The Spark

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

Issue no. 1173 — March 20 - April 3, 2023

EDITORIAL
Bakhmut:
Ukraine at an Impasse

Mar 20, 2023

The World Court has charged Vladimir V. Putin with war crimes. In a curious coincidence, during the same week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced a visit to Russia. The trip was to include a visit with Putin, with an offer to help in negotiating a truce in Ukraine. The U.S. press, in the most nationalist of reactive reporting, calls it the "most overt sign yet of China’s support for Mr. Putin."

But behind the rhetoric, could we be seeing steps toward a negotiated settlement in Ukraine? Perhaps. The war crime charges against Putin may be intended to pressure him. The visit of China, behind the rhetoric, is an overture for talks. All of this may reflect an impasse in the Ukrainian war, an impasse which has become glaringly apparent in the months-long battle for the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine.

Bakhmut has been mostly destroyed by the onslaught of Russian forces, which have encircled the city while the Ukrainian forces attempt to defend it. Bakhmut is currently the site of tremendous carnage. Thousands of artillery shells are being fired per day by Ukraine while a Russian takeover appears iminent. The Washington Post and the New York Times, which represent the position of the U.S. ruling class, are reporting that the recent deadlock has provoked discussion among U.S. generals about the sustainability of this pace of war.

Finally, behind the question of ammunition supplies lies the question of whether or not Ukraine has the human forces left to continue the war.

The Washington Post reports that Ukrainian forces have suffered upwards of one hundred thousand casualties since the beginning of the war, with the months-long campaign to win back Bakhmut contributing daily to that number. On March 13, the Post reported that "The quality of Ukraine’s military force, once considered a substantial advantage over Russia, has been degraded by a year of casualties that have taken many of the most experienced fighters off the battlefield…."

The U.S. Pentagon is not grieving the numbers of war dead. They are cynically calculating the chances that Ukraine will run out of human cannon fodder to continue their war. In any event, those troops remaining are often untrained, and what is worse, inexperienced. They suffer high levels of casualties as a result.

For all the talk of tanks and fighter planes, the war is currently, primarily, a ground war where human beings with artillery are the killing force.

If the U.S. and NATO allies are beginning to believe that Ukraine cannot win, why continue the bloodletting at Bakhmut? U.S. generals’ statements, as reflected in the American press, indicate that they are advising Zelensky to moderate, to move on. There is also reason to believe that the U.S. strategy to “bleed” and “weaken” the Russian state in this war, sacrificing Ukrainian troops to do it, may be reaching a limit.

In any event, it is unlikely that the visit of China to Russia with offers of mediation, and the accusations of war crimes against Putin are not linked. In the likelihood that Ukraine is forced to negotiate, the charge against Putin can serve as a card for imperialism to play in winning back territory in Russian occupied Donbass, with its industry and natural riches. Finally, Russia may be forced back to maneuvering to hold Crimea, its only warm weather port. Using hawk-like rhetoric, the U.S. military seems to be increasing the stakes in the event the Ukrainian military is reaching an end of its ability to wage war.

While Russia’s autocracy, led by Putin, has put the knife to Ukraine’s throat, U.S. imperialism has kept it there. It has worsened and widened the war for its own interests and has been a willing partner to the death and devastation of Russians and Ukrainians alike. Its relentless pursuit of profits, its incessant drive to open up any remaining world territory to capitalist exploitation, can only lead to deeper war.

A future without the intervention of the world working class is a future of more Bakhmuts, greater and more generalized war. An alternative to the carnage in Ukraine depends on the working class finding its own solutions far beyond the nationalist wars imposed by world imperialism—in Ukraine and in Russia, but above all, in the imperialist countries like the U.S.

Pages 2-3

Illinois:
Neglecting Foster Children

Mar 20, 2023

This January, the Cook County Guardian—the official in charge of the County’s foster children—sued the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS). Seventy-three foster children were held in the county’s juvenile detention facilities for weeks or months, because DCFS could not find a home for them to go to. Janiah Caine, now 18, was held for nearly half a year after her discharge, causing her to miss her grandmother’s funeral. “It feels like nobody cares about you, and they were the people supposed to get me out of a bad situation, but put me in another bad situation,” she said at a press conference for the lawsuit.

Why is this happening? DCFS says it does not have enough placements: not enough foster homes, not enough group homes, not enough residential facilities. The department by its own account served 425,000 children last year—up by more than half from a decade ago. The department’s budget during that decade did not increase—in fact, it dropped. Case workers are overloaded; many burn out quickly from overwork.

Young people in foster care have already seen the worst of this society—that’s how they end up in the system. They pass from a terrible situation, only to be confronted with institutional neglect at the hands of DCFS.

It’s quite telling: when the banking system is threatened, the ruling class moves heaven and earth to try to address the problem—immediately. But for these young people, they offer nothing.

Maryland Jails Youth in Cesspools

Mar 20, 2023

Maryland’s Baltimore County Detention Center holds youth charged as adults in deplorable conditions. These teenagers have not been found guilty of anything. Public defenders reported that the youth have to sleep on mats on floors which regularly flood with water and sewage from the toilets. There are rats. The youth have no access to books or TV. They have to pay for soap and shampoo and have to wash their clothes in the sink. The youth are held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. They are only let out for a shower or a phone call—not both the same day.

The jail was holding 19 youths ages 15 to 17 last November when the public defenders visited. One had been there for two years, awaiting trial. They are part of over 600 youths arrested and charged as adults in Maryland each year—more than 8,600 in the last decade.

