the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jul 18, 2016
In late June, unionized workers at health insurance giant, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM), got a big shock. The company announced it will end group retiree health benefits for 3,200 current retirees on January 1, 2017. Implicitly, these cuts will extend to the 4,100 workers currently working at BCBSM, who the company had also promised health care benefits when they retire.
BCBSM is a huge company, raking in close to 25 billion dollars in premiums last year, while sitting on four billion dollars in reserves and paying its top executive, Daniel J. Loepp, more than nine million dollars. And, like the rest of the extremely rich health insurance sector, it is growing by leaps and bounds, adding new members year after year in Michigan and around the country.
BCBSM, a rich and powerful company, is using that power against its workforce, to extract more profits by slashing what it pays the people who do the work.
It is tearing up its promises to unionized retirees and workers right in the middle of the contract with the UAW, the union representing the Blue Cross workers. Showing its fangs, the company is snatching away vital benefits from retirees on a fixed income. The company had told them they could count on these benefits for the rest of their lives. Now, the company is giving them a few short months notice before the retirees have to come up with a monthly payment.
The company has tried to sugar coat this attack by partially subsidizing the premiums. But this subsidy comes with strings attached–in order to get it, the retirees have to buy one of the company’s own insurance policies, no doubt with much greater out of pocket costs and/or reduced benefits.
And instead of getting the insurance at the old group rate, the retirees will have to pay the much more costly individual rate. And those health insurance premiums are skyrocketing. BCBSM itself announced that it plans on raising its premiums on so-called Medigap plans for those on Medicare by as much 100 per cent! That’s a warning of the kind of future cost increases that not just BCBSM retirees workers will face, but almost all workers who are retired, since few retired workers get company-provided health insurance anymore.
As shocking as these attacks are, no one should be surprised by them. They are just one more step in the 40-year-old capitalist offensive on retirement benefits. These attacks have come in waves: against new hires and non-union workers and employees. Companies in auto, steel and airlines pretended to go supposedly “bankrupt” in order to rob their unionized workforce and retirees of their benefits. And over the last decade, that offensive has spread to the public sector, as politicians and officials on the state and local level are slashing the retirement benefits of millions of public sector workers, teachers and employees.
Don’t expect the courts to step in, stop this robbery and save the workers’ benefits. The federal courts have already ruled that a company that promised lifetime retirement benefits can unilaterally decide to slash them. In other words, a company’s promises to its workers aren’t worth the paper they are printed on, whether they are in a company brochure explaining the workers’ benefits or in a legal contract.
The working class long ago produced enough wealth to allow everyone to be able to retire young enough, with a decent income to be able to do other things with their lives. But the capitalists are robbing us of this wealth, driving increasing parts of the working class to conditions of centuries ago.
There can be no answer to this ongoing move by the capitalist class to push the whole working class backward–until the working class mobilizes its own forces to defend workers’ own interests and to impose their own needs.
No one knows how such a fight can develop. But it could start if one group of workers–like those at Blue Cross–decides they will resist. What they do can open the way to other sectors to do the same, impelling a large and powerful movement that can meet the capitalist class head on.
Jul 18, 2016
Bernie Sanders finally did it. “I am endorsing Hillary Clinton,” he pronounced on July 12th.
Anyone who was surprised by this has been fooling themselves. He was just keeping the commitment he made at the beginning to endorse the Democratic nominee: that is, to bring back all the disaffected people into the Democratic Party fold.
Sanders himself stated, in an article titled Why I endorsed Clinton, “We mobilized over 13 million voters across the country. We won 23 Democratic primary and caucus contests. We had literally hundreds of thousands of volunteers across the country.” Now he is telling all of them to vote for Clinton.
For the last 15 months he has been portraying Clinton as the candidate for Wall Street billionaires, doing their bidding. But in his speech endorsing Clinton–with the slogan “Stronger Together” poster in front of him–he redirected those accusations to Trump, saying his proposed tax cuts would be a windfall to wealthy Americans.
This isn’t really anything new for Sanders. It is his standard operating procedure to pretend to have certain policies and then vote the opposite. The war is an obvious example. He claimed he was opposed, but voted for the war in Afghanistan and the budgets that paid for all the other wars.
