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
Nov 11, 2013
Here is the plain and simple truth: there is no party of the working class. And there has not been for the better part of a century.
The only choice we have been offered in elections is between the Republicans, a party that speaks openly for the big banks and the big industrialists–and the Democrats, a party that, while it gets some of its money from the unions, acts for the big banks and the big industrialists. In other words, the choice is between an open enemy and a false friend–both of them defenders of the capitalist system, enforcers of exploitation.
The working class needs its own party. One hundred and one years ago, in 1912, Eugene V. Debs ran for the presidency on the Socialist Party ticket. He did not expect to win, knowing then, just like today, that big money controls the outcome of elections in capitalist society. But he ran to let speak all those who otherwise would not be heard.
Six years later, he was put on trial for supporting the Russian Revolution and opposing the first big imperialist war, World War I. Two years later, while behind bars in federal prison, he won nearly a million votes in the 1920 elections. It was 3.4% of the vote, and it showed that in the working class there already was a sizeable current who agreed that it was necessary to “organize not to conciliate but to fight against the capitalist class.”
Debs was not a bourgeois politician, not someone whose aim was to fool as many people as he could. He used the electoral platform to speak the truth about the capitalist system, a system in which we are still trapped: “I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”
He was truly a militant of his class. He led the great railway strike of 1894, spending time in prison for that also. He declared, along with Marx, that the emancipation of the working class can be carried out only by the working class itself.
If we want to go forward, we have to resurrect our history–a history filled with working class militants like Debs, or like the many devoted, and often nameless revolutionaries who have always been part of the working class.
But it’s not just militants, individuals. The working class needs its own party, built around the conviction that “the working class and the employing class have nothing in common”–in the words of the IWW.
That’s never been more true than today. The capitalist class has engaged itself in a great war, a class war against all of us who do the work necessary to make this society run. Up until now, it has been a very one-sided war: workers have not found the way to join together in a common struggle against our enemies–against the bankers, the big industrialists and the politicians and governments that serve the capitalists.
But we could. We don’t need saviors to come defend us. We have the forces to defend ourselves. We make the whole economy run. Not only can we make it stop running, in order to defend ourselves. We have the power to create a new society and to run it in a way that can serve ourselves and all of humanity.
Nov 11, 2013
Supporters of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) say more of the poor will finally have access to healthcare because of the law’s expansion of Medicaid. Unfortunately, the Medicaid expansion is a safety net full of holes.
First of all, 25 states have NOT expanded Medicaid. And the 25 states plus Washington, D.C. that did expand Medicaid have put the working poor into a trick bag. If and when a person’s income temporarily goes up, they will LOSE the Medicaid COVERAGE they already have!
One study in Health Affairs found that 35 per cent of the poor will be tossed in and out of Medicaid. This is because their monthly income is constantly shifting. For many workers, hours may get cut at one time, but overtime is possible later. This will leave millions of people in constant jeopardy. One month they will qualify for health insurance, but the next month they will not. This is a crazy way to set up a healthcare system.
Medicaid has long been a bureaucratic program that makes it hard to obtain and keep benefits.
Medicaid applications are 20 or more pages long. Applicants must collect many documents. When you are ill and need health insurance, this is difficult to do.
When the government bailed out the banks in 2008, their paper work was said to fit on a single piece of paper. If only those applying for Medicaid could get the same deal!
Clearly, all human beings need access to medical care. Along with food, clothing, water, and shelter, medical care should be a human right. But the capitalist system charges outrageous prices for this list of necessities, just so profit can be wrung out and handed over to the wealthy few.
Nov 11, 2013
Who does Medicaid expansion benefit? Some of the world’s wealthiest corporations, that’s who! To name a few, companies like Walmart and McDonalds will push even more of their low-paid workers into the Medicaid program, lowering their costs of doing business while shifting costs onto taxpayers.
Today, if a worker at these companies calls Human Resources for help in getting by, they are told to go and apply for Medicaid. Essentially, the government’s Medicaid health insurance program keeps low-wage workers healthy enough to wage-slave another day.
