‘Small Schools’ Ploy Part of Bosses’ ‘Creeping’ Fascism

NEW YORK CITY — In discussions with friends, I’ve often mentioned that the working class is living under growing fascist conditions, but some disagree. They ask, “Are storm troopers kicking down the door to your house? If not, then we don’t have fascism.”

But the ruling class doesn’t want to control the working class by kicking down doors all the time (although sometimes it does. see Shades of Hitler, p.7). Some control is more subtle, slowly adding more and more fascist conditions over time so we’re deep in the middle of it before we know what hit us. For communists, it’s important to fight such trends.

Throughout the country there is a rush toward replacing larger schools with smaller ones. Among my friends with whom I work in our school I’ve raised the idea that this move is really “creeping” fascism. In New York City, the Chancellor has mandated the closing of large comprehensive high schools to be replaced by smaller ones, as is happening in my school.

They tell us the large schools are “not meeting students’ educational needs.” Although our school was improving somewhat, the bosses say it “wasn’t improving fast enough.”

The attack has a distinctly racist character since the majority of the school closings are in predominately black and Latino working-class neighborhoods. Currently the bosses feel they don’t have enough support or soldiers for their wars and think that one way to change this is to win these youth in the schools, and in the classroom, to patriotic support of their imperialist adventures.

I told my colleagues the rulers are closing the large schools to maintain more control, especially in the classroom. The students are their main targets.

Fascism in Schools Has Many Forms

This strategy is fascist for several reasons. These small schools have fewer students (although the same large class size) and so needed staff is also smaller, which is much easier to watch and control than a larger one.

Few veteran teachers are hired at the small schools. Mostly younger, newer teachers staff them. The latter aren’t tenured and usually are on probation, blunting their ability to fight-back against attacks on students and staff. A “55/25” proposal — allowing a teacher with 25 years of service to retire at 55 without penalty — is being dangled before more experienced teachers.

Small-school principals have greater power over the staff. At one Brooklyn school a principal rated 10 of 40 teachers “unsatisfactory.” At another school, union meetings are practically forbidden. When some staff did call one, they were ordered into the principal’s office to explain their action. The administration more easily knows everything occurring at these schools, making organizing more difficult.

The greatest fascist danger at these schools is the change in the relationship between the working class and the ruling class. Communists believe that the class interests of teachers, students and parents are opposed to the administration’s (bosses’) interests. These small schools spread a “we” philosophy, the “we” uniting the staff and administration. If one doesn’t follow the principal’s goal for student achievement, that teacher is ostracized from the rest of the staff.

For example, many teachers in these small schools work hours on their own time, without being paid overtime. If teachers refuse, they’re labeled “slackers.” Teachers go along with this anti-working-class thinking unwittingly, furthering fascism’s talons in the backs of the workers.

The majority of these small schools are housed — up to three or four — in a structure that used to contain one large school. The building is carved up into different sections to fit each school, often leading to a fight for space. Students who happen to wander down the “wrong” hallway may be considered “trespassers,” subjecting them to disciplinary action.

The fight over space forces students to share the little existing space. Gymnasiums and cafeterias that once served one school must now accommodate up to four schools. This not only pits staff members against each other, but also student against student.

School Closing Is Attack
on Working Class

The news that our school was closing devastated most of my colleagues. Many have been there 20 years or more. For some, this was the only school at which they’ve taught. The immediate response was depression, then anger (usually toward the principal or other administrators) and then fear — from not knowing where they’ll teach next year, not knowing what will happen next.

Many might not recognize this as growing fascism, but this is how it “creeps” into our lives, with workers concentrating on where to go next rather than on organizing. As workers “adjust” and get used to this level of attack by the bosses, it only enables the rulers to go further. This move to smaller schools is an attack on the working class, not “just another change in the schools.”

