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 11, 2024
The world woke up on November 6 to find that Donald Trump had been elected to be the next president of the United States, starting on January 20, 2025.
Many expressed shock and horror. How could a convicted rapist, felon and twice-impeached president actually win re-election?
Maybe the answer could reside in the nature of capitalist politics itself.
To start with, Trump did not win because of some new surge of voters. He ended up getting pretty much exactly what he got four years ago. The difference in the election was, Harris got many fewer votes than Biden got four years ago. That was the difference in this election, state by state. Previous Biden voters just did not vote for Harris—or at all.
So, why not? For answers, we can look to all the problems working people have confronted in the past four years. An accelerated inflation that blew up prices of groceries, fuel and housing following on the heels of decades of reductions in workers’ standard of living. Dealing with a crumbling infrastructure and ravaged medical care system.
And while inflation came down recently, prices did not. Wages have not risen to keep up. This deterioration in workers’ standard of living was virtually ignored by the Harris campaign. In fact, they bragged that they had created higher wages and a better economy.
On top of that, the Biden foreign policy of the past four years has produced human rights disasters and the threat of ever wider war. Just in the past year, Israel has carried out a massacre in Gaza that has resulted in over 43,000 civilian deaths and has implemented the complete destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure; housing, streets, bridges, businesses and public facilities. Forcing evacuation to one ruined area after another. Now that war is expanding, with Israel invading Lebanon. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to send arms and other aid to Israel, while pretending to chastise it for its “excesses.”
The Harris campaign tried to play both sides, both touting its support for Israel and expressing “sadness” about the loss of life in Gaza and promising something better in the future. Is there any wonder voters didn’t see any reason to believe there would be a policy change?
And there is the war in Ukraine, directed by U.S. imperialism. And how many more?
People were fed up. And they voted that way.
Yes, Trump voters voted as they had in the past. Trump retained his popular vote from four years ago. But Harris’s vote dropped significantly from what Biden received four years ago. Clearly, the big change is that the voters Democrats depended on four years ago did not feel the same mandate to vote for the Democrats this time around.
Yes, there are voters who accept Trump’s reactionary attacks on women, minorities and immigrants. Yes, there are those who couldn’t accept a woman for president. But there are plenty more who didn’t vote for Harris because they were fed up.
Like it or not, Trump was seen as the “change” candidate in a system that always presents two candidates, Democrat and Republican, with no representative of the working class in sight or at the table. As usual, those who wanted a change, having only the choice of the “lesser of two evils”, would vote the sitting party out of office.
Trump has no answer to the problems facing working people. He is a representative of the billionaire class as much as the Democrats have been. He will serve up the same bitter stew in these next four years that was forced down our throats by previous administrations.
Those who voted for him in the hope that he would better their condition will be very disappointed.
The only way out for working people is to fight like hell to keep the billionaire class at bay and to build our own party that represents our own interests in the face of the attacks of the ruling elite and their governments.
To fight for our own interests as workers with the means that we have—in the streets, and in the workplaces, where we can shut things down and take back from the capitalists.
No matter who is the president, from whatever party, that is the power that we have and that is the way we can use it.
Nov 11, 2024
Workers at the Marathon Oil refinery in southwest Detroit are still on strike. Negotiations between the company and the union resume on Thursday, November 7.
Reporting Wall Street earnings on November 5, Marathon management said stockholders can expect to make three billion dollars in capital returns, plus five billion dollars in a share repurchase, plus a ten percent quarterly dividend increase.
Talk about disgusting corporate greed!
Nov 11, 2024
Nearly one out of four car owners is “under water.” They owe more on their car loan than their car is worth. Why? Car prices are up, averaging $28,000 for a used car, and $47,000 for a new car. Interest rates are up, averaging 11.2% for a used car, and 7.1% for a new car. And car loans are longer, like six years. So, our car’s resale value goes down faster than we can repay our loan. Who wins? The banks!