For all his talk about the gap between the rich and everyone else–he voted for the government bailout of the banks. He supported measures that increased the criminalization of black men. He supported the Senate’s unanimous statement of support for Israel’s attack on Palestinians in Gaza in 2014. In fact, Sanders has voted with the Democratic Party leadership 98% of the time over the course of his political career.
In the end, Sanders led his followers right back into the Democratic Party. The very same party his followers are frustrated and disillusioned by–the party of the wealthy and the banks that Sanders pretends to oppose.
Jul 18, 2016
Governor Rauner and the Illinois legislature passed a six-month stopgap budget that includes school funding. This supposedly will “rescue” the Chicago Public Schools next year.
Rescue? Not hardly! Forest Claypool, the CEO of Chicago Public Schools, immediately used this “rescue” to announce that he will continue the cuts imposed last February, when he reduced the per-pupil funding by 5 percent. Plus, no surprise, he wants big concessions from the teachers. The Chicago Tribune, the governor, the mayor, and other politicians down the line all piled on the demand for teachers to take their “turn” making sacrifices.
It couldn’t be more clear: the school budget threats were nothing but a con game to extort concessions from the teachers and the students they serve.
Teachers in Chicago have stood up to extortion before. They should be preparing to do it again!
Jul 18, 2016
Legal Aid Justice Center says more than 940,000 people in Virginia currently have suspended driver’s licenses for non-payment of fines and court fees. The Center filed a class action suit against the Department of Motor Vehicles in U.S. District Court in Western Virginia stating: “Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their licenses simply because they are too poor to pay, effectively depriving them of reliable, lawful transportation necessary to get to and from work, take children to school, keep medical appointments, care for ill or disabled family members, or paradoxically, to meet their financial obligations to the courts.”
Similar complaints have been made in other jurisdictions. After protests in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 over the fatal shooting by a cop of Michael Brown, an investigation found that police had been acting as collection agents, enforcing traffic laws to increase revenue.
The suit also says Virginia receives ever-greater revenues from court fines and fees, with money increasing “from 281.5 million dollars in fiscal 1998 to 618.8 million in 2014.”
Col. Martin Kumer, the superintendent of the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail, who isn’t involved in the suit, said he sees too many people being incarcerated for driving with a suspended license.
“We have to stop locking people up because they are too poor to pay fines and court costs,” said Kumer. If it’s revenue they are after, why not give people jobs? Employed people pay taxes. Putting people to work would benefit everyone.
Jul 18, 2016
Donald Trump pretends to be an outsider to the political world. But Trump is no outsider. As he loves to brag, he has been buying and selling politicians, partying with them, vacationing with them, and getting them to do his bidding for decades. No, he is no outsider–he is the worst kind of vicious boss, the sworn enemy of the working class.
He built his fame around the catchphrase “You’re Fired!” He relished uttering it, taking pleasure in ruining someone else’s life, just because he could, because he was the boss. Every worker confronted with a boss like that can recognize him for the enemy he is.
And Trump seems to take as much pleasure from spreading poison among workers as he does in firing them, blaming immigrants and foreigners for the problems facing the U.S. working class, pitting white male workers against everyone else, putting women down every chance he gets. Like any vicious boss, he knows that if the workers are divided, they’ll never be able to mount an effective fight.
The Democrats and Republicans are both parties of the bosses–and Trump is no different, just more open about his viciousness. There is no way out of this impasse–until the workers build their own class party, a party based on all parts of the working class. And Donald Trump and his ilk will have no place in that party!
Jul 18, 2016
This was taken from the editorial in the Summer 2016 issue of Workers’ Fight, the paper of the revolutionary workers group by the same name active in Great Britain. It concerns the vote in Britain to leave the European Union: the so called “Brexit” vote.
A considerable amount of hot air was generated by Brexiters about what a “great nation” Britain is going to be, now that it is “free to go it alone.” Never mind that this country is a dot on the map, with less than 1% of the planet’s population—or that its social and economic fabric depends on the rest of the world, Europe included!