As we fight it, we must win teachers, students and parents not only to see it as growing fascism, but also to understand why the rulers are resorting to such attacks — the better to control us and win the youth, in preparation for unending wars against imperialist rivals. Ultimately, only communist revolution can defeat fascism because its source: capitalism.J Red Teacher

(Series continues next issue)

Black Students Lead Action Vs. Racist Minuteman Honcho

SOUTHWEST –– Chris Simcox, founder of the racist anti-immigrant Minuteman Civil Defense Corps recently returned to a university in the Southwest.  He previously visited the campus in April (see CHALLENGE, May 9), and was shut down by a multi-racial coalition of about 700 students and workers led by friends of PLP members.  It was the largest demonstration in campus history.

This semester, the same conservative student group brought Simcox to campus again. Because of the success of the last protest, the police attempted to crack down on any further show of multi-racial protest. This time, instead of five cops, there were 15. The event was held inside an auditorium rather than outside in the “free speech” zone. Also, to get inside the auditorium, you had to show a valid photo ID and write your name on a sign-up sheet. Although it seemed problematic to get in, many students wanted to do some sort of protesting to counteract and hopefully shut down his racist speech.

In order to stop this event, we needed a plan. So, before the protest started at 2:00, we passed out 500 flyers that showed the ties between the Minutemen and white supremacist groups and called for all students and workers to unite to shut Simcox down.  A group of about 30 black students were outraged to hear that Simcox was at their campus again. One student said, “I remember him from last semester, isn’t he that racist guy who got booed off stage?” Another stated his anger toward Simcox because he is “no better than the Klan.” They all seemed to be right-on with forcing him to leave their campus.

We then planned for everyone to meet near the entrance of the auditorium early and all but two people were going to go inside to shout Simcox down. When it got to be 2:00, the whole group of black students got out their ID’s and walked together towards the booth where they had to give their information. The doors suddenly closed and the cops denied them access. The cops explained that they were ordered not to let anyone inside the auditorium past 2:00. It was 2:02. The group of students was even more outraged…especially after witnessing the cops granting access to a white person at 2:04! My friend and I talked with them about options to act against the blatant racist actions of the school and police. One student suggested, “We should have an old-fashion sit-in.” My comrade and I explained how silent or peaceful protests would not show the school that we are not going to tolerate them allowing a racist to speak on our campus. So we all picked up posters and started chanting, “Minutemen, Nazis, KKK…Racists, Fascists, Go Away!”

Inside, about 15 anti-racists sat together and when Simcox came out to speak, they all stood up and started chanting for him to go home.  After a few minutes, they were forced to leave by the cops. When they walked out of the auditorium, they were greeted by dozens of black students chanting “Hitler rose, Hitler fell, racist Minutemen, Go to Hell!” The police made several attempts to shut us all up by taking away our posters and trying to separate us, but we remained together and stole our posters back. We demonstrated collectively and when the cops tried to tell us that we were not in a “free speech zone” we just chanted louder.

After Simcox left, we were able to speak with all the students who had protested. We got their phone numbers and invited them to a student meeting in which we were going to talk about what happened and relate it to the capitalist system as a whole.

The fact that so many black students showed up to oppose Chris Simcox was an important step in breaking the ideology that claims the Minutemen only affect the Hispanic community. We want to replace this idea with and understanding of how racism against one “race” hurts all workers. Our experience showed us the possibilities of working together in opposition to ruling-class ideology. It solidified for us the reality of needing to attack racism as one class: the working class against the ruling class.

From El Salvador’s Horrors PLP Politics Shaped a Young PL’er

EL SALVADOR — In 1980 I was among a group of people from El Salvador who went into exile in Honduras. I traveled in my grandmother’s arms, while my father and a sister stayed in El Salvador.

The “orejas” (snitches that spy for the police and army) murdered my mother and one of my brothers. When I was in Colomoncagua, Honduras, I remember Honduran soldiers massacring people in the camp where we lived. When the soldiers came, the people went out to yell at them. Once all of us children were locked in a house for safety, while the adults confronted the soldiers with machetes, sticks and rocks.