Nov 11, 2024
117 executives at 10 capital investment companies control 50 TRILLION dollars worldwide, invested by millionaires and billionaires. Five years ago, BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Amundi, Allianz, UBS, and so on only controlled half that much. The rich doubled their wealth in five years! All their wealth comes from the hard work and low pay of workers like us.
Nov 11, 2024
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson backtracked on a major campaign promise and proposed a 300-million-dollar property tax hike (a 4% increase). A regressive tax, it will hit Chicago’s working-class and poor homeowners the hardest, and landlords will pass the tax on to their tenants in increased rent.
Johnson says the hike may allow the city to avoid laying off city workers, although his 17.3-billion-dollar proposed budget includes cutting 743 city jobs and eliminating 1.2 million dollars in homeless support.
The few public services included in his plan are a drop in the bucket given the magnitude of the social crisis working people face. A tidal wave of funding is needed to address it. The money’s there but needs to be ripped away from the clutch of multi-millionaires that control city government and put in the hands of the working class majority who will know how best to spend it.
Nov 11, 2024
On November 5, Los Angeles voters approved Measure US, which allows the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to issue new bonds. The money raised, 9 billion dollars, is supposed to be used to repair and maintain school facilities, and it will be paid back, with interest, through an increase in property taxes.
Measure US is the seventh facilities bond measure that the LAUSD has put on the ballot since 1997. Voters approved each and every one of the previous six measures, for a total of nearly 28 billion dollars. And yet, tens of thousands of children in L.A. go to school every day in overcrowded classrooms, in buildings where the floors and ceilings are moldy, the roofs leak, and heating and air conditioning don’t work.
District officials themselves said that L.A. schools need 50,000 heating and air conditioning units, and that 18 million square feet of new roofs and 2 million square feet of plumbing also need to be replaced. In other words, the district raised all that money for decades, but didn’t even do much of the routine maintenance!
But voters approved a tax increase, once again, because authorities blackmailed them: you either pay, or schools fall apart even more.
The LAUSD is not alone. On the same November ballot, there were 25 other, smaller school districts in Los Angeles County with their own bond measures for facilities upkeep, for a total of 6 billion dollars. In addition, California had its own, statewide ballot measure for school repairs, to the tune of 10 billion dollars. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, 2.24 million students in California, nearly 40% of the state’s K-12 students, attend schools that do not meet minimum standards for safety and cleanliness.
All because California has not been providing adequate funding for public education for decades. But California is also home to some public schools with excellent, state-of-the-art facilities. Those schools are in well-to-do areas, where property tax revenue is high, and where parents can also pay extra to improve school facilities. But in working-class neighborhoods, where families struggle to survive, authorities leave schools to rot.
This extreme inequality in education is a reflection of the extreme, and growing, inequality in capitalist society. Capitalist society not only throws more and more workers into poverty, it also throws away the education—that is, the future—of working-class youth.
Nov 11, 2024
A U.S. Federal District Judge has ordered the Department of Veterans Affairs to build housing for homeless veterans on the vast 400-acre property of the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Medical Center.
About 3,000 of the homeless in Los Angeles are war veterans. On paper, this VA center is tasked to serve the needs of these homeless veterans. But this vast center is currently housing only around 140 homeless veterans in so-called “tiny shelters.”
The VA center is surrounded by three very wealthy neighborhoods: West Los Angeles, Westwood and Brentwood. Bowing to the pressures of these rich and powerful neighborhoods, the VA center acted like a real-estate schemer and leased portions of its land to various private businesses. They even allowed the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) to build its baseball stadium and practice field on this property, which was supposed to serve the needs of veterans.
Pointing to this history, Judge David O. Carter, himself a wounded Vietnam war veteran, ordered the VA to immediately begin constructing 750 units of temporary housing and another 1,800 units of permanent housing by 2030, in addition to the units already promised. But even if the VA fulfills the judge’s orders, many war veterans will remain homeless for many years.
In fact, considering that Los Angeles County officially has more than 75,000 homeless people on any single day, this court order hardly scratches the surface of the huge, and worsening, homelessness crisis throughout the region.
