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
Jan 1, 2024
Thousands of migrants are turning up on the U.S. southern border every day. Officially, these are the highest numbers of migrants in more than 20 years, four times as many as just four years ago.
Republicans and Democrats have been bemoaning and denouncing these huge numbers, blaming the rising wave of immigrants for everything under the sun. Every day the news media is filled with scare stories, trying to make migrants look like they are invading armies, with their supposed migrant caravans converging on the border.
But these migrants are simply ordinary workers, very poor farmers, and very poor people, who are fleeing disasters of all kinds in their home countries. These include economic collapse, environmental catastrophes, civil wars, and invasions that never end, and overwhelming gang violence.
Then, when they get here, these migrants are attacked, humiliated, imprisoned, and sometimes expelled by the U.S. government.
By carrying out these attacks, the U.S. capitalist class tries to divide the working class against itself. It turns around and uses the vulnerability and desperation of the migrant workers against them. Because they have no legal rights, because they have hanging over their heads the fact that they can be expelled, wage theft is rampant against migrant workers. The capitalists pay migrant workers much lower wages, and they face much worse working conditions. Very often the capitalists get away with wage theft, less than minimum wage, no overtime pay—when the capitalists pay them at all.
The capitalists are increasingly employing unaccompanied minors, immigrants as young as 13 or 14 years old. Instead of going to school, they are working long hours on dangerous jobs for little money, because they have to send money back to their families to keep them from starving.
These are not just attacks against the migrant workers, but on the entire working class, exerting a downward pressure on the wages of all workers.
The U.S. politicians and the news media try to divert U.S. workers’ anger, by making migrants the scapegoats for what the capitalist class itself is responsible for.
This same U.S. capitalist class wages economic and military wars around the world in order to super-exploit the workers and extremely poor farmers in order to increase the U.S. capitalists’ profits and wealth. These are what cause the devastation and poverty, provoking one refugee crisis after another. It is not an accident that some of the biggest numbers of migrants to the U.S. are coming from places like Cuba and Venezuela, whose economies have been devastated by U.S. embargoes for decades, which is one way the U.S. wages economic war. Millions more have come from Central America, where the U.S. instigated civil wars in order to impose its control.
This same U.S. capitalist class wages a relentless economic war against workers in this country in order to increase its profits and wealth, as well as to make the U.S. workers pay for all their barbaric wars. They impose falling living standards on U.S. workers, while the U.S. government carries out continual cuts in vital programs, like education and health care.
Don’t let the capitalists get away with fomenting divisions inside the working class. The migrants are a part of the working class. They are our sisters and brothers. They have already shown tremendous courage, bravery, and self-sacrifice just to be able to make it to this country, as well as to support their families. We must all come together in order to take on our common enemy, the capitalist class.
Jan 1, 2024
The Buffalo Bills’ owner is getting the largest taxpayer subsidy in history, to the tune of 850 million dollars to build a new 1.4 billion dollar stadium. At the same time, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has proposed an 800-million-dollar cut to children and family services. Coincidence?
Hardly! The Bills’ owner is worth nearly 6 billion dollars. He alone could afford it. The NFL is worth 163 billion dollars. That is almost as much as the NBA and MLB combined. They need a welfare check, for what? The NFL is big business. They are all about making a profit.
Politicians serve the wealthy. They are laser-focused on ways to use our tax money, workers’ money, to help corporations and businesses make even more money and profits by reaching into our pockets.
Jan 1, 2024
The ink was barely dry on the UAW contract with the Big Three auto companies when the companies announced that they plan to lay off several thousand workers. Stellantis said they were going to lay off workers at plants in Toledo, Ohio and Detroit. GM said they planned layoffs at plants in Lansing and Lake Orion, Michigan. After ratification, Ford announced that they planned layoffs at the Dearborn Stamping Plant.
What an outrageous slap in the face! The majority of workers voted to ratify a contract that contained some raises, only to be told a few days later that the company was planning to take away some of their jobs. A raise doesn’t do you any good if you don’t have a damn job!
What, did the leadership of the UAW know in advance about these layoffs? They certainly did not propose a fight against the layoffs, or even denounce them. They did not even propose to file unfair labor charges, as if the company misled them. The union leadership only said that the workers will have some protection because they can draw SUB pay, along with unemployment. But SUB pay is not full pay and certainly won’t pay all your bills. And there is no guarantee that laid-off workers will ever get their jobs back.
The response of the new UAW leadership to these layoffs was the same as the old UAW leadership. They both accept the right of the corporations to run their business however they want, and to lay workers off whenever they want.
But what gives corporations the right to put their profits ahead of workers’ lives and livelihoods? Workers do all the work. We have every right to impose our rights on the bosses.
For years, the auto companies have taken away thousands of jobs by eliminating some jobs and adding the work on to the rest of the workers. If the auto bosses today say they don’t need as many workers, then put the jobs back and make the workloads reasonable. Keep everyone working.
A fight against speedup and against layoffs would take a different policy than what we have seen by union leaders today. But it is a fight that workers have every reason to make.
