Autoworkers Need International Solidarity to Fight Bosses, Union Hacks

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL — Almost 200 delegates from 27 countries met June 16-18 for the 12th International Metalworkers Federation (IMF) World Auto Council “to address fundamental challenges of [the] industrial and enterprise restructuring process sweeping the auto sector.” But little could be expected to deal with the problems faced by autoworkers worldwide at a meeting where the keynote speaker was Ron Gettelfinger, president of the UAW and the IMF Automotive Department.

While parroting, “We must develop a pathway to build union strength at the major global auto producers and suppliers,” in practice under Gettelfinger’s leadership the UAW has done the opposite. The last example was the sellout of the Axle strikers in Detroit and other U.S. cities (see CHALLENGE, June 4).

Gettelfinger and most union hacks worldwide have done everything possible to help companies cut autoworkers’ wages, jobs and benefits. Nationalism and pro-company unionism have been the norm for these hacks, and not just the UAW. The Canadian Autoworkers Union has just seen its strategy of “trading concessions for job security” blown to bits when GM announced the closing of its big Oshawa, Ontario plant. In Mexico, union hacks have announced their willingness to accept even lower wages, making them competitive with “China’s low wages.”

On June 17, IMF delegates attended a strike solidarity rally with workers at the Cummins Engine plant in Guarulhos. It followed the meeting’s closing speech by IMF General Secretary Marcello Malentacchi pledging to end precarious (non-permanent, low-paid) work. But this symbolic rally was just for show, to pretend these hacks are actually fighting union-busting.

The IMF is calling for a Global Day of Action on October 7. Class-conscious and militant autoworkers must turn this day into one of real international solidarity, blasting the hacks’ nationalism, exposing how the attacks workers suffer worldwide are caused by an international capitalist system faced with sharpening competition for markets, resources and cheap labor, which is leading to endless wars.

This is the only kind of political leadership that can confront the auto bosses growing attacks, and it won’t come from the UAW, CAW or IMF hacks. It requires a red leadership whose goal is, “Workers of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains!”

Brazil’s GM Workers Need International Solidarity

Not far away from the IMF meeting place, GM has been trying to hire 600 new non-union workers with lower wages at its assembly plant in São José dos Campos. Meanwhile, the local city government has given GM tax exemptions and other concessions. The company, the local government and the media have attacked the workers opposing this wage-cut scheme, claiming they “oppose the creation of new jobs.” Now GM is threatening to transfer jobs to a plant in São Caetano do Sul, which has a pro-boss union leadership and already has 1,500 workers earning less and with less benefits.

Contrary to the U.S., Canada and Europe, Brazil’s auto industry is enjoying a boom because of the rise of the local market. GM controls 20% of it, making huge profits.

A coordinated struggle of rank-and-file GM workers in Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the U.S. behind the slogan, “Same enemy, same fight, autoworkers of the world, unite!”  would go a long way to fight these bosses’ attacks, something they won’t get from the IMF’s pro-capitalist leaders.

Teachers Oppose Bosses’ ‘Reform’ to End Pensions, Cut Vital Services

MEXICO CITY, May 29 — Thousands of teachers from many parts of Mexico, including Guerrero, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tlaxcala and Mexico City, participated in a massive march here to protest the reform of the law of the Institute of the Social Security in Service of the State Workers (ISSSTE), which plans to reduce pension benefits and increase retirement age. Members and friends of PLP distributed thousands of leaflets exposing capitalism and calling on teachers to fight for communism.

In their fascist offensive, the bosses and their imperialist backers have dealt a new blow to workers by reforming this law, thereby giving workers’ savings to the banks and financial institutions. These “reforms” mean the end of pensions for the retired, removal of the right to housing credits, slashing child-care services and a severe cut in medical services.

In the short term, this will affect the workers of the Federal Commission of Electricity (CFE), of PEMEX (the state-owned oil company) and of public companies. Even though the more pro-U.S. imperialist bosses support the “reform” all the other Mexican bosses represented by different capitalist political parties, including the opposition López Obrador and the PRD are behind it.  (This situation is facing workers worldwide — see page 5 on France’s workers facing a similar attack.)

Currently more than 20 million Mexicans eke out their existence on wages equal to barely twice the minimum and many even less than that. These hungry masses lack a revolutionary organization. PL’ers must continue exposing the bosses and their neoliberal and state capitalist policies and keep organizing the workers to build a communist system where exploitation, poverty and unemployment will not exist. We must have confidence in the great potential of the working class to make a revolution and run society.

