France: Auto Parts Workers Seize Plant, Fight for Jobs

VILLEMUR-SUR-TARN, FRANCE, August 27 — Eleven weeks after holding two bosses hostage for 26 hours, 283 Molex workers occupied the auto parts factory owned by the U.S.-based multi-national for 38 days, fighting to keep their plant open and save their jobs. This was part of a 10-month struggle against the French government and the U.S. company which exploits 32,000 workers in 45 factories in 17 countries. The workers are reacting to the bosses’ attempts to shift the burden of the world capitalist crisis onto their backs.

French media portraying Molex as a “rogue employer” and the Sarkozy government as “unpatriotic” create two dangerous illusions: that there are “good employers” and that a “patriotic” government would protect the workers. But both Molex and the Sarkozy government are typical products of capitalism.

“In the past ten months, we’ve gone through every state of mind,” Alain, a 30-year maintenance worker told a newspaper interviewer. “We’ve had our hearts in our boots, and then we began to hope again when the courts voided the first layoff plan in April, and again when they ordered the factory to reopen in early August. And when…management ignored the courts, our morale plunged even lower than before.”

Today, negotiations with the government-appointed mediator are stalled because Molex will only sell the factory to a purchaser that doesn’t compete in their market. But the government mediator “is just a media show,” declared Alain.

In 2000, SNECMA, then a French government-owned aeronautics company, raided the family-owned factory in southwestern France, bought and restructured it and then sold it to Molex in 2004. Nationalized companies remain capitalist companies.

In 2008, Molex stated that “during fiscal 2005, we decided to close certain operations in the American and European regions in order to reduce operating costs.” That year, workers in Detroit, New England, Germany, Ireland, Portugal and Slovakia got the axe.

“In 2006, eight executives began photographing our machines and noting…our working techniques,” said José, a 30-year veteran worker.

In 2007, Molex announced plans “to move production between facilities, reducing staff levels…”

Before closing the Villemur factory, Molex equipped its Lincoln, Nebraska factory with copies of the molds and tools used in Villemur, built up a stock of parts in the Netherlands, and informed its customers, the French auto companies PSA and Renault, of its plans. “They had us working overtime all summer to build up stocks,” said Michelle, a 23-year veteran.

On Oct. 23, 2008, Molex announced it would close the Villemur factory as “unprofitable,” although the factory netted 1.2 million euros in profits (US$1.6 million) that year. On Christmas, the workers guarded the factory to prevent Molex from stripping it of machines and stock during the holidays.

In January, 2009 Molex said the world financial crisis was forcing it to close the Villemur factory. It was when the Villemur workers discovered — on April 20 — that the Lincoln factory was making the same interconnects, that they held two bosses prisoner. One month later, workers’ actions prodded the courts into suspending the layoff plan.

In May, the Syndex accounting firm reported that the Villemur factory was economically viable. French Secretary of State Luc Chatel had promised that if this were true, “the government would…facilitate the purchase of the factory [by a “white knight”] in order to maintain interconnect production in France.” But the government did nothing, so on June 10 the workers demonstrated in Paris, and then, starting July 7, occupied the factory in a 38-day strike.

When Molex broke off negotiations with a possible “white knight” purchaser, the workers egged the Molex director of development. Two days later, four of us workers “were summoned to court,” said shop steward Guy Pavan. “The judicial system works fast against the workers.”

“When you respect the law,” said a worker, José, “you get screwed. When you stay calm, you get screwed. And when they’ve got your nose in the shit, you’re still supposed to keep your trap shut,” he concluded.

On August 6, the workers ended the strike, but Molex closed the factory “for security reasons.” Defying an August 11 court order to reopen the factory, Molex has used security guards and guard dogs to keep it shut. They can do this because the company has friends in government. Christine Lagarde, French Minister for the Economy, Industry and Employment, was Molex’s judicial advisor in 2004, when she was a director of the Chicago law firm Baker & McKenzie.

Today, these Molex workers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If Molex prevails, the factory will be shuttered. If Molex is forced to sell to a “white knight,” some workers will be laid off while others will continue to work to enrich its capitalist owner.

Communist leadership is needed here and everywhere to provide the revolutionary alternative to capitalism, a society where workers own the factories and share the goods they produce.

