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 20, 2023
The human toll of the February 6 earthquake in Turkey and Syria is horrifying. Over 46,000 deaths were confirmed as of February 18. The real number may never be known as tens of thousands of people are still feared to be under the rubble.
In Turkey alone, more than 84,000 buildings, including some high-rise residential buildings, collapsed or got severely damaged, leaving more than a million people homeless.
Government authorities were missing from the scene—especially during the first, and crucial, days after disaster struck. Survivors of the earthquake, still in shock, in their pajamas and slippers in the freezing cold, tried to dig into concrete rubble with their hands to rescue their loved ones and neighbors crying for help. Survivors of the earthquake are now trying to survive in the cold with little food, fuel and shelter.
In Turkey, where nearly 90% of the fatalities have occurred, the government did not intervene. Despite the fact that the country is in a very active earthquake zone, and scientists had warned of this earthquake days in advance, public safety was not a priority. Afterwards, facing the population’s anger, the government spoke of 134 investigations, and the arrest of some contractors—especially those of upscale high-rises, whose collapse has gotten a lot of publicity.
But this is the same government that has paraded the construction of high-rise buildings in many Turkish cities as “progress,” in collusion with contractors who enriched themselves. Four years ago, under the guise of providing amnesty from building regulation for modest homes, this government gave a free pass to big contractors who had violated earthquake safety codes—without requiring them to fix the flawed buildings!
In Syria, the situation is even worse since a civil war has torn the country apart for more than 10 years. In north-western Syria, which is controlled by insurgents, the Syrian government blocked aid workers and supplies for more than a week. The only point of access to the area, a border-crossing from Turkey, stopped functioning after the earthquake.
Yes, the reckless local governments, and the local elites they represent, are culpable; they must be held accountable. They, who are always ready to silence any opposition with brute force, should be pushed out.
But they are the junior partners in this murderous scene. They work in the service of big capital, first and foremost of U.S. imperialism.
To enable U.S. capital to reach its tentacles across the world, the U.S. ruling class has built a huge military and installed 750 military bases all over the world. The state they have built can move thousands of soldiers anywhere in the world at the drop of a hat; it can construct large, fully-equipped military bases in a matter of days. They budget 1.4 TRILLION dollars to this effort—to enforce the super-exploitation of world populations and resources through military terror.
The U.S. ruling class can spend, in less than a year, 50 BILLION dollars to send weapons to Ukraine, to further their agenda against Russia. But when it comes to aid for the earthquake victims, this mighty world power has “pledged” a tiny fraction of that sum, 85 million dollars. And who knows if that money will actually materialize.
This is the same imperialism that cuts aid programs in the U.S. for working-class families on minimum-wage jobs, while shoveling billions of dollars to military contractors, big banks, Wall Street firms—to big capitalists.
Not for health care, not for schools, not for the infrastructure. Even the worst kind of human suffering does not distract capitalists from their focus, which is to grab more of the society’s wealth from those who produce it—the international working class.
Today there is more than enough wealth and resources in the world to bring relief to the earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria, and very quickly. But the current economic and political system, capitalism, can only lead human society from one crisis to another, from one catastrophe to another, into more and more chaos, destruction and human suffering.
And there is only one way out: for the working class to overthrow the capitalist system, to take the lead and put society on a path where the needs of all human beings are met—starting with those who have the greatest need. Freed from the restraint of the ruling class, the working class will have the capacity and willingness to do that, because workers know that they, and workers like them, are the ones who pay the price for the disasters—natural or man-made.
Feb 20, 2023
Humira is one of the most sold drugs in the world, used to treat arthritis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and other autoimmune conditions.
This drug is the result of research carried out over decades by biologists around the world. The scientists who developed it were part of a global network of researchers. They read each other’s papers, present with each other at conferences, and collaborate with each other at universities across the globe.
In the 1990s, a lab in Cambridge, England was the first to develop a way to make an artificial immune system that was able to replicate human antibodies. This English lab then got a German company, BASF Pharma, to test and then market the drug that came out of this research. This was what would become Humira. But neither the English government nor Cambridge got the patent for this drug; BASF Pharma did. Then in 2001, the company that is now Abbvie bought BASF Pharma for 6.9 billion dollars and got the Humira patent.
Abbvie’s patent was supposed to expire in 2016, allowing other companies to make similar drugs, which would lower the price. But North Chicago-based Abbvie has used one trick after another to keep its patent, all with the cooperation of U.S. patent law. This has allowed them to raise the price again and again: today, treatment with Humira costs $80,000 a year. And according to a report in the New York Times, Abbvie has made 114 billion dollars from Humira just since it blocked the expiration of its patent in 2016!
The advancement of humanity’s understanding into how biology works has made “wonder drugs” like Humira possible. Humanity’s collective advances could serve us all. But instead, this capitalist system is organized to turn every advance into one more mechanism for capitalist parasites to rip off sick people and suck more wealth out of the world’s governments.
Feb 20, 2023
American workers are having to choose between medical care and other necessities due to rising prices. A recent Gallup survey found 38% of respondents said they’d put off medical care in 2022 because of cost, compared with 26% in 2021. One out of four of those who put off care did so despite needing care for serious illnesses.
This is true at a time when many people are more likely to need medical care because they put off care during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, over fears of infection with the virus.
