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
Jun 14, 2010
U.S. military brass says the task at hand in Afghanistan is to root out corruption and rebuild the country.
Root out corruption? Is that why the U.S. has been propping up a president who had to steal an election to stay in power? Is that why President Karzai’s brother–who controls Kandahar–is the biggest opium trafficker in Afghanistan?
Rebuild the country? Is that why the U.S. military bombed and invaded Afghanistan? Is that why the U.S. has been dropping huge bombs on villages, destroying homes and killing hundreds of civilians?
Today, after nine years in power, the U.S.-sponsored Afghan government controls little more than its own compound in Kabul. So the U.S.–in addition to its own murderous military machine–relies on private armies of warlords to control different parts of the country. These warlords, armed with guns and U.S. money, have a free hand to attack and rob the population.
That’s hardly a way for the U.S. to “win the hearts and minds” of the Afghan people–as it pretends to be doing!
And it’s nothing new. It’s the continuation of a cynical U.S. policy that has had catastrophic consequences for the Afghan people for more than three decades.
In the late 1970s, the U.S. began to channel money to warlords fighting the then Afghan government. U.S. policymakers, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, did this in part to create problems for the Soviet Union, with which that Afghan government was allied.
The rebel warlords used a reactionary ideology to recruit fighters and build a base for themselves in the rural population. In the areas they controlled, they stifled any hint of social progress. Women, who had been able to go to school and get jobs under the previous regime, were forced back into their homes, and under the full-body cover of the burqa.
Today women in Afghanistan are reduced to slaves of men–especially wealthy men like the warlords themselves. The population continues to be attacked and robbed by the warlords. Afghanistan continues to be one of the poorest and most socially backward countries in the world.
Unlike the press releases of the U.S. military that change every week, U.S. policy toward Afghanistan has remained the same for more than 30 years: to try to control the country, in the interests of U.S. Big Business.
Whether the U.S. tries to control Afghanistan by using its own military or by paying off reactionary, corrupt warlords, the results for Afghan people are the same–death, destruction, backwardness and cruelty.
When the U.S. government destroys lives in other countries, it claims it’s acting in the name of the American people.
No, we can’t allow this barbarism to go on!
Jun 14, 2010
The Detroit Public Schools announced its official closings list: 32 schools are slated to close by January 2011. This is on top of 29 closed last fall, and 35 three years ago.
Why so many now? Because officials estimate that enrollment in the district, at 87,700 now, will drop to 56,500 in the 2014-15 school year.
That’s right–they’re closing schools now because they project enrollment drops later.
This is just a way to make that projection come true! Closing more schools now, especially neighborhood elementary schools, will drive more parents to take their children to charter schools. Some of those charter schools might even be in the same buildings their public schools were in.
Despite all his protests to the contrary, Robert Bobb, the “emergency financial manager” of the schools, has long revealed himself to be a tool of charter school interests. He received training from a large private think-tank that pushes charter schools. And several months ago, he defended his decision to sell closed public school buildings to charter school companies. One school building was sold to a charter company for $440,000, after receiving more than one million dollars worth of taxpayer-funded renovations. That’s a gift to the charter schools!
That can only hurt Detroit children. Study after study has shown that charter school students do no better than public school students, and often do worse, in academic performance. Charter schools are not held to account like public schools are. They do not have to report their test scores, and do not have to meet “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top” standards.
Charters do not even save districts money, like they’ve always claimed. How can they, when so many are set up as profit-making entities? And charter schools often face no financial audits. When a student goes to a charter school, the money that would normally go to the public school is instead poured down a deep, dark hole, never to be seen or accounted for again. Great news for charter businesses–and rotten news for public school districts and children.
Everything Bobb is doing amounts to closing Detroit public schools, and driving Detroit children into the hands of private businesses.
And Detroit is not the only place this is happening. There is a widespread move in this country to turn public schools into a source of profit for private entrepreneurs.
Jun 14, 2010
When the announcement was made that 32 Detroit schools would close next year, much was made of the fact that 18 schools that were previously on the list would now be spared.