Jan 1, 2024
Five-year-old Jean Carlos Martinez Rivero died on December 17. He got sick in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood at an overcrowded shelter for migrants that is run by the private company Favorite Healthcare Staffing. A day after Jean Carlos died, five more people were hospitalized after becoming ill at the same shelter.
Over 2,300 people are staying in this former warehouse, more than half of whom are children. On top of a severe lack of medical care, people staying there complain that the crowding and unsanitary conditions have spread diseases. They showed reporters videos of visibly sick children crammed in with others, and water leaking from the ceiling onto cots.
The city gave Favorite Healthcare Staffing a 100-million-dollar contract to run shelters for migrants. Yet rather than calling out the company after this boy died, Chicago’s mayor tried to blame Texas for sending people to the city who were already sick.
Favorite Healthcare Staffing is part of a global conglomerate that is owned by a giant private equity company. Their goal is to squeeze out profits for the capitalists that own them, whatever the cost. In this case, apparently, the cost was the life of a five-year-old boy.
Jan 1, 2024
In 2022, what has been called “Food Insecurity” shot up to 17 million people in the United States unable to afford enough food. Thirteen million of this number were children. Officials say the jump had to do with the ending of pandemic era aid and inflation. And food banks have been overrun with the increased demand.
But nearly 14 million people were hungry in the U.S. BEFORE the pandemic and the temporary aid. People going hungry has always been a norm, not an anomaly, in this richest country in the world.
Jan 1, 2024
They say: “Inflation is going down” and then use numbers to try to trick us into believing things are getting better. Yes, it’s true that eggs were $6 a dozen at one point, and now they have gone down—to about two dollars. But that’s still 100% more than what they had been at a dollar a dozen.
And when you put milk and cereal and bread into the equation, ordinary people can go to the grocery store and come out with either a price tag that is twice as much as two years ago or buying half as much with the same amount of money.
Jan 1, 2024
At a town hall meeting in Berlin, New Hampshire, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was asked what she thought was the cause of the Civil War. Haley responded, "I think it always comes down to the role of the government and what the rights of the people are. And we will always stand by the fact that I think the government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They need to make sure that you have freedom."
Huh? Somehow, she failed to mention slavery or the fight between the Northern industrialists and the Southern plantation owners for control of the federal government. In fact, it sounds like she’s trying to appease those who might be upset with her one-time support for taking down the confederate flag from the State House grounds in South Carolina. Maybe she now even opposes the Union’s interference with the rights of the slave owners to own slaves.
It seems a bit ironic that the Republicans, Haley’s current party, were the party of the abolitionists at the time of the Civil War and the Democrats were the party of the slaveholders.
How low can presidential politics go?
Jan 1, 2024
Millions of people traveled home for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, and it seemed like everyone was sick.
Well not everyone was sick, but many were. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that there was a 16% jump in people testing positive for flu the week before Christmas and estimated it had killed 4,500 people so far this season. About 15,000 people in the U.S. were hospitalized for COVID-19 with about 1,000 dying from it every week. In addition, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) infections had risen sharply in some parts of the country.
There are reasons for this—most importantly the decline in vaccinations. CDC says only about 42% of adults had gotten flu shots by the first week of December, down from 45% a year before. Only about 18% had gotten an updated COVID-19 shot. And only 17% of adults 60 and older received new shots against RSV.
Many working people and their children haven’t because they can’t afford them. For example, COVID-19 shots were free last year, but this year they are not.
So, while top government officials are claiming that everything is looking up for working class people, in fact, this is not true. So, millions more working people are getting sick, and thousands more are dying.
Jan 1, 2024
Henry Ford Health and Ascension Michigan recently announced their plan for a “joint venture,” allowing Henry Ford to take control of eight Ascension hospitals in Southeast Michigan.
The plan still has to pass an antitrust review by Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel and the Federal Trade Commission, but if it does, the combined system would control nearly 44% of the Southeast Michigan hospital market and 19% of the state market.
Less than two years ago, Nessel and the FTC had no problem approving the merger of Beaumont Health and Spectrum Health, to become Corewell Health. Later that year, they allowed University of Michigan Health and Sparrow Health to merge. Assuming the Henry Ford-Ascension deal goes through, the three systems would control 59% of the state’s hospital market.
When the top executives of huge hospital chains announce mergers like these, they like to assure everyone that they will lower health care costs, because they will be able to negotiate lower prices for supplies. Somehow, that never seems to come to fruition, because reduced competition allows these big conglomerates to charge more for their services.
More importantly, when hospital chains consolidate, they close facilities. Since 1988, almost 1,900 hospital systems have merged and—wait for it—2,000 hospitals have closed! In 1988, there were 8,000 hospitals in the U.S. and now there are only 6,000, a 25% drop.
"Residents of urban neighborhoods of color and rural areas have suffered a lot as independent hospitals have closed or joined big health systems. Acquiring systems often move to close services like intensive care, labor and delivery, psychiatric care, and cardiac surgery. It forces people to travel out of their communities and poses really serious navigation issues for patients, especially those who are disabled, elderly, non-English speaking, and without their own cars," says Lois Uttley, a former advisor at the Hospital Equity and Accountability Project.
No wonder the U.S. spends twice as much on healthcare as any other developed country for the same amount of care yet ranks 43rd in the world for life expectancy! And it’s the working class and the poor who suffer the most.
