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
Feb 28, 2022
The news is filled with reports about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Much less is said about the U.S. military adding U.S. troops, missiles, ships, warplanes, and ammunition to U.S. forces already in the region.
“Let me be clear. These are totally defensive moves on our part. We have no intention of fighting Russia,” President Biden said on February 24.
Don’t believe it. U.S. presidents always say they’re for peace. They always say military build-ups are only “defensive.”
But over the last 80 years, the U.S. superpower has carried out more wars and invaded more countries than any other. From Korea and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has fought long, bloody wars that have wiped out tens of millions of lives. It has also instigated and funded civil wars, such as in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, in order to impose U.S. rule. And the U.S. has used its own military or paid other military forces to overthrow governments in Iran, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, and Libya. These wars wiped out millions of people.
Behind all the lies, the real reason for these wars was to impose the interests of the U.S. ruling class, the banks, military contractors, oil companies, over the peoples of the rest of the world—the freedom of U.S. capitalists to increase their profits and power.
What the U.S. superpower is doing in Ukraine today is no different.
Certainly, Putin is a ruthless dictator in the service of a handful of Russian oligarchs. Putin has sent military forces to break workers’ strikes, imprison opponents, and go to war against peoples of neighboring countries.
But the U.S. superpower bears a heavy responsibility for the war in Ukraine. For decades the U.S. superpower has surrounded Russia with its own massive military forces. The U.S. has continued to build up NATO, an alliance aimed against Russia, in more countries right on Russia’s border, stationing U.S. forces in those countries and arming them to the teeth. Today, for the U.S. government, the people of Ukraine are little more than pawns, their lives completely expendable, as the U.S. tries to increase its iron grip over Russia.
In that same speech on February 24, Biden said that what the U.S. military is planning against Russia will have “costs for us as well and here at home. We need to be honest about that.”
Yes, there will be a cost and it’s not because of Russia. It is U.S. wars past and present that have already cost us dearly. The cemeteries are filled with working class youth, who were cut down in the prime of their lives, fighting in past U.S. wars. The streets are filled with homeless vets struggling with their physical wounds, as well as psychological disorders and drug and alcohol abuse brought on by the horror of those wars.
The U.S. might be the mightiest and richest country in the world. But the schools are crumbling. The infant mortality rate is as high as a lot of poor countries. And working people in this country live shorter lives than people in other countries. All because funding for basic services has been slashed in order to pay for the U.S. military.
Biden’s words are a warning that—as bad as things are now—they are about to get a lot worse. There will be more shortages, more disruptions to the economy. And companies are poised to take advantage of this by hiking prices and increasing their profits at our expense, driving down our standard of living still more.
The constant drum beat of war propaganda from the politicians, news media and so-called experts is aimed at convincing workers in this country to accept all those sacrifices. And all that patriotic flag waving is meant to convince our youth to fight and die in their wars.
No, the drive for profit of this ruling class, the American ruling class, of the imperialist system it directs, is destroying the world. It is plunging the world into the unthinkable, another World War, that they want us to fight and die in for them.
Workers in this country can have only one answer: the main enemy is in this country. That enemy is the U.S. capitalist class, the owners of the big banks and businesses, that attack us and exploit our labor here at home.
Feb 28, 2022
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is presented by authorities as if it protects the U.S. population through the military might of the U.S. and its allies. But this description mirrors only the big capitalists’ agenda and interests.
They also focus on Russia as being an enemy of the U.S. population. But the real roots of the conflict between Russia and the U.S. state go back to the successful workers’ revolution in Russia in 1917. When the working class took power in Russia, the response of the U.S. government and other capitalist governments was to send in military forces to try to overthrow this revolution.
A devastating civil war ensued inside Russia. The workers’ state established by the revolution was able to hold on and defeat the capitalist armies. Workers in several countries rose up in demonstration, strikes and revolutions to carry revolution forward and in support of the Russian Revolution. This was the power that kept the bourgeoisie from destroying the new workers’ state. But, as the revolutionary wave fell, the workers state in Russia became more isolated.
This isolation led to the rapid degeneration of the revolution in a country that was already bled dry by World War One and by the capitalists’ civil war. The Russian working class became less active in the running of this workers’ state and a bureaucracy developed to make decisions. But while this bureaucracy became more and more a dictator over the Russian working class, they never dared to overturn the fundamental gains of the revolution. The capitalists had been kicked out and the imperialists of the capitalist world were not able to get back in to make profits off Russian natural resources and off the labor of the Russian working class. The capitalist class of the wealthiest countries want to dominate the entire globe, but the Soviet Union remained a brake against their expansion. And therefore, the Soviet Union has been a target for world capitalism ever since.
In World War Two, the Soviet Union was the main enemy aimed at by Nazi Germany. The U.S. and Britain had economic conflicts with Germany, and they were allies with the Soviet Union in the war. Most of this war was fought inside the Soviet Union after Germany invaded. The Soviet Red Army was mainly responsible for the defeat of Germany, inflicting 80% of the casualties suffered by the German military forces in the war. The Soviet population paid by far the biggest cost for the defeat of Germany, with more than 20 million people, civilian and military, who died in the war.
At the end of the war, the U.S. had emerged as the strongest capitalist power. Only the Soviet Union had comparable military forces. U.S. and Soviet leaders met in Yalta to divide up the world, establishing “spheres of influence” over countries they would control. For the Soviet leaders, those countries were in Eastern Europe, giving them a buffer zone to protect against any future invasions.
