friends of Mauricio Funes,” which includes millionaire businessman Nicolas Salume. He also financed the previous campaign of Antonio Saca (the outgoing President from the right-wing Arena party). Two sectors of Funes supporters made a deal for the FMLN to continue to control the mayors and the representatives while the capitalist “Friends of Funes” would pick the cabinet ministers. The bosses made sure that whoever won would continue capitalist policies.

The workers who see Funes and the FMLN as the solution within the capitalist system to the international crisis of unemployment, poverty and hunger will be frustrated since capitalism is in decline; none of these politicians can solve the crisis. Actually, they’re part of the problem.

The sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry is also reflected here. Funes said he would follow the governing model of Obama and Brazil’s Lula, while an FMLN group continues to insist that Funes must offer an opening to Cuba, Russia and China through Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

The international capitalist crisis is intensifying here. The bosses can’t keep hiding the emptiness of state coffers, so empty that subsidies for energy, transportation and rent can’t be paid. Fiscal collections, consumption and sales have declined, and, according to the Central Reserve Bank, the country’s projected growth rate is nearly zero. This is one of many countries affected by the crisis due to its dependence on remittances from families in the U.S., down $250 million in the last year.

Progressive Labor Party has shown the only way forward amid the international capitalist crisis is to sharpen the workers’ struggles worldwide; this country is no exception. Only the working class can save the working class.

During the election campaign, union and social group leaders diverted the working class from any sign of protest against the bosses or their system. But PLP continued to struggle against, and denounce, the deals among the bosses who financed Arena and the FMLN.

This election was a multi-million dollar campaign by the FMLN and Arena. The FMLN leadership paid $36 million to the media companies while 20,000 people are losing their jobs.
All these electoral events are aimed at lining up both the leaders of the capitalist system, as well as the workers, behind a group of bosses, whether in the U.S., Europe, Russia or China. All of these latter forces face the growing necessity of wider war and World War III, a war over international markets.

Now, after the elections, workers’ anger is starting to surface. A worker on a local radio program said, “This Funes has already shown he’s allied with the right. He just won the election and he showed his capitalist leanings. He’ll respond to the capitalists’ interests, like those of his friends who financed his campaign. As the saying goes, ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune.’”
The election results mean a change in the governing party but not in the capitalist political and economic orientation. Those capitalists who now hold State power won’t change the way they exercise it.

Whether there’s a neo-liberal or a state capitalist government, both are bad for the working class. There’s only been a superficial change among the bosses.
The only solution for workers is the long-term struggle for the dictatorship of the working class and communism through the growth of an internationalist PLP. To all workers: lets all march worldwide on May Day!

OBAMA: SAVE RACIST SYSTEM OVER WORKERS’ DEAD BODIES

WASHINGTON, DC, January 20 — The only apparent opposition at the inauguration of the new Obama regime came from a multiracial group of PLP communists and friends. A bullhorn rally was held at Gallery Place, a major Metro stop just outside the “security zone” for the Obama inauguration parade. Speakers at the rally called on the crowd heading to the parade to join PLP in the struggle against capitalism and racism instead of supporting Obama.

In a demonstration of the fascism of this system, 25,000 civilian and military police locked down the city. The day’s events were used to practice methods for the ruler’s need to control the working class.

The two million or so people that came to the inauguration, among them a sizeable number of black and Latino workers, believed what they were witnessing represented an historic victory against racism. In reality, they witnessed the latest in the succession of representatives of the U.S. ruling class, the most racist and murderous group of thieves in history.

Obama made it clear that for the working class, things will get worse, and the workers will be the ones paying for the latest crisis. Obama didn’t blame this racist system for the crisis, one that has enslaved millions and waged genocidal wars for the past 400 years, but instead blamed “our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.”

The desperate conditions of millions of workers were glossed over as Obama paid only lip service to the swathes of racist foreclosures. Up to 10,000 homes per week have been claimed. Millions of black, Latino and other workers were unable to keep up payments on houses they were encouraged to buy at high prices and at eventual exorbitant interest rates. Similarly dismissed was the prison-like conditions of our schools, stating simply that “homes have been lost…our schools fail too many.”

He immediately followed that saying, “no less profound is…the nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable.” “America’s decline” is indeed the “profound fear” of the Rockefeller-led wing of the U.S. ruling class, the banks and companies like J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Exxon Mobil, who have trillions of dollars invested in U.S. imperialism and have cast a nervous eye on their growing imperialist rivals in Russia, China, and the European Union.

Obama and his administration are the ruling class’s number one investment. They’re counting on him to win U.S. workers to support wider wars, unlike the Bush gang who not only squandered the chance to mobilize the country but provoked the anger of millions of workers worldwide. Key to this effort is the movement for national service, a precursor to support for a larger military as was evident in the references to the, “Brave Americans…who patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. …[and] embody the spirit of service: a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.”