Some people say you can judge a society by the way it treats young people. That means this society is rotten to the core.

Maryland:
Black Workers’ Towns Erased

Mar 20, 2023

The overgrown cemetery of a long-destroyed, working-class black community in the now-rich Maryland suburb of Potomac outside Washington, D.C. will be preserved. The Montgomery County council made this promise to descendants in February. The pledge follows an unbroken trail of destruction of historically black neighborhoods by the government, in the service of real estate developers, the auto industry, and banking. Again and again working-class black homeowners and businesses were forcibly displaced to house wealthier white people.

In the 1870s, Brickyard was one of a number of areas along the Potomac River where formerly enslaved black people bought land. Some white plantation owners were willing to sell off patches that weren’t so good for farming. There was work: in mines, mills, and on the canal, the river, and the former slaveowners’ big farms. In the new neighborhoods, black people built houses, schools, and churches. They organized social activities like baseball leagues for men and women.

It wasn’t long before organized racists attacked them. And then for decades, as suburban subdivisions grew all around them, their land was taken from them. In the 1970s the state and county governments suddenly decided that Brickyard’s cemetery owed property taxes it had not owed before. The government seized it and sold it to an out-of-state white developer.

There is a whole patchwork of such half-forgotten places: Toby Town. Scotland. Moses Cemetery, a few miles toward Washington. Across the river in Virginia, East Arlington-Queen City was levelled to make way for the Pentagon’s access roads and parking lots.

Brickyard is one of many examples of black—and white—working class neighborhoods destroyed so someone could make a profit off their land.

Pajaro, California:
Another Working-Class Town Sacrificed at the Altar of Capitalism

Mar 20, 2023

On the night of March 10, as heavy rains hit Northern and Central California, a levee near the town of Pajaro broke. Rising waters from the Pajaro River flooded this town of about 3,000 people, mostly farm workers and their families.

While many families had no choice but to leave their inundated homes, some residents defied the evacuation order and stayed behind without power and running water. People said that, when Pajaro was flooded back in January, they were not allowed to return to their homes for a whole week. This time around, officials said the evacuation order might last for months, while there are not nearly enough shelter places available, and these farm workers don’t have the money to stay in hotels.

In fact, the flooding of the town was totally avoidable. Since the 1960s, local officials had been requesting federal funds to rebuild the levee. But despite several floods since then—including one that killed two people in 1995—the federal government ignored the repeated pleas of the community. As an Army Corps of Engineers expert put it, this levee never cleared the agency’s “benefit-cost ratios” because, he said, “It’s largely farmworkers that live in the town of Pajarothe value of property isn’t all that high.”

Yes, you read it right: In capitalist society, everything has a price tag attached to it, including human life. And the lives of these low-paid immigrant farm workers were simply ignored by government decision-makers!

Only a month ago, the people of East Palestine, Ohio were poisoned—sacrificed to another “benefit-cost analysis,” made by a railroad company, with the complicity of government officials who have been ignoring the railroad industry’s egregious safety breaches in the name of more profit. Now it’s the people of another working-class town, Pajaro, California, that are being sacrificed.

Who will be next?

Public Schools:
Funds Yanked Away

Mar 20, 2023

"With the cessation of Covid relief" seems to be the opening volley today to announce all the “cuts” and “tough choices” that school officials are telling school employees, parents and students they will have to make in order to balance their budget.

In the case of Detroit, the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) had received a total of 1.3 billion dollars in federal aid to help students recover from the pandemic. That money has been spent on placing nurses in every school; increasing mental health resources and staff support; in after-school programs and summer school. Now we are told, the loss of that funding will hit the district hard—hard, because not only will that 1.3 billion dollars not be there, but one of the district’s main remaining sources of revenue is based on enrollment. DPSCD is headed toward a loss of 20 million dollars in state funding because its enrollment dropped by about 2,000 students since the start of the pandemic.

What’s on the chopping block includes assistant principals and other central office staff, paraprofessionals, some summer school programs, and after-school programming.

That doesn’t have to be. The wealth exists in this society to provide all of these, permanently, and much more. But the way education is funded would have to be completely revolutionized: No more depending on one-time Covid money to provide for professionals and services and programs that should be universally provided through all the public school systems in this country all the time. No more funding based on head count, or neighborhood property values, or lottery money or depending on a private donation from a billionaire getting a good tax break.

Revolutionizing education will happen when the working class organizes to put an end to a system based on war and profit, and replace it with a system that puts human beings first. Then education would be one of the top budget priorities in the federal and state budgets that the working class administers.

Pages 4-5

California:
The Big Natural Gas Rip-Off

Mar 20, 2023

In recent months, natural gas bills have doubled or even tripled for Southern California households. Experts say that behind this sudden rise in prices was a sudden rise in wholesale prices in California’s spot market, where natural gas is sold and bought.

But why did wholesale prices rise so much—sometimes up to TEN times higher than usual—in the spot market? Experts throw their hands up and say, “Beats me!” They say that natural gas traders are not making spot market transactions public. And even though the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission could do that, it hasn’t either.

SoCal Gas, which is the sole provider of natural gas in Southern California, has told its customers in emails that it has no choice but to charge them these outrageously high prices. That is actually a lie. For many years, SoCal Gas has been storing gas in the off-season and selling it to customers during the high-demand winter months. But instead of that, this year the company chose to buy big amounts of gas on the spot market at exorbitant wholesale prices, and passed those prices on to customers.

