The Spark - Workplace Press http://the-spark.net/factory.html Recent editorials from our workplace newsletters. en-us Copyright 2012 by The Spark No More Open Season on Young Black Men! http://the-spark.net/bl_1335115067.html http://the-spark.net/bl_1335115067.html In the weeks since Trayvon Martin was murdered, the media has carried out a second attack on Martin, assassinating his character, just as George Zimmerman assassinated his body.

Not just Fox News -- we expect vile racist garbage to come spewing out of the mouths of those right wing fanatics, funded by some of the wealthiest people in the country.

But the sedate, proper media do exactly the same thing -- they just do it more "politely," pretending that in this situation it's perfectly normal to be neutral, to give us both sides of the story.

There aren't two sides to this story. Trayvon was lynched, every bit as much as all those young black men during the 1930s, 40s and 50s were lynched just for looking the wrong way.

Yes, he wasn't lynched with a rope, hung from the branch of a moss-draped Southern tree. He was gunned down in the street by a vigilante who condemned him to death for being "suspicious" -- that is, for being nothing more than a young, black man, walking naively down the street.

Just as with all those lynchings of an earlier day, his murderer goes unpunished. In the modern-day racist state of Florida, the murder of a young black man calls forth no punishment. And if punishment ever comes, it will only be because of all the angry rallies and demonstrations not only in Florida, but around the country.

Trayvon Martin was supposed to be one of the lucky young men -- a football player, respected in his school, living a somewhat comfortable life. But he was killed anyway.

It could not be more clear -- in this modern-day racist United States of America, it is open season on young black men.

The impoverishment of the black community puts millions at risk.

One in ten young black men will die before they reach the age of 18. Some are killed by racists, some by cops, some by the medical system, some by other young black men -- young men living in the dire circumstances that poverty and unfulfilled needs create. Lack of jobs -- a 70% rate of unemployment if you are black, without a high school diploma. Lack of access to decent schooling -- this country spends less than one-third as much on poor black children in the big urban centers as it does on the children of the wealthy white bourgeois out in their suburbs.

More young black men will end up in prison than get into college -- because there aren't jobs for those without an education, and there are few decent schools that could provide a real education to children who are poor and black.

Nearly half of all young black men in urban centers come out of school functionally illiterate. From the day they start until the day they leave school, they are jammed into classrooms where individual attention isn't even a passing dream.

This, too, is a kind of assassination, a kind of lynching of a whole generation of young black men -- and young women too.

There is enough wealth in this capitalist society that this systematic deprivation could be overcome in a generation. More than enough. And the racism that feeds on poverty could be overcome. But none of this will be done by a system whose basic aim is to keep accumulating more wealth in the hands of a tiny bourgeois class, while further impoverishing the population.

This system certainly can't provide justice for Trayvon Martin and his family, nor will it shut down the open season on young black men. This can only be imposed by the population itself, especially by the black population, and it can be imposed by all those young black men who today recognize themselves in Trayvon Martin.

]]> Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:17:47 -0400 Detroit May Be First, but You're Next! http://the-spark.net/bl_1335115086.html http://the-spark.net/bl_1335115086.html Detroit has been put in the deadly grip of a "consent agreement," which will strip the city bare.

For decades, city politicians gave away subsidies and tax breaks to the auto companies, one after another. And the city has gone deeper in debt to the big banks linked to these giants.

Chrysler had schemes going for decades, getting tax breaks that lasted for 14 years every time it "modernized" an old plant. A skeleton work force kept them open -- just long enough to wring every last penny out of each of those tax breaks.

Ford got big tax breaks when it built the Renaissance Center on the Detroit River. It benefitted from large city reconstruction in the area, making the RenCen more valuable.

Ford got more aid when it wanted to vacate the RenCen, with the city and state paying for infrastructure improvements and giving tax breaks to GM who took the RenCen, and to real estate interests who took GM's old headquarters.

