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
Mar 3, 2008
The Federal Reserve has let out all the stops. It is pumping so much money into the U.S. financial system, its interest rate for loans to the banks is much lower than the rate of inflation. Of course, government officials and so-called economic experts swear that the Fed is doing it all for us, to help save our homes from foreclosure, stimulate the sinking economy and prevent a recession.
What complete rubbish!
The reality is that the Fed is pumping really cheap money... right into the hot little hands of the very same gigantic financial institutions and the super-rich who were behind the subprime mortgage rip-off and the housing bubble. The collapse of the housing bubble caught all these speculators with their pants down. The Fed stepped right in, handing them lots of cheap money.
Any guesses about what all those super-wealthy companies are doing with it? They’re speculating all over again. This time, they have turned to speculating on basic commodities, like oil, gas, gold, platinum, wheat, corn–basically anything they can get their hands on. They are pouring money into all that stuff driving prices to record levels.
Over the past year, they have shoveled so much money into oil speculation, they drove up the price of a barrel of oil from $60 to over $102 in just one year. They have pushed up the price of wheat so fast, it has actually quadrupled in a year.
And things are getting worse. Over the month of February, this speculation got even wilder and crazier. The price of natural gas skyrocketed by 26%. Cocoa for chocolate, of all things, shot up by 38%. What’s next, record prices for bull crap and bird dung?
The entire capitalist financial system is in the hands of madmen whose only thought is how to make another million dollars in the next five minutes.
Of course, all of this impacts us. Their bets on commodities have quickly worked their way through the supply chain and pushed up prices paid by consumers. Gas prices are a dollar per gallon higher than they were a year ago. Prices for basic foods, including bread, meat, vegetables, fruit, are increasing at their fastest rate in decades.
Families, already reeling from the housing crisis, are getting hit again. Those on fixed incomes are finding that they can’t stretch their checks past the first couple weeks in the month. And experts are warning that these price increases are just the beginning. They are saying, for example, that there could be $4 per gallon gasoline this summer.
Just like their speculation on housing made the family home or apartment completely unaffordable for most working families, now they are doing the same with our food and gas.
When the Fed feeds the speculators with all that cash, it is like putting a gun in the hand of a mass murderer, along with a couple of grenades and a bazooka. This is not an innocent mistake. It’s what the government has always done–bail out the rich at the expense of everyone else.
In their drive to make profits, big companies and banks jump from one mania to another, causing one crisis after another. In so doing, they plunge millions and hundreds of millions of working people into crisis and ruin, while the big money interests are bailed out of their problems by the Fed and various government agencies.
That is the insanity of modern capitalism–a system so old and worn out it needs to be tossed on the trash heap.
Mar 3, 2008
Thousands of people living in trailers supplied by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Administration) have had headaches, watery or burning eyes and throat, running noses, nose bleeds and chronic respiratory problems that were caused by formaldehyde out-gassing from materials used in the trailers. Some may develop cancer.
When people started reporting symptoms of formaldehyde poisoning shortly after the first families moved in, FEMA denied that anything was wrong. The environmental Sierra Club did respond to people’s complaints, however, and carried out tests showing the big majority of the trailers had dangerous levels of formaldehyde gas in them.
What did FEMA do? It set up a rigged test of unoccupied trailers it aired out for days beforehand–in order to pretend the trailers were safe.
Finally this past December, a court suit forced FEMA to have tests done on a sample of 519 trailers actually in use. The results show formaldehyde exposure in the trailers is FIVE times the average in modern homes. Some trailers tested at 40 times the norm!
FEMA now says it will move everyone out of its dangerous trailers as quickly as possible. But how quickly is “as quickly as possible”?
This is the same FEMA that took days to even “discover” that there were many thousands of people stranded in increasingly desperate conditions in the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center after Hurricane Katrina struck. Everyone else in the country had been watching the growing misery of those stranded on television every day.
“Quick,” in FEMA’s dictionary, is only another way to say “Never”!
Mar 3, 2008
In the wake of the growing housing crisis and recession, the Federal Reserve has dramatically cut short term interest rates on money that it loans to the banks, from 5.25% last August to 3% today. And more cuts by the Federal Reserve are expected in the future.
These cuts have been applauded unanimously by U.S. officials, the news media and other so-called experts. They characterize these interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve as “medicine” to supposedly “stimulate” economic growth by making borrowing cheaper.
Of course, what is not mentioned is that these interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve are very costly. To pay for them, either the Federal Reserve has to get funding from the U.S. Treasury, thus contributing to the mushrooming budget deficit. Or else, the Federal Reserve will simply print more money without any backing–contributing to more inflation, which finally penalizes consumers–ordinary working people–through higher prices.