In 1990, when we returned to El Salvador, I was 11. The war was still on; before that I had never heard the sound and terror of bullets and mortars in full battle. One day around 4 A.M., I awoke to the sounds of shooting; during the night the soldiers had broken into our encampment in Morazán. For two days we heard the sounds of guns and mortars. Someone said that all the people had to go to the mountains.

By that time, the fascist army had murdered three brothers and my mother. My father was still alive along with myself and another brother; he joined the ranks of the guerillas with many of the youth from the encampment. Many who I knew died.
One night we saw a helicopter shooting and launching lights with flares. My father said, “I wonder if my son is there.” Until then, I still didn’t know the reason for the war.

After the 1992 peace accords, I always talked to veteran guerillas, asking them the reason for the war. After those 12 years of armed conflict, I was still only 13. These veterans taught me the history and I came to identify myself with the left.
I firmly believed that revolutionary politics meant power was won through elections. Given what I had been taught, I became a reformer in the FMLN, which capitalism turned into an electoral party. Many veterans and commanders have become capitalists or small bosses. Nevertheless, I thought that was moving the revolution forward.

Then a long-time friend began reading CHALLENGE to me. He spoke about the PLP, gave me the paper and invited me to a meeting in his house. Others there talked to me about the international situation.

When the question of ideology arose, I described my electoral party (the FMLN) thinking that was the course to follow. After several meetings, I was thrilled with the PLP, and was invited to meet with international comrades to discuss the Party’s work. Most important to me was how we analyzed reality. Meeting PLP has meant learning about a true revolution.

While the FMLN held sway in my infancy, now in the PLP I consider myself the fruit of those who spilled their blood defending me during my childhood and made it possible for me to fight for communist revolution through the international Progressive Labor Party.
A Young PLP member

PL History: Anti-Racists’ Multi-Racial Unity Defies Rulers’ Attacks

(Last issue’s article about the 1975 summer of struggle against racism in Boston recounted the rulers’ unsuccessful red-baiting campaign against the Committee Against Racism and the PLP, and the cops’ attempt to ban CAR — later known as INCAR, the International Committee Against Racism — from marching on City Hall with an anti-racist petition containing 35,000 signatures.)

Early in the morning of August 18 — the planned march date — INCAR members and their lawyers went to court to enjoin the ban. The judge bent over backwards to help the cops’ lawyers present their own case. But they had no case, even by the lopsided standards of capitalist “justice.”

The cops’ attorney was reduced to arguing that since the commissioner had already canceled the march, it was too late to assign enough police to manage it. This he argued despite the hundreds of uniformed and plainclothes cops stationed along the march’s route at that very moment, waiting to prevent it.

In a public courtroom, the judge faced the alternative between flagrantly denying the right to free speech and assembly, supposedly “guaranteed” by the U.S. Constitution, and restoring the permit for the sake of protecting the system’s democratic façade. This time, the mayor and cops had gone too far, even by their own standards. The judge regretfully revoked the ban, and 300 people marched. It was one of the summer’s highlights. Thousands of workers watched from the street and shouted friendly encouragement to the demonstrators.

One speaker, INCAR’s chairperson at the time, aroused a collective shout of militant anti-racist anger when he said: “We will turn ROAR into a mee-ow!” and then, pointing to Hicks, O’Neill, & Co., who were watching from their City Hall offices, led the demonstrators in collectively giving these fascists the finger.

After that march, most of the volunteers returned home to prepare for school openings. Some decided to remain in Boston to consolidate the gains made over the summer and to build both PLP and the anti-racist movement there. The project’s final action came on September 8, the opening day of the 1975-76 school year. A year earlier, at the start of the busing program, ROAR thugs had thrown rocks at busses carrying young black schoolchildren into South Boston, Charlestown, East Boston, etc., and had otherwise conducted a racist rampage throughout the city, under the benevolent gaze of Boston’s police. Having proven that the ROAR goons didn’t reflect the views of most Bostonian workers, INCAR and PLP were now intent on organizing a demonstration for multi-racial unity outside South Boston High School on opening day.