Nov 11, 2024
The Israeli military has claimed that it was attacking Palestinian areas in Gaza and Lebanon to root out terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah. But clearly this explanation is even less convincing today given the destruction of these areas and the assassination of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. The Israeli military continues its attacks in ways one can only conclude are directed against Palestinian civilians.
In recent weeks, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attacked three hospitals in Northern Gaza; the Al-Awda, Indonesian, and Kamal Adwan Hospitals. These hospitals had already been attacked around the same time last year and were already severely damaged. The Associated Press interviewed dozens of witnesses, medical and humanitarian workers and Israeli officials at the hospitals and found little evidence of any “significant Hamas presence” at the facilities.
On October 18, the IDF shelled the upper floors of Indonesian Hospital, forcing staff and patients to flee for their lives. They surrounded the hospital and left staff and patients with little food, water and medical supplies.
October 25, Israeli troops stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital and fired on oxygen tanks, saying that they could be “booby traps.” They fired shells onto the hospital’s third floor, igniting a fire that destroyed medical supplies. An Israeli drone killed one doctor, and two children in intensive care died when generators stopped working. The Israeli military detained 100 medical personnel and continues to hold 30.
They also surrounded Al-Awda Hospital in recent weeks, making it impossible to evacuate six critical patients and leaving staff and patients with little to eat or drink and short of medical supplies.
On November 2, the Israeli military bombed two residential buildings in Jabalia in Northern Gaza, killing 50 children. They fired on the personal vehicle of a UNICEF employee working on polio vaccinations. They injured three children at a vaccination clinic nearby.
And on November 8, they attacked a school in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp, killing 12 Palestinians and wounding 12 others.
Finally, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, recently passed two bills effectively banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) from operating anywhere in Israel or occupied Palestine.
The United Nations Human Rights Office estimates 70% of the more than 43,000 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military following the October 7 attack by Hamas last year have been women and children.
Nov 11, 2024
With this election, the voices of Arab and Muslim Americans in Michigan were heard on a national level. In Dearborn, Michigan, where 55% of the residents are of Middle Eastern descent, Harris received just 36.3% of the vote. Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who opposes U.S. foreign policy supporting the State of Israel, received 18.4% of the vote.
In Dearborn Heights, where 39% of the residents are of Middle Eastern descent, Harris received only 38.3%, while Stein received 15.1%. Trump got the most votes in Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, but he didn’t get the majority in either.
Throughout Michigan overall, the Arab American population has traditionally voted Democratic. But according to an exit poll conducted through a partnership between Molitico Consulting and the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, about 56% of the state’s Muslim residents voted for Green Party’s Jill Stein. It shows that a sizeable part of this population didn’t want to choose either of the two traditional parties.
For over a year, Arab Americans, along with others in the U.S. population who have been outraged at the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, have fought to be heard. At the Democratic National Convention, not a single Palestinian American was allowed to speak.
Before the election, the Democratic Party attacked voters who declined to vote Democratic, for focusing on the genocide in Gaza as a “single issue vote.”
If so, wouldn’t that be the best single issue: to take a stand and vote against this government’s complicity in the massacres of the civilian populations of Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon? Against Israel’s violent military operations that have thus far resulted in the massacre of over 45,000 Palestinians, 70% of whom are women and children; against the indiscriminate bombing that has destroyed sanitation systems, with environmental impacts that have created unprecedented soil, water and air pollution throughout the region, not to mention starvation.
Obviously, the pressure exerted by the Democratic Party did not hit its mark. The protest was clear and present and echoes in the population across the nation, many of whom refused to vote for the administration’s war policy.
Nov 11, 2024
Trump and the Republicans made attacks on immigrants a centerpiece of their campaign this year. Trump called immigrants “animals” and blamed them for every problem under the sun, from the lack of jobs to the decline in health services, and ran countless fearmongering ads about “migrant crime.”
And far from defending immigrants, the Democrats ran ads claiming they would be better at “securing the border,” reinforcing the idea that immigrants are a threat.