But as soon as the ink was dry on the Yalta agreement, the capitalist “allies” of World War Two redirected their military plans and turned them against the Soviet Union. In 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed, organized by the U.S. government. NATO was an agreement among the U.S., Canada and 12 western European countries to form a military alliance, which was explicitly aimed against the Soviet Union.
Under the NATO agreements, the U.S. kept military forces in Europe right on the borders of those Eastern European countries controlled by the Soviet government. During the “Cold War” between the U.S and the Soviet Union, the U.S. had basically surrounded the Soviet Union with ground troops, air force bases, missile sites and navy warships, not just on the Soviet Union’s western border, but also on its eastern border with military forces in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and the Pacific Ocean. When the Soviet Union retaliated by putting missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida, the U.S. threatened war in 1962 until the missiles were removed.
When the Soviet Union formally dissolved in 1991, the countries of Eastern Europe that had been under Soviet control became independent, leaving Russia standing alone. At that point, there were some inside the U.S. government who favored ending the Cold War and ratcheting down the NATO threat toward Russia. In 1990, President George Bush made a deal with Soviet President Gorbachev. Russia agreed that East and West Germany would be reunited. In exchange, the U.S. promised that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward”, meaning into the former Soviet states and Eastern Europe. This would have meant that Russia would have retained a barrier around its perimeters.
But within a few years, U.S. policy returned to its hostile line against Russia. In 1998, under the Clinton administration, his foreign policy team said, “we’re going to cram NATO down the Russian’s throats because Moscow is weak…. The cold war is over for you, but not for us.” In 2001, the U.S. government pulled out of the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty and began planning a new missile system in Eastern Europe. And NATO began to break its previous promises in order to “expand eastward.” Between 1999 and 2004, NATO expanded to 14 more countries, most of which had formerly been part of or allied with the Soviet Union. The U.S. has since stationed troops in some of these countries, including Poland and Romania. Today, Russia is facing a situation where U.S. and NATO military forces and weapons surround it and are stationed on its very borders. And that means from East to West, all along its vast borders. Imagine if the U.S. government was facing this same situation, with Russian troops and armaments stretched East and West across its borders with Canada and Mexico! Likewise, they would never tolerate it.
Feb 28, 2022
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is connected to the history of NATO. Ukraine borders Russia. It was formerly part of the Soviet Union and has always been closely tied to Russia. Many ethnic Russians live in Ukraine and vice versa. Before the invasion, Russian president Putin had demanded that Ukraine never be allowed to join NATO. The U.S. and NATO refused to agree to that. And while Ukraine is not a formal NATO member, NATO and the U.S. have used Ukraine against Russia in the past, and today. In 1949, at the beginning of NATO, the CIA supported and organized an insurgency in Ukraine against the Soviet government. And from 2015 up to today, the CIA has been training Ukrainian special forces and intelligence operatives to be used against Russia.
Feb 28, 2022
The U.S. government and their mouthpieces in the media have denounced Putin for sending Russian troops into Ukraine. The U.S. imposed economic sanctions against Putin and others in Russia. But just two months ago, Putin sent Russian troops into Kazakhstan to put down a mass uprising by workers there. The U.S. government and the media did not denounce this invasion that was designed to support a dictator. They barely even talked about it. No sanctions were imposed on Putin for attacking the working class.
While the interests of U.S. capitalists and the Russian regime sometimes conflict with each other; at other times they are aligned on the same page—against the working class.
Feb 28, 2022
On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed by a neighborhood watch captain—George Zimmerman. Martin was walking back from the 7-Eleven with his bag of Skittles and ice-tea to a relative’s house where he was visiting in a gated community in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman stalked and killed Martin. In Zimmerman’s racist mind, a black guy in a hoodie was suspicious and dangerous. Never mind that it was Zimmerman who was carrying the gun. Zimmerman took it upon himself to play cop, jury, judge, and executioner. This incident touched off protests and demonstrations.
It sparked a movement. Ten years later, “Black Lives Matter” has grown from a hashtag after the acquittal of George Zimmerman to a protester’s cry to a movement. Since Trayvon Martin there have been many more killings—too many to count, and many more protests, demonstrations, and uprisings.
Some notable examples are Eric Garner, killed in July of 2014, in a choke hold by a New York city cop. The killing of Michael Brown by a cop in Ferguson, Missouri in August of that same year which led to a month-long uprising in the city. Freddie Gray’s killing in 2015, by Baltimore city cops, which led to many protests including the famous march from Mondawmin mall south through the city, led by high school students. All these and many more killings and protests occurred up to the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota by four cops. Then, the protests and demonstrations went to a new level. It is estimated that over half a million people were involved in over 550 places across the U.S. Not just in large cities, but small towns, local neighborhoods. People organized where they lived.
It makes a difference to stand up against these wrongs. The movement has had an impact. In 2014, Laquan McDonald was killed by Chicago police. Over a year later video was released showing McDonald walking away from police when he was shot 16 times. The cop was charged and found guilty of second-degree murder. While he was recently released after only serving half his sentence, he was convicted because people were out there in the street protesting.
