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
Jun 26, 2023
With a great deal of fanfare, President Joe Biden hosted the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He was greeted on the South Lawn of the White House with marching bands, honor guards and a 21- gun salute. There was a White House state dinner with flowers and drapery in the colors and designs of India and the very best food. Modi also addressed a joint session of Congress. The sky was the limit for both leaders in flattering each other and declaring their love of democracy and all things warm and wonderful.
So just what was the occasion? State dinners and decorated moments are few and far between for the Biden administration. Recently, relations with Modi have been strained as Biden has pressured Modi to join with him in his recent public attacks against China. So, what changed?
What is clearly evolving, by the day and week, is the ramping up of the U.S. trade war against China. Remember the balloon incident, portrayed as a spy drama, as if China were attacking the U.S. It was followed by news alerts about China responding aggressively when U.S. ships and planes invaded its air space and waters. In the South China Sea, not near the U.S! There are daily attacks and accusations in the U.S. press against China.
Underlying these attempts to rally public support for anti-China sentiment lie the very real sanctions the U.S. government has imposed against the Chinese giant tech corporation Huawei and the limits of sales of technically advanced semiconductors. The Biden administration, following Trump’s agenda, is openly acting to slow down China’s high-tech sector.
In this circumstance, India has become a pivotal piece in U.S. strategy to control Asian trade. India, with its huge population and a wealth of natural resources, can serve the U.S. as a counterweight against China. While the Modi government may take a distance from U.S. policy, in the end, it is a state power that has always been squarely in capitalism’s camp.
It appears that U.S. imperialism is continuing to pressure the Chinese regime. With roots in a revolution, formed in a massive national struggle against imperialist domination, the Chinese state has an ability to somewhat resist imperialism’s demands, no doubt in order to keep profits generated there for itself. A closer alliance with India, however temporary, gives the U.S. more leverage in Asia, allowing it to pivot away from China.
The U.S. and the major European powers have massive investments in China, India, and throughout Asia. The U.S. military already has almost one half of its forces stationed in Asia. It has the military capacity to cut off trade to and from China, even to cripple China in the world economy.
Are they looking to India, with its massive, impoverished workforce, to be an alternative “workshop of the world?” Will they continue to push U.S. giants like Apple to move more production to India? How far can they push this realignment? Clearly, these will be questions answered into the future.
But another outcome we could see develop, intentional or non- intentional, is war. U.S. imperialism is promoting the most ruinous, murderous, most profitable, most destructive military policies on the planet. Its funding and directing of the Ukrainian resistance for over a year now has put trade war and generalized war on the world agenda by promoting the militarization of Europe and regions beyond.
The political and military jockeying we are witnessing today have been played out twice before on the world stage and led to World Wars I and II.
The only force strong enough to counter this level of war, should it emerge, is revolution. The massive laboring populations of China and India have the potential to resist the blueprint for war in Asia that is unfolding before us. The U.S. working class, in the belly of the beast, can begin the process of joining with the world working class to turn capitalist war into revolution, into fight for a world free of capitalism.
Jun 26, 2023
Residents of mobile home parks across Michigan recently got a rude awakening. The hedge fund Alden Global Capital has been snapping up mobile home parks. “These new people that own the park are like a shadow,” said Arnold Musser, who has lived in a park in West Michigan for twenty years. “The only thing they did almost immediately upon taking over the park, they raised the rent $130 a month. That was an increase of almost a third.”
Alden is known for buying up big city newspapers, like the Chicago Tribune or the Denver Post, then laying off big chunks of their staff in order to squeeze out as much profit as possible. Companies like Alden swoop down on a property—a newspaper, a grocer, a mobile home park—and pick the meat off of its bones in order to turn a profit, leading to the term “vulture capitalist.” With its bad reputation, Alden tried to hide its hand: each of three mobile home parks around the state was bought by a separate “shell” corporation, but each of those corporations is in turn owned by the hedge fund.
For the working people who live in these parks, it means higher rents and worse conditions. A park in Berrien Springs has broken water pipes, leading to water shutoffs and sewage in the homes: "absolutely the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” according to one resident.
Terry Batson was evicted from a home in Lincoln Park near Detroit last month, after living there 17 years. The new Alden management raised his rent from $410 to $625—without telling him. He kept paying $410 a month until eviction court papers arrived in April, for a debt of $1409.83. Given the amount of money, and their quick move to evict, Batson commented to MLive: “I don’t know if it’s a money grab, a property grab or all of it all together."
Jun 26, 2023
Chicago has never had enough housing to accommodate its poor residents. A 2022 survey said that over 65,600 are struggling with homelessness in this city. But just this year, nearly 10,000 new migrants have arrived on buses from the South. The crisis is reaching staggering proportions, as nearly 6,000 of the newly arrived migrants are still desperately seeking shelter.
Existing programs to aid the homeless are deteriorating as the small number of city-provided shelters are already overflowing, and few new ones have been provided.
