Letters of September 18

Internal Class War Missing from Syria Editorial
The editorial on Syria in CHALLENGE (9/4) was very good describing the external forces involved in the Syrian conflict, but fairly weak when it came to describing the internal forces. The article states:
“The U.S. dispute with Russia has killed more than 100,000 workers in Syria over the last two years.”
I’m sure this wasn’t the intention, but this implies that the U.S. and Russia caused the civil war, and entirely ignores — as does the whole editorial — the internal class tensions and the oppressive nature of the ruling regime. The opposition to Assad didn’t begin because the U.S. ordered it. In fact, the U.S. and the Israelis were quite comfortable with Assad in power.
I think it’s a big mistake to even imply that a civil war of this magnitude is the result of external contradictions rather than internal ones. Syria is an oppressive and exploitative capitalist state, a mixture of state and private-owned businesses. Beginning in the early 1990s, Syria began an economic liberalization that greatly increased the size of the private sector, with notorious nepotism and corruption. Mami Makhlouf is the first cousin and close friend of Bashar al-Assad, and owns Syriatel, the country’s largest mobile phone company. Makhlouf has investments in banking, real estate, insurance, construction, tourism and a five-star Damascus hotel.
The workers, small farmers and tradesmen in Syria have every reason to rebel against the Assad regime. A few years ago, the UN reported that 11.4% — 2.2 million people — lived in extreme poverty, having less than $2 per person per day. In 2007, a third of the population was living in poverty. And it’s gotten worse in the last few years, as the government has reduced subsidies on fuel and food while housing prices have risen. Unemployment is extremely high.
We need to analyze carefully the nature of the rebel leadership, which appears fractured. The U.S. “leftists” who unreservedly support the “revolution” don’t do that. Nor do the ones having “Hands Off Syria” rallies with pictures of Assad in abundance as they dismiss all the rebels as Islamist fanatics.
It’s pretty clear that Obama is nervous about the possibility of a rebel victory, which is why the CIA has kept large weapons out of rebel hands. No modern president has gone to Congress to get approval for a missile attack! It’s pretty clear that the U.S. ruling class is divided over how to handle Syria. Rulers’ support for a land invasion is virtually nil, and there’s lots of opposition to any type of armed assault. They prefer an outcome in which Assad steps down and some of the favored rebel leaders (the pro-U.S. ones) become integrated into the ruling regime.
CHALLENGE should state clearly that we support the right of the masses in Syria to overthrow their oppressors. However, a revolt that doesn’t put the working class in power and dismantles capitalism will only replace one set of oppressors with another.
CHALLENGE Reader

No Vacation from Class Struggle
This summer, I vacationed at the South Haven, MI, home of my brother and his wife. He insisted we attend a film and forum on “The Atomic States of America.” South Haven is within the 10-mile radius of the Palisades Nuclear Plant, one of the oldest and least-maintained of the 104 plants in the country. Release of tritium from Palisades has leaked into groundwater for weeks, with uncontrollable accidents.  
Tritium damages human DNA, but published studies say that’s “all” the effects are. Tritium has a half life of 12 years and is released into Lake Michigan on a DAILY basis.* One billion dollars a year is spent by the Nuclear Reactor Commission (NRC)  to oversee this hazardous way of generating electricity. Overall, $350 billion is spent by the government every year on nuclear energy, whereas a paltry $300 million is spent on renewables, such as wind-generated energy.
More information came out last month from the Fukushima nuclear disaster rated 7, the highest in severity, along with Chernobyl. It’s common knowledge now that 300 tons of polluted water have been escaping from the plant since March of 2011, a fact the Tokyo Electric Power Co. had kept under wraps for 2.5 years. The cleanup promises to be much more dangerous since the spent fuel rods removed from Unit 4, which was not operating, rest in a pool containing plutonium and cesium. If released, they would be the equivalent of about 14,000 atomic bombs.  
As recently as last year palisades has experienced leaks which exceeded the code case limit, in bathroom and auxiliary building catacombs (where workers crawl to repair and inspect). Entergy-owned plants make up the bulk of the dozen on the “most-at-risk” list that includes Palisades, FitzPatrick, Vermont Yankee, Indian Point and Pilgrim plants. Entergy is famous for buying up plants and letting them decay.
The end of the film discussion centered on the most vulnerable reactor pressure vessel in the U.S.: Palisades.  All spoke of their concern that activation of the emergency core cooling system — the last line of defense against a reactor core meltdown — could cause, ironically, a catastrophe.  They claim that suddenly injected cold water could lead to a Loss of Coolant Accident core meltdown and spew radioactivity onto the environment.
If anyone thinks the Government will protect our health, check out the plant at Braidwood, IL. It got permission from the NRC to continue operating one summer when its cooling water hit 102 degrees, even though the plant is supposed to shut within six hours if the water temperature exceeds 100.  
Regulations and standards mean nothing when profits are involved. I asked what the profits were at the average nuclear power plant and learned that it’s$1 million a day! It’s no wonder that under a profit system, court rulings and government regulations protect corporations, and secrets are kept from the public.  
Petitions, statistics on cancer clusters and projected deaths bring no pressure to reform capitalism. Only a united working class is powerful enough to revolt for a communist system where profits do not rule over people. For more information I encourage readers to visit the radioactive waste watchdog site: Beyond Nuclear.
A Red Vacationer Welcoming a Dose of Reality

