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
Nov 27, 2023
A recent opinion poll by the New York Times and Sienna College found that 80% of the American public say the economy is “fair to poor.” Only two percent say the economy is “excellent.” Other opinion polls show the same thing, if not worse.
This is hardly a surprise. Economic instability stalks the working population. Today, a staggering two-thirds of households are forced to live paycheck to paycheck. Their income is often not even enough to pay for ordinary expenses. So, people resort to their credit cards to bridge the gap, leaving them increasingly buried in debt.
In this, the richest economy in the world, tens of millions of people are living on the knife’s edge, not knowing from week to week if they will have enough money to buy food or medicine, not to speak of paying for housing and to cover the car note.
Every day, these worsening conditions push more people over the edge, leading to worsening homelessness, hunger, and “deaths of despair,” that is, people dying from suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol abuse.
These awful economic conditions are not due to an attack or invasion by an outside power or because all the jobs are supposedly going to Mexico or China, as is often said in the news media and repeated endlessly by our “beloved” experts and officials. No, these worsening conditions are due to a real class war that the capitalist class RIGHT HERE is waging against the working class. This war has given the capitalist class ever-higher corporate profits, which have, in turn, rewarded the capitalist class with ever-greater wealth. Just in the last year, the 400 richest billionaires in the U.S. increased their wealth by 500 billion dollars, according to Forbes magazine.
On the one hand, employers have continually attacked their own workforces, greatly reducing what they pay workers by replacing full-time jobs with full benefits with part-time and temporary jobs. At the same time, employers have been forcing fewer workers to do more work, often through chronic short-staffing. Employers have even been able to shift their ongoing expenses onto many of their employees by turning them into gig workers or “independent contractors.” Altogether, this means that the number of workers without a steady income has more than doubled since the 1970s.
Big companies have also been robbing workers through inflation—that is, by charging ever higher prices, especially for basic necessities such as food, shelter, transportation, health care, etc. Politicians, government officials, and economists may brag that they have brought inflation down. But what they don’t say is that the prices of basic necessities have increased many times faster than the “official” inflation rate, thus squeezing workers from all sides.
Of course, when the New York Times-Sienna opinion poll came out, it made news not because of what the poll revealed about what people thought about this “wonderful” capitalist economy. That issue was completely ignored. Instead, all the commentary revolved around what it might mean for the upcoming presidential election, especially the contest between the Republicans and Democrats for control of the presidency and Congress next year.
But for working people, the biggest problem is not which of the two big parties of the ruling class will gain seats. Because no matter who is in office, the class war of the capitalist class to gain ever more wealth and power at our expense will continue.
For workers, the biggest question is how we can mobilize our power to defend our own interests through our own struggle and organization.
Nov 27, 2023
A massive fire on November 11 caused a section of Interstate 10, one of the busiest freeways in Los Angeles, to be shut down. For nine days, traffic in the streets around the freeway was jammed, making people’s already long commute even longer and increasing the noise and pollution in the crowded working-class neighborhoods around the freeway.
But this fire did something else: it revealed a shady side of everyday life in capitalist society.
Inspectors for the California Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans, were familiar with the lot UNDER the freeway, where the fire began. For years, they had been warning their higher-ups that piles of wooden pallets and hand sanitizers stored in the lot under the freeway posed a fire risk. But the higher-ups did nothing.
Caltrans was leasing this underpass lot to a company called Apex Development, which in turn was sub-leasing it to about a dozen small, makeshift businesses. The tenants—auto mechanics, recyclers, and distributors of garment shop supplies and pallets—are mostly immigrants trying to make ends meet. In the space under the freeway, they were neighbors with homeless people who camped there.
Unable to afford insurance, these tenants now have lost everything they had. But this dark underside of wealthy Los Angeles was a money maker for Apex and Caltrans. Apex was collecting $23,500 a month in rent from the struggling tenants, more than three times the amount it paid Caltrans for the lease. And Caltrans collects millions of dollars by leasing more than 600 lots under roads in California.
Contrary to what state officials claim, that money is obviously not used to improve—or even ensure the safety of—the state’s aging, overloaded freeway system, as this fire showed. Instead, politicians who run the state hand over the money they collect to big companies through tax breaks, subsidies and sweetheart deals.
Nov 27, 2023
At least 46 California hospitals have shut down or indefinitely suspended their labor and delivery services since 2012. This number includes seven hospitals that closed entirely. And these closures are accelerating. Twenty-seven maternity ward and hospital closures have occurred in the last three years. Twelve counties, mostly rural, have only one or not even a single hospital left to deliver babies.
Hospital administrators and state officials cite many reasons for these closures: dropping birth rates, high costs, and labor shortages. These excuses are just hogwash.
Birth rates might have dropped, but demand for the remaining few maternity wards has increased. Particularly in low-income working-class regions, the maternity wards are overloaded with pregnant women seeking healthcare, guidance, and help. In Imperial County, located in an agricultural region on the California-Mexico border, close to 23% of its population, mostly farm workers, live under the poverty line. One hospital, El Centro, the only one left to deliver the approximately 2,500 babies each year, is so crowded that this region’s medical centers direct labor and delivery patients to hospitals one or two hours away by car.