During the march there were many insults and anger directed against President Felipe Calderon and Elba Esther Gordillo, “leader” of the teachers’ union, but the problem isn’t only these puppets and the Social Security Reform. The whole capitalist system is rotten and must be destroyed.

Some teachers said that the positive reforms to Social Security were won with over a century of struggle and now the bosses are taking them away with one stroke. This is the essence of capitalist “reforms”: they give workers only crumbs and can take them back at any moment. We need to fight, not for reforms but for a communist world, where workers in Mexico and globally will control society for the benefit of the international working class. Long Live Communism!

Chile’s Students Hit Privatized Education, Seize Schools

SANTIAGO, CHILE, May 28 — For the third successive week, high school and college students have militantly protested a new law which could privatize public education. Students demonstrated on May Day and then again on May 16 (Day of the Fighting Youth) when students took over several colleges and high schools immediately after “socialist” President Michelle Bachelet gave a national speech on education. In one school students hung a banner reading, “If education is a merchandise, students must be rebels.”

Today, the “carabineros” (riot cops) brutally repressed a planned student march, attacking several thousand gathered in Santiago preparing to march to the Ministry of Education. The cops said they “had no march permit.” Some 337 students were arrested battling the vicious police attack. Over 600 were arrested nationwide during this day of protest. The cops beat students viciously as they were being loaded into police vans.

The government’s proposed General Education Law offers some crumbs like computers and a few scholarships, but each municipality would control education, opening the door to privatization. Students say they want free public education like their parents received, not a few computers or scholarships.

Chilean youth, like youth worldwide today, had a reputation of being non-political, but the reality of a local and international capitalist system bent on making workers and youth pay for its crises and wars, is impelling young people to realize they must fight for their interests.

Education under capitalism, whether free or privatized, is based on promoting bourgeois ideology and building the next generation of exploited workers the bosses need. The best education these youth can acquire is in the class struggle against capitalism and its stooges.

Urges El Salvador Guerrilla Vets to Join PLP

El Salvador — At the end of the 1970’s there were nine people in my family including seven brothers and sisters. The government army came into my settlement, killing children, youth, old people, and women; in my family four brothers were killed because they were suspected of helping the guerrilas.

In 1979, when I was 24 years old, I was pursued by the National Guard because of my revolutionary ideas. I joined a military detachment of the ERP (Revolutionary Peoples’ Army). We had massive confrontations with the government’s army at the same time that they bombed us. When we were invaded by the enemy in a combat zone, we sometimes spent up to eight days without food. After battle, we went to an area that was under the control of the guerrilas where we got our political and military training.

In 1989 we carried out a military campaign where I fought in the city of San Miguel, in the eastern part of the country. I spent nine days in a trench, seeing many of my comrades fall from the enemy’s weapons, and seeing the suffering of the civilian population from the bombings. But we also attacked and showed our political resolve and military strength, as we forced the army to flee and struck mortal blows. Hundreds of soldiers and police fell, brought down by the revolutionary shrapnel of the armed people. Here we were true to our slogan of struggle: victory or death.

At one moment when we were ambushed by the enemy army, a soldier in the bosses’ army (who today is my friend) warned us about this ambush, from which I escaped unharmed. This helped me understand that solders in the government’s army were winnable since most aren’t won ideologically to the bosses’ side.

Since the end of the armed struggle, as a disabled veteran of the war, I’m a member of ALGES — Association of the Disabled from the War in El Salvador. The ideas of a revolution to change society had me frustrated for a time, as I feel that I had been fooled by the high leaders of the guerrilas. After the war, many of them became brazen servants of the capitalists, while my conviction and that of my fellow disabled and dead fighters was to fight and win for the working class.

I then met a club of PLP and when I heard the strength of their political ideology, it didn’t seem foreign to me. Here I see true revolutionary ideology, which is the fight for communism. I hope that this story helps many fellow veterans of the war to join the Progressive Labor Party since the commitment to fight for the working class must continue.

Mexican Bosses Battle Over Oil While Workers Starve

MEXICO CITY, June 2 — The fight amongst the capitalists of the world for control of oil has motivated the latest wars in which hundreds of thousands of workers have died for the different greedy bosses’ profits. In this period, this dispute among the imperialists is leading to World War III.

