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
Dec 2, 2024
All this propaganda about low unemployment and strong economic growth! What workers actually believe it?! The biggest and richest companies in the U.S. have been cutting staff and carrying out widespread layoffs throughout the year.
The list of companies laying off thousands of workers is very, very long. It includes the top automakers, aerospace giants, high tech companies, telecommunication companies, retail chains, entertainment conglomerates, and the biggest banking and investment companies in the country.
Leading the way in slashing jobs have been the darlings of the stock market, worth hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars, such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Meta (Facebook), Amazon and Tesla.
So, like at the movies, “it’s coming to a theatre near you.”
Millions of jobs have been cut this year, with many more job cuts planned for next year. And don’t for a second believe that the holiday season will slow the cuts. These cuts devastate and lay waste not just to the workers, employees and their families, but to entire communities.
No job is safe, no matter how skilled or technically proficient the worker is. Nor does it matter how rich your employer is, how profitable they are, and how supposedly great the economy is. In fact, corporate layoffs, “reductions in force”—or RIF’s, as they call them—are an enormous weapon that the bosses use in their ongoing war against the working class.
Of course, all these companies use the same justification, or excuse, for slashing jobs. They all claim they have no choice; they have to cut jobs in order to “focus on efficiency,” which really means increasing their profits by paying fewer workers. Then they hand over these “savings” to their big stockholders and owners—that is, the capitalist class.
Whatever profits these companies make, it is never enough. Over the last five years, U.S. corporate profits have almost doubled to more than three trillion dollars, after taxes, a new record. Each year these companies use those increased profits to boost dividends, boost stock buybacks. In fact, these companies are in a giant race, not only to survive, but to pay out the most money to their capitalist owners. In other words, they are competing to make the most profits and recycling the most money and wealth into the investment accounts of their capitalist owners.
So, the entire economy is like a giant suction pump that takes the wealth produced by the working class and hands it over to the biggest stockholders. The entire economy is structured to make a tiny minority, the capitalist class, much richer. That’s what workers are sacrificing and killing themselves for, so that every year, a few billionaires at the top of the heap, like Musk, Buffett, Bezos or Gates, can grow even richer than the entire economy of a medium-sized country, like New Zealand, Hungary or Greece!
It’s been a little more than a month since the presidential campaign finally ended, a campaign during which both parties, Democrats and Republicans, led by Harris and Trump, promised workers more jobs, higher incomes … and all that other pie in the sky.
In fact, the only security, the only protection that workers have ever had has been in our own organizations and struggles. Certainly, it was through these struggles in the past that workers were able to push back the capitalists’ attacks and made important gains.
But those gains were never permanent. There has never been a lasting peace or even a truce in the capitalists’ class war against the working class. The capitalists’ competition for ever more profits drove them to take back whatever the workers gained … and more.
The only alternative for the working class is to take the power away from the capitalist class. Certainly, the working class is in the position to do that right now. It already does all the work. It already produces everything and makes everything run. The working class doesn’t need the capitalist class at all! Taking the capitalists’ power away would represent a giant leap forward for all of humanity.
What is lacking for the working class is the consciousness and understanding of what its real power, its real potential is. One step in gaining this understanding is for the working class to build its own party, to unite workers as a class with the goal of finally ridding humanity of the capitalist scourge.
Dec 2, 2024
Names have been in the news about who Trump has invited to help him run the government—his closest advisors. Billionaires abound.
Elon Musk, currently the world’s richest man, has a net worth of 323 BILLION dollars. Since his job description will be as an “outside advisor,” he will NOT be subject to “conflict of interest” laws. He will be able to use his position to further enrich himself.
His co-head of the “government efficiency commission” will be Vivek Ramaswamy, who is worth 1.1 billion dollars. He made his money in the pharmaceutical industry and in the medical world of biotech.
Both of these so-called “outside advisors” will be able to use their position to further enrich themselves. Talk about pigs at the government trough!
Not yet officially part of the new administration are the Cabinet picks and staff nominations. There appears to be no shortage of billionaires, real estate moguls, Wall Street sharks and corporate lobbyists among the ranks of Trump’s picks. Soon all the little piggies will go, “Wee, wee, wee!” all the way home—after a stop at the bank!
Dec 2, 2024
Medicare Part B premiums for most seniors in the U.S. are going up from $174.70 in 2024 to $185 in 2025, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That’s an increase of 5.9%. Yet Social Security benefits will only increase by 2.5%.