Two busloads carrying anti-racist black, white and Latino students and workers set out for “Southie” on the morning of the 8th. As the busses were crossing the bridge leading into South Boston, the cops pulled them over. A lieutenant named Bradley boarded and informed the anti-racists that they were all under arrest. “What for?” asked one of them, a final-year law student. “Well,” answered Bradley, “you’re not exactly creating a disturbance, but your presence could tend to create one.” The law student retorted: “There’s no such thing as ‘tending to create a disturbance.’ Your arrest is completely illegal.” “Don’t worry,” chuckled Bradley, “we’ll think of something.”

Before depositing the demonstrators in a South Boston jail, the cops made a point of handcuffing them so tightly that many lost circulation in their wrists. On the way to the jailhouse, the demonstrators were treated to a volley of racist vulgarities from the cops in the front of the vans transporting them. Once the demonstrators were behind bars, a cop at the jailhouse greeted them by saying, “Comes the revolution, we’ll kill every f—— one of you.” No one was intimidated, and spirits remained high.
After spending the day locked up, the demonstrators were transported in police vans back to the Park Street subway station in downtown Boston. The cops’ original plan had been to release them at dusk onto the South Boston streets, where they might have been easy prey for a cop-ROAR trap. At the request of a PLP member, who had spent a good part of the day befriending a public defender from behind bars, the lawyer agreed to accompany several shifts of demonstrators on the ride to Park Street. The thought was that with a public defender in the van as a witness, the cops wouldn’t dare try their usual brutalities. This estimate proved correct. The demonstrators held a short, defiant rally at Park Street.

The public defender’s courageous action had taught a valuable political lesson: sharp situations provide important opportunities to do the “right thing,” and given the proper encouragement, many people can be won to rise to the occasion.

BOSTON 75 proved that under determined communist leadership, a relatively small number of militant anti-racists can put the rulers, their state apparatus and their gutter racist henchmen on the defensive. This was one of the project’s important lessons. In the final installment, we will discuss others, including the crucial ones to learn from its weaknesses.

Spitzer’s Licensing ‘Gift’ Really Nazi ‘Yellow Star’

In October, New York’s liberal democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer, proposed allowing undocumented immigrants to get drivers’ licenses. The “immigrant rights” movement pushed the idea that Spitzer was taking a bold, pro-immigrant stance.

Spitzer’s plan was developed not out of concern that undocumented workers need to be able to drive to and from work legally, and to get car insurance, but rather “as a way of bringing a hidden population into the open.” This fits with “homeland security” concerns consistently pushed by the Democrats. Some right-wing flunkies of the ruling class favor licensing undocumented workers. Colonel Margaret Stock, an immigration attorney and West Point professor, figures this plan would address the problem of “hundreds of thousands of people run[ning] around the country without any oversight when there’s a war going on.” (NYT, 10/9/07)

But even that sham was too much for the openly anti-immigrant racists. Many upstate New York county clerks indicated that if the plan was enacted, they would simply disobey it. Within weeks, Spitzer held a meeting and then a joint press conference with Michael Chertoff, the head of the fascist Office of Homeland Security, and announced that New York would agree to a three-tiered driver’s license program. That plan would have given undocumented immigrants a license which could not be used to travel across borders or to fly, and would have left them open targets, easily identifiable by cops and immigration agents.

Spitzer’s apartheid licensing system would have led undocumented workers into the eagerly waiting arms of immigration agents (ICE) just as surely as the yellow stars on their clothes led Jews to the waiting arms of the Nazis. However, Lou Dobbs, CNN’s ranting racist, and his fellow media apologists for the ruling class, continued their vitriolic campaign, viewing even this plan as a “gift” to these workers. Within days, Spitzer announced that he was withdrawing the entire proposal.