[Messages of support and contributions can be sent to: Association Solidarité des Molex, 5 rue St Louis, 31340 Villemur-sur-Tarn, France.] J

S. Korea : Auto Workers Seized Plant, Repelled Cops’ Attack

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, August 7 — Hundreds of workers occupied the Ssangyong Motor Company for over two months, resisting layoffs. After two raids by the police, which the workers resisted by firing nuts and bolts from slingshots, 500 of 900 workers remained in the plant. They occupied the paint shop where thousands of gallons of flammable paint are stored. The workers initially rejected the company’s offer to reduce the number of layoffs and said in a statement that rather than being divided they would “die together.” (NYT, 8/5/09) The next day the union negotiated a settlement that further reduced the layoffs and pressured the workers to end the occupation. The struggle continues.

Clinton Visit to India

Red Revolution Needed to Stop Global Warming

Global warming, caused by capitalism’s mad rush for profits and devil-may-care attitude about the future, has already produced alarming weather events — increasingly violent hurricanes like Katrina, and hurricanes in the North Atlantic, where they had never been recorded. It has produced more severe droughts and flooding and the potential for a rise in sea level that will chase tens of millions from their homes in cities near coasts. So what do we make of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent visit to India (July 18-20), where she failed utterly in pressuring India’s leadership to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that cause global warming?

Clinton’s approach to India was a study in the imperialist rivalry that dominates global politics. Rather than accommodate her, India’s Environmental Minister Kamesh criticized the U.S. for generating a century’s worth of greenhouse gases (GHGs) without let-up and then preaching to the developing nations that they should stop emitting GHGs.

The capitalist ruling classes of both India and China — the two most populous nations in the world, containing over one-third of the world’s working class — know that the U.S. call for capping GHG emissions is mainly an attempt to slow their growth and prevent them from challenging the U.S. economically. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund already predict that the Chinese economy will surpass that of the U.S. in the next 20 to 30 years. This is what Clinton is trying to stop, not global warming!

U.S. bosses want a new international treaty on global warming at the December intergovernmental conference in Copenhagen, Denmark (the sequel to Kyoto). But developing nations are fighting against mandatory caps placed on their GHG emissions because it would hinder their economic growth, so Copenhagen is likely to fail due to the maneuverings of competitive capitalist interests. This neglect of the future of the working class and our planet illustrates why smashing capitalism is necessary to stop global warming.

Recently, the U.S. ruling class switched gears in its position on global warming. Previously, it had encouraged media denials that global warming was a problem or that it was caused by GHG emissions. The media and government were obedient to the short-term interests of giant energy companies like Exxon-Mobil. Now the rulers are pretending that they are about to tackle the problem and decrease U.S. emissions. The Obama presidential campaign began this shift in earnest.

But the world’s working class should not be fooled. Obama remains loyal to the profit interests of the energy companies. The U.S. capitalists are merely adopting a strategy to attack and isolate their Chinese and Indian rivals. The actual changes proposed by Obama and reflected in the Waxman-Markey bill (recently passed in the House of Representatives and being debated in the Senate) are too trivial to begin to make any difference in the rising concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere. The 17% reduction in U.S. GHG emissions by 2020 proposed in the legislation won’t even touch the problem.

Obama & Co. have no intentions of doing anything to harm the global strategic position of the U.S. ruling class. No capitalist government, no matter how worker-friendly it pretends to be, will ever do so. That’s why the world’s working class can only end the emissions of GHGs and prevent the devastating consequences of global warming by taking matters into its own hands.

We must throw the capitalists off the stage of history around the world through communist revolution, and organize a communist society in which both the short-term and long-term needs of workers (including the ecological health of our planet) will be the only considerations in determining how and what to produce.J

BOX: What Else Was Clinton Up to in India?

Clinton’s visit to India wasn’t just about global warming. Loyal to her capitalist masters, she also played the saleswoman for the big bosses. She pushed for a contract for U.S. corporations to build two nuclear power plants, and for a deal for India to buy $10 billion worth of fighter jets from Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The Indian bosses liked this part of her visit.  It’s all about the money!

Racist D.C. Metro Bosses Attack Transit Workers, Riders

The bosses are using the financial crisis to bludgeon workers all over the country, and the action has begun at the D.C. Metro Transit system. The Metro bosses have declared that there is a $154 million operating deficit for the coming fiscal year. That could mean layoffs and position reductions of up to 15% of the workforce. Despite the rising demand for mass transit, the local governments that own Metro have decided to cut service and lay off workers. Whether this is their real plan or just a ploy to justify a fare increase is yet to be seen.