This is not unusual, as Medicare Part B premiums have increased by an average of 5.5% per year from 2005 to 2024, while the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security benefits has only gone up by an average of 2.6% per year, according to Mary Johnson, an independent Social Security and Medicare analyst.
This is also not an accident. It’s because Medicare costs are not included in the way the Social Security Administration calculates inflation, when it determines its yearly COLA.
While it’s true that Medicare premiums are only a portion of what most seniors get from Social Security, it means that Social Security benefits don’t keep pace with inflation.
Dec 2, 2024
At least half of California’s 162,000 farmworkers are undocumented immigrants. Yet California growers who own the massive farms where these immigrants work are some of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters, despite his promise to carry out mass deportations. This would seem to be a contradiction—why would farm owners support a politician who has promised to deport their workforce?
Perhaps part of the reason is what actually happened during the mass deportation that Trump loves to cite: “Operation Wetback,” from 1954–1956. During those years, officials set up roadblocks and shipped south of the border anyone who looked Mexican—including many thousands of U.S. citizens. They carried out spectacular raids in cities, and even set up a detention camp in Los Angeles’ Elysian Park. Tens of thousands of farmworkers were among those caught up in these raids.
But the farms never ran out of labor. This was because the federal government doubled the numbers of “guest workers” or braceros that it let into the country between 1952 and 1956. These braceros were allowed to enter the U.S. to work for a short term, before they were supposed to go back to Mexico. Those who did not were themselves often caught up in the deportation campaign.
This mass deportation of their workers thus helped the growers, since the braceros were much more controllable than the workers they replaced. After all, the braceros’ very right to be in the U.S. depended on their boss. And the large numbers of undocumented immigrants and Mexican Americans who continued to work in the fields were terrorized into staying in the shadows, staying quiet, and accepting an accelerated rate of exploitation.
Something similar to the bracero program exists today, called the H-2A farmworker program. According to a spokesperson for the United Farm Workers union, this program is “a recipe for exploitation. Employers control nearly every aspect of workers’ lives,” including their right to be in the country—just like they did 75 years ago.
No one can say what the new administration will actually do. But the growers’ support for Trump makes clear that they think any attacks he carries out on immigrants will likely benefit them, not hurt them. And what is good for the bosses will be bad for the workers—not just in the fields, but everywhere.
Dec 2, 2024
Workers have the right to file for unemployment benefits when they lose a job. But at least in Illinois, to file for benefits is a huge headache.
Many older workers are not computer trained. Going to the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) website and creating an account sounds easy, but if you’ve filed for benefits before, you don’t remember your password or username.
You won’t be able to create a new account unless you talk to someone. But when you request to talk to them, you will spend many hours on the phone waiting. Or, if you try to make an appointment, a computer will ask you to leave your name and someone will call you back—maybe, in a few days.
If you try to just walk in to the IDES office—they don’t take walk-ins. They say you have to make an appointment—which could be many days of waiting.
If you finally get an appointment, they don’t tell you clearly what documents to bring—not just your Social Security number, but the actual card—and if you claim dependents, you need their Social Security cards too.
All this could be easy if there was a human being to answer the phone and tell you what you need to do—but you don’t learn it until you’re at the office for your appointment, unless you have a friend or coworker who has already had this experience.
Then, to qualify for benefits, you need to publish your resumé on their website—another roadblock for the many workers who are not used to using a computer.
Then, if you misunderstand their questions—like, “were you available to work this week?” and hit no—forget about getting any benefits you are owed.
Workers pay into the unemployment system. It’s our tax money! It should be a simple thing to access for all workers. Instead, between understaffing and putting up all these roadblocks, the State of Illinois keeps workers from the benefits we’ve paid for.
Dec 2, 2024
Twenty-nine million people ages 12 and older (10.2% of this age group) had alcohol use disorder (AUD) in the past year, according to the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). Every day, 385 Americans die as a result of excessive alcohol use. Alcohol abuse is not an individual, moral failure, but a societal failure. As society crumbles, people continue to turn to drugs and alcohol to escape.
It is common to hear “help is available.” But if and when someone decides to seek help, knowing where to turn isn’t so obvious. The first thing listed on Google when searching anything related to having an alcohol problem is the “988 Suicide & Crisis Hotline.” Many with AUD may feel that this does not apply to them. It may even frighten them, ending their search right there. After the hotline link is a list of sponsored private rehab facilities that cost big money and know-how to get into. One listing near the top clearly states “NO MEDICAID” in the heading—just to be clear, don’t ask! Help might be available if you have money, but if not, good luck.