What these Brexiters will do with what they describe as their “mandate” to leave the EU (European Union), is another question, as it depends on factors beyond their control. Who can tell, for instance, what the fallout of the speculation generated by this referendum will be? The 24/7 mobilization of the big financial institutions failed to prevent hectic movements in the value of the pound and acute turmoil on stock markets, in London and elsewhere. No one can predict what the fallout will be.
Besides, the new Prime Minister Theresa May, who replaces Cameron, will have the City breathing down her neck. Brexiter or not, she will have to toe the line laid down by British Capital—including ensuring that it retains its present full access to the EU market, whatever the price.
For the working class, this means more of the same attacks on jobs and conditions and more of the same cuts—if not worse. But then, in this respect, whichever way the referendum went made little difference.
The fact that the staunchest Leave strongholds were in Tory (conservative party) heartlands did not stop commentators and politicians from blaming working class Labor voters for the Leave victory. Some Labor right-wingers are even demanding Corbyn’s (leader of the Labor Party) resignation, for being “too soft” on migrant workers!
But in Labor’s strongholds, most of the Leave voters mistakenly thought this was a chance to say that they’d had enough of seeing their living standards fall due to Cameron’s policies. It’s not for nothing that the strongest Leave vote in working class areas came from industrial graveyards like Bolsover, Barnsely, Corby, etc.
What’s left after this campaign, and after years of scapegoating migrant workers, is a divisive, poisonous climate which could become dangerous if the working class doesn’t deal with it.
Voting has never brought about any change for the working class. But direct action against the bosses’ offensive, against their politicians and their system, can bring change—if it unites all its forces behind common fighting objectives. Then and only then will the working class really “make history,” by taking society forward!
Jul 18, 2016
This article is translated from the editorial of Pouvoir aux Travailleurs (Power to the Workers), the newspaper edited by the Organisation des Travailleurs Revolutionnaires (Organization of Revolutionary Workers) of Haiti.
Under the pressure of the street, the government of Privert/Jean-Charles has finally issued a decree announcing the wage increase (to 300 gourdes, a raise in the minimum wage of 25%) that was proposed by the upper chamber, retroactively applicable to May 1. The different actions in the industrial zone and in the press, starting with the demonstrations at the beginning of May to demand an increase in the daily minimum wage to 500 gourdes, paid off!
The workers feel like this is a victory, and with reason, above all because of the constant hounding in the press by the subcontracting bosses who blabbered on and on about how this 25% raise in their sector is too high. Public opinion has gotten a small idea of the cupidity of these exploiters who get their orders in dollars but pay their workers in gourdes, the local money which is in continuous decline.
Having lost the first engagement of this battle, the subcontracting bosses, with the complicity of their servants in government, have used all types of subterfuges to get around this decision to increase the minimum wage. Some have increased the daily quotas, others have gotten rid of workers to try to make a dozen workers do the work of twenty, for example.... With all this, since the salary was increased by 25%, the workers of Bakers have discovered that they are getting less than before. It is also the case in many other companies where the bosses push their arrogance and cynicism to cut the wages of their workers in order to punish them for having demonstrated for the increase in the minimum wage....
(In many companies) in the Sonapi industrial park, the workers have fought for more than fifteen days to impose the minimum wage increase. At Sisa and Tabarre, for more than two weeks, they have stood up to the bosses, who have pulled out every trick to try to divide and discourage the workers. The situation is the same at many other companies in the industrial zone, like Premium, where the workers oppose the resistance and maneuvers of the bosses who try to avoid paying the raise.
In the Sonapi park, after the official announcement of the raise in the press, during their breaks the workers gathered together to discuss their low salaries, the high cost of living, the conditions of work, and also the political events of the day. The discussions are lively and include more and more workers. The unions, reduced to almost nothing, have regained their courage, recruit, animate the collective debates, pose as leaders of strikes as was the case at Sisa, even though they did not call for it.
After the street demonstrations, the workers continue to fight in the workplaces, where they stand up to the bosses who don’t stop complaining to the press that they lost millions of dollars in lost production during the days of demonstrations....
The protests, strikes, and sporadic work stoppages heard across the industrial zone come together in a vast movement in order to impose the 25% raise and gain the social protections also promised for many years: reimbursement for the cost of transport, food during the workday, health insurance, etc.
Jul 18, 2016
These articles are the response by the revolutionary workers group Lutte Ouvrière to the terrorist attack in Nice, France on July 14.