GM got tax breaks for building a new plant in the city, while it paid nothing for leaving old plants vacant and decrepit, destroying the surrounding neighborhoods, and draining tax rolls.

Max Fisher got a tax break for putting up luxury housing on the waterfront, and another tax break when his son-in-law got the city to clear out large sections of housing near an area Fisher and friends wanted to gentrify.

William Clay Ford, one of the Ford family, got the city to take title on land, clear it for him -- and then give him tax breaks for the downtown stadium he wanted for his football team.

Pizza king Mike Ilitch got the same treatment for his new baseball stadium. And now his family wants city help to pay for a new hockey arena -- replacing one the city built earlier.

Peter Karmanos ended up with a big spot of very expensive property, cleared by the city, which also dug up and re-routed downtown streets to accommodate Karmanos, who wanted company headquarters for Compuware on that very spot.

Oh, and that's only the beginning of the story, the very tip-top of the iceberg that is sinking Detroit today -- an iceberg of tax breaks that fed every major corporation out of the public treasury, and demolition that ripped apart vibrant working class neighborhoods in the city.

Every one of these deals put the city's finances tighter in a hammer lock. Every one meant cuts in city services or new bonds floated with the big banks. Or both. And the banks made out like bandits on all these loans -- many so twisted they could only have been invented by a criminal mind.

These villains that robbed the city for decades say Detroit is now bankrupt. The bill has to be paid. And, according to them, the population and city workers should pay it. Gut parks, recreation centers, bus service, fire and emergency service, lighting, water and sewer lines. Get rid of city workers, cut their pay, eliminate their medical care and pensions. Give away public property.

The population of Detroit didn't create the problems. The capitalists did, searching for ways to prop up their profit at public expense. And they didn't do it only to Detroit. They did it and are doing it everywhere, throughout the country.

For four decades, going back to 1971, this country has been in a permanent economic crisis, bumping from one financial disaster to another, one recession to another.

The capitalists and bankers have not paid the price for the mess they created. For four decades, they used the public treasury as their own bank account. City, state and federal governments gave them a permanent bailout, gutting public and social services everywhere in the country.

Detroit may be the first major city to be put up for auction. But Detroit's problems -- the capitalists and banks which gutted it -- are every city's problems.

Every worker in Detroit and elsewhere who is outraged today is right. Everyone who is angry is right. Why should working people quietly go along with the capitalists and bankers who want us to pay for their crimes?

]]> Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:18:06 -0400 PUTTING AN END TO THE CRUMBLING OF THE TROTSKYIST MOVEMENT http://the-spark.net/bl_1336324976.html http://the-spark.net/bl_1336324976.html

Nearly forty years after the founding of the Fourth International, the Trotskyist movement is the only international movement to argue the necessity of an independent proletarian political line and organization. Only Trotskyism has the goal in its basic programmatic formulations to establish the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

Other currents â€" the so-called state capitalist groups and their various offshoots â€" make explicit references to proletarian revolution. But they never structured themselves on an international scale and have abandoned the very idea. They were never able to elaborate a political line of their own. Most of them define themselves with respect to the Trotskyist movement, from which the majority of them come.

As for the so-called Maoist groups, though they exist in almost every country and even have a notable influence in some underdeveloped countries, they represent populist currents that aim to put the working class in the tow of bourgeois interests. When these organizations are able to develop, their explicit abandonment of the proletarian camp causes them to become organizations representing petty bourgeois interests.

The international Trotskyist movement has two important assets. First, it has maintained, at least in its program, the political continuity of the revolutionary movement: the International Workingmen’s Association of Marx and Engels; the Second International until World War I; the Communist International of the 1919-1923 period; and ultimately the Left Opposition and the Fourth International founded by Leon Trotsky. Second, it was the only movement to maintain this tradition during such difficulties as classical reformism, Stalinism, and the different varieties of “Third-Worldism” with their Marxist terminology.

