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
Nov 14, 2016
Working people are fed up. Living standards have declined for decades. Jobs have dried up. Wages and benefits have fallen. Meanwhile, the government at federal and state levels has starved the public schools of money. It has squeezed Social Security retirement pensions for the elderly. It has let vital infrastructure, like roads, parks, water and sewage systems, crumble and decay.
It has been a sustained, continuous attack. And it provided a gigantic opening for Trump to pretend to be the champion of ordinary working people. He grabbed it. He made promises. A promise to create 25 million good paying jobs. A promise to fix the health care system. A promise to end the wars. And a promise to clean up Washington, get rid of the influence of lobbyists. A real champion of the working class.
Some champion! This is the same billionaire who used bankruptcy to not pay his workforce, paid sub-minimum wages to undocumented immigrants, and paid next to nothing to workers in overseas factories who manufacture his luxury clothing and accessory lines.
Trump’s victory was due less to what he did than on what the Democrats have done. The Democratic Party stopped pretending–a long time ago–to have anything to do with working people. They were ready to jettison their old base of support from the union apparatuses and the 1960s black movement in favor of the more privileged layers of the society. They were open in carrying out the dirty work for the capitalist class.
Bill Clinton, as president, slashed the social safety net for the very poor, those unable to work–and for their kids. He built up the massive prison-industrial complex in order to soak up the growing numbers of unemployed and turn them into a slave labor force. He bombed Bosnia and Iraq, in preparation for Bush’s war later on.
Obama’s big reform of health care was a scam to soak taxpayers, handing over hundreds of billions of dollars to private insurance companies, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. He continued Bush’s destructive education reform under another name, slashing public education spending, closing schools and firing teachers. Obama also continued Bush’s endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while starting up new ones in Syria, Libya and Yemen in order to further the domination of U.S. capitalists over the rest of the world, enriching the military contractors, oil companies and banks.
As for Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, she was the candidate of Wall Street and Silicon Valley billionaires, not to speak of big parts of the Republican Party establishment.
Democratic policies provided the opening for Trump, a despicable billionaire, who openly appealed to the most vile racist, anti-immigrant prejudices, who openly bragged about how he took advantage of women–and who would divide the working class if he could.
Trump now follows in Obama’s foot steps, just like Obama followed Bush. If anyone doubts it, notice how fast Trump began to revise his positions on “Obamacare,” on immigration–and tomorrow it will be on jobs. Notice who makes up his transition team: the same Washington insiders and lobbyists he had vowed to get rid of.
The capitalist class has two parties that speak for it, two parties that act for it.
The working class has none. This is the big problem of our day.
We need our own political organization, our own party. Period.
Nov 14, 2016
The Working Class Party of Michigan has something to show for its efforts. Not only did it get many times more votes than needed to let it run in the next election, their top candidate got more votes than any other candidate nominated by the minor parties.
A year ago, this new party didn’t exist. There were only–in addition to the Democrats and Republicans–the Libertarians, Greens, U.S. Taxpayers and Natural Law. All of them had been on the ballot for almost two decades, if not much longer.
In order to have the right to run in elections, a new party has to collect signatures–this year, almost 32,000 were required. The organizers of the Working Class Party collected just over 50,000 before they were done.
It undoubtedly was a lot of work, but it allowed the people who did it to meet 100,000 people, if not more, most of them in working class areas. The petitioners found a real response to the basic ideas they raised: that the working class needs its own party. It needs a party separate from the two big parties that represent the capitalist class very directly, and distinct from the minor parties that do not base themselves on the working class.
It seems likely that many of those people met in the petitioning were among the nearly 225,000 people who cast their votes for the top candidate of the new party: Mary Anne Hering, a teacher who ran for State School Board. More people must have decided to vote Working Class after they ran into the campaign in the nine weeks after Labor Day. But that doesn’t explain the size of the vote. The fact is, people in the far corners of the state, most of whom could not have met the new party, voted for it–in many cases, running into it for the first time when they saw its name on the ballot.
That means that the idea of a working class party struck a chord with a part of the working class. It wasn’t the majority–but it was a significant part.
The new party, with just a few dozen volunteers, found a couple hundred thousand votes. That’s because working people are fed up, fed up with the rule of banks and big corporations whose drive for profit has decimated parts of the working class. They are fed up with the existing political establishment, a whole apparatus which has done nothing but serve those same banks and corporations. Fed up with that fabulously wealthy class which lives off the profit wrenched from our daily labor.