And all this doesn’t even buy consumers lower interest rates. For these banks and financial companies are not passing on their lower cost of credit. On the contrary, they have turned around and increased the interest rates that they charge consumers for home mortgages, auto loans and credit cards, thus squeezing consumers, already overburdened by record amounts of debt, even more.
So, all claims that Fed rate cuts are being used to supposedly “stimulate” the economy are a complete fraud. No, the only thing being stimulated is higher profits for the banks and big financial companies.
The interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve are nothing but a massive bail out of the very same banks and financial companies that are behind the whole subprime mortgage and housing crisis.
It’s as though the courts handed a convicted murderer his gun–and said “Go use it!”
Mar 3, 2008
On February 17, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) ordered a recall of 143 million pounds of beef that was processed in a slaughterhouse belonging to Westland/Hallmark Meat Company in Chino, California. One-fifth of the beef used in the National School Lunch Program came from that slaughterhouse. Millions of school children ate it every day.
It also supplied beef for several fast food chains.
The USDA did not act because it wanted to. An undercover video shot by a Humane Society worker showed how “downer” cows were prodded, shocked and even fork-lifted to their feet in order to get around the rule that “downer” cows cannot be slaughtered for human consumption. This rule is supposed to protect against BSE or “mad cow” disease. The public exposure forced the USDA to act.
The scandal also prodded politicians to hold hearings. Agriculture Department officials repeatedly told Congress that the beef was safe for consumers. As proof they cited no reported illnesses–yet!
And the media dutifully repeated the official assurances! As though we have all forgotten about “mad cow” disease.
A cow that cannot stand on its own must be assumed to have the “mad cow” brain infection until proven otherwise. The disease easily moves from cattle to humans. It is a very dangerous, treacherous disease because it takes years or even tens of years to develop in the human brain, to the point that it shows symptoms and can be diagnosed.
The USDA officials know all about this. There is no possible way they can assure the school children who have eaten suspect meat that they are safe, since the development of the disease is so slow. It’s as if the USDA had said, “It’s safe to breathe asbestos because you don’t get sick right away.”
It’s not simply one bad meatpacker. The Humane Society video simply shows business as usual in the nation’s major slaughterhouses. The USDA’s laxity aids and abets the profits-first, safety-last system common to all capitalist enterprises.
The schoolchildren aren’t the only ones who aren’t safe.
Mar 3, 2008
The following editorial appeared in the February 22 issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
One after another, big companies announced their enormous profits for 2007. They made those profits despite the financial crisis, which saw tens of billions of dollars go up in speculative smoke.
Among the corporations bragging to their stockholders, we always find the same names: TOTAL, L"Oréal, Unilever, Renault, Peugeot. And leading the pack is ArcelorMittal, the giant steelmaker, with 11 billion dollars profit. But there isn’t a penny that ArcelorMittal will use to save jobs in the Gandrange plant when it is closed.
If ArcelorMittal is among the worst examples of corporations that make enormous profits while laying workers off or cutting jobs, it isn’t alone. Despite making profits, Michelin is closing its subsidiary, the Kléber factory in Toul. Peugeot is reducing its workforce, in particular by getting rid of its temporary workers and by closing one of its two assembly lines at Aulnay.
These profits, which they dare tell us are necessary for the functioning of the economy, aren’t useful to the very workers who produce them by their labor nor even to society.
The French government, headed by President Sarkozy, certainly isn’t the first to serve the interests of the big corporations whose drive for profits has destroyed so much. All the administrations, whatever their political label, have done the same. But Sarkozy’s display of friendship with the billionaires and bosses, and his policy of pushing workers into poverty in order to further enrich the wealthy, is cynical and provocative. So within eight months of his taking office, he has become the target of workers’ anger and resentment.
The so-called reforms of this administration aim at making exploitation worse, demolishing what social protections exist for workers, and making it easier for companies to lay off workers.
It funnels more subsidies to big business, while cutting back on public services. It closes or reduces the hours that the branches of the Post Office and Social Security are open, and shuts down train stations and maternity hospitals. It reduces pensions for retirees and forces deductible payments on those with public health insurance plans.
Of course, more than an election is needed to stop the permanent war of the bosses and the government against the working class.
But the municipal elections constitute an occasion to renounce this policy and the politicians who carry it out for the bosses. We can vote to punish their servility toward the rich and their scorn for the poor. Even if the right loses the elections in a large number of cities, it won’t resolve the main problems of the working class: unemployment, low wages and pensions. But municipal government can still be more favorable to the poor than it is. Municipalities can construct affordable housing, even when it means those living in well-off neighborhoods are afraid this will bring down their property values.