People with the wherewithal to keep at it, or more likely, friends or family willing to help, will learn, after several phone calls, that in order to get into any rehab program they must first go to the emergency room for a psych evaluation. But not just any E.R. They will need to find an E.R. that provides this service AND accepts their insurance, if they have any.
So long as the person isn’t posing an imminent danger to themselves, they are considered low priority in an E.R., meaning they’ll have to wait. Anyone who has ever been to an E.R. knows that this can take hours! Those with enough willpower (and more likely, support) to make it through the waiting room will find out that the psych evaluation can’t be performed if they have alcohol in their system. They will be ushered into a detox program. After detox, and if the psych evaluation shows they are fit for rehab, they will be allowed to enter a program. Each one of these steps has a different set of requirements and accepts and denies different insurances. People often have to bounce between different hospitals and facilities because, even though the hospital accepted their insurance for detox, it doesn’t accept it for rehab.
Medicaid is available for people with extremely low incomes, but as seen in this listing, the quantity and quality of services available are limited. The uninsured must be ready to pay whatever the cost may be, and private insurance still comes with unknown copays and deductibles.
Even when help is technically available, there are insurance qualifications and paywalls blocking people every step of the way. People who can’t blindly accept to pay bills that may range from hundreds to more than tens of thousands of dollars, can’t proceed with getting help. The hoops people have to jump through to avoid bills they can’t afford for medical care they desperately need are pitiful.
On top of all of this, the majority of working-class people would lose their jobs and insurance if they missed work for a 28 day rehab program. Then what? They get out of rehab jobless and a month or more behind on bills? If something was going to drive someone to drink, that’d do it!
Dec 2, 2024
The U.S. Department of Justice has announced that it is filing charges against the oil company Phillips 66 for dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil and grease into L.A. County’s sewer system.
Four years ago, Phillips 66 was caught dumping more than 300 times the legal limit for such hazardous discharge. And yet, even if the company is convicted, the most penalty it faces is probation and 2.4 million dollars in fines—peanuts for a company that made 7.24 billion dollars of profit in 2023 alone.
And this is not the first time the company’s twin refineries near the Los Angeles harbor are making the news for the pollution they cause. For years, residents in surrounding communities have been complaining about soot, harsh odors and fires that released large amounts of thick smoke and toxic chemicals into the air. But authorities allowed this 100-year-old facility to continue to operate at high capacity—producing as much as 8% of California’s gasoline, and huge profits for Phillips 66 and the facility’s previous owners.
In the meantime, Phillips 66 has announced that it has slated this refinery complex for closure by next year, opening up 650 acres of “prime property” for real estate development—and extra profits for Phillips 66 and developers.
By regulation, the company has to clean the land before it is used for other purposes. But given the track record of Phillips 66, and how government regulators have been letting it get away with pollution, who knows how much clean-up will get done.
Dec 2, 2024
This article is translated from the November 29 issue of Lutte Ouvriere (Workers’ Struggle), the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu announced on Tuesday, November 26 that his security cabinet accepted a ceasefire in Lebanon.
The U.S.-brokered agreement would provide for a sixty-day truce during which Hezbollah and the Israeli army would withdraw to make way for the Lebanese army. An international monitoring committee made up of five countries, including France, and chaired by the United States, would be set up to guarantee the ceasefire.
To reach this agreement, American officials assured the Israeli government that it would have the right to bomb Lebanon if it deemed it necessary. In reality, the Israeli state has never needed any authorization to arrogate this right unto itself, or even to occupy southern Lebanon, as it did for almost twenty years between 1982 and 2000.
Today, Israeli leaders clearly have no plans for a new occupation. After more than two months of war, their troops are facing strong resistance from the Hezbollah militia. The Israeli general staff cannot boast of having achieved its objective, which was to put an end to the missile fire that has led to the displacement of 60,000 Israelis living on the Lebanese border. On Sunday, November 24, Hezbollah again fired around 250 rockets and other projectiles into Israel, injuring seven people.
Before agreeing to this ceasefire, the Israeli army stepped up its bombing raids in many parts of Lebanon and in Beirut, killing dozens of people every day. Pretending to target a Hezbollah leader or command center, Israeli bombs destroyed entire buildings. They have already claimed more than 2,000 lives and displaced more than a quarter of Lebanon’s 5.3 million inhabitants.
On the other hand, the Israeli government does not envisage an end to the war in Gaza. Bombardments continue day and night throughout the Palestinian enclave, bringing the death toll to over 44,000. Since October 6, the town of Jabaliya and its surroundings have been under siege, depriving the 65,000 Palestinians living there of access to food aid and drinking water.