While government officials claim they are working to provide additional shelters, they most often send newly arrived migrants to poor and working-class communities, hoping that churches and public buildings will share their facilities, and that compassionate individuals will open their homes and apartments to the new arrivals. New migrants are sent to public schools that have been shuttered; or to Park District facilities where existing programs have been either cancelled or relocated.
Residents are upset because city funding for the neighborhoods and social services have already been slashed, and adequate additional funding is not provided for the care of the new migrants being sent.
In response to the crisis, the city’s capitalist politicians do what they do best—point fingers at each other and the communities they supposedly represent. As a result, racial tensions and animosities are being stoked. All this was on display at a recent Chicago City Council meeting where a proposal for additional funding was under discussion. A hostile argument broke out and politicians hurled racially charged taunts and accusations at each other and the communities impacted.
They say the crisis will be solved if working class communities “open their hearts and homes” and make “new sacrifices.” All the while bending over backward to avoid discussion of the real solution: to go after the ever-growing profits and tax breaks of the banks, corporations, and local developers that the politicians serve.
Jun 26, 2023
According to a recent report from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), workers who showed up sick or contagious at work were linked to about 40% of restaurant food poisoning outbreaks between 2017 and 2019, where a cause could be determined. The most common causes of the 800 outbreaks studied were norovirus and salmonella germs.
Eighty-five percent of the surveyed restaurants said they had policies prohibiting sick staff from working. But only 44% of managers said their restaurants paid workers for sick leave. So, the majority of sick workers had to choose between staying home or getting paid.
It’s no wonder that many workers came into work sick!
The CDC estimates that about 48 million people a year are sickened by food poisoning. About 128,000 are hospitalized and 3000 die.
The drive for ever more profits by restaurant companies is causing widespread illness and even death.
Jun 26, 2023
The most recent version of an annual report on the costs of daycare confirms what many workers already know: dramatic increases in the costs are forcing workers, especially women with young kids, to change jobs, with negative consequences.
Fourteen percent of children younger than five lived in families with someone who had to quit, change or refuse a job due to childcare costs in 2021, the year upon which the report is based. This was more common for black and Latino children than for white children; 17% of black children and 16% of Latino children lived in families in such circumstances, compared with 10% of white children.
The number of parents facing job insecurity is on the increase, with 23% more children living in families where no parent had full-time, year-round employment, compared with the year before.
The situation is much worse for women, who are eight times more likely than men to go through negative job consequences due to caregiving responsibilities, according to the Michigan League for Public Policy.
It’s not hard to see why so many are experiencing difficulties, considering childcare costs "have risen 220% since ... 1990, significantly outpacing inflation,” according to the report. Anne Kuhnen, the director of Kids Count, said, "A lot of parents have trouble finding childcare in the first place. Waitlists are long. and it can be difficult for families to find care that is compatible with their work schedules and their commute. Is it accessible by public transport, for example?" The average childcare costs for enrolling a toddler in daycare are over $11,000 a year, says the report.
Don’t believe for a second that the rising cost of daycare means that child care workers are well paid; 94% of child care workers are women, and they make less than those in 98% of all professions. The median national pay for child care workers was less than $14 per hour in 2022. And most child care workers report having difficulty paying for food and utilities in the last month, according to the report.
In the face of all this, the bosses and their media dare talk about a shortage of available workers. Duh!?! In a rational society, daycare would be made available so that workers could go to work, but that’s too much to ask in a system based solely on the goal of profit.
Jun 26, 2023
Several thousand union members, civil rights activists, family members and supporters gathered on June 24th in Detroit to recognize that the struggle against racism continues. UAW activists from Ohio and Indiana joined marchers from Michigan in this 2023 gathering of people determined to stand together for what is right.
The march down Woodward Avenue that ended at Hart Plaza recognized that it was 60 years ago in Detroit that Martin Luther King, Jr. first delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. When key sections of that speech were played along the march route, participants often shook their head, commenting that so much more remains to be won.
Conversations in this largely working-class crowd raised concern that society is going backwards. Some spoke of the need to fight for the younger generation to have a future. Far from being focused only on a moment in history, a part of this UAW crowd seemed to be prepared for a larger fight in 2023.
Jun 26, 2023
Maryland officials are deciding whether to let the Potomac Edison electric company charge customers in western and central Maryland an additional 357 million dollars through the end of the decade. The charge is the fee for Potomac Edison to get out of its high-priced contract with AES Warrior Run, which runs one of Maryland’s last coal-fired power plants.
The Warrior Run plant has been super-expensive (not to mention polluting) since it was first built three decades ago. At the time, AES said it would save customers 876 million dollars. But Potomac Edison said the coal-sourced power has cost customers over one billion dollars more than other forms of electricity.
So why did Potomac Edison sign its multi-billion dollar contract with AES three decades ago? Because Maryland officials said to! Citing a 1978 federal law, Maryland officials provided 73 million dollars of tax-exempt bonds for AES to build the plant. They passed a tax break for power companies using coal mined in Maryland, which cost taxpayers up to 14 million dollars a year. The city of Cumberland spent 10 million dollars for new water and sewer lines for the plant.
The kicker? Two big bosses of AES, who own more than a billion dollars of stock in the company, were among the federal officials behind the 1978 law—which they claimed would promote renewable energy and fight big business!