With this perspective Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle) is presenting candidates in a number of cities for the next municipal elections. Those elected from Lutte Ouvrière will be the defenders of the social and political interests of the exploited, the unemployed, the retired and the poorest in the municipal council and outside it. Lutte Ouvrière’s elected city council members will support those who defend their living and working conditions, those workers who are on strike, or those who don’t accept substandard housing, or commuters who refuse to accept deteriorating local transit, schools, public services.
Mar 3, 2008
The announcement that Fidel Castro would give up being Cuba’s president led Bush to say that there “ought to be a period of democratic transition for Cuba,” and what Castro did was “to ruin an island and to imprison people because of their beliefs.”
It’s obvious that the Cuban regime, which manifestly had the support of the entire poor population when it arrived in power, then evolved in a dictatorial direction. And it’s difficult to know what remains today of the immense popularity it had back then. But the U.S. has far from clean hands in this evolution. The U.S. may have given up direct military intervention after the failure of its invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961; it may have eventually given up trying to assassinate Castro when that failed too. But it did everything possible to try to strangle the island economically. The U.S. embargo still causes the Cuban people to suffer today.
But Castro didn’t give up. This is why the U.S. rulers continue to treat him as a pariah, while they protected so many dictators–bloody ones–in Latin America and continue to consider Uribe, the head of Colombia, as a great democrat.
Cuba is a dictatorial regime. But it is a regime which has made enormous efforts to install a health system that allows the entire population to have access to medical care, and Cuban doctors make up for the lack of locally trained doctors in Haiti and Venezuela. It is a regime which led a true campaign to wipe out illiteracy. It’s a country whose population doesn’t die of hunger. When one compares Cuba’s situation to that of Haiti, which has been under the “protection” of the U.S. for years, the difference is striking.
All the commentators who write about Cuba consider that Castroism is obsolete and hope that Castro’s successors will open a new page in the history of the island. Of course we would rejoice if the evolution of the Cuban regime goes in the direction of more freedom for workers, peasants and intellectuals. But if Cuba returns to the control of U.S. imperialism, like it experienced at the time of Batista, that’s certainly not progress.
There is no road to economic development for the island of Cuba, isolated in a hostile world. But the poor populations of Africa, Latin American and Asia–even in the so-called “emerging” countries–continue to live in misery. It isn’t Cuba that’s obsolete. It’s the entire global imperialist system.
Mar 3, 2008
In the municipal elections of March 9, nearly 5,000 candidates of Lutte Ouvrière (LO) will be running on 186 different lists. Lutte Ouvrière will have candidates in most major population centers since 32 out of 38 of the main cities in France, those with 100,000 inhabitants or more, will have LO candidates. So LO’s presence is clearly greater in this year’s municipal elections than in the last municipal elections in 2001.
In 69 cities, Lutte Ouvrière is participating on slates with the big traditional parties of the left–the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, or both. In a number of towns, our candidates are on lists with other smaller parties, like the LCR (Revolutionary Communist League), the Greens, the Citizens Movement of J-P ChevPnement, the Workers Party, or the Left Radicals.
Thirty-seven of these lists, or 55%, are led by the Communist Party, and 26 of them are led by the Socialist Party.
Finally, in 117 cities, Lutte Ouvrière will present lists under its own name. And in a number of cities, it will be for the first time.
Mar 3, 2008
The following article is translated from Issue #2065 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
On Saturday February 16, hundreds of workers from Ford’s FAI (automatic transmission) plant in Blanquefort, Gironde blocked delivery of parts to two plants, closed down the gates to the factory and began to shut down production.
At the end of 2007, Ford Europe management had finally announced it would close this automatic transmission plant that employed 1800 workers by 2010 at the latest.
During the past week, more and more workers joined the strike for several hours each day, or joined in the gate demonstrations before or after their work hours. The workers are demanding that all jobs be protected from elimination. If there are job eliminations, the workers want a severance payment of 120,000 euros, or the equivalent of the $150,000 amount that Ford paid when it offered buyouts to Ford workers in the U.S.
The plant directors shut down the plant last week on a technicality and threatened to close down the factory permanently if the blockage of the gates continued. The company also filed charges in court against the unions, asking that they be fined 1000 euros for every hour the gates are blocked. So the workers on strike decided not to block trucks entering the work site. But they have continued to picket the entry gates of the two sites, GTF and FAI, the site where management had already laid off some workers. On Monday, February 25, management of FAI filed charges against the picketers.