While some of these hospital systems are still called “non-profit,” they channel profits to other companies and financial interests. It’s a system that puts profits before people.
Jan 1, 2024
Three Chicago men charged with killing an off-duty police officer in 2011 are having their cases reconsidered—after spending more than a decade behind bars. The charges stem from a robbery of a West Side corner store, where officer Clifton Lewis was shot while working as a security guard.
At the time, then-Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy vowed to find the killers, telling an entire gang unit that they would only work that case. Three men were brought in: Tyrone Clay, Oscar Colon, and Alexander Villa.
The prosecution rested on “confessions” made by two of the men, after many hours of questioning. Police did not allow either man to speak to a lawyer before obtaining a confession. This unconstitutional practice led a judge to overturn Colon’s 2019 conviction in the murder. Facing misconduct charges, the prosecution dropped charges against Clay this summer.
In the wake of all this, a CD surfaced, containing cell phone records of the three men, obtained by the FBI. The records indicated that the men were not at the scene of the crime and were not even together. Two of the men are now suing.
Tyrone Clay sat in jail for more than a decade, waiting on a trial that never came. Colon is now free, and it seems likely Villa will be released as well. This case shows how this society’s “justice” system operates—throwing men in jail and prison while trampling on their rights.
Jan 1, 2024
This incredible book was written by a Jewish young man, a Marxist, while he was in the underground resistance in Nazi-occupied Belgium. Though he was caught and killed by the Nazis in 1944, he left us this groundbreaking book.
He analyzes the history of Judaism from the Roman Empire to World War II and shows how it survived because of the economic role that events forced it to play. He relates not just how Judaism changed over time, but also how the Christian religion was forced to adapt to the demands of changing economies, how religion came to serve the feudal class and then the rising capitalist class. And he explains how racism’s divide-and-conquer policy allows capitalism to rule.
He concludes that a Zionist state in Israel will not serve the interests of Jewish workers, and that only the working class can lead, escaping the traps of a corrupt and decaying capitalism, and sweeping this rotten system from the globe.
Inspired by the 1982 book of the same name by Alice Walker, this vibrant film opened in theaters Dec. 25th of 2023. While the story line is heartbreaking, that of a young woman, Celie, abused and violated by first her step-father and then her husband, the theme that emerges is how she is able to fight back against her isolation and oppression, and how she is able to find allies who help her fight, two women who are also fighting in their own way.
The movie is about their love and support of each other, and how, through coming together, the human spirit survives. Yes, the racist and patriarchal system is still out there, and needs to be overthrown, but a first step for abused women is to come together and to fight it. The film celebrates this with powerful beauty.
Jan 1, 2024
The Washington, D.C. city government will remove a new self-serve vehicle emissions testing kiosk in the Eastland Gardens community. Neighbors successfully raised a fuss when they saw the city had installed the facility in their neighborhood without their permission and against their wishes.
Eastland Gardens has a proud history as a community of black working people, often embattled by the government. Black architects and builders built at least 105 of its homes by 1955. The government then tore down dozens to build a commuter highway. When the government built a dump nearby to burn tons of trash, women protested—even lying in front of garbage trucks.
The city built the vehicle emissions kiosk in 2023 with the justification that more than 170,000 drivers have to use the main inspection station, whereas kiosks are more convenient. But the Eastland Gardens neighbors didn’t want all those lines of cars idling and kicking out fumes near their homes. They got together to email, call, and protest. And they showed how the city had even violated its own law by putting the kiosk on land reserved for recreation.
By fighting together, working people have an impact.
Jan 1, 2024
Brittany Watts was arrested on the charge of felony abuse of a corpse for how she handled the remains from her pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage. If indicted and found guilty, she faces up to a year in prison, along with a fine of up to $2,500, according to her lawyer.
Watts had miscarried into her toilet, something that is not uncommon. But this clogged the toilet and Watts had to remove the fetus. Not knowing how to handle the remains, she put them in a bucket and left it outside by the garage. After her miscarriage she was hospitalized and on an IV for two weeks before being arrested. The autopsy on the remains showed that the pregnancy loss was natural, and that the fetus was unharmed in any way.
As many as 30% of pregnancies end in miscarriages, usually in the first trimester and often before a woman even knows she is pregnant. In other words, miscarriages happen all the time—most of the time they go unnoticed. But Watts had her miscarriage at 22 weeks, which is rare. Doctors say there is no clear guidance for how fetal remains should be handled.
In the last seven years, Ohio, along with several other states, enacted laws mandating that products of pregnancy be buried or cremated. These rules typically apply to hospitals or clinics which are more able to absorb the cost rather than the individual woman who miscarried.
Make no mistake, the ridiculous charge against Watts is punishment for her miscarriage. She was arrested to placate the far-right, which wants to control women and challenge any time a pregnancy does not result in a live birth. On top of the pain and hurt a woman goes through in an event such as this, they want to impose further suffering. This is an attack on all women, particularly working class women in their reproductive years.
Jan 1, 2024
A Los Angeles jury awarded a former Kaiser Permanente nurse nearly 41.5 million dollars in damages. The nurse, Maria Gatchalian, had sued Kaiser for retaliation and wrongful termination.