In addition to this thinly veiled call to kill and die for U.S. imperialism was another message extolling workers to sacrifice to save the bosses’ system which Obama called on people to imitate, “the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours” — in effect, a wage-cut. Meanwhile, of the current U.S. prison population of 2.4 million — the largest ever in human history, and now over 1% of the total adult U.S. population — 70% are black and Latino. The inmate population languishing in the prisons of 10 states is expected to increase by 25% or more by 2011.

In the dangers of the ruling class’s efforts to build its movement, there are opportunities. Millions hate racism, imperialism, and sexism, and could be won to dedicate their lives to ending the brutal system that requires these evils.

Obama melodramatically showered us with images of slave-owner George Washington “huddling by dying campfires” and called on us to be “faithful to the ideals of our forbears.” Does he mean the first eight U.S. presidents, all of whom owned slaves? When only white, property-owning men were considered citizens and Native Americans were exterminated by the millions? What “greatness” about the U.S. is he talking about if not genocide and slavery?

The horrifying conditions of, and racism against, immigrant workers, and the Ku Klux Klan’s reign of terror, continued full steam into the 20th century. The U.S. was just cutting its teeth as a rival imperialist power to the genocidal British and French imperialists.  No, U.S. rulers have never been great at any- thing except mass murder — and now, with about 750 U.S. military bases worldwide, Obama wants to usher in “a new era” of U.S. global dominance.

The international working class’s inspiration is not in the slave-owners’ revolt in the U.S. war of independence from Britain, nor in racist Abraham Lincoln’s “solution” of shipping black slaves back to Africa. It’s in the mass slave rebellions and the actions of Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman and John Brown which led to the crushing of slavery.

We fight today with the memory of the brave millions of the Haitian Revolution of 1801, which inspired generations of workers because they taught the world how to fight back. The pride in our history is in the workers at Stalingrad who smashed the Nazis; in the caves of Yenan, China as the communist-led workers regrouped after the Long March to win workers’ power in the most populated country on earth; and in countless other uprisings where our class rose against all odds and dared to struggle for a world free of the capitalist slavery that Obama represents. Real change will come when millions of workers read and distribute CHALLENGE and become steeled in class struggle. Join the Progressive Labor Party and help build a mass international communist movement, learn from our predecessors’ mistakes and victories, and help destroy this system once and for all.

PLP RALLIES AGAINST THE NEW CEO OF RACIST CAPITALISM

WASHINGTON, DC, January 20 — Speakers at our rally alerted the throngs of people that Obama, far from making things better, would lead workers and students into expanded war. He would continue racist oppression from Chicago, where police terror and hospital closings marked his time in leadership, to Gaza, where he gave his stamp of approval to genocide. He will reward the thieving capitalists with bailouts just as he condoned those George Bush had given.
Many agreed that the struggle would have to continue, but thought that Obama would still be an improvement. One person told us that he had just won a 3-year battle against D.C. for police brutality and was interested in joining our campaigns on this issue. Several youth from Baltimore were happy to see us, as they knew us from our work in their city as part of the Algebra Project/Peer-to-Peer (see CHALLENGE 10/15/08). Several other young people agreed that Obama just represented capitalism, just more of the same, and that we had to intensify our fight-back.
There were a few hostile responses, one demanding that we talk about Bush’s crimes. We told him that we’d been doing that for eight years! Another said we shouldn’t “rain on Obama’s parade” and should give him a chance. But we can’t give murderous capitalism a chance. Capitalism always has, and always will, serve the ruling class, not the working class. We are in the midst of a severe economic and military crisis, and the working class must be mobilized to fight racism and capitalism now!
We gained several new contacts for the Party and distributed over 800 flyers and 400 CHALLENGES. We also came away determined to win the millions of workers deceived by the election to a revolutionary struggle against racist capitalism, and not compliance with the increased war and fascism being ushered in by this new CEO of U.S. capitalism.

OBAMA: NEW CEO FOR U.S. IMPERIALI$M

The expanding “war on terror,” the stock market crash, mass racist unemployment and home foreclosures, police terror, fascist immigration raids and racist budget cuts are all built into the racist profit system. These are the issues that moved millions to respond to Barack Obama’s call for “CHANGE.”

But Obama isn’t offering anything new, except a liberal face in the White House. His cabinet and top advisors are mostly Clinton and Carter re-treads with decades of loyal service to Chase, Citibank and Exxon-Mobil. His National Security Advisor is mass murderer General James Jones who led the saturation bombing of Yugoslavia, killing thousands.

Every president is a defender of capitalism, a system composed of two classes: the bosses who own everything and profit off the backs of the overwhelming majority, and the working class, who only own our labor power and produce all value, including the profits of the bosses.