Los Angeles County also lost most of its maternity wards to the closures. In this vast, very rich, populous city, the maternity wards of the remaining hospitals are overcrowded.
As for high costs and labor shortages, as the University of Minnesota’s Caitlin Carroll, who specializes in female healthcare, explains, “Obstetrics units are often unprofitable for hospitals to operate. The cost of running an obstetric unit is quite high. Obstetric units have to be ready to take care of a patient 24 hours a day; they need clinical staff with specialized skills, they need specialized equipment, they need dedicated space for labor and delivery. All of that costs money.”
But we are living under capitalism that treats hospitals not as healthcare organizations serving the public but as businesses generating profit. According to the rich owners of this system, for their benefit, each unit must be profitable on its own; if not, this or that unit must be shut down.
As a result of championing such a narrow mindset, the U.S. ranks worst in maternal care and death among the 11 richest countries of the world. According to the State of California’s records, pregnancy-related deaths reached a 10-year high in 2020. The state estimated nearly 60% of maternal deaths were preventable.
Yes, the U.S. is the richest and the most technologically advanced capitalist country in the world. But, at the same time, it is the cruelest against its working class.
Nov 27, 2023
Eight-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital (MLK) may run out of money to pay its bills as soon as 2024 and may be shut down. Although Los Angeles County has 160 hospitals, MLK is one of the two hospitals left in South Los Angeles, serving close to two million, mostly low-income people. Because of such a shortage of hospitals and clinics, the South Los Angeles area is labeled a “healthcare desert.”
MLK was supposed to replace King/Drew Medical Center, which closed in 2007. But the County of Los Angeles built this crucial hospital to be much smaller, about one-third the size of the medical center it replaced. It has only 131 beds. When the COVID epidemic arrived, this small hospital was suddenly overwhelmed.
Today, this hospital is still overcrowded with patients. MLK’s many patients have chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and heart disease, that could be managed at a doctor’s office. But, as MLK’s chief executive, Dr. Elaine Batchlor, explained, there aren’t enough doctors in South Los Angeles who can serve these patients. So, these patients end up at MLK. Also, police departments serving areas as far away as Santa Monica, Whittier, and Huntington Beach deliver psychiatric patients to MLK, further straining the hospital’s resources.
MLK was planned to handle 25,000 emergency department visits a year. Last year, MLK responded to the needs of more than 112,000 such visits, ranking it among the busiest in the U.S. With only 29 rooms, the MLK’s emergency department has been forced to treat patients on gurneys, in chairs, corridors, tents built on its grounds, ambulance parking lots, waiting rooms, and wherever the hospital staff finds empty space.
MLK has estimated about 40% of its emergency visits could have been handled in outpatient clinics. But, there are only a few outpatient clinics. Other hospitals in Los Angeles refuse to serve these patients because they only have Medi-Cal, the California Medicaid program. For this reason, the patients reach out to MLK’s emergency room even for minor health issues.
Like any other hospital, MLK’s financial survival depends on the income it can generate from its patients and the financial aid it can get from the Federal Government and the State of California. The bulk of such government and state-sponsored financial aid was drastically cut over the years. The MLK’s patients are mostly underinsured or uninsured. The underinsured patients rely on Medi-Cal, which pays poorly for the healthcare service the patients receive. That is, poor revenue from the billing of its patients and undercut financial government aid are insufficient to sustain MLK financially, which can force this hospital to be shut down. MLK’s closure would have devastating effects on the health care of people living in South Los Angeles.
As Dr. Batchlor, explains, “MLK isn’t a hospital that’s going to generate significant profit for a health system.” In search of profits, the capitalist system that runs this health system undercuts everything. It prevents the building of proper-sized hospitals. Low-income working class people cannot afford better insurance because of their low wages. The result is insufficient healthcare for workers and those who fall into poverty.
Nov 27, 2023
This book follows Elizabeth Packard’s years and years of struggle to make her voice heard. In 1860, at the beginning of the Civil War, Elizabeth, a minister’s wife and mother, stood in the way of her husband receiving much-needed financial backing. They had both been against slavery and were abolitionists. However, the minister was being paid to change his stance to come out for slavery. Instead of following her husband’s lead, Elizabeth fought him at home and in their church. She was independent and determined. He felt he had to get rid of her. Elizabeth was committed to Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville.
This book exposes the fact that Elizabeth’s treatment was not a fluke. She was one of many women locked up in inhuman, miserable, and even tortuous conditions while completely rational.
In December 1984, a gas leak, known as the biggest industrial incident in global history, occurred in Bhopal, India, at a Union Carbide India Limited factory. The miniseries is a fictionalized version of the actual events. It shows how the gas leak killed 15,000 people, how the company had short-shrifted the factory of all safety precautions, and how the politicians wanted to cover up the events and protect the company bosses.