Thanks to this maintenance of political continuity, today, after decades during which the revolutionary movement has had no real influence on the working class movement, new generations can be trained and educated as proletarian revolutionaries.

However, the Trotskyist movement has not been able to give itself a living, competent, and efficient international leadership, recognized as such by all the forces of the Trotskyist movement.

The emergence of an International, of a world party of revolution, recognized as a leadership by important fractions of the proletariat itself, is a problem which surpasses the mere will or competence of proletarian revolutionary organizations. The emergence of an International is not dependent only upon the ability of the organizations to measure up to the tasks, ideological or practical, of the hour.

Nevertheless, the organizations that make up the Trotksyist movement today have failed their responsibilities because there is no international leadership corresponding to the present possibilities of the movement and to its development. The inability to maintain the organizational unity of the movement and the inability to train an international leadership recognized by all the Trotskyist groups are, of course, two aspects of the same problem.

The scattering of the Trotskyist movement is shown by the number of rival international leaderships, each of which has a variable audience; by the existence of a great number of Trotskyist organizations belonging to none of the existing international bodies; and by the type of relationships existing within each of these international bodies, which are often formal or even fictitious relationships.

No responsible Trotksyist organization, one that really wants the Trotskyist movement to play the role it should, can accept this division, this scattering of groups which is not justified by programmatic differences.

Of course, part of the existing disagreements between Trotskyist groups rest on questions of vital importance. But the different analyses can be fruitfully discussed only inside a Trotskyist movement capable of doing away with sectarianism and ostracism and of allowing a large-scale confrontation of ideas.

Such a confrontation, about the present situation of the Trotskyist movement, about the analysis of the causes of its dispersion, with a critical balance-sheet of its evolution since Trotsky’s death, appears an urgent necessity.

No proclamation, address, or unilateral appeal will ever be able to solve these problems concerning the whole Trotskyist movement.

An international framework for such a confrontation is indispensable and is part of working toward an International based on the rules of democratic centralism. Attempting to end the scattered state of the Trotskyist movement is the best way to work toward the building of a democratic and centralized international organization.

Will such an organization be created around one of the existing international organizations? Will it be the fruit of a larger restructuring on other bases? The proposed confrontation will have to deal with these questions among others, because there are great differences of opinion among the organizations which are members of international bodies and those which are not.

However, the starting point of this discussion must be the undeniable fact that an international organization having a political authority over the whole of the Trotskyist movement does not exist. This remains an aim which must be reached by the organizations existing today. Our task is to build a democratic centralized international organization starting with the presently scattered groups.

The democratic centralism of a new international organization can’t be suspended in mid-air. Nor can it be the result of correct statutes. Democratic centralism implies a basic agreement on the program. It also implies a mutual political trust on the part of the groups making up the international organization, and it implies the trust of all groups and all their militants toward the leadership.

This trust between groups and toward the leadership of the other groups does not exist at the present time. Unless some group is able to lead significant struggles of the proletariat in its own country and to prove through action that it deserves the political trust of the other groups, the sectarianism which is characteristic of the relations between Trotskyist organizations today will always prevent the formation of such trust among them.

The only other way to overcome this distrust is through an honest confrontation of these points of view and through common activities. These should be started right away in all possible fields and can be extended afterwards to encompass all the activities of the groups concerned.

In the face of the present sad situation of a scattered Trotskyist movement whose sectarianism prevents the first steps toward a solution, the undersigned organizations have taken the initiative to address themselves to the whole Trotskyist movement. We wish to set up an international framework to discuss creating an international forum within which all the different trends of the Trotskyist movement could coexist.

The framework proposed by the undersigned is not to become a new international body in competition with those already existing.

Neither is it to become a mere discussion group, though it will have to play this role fully, by allowing the participants to outline their points of agreement and disagreement, thus contributing to the clarification needed by the Trotskyist movement.

The undersigned realize that the honest confrontation of points of view is just a necessary pre-condition for the establishment of a political program for the world revolutionary struggle of our epoch. Beyond this, the positions of each will have to undergo the test of actual political struggles. The existence of a program adopted by the whole of the movement implies the existence of an international leadership recognized as such by the movement.