No, what’s going on is no mystery. A few well-positioned people—big shareholders of companies selling wholesale gas on the spot market, such as SoCal Gas’ parent company, Sempra Energy—are making huge amounts of money this way, at the expense of the population.

It’s another massive rip-off scheme to further enrich big capitalists, with the complicity of federal regulators.

California Nurse Shortage

Mar 20, 2023

California is facing a severe nursing shortage, according to a University of California-San Francisco study. This study estimated that by the end of 2022, the state was missing around 19,000 full-time nurses. The study also showed that U.S. hospitals were short of about 80,000 full-time nurses nationwide. And the study said this shortage is expected to get worse over time.

One reason for this shortage is that nurses face poor working conditions, including very demanding long hours of work pressure with low wages. So, nurses change careers, retire early, or search for less demanding nursing assignments, resulting in staff shortages. These conditions were made far worse with Covid. And, of course, many nurses died or were debilitated during the worst of the Covid-19 outbreak.

This shortage is compounded by the lack of training programs for nurses. Such training programs require experienced nurses as instructors. Because colleges and universities pay low wages for such teaching jobs, few experienced nurses apply for such jobs, resulting in a shortage of training instructors. As a result, nursing programs admit only a limited number of students.

And many programs that do exist are private, with a very high price tag, reaching $120,000 per program, which most nursing students cannot pay, adding to the shortage.

In late January, to counter the work overloaded by the hospitals, registered nurses at six Southern California hospitals picketed their facilities as part of a nationwide call for increased staffing amid a winter surge of respiratory viruses, and influenza and COVID-19 patients. Nurses in other states—Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, New York, and Texas—joined similar protests.

Rich people run hospitals like any other business, as big cash-making machines. Reducing their so-called “labor costs” by overloading their workers with work, like nurses in this case, increases the profits of these rich people. Only nurses and other hospital workers’ organized action can improve working conditions and wages … and improve the health of patients, as well.

Who Pays Taxes?

Mar 20, 2023

While we wait for a few hundred or a thousand dollars of our own money to come back from the IRS, really wealthy people get hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars as tax refunds or tax credits to use in the future.

But the real problem is corporate taxes. That’s if the company lacks accountants who creatively get them out of paying any taxes. Fifty years ago, corporations paid more than double in taxes than they do today.

Today corporations pay SEVEN percent of all federal taxes collected and individuals pay 50% of all federal taxes. Congress protects corporations and their wealthy contributors. Too bad if our children’s schools need heat or air conditioning. Too bad if we cannot pay for another car while the old one falls into pot-holes.

In 2021, before last year’s staggering increase in prices and profits, Amazon and JPMorgan Chase paid only 6% in taxes! Exxon Mobil paid 3%; Ford and GM paid under one percent in taxes, and dear old AT&T got back 4% in tax credits!

When Jesse James was asked why he robbed banks, he answered, “that’s where the money is.” Anyone can see where the money is today.

Alabama Coal Miners Forced to End Their Strike

Mar 20, 2023

The United Mine Workers of America have agreed to an “unconditional return to work” by miners at Warrior Met Coal in Brookwood, Alabama after 23 months on strike. Assuming they can pass a physical and a drug test, some of the striking miners will be allowed to go back to work, though some who have found work elsewhere may choose not to return. As of now, the company is refusing to allow 41 miners whom the company claims engaged in illegal activities during the strike to go back to work.

After the company’s previous owner declared bankruptcy in 2015, the company cut the miners’ pay by $6 an hour, increased their health care costs from a $12 co-pay to a $1,500 deductible, took away overtime pay for Sundays and holidays, reduced paid holidays from 13 to three, and turned the costs of workers’ retiree health care over to a Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association, among other cuts.

While the company threatened to close its mines if workers didn’t accept the cuts, it promised to restore the cuts when its finances improved. Yet when the miners’ contract expired in 2021, the company insisted on maintaining most of the cuts, which led to the strike. Some 1,100 miners went on strike.

The company continued to mine coal using highly-paid strikebreakers. When the miners attempted to prevent the strikebreakers from entering the mines, the company got a local circuit court judge to issue an injunction telling the union to stop all picketing and other activity within 300 yards of the mines. Local, county and state police acted as escorts for the strikebreakers, but took no action against company management who intentionally struck picketing miners with their cars.

The National Labor Relations Board sided with the company in forcing the union to pay the “costs” the company claimed to have incurred due to the striking miners blocking access to the mines. The NLRB initially billed the union 13.3 million dollars, but later reduced the bill to “only” $435,000!

Meanwhile, Warrior Met Coal raked in huge profits, while paying generous bonuses and salaries to its executives.

In the face of the combined forces of the company, the cops, the courts and the NLRB, the Met Coal miners fought a determined fight. Their fight, however, shows that workers today likely cannot win if they carry out their fight in isolation. There are many other workers facing similar attacks who could be convinced to join such a fight.

The Met Coal miners gained an experience through their strike. To capitalize on that experience, they and the rest of the working class need to draw the lessons to widen that fight.

Hunger in the Wealthiest Country in the World

Mar 20, 2023

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 34 million people in the U.S., including nine million children, are “food insecure"—they lack the consistent access to enough food for every person in their family to be healthy. That’s over 10% of the population of the wealthiest country in the world going hungry.

Certainly, the recent ending of supplemental food stamp benefits for nearly 30 million Americans and soaring food prices are a big part of the reason for this hunger. But what is most egregious, perhaps, is the ending of the federally funded universal free school meals program, called a pandemic-era benefits program. That program ended this past fall, much to the shock of the families of nearly 30 million students across the U.S. who had benefited from it.

