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
Feb 7, 2011
Popular mobilizations have made dictatorships tremble, dictatorships which once seemed set in stone. In the North African country of Tunisia, the people sent the dictator Ben Ali packing.
The popular movement was strong enough so the imperialist powers–who once protected, financed and armed Ben Ali–shipped him off to Saudi Arabia, giving him a luxurious villa, not to mention letting him keep the ton and a half of gold that his family stole from the Tunisian state treasury.
With Egypt’s Mubarak, it was not so simple. Given the strategic role played by the Egyptian regime in the Middle East, the big imperialist powers are still hesitating.
The ruling classes of the imperialist countries and their political and military leaders know that the movement might deepen. And they fear it. The poor masses, once mobilized, might not be satisfied with only a change in leaders. They might fight for their own demands, for jobs and for bread to begin with.
The leaders of the imperialist countries–the U.S., France and Great Britain–know very well that their domination has turned this region into a powder keg. The poverty of most people is so great, the inequality between the exploited classes and the privileged classes is so ugly–the whole region could go up in a flash.
In Tunisia, as in Egypt, the leaders of the imperialist world are feverishly searching for a way to put the brakes on the movement of the masses before the masses become conscious of their own power–before the masses could become conscious that behind the dictator Ben Ali or Mubarak, there is a whole state apparatus with its army and that behind the state are the local privileged classes and the imperialist bourgeoisie.
Do the masses in Tunisia and Egypt have enough energy to push further, to rip off the chains that bind them?
It’s impossible right now to know. But what we do know is that the working class of these two countries needs to participate as massively as possible in this movement for liberty and democratic rights. And the working class needs its own objectives, and its own class demands. It is the only way for them to impose their right to live.
Even in order to make the state accept democratic rights and liberty, the exploited masses have to remain mobilized, suspicious of all those contending right now to put themselves in power, to take over running the country.
The exploited masses in this movement need to be suspicious of the army, which in Egypt pretends to act like a mediator between the regime and the movement. The demonstrators have a thousand and one reasons to fraternize with the rank and file soldiers, who are the sons of the ordinary people. But, to bring the soldiers over to their side, the exploited masses need to oppose the generals, the military hierarchy–which have been the pillars of Mubarak’s regime.
The exploited classes must become conscious of their own class interests–which are separate and opposed to those who speak of “national unity” and “democracy” in order to take over the movement.
In Tunisia and Egypt, the industrial proletariat, which is in the heart of capitalist production there, just like here, can lead the whole movement of the oppressed.
Feb 7, 2011
In his State of the Union Address, President Obama said, “It’s family that first instills the love of learning in a child. Only parents can make sure the TV is turned off and homework gets done. ... We need to teach them that success is not a function of fame or PR, but of hard work and discipline.”
Yes, it’s true that many children are raised in households that don’t give them an adequate preparation to be able to do well in school.
But why?
Obama is pushing a story that turns reality upside-down. He’s telling us that kids enter school without the skills they need to do well, that they do not or cannot do the work asked of them, because their parents don’t discipline them enough or value education enough.
What kind of reactionary garbage is that!
The problem is not the parents’ attitude; the problem is the realities of the class system we live in.
How can someone deprived of a decent education themselves be able to give their kids the foundation for their own education? How could they help their children with the homework they have? How can someone who must work 12 hours a day to keep food on the table and a roof over their family’s heads be able to “make sure the TV is off and homework gets done”? How can they even begin to search for the resources that will allow their kids to get a decent education–or even know where to search?
Twenty-one% of U.S. children live in poverty. How are their parents supposed to turn things around simply by a fresh attitude?
After attacking the teachers for two years, Obama is now offering a sop to the reactionary attitudes some teachers have: Yes, he says, teachers deal with unprepared students–but because the parents are bad, not because the poverty level is bad.
If Obama were to truly address the conditions creating a poor education for many students, he would push to give schools serving the poor many times more resources than they currently receive. It’s the only way to begin to address the cycle of poverty. But instead, his administration is doing the opposite.
And by telling us the problem is bad parents and bad teachers, he’s telling us to expect that nothing will change.