Of course, that’s great news. (And how useful to distract from the 32 schools that WILL close!) Most often, schools were spared because parents and teachers organized themselves and publicized their situation. A couple schools went out into neighborhoods and recruited families back to the public schools out of nearby charters. Others, like Carstens Elementary and Southwestern High School, publicized their roles as lynchpins of their local communities. The Detroit Day School for the Deaf and the Catherine Ferguson Academy for Young Women demonstrated that they provide services no other school for miles around provides.
The public reacted with shock that these schools, successful by any objective standards, would be slated for closing. Bobb’s hand was forced, unless he wanted to reveal himself as a callous slimebag.
But for good measure, he added four others to the closure list that weren’t included before.
But these parents, teachers and administrators have shown that no decision is permanent–if enough noise is made.
Jun 14, 2010
In June the federal government began sending checks for $250 to seniors and the disabled who have fallen into the so-called doughnut hole. These people take medicines that cost far beyond what their insurance plans agree to cover. One brand name medicine for one month costs more than this tiny $250 check.
Very quickly those with brand named drugs go over the limit their health insurance has to pay. In 2010, seniors and the disabled with these drugs must pay $4,750 out of their own pockets before their health insurance so-called benefits come back to pay for drugs.
The politicians are busy congratulating themselves, led by the president. Claiming they have done something to improve health care costs, they remain willing to let people die in the name of private profit for the health care industry.
For those most in need of prescription drugs, a check for $250 is a slap in the face.
Jun 14, 2010
Various unions in Chicago are trying to keep WalMart out of the city. They criticize WalMart for refusing to pay a “living wage.” But some of those workers hired at WalMarts say they are glad to have a job, even at lower wages. And many workers prefer to have a big store nearby, since prices are lower.
In fact, the problem is not that workers can have either good wages or jobs or reasonable prices. It’s possible to have all three–IF money weren’t drained out of WalMart.
Look at WalMart’s owners. Four children of Sam Walton–Christy, Jim, Alice, and Robson–have a combined wealth of 79 billion dollars. They did not work to produce that wealth. The only thing they did was be born to Sam Walton. That wealth was produced by the two million WalMart workers in this country and around the world.
Workers can have jobs and a real living wage and decent prices. But the only way to get them is to make a fight for all of those things, at the expense of the Walton family. Let them run their stores, but take the wealth from them!
Jun 14, 2010
From January to March of this year, 13,000 home owners in Maryland faced foreclosure proceedings. That is even more than the 10,000 foreclosures begun by bankers in the three previous months. And one in seven home owners in Maryland are late in their payments.
Who says there is a recovery? Only politicians and millionaires.
Jun 14, 2010
Even the experts had to admit it: the government jobs report for May was truly shocking. After years of record job cuts, no new jobs were created–only a few temporary census jobs lasting for the next two months.
And the report confirmed that the jobs crisis in this country has lasted so long and has grown so deep, almost half the 15 million workers the government counts as unemployed have been out of work for more than six months. This is the highest level of long-term unemployment since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Even worse, in the month of May, roughly 251,000 jobless workers had become so discouraged about not finding work that they stopped looking–and according to the government, dropped out of the labor force. So, even though they are unemployed, the government stopped counting them as “unemployed.”
This statistical sleight of hand is only one way in which government statistics hide the real level of the crisis. If all the unemployed were really counted, the unemployment rate would be closer to 20%, rather than “only” 10%.
Last month, state and local governments slashed 22,000 jobs. This brings the number of job cuts in the public sector up to 231,000 jobs over the past 12 months, a number expected to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming period.
So job cuts in the public sector are now compounding the job cuts from the private sector–with all of the reductions in vital services that come with it.
In a speech following a sumptuous official dinner for economic “scholars” and their extremely wealthy patrons, Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, had this to say: “My best guess is that we’ll have a continued recovery, but it won’t feel terrific.”