These attacks on immigrants are attacks on part of our class, the working class.
The vast majority of immigrants, whether they came “legally” or not, whether they came from Mexico, or Venezuela, or Haiti, or Honduras, or Poland, or Iraq, or the Philippines, were workers in their original countries, and will remain workers here.
Most came here fleeing the results of U.S. policies aimed at ensuring the domination of U.S. corporations over the whole world. U.S. imports and investments drove millions of small farms and businesses into bankruptcy in Mexico. U.S. sanctions destroyed the Venezuelan and Cuban economies. U.S.-backed militaries in countries from Honduras to Haiti carried out wars against their own workers, often allied with gangs. U.S. invasions and bombing campaigns have laid waste to entire countries from Iraq to Syria to Libya to Afghanistan.
In other words, immigrants are fleeing destruction caused by the same people destroying workers’ standard of living here: the U.S. capitalist class and the state apparatus that serves it. That class, which owns the corporations and banks, and which runs both Democrats and Republicans, is our common enemy.
The capitalist class makes up a tiny percentage of the population in this country. One key strategy they have always used to stay in power, and keep the rest of us producing their profits, is to divide and conquer the working class. White against Black; men against women; old against young—and of course, those who arrived yesterday against those who arrived today. Blaming immigrants for workers’ problems has been capitalist policy since the working class was born. It has always been a way to make workers fight each other, instead of fighting those who exploit us.
The immigrants Trump rails against didn’t close the factories. They didn’t speed us up. They didn’t understaff the hospitals. They didn’t steal the money for workers’ schools. They didn’t drive up the price of everything. No, the capitalist class did all of these things.
Of course, the capitalists take advantage of the desperation of immigrants to pay them less and force them to work under the harshest conditions. And yes, the capitalists use that desperation as a battering ram to lower the pay and intensify the work of everyone else. But making immigrants more afraid will only make it easier for the capitalist class to use immigrants’ desperation to drive down every worker’s standard of living.
It’s impossible to tell how many people voted for Trump because of the anti-immigrant rhetoric, or despite it. In any case, it is a huge problem that so many workers gave their votes to a candidate who ran squarely on a program of setting one part of the working class against another.
But it is not an insurmountable problem. Many times, in the past, when the working class has moved, immigrant and native born workers, from all over the world, have found the way to unite around our common interests and against our common enemies. For the working class to begin to address the crises we all face, we will have to find a way to do that again.
Nov 11, 2024
The Trump campaign ran ad after ad accusing Kamala Harris of supporting “taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens.” According to FactCheck.org, exactly two federal prisoners and no immigrant detainees have gotten such surgeries.
But there is a reason the Trump campaign ran it so often.
This whole attack on transgender people reinforces the idea that there is some narrow definition of what it means to be a man, and what it means to be a woman, and everyone has to fit into one of those boxes, as defined by their genitals at birth.
The “woman” box includes doing an enormous amount of unpaid but socially needed labor: taking care of children and the elderly, cooking, and cleaning. It includes smiling at everyone, accepting lower pay without complaint, and defining your worth based on your attractiveness to men.
The “man” box includes doing dangerous jobs—and if necessary, killing and risking your life on the battlefield.
Strange how these definitions just happen to make both women and men more easily exploitable by the capitalist class!
Nov 11, 2024
Women and activists have pushed onto the public stage a very frank discussion of the necessity of legal abortion as part of women’s reproductive healthcare. Resistance started immediately after Roe v Wade fell in 2022 and it has not stopped since.
This election season there were ballot measures in support of abortion rights in 10 states. In 8 of the 10, a clear majority of voters supported abortion rights. Even in Florida, fifty-seven percent of voters were in support. Yet the measure failed in Florida due to needing 60% support to pass. In Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana and New York, abortion rights DID pass.
The work involved in getting these proposals on the ballot and campaigning for them is both impressive and useful. Serious healthcare decisions that women have faced around the issue of abortion end up getting discussed openly instead of remaining hidden.