Rank-and-file workers at Metro are getting ready to fight back. A public hearing on cutting back Metro runs in D.C. is planned for February 19 at Metro Headquarters. Workers will be there in large numbers to say no to cutbacks in service, no to layoffs, and no to fare increases, with no help from the union leadership. Although the union contract expired on June 30, 2008, a new one has not been negotiated. The union has refused to mobilize the membership to fight for a new contract. The union president’s excuse is that the workers don’t want to fight, and instead is relying on her political friends. Some good that will do! But many workers remember the mass demonstration we had with communist leadership during the last contract fight and declare that we should do more bold and militant actions.

A fight-back is needed! In addition to service cuts and layoffs, the workers’ pension fund is in trouble, having lost about 1/3 of its value due to the crash, and the bosses are trying to weasel out of their contractual responsibility to make the fund whole. The bosses are building racism by using the crisis to pit D.C. area workers against the mainly black workforce of Metro.

Metro bosses have joined in this racist onslaught and have begun a terror campaign against operators. Minor safety violations, which have always been punished with a written warning, now result in a five-day suspension. Talking on a cell phone while laying over is now a five-day suspension. An operator with a poor work record as defined by the bosses can be terminated without warning, i.e. no final warning. These attacks are to soften up the workers to be savaged by the bosses who want to take out their crisis on our class.

There have been no actual layoffs at Metro since 1995. At that time, we organized large numbers of workers and riders to protest the cuts in service and the loss of jobs. The bosses backed down and reduced their plans for cutbacks. This time the crisis is much more serious, and our efforts must reflect that.

We must unite with the community as well to oppose any fare increase that the bosses may be planning. Our brother and sister workers who use Metro are being squeezed from all sides by the bosses. We must not be part of this.

A system that can find billions (and even trillions!) of dollars for oil wars and to bail out bankers who still get billions in bonuses — but can’t pay Metro workers without further soaking the working class — such a system needs to be smashed with communist revolution. Metro workers and riders should join in this fight.

D.C. Rally Blasts Pols Over Housing for AIDS Victims

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 1, –– Progressive Labor Party members celebrated World AIDS Day today at a rally demanding housing for people living with AIDS. Our central objective was to help our friends understand that capitalist politicians cannot give us what we need, that racism like that of the AIDS epidemic is inherent in capitalism, and that only developing a revolutionary party to destroy capitalism and racism can get us off the treadmill of begging our rulers for crumbs as our friends die.

We joined with 60 people from DC Fights Back, the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association, American Medical Students Association, Student Global Aids, Empower DC (a D.C. housing advocacy NGO) and the National AIDS Housing Coalition. We demanded immediate housing for the 278 people on the D.C. waiting list for the Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS (HOPWA) Program. This program is pitifully under-funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The noon rally outside the field office of HUD included a picket line around tents and cardboard houses with brightly-painted signs calling AIDS housing a life-or-death issue. We demanded that the HUD director speak to us. We chanted “Racism means, FIGHT BACK” and “AIDS housing is the name of the game, HUD and HOPWA, Shame, Shame, Shame.” One speaker declared that stable housing for people living with AIDS is an absolute necessity so that complex AIDS medical treatments can actually be implemented and maintained. After initially refusing to meet, housing officials finally responded by offering to schedule a meeting on the issue.

The strength of this event was its multiracial composition and its confrontational nature. The coalition challenged the power structure by demanding housing, the critical missing link in AIDS treatment, going beyond education and outreach efforts in the community. As supposedly “progressive” D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty cozies up to developers and closes homeless shelters like the downtown Franklin Shelter, the battle for housing will become fiercer. In fact, when real estate developers threw Fenty a lavish birthday party on December 6, over 100 furious housing advocates and union members confronted Fenty and his billionaire buddies, carrying a big angry sign saying, “Kill the Homeless—Vote Fenty”.