Gatchalian said that Kaiser fired her in 2019 because she had repeatedly reported staff shortages and unsafe conditions in her department to management. Gatchalian had worked at the neonatal intensive care unit in Kaiser’s Woodland Hills hospital for 30 years, the last 13 of it as a lead nurse.
Kaiser argued in court that Gatchalian was fired for placing her feet on a device in violation of safety procedures. But the jury not only didn’t buy Kaiser’s argument; it also voted unanimously for a particularly high amount in damages—30 million dollars of it specifically as punishment for Kaiser.
U.S. courts have a long history of reducing the amount of punitive damage verdicts juries hand out to companies. But even if this 41.5-million-dollar verdict stands, it would amount to just a slap on the wrist for Kaiser—a company that made a profit of more than 80 times that amount in the first nine months of 2023 alone and has an estimated net worth of about 60 billion dollars.
Over the years, many Kaiser workers have pointed to Kaiser’s short staffing, an obvious policy Kaiser uses to increase its profits—just like other companies across the industries. This jury verdict against Kaiser may have vindicated one worker who spoke out, but the fight against working conditions cannot be won in courts that accept—in fact defend—the companies’ profit drive. It’s a fight the working class will have to carry out collectively, using its own forces.
Jan 1, 2024
What follows is a translation of the editorial that appeared on the front of all Lutte Ouvrière’s workplace newsletters, during the week of December 20, 2023.
The Israeli army announced the deaths of three Israeli hostages killed by its own soldiers in the Gaza Strip on Friday, December 15. The three hostages had appeared in an area of intense clashes, waving a white flag, and speaking in Hebrew. Identified as a threat anyway, they were shot dead.
Netanyahu spoke of a "mistake," a "tragic accident." But the Israeli army didn’t kill unarmed men waving a white flag by mistake! It killed them because, for the past two months, it has been applying a policy of terror, indiscriminately killing children, women, the elderly, and Hamas militiamen.
The Israeli army has already killed at least 20,000 people in the Gaza Strip—sixteen times as many as died on October 7. And there are certainly more buried under the rubble, including hostages! These indiscriminate bombardments, which surprise and kill civilians going about their day or in their sleep, are political choices. It’s state terrorism.
It is not Hamas that the Israeli army seeks to terrorize. Hamas is a miniature state apparatus and a mini-army, prepared to cope. From the outset, Netanyahu has known that Hamas will survive the deluge of fire, with its key leaders long since sheltered. And he knows that Hamas will remain one of his counterparts—they are already in the current negotiations.
The Israeli government seeks to terrorize the Palestinian population. It needs to break them for many years to come, so that they will resign themselves to whatever solutions Israel and the great powers choose for them.
All the major powers, starting with the United States, understand this need as well. How many times have they themselves used such methods?
How many have there been from Vietnam, to Gaza, by way of Latin America, Iraq, and Afghanistan? And how can we forget the terror into which the United States plunged the Japanese when it dropped two atomic bombs in 1945, one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki?
The American bourgeoisie built its lead over the rest of the world on the capital it had accumulated, but also by using state violence whenever necessary, to get its hands on land, eliminate a competitor or subdue a recalcitrant people. By this ruthless policy they became master of the world.
So yes, what is presented to us as the world’s greatest democracy, American democracy, is responsible for the carnage perpetrated in Gaza. Biden could hold back Israel’s armed wing. The bombing would stop in a matter of days if the United States stopped delivering munitions to Israel. Instead, they voted against a U.N. vote calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, because they fundamentally agree with this policy of terror.
The massacre of the Palestinians shows, once again, that international rules and respect for human rights are just words. Those who decide are the most powerful, the richest and the best armed.
Most of the time, they impose their exploitation and dictatorship from the heights of their billions through the market and competition. This has dire consequences for the people and the future of the planet, who are exploited to the point of exhaustion. But so long as it does not provoke a revolt, the big bourgeoisie can hide its domination behind a pretense of freedom and democracy, as is the case in most rich imperialist countries.
As soon as its domination is challenged, the democratic façade gives way to the direct and violent oppression of a state apparatus reduced to its simplest expression: that of a band of armed men.
Today, the masters of the world use both methods of domination. In the United States and France, where the big bourgeoisie does not feel threatened by a generalized revolt, Biden and Macron lead through the democratic circus. Against the Palestinians, they defend the policy of Israeli bombs and jails.
These two policies are two sides of the same coin: that of the domination of the capitalist system, the big bourgeoisie, and its states. But fierce as it is, this domination is no more eternal than that of emperors or kings.
As long as there are exploited and oppressed people, there will be rebels and the possibility of transforming society. Workers have the means to fight and work for a collective society guided by the interests of humanity. The future belongs to those who are convinced of this.
Jan 1, 2024
This article is translated from the December 20 issue, #2890 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Over the past two months, more than 300 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by official Israeli repressive forces and settlers.