There’s nothing new under the sun, especially in this system where energy is for profit.
Jun 26, 2023
Film: Take Care of Maya
This film recounts how a trip to the emergency room resulted in Maya, a ten year old girl, being separated from her parents by a hospital and child protection services. When her parents took her to Johns Hopkins emergency in Florida, the hospital refused to listen to the parents. They instead brought in the medical director of a privatized child protection service, who, after 10 minutes, decided the parents were abusing Maya, immediately instigated proceedings against the parents, and suspended parental rights.
The family never gave up, though. Today Maya is back with her family, and a court case, after years of delays, is finally scheduled for this coming September.
In the publicity from the fight, many other families came forward with their stories, and also recounted devastating forced family separations and even jail time. These privatized family agencies say that they will save money for the hospitals and the state, and make a profit for their investors, when in reality they cut corners and do more damage than good.
Book: Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, 2022
Inspired by true events, this novel tells the story of widespread experimental birth control and forced sterilization in the 1960s and 1970s from the point of view of a young black nurse and two young girls in her charge. The young woman thinks she is providing a needed service to poor black women, giving them control over their bodies and their reproduction. She comes to realize these federally funded clinics are sterilizing women and girls against their will and giving them birth control that caused cancer in lab animals. Even girls who were not sexually active, as young as 11, were sterilized.
These federal clinics forced their experimental services on women and girls who were on “aid,” that is, who were poor, often illiterate, mostly black or Latina. The story takes place in Montgomery, Alabama, the same area where the horrific Tuskegee syphilis experiments were conducted on black men for 40 years. At the end of the book, in 2016, she revisits the issues and people and reveals that forced sterilizations continue even today.
Jun 26, 2023
On June 14, the union that represents 22,000 dockworkers on the West Coast reached a tentative deal with port operators set to last for six years. In no way is this deal a victory for the workers.
The new agreement does not stop the erosion of jobs and working conditions. These workers are increasingly being squeezed. Instead of hiring more dockworkers who are union, the companies pressure workers to work more hours and work through the night and other demands. The next six years under this new agreement promise to be more of the same, if not worse.
Neither does the new agreement stop the erosion of workers’ living standards. Workers at the docks haven’t had a raise in years. The new agreement includes a 32% pay increase spread over six years, which doesn’t come close to making up for how much the workers have lost to inflation.
Neither does the new agreement touch the horrible two-tier system of pay and benefits. In the first tier are the so-called Class A longshoremen, who routinely make $100,000 per year for operating heavy machinery under sometimes dangerous conditions. Making up the second tier are the “casual” dockworkers. These casuals earn $32 per hour. But they don’t get any health or retirement benefits. And they are not guaranteed any shifts. So, they are forced to survive without a predictable income, hoping that eventually they will be promoted to the first tier. The casuals don’t even belong to the union and can’t vote on the very contract that sets the terms of their employment.
The companies also advertised a 70 million dollar “hero” bonus for working through the pandemic, which turns out to be only a few thousand dollars when divided by the 22,000 workers. During the pandemic, dozens of dockworkers died and thousands were sickened keeping the ports open. What the companies are offering is much less than one percent of the profit bonanza the shipping companies made in one year during the pandemic, as they hiked prices to the sky and price-gouged with impunity.
The shipping companies never could have imposed such a horrible deal without the close cooperation and help of the U.S. government. Just look at how government officials pressured the union officials. Long before negotiations started, the Biden administration openly bragged that it had the authority to break any strike that it said would “cripple the economy.”
As negotiations dragged on for more than a year, the Pacific Maritime Association, the mouthpiece for the port and shipping companies, issued an open letter calling on the Biden administration to intervene and end the deadlock. So, Biden immediately dispatched acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su to the bargaining table. Two days later there was an agreement. Obviously, Su let the ILWU negotiators know that the Biden administration would follow through on its threats to make any strike action illegal, just like it had done last year against the railroad workers, imposing the bosses’ demands on the workers.
In fact, the Biden administration is no different than any other presidential administration. They all support the capitalists against the workers. This is nothing new.
Workers have to find an answer to this. Obviously, the dockworkers are at the center of world trade. Trillions of dollars in goods pass through their hands every year. And that’s an important bargaining chip that the workers hold. But the dockworkers cannot fight alone and win. Because it also means taking on the government. To do that, the workers have to be able to spread the fight from workplace to workplace. They have to turn their individual fight into a broader fight, a real social explosion. That’s what both the bosses and the government fear the most, because it’s what hits them where they hurt—their pocketbook. It’s the only way to win.
Jun 26, 2023
On June 18, American golfer Wyndham Clark won the 2023 U.S. Open, a golf tournament held this year at the Los Angeles Country Club.
The Los Angeles Country Club serves the ultra-rich. From its foundation in 1897, the Los Angeles Country Club limited its membership to Christian white males. It only admitted its first Black person in 1991. The initiation fees for a club member can reach up to $500,000, and annual dues to $30,000. But membership isn’t just a question of money. Only people who are nominated by other members can apply for membership. That is, they have to be socially and economically connected.