The government is run by this ruling class, which makes Obama the new CEO for U.S. imperialism.
The bankers and billionaires comprising the U.S. ruling class will continue spilling rivers of blood to maintain their control of Mid-East oil and their rank as the top imperialist power. While they try to secure a permanent presence in Iraq, they will escalate the war to Afghanistan, Pakistan and, if necessary, Iran.

‘NATIONAL SERVICE’ — A BACK-DOOR DRAFT TO SUPPLY CANNON FODDER FOR THE BOSSES’ OIL WARS

One of Obama’s main goals is winning millions of youth, especially black youth, to wrap themselves in the American flag and fight for U.S. imperialism in these oil wars. Right now, amid this emerging Depression (see page 5), millions of black and Latino workers and youth as well as workers in general are becoming fed up with the effects of a racist profit system gone wild. So Obama’s job is to win them back with his all-class unity — “we all have to pull together and sacrifice” to save the system — which masks his role as the bosses’ servant. The rulers’ National Service scam is designed to get millions, especially youth, to work for low, or no, wages, as volunteers “to support America,” particularly in the military.

Obama, Bush and McCain all fell in line and supported the $700 billion bailout of the bankers and Wall Street parasites while millions swell the unemployment lines. Racist misery is built into the profit system.  Black workers suffer twice the unemployment rate of white workers (four times the rate for black youth). In Detroit, Milwaukee and Buffalo, over 50% of black males, age 16-64, are unemployed. Millions more are either under-employed or have given up looking for work. Twelve million undocumented workers and youth face racist detention camps and deportations just for looking for work.

Obama will now preside over the world’s largest prison population, 2.4 million, 70% black and Latin males. Hardly a black or Latino family in the U.S. doesn’t know someone who’s either in jail, on probation or parole. This result of racist police terror rivals the old South Africa apartheid system.

One of Obama’s mentors, Chicago’s Mayor Daley, rose to power as a State’s Attorney prosecuting black workers and youth who “confessed” to crimes they never committed while being tortured in Chicago police stations. The prison doors will not swing open on Obama’s watch. The victims of racist police terror will not be sent home to their families.

The change we need won’t come from reshuffling capitalist politicians and bureaucrats no matter how “smart” they appear. We need mass actions and a mass movement, not to “fix” capitalism but to smash it. We need to turn every attack into an opportunity to build a mass revolutionary communist PLP that can ultimately lead the working class to power and to a world based on meeting the needs of the international working class.

FIGHT BACK!

• IN THE FACTORIES AND UNIONS. Oppose every plant closing; organize strikes and plant occupations, like the 240 Latino and black workers at Republic Windows did in Chicago last month. Learn from the striking UAW workers at American Axle in Detroit, Seattle’s Boeing workers and Stella D’Oro workers in the Bronx. Show solidarity with rebelling students and workers in Greece, throughout Europe and China who fought fascist conditions this year. Build unemployment committees on our jobs and in our unions to unite laid-off workers with their still-employed brothers and sisters.

• IN THE COMMUNITIES. Organize factory, union and neighborhood committees to fight evictions and immigration raids. Work in community centers and church soup kitchens and food pantries, talking to volunteers and those in need about the racist profit system and the need to destroy it.

• IN THE SCHOOLS. Fight budget cuts, racist testing, militarization and fascist conditions.

• IN THE MILITARY. Bring the fight against imperialist war and racist police terror in all these organizations to show how the only way out of this endless and escalating war on terror is to win soldiers and sailors to rebel against the brass and overthrow the capitalist war-makers.

The more we do, the more we can expand the circulation of CHALLENGE. The more we expand the readership of CHALLENGE, the more we can do in the class struggle.

The nature of the capitalist beast will not change because a liberal face is in the White House. He won’t bring peace, full employment or freedom for immigrant workers or to workers jailed by this criminal INjustice system
Yet, in the absence of a mass revolutionary movement, millions of potential revolutionaries hold out hope. Many illusions must be shattered. We have a big job before us. Let’s engage the enemy everywhere we can, and use every battle to build the revolutionary communist PLP.

IS THIS THE RACISM WE CAN EXPECT FROM OBAMA?

• When Chicago’s Cook County Health Bureau closed half the clinics used by predominantly black and Latino uninsured workers, slashing 2,000 jobs in 2007 — and just destroyed another 500 jobs on January 1 — not a word of protest came from Obama as clinics closed in his South Side neighborhood.
• Obama was directly involved in the destruction of Chicago Housing Authority projects on the West Side, displacing tens of thousands of black working-class tenants. The Boston Globe reported (6/27/08): Chicago’s “Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator…[was] subsidized by the federal government….But it’s not safe to live there….Collapsed roofs and fire damage….Mice….Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks….
• “Thousands of apartments across Chicago…built with [government]…subsidies — including several hundred in Obama’s former district — deteriorated so completely that they were no longer inhabitable.
• “Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama’s close friends and political supporters….[who] profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama’s constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.
• “As a state senator…[Obama] co-authored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers….He…campaigned on a promise to create [a]…Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year….
• “Grove Parc…[symbolized] giving public subsidies to private companies…an approach strongly backed by Obama….”
• Obama’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is Shaun Donovan who, as NYC Commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), laundered public-housing renovation funds through private not-for-profit social service agencies to evade paying union wages. Donovan used HPD low-income housing funding to bring racist gentrification to Central Harlem, replacing long-time African-American, African immigrant and Latino working-class residents with luxury housing for affluent professionals and business owners. This is the guy Obama has picked to set national housing policy!