Feb 7, 2011
“We are poised for progress,” declared Obama in the 2011 “State of the Union” address. “Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.... We have broken the back of this recession.”
But, there’s only one problem–unemployment. Obama blames the lack of jobs on technology, which, he says, has made many production and clerical jobs obsolete, and he blames global production, which throws American workers into competition with other workers for jobs.
So Obama proposed more tax breaks and subsidies for corporations to get them to engage in “innovative” research–and create jobs.
He proposed to cut all corporate income tax rates, to give them more capital so they can “compete”–and create jobs.
Big business doesn’t need money. It’s not for lack of capital it doesn’t create jobs. The 50 biggest U.S. industrial corporations today have one trillion dollars in reserve, NOT being invested.
It is more profitable for them to squeeze more work out of fewer workers. That’s what they have been doing for years. The Gross Domestic Product is growing again. Manufacturing production increased again. But the number of people working declined.
Jobs are not obsolete–they are being crunched together, one person doing the work of two, or even three.
It’s not technology or globalization that stole the jobs–it’s capitalists, the class that Democrats and Republicans both front for.
Feb 7, 2011
“I want to thank all Chicagoans for the patience they have shown through this historic storm and its aftermath...” declared Mayor Daley. Maryland Governor O’Malley agreed that the “storm has been unpredictable as to how and when it would start.”
In fact, politicians, government officials and news media all pretended that severe disruption and damage in the Midwest and along the East Coast was produced by the exceptional severity of the storms.
Serious storms? Yes. But there are serious storms every winter. The big shots are just blaming Nature for problems they created.
Cutbacks in air and ground crews and among terminal maintenance workers resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being stranded for days by the airlines–some of them in airport terminals.
Thousands of commuters were stranded on highways in the Baltimore/Washington area because of layoffs of city and state road workers, and the contracting out of snow and ice removal to private contractors, some of them more willing to take the money than do the work. To add insult to injury, hundreds were billed for towing after being forced to abandon their stuck cars overnight.
In Chicago, Washington and other cities, tree limbs left untrimmed over power lines, and weak cable connections left unimproved because of utility company layoffs, caused millions of people to spend hours or days without electricity, heat and refrigeration.
Here’s a word of advice to all these cut-throats: There’s still a lot of winter left. Hire more workers!
Feb 7, 2011
Obama proposed in his speech to extort a range of sacrifices from the working class and other ordinary layers of the population–to cover the deficit the government runs up giving its money to business and the wealthy.
• He froze government workers’ pay for two years–a de facto wage cut.
• He wants to freeze all domestic spending for five years. Given the increase in the population, that’s another 6% cut in state and local programs funded by the federal government: public services, social services, education.
• He wants to reduce teachers’ wages by tying them to bonuses, while cutting out classes students need in science, history, social studies, literature, foreign languages, the arts, even physical education.
• He wants more cuts and bigger cuts in Medicaid and Medicare.
• Obama’s budget-cutting commission called for an increase in the age of retirement and a hidden decrease in Social Security benefits.
No wonder Obama today talks about “bi-partisan” solutions. He wants to share the blame for these attacks with the Republicans. Republicans have shown themselves ready to join with Obama to cut our standard of living, calling for cuts over and over.
They are charlatans–Democrats and Republicans both. We can thumb our nose at them, just like they do to us!
Feb 7, 2011
The following is a translation from an article written on February 2, appearing in Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France. Events are fast moving, but the analysis in this article shows its relevance even with the changes.
The events occurring in Tunisia and Egypt are of major importance. For the first time, protests in the street are so powerful and sustained that dictators tremble and one of them, Ben Ali of Tunisia, has been sent packing. When this was written, Mubarak was still in power, but the question is posed of how long.
These dictators are mafia-like chiefs who enrich their clans and their families. But most of all, they are guard dogs for the economic interests of the big capitalist groups and, on the political level, the local servants of the great powers.
The great powers, their political and military chiefs, aren’t worried about what has happened during the last few days, but of what could happen in the future, the dynamic contained in the situation.
