FIGHT RACIST DEPORTATIONS

During the first week of January the Obama administration put into practice its promise to round up recent immigrants from Central America for deportation. ICE has arrested almost 500 immigrants, all subject to deportation, mostly in North Carolina, Georgia, Texas and California, but also in New Jersey, New York and other states.

Members of the immigrant’s rights organization we PLP members are in, as well as the wider community, are understandably alarmed and afraid. The organization has begun workshops informing immigrants of their legal “rights” if they are confronted by ICE. There’s also talk of finding sanctuary in churches for immigrants at risk of deportation. We in PLP are supporting these measures. But the organization is downplaying this surge in deportations as “normal” ICE activity. They are relying on good lawyers to represent immigrants in deportation hearings and trying to get “local” laws passed to protect immigrants within particular cities. While PLP is never opposed to good lawyers, these approaches are at best illusory and at worst part of liberal policy to pacify the working class and allow racist divisions to grow.

So what does communist leadership within the mass organizations mean now? Communists are against panic; we aim to strengthen the working class. We must do a number of things:

• Develop workers’ understanding of how imperialist rivalry and constant war is related to attacks on immigrants world-wide,
• Relate deportations to the surge in racism in the US beginning with daily police killings of black workers and youth to anti-Muslim attacks to anti-immigrant attacks,
• Expose how the capitalist ruling class and their media seize on “fear of terrorism” to blame immigrants and Syrian refugees for the entry of terrorists into the US and Europe while obscuring the criminal, racist and fascist nature of cpaitalism,
• Denounce how capitalist governments from Europe to the US. are closing borders, leaving refugees from war, starvation and misery to die.

Workers ask us communists in PLP about what will happen in the future. We tell them that we can’t predict the future. Our answers depend on communist understanding of how capitalism works and our confidence in the international working class. Workers will continue to find ways to cross borders and will continue to be a source of cheap labor in the US. The US government will continue to welcome technology experts, scientists, researchers and others who can help US imperialism to project its power in the world and remain on top. It is likely that there will be a guest worker program to allow in immigrants for limited periods of time to work in agriculture, food packing and other industries, but without any of the so-called labor rights that workers in the US currently have. The focus will be on programs that will guarantee rights for youth who join the military as ground troops in imperialist wars.

In our mass organizations, we have strongly called for demands that can put the working class on the offensive: no deportations, immediate acceptance of hundreds of thousands of Syrian war refugees, open all borders for workers and amnesty now for all immigrants in the US, no restrictions. We want fightback that will include all workers, immigrant and citizen, black, Latin, Asian, white, same enemy, same fight. We will never accept any form of racism as “usual or normal.”

The Uprising in Missouri Illustrates the Need for Communism

With all that is happening in these dark days of the dark night that the working class is being brutalized under, there is a general feeling of powerlessness: the “what can I do about it?” syndrome. This passivity-bred powerlessness is vital to the interests of the ruling class. All of the massive problems facing the working class today are primarily caused by inter-imperialist rivalry. This passivity was smashed by the murder of a young man, Michael Brown, in St. Louis by the racist police. The murder of the young Missouri teen and father in Staten Island by racist pigs illustrates how before a ruling class can attack its rival ruling class, it must attack its own working class even more viciously. The purpose if these attacks is for the ruling class to discipline us in order to wage war, and this process is called fascism.
The uprising in Missouri, though inspiring, parallels the peasant uprisings that would rage like a firestorm until they were extinguished.

The killing has drawn comparisons by some civil rights leaders with the 2012 killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a Florida neighbourhood watch organiser who was acquitted of murder charges. PLP supports these rebels who are angry with the racist police, and we would have liked to see and have participated in this same action initiated by Garner’s death in Staten Island. We find it welcoming to see angry Black workers opening fire on the KKKops at the injustice of the racist system. In contrast to the narrative the police constructed in order to blame the teenage victim, Dorian Johnson, who said he was with Michael Brown, gave a different version of the police murder:

He told local broadcaster WALB a police officer told them to get out of the street and onto the sidewalk, and when they continued walking, the officer confronted them.
Protesters have called for the police officer to be prosecuted with murder…

A resident on the street where the shooting occurred told the Associated Press news agency Brown had his arms raised but the police officer stood over him and shot him (execution style).