Derek Chauvin, the cop who knelt on George Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes, was convicted of murder. And now his three accomplices have been found guilty of violating Floyd’s constitutional rights because they did not stop Chauvin. This would not have happened without all the hundreds of thousands of people standing up and saying “No!”
In 1955, Emmet Till was brutally murdered in Money, Mississippi. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, had an open casket funeral because she wanted the world to know what they did to her son—touching off the Civil Rights Movement. A movement that had an impact particularly in reducing the number of lynchings against black people.
The killing of Trayvon Martin sparked a very different movement but one that has had its impact and hopefully a movement that can grow to recognize racist violence as part of a much larger violent system that has to be dismantled and replaced, because it cannot be reformed.
Feb 28, 2022
The federal hate crime trial of Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers ended with the three men, Gregory and Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan, being found guilty. Their conviction provides at least some additional measure of justice, which undoubtedly would never have occurred were it not for the outspoken courage of Arbery’s mother, protests that took place after Arbery’s death both in the U.S. and around the world, and the ongoing, determined protest movement against racism following the death of George Floyd.
The evidence raised in the latest trial included a litany of racist comments by all three of Arbery’s killers, most of which are too ugly and vile to repeat here. A former neighbor of Greg McMichael testified that McMichael shut off the air conditioning of a black tenant who was late with her rent and made racist remarks about her weight. Another witness described Greg McMichael expressing pleasure upon the death of civil rights leader Julian Bond.
A former Coast Guard worker testified the younger Travis McMichael was her supervisor and used a racial slur toward her for dating a black man. An FBI analyst testified McMichael posted multiple videos on Facebook showing a black person being run over by a car.
Prosecutors presented multiple racist text messages sent by Bryan, including one expressing disgust upon discovering his daughter was dating a black man. Others showed Bryan made racist comments about the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday.
The evidence presented in the federal hate crime trial makes it so obvious that Ahmaud Arbery’s murder was racially motivated that it begs the question, why wasn’t any of this evidence brought up in the earlier state trial?
Keep in mind, both police and prosecutors in Georgia initially refused to even arrest and later to prosecute Arbery’s killers. It was only after the video taken by Bryan came to light, and Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, expressed outrage, that the state trial even happened. During that trial, prosecutors bent over backwards to avoid making the case that Arbery’s murder was motivated by racism, because they figured that if they “made the trial about race,” it would move the local jury to acquit Arbery’s killers.
That simply goes to show that racism still weighs so heavily in this country that prosecutors worry that exposing the disgustingly blatant racist attitudes of perpetrators could compel an all-white jury to let them go free! After a commission of a lynching, in this event. Too rotten, too true.
Feb 28, 2022
“Fix the Damn Roads” was a campaign slogan of the current governor of Michigan during her election campaign in 2018. Why? Because Michigan roads have a national reputation for being notoriously horrible when it comes to potholes every year. These potholes, often so big people call them craters, are the reason for multiple blowouts on the major freeways and surface streets. They knock your vehicle out of alignment and cause problems for vehicle’s suspension systems. And EVERY winter, the population finds itself forking over the extra thousands of dollars out of their own pockets to get their vehicles repaired.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There are different ways to build and repair roads that would make them have a longer life span. Take, for instance, in Europe, where they use advanced polymers, where roads are expected to last 40 years or more. They dig and prepare the base layer of material, gravel, stone, etc., five to six feet deep, twice as deep as we do here. They spend the time surveying for drainage issues and solving those problems. They use newer technologies, like porous road material, which allows water to drain through rather than puddling up to freeze, expand, and thaw into bigger and bigger cracks and potholes.
You can make roads better by spending more money, whether by using more expensive materials that would provide longer term solutions, or by making road repairs more frequently.
BUT this is exactly what has not been done here. Instead, the state government, under Democratic and Republican administrations, has time and time again made decisions to hand over public money to corporations that should be used to fix the roads.
Feb 28, 2022
On Friday night, February 11, transportation officials shut three lanes on the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge for emergency repairs. This bridge links downtown Washington, D.C. to a major highway to the Virginia suburbs, Interstate 66. The bridge’s remaining four lanes must handle the 150,000 cars that usually cross it every day. Gridlock, meet bottleneck!
Fire engines, ladder trucks, and snowplows over 10 tons aren’t allowed to use the bridge, and other emergency vehicles must drive slowly. Inspectors had found deteriorated steel support beams threatening the bridge’s ability to support heavy weight. This bridge has not had a major rehabilitation in its 58 years. An inspection in 2014 found the need for more work, which never happened. In the meantime, in 2018 the bridge was rated “poor.”
For everyone stuck in traffic, these official promises of fixes this summer are hard to swallow. Assurances to fix more than 70 other old bridges in D.C. within a decade are equally impossible to believe.
Feb 28, 2022
Many workers saw the news that one ramp worker stabbed another at the Boston airport. O’Hare workers in Chicago worry that it may mean additional security hoops to jump through. Others worry about the possibility of violence.
This capitalist society, set up to serve companies like American and their profits, has always heaped violence onto the working class. And then it let the Covid-19 pandemic run rampant, which increased all kinds of pressures: isolation, unemployment, masking, closed schools, and lack of childcare. Along with that, we’ve seen a big increase in carjackings and murders in the city.
It’s no surprise that the violence created by this exploitative capitalist society could follow us into the workplace.