The Arab countries in Northern Africa are powder kegs. The crushing poverty in which the majority of the population lives and unemployment both push the youth to despair. And the economic growth the Tunisian and Egyptian leaders brag about profits only a tiny layer of the local wealthy and imperialism. The wages of an Egyptian worker amount to only a fourth of the wages in Turkey, which doesn’t pay its workers well!
This situation isn’t new, but instead of improving a bit with time, the economic crisis has aggravated it. Dictators like Ben Ali and Mubarak use the crisis to prevent their people from raising their heads and to repress them, including with terror. But these dictatorships can be inconvenient for those who own the countries’ wealth–because all the hatred and anger has a focus: the dictator.
In Tunisia when the popular movement showed it would continue, imperialism decided to drop Ben Ali, in hopes of calming the growing anger. Ben Ali had already tried the same trick to defuse the situation–firing his Interior Minister. But it wasn’t enough. When the wave of demonstrations threatened the capital Tunis and the tourist zones, whose receipts are important for the local bourgeoisie, it was Ben Ali’s turn to be “sacrificed.”
He was shipped off to a villa in Saudi Arabia to enjoy a peaceful and luxurious retirement! The United States carried out this operation, since the French leaders made the mistake of clinging too long to Ben Ali. U.S. leaders had profited from the situation to take their distance from Ben Ali. And that puts the U.S. in a better position to replace French imperialism in Tunisia.
Certainly, the U.S. wouldn’t have advised the Tunisian general staff to push Ben Ali out if there hadn’t been a popular revolt, with demonstrators courageously confronting the police who shot real bullets. The political leaders of imperialism pushed Ali out–in order to put the brakes on a movement before the poor popular masses, especially the working class, began to erupt.
The masses in revolt educate themselves through the revolt itself. When revolt is radical and durable, people learn in the fire of events to distinguish their friends from their enemies, above all, getting rid of false friends who always swarm about coming to aid the victory after it is nearly won, positioning themselves to harvest its fruit, seeking out positions that had been occupied by partisans too closely linked to the overthrown dictator.
Yes, the overthrow of the dictatorship is itself a major fact, but people have always known how to do that, when they reach a certain level of anger. But the true problems begin after the dictatorship is thrown out. What objectives should the exploited fight for, how should they try to organize to impose them? What attitude should they have toward the army? So long as the army is controlled by the general staff and military hierarchy, it is in the hands of the classes that own society’s wealth.
The bourgeoisie has many alternatives. Its problem is to choose the one most appropriate for the situation. The masses, on the other hand, serve their apprenticeship in the struggle itself. That’s why it’s indispensable that parties representing the political interests of the working class be reborn everywhere, be educated, tempered, and capable of proposing a correct policy to the working class in the context of an uprising, that is, a revolutionary communist party!
Unfortunately, there isn’t such a party in Tunisia or in Egypt, or moreover in France or the United States. But, on the road of struggle, the exploited can learn that behind the dictatorship, there is a state apparatus and a ruling class and the big imperialist powers.
Even when the energy of the revolted masses is powerful, the main obstacle that prevents them from becoming conscious of what they need to go further is the joyous but poisonous atmosphere that accompanies any popular uprising and which very often prevents it from becoming a revolution. A poisonous atmosphere because the joy of having overthrown the dictatorship smothers all criticism, smothers all opposition–but without criticism and opposition the revolution can’t advance.
General Rashid Ammar is put forward today as the “friend of the revolution.” He was, according to the press, the general who refused to shoot on the protesters, leaving the dirty work to the police. But this man served Ben Ali during his entire career, with no misgivings. And if he chose not to shoot–or if his U.S. advisers decided he shouldn’t–it was because neither of them wanted the army to sink along with the dictatorship.
The Egyptian army general staff faces the same problem. It declared that the protesters’ demands “are legitimate” and promised that the army won’t shoot on the crowd of demonstrators. Obviously there is no guarantee this promise will be kept. And the army made a point of deploying tanks in Cairo, flying fighter planes over the demonstrators. But for the time being, the army has no reason to link its destiny to Mubarak and his regime. The bourgeoisie can do without Mubarak, but not without the army.