Recruiting our friends to the PLP’s revolutionary strategy remains challenging. PLPers working in the community and with students brought a contingent of 15 people to the World AIDS Day protest and its four planning meetings, but many still harbor illusions about pressuring politicians and hoping for good results. One friend told us, “I really felt more comfortable with this rally than at May Day. May Day was good but this is my struggle.” We have to win him and others to seeing that the real struggle is against the capitalist system even as we fight day to day for the working class.

CHALLENGE was distributed at the rally and several participants in this work read it regularly. As the battle with the city and federal government heats up, and as the economic crisis intensifies, the need for revolutionary action will become clearer to our readers. Today’s study groups and regular reading of CHALLENGE will help many see and join the road to revolution.

Mass Strikes Hit EU Bosses’ Bailout Attacks on Workers

Ever since European bosses formed the European Union (EU) in 1993, workers’ demands for any improvements in their lives and working conditions have been rejected because the EU guidelines “wouldn’t allow it.” When working-class voters massively rejected the unified European Constitution in referendums in France and Holland in 2005, the rulers simply had the national parliaments adopt the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, allowing privatizations, cutbacks and other attacks on workers throughout Europe.

But when the current economic tsunami hit Europe’s bosses, their EU guidelines were the first thing to go as each national group of bosses nationalized and bailed out banks and cut each others’ throats. Britain threatened Iceland because the latter’s banking crisis affected billions invested by British bankers there. European “unity” went out the window as each capitalist country’s ruling class tried to save its own bankers and bosses.

But the crisis has also sharpened workers’ militancy, involving mass protests and strikes, including a general strike in Belgium on October 6 (see CHALLENGE, 10/29).

GREECE PARALYZED

On October 21, a massive general strike paralyzed Greece, the ninth one against the conservative Karamanlis government since 2004. There were huge protests nationwide, two in Athens organized by different union groups. The strike shut down airlines, heavy industries, transportation, health services and schools. It also opposed the 2009 draft budget, headed for parliamentary debate.

The Greek budget would “reform” the pension system, adversely affecting millions of workers. They are also angry at the recent $37 billion bailout of failed banks, the privatization of companies such as Olympic Airlines, the ports, utilities and education. This would attack even more public-sector workers.

Workers were even more irate because while billions of euros of public money are being used to bail out banks, huge financial scandals are erupting, involving many government cabinet members and the “holy rollers” of a Greek Orthodox Church monastery.

THOUSANDS MARCH IN ITALY

On October 17, a mass strike took place in Italy against the anti-working-class policies of Prime Minister Berlusconi. A governmental education “reform” threatens 87,000 teaching jobs, huge cuts in health services and allows temporary contracts in many industries, leading to wage cuts.

Workers marched in many cities, including 300,000 in Rome, where the cops had to guard the education ministry to protect it from angry college and H.S. student protestors. In Milan, students and cops clashed when students tried to take over the Polytechnic college.

The attacks against workers and students are occurring amid a huge racist campaign against immigrant workers and youth which has led to murders and pogroms of Roma people and violent attacks against immigrants from Africa and Asia.

Teachers, Parents Protest in France

In France, the teachers’ unions and the main parent organization called a national demonstration in Paris on October 19. It had tepid demands — “to defend the public education service, to demand a halt to the budgetary policy of austerity and that necessary reforms be made in a different manner,” according to the leader of the Christian teachers’ union. The “church bazaar” atmosphere only mobilized 40,000 protesters, although the union misleaders are claiming twice that number. Some analysts believe workers in France are “disoriented” by the economic crisis, not surprising since no organization is putting forward revolutionary politics.

The mass strikes in Greece and Italy are good but are not enough. Union leaders and opponents of conservative governments in Italy and Greece are using them as an electoral tool to bring back “pro-worker” bourgeois governments. In Italy, such a government preceded Berlusconi’s return to power last year. It was supported by Refondazione (the remnants of the old “Communist” Party). That government also attacked immigrants and workers, and sent troops to fight in the imperialist war in Afghanistan.
In the current situation of sharpening dogfights among imperialists to save their own skins during the global economic meltdown, any bourgeois government must attack workers more sharply.

A big victory workers and their allies could gain from these struggles is the building of a new revolutionary communist leadership, breaking with all the capitalist collaborators calling themselves “leftists.” Only then could the working class construct a truly united society without any bankers or capitalists.