Trump played to this anger–but it will be only to deceive workers who gave him their votes. Not only will he deceive them–he will try to pull them into the swamp of his racist and sexist ideology. The biggest service Trump will try to do for the ruling class is to divide the working class up into separate and thus weaker parts.
The working class needs its own party. This is an old problem. But the election of Trump demonstrates its absolute necessity in a stark way.
The task now is to build it. The response to Working Class Party, which is only an electoral party, and a new one at that, shows that it is possible to begin.
Nov 14, 2016
The following statement appeared on the Working Class Fight website: https://workingclassfight.com/party
Vote totals are in for the Working Class Party. It’s not a spectacular vote, but it shows that a part of the working class responded to the main axis of our campaign: that the working class needs its own party.
Mary Anne Hering, candidate for State Board of Education, had 224,122 votes statewide, the highest vote of any minor party candidate for a state-wide position. Mary Anne’s votes gave her 2.66% of the vote. And her votes enabled our new party to keep ballot status for future elections. (Her total was almost 14 times the legal requirement of 16,491 votes.)
Gary Walkowicz, candidate for U.S. Congress, Michigan District 12, had 9,183 votes, with 3.81% of the vote in Wayne County’s part of the district, and 1.21% in Washtenaw County.
Sam Johnson, candidate for U.S. Congress, District 13, which covers part of Detroit and part of Wayne County, had 8,778 votes, or 3.43% of the vote.
The largest number of our votes came from the big working class cities in the state. But Mary Anne had even higher percentages in some semi-rural districts—with more than 4% in Ontonagon, Arenac, Iosco, Lake, Oscoda, Presque Isle and Schoolcraft counties, as well as St. Clair County.
Finally, more than 13,000 people voted a straight party ticket for the Working Class Party, a new party that had never been on the ballot before. That includes in a number of counties where we were not able to campaign, and the only information about our campaign may have been in an interview heard on Michigan’s public radio system or an article picked up by small local papers or even simply in the name itself.
These results mean that a part of the working class—even if a small one—is conscious of their own class interests and of the urgent necessity to create a party of their own.
The absence of a working class party helped open the road for a racist and misogynist billionaire demagogue like Trump to pretend to be a “populist,” to tap the anger of at least part of the working class, and to carry out a campaign that can only be divisive and dangerous for working people everywhere.
The lack of a working class party is the major issue of our day, the one that the organizers of the Working Class Party set out to address.
We know that a real party will be built only through the struggles of the working class to defend itself and impose its answers to the problems of society. But some of those thousands who voted for Working Class Party today can be the impetus for struggles tomorrow.
The work done to put the party on the ballot and let it be heard was important, but it was only a start. The work continues.
Nov 14, 2016
David Harding, a working class candidate for Baltimore City Council, got 1288 votes, or about 8% of all the votes cast in his district, in the recent election.
Harding was the only other candidate on the ballot running against the current representative. So some of his votes were simply against her.
But David’s vote was still significant. Some people knew him from his years of activity in the 1960s and early ’70s in the Steelworkers Union at Sparrows Point, or because of his participation in the civil rights and anti-war movements. Other people know him from his activity as a unionist at the State of Maryland including in AFSCME.
In his campaign, Harding said the crisis faced by working people in Baltimore has been created by big banks, corporations and developers, and made worse by the policies of the Baltimore City government. The city government has taken money away from the schools, water and sewage systems, roads and public housing in order to give hundreds of millions of dollars of tax breaks and other subsidies to big developers, corporations and banks.
Harding said the wealth of the city should be used to meet the needs of working people; that if jobless people in the city were hired and trained to repair and replace deteriorating services and low-cost housing, then unemployment and poverty could be reduced. But, he said, the way wealth in Baltimore and the rest of the country is used cannot be changed by an election. A massive and organized fight by the working class is needed. He asked those who agreed with this to vote for him.
The fact that hundreds of people in his council district voted for Harding shows that these arguments touched people.
Nov 14, 2016
Remember how Trump kept repeating that the elections are rigged? That is when he thought he might lose.
He is not wrong.
The person who won the popular vote did not win the election. This is not the first time someone won the popular vote and lost the election.
Remember Al Gore. They kept re-recounting Florida but Gore kept winning. So the Supreme Court stepped in to stop the recount–making Bush the winner.
If you thought your vote counts, you were wrong!
Nov 14, 2016
The following article comes from Workers’ Fight, a monthly paper written by a revolutionary organization of the same name, in Britain.
Since the “Brexit” referendum, xenophobic attacks in Britain have drastically increased according to the police’s own figures, especially in the immediate aftermath of the vote. Obviously, the vicious anti-migrant tone of the referendum campaign reinforced those who had already thought of taking out their frustration on foreigners.