Nov 11, 2013
In 2003, Governor Granholm came after concessions from state workers. She wanted to permanently cut each state worker’s pay by $4,000 a year. Back then, state workers decided to express some anger. A series of protests were organized. It helped! Granholm backed off and in the end, workers saw a temporary cut of $2,400. (Remember Banked Leave Time or BLT?)
Ten years later, Governor Snyder wants HUGE health insurance concessions. Under the proposed new state health plan, if a family member gets cancer, it could end up costing you $7,000 in medical bills.
How will state workers respond in 2013?
Nov 11, 2013
Five state employee unions in Michigan, representing 33,000 state workers, just said NO! to Governor Snyder’s final contract offer. The dispute now goes before the state’s Civil Service Commission.
The following is an excerpt from a union website, www.uawlocal6000.org:
“Why We Are Protesting”
“State workers are under the gun.... The type of health insurance the state wants will literally bankrupt some people who have big medical bills. It could cost some people up to $5,000 a year in out-of-pocket costs. People in the State Health Plan and HMO’s, in separate ways, would see big changes, in a negative way. In addition, the issue of Wellness plans was discussed. But the way they are being looked at, these could only hurt people even more financially.”
“On top of all this, the very tiny pay increases the State is proposing will not even keep up with inflation, let alone make up what we have lost the past couple of years, or put a dent into the higher, much higher, health insurance costs the State wants.”
“For all these reasons, we cannot agree to this.... Enough is enough!”
“We need people to come to the Impasse Hearings that begin in Lansing on Wednesday, November 13th.... We need to all be there to let the Impasse panel know that we care about our jobs and our benefits that we deserve.”
Nov 11, 2013
This article is from the November 8th, 2013 edition of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
On November 27th, members of the French parliament are scheduled to debate a bill that aims to combat prostitution by punishing its clients. The bill has the endorsement of a large majority of feminist organizations and of the support networks for prostitutes.
Ninety percent of prostitutes on the street in France, almost exclusively women, are immigrants, and most are trapped in trafficking and pimping networks that use systematic violence to coerce them. These tens of thousands of young women are first sold or kidnapped, and then are forced to accept their fate through abuse or torture. After what are called “training courses” in the trafficking networks, they are sent out into the street, without legal papers and chained to the hope of freeing themselves by paying what their torturers present as their debt. These networks, which were first strengthened in Eastern Europe in the 1990’s, now serve to organize human trafficking in many countries.
In this way, many prostitutes are not only exposed to daily violence and sexually transmitted diseases, but also to dire poverty that saps their health. Tuberculosis, lung disease, skin disorders, dental problems, addictions, and psychological trauma are their daily fate. The insecurity that comes from not having a residence permit is a weapon in the hands of the pimps.
The French government could easily take away this weapon by regularizing their status. One major obstacle to the fight against prostitution is the lack of resources that the government devotes to it. The resources allocated to organizations devoted to helping prostitutes continue to diminish from one year to the next.
This is not the first time that a government has tried to fight prostitution, and this law might not be any more effective than previous laws. To consider the use of prostitutes a crime is a minimal step.
What allows prostitution to flourish is the generalized poverty and misery rampant throughout the world. This is what makes possible the existence of networks that traffic in human beings and the sexual slavery that is a result. Resting on poverty and violence, prostitution is one of the symptoms of a sick society that reduces women to the level of objects and turns sexual relations into a source of profit.
Nov 11, 2013
The violent bullying of Miami Dolphin’s player Jonathon Martin at the hands of Richie Incognito and other teammates has blown the lid off of one NFL locker room. It became obvious as the scandal unfolded that the problem extends well beyond the players. Coaches reportedly asked Incognito to “toughen up” Martin. When Martin complained, the Dolphin’s General Manager Jeff Ireland reportedly told him to punch Richie Incognito to settle their differences.
This is a sport that makes billions for its team owners by encouraging brutality. The NFL admitted as much in August, when it agreed to a 765 million dollar settlement with 4,500 former players who sued over concussion-related brain injuries. The lawsuit said that the NFL profited by glorifying the violence of the game and “set up a sham committee” that “spread misinformation” about the brain risks inherent in football. The settlement was an acknowledgment by the NFL that it was responsible for the deaths, suicides, and dementia that came from these head injuries.