In plain language Bernanke expects the “recovery” in corporate profits and the wealth of the capitalist class to continue unabated, produced by an increasingly exploited working class plagued by horrendous jobs cuts and dire poverty.
Jun 14, 2010
Chinese authorities just raised the minimum wage by 20% (to about $140 a month). This was after workers in the large factories in the south of China won significant wage increases through victorious strikes.
At the beginning of June, there were successful strikes in the Honda factory in Foshan, near Canton, with an increase of 35% in base wages; followed by a significant increase in wages in the Korean plants of Hyundai near Beijing; and then a 10% increase at Zhoshan, a parts supplier to Honda. Despite the limited information available, it appears that the number of workers involved and the size of strikes have increased recently.
These strikes are welcome, given the absolutely horrible conditions. The recent wave of suicides over the past few months in the factories of Foxconn testifies to this. Foxconn is part of an electronics giant from Taiwan that produces for iPhone, Apple, Nokia, Sony, Dell and Hewlett-Packard. Altogether, Foxconn employs some 300,000 workers in Chinese factories. And its parent, Hon Hai, employs more than 800,000 workers all over the world. The global importance of its well-known customers gives weight to these protests.
The peasants who have become workers are known as “mingong”. Their lives are militarized; they live in barracks; work six days out of seven, for 12 hours a day, in horrible conditions. Lodged in dormitories, they have no right to a family life. And their wages are miserable.
The so-called rapid economic growth in China over the last two decades comes at a price. Workers of the cities and of the countryside have been paying for this “miracle.”
According to official Chinese statistics, the share of the national wealth received by workers has declined from 53% to 40% over the last 20 years. The share of national wealth going to factories and their owners has jumped from 21% to 31% in the same period.
These so-called owners, who are often the sons or cousins or nephews of high officials of the army, the party and the state, have privatized half the former public enterprises. And now they pocket the profits. They have used their positions in and ties to the regime to strangle this working class up to now. But this working class that rapidly developed as China became “the workshop of the world” seems to be flexing its muscles today.
More than 200 million mingong make up some 80% of the working class in China. These workers have only a temporary authorization to live in the city where their factory is located, with no right to reside there permanently. The police are always present, intervening to prevent any independent organizing, especially of unions other than the official “union,” the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). ACFTU is a loyal bosses’ union. During the strike at Honda, ACFTU officials verbally attacked the strikers.
In ripping hundreds of millions of workers out of the countryside, capitalist exploitation has brought forth a large and concentrated Chinese working class in the big urban centers–just as once happened in Europe and the United States. Now, some 20 years after the Chinese miracle, this working class may be more conscious of the force it has. Young strikers of Honda declared: “We fight not just for the rights of the 1800 workers (of Honda), but for the rights of all workers in China.”
Jun 14, 2010
The following is translated from the May 28 issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers’ group of that name active in France. The problems it raises will sound very familiar to workers in this country.
Two years ago, at the point the stock market crisis erupted, all political leaders pretended that saving the banking system was necessary for the entire society. What they were really trying to save, however, were the bankers, the ones responsible for triggering the crisis.
No government proposed to expropriate the bankers or take control of the banking system. To the contrary, governments gave them hundreds of billions of dollars, asking nothing in return. And as soon as they were “saved,” the bankers went right back to speculating, just like they did before the crisis.
Every government went deeply into debt to save the bankers. The U.S. government took on the biggest debts. Today they all must borrow to make payments on these new debts. What governments owe grows along with the interest, of course. So governments propose to cut back on other expenses, above all, on the social expenditures and public services that benefit the population.
The French government already announced it plans to reduce the minimum wage and cut aid for housing and job benefits. Like the U.S. government, the French government proposes cuts in health care expenditures. It proposes to block further national government contributions to local governments. And there is an ongoing attack on Social Security benefits.
...
The same political leaders who poured billions into the banks loudly claim that the national debt has become insupportable. But it wasn’t workers who drained the government of funds. Since billions went straight to the pockets of the bankers and the big capitalist corporations, they are the ones who should pay!
