Haiti: NGOs Live High Off the Hog While Troops Abuse Workers

The AFT Peace and Justice Caucus sponsored a forum on the after-effects of the earthquake in Haiti. There was much debate after two teachers from Haiti spoke about the

efforts of rank-and-file workers to improve conditions in Haiti.

The forum revealed that many workers have illusions, fostered by the media and the U.S.
government, that the UN “peacekeeping” forces and the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), like the Red Cross, are the good guys.

At the forum educators from Haiti stated that these NGO workers in Haiti live off the NGO’s U.S.dollars, drive around in  large dark SUVs with tinted windows, and live in big houses. The desperation for U.S. dollars has led to an increase in prostitution paid for by this NGO money. Friends from Haiti warned that if workers want to send money to Haiti we should find workers to send it to, and not send money to the NGOs to steal. And while we’ve all been told that the UN forces are the saviors of the working class in Haiti, we heard reports of the UN troops abusing and terrorizing young men there.

A PLP member from the Dominican Republic called for the unity of the working class to  over-throw the yoke of U.S. Imperialism in Haiti and around the world.

At the forum about fighting back against the Race to the Top (RTTT) competition, the panelists described their fights against attacks on educators and students. Unfortunately, too many of the panelists described their struggles merely to get more tax money to pay for schools during this period of capitalist crisis. However, that just means taxing the working class, not the bosses, and it does not suspend payments to the banks. No matter how the budgets are cut everywhere, the debt service (money to banks to pay back debts) is never cut. Another serious weakness in the RTTT forum was the lack of discussion of the affects of RTTT and budget cuts on students, and the lack of any clear call for unity between parents, students and educators.

We should continue these kinds of discussions, continuing to bring our line to honest educators, parents, and students, to build our movement.

Successful Camping Trip Sets Stage for New PL Youth Club

CALIFORNIA, July 2 — Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends from all around the state met up for three days of activities and study during a camping trip in central California last weekend. Six students from the high school where a comrade teaches came on the trip. We started out at seven in the morning and drove six hours to get to the campgrounds.

During our quick stops for meals on the road, we met to discuss how to organize a study group around the current anti-immigrant racism in Arizona. The high school students took the lead and created questions to help keep the discussion moving. A few drew on their prior experience leading a discussion on a similar topic at a forum in Los Angeles.

At the campgrounds, after a refreshing dip in the river, we prepared dinner collectively before the study group, which went really well.

After the study group, we made s’mores and told ghost stories. Everyone got along really well. People partnered up to make the s’mores, since it turned out to be a two-person job. The high school and middle school students told stories to the younger children. The next day, we made breakfast together and continued our study group from the night before. This time, we also talked about communism: what is it and how do we achieve it? Once again the high school students impressed us all by helping to lead the discussion and asking questions. They also learned a lot. They said:

“At the camping trip we had a very good discussion about communism and what everyone thought it was. We also talked about what Barack Obama was doing and what he was supposed to be doing. Communism to me means making the world a better, more diverse place to live without all the differences.”

“The camping trip was really fun and a good experience for me, since I’ve never been camping before. It was good hanging out with other ‘races’ and hearing their opinions.”

Many of the teacher comrades who came were inspired by the work at this high school and felt encouraged to go back to their schools and bring up our ideas more openly with their students. The success at this high school was in part the result of a year-long curriculum that incorporated discussions on racism, sexism, working-class consciousness and the need for black students (like the ones who came on this trip) to unite with others and take the lead in the fight to change society for the better.

There has also been some limited work with the parents at this school. The grandmother of one of the students disagreed with us on the question of immigration. She believed that immigrants who come to the U.S. without documentation are criminals and should be punished, and that Latino immigrants were taking jobs away from black workers. The student was unclear on the issue and had a lot of questions about it. After a discussion with the comrade teacher, the grandmother agreed to let the student go camping, and the student has since spoken up in favor of helping all people, no matter what color. Another grandmother also reads the paper and agrees that her granddaughter should learn to fight the system.