While it lasted, all school-aged children in the U.S. were eligible for school meals, no questions asked. No money had to pass from the child to the person in the cafeteria before that child could eat; no bureaucratic paperwork had to be filled out by parents; no guidelines were enforced that said “your child is eligible and your child is not.”

But with the end of this federal universal free school meals program, families that had been able to have some cushion to survive all their normal economic challenges to provide for their families, with the additional burdens that came their way during the pandemic, had that cushion pulled out from under them. That program had meant that, at least, their children were getting fed.

But no more, for the most part. While it may be true that a few states are using state money to continue, most have gone back to charging all but the neediest kids for meals. And because schools are pressed to provide meals without the federal money to do it, now families have to make applications that haven’t been necessary for years.

And, to add insult to injury, eligibility guidelines to receive food aid have not kept up with inflation. So more families, even if they could navigate the bureaucracy of filing the applications, don’t qualify because of their incomes. For a family of five, about $42,000 to qualify annually for free meals and $60,000 for reduced price meals. As one single mother said: "I missed the cutoff for reduced meals by $100 of gross income."

Was this universal free school meal program breaking the bank of the federal government? Hell, no! School nutrition programs cost $28.7 billion in the 2022 fiscal year, or less than a half a percent of the 6.27 trillion dollar federal budget. Is spending less than $1,000 per year to feed each school-age child too high a price to pay? Hell, no!!

Pages 6-7

The Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank—“The Canary in the Coal Mine”

Mar 20, 2023

On March 9, bank stocks dropped sharply after big depositors rushed to pull their holdings from an important regional bank, called Silicon Valley Bank, in California. The bank had trouble covering the withdrawals, causing it to collapse. A couple of days later, Signature Bank in New York, another important regional bank, went into a death spiral for similar reasons.

In order to try to calm financial markets and big depositors, on March 12, the U.S. Treasury, the FDIC and Federal Reserve hurriedly put together a bailout. But by then, the crisis had already spread to Europe. There were big withdrawals from Credit Suisse, the second biggest bank in Switzerland and one of the most important banks in the world. A complete collapse was staved off, at least temporarily, only after the Swiss National Bank provided Credit Suisse with a massive 54-billion-dollar emergency loan. A day later, the biggest U.S. banks raced to inject 30 billion dollars into another regional bank, First Republic Bank based in San Francisco, in order to try to prevent it from going up in smoke.

Stupendous Growth of Debt

Even top financiers admit that this banking crisis is only getting started. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank could just be the start of a “slow rolling crisis” in the U.S. financial system with “more seizures and shutdowns coming,” said Larry Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. Ray Dalio, the recently retired founder of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, called the bank failures, “a canary in the coal mine.”

Behind this panic is a financial system that is increasingly riddled with debt—debt that, taken together, is much, much bigger than the entire world economy. Over the last couple of weeks there have been plenty of economists and other supposed experts blaming the growth of this debt on the easy money policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve, as well as central banks in other countries. And certainly, for more than a decade following the financial crash and Great Recession of 2008, the Federal Reserve pushed interest rates down to practically zero, and kept them there—at least for the big financial institutions. The idea was that with markets practically frozen, banks would be encouraged to lend money to businesses and consumers, priming the pump for both greater consumption and investment.

But that is not what happened. Instead, employers squeezed out their profits by slashing payrolls in every way they could. So, both consumption and capital investment stagnated and declined. Instead, almost all that debt went to speculation. Companies borrowed billions in order to push up the price of their own stock and increase dividend payments to their richest stockholders. Companies bought each other up in financial operations that loaded the new company with outlandish levels of debt, which was paid for by cutting employment and investment. So, stock markets and other speculative markets, including real estate, shot up—which attracted more money, which pushed up prices ever higher. There were plenty of new financial operations set up just to bet on the ups and downs of other speculative markets.

The entire financial sector became so addicted to this rapid growth of almost free debt, that every time Fed officials even began to talk about cutting back how much debt the Fed had created, financial markets panicked and dropped like a rock. So, the Fed continued what began as an emergency lending program for more than ten years. For the six biggest banks in the U.S., profits were stupendous. Over the last 10 years, profits totaled over a trillion dollars, making banking the most profitable sectors in the entire U.S. economy!

What About Regulation?

Democratic politicians and government officials have also called for more regulation as a way of reducing the danger of all this debt. But what they ignore is that tens of trillions of dollars in debt have been stashed away in the unregulated parts of the financial system, amongst all different kinds of investment funds, private lenders, private equity companies and hedge funds.

Much of this debt is in the form of very complicated speculative instruments called derivatives. These derivatives are a kind of debt bomb. During a downturn these derivatives blow up, with the losses spreading practically at the speed of light—which is what happened during the subprime banking crisis of 2008. How much of these derivatives are out there is not even known by governments and official regulators, because many of these funds operate out of countries where the governments do not demand much in the way of financial reports.

The gigantic size of this debt, along with the fact that so much is secretly held and used, is exactly why the losses at a couple of medium-sized regional banks set off a much wider panic. It shows the lack of confidence that most financiers, speculators, and bankers have in their own system.

In fact, this is not just the beginning of a financial crisis, but a more general economic crisis—a true disaster that the big financiers will try to make the working class pay for in full.