Yet the true societal change that working women need and deserve will require a massive social movement—something more powerful than legal changes to a state constitution.
Abortion rights were won in the first place only because tremendous social movements rocked U.S. society in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, the struggle of the black population for basic human rights kept growing, encouraging a student movement against the Vietnam War. Soon women saw the need to organize and fight.
The next wave of social movements will need to pick up where all those fights left off!
Nov 11, 2024
Now that Trump has been elected president, there has been endless speculation in the news media about what kind of impact he will have on the Russia-Ukraine War. Will Trump “sell out” U.S. interests to his supposed buddy Vladimir Putin? Or will the U.S. foreign policy establishment, including the Pentagon, State Department and CIA (what Trump likes to call in his cartoonish language, the “deep state”) simply ignore Trump, like they did during his first term, when they increased sanctions against Russia and sent U.S. weaponry to Ukraine, despite Trump’s supposed warm and fuzzy feelings for Putin?
One thing is sure: this war is not about to end. Even if there is some eventual peace treaty, and one side or the other declares victory, it will only be to allow enough time for both sides to rearm and regroup in order to continue the war down the road.
Because this war is not really about Russia versus Ukraine. It is a war in which the U.S. imperialist super-power is using the Ukrainian population to try to impose U.S. domination over the bureaucracy and oligarchs based in Russia. It’s a war for control over an entire, rich and valuable region of the world, between two sets of murderers and thieves.
Right now, the big worry on both sides is that they are seeking much more cannon fodder to feed their respective war machines. Estimates cited in the Wall Street Journal are that over a million people have already been killed or wounded on both sides in close to three years of war.
That high rate of casualties, death and destruction dictates a high rate of troop replacements. Videos online show Ukrainian troops and cops dragging men out of concert halls, bars and restaurants, as well as off of street corners, and forcing them at gunpoint “to enlist.”
In Russia, which has a much bigger population, Putin has not yet had to resort to a draft. Instead, the Russian government is offering big enlistment bonuses, worth more than two years of workers’ pay, in order to entice hundreds of thousands of working people and the poor to enlist. Thus, Putin can rely on the rotten economic conditions to force enough working people to enlist and take their chances in the murderous war.
In Ukraine, 60,000 former soldiers face criminal charges for fleeing their posts since the war started. Low morale caused by mental and physical exhaustion is said to be the main reason, as the soldiers go from battle to battle, with little rest since Russia’s invasion in 2022. Many of these former soldiers say they prefer prison to having to go back to battle, because at least they know when their prison sentence ends. At the same time, an estimated 600,000 men have fled Russia since 2022, in order to avoid having to sacrifice for a war that is not theirs.
All this shows is that what Biden, Trump, Putin and Zelensky all have in common is their willingness to sacrifice generations of ordinary peoples’ lives, like it’s nothing. They are all rotten to the core. To end this madness, they along with the ruling classes, cliques and parasites they represent, all have to be overthrown by the working class.
Nov 11, 2024
This article is translated from the November 4 editorial of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
The King of Spain, the Head of Government and the President of the Region were greeted by Valencian disaster victims to shouts of “murderers” and mud throwing. And with good reason!
Last Tuesday, the region’s inhabitants saw their lives turned upside down by torrential and deadly rain. As of this Sunday, the overwhelming majority of those affected were still left to fend for themselves, relying solely on the outpouring of solidarity from the public who came to help. So, yes, they spoke their truths to those who call themselves leaders, and they were right to do so!
This tragedy was not the result of “bad luck.” Many deaths could have been avoided if a red alert had been issued sooner. While the weather agency had warned of the danger at 8 a.m., the provincial authorities didn’t issue the alert until 8 p.m., by which time the streets had already turned into torrents.
Why was this? Because a red alert would have meant closing public establishments and businesses and sending workers home. In other words, it would have meant a wasted day for commerce and business.
A year ago, the President of the Region of Madrid was heavily criticized for having triggered the red alert before heavy rains turned out to miss the city. Business circles accused her of erring on the side of caution. Well, last Tuesday, employees worked all day, and dozens of them drowned trying to get home!