For the Mexican ruling class, the big fight amongst different sections is over PEMEX, the state-owned oil monopoly. President Calderón, with the support of the U.S. imperialists, wants to privatize it all, while other local bosses (like former presidential candidate López Obrador) oppose this, preferring it to remain as a state-owned company, favoring more investments from local capitalists instead of U.S. oil companies.

Oil is the bloodline of modern capitalist industry and war machines. Control of the oil flow and profits is the reason the U.S. bosses and their military are geared to make wars from Baghdad to Kabul. It is now more profitable than ever with the continuous rise of the price of a barrel of crude. For example, PEMEX had profits of about $100 billion in the last four years.

This oil wealth does not belong to the “Mexican people” as the politicians tell us. If it did, its megaprofits would be used to end the poverty of 70 million people in Mexico, 50% of whom live in extreme poverty. These profits benefit the politicians who administer PEMEX and the companies’ bosses who have direct business with PEMEX.

The center of the dispute between the group led by Calderón, the ruling PAN party and the majority of the PRI (which ruled for 60 years before PAN) against López Obrador, the FAP (Broad Progressive Front) and some of the PRI is over which group of national or foreign bosses will control the billions of dollars of profits of PEMEX.

The competing bosses are trying to convince us to support the “privatizers” or the “nationalists.” This is a fatal trap. We workers are the ones who produce all the wealth including the oil and we must take it into our own hands. Capitalism in any form (free market or with nationalized industries) is based on the exploitation of the working class. Choosing sides in this dogfight as far as workers are concerned is like siding with either the drug cartels or the bosses’ government in their mini-civil war over drug profits. Workers have only one choice: to build a massive international communist movement to fight for the revolutionary dictatorship of the working class over all bosses and establish a society in which oil, and everything else, will serve the needs of the world’s working class. That is what PLP fights for. Join us!

The U.S.-Death-Squad Empire Strikes Back

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, June 1 — The heart-attack death of Manuel Marulanda (aka Tirofijo or Sureshot), founder and leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest and oldest Latin-American guerrilla group, follows several recent events favoring the U.S.-Colombian government’s war policies in the region. Early in March, Raúl Reyes, FARC’s second-in-command, was killed by an air-command raid while asleep in a camp inside Ecuador. Then Iván Ríos, another top FARC commander, was killed by his own security chief to collect a huge government reward. This was followed by the surrendering of Commander Karina, the top FARC woman leader. (Apparently, the Colombian secret police threatened her daughters’ lives, a common government tactic against guerrilla leaders).

The FARC has suffered major setbacks, losing many areas it once controlled, reducing its ranks to some 9,000 fighters.

All of this has induced the Uribe government, the Colombian generals and the White House to seek a military solution to eliminate the FARC altogether.

However, the FARC might be down but it’s not out. Recent reports show its urban base increasing. Yet the government now has the upper hand. Uribe and U.S. rulers are using this to intensify attacks against its two main enemies in the region: Venezuela’s Chavez and Ecuador’s Correa (both oil-producing OPEC members).
These two are partly to blame for this. After the Colombian military’s air-command raid that killed Raúl Reyes and others inside Ecuador (with open U.S. intelligence help), Uribe and the U.S. were on the defensive since this raid was to sabotage Chávez’s plan, supported by France, to exchange Ingrid Betancourt (a French citizen and former Presidential candidate in FARC custody) and others for FARC members held in government prisons. This exchange was making Chávez and FARC look good. But amid worldwide condemnation of the Colombian government for the raid, Chávez and Correa shook hands with Uribe at a Latin-American presidential meeting in the Dominican Republic. Uribe later responded to this favor by increasing attacks on FARC and linking it to Chávez and Correa.

The Uribe government was also discredited internally because of its connection to “parapolitics” (death squad-drug dealer groups). Sixty-four politicians (51 of them congressmen or 20% of Parliament) have been linked to parapolitics; 32 are already in jail. Most are linked to Uribe.
Semana, a newsweekly magazine, commented (5/4), “In the ’80s, Pablo Escobar and his gang reached Congress, but only 5% of all parliament members were linked to him. In the ’90s, when the Cali cartel decided to subtly bribe politicians under what was known as Process 8000, only 26 congressmen ended up in jail (10%). Today, the alliance between the mafia and paramilitaries has…seen 51 congressmen under investigation (19%).”