Unfortunately, many workers still believe that liberal Democrats will look after their interests and protect them from the ravages of the gutter racists. Each of Spitzer’s proposals, however, shows the error of that belief. The liberals simply have a different way of building fascism. They know that the wider wars of the future require winning immigrants to patriotism, while maintaining a level of terror to keep workers in line. That is why they keep Dobbs & the Minuteman racists around, and allow them to build their movement.

Liberal Democrats are no more the friends of the working class than are the gutter racists. Today, we fight against all forms of racism and fascism, and for the international unity of the working class. Once our struggle is won, members of the working class will not have to carry an identification card to prove our entitlement to the fruits of our labor.

France: Black and Arab Youth Rebel Against Cops’ Terror

100 COPS INJURED:
“THEY WON’T STOP ’TIL THEY BURN DOWN A POLICE STATION”

VILLIERS-LE-BEL, FRANCE, Nov. 28 — Black and Arab youth have rebelled against the racism they face every day. Two police stations were attacked and 100 cops were injured in several nights of violent protest that rocked this Paris suburb. Angry youth have shot at the hated cops with hunting shotguns. The rebellion has spread to Toulouse.

The rebellion began after a police car deliberately struck and killed two Arab youth on a mini-motorcycle. The racist cops then fled. When the police failed to investigate the “accident,” the neighborhood exploded.

Le Monde, a French newspaper, quoted Younès B., a resident of Villiers-le-Bel: “A second police team came to pick up their colleagues. But they left the two kids without doing anything.”
The rebellion followed on the heels of two weeks of labor and student struggle (see page 3). On Nov. 27, while the Socialist Party Student group (UNEF) was trying to sell out the student and teachers’ struggle, riot cops attacked protesting students in Nantes. One 17-year-old high school student suffered a serious eye injury when riot cops aimed point blank at his face.
Meanwhile in this Paris suburb where the rebellion began, the father of one of the slain Arab youth, Larami, 16, said his son had been threatened by police last week.

“We’re fed up with the lack of respect,” said Ikram, 23, who used to live here. He predicted the uprising would continue. “The young people won’t stop until they’ve burned down the Sarcelles police station,” he said. Youth anger at the cops and the racist system they serve is very justified.

Rulers’ Wars Intensify Racist Police State

Amid escalating war in the Middle East, and threatening inter-imperialist clashes (see page 2), the rulers must impose wartime discipline on the home front — FASCISM. With the liberal, imperialist wing of U.S. capital leading the effort, a full-blown police state exists for black, Latino and immigrant workers and those of Arab and Muslim background:

•Chicago: In August, the police went on a racist rampage and brutally murdered four young black men in cold blood, in four separate incidents. This year the police have murdered at least 31 workers.

•Atlanta: Undercover cops shot and killed a 92-year-old black grandmother, Kathryn Johnston, in her own home.

•Cleveland: In May 2007, police killed three black people – Aaron Steele, Steven Ray and Ira Mitchell – within three days.

•Conneaut, Ohio: On Nov 17, Immigration Customs Enforcers (ICE) arrested an immigrant mother breast-feeding her child.

•North Carolina: Police shot and killed Phillipe McIver, a 23-year-old black man.

•Los Angeles: LA cops murdered Francisco Mondragon a 24-year-old schizophrenic.

• Minnesota: Law enforcement agents have killed five black people in the first half of 2007.

•New York City: Nov. 25 marked the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Sean Bell, a 23-year-old unarmed black man, murdered with 50 shots from NYPD gunmen. On Nov. 7, the same NYPD assassinated 18-year-old Khiel Coppin, shot 13 times (see box). Since then, they have killed at least ten more people.

•Jena, LA.: Six black youth are being legally lynched for standing up against the racism of fellow students who hung a noose under a “whites only” tree. On September 20, over 50,000 people marched in Jena, protesting this racism and supporting the six youth.