NATIONAL SERVICE: OBAMA’S SCHEME TO DRAFT YOUTH FOR BOSSES’ WARS

Last June at Columbia University, President-Elect Barack Obama said  that he would make plans for the American people to recognize an “obligation” for military service. “If we are going into war, then all of us go, not just some.” The ruling class has never forgiven the Bush administration’s failure to successfully use the 9/11 attacks to recruit more young workers, especially black and Latin, to be patriotic Americans willing to fight in its military.

The Obama administration has promised not to make the same mistake. With wars in Afghanistan and Iraq burning, the economic meltdown and rising unemployment and the rise of new imperialist rivals, time is running out for the U.S. ruling class to try to maintain its position as top imperialist power. As future White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel has stated: “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste . . . They are opportunities to do big things.” (Boston Globe, 11.30.08)

One “big thing” they’re attempting is to recruit young workers and students to National Service. This includes plans to expand AmeriCorps to 250,000 and double the size of the Peace Corps. These programs under the guise of promoting community service domestically and internationally have been used as a way to stop rebellions and support U.S. imperialist attacks on workers around the world.

They are also proposing that all middle and high school students do at least 50 hours of community service a year, giving a tax incentive of up $4,000 a year in “exchange for 100 hours of public service.” College students would do 100 hours of public service in exchange for tuition decreases,  making “a college education affordable.” (Obama’s website).

This service would help meet dire needs of the ruling class:
In order to rebuild a rapidly disintegrating infrastructure, it will create low-wage jobs –– many of them non-union –– thereby lowering the wages of the entire working class

1. More bodies in military uniform. (See CHALLENGE, 12/10)
2. Win workers and youth to U.S. nationalism
3. Clean up the image of the U.S. around the world as the country that spreads “democracy.”

RULERS TURN WORKERS’ COLLECTIVITY ON ITS HEAD FOR THEIR NEEDS

In the absence of a mass communist movement capable of winning thousands of workers to revolutionary ideas, the bosses can twist working-class collectivity into support for capitalism. Many people volunteered during events like 9/11, the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, proving that workers have a willingness to help others and oppose, at some level, the “everyone-for-themselves” mentality of capitalism. A 2006 UCLA study found that 86% of incoming college freshmen — most of whom are now presumably college juniors thinking about post-college employment –– volunteered at least occasionally during high school and 70% did so at least once a week (Washington Post, 11/24/08). The communist PLP aims to take this collective feeling and use it as part of organizing a society based on production for the good of the whole of society.

On the other hand, the bosses’ intentions with community and national service is similar to the Nazis’ call for National Socialism by recruiting young and old to “do what they can” for the sake of the country (i.e., the ruling class). The Obama administration wants to acclimate the U.S. population to the idea of “service” and “sacrifice.” These ideas will be used to convince workers and students to make the deadly error of allying with their class enemies and fighting for U.S. imperialism.

Work Within, Not on the Outside

We can turn Obama and the Democrats’ idea of community and national service on its head by buildng communist ideas within their various “Corps.” That means distributing CHALLENGE and always fighting for service for the working class — organizing against the bosses and for the real interests of the workers. We need to fight against workers getting laid off from their jobs, getting their pensions and homes ripped away from them by the greed of capitalism. We need to fight every attack against immigrant workers, like the murder of Marcelo Lucero in Long Island, by capitalist-inspired racism. We need to fight for communism to get rid of racism, sexism, nationalism and imperialist war. These are our working-class’ calls to service.

The mass unemployment hitting the U.S. and the world will draw many workers to the option of national service. Sooner rather than later this option will become mandatory as inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens and the eventuality of war is clearer. Members and friends of the communist Progressive Labor Party must organize with workers to build class struggle against the bosses — taking the lead in strikes, marches and rallies. We need to build a base of rank-and-file workers to recruit for communist revolution.

BOSSES’ ELECTION: CAPITALISM WINS

COMMUNISM IS ONLY SOLUTION

One of two events, both disasters for the working class, will occur on November 4. Either Barack Obama, spouting his phony “end-of-racism” message, will prevail (as polls predict), or a sudden upsurge in overt racism (always a possibility in the U.S.) might propel John McCain into office. We in Progressive Labor Party do not believe in voting in the bosses’ election system. They completely control this electoral circus and only those who swear allegiance to them are even allowed access to it.