This film shows how greedy companies and their lackey politicians threaten our very existence and that only workers have the power and the will to move the world forward.
Nov 27, 2023
A shopping app called TEMU has spread to many millions of online shoppers all over the world. It originated with a Chinese businessman and already has 750 million monthly users. Supposed experts say the app can spy on its users, gaining information about individuals from their cell phones.
Yes, indeed, TEMU does know which t-shirts, sweatshirts, baseball caps, and chargers each user likes.
And who else knows such important information about everyone who goes online? Google, Amazon, and Facebook—all made in the USA—also make their billions by collecting and selling our info.
U.S. media flunkeys call out Chinese government flunkeys? Hypocrites R Us!
Nov 27, 2023
The U.S. Army on November 13 of this year dismissed the convictions of 110 black soldiers who had been accused of mutiny, murder, and assault during a soldiers’ uprising in Houston, Texas during World War I. The Army will correct their military records to honorable discharges and give survivors’ benefits to their families. The families and their supporters have been fighting for this for 105 years!
The soldiers were part of the Army’s all-black 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, originally formed during Reconstruction in 1869. The unit had fought on the Western frontier, where, along with similar regiments, its troops were known as Buffalo Soldiers. In late July 1917, the Army sent the troops from their camp in New Mexico to guard the construction of new Camp Logan in Houston. To accommodate racists in Houston, the Army said the black guards would be unarmed while on duty and would have to call for white city police to make any arrests.
But on August 23, two of the city’s most notoriously racist cops beat and arrested a well-respected local black woman, claiming she hid a fugitive from a dice game they broke up. Then the cops beat and arrested two Buffalo Soldiers who confronted them about how they treated the woman. Back on post, around 156 troops decided to march downtown to save their comrades. The white commander of the battalion ordered the troops’ rifles and ammunition collected, and all passes to town canceled. The soldiers stopped the commander at gunpoint and rushed the supply tents to seize their rifles. After a half-hour gunfight, around 100 broke out of the base and started marching toward the police station. During several gunfights with cops and racists along the way, 16 people died.
By the next day, the Army had arrested the soldiers. The Army charged 118 men with serious crimes, and 110 were found guilty. Their case was the largest murder trial and court martial in U.S. history. Nearly 200 witnesses testified, producing over 2,000 pages of trial testimony. The soldiers were defended by one officer untrained in the law. A general sentenced 19 to death. The Army hanged them and buried them in unmarked graves. The general sentenced another 53 to life in prison.
The city and the Army tried to bury the story. The families and the NAACP held petition drives to have the sentences reduced and the soldiers paroled. The final mutineer was finally released 20 years later. The families have kept on fighting for justice for more than a century.
Nov 27, 2023
Not only has SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket blown up twice now, with marketing-conscious owner Elon Musk nonetheless declaring each launch attempt a success—but worker injuries are also distressingly high at the company’s industrial sites.
SpaceX employs 13,000 workers and has raked in 11.8 billion dollars from NASA. A Reuters investigation documented 600 injuries of SpaceX workers since 2014. These included broken and crushed bones—some leading to amputations—including a skull fracture, plus concussions, burns, electrocutions, eye injuries, and so on. One worker died from head trauma, and another remains in a coma.
The company told technicians at Brownsville, Texas, to move steel tubing weighing 500 pounds with a crane whose lifting magnet was only designed for 300 pounds. The tubing fell and crushed a worker’s hand. Management shut tents, which closed ventilation essential for safe welding of toxic stainless steel—and the company wouldn’t provide respirators.
SpaceX puts incredible pressure on workers to work harder, faster, and longer. At Brownsville, some workers work more than 80 hours a week, and some take Adderall to stay awake. Workers are not trained enough, and components are not tested enough. Meanwhile, the company leaves workers in charge of their own safety. A former welder said, "There was no accountability.... That’s a terrible approach to take in industrial environments."
SpaceX has failed to report injuries to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for most years since 2016. But other major space companies failed to report, too. At least 24 workers have been killed at work in the space industry since 1980, including three at Virgin Galactic.
These companies market their space-age technology, but management still acts like it’s the days of Charles Dickens or the robber barons.
Nov 27, 2023
This year, big business hyped Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as they always do. Instead of lining up at stores, workers spent hours on the internet looking for a deal. A larger number of working-class families wound up at thrift stores and resale stores to try to get the lowest-price gifts for friends and family, especially for children.
In spite of all the “happy Biden talk” about a good economy, the labor force participation rate has decreased—that is, the percentage of permanently unemployed has gone up. It’s hard to afford basics like food and shelter if you have burned through credit; a little extra for the holidays just isn’t there.
Stores “offer discounts” on already jacked-up prices, and banks increase credit card interest rates. So, many of us are taking on extra work—including low-paying, seasonal jobs and extra hours that retailers and shipping companies offer during the holiday season.
