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
Jul 14, 2008
The Democratic primary was barely over, when the two nominees rushed to stake out a position on the right of the political spectrum.
John McCain started even before he won the Republican primary, junking the image he had cultivated as a “maverick,” the one who didn’t go along with George Bush.
McCain had once voted against Bush’s tax cuts for the rich–saying, “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who most need tax relief.”
Today, his adaptable conscience lets him support the continuation of those tax cuts. Having long opposed off-shore drilling for oil and natural gas, he now embraces these additional gifts to the monstrously wealthy oil giants. Having denounced the Air Force’s fuel-tanker contract as an unconscionable handout to Boeing, McCain turns out to have loaded his staff with lobbyists for Boeing’s competitors.
McCain once said that he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade because it would force innumerable women to go through “illegal and dangerous operations.” Today he supports “overturning” Roe v. Wade. Having once called right-wing Christian fundamentalist leaders “agents of intolerance,” and “corrupting influences on religion and politics,” today he embraces those “agents of intolerance.”
No one should be a bit surprised. Whatever “maverick” appearance McCain might once have sported, his actions show that he was never anything but a good old right-wing Bush Republican. In 2007, he voted for Bush’s proposals 95% of the time. In 2008, he came on even stronger, voting with Bush 100% of the time.
Obama’s move to the right was more spectacular, upsetting many of his staunchest supporters.
Within a month of the last primary, he had called in question what had seemed to be his absolute pledge about getting out of the Iraq war. He shifted support to Israel in its attacks on the Palestinians. He joined John McCain in denouncing Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, while he and McCain both praised the Colombian regime of Uribe, whose record includes the murder of many thousands of peasants and unionists.
On the economy, he could offer little more than another “stimulus” package, like Bush’s $600 rebate–although only $500. And just as with Bush’s plan, he indicated he would support further tax cuts for the corporations, under the preposterous claim that this would spur job growth–despite all evidence to the contrary.
On the political level, Obama not only voted for Bush’s proposal to legalize government spying on any person in the country, he helped rush through the vote, preventing opposition from being heard.
On the social level, he endorsed an extension of the death penalty–even as police chiefs around the country continue to oppose it and call for its abolition.
As for the black population–whose votes he assumes he has in his back pocket–Obama made the point of ignoring the real problems most ordinary black people face in a society still marked by racism. In a widely publicized sermon, he told them, just as any racist would, that they were the cause of their own difficulties.
Some people say Obama and McCain are moving to the “center” in order to win the election.
Nonsense! They are moving far to the right, and they are doing this to reassure the ruling class that they are its men.
The vast majority of people in this country are seriously fed up. They don’t want more wars. They don’t want this economy to go on in the same way. They don’t want politicians pushing the same policies.
What Obama and McCain are doing doesn’t win more votes. It reassures the ruling class that either of them will carry out policy in the interests of the big corporations, the big banks and the wealthy people who control them.
Jul 14, 2008
Some of the biggest financial companies in the country have a new side line: General Electric, U.S. Bancorp, Capital One and Citigroup are acting like bill collectors for big hospital chains.
They pay the hospital a portion of the patient’s medical bill, and then go after the patient for the total bill, adding on high interest rates for those who can’t pay right away. Or they issue medical credit cards to patients without enough insurance–and then collect the high rates credit cards charge.
U.S. Bank, a U.S. Bancorp unit, finances about two million dollars in medical debt each month and charges most patients annual interest of 13.5%, up to 24% on late bills. GE offers a 0% introductory rate on “medical credit cards” that balloons up to a 27% annual rate for those who miss a payment.
Previously, many hospitals forgave portions of debts to some patients, especially low-income ones. It was how they justified their existence.
But as the medical care industry has transformed itself into an almost totally for-profit enterprise, concern for the patient is a luxury it doesn’t want to afford. Health care, in this most capitalist of capitalist countries, is a privilege–but only if you can pay.
Jul 14, 2008
Ninety million people in the U.S. went without health insurance in 2006. Eighty% of them were in families with a person who had a job, most of them full-time.
Twenty-five million more adults did not have enough coverage to shield them from financial hardship if they were seriously injured or ill, according to a study by the Commonwealth Fund. That’s up from 16 million in 2003–a 60% increase! Today, it’s undoubtedly worse.
In the country with the most advanced medical system in the world, people who can’t pay do without even necessary medical treatment for chronic diseases, like diabetes or heart disease, which can be kept in check with regular medication.