On August 27th, in Harlow, a gang of teenage thugs attacked two Polish workers outside a takeaway, beating one of them to death—40-year-old food factory worker Arkadiusz Józwik. A week later, two other Polish workers were severely beaten after attending a vigil in Józwik’s memory. And then a few days later, in Leeds, another Polish worker narrowly escaped being kicked to death by 20 thugs, all of them again, teenagers. How many more similar attacks have gone unreported?
These events can’t be blamed on the referendum campaign alone. The many years during which politicians blamed foreign workers for everything that went wrong in Britain, including the consequences of the capitalist crisis, fueled an anti-migrant “fear” across some sections of society.
Today, it is in the interests of the working class—and it is its responsibility—to react against these prejudices and counter the divisions they threaten to create in its own ranks, by providing foreign brothers and sisters all the solidarity and support they need against these attacks!
Nov 14, 2016
Today we are seeing the forced migration of populations on a scale unprecedented in history. As many as 65 million victims of wars are now living as refugees, according to a recent report by the World Bank and the U.N. This is the equivalent of the entire population of California and Texas put together. Last year, wars forced 24 people to flee their homes every minute! And these figures do not even take into account those who are constantly forced to leave because of dire poverty.
The largest number of refugees come from regions ravaged by the wars in which the U.S. has most recently bloodied its hands, like Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Others are from countries where local warlords have fought it out for the spoils over the corpses of their local populations, acting as proxies for the interests of one or another imperialist power and its big companies: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Somalia, Sudan, etc.
This is the only future that the U.S. and its imperialist partners in crime have to offer humanity. And this is why their capitalist order must be overthrown!
Nov 14, 2016
According to a report released by the campaign group “Global Justice Now,” of the 100 richest economic entities in the world, 69 are private companies. Only 31 countries make the list.
The concentration of capital in the hands of a small number of multinationals is nothing new, but it is increasing. The combined revenue of the world’s ten largest corporations is now larger than the total combined GDP of the world’s 180 poorest countries. Walmart’s income is larger than that of Spain, Australia, and the Netherlands. These corporations can sometimes entirely control the economy of a poor country. This used to be the case for Guatemala, which was controlled by the U.S. giant, the United Fruit Company. It is still the case today for Republic of Congo, which French oil major Total controls. Meanwhile, in the rich countries there are companies which have more influence than millions of voters, like the oil majors which got the U.S. and British governments to invade Iraq, despite widespread opposition.
The working class cannot expect any change from the ballot box. As long as these giant companies control countries and whole economies, the social injustices on which their parasitism in society is based, won’t be ended.
Nov 14, 2016
In France, the campaign for the April presidential election is well under way. The right-wing candidate will be chosen at the end of this month from seven competitors, each more reactionary and anti-worker than the next. The left-wing candidate will be chosen in January. It might be a former minister, or even Hollande himself (the current French president), but all the possible candidates have solid records of anti-worker policies. Jean-Luc Melanchon is the head of the Left Party. He hopes to win the presidency by gathering behind him all the people disappointed and angry at the government. He pretends to be anti-establishment, but he speaks in crass nationalist language.
On November 8, Melanchon and Hollande both spoke at the “Forum of the Maritime Industries.” Below is an excerpt from the newspaper Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle) which shows that the workers have nothing good to expect from any of these people.
To “the millions of women and men” directly involved in industries related to the ocean, Hollande talked about increasing the activity of the ports, of the shipyards, and of developing fishing, pledging to “help their development and their shareholders.” Nonetheless, Melanchon criticized Hollande’s “lack of consciousness of the national interest.” According to him, the worst of Hollande’s crimes was “to have authorized the sale of Adwen, a subsidiary of Areva for offshore wind energy, to the German company Siemens and the Spanish company Gamesa. Two French technological successes....” But in this case, where are the interests of the workers? Those who ensure, thanks to their work, the fortunes of their respective bosses, be they French, Korean, German, or Spanish?
This incident illustrates the common framework of the candidates of the main parties, from the far right to the left of the left: they compete to be the best representative of “French industry.” They thus promote the idea that the workers share the same interests as the bosses, all of them in the same boat of the “national economy.”
No! The exploited, wage earners, unemployed, young or retired have never gained anything from the good fortune of the bosses and the shareholders. To defend “national interests,” “France,” all the social classes together, can mean only to defend the rich.