Although important tactical differences exist between Democrats and Republicans, both are committed to capitalism and U.S. “democracy.” The rich and powerful who own and rule the U.S. clearly will never give up their power peacefully. They will also spill the blood of millions of workers and soldiers to protect their imperialist interests overseas from their capitalist rivals, waging wider wars which will lead to another world war.

They offer us the chance to vote for “our representatives” when both parties are actually financed by the richest of the rich, who they serve in all important matters. For instance, in the current financial crisis, polls showed that voters opposed the government bailout plan. But even mere weeks before an “historic” election, the politicians of both parties approved rescuing the banks. The richest bosses feared that panic would undermine their ability to pocket their profits as usual and that imperialist rivals would be able to take advantage of their weakness. After a momentary show of reluctance, the “representatives” fell into line with the rulers’ program.

HOW ELECTORAL SYSTEM  SERVES RULERS’ NEEDS

All politicians work for the ruling class. However, if the parties and politicians were completely alike, the electoral system wouldn’t serve all the rulers’ needs. First they want workers, students and professionals to believe we can elect someone who represents their “interests.” Anti-racists have black and Latin candidates, anti-sexists can vote for women and those concerned about the environment are given candidates who talk about fighting global warming as long as business profits aren’t affected.

The presidential primaries had someone for everyone, an attempt to win workers to see the electoral system as the only option for change.

A secondary effect of drawing workers into the election circus is to build the illusion that voters determine government policy. Workers are encouraged to feel they’re responsible for the government’s actions. If something goes wrong, then just vote for a replacement. But in reality, the candidates and parties will do the opposite of what they campaigned for if important interests of the rulers are involved.

With his broad appeal, probable victor Obama poses the graver danger. Many workers and youth see him as a “solution” to the catastrophe of the Bush years. Obama & Co. seek to lure masses of workers to the rulers’ agenda of ever-expanding wars paid for by workers.

THE ‘CARROT AND THE STICK’

Rulers also use the electoral system to co-opt mass protests against capitalism and its racism, sexism and wars. When millions took to the streets to protest the Vietnam War, liberal Senator Eugene McCarthy was trotted out to entice them back into the fold of dead-end campaigning and voting that changed nothing.
In the 1960s, millions of students and workers rebelling against the harsh racism and segregation, north and south, were given black mayors and “anti-poverty” programs that bought off a few and left masses of black workers still facing police brutality and the lower wages of a racist system.

However, while the rulers can use the “carrot” of an “anti-war” Eugene McCarthy or black legislators and “anti-poverty” programs, they simultaneously will use the “stick:” the cops, National Guard and the Army to kill anti-war demonstrators (Kent State and Jackson State); repress black uprisings (sending the 82nd Airborne to put down the 1967 Detroit black rebellion); covert state terror (the FBI’s COINTELPRO); and imprison 2.4 million people, 70% black and Latino.

When the rulers worry that our struggles may threaten their profits, they may give us a crumb: a dollar more on the minimum wage, OSHA laws (governmental on-the-job safety regulations) with one inspector for every 10,000 workplaces, laws against discrimination that are rarely enforced. Later, those crumbs are taken away when they see that we’ve bought into the election shell game instead of militant working-class struggle.

Relying on elections to improve our conditions is a treadmill to oblivion.

Freeing ourselves from the passive pull-the-voting-lever mentality starts with militant struggle like the Boeing machinists’ strike in Seattle, or the teachers’ strike in Morelos, Mexico. Mass marches, demonstrations and standing up to the boss may help teach us to fight back instead of accepting the “democratic” program. But to really overcome capitalism’s exploitation and wars, we also need to struggle for more profound change — a new system where workers will be in control.
U.S. rulers are desperate to maintain their system of wealth and profits. They killed 3,000,000 Vietnamese and 58,000 U.S. soldiers trying to control a small country’s workers and resources. They’ve killed over a million Iraqi workers with eight years of Clinton bombing surrounded by eight years of Bush aggression trying to maintain control of the world’s oil supply.

RAW DEAL FOR WORKERS

But now, to marshal the forces U.S. imperialism requires, Obama may try an end run around blatant militarism and the draft. With the crippled U.S. economy shedding 200,000 jobs a month, he may opt for a Roosevelt New Deal-style employment program to rally workers around the flag. The Times (10/26/08) reports that Obama “proposes increases for education, infrastructure, research, foreign aid, and the military.”

For workers, voting for warmaker Obama is no better than backing McCain. Viewing Obama’s election as a triumph over racism would be a serious political error. By every measure imaginable — from wages to health to education to imprisonment to jobs and home foreclosures — racist disparity rages in the U.S. Because capitalism breeds racism and imperialist oil wars,  Obama can’t and won’t end or even alleviate either. Only the working class can.