The same race for profit leads to the same blindness to global warming, the main cause of the problem. For thirty years, climatologists have been warning of the climate chaos caused by global warming. Thirty years that heads of state have been negotiating their commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. And thirty years of trampling on their promises.
Today, climate chaos is here. It has struck Valencia in Spain, and, as we have seen in the Ardèche and Pas-de-Calais, it is not sparing us [in France]. The worst is yet to come, because society’s current leaders—the bourgeoisie who dominate the entire economy—are incapable of doing what is necessary to curb climate change.
Capitalists see the slightest ecological standard or constraint as an obstacle to profitability and competitiveness, as an unbearable handicap in international competition. And they get their way. Today, agribusiness trusts are continuing to deforest, and Total, Shell and Co. are going to drill for oil in the waters freed from the ice pack. At the same time, those in power are making us feel guilty and lecturing us on the way we consume and travel!
The servants and profiteers of capitalism are leading us to the precipice, because their system has only one goal: the accumulation of capital through the relentless exploitation of mankind and nature. Everything else takes second place: human life and the future of the planet.
The laws of profit, the market, and competition decide what will be produced, where and how. Luxury goods count as much as food production, arms sales as much as medicines. Similar goods can travel thousands of kilometers and cross each other on the roads. This is an incredible waste of energy, resources and human labor.
Instead, production and exchange should be planned and rationalized according to the needs of all humanity. This is not utopian, because the means exist to achieve it. They even exist on a planetary scale.
These tools of production and planetary planning are today controlled by the shareholders of multinationals such as TotalEnergies, BNP Paribas, Volkswagen, Nestlé, Arcelor, Amazon, Google, the shipping giant CMA-CGM, satellite companies.... In the hands of workers, managed democratically and collectively, they would be formidable means of resolving the problems facing humanity, not only the climate crisis but also underdevelopment and monstrous inequalities.
The prospect of a communist organization of society is the only hope of putting existing means at the service of humanity and the preservation of the planet.
Capitalism is neither inevitable nor natural. It was built and is defended by a social class, the bourgeoisie, which profits from it. The working class has every reason to want its demise. However remote it may seem, the communist revolution remains absolutely urgent.
Nov 11, 2024
This article is translated from the October 27 issue of Combat Ouvrier (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique.
Since September 1, hundreds of people have been demonstrating against the high cost of living. The association RPPRAC (Rassemblement pour la protection des peuples et des ressources afro caribéens) has called on the population to mobilize. They are demanding that prices be lowered and brought into line with those in France.
Mobilizations began in the streets of Fort-de-France on Sunday, September 1. Then people blockaded supermarkets belonging to wealthy capitalists such as Hayot and Parfait, as well as industrial zones.
In mid-September, the anger spread to young people in the Sainte-Thérèse district of Fort-de-France. They clashed with the police. Following these nights of violence, the Prefect announced the arrival of CRS 8, a unit specializing in urban violence.
The mobilizations also spread to workers’ organizations. On September 20, the CGTM (General Confederation of Workers, Martinique) filed a 24-hour strike notice, which is still in force. On September 26, 600 workers demonstrated in the streets of Fort-de-France. On October 1, several unions called a strike and demonstration. More than a thousand people took part. On October 10, Martinique woke up to roadblocks from the north to the south of the island. Almost every district was affected.
Since September, negotiations have been taking place at the CTM (Collectivité territoriale de Martinique) between the Prefect, the President of the CTM, representatives of the retail sector, CMA-CGM (the main transportation company), and the RPPRAC.
On Wednesday, October 16, an agreement was signed between the parties. But the RPPRAC refused to sign, as it would only bring down the prices of 6,000 products out of a total of 40,000. On Saturday, October 19, over 2,000 people responded to RPPRAC’s call to rally in Fort-de-France.
We can only understand people’s anger: a pack of milk that costs 6.30 euros in France costs 9.95 euros in Martinique. Or a 750 gram jar of applesauce, which costs 1.49 euros in France, is 5.49 euros in Martinique, an increase of 268.46%. [Note that one euro is about $1.07.]