It should be no surprise that a billion dollar sport profiting from inflicting permanent damage on its players would encourage bullying in the locker room. How else can you get players to keep playing despite the risks, and to inflict such harm on each other? A few players make a lot of money, but most play for a short time and wind up with little to show for it. So the players have to be “toughened up.” Chicago Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall explained that football players, “Can’t show that you’re hurt. Can’t show any pain. So for a guy that comes in a locker room and shows a little vulnerability, that’s a problem.”
The NFL wants to pretend the problem is Richie Incognito, or at most the culture of the Miami Dolphins. But this macho culture extends well beyond the Dolphins. NFL players from other teams report being taped to the ground, covered in Icy Hot and punched, or repeatedly dumped in buckets of ice water against their will.
The real problem is that the owners make billions by treating their players like meat, brutalizing them in body and mind. Football is an intricate, athletic sport that can be a joy to watch and that can teach players teamwork and discipline. But like every other sport in this country, football is run for profit, and brutality sells.
Nov 11, 2013
The following are remarks from a public meeting in Detroit given by the Spark organization in October 2013.
Dan Gilbert, with his 40 buildings, not to mention large chunks of Detroit real estate is—to use his words—“Doing Well by Doing Good.”
Greed is good. That was Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street. He too had the gall to claim that the greedier he was, the better it was for everybody. It’s the same load of manure in real life as it was in the movie! Dan Gilbert and his greedy class are doing well. But it’s a disaster for the rest of us, for the population, for the city workers, for the city retirees, and for everybody around the city too. It’s a disaster. It was a disaster before Kevin Orr and his bankruptcy. It will become much worse, if you are not a member of the wealthy club.
They tell us it will get better, we just have to let them do what they are doing. Let them go through bankruptcy. Let them destroy workers’ pensions. Then it will all be better! But it won’t. Not for us. Their greed is not good for us!
The “60 Minutes” program on Detroit repeated the claim of Gilbert and his wealthy class, the claim that the workers’ pensions are to blame. It’s all lies. The Detroit pension funds are short of money because the city broke its contract with the workers. Year after year, they took the money that was owed to the workers to give to the upper classes, the people like Gilbert.
Gilbert brags about the fact he didn’t pay much for his buildings. What he forgets to mention is that the city gave him tax breaks on top of tax breaks to take those buildings. A tax break because some are old “historic buildings.” A tax break, because some of them were in an area declared to be a “renaissance zone.” He also forgets to mention that the city paid to clear the site where he is about to build a mammoth underground parking garage. The city paid to tear down the 25-story Hudson’s building. The city paid to take it down, rebuild the foundations and utilities—and charged Dan Gilbert not one penny for it.
Dan Gilbert and his class are the reason the city didn’t pay enough into its pension funds. Dan Gilbert and people like him—the Illitch family, the Ford family, General Motors, Roger Penske who thinks he owns Belle Isle. The Karmanos family that got the land for its headquarters from the city for $1. And Chrysler. Chrysler got the city to buy the land for its Viper assembly plant, clear it, get rid of decades worth of pollution—Chrysler’s own pollution!—put in infrastructure, and on top of all that, give Chrysler a 100% tax abatement for 13 years. Thirteen years, no property taxes! Anyone here ever get offered a deal like that?
The city is broke because these big thieves, some of the richest capitalists in the world, pay no taxes. The pension funds are underfunded because the city took money that was owed to city workers’ pensions and gave it away in all sorts of deals to these big thieves. Who cares about promises to workers? The politicians had a city to give away!
If the bankruptcy were truly aimed at putting Detroit’s house in order, as they claim, the first thing that the Emergency Financial Dictator would have done was go after the big thieves, prosecute them, take back the property they stole from the city, get back the billions upon billions of dollars thrown to them. I mean the big thieves, I don’t mean the small fry.
But that’s not going to happen because that’s not what the Emergency Financial Dictator and his bankruptcy are all about.
