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
May 29, 2023
During COVID, millions of people lost their jobs at one blow. Afraid of the social explosion that might result if these workers also lost their homes, their food, and their medical care, the federal government “found” money to expand a few social programs.
This money didn’t begin to make up for the damage caused by this society’s inability to deal with the pandemic. But now the government is cutting off even that trickle of pandemic money.
There is no more extra money for school systems coming from the federal government. And so, just as the kids damaged by learning loss during COVID need help to try to make it up, schools are gearing up for cutbacks.
The expansion of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program ended in April. These programs provided health insurance to more than one in four people and more than half of all children in this country. Hundreds of thousands have already been cut off, and tens of millions are predicted to lose their health insurance in the coming year.
Earlier this year, just as the price of food was hitting an all-time high, the government cut off the expansion of SNAP food aid.
The government ended eviction and foreclosure protections and the small increases in housing subsidies—even as the price of rent in most cities continues to skyrocket, and homelessness reaches epidemic proportions.
In the midst of all this, it should be no surprise that life expectancy has continued to drop, addiction and suicides continue to climb, and crime rates remain high.
And yet, in the face of this unfolding social disaster for a huge share of the population, no one in the federal government is seriously even discussing making permanent the small funding increases passed during the pandemic. Instead, they are arguing about how many MORE cuts they will impose, using a made-up law called the “debt ceiling.”
Democrats could have easily eliminated this rule when they controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency, as recently as a few months ago. Instead, they want to blame the coming cuts on the Republicans, who say they want to rein in the budget.
What lies on both sides! Both parties agree there is plenty of money for their number one priority: war. Even as they claim there isn’t enough to educate our children or deal with the various social crises hitting the population, the military budget has soared to more than one trillion dollars. The capitalist class needs this military to protect its ability to suck profits out of every corner of the globe. And the leaders of the U.S. government have made clear they are preparing for another massive war, in which workers will once again pay the price.
Both parties serve the corporations, which want to force workers to accept even lower wages. Wages for many jobs may be higher in dollar terms than they were before the pandemic, but you can’t eat dollars. You need to use those dollars to buy food. Because of inflation, wages buy less food than they used to. Wages aren’t enough to afford the rent. They don’t nearly cover the cost of raising a child. But if people are desperate enough, they will take these jobs. This is why the corporations have an immediate interest in getting rid of any program that provides people with an alternative to taking the low wage jobs that they offer.
Politicians in both parties claim wages need to stay low to fight inflation. What BS! High wages didn’t cause the price of oil to skyrocket. High wages didn’t lead the egg monopoly to jack up the price of a dozen to five dollars. No, inflation is driven first of all by the corporations looking to charge as much as they can. The corporations want low wages so they can keep more of the wealth workers produce.
The corporations and the politicians who serve them want us to accept a future in which our standard of living is further degraded, in which our children live worse than we do—if they survive the wars this capitalist system is preparing.
But the working class doesn’t have to accept all this. There is more than enough wealth in this society for everyone to live decently. To make that happen, the working class will have to organize a fight to take that wealth back from the capitalist parasites who have stolen it from our labor. Workers make everything run and that gives them power when they can find the way to organize as a class.
Instead of allowing our lives to be worsened in order to make billionaires into trillionaires, in order to pay for the wars they want to fight to dominate the world, why not, instead, prepare to fight in our own interests, for a decent future for all of us?
May 29, 2023
The multi-millionaire owners of nine car dealerships in the Washington, D.C. area will have to pay a total of more than 3.3 million dollars to over 18,000 people to make up for illegally adding unnecessary fees onto car prices, according to a settlement announced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Passport Auto Group also discriminated against Black and Latino customers by charging them hundreds of dollars more for loans. The FTC claims this is only one of dozens of its legal actions which forced different kinds of retailers around the country to repay over 392 million dollars last year alone. So, the regulatory system works, right?
Not so much when you remember that this only saved people in this county just over one dollar each last year. Inflation was a lot higher than that! And in terms of cars specifically, new car prices jumped nearly $12,000 in the last five years. Used cars shot up nearly $9,000 in that time. Above and beyond prices rising because the chip shortage kept inventories low, dealers also jacked up delivery fees and other dealer additions while not offering the usual discounts, simply to make more profit. Average new vehicle profit margins more than doubled from 2019 to 2022. All of this was totally legal and outside of government regulatory control.
Working people can’t rely on the government to fight inflation. We have to make the fight ourselves for wages and retirement benefits that keep up with high prices.
May 29, 2023
With the rising demand of online shopping and fast home delivery options, corporations are building more warehouses than ever before. Hundreds, if not thousands of diesel-run trucks are being loaded and unloaded at each warehouse nearly every single day. And it’s negatively impacting the health of residents living near these new warehouses.
Studies have linked the pollutants from diesel exhaust to increases in respiratory hospitalizations, heart attacks, premature births, and preventable deaths. The Chicago-area Warehouse Workers for Justice released a report showing unhealthy levels of an air pollutant called PM2.5 in Joliet and Elwood, two working-class towns near Chicago. This PM2.5 pollutant causes about seven million preventable deaths a year, according to the World Health Organization.