"All Palestinians are looked upon by the Israelis as if they were the ones who perpetrated the Hamas massacres," says a Palestinian human rights activist. Indeed, while the French Foreign Minister declares that her government "has decided to take national measures against certain extremist Israeli settlers," their exactions are multiplying. The crushing of Gazans under bombs is accompanied by military raids and attacks by militias of armed extreme right-wing settlers against villages and refugee camps where some of the three million Arabs living on the West Bank live.
In the space of a few days in the first half of December, the army once again staged murderous raids on refugee camps, home to Palestinian families driven from their land since 1948. In Jenin, on the pretext of having found tunnels—so what?—soldiers killed twelve young people, tanks and bulldozers ransacked houses and shops, and crushed cars. In the Tulkarem camp, five Palestinians were killed, and four more in the Faraa camp in Tubas.
To make their anger and despair heard, on December 11, residents of West Bank towns and East Jerusalem were called out by Palestinian organizations for a general strike. By stopping their daily activities, they wanted to mark their opposition to the support of U.S. leaders for Netanyahu’s murderous policies and the programmed crushing of Gaza, expressed by the U.S. veto at the U.N.
In Ramallah, however, a large demonstration, bristling with Fatah, DFLP and Hamas flags, gave voice to the anger of Palestinians of all ages, including many young men and women. Signs in English reading "Stop Genocide" clearly expressed condemnation of the massacre in Gaza. Beyond the borders, in Lebanon and Jordan, the population was also called upon to cease all activity.
In the West Bank itself, this day’s strike was just one more moment in a series of angry demonstrations. Gatherings, spontaneous or otherwise, and collective reactions against the exactions of the Israeli army and settlers are multiplying. Demonstrations by groups of young people, armed with stones, have also served as a pretext for murderous reactions by the Israeli army or groups of settlers, when they had not previously been ruthlessly dispersed by the Palestinian Authority police.
130,000 Palestinian workers have been reduced to unemployment following the withdrawal of their work permits by the Israeli government. Unlike Israelis, they are not entitled to any unemployment benefit, nor does the Palestinian Authority distribute any. "We’ve spent what we’ve earned," says a construction worker sent home. Like him, 70% of the workers in his town, who used to cross the border every day after long and arduous waits at checkpoints, are now destitute.
Poverty is setting in among the working population, against a backdrop of increasingly open warfare. The deployment of over 700,000 settlers and their violence, encouraged by the aggressive policies of the Israeli government, has already wiped sixteen Palestinian villages off the map. Faced with a state that continues to deny them the right to a national existence, many fear they will once again be driven out, as they were when Israel was created in 1948.
Jan 1, 2024
This article is translated from the December 27 issue, #2891 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
On October 8, in support of Hamas, Hezbollah launched rocket attacks against Israel from southern Lebanon. To maintain its image as a fighting organization, this Shiite Islamist party could not remain aloof from the conflict, so long as it claims to make resistance to Israel a priority. However, neither it nor its Iranian sponsor seem to want an escalation with Israel and the United States.
It was in 1982 that Hezbollah (The Party of God) burst onto the Lebanese political scene in reaction to Israel’s occupation of the south of the country. Ravaged by civil war, Lebanon had become the arena in which the powers of the region clashed, each supporting various militias formed along sectarian lines.
Hezbollah, which grew out of the Movement of the Disinherited, benefited from financial and military support from Iran, buoyed by the prestige of the revolution that had brought the ayatollahs to power and ousted a regime subservient to the United States. Hezbollah broadened its social base by organizing networks of assistance to the most disadvantaged around mosques and used social demagogy to establish itself as the exclusive representative of the Lebanese underprivileged, assimilated to the Shiite fraction of the population. But while Hezbollah claimed to help the poorest, it expected them to remain submissive to the bourgeois order it defended, not hesitating to repress any dissent.
In 1997, for example, a revolt by the poor population of the Bekaa region was put down by the Lebanese army with the military support of Hezbollah. In 2004, when workers mobilized by the CGTL trade union were subjected to army repression that left four dead, Hezbollah justified it by invoking a red line that must not be crossed. Fiercely opposed to the class struggle, Hezbollah also violently fought its rivals, particularly left-wing organizations that had some influence among workers. In 1987, for example, Sheikh Nasrallah, who still heads it today, had some thirty Communist Party cadres assassinated, including Mehdi Amel and Hussein Mroué.
Over time, thanks to its militias, armed and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, this fundamentalist party has earned a reputation as a fighter. It has seen the Lebanese Communist Party rally behind it in the name of the anti-imperialist character of Hezbollah’s struggle against Israel, despite its reactionary character and the attacks it has suffered.
In 2006, during Israel’s fifth war in Lebanon, when the Israeli air force destroyed the infrastructure and razed part of the cities of southern Lebanon and the suburbs of Beirut, Hezbollah militiamen fought fiercely. Israeli troops entering Lebanon had to turn back after a month of fighting. While the Lebanese army proved incapable of doing so, the fact that Hezbollah was able to keep Israel at bay further boosted its popularity. With its anti-Western rhetoric and support for Hamas, Hezbollah established itself as a pillar of resistance to Israel and a champion of the Palestinian cause.