The club is enormous: 313 acres of painstakingly manicured greenery, that includes two entire 18-hole golf courses. And it’s all conveniently located right in the middle of Los Angeles. But because it is hidden behind high walls, most working people, who pass it every day, don’t know what’s behind those walls, the opulence, wealth, and privilege.
Government officials have bent over backwards for this country club. Since the land alone is estimated to be worth 9 billion dollars, the country club should be paying 60 to 90 million dollars per year in property taxes. Of course, since the tax laws are written to favor the rich, it pays only about $300,000 per year.
The Country Club operates under rules of strict secrecy. The members are forbidden to carry their smartphones into the club, to discuss outside of the club or record what they see, say, and hear in the club, or to comment about other club members. And no one besides a few rich people have ever stepped foot inside, not even most of the highest-ranking golf professionals.
Who can be surprised that the super-rich maintain their own secret, shady club where they can carry out all their secret shady deals away from public view—even if it is right in the middle of the U.S. city with the highest homeless population!
Jun 26, 2023
This article is translated from the June 23 issue #2864 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
A boat carrying hundreds of people trying to reach Europe sank off the coast of Greece on June 13. How many children, women, and men died? As many as 500 or 600, as photos of the overloaded boat suggest?
Most revolting is that everyone on board could have been saved. The boat had been spotted by the European Union’s Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex. The Greek coast guard was on the scene. Did they try to force the boat back onto the high seas, as survivors accuse them of doing? It’s possible, because the criminal policy of the European Union encourages that kind of endangerment.
We will never know the names of all the missing. But one thing is certain: among the victims, there are no gilded sons or trophy wives of millionaires or oil barons. The rich possess all the required documents and the resources to take a plane to travel wherever they want.
The migrants on this ship were destined to be part of the working class. They were all forced to find a way to earn their bread through their labor to make a future for their children. Because they could no longer do this in their home countries, they ended up on this floating coffin. It’s what any worker here would do in the same situation.
Escaping poverty is not a crime! Freedom of movement should be a basic right for every human being. This must be said loud and clear in opposition to the rulers of the European Union, who wage a real war against migrants. And we have to shout it in opposition to all the demagogues who make immigration a scapegoat.
No law in any country in this world guarantees women and men without capital the right to earn a living with dignity. The dominant law is the law of the capitalist jungle, which leaves the exploited with no choice but to struggle for the right to live. This is what we must fight.
Workers can not protect themselves by walling themselves off from other, poorer workers. The challenge is to fight together against the misery which exploitation and imperialism create.
Fighting the capitalist class—which thrives by impoverishing the crushing majority of humankind—can only happen when the exploited revolt here, in Africa, in the Middle East, and elsewhere, against all the barbarism capitalism brings.
This is not an abstract vision. Wherever there are workers, there is resistance and attempts at organization and struggle. Around the world, major revolts flare up, capable of overthrowing the most dictatorial regimes. And there are ceaseless local and partial struggles by workers. No one resigns themselves to misery forever.
Whether these struggles are fought in the ports of Dakar or Abidjan, in mines in Congo or South Africa, or in factories in Turkey or France, everywhere we see the same kinds of demands over wages and working conditions. All over the world, labor is subjected to the same corporate greed, to the arbitrariness of the market, and to the unpredictability of economic warfare.
And often we share the same exploiters, because big business knows no borders. It operates on a global scale. Multinationals in automobile, oil, agribusiness, construction, surveillance, and so on are so many examples of brothers or cousins operated by the same company—one on the African continent, one on the European continent.
Here in France [and in the U.S.], any big strike involves workers who came from all over the world. Some of the landmark struggles in recent years, like strikes by cleaning staff at major hotels, have been led by migrant workers.
Whatever our origin, culture, nationality, or beliefs, whatever country where we reside, we are all bound by the same chain: big capital which exploits us, destroys the planet, and stirs up wars. The only way to break this chain is to spread the awareness that we belong to the same side and that we must unite against the capitalist class and its political lackeys.
Let us never forget that our only enemy is the big bourgeoisie which dominates the world.
Unite against politicians who use immigration to create a diversion and hide their servility toward the richest! Unite against employers eager to find hands to exploit! Unite to defend our interests as workers!
Jun 26, 2023
All of the media were filled with the daily drama of the story of the Titan submersible lost in the sea near the sunken remains of the Titanic. The media made every effort to keep the public glued to their TVs, phones and computers with gripping stories of the lives of the billionaire adventurers, what signs might provide the slightest indication of their whereabouts, and even a running account of how long their oxygen supplies might last them.
Four days before the Titan lost contact, the ship Adriana, estimated to be carrying 400 to 750 migrants, sank off the coast of Greece. In the first days, it became clear there were about 100 known survivors of the Adriana, and a similar number of known dead. Little was mentioned of the others who perished in the hull of the ship, including apparently all of the women and children.
Once the story of the Titan’s possible sinking broke, barely a word was heard about the Adriana. To anyone who knew of the sinking of the migrant ship, the silence was deafening.