Even workers who have health insurance through their jobs are forced to make these kinds of difficult choices. The Commonwealth Fund found 29% of those with employer-based coverage were underinsured because of high out-of-pocket costs. As a result, many are piling up serious medical debts. One survey found 1 in 5 Californians said they had over $5,000 in medical debt. Health care social workers say they are starting to see more people wrestling with how to pay for medical care.
The situation is likely to get worse, since many hospitals reported financial losses in 2022. So health care economists predict hospital rates to rise. In addition, many people currently receiving Medicaid will soon be forced to re-apply and many are likely to lose coverage or have it delayed.
The spending bill passed by Congress in December allows states to start making Medicaid recipients re-apply for Medicaid, which states were not allowed to do during the height of the pandemic. This will result in many people losing their Medicaid coverage simply because they are unaware of the need to re-apply. Some have addresses that have changed since they first applied for Medicaid, so they won’t receive information through the mail. Others whose incomes increased will no longer be eligible for Medicaid.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says openly they expect 15 million people to lose eligibility during this re-enrollment process.
Of course, those who don’t qualify for Medicaid can always apply for coverage under the Affordable Care Act. But we know that ACA coverage comes with high out-of-pocket costs due to high deductibles and less than full coverage of the costs of treatments!
How ridiculous is it that workers in a country as wealthy as this have to choose between feeding themselves and their families, or receiving the medical care they need?! This despite the fact that the U.S. spends more per person on healthcare than any other country in the world.
It’s the result of a health care system that places profit over the well-being of the population. It needs to go!
Feb 20, 2023
What was already a problem in the U.S. educational system was made worse by the COVID pandemic, according to a comprehensive study published in June of 2022, entitled "The Biggest Disruption in the History of American Education." The study indicated that neither the Great Depression nor even the two World Wars imposed anything close to as drastic a change in how America’s school children spent their days. School closures cut children off from teachers and friends. Children were cut off from various public services that in some way run through schools, like food, nursing and mental health care, social work services, physical and speech therapy, etc.
And though COVID has "gradually lost its grip on American life, today’s teachers and students and parents are living with a set of altered realities, and they may be for the rest of their lives." (America Should be in the Middle of a Schools Revolution, February 17, 2023, New York Times).
And what are those “altered realities?” During the first full academic year of the pandemic, K-12 public school enrollment fell by 1.1 million and fell yet again by an additional 130,000 students the following fall. Estimates are that 26% of students were switched to home-schooling, 14% to private schools—and, many just fell through the cracks during the pandemic. One study just indicated that 240,000 students in 21 states went “missing” from public schools and their absences couldn’t be accounted for!
Test scores in the key core subjects of math and reading fell, so much so that, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress, two decades worth of math and reading gains were more or less erased for nine-year-old children during the pandemic.
During the pandemic, millions of students never were able to navigate the remote mode of instruction. According to one estimate, 16 million students, that is, nearly 30% of students in the U.S., were chronically “absent,” even after the height of the pandemic, during the 2021–2022 school year.
And yes, worsening discipline problems are reported—like increases in fighting in the schools. Well, you don’t have to be a nuclear scientist to understand that two years of social isolation, of not being in school, has done a number on the social and emotional development of young people. It has led to increased fighting, mental health problems, including increased rates of suicide and suicide attempts.
To address some of problems that exist today, politicians point to their “unprecedented” 190 billion dollars in pandemic relief funds they have allocated to American schools. But education experts say that at least 700 billion more dollars would be required to catch kids up.
But even if 700 billion were allocated, that would not address the inherent inequalities that have existed in education. For the inequalities in this capitalist system weigh heavily on EVERY aspect of ordinary people’s lives.
Yes, a tidal wave of funding is needed, and a total revamping of education. But that is not going to happen without a fight—a massive fight for a different social system which truly puts children first. For there to be a “schools revolution,” there needs to be a social revolution.
Feb 20, 2023
There are balloons in the sky all over the U.S. What does it mean? Why send up a fighter jet with a missile costing $400,000 to shoot it down?
Senator Ted Cruz joked last week that the missiles might have shot down a hobby club’s $12 balloon. Cruz added, "To be fair, Biden is providing a powerful deterrence for any high school science clubs that might try to invade America…." Who knew Ted Cruz was such a comedian?
The hysterical tone of the U.S. government and some of the media reminds older people of a similar tone in the so-called Cold War from the 1950s and 60s. That time, it was “the Russians are coming.” But in reality, what was shot down? In 1960, a U.S. spy plane was shot down by the Russian Air Defense Force over the Soviet Union.
Maybe the Chinese government just sent over a spy balloon, maybe not. Or maybe, in a few months, there will be a quiet announcement that it was actually a weather balloon. Already Biden went on TV to say three of the four objects shot down were not likely to be spyware. In fact, the government said they could not even recover two of the objects.
Every single year the U.S. National Weather Service launches 60,000 balloons, going up into the area that is now called “near space.” This area in the skies is above where commercial jets fly, about 20 or 30 miles up. According to the World Meteorological Organization, there are many thousands more.
The skies over our heads are quite full of stuff, even without wild conspiracy theories about alien spaceships. A lot is going on up above the earth. Does it get talked about? No, not unless the U.S. government wants the population to start worrying over “foreign” spies. What we really can worry about is taxpayer-funded spying that could provoke the next war!