Somebody is saying, “Ho, Ho, Ho,” but it sure ain’t the workers!
Nov 27, 2023
Here are some strikes that are currently going on in the U.S. These strikes may remain isolated and separated today. But others could join them. New strikes arise almost every week.
Four hundred cashiers and other workers at three Macy’s stores in Washington State picked Black Friday, one of the year’s busiest shopping days, to go on strike for more wages, more staffing, and more security.
One striker of UFCW Local 3000 described the staffing as “skeletal.” Another said, "We’re tired of being frightened and endangered at work," when assaults by angry customers and shoplifters are more and more common.
Workers are reminding Macy’s that not only are they essential—it’s essential that they get more help to do their jobs!
Starbucks Coffee’s Red Cup Giveaway Day was interrupted by unionized workers at over 200 Starbucks stores nationally. Starbucks Workers United went on strike for the day, November 16, to protest Starbucks’ long-drawn-out refusal to bargain with their union.
Staffing is a very big problem. The union stated that "On Red Cup Day, drink orders pile up and are abandoned, lines are out the door, and Starbucks workers are left to handle angry customers who have had to wait much longer than usual for their beverages and food, all while trying to make complicated holiday specialty beverages as fast as possible. When the supply of red cups runs out, customers get disappointed and often take their anger out on workers."
Hospital staff at three HCA hospital centers in Riverside, California, began a five-day limited strike action on November 22. Staffing is a critical issue. Hundreds of nurses and techs have left because of short-staffing stress.
Over the last three years, California Department of Public Health officials determined there had been hundreds of staffing violations at each of the medical facilities. HCA acts like it is above the law.
Safety is far behind profit as a priority. For example, in-person attendants for patients at risk of falling were eliminated. The at-risk patients are now monitored from afar by a video center! No helping hand has yet been extended from a screen....
The 2,400 workers of SEIU Local 121RN are up against mega-chain HCA, with 182 hospitals and more than 2,300 medical centers in 20 states and the United Kingdom.
Nov 27, 2023
The following two articles are excerpts of reports by Andrea Kirby and Kathy Goodwin, former Working Class Party candidates, on the recent UAW strikes in auto and the ongoing strike at Blue Cross. The reports were presented to the 2023 convention of the Working Class Party of Michigan. Videos of these speeches are available at the Working Class Party website at WorkingClassFight.com.
Nov 27, 2023
I’m a Blue Cross worker. I’m currently on strike. On September 13th, approximately 1,100 Blue Cross Blue Shield workers across the state of Michigan went on strike. Workers at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan have been on strike now for 67 days.
Now, I would love to tell you that it’s been all peaches and cream or unicorns and sprinkles, however, you want to envision it, but it hasn’t…. Most of the workers at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan were unaware of the UAW elections or its candidates; but when it was all said and done, we did have a new leadership team and they presented a militant fighters’ approach, which sounded like it was something new.
But that same excitement didn’t stick around for long. It wasn’t around when the Blue Cross strike started. Workers weren’t prepared. The militant words of the International leadership didn’t change how the Blue Cross Blue Shield strike was being handled. The 2023 Blue Cross strike started just like any of the other long-standing traditions of the strikes. Nothing was new. Workers did not make the decision to go on strike; rather, they voted to authorize International to call a strike. There were few or no meetings held, and no solid information was given out about the progress of bargaining until the final contract was presented to workers for approval. Workers are just assigned picket duties for several hours a week, and that’s the extent of their strike assignments.
Now, this is a stark contrast to the first Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan strike that occurred in 1987. In 1987, almost 4,000 Blue Cross workers went on strike for almost 12 weeks, 84 days. From the very first day of that strike, workers in Detroit organized daily meetings where strikers would come together to discuss problems of the strike, get information about bargaining, and decide on their activities on how to strengthen their strike.
On the night the contract expired, over 900 employees got together to decide on what their last offer was going to be, and they decided how they were going to prepare to strike. The International representatives came to them and told them that they didn’t need to do that; it wasn’t even legal, but that didn’t stop the workers. They met to elect a strike committee; they published a strike bulletin so everyone could know about the changes and everything going on at the same time; they organized activities to make signs and banners, get coffee and donuts, set up strike headquarters, and so much more.
Workers faced opposition from the International apparatus, who threw hurdles in front of the strikers any time they could. They initially told workers that they couldn’t meet, they tried to close up the local, they threatened to freeze their strike wages, and they also had personal attacks on the union president. But that didn’t stop the workers. They continued to meet, organize, and strike for what they wanted. So when the company came with their multiple final offers, workers already knew what they wanted, and they sent it back.
Now, these weren’t easy decisions; workers were facing shutoffs, repossessions, and other hardships, but they helped each other, and they used the resources that were available to them. In the end, the workers were able to hold the company back from all the concessions that the company wanted to pass—which was a cut in sick time and an offer of bonuses, not wage increases; the company even wanted to cut the long-term benefits by 50%.