The major contradiction inherent in this uprising is that the violence against the state, the petty bourgeoisie, and the reappropriation of products, called “looting” by the press, though inspiring to the working class, will not lead to Communism. It may lead to a temporary reform where the pigs may hesitate a bit more before murdering another black member of the working class, but it will not fundamentally alter the nature and role of the KKKops as the protectors of private property and inequality.

We must take to heart that in order for us to make systemic and lasting change, we must build revolution where we are. We need to build the Progressive Labor Party so that we can make a concrete and lasting change, not just rise up like a firestorm and then be put down. PLP condemns the racist police and the ideology of racism that justifies their action. We were born in the heart of the Harlem uprising and fully support workers rising up and fighting back, but the PLP must grow if we are to change the daily misery and exploitation of inter-imperialist rivalry.

RACIST NYPD KILLS AGAIN

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Eric Garner was murdered by the racist NYPD last Thursday. Choked to death by killer cop Daniel Pantaleo. Already, despite the assertions of Mayor DeBlasio that he was deeply disturbed by the video of the racist attack on an unarmed Black man, DeBlasio’s medical examiner(ME) is already leaking info to the NY Post trying to take the heat off the cops.

Any honest person who sees the video knows that Eric Garner’s murder was another continuation of the long line of people killed by the police for being Black or Latin.

When DeBlasio ran for Mayor he tried to get working class people out to vote for him by saying he was going to do something about there being two New Yorks, one for the rich and one for the poor. Well we see what he’s doing: first he hired Bill Bratton as Police Commissioner, the same Bill Bratton whose “Broken Windows” plan was nothing more than increasing police harassment and arrests of people in working class neighborhoods for any excuse possible.

Now DeBlasio’s ME office is trying to figure out how to get these racist murderers from the 120th Precinct off the hook. As if a man dying while being brutally strangled is anything but murder.

Pantaleo and the other racists from the 120th came out there looking to hurt someone. They were called because of a fight on the street, and when they didn’t get to hurt those guys, they went after Eric who had done the right thing by trying to break up the fight.

Yes, Pantaleo and the other cops who jumped on and then stood around while Eric garner died must be indicted and convicted of murder. However, if this was just an isolated incident, you could say that would be enough, but we all know it’s not. This is the NYPD doing their job.

DeBlasio and the ME and the Staten Island DA are all hesitant to go after the cops because they know the cops were doing what they’ve been conditioned to do, attack and terrorize Black and Latino workers in this city. That is a big part of how the wealthy, the capitalists that run New York, and this whole country stay in power and they are who these cops serve and protect.

Pantaleo must be brought to justice, but we will never be free of this racist police terror until we are free of the capitalist system. Freedom from police terror will only come from the working class taking power from the capitalists with communist revolution.

Fascism Grows In The USA, Ukraine, Gaza, And All Over The World

Racism is the other side of the coin of patriotism. Patriotism and nationalism are synonymous and are the ideological foundation that motivates the working class to kill themselves in the interests of their own bosses. Whether it is small nation nationalism or big nation nationalism, borders are artificial and divide the working class. Borders do not stop capital investments from flowing; they just keep the working class producing at the lowest wages possible. When the workers try to flee the harsh economic conditions that US imperialism creates, they are then scapegoated and used to facilitate anti-immigrant racism, thereby dividing the working class and turning it against itself.

The Party recently marched and rallied against anti-immigrant racism in Murrieta, CA. Since we were not defenseless women and children nor liberal pacifists, they did not confront our militant, multi-racial, multi-gender march against the fascist organizing going on. Towns like Murrieta are important to the bosses because they allow them to whip up the kind of hysteria that their fascist designs need with more wars looming against Russia and China.

In Ukraine, hundreds of dead workers litter fields as one group of IMF/EU/US backed workers battles against Russian backed workers. The dead women, men, and children of flight MH17 and the recent victims of Israeli colonial style racism in Gaza are actually victims of capitalism. Russia is pointing out that a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter was trailing the Malaysian plane. Whether or not a Russian made BUK missile is to blame or an air-to-air R-60 is doesn’t change the fact that innocent workers have died in a war zone between rival imperialists trying to geostrategically divide the world. The working class suffering and dying in Gaza is also part of the crimes of modern day capitalism.