During this crisis, in the midst of the competition between the big countries, companies build up and secure profit first of all on the backs of their workers, and second by plundering public money, which the population pays for in every possible way. The workers can put an end to this vicious cycle only by becoming conscious of their own interests, which are opposed to those of their exploiters, and by carrying out a fight to make the exploiters pay for the well being of the working population.
In the coming election, another voice must be heard, a voice expressing the interests of the women and men who create all the wealth, the working class. This is why Lutte Ouvrière’s candidate Nathalie Arthaud is running: to have the workers’ side be heard.
Each vote for her will assert that there are women and men still eager to defend the interests of their class and who are proud to be class-conscious workers. It will express the idea that the working class is the only force that can oppose the war carried out by the capitalists and stop the backwards march that their rule imposes on the whole society.
Nov 14, 2016
Robson Walton, one of the Walton inheritors that controls Walmart, sold off 2.1 million shares of company stock, bringing in a cool one hundred fifty million dollars. No problem for him. He continues to own 1.6 billion additional shares of Walmart stock.
Imagine how rich that makes this guy who did nothing but be born to get all this wealth!
Nov 14, 2016
UAW President Williams appeared on the front page of Detroit papers just two days after the elections, saying that he hopes to work with Trump on dismantling the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
No one should be surprised at what appears to be a new UAW embrace of Trump’s policies. In fact, the UAW and other unions laid the groundwork for Trump’s victory. For decades, not just years, the UAW tried to persuade workers that the reason for loss of U.S. jobs is the movement of work to Mexico, or the building of “foreign” cars in the U.S.
They never admit that the single largest reason for loss of auto jobs is the bosses’ speedup of U.S. auto plants. They have one worker doing the work of two and more, while the other worker is thrown in the street. Impossible shifts grind down some workers while others sit idle.
The UAW leadership has led no struggles, has held no protests, against these killing conditions. They tell workers they must accept it, and that if they don’t, then the jobs will go out of the country. They tell workers they must compete for lower wages and then still lower wages. It is so much easier for them to call Mexican and other workers the problem for “taking our jobs.”
Harder to tell the workers the truth. There are no jobs that are ours. The companies will go wherever they can realize a greater profit. Their workforce is international. Look at the jobs they have recently added in the U.S. With the UAW’s cooperation, increasing numbers of auto jobs are paid at less than half of what they were 20 years ago or are temporary jobs.
Trump promised to bring jobs back to places like Macomb County. But he never promised that they would be paid at decent wages, with decent hours and decent benefits. Trump is disgusting in his easy campaign trickery, but who can expect more from an unscrupulous big boss? On the other hand, for the UAW leadership to support empty promises and sleight-of-hand is worse, because it traps workers in a dead-end policy.
Nov 14, 2016
Following a call for a nationwide strike of prisoners, inmates in at least 29 prisons in 12 states have launched strikes, involving more than 24,000 prisoners. The prisoners are now fighting against awful work conditions in prisons, what they correctly call “modern day slavery.” It is forced labor for little or no pay.
This work is mandatory. If the prisoner refuses to work, he or she can be punished, such as, by solitary confinement or cancellation of visitation rights. Inmates in state and federal prisons do many different types of work, including maintenance, cleaning, kitchen duties, farm work, stuffing shelves in stores and warehouses, and manufacturing license plates, clothing, electronics and army hats, etc.
Some states, including Texas, Arkansas, and Georgia, do not pay inmates for prison labor at all. In other states, the pay to the inmates is usually close to nothing, between 12 and 40 cents an hour.
Some inmates are engaged in work programs, such as the Federal Prison Industries, Inc. (known as UNICOR). The Federal Bureau of Prisons runs UNICOR like a company that supplies cheap labor to U.S. businesses. The government website advertises UNICOR as “Factories with Fences” and boasts that this program is “bringing jobs home.” And with their third-world pay available in the U.S., ranging from 23 cents to $1.15 an hour, UNICOR provides a highly “competitive” labor force. In 2015, UNICOR generated a revenue of over half a billion dollars through the labor of more than 12,000 inmates.
This revenue is the tip of the iceberg. The U.S. incarcerated more than 2.2 million people in federal and state prisons, and county jails in 2013. It is the largest prison population in the world, forming an abundant labor force that can easily generate a revenue of billions of dollars for those who exploit it.
Not only states and the federal government, but also the huge companies like Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Whole Foods, MacDonald’s, directly or through their contractors, use this very cheap labor to fill their coffers.
So, in this country that does not provide jobs to young people on the outside, the government has turned people into a captive work force–for the benefit of corporations. Yes, it’s “modern day slavery.”