U.S. rulers claim to be “democratic,” but they really preside over a capitalist dictatorship. They own the wealth, control the mass culture and media and use their government and its military and police forces to maintain their power. Communists in PLP believe the working class must overthrow their dictatorship and replace it with a workers’ dictatorship where the vast majority will be armed to prevent the capitalists from ever returning to power.

To achieve this, millions of workers must join PLP to embrace communist ideas of sharing the wealth we produce according to everyone’s needs, along with anti-racist, anti-sexist and internationalist ideas which are necessary to unite the working class in its struggle for power.J

TEAM OBAMA: IMPERIALISTS ONE AND ALL

Before Obama was given the resources to campaign for the presidency, he had to meet with, be vetted by and swear his allegiance to the bosses’ flag of profits before a committee of Wall Street financial tycoons and then they donated $7.9 million to Obama’s campaign (Reuters, 6/5.08).
Obama’s economic advisor is the ruling class’s top economic assassin Paul Volcker, who has frequently met with the candidate since the financial crisis broke. As Federal Reserve chief, Volcker “solved” the bankers’ inflation crisis of the early 1980s by jacking up interest rates and causing unemployment rates unseen since the Great Depression.

Today, Volcker and Obama push for a fascistic concentration of finance under tightened state control. Volcker was chief economist at Chase Manhattan bank when David Rockefeller ran it. With Rockefeller, he co-founded the imperialist Trilateral Commission.

On October 25, The New York Times published a list of “Possible Presidential Appointments.” As Obama’s treasury secretary, the Times pointed to Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers. Geithner, head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, has toiled for Rockefeller’s Council On Foreign Relations and Kissinger Associates, which advises Exxon Mobil and other firms that depend on the U.S war machine. Geithner was a leading engineer of J.P. Morgan Chase’s takeover of Bear Stearns and the $250-billion federal buy-in to major banks.

Summers, who as Clinton’s treasury boss helped dismantle Welfare, tried mightily to restore officer training at Harvard when he was its president. The Times says Richard Lugar may run the State Department. In 1997 and 1998, Lugar sponsored a little-known terrorist attack drill that put local police under Pentagon control in cities from coast to coast.

BOSSES USE ELECTIONS TO SETTLE THEIR OWN CONFLICTS

In addition to countering any worker protests against the system, elections are also used to provide a peaceful way to deal with conflicts among different sections of the ruling class. Various capitalists who are united in pursuing profits can sometimes have different economic and political needs. Those who are deeply invested in oil production internationally (tracing back to the Rockefeller and Morgan fortunes) are sometimes in conflict with those whose fortunes are tied to domestic oil production.

The government is used to mediate these differences. For instance, the “liberal” internationalists use environmental regulations to hamstring domestic oil producers. As a side effect, the liberals can appear to be pursuing the environmental goals of their supporters.

Health care “reform” is an issue where mediating conflicts between the rulers is combined with attempts to con us into believing that the government represents our interests. The older established section of the rulers, whose fortunes are centered in large industrial and financial institutions, provides most of the health care insurance available to U.S. workers. For decades they’ve been trying to reduce that expense by creating a system where more bosses (and also workers in general) will share that burden by increasing the number of workers who are insured but making the coverage considerably poorer and less expensive than the largest bosses pay now.

Small and medium-sized bosses, who rarely provide insurance coverage, fight these plans by having “their” politicians argue that they will lower the quality of health care available to workers (true). But they downplay the reality that tens of millions of uninsured workers must often choose between paying for food or for medical care.

Resolving this debate may solve problems for some set of bosses, but whether workers support one side or the other, all of us will wind up with the short end of the stick.

Seeking Cannon Fodder, Obama Enlists Mass Murderer Powell

War criminal Colin Powell’s recent endorsement of Barack Obama speaks volumes about the Obama camp’s militaristic intentions. Powell has a long military history of serving U.S. rulers, from Vietnam to Gulf Wars I and II (see below). This endorsement means Obama embraces the “Powell Doctrine,” which demands rallying wide popular and international support to unleash overwhelming force against any imperialist rivals threatening U.S. bosses’ interests, particularly oil.

As part of this strategy, the Obama-Powell love match aims at reversing the sharp decline — 41% last year — in black enlistment in the armed forces. They especially want to stem the loss — mainly due to the racist nature of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — of black sergeants, who train recruits and thus form the backbone of the Army and Marines. The rulers also count on loyal retired black non commission officers (NCOs) to recruit and spread patriotism in their neighborhoods.