Over the years, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan leadership has continued its attacks. In 2005, we had a statewide membership of over 3,300 members. In 2015, it was down to 1,800, and now we’re down to 1,100. Most of the union work has been outsourced to other companies, but a lot of it has been given to other non-union workers. In 2015, Blue Cross Blue Shield had one outsourced call center; today, they have four.… A former Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan rep was quoted saying that they outsourced because "their price is attractive compared to our internal cost per call. It helps us reach our aggressive cost containment targets."
Now, fast forward 36 years, Blue Cross is on strike again. Now, this time, a lot of things are different than in 1987. Strike authorization was taken four days before the expiration of our contract. Workers were told via text or email that they were on strike. We had no picket practice; we had no strike sign-up sheets; we had no information. Simply put, we were not organized.
On the strike line, it hasn’t changed much since day one. One or two other strikers have made their own personal signs. Most of our signs just say, “UAW on strike.” We’ve only had two meetings since we went on strike: on the day we went on strike and the other on November 1st, 49 days later.
Workers have been in the dark. The meeting on November 1st gave us no bargaining updates. It gave us no instruction on how to conduct the strike line. Many workers who attended it said it was a waste of time, and it was. Workers have had no control over the strike.
What we are witnessing is what happens when people are not organized. When it comes to the fight at your front door, and you are not organized, people are frustrated. They have unreasonable expectations. They attack each other. They can’t remain focused on their goals.
Now, we don’t know how the Blue Cross strike is going to turn out. Workers are smart. They have the ability to come together and accomplish a lot of great things. But this strike can teach us something before its conclusion. We can learn the importance of being organized before the fight comes to our door, which, in this case, is our next election. We cannot wait till the spring or summer of next year to start talking about the need for the working class to have its own party, the Working Class Party. We cannot look for someone else to fight for what the working class needs, only the working class.
Nov 27, 2023
The new contracts at GM, Ford, and Stellantis did achieve 11% up-front raises. These contracts were approved by the majority of auto workers.
What auto workers did not achieve is what workers truly deserve: A chance for enough money to live a comfortable life and enough time off work to enjoy life.
These contracts will not catch workers up with inflation. The top wage in 2007 for an auto production worker was about $28 an hour. There’s this handy dandy calculator if you Google a website called Bureau of Labor Statistics, and you can put in a dollar amount from a certain year and what the buying power is today. So, buying power today would require $41 an hour TODAY to have the same amount of buying power. And these contracts, it’ll be four years before production workers get up to that level.
There was a real opportunity in 2023 to make progress. These negotiations happened during an economic boom for the capitalists. Some auto workers were ready for a fight. While partial strikes were waged at GM, Ford, and Stellantis, all the auto workers were never brought out together.
Under a different leadership at the top of the UAW this year, the words were different than in past decades. Workers heard fighting language for the first time in a long time. New UAW leaders emphasized how profitable the companies are. New UAW leaders said that unless the companies came through on key demands, workers would have no choice but to go on strike.
In the new auto contracts, there were improvements for temporary workers, and this was a good thing. But the category of temporary worker did not go away. All who want a full-time job should have one. Work is work. The temporary worker label is just a trick to lower wages. The working class needs equal pay for equal work.
This time, top UAW officials talked about the corporations as the enemy. But to have a completely new policy, different from all the old policies, top UAW officials would have had to have added something to that sentence:
The first part, the company is the enemy.
The second part, THEIR profits are not OUR problem.
This fall, the current group of union leaders carefully crafted strike targets to maintain company profits. That devotion to the right of companies to make profits is the wrong policy for the working class.
These were strikes where the working class was held back. They were limited strikes. Workers never got the chance to all come out together this fall. There was no feeling of being inspired by the power of workers fighting for our class to move forward.
Workers never got the chance to have big union meetings to discuss each contract proposal together, point by point.
The fight this fall was twisted into contradictions because UAW leaders were not ready to put the working class first and only. The fight this fall was twisted into contradictions because union leaders have no readiness for the shop floor organizing that creates a strong union from the bottom up.
Why do union leaders have a top-down manner exactly like the companies? Yes, this society is top-down, but why do union leaders have to copycat that awful behavior? Why keep so many secrets from the workers? Secrets from the workers are the policy of corporations to help them exploit and control. Big companies make decisions hidden in secrecy.
All of the surprise strikes were carried out by the top UAW officials this fall with secrecy. This was done because it was said that it would surprise the companies, but it surprised the workers too. Too little information flowed daily within the union.
Our working class organizations, our unions, and our working class party should belong to us. It should feel like our organization. When it doesn’t feel like that and when it feels like something far away from us, workers have to figure out how we get control of it. Working class democracy should be encouraged and felt by all in the unions. We, the workers, need to push back together, millions of us, all of us who are exploited by this greedy capitalist class.
A political party collecting the working class together needs to be built to fight in the political arena for our working-class interests. Our party must take up the fighting words of the Industrial Workers of the World, the IWW of a hundred years ago:
The working class and the employing class have NOTHING in common.