...
If workers don’t want to be completely crushed by capital, it’s necessary they defend themselves with their own means, with their own class weapons: strikes, street demonstrations, a social explosion so powerful that the capitalist class fears for its profits, for its property, for its power over the economy.
Workers must take control of business and bank accounts, or else the bosses will pretend they don’t have the means to pay wages and benefits. Workers must be able to verify the bosses’ accounting, including what they claim as income and expense and what they pay the shareholders.
It’s the only way the working class can stop this plunge toward misery.
Jun 14, 2010
Even while the economy has supposedly been “recovering” for almost a year, there has been almost no additional hiring. Instead, companies have been using the jobs crisis to squeeze out ever more work from the reduced number of workers. This is the result: companies increased productivity by close to six% over the last year–more than twice as fast as what the government considers the “average” rate of productivity increases.
Ever more of the wealth produced by the working class is being absorbed by an ever more parasitic capitalist class.
Jun 14, 2010
What is the government doing to alleviate the jobs crisis? The politicians claim they are “stimulating” the economy and Congress did pass three huge jobs “stimulus” bills, one under Bush and two under Obama. Together they cost close to one trillion dollars.
But the bulk of this money went to the capitalist class in the form of tax breaks for business and sweet heart contracts with various companies. As for the jobs–anyone seen any?
These bills only “stimulated” the growth of profits ... for companies already swimming in cash!
Jun 14, 2010
Big companies claim they have no choice but to lay off some workers while speeding up those who remain. They say the bad economy and competition force them to do it.
The fact is, in the last year, U.S. companies increased their cash hoards by 25%, the biggest increase in a single year since the Federal Reserve began keeping records 60 years ago. These companies now hold two trillion dollars in cash ... and counting. Two trillion dollars is more than what the entire state of California, the biggest state in the country, produces in one year.
Why aren’t these companies using this money to invest in new production that will create more jobs? Because they are hoarding it to use speculating.
Jun 14, 2010
For the first time in 18 years, the hold of the so-called “administration caucus” over the UAW has been challenged. Gary Walkowicz, a bargaining committeeman from Ford and one of the leaders of the movement to reject concessions, is to be nominated for the presidency of the union in its convention to be held this week in Detroit.
Walkowicz told the Detroit Free Press that the big NO vote against further concessions at Ford was one of the reasons he decided to run.
He went on to say that he had few illusions about the outcome of the election, but he was making this effort in order “to give a voice to workers in the UAW who really do not agree with what has happened in the last couple of years with concessions.”
He was supported by some Ford delegates who themselves had played a role in the anti-concessions fight. They wrote that they believe the overwhelming NO vote at Ford “shows the membership wants a radical 180-degree change in direction by our union. We believe it should be the business of this convention to start that change by reasserting and going back to some basic union principles.” And they listed as principles, the need to refuse further concessions; to fight to get rid of all two-tier wages, an attack on future generations; to fight to restore the broken promises stolen from current retirees; and to make sure the membership had full control over every step in contract changes.
His candidacy was also supported by union militants who have led fights against concessions at their workplaces or tried to challenge the control wielded by the “administration caucus” for the last 60 years.
Gregg Shotwell, known for the role he has played in fighting the concessions drive at Delphi told Automotive News that “Gary’s audience won’t be the hundreds of UAW delegates in an air-conditioned Cobo Center. It will be the more than 100,000 active hourly workers on Detroit 3 factory floors. He’s really out to build resistance to further concessions during next year’s master contract negotiations.”
Jerry Tucker, who himself ran for the presidency of the union at the 1992 convention said, “Gary Walkowicz, whose voice spoke truth to power so eloquently during the Ford Contract reopener rejection vote, should command the respect of his delegate brothers and sisters who are being given this rare opportunity to lend their own voices to the reformation of a once proud union sorely in need of a new direction.”
Other well-known dissidents signaled their support for his candidacy, including Pete Kelley, long time president at the GM Tech Center, Bob Weissman, president at Chrysler’s Twinsburg Ohio plant and Wendy Thompson, president at GM’s Gear and Axle (later American Axle).