Feb 20, 2023
The winter rains that fell on the Western part of the United States did little to alleviate the deep crisis that has hit the Colorado River, which feeds the two biggest reservoirs in the U.S., Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Both are now lower than they’ve ever been.
Over the last two decades, a record drought has reduced how much water flows through the Colorado River. But there was no significant reduction in how much water was taken out of Lake Powell and Lake Mead. For the first time in history, those two reservoirs could become too empty to run their massive hydroelectric turbines.
Generally, this crisis is blamed on the growing population in seven Western states who depend on the water from the Colorado River. But, in fact, agribusiness uses about 80% of the water from the Colorado River. That means a small handful of huge farms use about four times as much water as all 40 million people.
By far, the biggest user of Colorado River water—consuming more water from the Colorado River than all of Arizona and Nevada combined in 2022—is California’s Imperial Valley, which is located along the Mexican border.
A handful of extremely wealthy landowners, about 500 farms in all, control the rights to all this water—which they get practically for free! The Federal government charges nothing for the water. The Imperial Irrigation District, a public agency, maintains the canals and other infrastructure and charges these farms a nominal rate to cover costs. The real cost of the water is paid for by millions of households and other ratepayers in the big cities and towns.
The Imperial Valley is a desert. It rains less than three inches per year. Summer temperatures average 110 degrees. The extremely cheap and abundant water of the Colorado River has turned this desert into a rich farming region.
And what does all this water grow? More than half of the water is used to grow common alfalfa, hay and other grasses that are used for animal feed.
This is an amazing waste of resources. Look where that water comes from. The Colorado River that gathers its water in the Rocky Mountains flows over a thousand miles, where it is then dammed up by some of the most impressive and expensive public works in U.S. history, the Hoover Dam and the Glen Canyon dam. The water is then collected in two giant reservoirs until it is transported about 80 miles to the Imperial Valley by the All-American Canal, the highest-capacity irrigation canal in the world (and still full).
All that in order to mainly grow grass—which can grow almost anywhere in the world without irrigation, as long as it rains!
Yet, all that free water irrigating the desert has made the Imperial Valley land so profitable that giant U.S. financial companies, and also a couple based in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have bought up tens of thousands of acres, mainly in order to grow grass and hay. Much of that is then exported all over the world, including to Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, Korea and other countries. In reality, what they are exporting is the water from the Colorado River.
No wonder why there is no agreement on significantly cutting the use of Colorado River water. That water is too profitable to a few big companies and landowners to give up.
No, the drought and global climate change did not cause this crisis. They only exacerbated the ongoing crisis of how the water of the Colorado River is exploited merely for profit—and how much human and natural resources are wasted and destroyed in the process.
Feb 20, 2023
Chicago-area oil refineries are among the worst polluters of U.S. waterways, yearly discharging millions of pounds of toxic waste into Lake Michigan and local rivers. Yet this activity is consistently tolerated as legal and acceptable by both capitalist parties running federal and state governments.
Despite a myriad of national and local laws supposedly designed to protect waterways and local residents, oil refineries continue to dump massive amounts of toxic chemicals and heavy metals into the Great Lakes and the nation’s rivers. In rare instances, measly fines are imposed, which are never severe enough to deter these Big Oil giants from their profit-hungry goals.
During 2021 alone, 81 refineries released 1.6 billion pounds of chlorides, sulfates, and other dissolved solids into these waterways. Collectively they discharged 60,000 pounds of selenium and nearly 16 million pounds of nitrogen into lakes and rivers, creating deadly toxic hazards that damage public health and wreak havoc on aquatic life and its ecosystems. All these oil refineries are located in working-class neighborhoods and communities, contaminating water supplies and exposing the local population to numerous toxic health hazards. It’s the working class that always pays the price.
For years an ExxonMobil refinery just southwest of Chicago has dumped dangerous toxic pollutants in both solid and chemical form into the Des Plaines River. Between 2019 and 2021, pollution levels exceeded government “allowable” levels by 40 times. Yet neither federal or state governments have taken any action to penalize ExxonMobil for these repeated and excessive violations.
The BP Whiting refinery on Lake Michigan’s southern shore is a national leader for dumping the toxic chemical selenium into waterways. Located just a few miles from Chicago’s city water intake cribs, it poses a constant threat to the city’s under-maintained and outmoded water filtration system. If ingested by humans selenium can cause gastrointestinal problems, tremors, difficulty breathing, and kidney and heart failure. Both selenium and nitrogen are highly toxic in fish, and cause water-fouling algae and dead zones in important fisheries.
Over the years, especially at election time, influential capitalist politicians share platforms with Big Oil executives at public events, pushing the lie that they are in lock step toward advancing a clean environment and the public good. They certainly are in lock step—in their mad chase after profit.
Feb 20, 2023
Police in Georgia shot and killed Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, an activist protesting the construction of a police training center some refer to as Cop City, near Atlanta on January 18. Environmental activists have been camping in the forest where Cop City is planned to be built since December, in an attempt to stop the project and prevent the forest’s destruction.