Since then, its military power has grown and its political weight has increased in Parliament, the government and throughout Lebanese society. It calls for national unity to defend the interests of the Lebanese owners against their rivals, but also against the exploited classes of Lebanon. So, in 2019, when the population rose up against the government and its corruption, Hezbollah repeatedly sent its men to confront the protesters in Beirut and the southern regions.
Despite their aura as fighting organizations, Hezbollah and Hamas are not the representatives of the poor masses in Lebanon, the West Bank or Gaza. In the fight for their emancipation, the exploited classes of Lebanon and the entire Middle East will have to forge their own communist, proletarian and revolutionary organizations. They will find many enemies in their path, including reactionary bourgeois organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas.
Jan 1, 2024
Women from all over Russia are angry and fed up with the long deployments of their husbands and sons in the war in Ukraine. They are protesting the official argument that mobilized troops are needed in combat indefinitely to secure the Russian homeland.
Protesting anything in Russia is different from protesting here in the U.S. This is because, at least for now, the Russian government is more repressive. But nonetheless, these Russian women have found ways to protest. One of the main ways has been a channel on the Telegram messaging app called "Put Domoy" in Russian, or "The Way Home," which has had more than 14,650 participants. The channel’s organizers published a manifesto pushing for mobilized soldiers to be sent home after a year in the combat zone. "Military servicemen and their families—unite and fight for your rights," the manifesto said in part.
The Russian government has not wanted to arrest family members of combat soldiers for protesting. But it seems they are running out of men to send to the front. So instead of reducing time spent in combat, the Russian government is offering more money and benefits to families of soldiers. But the women don’t want to be bribed and they won’t be silenced by hush money. They want their husbands and sons to come home.
Jan 1, 2024
Since the war in Ukraine began in 2022, the U.S. government has spent about 68 billion dollars of taxpayer dollars for military aid to Ukraine. This money is being used by the Ukrainian military to buy weapons like Abrams tanks, Stryker combat vehicles, HIMARS rocket launchers, Javelin missiles, Switchblade aerial systems, howitzers, and artillery shells.
But most of the money being spent on these weapons finally ends up in the pockets of U.S. military contractor corporations because almost all of these weapons are being produced by U.S. corporations like General Dynamics, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
In addition to the new weapons for Ukraine, the U.S. military is also giving some of their old weapons to Ukraine and then replacing them with more new weapons for themselves—which are also being produced by these same U.S. corporations.
And then on top of that, the U.S. government has pressured some of their NATO allies to give some of their old weapons to Ukraine and then replace them with new weapons bought from … guess where??? From these same U.S. corporations!!! So, for example, Poland has donated their old tanks and helicopters to Ukraine and in turn replaced them with new Abrams tanks produced by General Dynamics and Apache helicopters produced by Boeing. Finland, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands are giving their old fighter planes to Ukraine and replacing them with new F-35 fighters being jointly produced by three companies—Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and BAE—they all get to share in the profits of that weapon!
The war in Ukraine has been a human disaster with over a hundred thousand Ukrainian and Russian soldiers being killed so far. Thousands of civilians on both sides have been killed and millions of Ukrainians have been displaced from their homes. Infrastructure has been destroyed. The long-standing policy of the U.S. government to surround Russia with military forces helped provoke Putin’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago. The U.S. has kept this war going for almost two years, all with the apparent goal of weakening Russia. And along the way, U.S. corporations have been profiting very nicely! Capitalism at its finest!!!
Jan 1, 2024
On December 26, Israel sentenced 18-year-old Tal Mitnick to 30 days in jail for refusing to enlist in the Israeli Defense Forces, despite that country’s mandatory military service. He said he would not take part in what he called "a revenge campaign ... not only against Hamas, but against all Palestinian people." He can be sentenced to 200 additional days if he continues to refuse military service after his first month in jail.
In an interview last month for TRT World, the Turkish public broadcaster, Mitnick said: "the army that we have in this area is the operational wing of Jewish supremacy in the area and it’s bent on the oppression of the Palestinian people, and I refuse to take part in that oppression and instead fight against it ... I refuse to agree with the idea that killing civilians in Gaza would provide security for anyone ... I believe that the only path to security and peace lies in coexistence."
In addition to jail time, Israelis resisting the ongoing assault on the population of Gaza face enormous pressure in Israeli society. During the interview with TRT World, Mitnick and two other interviewees were physically and verbally assaulted. The attackers shouted that Mitnick and his friends were “terrorists” and “Hamas supporters,” causing the interview to be cut short.
It is important that even a few Israelis stand up to the pressure and say clearly that the war in Gaza is not being fought in their name. Their refusal to participate is a down payment for the future struggles that will have to be carried out against the extreme nationalism of Israeli society, if “coexistence” between Israelis and Palestinians is ever to be possible.
Jan 1, 2024
This article is translated from the December 27 issue, #2891 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
On Friday, December 22, the U.N. Security Council called for "large-scale” delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. To avoid a U.S. veto, there was no mention of a call for a ceasefire to enable the distribution of aid.
The resolution could therefore only be adopted by aligning itself with the position of the United States, which is in fact unwavering support for the State of Israel, whatever the atrocities and massacres perpetrated.