But to bring prices down dramatically, we need to demand that these major retailers reveal the exorbitant margins they make on product prices! We need to force Hayot and the big retailers to lower their margins. CMA-CGM, which made over 23 billion in profits last year, must do the same.
Life is also expensive because wages, pensions and minimum social benefits are not keeping pace with inflation. It is not possible to live with dignity on less than 2,000 euros after taxes per month!
Against the high cost of living, workers have every interest in organizing themselves in their companies, in their neighborhoods. They can organize in the unions, and also set up committees everywhere, based on their own demands. This organization of struggles into committees would better reveal the revolutionary force of workers.
For a full-scale fight against the high cost of living would have a direct impact on the coffers of big capitalist companies and would attack the stubborn legacy of colonialism and the plantation economy.
The advances already achieved have been due to the balance of power created in the streets. This is what the workers and people of Martinique have demonstrated. By raising the level of combativeness, it is possible to achieve much more in Martinique, and by extending the struggle at least to Guadeloupe, and even to Reunion Island and French Guiana.
The workers and people of Martinique are leading the way.
Nov 11, 2024
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters during the week of November 4, 2024.
Sunday before the election, as this is being written, we don’t know who will be president, Harris or Trump. We don’t know which party, Democratic or Republican, will control the new Senate, nor the House of Representatives.
But two things we do know. No matter who wins, the mega-wealthy capitalist class will have its interests defended. Once again, the working class will not be represented.
You hope that’s not true? You hope one of these candidates will be a break with the past?
Yes, Donald Trump may sometimes be stick-it-in-your-eye boisterous. Kamala Harris may have a more modern style than the usual boring wealthy male who’s been president.
Different, maybe. But they each were chosen by their own parties. And those two parties have always represented the wealthy class of people which controls the economy of this country.
Trump and Harris may pretend to speak to working people, but, when in office, they both acted for big business, banks and the financial industry. They inflated business profits with contracts, subsidies, tax laws and grants. They both used office, when elected, to push funding for wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, and unknown places.
Their two parties have a history. Ever since the end of the Civil War, one of them has been in power. One of them or both—and no other party.
No matter what happened—warfare which never ended or economic crisis which never ended—no matter what happened, one of these two parties led the government.
There might have been two parties—the better to fool the population—but it was still a dictatorship, a two-party dictatorship, the longest lasting dictatorship in the world. Behind it was the social/economic dictatorship of the capitalist class.
What was missing during all these years was a party representing the interests of working people, who are by far the majority. There was no working class party, organized by the working class, putting forward working class demands, pushing to build unity inside the working class.
Certainly, there have been candidates who spoke to workers about the disasters caused by capitalism. The most important was Eugene Debs who ran for president in 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920. He went to jail for leading an important railroad strike. He went to prison for campaigning against World War I, declaring, “there was only one war in which I would enlist and that was the war of the workers of the world against the exploiters of the world.” Debs was a militant of the working class. But there was no party.
There has not been one since. But that is what needs to be built. Until the working class organizes itself politically, working people will be trapped within this two-party system, which may give workers a vote, but no representation.
The appearance of Working Class Party on the ballot goes against this whole history. Compared to the two parties with their army of campaigners, with their hundreds of billions of dollars, with the big media on their side, Working Class Party may seem insignificant. There were only 15 candidates in Michigan, out of thousands, and only one candidate in Illinois, one in California, while people in Maryland were still only gathering signatures to put Working Class Party back on the ballot.
Working Class Party on the ballot will not change the workers’ situation today. For that, the working class has to move, to organize itself to carry out a real fight. And it needs to organize its own party. But those are the very points Working Class Party candidates made with their campaign.
With this party on the ballot, some tens of thousands of people could break with the two-party system. With their vote, they could say they want the working class to build its own party. They had a way to say publicly what they want.
It’s only the very beginning, but beginnings are necessary.