Residents of neighborhoods of Atlanta located closest to the planned construction site had also expressed opposition to the project. Community groups passed resolutions calling for the land’s "conservation in-perpetuity for passive greenspace, natural habitat restoration, and future public recreation uses." Yet the Atlanta City Council, with the support of the mayor, approved the plans for the police training facility.
On the day of Terán’s shooting, cops moved in to tear down 25 campsites and arrested seven activists. The cops claim Terán shot and injured a Georgia State Patrol officer, but no civilians apparently witnessed the shooting. Terán’s friends said they don’t believe the cops’ story and say he was a proponent of nonviolence.
Now the Atlanta Police Department released body camera footage which suggests that the officer who was shot was a victim of another cop’s bullet—"friendly fire.” An Atlanta cop is heard saying “Man ... you fucked your own officer up?"
Even before the killing of Terán, cops had charged some of the activists with felonies under Georgia’s “domestic terrorism” law, which was expanded in 2017 to include crimes against property. When protesters in Atlanta took to the streets to protest Terán’s killing, local cops arrested even more and charged them with domestic terrorism as well. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp went so far as to declare a state of emergency, giving him power to mobilize up to 1,000 National Guard troops to the streets of Atlanta.
In December and January, area cops charged 19 activists with domestic terrorism. Of those, 14 were among the forest defenders. Other than three who were alleged to have thrown rocks, none of the others were accused of anything more than trespassing.
On the day of Terán’s killing, two people were arrested and charged with trespassing for doing nothing more than walking along the river. They later were found to be what the cops referred to as "vagrants from New Orleans" and released.
Six of those arrested while protesting Terán’s killing in Atlanta were charged with domestic terrorism over damage to an Atlanta Police Foundation building and setting fire to a police car. One was charged for nothing more than carrying spray paint, a hammer, “torch fuel,” and a lighter.
While the forest defenders have been released on bond of $6,000 to $13,500, none of the street protesters have been released, with four denied bond altogether and two levied with a $355,000 bond.
More than likely, the domestic terrorism charges won’t stick for many of those charged. The cops and politicians are clearly using the law as a threat against anyone who might oppose them, and as a threat to dissent. The training center that activists refer to as “Cop City” is intended to come complete with mock city streets for cops to carry out riot training.
It’s clear from all this who the true domestic terrorists are—the cops and the state! Unfortunately, this is what American democracy looks like in 2023.
Feb 20, 2023
A terra cotta conduit runs under the city of Baltimore. It is some 700 miles of pipes, mostly more than 100 years old, carrying the lines that allow Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) to deliver electricity, and Comcast and Verizon, a few other companies, and a university, to deliver phone and Internet services.
The city had been taking in over 37 million dollars per year for the rental fees on this conduit’s space. Four months ago, Baltimore voters passed an amendment to prevent the sale or franchising of any city infrastructure. Yet the mayor has just pushed through a deal to let BGE stop renting. Instead BGE will upgrade the conduit, at a cost over the next four years of more than 130 million dollars. After that, all the city gets is a 1.5 million dollar annual fee.
How is it, with a loss of maybe 30 million dollars per year, somehow the conduit will be in better hands with the private utility company? Whatever the lawyers argue this maneuver should be called, it is a form of privatization. How does privatization make things work better for city residents?
Instead of 30 million dollars coming into the city, city residents will have to pay more. The day after the deal went through, BGE went in front of the Maryland Public Utility Commission to ask for a rate increase. Only the shareholders win on this deal.
Feb 20, 2023
This article is translated from the February 10 issue, #2845 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
The following is the editorial of the monthly Workers’ Voice (La Voix des Travailleurs) published by the Organization of Revolutionary Workers in Haiti.
Haiti’s economy is collapsing. Prices of goods and services explode. Annual inflation nears 50%, a peak never reached before. In under a year we had two huge increases in gas prices. The gourd (Haiti’s currency) lost more than half its value over the year! Purchasing power is dwindling. The owning classes and their lackeys in the government wage a dirty war on the exploited classes to make them pay for the crisis.
The bourgeois press talks about food insecurity for five million starving people. But these numbers are far below the reality. The overwhelming majority of the population is brutally pushed into abject poverty. Gang terror makes the already precarious conditions of working people all the harder.
People escape from this hell by any means. Overloaded sailboats take to the sea, defying the inherent risks. The press regularly reports on shipwrecks with deaths and disappearances. For all its contempt for the poorer classes like domestic workers, now the petty bourgeoisie has also become poor. The overwhelming majority of those with visas flew overseas and work there on the black market in precarious jobs reserved for illegal immigrants—for the poor.
The number of unemployed also exploded as many small and medium size businesses not tough enough to face the crisis simply closed. In the Caracol industrial park, principal employer S & H Global just announced it will lay off 3,500 workers. The job sites still open impose increasingly harsh piecework and working conditions, not to mention ill-timed furloughs.
The agony of the working population, the sorry state of the country, the humanitarian catastrophe that is fast approaching: that’s what the ruling classes in power have brought us. Since independence, the head of government has been a succession of dictators and democrats, soldiers, priests, agronomists, lawyers, engineers and even a musician, often loaded with diplomas. Capitalist families like Mevs, Brandt, Biggio, and Paid, pass management of their companies, and the spoils derived from exploiting workers, from father to son.
Economic and political leaders have definitively failed. It is up to the poor classes, who have been exploited non-stop, to energize themselves to drive out their oppressors and give the country another perspective.