In mid-May, 14 jailed leaders of the AUC (death squads) were suddenly sent to the U.S. for drug trials. This had a dual purpose: firstly, to clean the image of President Uribe and force the Democrats in the U.S. Congress to pass a free-trade deal with Colombia. Secondly, the death-squad leaders will only be tried for drug-dealing, not for the thousands they’ve killed (mostly innocents) in the last few years. Thus, the links of Uribe and U.S. companies (Chiquita Brands, Del Monte, Coca-Cola, Drummond Mining) to these killings won’t be exposed.

Most of the thousands murdered in Colombia in past decades are victims of the Army and its allies in the paramilitaries (trained and financed by Plan Colombia, signed by Clinton with Colombia in the 1990s). Although the FARC is labeled “Marxist,” it’s far from that. Its main goal has been to negotiate a deal with some section of Colombia’s ruling class (and possibly with some imperialist rivals of the U.S.) to preserve capitalist exploitation. Colombia’s working class and its allies don’t need more capitalism. They need to fight for a communist society without any bosses. That was the idea advanced by the small but growing PLP group here on May Day.

FASCIST PARTY OUT IN PARAGUAY, BUT CAPITALISM REMAINS WITH A LIBERAL FACE

Ex-Bishop Fernando Lugo won the presidential elections in Paraguay, ending the 61-year reign of the fascist Colorado Party.  Lugo won with the help of the Patriotic Alliance for Change, including the center-right Liberal Party, center-left parties, as well as several socialist parties including PMAS (Party of the Movement Towards Socialism, Hugo Chavez’ allies) and several social movements of farmers and indigenous groups (including Tekojoja).

Many workers and activists believe that the working class will benefit from this ouster of Colorado. Not true! Lugo’s win signals a change in the style of the oppressor, nothing more. His politics resemble those of Chavez in Venezuela and Lula in Brazil, who have the image of being pro-working class, but are really just another face of the ruling class.  Lugo owes a debt to many capitalist elements among his allies in the Patriotic Alliance for Change and is not likely to be able to even accomplish modest reforms. Face it –– capitalism is bigger than any one candidate, no matter how sincere he or she may be about social change.

It’s the same in the U.S. with Obama, Clinton and McCain. Rather than build illusions in the system, workers and activists should follow the policy of “Don’t Vote! Revolt!”

The big issue that Lugo will take on is renegotiating contracts involving two hydroelectric plants  –– Itaipu (with Brazil) and Yacyreta (with Argentina).  The Paraguayan government receives less than the typical world price for the electricity they sell and  Lugo has promised that the revenue received from better deals with Brazil and Argentina will help fund social programs, including health care. (Dengue and yellow fever are now common in Paraguay). We have seen, however, time after time, that such reform promises rapidly go out the window after a “reformer” is elected, as the ruling capitalist class asserts its needs over those of the masses.
Immediately after winning the election, Lugo spoke with Hugo Chavez and said that he intends to join UNASUR, an economic bloc formed by Chavez. Then he declared his desire to meet with China, signaling an opening to Chinese imperialism to play off against U.S. imperialism and curry favor with his socialist backers in the Patriotic Union for Change. But trading one imperialist for another is not progress!

Paraguay is a geopolitically strategic country finding itself between Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Bolivia, while at the same time sitting on top of one of the world’s largest supplies of fresh water –– the Guarani Aquifer. Many large and small imperialists, including Brazil, the U.S., Venezuela, China and the European Union, want a piece of Paraguay’s resources and labor! Instead of playing ball with imperialists, revolutionary workers should break with all politicians and build the PLP, an independent revolutionary communist party that calls for the complete destruction of capitalism.  No deals — Lugo is just another puppet of the capitalists and their elites — Workers must build the PLP and make revolution if the future is going to be bright!

PL-led Action Hits Mexico University’s Oppressive Rules

MEXICO, April 16 — PLP organized a protest at a school in UNAM (Autonomous University of Mexico) against the Rules of  Inscription reproduced on April 7th, in an edition of the “Rights and Obligations of the Universities” by the Administration’s Committee in “ Defense of the University Students.”

These rules require that only students who have finished their Bachelor’s degree in three years and with an average grade of nine (barely 10% of the students achieve this) are allowed to choose a major and their preferred school. This same rule excludes from UNAM those who finish their bachelor’s degree in more than 4 years. And for the faculty, to achieve permanent status, a professor would have to work 5 times longer (505% more) than the current plan.