•Since then over 60 incidents of noose hangings have occurred nationwide. (NY Times, 11/24)

•Thousands of Muslim workers have been detained in the U.S. and the Middle East and imprisoned and tortured in concentration camps in Guantánamo and “secret” CIA jails.

On the road to waging imperialist wars to control the flow of oil, the U.S. war machine has been tripping over a few roadblocks. Two of the main ones are their troop shortage and the fact that a crumbling economy hits most heavily on the super-oppressed black and Latino workers and youth. On the one hand, they need to win black, Latin and immigrant workers to fight and die in their wars. But since racism is inherent to capitalism, it inevitably shoots and harasses black and Latin workers while using the threat of deportation to terrorize and persecute immigrant workers. This racist terror undermines many of these workers’ loyalty to the system.

As a result of such racism, 2.2 million people are imprisoned nationwide, 70% of them black or Hispanic. Every twelfth black male between 25 and 29 languishes behind bars; the figure for whites is 1 in 100 (Bureau of Justice Statistics). Liberal misleaders and reformers have been working overtime to try to solve this insoluble contradiction: the system’s inherent racism oppressing black and Latino workers and their need to super-exploit them for super-profits, versus needing to use them as cannon fodder in their wars. They try to divert workers’ anger into such reform efforts as “community policing,” “civilian review boards” and their election campaigns. But to fight police murders we can’t fall into this trap!
The only way to smash the Klan in blue is to smash the racist system — capitalism — that uses them to terrorize working-class communities. Communism — the system of workers’ power, a society run for need, not profit — will sweep away these new night riders and their politician masters, crushing them like the cockroaches they are. To achieve this, we must organize!

POLICE TERROR

There is an alternative to capitalist oppression and its rotten culture: a society that produces for need, not profit; a society where the workers from all backgrounds can determine their own destiny as one united class; where we can stamp out selfishness, racism, sexism, killer cops, “workfare,” profit wars, prisons, deportations and national borders; where this system will be ground into the dust under the feet of millions of united workers and students.

That society is communism, and Progressive Labor Party is serious about organizing to make that world a reality. Join us!

Why the Spanish King Doesn’t Tell Neo-Nazi Goons to Shut Up

MADRID, Spain, Nov. 11—Neo-Nazis stabbed to death a young anti-fascist in a subway here during a day of protests against racists in the working class neighborhood of Usera. The fascists were rallying against immigrants. The cops protected the fascists and attacked the anti-racists. Racism against immigrants is on the rise in Spain and all over Europe. Neo-Nazi punks are just the goons of mainstream racist politicians blaming immigrant workers for the problems caused by capitalism.

This latest fascist attack took place the same day King Juan Carlos Borbón told Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez to shut up at the “Iberoamerican summit” in Chile. He was mad because Chávez was attacking Aznar, the former Prime Minister of Spain, as a fascist (Aznar was one of Bush’s loyal lapdogs in Europe, sending Spanish army troops to Iraq as part of the “Coalition of the Willing.”) Apparently, Chávez remarks touched a never in the King, who was groomed and appointed to his royal throne by Generalissimo Franco. The King has never told the neo-Nazi goons, like those who killed the young anti-fascist in a Madrid subway, to shut up.

But what really worries the royal highness is that nationalist leaders like Chávez threaten the many billions Spanish-owned companies now invest in Latin America. It is being called the “Reconquista” (Spanish imperialism reconquering Latin America). Spanish companies and banks like energy giants Repsol, Telefónica communications, BBVA, Santander Banks, etc. have now become the biggest European investors in Latin America, and the second largest after the U.S. It is a very profitable market for Spanish imperialist companies. But nationalists like Chávez, Evo Morales of Bolivia, President Correa of Ecuador now threaten these investments making better deals with China, Russia and even India.

That was what really ticked off the King.

