2009 Marked by Capitalism’s Crisis, Workers’ Anger and Fight-Back

An Athens youth fghts back this past summer in Greece.The year 2009 started off with newly-inaugurated Barack Obama sending 21,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan, and caps off with him committing 30,000 more, plus 56,000 mercenaries. Obama dealt with this year’s crisis in time-honored capitalist traditions. He bailed out banks and auto-makers while calling on the working class to make sacrifices “for the greater good.” He proclaimed this year a ‘Year of Service’ while announcing these troop increases in Afghanistan, making clear why the ruling class needs our service.

PLP has been saying for several years that the U.S. ruling class is heading deeper and deeper into a crisis it cannot control. This year the rulers could not mask their difficulties anymore. While few would use any label harsher than “recession,” all media — from the stuffiest newspaper to the trashiest talk show — were comparing this year’s financial disasters to the Great Depression of the 1930s, calling this period the “Great Recession.”

The capitalists’ crisis devastated the lives of many workers. Over 30 million are now unemployed in the U.S. Like the increasing foreclosures and homelessness, jobless rates disproportionately affect black and Latino workers, reflecting the racism built into the capitalist system. U.S. prison rates exceed those of any other nation, and figures continue to rise. Young workers are increasingly forced to look to the military to support themselves, being sent to kill and die to rescue U.S. rulers’ imperialist dreams. Attacks on immigrants are rising, including the firing of all “undocumented” workers by the supposedly non-sweatshop garment manufacturer American Apparel.

Obama continued the plans of his predecessors in many areas, including extending plans for anti-student education reforms under the direction of new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. He presided over the increasingly racist divisions of the Chicago public schools. Across the country budgets were slashed for schools, hospitals and city services.

No media pundit or politician will ever say that we would be better off under another system, but this year was unique in its revelations about the low point capitalism has entered.

Fighting Back

While the need for revolutionary leadership is clear, in many places around the world workers have stood up and rebelled. The year began with a general strike in Greece. Students protesting the police murder of a teenage boy were joined by millions of workers in a general strike. Tens of thousands of workers, teachers, students and farmworkers defied Mexico’s rulers’ using the swine flu to ban May Day marches and took to the streets in Oaxaca, Puebla and other cities.

There were widespread student strikes throughout Austria and Germany. Workers brought the French department of Guadeloupe to a halt several times throughout the year as the capitalists were unwilling to meet their demands. In France, attempts by workers to copy the rebellions of Guadeloupe were channeled by unions into single-day strikes. A current strike of over 6,000 undocumented workers in France has lasted over two months, inspiring the French labor movement and a march of 10,000 to the Immigration Ministry in Paris.

In the U.S., teachers, students and workers showed their anger at the system which is increasingly unable to meet their needs. Los Angeles teachers went on a one-hour work stoppage against the wishes of their union leadership. Washington, D.C. bus drivers imposed a work slowdown. Recently, University of California students took over administration buildings protesting budget cuts, enduring attacks by police.

Most inspiringly, in the Bronx, this summer marked the end of the 11-month strike of Stella D’Oro cookie factory workers. This prolonged battle has taught thousands much about the strength of workers fighting sexism, racism and oppression in staunch defiance of scabs, police terror and unscrupulous bosses. These workers did not give up the fight, even after they returned to the factory floor. Finally the factory was closed and moved to another state. The collective they built still stands together, contacting the workers in the new factory to let them know about the struggle. Several have joined the Party, committing to fight the whole capitalist system, no matter how the cookie crumbles.

In Memoriam

In 2009 Progressive Labor Party celebrated the lives of several anti-racist, working-class heroes whose lives inspire our work as communist organizers. In the autumn many members and friends traveled to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, to honor the raid by John Brown’s integrated force of principled fighters. John Brown and his comrades, including runaway slave Harriet Tubman, who led hundreds to freedom, get short shrift in the history books, often even derided as mentally ill. But we recognize that they knew that only armed insurrection could fix the problems of slavery and stood up for what was right. Their bold actions changed their world.

This year we lost honored friends and comrades including Joseph Furr, Helen Jones, Sylvia Dick Gomez and Lee Simon. We memorialized former CHALLENGE/DESAFIO editor Luis Castro, who was an example to many of us of how to lead the life of an internationalist fighter against racism and imperialism, a dialectical materialist studying the world from a scientific viewpoint and a comradely participant in collective struggle.

Remembering the lives of these working-class brothers and sisters, both in our own lives and in history, can motivate us all to work hard for the future they dreamed of and carry their legacies forward in the coming year. In 2010 and on, we call on our members and friends to distribute more CHALLENGES and bring more coworkers and friends the ideas of the Progressive Labor Party to win more fighters for communist revolution.
Our New Year’s resolution must be to get involved in, and to lead, class struggle to battle the attacks of the rulers, from budget cuts and unemployment to police terror and the increasing wars abroad, with the goal of winning workers’ power — communism.