How many children does capitalism kill each day? How many children are right now dying of thirst in the desert because they can’t live due to the highly profitable drug wars being fought by destitute working class youth organized into gangs in places like Honduras and Mexico where their blood fuels vast profits in banks that make money from the money laundering.

Today, July 21, is also the one year anniversary of Kyam Livingston who was murdered in a Brooklyn cell. The same racism that killed her took another victim, Eric Garner, last week as a man was murdered by the police for selling loose cigarettes. The same racism that is build and fueled by deporting undocumented workers and their children is the cutting edge of fascism that is being wielded relentlessly on the black working class.

As fascism is being built in the US and around the world, it will be the working class that fights and dies for the super rich to get super richer. WWI saw the world get re-divided as a decaying empire, Britain, had to fend off its rival upstarts in Germany allied with the dying empire of the Ottoman Turks. Communist Revolution caused a quick ending to WWI and gave state power to the working class in The Soviet Union. They fought for Socialism then, and though great advances were made, Socialism will never lead to a Communist transformation of the capitalist economic system as it requires the market, retains the wage system, and does not abolish classes. The Progressive Labor Party knows that with the oncoming World War, the potential for Communist revolution grows. We need to be in it to win it, and we need all workers to join the PLP and help build it where they’re at.

A Typhoon Destroys the Philippines

 

As capitalism continues to destroy the Earth’s environment, the working class continues to suffer. Over 10,000 dead workers in the Philippines, and the survivors scrounging for food, desperate for help, are a sight that we’ve seen before way too often: Natural disasters’ destruction exponentially increased due to the inequalities of capitalism. Nature will have disasters and will whip up superstorms, but it is the racist systemic inequality of the profit system that causes so many to die and the survivors to be in such a desperate situation. How many of those that were the most affected came from the working class and how many came from the Philippines’ local bourgeoisie?

Some might question the validity of blaming Capitalism’s overconsumption and placing of profits before the environment, yet capitalism’s wanton destruction has significantly contributed to the superstorms. Let’s not forget that the largest polluter is the U.S. military. The U.S. military pollutes the planet with its radioactive depleted uranium bombs and uses vast amounts of petroleum — think how many gallons it takes to move a battleship just one mile! This pollution causes greenhouse gasses and global warming.

This same U.S. military has been trying to engage with Asia and encircle China strategically. There is potentially more oil in The East China Sea than the Middle East. Now, it may not be as easy to acquire, and profitable, as the light sweet crude in Libya just bubbling below the surface, but China is hungry for oil and the U.S. has no intention of letting a major rival have unfettered access to development. The U.S. is sending 9 warships, one being an aircraft carrier, to the strategic area of the Philippines. Once they are there, there’s little chance that those imperialist parasites are leaving. The U.S. didn’t want to leave in the late 19th century when they inflicted genocide on the workers there. The U.S. has a long history of imperialist brutality on the workers in the Philippines, and it wouldn’t be surprising if they took advantage of the devastation to improve their geo-strategic position.

Problems with access to areas affected by the typhoon should not be a bother to a super power that’s had a decade of experience fighting in harsh mountainous conditions. How many high tech stealth helicopters do the U.S. bosses have that can drop on a dime? The desperate workers in there are not their priority. Killing and slaughtering families by remote control is their priority. Wars for oil and domination are their priorities. Where’s the profit in mobilizing millions and millions of workers and shipping them to the to help those affected?

Under communism, the world’s working class would directly organize to meet the needs of those affected by the disaster. Instead of the priority being the continuation of wars without end, there would be help provided, not just amphibious warships and aircraft carriers! A massive rebuilding effort would accompany the massive supplies of food that would be freely given to the affected workers, not the cash loans the World Bank (WB) is hungering to lend the workers in the Philippines. The WB claims it is looking to make only a modest profit from the massive amount of rebuilding that’s going to be needed. Whatever they claim, even if they give the money away, it will not emancipate the working class; it will possibly rebuild some of the houses, but what about the next greenhouse gas accelerated superstorm?

The Philippines has revisionist parties that have been fighting for various strains of socialism for decades. Hundreds of thousands have grasped the ideas of Marxism and the need for revolution. They need Communism. There is a long Red tradition in the Philippines, from the Huks up until today. The only way of truly rebuilding in the Philippines is to build The Progressive Labor Party there. The masses of workers joining PLP will be a superstorm for capitalism sweeping away exploitation and its irrational destruction away with it. The struggle for Communism is paramount to ending the misery and desperation of workers in the Philippines and all over the world. 