Feb 28, 2022
Fliers were distributed in Bowie and Vienna last weekend saying the Biden administration is dominated by Jewish people and “Jews celebrate their role in Covid.” The fliers were copied from fliers distributed in the Los Angeles area by a man who says, “Jews want a race war.”
These lies have a sinister purpose to divide, distract, and deflect. There is no Jewish conspiracy. Jews are not the cause of Covid.
The pandemic happened as many scientists had predicted. Then governments and capitalism failed to stop it. Muddled masking messages and lack of testing are just a few of the failures. None of these failures has anything to do with Jews.
Working people can only solve our problems by uniting and making a struggle together for the wealth we produce together.
Trying to divide us, as these fliers attempt, makes it impossible for us to make the fight we need to make.
Feb 28, 2022
People in Russia took to the streets almost as soon as the invasion of Ukraine became known, to protest the Russian military attack. Clearly, many people in Russia understand that this war is not in their interests.
Protests took place in at least 54 cities across the country on the day the invasion started. At least 1,745 people were arrested—957 of them in Moscow, the country’s capital. Taking to the streets in a police state shows courage and determination—these demonstrators were taking a risk.
Public figures made statements against the invasion. Opposition activist Tatyana Usmanova said, "I want to ask Ukrainians for forgiveness. We didn’t vote for those who unleashed the war." More than 330,000 signed an online petition against the war in one day. More than 250 journalists signed an open letter, in a country where journalists are often killed for speaking out; 250 scientists signed another, while 194 municipal council members in Moscow signed one of their own. Human rights activist Marina Litvinovitch issued a video statement on Facebook, saying, "We, the Russian people, are against the war Putin has unleashed. We don’t support this war, it is being waged not on our behalf."
The speed and depth of the reaction against the war reflects the connection many in Russia feel with the Ukraine, and other former Soviet republics that were all part of the same country until 1991. Many Ukrainians live in Russia; many Russians have family members in Ukraine. It is a legacy of the working class revolution led by the Bolsheviks in 1917.
The policies of the Bolsheviks showed that it was possible to build a free and conscious association of all the peoples in the large land mass that comprised Russia prior to World War I. They encouraged all languages and cultures. They ensured that the different peoples—Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Azeri, Kazakh and many more—all had the opportunity to develop inside a vast planned economy.
This common development lasted until 1991, despite the fierce Stalinist dictatorship that wiped out most of the achievements of the Bolshevik Revolution. It was the bureaucrats of Moscow, Minsk, and Kyiv who wanted to declare their own fiefdoms; to be lords in their own strongholds and to plunder the maximum amount of wealth. The peoples of the Soviet Union did not want to separate.
Borders were imposed that separated families and obstructed travel between Ukraine and other prior federated regions and Russia. The Ukrainian population suffered a terrible economic collapse and the looting of public enterprises and resources by bureaucrats and officials. In Ukraine in 2014, the rivalry between cliques of pro-Western ultranationalists and pro-Russian oligarchs escalated into civil war. Ukraine became the bloody arena of rivalry between imperialist rulers and the Kremlin.
The Russian people demonstrating against Putin’s war are reflecting a solidarity with the Ukrainian people which was a reality of Soviet life for decades. It represents a hope for the future, that the working class of Russia and its population can reject a narrow, nationalist view and replace the repressive apparatus of Putin and company with a representative workers’ government.
Feb 28, 2022
President Joe Biden issued an executive order on February 10 to take control of 7 billion dollars in Afghan central bank assets in U.S. banks. The Biden administration has been blocking those assets since the U.S. pullout in August. The Biden administration now says that half of that money would go to relatives of victims of the 9/11 attacks; and that the other half would be used for humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.
It is in fact quite outrageous that the U.S. has been blocking money that belongs to the Afghan government, when 95% of Afghans, nearly 40 million people, don’t have enough to eat, and experts estimate that 9 million Afghans are at risk of starvation!
But it’s not a surprise, considering that the 20-year war the U.S. fought in Afghanistan has wrought this catastrophe on the people of Afghanistan in the first place.
When the U.S. attacked Afghanistan in October 2001, it said that its aim was to fight terrorism by punishing the Taliban government of Afghanistan for supporting the 9/11 attackers. But even though that government fell quickly within weeks, the U.S. continued its war on Afghanistan for 20 years.
It’s because the U.S. war on Afghanistan was not about fighting terrorism. Being attacked on its own soil on 9/11, the U.S. picked this war to re-assert its position as the biggest imperialist power in the world. But after knocking out the Taliban government, the U.S. continued to occupy Afghanistan just to prop up the government it had installed—a government so corrupt and brutal that it provoked opposition and civil war in practically all parts of the country and needed the U.S. military to stay in power.
In other words, what began as a show of force by U.S. imperialism turned into the longest war in U.S. history because a U.S. pullout would make the U.S. look weak once again—what the U.S. wanted to avoid in the first place. And sure enough, that’s exactly what happened when the U.S.-installed Afghan government collapsed within days when U.S. troops left Afghanistan!
But the price of this imperialist muscle-flexing was paid by the Afghan population—and it was an enormous price. In 2001, when the U.S. attacked Afghanistan, the country had already been ravaged by more than 20 years of war; and it was one of the world’s poorest countries. Twenty more years of war, this time led by the U.S., further devastated the country and killed an estimated 212,000 people (more than 70 times the number of people killed in the 9/11 attacks), according to the Costs of War Project from Brown University.