Unemployment Spreading Worldwide

Both bosses’ candidates, Obama and McCain, build false consciousness among many U.S. workers. McCain jabbers about Joe the Plumber, a non-union, right-wing plumber who has illusions about owning a plumbing business. Obama babbles on about how the “middle class” is hurting. But the working class, the overwhelming majority, did not benefit from the “boom” years of the ’90s and is now hurting even more from the current capitalist economic tsunami.

For millions of workers, capitalism in the U.S. and worldwide in the last three decades has meant lower wages, union-busting, racist and fascist ethnic cleansing from the Balkans to Iraq to Rwanda to the U.S. (with 2.4 million in jail, mainly black and Latin males). Endless wars, racist-fascist terror and mass unemployment are the main aspects of global capitalism.  In fact, the director of the UN’s International Labor Organization estimates that the current capitalist crisis will increase unemployment by 20 million worldwide.

According to the AFL-CIO (and it ought to know), over 45 million U.S. workers earn $10.20 an hour or less. One of four earns $9.60/hour, the official poverty rate for a family of three. And 15 million workers earn the minimum wage, $6.70/hour. Among black workers, one of three earns the poverty wage or less.

Throughout the entire history of the profit system, the only time “full employment” has ever existed is during world war — and then only in the more advanced capitalist countries which are the main antagonists of such wars.

Many compare the present crisis to the Great Depression of the 1930s when one-third of the working class in the leading capitalist nations was jobless. It was only when a military draft was enacted and during World War II when countries’ industries became completely devoted to war production that anything approaching “full employment” materialized.

Of course, that presumes that tens of millions in WWII uniforms could be labeled “employed” (at least 14 million in the U.S.). Meanwhile, the main warring capitalists in Germany, Japan, the U.S. and Britain geared total production for the weapons of war. It was only then that capitalism could claim the unemployment problem had been “solved.” The German and Japanese fascists used millions of slave laborers for their war production. The war wiped out 100 million people permanently, including tens of millions of workers. A similar capitalist “solution” to the current crisis is not far-fetched.

The only country without any unemployment before WWII was the Soviet Union which had no private profit system; the source of unemployment, racism and war. It lost 25 million people in the war while its Red Army defeated the bulk of the Axis fascist armies.

Capitalism is based on the accumulation of maximum profits. The only source of profit is the value created by workers in the course of production. However, workers’ wages do not equal the full value they create. If that were true, there would be no profit for the boss. So the bosses try to keep workers’ wages at the lowest level possible, turning as much of the value workers create into profits for the bosses.

But each individual capitalist is competing against all his/her rivals for the maximum share of the market, and produces as much as they think they can sell. However, nothing is planned. So overproduction results, exceeding what the market can buy. Those capitalists who can produce at the lowest possible cost push aside many of their rivals. The latter, seeking to reduce costs to stay in business, feel compelled to achieve that by cutting labor costs, leading to either wage-cuts or mass layoffs, or both. Thus, unemployment is intrinsic to capitalism.

Racism is one of the main weapons capitalists use to reduce their costs. Historically, they relegate various sections of the working class to “second-class” status — the lowest wages, the hardest jobs, the last hired and first fired, and the worst-off in other aspects of life: housing, healthcare, education, etc. In the U.S., this super-exploitation has fallen on black workers, going back to slavery, and in the last two centuries also on Latino and Asian workers. (This does not include the genocide perpetrated against Native Americans who suffer the highest rate of joblessness, 90%.)

The capitalist class reaps super-profits from this racism, partly from the difference in family income between white workers and that of black, Latino and Asian, and partly because the bosses use the lower wages of super-exploited workers to drag town the wages of the entire working class. In the U.S., this difference amounted to $250 billion annually a decade ago, and is probably much higher when figuring in capitalist competition using racism on a world scale, not just within each capitalist country.

Since China has become a full-blown capitalist country, the imperialists have used its huge cheap labor to shift production away from relatively higher-paying areas. Others — India, Latin America, Vietnam and the former Soviet-bloc countries in Eastern Europe — have been used to “outsource” jobs. This “globalization,” in turn, has also been used to lower workers’ wages in the imperialist countries, and even to subcontract key industrial jobs in auto, steel, aerospace, etc., to low-paying non-union areas all across the southern U.S. and California. Racism against immigrant and black workers has been crucial in this process. The pro-capitalist policies of the union leadership have helped the bosses carry out this massive attack.