Nearly 2 million people in Illinois live near these warehouses with lots of truck pollution. Illinois was reported to have one of the most obvious patterns of unequal warehouse distribution of any state. Of course, you wouldn’t see this pollution problem in Glencoe or Winnetka, Illinois, two of the richest towns in the U.S.! But working class lungs and lives are deemed expendable in this society.
May 29, 2023
The Los Angeles City Council approved 250 million dollars more in funding for “Inside Safe”—Mayor Karen Bass’s program to buy and lease hotel and motel rooms as temporary housing for homeless people.
So far, in four and a half months, officials say, “Inside Safe” has moved 1,200 people out of homeless encampments in various parts of L.A. That’s really not more than a drop in the bucket, considering that last year, L.A. public schools reported that 1 out of 11 of their students, amounting to more than 50,000 children and teens, were homeless—without counting their adult family members!
For that drop in the bucket, the city has already paid 44 million dollars to hotel and property owners. It’s not a surprise, considering the prices hotels are charging. One example: 4,684 dollars per month per room at the L.A. Grand Hotel Downtown!
One thing that’s safe under this “Inside Safe” program is hotel profits.
May 29, 2023
For the residents of Highland Park, Michigan, it has been one crisis after another for the past 30 years or so. The latest crisis is over their water system. The city is facing possible bankruptcy over unpaid water bills, that could also lead to much higher bills for residents.
Highland Park is a small city of less than 10,000 residents. It is surrounded by the city of Detroit. It is one of the poorest communities in Michigan.
At one time, however, it was much different. Chrysler had its world headquarters in Highland Park until it moved to the suburbs in the early 1990s, costing the city about 5,000 jobs and lots of tax income. Prior to that, Ford Motor Company had plants in Highland Park: Henry Ford built his first assembly line there. When these companies left, they took the wealth that those workers had produced with them.
Beginning in 2001, the state of Michigan took over the city government with an Emergency Financial Manager and ran the city for almost 10 years. This was done to a number of poor cities in Michigan, such as Detroit and Flint. These un-elected Emergency Financial Managers, appointed by the governor, acted with no accountability—that led, for example, to the Flint Water Crisis.
Highland Park has been left without a school system. The only public high school in the city, Highland Park High School, was closed in 2015, and the students now have to go to schools in Detroit, or to charter schools. About 10 years ago, most of the street lights were turned off and then completely removed due to money owed to DTE, the local electric company. There is no public library anymore.
Now the issue is the water system—it is old and has not been properly maintained for years. The water is supplied by the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA), which supplies water to most Detroit area cities.
Most residents pay their water bills, but this money has not been used to maintain the system, a water system so old it still has wooden pipes! The leaks throughout the system are very costly.
The city owes about 24 million dollars in back water bills. It is mostly the absentee landlords that do not pay their bills. And yet, the residents are the ones who could be faced with the shut off of their water.
Michigan is surrounded by the Great Lakes, some of the biggest freshwater lakes in the world. Michigan should be one of the last places in the world where there are water crises. Yet from Flint to Highland Park and in multiple other parts of the state, there continue to be problems.
May 29, 2023
A new bridge in Baltimore is just about ready to open. The bridge will allow cars on Washington Boulevard (U.S. Route 1) to cross over CSX railroad tracks below. It will replace an older bridge. Except … it’s too low!
CSX has a strict requirement that all bridges over its tracks must provide at least 23 feet of clearance underneath. And the new bridge provides only 22 feet, 10¾ inches—1ü inches too little.
The bridge has been under construction for about five years. It was supposed to cost about 37 million dollars and provide 23 feet, 5 inches of clearance. But the contract to Lane Construction was modified shortly before the bridge was finished to include a sidewalk for pedestrians. The additional weight of sidewalk and other modifications caused the bridge to come down to only 22 feet, 10¾ inches of clearance.
MDOT (Maryland Department of Transportation) was supposed to be responsible for seeing to it that the bridge met all standards. They clearly did not do this.
Fixing the clearance problem now by either raising or rebuilding the bridge, or lowering the tracks below it, will cost more millions of dollars. But no matter what the solution is, we can be sure it will cost ordinary taxpayers a pretty penny.
May 29, 2023
In March, the Michigan legislature passed, and the governor signed legislation to repeal the Right-to-Work law in Michigan. The so-called Right-to-Work law was originally passed in late 2012 during a lame-duck session when Republicans controlled the legislature and governorship in Michigan.
The repeal of the Right-to-Work law was hailed as a big victory for labor. It was one of the goals when the Democrats gained control of the government in Michigan in the 2022 election.
The Right-to-Work Law has been used as an attack on unions across the country for many years. In states with a Right-to-Work law, no one is required to be a union member even if they benefit from union protection and have the wages and benefits of a union contract. In states that do not have a Right-to-Work law, if the majority of workers at a specific workplace or company vote for a union, then everyone either must be a union member or pay union dues to support the services of the union.
But the repeal of the Right-to-Work law in Michigan only applies to private employers. Those who work for any type of government agency were not included. That is because of the United States Supreme Court decision in 2018 known as the Janus Decision. This decision basically forced all public employees across the country to be considered right-to-work—in other words, they can opt out of the union, not pay union dues, but still be covered by everything that the union negotiates. This exception for public employees is not a minor amount of people. Just the opposite. More public employees are unionized across this country than are employees at private companies. A lot more. The unionization rate for public employees across the country is over 30% while it is 6% for private employers.