And it’s not over. Being pushed out of Afghanistan, the U.S. now wants to punish the Taliban government that has come back to power again—by blocking Afghan government funds and imposing an economic embargo on the country. It’s a continuation of the U.S. war on Afghanistan—once again victimizing the people of Afghanistan, this time condemning millions of people to starvation.
This is the price humanity pays in a world dominated by imperialist powers—first and foremost the U.S. in today’s world. We have to try and stop these imperialist wars, whose horrific price, in both lives and money, is paid by working-class and poor people, in the countries attacked by the U.S., as well as here in the U.S.
Feb 28, 2022
Translated from Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers’ group active in France.
By February 15, Lutte Ouvrière’s presidential candidate Nathalie Arthaud had collected 509 endorsements from mayors, more than required. The Constitutional Council validated them. So, she will run in the presidential election, even if that bothers some people!
Especially in small towns, many mayors support political pluralism even while not necessarily sharing our ideas. As staff, workers, technicians, small farmers, teachers, or retirees, in general they are working people. They know about the problems of low wages, unemployment, and precariousness, and they find it legitimate that Nathalie Arthaud will talk about these problems in her campaign. They do not want political discourse to be monopolized by professional politicians who are selected by big business clans like Bolloré or Bouygues. These politicians have nothing to do with the interests and feelings of working people….
Lutte Ouvrière and Nathalie Arthaud did not invent the law requiring mayoral endorsements. The requirement of 100 and more recently 500 endorsements was enacted in theory to filter out fanciful candidacies. But in fact, it is an attempt to close the system and prevent political currents which are not from the political in-crowd from expressing themselves.
Unlike the major parties, Lutte Ouvrière does not have any elected representatives authorized to endorse its candidates, like national or European legislators, regional councilors, mayors, etc. But Lutte Ouvrière managed to overcome this obstacle thanks to the determination of its militants, who traveled to meet thousands of mayors across the country. This may surprise some journalists who only see the world from their cocoon. But this surprises no one from the world of work, in which many know Lutte Ouvrière to be a stubborn organization that is very present on a daily basis. In the working population, we know from everyday experience that when we want to defend our interests as exploited people, we can expect nothing from the leaders of this system, and we have to fight.
Thanks to this militant energy, and also thanks to the democratic sensibility of small town mayors, Nathalie Arthaud will be very present in the presidential campaign, to make the workers’ side heard.
Feb 28, 2022
The following is from a statement by Natalie Arthaud, candidate of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle) in the French presidential elections.
I stand as a candidate so as not to leave the field open only to bourgeois politicians. I am a candidate to let workers speak and formulate their demands. I am addressing all those who no longer believe in the electoral circus or in promises that are always betrayed, but who refuse to be silent and resign themselves to it all. I am speaking to those who are revolted by increasingly glaring inequalities and who can no longer bear hearing the line that, “There have always been rich and poor,” or, “That will never change.” I speak to those who refuse to be divided according to their ethnic origin, their legal status, or their religion, and who are aware that they form one and the same class, the working class—those at the front line who make society work.
My candidacy aims to assemble together all workers who are aware that their fate depends solely on their ability to defend themselves against big business. There can be no “good president” for working people. After the ballots are all counted, no matter who wins, we will still face exploitation, low wages, precariousness, and hellish speedup. The class war will not stop after the presidential election.
My candidacy is a call to battle. There will be no significant progress for working people or for society as a whole without attacking the financiers, big business, and the bourgeoisie. What matters is the balance of power, meaning strikes and social clashes.
Feb 28, 2022
The following is an excerpt from Workers’ Fight, the newspaper of the revolutionary group active in Great Britain.
A shocking report has been published which exposes the consequence of the lousy social care system, which asks the elderly and vulnerable to meet payments for home helps, meals on wheels and vital help with basic needs.
"Of the total of at least 166,835 people who are in arrears on their social care payments, more than 78,000 have debt management procedures started against them by their authority for non-payment of social care charges," and what is more, 1,178 people have been taken to court by local authorities because they’re unable to pay for their own care—or that of family members.
So, they concluded that the "system isn’t working." A bit of an understatement. This care used to be provided according to need, free of charge, until Thatcher’s 1990 Community Care Act which allowed a “private industry” to develop and make money out of this provision. It was so obviously unjust and unsustainable that Scotland partly reversed this in 2002 and made personal care free for people aged 65 and over.
Extending free provision everywhere is going to take a fight, and it’s overdue.
Feb 28, 2022
110 years ago, 23,000 workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, shut down the largest center of woolen cloth manufacture in the country. These workers were women, men, and children, and comprised dozens of immigrant groups speaking many languages. Over the following three months, they organized themselves, fought the police and National Guard, and used their power to extract wage increases and other demands from the manufacturing capitalists.
Lawrence was founded as a kind of company town, 30 miles from Boston, for wool and cotton cloth makers in the middle of the 19th century. Mill work drew immigrant women workers to Lawrence, which became a city of immigrant women from the 1850s on. From that time forward, they confronted "the difficult art of making three dollars out of one,” working in the mills, then taking care of house and home and their children.