For over a year, the Israeli army has been able to wage a veritable war of extermination in Gaza. This is the claimed program of the extreme right, one of whose government representatives, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, declared on Monday, November 25 before a body representing West Bank settlers: "We can create a situation in which, within two years, the population of Gaza will be halved".
With the unwavering support of the leaders of the imperialist powers, first and foremost the United States, the Israeli government has a free hand to continue the massacre. At the same time, its criminal policy condemns the Israeli population to live in a permanent state of war. Some Israelis are aware of this and refuse to accept the prospect. On November 23, as on every Saturday for weeks, thousands of people demonstrated in Tel Aviv, expressing their opposition to Netanyahu, his government and his war.
Dec 2, 2024
This article is translated from the November 29 issue of Lutte Ouvriere (Workers’ Struggle), the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
The Israeli army is facing increasing defections among the 300,000 reservists mobilized against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and now in Lebanon.
Before the start of the all-out war launched by Netanyahu following the attack on October 7, 2023, Israelis under the age of 40 performed an average of 25 reserve days spread over three years. Over the past year, this figure has risen to 135 days for soldiers and 168 days for officers. Reservists complain of not seeing their children, of putting their jobs or small businesses at risk, of having to interrupt their studies.
And above all, these periods of reserve duty are taking place in the context of a dirty war of occupation being waged on an entire people. Over the past year, 800 Israeli soldiers have been killed, 5,400 wounded and 12,000 are being treated for post-traumatic stress. There are a growing number of testimonies from reservists, soldiers and engineers: they remain scarred after having crushed Palestinians, dead or alive, under their machines or having participated, in one form or another, in exactions.
Added to these horrors of war is the injustice felt by many reservists in exempting 63,000 young ultra-Orthodox Israelis from military service, on the pretext that they are devoting themselves to their religious studies. Netanyahu, needing too much the votes of the deputies of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish fundamentalist parties, refuses to put an end to this provision and is preparing to lengthen the duration of military service.
The Israeli state has turned its population into prison guards, and today into the executioners of a people. There will be no peace without a break with the Netanyahu government’s infamous colonialism.
Dec 2, 2024
This article is translated from the November 29 issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
On Thursday, November 21, during the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Macron was challenged by a Haitian who accused France of being responsible for the chaos in which his country is plunged. Macron’s retort was insulting to an entire people.
"There frankly, it’s the Haitians who killed Haiti, by letting the drug trade flourish (...) They’re completely stupid. They should never have taken out the Prime Minister. He was great," Macron exclaimed. The insult could be returned, when we know the outcome of his stroke of genius: the dissolution of the National Assembly in June. Above all, Macron oozes social contempt and colonial arrogance at a time when Haiti’s working classes are starving, being shot at by gangs, condemned to live as refugees in their own country, while the clans in what serves as government are tearing each other apart with the sole aim of enriching themselves.
Macron felt sorry for Gary Conille, who was sacked on November 10 after serving as Prime Minister since May 29. Of course, his appointment brought no relief to the population. He was by no means a new man, having been a minister on several occasions since 2011, sharing responsibility with all Haiti’s political cliques for the hell experienced by the population.
The imperialist powers are primarily responsible for this hellish state of affairs—the United States, of course. But France is also the main culprit, because Haiti, when it was called Saint-Domingue, was a French colony, the most profitable because of the exploitation of slaves. The slaves fought for their emancipation in 1791, and managed to hold on to it in the face of Napoleon’s troops, who landed in 1802 in an attempt to re-establish slavery. The colonial powers never forgave Haiti for having become the symbol of the slaves’ victory over their masters. As soon as they could, the former colonial powers imposed a financial burden on Haiti as compensation or ransom for the former masters. This contributed, from 1825 until 1952, to strangling a country made bloodless by the impoverishment of the soil, due to the production of sugar cane for Europe.
France’s role in Haiti is obvious when you consider that former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, ousted from power in 1986 by the people of Port-au-Prince, lived in France in exile until 2011, having taken with him a fortune greater than Haiti’s foreign debt. Returning to Haiti in 2011—when the “formidable” Gary Conille was Minister of Justice and then Prime Minister—Duvalier lived happily ever after until his death in 2014.
Today, Haiti is one of the poorest countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and has seen gangs and the insatiable appetite of Gary Conille-style politicians flourish. The sole reason for this is that rotting capitalism is sinking ever deeper into a country it has never forgiven for setting an example of victorious revolt. Macron is complicit in maintaining this rot that only a social revolution, in the Caribbean and beyond, can sweep away.