Still, repealing Right-to-Work in Michigan is seen as a gain for workers because the law clearly was an attack on unions and workers in 2012. The Democrats are presenting themselves as the friends of workers for repealing it. But to have strong unions, workers need more, much more. If the Democrats were really the friends of labor, they could pass a law that makes a union the bargaining agent for an employer the minute a majority of workers sign union cards. Company bosses usually refuse to recognize what’s called the card-check process. They string out the unionization process for a long time. The bosses hold mandatory anti-union workplace meetings and threaten layoffs. They harass union supporters in the workplace, including firing some of them. Even if these firings are later overturned, sometimes it is too late, and the union drive gets defeated, even though a majority of workers signed cards for the union. But the Democrats do not pass the card-check laws that the unions have asked for to slow down the bosses’ anti-union interference and to make organizing a union easier.
At the end of the day, workers can only depend on their own activity and determination to fight for what they need—whether it is organizing a union or fighting for improved wages and benefits.
May 29, 2023
Corcoran, a town of about 30,000 people—22,000 residents plus the 8,000 inmates of California’s largest prison complex—is under immediate threat of getting flooded. After an unusually wet winter, part of the Tulare Lake Basin just west of Corcoran is already flooded, and the only thing keeping the water from inundating Corcoran is a 14.5-mile-long dirt levee surrounding the town on the west, south and east. Right now, the levee is less than ten feet higher than the water level.
There is no doubt that the water level will rise, because an unusually deep snowpack at high elevations on the Sierra Nevada Mountains has not even begun to melt. So, Corcoran has to raise the levee and repair its vulnerable sections before the water spills over. After multiple requests by local officials at both state and federal levels, the California government, in early May, finally promised 17 to 20 million dollars for levee repairs. But it may prove too little, too late—for no one knows how fast the Sierra snowpack will melt, as it depends on the temperatures in coming weeks and months.
But there is one thing experts agree on: the floodwaters are there to stay for a long time. A thick layer of clay lies under the soil in the area, which prevents water from seeping through into underground aquifers. After heavy flooding in 1983, for example, parts of the Tulare Lake Basin did not dry for about two years. The longer the water stands—and sloshes—against the levee, the more it wears the levee down, increasing the risk of breaches.
And the risk of breaches in the levee is exacerbated by another, man-made scourge: parts of the San Joaquin Valley, including Corcoran, have been sinking for decades, at a rate of a foot or even more per year—a result of the excessive pumping of groundwater for agriculture. This sinking, known as subsidence, damages levees along with other infrastructure such as roads and bridges.
In the area surrounding Corcoran, much of the groundwater pumping is done by the biggest landholder in the area, the J. G. Boswell Company. According to information revealed to Water Resources Control Board in 2021, Boswell pumps an estimated 45 billion gallons of groundwater per year to irrigate its fields—which is nearly half the amount of water all of Los Angeles’s four million residents use in one year!
Because of subsidence, the Corcoran levee has had to be raised many times over the years. In 2015, for example, when the levee sunk by two feet, local officials spent 14 million dollars to raise it—once again, with taxpayer money.
Big agricultural companies pump aquifers dry, sink the land, damage levees and other infrastructure—all for their owners’ private profit. The population in the area, mostly working-class people, are not only at risk of losing their homes and everything they have, but they are also supposed to pay to fix what these companies break. And the companies continue to sink the land and break the levees for even more profit.
That’s how capitalism works—a system that’s an even bigger threat to the well-being of working people than any natural disaster.
May 29, 2023
This powerful movie was made outside of the Hollywood movie system during the McCarthy Period. It was financed by the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, a militant union that was expelled by the CIO for its refusal to expel its communist members. The movie’s writer, director and producer had all been blacklisted by Hollywood for their politics.
The film is based on the true story of a miners’ strike for equal wages and safety in New Mexico. It addressed the company’s divide-and-conquer policy of granting small privileges to the Anglo workers, setting them against the Mexican American workers.
Only five people in the film were professional actors. The rest were people from the actual community in New Mexico, and many acted in their true-life roles.
The film itself is a complex powerful tale of the male workers and their wives struggling to come together to defeat all the powers against them. It especially shows the women overcoming male resistance and coming into their own by participating in the strike.
While it was not allowed to be shown until the 1960s, it became well known and respected for the classic that it is.
This book tells of the six-day general strike of 65,000 workers in Seattle in February of 1919.
Seattle was jammed with workers due to World War I in the shipbuilding industry and on the docks. It was a hotbed of ideas and radicalism, with many experienced worker militants who had links to traditions stretching back to the beginning of the workers movement in this country.
Workers had mostly forgone striking during the war, but once the war ended, they felt it was time to strike. The entire working class of the city supported the strike. The strikers demanded wage increases for all, not just their own union.
During the six-day strike, they organized kitchens to feed the strikers, medical care, communication, and the other services they needed to survive and keep the strike going. They ran the city.
The strike was the first general city-wide strike in this country and shook all.