Going through these UAW strikes, we saw that fighting words are not enough to truly be a new policy. We saw that for workers to achieve what we need, we have to fight outside the bounds of capitalism.
We need to fight for a better society.
Nov 27, 2023
This article is translated from the November 23 issue, #2886 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Will the four-day truce between Israel and Hamas on November 22 mark a turning point in the Gaza war? Even if it is prolonged, it will not erase the massacre and enormous destruction wrought by more than seven weeks of bombardment.
Schools were bombed, and babies died in bombed-out hospitals for lack of evacuation…. Even the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights denounced the "horrific events beyond comprehension" that continued to take place in the Gaza Strip.
On Wednesday, November 15, Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, was stormed by the Israeli army. On Saturday the 18th, 2,300 patients, caregivers, and displaced persons were still in the hospital, according to the UN, dying within its walls for lack of drinking water, food, care, or electricity to run incubators or breathing apparatuses. Images showed civilians being shot down like a game by the Israeli army as they tried to flee the fighting. The argument that Hamas uses the sick as human shields and hospitals as headquarters is war propaganda: true or false, the dead are Palestinian civilians killed by the Israeli army.
After methodically wiping out Gaza City in the north of the territory, killing more than 14,000 people, almost all civilians, the Israeli army remains ready to unleash the same deluge of fire on Gaza’s southern part. Leaflets dropped in the town of Khan Younis called on the population to evacuate. But where to?
Two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants have already had to flee to this area, where they are now stranded. Deprived of water, food, and healthcare, they survive in schools, hospitals, or streets.
By allowing Israel to do this, Western leaders are complicit in the mass slaughter in Gaza. As for their statements, even when they show a hint of indignation at the murder of babies, they are the stuff of hypocrisy. From Biden to Macron to the U.N., they have all supported and continue to support "Israel’s right to defend itself." Today, this right includes a policy of terror against the Palestinian population. Beyond that, it also targets all the peoples of the region, showing them what might await them if they were to challenge the tutelage of imperialism.
Nov 27, 2023
CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour got thrown for a loop in her interview with Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister and general.
She asked him if the Israeli military and government had done a "good enough job of proving their claim" that there was a “major” Hamas command center and bunker under al-Shifa hospital, the biggest hospital in Gaza, which was besieged and then taken over by Israel’s military this week. Barak responded, "It was many decades ago ... that we helped them build these bunkers in order to enable more space for the operation of the hospital within the very limited size of these compounds."
At that, Amanpour paused, apparently shocked: "When you say it was built by Israeli engineers, did you misspeak?"
Ehud Barak: "No, decades ago, we were running the place ... we helped them to build these bunkers."
Amanpour: "OK. That’s sort of thrown me a little bit."
Yes, because Israel has been talking about this bunker for the entire time of its campaign against Gaza. The bunker under the hospital justifies Israel’s attacks on the hospital, justifies cutting its power—which left three babies in incubators to die. It helps justify the killing of 14,000 people in Gaza.
Maybe it helps us to see a little more clearly how they use the news as propaganda in their war effort.
Nov 27, 2023
This article is translated from the November 23 issue, #2886 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Among the population of Arab countries and beyond, Hamas’ October 7 Operation al-Aqsa Flood was seen as a historic victory for Hamas. Despite the atrocities committed, it gained in popularity.
Faced with an Israeli state protected by the imperialist powers, which has expelled and oppressed an entire people with impunity and perpetrated massacres, many in the Arab world have felt a sense of revenge. With the new war in Gaza and Israel’s declared determination to eradicate Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood has succeeded in restoring its tarnished reputation after seventeen years at the head of the Gaza Strip.
Israel decided to evacuate the Gaza Strip in 2005. The following year, taking advantage of the failure of the Oslo Accords and the discredit of the PLO and Fatah, Hamas won the elections there. Western leaders, unwilling to recognize the success of an organization they classified as terrorist, urged Fatah to challenge the election. A bloody battle ensued between the militias of the two rival organizations, culminating in Fatah’s ouster from the Gaza Strip in 2007.
Hamas found itself at the head of a mini-state with its own administration, taxes, military, and repressive apparatus. To enable it to pay its civil servants and play its role in maintaining order in Gaza, funds came from Qatar and Iran, with the agreement of Israel, which had a vested interest. "Anyone who wants to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state must support our policy of strengthening Hamas and transferring money to it. This is part of our strategy: to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from those on the West Bank," Netanyahu cynically declared in 2019.
While Israel and the imperialist powers have always presented Hamas as the enemy to be destroyed behind the scenes, they have never ceased to maintain direct or indirect relations with it. As for the Gazans, they were disappointed. They have been confronted with the daily difficulties of a permanent economic and military blockade, multiple wars, unemployment affecting 50% of the population, power cuts lasting more than twelve hours a day, barely drinkable water, and unlimited taxes. Although Gazans hold Israel and Egypt responsible for the blockade, their criticism has not spared Hamas. Its leaders control the enclave’s economy, imposing heavy taxes on everything from building permits, informal businesses, and cigarettes to bail bonds on release from prison following arbitrary arrests. Many criticize the corruption of Hamas cadres, who do not seem to suffer from the electricity shortages.