Dec 2, 2024
This article is translated from the November 23 issue of Combat Ouvrier (Workers’ Struggle), the Trotskyist group of that name active in the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique.
Rodrigue Petitot, the leader of RPPRAC, the organization behind the current movement against the high cost of living in Martinique, was arrested on November 12 “for home invasion, threats, intimidation and violence against persons holding public authority.” Hundreds of people turned out to support him outside his place of detention until his release from court on November 15.
The authorities, backed by the mainstream media, would like to blame the violence and looting on the margins of the movement on this leader. The struggle against the high cost of living in Martinique has been gaining in popularity for nearly three months. Actions and demonstrations are continuing not only in Martinique, but also in France, with impressive demonstrations in Paris. In Guadeloupe, on November 16, people disrupted the operation of a Carrefour store which not only sells expensive products, but also lies about the prices displayed.
RPPRAC leaders began the mobilization by demanding lower food prices, and denouncing the power of wealthy Békés families and a few bourgeois of color over supermarkets in the West Indies. The Bernard Hayot Group alone owns franchises for Carrefour, Renault, Mr. Bricolage, Danone, Kia, Decathlon and many others. It’s a group with a presence in 19 countries around the world and in all overseas territories, with sales of three billion euros in 2023.
These capitalists reserve exorbitant margins for themselves and refuse to reveal them to the public.
What’s more, supply is largely dependent on imports from France, estimated at 87% in 2023. The CMA-CGM company, which monopolizes import-export, takes full advantage of this situation to enrich itself.
Demonstrators rejected a proposed agreement. It was signed by the prefect, the local authority and supermarket bosses on October 16. Price cuts are largely insufficient, since the profits of big business remain untouched.
It’s the bosses who should be made to pay, rather than taking money from the public purse. But beyond a significant price cut, it’s important to demand higher wages!
The real expenses of the working classes have exploded. It’s no longer a question of losing a little purchasing power; salaries are no longer enough to live on. In 2023, economist Christian Louis-Joseph reported that more than half the population of Martinique was living in poverty.
We need a substantial increase in all salaries, benefits and pensions. Not less than $600, starting with the lowest incomes. No income should be less than $2,000.
The social struggle in Martinique concerns part of the population, but workers have just as much at stake in launching a struggle within companies. A struggle for wage increases waged with at least as much determination as Rodrigue Petitot’s movement would be a winner.
Like the dockers and EDF workers, who, when they cease their activities, stop the transport of goods and the production of electricity, we can see that workers are indispensable to the running of society. This awareness among workers that they carry the whole of society on their shoulders can go a long way.
The thousands of supermarket workers in the West Indies, if they decide to stop work, could block the Hayot and company money machine. The exploited are the only ones who can challenge the power of the owners. This is how the working class is best placed to impose its demands and win higher wages through mass struggles and strikes in the workplace.
Dec 2, 2024
This article is translated from the October 10 issue, #2932 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
At the end of the 19th century, feudal China was divided up and ruled by Western imperialist powers. China’s last imperial dynasty, corrupt and incompetent, eventually fell. A nationalist party, led at the time by Sun Yat-Sen, proclaimed the country a republic in 1911, calling for a modern, capitalist China, independent of imperialism. But China instead fell into the hands of warlords and disintegrated.
From 1925 onwards, a new revolution began to mature. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in 1921 under the impetus of the Third International, which sought to extend the revolution begun in Russia. The Party organized thousands of workers, with the aim to put an end to the domination of feudal lords and imperialism.
The International, under Stalinist leadership, forced the CCP to merge with the Nationalist Party of China (Kuomintang), then led by Chiang Kai-shek. Workers and Communists seized power in Shanghai in 1927, only to hand that power over to Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang turned around and had thousands of them shot, drowning the workers’ revolution in blood.
It was all the more tragic because a victorious Chinese revolution could have breathed new life into the workers’ revolution worldwide and given Russian workers a chance to counter the Stalinist bureaucracy.
After the defeat of 1927, the Chinese Communist Party found itself isolated in the countryside, cut off from the working class. It was led by Mao and under the influence of the Stalinist apparatus, which had a policy to form People’s Fronts, that is, alliances with bourgeois parties. Over the course of the 1930s, the CCP became a radical nationalist party.
In 1937, the Kuomintang and the CCP, which dominated certain provinces, stopped fighting each other and joined forces against Japan, which was then extending its hold over the whole of China. The Japanese occupation was particularly violent, and its defeat in 1945 set off a big peasant uprising. The CCP’s aim was to form a coalition government with Chiang Kai-shek, a position long supported by American imperialism. It was Chiang who broke ranks.