Already hard hit by poverty as a result of the Israeli blockade since 2007, the situation of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip is becoming increasingly catastrophic. The war has already claimed more than 20,000 lives and left at least 50,000 wounded. 1.9 million people have been forced to leave their homes and are wandering from place to place, sleeping in tents while the few public buildings still standing are running out of space.
As the bombardments devastated the fishing port and livestock farms, Gazans began to eat the animals they could no longer feed, and then all the stalls emptied. Drinking water was in short supply, with two of the three access roads cut off and pumps and desalination plants unable to operate for lack of fuel and electricity. According to the World Food Program, 93% of the population is "acutely food insecure," and the first deaths from hunger are likely to occur in the first few days of February.
With the flow of goods suspended, the people of Gaza find themselves entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. The pace of aid deliveries has been cut by a factor of three since the beginning of October, due to the closure of crossing points and the attitude of the Israeli army, which, as one MEP testified, sometimes allows only one truck through in a day. The convoys are then confronted with the absence of a safe route for distributing food supplies.
"We’ll be stepping up the fighting in the days ahead, and it’s going to be a long war with no end in sight," declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on December 25. He himself has a vested interest in prolonging the war, which enables him to stay in power by silencing criticism among the Israeli population. Demonstrations calling for the release of the hostages to be made more of a government priority show that his policy of all-out war does not enjoy unanimous support.
In an op-ed published by an American newspaper, Netanyahu detailed his war aims: "Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza demilitarized and Palestinian society de-radicalized." But the current destruction and massacres are aimed first and foremost at crushing the Palestinian population. And instead of destroying Hamas, they can only fuel feelings of hatred and the desire for revenge among Gazans and Palestinians as a whole.
For seventy-five years, all Israeli governments have pursued a policy of terror against the Palestinians, imposing oppression and denial of their rights. This has led to the current impasse, for which both peoples are paying dearly, first and foremost the Palestinians, but also the Israelis, to whom a leader like Netanyahu promises endless war, with the support of the imperialist powers.
Jan 1, 2024
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters, during the week of December 17, 2023.
In the last two years, the attacks on the working class escalated as the corporations raised prices much faster than wages. Inflation raged, and it brought down the standard of living of every working person and their families. For more than 40 years, working people have seen their lives steadily worsen.
During most of that time, there were few attempts to fight back. But in 2023, that seemed to change, with a marked increase in strikes. The strike by autoworkers was the most significant, but not the only one. In Michigan, workers at Blue Cross and the Detroit casinos also went out. There were strikes by hospital workers in other states; by hotel workers in Los Angeles and Las Vegas; by the ordinary workers who make the film and TV industry run; by Portland teachers; as well as many other smaller strikes. Workers attempted to organize at Amazon and even Starbucks.
This was not yet a strike wave that really shook capitalist society. But it had the potential to become one, and it showed the desire of many workers to resist. The strikes in 2023 could have been the opening to a new period of working class struggles.
Two big industrial unions, the Teamsters at UPS and the UAW at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, had contracts that expired in 2023. Those workers are the very heart of the industrial working class, the part of the economy where workers show the power the working class has. Their struggles always have the potential to pull millions of other workers along with them.
A fight by the Teamsters at UPS could have opened the door for a fight by millions of other workers who work in delivery and transportation—workers who also face low wages and also have jobs that are often only temporary or part-time.
The same is true in auto, where most of the work force works for the parts suppliers. They have lower wages and even worse conditions than the UAW workers at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. They had their own reasons to join any serious fight carried out at the major companies.
To put it quite plainly, opportunities were lost. After posturing that they would not extend the strike deadline, the Teamster leadership did not even call a strike. Bragging about wage increases—which did not keep up with inflation—they pushed through a contract letting UPS keep the majority of UPS workers in jobs that are only part-time.
The new leadership in the UAW did call a strike, but one that kept workers in handcuffs. It was limited to a few plants and less than one third of the workers. When the strike was settled, the new UAW leadership acted just like the old UAW leadership, hiding the losses, bragging about pay raises that did not keep up with what workers lost to inflation. The contract did nothing to address the horrible working conditions that auto workers face.
So, in 2023, opportunities were lost. That doesn’t mean workers can’t find a way to make the fight that is needed, and starting in 2024. But to do that, we will have to break out of the straitjacket that the unions—under “new” leadership or old—have put on the workers.
Today every part of the capitalist class bases their profits on high prices and low wages, on speed-up, and on jobs that are part-time and temporary. These are facts of working class life throughout the whole economy.
The problems will not be addressed by one union at one or a few companies. They won’t be addressed by negotiations or by a limited fight.
The strikes in 2023 were limited. But workers who came through them had an experience that can help them gain a working class perspective.
We don’t have to wait until the next contract expires to begin a fight. We can fight when we are ready. And when we do, we will try to bring other workers with us. And we will try to spread our struggle to other parts of the working class.
That’s where the workers’ power resides—in our whole class.
Jan 1, 2024
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.
On December 22, 500 grocery workers in five stores in central Minnesota went on strike over staffing issues, low pay, and refusal to bargain. UFCW Local 663 picketed Super One Foods and Cub Foods in Pequot Lakes, Baxter, Crosby, and Brainerd.