May 29, 2023
A Pulitzer prize-winning play has made its Michigan premiere at the Detroit Repertory Theater. SWEAT, written by Lynn Nottage, is the story of people who had been steelworkers in Reading, Pennsylvania. Based on the real lives of workers who had been locked out of their factory for 92 weeks, this play examines the lives of steel workers left behind by the economic crisis in the early 2000s. Set in a bar, where people unwind, relax, laugh and spar, their story is a slice of life about workers who have been told they have to take a pay cut to save their jobs; who have been injured on the job and can no longer do factory work; who have faced prison time; and who have been pitted against each other—for a job. It deals with class and race and the changing ethnic composition of the city.
It may be set in one city, but it’s the story of hardworking people everywhere, who, despite their work, find themselves impacted by decisions made by rich corporations. Nottage’s work has been described as going into “the heart of working class America” and as a “powerful look at identity, race, economy and humanity.”
Performances of SWEAT at the Detroit Repertory Theater will be held through June 25th. This historic theater company is renowned for its excellent productions. And, at a time when entertainment is so expensive, the fact that you can go to live theater for a modest cost is something to embrace.
May 29, 2023
Two-hundred fifty former residents of Palm Springs, California, joined by 100 descendants of former residents, have filed a reparations claim. They are seeking up to two billion dollars in damages from the city, based on the fact that, in the 1950s and ‘60s, these residents were brutally driven out of their neighborhood known as Section 14—in order to make room for commercial development. Today this one-square-mile tract about 110 miles southeast of Los Angeles is home to the downtown of one of the most famous resorts in the country, including a casino, a spa, a convention center, hotels, and condo developments.
Section 14 is owned by the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. Back then, the tribe was the only owner in Palm Springs willing to rent to Black and Latino tenants—who then had to build their own houses on small plots of land that they leased from the tribe. The claimants say they expect more people to join the reparations claim since, in the 1950s, as many as 2,000 families lived on Section 14—mostly families of workers who built and maintained Palm Springs, and workers who served Southern California’s business and entertainment elite who vacationed there.
The City of Palm Springs did not even provide basic sanitation services, such as trash pick-up and adequate water supply to Section 14. But when big developers and the city’s business elite wanted to see the area cleared out of its people to make room for hotels and shops, city officials used the unsanitary conditions in Section 14 as a pretext to target the neighborhood for demolitions.
By the late 1950s, the city’s attack on Section 14 residents had turned into outright, KKK-style terror—to a degree that a 1968 state of California investigation called it “a city-engineered holocaust.”
City crews were sent to Section 14 at a time of the day when family members were at work or at school. When no one answered the door, they destroyed the house, by either bulldozing it or setting it on fire—sometimes with residents’ belongings inside. There was no compensation afterwards either. The perpetrators openly bragged about the racist terror they unleashed on Section 14 residents. This 1961 entry in a Fire Department anniversary book stated: “Several old buildings on Section 14 seemed to suffer from ‘spontaneous’ ignition at different times throughout the year … These were no-loss fires, the only losses being in the form of firemen’s sleep and part of the city’s water supply.”
The attack on Section 14 was ordered and overseen by court-appointed “conservators” and “guardians,” after Congress declared Agua Caliente tribe members “incompetent” to handle their own business affairs! And these conservators and guardians included real estate agents, a judge, the chief of police, and Mayor Frank Bogert.
For more than a decade, many families refused to move, despite the continuing terror and fires. But by the end of the 1960s, none of the original residents were left. The only places these families were allowed to move to were either desolate areas nearby without electricity and running water, or areas 25 or 30 miles away, from where they had to commute to work.
In the wake of the protests against the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, surviving Section 14 residents and their family members got together to seek justice. They forced the Palm Springs City Council to issue a formal apology, and also to remove from in front of City Hall, a bronze statue of Bogert, the mayor who presided over the brutal assault on Section 14 residents.
But the city officials refuse to admit any liability for all the damages and, so far, have refused to pay anything. These politicians, and behind them the big business interests that profit from Palm Springs’ lucrative resort facilities, are apparently hoping that they can once again sweep under the rug their city’s violent, racist, and anti-worker past, upon which their own fortunes were built.
May 29, 2023
Car manufacturers promote and push electric vehicles on us as zero-emission, environmentally friendly, “green” alternatives to traditional fuel-burning vehicles, as if their profits are not an issue. Such promotions are nothing but deceptive.
To start with, typically, electric vehicles require six times the metal input by weight of current vehicles that run on fossil fuel. So, if manufacturing shifts to electric vehicles, the amount of metal used will substantially increase.
Also, the manufacturing of electric or hybrid vehicles requires many different metals. For example, their frames are made mainly using aluminum, a very lightweight metal that increases the electric vehicle’s travel range before recharging. Aluminum is extracted from bauxite. The world’s most significant bauxite reserves are located in Guinea, one of the world’s poorest countries.
To mine this ore, mining companies are leveling family farms, polluting rivers and seas, and destroying fisheries in Guinea. Partially due to the projected increase in electric vehicle sales, demand for aluminum is expected to jump nearly 40% by 2030. In the next two decades, according to The Washington Post, bauxite mining will destroy more than 200,000 acres of farmland and 1.1 million acres of natural habitat in Guinea—an area almost the size of Delaware. This bauxite mining will unavoidably bring environmental disaster and social misery at a devastating scale. Its human toll will be tremendous.