The population lives under the surveillance of Hamas agents in civilian clothes, called Zanana in reference to the Israeli army surveillance planes that fly over Gaza. Yet, in recent years, mobilizations have repeatedly emerged via social networks. In March 2019, for example, the hashtag "We want to live" went viral. For three days, thousands of young people mobilized against taxes and poverty. Thinking that the protests would only be directed against Israel and Fatah, Hamas initially let them go before discovering that it was the target of the demonstrators and violently repressing them.
For almost twenty years, the permanent state of war between Israel and Gaza has enabled Hamas to consolidate its power and silence all dissent. It has also been an opportunity to divert and profit from revolts that did not start, notably in the spring of 2021, when Israeli forces stormed the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, triggering an uprising by a whole generation of young people. The youth of occupied East Jerusalem and the refugee camps of the West Bank were joined for the first time on this scale by young Israeli Arabs. Hamas fired rockets into Israel, forcing a military confrontation and stifling the youthful revolt, while Israel bombed Gaza once again. In Israel itself, the growing protest of young Arab Israelis against the vexations to which they were subjected was also suppressed.
Hamas’ policies do not serve the interests of the region’s oppressed masses. The people of Gaza pay a high price for its cynical maneuvers. On October 7, Hamas willfully started the bloodbath that claimed the lives of thousands of civilians. It is clear that the Hamas leadership knew it would provoke a response from Israel, which has turned Gaza into a field of ruins. Its warlike posture and radicalism are aimed at asserting itself as the exclusive representative of the Palestinians and imposing itself as the sole interlocutor with the major powers and Israel, whatever the price paid by the population.
Hamas does not want to express the revolt of the oppressed masses and, in fact, fears it. Yet it is this revolt that can open up a future if it seeks to overthrow the imperialist order, which, using all religious, national, and political cleavages, drags peoples into barbarism and endless conflict.
Nov 27, 2023
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters during the week of October 31, 2022.
"We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba." Those were the words of Avi Dichter, current Israeli minister for agriculture and part of Israel’s security cabinet. Dichter repeated, "Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it will end."
"Nakba” is an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe,” referring to the 1947–49 forced expulsion of people living in Palestine.
Several villages were wiped out by Zionist militias. Their inhabitants, men, women, and children, were massacred; their houses and sheds were burnt to the ground. Pictures of those tragedies were posted in other Palestinian villages, with the warning: "You have 48 hours to leave."
Violence and terrorist threats drove three-quarters of Palestine’s population from their homes. Most ended up in refugee camps in the Sinai Peninsula, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Those who remained were herded into a small enclave surrounding Gaza City and into the West Bank.
This is how Israel was created. Pulling the strings ever since have been the world’s big imperialist powers. Israel’s military today rests on U.S. money and U.S. weapons systems.
It is understandable that Europe’s Jews wanted to flee from the pogroms and ovens that capitalism had fated for them in Europe. But, given how it was created, Israel could never be a refuge for the Jewish people. It could only turn them into the oppressors of other peoples—victimizers, and victims at the same time.
This tragic future was seen clearly by the Socialist movement as early as 1886 when Zionism gained influence among Europe’s Jewish workers. I. Rubanovich, a Russian Jewish Socialist, issued this warning about the disaster that would result if Zionist plans to occupy Palestine were carried out:
"What is Palestine? It is a country that belongs to the Turkish empire and is settled by Arabs.... Mr. Lilienblum says that ‘we [the Jews] have a historical right to Palestine.’... A historical right!... and by what means will you defend that historical right? The Arabs have exactly the same right. Woe unto you if—under the protection of international bandits and by the manipulation of international intrigue and corrupt diplomacy—you force the peaceful Arabs to defend their rights. They will answer tears with blood and will bury your hereditary claims under the ashes of your homes."
The tragic reality of Rubanovich’s prediction has been borne out. The future he foresaw 137 years ago was not based on a wild guess. It came out of the reality of capitalism’s functioning in a period when the big capitalist powers were dividing up the world into colonies. Capitalism meant then—and means now—war and "international intrigue” to set peoples against each other.
Israel is once again involved in displacing people through violence. This time, it is violence by one of the most heavily armed states in the world, backed by U.S. power. Almost 12,000 people have died, nearly half are children. Over one-and-a-half-million of Gaza’s two-and-a-half-million people have been driven from their homes, and half of all structures in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged.
Capitalism is rewinding the catastrophes of its history, playing them out over and over again.
Israel and Gaza are bloody traps—for the Palestinian people, who have no place left to which they can flee, but also for the Israeli people, who fled to the Middle East only to discover capitalism’s horrors awaiting them there also.
There is no refuge in a world dominated by capitalism—not in the Middle East, nowhere—no refuge other than in the struggle to get rid of the system that creates new Nakbas, new catastrophes.