This is one consequence of a system whose goal is to amass as much profit as possible.
Jul 14, 2008
More than 1,000 people in the U.S. and Canada have recently been infected with a rare strain of salmonella, a bacteria that causes nausea and diarrhea. As of early July, two deaths were blamed on problems associated with this particular strain.
After the first cases became known in April, government officials blamed tomatoes. But even as the food industry let tomato crops rot in the fields, more people became sick with salmonella.
Today the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) admits it has not found the rare strain of salmonella on any of the tomatoes it tested, nor on the jalapeZo peppers and cilantro it’s been able to test.
No matter whether or when the FDA figures out what caused this dangerous illness, it has become clear that the food chain has become a source of contaminants. Salmonella is not the only problem: recently some meat was taken off the market by the Agriculture Department because it carried another dangerous bacteria, E-coli.
Fresh food comes from many thousands of sources within the United States, not counting food that is imported. Yet responsibility for checking that it is safe is split between two different government departments, Food and Drug, for fresh and canned foods, and Agriculture for meat and poultry.
Crazy–and guaranteed to make sure no one is responsible for food safety!
In addition, the population has grown by more than 40% in the last 30 years, so that there are more farms, more stores, more restaurants. Yet the number of food inspections and inspectors has dropped. In the 1970s, according to the Center on Food Safety, there were 50,000 inspections a year concerning food safety. In recent years, the number of inspections has dropped to 10,000 a year.
For more than 300 million people in this supposedly very advanced country, eating is a lot like playing Russian roulette. Watch out–that tomato may be loaded!
Jul 14, 2008
On July 11, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that instead of beginning to propose reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, it will spend at least several more months taking further “public comment” on the threat of global warming to human health and welfare.
Decades ago, the big majority of climate scientists concluded that the earth has been undergoing a long-term warming trend going back over a hundred years, threatening life on the planet and furthermore that human activity, particularly the creation of so-called “greenhouse gases, was not only contributing to the warming, but speeding it up. They have warned that it is long past time for action to reduce the production of gases like carbon dioxide and methane, among others.
For years the U.S. government acted deaf, dumb and blind when it came to this problem. It wasn’t until 1997, at the climate summit in Kyoto, Japan, that then-President Bill Clinton finally pledged to slow down the increase in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
Of course, neither he nor his environmentalist VP Al Gore ever pushed to act on this agreement. It was a dead letter before they even returned home. And so it remained for the rest of Clinton’s term, followed then by Bush’s two terms.
What’s next? Don’t hold you breath–you might just need it!
Jul 14, 2008
Even before the IndyMac takeover, the whole financial market had already been shaking last week with anxiety over the fate of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two mortgage companies that together own or guarantee five trillion dollars worth of mortgages, or about half the outstanding mortgage debt in the U.S.
Fannie May and Freddie Mac were set up by the federal government, but operate as private stock companies. They buy mortgages from banks which make the loans to home buyers. Then Fannie and Freddie bundle the mortgages and sell them again, to buy new mortgages with the money they get.
Lately the two companies have been reporting big losses–about eight billion dollars in the last nine months. And serious economists have started to bring up the possibility that one or both of these mortgage giants may declare bankruptcy–something that would have been unthinkable just a few weeks ago.
The stock prices of these companies have been falling fast–and that already has had big consequences. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds have long been considered among the safest, and many big banks and governments throughout the world own a lot of them. The fact that both companies’ stock prices fell by 50% last week threatens huge financial losses for big companies and governments.
But also, many big banks and corporations are deeply submerged into the mortgage market–and thus linked to Fannie and Freddie. It is estimated, for example, that J. P. Morgan holds a total of 87 billion dollars worth of mortgage securities and mortgage debt backed by Fannie and Freddie. Another U.S. banking giant, Citigroup, is thought to hold 51 billion dollars worth of the same.
In short, a failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would shake the financial markets throughout the world, and possibly bring down giant banks and corporations–indeed the functioning of the whole capitalist economy.
There are crucial questions, whose answers are anybody’s guess. For example, everybody knows that many more of the outstanding mortgages will default in the future, but how many? And how many of those bad loans are owned or guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie? Nobody knows.
Secondly, how long will the confidence of individuals, banks and investors last, so that they continue to buy and sell mortgages and company shares, issue loans, etc.? There is already a lending crisis, because many banks have stopped giving each other loans for fear of not getting their money back.