French Workers Are Angry, and Showing It

Mar 20, 2023

Since January 19, French workers have been protesting the so-called “reform” of their pensions, meant to take money out of their pockets. Thousands have gone out to protest in more than 200 locations, including railroad workers, nurses, teachers’ aides, angry people young and old.

Trash workers have not been collecting the bags in many Paris locations, leaving about 10,000 tons in the streets. The government has threatened to lay off the trash collectors. One oil refinery was completely shut by a week-long strike. Another refinery is now proposing a strike. Last weekend a few hundred protesters were tear-gassed and arrested after trash was lit on fire. The police said no one could protest directly in front of Parliament.

The majority rely on a government pension like Social Security. Now the French government, like the U.S. government, pretends the Social Security system will soon go broke. In France, where all working people pay much higher payroll taxes than in the U.S., everyone must work more than 40 years to get a government pension. There are few private pensions in France.

The French president just pushed through a political maneuver, without a vote in Parliament, to push up the age of retirement from 62 to 64. French workers and retirees, like those in every country, have faced higher prices on everything. Many European countries were getting heating oil from Russia before the Ukraine war.

Like in the U.S., the biggest corporations are making record profits. Total Energy had 20 billion euros in profit last year, Stellantis, an auto conglomerate of 16 brands, including Chrysler, Fiat and Peugeot, had 17 billion euros in profit, etc. As these companies lay off workers and pretend they cannot afford to pay into Social Security, they rack up more and more profits.

It doesn’t matter what maneuvers the French politicians get up to. What matters is whether the protests spread into a strike movement that makes the bosses re-think their attacks.

The Strike:
Workers’ Weapon

Mar 20, 2023

This article is translated from the March 17 issue, #2850 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.

Millions of workers now have participated in at least one protest, walkout, or day-long strike since the movement to defend retirement began.

Workers participating are from the public and private sectors, from big and small companies, and come from Paris and from the provinces. Some are permanent workers. Others are temporary workers or interns. For many, this is their first social struggle. Discussions multiply in workshops and offices. Political consciousness rises everywhere. The attack on retirement is the last straw for everyone, after soaring prices and wage freezes.

But to push back the government and big business, many workers feel that isolated days of action are not enough, and that it’s necessary to ratchet the movement up a notch. But by doing what? Some workers including trash collectors, railway workers, and refinery workers have decided to stay out on strike since March 7. Aiming for a tough and determined strike in all sectors of the economy is the way forward. This is what big business fears the most. The evidence is that some bosses like Stellantis and Continental furloughed many of their factories on March 7 and even the following days.

Workers are indeed a colossal force. It’s the same in metalworking, retail, oil refining, cleaning, banking, hospitals, and transport. The same whether they are laborers, salaried, technicians, engineers, drivers, IT specialists, cashiers, secretaries, nurse assistants, and so on! Workers are the basis of the functioning of even the smallest gear in society.

The strength of a general strike is not that it blocks the economy. It is above all that it blocks the profit-making machine. It hits big business directly in the wallet, which is what hits them hardest. And big strikes free the workers from the workstations to which they are usually physically and even mentally chained all the livelong week. A big strike gives them time to organize each other, to discuss among themselves, and to question everything that is wrong in society. With a general strike, everything becomes possible!

If the bosses’ power is owning companies, workers’ power is running them. They are the vast majority of society. They are 10,000 times stronger than the tiny minority of capitalists when they all throw themselves into battle and strike together.

Spain:
Mobilization for Health Care

Mar 20, 2023

This article is translated from the February 17 issue, #2846 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers’ group of that name active in France.

On Sunday, February 12, some 250,000 people demonstrated in the streets of Madrid against the deterioration of the public health system. Both caregivers and patients showed up.

Last November, Madrid-area doctors began a strike to oppose the reorganization of general practices and the dismantling of public health care. With the new regional plan, 37 urgent care centers were closed. Many of those left have no doctor on staff.

The protesters demanded at least 10 minutes of medical attention for each patient, and more generally, more resources for health care. They opposed the continued deterioration of public health in Madrid. It’s not uncommon to have to wait three weeks for an appointment with a general practitioner or months for a specialist. Many people do not have a doctor.

The recent caregivers’ protest was part of a broader movement. The demonstration shows the discontent that exists in the population on the subject of health care. People of all ages took to the streets, indignant about the cumulative privatization pushed by the regional government.

The problem is exploding now in Madrid because of particularly brutal management by right-wing politicians, but it actually exists all over the country. On the same day, similar demonstrations in other cities brought together tens of thousands of people.

Inaction by governments is proof of their inability to manage health care satisfactorily. The only way for clinics and hospitals to function properly would be to let those who work there decide matters according to patients’ needs, which they know. No one better than doctors and nurses can determine the number of workers needed, the times when additional workers are needed, the equipment needed, or the appropriate waiting time for each patient.

For all these reasons, and because the politicians will not come to the aid of public health, every day it is more necessary to join the demonstrations and support the strikes of health care workers.

Pages 8-9

Pacific Ocean:
Preparing for War

Mar 20, 2023

This article is translated from the March 17 issue #2850 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.

President Biden, British prime minister Rishi Sunak, and Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese announced a new phase of their military alliance on March 13 while touring a Navy base in San Diego.

The three countries will jointly develop and build a new type of nuclear-powered attack submarine. They named this warship program SNN AUKUS, after the Australia-UK-USA alliance of 2021. Within two years, the U.S. will provide several new submarines to the Australian Navy, in advance of the first launches, which are to take place around 2040. The official budget for this program exceeds 200 billion dollars.