In 1996, Charles Moskos, who later worked on Clinton’s Hart-Rudman Commission reports outlining U.S. imperialism’s goals for the 21st Century, co-wrote a book called “All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way.” In it he said, “The beneficial impact of black sergeants extends beyond the Army. Every year 2,000 black NCOs in the Army (4,000 in the military as a whole) retire from service….The impact of this group of men — and now women as well — on the civilian black community will be tangible and positive.” Obama hopes having Powell on board will help him get the 91,000 additional soldiers he demands for, among other stated aims, expanding the Afghan war into Pakistan.

With 35 years as a professional soldier, Powell rose to full General. He got his start as a captain and later a major in the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, serving as a South Vietnamese Army advisor and as assistant chief of staff for the Americal 23rd Infantry Division. He was assigned to investigate the My Lai Massacre of Vietnamese women and children, which he whitewashed, saying that “relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent.” (So “excellent” that 3,000,000 Vietnamese were slaughtered).
In 2004, Powell told TV interviewer Larry King, “I was in a unit that was responsible for My Lai. I got there after My Lai happened. In war, these sorts of horrible things happen every now and again.”

Adding to his executioner “laurels,” Powell — as senior military assistant to Reagan’s Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger — helped carry out the 1983 invasion of Grenada and the 1986 air strike on Libya.
Powell drips with the blood of the millions of Iraqis he helped kill in Desert Genocides I and II to benefit Exxon Mobil’s oil empire. Powell personally directed the slaughter in the first war as chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs. He “justified” the second invasion by lying to the UN about Iraq’s weapons programs. Powell currently serves as a director in the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. imperialism’s top think-tank.

An Obama presidency would put into practice Powell’s strategy for mass murder, while attempting to win working-class youth, especially black youth, to become cannon fodder for U.S. rulers in present and future oil wars.

Cops Attack Iraq Vets Demonstrating At Hofstra During Presidential Debate

Obama Healthcare Plan Hazardous to Your Health

Barack Obama is calling for affordable healthcare for all. While appearing progressive, a closer look reveals that his plan is barely a bandaid. Obama is not calling for universal healthcare. Even if he were, universal healthcare never means equal healthcare under capitalism. The following just touches the surface of his “reform.”

In 2007, PBS compared U.S. healthcare statistics to Japan, the UK, Germany and Switzerland.(1) The U.S. spends more on healthcare (15.8% of its Gross Domestic Product) than any of the above. But the increased costs don’t produce better care. The report shows that, in comparison, people here have a shorter life expectancy and higher infant mortality rate. The extra costs go into the profit coffers of insurance and drug companies. The other countries boast a “socialized medicine,” “national health insurance” or “social insurance” model. In these countries, everyone has healthcare (although it’s not free for everyone). However, as of 2006, 47 million people in the U.S. had no health coverage.(2)

The U.S. actually ranks 41st in life-expectancy statistics compared to other countries. Mainstream media often cites obesity and racial disparities as the main cause.(3) But without a class analysis, this seems to blame the problem on individuals, for being fat or black, instead of the system.

WILL OBAMA FIX THIS PROBLEM?

Myth #1: Under Obama’s plan everyone will receive free healthcare.

Reality: Those who don’t qualify for Medicaid or State Children Health Insurance Plan (an income of $20,614 for a family of four in 2006), will be expected to buy into the new plan, or purchase private healthcare coverage, with an income-related federal subsidy, if their employer does not offer health insurance.(4) This implies universal access to a health plan, but not government-mandated universal coverage (compared to other countries).

Myth #2: Catastrophic illness medical bills will be covered.

Reality: Catastrophic illnesses are those that incur major expenses such as lengthy hospital stays and financial losses, including loss of work. Heart attacks and cancer are examples of catastrophic illness. A high percentage of U.S. workers, 40% for example in California, hold jobs that do not offer sick days, and therefore lose a day’s pay for each day they’re out sick. Obama’s plan would reimburse employer health plans for a portion of the catastrophic costs they incur above a threshold.(5) The only people able to go to top hospitals for cancer or surgery would be those who could afford it, the way it is now.

Myth #3: Obama’s plan will cover long-term care for the elderly.

Reality: People over 80 are the fastest growing segment of the population. Most need some kind of assistant care. Currently, in a nursing home, Medicare pays only for short-term rehabilitation immediately following a hospitalization. After that, people must pay out of their pockets until all their money is gone and they’re eligible for Medicaid. Obama says he’ll “work to” improve the choices, the quality of care and to reform the financing of long-term care. Beyond that, nothing more specific.
Myth #4: The Obama campaign says he would finance his health plan costs by allowing expiration of tax cuts adopted in 2001 and 2003 for families making over $250,000. (New England Journal of Medicine, (8/21/2008)

Reality: In its projections, the Congressional Budget Office has already assumed this extra money coming from the ending of the tax cuts.