The Kuomintang was loathed by large sections of the population, including the bourgeoisie, who were fed up with its corruption and parasitism. The CCP saw its influence grow. At the end of 1945, the Kuomintang attacked Mao’s troops, who had gained the support of revolting peasants and the urban petty-bourgeois city-dwellers. The CCP, however, hesitated for a long time before supporting this revolt. In order not to alienate the so-called patriotic landlords, it had only a moderate agrarian program of rent reduction. After long hesitation, because no compromise with Chiang materialized, and because part of the bourgeoisie looked favorably on the CCP, Mao made up his mind. In summer 1946, the order went out: “Share the land.” The Communist Party thus chose to lead the peasants in revolt to seize power. Chiang’s armies were defeated. Mao’s armies often entered the cities without firing a shot.
The working class, carefully kept at bay, played no part in Mao’s seizure of power. On October 1, 1949, Mao officially proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. Chiang fled to the island of Taiwan under American protection. The Chinese revolution of 1949 gave birth to a bourgeois state, aimed at modernizing Chinese society, ensuring its economic development by freeing the country from the direct tutelage of imperialism and sharing feudal lands. The new regime, supported by the progressive petty bourgeoisie, put an end to many reactionary aspects of the old society, particularly with regard to the status of women. The new bourgeois state soon came up against a section of the Chinese bourgeoisie itself, who fled to Taiwan and Hong Kong, and against imperialism. From 1949 to 1971, American imperialism, which still supported Chiang Kai-shek, placed China under embargo. Faced with this opposition, the State nationalized and developed industry by overexploiting China’s vast peasantry.
At the end of the 1960s, it was the United States, bogged down in Vietnam, in search of a foothold in the region, that changed its policy. This led to the re-establishment of diplomatic relations, most spectacularly with the 1972 meeting between U.S. President Nixon and Mao. Economically, China became a virgin market to conquer, and an inexhaustible source of cheap labor.
Under Chinese state control, Western capitalists were welcomed with open arms. China integrated into the world economy as the workshop of the world, a subcontractor to Western and Japanese trusts. The Chinese state made itself their agent, maintaining order in the factories, and promising the developing bourgeoisie to reap some of the fruits of workers’ exploitation.
This bourgeoisie, now made up of a few hundred billionaires and several million millionaires, owes its fortune and positions to the Chinese state, to which it is closely linked. The working class has also grown considerably stronger. Millions have left the countryside in search of work in urban centers. Counting these 295 million “mingong” in 2022, they now number almost 800 million, a formidable force that the Chinese and Western bourgeoisie are wary of, for while the Chinese working class is fiercely exploited, it also fights fiercely.
Today, imperialism has to reckon with a Chinese state it still does not control, and which has developed the ability to compete with it in certain areas. Containing that state has been the policy of the major Western powers since 2011, marked by the rise of protectionist barriers, the deployment of military forces in Asia, and a heightened risk of war.... The revolution of 1949, which took place within a national, bourgeois framework, led to a new impasse. But China’s working class, now the largest in the world, linked by a thousand ties to the European and American working class, can be a decisive force in the future.
Dec 2, 2024
Recently the U.S. Secretary of the Air Force gave a speech saying that a U.S. war with China “can happen at any time” and that there needs to be a “sense of urgency” to prepare for war. In November, members of Congress were given a briefing about how the U.S. military is making preparations to go to war against China. In October, the U.S. army conducted war-game exercises in Hawaii, that were specifically aimed at conducting a war against China. Meanwhile, the U.S. navy conducts its own war exercises in the Pacific and the South China Sea.
If the U.S. military is today making plans for a war against China, it is because they are following directions of the political leaders of the U.S. government and the capitalist class that these politicians work for. They are all preparing the population here for such a war. We heard that during the recent election campaign, in which both the Republicans and Democrats were portraying China as a threat to the U.S. In Michigan, the two parties’ candidates for the Senate, Elissa Slotkin and Mike Rogers, tried to outdo each other claiming to be the toughest on China. Some of Donald Trump’s choices for cabinet positions claim that their main qualification is how hostile to China they are.
The corporate-owned media is also preparing the population here for a possible war against China. Almost daily there is one story or another about how China is a threat to the U.S.
But where is any military threat from China? China does not have bases and troops along the U.S border in Mexico and Canada. China does not have naval forces off the coast of California and New York. There is no threat from China.