Horror has struck again this night in Nice. In propelling his truck into the crowd to hit women, men, children, the murderer tried to kill as many as possible. It is a vile act and we express our emotions and all our solidarity with the victims and those close to them.
Whether he was a “lone wolf” more or less mad, or part of a terrorist network, the killer has sown terror like the jihadists have done in Iraq, in Syria, in Turkey, or in Pakistan. These “crazies of God” use religion to carve out a domain where they can, in their turn, oppress the population. They are the enemies of the workers and impose their yoke on the poorest people.
To cover up his impotence, [French President] Hollande announced the prolongation of the state of emergency, even though the killings in Nice prove that it doesn’t prevent anything. He above all announced the intensification of bombing in Syria and Iraq.
The emotion of the event must not make us complicit with the policies of Hollande and the French state. Without waiting to find out who the killer was and how he was connected to ISIS, Hollande announced the intensification of air strikes in the Middle East. Because there was a massacre perpetuated by an individual in Nice, dozens, hundreds, thousands of inhabitants of these regions already ravaged by war will be bombed. We condemn this policy that adds the barbarism of bombings to that of the dictatorship of armed bands under which the populations suffer.
And the horror of the attacks is multiplied by the repugnant proposals of those who search to link terrorism, Islam, immigrants, and migrants. At Nice, the terrorist struck indiscriminately, without asking either the religion or the origin of those who were in his path. The migrants who today flee the Middle East are looking to escape just the type of terror that we denounce here.
The terrorism of jihadism is the rotten fruit of the pillage of the Middle East by the great powers and their imperialist maneuvers. In pursuing the same policies, the French leaders, behind the United States, don’t defend peace or security in the world. They aggravate the injustice, the poverty, the hate, and the obscurantism that form the breeding ground of terrorism.
This is why Lutte Ouvrière will continue to condemn terrorism and fight against the imperialist policies of France and the lies of the political caste that wants to use these hideous acts to set one part of the population against another.
Jul 18, 2016
Hollande’s first act after the killings in Nice was to prolong the state of emergency. In doing this he exploits the very legitimate emotion and fear of the population.
But this attack, committed while the state of emergency was in effect, proves its ineffectiveness in stopping such crazy acts. On the contrary, it allows Hollande to limit the expressions of opposition to his policies and facilitate abusive police actions. It maintains a climate of fear.
We refuse to accept the fear and divisions that the jihadists on one side, and the government and the right on the other, all try to impose.
Jul 18, 2016
As soon as the atrocious terrorist attack in Nice happened, without knowing whether the mad attacker was or was not linked to ISIS, Hollande announced that he intended to “strengthen the actions” of France in Syria and “Strike those who attacked us in their den in Iraq.” In other words, he will intensify the war in the Middle East.
Since the American intervention in Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1991, and then renewed after September 11, 2001, the wars without end that the big powers wage in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, in Libya, or in Mali, do nothing but plunge these regions of the world in barbarism and chaos. They do not eradicate terrorism but on the contrary nourish it. To pretend that responding to attacks with military actions and aerial bombing will stop terrorism is not only a delusion but a crime that can only plunge humanity deeper into barbarism.
Jul 18, 2016
The Free State of Jones is about a little known revolt against the Confederacy in Jones County, Mississippi during the Civil War. Some small farmers, deserters of the Confederate army and runaway slaves banded together and fought a guerilla war. Newton Knight, a poor white farmer and Confederate deserter, was one of its leaders.
After surviving the Battle of Corinth, Newton Knight, who served as a battlefield medic in the Confederate Army, deserted and hid in the swamps. He was befriended by Rachel, a slave woman who secretly learned to read. Many factors led to Jones County becoming a haven for deserters. Many were outraged by the passing of the Twenty Negro Law, allowing wealthy plantation owners to avoid military service if they owned twenty slaves or more. There were also horrific tax collections where families had most of their crops and livestock stolen by the Confederacy—and were basically left to starve to death. The fruits of their labor were literally used to feed Confederate soldiers.
Knight’s guerilla army vowed to resist capture, defy tax collectors, defend each others’ homes and to do what they could to aid the Union. Women also fought in the guerilla company.