Nov 11, 2024
Boeing workers have decided to end their strike and return to work. Their strike of nearly two months forced Boeing to give the workers more money in wages.
The Boeing workers, like all workers, had seen their standard of living steadily reduced, much of that due to inflation. The leaders of the IAM union (International Association of Machinists) had initially asked for a 40% raise over 4 years. Boeing had first offered 25%, but workers said NO. Later the company offered 35%, but the workers said NO again. Finally, Boeing offered a 38% raise and the majority of workers agreed to settle the strike.
But a sizeable number of Boeing workers did not agree, despite the union leaders pushing for a Yes vote. Forty-one percent of the Boeing workers voted NO. By their vote they said they were not satisfied and they were ready to continue the strike.
Many Boeing workers said they wanted to get back the pensions they had lost 10 years ago. Over those 10 years, Boeing had made huge profits and gave over 74 billion dollars to their rich stockholders, while Boeing workers without a pension were facing a less secure chance for a decent retirement.
Before the strike and during the strike, the Boeing bosses were adamant they were not going to agree to restore pensions. The Boeing owners are linked, financially and through many other ties, to the rest of the capitalist class, almost all of whom have taken away workers’ pensions.
The Boeing workers were adamant that they were ready to fight for what had been taken from them. But the Boeing workers were fighting alone. They were up against not just Boeing, but the whole capitalist class. In this situation, the Boeing workers did not have the way to gain what they wanted and deserved.
But their determination and willingness to fight was important. Their experience can show other workers that a bigger fight is needed, a fight that will draw in many other workers who face the same problems, a fight where workers use all their power as a class to go up against the capitalist class.
In the future, when other workers are ready to come together to make a fight, the Boeing workers, with the lessons of their determined strike, can play an important role.
Nov 11, 2024
Several hundred thousand people voted for candidates who want to see the working class build its own party, breaking with the two parties that represent big business. That’s not a lot. But at least, in three states, this perspective was raised.
Those of us who campaigned in Michigan, Illinois and California often talked to people fed up with the two old parties. Quite a few of them liked the idea that the working class would build its own party—but many wondered if it could happen in this country. Why not? Working people need our own party.
The votes in these three states for a working-class party were somewhat higher this year. In a few districts, particular situations explained the increase. But overall, votes were up. So, whether any of them doubted it can happen, a few more of them, with their vote, said, we want a working-class party.
The following are the results, at least as of November 15. In several districts, and California especially, they are very incomplete.
Working Class Party has been on the ballot five times in Michigan since 2016, and once again received enough votes to qualify for next time.
Voters throughout the whole state could vote for two candidates who ran for statewide education positions. Mary Anne’s votes were about 98,000 higher than last time.
The next seven candidates ran in congressional districts that together reach half of Michigan’s population. With one exception, they were all higher, with the increase running from about one thousand to five thousand more, and percentages were also up.
Seven others ran for State Representative in districts around Detroit. Even if districts and/or candidates were different, overall, the votes of our candidates for these positions were higher.
The Working Class Party of Illinois has been on the ballot in one congressional district touching parts of Chicago and its near suburbs since 2022. The higher result this year means Working Class Party for the first time qualified to remain on the ballot for the next campaign. And that opens the door to run an additional one or two candidates.
In California, the law is so restrictive that putting a new party on the ballot is nearly impossible. So, the people who want to see the working class build its own party collected signatures to put up an independent candidate. Legally, he may be considered “non-partisan,” but his whole campaign made it clear that his goal is to see the working class build its own party. With nearly all the ballots counted, the following is his result so far.
A society so terribly destructive as this one won’t be overhauled through an election. A new society must be built. The working class has the forces to wrench control from the capitalist class and their two big parties. It has the capacity to organize itself to control the economy and make decisions that serve the population. But the working class will need its own party to do that.
A working-class party will not be built by an election. But this election let those candidates who ran, and all their supporters, send a message to the rest of their class, “We need our own party.” These results show that some hundreds of thousands of people agree.
[Counts updated as of November 15, 2024.]