‘Democracy’ U.S. Style: Musharraf’s Reign of Terror

A funny thing happened on the road to the “war on terror and for democracy.” Gen. Musharraf, a key ally of the U.S. in this endeavor, declared a “state of emergency,” jailing judges, lawyers and many others who oppose his scheme to get re-elected. He even briefly put The Pakistani People’s Party (PPP) leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest. She recently returned from exile as part of a U.S.-U.K. plan to work out a deal with the general to share power. Meanwhile, pro-Taliban-al Qaeda forces control some sections of the country in the North West Frontier and the border with Afghanistan.

There are many reasons behind Musharraf’s state of emergency, reflecting a power struggle among different sections of the Pakistani bosses. Bhutto was exiled several years ago, accused of stealing billions when she was Prime Minister. This supposed “voice for democracy” runs her Party as her personal fiefdom, being named its chair for life. The PPP belongs to the same “socialist international” as Tony Blair’s New Labor Party.

She and Musharraf represent two sides of the U.S.-U.K. imperialist coin in Pakistan. Her brief house arrest was rumored as a “mock conflict” to give her some credibility among the people. Washington and London want her as a back-up, fearing Musharraf’s days are numbered.

U.S. rulers have hypocritically made a big splash about championing “democracy” in Pakistan. This from right-wing neo-cons and liberals who are instituting a police state in the U.S.

The Pakistani military itself is a big business. High-ranking officers have made good personal use of the $10 billion aid the U.S. has sent since 2001. Joshua Hammer recently reported for “The Atlantic” that it owns large stakes in the country’s “banks, cable-TV companies, insurance agencies, sugar refineries, private security firms, schools, airlines, cargo services and textile factories.”

Its Intelligence Service (ISI) still owns a big share of the drug business in Afghanistan, where it really never stopped financing the Taliban forces fighting the U.S. and NATO. In the 1980’s, when the CIA and Saudi Arabia were funding bin Laden and the Jihadists fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan, the ISI was the main trainer of troops and conduit of money and weapons for the Islamists.

Pakistan is also a nuclear power, with possibly 115 nukes (NY Times, 11/11). The U.S.-U.K. bosses fear these might fall into the hands of the Al Qaeda-Taliban forces. Pakistan is also a key geopolitical country, bordering China, Iran, Afghanistan and India. The U.S. uses the province of Baluchistan to carry out covert operations against Iran. The U.S. would like to stop China from building an important port in Gwadar which would give China’s ships access to the Arabian Sea, near the oil shipping routes. China is another important ally of Pakistan since both consider India to be a rival in the region.

WHAT ABOUT THE WORKING CLASS?

While a few Pakistani bosses, military officers and yuppies have become super-rich, the working class and its allies are the real losers there. They’ve been victims of super-exploitation and union-busting because of privatization. In the past many had illusions about Bhutto’s PPP because it called for some “socialist reforms.” But the PPP and Bhutto have proven to be just another capitalist gang. Before partition (independence from the British in 1947) the Communist Party of India had a large base in what is today Pakistan. But repression and its own weaknesses basically destroyed it.

Friends of PLP are trying to rebuild the revolutionary communist movement there. Even though we’re still small, there are a lot of opportunities now. The masses are fed up with all the politicians and with capitalism, and hate the Jihadists. The communist road is the only way out of this hellhole created by capitalism and imperialism.

U.S. Bosses’ ‘Solution’ for Economic Woes: Police State, Wider War

“We are at a moment of economic crisis, stemming from four key areas: falling housing prices, lack of confidence in creditworthiness, the weak dollar and high oil prices,” said Senator Charles Schumer. (New York Times, 11/10/07). He could have added plunging stocks, dwindling sales domestically and being bogged down in the quagmire of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to his list of U.S. rulers’ woes. Hundred-dollar-a-barrel oil, GM’s $39-billion third-quarter loss, the growing subprime foreclosure epidemic and a rapidly-devaluing dollar all cut sharply into the bosses’ profits. The dominant liberal wing of U.S. capitalists is responding by concentrating control over their own class, increasing racist attacks on workers at home and expanding their murderous overseas oil wars.