Why did this rebellion occur in Jones County? The whites in Jones County had voted overwhelmingly not to secede from the Union. Many were pro-Union, and anti-slavery, and anti-secession, precisely because they were small family farmers.
The class nature of the Civil War is touched on in the film. Slave owning planters led Mississippi to join South Carolina and secede from the Union in January 1861. Secession reflected the planters’ interests in its first sentence of their petition to secede: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery….” Small farmers and cattle herders had no interests in slavery.
Jasper Collins, Knight’s second in command, echoed many non-slaveholders across the South when he said, “this law [The Twenty Negro Law] ... makes it a rich man’s war and poor man’s fight.” He rightly believed the poor were dying for the desires and greed of the rich. There was one scene where Knight makes a populist plea, imploring his followers to remember: “No man ought to stay poor so another man can get rich. No man ought to tell another man what he’s got to live for and what he’s got to die for. What you put in the ground is yours to tend and harvest, and ain’t no man ought to be able to take that away from you.”
The film also touches on Reconstruction, showing Freedmen’s schools, black politicians, and the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan. The writer/director of Free State, Gary Ross (The Hunger Games), made some interesting comments on Reconstruction in an interview about the movie: “Reconstruction didn’t fail, it was killed. It ended for many reasons, but probably the most prominent one was a counter revolution on the part of white supremacists that struck back at the freedmen. The reign of terror that eventually led to the advent of the Jim Crow era. To say that Reconstruction perished somehow under its own weight is a myth. Reconstruction is a part of history that is sadly ignored.” These ideas are conveyed in the film.
The story is interspersed with the trial of a descendant of Newton Knight, Davis Knight. He was arrested under Mississippi’s miscegenation law 83 years after the end of the Civil War. The prosecutors argued he descended from a common law marriage between Rachel (former slave) and Newton. The prosecution argued he was black—one drop rule—and that therefore his engagement with his white sweetheart was illegal in Mississippi at that time. While Davis Knight was convicted in 1948, the court of appeals overturned the conviction arguing that the prosecution failed to prove Davis descended from Rachel and not Knight’s white wife, Serena. This was one of Ross’ attempts to bring the past into the present or at least closer to the present so that film goers could connect the dots.
The Free State of Jones will likely be the first exposure to the history of Reconstruction for many movie goers. The film is a good starting point for many discussions not just of the Civil War and Reconstruction but how this history relates to the present day.
Jul 18, 2016
In recent contract negotiations, the very big grocery chains Ralphs and Albertsons have proposed a pitiful raise of 10 cents per worker over the next three years, according to the Los Angeles Times. They also want cuts to holiday pay, and to make it harder for the new employees to reach highest pay grade. The entry wage for a grocery worker at the two chains is $10.10. This is barely higher than the current California minimum wage.
The highest pay is also very meager. For example, Erika Bentzen, who has worked for Ralphs for 31 years, makes $20.10 per hour. She says that “I don’t look at it as asking for more, we are just looking to survive here. We are looking for a decent wage for a good job.”
Around 47,000 clerks, meat cutters, and merchandise stockers work for these chains. These two monstrous grocery chains argue that they cannot pay their workers higher wages, because they are not profitable. This is an outright lie. For example, Albertsons is the fourth largest private company in the U.S., with revenues reaching 57.5 billion dollars in 2015, according to Albertsons. Albertsons owns many retail companies. Among them are Safeway and its gas stations, Sav-On Drugs, Bristol Farms, Vons and Pavilions. Albertson’s gross profit margin was more than 25% last year. And its sales increased by more than 5% last year. But, Albertsons reported losses last year, explaining that it had to pay off debt it owed and its interest. So, some rich guy or bank, or whoever owned this debt, made huge profits through accounting wizardry.
It is like a trickster whose hands get the money and hides it on his body. And this trickster turns to the workers and says that he cannot pay workers higher wages, because he does not have any money left in his hands. Maybe not, but if workers can start kicking this trickster hard, we will see the money come out of every pore of his body.
Jul 18, 2016
The Los Angeles city controller revealed that the City has been paying banks millions of dollars extra in interest–54 million dollars on three projects alone from 2010 to 2015. It’s because the city issues bonds long before the bills come due, thus paying interest on the money waiting in the bank.