Capitalism Is Holding Us Back: The Stars Should Be Ours

Each year brings more advances in science that shed light upon how much capitalism is retarding the development of the human race and acting as a chain on our potential. The god particle was discovered. A substance that repels water was discovered. Water was found in the polar regions of Mercury. Yup, Mercury has Polar Regions.

The whole universe beckons to us. The stars would be ours already if it were not for the limits that profit places on human development. Marx said that war is like taking all of the productive capabilities of a society and then dumping it in the ocean. We have the technology today due to advances in Nano technology to begin to build mining operations in space, to begin constructing things that seem far out and fanciful — like a moon bridge or space elevator.

Instead, the capitalists are more concerned with funding terrorism in Syria (either the butcher Al Assad or Al Qaeda); assaulting our ozone and environment with the Keystone pipeline; destroying the working class’ access to quality education by the Troika in Greece or Obama’s Race to the Top in the US; or outright murdering us as factories kill us by the thousands in Cambodia and Bangladesh. The need for capitalism to increase the profitability of capital through maximum exploitation of humanity and the Earth is now plowing ahead with a full head of steam towards World War 3 and our possible annihilation instead of taking ourselves to the unlimited resources that we could have from the Solar System around us.

Instead of designing and building floating cities in Venus, we’re designing weapons to destroy cities and kill innocent workers. Instead of building massive coral reefs as a counterbalance to Global warming, Obama and company are getting ready to build a pipeline that will wreck environmental havoc on our world, as if superstorms like Hurricane Sandy are not enough. What was once only dreamed of in science fiction is quickly becoming scientific fact, yet our ruling masters would rather kill each other, and get us to kill each other in their interests, rather than allow us to achieve our historical moment.

The revolution just can not come soon enough for us to throw off the yoke of their exploitation driving us to slave for our annihilation. These parasites, the capitalist bosses, inhuman garbage that they are, need to be thrown off of the proletariat’s back. A world that is sustainable, green, healing, feeding us and clothing us all, meeting the needs of all, can only be built by a Communist Revolution led by the Progressive Labor Party. Our advanced line of fighting directly for Communism, a society based on meeting the needs of the working class by our class struggling together, will break the shackles on our development. We will inherit the Earth and the stars, the ability for us to feed every human being 20 times over and educate every worker to be a leader, the death of exploitation, sexism, nationalism, ideology, and racism with the ascendancy of scientific thought based on the power of Dialectical Materialism.

Capitalism is so broken it can’t be fixed

Capitalism is so broken it can’t be fixed is the headline from The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch.  The bosses’ pundit Paul B. Farrell, no friend of Communism, is pointing out that nothing that the bosses are currently trying to do can solve the broken system of capitalism.  He even points out that the inter-imperialist rivalry that PLP has correctly pointed out as the primary contradiction determining world events is an important determinant.  He points out that what Marx called the tendency for the capitalists to hoard their capital as they search for maximum profitability is also a major facet of broken capitalism.  The capitalists hoard their “capital” that  “sits unused on the balance sheets of corporations, and languishes inert in private equity funds.”’ because they use it to speculate, generating Abstract and Fictitious Capital to generate their profit returns as opposed to investing it in infrastructure and other elements of Concrete Capital that are actually needed to support their place as the world’s hegemon.  In other words, the US bourgeoisie use their money to make money not the roads, rails, and factories that are needed to make actual products and preserve their level of production.  This tendency of capital is mitigated by attacking the working class to extract more profit and, as Lenin pointed out in Imperialism, exporting capital to other undeveloped areas of the globe in order to produce at the highest profit possible.  The problem of exporting capital is that other capitalists in other countries want to do this as well.

 

The ruling class has to protect their economic investment, and they use the working class to fight their wars.  The workers who have been part of the economic draft to become US soldiers are now having Moral Injuries that tear their psyches apart.  They have nightmares and have trouble living with themselves because of the atrocities that they do for the sake of profit based on the timeworn lies of god and country. “ A moral injury tortures the conscience; symptoms include deep shame, guilt and rage. It’s not a medical problem, and it’s unclear how to treat it, says retired Col. Elspeth Ritchie, former psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general.”