In addition to the buildup of naval firepower, AUKUS shows how the British and Australian navies are being integrated more and more into the U.S. Navy—ships and crews included. The project also includes teams researching weapons, from hypersonic missiles to quantum computers needed for space warfare! The Japanese Navy is already equipped in part by the U.S. and coordinates with them. Soon it too will join this alliance which is so blatantly aimed at China.

To justify this war program, American imperialism’s official and unofficial spokespeople underscore the so-called Chinese threat. Their topics range from the ridiculous—like banning teen social network app Tik-Tok—to the terrifying, claiming that China’s fleet is now the most powerful in the world.

China’s fleet is certainly the most numerous, if we count all its vessels down to the most modest customs patrol boat. But the U.S. fleet remains the most powerful by far, without even considering AUKUS or NATO or the U.S.’s other allies. The U.S. has 14 nuclear-powered missile-launching submarines, while China has seven. The U.S. has 50 attack submarines—half the world’s total—while China has only nine. Any one of America’s 11 aircraft carriers—larger, faster, better armed—is more lethal and expensive than China’s three aircraft carriers put together.

The AUKUS program ensures substantial profits for already multi-billion-dollar American weapons dealers and a gift to their British confederate BAE Systems. But also, by establishing an integrated global naval force, the program sketches out the sides of a future general conflict, and prepares for it. Far from defending peace, imperialism guarantees war.

20 Years ago:
U.S. Invasion of Iraq—Based on Lies

Mar 20, 2023

The United States invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, after an enormous propaganda campaign.

We were told that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” … whatever that exactly meant, coming from the U.S., the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons in a war. The U.S. had given Iraq chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. But after the invasion, no WMDs were ever found.

We were told that Iraq was linked to terrorists. Without saying so exactly, President George W. Bush and those around him implied that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks. But in fact, there was NO connection between Iraq and 9/11. No al Qaeda members were even active in Iraq—until after the U.S. invasion.

We were also told that Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, was a brutal dictator. This was true—but all the propaganda conveniently left out the U.S. role in helping Hussein take and consolidate power, as well as the U.S. role in arming his regime against Iran.

The Bush government’s lies and misinformation were exposed before the U.S. attacked. And yet, Democrats and Republicans both lined up for war. Even those in Congress who voted against authorizing the invasion continued to vote to fund it, year after year after year.

The result for the Iraqi people was a disaster, with hundreds of thousands killed, ethnicity set against ethnicity, and the economy wrecked.

The working class in this country also paid a heavy price. Thousands of soldiers were killed and wounded, both mentally and physically. Huge sums of money were drained from our taxes and from the services we need. And deep moral damage was inflicted on the U.S. population that went along with this dirty imperialist war based on lies.

As the volume of the war propaganda drums increases once again, this time against Russia and China, we have every reason to remember the lies behind the Iraq war. As the old saying goes, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Haiti:
The People Confronting Gang Violence

Mar 20, 2023

This article is translated from the March 11 issue, #1302 of Combat Ouvrier (Workers Fight), the paper of comrades in Guadeloupe and Martinique, two islands that are French overseas departments in the Caribbean.

Clashes between armed gangs have been on the rise in recent weeks in several neighborhoods in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. The population is caught between rival gangs.

Neighborhoods previously spared now come under attack by armed gangs. The assailants kill, rape, and loot. Kidnappings rack up. Passers-by and shopkeepers alike are kidnapped. A teacher was kidnapped along with his wife and child and two other people with them. That same day, the inspector general of Haiti’s national police and his daughter were kidnapped while he was taking her to school. The gangs strike relentlessly.

Thousands of families have fled from their homes seeking refuge outside the capital. But places to shelter are becoming increasingly rare. Other neighborhoods are also under the control of other armed groups. Some Haitian community organizations say these groups now control the entire capital.

While the government waited for a military intervention by Canada or another United Nations military power, working people adapted to the situation in order to survive. One worker said, “When there is gunfire we hide, but then we go back to normal life. We are not sure of being able to return home in the evening, so we plan alternative places to sleep, and we carry a change of clothes in our bag.”

Given the amount of violence exerted against the population, the vast majority of people have suffered these abuses. But in spite of this, pockets of resistance are forming in the provinces, where people in some areas are organizing to fight back. Neighbors in the department of Artibonite identified and caught several gangsters and put them to death. Neighborhood brigades began patrolling in the evening, checking and stopping unknown individuals. They set fire to one house where suspicious people tried to settle. By doing this, they stopped the gang attacks that were happening in the area. These patrols have shown that the only rescue from the situation will come from the anger and mobilization of people living in working class neighborhoods, urban or rural.

Greece:
Anger on the Streets

Mar 20, 2023

This article is translated from the March 17 issue, #2850 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.

Protests against Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ right-wing government continue, a week and a half after the train disaster which killed 57 people on the Athens-Thessaloniki line near Larissa.

Protests brought together 65,000 people in different cities on March 8. On March 12, 12,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of Athens, and 5,000 in Thessaloniki.

The anger has not subsided. The more details the investigation reveals about how two trains tragically collided, the more they confirm the responsibility of railway line executives and current and previous governments for the blight of the rail network.

According to a report published by the press, breakdowns, delays, and other incidents piled up on February 28. One incident would have required a temporary route change due to a severed electrical cable. The drivers of the passenger train and the freight train knew of some of these malfunctions and tried to communicate. But they tried in vain given the shortages of the rail system. These problems happen frequently. But on that day the accumulated problems proved fatal. Faulty and non-existent control and communication equipment did not compensate for a single human error.