Nov 27, 2023
Mechanics at seven Tesla repair shops in Sweden went on strike on October 27. These 130 workers want a union agreement and better pay. Their fight just got bigger.
Union workers in other sectors are now refusing to do any tasks related to Tesla. Support strikes are legal in Sweden, and now eight additional unions have joined the fight.
Postal workers will deliver no license plates for new Tesla vehicles. Delivery workers will deliver no parts or supplies.
Dock workers and transport workers refuse to load or unload Tesla vehicles at all Swedish ports. Garbage workers refuse to remove waste. Electricians refuse to make repairs. Painters refuse to work on Tesla cars. Communications workers refuse to make service calls.
In neighboring Norway, 500 unionized Tesla workers announced preparations for sympathy action.
The CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, learned of sympathy strikes from a post on X, the social media platform he owns. Musk was so irritated he tweeted, "This is insane!" His comments went viral, spreading news of this very interesting strike!
Nov 27, 2023
After the UAW contract with the Big Three—Ford, GM, and Stellantis—was ratified, union president Shawn Fain said, "Next, we are going to organize non-union auto companies like we’ve never organized before." The transplant companies, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and others, followed the UAW contract by announcing that they would be giving their own workers an immediate raise of 10 or 11%, matching the upfront raise that the UAW workers received. Fain claimed the credit for the UAW.
And it may be true that the transplant companies raised wages because of the wages won in the UAW contract. They gave the same pay raise to convince their own workers not to organize a union. This is a strategy the transplants have followed for years. Scare tactics, threats, and anti-union propaganda from the companies are some of the reasons why the UAW has failed in previous attempts to organize unions at the transplants. But there is another, more basic reason. Under the old UAW leadership, organizing was mostly conducted from the top down and from the outside. Little was done to engage the workers inside the plant to build their own fighting union.
So, will the new UAW leadership organize differently than the old leadership? Will they make the union campaign the strongest it could be by engaging the workers themselves to lead the way?
The new leadership certainly did not do this during the strike at the Big Three. They used fighting words beforehand, and many auto workers seemed ready to make a fight. But the UAW leadership called out less than one-third of the workers to actually go on strike, a few plants at a time. The leadership never organized meetings where workers could come together and discuss and decide anything about the strike. The strike was very much conducted from the top down and never gave the workers the way to feel their own power and make it their own strike.
In any case, victories at the transplants would be a step forward. But if organized auto workers want to see real victories, real changes in job conditions, and real gains in standard of living, they need to bring a majority of auto workers into the fight. And that means all those who work at the auto supply plants.
Today, there are about 146,000 UAW workers at the Big Three and 128,000 at the transplants. But there are about 600,000 workers at auto supply companies, almost all of them non-union. Many of these supplier plants were Big Three plants that got outsourced in order to lower wages. The below-poverty wages and lower benefits at these supplier plants are being used to bring down the wages of all auto workers.
If we are going to organize and fight into the future, we need the weight of the organized working class—starting with all those who have a hand in producing vehicles would be a good start.
Why is that important? Because we keep fighting for crumbs when we bake the whole cake. Why are we working like dogs in these plants while the profit of our labor goes into bosses’ and bankers’ pockets?
We could have a decent life for ourselves and future generations without having to burn off our physical and mental health to do it. Auto workers have the social and political weight to lead a fight for that.
Nov 27, 2023
This article is translated from the November issue #311 of La Voix des Travailleurs (Workers’ Voice), the journal of the Organization of Revolutionary Workers (Organisation des Travailleurs Revolutionaires) active in Haiti.
In the context of capitalist globalization, there is no shortage of international treaties for the free movement of people, goods, and capital. There is no such freedom for the exploited. This is the case now in Haiti. Even those whose lives are in danger face multiple barriers if they want to leave their country in search of a better life.
The United States has just ordered its lackeys in power in Haiti to suspend all flights to Nicaragua, where entry visas are not required. Following the closure of land, air, and sea borders last October by the president of the Dominican Republic, one more door is closing on desperate people fleeing the misery and gang violence visited mostly by the poorer classes.
The right of people to leave their country and choose their place of residence is recognized, especially when their lives are in danger, by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and also by numerous global and regional treaties.
The reality of the bourgeois-run world is a very different story. National borders—lines drawn on maps, vestiges of generations-old balances of military power, and often traced by colonizing or imperialist powers—are, in reality, walls, barriers erected between dreams and reality, depriving individuals of mobility while allowing goods and money to circulate unhindered.
Everywhere you look, these borders separate the hopes of a better life from oppressive realities. Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the same island, are separated by physical and administrative barriers that have reached dizzying heights in recent years. By 2023, for example, Dominican visas were selling for up to 1,000 U.S. dollars, compared with 50 dollars the year before.
Facts keep showing that capitalists and their henchmen in power don’t even respect their own laws. All that talk about freedom of movement and other freedoms only applies to the rich.