Ritchie’s comments echo the torturers in Franz Fanon’s Wretched Of The Earth who felt uncomfortable psychological trauma from brutalizing the guerillas and didn’t want to stop torturing and killing, but wanted their psyches to be healed nonetheless.  The way to treat these nightmares is to stop these imperialist oil and resource wars and begin a rectification campaign where the US imperialists and the soldiers who killed on their behalf apologize and rebuild.  This will never ever happen under capitalism.  Only a Communist revolution can begin the healing process and rectification necessary for those who are guilty of the most brutal crimes against humanity in the name of profit can heal themselves. 

 

So while the working class soldiers live with guilt, the professional mercenary scum in Blackwater get all of their charges completely dropped.  Poof.  Vanished. It cost them a few million, made some rich people a bit richer, and reaffirmed that the US needs their thugs to kill kill kill!  The war on the black and Hispanic working class under the veneer of the war on drugs continues unabated with felonies handed out like party favors, yet when the thugs who murder and kill for the bosses get tried in their courts, the capitalists use their courts to preserve their power.

 

Meanwhile, in the Syrian arena, the Free Syrian Army, stooges of US Imperialism, have begun to bomb Hezbollah, stooges of Russian and Chinese imperialism and Iranian hegemony, in Beirut and Lebanon. The escalation of this war threatens the stability of the whole Levant, yet the US looks on with delight as they can get profitable pipelines and check their rivals.  The “Arab Spring” has turned into the Winter of Jihadism and reaction as Islamic Parties and other reactionary groups have filled the power vacuum that deposing dictators creates.  Without a Communist Party ready to seize state power and begin the revolutionary transformation of society under the dictatorship of the working class, there can be no fundamental systemic change.  Capitalism is fundamentally broken when it comes to meeting the needs of the working class.  It needs to go. 

 

The working class is trapped in the prison of false consciousness.  For example, thousands of workers in Bangladesh are fighting for false consciousness as they attack the police and rally in defense of Islam.  They are angry at “atheist blogs”.  This reactionary rally is a tragedy for the working class as religion is a weapon that the ruling class uses to divide the working class and get us to pay attention to the next world instead of this one.  The working class is divided by race, class, gender, and cultural structures such as religion – Christian vs Jew, Sunni vs Shiite, Muslim vs Hindu, etc.  The list goes on and on and on.  Communism is needed to wash away all of the social constructs that act as the bars in the prison of false consciousness that we live in.  The friends of PLP in Bangladesh will continue to struggle against the violent reactionaries and continue to organize for a revolution that will end the ability for religious leaders to command thousands of workers to kill. 

 

The fact that Capitalism is broken is inaccurate though.  Capitalism is working fine.  It is making the wealthy wealthier, concentrating power in fewer and fewer hands, facilitating the growth of fascism as the bosses need to prevent their power from flowing out of their hands and into the hands of their rivals.  Capitalism works for the capitalists.  They can maintain their state power through any natural or economic disaster.  Capitalism is a resilient system with only one fatal weakness – Communist revolution.  A Communist Party of millions, armed with Red ideas, Dialectics, and the determination to wipe capitalism off of the world once and for all is the only that thing that will break capitalism.  Capitalism will not end because of some massive crisis.  No, only we, the working class under the leadership of PLP, can end it.      

 

 

 

 

 

Communism is needed to Smash the Sexist Assaults on Women in India and all over the World

All of the people that are outraged that the woman that was gang raped, tossed off of the bus, and then left for dead, has died need to join PLP in order to destroy sexism and the brutality that it engenders once and for all.  The last blog written condemned the Communist movement in India for not going far enough and channeling the rage of the working class into narrow reformist avenues of discontent instead of the road of revolution.  Exactly what would a revolutionary Communist Party, like PLP, have done had they had the mass base of the CPI and the rest of the Red Indian alphabet soup Communist left?

With hundreds of thousands of members in the student unions and trade unions already marching on the center of parliament, we would have struggled to arm them while simultaneously marching directly on the police station where the men who did the raping were being held.  We would have held a public working class tribunal where they would have been tried and punished as the working class saw fit.  We would have not sent condolences on Christmas Day to any pigs who got blasted by the working class, like the CPI had the audacity to do.    The Central Secretariat of the Communist Party of India sends its deep condolences to the family of the police constable, Tomar, who died in hospital after the police clash with protestors. It is an unfortunate incident. While CPI condemns the violence, but feels that the police could have shown more restraint.   We would have pushed the correct understanding that armed struggle is necessary in order to defeat capitalism.  We would have pointed out that this struggle isn’t about showing the poverty of one government or another, but that this is a consequence of the ideology of sexism – an ideology that capitalism needs in order to preserve its stranglehold on the world. 