For the moment the U.S. has not removed its support for Mubarak, contrary to Ben Ali–due to Egypt’s role as the faithful U.S. ally in the Middle East. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sent Mubarak warnings. But if they are leaving open the opportunity for him to remain right now, it’s undoubtedly under the condition that he not compromise the army too much to leave the way open for a transition. Will the U.S. favor someone like ElBaradei, a high functionary not well known in Egypt, but who acts on the political scene as a “unifier” of the opposition? Will it favor another civilian? Or a high army officer who will take power “provisionally,” promising to proceed later to elections?
The leaders of U.S. imperialism have to be particularly prudent. First, due to Egypt’s proximity to Israel, any change in regime can have consequences for the relations between the two countries. Furthermore, Egypt isn’t Tunisia–it has eight times the population, and Cairo has 18 million inhabitants, the overwhelming majority of whom are poor. Egypt has an important, combative working class, which knows how to lead strikes, even under the dictatorship. All this represents an enormous explosive potential.
For the moment, to judge by what the media reports, the working class isn’t mobilized, or only very little, no more than the majority of ordinary people. But they could be mobilized very rapidly. A workers’ explosion in Cairo, mixing political and social demands, would represent an immeasurable danger for the ruling class. Of course, the leading circles of the imperialist bourgeoisie repeatedly speak of “stabilization.” So do many of those who demonstrate today, but think above all about defending their property. Once Mubarak has fallen and even before, they speak of “stopping anarchy.”
It isn’t possible to define from afar the details of a policy that would accord with the interests of the working class. But the general line of this policy is obvious.
The working class obviously has an interest to participate in the current movement for the fall of the Mubarak regime. Freedom and democratic rights concern it still more than the petty bourgeoisie and its intelligentsia–even if “democracy” means something different for the working class than for the middle layers of society.
The working class needs to put forward its own class objectives, independently of the petty bourgeoisie, which today has risen up, but which will inevitably break with the movement, if the movement radicalizes and threatens its property.
The workers need to try to draw the army to their side, by trying to touch the rank and file soldiers–as sons of the workers and small peasants–to oppose them to the army’s general staff and the top officers.
If the current movement develops, if it really involves a significant part of the working class and the poor categories of the population, they need to put themselves forward to lead the movement and to give themselves the organizations which will let them do it. Would it be utopian to imagine workers’ councils in Egypt? Not at all: barely two years ago, in April 2008, at the time of a strike in the Misr Spinning mill in Mahalla El Kubra–one of many strikes the workers led despite the dictatorship–the 25,000 workers of this factory created “a strike committee” to lead it. Of course, the strike was for a wage increase, in fact obtained, not a political strike. But such organisms, formed in struggle, can also take the leadership of a political struggle and transform themselves into true workers councils.
The workers have every interest not to leave the monopoly of arms to the army led by the military hierarchy, and, instead, to push for the people to arm themselves.
The current uprising has already shaken the Mubarak dictatorship. And if it continues, the end of the reign of the old dictator is probably near (a dictator who probably has already lost any chance of leaving power to his son Gamal, as he intended).
Those who wish to prevent the arrival in power of a new Mubarak, those for whom democratic rights aren’t limited to the installation of a bit more of a parliamentary regime, with elections a little less rigged; those who truly wish to better the situation of the exploited classes can’t be content with the departure of Mubarak. Don’t leave the future of the country and of its exploited classes to the good will of the general staff of the army and the imperialist bourgeoisie that it ultimately serves.
Feb 7, 2011
USA Today recently wrote that “The number of people 55 and older holding jobs is on track to hit a record 28 million in 2010 while young people increasingly are squeezed out of the labor market.”
They might as well come right out and say it: “Older workers are taking jobs away from younger people.” Because this is the lie they are pushing. It’s far from reality: a fiction created to pit younger people against the older workers.
It is correct that growing numbers of older workers are looking for work. In 1993, 29% of people older than 55 years were in the work force; today it’s 40%. This is a huge increase.
At the same time, the unemployment among older workers increased three times over the last 10 years. This is another record high.
Older workers continue to work not for the fun of it–but because they are squeezed from every direction. Starting in the early 1990s, company pension plans with secure benefits gradually disappeared, even while many older workers lost their savings to stock market schemes. Decreasing wages and home prices, increasing cost of living and health care, and economic crises further contributed to these losses. And they often were helping to support their adult children.