This is only the beginning. The work with these students, and others, will continue throughout the summer and on into the next school year. Hopefully, this will result in these students taking part in the actions around the racist Arizona law (as well as other struggles) this summer. We have also asked them to join PLP. We discussed creating a PLP club at the high school next year that will take the lead in fighting the budget cuts and attacks from administration. The students are all open to participating in and leading these fights. We will update CHALLENGE as things progress. 

E.U. Rulers’ Austerity Plan for Workers: Slash and Burn

PARIS, July 13 — Europe’s bosses are driving to slash government budgets, shifting cash from the working class into their own pockets. How deep? A lecturer at Warszawski University in Warsaw recommended on state radio that, “Another way [to cut the budget] is to limit the amount of people who are getting compensation as a result of health problems or having been categorized as terminally ill or incapable to work. This is one area where a lot of government funds disappear.” Learning from the Nazis….

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U.S. Social Forum — PL’ers’ Roadmap to ‘Another World’: Destroy Profit System

DETROIT, June 22 — The U.S. Social Forum (USSF) attracted about 15,000 activists of all backgrounds to Detroit, a city where the capitalist economic crisis has left the majority black population devastated by racist unemployment, lack of health care and poverty.  The Forum’s theme, “Another world is possible, another U.S. is necessary” expressed the hopes, dreams and passions of the thousands that attended.  However, after all the rhetoric of revolution, U.S. imperialism, and capitalism, the Forum failed to offer the only real solution of how to achieve this other world, by organizing for communist revolution to abolish the profit system.

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Japan: Still Another PM Dumped; Exposes Rulers’ Bankruptcy

July 14 — It’s hard to keep track of how many prime ministers (PM) Japan has had over the past five years. One after another has been dumped or given up because, like their U.S. counterparts, the country’s politicians have no solution to economic stagnation, poverty and underemployment. Voters handed Naoto Kan, the latest PM, a serious blow last Sunday as his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) lost control of the upper house of parliament in national elections.

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China Currency Debate: An Inter-Imperialist Fight

After China embarked on a modest plan to re-valuate its currency upward before the June G-20 meeting in Toronto, the Western press continued to attack it for “intentionally” devaluing the renminbi (alternatively known as the “yuan”). The NY Times’ Paul Krugman (6/24) has led the charge, calling the revaluation an act of “bad faith” and “an attempt to exploit U.S. restraint,” even advocating trade sanctions on China.  But further investigation reveals these attacks are based not on fact but on the inter-imperialist rivalry heating up between U.S. and Chinese rulers.

Dating back to 2005, the U.S. has claimed China has unfairly undervalued its currency, giving an advantage to Chinese producers and exacerbating the U.S.-China trade deficit. Many in the media and in Congress have even blamed China’s currency valuation for the current economic crisis in the U.S. that was actually set off by the latter’s own weakness.¹

In reality, currency valuation has became a highly speculative business ever since the dissolution of the 1971 Bretton-Woods Agreement and the dropping of the gold-standard. Analyzing all the various models for valuating currency, in 2007 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported that the renminbi could be undervalued by as much as 50% or as little as 0%, depending on which model was used. That same year Morgan Stanley used four separate models to valuate the renminbi and found it was, at most, 1% undervalued.² The IMF continues to assert that the undervaluing of the renminbi is either minor or non-existent.³

So why the continued attacks on China? They represent the increasing  inter-imperialist rivalry between U.S. and Chinese bosses. China has become an increasingly attractive bogeyman for the collapsing U.S. economy (for more on these myths see “China Bashing” in “The Communist,” Summer 2008). Attacks on Chinese “job-stealing” and currency “manipulation” are used as a smokescreen for the internal weaknesses of U.S. capitalism.

Anti-China rhetoric also serves as a basis for increasing U.S. attacks on growing Chinese imperialism. As stated clearly in the 1999 Hart-Rudman Report, U.S. bosses see their future as resting on their ability to contain Chinese economic growth.⁴ Efforts to force China to artificially inflate the value of its currency are aimed at decreasing Chinese exports and making China’s domestic market more amenable to foreign imports.