Other metals used to manufacture electric cars’ batteries, including nickel, lithium, manganese, and cobalt, are also now in high demand. An electric car’s battery weighs approximately 900 pounds.
Like bauxite in Guinea, mining these other metals brings disaster and human misery. In Congo, where the largest cobalt mines are located, a vital part of the mining is done under very primitive conditions, often using child labor, with shovels. In the U.S., companies plan to build huge lithium mines in Oregon and Alaska: some of the few remaining pristine lands in the U.S. will no longer remain intact after such mining.
Electric cars require a much smaller number of parts to manufacture than fuel engine cars. The car manufacturers, therefore, want to achieve their production by decreasing their parts costs and employing fewer workers. Such savings for them mean more profits. Forcing so-called zero-emission cars on consumers through regulations, like in California, further increases the shift toward electric vehicles.
So, every car manufacturer is in this race for profit from electric vehicles that they created. For example, under the so-called “zero crashes, zero emissions, zero congestion” mantra, General Motors wants to fully electrify all its brands, including Cadillac, Buick, Chevrolet, and GMC, by 2035. Globally, auto companies expect that, due to such driving forces, their electric car sales will surpass their fuel-burning counterparts by 2040.
So, within 20 years, the electric car manufacturers, seeking ever-increasing profits with no regard to human and environmental costs, will turn the whole world upside down, killing more land, further poisoning the air, and exacting a tremendous human toll. This profit drive is anything but “green.”
May 29, 2023
Worldwide, massive amounts of energy are consumed yearly for “mining” cryptocurrency. According to University of New Mexico scientists, the production of Bitcoin alone consumes more energy than countries like Austria (9 million people) or Portugal (10.2 million people) each year. This also creates enormous pollution. On average, each $1 in Bitcoin market value created was responsible for $0.35 in global climate damage.
Until June 2021, most production of Bitcoin took place in China. But over the last few years, the United States has become the global leader in producing Bitcoin. According to the New York Times, there are now 34 large-scale computer installations, known as “Bitcoin mines,” in the United States. These plants consume as much electricity as all of New York City.
Some forms of money, like gold and silver, are mined and then minted. The value of gold or silver money is protected because they are minted from rarely available, therefore precious, metals. Other forms of money, like dollars, euros, and yen, have government backing.
Bitcoin is another type of money, existing only in computer memories and “mined and minted” through extensive computer systems comprising thousands, if not tens of thousands, of computers. Replication or creation of uncontrolled copies of Bitcoins by others is prevented through very complex mathematical problems written in computer codes. To register (i.e., print or mint) a Bitcoin, a Bitcoin “miner” must solve these challenging mathematical problems using ever-faster computer systems, requiring ever-increasing amounts of energy.
Solving these complex problems becomes a competition between “miners” of Bitcoin. The reward of registering one Bitcoin goes only to one miner who solves the problem first. On average, if there are 100 Bitcoin miners, only one miner gets the prize. All 100 Bitcoin miners use incredible amounts of energy during mining, but the colossal energy consumed by the remaining 99 miners, who lost the competition, is wasted.
Because the competition is fierce among the Bitcoin “miners,” they use a massive number of high-speed computers to solve the mathematical problem first. Since computers advance each year, a Bitcoin mine’s computers become obsolete within a few years. The slow “old” computers are then junked every other year and replaced by faster “new” computers, further increasing energy consumption and waste.
Money is an exchange tool for buying and selling goods like bread, eggs, milk, cars, housing, etc. The printed money in paper form would be sufficient for such an exchange. It is hard to imagine how an electronic money form, which is hugely wasteful and environmentally damaging, like Bitcoin, could be used to purchase goods, like underwear.
Sounds crazy? You bet! This capitalism is currently at its most “creative,” destructive, and wasteful stage.
May 29, 2023
This article is translated from the May 8 editorial for the workplace newsletters distributed by Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the revolutionary workers group active in France.
Last Monday was the commemoration of May 8, 1945. It may have been the end of the Second World War in Europe, but it wasn’t the end of all wars. They continue to rage in many countries. For more than a year, the war in Ukraine has demonstrated that war isn’t a thing of the past for Europe: it’s very much part of our present.
For a long time, governments have wanted us to believe that the barbarity of war is behind us, that there will be no more bombardments or trenches, no more cities destroyed or displaced populations.
Populations were fed the same nonsense after the First World War, which was a horrendous massacre: 10 million deaths in Europe, millions wounded, amputated, gassed, and left with disfigured faces. At the battle of Verdun alone, 500,000 soldiers were killed and both sides ended up in the same place they started from!
There had never before been so much suffering and destruction in a single war and every leader of the time called it “the war to end all wars,” the very last war. Twenty years later, in 1939, it started all over again!
The Second World War streamlined horror so efficiently that it was the deadliest war in history. Not only were 20 million soldiers killed, but also between 40 and 60 million civilians were bombed and starved, and 6 million Jews plus Roma and others died in Nazi extermination camps. Many cities were reduced to rubble.
The cause of the two world wars was fundamentally the same: the need for capitalist trusts to expand and the economic war that resulted from it.