The UNAM student strike of 1999-2000 demanded the repeal of this same rule. In the face of the mass and prolonged protest against the police intervention to smash the strike, the Rector declared that this rule would be suspended until it was discussed in the University Congress (that they could never organize). However, since the protests got smaller, now the government in using the Administration’s  Committee in the Defense “of the university students” to remind us of their regulation. The majority of students are against this.

The PLP quickly called for a protest inside one of the schools where we demanded that the Director take the message of our anger against this ruling to his superiors. We also demanded a cafeteria for the students, improvements in the showers in the sports area, and permanent status for the “interim” professors, some of whom have been in this interim situation for 10 years, and other demands.

About 60 students came to the protest and hundreds watched it, including teachers and workers who’ve shown their support and agreement. We brought red banners of PLP and we talked abut the need to build a new type of proletarian party that fights directly for Communism.

We recognize that even though we’ve been timid in putting forward the ideas of the liberation of the working class, we’ve taken steps that have also led to the  math professors demanding the same things of the school administration. We’ve also carried out a campaign to distribute copies of PLP’s Road to Revolution IV. Several professors have shown us their support and encouragement to continue fighting actively for revolution.
Greetings to all the comrades!

Rising Food Prices Trigger Haiti Rebellion

HAITI, April 8 — Rising food prices worldwide have triggered rebellions in many countries. Southern Haiti is the latest. Five people have been killed and many injured after several days of protests by thousands, including attacks against local cops, businesses and the MINUSTAH (the U.N. multi-national occupation force here led by the Brazilian army). Over the weekend protesters looted the MINUSTAH office in Cayes, taking weapons and other materials.

Today, UN forces shot rubber bullets and tear gas at thousands of workers and university students marching on the national palace in Port-au-Prince, the capital city, backing the rebellion and shouting, “We’re hungry!”

The U.N. occupation, which began after the U.S., France and Canada invaded the country several years ago and sent President Jean Bertrand Aristide into forced exile, has only brought more misery, drug gangs and hunger to the Haitian masses. One of every four children here is malnourished. People have resorted to eating “dirt cookies,” made from salt, oil and clay and baked in the sun. A system that has brought billions worldwide to such extremes must be destroyed.

The Battle That Helped Crush South Africa’s Apartheid

Part VII of Africa Series

On March 25, the 20th anniversary of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, Angola, was celebrated in Cuba by Raúl Castro and government representatives from Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Although the battle is mired in propaganda over whether the South African apartheid army really lost or the Cuban Army-led forces won, it marked the beginning of the end of the hated South African apartheid regime and the myth of its army’s invincibility in Southern Africa.
It has been called “Africa’s largest land battle since World War II,” occurring amid the Cold War between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. A brutal, bloody civil war gripped oil-rich Angola after it won independence from Portugal in 1975. Angola’s MPLA government was pro-Soviet. So the CIA, the apartheid South African regime, Congo’s corrupt dictator Mobutu and Israel armed, financed and trained UNITA, a guerrilla movement that had also fought Portugal’s colonial army. UNITA and its backers outgunned the MPLA, so the latter sought aid from Cuba, which sent thousands of soldiers to fight alongside the MPLA. The South African army also wanted UNITA to control Angola’s southern border to stop the liberation movement (SWAPO) fighting for Namibian independence from South African control.

The border war’s final battle occurred in the city of Cuito Cuanavale, in early 1988. It involved hundreds of tanks, artillery, planes and 50,000 Cuban-army-led soldiers against the UNITA-South African army attempt to capture the city. Both sides suffered heavy casualties. The apartheid regime claimed it wasn’t defeated.
But as von Clausewitz said, “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” That battle crushed the myth of invincibility of the racist apartheid regime and its army. Several years later, apartheid was dismantled in South Africa.

Unfortunately, this defeat of the hated apartheid regime didn’t include a revolutionary struggle against the root of racism: capitalism. Today, the rulers of South Africa, Angola and Namibia (all former leaders of those liberation movements) are in bed with capitalism and imperialism. Cuba looks to be turning towards the “China” road of free-market capitalism. And a new imperialist battle for Africa’s oil and other vital resources is developing, now between the U.S. and Chinese imperialists. A luta continua (the struggle continues).