This competition for profits, and for resources such as oil, gas and minerals needed for modern capitalist production, as well as to equip modern armies, is what leads to military confrontation: war. And not limited to wars between two countries, but to world war. This “solution” to inter-imperialist competition plus the mass unemployment produced by the general competition among bosses in one country and between corporations internationally is part and parcel of capitalism. This is what produces the cycles of “boom” and “bust,” of recessions and depressions. This is the history of capitalism.

Obama and McCain constantly prattle about concern for “the middle class.” They rarely, if ever, use the term “working class.” But classes are defined by their relation to the means of production. U.S. workers who might earn $50,000 a year and manage to hang on to their houses and cars are labeled “middle class” and are even portrayed as “future owners of small businesses.”

But auto or aerospace workers (or plumbers) can be laid off tomorrow, victims of the bosses’ drive to cut costs to maintain profits, and their homes and cars go up in smoke. Currently millions of U.S. workers are losing their houses because of the capitalists’ scams to make paper profits from subprime mortgages, because profit rates from these swindles exceed those that can be reaped from industrial production.

Workers and youth who think a President Obama will “create good jobs” will soon be disillusioned. These jobs will either be civilian ones, the “National Service-type,” with low wages and no benefits or contain the military “option” to carry on U.S. rulers’ oil wars worldwide.
We must be involved with these working-class youth in their mass organizations and win them to see that, under capitalism, their desire for “decent jobs, healthcare, education and housing” is a mirage. We must be part of their daily fights in order to transform them into intensified class struggle between the two classes and use this opportunity to build the Progressive Labor Party. Our goal must be communist revolution to abolish capitalism, its system of wage slavery and racist super-exploitation.

While capitalist crises in and of themselves will not topple the system, they do open the door to building a movement and Party that can lead to the destruction of that system. This is the working class’s only way out of the insufferable horrors of the profit system.

U.S. Rulers’ Biggest Bailout Scheme: Global War

U.S. capitalists are finding it extraordinarily difficult to organize their way out of the worsening global economic crisis they created. The most powerful sections of the ruling class are beginning to assert themselves by either taking over smaller, failing banks and companies or eliminating them. This will enable the top financiers to control the entire banking system and enforce their long-term strategy of fascism at home and war abroad to protect their oil empire. All the out-of-control profiteers seeking short-term gains are now being disciplined, to follow the top guns or fall by the wayside.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson’s original bailout bill couldn’t make it through a rebellious Congress and the remake failed to inspire investors and contributed to Wall Street’s worst week since 1933. “Some $8.4 trillion has been lost from US stock markets in the past year.” (Times of London, 10/12/08)

Another failed cure was Paulson’s decision to let Lehman Brothers go under. Rather than cleanse the investment banking system, the move worsened the situation. Wall Street investment giants Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch have all had to find new ways to exist.

Even a massive bailout from Washington may not save General Motors as an independent company, it having launched merger talks with Ford and Chrysler. Tens of thousands of auto jobs are at risk, on top of the 750,000 jobs lost overall this year.

MEGA-MONEY BOYS SOROS, BUFFETT, BLOOMBERG TAKE CHARGE

But economic chaos and destruction represent only one side of the coin. While the bosses appear to be losing control, the biggest U.S. capitalists, those with major stakes in U.S. imperialism, are in fact tightening their economic and political grip. Billionaire George Soros — who bankrolls anti-Russian regimes in Eastern Europe and urges anti-China “intervention” in Tibet and Darfur — helped steer a big shift in the bailout policy.

The New York Times reported (10/12): “Two weeks after persuading Congress to let it spend $700 billion to buy distressed securities tied to mortgages, the Bush administration has put that idea aside in favor of a new approach that would have the government inject capital directly into the nation’s banks — in effect, partially nationalizing the industry.”

On Oct. 1st, Soros had written in London’s Financial Times, “Instead of just purchasing troubled assets the bulk of the funds ought to be used to recapitalize the banking system.” Nationalizing the banks helps imperialists like Soros & Co. control capital and channel it to their own, increasingly military, needs to maintain U.S. rulers’ super-power status. That the Soros position prevailed over both Bush and the Congress reveals the true nature of state power. As Lenin said ninety years ago, politicians are ruled by finance capital.
Financier Warren Buffett, Forbes Magazine’s “Richest Man on the Planet,” is another master of U.S. capitalism’s rapidly evolving new universe. Buffett, an ally of the Rockefeller-led Eastern Establishment, has a big say in who survives the current carnage. He just threw multi-billion-dollar lifelines to two of U.S. imperialism’s flagships, worldwide deal-maker Goldman Sachs and arms maker General Electric.