The Larissa station master, who was new, was arrested and charged with negligent homicide. The traffic inspector who had assigned him to that position was also charged, along with two station masters who left their posts early. But Mitsotakis also had to acknowledge the years of neglect, and offer his “profound apologies.” This didn’t pacify the unions, which had been warning for months of an impending disaster. Nor did it placate the population, especially young people who showed up in force at the marches to denounce the government which is responsible for the deaths of so many of their fellow students riding the smashed train.

The judicial system machinery jolted on, and the supreme court decided to blame senior railway management. The prosecutor asked for the files on all fatal rail accidents, to reassess the investigations. For example, a derailment in May 2017 on the same line near Thessaloniki left four dead and five seriously injured. That investigation concluded only that there was a speeding violation.

Will the investigation into this tragedy bring all the rotten deals into view? Not likely! As for the European Union and its bankers—who complain about having paid 700 million dollars to modernize the rail network—they spearheaded holding the population at ransom by imposing unprecedented austerity and corrupt administration.

The Greek government aims to keep a low profile, especially as legislative elections are approaching. But demonstrators are correct to yell, "We will not forget! We will not forgive!" It is on the streets that they can make themselves heard, now and tomorrow.

Pages 10-11

How Many Crises before It All Collapses?

Mar 20, 2023

On Wednesday, March 8, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) notified its shareholders that it would issue new shares of stock to cover a loss in the value of its investments. SVB is a very specialized local bank. Its clients inhabit Silicon Valley: IT and medical technology start-ups, and the so-called venture capital firms that advance money to them.

On Thursday, the venture capital firms pulled out their deposits. By the end of the day, a run on deposits emptied the bank of all its cash. On Friday morning, the state of California declared the bank insolvent and shut it down. The FDIC, government insurer of bank deposits, took it over.

Silicon Valley Bank is not a typical bank. Over 90% of its clients had more than $250,000 deposited, even though the limit of FDIC insurance is set at $250,000.

So now what? Some financial “experts” insist that government must find a way to reimburse these companies for all their losses, despite the limit. If not, they warn, the failure of SVB could end up bringing down the whole financial system.

Other “experts” declare that this is an isolated situation. A spokesperson for Fidelity Investment blames it on risky banking practices, in which, Fidelity brags, it never engages.

In fact, at this point, no one knows what’s going to happen. But one thing is sure: Silicon Valley Bank is not the only one with risky behavior.

If the collapse of SVB leads to a wider financial collapse, it will happen for the same reason that the whole global economy nearly collapsed in 2008: the whole capitalist system is engaged in “risky behavior.” In 2008, the bankruptcy of one Wall Street trading firm, engaging in “risky behavior,” soon threatened all the biggest banks in the country.

Since 1970, there have been crises, one after another, each one deeper and more serious than the one before: the monetary crisis and the first “oil shock” it led to; the second “oil shock,” which led to the “third world debt crisis"; the 1987 stock market crash; the collapse of the “dot.com bubble"; followed by the “sub-prime real estate” crisis. With each crisis, problems in the financial system spilled over into the productive economy, leading to unemployment and disruption—and to a worsening of the lives of laboring people around the world, including here.

Each of these crises was alleviated by a government bailout. Government printing presses threw more money into the financial system to bail it out, but governments went into more debt to do so. And each bailout created a greater overhang of money circulating in the system, leading to more speculation, which erupted into the next crisis.

In fact, capitalism does not use the money it already has on hand to invest in production unless it can make more profit there than elsewhere. This new money thrown into the financial system found its outlet in greater financial speculation, driving up prices in the stock markets of the world and on real estate ... or on eggs and used cars!

The financial system is a great big casino, where all the chips are paid for with government debt, which absorbs more and more of the value produced in the productive economy. Government, burdened down by more and more debt, cuts back on society’s collective needs. Schools degrade, as do roads, bridges, tunnels, railroad right-of-ways, dams, levees, and so on.

Yes, there is a risk the whole financial system could suddenly collapse. That risk exists because crisis is endemic to the capitalist system, and it has been since the beginning. In 1920, in the midst of another crisis, Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary, described the situation in this way: "So long as capitalism is not overthrown by the proletarian revolution, it will continue to live in cycles, swinging up and down. Crises and booms were inherent in capitalism at its very birth; they will accompany it to its grave." The answer to capitalism’s crises remains, as it did in Trotsky’s day, with the working class, the only force that has the capacity to overthrow capitalism, and replace it with a society beneficial for the whole population.

Culture Corner:
Movie:
Argentina 1985; Video:
Age of Easy Money

Mar 20, 2023

Movie: Argentina 1985, 2022, streaming on Amazon Prime

This award-winning movie is a gripping fictionalized portrait of the prosecution of Argentina’s military junta leaders who oversaw the kidnapping, torture and murder of thousands of people without any trial or any due process. The military is no longer in power, but even though many allies of the military are still in the 1985 government, that government decides to prosecute nine military leaders and generals, all in one trial. The horrors are just too great and widespread to be allowed to be swept under the rug. Ricardo Darin as the prosecutor assembles a team, and in the face of ongoing death threats and harassment to his team and to the victims, they find almost a thousand cases where the victims or their family members are brave enough to be willing to step forward and give testimony. A film worth watching.