Detroit’s bankruptcy is being used to set a pattern, a precedent: Pensions will be made a thing of the past. You may have been promised a pension, but that doesn’t mean you will get what you were promised. The greedy class intends to break all those promises. Detroit’s bankruptcy is being used to show that even promises that were guaranteed to be iron clad, gold plated, 100% sure, even those promises CAN and WILL be broken—if you are a worker.
You may think it’s just Detroit, or maybe just Flint and Benton Harbor and Allen Park. If so, look at California. Look at San Diego and San Jose. San Diego is California’s second biggest city, and base of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet. San Jose is the third biggest city, plopped down in the center of the very wealthy Silicon Valley. Both of those well-off cities have just torn up the promises made to their retirees, proposing a series of changes that will reduce medical coverage, cut the pensions and force city workers to pay more into them.
Neither of those cities even bothered with bankruptcy to do it. Instead, mayors and other politicians cut city services, then cut them again, and then again—even while they were handing out big bucks to all those Silicon Valley high tech companies, and to all those contractors that work for the Navy in San Diego. The cuts in services may not be quite as extreme as the ones in Detroit, but they sure sound familiar. San Diego closes down firehouses on a rotating basis. San Jose politicians closed down four libraries and slashed almost half the city’s police force.
Both California cities used the big lie that they were running into debt because of the massive amounts owed on pensions. They said it, repeated it, and the media repeated it. Finally, they put a referendum on the election ballot calling for mandatory cuts to pensions. Now, a part of the population in those two cities is quite wealthy. No problem for them if city workers lose their pensions! But the worst part of this whole deal is that a part of the working class in San Jose and San Diego also voted to cut pensions. Workers themselves fell for the propaganda that the “rich” city workers’ pensions were creating city debt and forcing the cities to cut services.
Having succeeded in San Diego and San Jose, California politicians now are working to put a referendum on the state ballot to let all cities and counties in the state cut pensions, too, tearing up whatever promises were made. Pushing their propaganda, they hope to get one part of the working class to vote against another part.
In Detroit, workers have been under attack a lot longer. Maybe more of them feel in solidarity with the city workers, maybe more of them understand that the attack on city workers is also an attack on them. Everybody has been catching hell and probably the politicians couldn’t do their dirty work here by a referendum vote. Probably that’s why they need a financial dictator and a bulldozed bankruptcy.
But in Detroit, also, and for sure outside of Detroit, there are some working people who believe that the cuts to Detroit workers’ pensions don’t matter. Some people think it’s not them because they don’t work for the city. Some may say that they personally don’t have a pension, so what’s the big deal? Some who are in bad shape may even resent the city workers who have not only pensions but regular jobs. If you don’t have a job and you can’t find a job then you wonder, why are they crying?
We shouldn’t ever kid ourselves. If we let one worker go down, then sooner or later it will be our turn to go down another notch from wherever we are. It may be someone else today who is attacked, but tomorrow it will be you. You may not have a pension, but they can cut your wages. Or cut your job. Or cut your kid’s back to school clothing allowance, or raise your electric rates. And while they cut city workers’ pensions and jobs they will cut the services that city workers deliver in your neighborhoods. Goodbye libraries. Goodbye 911. Goodbye EMS and fire stations. When they get away with one thing, they come for another, it spreads out. It goes on and on until they are stopped. When they come for your neighbor today, if nothing happens to stop them, then they will come for you tomorrow. Count on it. Did you ever see them do any different?
I have experience. I’m a UAW retiree. The year after I retired, in 2003, the UAW agreed with GM and Delphi that new hires at GM’s former parts plants could be paid half the wages of current workers. Some of the workers at GM’s other plants said, “Well that’s a shame, but that’s not us.” And the UAW told them it was only the new hires, only at Delphi.
A few of us knew it was a lie and a threat. We spoke up wherever we could. We knew Delphi was only the beginning if it wasn’t stopped.