Conditions inside the mills were terrible. The machinery was deafening, running from dawn to dusk. One teenage worker was hospitalized for 7 months after a machine tore off her scalp. The thread had to be kept humid in order prevent it from breaking, but the humidity made the heat very hard to bear, especially in the summer. The humidity, along with the dust in the air, allowed diseases like tuberculosis and asthma to run rampant. Life expectancy for mill workers was under forty years. A Slavic priest said of his parishioners: "My people are not in America, they are under it."
By 1912, the working class in Lawrence consisted of dozens of ethnic groups. English, Scottish, Irish, French Canadian, Portuguese, and German workers who came in the 19th century were joined by Italians, Hungarians, Syrians, Poles, and Jews in the early 20th. With so many groups concentrated in a small town, blocks, and even buildings, became a patchwork quilt of different groups.
Worker neighborhoods started out filled with small cottages with yards; by 1912, many lots had been bought by speculators, who crammed four-story tenement houses together, one by the next, with barely a gap to let in the sunlight.
The jobs that drew increasing numbers to these shores offered pay rates that sounded good to the immigrant workers, especially in the old country. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn said of them, "They thought they were rich, till they had to pay rent, buy groceries, clothes and shoes. Then they knew they were poor."
The working class was hit by inflation in the first decade of the 20th century. Food went up by 20% overall, eggs, bread and milk all went up almost by half, and meat prices nearly doubled. That added to the high rents charged by the companies and housing speculators. Families could not make ends meet with one parent working, so mothers and children poured into the mills to pick up the slack—said a paper, "in Lawrence, all the family must work if the family is to live." The companies hired children as young as 14 and turned a blind eye when younger ones faked paperwork so they could take jobs to turn out cloth for them.
The Massachusetts legislature passed a “do-gooder” law, cutting the work week from 56 hours to 54 for women and children under 18. Workers, pressed for money, repeatedly asked American Woolen management whether that would mean a pay cut—the company remained silent. The law went into effect on January 1st, 1912.
Thursday, January 11th was the first payday. Polish women weavers at the Everett Mill counted their pay: 32 cents short! That was the signal; they marched through the plant: "short pay, all out!" The next day infuriated Italian workers at the Washington Mill, the largest in Lawrence, went from room to room, shutting off the power, cutting belts, shredding cloth, smashing lightbulbs. By the end of the day, 14,000 workers had “hit the bricks” and walked off the job.
Workers called for a 15% raise for the workday and double time for overtime. They did not limit themselves to pay: the call “We Want Bread, and Roses Too” was seen on many banners throughout the strike. This was the idea that workers need pay and to be able to eat, but that we also have a right to enjoy the nice things in life.
The Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, a revolutionary union organization, played a leading role in the strike. A few hundred workers were IWW members before the strike; they had been organizing in the weeks before the pay cut hit. Once the strike started, Joe Ettor and Arturo Giovanitti came to Lawrence to lead the strike. They organized a strike committee of 56 workers: 4 from each of 14 ethnic groups. They made sure to have workers there from each plant, and from each department. The committee allowed the workers to control the strike, to discuss strategy and tactics, to take decisions, and to communicate those out. They held their meetings on the Common—that is, the main town park. All the speeches were translated into 25 languages, so that all strikers could participate. At its peak 23,000 workers were on strike.
The government from the beginning directly served the mill bosses. Early in the strike, police turned a firehose on thousands of marching strikers—in the middle of the freezing winter! Workers responded by throwing chunks of ice through the windows of the mills. The bosses outlawed picketing. The workers’ response was to parade in the thousands, keeping the plants closed.
The governor called out the National Guard; they frequently brandished bayonets at the workers. Joe Ettor noted that "bayonets cannot weave cloth." Ettor and Giovanitti constantly counseled the strikers against responding violently to the ruling class’s provocations—they knew the bosses would use anything they could against the workers.
In one scuffle, a young worker, Anne LoPizzo, was shot dead by a policeman. Nineteen workers testified that the cop shot her. Nonetheless, the politicians used it as excuse to repress the strike, arresting Ettor, Giovanitti and another worker as responsible, though none was at the scene of the crime.
The IWW brought in Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Bill Haywood to take over leadership. They mobilized their network to raise funds from other workers in the region and organized a system of 11 strike kitchens. Workers from a nearby mill town sent a cow.
French and Belgian workers had an idea that had worked back in Europe: sending children out of the strike zone. This was partly to relieve pressure on striking parents. And it also was a way to put their strike in front of the country. The Socialist Party organized to take 119 strikers’ children to Manhattan, where they stayed with relatives or sympathetic Socialist Party members. A parade was held when they arrived. The newspapers saw that the children were malnourished and poorly clothed—though their parents made clothing! Many of the children were strikers themselves. That embarrassed the bosses. A second round of children gathered two weeks later to travel to Philadelphia—but they were confronted and attacked by police. Police beat children and parents with batons and made arrests—all in front of newspaper reporters. A Congressional investigation was begun.
The pressure was enough to move American Woolen to settle. The investigation raised the possibility that Congress might revoke the tariff on woolen imports that protected the company. American Woolen offered a five percent raise at the beginning of March, then a 20% raise two weeks later, and addressed most of the strikers’ other demands. The other companies in Lawrence quickly followed suit—it was Victory!
One last battle remained. Ettor and Giovanitti, the strike’s leaders, remained in jail with another striker, framed for Anne LoPizzo’s death. Workers struck once again, shutting down Lawrence for several days as the trial began. Several thousand workers in plants and mines around the country struck in sympathy. The jury returned a verdict of innocent by November.