Ford Europe makes hundreds of millions of euros of profit. And that amount doesn’t even count the millions in grants that Ford sucked up when it decided to locate in the Gironde region near Bordeaux. Ford certainly has the means to keep all the jobs at these plants, changing over to another kind of production.
Workers will only win their demands when Ford management and public officials fear that the mobilization and determination of the workers is becoming contagious. That’s the only time bosses give severance packages–when they are forced to do so.
Ford workers are letting other workers know about their situation. Their mobilization has taken a step forward. Other workers in the Bordeaux region are aware of what they have done and can now show solidarity with them. Because when Ford attacks the workers at Blanquefort, it is also threatening to ruin the entire region.
Mar 3, 2008
The following article is from the January 28 issue of Le Pouvoir aux Travailleurs, published by the African Union of Internationalist Communist Workers.
A South African plane transporting 85 Malians deported from Mozambique landed in Bamako, Mali on January 15. During the flight, the deportees had violent confrontations with the South African police who guarded them. There was considerable damage inside the plane.
The deported workers’ anger exploded because of the way the police treated them. The cops took away the deportees’ possessions. Then the cops tied them up. One of the deportees explained:“Each of us wore an electrified belt and each time that we asked for a little money, a policeman activated the belts.” Another deportee from Mali told what they suffered before they were deported:“I left six months ago for Maputo, Mozambique ... I found work in the mines in Mafufu. When the Mafufu deposit was exhausted, I went to the Zimbabwean border... there were 230 foreigners arrested including 80 Malians. The rest were Guineans and Senegalese. Police and soldiers came to arrest us at 1:00 a.m. in our bedrooms. They opened fire, killing one guy. They beat us and used electric stun guns on us! Anything we had (telephones, diamonds, money) was seized. We were brought to the prison of Sounboye where we stayed 11 days. Afterwards, they led us to Maputo... We spent four days on a military base. There, the Mali ambassador to South Africa promised to come to see us and indicated that we could get back our money and precious stones. But he preferred to stop coming. Isn’t that contemptible? He killed us.”
All the Mali authorities say is that workers from Mali had been accused of working in diamond mines where no foreigners are allowed. Not a word about the horrible treatment inflicted on those Malians who were deported.
This isn’t the first time that a riot has broken out in a plane transporting deportees. The same thing happened on an Air France jet in 2000 that landed in Bamako, the capital of Mali.
Perhaps when the airlines suffer damage to their planes, they will think twice about allowing governments to use them to deport workers, especially when they are guarded by brutal cops.
Mar 3, 2008
At midnight on February 25, 3,600 UAW workers at five American Axle Manufacturing (AAM) plants walked out on strike. The owner of AAM, Dick Dauch, forced the strike when he demanded that the wages of all workers be brought down to a rate no more than half what older seniority workers get.
As of Sunday March 2, workers still picketed and negotiators weren’t meeting. The impact of the strike was beginning to ripple out. General Motors had already shut down at least four assembly plants due to lack of axles for rear-drive vehicles. Some Chrysler vehicle assembly will be affected later.
The AAM workers also walked out briefly in 2004. A concessions contract recommended then by the UAW leaders was only barely approved. In fact, workers at the Hamtramck, Michigan plant voted majority NO, because they disagreed with a two-tier wage structure.
Now, three years later, the AAM owners and stockholders are much wealthier. One analyst estimated that Dauch himself has raked in about one hundred million dollars so far! The company is still profitable, and its stock price is holding up nicely despite its media “spins” hinting of bankruptcy. Only the workers have taken losses! And now the company wants more!
The official UAW policy at the International level is to bend over backwards to “partner” with companies, to “cooperate” in improving corporate “competitiveness.” This policy’s only result has been hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, and less pay and harder lives for the remaining workers.
It’s clear that if workers are to defend their own interests, they will have to take on the job themselves.
Some workers still angry at the 2004 concessions organized themselves to oppose any more cutbacks. They used a newsletter they gave out at AAM plants in Michigan and New York, trying to build up links between the different places.
So far the picket lines seem enthusiastic. And AAM workers don’t have to stand alone. The opposition inside the UAW began to grow larger at the time of the Delphi concessions, imposed in 2005 with the excuse of Delphi’s phony “bankruptcy.” In 2005 and 2006, GM and Ford retirees suddenly saw their future healthcare compromised by new VEBA deals, cut by the union leaders without retirees’ consent. Chrysler workers’ opposition in the plants was strong enough then that the UAW delayed the Chrysler VEBA plan until the 2007 contract.
