Letters of September 19

Mexico: Red School Shows Workers’ Strength

During an early Tuesday afternoon during our PL communist school at a comrade’s house in Mexico, we had an interesting ideological discussion about the component parts and essence of fascism and how the Party’s ideas differ from a liberal or conservative perspective.

Around 3:30 PM, a group met outside on the patio to discuss the Party and communism with three workers. One was an unemployed worker from the neighborhood; another was a worker from Oaxaca who formerly worked as a taxi driver; and the third had recently become unemployed from work in a local factory.

The conversation about communism and the PLP was broad, like the majority of those we had in various study groups, but two specific subjects included the “war on drugs” and an analysis of the teachers’ strike in Oaxaca some years back. The worker from that area perceived a certain selfishness by striking teachers. Party members did our best to describe the history of the teachers’ fight-back and how it advanced the interests of all workers in that area in particular and in Mexico in general.

At 8:00 PM we had a large meeting of over 25 people at the house of two workers from a local company. Four more workers from that workplace also attended, including a dedicated comrade. These workers have been constantly involved in struggles against the boss.

A Party leader in Mexico gave a power point presentation about the international situation, especially on capitalist rivalry to control oil resources and oil distribution routes. It included graphs and statistics. Much political conversation followed afterwards, primarily answering the questions of the invited non-PL members. One worker doubted the working class’s ability to organize communist society after eliminating the capitalists. We gave examples of the strength and abilities of the working class and the energy of youth organized by a disciplined international communist party. The worker shook hands, encouraged by this exchange of ideas.

A comrade

Challenge Impact of Nuclear Radiation

The CHALLENGE editorial (8/15), comparing the horrific Aurora movie theatre deaths to the vastly greater number of deaths from U.S. imperialism, was excellent — on every point but one. It quoted a paragraph from Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) that predicts that if the Israeli or U.S. ruling class bombs Iran’s nuclear facilities, there will be “severe public health impacts,” and says, “it is impossible to predict in advance the number of people that would be killed and injured...” This is code for catastrophe, as indicated by PSR’s comparison to the 1984 chemical explosion at a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India that released poisonous gas, killing thousands and injuring tens of thousands more.

PSR implies these deaths would be in addition to the number of civilians killed by the explosive force and shrapnel in any bomb attack and that the cause of these additional deaths would be radiation or radioactive material released by the bombing. Many civilians would definitely be killed in such bombings. Neither the Israeli nor the U.S. ruling class would hesitate to commit such mass murder.

But it is simply false that there would be additional civilian deaths due to radioactivity or radiation. Nuclear reactors are not nuclear bombs, since the gap in concentration of fissionable uranium — around 20 times too small in a reactor — far exceeds the gap in explosives in a cap for a child’s toy pistol versus that in a murder weapon. Virtually nothing PSR says about nuclear energy is true.

The Iranians have only one operational nuclear reactor — for electricity, operated and maintained by the Russians. They also have several small research reactors, including some at Isfahan, the place PSR claims would produce catastrophe. 

While bombing any of these might indeed release some radioactive uranium and a small amount of accumulated fission products, uranium exists as part of nature. Its use as fuel in a reactor does not make it any more dangerous. Fission products, for the most part, decay away in days or are excreted from the body in even shorter times. Furthermore bombing any of the underground uranium enrichment facilities would, at worst, only release a small amount of natural uranium. 

Despite much propaganda to the contrary, the fission products released even by the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors have harmed no one — though there might be a very small chance of one future additional cancer among the handful of plant workers. They received doses beyond 100,000 mrem, a huge dose to which no one in the public has been, or could be, exposed. But it would be undetectable against the 20 percent or so of all Japanese who get cancer some time in their lives from other causes, mainly smoking — a far lower percentage than the 30 percent in the U.S.

The only deaths associated with Fukushima have been due to the forced evacuation and relocation of 100,000 Japanese living near the plant — over 500 elderly and others so far, according to Japanese media and reports. These result from ripping people away from their homes, jobs, neighborhoods, and communities. This has only added to the immense number of deaths due to the quake and tsunami of March 2011 — over 25,000. 

All estimates of future radiation-caused deaths from Fukushima are calculations based on the demonstrably false claim that all radiation is harmful, no matter how low the dose. This fiction ignores the way all biological organisms, including humans, have evolved to react naturally and protectively to low-level radiation and low doses of virtually all other naturally occurring chemical and physical agents. High doses of every single one can overwhelm our defenses and kill. It also ignores all the natural radiation in our environments from sky and ground, which exceeds, in many places in the world, the radiation released from Fukushima.

This may be hard to believe because of the deluge of fear-mongering news reports by various government agencies and media in both Japan and the U.S. We cannot provide evidence of these statements in a brief letter.

However, following several years of research, we have written a lengthy article on nuclear energy and radiation to appear in a future issue of THE COMMUNIST magazine, explaining all related issues. As our article demonstrates, nuclear energy will yet prove to be the only solution to the long-term energy problem in the face of the near-depletion of oil, coal, and natural gas. It will prove to be the only clean energy that can completely replace these fossil fuels and prevent further greenhouse gases that are forcing the earth toward ever-hotter climates. This will likely require a mass working-class communist-led revolution that rips power away from the capitalists and replaces the profit system with workers’ power.

Two pro-nuclear comrades

Bet on Communist Revolution

In a letter to CHALLENGE (9/5), the PLP idea of all-out U.S.-China war is disputed by Ancient Red. But who was the U.S. at war with in Korea and Vietnam? The Korean War killed four million, including 58,000 U.S. soldiers. My comrades in Korea told me of many battles when the brown hills suddenly became the blue color of Chinese Army uniforms. In the Vietnam War, the Chinese Army provided training, arms and supplies along the thousand-mile Ho Chi Minh trail under daily bombardment.

Ancient Red suggests that British tactics using nationalist and religious forces to do most of the fighting would be more effective than all-out war. But history shows the U.S. militarily backed the Chinese nationalist Chang-Kai-Shek against the communists until they crushed him. In Korea and Vietnam, the U.S., with the world’s most powerful military, backed puppet nationalists but the communists defeated them. Decades of massive military support to nationalist and religious forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan have produced nothing but failure for U.S. capitalist oil and gas interests.

The U.S. has over 1,100 military bases in 130 countries and spends more than half of its budget on the military because it understands what Ancient Red cannot grasp — that the all-out war option has always been on the capitalists’ table.

Ancient Red says it is impossible to outline a scenario which would lead to benefits from all-out war. How about the prelude to World War II? A worldwide depression, U.S. and Britain enforcing military sanctions on their main capitalist rivals, Japan and Germany, leading to a war costing 50 million lives. But the U.S. capitalists got out of a ten-year depression hole that threatened communist revolution and became the top dog in the imperialist world.

Don’t bet on rulers’ wars to make it easier for PLP’s revolution says Ancient Red. But history shows that capitalists must always start profit wars and history also shows that communists know how to finish them with communist revolution. I’ll bet on that! Join PLP.

Korean War Vet