Sure enough, it was only the beginning. Those two-tier low wages spread from the new hires to the old workers at the parts plants at GM-Delphi and Ford-Visteon in 2007. In that same year, much lower two-tier wages spread to some new hires at all of the Detroit auto plants. Two years later in 2009, it spread to all new hires. And then the next year some older workers were targeted. At GM’s Lake Orion plant, older workers were told that regardless of seniority, if they wanted to keep their jobs at that plant, they had to take the two-tier pay. From $28 down to $16 or else they had to transfer to other plants—if there were openings.
Still no one in auto got organized to stop it. So, bosses being bosses, they didn’t stop in auto. When auto can cut and get away with it, that’s an invitation to every other company to cut. That’s why so many people today in this area are working at minimum wage or just above. When we let the auto companies get away with pulling down wages, then everyone else is going to be pulled down even further from wherever they are.
Today when you see Detroit city workers losing their pensions, don’t tell yourself, “That’s not us.” If you live in the suburbs and you look at Detroit, don’t tell yourself, “That’s not us.” We are all US. Whether we like it or not doesn’t matter. We are all US just like Dan Gilbert and his wealthy club are all THEM. They are their own class. We are our own class. They stand together. We need to stand together. Divided we fall. But united! United we can show the Dan Gilberts how little they really are.
It is US. And we are in this together.
Nov 11, 2013
This year Baltimore’s mayor put in a new law: new employees would pay 5% of their income for the pension fund, with the city contributing only 4%. And, in a pay cut for current employees, they must start paying in 1% to the retirement fund. This amount rises to 5% over next five years.
City employees have never had very large salaries or pensions, compared to private sector jobs. But in the past, the city kept its promise that a guaranteed pension and health care in retirement was part of the wage agreement.
That seems to be a broken promise in 2013. The city is jumping on the bandwagon of attacks against public workers nationwide. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it!
Nov 11, 2013
Chicago already only pays 55 percent of its retirees health care costs. But even that is too much for Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Chicago is phasing out city support for retiree health care for all but the poorest retirees over the next three years. Emanuel is using the Affordable Care Act as an excuse to steal this money from 21,160 city retirees and their 9,108 dependents.
This will be a disaster for retirees. For a retiree too young to qualify for Medicare with children, health insurance will cost an extra $4,440 a year. One retired police officer with Parkinson’s disease said: “The mayor seems to find money for his pet projects, but none to take care of the city’s obligation to provide health care to retirees and their families who were promised health coverage for life.”
Chicago is not broke. Emanuel recently decided to spend 125 million dollars in public money on a new basketball arena for DePaul University. The city gives out millions in subsidies to corporations like Boeing, United Airlines, and Miller-Coors every year. Emanuel and his buddies want to give away even more, and they’re attacking retiree health care to get it. It’s just one more way of stealing from the working class, to subsidize the rich.
Nov 11, 2013
Secretary of State John Kerry and other world leaders met with Iran’s Foreign Minister in Geneva to discuss curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
The U.S., Britain and France have made a lot of noise in recent years about the “danger” Iran poses to the Mideast and the world if–IF Iran develops a nuclear weapons program.
But who IS the threat to the world? NOT Iran! The U.S. and other imperialist powers have been the biggest threats, to both Iran and the world. A brief look at history shows it.
From the beginning of the 1900s, the imperial powers, and especially Great Britain, controlled the vast oil fields of Iran, the fourth largest producer of oil in the world. In 1951, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq and the elected parliament, facing popular movements, nationalized Iran’s oil reserves. British and American oil companies reacted badly to the loss of “their” resources, and the imperialist powers refused to buy Iran’s oil.
In 1952, Iran’s king, the Shah, tried to remove Mossadeq from office. Demonstrations broke out in the streets; Mossadeq was reinstated, and the Shah fled the country.
In 1953, Iran’s military, backed by the U.S. and British secret services, overthrew Mossadeq. The Shah was put back into power by this coup, and was backed by the U.S. from day one. The Shah’s military dictatorship enjoyed generous U.S. aid, while Iran’s U.S.-trained secret police jailed, tortured and assassinated thousands of oppositionists, including almost all the local leaders of the trade unions. In return, the U.S. and Britain controlled eighty percent of Iran’s oil. Iran also served as a stable proxy for U.S. interests in the whole oil-producing region.