Known for having a long-term outlook, Buffett recently invested heavily in U.S. railroads. Though not very lucrative at present, Buffett’s railroads will prove indispensible in mobilizing for global war and are beginning large-scale infrastructure rebuilding. Without an efficient rail system, it becomes very difficult to move large number of troops, supplies and weapons coast to coast.

Buffett is also the largest single owner of Wells Fargo, which bested Citigroup in its attempt to seize Wachovia, saddled with toxic subprime mortgages.

Wall Street darling Bloomberg’s bid for a currently illegal third term as New York mayor serves the same imperialist capital-concentrating purpose. On October 2, thirty ruling class big shots published an Open Letter in the NY Times urging lawmakers to “extend term limits [to three terms] in order to give New Yorkers the opportunity for whomever [sic] they think can do the best job during these tough economic times, including our current mayor.”

The signers included ultra-imperialists like David Rockefeller and his war criminal henchman Henry Kissinger. Others were J.P. Morgan Chase chief James Dimon, Goldman boss Lloyd Blankfein, and financier Wilbur Ross. The latter is bent on safeguarding U.S. industries like coal, steel, and textiles, all crucial to the manufacture of weapons, tanks, warplanes, troop uniforms and gear, and all the other ingredients of modern warfare.

GLOBAL WAR: OBAMA, MCCAIN AGREE ON GOAL, DIFFER ON APPROACH

Stopgap measures like bailouts, buy-ups, and partial nationalization can only bring a mix of successes and setbacks to U.S. rulers. Their imperialist wing, however, eyes the Big Bailout, top-to-bottom militarization for global war with rivals like Russia and China. Liberal Robert Reich, Clinton’s Labor Secretary, let that cat out of the bag in an October 9 NY Times column.

Encouraging broad federal spending to counter the current crisis, Reich said, “the government will probably have to run deficits to keep the economy going anywhere near capacity, a lesson the nation learned when mobilization for World War II finally lifted us out of the Great Depression.” That’s when the mass unemployment of the 1930’s — 17 million jobless in a 50-million workforce — was “solved” by drafting 14 million into the military.

Candidate Obama vows to put millions to work —in low-wage jobs— in New Deal-style programs to rebuild strategic infrastructure. His call to reinvigorate the nation economically serves the rulers’ war agenda even better than McCain’s openly militarist appeal.

The rulers well know that most U.S. workers and GIs in World War II did not back the McCain-like, patriotic, right-wing “America First” line. Opposed to Hitler’s fascism, they bought into “The American Way of Life,” Roosevelt’s promise of state-sponsored post-war prosperity. This built the illusion that “reformed” capitalism can guarantee a decent life and tie workers to the profit system. Obama hopes to revive that illusion.

Neither economic crisis nor voting can eliminate the class dictatorship finance capitalists blatantly flaunt every day. Only communist revolution can because it abolishes profits, bosses and their wage slavery system and puts the workers in control of state power, guaranteeing our class — which produces all value — will share the fruits of our labors.

The profit system’s crisis, with its wholesale attack on workers’ wages, pensions, housing and healthcare, its racist super-exploitation of black and Latino workers, opens up limitless opportunities for communists to expose the anti-working-class nature of capitalism.

However, no matter how low capitalism sinks, it will not topple itself as long as the bosses hold their ace-in-the-hole — state power. That’s why the revolutionary communist PLP must be built and win workers to bury capitalism in the garbage heap of history.

Belgian General Strike Blasts Bailout Assault on Workers

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, October 6 — The financial meltdown of world capitalism is prompting workers to fight back, refusing to pay for the bosses’ crisis. Today’s general strike here was “a warning to the government and the bosses.” Workers paid no heed to rulers’ pleas “not to aggravate” the shaky economic situation. Instead, workers here set an example for workers internationally by taking the offensive.

Workers are demanding no wage-cuts, a higher minimum wage, equal benefits for young workers, government action to reduce the cost of trips between home and the workplace, higher welfare benefits, and lower taxes on workers and higher taxes on the rich and the corporations.