No, the real threat of war is coming from the U.S. government. They have put troops, air bases, and warships all around China. They have U.S. forces stationed in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, threatening China.
So why is the U.S. government preparing to go to war against China, when China is the U.S. bosses’ primary source of labor and product production?
The U.S. bourgeois bosses and bankers look to squeeze out ever more profits. While U.S. capitalism dominates the world economy, China is a competitor, taking their margin of profits.
China is an immense country with a large population and a massive state apparatus that constrains the ability of the U.S. capitalists to exploit the world’s markets, natural resources and labor at an even higher level.
The politicians who serve the capitalists, and the media owned by the capitalists, are grinding out war propaganda, preparing the population for war. How could a war like this be in our interests? We would pay the price for it. We would be its victims and see our own standard of living drop off a cliff.
Our interests as workers are the same as the workers in China, and the rest of the world. Our interests are to have food, shelter, non-killing jobs, decent wages, education and security. Our interests are to have a future for ourselves and our children, better than our past. And war is not that future.
Dec 2, 2024
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters during the week of November 17, 2024.
Almost 89.7 million people who have the right to vote didn’t. Put all together, their votes could have beaten either Trump, who got only 76.5 million votes, or Harris, who got 73.8 million.
Well, did those non-voters throw their votes away—as some politicians and preachers put it?
What about the people who voted for Trump? Trump is already claiming that their votes give him a mandate for measures he wants enacted—like tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country.
Harris would have done the same, claiming popular support for measures like the subsidies she and Biden pushed through for the big corporations and their super-wealthy owners.
Talk about throwing your vote away! Isn’t that what you did if you gave it to politicians who carry out policies that favor the big-money class, at your expense?
In any case, the election is over. But reality didn’t go away.
Staring us smack in the face is the capitalist economy, which has never provided a decent-paying full-time job for all those who need to work. And now, companies from Silicon Valley to Detroit are cutting more jobs, closing plants and other facilities. This is the logic of capitalism: squeeze more work out of fewer workers. It’s great for company profits, which flow to the whole capitalist class—but not great for those who need to work.
The logic of capitalism, with its search for more profit by whatever means, also leads to inflation. It may not be going up as fast as last year, but prices are much higher than they were last year. Funny how that works. But it’s not so funny that most of us can’t buy the same groceries, or cars or houses. Can’t even rent a decent apartment.
The same capitalist logic created school systems that can’t educate the children of the working class. There aren’t enough teachers, not enough classrooms, not enough books, supplies, lab facilities. In other words, the schools do not have enough money. The money that should go to schools—and all the other social and public services needed—is going to subsidize capitalist profit and pay for tax breaks to the super-wealthy. Increasingly, it is going to war.
Today, the extent of war is hidden because it is being fought by U.S. surrogates like Israel and Ukraine. But it’s being fought with U.S.-built weapons, U.S.-funded planning, U.S.-organized spying. There may not be U.S. troops there—yet—or not many. Not many? There are at least 30,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East right now, and more than that in Europe surrounding Russia. There is a U.S. armada in the South China Sea. War is creeping up on us.
The elections did not and could not give an answer to this reality. Not from the standpoint of the working class.
There can be no answer to this situation until the working class begins to act as a single, unified class—workers who didn’t vote, workers who voted for Trump, workers who voted for Harris.
In mobilizing to fight for itself, the working class can find a way out of this mess we find ourselves in—if it sees the need to bring all its forces together, no matter whom they voted for, no matter what their nationality or citizenship is, no matter what their skin color or gender is.
The working class today works in the center of the economy. This gives it the potential of transforming its own situation IF it understands that the changes it needs can come only when it works to get rid of the capitalist system, only when it drives the capitalist class from power.
When Trump demonizes immigrants, he is trying to drive a wedge in the working class. He would destroy working class unity, the very thing workers need to carry on their struggles.
Harris would not have been a protection for the working class. She made it absolutely clear that her allegiance was to the capitalist class—and when it wanted the working class divided, she did that.
The working class, and only the working class, will create its own unity, and thus start on the road to building a collective society.
Dec 2, 2024
This film is an adaptation of August Wilson’s play of the same name. Denzel Washington bought the rights to produce all ten of August Wilson’s plays. This one is directed by Denzel’s son Malcolm, and stars another son, John David, along with Samuel L. Jackson and Danielle Deadwyler.
The film takes place in Pittsburgh in the 1930s and revolves around the debate of what to do with the family heirloom, a beautiful upright piano with beautiful carvings done by one of their ancestors when he was a slave. The debate around the piano comes to symbolize the debate about how to deal with their traumatic and horrific past. The conflict between the different points of view seems irreconcilable and threatens to destroy them all, but the film shows the way forward is to come together, discuss, listen and engage, and only then can we move forward.