Haiti: Capitalism Foments Prejudice Against Homosexual Workers
We have thousands of young people here suffering a criminal level of unemployment and thousands of people dying of hunger, while the working and peasant classes are sunk in extreme poverty — and the high-living bosses under the protection of the so-called government exploit both the workers and our natural resources for their private benefit.  Then, on July 19 in Port-au-Prince, we see thousands of middle-class and working-class people taking to the streets to demonstrate against the legalization of gay marriage.
The question of sexuality must be addressed.  It is not, however, the fundamental or primary problem in society.  The problem of our society is capitalism, the source of poverty, racism, crime, immorality, and stealing.  It’s not gay marriage we should be struggling against, but capitalism.
The struggle the working class must wage is the class struggle — one that will liberate the world from inequality, poverty, hunger, sexism and all the other problems stemming from exploitation and related to individualism.  The struggle of the working class is the struggle for communism.
Some workers think that homosexuality is immoral, a product of capitalism, and should be eliminated by abolishing the capitalism which is its cause.  That view is simply an age-old prejudice.
This march in Haiti by religious reactionaries against gay marriage was followed by several gay-bashing assaults in the capital. Violent witch-hunts against those of us in the working class who are gay are typical of fascism, starting with the Nazis. The recent anti-gay legislation by the fascist Putin regime in Russia was followed by the kidnapping and murder of a gay teenager by neo-nazis.  Lethal gay-bashing and murder are also common practice among U.S. right-wingers.  It is disgusting that there are still 76 countries where homosexuality is a crime.
From a scientific point of view, homosexuality is simply one common variant of human sexuality, neither good nor bad in itself, simply a minority, but normal, human behavior. Around 10 percent of the population is gay — as many in the working class as in other classes, as many in places where we are claimed not to exist at all (as used to be said, falsely, in some African countries) as in the West, where a few liberal changes in official anti-gay have been made through struggle.  Examples are the 1980s ACT UP campaign for AIDS treatment in the U.S., and the similar Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa begun in 1998, both with many lessons for campaigns for workers’ health, and both obliged to overcome official state homophobia.
But gay people have been stigmatized in the interests of the social control of various ruling classes long before, up to, and including, the rule of capitalism. Discrimination against homosexuals is part of sexist ideology in general.  It remains to this day yet another divide-and-conquer technique of the ruling class. Bourgeois morality, though loosening on this question, still mainly follows the ancient prejudices against homosexuality. Prejudice against homosexuals is completely anti-scientific and reactionary and communist morality will abolish it along with all other forms of sexism.  
But the Marxist tradition itself has suffered from this prejudice, and all workers should get involved in fighting it.  A new communist society will have the opportunity of sweeping away all such ancient myths.  Clearly that will require intense reflection and education in cultures and milieux where anti-gay ideologies and practices — like other forms of sexism — has been deeply entrenched and normalized, and that is a task for communists to take up in our long march to revolution and freedom for the entire working class.
Haiti Comrade

Problems with Quotating Malcolm X
   The article quoting Malcolm X in CHALLENGE (9/4/13) seems to make a few leaps in logic.
Readers are asked to substitute “capitalist” for the use of “white” to truly understand what Malcolm really would have said on the basis of how he felt after he returned from his pilgrimage to Mecca in June 1964. However, at the time he made his remarks criticizing King and other moderate and Christian civil rights movement leaders, he was a minister of a different religion (Nation of Islam) from King’s, a religion led by a corrupt charlatan. Malcolm was a spokesman for that religion for quite some time.
   When we study the history of the period, we have to carefully analyze why our Party viewed Malcolm more favorably than it did King, et al., in the mid-1960s. We admired Malcolm because his voice was one of genuine anger against U.S. apartheid, and he advocated violence rather than peaceful resistance. Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers were influenced by Malcolm. They also called for violent struggle. Many of us in favor of revolution admired that part of what Malcolm and Stokely were saying. In the wake of the Harlem Rebellion, we agreed with the idea that revolutionary violence was necessary, and we supported militant black nationalism.
   By 1969, however, our Party put forward a rejection of all forms of nationalism.  Part of that rejection was based on our learning that nationalism means allying with the capitalists of one’s own nation or ethnic group. This analysis has helped us understand revisionism in all its forms — whether in Vietnam, China, or North Korea.
    We have even stated that the Soviet Union’s use of nationalism to rally the Russian people against the Germans was a mistake. It is unfortunate that identifying with “one’s own people”— nationalism — seems to be easier for people to comprehend than internationalism, particularly when they’re faced with racist attacks. It is worth noting that the Soviet Union also endorsed establishing the state of Israel.
   Your article concludes by saying, “It’s a good start to march for jobs and human rights, but we cannot stop there.” No one knows where Malcolm would have stopped because he was murdered in 1965 before his thinking could evolve further. What we do know is that, by 1970, the ruling class began aggressively promoting and funding nationalism in the form of ethnic studies programs in U.S. universities. This was done to buy off black and Latino youth and intellectuals and to divert them from Marxism-Leninism. That sounds quite a bit like the Kennedys buying off moderate civil rights leaders with federal programs, which Malcolm condemned.
   I think we have to be careful about quoting Malcolm X and presenting him as a source of wisdom. It may carry the seeds of opportunism in the form of trying to gain favorable attention from angry African-Americans with nationalist feelings. Using “Malcolm X Speaks” as a way of introducing his remarks suggests that we view him as a thinker from whom we can learn a great deal.  We can admire Malcolm for his courage and sincerity, but we have to be wary of presenting him as a powerful thinker.
 Red X