 A young 19 year old attacked a police officer attempting to arrest him for jumping the turnstile. The young man’s crime of not having enough money to lay the ever increasing fare justified the pig who got a big old case of what’s what when the young man slammed him and started choking him.

 Random acts against the state’s constant dispossession and oppression of the working class will not stop capitalism in and of themselves, but they do inspire the working class to resist the state.

 The bourgeois media is trying to tie this crime into the hate crime of a woman who bought the bosses’ anti-South-East Asian racism hook line and sinker. She said she hated all Muslims and Hindus due to the terrorist attack over ten years ago on September 11, 2001, that the US capitalist class has been using as Reichtag-esque call to arms ever since. 

 A young man hospitalizing a kkkkop who was trying to arrest him for the crime of being poor and working class is not the same as the racist hate crime. This attack will hopefully make more kkkops afraid to harass our youth so that they can continue to perpetuate their New Jim Crow.

 PLP is a revolutionary Communist Party because it does a lot more than just talk a good game.  Whenever there is a way to expand the limits of the struggle past what the limits of what the capitalist state permits, PL does so.  The massive Communist movements in India, like the revisionists all over the world, are betraying the Red Flag and the working class that still holds it high and believes in fighting for an egalitarian society. 

 

The tragedy of the woman dying after being gang raped has been repeated how many times since her attack, as every 22 minutes a woman is raped in India?  The need to struggle against sexism is at the forefront of the revolutionary struggle for Communism. 

Capitalism Murders in Bangladesh and All Over the World

Capitalism is murdering workers all over the world.  It is slowly grinding us to death under the weight of starvation wages that don’t cover the costs of living within their sick twisted system.  The profit system also literarily flares up and murders workers outright as they produce the material that those who die the slow death must sell for a living wage.  Hundreds of Women, children, and men have been burned to death over the past five years in Bangladesh so that rich capitalists can rake in huge profits.  The most recent factory fire in Dhaka where over 100 of our working class brothers and sisters were burned alive, many beyond recognition, as the factory didn’t have fire escapes or enough emergency exits, is just another example of how capitalism brutalizes the working class. It would be great if strikes that have shut down the ports in LA would happen every time that workers were killed.

 

As the New Depression rages and arch-racist puppet Obama attacks our social safety net and tries to install a new war budget with the bogeyman of the “fiscal cliff”, and the capitalist’s media trumpets that we need to shop shop shop on Black Friday, workers all over the world are fighting back.  Workers in McDonalds are striking for a better wage.  Workers in Wal-Mart and their allies are also striking to organize a union and fight back against the starvation wages that cause them to have to accept social services in order to have access to health care and to make ends meet.  We must not forget that Obama, on behalf of his finance capitalist masters, is attacking these very same social services that so many depend upon.

 

Thousands and thousands of refugees from Hurricane Sandy are scattered in hotels all over New York City.  Many of them don’t have ready access to food, and virtually none have access to new homes.  While hundreds of empty luxury condos are all over Brooklyn and New York City gentrifying the neighborhoods, capitalist Bloomberg sheds tears that they are doing all they can and then pats themselves on the back for what they have done.  The Red Cross abandoned so many refugees that they had to protest in front of them in order to get a promise of aid. Illustrating the intense racism and nationalism at the heart of capitalism, even though these workers have been brutalized, the plight of the undocumented workers is even worse as they aren’t getting anything from whatever relief is available.

 

The fires in Bangladesh are fueling the worker’s rage.  Thousands and thousands of angry workers have taken to the streets demanding that safety regulations are met.  Thousands of workers in Greece, Spain, Italy, and Portugal are battling the austerity programs that Capitalism is using to rip billions of dollars from the working class to ensure the profits of the rich capitalists. 