This revaluation would severely punish China’s workers and stifle China’s economic growth, all while rewarding Western speculators.⁵ Not surprisingly, Chinese capitalists have not been eager to play the U.S. bosses’ game.

 The hollowness of Western attacks on China was revealed last April. On the eve of a Congressional report detailing Chinese economic villainy, the Obama Administration chose instead to back off its anti-China rhetoric after China agreed to relax its laws against foreign capital inflows into the Chinese domestic market.⁶

U.S. capitalists are using these attacks to try to pry their way into growing Chinese markets while simultaneously mentally conditioning U.S. workers for a potential future war with China. China has responded by shifting its export markets from the U.S. to the European Union and Russia.⁷ China has also repeatedly expressed its interest in selling off U.S. treasury bonds.⁸

The current tension between U.S. and Chinese capitalists will not ease until one imperialist is able to fully impose its will over the other. As Lenin noted in “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism,” this is the pre-condition for major inter-imperialist war in the modern era. J

Sources:

The Communist, “China Bashing Simply a Smokescreen for U.S. Bosses Weakness,” Summer 2008; Andrew Fischer, UNRISD Paper, “The Perils of Paradigm Maintenance,” 11/26/09, p 7-13.

 The Communist, p 7.

 Andrew Fischer, Monthly Review, “The Great China Currency Debate: For Workers or Speculators?” 6/25/10.

US Commission on National Security/21st Century, “Phase I: Report on the Emerging Global Security Environment for the First Quarter of the 21st Century,” 9/15/1999, p 70, 138.

 Monthly Review.

 Monthly Review.

 The Communist, p 8.

 NYT, “China Losing Taste for Debt From the US,” 1/7/09; NYT, “China Grows More Picky About Debt,” 5/20/09.

Board of Ed. Cuts $ and Teachers; Raises Class Size: Workers Fight Bosses’ Racist ‘Lesson Plan’

CHICAGO, IL, July 1 — “We don’t get paid for this job,” the president of the Chicago Board of Education told parents at the June meeting.

“I’m glad to hear that you are displacing teachers and screwing our children’s education from the bottom of your heart,” a parent replied, in the spirit of two years of struggle by teachers in CORE (Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators), parents, students, and community groups. Speaking out — and demonstrating, when the opportunity arises — helps to mobilize and organize forces to oppose these attacks on education.

The Board wanted to use the meeting to solve its “budget crisis” on the backs of students and school employees, but the discussion didn’t go as planned. As one speaker said, “You guys should be ashamed.” Another pointed out, “Schools are more than bricks and mortar. Why should we terminate quality teachers?” Under capitalism, there is always plenty of money for imperialist war, bank and corporate bailouts, and politicians’ pet projects. But there is never enough for workers’ needs.

For example, the Chicago Public Schools CEO, Ron Huberman, claims that they might need to fire 2,700 teachers and raise the average class size to 35 to save $150 million and close their budget gap. Yet Mayor Daley is hoarding $250 million in “Tax Increment Funding” for his private slush fund. As always under capitalism, the question is more than dollars and cents; it’s about who profits — and at whose expense.

While Chicago’s disinvestment in its schools is a disgraceful case of child neglect, money alone won’t solve the problem. The content of U.S. public education is primarily aimed to give working-class students a salute-the-flag fast-track to fighting in imperialist wars, toiling in minimum-wage jobs, or suffering racist unemployment.

Parents and teachers spoke passionately about teachers who spend their own time and money and devise creative and effective ways to reach all students. The scores of people in the audience applauded these remarks, while Huberman and the Board members sat stone-faced or worse. (One board member fell asleep, and another was busy texting.) As one of about two hundred “honorably-terminated” teachers said, “We have been left on the street with no job and no health insurance.”

A PLP member underscored that racism continues to be perpetuated by Board policies. Because this administration claims to be “data driven” (meaning if student test scores don’t go up, teachers could be fired), the speaker used data to expose its racism. There are 2,100 fewer African-American teachers now than in 2002, a drop from 40 to 30 percent of the total teaching force. Thirty percent of white students attend selective enrollment high schools, or three times the proportion of students in general. Finally, 72 percent of African-American students attend segregated, low-performing schools with the greatest chance of being reconstituted (or “turned around,” as the Board likes to say) with all new staff. 

