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
Oct 11, 2010
The Republicans say the economy is getting worse–and it is. But who would vote for the Republicans if they had a choice? Bush and the Republicans were in charge when the economy crashed and burned, bringing on the worst crisis since the 1930s Great Depression.
The Democrats say they are not to blame for the economic crisis, because it started under Bush–and it did. But who would vote for the Democrats if they had a real choice? The Democrats followed in Bush’s footsteps and gave away trillions of dollars in taxpayer money to big business and the banks.
The Republicans say their priority is to close the budget deficit. They call for slashing social spending, social services, education, Social Security–all the programs that serve the working population. All this to keep the enormous tax cuts for the wealthy and increased spending for wars and weapons. The Republicans openly take the side of the wealthiest against the working class.
Like the Republicans, the Democrats say they want to cut the budget deficit. But the Democrats say they want to tax the wealthiest more. Unfortunately, or so the Democrats say, they can’t do it because they don’t have the forces–despite Democratic control of the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate for almost two years. So Democrats say they have no choice but to cut spending on social programs, services, Social Security, etc. The Democrats pretend to be the friends of working people–but stab us in the back all the same.
The Republicans are more open about attacking working people, while the Democrats carry out attacks, while pretending they don’t like them.
What are the major so-called "accomplishments’ of these two parties?
Both parties have taken turns managing and supporting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These wars are aimed at strengthening the U.S. imperialist grip over the Middle East and Central Asia through terror and blood. While both parties claim the war in Iraq is practically over–a lie–they both support extending the wars into Pakistan.
Second, both parties have spent trillions to bail out big business and the banks. This did not rescue the economy, as advertised. The capitalists used the taxpayer money for even more wild speculation, which, in turn is strangling and sabotaging the economy, while paving the way for another crash.
For workers, we have no real choice in these elections, no party that represents the interests of the working class. Many workers know this and they don’t vote at all.
Others vote for the "lesser of two evils," or they vote against the party in office. It’s all a trap. By voting for either of the bosses’ parties, working people give the politicians a blank check, a stamp of approval for their policies.
If you vote for either Democrats or Republicans, you are authorizing both of these parties to continue attacking us.
Don’t give them your vote!
Oct 11, 2010
The Los Angeles MTA recently decided to cut bus service by 4%, effective December 12 of this year. Art Leahy had the nerve to say “We are running service that is excessive.”
If anything, there is a lack of bus service. Demand for buses is increasing. With the high gas prices, high unemployment and big cuts in wages and hours for many workers, more people are depending on buses and trains to get where they have to go.
Cutting bus service is practically criminal.
Oct 11, 2010
Detroit City workers’ pay was cut 10% by the mayor and council. Workers must take unpaid days off, meaning that city services like EMS, fire, 911, buses, water and security will be more understaffed and unavailable to residents.
Meanwhile the city provides free services to companies like DTE. When a cop stands watch on a downed power line in a suburb, the suburb bills DTE for the cop’s time. But Detroit doesn’t bill DTE–cops do it on the Detroit taxpayer’s tab.
Oct 11, 2010
Since September 15th, about a dozen parents have occupied the field house of Whittier Elementary, in Chicago’s mostly Hispanic Pilsen neighborhood. Chicago Public Schools had scheduled to demolish the field house, but the parents demand the building be kept open and converted to use as a library for the school.
Whittier Elementary, like 160 other schools in the Chicago Public School system, has no library.
Parents had been using the field house to meet, and to organize GED and other classes. Ron Huberman, “CEO” of the Chicago Public Schools, announced this building would be demolished. A closet–a closet!–in the school would be converted to a “parent room.” The field house would be replaced by a soccer field.
Fed up, a group of mothers organized and occupied the field house. They have taken turns, occupying and sleeping there in shifts for over two weeks now.
In one confrontation with the police, enough parents and students turned out to back the police off. Since then, parents collected books, and had volunteers organize them into a library there in the field house.
The school district has shut off the gas in an attempt to freeze the parents out. But the sit-in continues.