As far as the stock market can be seen as a measure, things don’t look good. Last Friday, Fannie and Freddie shares went down sharply by 50% within minutes, before gaining some by the end of the day. Then came the IndyMac takeover, and the news that Freddie is due to sell three billion dollars of short-term debt on Monday. Depending on whether there will be buyers at all, or if the government will be able to persuade banks to do that (for the sake of keeping the whole system afloat), next week may prove to be a crucial one.
But if next week goes by without some huge crash in the markets, what will happen the following week? And the week after that? How long will these huge companies be able to stay afloat?
Government and company officials try to act cool and confident–as if things were stable and under control. But, more and more, they look like the guy who whistles loudly going by the cemetery at night, when the ghosts are ready to jump.
The only thing that’s certain is that the banks and “investors,” whose unsatiable greed created the whole mess, will do everything they can to make working people foot the enormous bill–and that government officials will try to make taxpayers’ hard-earned money available to them.
Jul 14, 2008
Last Friday evening, the federal government seized IndyMac Bank, one of the biggest mortgage lenders in the country. With assets worth 32 billion dollars, IndyMac is the third-largest U.S. bank to fail–the other two having collapsed in the 1980s–and the biggest mortgage lender to go under so far.
IndyMac’s rise and fall reflect the development of what has been called the “housing bubble.” The bank started as a spin-off of Countrywide, which collapsed last spring. IndyMac grew very fast, specializing in so-called Alt-A mortgage loans, which were considered less risky than subprime loans.
But then the bubble started to burst, and IndyMac reported its first annual loss last February. The stock price of the company started to drop, from 45 dollars in early 2007 to less than 7 dollars at the end of 2007, and 28 cents last week.
Then came a panic run on the bank by depositors. On June 26, New York Senator Charles Schumer publicly said that IndyMac was in bad shape. Within less than two weeks, depositors withdrew 1.3 billion dollars from the bank.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will now run IndyMac until it finds a buyer for it. The endeavor is expected to cost the FDIC between four and eight billion dollars–that is, up to 15% of the FDIC’s entire capital of 53 billion dollars. This fund is meant to cover loss of deposits, but it certainly won’t be enough if there are more runs on big banks–a run on the FDIC itself, in other words–in the near future.
The federal government says it won’t let its own system fail–meaning it will back the FDIC. Fine, but it shouldn’t expect workers to pay for any of it. For years, IndyMac and other banks made easy and huge profits, taking advantage of the housing bubble. Their shareholders and officials pocketed all that money. If their bubble is bursting now, they should face the consequences and pay up–not the families of workers and home owners.
Jul 14, 2008
During the very first week of the U.S. war against Iraq, the news media around the country carried a photograph of Private First Class Joseph Dwyer carrying an injured Iraqi boy. It was used as a poster justifying the war, depicting it as practically a humanitarian effort.
Now Dwyer is dead. Earlier this month he committed suicide at his home, after enduring years of problems with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
There were no front page headlines and pictures, nor have there been for the thousands of other U.S. soldiers who have come back from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, only to take their own lives.
But these are the pictures that should be postered every place. They give a small glimpse into part of the terrible human cost of this war that never had a single humanitarian impulse to it.
Jul 14, 2008
Almost every day now, there are terrorist bombings in the streets of Kabul. One of the latest, in front of the Indian Embassy, caused real carnage, with 41 deaths and more than 140 wounded. The bloody confrontation between the Islamists, including the Taliban, and the government of Hamid Karzai, which is supported by foreign armies in the country, now take place in the very heart of the capital.
In 2001, the international military coalition led by the U.S. overthrew the hated Taliban government. But the Afghan people’s living conditions didn’t improve as a result. On the contrary, seven years later, a country already destroyed by decades of war has been even more ravaged. The population has never seen the billions of dollars promised for reconstruction. A large number of people have been pushed into a miserable exile or have been forced to flee combat zones, like in the Kandahar region this past June when the Afghan and coalition forces carried out a huge search operation. The poor try to survive in the slums of the big cities or have to cultivate poppies in the countryside in order to survive. The freedom promised to the Afghans, in particular to women covered head to toe by the burka, never happened, thanks to the continuing war and the choice of the government to base itself on traditional warlords who hold the valleys of this mountainous country.