What was even worse than the disparity in the amount of publicity the two stories got was the contrasting amounts of resources devoted by governments around the world toward saving the victims of the two disasters or finding their ships’ remains.
To find the Titan submersible, the U.S. Coast Guard sent five ships. Private ships also went to the scene, including a Bahamian research ship. The U.S. military provided six planes to search the ocean by air, and Canada provided aircraft with sound-sensing equipment to search a large area of the ocean as well.
Yet, the migrant ship Adriana, carrying refugees escaping difficult circumstances from places like Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Palestine, could not get help from the Greek Coast Guard, or most of the other ships in the area. The Coast Guard was aware of the ship’s presence well in advance of it sinking, yet apparently did little to rescue those who perished.
It’s not hard to see, from the contrasting responses to the sinking of the two ships, the difference in the values capitalist society places on the lives of a few billionaires seeking adventure over those of hundreds of refugees fleeing from difficult economic and political circumstances looking for a better life.
Jun 26, 2023
Daniel Ellsberg, who died on June 16, was someone who helped reveal some of the truth about the Vietnam war and the lies told by the U.S. government.
Ellsberg first worked for the RAND Corporation as a military analyst. In 1964, he joined the U.S. government as an adviser to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara as the U.S. was sending more and more troops to Vietnam. At this time, Ellsberg was known as a “Cold Warrior” who supported the U.S. government policy as it was escalating the war.
Then the government sent Ellsberg to Vietnam to evaluate the U.S. government’s policies toward the Vietnamese population in what were called “civilian pacification” programs.
Ellsberg accompanied U.S. troops on combat patrols in the villages and countryside. There Ellsberg saw the reality of the war. The Vietnamese population, whom the U.S. government claimed they were fighting for, did not want U.S. troops in their country. Ellsberg saw the civilians killed and the villages burned.
After World War II, the Vietnamese population had first fought for independence from the French government, who claimed Vietnam as their colony. After the Vietnamese drove out the French troops who occupied their country, the U.S. government stepped in, first sending “advisers” and then more and more soldiers. Ellsberg saw that many Vietnamese, North and South, were fighting to liberate their country from the U.S. occupiers.
When Ellsberg returned to Washington, he wrote reports that were more critical of the war, but they went nowhere. He was assigned with other people to help write a history and analysis of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, which became known as the “Pentagon Papers.” This analysis showed clearly how the U.S. government was lying to the U.S. population about the war.
Ellsberg left the government and began to openly speak out against the war and join antiwar protests. He copied the 7,000 pages of the “Pentagon Papers” and tried to work within the system to expose the lies. Ellsberg went to some U.S. senators, including William Fulbright and George McGovern, who were considered to be antiwar. He wanted them to expose the “Pentagon Papers” in Congressional hearings, but they refused.
So Ellsberg gave the “Pentagon Papers” to the New York Times and then to the Washington Post, which began to publish them. The government tried to stop the papers, but the Supreme Court upheld the newspapers’ right to publish them. The government also came after Ellsberg himself. He was charged with “espionage” and other crimes that called for 115 years in prison. But, in the end, the judge threw out the case because of government misconduct that included burglary and wiretapping against Ellsberg, and the attempted bribery of the judge.
Ellsberg continued to be active the rest of his life. He continued to speak at rallies against the Vietnam war and he spoke against nuclear weapons. He was arrested at a demonstration outside the Pentagon. Later, he denounced the U.S. military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, other wars that were based on lies told by the U.S. government.
What Ellsberg helped reveal in the “Pentagon Papers” was that the U.S. government will tell any lie when it is ready to go to any war. In the final months of his life, when Ellsberg knew he was dying, he warned about the threat of the U.S. going to war against China over Taiwan.
Today, with the U.S. making threats of war against China, we will do well to remember what the “Pentagon Papers” showed us.
Jun 26, 2023
In 2021, Daniel Ellsberg was concerned over the U.S. threats against China over Taiwan. So, he revealed another classified government document that had never been published, about U.S. plans for nuclear war against China in 1958.
The Chinese Revolution in 1949 was a popular revolution that threw out the regime of Chiang Kai-Shek, a regime that was supported by the U.S. government but was hated by the Chinese population. After the revolution, the capitalists of the U.S. and other countries were no longer able to dominate the Chinese economy as they had for decades.
In 1958, fighting flared up again between the new Chinese government and Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces, who had retreated to the island of Taiwan and taken it over. The U.S. government, supporting Chiang Kai-Shek, drew up a plan to attack China with nuclear weapons. An attack against China would have risked drawing in the Soviet Union, which had developed its own nuclear weapons.
The U.S. was preparing to risk a nuclear holocaust, which would have killed millions of people. War was averted when the Chinese government withdrew its forces. The U.S. government has always kept quiet about how close it was to starting a nuclear war.
Jun 26, 2023
This article is translated from the June 23 issue #2864 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Unusually violent fighting broke out after the Israeli army entered the city of Jenin in Israel-Palestine’s northern West Bank on June 19th. Six people were killed including a 15-year-old boy, and more than 90 Palestinians were wounded.