Feb 20, 2023
This article is translated from the February issue #301 of La Voix des Travaillers (Workers’ Voice), the journal of the Organization of Revolutionary Workers (Organisation des Travailleurs Revolutionaires) active in Haiti.
In Haiti almost nothing is left of the traditional bourgeois state. The headquarters of Haiti’s supreme court has been occupied by armed gangs for many months. The police are badly trained and underpaid, and when they leave police stations they fall like flies under the murderous bullets of armed gangs. The executive office and what remains of government institutions operate as if they were in hiding. But in spite of all this, as far as the imperialist powers are concerned, there is no fire to put out. Why? Because the foundation of their system of exploitation—private ownership of the means of production—is not yet threatened.
The reign of terror by the gangs continues. As if on conquered ground, they continue to invade new territories and carry out massacres in working-class neighborhoods. The exploited masses are the main victims, while the bourgeoisie gets collateral damage. Economic activities are collapsing. The main roads linking different parts of the country are blocked. The ports operate in slow motion. Fleeing the gangs’ fury, many businesses have shut down. Some bosses and foreign nationals are kidnapped. Others are killed.
At the request of the prime minister and his government, in October the Haitian ruling classes asked the imperialist powers to immediately dispatch a specialized armed expeditionary force to counter the gangs’ rise.
But since then, the imperialist powers have blown hot and cold. The U.S. government’s cautious attitude and contradictory statements by Canada’s ambassador in Haiti and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez are typical. Presumed to be imminent 4 months ago, Canadian ambassador to the UN Bob Rae recently said any major military intervention would have no lasting impact. Gutierrez disagrees and continues to call for military intervention to resolve the security crisis.
Proponents of the global capitalist order hesitate. Their Haiti is not yet on fire. It would be if the working class and the starving millions took to the streets contesting for control over the wealth of the country. Or even if some bourgeois politician dared to spread illusions among the popular masses. In that event, they would not hesitate one second to intervene, as they did in the Dominican Republic in May 1965, or in Cuba after Castro’s victory. They hesitate now because they fear that their military presence would trigger greater militancy among the working class and poor themselves against the gangs and the exploiting class.
The little gangs in workers’ neighborhoods and the big gangs of imperialism which dominate the world have this in common: they all live off the exploitation of the working people. Let’s be clear. As long as that continues, there is no other solution for the exploited masses than to fight to overthrow this social order on the scale of Haiti and internationally.
Feb 20, 2023
This article is translated from the February 11 issue, #1300 of Combat Ouvrier (Workers Fight), the paper of comrades in Guadeloupe and Martinique, two islands that are French overseas departments in the Caribbean.
At the end of January, textile subcontractor S and H Global announced the layoff of 3,500 workers effective the end of February. The company is a subsidiary of the South Korean textile group Sae-A Trading, one of the world’s largest garment manufacturers.
It is the biggest employer at the Caracol industrial park in Ouanaminthe, near the border with the Dominican Republic. The company gave its capitalist reasons for the layoffs: strikes by customs officials, social unrest, fuel shortages caused by gangs who control the key fuel terminal in the capital Port-au-Prince, which paralyse production, blocking of shipments of finished products, cancellation of orders, loss of confidence by customers in the United States …
A long press release after having exploited the labor of Haitian workers at low pay and after having made colossal profits! The boss would seek other workers to exploit elsewhere …
Following the announcement of the closure, workers demonstrated in three workshops. In fact they occupied the premises. Police intervened. The workers were expelled. Machines were ransacked. In the end, the company closed the workshops for three weeks and announced in one week it would pay the workers.
The bosses in the industrial zone in Port-au-Prince use similar methods. They dismiss workers or hire them only three or four days a month. During these few days, the workers are forced to finish an entire month’s production, which the boss hoards for later resale.
While waiting to find work, unemployed workers become itinerant merchants. They buy what they can in bulk—candy, cigarettes, sandwich bags of water, plantain chips—and wander the neighborhoods trying to sell a few things, while avoiding armed gangs.
In the workshops, a system of exchange has developed among workers. They buy from one another on credit and pay each other back when paychecks come. These individual survival measures don’t stop anyone from reacting collectively, though! Workers struck for two days in January at two companies in the industrial park. They forced the bosses to pay additional salary they were owed. This was the salary adjustment the bosses withheld and stole back during the February 2022 protests.
Even under the dictatorship of the gangs, workers’ solidarity, combativity, and organization allows some fights to succeed.
Feb 20, 2023
This article is translated from the February issue #301 of La Voix des Travaillers (Workers’ Voice), the journal of the Organization of Revolutionary Workers (Organisation des Travailleurs Revolutionaires) active in Haiti.
Angry police demonstrated in Port-au-Prince, Gonaïves, and Bas Artibonite on January 26 after armed gangs assassinated a number of police. But the cops were too cowardly to attack the assassins in their strongholds. Instead the cops attacked poor people.
Workers had the hardest time getting to work early that morning. It was the same near public markets and some schools: Heavy gunfire from all directions. Streets blockaded. Stones thrown. Tires burned. Panic reigned in downtown Port-au-Prince and its environs. The braver continued on their way, but many people turned back to protect themselves.