This arrogant school board, which says it thinks only about the students, and that it and only it knows best–wants to tell parents that they must choose between their students’ physical well-being and their mental and academic well-being. The students need both–in ALL 160 buildings that currently don’t have a library!
Oct 11, 2010
The FBI raided homes of anti-war activists in cities in Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan and North Carolina. It used, as a pretext, a recent Supreme Court ruling, supported by the Obama administration, that widened the definition of “providing material support for terrorism” to include writing and speaking in support of groups the government considers “terrorist.”
In Minneapolis and Chicago alone, FBI agents served subpoenas to 14 activists to appear before a grand jury to face possible indictment. So far the list of groups targeted includes the Minnesota Anti-War Committee, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Students for a Democratic Society, the Palestine Solidarity Group, and the Colombian Action Network.
What these groups have done from the beginning is to oppose the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to expose the effects of the wars on U.S. soldiers and the populations of those countries, to oppose incursions by the U.S. into Pakistan, and Yemen, and to expose the U.S. support for oppressive regimes in Israel and Central and South America.
The raids are intended to silence anyone who might oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, incursions by the U.S. into Pakistan, Yemen and a number of countries in Central and South America.
Labeling anti-war activists as “terrorists,” with the threat of long prison sentences and harsh “interrogation” methods is aimed at shutting up all criticism of the wars!
Oct 11, 2010
Vigils and demonstrations have been held across the country in sadness and horror over a wave of suicides by gay young people.
The list of teenagers who recently took their own lives is long. Cody Barker, age 17 of Wisconsin; Asher Brown, age 13 of Texas; Seth Walsh, age 13 of California; Tyler Clementi, age 18 of New Jersey; Raymond Chase, age 19 of Rhode Island; Justin Aaberg, age 15 of Minnesota; and Billy Lucas, age 15 of Indiana.
These were young people just trying to find a place for themselves in society. The responsibility for their deaths falls squarely on the shoulders of all those reactionary forces that in the name of religion or “traditional values” condemn as “immoral” homosexual people.
Describing the situation of gay or perceived to be gay young people, columnist Dan Savage recently wrote:
“Being told that they’re sinful ... or damaged or disordered and unworthy of full civil equality–even if ... people strive to express their bigotry in the politest possible way” has catastrophic consequences.
Parents who teach their own children fundamentalist religious ideas “may only attack gays and lesbians at the ballot box, nice and impersonally, but your children have the option of attacking actual real gays and lesbians, in person, in real time.
Those same dehumanizing bigotries that fill your straight children with hate? They fill your gay children with suicidal despair.”
These reactionary forces that perpetuate the torment of gay people are the same reactionary forces that attack women’s rights.
Such ancient prejudices and disgusting bigotry belong in the dustbin of history!
Oct 11, 2010
In early October, the largest bank in the U.S., Bank of America, stopped all foreclosures across the country. Other major banks had already halted mortgage foreclosures in 23 states.
Are the banks trying to help the millions who are about to lose their homes? Of course not. These banks are trying to figure out how to avoid being charged with fraud.
During the height of the housing boom, many millions of mortgages were bundled together and turned into different kinds of investment securities, which were bought and sold by speculators. Record keeping was sloppy or even non-existent about which “investment” bond contained which mortgages. What was in these bonds? No one really knew–or even cared. The various speculators kept on buying and selling them in their rush to turn a profit, while the banks turned huge profits in commissions and fees.
The problem for homeowners was that they often didn’t know which company or bank actually held the mortgage on their home. Homeowners only knew who to send the payment to. So, when homeowners tried to renegotiate their mortgage, they often couldn’t find anyone to negotiate with.
When the wave of foreclosures began, many homeowners and community groups started to sue–demanding that the banks provide the proper legal documents. And often, the banks didn’t have them–or they have signatures that appear forged!
In reality, there seems to be fraud on a massive scale. So, to limit their liability, banking companies halted all foreclosures in the 23 states where they had to go through the courts. This moratorium on foreclosures has now spread nationwide.