The Iranian people rightly resented this brutal regime, and the U.S. government for supporting it. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 overthrew the Shah–only to be replaced by another dictatorship, this time controlled by Iran’s top religious leaders.
These leaders, the mullahs, have shown themselves over the years to be very willing to work with the U.S. in advancing oil company interests in the region. But because they came to power through the massive social movement that had overthrown the Shah, they could never completely be controlled by the U.S.–and so, the U.S. has proven hostile to the regime, time and time again.
In 1980, Iran was invaded by Saddam Hussein’s regime in neighboring Iraq. In this war, the U.S. initially backed and encouraged Iraq. But when Iraq started to win the war, the U.S. secretly started to arm Iran also; it was better for U.S. interests to have the two countries destroy each other than to have a clear winner who they couldn’t control. The price of this cynical U.S. policy–paid by the populations of both Iran and Iraq–was eight years of war and one million deaths.
In the 1990s, the U.S. continued this cynical game, alternately imposing sanctions on Iran and Iraq.
After 9/11, Iran once again showed its willingness to help imperialism, working with the U.S. in its invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. But the U.S. did not give Iran the recognition it expected. Moreover, with the U.S. military occupying Afghanistan to the east of Iran, Iraq to the west of Iran, keeping a big naval presence near Iran’s southern shores, it’s no surprise that Iran feels threatened!
During this whole long period, the U.S., Britain, France and Germany all conspired to cripple Iran’s economy with sanctions hurting much of the population.
With recent events, it appears the U.S. and other imperialist powers may be willing to negotiate a settlement with Iran. Iran’s government, hoping to get these sanctions lifted, has once again offered to state clearly what it has been stating all along: it has no interest in producing a nuclear weapon, and it has no capability to do so. But the imperialist powers are not even offering to lift sanctions–just a promise of no new sanctions in the near future.
The Iranian people have every reason to feel threatened by the U.S. government. And American workers have every reason to distrust this war-making U.S. government–because it is American workers who are expected to fight the wars this country’s rulers start all over the world.
Nov 11, 2013
In July, 1,057 civilians were reported to have been killed in Iraq, making it the deadliest month for Iraqis in five years. The official death toll so far this year is greater than 5,700, much higher than last year’s 3,200.
Commentators say that this rise in violence in Iraq is a spill-over of the civil war in neighboring Syria. They say Islamist fighters, who are Sunni, are crossing the border into Iraq and fighting against Iraq’s Shiite regime.
That may be true–but it’s also true that Iraq’s own civil war has never stopped.
A recent study, based on interviews of Iraqi households and published by University of Washington researchers, found that nearly half a million people were killed in the Iraq war between 2003 and 2011.
Many of these deaths were caused directly by the bullets and bombs of U.S. occupation forces. The rest of these killings either came from sectarian militias, or were the result of the chaos created by the war–both of which were, in turn, direct results of the U.S. occupation. After overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, the U.S. set up the new political system in Iraq, dividing the country along ethnic and religious lines, and propping up the various sectarian leaders who attack people from the “enemy” sect.
Besides killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the U.S. war on Iraq also destroyed the country’s infrastructure, disrupted its economy and vastly impoverished its people–making life miserable for millions of Iraqis. This war has been a real catastrophe for the people of Iraq, and it still continues.
But the Iraq War is not over for us here in the U.S. either. Despite the claims of U.S. officials to the contrary, the U.S. occupation actually continues–it’s just that soldiers are now called “contractors,” and the headquarters they are directed from is now called the “U.S. Embassy.”
Nov 11, 2013
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and alderman Robert Maldonado recently announced that Ames Middle School would be given to Marine Military Academy.
Ames is currently a neighborhood middle school–a school that was built after parents at Ames Elementary fought for additional space for their students.
Military schools are not neighborhood schools. So parents had every reason to be outraged by this announcement–it means their children might not be able to go to a school nearby. Moreover, many parents object to training their children for the military–training them to fight in future wars.