Panic hit its peak around 10 a.m. Parents whose children were trapped at school ran to get them. People apprehended truck drivers and used the vehicles to block the roads.
People wanted to know who the armed, hooded, violent people were. Was there a fresh episode of clashes between criminal gangs? Had the armed gangs finally decided to take the presidential palace, as whispered on social media earlier that week?
As the hours went by, the presence of many police officers on the streets and the demonstration led by police officers in the town of Delmas confirmed the fracas was a violent protest by a group of police officers against the assassination of 15 of them in less than two weeks by armed gangs.
But the criminal gangs were entrenched in their safe houses. They had no concern for the cops blustering in the streets. Rather than going after the thugs where they were, the cops preferred to go after small merchants, taxis, and poor delivery drivers they encountered on the street.
If they want to defend themselves, the popular masses must prepare to counter the horrors of the criminal armed gangs and of their enemies, which are both in league against them. Faced with a population bloodied but mobilized and determined to fight, no armed band will be able to resist.
Feb 20, 2023
This article is translated from the February 15 issue, #2846 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
In Syria, the death toll from the February 6 earthquake in the northwest of the country continues to rise. Thousands of people were injured, and 2.5 million Syrian children badly impacted, according to UNICEF.
The inhabitants themselves were the only ones to try to find survivors. With their bare hands, or with the help of rudimentary tools, risking life and limb, they managed to save survivors trapped under the rubble. Those pulled out alive then must survive the cold and hunger.
This disaster struck a country already devastated by more than ten years of war, pitting Bashar al-Assad’s army against armed gangs and militias of various stripes. Idlib province is at the center of the earthquake zone. More than three million people live there, mostly displaced from war zones. It is held by one of the militias still at war with the Syrian regime, a former branch of al-Qaeda in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The Turkish army occupies part of the Kurdish region—protection of the population is the least of their concerns.
Since well before the earthquake, Idlib has only received humanitarian aid by the spoonful from Turkey, through a single crossing point. But the roads that allow access were damaged by the earthquake and have become impassable. The Syrian government has finally authorized the opening, for three months, of two new crossing points with Turkey, asking in exchange for a reduction in American and European sanctions.
The population does not see any help coming from the Western countries. "How is it possible that the UN has sent barely fourteen truckloads of aid? We have received nothing here. People are on the street," said a resident of Harem, a town in northern Syria. European leaders at the European Commission meeting on February 8, two days after the earthquake, merely agreed to provide aid to Syria, which the affected population is still waiting for.
The U.S. has so far kept to declarations. They will finally ease the sanctions they have imposed. But they have long been responsible for the worsening of the situation in the country, which sinks into misery, where hospitals and schools have been abandoned and cholera has reappeared. The leaders of the imperialist countries do not care about the fate of the Syrian people any more than the regime itself.
Feb 20, 2023
This article is translated from the February 15 issue, #2846 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Many workers mobilized against the attack on pensions are wondering how to make the government back down.
The one-day strikes and demonstrations proposed by the trade union leaderships, those of January 19 and 31, those of February 7 as well as those of Saturday the 11th, have had the merit of making working people feel their strength and unity. Between the 19th and the 31st, the demonstrations and strikes strengthened. On February 11, the number of demonstrators was still very important, before the day of February 16.
In many small and medium-sized cities, the number of demonstrators was particularly high. For many workers, this was confirmation that they were all experiencing the same thing, that they felt the same anger. Supermarket cashiers, warehouse workers, car workers, nurses, bus drivers marched side by side. And this newfound awareness of forming a single camp and feeling strong was most important.
Is it enough to win? Many workers feel that a much more favorable relationship of forces is needed to win against the employers and the government. The days of action are a useful springboard for the working people to regain confidence. But many also feel that the issue of the movement is not limited to pensions.
This extension of working years is only one of the many attacks by the government and employers, who are reducing wages and crushing workers in every way possible in order to obtain even more profits. They are all the more violent and determined in their attacks because their economic system is bankrupt; the capitalists are more and more subject to the pressure of competition. To push them back, the workers will have to attack the nerve of the bosses, i.e., their profits, or at least make them fear for their profits. That is why it will take a massive and determined strike to force them to back down.
The trade union federations are announcing a “shutdown of the country” on March 7, and some are talking about a toughening up of the movement. Some unions are calling for an open-ended strike from that date. That is the direction that we must go in. But what could frighten the government and the employers is that these strikes are decided from below, that they spread like wildfire and that they go beyond the framework set by the union leaderships.
It is necessary that general assemblies, gathering as many workers as possible, discuss the continuation of the movement and whether to strike. They must discuss everything; the demands, of course, but also and above all the way to lead the movement.
To meet everywhere, to discuss the means to continue and extend the movement, this is how the working class can revive as a force that can become invincible.
Feb 20, 2023
This article is translated from the February 10 issue #2845 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
On February 5 the G7 countries and Australia decided to block petroleum from Russia. This affects crude oil, diesel, gas, heavy oil for power plants, and kerosene. (The G7 includes the U.S., Germany, England, France, Italy, Canada, Japan, and the European Union.)
The announced purpose is to punish the Russian government for the war in Ukraine, by drying up the revenue it gets from exporting oil.