What ‘Freedom’ Marches?
Some of the marchers at the 2013 50yr anniversary of the 1963 Washington “freedom” march tried to carry signs about the new Jim Crow and ending mass incarceration of predominantly black and Latino workers and youth but they were confiscated by march officers. And days later Obama spoke critically of those who still protest racist exploitation as denying the great progress that’s been made in civil rights.
But oppression is worse today because you don’t need KKK white sheets and police water hoses when capitalist-controlled politicians and a captive media are silent while the bosses are allowed to create more racist poverty, unemployment  and disfranchisement than all the tactics of segregated facilities and police dogs combined.
The main purpose of both Washington marches was to take the struggle against racist oppression out of the streets and put it into the courts, as SNCC leader John Lewis was prevented from saying at the 1963 march. That march not only banned militant speakers but controlled the sound system which could immediately be switched off to play gospel music if anything militant was being said.
The only positive feature of the recent 2013 march was the presence of workers with CHALLENGE and its message that only communist revolution can end racism.
1963 Marcher

Woody Guthrie Novel Hits Home in  Mexico
The CHALLENGE article about Woody Guthrie’s novel (7/17/2013) made me question a few things. I work in a small community that’s part of a state in central Mexico. This is a rural area where the majority of folks come from a farm-working background.  They grow corn and kidney and lima beans as basic staples for survival.    
As in other parts of the world, however, these small parcels of land cannot cover the cost of clothing, decent housing, health and education. Capitalism has forced many workers to leave our town and look for construction work in Mexican cities or in the imperialist U.S. Wives and children are often left behind. In other cases, children stay with their grandparents while their mothers work in other homes for a salary.
Under capitalism, social relations are defined by private property and the wage system. The owners of the means of production (factories, mines, arable land) are the capitalist bosses. These bosses, by definition, are incapable of producing any wealth. That’s why they need us, the working class. Our only possession is our labor power, which we sell to the capitalists.  The capitalists sell the products of labor and expropriate the wealth produced by the workers from which they gain surplus value — the difference between the wages paid to the workers and the actual value of their labor.
Capitalism promotes the idea that we must work hard to get ahead. That’s what most people in this town do, like our class brothers and sisters throughout the world. In our community, in addition to people’s subsistence farming of corns and beans, they also grow potatoes and carrots for sale at the market. These crops are treated with agro-chemicals produced by large corporations, such as Syngenta, Bayer, and DuPont. These chemicals damage the health of the workers and pollute the soil, water and air. But this is no concern for the owners of these corporations.
Because the process is expensive, from planting to harvesting, many small producers need bank loans to invest in their production. Often these folks lose everything. Yet they continue making efforts to survive under capitalism, when the reality is that under capitalism we cannot survive!
Capitalism is a system that must generate profits. It can never respond to the needs of the working class. Capitalism serves the interest of the ruling class, a handful of bosses and their servant state apparatus.
In this region, although communist ideas are undeveloped, we have people with the potential to spread these ideas among large numbers of people. We have the potential to mount a struggle to provide for the needs of our class instead of producing profits for the bosses.
Though we need to be bolder, we have kept up the struggle against capitalist ideas and the harm they cause. Often we talk with people here about the damage caused by chemicals and the need to make changes in how we produce foodstuffs to make them healthier, using organic farming techniques developed by workers.
Organic agriculture, however, can flourish only when the profit system is abolished through communist revolution, and is replaced by a society run by and for the working class.
The more we fight for communist ideas, the deeper the hole we’ll be digging to bury the capitalist system of wages and put an end to all types of exploitation. We are one class, the international working class. We need one party, the Progressive Labor Party, to lead the workers of the world to fight for communism.
Mexico Red