The undersigned organizations consider that, along with the discussion of the important problems of the Trotskyist movement, the proposed framework must examine the political and organizational help that the various groups can give to each other.

It will be up to the participating groups to determine the degree of collaboration they wish to establish, according to their own needs and their own political and organizational capacities.

When, beyond the actual differences, the participating organizations want to work toward a closer and closer collaboration; when they feel a concern for the political and organizational problems of the other groups; when they do all they can to promote closer and closer ties by an exchange of militants and of discussion materials, then the possibility will exist for the establishment of relationships based on trust. In the future these relations will form one basis of an ever-growing common discipline, allowing leaders accepted by all to be selected and trained.

SPARK (United States)

LUTTE OUVRIERE (France)

COMBAT OUVRIER (Antilles)

UATCI (African Union of International Communist Workers, Africa)

Paris, January 21, 1976

]]> Sun, 06 May 2012 13:22:56 -0400 Needed: A Real Working Class Party -- A Revolutionary Party! http://the-spark.net/bl_1336325067.html http://the-spark.net/bl_1336325067.html The November election campaign has begun. President Barack Obama, the Democrat, says that the Republicans want to give tax breaks to the rich and cut social programs and public services. He's right. And they say it.

But that's exactly what the Democrats have been doing. In 2010, they voted to reduce taxes on the banks, the corporations and the rich, and to cut spending on education, social and public services.

What choice do workers have in this election? We get to pick between an open enemy and a false friend.

We can vote for the Republicans, who speak and act for the big banks and the big industrialists. Or we can vote for the Democrats, who get money from the unions, smiling at us when they take it -- but then act for the big banks and industrialists.

Here is the plain and simple truth: there is no party that represents the interests of the working class. And there has not been for decades.

Exactly one hundred years ago, in 1912, Eugene V. Debs ran for the presidency as a Socialist. He did not expect to win. Then, like today, money controlled the elections. But he ran to speak for the workers and farmers. He used the elections to denounce the capitalist system, a system in which we are still trapped: "I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence."

Six years later, he was put on trial. He had committed the so-called "crime" of opposing the slaughter the capitalists had fomented: World War I. And he had supported the workers' revolution that broke out in Russia.

Two years later, still behind bars in federal prison, he won nearly a million votes in the 1920 elections. It was only 3.4% of the vote, but it showed that there was already a sizeable current of workers who agreed with Debs that it was necessary to "organize, not to conciliate, but to fight against the capitalist class."

Debs was not like capitalist politicians, who smile to your face and stab you in the back.

He was truly a militant of his class -- having led the great railway strike of 1894. Unlike today's unions leaders, he took his place alongside the striking railroad workers -- and went to prison for it. He agreed with Marx that the working class has the force and power to emancipate itself.

If we want to go forward, we have to resurrect our history -- a history filled with revolutionary working class militants like Debs, or like the many devoted, and often nameless revolutionary syndicalists who made up the IWW, or the selfless and committed activists who made up the Communist Party and the Communist League. The communists of the 1930s led the sit-down strikes, the vast wave of strikes that forced the capitalists to step back in defeat. The communists led the workers' movement that built the unions.

The working class needs its own political party, built around the conviction held by all those revolutionaries that "the working class and the employing class have nothing in common" -- in the words of the IWW.

That's never been more true than today. The capitalist class has engaged itself in a vast class war against all of us who do the necessary work that lets this society run. Up until now, it has been a very one-sided war. Workers have not found the way to come together in a common struggle against our enemies -- against the bankers, the big industrialists and the two big parties that serve the capitalists.

It's time for the working class to step forward. We have the force to defend ourselves. We make the whole economy run. Not only can we defend ourselves by bringing the economy to a stop. Together, we have the power to start it running -- this time, in a way that will serve all of humanity.

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