Older workers today do not retire or stay retired because they cannot afford to. There is no adequate retirement income to do so, although they have worked for companies for a long time and deserve to be comfortably retired.
Companies know that many older workers are desperate and try to use this desperation to their advantage to cut the wages not only of older workers, but for everyone.
But the biggest lie pushed on us is when the bosses’ front men say, “there are only so many jobs to go around” and therefore someone must go without.
Older workers are not the reason for younger workers’ unemployment, as they want us to believe. This capitalist society, which cannot create enough work for everybody and decent retirement income for the older people, is the problem.
Current social and economic conditions set a trap for all of us.
If the bosses cannot provide enough jobs for all, then let them divide up the work among all those who want to work, giving us all a full pay check. They caused the problem–let them pay for it!
Feb 7, 2011
At least 145,000 jobs must be created each month, merely to accommodate new young workers entering the work force. Last month, only 36,000 were created.
Fewer jobs, more unemployed–but the 9.4% official unemployment dropped to 9.0%!
Radio stations and newspapers declared how this “puzzled” and “confounded” economists. But there is no puzzle.
The unemployment rate dropped because, to arrive at this figure, government statisticians are ordered not to count those workers who aren’t registered as actively seeking work. What work? Jobs cannot be found. About five million workers have given up looking for jobs that they know aren’t there.
The official unemployment rate dropped because many, many more workers got discouraged and stopped registering. Simple as that.
The statistics are doctored beyond belief so that politicians and their “economists” can claim jobs where there are none, and claim progress where there is failure.
Accurate numbers would show an unemployment rate around 22%! Eight million jobs lost since 2008 have not been regained. Or, using another figure, the “labor force participation rate,” all those older than 16 who have jobs, is only 64.2%–the lowest since 1984.
The true figures are well known to the politicians. If they play dumb and feed us false information, it serves their purposes.
The politicians are the professional managers of the bosses’ system. The bosses have shut down those millions of jobs because they aren’t making enough profits. What do they care for those who lose their homes? What do they care for those who must go hungry, who can’t pay for medicine, who may go over the edge? Their care is for profit, and profit only.
The bosses know well enough that at some point, the anger, frustration and desperation can boil over into outright rebellion. It’s the politicians’ job to delay and defuse that rebellion as long as possible. They doctored statistics and did their job.
If workers and the poor can be persuaded that hope is just around the corner–that today someone got a new job and tomorrow you might, too–then we may decide to wait. Just a little longer. We may hope things will get better by themselves.
But we have already been waiting a long time. Things have only gotten worse.
We know the reality of our lives. We know the reality of our families’ lives. Reality itself proves that the bosses’ statistics lie. Leave it up to bosses and politicians, and the unemployment rate might even fall to zero–but no one will be working, either!
No, it is past time to discover an old truth. No one will save us, but us. We must set our minds to that, and get started.
Feb 7, 2011
How the government loves investigations!
The economic crisis and banking collapse of 2008 has now been “investigated” by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC).
The commission chairman released the FCIC report by saying the crisis was “avoidable.”
The report said that if steps were not taken, “it will happen again.”
A member of the commission said later, that the financial system is “not really very different” today.
Since it’s all true, it means that those who caused the last collapse are preparing the next one.
Why does government investigate when it doesn’t act on what it finds? Obviously–in order to do nothing.
Feb 7, 2011
The Chicago Board of Trade, home to all the big traders, gave Rahm Emanuel $200,000 for his campaign for mayor. Ken Griffin and wife, owners of Citadel Hedge Fund, gave him $200,000. Other hedge fund operators gave $100,000 each. They are paying big bucks to put in office the mayor they want.
In fact, business will win no matter what candidate comes in first. Gery Chico, another candidate, has a law firm that represents loads of companies in their dealings with the city. Carol Mosely Braun, as a U.S. senator, cast a key vote to give giant pharmaceutical company Glaxo an extra two billion dollars through extending one of their patents.
This is the “democracy” the wealthy talk so much about.