But financial interests will be protected and foreclosures will begin again–even without the proper documentation–as soon as Congress returns from the elections. The politicians already have started writing laws to get mortgage interests out of legal difficulties. Any mortgage whose financing crosses state borders–which these days is most of them–will be deemed to be “legal,” with or without papers to prove it. And let homeowners be damned.
Oct 11, 2010
Ten million Spanish workers turned out for a 24-hour general strike–two thirds of the country’s work force. The party in power, which calls itself the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, and which is tied to the unions, nonetheless cut public workers’ pay by 5%, ranging from $70 to $280 a month less per person. It also changed the labor law to make it cheaper for bosses to lay off–at a time when unemployment is already 20%.
The strike shut down entire sectors of the economy–steel and auto, especially. The ports were closed and there was only minimal public transit. Few planes, trains or intercity buses moved. The strike was total in the construction industry, which has been severely hurt by layoffs. Even a TV station had to broadcast that all its programs were cancelled due to the strike. Workers demonstrated in great numbers in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and Valencia.
Will this government, harassed by the right, give in to the pressure of the workers’ mobilization? Or will the workers be content if the government softens just some of the blows aimed at workers? No one knows yet.
But these strikes and demonstrations can bolster the morale of all those who know we must act, not stop at just one day of protest. Just as they can open perspectives for all those who understand the role the working class plays in society.
The working class shouldn’t pay for the crisis; the capitalists and bankers must. There must be more mobilizations aimed at throwing back all the measures which attack the workers and the popular masses.
Oct 11, 2010
Angry demonstrators used a concrete mixer to break down the gates of the Parliament in Dublin on September 29. The mixer displayed “Toxic Bank” painted in big red letters.
Members of the Irish Parliament were greeted by projectiles and jeers. Protests also took place in Galway and Cork, two working class cities.
These demonstrations were the response of Irish workers to the government’s announcement of a new 18-billion-dollar bank bailout. That money is equal to almost 10% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It means the Irish state takes over the country’s five main financial businesses.
After the losses the banks made on their fantastic loans to real estate developers and big land owners, they got two previous bailouts from public funds. Now real estate prices in Ireland have collapsed, down as much as 70% from their peak in 2007. The country is dotted with abandoned construction sites and empty luxury homes and office buildings.
The anger of those September demonstrators was provoked by the announcement of a third austerity plan. It follows the 2008 and 2009 budgets in which state expenses were brutally cut: the number of public workers was reduced, their pay was cut by at least 15%, their deductions were increased. Pensions were reduced and the age of retirement was increased. Benefits like unemployment were cut just as the number of the unemployed doubled.
These sacrifices imposed on the working class were supposed to kick-start the Irish economy, reduce the government deficit, and provide a good example to the government of Greece.
Today Irish workers find only an economy that continues to lay off and threatens new austerity measures. Meanwhile, the rich who gained from real estate speculation got the Treasury to reimburse them. And the stockholders of big business continue to benefit from some of the lowest taxes in the European Union!
Yes, the Irish workers have many reasons to be angry. In the past, they didn’t accept things quietly. Each austerity plan was protested heartily by workers in the streets. But the union apparatuses, determined to remain “partners” with those in power, used workers’ combativeness as a springboard to assure themselves a place at the negotiating table. There, they approved all sacrifices demanded by the government.
Will the anger of the Irish workers help them to find the way around the constraints of the union apparatuses, a way to go on the offensive, to make the bourgeoisie pay for the crisis? We certainly hope so.
Oct 11, 2010
The following was an editorial in the October 8 issue of Lutte Ouvri re (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France, about the recent one-day general strikes and demonstrations.
The demonstrations of Sunday, October 3rd mobilized at least as many demonstrators as the two that came before. But this time families could come out as well as workers not ready to go on strike. And these demonstrations prepared for the next strike, planned for Tuesday, October 12.
The demonstrations continue to enjoy a wide sympathy from the population, which does not seem opposed to workers in struggle. And that counts for something.