Competition and competitiveness may seem inoffensive, but they embody this economic war. Those who defend capitalism sing its praises but, by definition, it means a confrontation between private interests. States relay these confrontations with the means conferred on them by their economic, political, and military power.
World war is not a catastrophe brought about by this or that dictatorial monster. It’s the extension of the economic war between capitalist trusts to gain control of raw materials, production lines and to secure markets on a global scale.
Of course, the First World War was inevitably followed by a Second World War. And the Second will be followed by a Third. And this will go on for as long as the capitalist system rules.
International relations, alliances, reversals of alliance, peaceful relations and warlike relations are not guided by the happiness of peoples, by freedom or by democracy. They are the result of calculations and the balance of power between states and the capitalist interests they represent.
The war in Ukraine is no exception. Warmongers explain that it’s important to defend a small country that’s being attacked by a powerful neighbor. As if Ukraine hadn’t been the arena for the clash between the U.S. and Russia for more than 30 years! As if the imperialists behind NATO were equipping, training, and giving military intelligence to Ukrainian troops out of the goodness of their hearts.
The war against Putin’s Russia and the blacklisting of Xi Jinping’s China are the political and military expression of the economic rivalry that exists among all these great powers. It is not in the workers’ interest to choose one side or the other. It is in their interest to fight to overthrow the capitalist system that condemns us to exploitation and war.
The United States and Western imperialist countries, including France, maintain world order by brandishing the flag of peace and democracy. But their order is infested with dictatorships! Their order generates endless wars in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia! Their order plunges whole regions into deprivation and drives hundreds of millions of women, men, and children out of their homes and turns them into pariahs!
The deadly fighting in Ukraine and the skirmishes between the U.S. and China make the threat of generalized war all the more real.
Every state is preparing for war by rushing headlong into rearmament. The fighting cannot be separated from the social battle that workers must wage against the power of a capitalist class that, in order to have its market shares and profits, is ready to drive the whole world into barbarity.
May 29, 2023
This article is translated from the May 26 issue #2860 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Held in Hiroshima, Japan, from May 19 to 21, the traditional G7 summit was, more openly than usual, a meeting of imperialist brigands bent on subjugating the world to their laws and interests.
Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China, two major powers, were not invited, even though they were at the heart of the discussions, negotiations and resolutions adopted at the summit. Other major countries from the so-called “global South,” in order not to say “poor countries,” such as India, Brazil and Indonesia, were invited as mere observers to this summit of rich countries. One of the aims of the G7 was to put pressure on these countries, which refuse to be locked into an exclusive alliance behind the United States and are trying to maintain economic and diplomatic relations with Russia.
This task fell to Ukrainian President Zelensky, a surprise guest at the G7. He extracted from the Indian president a vague promise "that he will do everything possible to put an end to the war." Above all, Zelensky obtained the agreement of U.S. President Biden, previously refused, for European countries wishing to do so to deliver F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, on condition that they are deployed "solely on Ukrainian territory." While Macron, who is doing everything he can to appear to be at the center of the game, has boasted of having made aircraft available to Zelensky, this announcement by Biden shows, if proof were needed, that the United States is the sole master of the Western coalition against Russia. But it is also at work against China.
While the imperialist powers, led by the United States, are constantly using protectionist measures, sanctions and economic or financial retaliation against countries that do not submit quickly enough to the interests of their capitalists, they accuse China of practicing “economic coercion.” It’s the pot calling the kettle black! Once again, the aim of American leaders at the G7 was to force their allies, European or otherwise, to approve the sanctions against China.
Determined to curb China’s economic development, for example, by refusing to sell it the most high-performance semi-conductors, the United States is unwilling to let its European competitors pursue unlimited trade with China. Macron’s declaration, made a few weeks ago on the plane back from China, that “France must not follow the United States on Taiwan," made waves. But the reality is that Western capitalists have no choice but to obey, so as not to be deprived of the American market and the dollar, the international currency, both of which are inescapable.
They are part of a political and military coalition that is tightening its grip. As Western submarines and naval vessels cruise the China Sea, it’s China that’s being accused of going to war!
This G7 meeting, officially dedicated to peacekeeping, has clearly brought the world a little closer to generalized war.
May 29, 2023
In February of this year, U.S. military forces met with hundreds of troops from West African countries to conduct training exercises. These exercises, known as Operation Flintlock, take place annually.
The forces that have been through this “training” at Flintlock have attempted nine coups in the region, in Mauritania, Mali, the Gambia, Guinea and Burkina Faso, since 2008, with eight of them successful.
Besides this training, the U.S. is by far the biggest arms dealer in the world. The Intercept recently reported that more than half the world’s autocracies bought weapons from the U.S.
The U.S. and its politicians talk endlessly about being on the side of “Democracy.” Meanwhile, they arm and train forces such as these: autocrats and military dictators.
Democracy? No, they want forces around the world that keep their arms open to U.S. corporations and U.S. capital!
May 29, 2023
In former President Trump’s deposition in the rape case brought by E. Jean Carroll, he made clear his contempt not only for Ms. Carroll, but also for her female lawyer, and against women in general.
Trump was also found liable for sexually assaulting Ms. Carroll. She is not the only one who had accused him of assault. But we can expect that, by the time the lawyers finish arguing the lawsuit, we will all be dead and buried.