The presence of some 70,000 foreign forces has done nothing to make the population safer. Suicide attacks, which affect the south and east of the country, have sown terror for two years now, reaching as far as the area around the government palace in Kabul. Large scale military operations no longer can hide the growing weight of the Taliban in a great part of the country, despite the boasts of military commanders to the contrary.
And aerial bombing causes hundreds of civilian deaths each month, although these, too, are systematically denied by the military authorities. The latest occurred on the July 5-6 weekend in the province of Nangarhar. A coalition spokesman announced the death of between “5 and 10 Taliban due to an air strike,” after the soldiers “were assured there were no civilians nearby.” But the protests of local authorities and the doctor who examined the victims showed that they were women and children getting together for a wedding! This time the bad press about these atrocities by foreign armies pushed the government to open an inquiry. And in June, coalition soldiers suffered their worst losses since 2001, with more deaths in Afghanistan than in Iraq.
Bush and other leaders of the imperialist countries are promising to send still more troops to Afghanistan. And Obama criticizes him for not doing it fast enough. But the increase in foreign military troops only adds to the bloody impasse and misery into which a century of imperialist interventions have plunged this region of the world.
U.S. and other troops out of Afghanistan!
Jul 14, 2008
The following article is translated from the July 4 issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers’ group of that name active in France.
What an outcry among the imperialist leaders after the elections in Zimbabwe on June 27! From the U.N. Security Council to the leaders of the rich G8 countries, everyone denounced the "electoral farce" and threatened the country with worsening the sanctions already causing suffering among the population. The British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lord Malloch-Brown, even talked about military intervention.
No doubt, this second round of the presidential elections is a farce with dictator Robert Mugabe the only candidate. His rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had to withdraw five days before the election, surprising his own supporters.
But since when has imperialism worried about democracy in Africa? It maintains good relations with all kinds of local dictators, whom it arms against their populations, to protect the interests of the Western companies. These tin pot potentates don’t even bother to maintain the appearance of democracy.
If Mugabe has fallen into disgrace with the Western powers, it isn’t because he is a worse dictator. Until the end of the 1990s, "Sir" Robert Mugabe was described as a very "honorable" man.
In 1997, following a powerful strike wave, he stopped privatizing industry and reestablished state subsidies, defying the demands of the International Monetary Fund. Only then did Mugabe cease to be "honorable". International loans to Zimbabwe dried up. Brutally hit by these measures, poor peasants began to occupy rich European farms that had continued to exploit the most fertile lands after Zimbabwean independence in 1980.
In 2000, trying to reestablish his strongly eroded prestige, Mugabe transformed these occupations into official policy. For the imperialist leaders, that was crossing the line: Sacred capitalist property was violated and Mugabe had to pay for doing it.
Two years later, Bush added Zimbabwe to his list of "rogue" states and the era of economic sanctions began, freezing a part of the country’s assets in Western banks and cutting off its source of foreign currency. These measures, more than the regime’s parasitism (which wasn’t new) led to economic catastrophe.
The local money lost all value. Inflation in February 2008 reached the unbelievable figure of 100,580%. Those who had nothing to trade for food were condemned to charity or famine. Thirty to 40% of the 12.3 million inhabitants of the country fled starvation by crossing into neighboring countries. And in a country that had been relatively rich compared to many others in Africa, life expectancy fell to 35 years, the lowest in Africa.
The Western leaders talk about "democracy" to cover up their economic interests in Zimbabwe.
Two British banks, Barclays and Standard Chartered, continue to operate in Zimbabwe. Some agribusiness companies export fresh produce to Europe from Zimbabwe although its population has desperate need of it. Powerful mining corporations already operate in Zimbabwe. A mountainous ridge that crosses Zimbabwe contains considerable platinum reserves, perhaps more than those of South Africa, the top producer of this metal. At a time when platinum has reached an astronomical price on the world market, both Anglo-American and Implats, which are already in the country, and Rio Tinto and BHP-Billiton, which are not yet there, have their eyes fixed on this fortune. Mugabe has never been hesitant to deal with these corporations. But they need guarantees, in particular, that the raw materials they want will be sheltered from Mugabe’s populist demagogy.