 

The fires in Bangladesh, the bombs falling in Palestine, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, the strikes in Wal-Mart and McDonalds, the refuges of Hurricane Sandy who are abandoned, the families of those who’ve been murdered by the racist NYPD, and the workers in Europe fighting austerity, are all fighting to reform some aspect of capitalism in order to try to make life under it more bearable.  Capitalism cannot be reformed to meet the needs of the working class because it must maximize profit.  Only a society directly organized to meet the needs of the working class and run by the working class can alleviate the grinding death of capitalism.  That system is Communism.  Communism will eradicate money, racism, and sexism while building a world that meets the working class’ needs.    Join the Communist Progressive Labor Party to fight for this world.  WWW.PLP.Org for more information. 

What will stop the attacks on Gaza and the West Bank?

ONE STATE, TWO STATES or A COMMUNIST STATE?

Once again the Israeli Zionist rulers are launching a full-scale murderous military attack against the Palestinian civilians – men, women and children – in Gaza, just as they did with the brutal Cast Lead massacre in 2008-2009. They claim that this is in retaliation for and to stop the rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. This is a big lie! The current murders are simply the latest step in the constant fascist attempts to “ethnically cleanse all of Palestine.

*There is no doubt that the 2nd attack on Gaza is a war crime and that the military occupation of Palestine by Israel is wrong and unsustainable. At 44 years, it is one of the longest occupations in history and violates every precept of international law. Not only are Palestinians reduced to living on 22% of their former land, but they have been deprived of much of their water, farmland, employment, and freedom of movement. Continuous warfare afflicts not only the region but fuels world conflict. No one demonstrating here today disagrees with any of this.
*The much more difficult question is what should we be fighting for? Is it enough to demand that siege of Gaza and the occupation end, the settlements be dismantled, or a “Palestinian state” be established? This issue cannot be addressed without considering the role of racism and nationalism in the history of Israel and the current struggle between Israel and Palestine.

The influx of Jews into Palestine was a response to their racist persecution in Europe and the nationalist impulses of the late 19th century. The massive increase in immigration after the Holocaust also largely reflected the refusal of Western nations to accept Jewish refugees. In addition, the US and Britain were glad to have an enclave of people with Western capitalist values and ties in the Middle East, which was rapidly gaining importance as the major source of oil.
Instead of going to “a land without people for a people without land”, the Jews arrived in a densely populated area. In 1948, the UN gave 55% of the land to the Jews, when they comprised only one third of the population and owned only 6% of the land. 750, 000 Palestinians, 6/7 of the population, were brutally expelled from their homes. In the 1967 war, Israel began the occupation of Palestinian land and took total control over 46% of the West Bank. Now the Wall, the checkpoints, the ban against Palestinians working in Israel and other indignities have reduced Palestinians to a state of desperation.

*None of this would have been possible if the Zionists were not themselves guilty of racism. Instead of learning from centuries of anti-Semitism that racism is the father of genocide and divides poor peoples against one another, they used the same ideology to suppress other people. Meanwhile, now as throughout history, the wealthy and the rulers use these ethnic divides to their own advantage. The US arms Israel to the teeth, not out of love for Judaism, but to maintain bully-power over the oil rich nations and their potential allies in the area. Ordinary Israelis suffer the costs of occupation in lives lost, morality destroyed, and social services cut to finance the military, all tolerated only because of anti-Arab racism.

Despite the fortitude displayed by Palestinians in surviving the occupation, many are now focused on the strife which continues between the corrupt Fatah movement, and fundamentalist, nationalist Hamas, neither of which promises social equality for Palestinians, or leads to an effective resistance. Palestine, like Israel, is a class society, and needs a mass anti-racist movement of workers for a society in their own interests. Jewish and Arab workers. from the river to the sea. must unite to fight the capitalist rulers.

*So we come to the question, what do we ask for now? It is not good enough to ask for equal civil rights and look to South Africa for inspiration, as do many activists. For although apartheid is gone, the condition of the majority poor black population in SA remains abysmal. As long as the same capitalist system, the same corporations are running the country, poor workers are no better off – maybe worse, having lost the activism of the anti-apartheid movement. From India to El Salvador, throwing off colonialism but not capitalism, has not improved the lot of workers.

That is why, while we march against the attack on Gaza and the evil of occupation, we should also march for an egalitarian, anti-racist, anti-sexist struggle and a communist society in Israel–Palestine, History provides many examples of struggles uniting Arabs, Jews and others in the region against common exploiters. Without a fight for communism in the Middle East and the US, global inter-imperialist wars, fought by workers taught to hate and fear one another, will destroy us all.