In fact, Europe—which was heavily dependent on importing Russian petroleum—took the time beforehand to find alternative suppliers. So did the U.S., which imports significant quantities of Russian oil, despite having its own oil fields.
The U.S. and Europe both negotiated contracts with countries that seized the opportunity of Western sanctions to transform themselves into oil exporters. For example, India. Before the war in Ukraine, Russian oil only made up one percent of India’s imports, but now it’s shot up by a factor of nearly 30, to 1.27 million barrels. Because Russian oil processed in India is considered an Indian product, the G7 countries can buy it at the market price.
Russia stands to lose a hundred million dollars a day because of the embargo. But Russia can still export its oil, which the West needs even more than before the war. Middleman countries like India benefit by getting their supply from Russia at a good price. They take their cut along the way when they resell the portion of processed Russian oil they don’t use. American and European oil companies also benefit. They still have enough to flood gas stations around the world, plus the sectors of the economy dependent on oil, like agriculture, transportation, home heating, and so on.
So, is the balance even? Not for consumers! They have already been warned not to expect prices to go down. This system creates a host of middlemen and must keep them and the speculators fat. They find ways to multiply their opportunities to make fortunes worldwide. Of course, oil majors like Total take their usual lion’s share of the deal. The war in Ukraine is the best fuel to pump up their soaring profits.
Feb 20, 2023
The U.S. tries to keep up an appearance that it is not fighting a war in Ukraine—no, it is only supplying weapons to a population under siege. But then this week, Ukrainian military officials revealed that they rely on the United States to provide coordinates for their attacks that use the U.S.-made HIMARS precision rocket systems, and systems like it.
When the Ukrainians want to launch a precision rocket, they “almost always” run the coordinates through a NATO command center in Europe, because they do not want to waste limited and expensive ammunition, they say. The U.S. then immediately turns around more precise coordinates, using their satellites.
When the U.S. does not provide the coordinates, the Ukrainians say they do not launch the strike. According to one Ukrainian official, the U.S. is “controlling every shot” they take using precision rockets.
Once more, the U.S. gets to fight a war against Russia, using Ukrainian soldiers and with the Ukrainian population and Russian soldiers paying the price. There’s a word for that: a proxy war.
Feb 20, 2023
The U.S. military shot down a supposed Chinese “spy balloon.” And then they shot down two “unidentified flying objects"—pieces of “space junk"—just to drive the point home.
Of course, if China did send over a “spy balloon,” it would have been more than justified. The U.S. has a vast fleet of satellites, as many as all the other countries in the world put together. They spy on every part of China (and every other country) 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
The gunning down of the “spy balloon” was a made-for-TV demonstration of U.S. military bravado, an announcement that the U.S. is ready for war with China.
Going as far back as the Obama administration—and even further—the U.S. has been pursuing an economic war against China. Tariffs were put on Chinese products. Chinese companies were banned from buying the items they need from U.S. companies—particularly, advanced semi-conductors and other high-tech goods. And embargos were put on the products from the most advanced high-tech Chinese companies.
But behind this economic war lay another reality: Chinese factories have been an integral part of the U.S. high-tech industry. They have provided parts like simple chips, mass produced on Chinese assembly lines, by labor pushed to work at slave-labor wages. Part of the enormous profit made by big U.S. companies derives from parts produced in Chinese factories, or in factories on Taiwan, or in India, or South Korea, or in Mexico, and so on.
This is not new. This “global assembly line,” pulled together since the end of World War II, has been directed, organized and presided over by big multinational companies, most of them centered in the U.S. The whole globe may be their factory floor. But the profits feed into the U.S. banking system.
What’s different today is the economic crisis in which capitalism has been mired for 40 years. The longer capitalism’s crisis goes on, the more that big companies attempt to snatch greater profit from labor—no matter where that labor works.
We know what has happened in this country. U.S. companies push American workers to put out more production in less time, for wages whose value has been cut by inflation.
U.S. companies put the squeeze on labor in other countries by squeezing the companies they work for. This is true around the globe, whether the subsidiaries of U.S. companies be in South Korea or Mexico or Canada or even Europe.
But China is a special case. Its productive economy is the second biggest in the world. It has the most people. And its history, coming out of the 1949 Revolution, aimed at developing China as an independent country.
That didn’t mean that China could call the tune in its relationship with the U.S. But for decades, the Chinese ruling class took a slightly larger share of the value produced in its industry than what happened, for example, with Mexico.
But today, U.S. capitalism wants more out of China. So, today, there is an economic war, carried out with tariffs, and patent restrictions and even trade embargoes.
But economic wars have a logic to them—they can lead to shooting wars. During the 1930s economic crisis, trade wars led right into the Second World War.
It’s a mistake to fall for the propaganda being fed to us today: “spy balloons,” “unidentified flying objects,” “chip wars.” All of it aims to get us lined up behind “our own” capitalist class: enlisted in their economic war today; enlisted in their shooting war tomorrow.
Well, that capitalist class is not our friend, never has been. And our enemy is not in China or other countries. When World War One was starting, a German revolutionary said, "Every people’s main enemy is in their own country."
That’s even more true, a century later!