Among the strikers are long-term workers. One with 39 years seniority was interviewed: "It’s a shame to put this much time and effort into a company and not be appreciated." The company has used surveillance and intimidation and rejected workers’ requests to continue bargaining on a new contract.
The union spirit is demonstrated by the mother of one worker. The worker is too sick to picket, so his mother came to take his place on line and let him talk to his fellow strikers by video!
Strikers called this limited 4-day strike at Christmas as a “last resort” to try to get the company off of Square One. A senior worker said, "This is for the next generation. Everyone deserves a good job for their life."
Prime Healthcare company owns 44 hospitals in 14 states. Two hundred nurses at two hospitals in Philadelphia suburbs, and 1800 nurses and techs at four California hospitals, called a five-day strike against Prime through Christmas Day, trying to get a livable contract. Nurses say they are far understaffed, and no new nurses will take a job under these conditions. "We are exhausted, overwhelmed, and struggling."
Strikers point out that they work for a health care company but can’t get their own health care! "There’s been plenty of nurses that have been denied certain forms of care, being told where they have to go see this doctor or that doctor," one said. "Myself, I just recently had a baby. During my pregnancy, it was a battle to get certain care."
The new contract offer on pay is also intolerable. "We were heroes a couple years ago and now there’s this 1% increase or 2% increase — that’s just not appropriate for what we do, and everybody out here feels the same way for sure."
Jan 1, 2024
If you add up all of the Walmart, Starbucks and McDonalds locations in the U.S.—that total is less than the over 35,000 Dollar General, Dollar Tree and Family Dollar stores that exist. In vast rural areas and low-wage urban centers, dollar stores are the only nearby job for workers as well as the only place to buy toilet paper, clothes, soap, and food.
In a recent YouTube video posted by Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, a former Dollar General worker laid out the disparity between the pay of executives and that of dollar store workers. “You [executives] can go out and eat crabs and steak and filet mignon and escargot and all this. Meanwhile, your workers are eating ramen noodles. You all are making millions. I want everybody to think about it. Let me know, when did a Dollar General worker make more than $20,000 in a whole year? Don’t worry. I’ll wait!”
Most Dollar General employees make less than 12 dollars an hour, and close to 1 in 4 make less than 10 dollars an hour, according to a wage survey put together by the Economic Policy Institute in 2021. That same study found that 92% of Dollar General employees make less than 15 dollars an hour. No other national retail or fast food company surveyed paid lower than Dollar General.
The CEO of Dollar General had total compensation of 5.8 million dollars in 2022. Dollar Tree and Family Dollar have the same corporate owner and in 2021, the CEO received 3.7 million dollars in compensation.
Lawsuits and OSHA reports reveal stores regularly operate for hours with only one worker to run the registers, receive truck deliveries, and stock shelves. The dollar store business model packs too much stuff in too little space to save on warehouse costs. So, the clutter, chaos and blocked aisles seen in many stores are by design!
OSHA reported workers at an Iowa Dollar General store were having breathing problems. They suspected asbestos. But after testing, state officials explained the likely culprit was mold and “stains on the wall that were bat feces.”
Dollar store workers have reported injuries from rusted or faulty metal moving pallets and from items falling on them. Workers have been threatened with guns and have been pistol whipped on the job. Some have been murdered. Dollar General has been issued more OSHA fines than just about any other company.
But in the past five years, profits at Dollar General have gone up 50% to 2.4 billion dollars a year. Its stock price has jumped since the Great Recession of 2008 to double that of Walmart and triple that of Target Corp. Dollar Tree/Family Dollar reported 2022 profits of 2.6 billion dollars.
And profit is all that matters to these Wall Street billionaires.
Jan 1, 2024
The Washington, D.C. city government has a program to help poorer people buy a house. But the program is quite limited, while the need is huge.
The Home Purchase Assistance Program pays up to $202,000 toward the price of a home. Very low income people don’t have to pay it back. Others pay it back interest-free over 40 years after a five-year grace period.
The program helps around 500 people a year. On average this is around 10% of home buyers. In other words, apart from these 500 or so people every year, thousands of others don’t get this help. But home prices are crazy. The average home price in D.C. is getting close to $700,000! And now mortgage interest rates are crazy, too.
The city changed the rules so that the program only pays for 30% of the home price. For many poorer people hoping to get a nicer house, this change dashed their dreams of getting the home they wanted.
Everyone deserves a decent place to live. But no government program can solve the never-ending problem that housing is unaffordable for all too many working people under capitalism.
Jan 1, 2024
Recently there was a big pronouncement on which states were raising their minimum wage rates. In Michigan, the minimum wage has risen to $10.33 an hour for adults starting in January, replacing the $10.10 an hour rate. That amounts to $1652.80 a month before taxes, or about $1356 a month after taxes.
So, what’s wrong with this picture? Well, just for starters, if you add up the average cost of an apartment in Detroit, at $1047, AND monthly car insurance costs at $761 a month, AND food, at about $300 a month, that comes to $750 a month MORE in expenses than your minimum wage paycheck. Never mind clothing costs, or if you even have a car, not to mention the money to put gas into it.
They say: "People Don’t Want to Work." We say we need wages we can live on and get to work on.