In this affair, the MDC is the Trojan horse of Western capital. Formed by unionists after the 1996-97 strikes, it is still allied with the big European colonialist landowners. Its ties to British and U.S. capital are notorious, even if its main support comes from the urban proletariat of Harare and Bulawayo. Its leader, Tsvangirai, the old leader of the country’s unions, was himself an experienced dignitary of the dictatorship, who decided to try his chance as the head of the discontented. Having pushed his partisans to confront the regime, by promising to go all the way in his battle with Mugabe, Tsvangirai ended up shirking his responsibility, leaving his supporters to face the brutalities of the police.
Tsvangirai took refuge in the Dutch embassy, appealing for negotiations with the regime under the aegis of the United Nations. South African President Thabo Mbeki, supported by the Western powers, has already come out for a "solution" to allow Tsvangirai to share power with Mugabe. This maneuver would permit imperialism to bring Mugabe back into line.
In this affair, all camps, from Mugabe to the MDC and the imperialist powers, will try to use the poor population as cannon fodder. As for those imperialist leaders who revel in the word "democracy" when it serves their interests, they have, more than all the others, the blood of the Zimbabwean proletariat on their hands.
Jul 14, 2008
The following is translated from a July 11 article in Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), published by the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
When Ingrid Betancourt and others, including three U.S. mercenaries, were rescued after years of captivity by guerrillas, the majority of the media painted the Colombia of President Alvaro Uribe in democratic colors. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
Colombia has a long tradition of official violence. From the 19th century continuing up to today, the wealthy classes have often moved to drown protest movements of the working classes in blood, rather than satisfy their demands.
For example, between 1946 and 1957, a period called "the Violence," 300,000 people were massacred so that landowners could continue to prosper. The founder of FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), Manuel Marulanda, who died last March, was himself an old member of the peasant militias that were repressed.
The militants grouped around Marulanda, and the peasants they trained, tried to continue resisting the central power. The government tried to destroy them, but the Colombian army wasn’t strong enough to do it. So it used the hired hands of the wealthy, the paramilitary groups. Between 1964 and 1966, Marulanda and his companions established the FARC. Their program was essentially that of an agrarian reform, which the peasants had never had. In regions where the FARC rooted itself, they offered a protection to the peasants who were driven off their lands by the militias of the landlords.
The landed bourgeoisie got rich off coffee, but with the fall in its price, cocaine became its number one export. In the 1970s, the FARC wound up accommodating itself to the increased development of coca growing, which the narco-traffickers, allies of the big landowners, transformed into cocaine. The FARC began by levying a tax on the peasants who grew this crop in regions under their control, in exchange for providing different public services, like building roads and water purification. They acted in their zones like the state might have, but the Colombian state wasn’t capable of it. But 30 years later, the FARC had become one of the intermediaries in the drug trade, even if they weren’t the main beneficiaries.
Up to now, those who govern Colombia prohibited the FARC leaders from returning to traditional politics. In the 1980s, the FARC launched the Patriotic Union with the Communist Party, which ran in several elections. It obtained good results, particularly at the local level. But this return to electoral politics resulted in a campaign of assassinations against them carried out by right-wing paramilitary groups. Three thousand leaders and militants were assassinated. The FARC returned to the jungle to survive.
The wealthy have continued to drive the peasants from their land. This policy of monopolizing land helped the FARC to grow. Expelled peasants sought their protection. Unemployed youth joined their ranks. In the 1990s, the FARC became much larger.
President Uribe proposed in 2002 to crack down on "insecurity." For the ruling classes, "insecurity" means the FARC, unlike the lawlessness of the paramilitary groups of the right, which permitted the wealthy to prosper. A wholehearted supporter of Bush, Uribe made use of September 11, 2001 to label the FARC as "terrorists." He benefitted from the support of the United States, in its "Colombia Plan," which is supposed to attack drugs but which, in practice, has attacked few narco-traffickers but many small peasants and the FARC.
The guerillas today seem weakened. They have suffered military reversals. However, they maintain ties with the peasantry, even if corruption has shown up among the leaders of the FARC. While some of the guerillas have defected in reaction to what they consider to be a betrayal of their ideals, others, less scrupulous, chose to change militias by joining the paramilitaries.
In her declarations, Ingrid Betancourt praised the merits of "Colombian democracy." Certainly, people have voted for a long time in Colombia, but when candidates for president displease the wealthy, they are assassinated, as has happened several times. And it’s the same when the peasants don’t leave their land quickly enough or with workers who defend their rights. In the past 20 years, 2,600 unionists have been assassinated. Not only do these crimes go unpunished, but Uribe has cleared the paramilitaries of all responsibility for the mass killings they carried out.