TOP IMPERIALIST PLANNER TAKES OVER BIGGEST U.S. BANK

Robert Rubin, a leading ruling-class strategist, took over as chairman of the giant Citigroup after it reported an $11-billion subprime-related loss. Rubin is co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Rockefeller-funded think-tank that seeks to steer foreign policy in the interests of the biggest U.S. capitalists. Rubin’s CFR drafted plans, that Bush ignored, envisioning a massive occupation of Iraq accompanied by a six-million-barrel-a-day oil bonanza for Exxon Mobil and its allies. As Clinton’s treasury secretary, Rubin helped dismantle Welfare in order to pay for the bombing of Serbia and missile strikes to soften up Iraq. With Rubin at its helm, look for Citi to prove more responsive to the needs of U.S. imperialism.

The current profit slump has bosses squeezing more and more out of workers. Recent auto-industry contracts slash workers’ pay and benefits by more than 50%, with black workers hit the hardest (see article page 5). This increased racism is making it more difficult to recruit black and Latino youth into the military. Minimum-wage workers today receive 40% less in purchasing power than in 1968. Stepped-up deportations, concentration camp detentions and workplace terror raids force many immigrants to toil for even less than the minimum. Liberals want to increase the pressure. Earlier this month House Democrats introduced a bill that would “strengthen workplace enforcement of immigration laws.” Lower wages for black workers and immigrants depress pay rates for the entire working class. In the U.S., 38 million people now live in poverty.

BOSSES FACING LOSSES USE COP, MIGRA TERROR AGAINST WORKERS

A burgeoning racist police state helps enforce the rulers’ profit-driven attacks on workers. The 100,000 additional cops Bill Clinton put on the streets have been working overtime terrorizing, jailing and often killing workers. The cops’ victims are disproportionately black and Latino and increasingly women (see box). Community policing, which uses churches and schools to turn neighborhoods into networks of undercover agents and civilian stoolpigeons, has taken hold in cities nation-wide.

Along with cracking down domestically, U.S. rulers are counting on their (for now) unmatched military to launch a wider war for control of Mid-East oil and export routes to solve their many-sided economic problems. The euro may shame the dollar, but France has no aircraft carrier groups regularly plying the Persian Gulf or South China Sea. Germany has no troops stationed in Japan or South Korea. So now, among presidential hopefuls of both parties, permanent U.S. presence in oil-rich Iraq is a done deal, and debate has shifted to how best to confront oil- and gas-rich Iran.

Hillary Clinton, supporting the U.S. Iraq occupation has said that Iraq lies “right in the heart of the oil region” and so “it is directly in opposition to our interests” for it to become a failed state or a pawn of Iran. Michael Klare, a professor at Hampshire College, wrote in The Nation (11/12/07):

“Senior figures in both parties are calling for a reinvigorated U.S. military role in the protection of foreign energy deliveries….Perhaps the most explicit expression of this elite consensus is an independent task force report, “National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency”…released by the Council on Foreign Relations in October 2006. The report warns of mounting perils to the safe flow of foreign oil…It argues the need for a strong US military presence in key producing areas and in the sea lanes that carry foreign oil to American shores.”

U.S. rulers intend to muddle through their economic troubles by exploiting and killing millions of workers. They are getting away with murder, for the time being, without a serious military rival or a mass communist movement to challenge them. But both situations can change.

The U.S. empire is on a long-term collision course with China’s bosses, whose interests lie in allying with Europe or Russia or both. Such a coalition holds the potential for World War III. Building a base for communism among workers, soldiers and students, we can turn the cauldron of global conflict among the imperialists and their lackeys into a revolutionary storm to smash all war-makers.