Trump referred to women by their sexual organs decades ago, when he was a celebrity on TV. He repeatedly cheated on his wives. Two of the lawsuits against him had to do with his payments to women he had sexual relations with.
And is Trump alone in this disgusting behavior toward women? Of course not!
Two popular and married DEMOCRATIC presidents more or less did the same: Both Kennedy and Clinton brought women to their beds using their security details. These men in power used men in paid government positions like pimps, and women like objects.
In this rotten class society where the vast majority of the population is used up and discarded for the profits of a few, women continue to be placed in an especially degraded position. The powerful men in this society embody this, thinking nothing of treating the women around them as objects and playthings.
It’s time to sweep this rotten society aside and truly free the population.
May 29, 2023
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters during the week of May 21, 2023.
Stellantis abruptly shut down construction of its planned battery plant in Windsor, Ontario. It demanded more money from the Canadian and provincial governments. It already was given a billion dollars from Canada in a deal cut last year.
Then, the U.S. government promised bigger subsidies, tax breaks and outright gifts to companies producing electric vehicles. Trying to compete, the Canadian government granted Volkswagen about four billion for a massive battery complex it would build in Canada.
So Stellantis threatened to leave the hulk of an unfinished plant to rot in Windsor if it didn’t get more. It hinted it might move its factory to the U.S.
It’s nothing but an extortion game. All over the world, it’s the same thing. A Swedish company wants eight billion dollars to move its planned battery factory to the U.S. from Germany. A Taiwanese company wants several billion to move a battery factory from Taiwan to France.
Governments compete with each other to attract investment. The ones who are winning this competition are the capitalists, no matter which country they come from.
Big capitalists have no country. They exist on the scale of the world. Consider Stellantis. It’s a single multinational company composed of companies that existed originally in five countries: Italy, France, the U.S., Britain, and Germany.
Big companies are owned by a capitalist class that knows no borders. They use governments like their servants; they have no loyalty to the workers in their plants; they respect no contracts they sign. Their only loyalty is to money.
Well, there is plenty of money to be had today in the move to electric vehicles.
Pretending that electric vehicles will protect the environment, governments try to force the sale of electric vehicles. No more gasoline-powered private vehicles can be sold in the U.S. after 2030. After 2040, no more gasoline-powered used vehicles can be sold.
It’s a gift to big companies, and it will be paid for by a population forced to buy electric, whether or not we want to drive electric.
Moreover, despite the propaganda, the move to electrification doesn’t protect the environment. Electric vehicles themselves may be less polluting, but the total damage to the environment of providing electricity for these vehicles is just as polluting, maybe more so.
Laboring people will bear the cost of this move to electrification. Our taxes will be used to pay for the subsidies and tax breaks. The public services, social services, and schools we depend on will be further cut, deprived of the funds they need.
We also pay because government has worked for decades to help keep the cost of labor down. The minimum wage in the U.S. has been kept at an abysmally low level for four decades, forcing young people to go into these new factories at impossibly low wages. Social Security has lost so much to inflation that many workers can’t retire from existing factories.
We will pay because government turns a blind eye to the worsening of conditions in production. Look at the railroad workers, who voted to strike to alleviate unsafe conditions on the trains. Congress passed a law, which Biden signed, making the strike illegal.
We shouldn’t fall for the capitalists’ propaganda about electrification. Electrification is a scam—in the way they do it. Falling for their scam gets in our way, prevents us from fighting for what we need. We have to protect ourselves, forcing the capitalists to answer our needs.
And why should we fall for the patriotic propaganda the capitalists push? They are trying to get us to view workers in other countries as our enemies, people to compete against.
No matter where we live, we have a common fight, against a common enemy. Our only enemy is the capitalist class, which is carrying out a real war against working people in every country.
May 29, 2023
Here are some strikes that are currently going on or have recently taken place in the U.S. While these strikes remain isolated and separated, they show that some workers are ready to fight today. And any strike always brings the possibility of a wider and more generalized fight that starts in one place and spreads. That is what is needed!
On May 8, UAW Local 12 struck Clarios (previously Johnson Controls), a battery maker in Holland, Ohio, near Toledo. The 500 workers need better pay and limits on forced overtime. The company’s contract offer was rejected by a 98% vote, and a later tentative agreement rejected by 76%.
Clarios got a local judge to limit strikers to groups no more than 5 who must stay 100 feet from plant gates. The company brings in vanloads of scabs, and police protect scabs going in and truckloads of batteries going out.
“We’ve been grinding. We’ve been working. We’ve been making a lot of batteries for this company. And even with inflation and everything going on right now, they’ve been cutting our rates, cutting our wages,” a Clarios striker said.
Clarios has many plants worldwide and makes one-third of the world’s lead-acid batteries, including for GM, Ford, Stellantis, Walmart, AutoZone, DieHard, and many others.
About 160 workers of UAW Local 174 at a Constellium aluminum components plant in Van Buren, Michigan, continue to strike over workplace safety and low pay. The strike began May 17against the Ford supplier.
Constellium, of Paris, France, ranks No. 84 on Automotive News’ list of the top 100 global parts suppliers, with estimated worldwide sales to automakers of $1.9 billion in its 2021 fiscal year.