Obviously, we don’t agree with the methods of the FARC. But the success of Uribe certainly doesn’t indicate a better future for the poor population of Colombia.
Jul 14, 2008
On July 9, the Iranian military began exercises that included testing several missiles. Democrats and Republicans alike immediately denounced Iran. Said Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, “Iran is a great threat. We have to make sure we are working with our allies to apply tightened pressure on Iran.” Republican nominee, John McCain, said practically the same thing: “Working with our European and regional allies is the best way to meet the threat posed by Iran.”
What incredible cynicism and hypocrisy! Over the last seven years, the U.S. military has invaded and occupied two of Iran’s neighbors, Iraq and Afghanistan, surrounding Iran with enormous armies. Besides that, the U.S. Fifth Fleet (with an air craft carrier and all of its jet bombers, missile-launching submarines, missile cruisers, destroyers, etc.) is a permanent military threat stationed right off Iran’s coast in the Persian Gulf.
And–on top of that–over the last six weeks, the U.S. and its allies have openly threatened to bomb Iran. In early June, a top Israeli official, Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz, said that Israel was considering bombing Iran immediately. Days later, more than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters, as well as several dozen helicopters, carried out war games over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece that U.S. officials confirmed were rehearsals for a massive bombing attack on Iran. Since then, hardly a week goes by when one or another Israeli official doesn’t repeat these threats.
The main threat of war in the region doesn’t come from Iran–but from the U.S. and its allies–as they try to impose their rule over such a vital, but explosive region, including against the Iranian regime.
Of course, the U.S. military has not seemed overly eager to go down that road. Already bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff declared: “Opening up a third front would be extremely stressful on us... This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don’t need it to be more unstable.”
It’s why the U.S., even while threatening Iran, has been quietly, but steadily working with the regime in Iran. The U.S. and Iran have many interests in the Persian Gulf region that coincide. They both want stability in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran strongly backed the U.S. puppet government in Afghanistan. And in Iraq, the government of Nouri al-Maliki, which the U.S. supports, also has had long-standing ties to the Iranian regime, with Iran helping to build up the Iraqi military and police forces. In March, for example, when the Iraqi military provoked an uprising by trying to crack down in Basra on Muktada al-Sadr’s rival militia group, it was the Iranian government that brokered a ceasefire, restoring some kind of order for the U.S. and its Iraqi government.
It is this ongoing behind-the-scenes cooperation that most likely was behind the “surprise” finding last December in the U.S. National Intelligence Report, the product of the CIA and nine other U.S. intelligence agencies, that declared that Iran was NOT producing nuclear weapons. The State Department has more recently said the same thing–even if these statements didn’t get much attention in the news media.
But whatever the U.S. does–attacking Iran or working with it–it does with the aim of furthering its control of the region. And this cannot benefit the people of any country, neither in the region, nor here.
Jul 14, 2008
For 12 weeks and three days, American Axle workers carried out a determined strike. Nonetheless they finally accepted a contract containing deep cuts in wages and benefits little better than the company’s original offer.
Some people looking at the strike have said it is discouraging. Maybe, but there is a great deal more that should be said.
This strike was provoked by the outrageous demands of American Axle, a company that could not even claim to be in financial trouble. The company proposed to cut wages to $11.50 to $14.50 per hour, as opposed to the $17.50 to $28.15 per hour workers had been making. But the issue was never just Axle and its situation. This disgusting “offer” was part of an offensive being carried out by the whole auto industry, which was already marked by what had happened at Delphi and at the Big Three auto companies.
In those earlier contract talks, the companies were either in bankruptcy, threatening bankruptcy or declaring what bad shape they were in. But then came American Axle, which could not deny that it had made a profit of 37 million dollars the previous year. Nonetheless it proposed to carry the attacks against auto workers quite a bit further. While the earlier contracts imposed two-tier wages on new hires, American Axle’s was looking to slash wages on the entire workforce.
Certainly General Motors, American Axle’s main customer, was ready for a strike if it happened. It had prepared by increasing its production of trucks and SUVs in January, the month before the strike. It increased its inventories from around 100 days to about 150 days during the month. The auto companies usually maintain only a 60-day supply.