But perhaps the strongest comment on his candidacy came from several workers at his own plant, Ford’s Dearborn Truck Plant, who told him, “Don’t say you can’t win. If people in this plant could vote, you would win.”
Jun 14, 2010
How many fishing workers, tourism workers, and oil industry workers will never economically recover because of this horrendous spill–this gushing disaster?
Yet Tony Hayward, the callous, spoiled brat CEO of BP had the nerve to whine: “I want my life back.”
The brother of one of the men killed in the initial oil rig explosion testified before Congress: "Well, Mr. Hayward, I want my brother’s life back."
Eleven men lost their lives. Millions will lose their livelihood.
In 2007 when Hayward became CEO it was after a series of major accidents. He promised to improve safety.
There was no safety plan. He is responsible. The life he deserves to get back–should be in a prison cell.
Jun 14, 2010
World military expenses increased strongly in 2009, up 5.9%. They reached the colossal sum of 1.5 trillion dollars. Over the last ten years, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), these expenses have exploded by 49%.
The U.S. accounts for 43% of the world’s military spending, with 661 billion dollars spent in 2009, up 7%. This increase is in part explained by the doubling of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan. This sad record delights the stockholders of Lockheed Martin Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and other merchants of death, but certainly not the peoples against whom the arms are or can be used.
This waste of 661 billion dollars or $2,100 for every person in the country could have been devoted to much more useful production, like health, housing, education and public transit ... and none of the workers employed in the arms industry would have a problem if their abilities were used for socially necessary services.
Jun 14, 2010
The BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico shows the attitude of oil companies when they extract oil. Their concerns about production safety are even more limited in poor countries.
In Nigeria, where extraction of oil began 40 years ago, the Niger river delta has been ravaged. The amount of oil dispersed into the delta yearly is unknown, because the government and the oil companies don’t release the information.
But two recent investigations suggest as much oil was dumped annually into the Atlantic sea, the Nigerian swamps and on land as the amount of oil that has escaped up to now into the Gulf of Mexico. A report in 2006 said one and a half MILLION tons of crude oil have been spilled into the Niger delta over the past 50 years. That’s the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez wreck every single year. The Nigerian authorities listed more than 7,000 oil spills between 1970 and 2000. An ExxonMobil oil pipeline broke last May, throwing a million gallons of crude oil into the delta before the break was sealed.
The permanent ecological disaster imposed on the Niger delta is accompanied by a permanent social and human catastrophe. The water is polluted, as is the air, thanks to natural gas burned off. Fishing and farming face enormous destruction, plunging the local population into such poverty that life expectancy has fallen to barely 40 years.
Forty% of U.S. crude oil imports come from the Niger delta’s 606 oil fields. The Western oil companies have carved up the lion’s share of it, in particular Shell Oil. They are responsible for the destruction of the Niger delta.
Jun 14, 2010
In 2009, BP submitted a disaster response plan to the Minerals Management Service (MMS) when it applied for a permit to start its Deepwater Horizon drilling.
Would anyone be surprised to hear that it was a complete fake?
The biologist BP said it would call on to monitor the impact of an accident on wildlife had died four years before BP even submitted the plan!
The MMS accepted BP’s fake disaster plan without questioning a thing, proving how fake government oversight of the oil industry has been!
Jun 14, 2010
BP promises it will compensate everyone who suffers a loss related to the blowout at their oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.
Another fat lie!
Compensation means NOW! Many thousands of people have lost their livelihood already. Start paying them NOW with no limit on BP liability!
People’s jobs and little businesses around the Gulf, its bayous and rivers are being destroyed; their homes and lands are being made unusable. Start paying them NOW!
People all along the Gulf can’t go fishing or swimming on a day off, or go for a walk or a picnic at their usual places near the water. Start paying them NOW–with no limit on BP liability!
Compensation promised for sometime in the future is not compensation at all. BP should start paying NOW!