Day care and group home caregivers of SEIU 1199 NE went on strike May 24 against 6 contractors for the state of Connecticut who care for the intellectually and developmentally handicapped. Over 1,700 striking caregivers demand a pathway to $25/hr minimum wage, affordable healthcare, and a pension plan.
“I’ve been in the long-term care field for 20 years. I make $17.25 an hour,” said Sylvia Grant, a caregiver working with Oak Hill for the past two years. “I cannot afford my health care. I cannot afford to get sick. I should not have to make these choices in my life, while I’m taking care of the lives of other people.”
Four hundred bus drivers at Transdev, a contractor for the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS), are on an unfair labor practice (ULP) strike.
Teamsters Local 683 tried negotiating with Transdev for six months with no results except retaliation and stonewalling. Workers voted unanimously to strike May 17.
“We are not asking for much,” said Adelene Adams, a Transdev bus operator. “We want clean bathrooms, somewhere safe to take breaks, and better compensation.”
May 29, 2023
The “Queen of Rock and Roll”, Tina Turner, died at the age of 83 after a long illness on May 24th. People have mourned the world over, honoring her legacy—her legacy of powerful songs and performances with her powerful voice and quick-stepping, high-kicking moves; her legacy as one of the first celebrities to speak out openly about her years suffering domestic abuse at the hands of her husband of nearly twenty years; and most of all, her legacy of becoming a symbol of resilience.
Born Anna May Bullock, from a farming family in Nutbush, Tennessee, Turner began singing in her church choir. While still in high school, she literally grabbed the microphone and sang her way into Ike Turner’s band, the Kings of Rhythm. With him she had a dynamic run of hit records and lives shows in the 1960s and ‘70s. In these early years, their pop, rock, and R&B included “Proud Mary” and “River Deep, Mountain High”.
But this life came with a heavy price of abuse—that she finally walked away from, in 1976, with 36 cents and a Mobil gasoline card in her pocket. “When I left, I was living a life of death … when I walked out, I didn’t look back,” she said.
After her break with Turner, and several years of struggling, she triumphed in her mid 40s, pulling off what has been called the greatest comeback in music history, with the chart-stopping, “What’s Love Got to Do with It”, followed by “We Don’t Need Another Hero”.
Her career spanned half a century during which she remained an unstoppable singer and stage performer, with her raspy, powerful voice, as described in Rolling Stone magazine, “… coming on like a hurricane”.
As recently as 2018, Turner collaborated on the musical, Tina, which became a hit on Broadway and has toured throughout the country. She said, “This musical is not about my stardom. It is about the journey I took to get there. Each night I want the audiences to take away from the theatre that you can turn poison into medicine.”
With her death, the world loses a music legend, and a role model. But she lives on, through her powerful voice—her singing voice, and how she gave voice to women to stand up to domestic abuse and go forward with their lives.
May 29, 2023
The attacks on women’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion are continuing.
In South Carolina, the state legislature passed, and the governor signed, a bill that would make abortion illegal after six weeks—before most women even know they are pregnant! The state supreme court had previously stopped a law to ban abortion. But one position on the supreme court has now changed to a more conservative judge and there are now no women on the court, so the state’s Republican politicians are bringing back almost the exact same law to again try to take away a woman’s right to choose.
In North Carolina, the state legislature passed a law banning abortion after 12 weeks. When the governor vetoed this law, the legislature voted to override his veto and put this law into effect. This now will affect not only women in North Carolina, but also women in much of the South. Almost all the states in the South have passed laws restricting the right to an abortion. Some women—those who could afford to travel or take time off work—had come to North Carolina to get an abortion. Now, Virginia will be the only state in the South with some semblance of access to abortion.
In Indiana, Dr. Caitlin Bernard was fined and reprimanded by the state. Bernard had performed an abortion for a 10-year-old girl who was a rape victim. That girl, from Ohio, had traveled to Indiana to get an abortion because abortion after 6 weeks is illegal in Ohio. What was Dr. Bernard’s crime? She spoke publicly about this abortion as a way of protesting the laws restricting abortion. For speaking her mind, Bernard was targeted by the state’s attorney general. She was found guilty of violating patient privacy laws—even though she never named the 10-year-old girl!
Ever since the Dobbs decision in June of 2022, where the U.S Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, attacks on abortion rights have been escalating in many states. All these attacks on abortion rights at the local level are being carried out by state legislators, governors, attorney generals, judges. But across the whole country, in state after state, when people have found the way to express themselves, the majority of the population has made it very clear that they support some right of women to choose whether or not to have an abortion. In the November 2022 elections, in every state where some abortion laws or constitutional amendments were on the ballot, people voted to support abortion rights. Every time a poll is taken, the majority of the population clearly supports abortion rights.
But there are many political leaders in this so-called democracy, politicians funded by multi-billionaires, who try to impose a dictatorship over women’s bodies. Most of these politicians are Republicans. But when the Democrats have been in charge, they, too, have put limits on abortion rights—for example, by voting to renew the Hyde Amendment every year, barring federal money for poor women to get abortions.
Women can’t depend on any politicians. Any rights that women have gotten—whether it was the right to vote, the right to an education, or the right to an abortion—the only rights women have, are those that they have organized and fought for. Just like the working class, we can only depend on ourselves, we can only depend on our own forces.