Myth #5: Taken from his website: “Obama will tackle the root causes of health disparities by addressing differences in access to health coverage.”(6)

Reality: This is impossible for Obama, or anyone else, to fix under capitalism. In its drive for profit, capitalism creates poverty and racism, which causes these disparities in healthcare. “Blacks with diabetes or vascular disease are nearly five times more likely than whites to have a leg amputated” and “women in Mississippi are far less likely to have mammograms than those in Maine.”(7)
Worldwide, a woman in Sweden or Japan will typically live past 80 years, while the average woman in Swaziland does not live to see her 30th birthday. Without noting that disparities in U.S. healthcare (and healthcare worldwide) stem from poverty and racism — inherent under capitalism — these problems won’t disappear.

While many workers believe Obama’s healthcare reform is in their interest, the truth is Obama only represents the interests of the capitalist class. But Obama and McCain and the bosses they serve face a major contradiction: On the one hand, they need more physically-fit soldiers to fight in their endless wars against their imperialist rivals, but on the other hand they need to cut the costs of all social services including healthcare, to pay for that very military and for their current fiscal meltdown. No doubt they will try to solve this contradiction on the backs of the working class.

1. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/)
2. (http://public.cq.com/docs/cqt/news110-000002575515.html)
3. (http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/08/13/life.expectancy.ap/index.html)
4. (http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/).
5. ibid.
6. ibid
7.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/health/research/05disparities.html

U.S. RULING CLASS, NOT VOTERS, CALLS SHOTS IN ELECTION

(The Following is a Progressive Labor Party Leaflet)

Like all elections, the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain help the capitalists hide the fact that this is not a democracy. The illusion is that voters, mainly workers, can choose the nation’s leaders. In reality, a ruling class — led by powerful financiers — selects, bankrolls and directs each of the candidates. The dominant section of the U.S. ruling class (the Eastern Establishment), whose interests lie in continuing U.S. world domination, is determined to control the policy of whoever wins in November 2008. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Brookings Institution are the two most important foreign policy think tanks of these capitalists.  They are developing a blueprint for the next U.S. president (no matter who is elected), which can be used as the foundation for the new administration’s Middle-East policy.

Key advisor for Obama is Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski is a former director of the Eastern Establishment backed CFR. He helped President Jimmy Carter frame write the 1979 Carter Doctrine, which promised permanent occupation of Mid-East oilfields. One of McCain’s advisors is CFR member Max Boot, who is pushing for a U.S. Foreign Legion. Other McCain advisors are Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft (CFR member and Bush, Sr.’s National Security Advisor). 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.

Today, the economic crises of capitalism in the U.S. and the world are only sharpening the conflict with imperialist rivals. Now, more than ever the U.S. ruling class needs workers and professionals to sacrifice for the needs of U.S. imperialism. They need a capitalist leader who can inspire the masses to support U.S. imperialist ambitions throughout the world. This leader faces a tough challenge. Russia is becoming more aggressive.  China is a rapidly growing economic and military power, and Europe is uniting and growing stronger.

In order to protect the U.S. profit empire against challenges from imperialist rivals, particularly China and Russia, the U.S. ruling class needs to dominate the oil-rich Middle East and Central Asia, politically and militarily. Campaign 2008 boils down to which candidate can most effectively mobilize the nation behind the U.S. imperialists and their war and fascism. McCain believes in more troops in Iraq and keeping them there longer while Obama believes in fewer troops in Iraq and pulling them out sooner but sending the troops to other key areas of Mideast. Both believe in occupying Iraq and preparing for war with Iran. Both agree on the absolute importance of maintaining control of oil in the Middle East and Central Asia. They disagree over the tactics to use not the strategy!

Both Obama and McCain offer national service and push patriotism as a way to win workers and professionals to support expanding the U.S. military to prepare for more wars. During a rally on July 3, 2008, Obama said, the quiet following Friday’s Independence Day celebrations would be a good time to consider how to contribute “to our most pressing national challenges,” whether in the military, overseas or just next door. National service, a key part of Obama’s campaign platform, is an important step towards bringing back the draft and winning people to support expanding the U.S. military. Obama, like McCain, understand that the U.S. will need more troops in the future to face threats to its superpower status.

As more people become interested in the elections, the need to expose the candidates’ class allegiance is crucial. They both defend a racist profit system that systematically and brutally exploits workers, often through war, and needs to be eliminated. But the working class cannot just vote away its tormentors. Capitalism’s destruction can only be achieved through the long-term, painstaking process of building a revolutionary communist movement that will ultimately end the rule of profit and put the working class in power. Join us!

Workers, Soldiers, and Students of the World Unite Against Fascism and Imperialist War!  Don’t Vote!  Fight Back!

Progressive Labor Party is a revolutionary communist party dedicated to eliminating capitalism with communist revolution as the only way to end imperialism, fascism, racism, sexism, and class inequality.

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.