The Lawrence strike put the power of the working class on display for all to see. A workforce made up primarily of immigrants, women and children brought to heel one of the most powerful corporations in the country. They were able to unify themselves, despite speaking different languages, and they defied violent opposition of the local state apparatus.
Today, we do not see many large fights by the working class. But many of the conditions faced by the Lawrence workers are still faced by workers today: inflation, high housing costs, safety.
This strike seemed like a bolt from the blue. We could today see a big fight once again, appearing to drop from the sky.
Feb 28, 2022
The following editorial appeared in the Spark newsletters, distributed at workplaces during the week of February 21, 2022.
Three days ago, Biden declared: “Russian forces are planning to and intend to attack Ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days.”
The U.S. news media gobbled it up—then spit out headlines about the 150,000 Russian troops in the region. Or was it 190,000? The news forgot to mention that those troops are almost all on Russian soil.
Russia set off three missiles in a training exercise the other day. We heard all about that, too. What we didn’t hear about, although they exist: 1) the U.S. Navy has four guided missile destroyers on Russia’s flanks; 2) the U.S. has operational missile bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey—all near Russia—and two so-called “defensive” nuclear bases in Poland and Romania.
In fact, we hardly ever hear about U.S. troops stationed around the world, and hardly a peep about the numbers stationed near Russia itself.
But U.S. troops do threaten Russia. Today, more than 71,700 U.S. troops are permanently stationed within striking distance of Russia; 9,000 more slots are filled by a permanent rotation. And 8,500 more are on “high alert,” ready to go at any moment. Attached to the military in this region, are 64,000 so-called “civilian” forces: that is, clandestine units, spies, paramilitaries, and a few diplomats. Behind all those U.S. forces, there are another 40,000 NATO troops—NATO, which has always been an extension of the U.S. military empire. Finally, the U.S. Navy currently has 20 warships patrolling in waters near Russia, including several battleships with allied vessels. These forces wind around Russia’s borders.
While all those U.S. troops ring Russia’s borders, there are NO Russian troop installations near the U.S.; NO Russian bases ring U.S. borders; NO Russian warships make their way up the St. Lawrence Seaway threatening the Great Lakes; none sit at the mouth of the Mississippi.
So, who is threatening whom?
None of this means that Russia’s Vladimir Putin is a nice guy. No, he is a real dictator, resting on a repressive military regime, directed against the Russian people to prevent them from organizing to improve their own situation. His regime has broken strikes, driven down the standard of living of the Russian working class. And it has sent troops to reinforce other dictators in eastern Europe when their peoples revolted.
But the U.S. doesn’t focus on Russia because it is a dictatorship. (After all, the U.S. supports dictators around the world.)
The U.S. aims at Russia because it is one of the few countries standing in the way of U.S. domination of the world. The 1917 revolution in Russia—despite bureaucratic deformations and the destruction of so many of its gains—gave Russia a small possibility for independence. That’s why the U.S. ever since kept Russia in its cross-hairs.
Up until now, the stance of both Russia and the U.S. toward Ukraine has seemed more like posturing than any move to real war. But whatever happens there, and whatever incident might set off a war, the U.S. is deeply implicated in what will happen, responsible for the devastation the peoples of the area will suffer—and have already suffered.
Whatever happens there, we have no reason to support the American military empire. The U.S. has the most bellicose military empire the world has ever seen: 750 military bases in 80 other countries. (Other countries ALTOGETHER have only 70 bases outside their own borders.) Those 750 U.S. bases exist in order to make the world a safe place for U.S. corporate investment and profit taking.
We sit in the middle of this empire—and pay the price for it, an enormous price that has hemorrhaged our well-being, as well as the lives of the soldiers sent to patrol the world.
The same corporations that exploit the peoples of the world exploit us here. The wealth they control was stolen from the labor of people around the world, including here. Sitting in the “belly of this beast,” we have every reason to oppose the wars and the military empire these corporations rest on.
Feb 28, 2022
This book clearly lays out the multi-faceted attacks on public education, teachers, and their unions. Chapter by chapter it shows how billionaires like Betsy DeVos, David Koch, and Rupert Murdoch, to name a few, have for decades systematically attacked public schools, by privatization, deregulation, right-to-work, and standardization, seeking the taxpayer funds for their own corporations while starving the schools. These attacks have resulted in larger class sizes, more online learning, less qualified teachers, less music, art, and recess, and more students dropping out.
This documentary shows how Boeing changed over the decades, to a company that more and more made decisions to squeeze out as much profit as they could, at all costs, resulting in the two crashes of the 737 Max that killed 346 people. The film says this race for ever increasing profit started with a merger in 1997, but the changes depicted in the film, the speedup and the decrease in quality control, are the same that we see in auto, health care, etc., and started way back in the 1970s and 1980s. The film does not even mention the huge shift to outsourcing (52% either to nonunion domestic plants or to cheaper foreign manufacturers, as of 1995). The film does interview many disgusted workers in the Boeing plants. There are also interviews of relatives and spouses of the people that died in crashes, and it explains how in cutting costs, Boeing made decisions that killed hundreds. Decisions that, with government complicity, would have killed even more if the uproar had not grounded the 737 Max.