GM was backing Axle in imposing still more stringent demands than what had come before. “We got this and we want more!” It was to be the preparation for the next wave of attacks on auto workers at the Big 3 companies.
But the Axle workers were not ready to roll over and play dead. And the longer the strike went on, the less ready were active workers to give in: “No matter what we might lose by striking, if we accept the company’s offer, it would simply delay the point at which we lose everything anyway.”
By early April, GM itself may have been looking to bring the strike to an end. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger jumped on board, announcing plans for a rally in support of the strike to be held April 18 in downtown Detroit. But said Gettelfinger, “We’d like nothing better than to cancel our rally on April 18th because the strike was resolved by having a ratified contract.”
The UAW International did indeed cancel the April 18th rally, but not because a settlement was in hand. There was nothing that Axle proposed that workers were ready to accept. The cancellation of the rally set something else in motion. Activists at Axle and at other plants were pushing for a rally and some local union officials were ready to be part of organizing it, even to issue calls for other workers to come and to support the Axle workers.
Faced with that activity, the UAW International made another about-face, giving its approval to the rally.
Activists who had pushed to get the rally, bringing other workers to it, were pumped up by the turn-out. They were not ready to give in to the demands of a tyrant like Dick Dauch, American Axle’s CEO, who made a point of announcing in the middle of the strike that he had paid himself 10 million dollars in salary and stock options the year before.
The company had to understand that the workers weren’t about to accept its demands. That’s when Axle stepped up its threats to take work overseas and to close plants.
At this point, the strike had become one of the longest UAW strikes in recent memory. Nonetheless, the International had made no move to increase strike pay–despite the fact that the UAW had amassed a strike fund of one billion dollars and despite the fact that a union convention years before had authorized them to double strike benefits in a difficult strike.
In fact, when other locals raised money to support the Axle strikers, they were told they had to turn the money into the strike fund. Some local union officials told workers wanting to support the strike they should contribute food, since money wouldn’t go to the strikers!
There certainly was support from other locals and other workers. There was a wide-spread understanding in local areas near Axle plants that the fight involved the whole working class.
To continue their fight, workers would have had to get outside the limited framework the union laid down. They would have had to organize their own meetings, to make their own decisions. They would have had to make it clear they wouldn’t be starved out–going to other workplaces, asking for support, financial and otherwise, calling not just to support their fight, but to join it. They would have needed to carry out demonstrations more widely.
This would have meant a big break with the policy of the leadership of the International. It has long been absolutely clear that the UAW leadership is not going to lead the kind of fight needed. It has been too much of a partner with the companies for anyone to believe it would fundamentally challenge the big auto companies and their suppliers.
There apparently weren’t enough people who understood the need and/or the possibility to make that break. Of course, there are no guarantees in a fight like this. But to continue, strikers needed another perspective.
Finally having upped the threats, Axle came in with an offer that was little better than its original offer. Workers saw no way to continue their fight.
It’s obvious that a strike like this might discourage workers at American Axle and other people who supported them. But that’s not the end of it. American Axle workers put all the companies on notice. Companies now know there is a price to pay, that workers will resist outrageous demands.
People tend to look at the strike wave of the 1930s as though it was a string of continuous victories. In fact, almost up to its culmination in 1937, there were many more defeated strikes than “victorious” ones. But what all those strikes did was to lay the groundwork for the vast wave of sit-downs that swept the country within a few months, changing the whole relationship of forces between the working class and the ruling class.
This strike, much like the Detroit newspaper strike of a generation earlier, trained a whole layer of workers who can better understand the policy of the top union leadership and the real relationship of forces. And like that generation of newspaper strikers, many may well go on to other workplaces where their experiences will be valuable.
After they catch their breath, the American Axle strikers may well play a role in the fights still to come. For we can be sure there will be more fights.
Jul 14, 2008
The stock markets are in a panic. Since mid-May, the Dow Jones has lost over 14%. At the same time, prices are soaring–oil and raw materials go up and up, as do prices in the stores. Meanwhile, wages don’t budge.
It’s all linked. The big bourgeoisie has accumulated enormous amounts of capital. They got it off the backs of the laboring population; they made fewer workers produce more; they eliminated jobs, profiting from unemployment to push down wages.
But the problem the rich have is knowing what to do with all this capital they accumulated. Their personal spending on luxury goods, on sumptuous villas, on yachts the size of ocean liners, on private jets, on paintings by the old masters, only represent a drop in this ocean of riches. They wish to find even more places to put their capital, so it will bring them even more money, even faster.