It is becoming more and more obvious that the attack against Social Security pensions prepares the way for other attacks. The government is beginning to lay its cards on the table. The coming “austerity” budget will continue sharp cuts in public services used by the population: hospitals, schools, public transit. It will lead to job layoffs. Even officials in hospitals denounce the terrible shape of their services, due to lack of money and personnel. Hospitals and neighborhood maternity clinics are closing one after another.
A decline in public services is already an attack on the living conditions of the majority, who don’t have the money to pay for private clinics or to send their children to private schools.
The government makes propaganda about the deficit of the national health insurance fund–to prepare for an increase from workers’ paychecks and a cut in services paid for. And these policies are added to the exploitation in the workplace. The bosses continue to reduce the number of workers, forcing more work to be done by fewer workers, changing work schedules at the workers’ expense and stopping any wage increases.
It’s necessary to stop them. Without a powerful burst of energy from the working class, those who rule us will continue to attack us, worsening our situation.
The state is in debt up to its neck to save the capitalist economy, that is, the incomes of the capitalists. Every day the French state borrows the staggering sum of 1.4 billion dollars to meet its expenses, including paying for the loans to bankers, who get colossal sums of interest. The state goes further into debt to aid the bankers and the bosses of the big corporations. Why aren’t they the ones paying back these loans?
The tax system lets billionaire Madame Bettencourt pay a tax rate similar to the middle class. The top 40 companies on the stock exchange pay on average 8% of their profits in taxes. Meanwhile small and medium business pays 30%. The tax rates always protect the rich. Most of government’s income comes from the sales tax on working class consumption. The government refuses to make the rich pay, but then says that Social Security pensions should be reduced. The Social Security fund is drained by letting the bosses avoid the payroll tax.
The next presidential and legislative elections will NOT change the policy that serves the capitalist class. No matter who becomes president or prime minister, the economy will still serve the same big bosses, the same bankers, the same big stockholders as today. They will impose the same policy, which corresponds to their interests, even if it devastates the living conditions of the great majority of the population.
The big bosses, who exercise the real power in this country, fear neither ministers nor legislators. They fear only an explosion from the working class. When the rich and their servants hear the anger rumbling down below, they might begin to pay attention.
Oct 11, 2010
“Waiting for Superman” is a new documentary film that is being lauded as a path-breaking exposé of the problems with public schools in this country, and as a vehicle to pretend that some hard-working, school “reform” experts, have the solutions. The movie follows five students as they try to get a better education in cities like Harlem, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. Their personal stories are heart-wrenching. They have hard working families, and big dreams. But their public schools offer few good prospects, and private schools are too expensive.
The movie decries the low graduation rates in many working class public high schools. And it has charts that show that public school funding has continually gone up, and so concludes that money must not be the problem.
So if it’s not money, what is it? The movie accuses the dead wood, “bad” teachers, protected by outworn and obsolete teachers’ unions, as standing in the way of improving education.
And along come the Supermen–so-called education reformers who can show you model charter schools that “work” because the teachers there care.
But the movie is remarkable for the “facts” it doesn’t show: how public money has been handed over to corporations and banks, resulting in public schools closing, students being jammed into overcrowded classrooms, with no equipment, books, or sometimes, not even toilet paper. It doesn’t show how so-called top leaders in education summits are primarily CEOs and charter school operators, as well as Wall Street “Investment” bankers and representatives from foundations pushing the agendas of billionaires like Bill Gates and Eli Broad.
All children deserve a good education. But this film in fact is a propaganda piece for the very things that today are helping to destroy public education. It praises a few select charter schools without telling the truth about the vast majority of charter schools–that they do as bad a job–or worse, than the regular public schools.
The film’s hidden agenda advances the cause of robbing the public school funds of the entire country to put into the hands of wealthy interests who dare to pretend they care about children.
Oct 11, 2010
On September 26, the body of Rigoberto Ruelas Jr., a 39-year-old Los Angeles teacher, was found under a forest bridge. Authorities said the likely cause of death was suicide.
Ruelas had recently been named a “less effective” teacher–based on his students’ test scores–in a ranking published on the internet by the Los Angeles Times. Did his death have anything to do with this? Fellow teachers have said that Ruelas was upset over his rating, but no one knows for sure.