Military operations happen almost daily in the West Bank. But this is the first time since the end of the second Intifada in the early 2000s that an Israeli helicopter has fired missiles at a densely populated residential area—near a Palestinian camp where more than 23,000 people live.
The city of Jenin is located in a so-called autonomous zone, which is said to be administered by the Palestinian Authority set up after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. In reality, the Israeli army does what it wants, more and more.
The crackdown on Palestinians has escalated since Israel’s coalition government of ultra-nationalist and religious far-right parties took power in December. The leader of the Religious Zionist Party, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, called on the army to carry out a “widespread campaign” in the West Bank. This policy fueled the escalation of violence that has killed at least 164 Palestinians and 21 Israelis so far this year.
Added to the army’s violence is the building of new Jewish-only settlements, which the government plans to accelerate. Smotrich was given full powers on June 18 to plan more settlements. He intends to double the number of settlers in the West Bank, currently 700,000, including 229,000 in East Jerusalem. According to a representative of Israeli NGO Peace Now, these plans will make it as easy to build settler housing in the West Bank as in Israeli cities like Tel Aviv and Haifa.
Meanwhile, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu began “reforming” the judicial system, as he promised his far-right allies he would do. This involves strengthening of legislative power at the expense of Israel’s supreme court, which has stood up to religious movements several times when they tried to extend their control over everyday life.
Since January, tens of thousands of opponents of this reform have been demonstrating every Saturday. They rightly denounce the evolution toward an increasingly authoritarian regime shaped by the most reactionary groups. Faced with a mobilization which has broad support, including within the state apparatus and the army, Netanyahu was forced to declare a “pause” at the end of March. On June 18, under pressure from his far-right allies, he just announced he now will re-introduce his bill.
In order to be able to pose as the guarantor of the security of the Israelis, Netanyahu misses no opportunity to raise tensions with Palestinians. No doubt this helps explain the Israeli army’s violence in recent days.
This policy can only fuel an ever more deadly escalation. It leads the Israelis themselves into a dead end. “Don’t let Ben-Gvir [far-right Israeli National Security Minister] get away with murder in Arab society,” a placard held by an Israeli protester read. This perspective shows the hope of a future where Jews and Palestinians live in peace on the same territory.
Jun 26, 2023
The White House announced in mid-June that the U.S. will provide Ukraine with shells made of the radioactive metal called depleted uranium, to launch from the M1A1 Abrams tanks the U.S. will give Ukraine. The government says these missiles can penetrate targets deeper than other shells because the uranium is very dense—almost twice as dense as lead, and two and a half times as dense as steel—so supposedly this will help the Ukrainians fight the Russian army.
What they don’t say is that when these shells blow up they spread very toxic dust into the air and ground, which poses a major health hazard effectively forever. Uranium stays radioactive for billions of years, even the “depleted” kind. The U.S. has used depleted uranium munitions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo. Medical personnel and parents in Fallujah, Iraq, especially have spoken out for decades about the birth defects and other health problems they attribute in part to depleted uranium dust.
Companies like Northrop Grumman have made a lot of money providing depleted uranium missiles to the military. Now the U.S. is shopping for a supplier in Poland closer to Ukraine and willing to have its factory workers handle the toxic metal for lower pay.
This has a lot to do with profits, but nothing to do with helping Ukrainians. To the contrary, it will poison them forever.
Jun 26, 2023
Workers’ protests in China are sometimes small-scale, but more of them have happened so far in 2023 than in 2022. This is according to the China Labor Bulletin (CLB), a labor advocacy group based out of Hong Kong. They report at least 130 factory strikes, more than triple the number in the whole of 2022.
Information is difficult to obtain, so this is only one small window into what may be happening. With the worsening of political relations between the U.S. and China, new orders in factories have gone down. Some factory owners have been resorting to not paying workers. Most of these strikes have been over money owed to workers and not paid.
Also, since 2008, "more factories hired temp workers or agency workers—they found a lot of different ways to evade responsibility," according to a researcher at CLB.
These small protests have sometimes resulted in small wins. Organizers are punished, but the protests continue.
So far, these small fights have not been connected to any broader workers’ movement, but they are an encouraging sign for the working class.
Jun 26, 2023
This article is translated from the June 16 issue #2863 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) held the largest airborne maneuvers in its history from June 12 to 23 over Germany and Central Europe, close to Russia. NATO’s Air Defender exercises brought together 10,000 soldiers and 250 warplanes from 25 NATO members and partner countries, including Japan and Sweden.
Senior NATO officials say they are training these militaries to deal with attacks by missiles and drones, to protect their cities, ports, and airports, and to strengthen their ability to work together. Clearly, it is a question of the air forces of these 25 countries learning to better coordinate and fight side by side—like fresh troops integrated into a regiment and transformed into a coherent collective fighting force. This is what the top brass calls “providing operational and tactical training” to the air forces of these 25 countries. So they can unite in the context of a future generalized conflict. In other words, a world war.
Even while actively preparing for world war, these professionals in the art of mass murder would like to deceive people. The head of the German Air Force claims these huge exercises are not aimed at anyone in particular and that NATO is “a defensive alliance.”