Feb 28, 2022
The Canadian truckers’ protest that shut down the Ambassador Bridge and led to a takeover of downtown Ottawa has come to an end. The truckers protested government-imposed Covid-19 restrictions for Canadian and U.S. border crossings.
These truckers are workers who simply want to do their jobs! Driving trucks across the border is how they make their living! And the last thing they want is the government telling them they need to show a “vaccine passport” every single time they cross the border.
There are those who say the truckers did not gain anything from the protest. While they were not successful in getting the government to change its Covid-19 restrictions, they were quite successful in gaining national and international exposure for their protest.
There were many people on both sides of the border that supported the truckers, including business owners. These truckers started a protest that political analysts speculate may very well lead to a movement. There have been times in history when protest led to movements, and movements led to change. Never underestimate the collective power of working people!
Feb 28, 2022
Conditions faced by more than 1,000 inmates of Illinois’ Crest Hill Prison are barbaric.
Newly-sentenced prisoners are initially held at Crest Hill, southwest of Chicago, for up to a year, and then transferred to a permanent “correctional facility” elsewhere in the state.
For years prisoner complaints have been ignored by state officials. But recently, a prisoner’s lawsuit has brought the ugly reality of prison life at Crest Hill into public view. The Uptown People’s Law Center released prisoner complaints dating back to 2015 that expose inhumane living conditions and systematic abuse.
Prisoners say the facility is “riddled with vermin and coated in a hazardous mold”. Mice and rats run in and out of cells day and night. Cockroaches and other insects crawl everywhere and bury themselves in bedding, clothing, and other personal items. Gnats and flies swarm, especially where water collects on floors and shower areas.
Infestation is exacerbated during winter months as vermin come into the prison to escape from the cold outside. Year round, the filth and infestation exposes prisoners to a wide range of infections and diseases.
Adding to the squalor, the toilets, often covered in mold, do not flush properly and are connected in a corroded system of defective and improperly connected pipes. As a result, raw sewage and toilet wastewater backs up into the cells and collects on cell floors and in hallways. Sometimes it spreads into kitchens, bathroom sinks, dining, and communal shower areas.
As news of these deplorable conditions spread in local media, the response of state officials was to be expected—"no comment." Meanwhile, their bosses, which include politicians of both capitalist parties, are focused on putting public money in the hands of billionaire investors and have no interest in engaging the massive effort required to fix Crest Hill. Barbaric conditions of prison life are among the least of their concerns.
Feb 28, 2022
For many working class families who have family members in prison, it’s a struggle to keep connected. Often, they can be sent to a facility far away from their homes, making it difficult to physically visit. And now, as a result of COVID outbreaks in Michigan prisons, lockdowns are ongoing, so at present, you can no longer visit in person.
Prisoners in lockdown spend 22 hours in their cells, while educational programs and group therapy sessions have stopped. If inmates are lucky enough to have outside support, their family members have to set up a money account for them to buy cheap TVs or game pads from the prison-owned store. If they want books, the inmate again has to have an outside source who would buy the books which have to be new, paperbacks only, purchased from a third party that will issue a receipt inside a package. Again, money is needed.
Zoom visits and phone calls? You have to have a credit card on file so money for the visit or call can be charged to your card. And calls are routed from an out-of-state company and if you don’t know that, you might not even answer a call you don’t recognize.
In one unit of 50 inmates at the Thumb Correctional Facility, they have to share the 4 out of the 8 phones that actually work. For many inmates this is the only source of communication with the outside world. So, the 2 hours inmates are let out of their cells is a race to the phones for a 15-minute call. If you don’t happen to be lucky enough to get to one of them, your race to the phone returns the next day.
So, while it’s already hard for many families to have a loved one behind bars, keeping connected requires time and money. And lots of patience … lots!
Feb 28, 2022
California corporate farms in Kern County, one of the largest almond and pistachio growers in the U.S. and exporters worldwide, use highly toxic wastewater from Chevron’s oil fields to irrigate their crops.
Kern County, located just north of Los Angeles, has large oil reserves and produces 120 million barrels of oil each year. That is 66% of all the oil produced in California. But, since the oil companies have exploited this oil field for more than 120 years, the remaining oil needs to be extracted deeper from the ground by using water.
Chevron first mixes this water with many different chemicals, without which this extraction is not possible or economical. Only Chevron knows which chemicals it mixes with the extraction water since this knowledge is Chevron’s trade secret. So, Chevron keeps the public in the dark about the toxicity of these chemicals used.
After Chevron injects this extraction water into the ground, this water returns to the surface along with groundwater and oil. The resulting wastewater, together with oil, contains naturally occurring toxic elements extracted from the ground, such as arsenic and uranium, along with the numerous chemicals Chevron uses. So, this oil field wastewater is exceptionally toxic.
Since Chevron uses 18 barrels of water to extract one barrel of oil, the amount of toxic wastewater this oil company generates is enormous.
For Chevron, treating or keeping the vast quantities of toxic wastewater is costly. So, after a minimal treatment to remove particulate material, Chevron sells this wastewater, which is supplied to the corporate farms, making money from poisonous material.
Kern county is a desert. Chevron uses underground water, which is drastically depleted because of overuse. Because the water is scarce, the corporate farms need Chevron’s toxic wastewater to irrigate their, particularly water-thirsty, almond tree fields.
As a result, we get poisoned by eating these crops grown by this toxic wastewater.