The bourgeoisie is less and less inclined to put their capital into production. They know that low wages and soaring prices shrink the market for what can be sold. Real estate–which for years permitted the banks, developers, and construction companies to rake in huge profits–has fallen drastically. So today these people speculate in oil, they speculate in raw materials, just as some years ago they speculated in “new technologies.” As long as prices rise, there are short term profits to be made. Increase leads to increase ... up to the day when the bubble bursts. But for the moment, all they care about is that prices are going up–not about the social and human consequences of their speculation.
The price of oil soars. It has nothing to do with consumption in so-called “emerging” countries. Prices are going up only because the big companies bet that prices are going to continue to go up. These prices, for everyone who uses gasoline, or natural gas or heating oil, can lead the entire economy into a crisis. But what do the decision-makers care? They see no farther than their bank accounts.
A billion people in the world already suffer from malnutrition, but still the owners of capital speculate in corn, or in all the other grains that can be used as bio-fuels. The increase in basic food prices can lead to famine, can actually kill millions of men, women and children. But that isn’t a problem for the speculators.
This is the capitalist system, “the market economy,” which all the politicians like to brag about, declaring it to be the only possible economic system. The “free enterprise” they brag about is nothing but the freedom to exploit, to lay off, to close a factory–even when its production is useful–because it no longer brings in enough money. It’s the freedom to ruin cities, even entire regions.
Sooner or later, and sooner would be better, it’s necessary in the interest of all humanity that the working class hurls down this insane system and replaces it with an economic system whose goal will be to satisfy the needs of all people, and not to enrich a minority of profiteers.
Jul 14, 2008
It’s OK and legal for the government to wiretap individuals’ phones without court approval–according to a law that has now passed the U.S. Congress. The Senate approved the law easily in a 68-29 vote last week. The House had already passed it last month.
Unlike most laws, this one is not only about the future. It also approves, retroactively, the secret wiretapping that the Bush administration has already been doing–illegally–since 2001.
In addition, the law stops ongoing lawsuits against phone companies which, again illegally, gave the government phone users’ records. In other words, Congress is effectively preventing information about wiretapping from seeing the light of day. Congress is not only sanctioning Bush’s breaking the law–it’s also helping him hide his crimes!
It’s obvious that Bush wanted this bill, and his fellow Republicans voted for it. But how about the Democrats? Having majorities in both the House and Senate, they could easily have stopped the bill and hold Bush accountable for breaking the law. But they didn’t–21 Democratic Senators voted for the bill too!
And the two senators who are running for president? John McCain didn’t show up for the vote. How convenient, since everybody knows that the majority of Americans are against giving the government such powers!
And how about Barack Obama who, during the primaries, said he was against this law, especially giving phone companies immunity? He, too, voted for the bill–the whole of it! Not only that, Obama also voted for cutting short the debate on it. Like the majority of the senators, Obama didn’t want much discussion or publicity about this bill.
This law is basically doing away with the few legal protections against secret surveillance that Americans had. In 1978, after it was revealed that the government had been secretly spying on Americans, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
It’s not that having that law on the books helped much–and not before 2001 either. Of the 20,000 secret surveillance warrants requested by the government since 1978, the secret FISA court rejected only half a dozen! Legal or not, the U.S. government has always watched people secretly–in particular people who have tried to organize trade unions, got involved in the Civil Rights Movement or protested wars.
But still, the easy passage of this totally undemocratic law shows something. That is, our elected “representatives” not only will not protect our democratic rights, but they don’t even want to give us a legal opening to try and protect these rights ourselves.
No, it’s not laws or Congress that will guarantee our rights, but our own willingness and level of organization to defend them.
Jul 14, 2008
Over 800 of the biggest companies in the country have made an extra 265 billion dollars as the result of a complicated law passed in 2004. The law was touted as encouraging U.S. companies to bring foreign profits home where they would invest and create more jobs.
Here’s what companies did instead: They bought back company stock, enriching stockholders and speculators in financial markets. For example, Pfizer in those years paid out 17 billion dollars to its stockholders and Hewlett-Packard paid out 13 billion dollars. They invested in “labor-savings” plans to cut jobs.
The one thing they didn’t do was create more jobs–and nonetheless the politicians dared call this tax law the “American Jobs Creation Act”!