One thing is certain, though. Ruelas was a dedicated teacher who had been working at the same elementary school for 17 years. He hardly missed a day of work. He lived in the same working-class neighborhood where he taught. And he was highly respected by students, parents and co-workers alike, for his efforts to help students avoid gangs.
Certainly, all these are things that make a difference in students’ lives. But these are also the very things that the “standardized tests” don’t measure! And they are the very things that politicians eager to turn the schools over to “private enterprise” care nothing about.
Oct 11, 2010
The Michigan legislature has finally admitted that tax breaks to corporations are the cause of cuts to education.
Right when college training is necessary for many jobs, the new State of Michigan budget is taking away three million dollars from community colleges. Why?
Legislators decided the state would no longer reimburse community colleges for the money they lose when their district includes “Renaissance Zones.”
“Renaissance Zones” are property tax free zones, originally set up in 1996 supposedly to create jobs. Of course they didn’t, but they did cut out a big chunk of tax revenues for community colleges.
Community college students–working class students–are being robbed to allow corporations who have not had to pay property taxes for 14 years to continue their tax-free ride.
Save the schools–eliminate corporate tax breaks!
Oct 11, 2010
Forbes magazine just published its list of the 400 richest Americans. Their combined wealth comes to 1.4 trillion dollars, equal to half of all private sector wages in the entire U.S.
Bill Gates remains the richest American, with 54 billion dollars in wealth. That wealth came in great measure from the 50,000 or so “contractors” in India, China and right in the U.S., that Microsoft underpays and ruthlessly exploits.
The four children of Sam Walton, who founded WalMart, have a combined wealth of 84 billion dollars. This money comes from the poverty-level wages of two million workers in this country and abroad, most working part time and without health insurance.
But overall, this was the year for financiers. The big money men owning hedge funds, private equity companies, banks and real estate make up one third of the Forbes list.
Yet no new wealth was created in the financial sector, which now takes in 40% of all profits, drained from the wealth created by tens of millions of workers in the real economy, those who do actual work in manufacturing, construction, agriculture, mining and transportation.
Warren Buffet, Number 2 on the list, made his 45 billion by buying and selling companies, speculating on their prices. This year he acquired Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad. He also helped Dow Chemical’s 19 billion dollar acquisition of Rohm & Haas, resulting in 3,500 layoffs.
John Paulson, with his own special hedge fund, owns much of Wyeth pharmaceuticals, which merged with Pfizer, making it one of the biggest drug companies in the world. The merged company then laid off 19,500 workers.
Four brothers and sisters of the MacMillan company have 15 billion dollars in wealth, based on the ownership of Cargill Inc., the super big agribusiness and food processor. They got wealthier as speculators drove up food prices, which at the same time caused famine in the poorest countries of the world.
The basic source of the wealth of all these 400 thieves remains extracting profits through the exploitation of millions of workers.
Oct 11, 2010
On October 4, musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra went out on strike. They are facing a management that, after draining big bucks out of the symphony’s cash reserves, is demanding that musicians take a 30% pay cut and put in more hours of work for less money.
It’s obvious by the behavior of management that they intended to impose this deal–or to let the musicians hang out on strike for a number of months. Management started the season in mid-October this year, almost a month late, and then scheduled only two week-ends of concerts by the symphony–filling the hall with other money-making events, trying to pressure the musicians on strike.
Management stuck with its outrageous demands, effectively refusing to negotiate. Of course, like all bosses in Detroit who demand concessions from their workers, the symphony management says it has a large budget deficit.
Yes, it does–precisely because management engaged in a wide refurbishing and additional construction of the orchestra’s buildings. To do it, they went 54 million dollars into debt. And now, interest rates on their loans are going up–even while some bank rates are going down. The increase in rates this year alone accounts for most of the supposed deficit.
An entity like the Detroit Symphony is not, unfortunately, concerned only, or even primarily, with music. It is a showpiece where wealthy “society people” show off their furs and latest fashions while pretending to listen to music, or take advantage of the orchestra’s resources to hold receptions. It is a profit-maker for banks that loan it money at outrageously high interest rates or construction firms that get big contracts. Its board of directors includes many people with little knowledge of music, but represent the interests of big business.