Only the incurably naïve will believe this. The American ambassador to Germany—not so naïve—let it be known that these maneuvers are intended "to send a message, in particular to Russia."
You can imagine, their message is also intended for China.
Jun 26, 2023
This article is translated from the June 16 issue #2863 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
On the International Day Against Child Labor, June 12, the International Labor Organization stated that 160 million girls and boys aged 5 to 17 are exploited around the world. This is 8.4 million more child workers than four years ago.
In this regard, the United Nations children’s fund UNICEF wrote, “These working children are everywhere, but invisible: servants in the houses, behind the walls of the workshops, hidden in the plantations. The worst forms of child labor include the use of children as slaves, prostitution, the sale of drugs, crime or recruitment as soldiers in conflict situations or for other dangerous work.”
This description is not just valid for poor countries where imperialist domination has created the conditions for fierce exploitation. It also applies to the imperialist countries themselves, and particularly to the United States.
The Department of Labor reports a 69% increase in child labor in the U.S. since 2018. A survey last February described tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who entered the U.S. illegally and have no other choice than to work on farms or for a number of subcontractors at large industrial groups in some 20 states.
In agriculture, 30,000 children do piecework until their physical abilities are exhausted. We are a long way away from the recurring Hollywood character of the little newspaper delivery boy making his rounds by bicycle before going to school.
The only limit to exploitation is the resistance of workers. Capitalism always revives and recreates child labor, regardless that its laws forbade it during periods of prosperity or under the pressure of workers’ struggles.
But exploitation of children does not only produce shameless profits, daily misfortunes, and UNICEF reports. It also generates revolts and revolutionaries like Victor Hugo’s Gavroche in Les Misérables—ready to mount the barricades at the first call.
Jun 26, 2023
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters during the week of June 18, 2023.
Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken is visiting China this week, supposedly seeking to “moderate” the conflict that has grown up between the U.S. and China before it turns into open war.
But conflict in this capitalist world will not be overcome by a diplomat’s soothing speeches.
For decades, China was the “workshop of the world,” providing low-paid labor that produced clothes, electronic games, TV sets and so on for foreign investors, a large share of which were U.S. companies. The enormous value produced in Chinese factories went into the banks of Western companies, especially those in the U.S.
But China’s history, resting on its 1949 national revolution, allowed it to construct its own state in a more independent fashion than normal in formerly colonized countries. Providing labor for companies like Apple, China developed its own technology base. The Chinese state began to pour money into developing heavy industry, as well as aeronautics and weapons industries. And the Chinese state kept control of the banking system.
By 2010, China had become the second biggest economic power in the world. And its population—almost one and a half billion people—provided not only labor, but increasingly an internal market.
Certainly, the U.S. was much more powerful, and—what is most significant—its economy, which remained much bigger, was able to pour three times as much money into the military. Nonetheless, China stood as a significant new power in the world.
This did not mean that China could really compete with the U.S. at every economic level. Nor did it mean that U.S. imperialism was blocked by China. But it did mean that the U.S. did not have a free hand in Asia. And Asia had become the focus for American corporate investments.
As U.S. investment shifted to Asia, Asia also became the focus of U.S. diplomatic and military strategy. This put China in U.S. military cross-hairs. Today, well over half of all U.S. armed forces are in Asia. U.S. warships patrol in the seas close to China. U.S. planes run surveillance.
Remember all the talk about a Chinese spy balloon? Well, with bases set up in countries around the East China Sea, the U.S. could cut off all overseas Chinese trade if it so desires.
Regardless of what announcements come out of Blinken’s trip to China, conflict between the U.S. and China is not going away. It is the product of the capitalist world, divided into nation states, and dominated by imperialism—specifically, by U.S. imperialism.
Will those conflicts lead to war? The interdependence between the U.S. and Chinese economies today could make that seem unlikely. But such linking of economies never prevented war from breaking out before when the capitalists found their economy on the ropes.
Today, war, even a global war, is much more likely because capitalism has been unable for almost half a century to extricate itself from an economic crisis that eats into its profit.
The answer to that crisis—the only one that capitalism has ever found to give—is that the stronger try to take more from the weaker. In other words, the big imperialist countries drain wealth from the rest of the world. But, twice before, when that was not enough, the big imperialist powers took the world to war on a global scale.
The only thing that can prevent war is a revolution to eliminate the capitalist system that produces war. The social force that can carry out that revolution exists. The working class in China, just as in the U.S., not only has the capacity to throw out capitalism, it has the capacity, when linked to workers around the world, to build a new society, a collective one that will find the way to answer the needs of all humanity.
The workers in China have a recent history of struggles, massive and determined struggles. Despite a state that is repressive, they organized themselves. They can serve as a beacon for workers everywhere—in underdeveloped countries, just as in the biggest imperialist countries. Here first of all.
Jun 26, 2023
Here are some strikes that are currently going on in the U.S. These strikes may remain isolated today. But others could join them.
Spirit Aerosystems workers, members of IAM Local 839, went on strike Saturday, June 24. They build 70 percent of the fuselages for the Boeing 737.