Not that it was a secret. The controller himself said that city policy requires departments to have enough cash to pay the full amount of contracts–including big construction contracts that take years to complete–when the contracts are signed.
It sounds like a set-up, of course, and a very profitable one for the banks. That way, banks get millions of dollars of extra interest on top of the already high rates they charge; while the contractors make fat profits off overpriced contracts.
One more way that politicians found to help big banks and companies plunder public funds.
Jul 18, 2016
“Terrorism”–that’s what the police have been calling the killing of cops, first in Dallas, then in Baton Rouge.
Perhaps it is. And if it is, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that isolated individuals took it upon themselves to attack police. There has been an open warfare going on in the big cities, one that pits the police against people, mostly young men, and mostly, but not only, black. And it’s not the cops who suffer most of the injuries, nor most of the deaths. For every police officer killed this year, dozens of civilians were killed by police.
So perhaps someone decided to kill police in revenge, or as a warning, or in the hopes it would stop the killing.
If they did, they couldn’t be more wrong. The black population long ago learned that individual actions don’t push back oppression–only the organized force of a population that has been mobilized can do that.
The issue of the people who have been killed by police does not start with the police themselves, although some police who are brutal or racist or both magnify the problem.
It starts with a society that for decades has deprived whole generations of young people of ever having a job, deprived them of the education that would allow them to get jobs. It’s a society that has turned large sections of big cities into wastelands. Recreation centers, where young people could develop themselves, were shuttered. Parks were closed down and the equipment that belongs in them removed or not replaced–so that public funds could be turned over to private interests. Schools were given away to private, profit-making corporations for their own benefit. Large sections of cities big and not so big were ravaged by the banks that ran one mortgage scam after another.
Money for jobs, for training? Oh, no, capitalist society poured public money instead into prisons. Instead of schools, the rulers of this society built prisons. Instead of job training, they offered training in how to become a criminal. It is a whole prison-house regime into which millions of young people have been thrown.
Is it any wonder that many are angry, desperate?
This is the situation that the rulers of this society handed over to the cops, demanding that they keep order in this disordered society. Is anyone surprised that they sometimes shoot?
Anyone who believes we have seen the end of the violence is engaging in wishful thinking.
Capitalist society is based on violence. Until this society is uprooted, replaced by a more humane one, one that working people will build, the violence will continue.
Jul 18, 2016
As we write this article, a fourth officer has gone before the judge.
A young man lay dead a year ago in a Baltimore hospital, one week after his confrontation with Baltimore City police officers. Freddie Gray’s neck was 80% severed from his spine. Doctors said it was equivalent to the trauma of a car crash at high speeds.
By the time Gray and the police van into which he was dragged had reached the local police station, six officers had been involved in his arrest. At no time was Gray restrained by a seat belt. At no time did any of the six officers call for medical help. Yet after a ride of half a mile to the police station, Gray lay unconscious. A week later he was dead.
The trial of the first officer accused ended in a mistrial because the jury was not unanimous on any of the charges—involuntary manslaughter, second degree assault, reckless endangerment, and misconduct.
The second and third officers chose to go on trial before a judge. The judge declared the state did not prove its case of criminal intent. The last three officers are also scheduled for trial this year.
How could a man who had done nothing die in police custody and yet no one has yet been held responsible for his death? Six officers were involved, all supposedly trained in methods to arrest people without killing them, yet no one is accountable, and the first three to go on trial weren’t convicted on any count so far.
It happens too often in this society, a society in which most young black men are considered criminals almost from the moment they are born, whether or not they ever commit the slightest wrong-doing. This society imprisons the largest number of humans of any country throughout the world. It is a society that condemns part of its population to a life of poverty. It condemns part of its population to a life without education, without skills or job training to make possible a better life. And it is a society that cannot provide decent-paying jobs for all who want to work, even though enormous amounts of work need to be done throughout the country.
In the end, a Baltimore lawyer long known for his civil rights efforts may have put it best. He said Freddie Gray was a victim of “walking, driving, breathing and living while black.”
And for that “crime,” Gray was condemned to die by six murderous so-called “officers of the law.”