Dec 2, 2024
Earlier this year, General Motors announced it intended to move its employees out of Detroit’s Renaissance Center, with some moving to the redeveloped Hudson’s building.
In exchange for their “generosity,” the city of Detroit allowed GM to hold onto 200 million dollars per year in tax breaks the State of Michigan granted it in 2009, for supposedly providing jobs at the RenCen.
Dan Gilbert’s real estate company, Bedrock, which owns the new Hudson’s site, also received 100 million dollars for “keeping” jobs in Detroit.
Recently, General Motors and Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock real estate company formed a partnership and proposed to tear down two of the RenCen’s four towers and an indoor mall space. This would allow them to benefit from the rental of hotel, residential and office space in the remaining three towers. In exchange, GM and Bedrock want 250 million dollars from the state and another 100 million dollars from Detroit.
After GM and Bedrock made their proposal, some politicians expressed reluctance to go along with it.
GM’s response? They threatened to simply tear down the entire RenCen if they don’t get the funding they want.
What is this, other than simple extortion?
This is the same GM that received 126 million dollars from the state for its old headquarters building, and paid only 73 million dollars for the RenCen when it moved in, then received 221 million dollars more.
All these subsidies and tax breaks allowed General Motors to pay out 11 billion dollars in early 2023 in stock buybacks, then another 10 billion dollars in November of last year, and another 6 billion dollars this past June.
Billionaire Dan Gilbert received the land from the old Hudson’s department store building for free and the city paid for the building’s demolition. He received 618 million dollars in tax breaks from the state, over 500 million for the construction of the new county jail in Detroit, and 62 million dollars in prime real estate in downtown Detroit.
Billionaires like Gilbert and the big GM stockholders don’t take on projects like this out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it to make more money!
All of these handouts to the wealthy in tax breaks and subsidies are money that could be spent on schools, roads, and home repairs for the remaining residents of Detroit who managed to not lose their homes to mortgage and tax foreclosures in recent years.
Dec 2, 2024
Seven Michigan counties and 72 small townships have banded together to take the State of Michigan to court. Their lawsuit states that the Michigan Public Service Commission—the state agency that “regulates” utility companies—made illegal changes to state law.
The local municipalities say they are being shut out of any local say on large scale wind and solar energy projects. The communities bringing the lawsuit say they are in agreement with renewable energies. They just want the local input they were promised when the law passed.
An attorney representing the local communities said, “So to now have this unelected and unaccountable agency [the Michigan Public Service Commission] trying to redefine what (the law) means is, frankly, a lot of our clients find it offensive.”
In 2023, the Michigan legislature and governor’s office, controlled by the Democratic Party, passed a law giving the Michigan Public Service Commission jurisdiction to speed up local placements of 100-megawatt projects involving solar and wind energy.
Without rejecting green energy, local communities want to retain some say about location, location, location!
The lessons of the tragedy of the Flint water crisis apply here. The lead poisoning of children and adults could have been avoided had the State of Michigan LISTENED to LOCAL Flint water department experts. Instead, state dictatorial powers were used to ignore local warnings about the harm of re-opening the Flint water plant too quickly.
Local communities were promised a say about the exact placement of huge green energy projects. Local communities are damn right to fight for that say!
Dec 2, 2024
As if it isn’t bad enough that we get sticker shock when we go grocery shopping. But when we go to check-out, there may be only one or maybe even no check-outs with a cashier, open. And so, on to the self-check-out lines where customers scan and bag their groceries, themselves.
Ninety-six percent of big grocery stores have self-check-out lanes. And the propaganda goes—the customer can have autonomy—it can be more efficient, rather than wait in a long check-out line. They float the myth that lower labor costs could lower prices.
Has self-scanning groceries led to lower prices—No. Is it more efficient? No. Just ask anyone who has more than six items; anyone who is subjected to “Please wait. Help is on the way” when something goes wrong with the scanning process.
The reality is, self check-out is a transfer of paid labor—cashiers—onto unpaid labor—the customers. It is big stores looking to achieve long-term labor cost savings by hiring fewer cashiers, and expect customers to do the work for free. As one customer put it, as she found herself with no choice but to use self check-out: “I didn’t leave work to come to work.”
The principle of using technology to make work more efficient, and improve customer service could be a good thing. But in this capitalist system, technology comes with a hook, since it is used to increase the profit margins of companies, rather than help workers.