Feb 20, 2023
This is a book by Angie Thomas. Many know her from her first book, The Hate You Give. On the Come Up is another teen/young adult book that features Bri, a 16 year old girl who is experiencing extreme poverty and enormous emotional pressure that she feels to grow up and solve her family’s dilemmas. She is a creative and intelligent rapper, following in her deceased father’s footsteps. She and her friends experience racism, harassment, a lack of opportunities. She faces choices to do what others expect and want, or to find her own way. But what is the way to your dreams? In spite of incredible obstacles, she finds a way to fight back.
This book was just recently made into a film in 2022, directed by Sanaa Lathan, starring Jamila C. Gray as Bri Jackson, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Pooh, and will soon be available to see.
This 2023 Oscar nominated film was based on a German book of the same name, which shows the horrors of WWI but also of war in general, and the emotional dilemma facing soldiers as they face re-entering society after the dire overwhelming experience of war. The film is utterly horrifying, and it’s meant to be, and yet, humanity finds a way to sprout through the cracks.
Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, and the ramping of war propaganda against China, it is a film which touches the central issue of the day: fight their wars or fight those who propose war to suit their greed.
Feb 20, 2023
At 9 pm on February 3, a train wreck derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, was made into a disaster by train company officials. They ordered the track cleared in a hurry to get trains moving.
The eastbound Norfolk Southern freight was classed as a general merchandise train, yet loaded among its 150 cars were 20 cars of hazardous liquids including vinyl chloride, the precursor of the chemical weapon phosgene gas. This “general” classification let Norfolk bypass rules on HAZMAT notifications to towns it would roll through.
Norfolk staffed these 3 locomotives and 150 cars with only 2 workers, an engineer and conductor. A trainee was luckily along. The workers said if not for the three of them working together, they would not have been able to uncouple the engines from the wreckage and move to safety.
Thirty-eight cars derailed and piled up, including 11 hazardous tank cars. East Palestine is a small town of 4,700 with no capacity to take on this type of situation. Norfolk Southern officials persuaded the local mayor and fire department that the vinyl chloride cars might explode if they were not drained and burned off.
Coincidentally or not, this was the fastest way to get the tracks cleared without proper HAZMAT clean up procedures and get rail traffic running again.
The local officials felt they had little choice. The town was evacuated. The phosgene gas that would be created in the burn is similar to the mustard gas used to kill troops in World War One. Other burn products are known carcinogens if inhaled.
On the morning of February 6, Norfolk ordered the rail cars emptied into a drainage ditch along the tracks. The chemicals were lit on fire. A hundred-foot burn pit erupted. Ash and soot flew as far as nearby Pennsylvania. Now the air was loaded with the smell and taste of burning plastic. Soot got into homes. Dioxin, a carcinogen, is a byproduct of burning plastic. People a mile and a half away reported headaches and sore throats and even the deaths of pets.
Liquid overspill from the immediate crash had already flowed into 2 streams along the tracks, killing fish and frogs, sending a toxic plume down to the Ohio River. Communities along the Ohio River draw drinking water from it.
Teams of state and regional EPA technicians came in with meters that registered “safe” air and “safe” city water. Residents ask how it can be safe, if their heads hurt and their throats are sore and their children have diarrhea? When questioned, officials declined to answer if they have tested for Dioxins.
With soot everywhere, parents fear for their young children’s exposure over the years to these known carcinogens. Norfolk Southern promises of cleaning everything up are too glib to be believed. How are they going to clean a whole town, restore its livability?
A grandmother asked, "I have three grandbabies. Will they all grow up here and have cancer?"
But in fact, Norfolk Southern does have the money, and plenty of it. They have raised their dividend every year, starting from 47 cents a share in 2012, up to $1.35 a share now. Their 2022 profit was $12.7 billion. They announced a share buyback program of $10 billion a year ago.
The dividends go to already fabulously wealthy investors in funds like the Vanguard Group, whose 17.5 million shares hauled in 94.5 million dollars, and JPMorgan Investments whose 10.3 million shares hauled in 55.9 million dollars—for people already too rich, people whose children will never have to play in the soot of carcinogens.
It’s the mindless pursuit of profit that set up this entire tragedy in so many ways. The railroads’ lobbyists keep Congress under control. A rule passed in 2014 to require updated electronic braking systems was rescinded in 2018. Old tanker cars known as DT-111 are more dangerous than newer designs but there is no deadline for railroads to actually replace the bad ones. Longer trains like this one are hard to handle but are still allowed.
Cuts to crew size and safety measures have been the most dangerous victories of the lobbyists. The railroads have put PSR in place, Precision Scheduled Railroading. In the last six years with this program, they have cut 29% of their work force! Fewer workers must handle longer trains with less time off, subject to being called out of bed at any moment to sub for anyone missing.
Rail workers don’t have a clear right to strike—the government regulates the unions under the fiction of “national security.” The rail unions desperately tried for years to jump through all the hoops to go on a legal strike, to force the railroads to make PSR safer and more humane. President Biden chose to sign legislation on December 2nd to block a national railroad strike.
Without more eyes and hands on the trains, workers are driving blind. Engineers can’t see back 150 cars! One engineer and one conductor can’t watch 1200 axle bearings. Twenty miles before the crash, a store camera in Salem, Ohio, recorded flames coming from an axle bearing as it burned up.
The failed bearing froze the axle. The weight of the tankers behind it caused the crash. But remember those billions of dollars in dividends? As many townspeople said: "Corporate greed did this!"