The PLP member concluded by stating, “The data-driven conclusion is that the Board runs a racist school system that provides separate and unequal education for over 70 percent of the system’s African-American students. In addition, it is decimating the system’s African-American teaching force.” Loud applause and handshakes from the audience, frozen stony faces from the Board. In an era where many think the U.S. has moved “past racism,” it is incumbent on communists and others to expose it at every opportunity. Capitalism will not be destroyed unless anti-racism leads the fight. 

Only Communist Revolution Leaves No Child Behind - Bosses’ ‘Race to the Top’ Leaves Most at the Bottom

School systems across the country are facing the worst cutbacks in decades, while Obama’s promises to withdraw from Afghanistan are coming undone barely six months after he made them. In a brazenly honest way, education secretary Arne Duncan has vowed to “let no crisis be wasted” in the ruling class’s ongoing strategy to solve their economic and military problems through attacks on the working class. This is the same Duncan who accelerated the re-segregation of the Chicago school system, coupled with a noxious cocktail of education “reforms” now being imposed throughout the country through the bribery of Obama’s cynical “Race to the Top.”

Charter schools, merit pay, data-driven teacher evaluation, standardized exams — none of these bosses’ ploys can meet the needs of students. Teachers must not be fooled into siding for or against any of these schemes. They’re all intended to deliver students more efficiently into the hands of the ruling class, to be exploited in the workplace or the military. It’s a contradiction for the rulers to “leave no child behind” in a “race to the top.” In such a race, working-class kids will inevitably lose because the capitalist education system was never designed to prepare all students to succeed.

Major ruling-class figures are saying so themselves. In the May/June 2008 issue of “Foreign Affairs,” the house organ for the Rockefeller wing of the ruling class, prominent pundit Fareed Zakaria wrote, “If the United States cannot educate and train a third of the working population to compete in a knowledge economy, this will drag down the country.”

If we do the math, that’s two-thirds of the working class that the rulers plan to leave behind. They are using the latest financial crisis as an opportunity to trim spending on classrooms and pension funds. They need a school system that will preserve the status quo of class relations. Under capitalism, a portion of workers is always disposable. In a society founded on slavery, these are mostly black and Latino workers. With rising racist unemployment devastating millions, the ruling class needs schools to help reorganize society and to crush the idea that a job is a basic right.

Nobody in education — no liberal in the White House, no union misleader — is dealing with the heart of the matter. The basic drive of capitalism toward imperialist war and increased exploitation of the working class makes education reform a joke. The exceptional cases where schools do a better job of educating our youth can only be viewed as oases in a desert of racist neglect, not as models that the bosses will reproduce for all. Education reform will make education for the masses a meaningless process of test prep. Teachers also stand to be more sharply exploited, and will be forced to work harder for less money.

Communists need and value every one of us. Each individual contains the potential to understand and change the world. Through the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, hundreds of millions of working people banished disease, illiteracy, and imperialist exploitation from their societies under the leadership of communists. These magnificent movements were reversed, but their achievements can and must be replicated and deepened. Communism, and only communism, leaves no child behind. Join PLP!

33 Million Jobless — What ‘Economic Recovery’?

No matter how the Obama administration or the bosses’ media pundits try to spin the “economic recovery,” the actual 33 million jobless figure keeps getting in the way. Now even some of the NY Times analysts have taken to confirming what Karl Marx proved over a century ago: capitalism inevitably breeds unemployment. And capitalism based on racism breeds double unemployment rates for black and Latino workers.

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Spy Saga: Sharpening Imperialist Dogfight A Deadly Drama

Treating the latest Russian spy scandal as mere entertainment misses the point. Sure, all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster are there. But U.S. media are likening the plot to 1960s thrillers (or parodies of them), to obscure the stubborn fact that U.S. and Russian capitalist rulers still aim at destroying one another, while killing millions of workers in the process.

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