Video: Frontline’s Age of Easy Money, 2023, available for streaming on public television’s pbs.org

This two-hour documentary deals with the current economic banking crisis and examines the events that led up to this point. It shines a spotlight on the policies of the Federal Reserve Bank, the Fed. With one economic crisis after another, it shows how the Fed intervened to solve the crises by flooding banks with practically interest-free money, no strings attached. This free money let banks continue to do risky speculative investments, which in turn brought the next even higher-stakes crisis. Documentary producer, director, and correspondent James Jacoby speaks to bank managers, politicians, authors, ordinary people, and experts, and leaves us to ponder the future.

Pearl Harbor Base:
Workers Told to Pay

Mar 20, 2023

A year ago, 4,000 families living near Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam near Honolulu, Hawaii were relocated by the military to hotels for months. Jet fuel stored at the base had leaked into the city’s water supply, and tap water sickened thousands. Now, without warning, these residents were told they each have to pay thousands of dollars in taxes, because the military paid for their long hotel stays last year. The government considers this taxable income. No one was prepared for this huge tax hit.

It’s outrageous how capitalism and its government operate. The big hotels got tens of millions of dollars in government money. But the people who worked and retired at the base have to pay taxes for something that was not their fault!

And no one trusts the military to solve the problem of more jet fuel leaking into the water table.

Page 12

More Attacks on Women’s Right to Choose

Mar 20, 2023

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning women’s right to choose to have an abortion led to many women mobilizing and organizing around last November’s elections. In the six states where abortion laws or constitutional amendments were on the ballot, including Michigan and California, people voted in favor of women’s right to choose. These votes were in alignment with poll after poll that show that the majority of the population favor at least some form of rights to an abortion.

But despite this clear indication of what the population wants, some Republican politicians and well-funded right-wing organizations ignore any pretense to democracy and continue their attack on abortion rights. Many of these attacks are now going on at the state level.

There are currently somewhere around 200 bills in different state legislatures that would restrict access to abortion. Wyoming just became the first state to ban the use of pills for abortion. Many other states are pushing similar bills to stop medication abortion, which is the method that a majority of women use to end an unwanted pregnancy.

In a federal court in Texas, anti-abortion groups are trying to overturn the FDA’s (Federal Drug Administration) approval of the use of mifepristone, which is the first of a 2-pill procedure for safely ending a pregnancy. Right-wing forces also are trying to stop the distribution of mifepristone by mail.

In some states the attacks against abortion rights are in the form of proposed laws aimed at doctors who perform abortions, or even prescribe medication for abortions. They want to throw doctors and/or nurses in jail. A proposed law in Wyoming could send a doctor to jail for five years for performing an abortion or prescribing medication. A legislative bill in Iowa would mean ten years in jail. In Nebraska, a doctor performing an abortion would lose their medical license.

Other proposed anti-abortion laws are aimed at anyone who would help a friend or relative obtain an abortion. In Idaho, a bill would make it a human trafficking crime to drive a young woman to an abortion clinic. Under a state law in Texas, three women are currently being sued because they texted their friend information about how to get abortion medication.

For those politicians and groups whose goal is to block women from their right to choose abortion, nothing else matters, no matter how outrageous it may be. Are these same right-wing forces trying to pass laws to provide women all the resources and money they need to raise a child they may not be able to afford? On this issue, these hypocrites are silent.

Clearly women can’t depend on the laws or those making the laws to protect women’s right to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy. Even in states where the Democrats are in the majority, they sometimes put limits on women’s rights. Democrats play these games too.

Those who protested and mobilized last year in support of women’s right to choose showed the way forward. They showed that the only rights people have are those that people are ready and willing to fight for. It will be the same in the future.

Pregnancy-Related Deaths Climb Ever since Covid

Mar 20, 2023

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) just released a shocking report about deaths of mothers from complications during and soon after pregnancy—maternal mortality.

Death certificate reviews found that maternal mortality jumped up once the Covid pandemic started. In 2020, there was a 20% increase in maternal death. In 2021, maternal mortality increased another 40%.

Having Covid can be dangerous for pregnant women. Pregnancy causes a loss of lung capacity and a higher risk of blood clots, and works the heart, lungs, and kidneys harder. The Covid virus can attack any of these already vulnerable systems.

This devastating jump in maternal deaths in 2020 and 2021 left thousands of infants and children to grow up without their mothers. That human toll is difficult to fathom.

A maternal mortality crisis like what happened in 2021 has not been seen since the mid-1960s—for almost 60 years! The 2021 rate was 33 deaths per 100,000 births. And for black mothers, the rate was double that—70 deaths per 100,000 births. In all income groups, black women had a higher rate of maternal mortality. That is a disgusting result in a rich country!

By comparison, in countries with a somewhat functional public health system, Covid did NOT cause such a huge increase in maternal deaths. For example, look at Australia, Austria, Japan and Spain. In these 4 countries there were between 2 and 3 maternal deaths per 100,000 births—during the pandemic!

Beyond the impact of still-present Covid, the advocacy group March of Dimes describes another problem. In the U.S., 36% of counties are “maternity care deserts.” They have no OB-GYN doctor, labor and delivery hospital or any type of pre-natal care. Going without prenatal care increases the risk of pregnancy-related death by three to four times.

Maternal care units are shut down to “save money.” According to a researcher, "Running a labor and delivery unit is expensive. … The facility must be staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a team of specialized nurses." In other words, blind capitalism cannot be bothered nurturing a new generation of healthy moms and babies—unless there is money to be made in it!

The Covid pandemic worsened the already broken U.S. healthcare system. The pandemic exposed the need for a completely new healthcare system!

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