The strike shut the country’s major factories, such as Audi (auto) and Sonaca (aeronautics) in the Brussels area and the Charleroi steel mills. Work stoppages and workers’ on-the-job mass assemblies hit banks and superstores. Teachers struck nation-wide, as did postal workers and workers in national and local governments. Some cities (like Sambreville) decided to close “in a show of solidarity” rather than be shut by municipal workers.

Antwerp and Bruges, in Flemish-speaking regions, ground to a halt, as did Charleroi and Liège in French-speaking areas. The subway, trams and buses in Brussels — Belgium’s capital and the seat of the major European Union institutions — were all at a standstill. Practically no trains were running, disrupting both domestic traffic and travel to Amsterdam, Cologne and Paris.

On June 6, 100,000 workers had demonstrated in Brussels demanding the government take emergency measures to defend their purchasing power. Since then only prices have risen: food up 7.9%; electricity up 20%; natural gas up 50%; and heating oil up 59%.

The Belgian bosses’ answer to that demonstration was a new round of downsizing, repeated attacks on such public services as education, transport and health care, an attempt to impose a wage freeze and to make any improvement in welfare benefits dependent on a reduction in the corporate tax rate.

However, the power of the workers is being derailed by the leadership of the three major unions, the socialist FGTB, the Christian CSC, and the liberal CGSLB, which only want to influence the government’s proposed budget, scheduled for October 14.

In this period of global crisis and endless wars, the bosses — even if they give workers some crumbs — will try to take them away as soon as possible. The best victory workers can gain from these struggles is to turn them into schools for communism, forging the revolutionary leadership needed to fight for real workers’ power: communism.

France-wide Protests Hit Bosses’ Meltdown of Wages

PARIS, October 7 — Some 100,000 workers demonstrated in 90 protests across France demanding workers not pay for world capitalism’s banking meltdown, the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Over 13,000 trade unionists marched in Paris. Three hundred unionists from 14 European countries met for the World Day for Decent Work sponsored by the International Trade Union Confederation.

PSA Aulnay auto workers were among the loudest in the Paris march, chanting: “To get out of the crisis, it’s not the banks that need to be helped, it’s wages that have to be raised.” This reflected the fear of millions of workers worldwide who are forced to pay to save the bankers and bosses with untold billions in bailouts.

A government worker in the Paris suburb of Stains defines himself first and foremost as a worker. His monthly salary, 1380 euros ($2,000) is his household’s only income, with unpaid bills piling up. He questioned why “banks that are up to their necks in debt are getting billions,” whereas no one’s bailing out his debts. “But,” he sighed, “that’s the way it always is for us workers.”

Nearby, another worker retorted: “That’s the way it is, but that’s not the way it should be!”
To be sure, but workers must realize the nature of the crisis. The union leaders, whose goal is a few more crumbs from a “reformed capitalism,” are part of the problem. They build illusions that a “lesser-evil” ruler can make things better for workers — “Dump Sarkozy, dump Bush and things can get better.” But it doesn’t matter who rules.

It’s not just some greedy bankers in Paris, London or New York; it’s not even the anti-working class, racist policies of Bush and Sarkozy — although they surely are at fault. It is capitalism itself. The nature of the system, social production but private profits for a tiny minority, creates the basis for these periodic crises.
With each successive crisis, workers pay more and more. Workers must learn from the lessons of the past. Global economic turmoil will sharpen all the inter-imperialist contradictions.

During the 1930s, the Nazis came to power and built a war economy to “solve” the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s New Deal created government-sponsored job programs, but another recession followed in 1937. World War II’s military draft “solved” the Depression’s mass unemployment problem in the U.S.

Only the then communist-led Soviet Union was untouched by the Great Depression, in sharp contrast to Putin’s Russia today. The USSR was also the only European country on the continent that didn’t fold or surrender when the Nazis invaded, and then defeated Hitler’s war machine.

Today, there’s no Soviet Union to inspire the world’s workers, but the threat of global imperialist war is now sharper. The world’s working class has a gigantic task: break with all the agents of the ruling class, regain class consciousness and learn from the past achievements and errors of the revolutionaries who preceded us. Fight for the only real solution to this capitalist hellhole: communism. That’s PLP’s goal. Join us!