In 2007, when the UAW proposed “Big Three” contracts dividing workers into regular-pay “core” and half-pay “non-core” jobs, plus other major concessions, a wave of protest arose in the plants. And today, at Ford and GM, workers are very reluctant to take the buy-outs which the companies and their union “partner” are using every trick to push.
These workers could be an enormous source of strength and support for American Axle workers. And even more.
The stakes are high. The corporate war on workers won’t be thrown back only at one company, no matter how strategic its position. But if the rank and file finds the way to stand together and let it be known, in a big way, that production will not be normal until all workers get a better deal, then the partnership will be out and the corporations will have to bow.
Mar 3, 2008
Speaking before a black audience in Beaumont, Texas, Barack Obama said, “It’s not good enough for you to say to your child, ‘Do good in school.’ ” Obama then lectured them to turn off the TV, radio and video games, “buy a little desk,” and help their children with their homework–or call the teacher if they don’t know how.
Saying, “I gotta talk about us a little bit,” Obama said, “We can’t keep on feeding our children junk all day long, giving them no exercise...a bag of potato chips for lunch or Popeye’s (chicken) for breakfast...”
What garbage! He tells working parents that they need to spend more time with their children–as if they choose to work 12-hour shifts day after day after day. He tells them to fix their kids a “proper” breakfast or lunch–as if they choose not to have time before they have to rush off to work in the morning. He tells parents to help their kids with their homework–when the schools don’t even have books for the students to take home with them. He lectures them on nutrition, as if they choose to live in cities where they can’t even find a decent grocery store within city limits.
How dare he! Obama makes it sound like it’s just a matter of foolish choices–and he acts as though his privileged position came from wise choices he made and not from the wealth and relative privilege he was born into.
Obama is speaking to that reactionary part of the white–and black–population that blames poor black people, and poor white people, for the problems created by a society run for profit.
And he is telling the capitalists that he is ready to serve as their henchman–against the working class and poor.
Mar 3, 2008
Hillary Clinton is running an ad directed toward night shift workers–who’ve been “underpaid, overworked, and sometimes overlooked.” The ad ends with an image of Clinton sitting at a desk; the announcer says, “She understands–she’s worked the night shift too.”
Sure she has–but under what conditions? And how much more did SHE get paid for her “night shift” work?
Please don’t insult our intelligence!
Mar 3, 2008
The news media has been portraying John McCain, the leading Republican candidate for president, as something of an “independent thinker” or “maverick” within the Republican Party. Certainly, he criticized the Bush administration about the war in Iraq, though his criticism was only against the way the Bush administration was pursuing it (not enough troops, wrong tactics, etc).
McCain was a very strong advocate of the U.S. troop surge in Iraq last year. In fact, he criticized Bush for not having even more troops in Iraq for the surge. So when U.S. casualties increased dramatically, anger against the war in this country also increased, McCain’s popularity plunged, even amongst his base, and his presidential campaign almost completely tanked.
However, over the last few months, U.S. casualties in Iraq have decreased somewhat, and this has allowed U.S. officials to pretend that the surge has supposedly worked–although clearly, conditions in Iraq are even worse than they were before, and the U.S. occupation continues to be a bloody quagmire. The fact that Secretary of Defense Gates says that the U.S. cannot withdraw any more troops is a confirmation of this.
But, given the supposed “success” of the U.S. surge, the U.S. news media has almost completely stopped reporting on Iraq. And this has helped McCain’s immensely. McCain, the former military officer and POW, has actually gotten away with presenting himself as the candidate who understands the military and is on the side of the common soldier.
Of course, McCain’s complete hypocrisy and cynicism was demonstrated when he openly stated that he expects the U.S. military to keep a major force in Iraq for... 50 or 100 years. Sure McCain qualified this by saying that this would be a supposedly peaceful occupation, that “Americans” will not be harmed or killed.
But obviously, a vote for McCain is a vote for a permanent U.S. occupation of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East–a virtual guarantee of permanent war.
Even Bush wouldn’t dare admit this. McCain is Bush on steroids.
Mar 3, 2008
A young worker from Shelby Township near Detroit was killed when his car veered off the freeway, struck the guard rail and rolled over. The accident took place at 3:30one morning. Even the police had to admit that neither drugs nor alcohol had anything to do with the accident. Rather, it appears that “fatigue may have been a factor,” as the police said in a deliberate understatement. In fact, fatigue was the main cause. The 23 year-old man had just finished working a 12-hour shift at his job and apparently fell asleep at the wheel.
This accident, and who knows how many others like it, are the direct result of the disappearance of the eight-hour day!
And not one of the presidential candidates has ever proposed bringing it back!