Many of the 6000 members gathered in a Wichita arena on June 21 to vote on the company’s contract proposal. Workers made paper airplanes from the proposal and sailed them all around the place. The NO vote was 79 percent. Then 85 percent voted to strike. “It was very loud, my ears were still ringing, they’re ringing today from it. It was just awesome,” said a worker.
Wages and healthcare are the biggest issues. Regarding the company’s health plan, a worker said, “You can put feathers on a dog, but that doesn’t make it a chicken. They can do a lot better.”
Nurses and clinicians of AFT Local 5905 struck three Providence Health locations in Portland, Oregon, starting on June 19. The 1,800 workers demand a livable wage, and most urgently an end to punishing work overloads that create unsafe conditions for patients and caregivers alike. The strike was scheduled to last for 5 days as a trial run, to see if they get Providence’s attention.
The 200 members of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 390G went out on strike at International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF) in Memphis, Tennessee, June 4.
The workers produce soy protein used by companies such as Nestle, Kellogg, and Abbott, some of the wealthiest food corporations. But the IFF management demands that workers give up overtime pay for certain hours, accept reduced health benefits, and allow the company to reduce healthcare coverage even more at any time during the contract.
On May 2, the 16,000 writers for entertainment shows of networks, streaming services, and movies went on strike for a living wage, and for better compensation when their work is used over and over in re-runs of shows.
Their strike is in its seventh week, against the powerful association of networks and show producers. The strikers’ website including writers’ stories is wgacontract2023.org.
Jun 26, 2023
The city council of Hamtramck, Michigan banned Pride flags—rainbow flags celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer people, or LGBTQ—from city property. The city council and the mayor of Hamtramck are all men and all Muslim.
Make no mistake, Hamtramck is not alone in its attack on the LGBTQ community. This year alone has seen over 540 anti-LGBQT bills introduced in state legislatures—a record high. Over 220 bills specifically target transgender and non-binary people, also a record number. Forty-five anti-LGBTQ laws have been enacted so far this year. It’s not just conservative Muslim politicians.
These attacks against LGBTQ people are an attempt to enforce rigid gender roles and the hatred and oppression of women in this society. LGBTQ people’s existence calls into question the whole notion of rigid gender roles. This is threatening enough to male-domination to create the reaction we are seeing today.
The enforcement of male domination can be seen everywhere in this society, starting with attacks on women’s bodies: domestic violence, rape, taking away the ability to decide to end a pregnancy. The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant group in the United States, just barred women from becoming pastors and voted overwhelmingly to expel two congregations with women pastors. Their rationale is that women cannot have authority over men! It’s not only Southern Baptists; Roman Catholics, Mormons, and the Orthodox Church also forbid women from being ordained.
In fact, this enforcement of strict gender roles and suppression of women is an inherent part of capitalist rule. They use this division to control women and exploit the entire working class.
Women, we are told, are supposed to get married, have children, take care of the housework and children, care for their elderly parents and so on. Men are supposed to go to work and bring home enough money to live on.
The reality is that since the very beginning of capitalism, women and children have worked in factories—the textile mills in Manchester, England, for example. Working class women have had to go to work precisely because families need two incomes. This is more true today with inflation. Women are still expected to take care of everyone, and the house, and punch the time clock.
Reactionary forces want to keep women down. But the working class has means to put women on an equal footing with men.
Jun 26, 2023
The federal standardized test known as the nation’s report card, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), was administered to 8,700 13-year-old students from October to December last year. The results are characterized as “plunging”—average math scores fell by nine points between 2020 and 2023, and are at their lowest levels since 1990. And average reading scores fell by four points and are at their lowest since 2004.
Quoting averages doesn’t even tell the complete story. There were much larger losses in the scores of students from low-income areas.
We know that most children experienced academic struggles during the pandemic. But children in more prosperous areas were not hit as hard. They were able to have tutors and learning pods during the height of the pandemic. They were returned to in-person school earlier because their wealthier school districts had the resources to make in-person schooling safe.
But kids in poorer and working class areas were kept in remote learning longer, often without access to the internet, or laptops, or anyone to be able to work with them academically—because their parents were the essential workers. And so the steeper losses in test scores reflect this disparity.
But the disparity in test scores did not start with the pandemic. Long before the pandemic—going back over a hundred years, as long as standardized tests have been administered, there have been disparities in test scores: the main dividing line between who scores higher and who scores lower on standardized tests, has always been social class.
Test scores are just a symptom of the real problem. This richest country in the world is divided into social classes, where all institutions are unequal and inequitable. This educational system deprives the vast majority of children from having access to a high quality education that would allow them to be able to perform well on academic tests in the first place.
It has been proven, time and time again, what children need in order to develop intellectually and socially. Vast financial resources would have to be devoted to all school districts throughout the country. For starters.
And despite all the attempts by education reformers and teachers and parents to secure more funding, this system is incapable of actually releasing and devoting the vast amount of resources needed to provide the best education to all children. Finally, to level the playing field, the working class will have to take on this class system of capitalism itself.