Nov 14, 2016
Blue Cross Blue Shield retirees are facing terrific problems. More than half of all retirees are being forced to call Blue Cross agent OneExchange to arrange to go into a worse, individual healthcare plan by January 1, 2017. After explaining how much more expensive premiums, co-pays, deductibles and out of pocket costs will be, the OneExchange agents can’t tell you what benefits will be in the plan you are paying for! So, in other words, they can tell you the thousands more you will pay into the future, but they can’t say what it pays for?! Ridiculous!
Retirees continue to press forward with the demand to retain full benefits under group plans, and look for opportunities to expose Blue Cross executives for the liars they are. “Hired with a promise, retired with a lie!” remains their slogan.
Nov 14, 2016
In the midst of all the election uproar, Cook County passed a new tax on sugary drinks. This tax will add one penny for each ounce. A 12-ounce can of pop will cost 12 cents more and a 2-liter bottle will cost 68 cents more.
Toni Preckwinkle, the President of the Cook County Board, said this tax was expected to bring in 224 million dollars a year, and that it would balance the County budget.
Yes–on our backs.
Cook County and the City of Chicago already impose high taxes on ordinary people, every time we buy something. Last year they raised the sales tax by another percent, bringing it to 10.25 per cent. Now they want more out of us. This is because they DON’T tax the wealthy and the corporations.
Of course not–that’s who these Cook County politicians serve–almost all of them Democrats.
Nov 14, 2016
Anything you post on social media can and will be used against you.
During the protests against the murder of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore police hired a private contractor, Geofeedia, to monitor posts on sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. They looked for posts saying people were going to the protests, and found photos of those people. The police then checked those photos against all the photos the state has–drivers’ licenses, mug shots, and the FBI’s database–to try and find people with outstanding warrants. All so the cops could “arrest them directly from the crowd.”
This technology could be a boon to humanity. But in the hands of these thugs it’s just another tool to squelch protests and protect killer cops from the population’s anger.
Nov 14, 2016
About eight million Californians, or one in five state residents, live in poverty–according to U.S. Census figures released in September.
Perhaps the most disturbing result of poverty is its effect on children, among whom the rate of poverty is higher. Nearly one third of the people who live below the official poverty line in California are children. Growing up in poverty has a devastating effect on a child, because poor nutrition and stress hamper a child’s physical, cognitive and emotional development, affecting his or her entire life.
Six years after the official end of the recession, unemployment remains high in California; wages are low; and companies continue to eliminate jobs, and cut down wages and work hours.
In fact, that’s why profits have recovered so quickly after the recession–prompting pro-capitalist economists to happily declare the “Great Recession” over.
Growing and spreading poverty for the working class in the midst of fabulous, and rapidly growing, wealth for big capitalists. This is how the capitalist system works and will work until the working class finds the way to organize itself for a fight to defend itself.
Nov 14, 2016
A year ago, the Baltimore Housing Authority had 4,000 work orders outstanding; residents pointed out their apartments were falling apart. The city admits they have completed only 20% of the maintenance needed at the J. Van Story Branch public housing for seniors. Or as another resident put it, “They are not doing anything. They ain’t taking care of their responsibility and they always want to infringe on our rights.”
The Baltimore Housing Authority has more than a one-hundred-fifty-million-dollar surplus. And everyone who lives in those buildings understands why. The Housing Authority doesn’t spend the money on necessary repairs and preventative maintenance. They are making money by pocketing the rent people pay, then letting their apartments go to pieces.
Now, the Housing Authority wants to sell 40% of the low-rent units it controls to private developers. Private developers are in business first and foremost to make a profit, period. They see how the Housing Authority made money. Why would they reinvent the wheel? The developers will simply do more of the same.
Nov 14, 2016
Washington, D.C. will lose 10 percent of its long-term-care beds and one of its last remaining hospice centers in December. That is when Washington Home and Hospice has contracted to sell its rehabilitation center to Sidwell Friends, the very expensive private school. This facility recently housed 200 aging and disabled patients who were almost all on Medicaid.
Washington Home was paid $110,000 per patient per year by Medicaid but argues that wasn’t enough money to keep the nursing home open. The residents, including retired nannies and federal workers, will have to find new places to stay. Some are wheelchair bound or have other difficulties in seeing, speaking, eating, and so on. Their families will have to scramble to place them miles away. No new nursing home has opened in Washington for six and a half years, and already more than 400 elderly and disabled former D.C. residents are forced to stay in Maryland and Virginia facilities paid with city Medicaid dollars.
Caring for old and sick people obviously has no place in the world capital of capitalism.