The school’s local school council, controlled by parents, held two public meetings, attended by more than 130 parents and community members. Almost everyone opposed the move. In reaction to their protest, the school board has already changed its tune: they now say that current Ames students and staff will be able to share the space with the military school. But this fight is not over.
Nov 11, 2013
This article is excerpted from the October 19th, 2013 issue of Combat Ouvrier (Workers Fight), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in Guadeloupe and Martinique.
The demand by descendants of slaves for reparations from the French government and from other governments that once practiced slavery has resurfaced from time to time, but no agreement of any kind has been reached. An organization called CRAN (Representative Council of France’s Black Associations) is calling for financial compensation for slavery, which the Taubira Act of May 10th, 2010, has labeled a crime against humanity.
In fact, reparations have already been paid around the time that slavery was abolished in different countries. However, it was the slave-owners and the slave-trading governments who received enormous compensation, all in exchange for the loss of their land, their slaves, and their ability to get rich through such despicable exploitation.
In 1825, the French government agreed to recognize Haiti’s sovereignty in exchange for 150 million gold francs, a debt that was later brought down to 90 million. The new Republic of Haiti accepted this “deal,” which left the country in debt until 1946 and added to the poverty of the population.
In 1833, the British West Indies compensated 3,000 former slaveholders to the tune of 20 million British pounds, a huge amount at that time.
Likewise, in 1849 the French government compensated French settlers for the liberation of 250,000 slaves in the French West Indies, Guiana, and Réunion Island.
The exploiters have already been generously compensated for having been forced to stop committing the crimes against humanity that they practiced for over three centuries—crimes that allowed influential families and major cities in France and England to grow rich. The former slaves and their descendants, on the other hand, have been granted nothing other than the right to fall into the wage slavery that continues to this day.
In this sense, the demand for reparations advanced by the black associations seems scant compared to the harm that has been done. These associations do not demand real reparations that might make the lives of the poor population easier. For them, the important thing is to remain acceptable in bourgeois society; to obtain funds to establish museums or research projects, and to set up a commission to explain the profits made at the time.
Even if the reparations included financial aid to African countries, which had been emptied of a large part of their populations by the slave trade, or even if they allowed the Antillean nationalist leaders to plan more comfortably for independence, the reparations would do nothing to improve the lives of those who were truly disinherited.
The bourgeoisie of the world owes a colossal debt to the descendants of slaves, as it does to all workers. It owes its wealth to the slave trade, its profits to the blood and the sweat of slaves. This debt is so enormous that it is impossible to put a figure on it. It can in no way be limited to some financial aid, aid the bourgeoisie has no intentions of giving. The only reparation possible for the harm that the descendants of slaves and the poor of the world have suffered is the expropriation of their exploiters.
Nov 11, 2013
The settlement that JP Morgan reached with the U.S. Justice Department was said to be so large, it rocked all of Wall Street.
The bank is supposed to pay 13 billion dollars to the federal government for defrauding homeowners and investors like pension funds and endowments during the housing bubble. In fact, the bank will be able to deduct the fine from its taxes.
As part of the settlement, JP Morgan is also supposed to write down mortgages and accept short sales by some homeowners who are under water. But JP Morgan has already made it clear that it expects the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to pick up most of the tab.
So, U.S. taxpayers will wind up reimbursing JP Morgan for most of the costs of its legal settlement with the Justice Department.
And behind this fake penalty is the real issue: the settlement clears JP Morgan of any wrongdoing, along with everyone associated with the bank, including the bank’s CEO Jamie Dimon and his entire staff, the entire Board of Directors and its major stockholders. It confirms that the U.S. Justice Department won’t seek any prosecutions, won’t send anyone to prison and won’t touch anyone’s fortune–even though everyone knows how deeply guilty the bank and everyone who runs it is, how much they all profited from the housing bubble and housing collapse, and how much suffering and misery they caused from the huge increase in homelessness and unemployment.
The entire charade between the bank and the government confirms once again that the mighty U.S. government, with all its power, is nothing but a tool of the big banks.