The musicians currently on strike have the understanding and support from workers in the area.
Oct 11, 2010
The 2009 UAW-GM contract “modifications” included these innocent-looking clauses: “...innovative labor agreement provisions will have to be put in place so that such production can be done profitably...” and “The Company and the Union will work together...to arrive at innovative ways to staff these operations.”
The Company and the Union “worked together” to cut wages of nearly half the seniority workers at Lake Orion Assembly down to $15 an hour! They claim that “innovative” means “blank check.”
Stop payment!
Oct 11, 2010
Joe Ashton, the UAW’s V-P for GM, and UAW president Bob King told the news that there would be no problem at Lake Orion if only the 300 employees eligible for retirement would retire.
A worker from Lake Orion wrote: “That gets Orion to an all-tier-two and contractor plant that much faster.”
Precisely every boss’s intention, to get wage levels busted down to the absolute lowest levels that workers will tolerate. And why? So their profits can be maximized, so the money can flow to the banks and to Wall Street, so that the insanely wealthy can renew their speculation on the stock exchanges of the world–and set up the next economic crash.
None of which is in our best interest!
Oct 11, 2010
When two-tier wage rates and benefits were first snuck into union contracts–as in auto contracts with Visteon and Delphi in 2003, and Ford, GM, and Chrysler in 2007–the lower rates applied only to “new hires”, workers not yet in the plants.
But two-tier is now coming home to roost, threatening every worker–as recent events at GM’s Lake Orion, Michigan plant so clearly show.
In November of 2009, Lake Orion workers were laid off while their plant was retooled to build a new GM model. All the workers except temps were either making the regular wage of $28 an hour or progressing toward it. Temps were told they would be made permanent when the plant reopened.
On October 3, 2010, the local union officers called a meeting, informing workers that only 60% of them could come back at the same pay as when they were laid off. The other 40% would have to work for half pay if they came back–the two-tier!
The depth of the betrayal was highlighted by UAW officials who informed workers they could not vote on this deal because–they had already voted for it, without knowing it! (See box.)
Some workers began to organize for a picket at UAW headquarters in Detroit, for Saturday October 16. They say it is time for every UAW worker to express their outrage.
They are right, and they are not alone. American Axle workers fought a determined strike in 2008 for 11 weeks, but they were blindsided by a last-minute betrayal by high union officials who had pretended to oppose the deal.
Chrysler’s New Process Gear plant repeatedly voted down the two-tier. The Delphi spinoff plants voted against two-tier only to have it imposed on them by another UAW trick: rolling their vote into a larger GM-wide vote.
In 2009, only the force of a government order–accept a widening of two-tier or else no bailout for Chrysler and GM–created conditions for top UAW officials to push through a vote accepting it, especially since those officials controlled the count.
Ford workers threw a monkey wrench into the demands for further concessions. They organized nationally to vote “No”. And–this is important–they monitored the votes from every local, reporting them independently. The International had no choice but to report a final national vote that tallied with the workers’ own count!
Last month workers at GM’s Indianapolis Metal Fab imposed their control on a vote. When the UAW brass refused to accept the workers’ vote against everyone going into the second tier wages, the brass set up a mail-in vote without the consent of the Local. Four hundred ten workers videotaped their NO ballots and the mailing. The brass had to report the true vote: 457 NO, 96 yes.
Workers at Chrysler’s Warren, Michigan Truck Assembly Plant are now publicly denouncing two-tier. A few workers started a petition demanding the contract be reopened NOW and returned to a standard wage progression for every worker.
At Truck, temp workers were “rolled over” to permanent, but only if they took a two-tier wage cut. Now $28 workers and $15 workers work side by side doing the same work as always–but divided. And neither side likes it! Petition organizers say they have 1000 signatures at two plants so far.
Of course, these refusals are only beginnings. But some workers are trying to break the ball and chain of two-tier and other concessions. And this can grow into a wider movement, not only among auto workers, but all workers.