Letters of October 17

Obama’s Drone Attacks Kill Hundeds of Civilians

Some around the world think of the U.S. as the moral leader among nations.  This idea is particularly spread within the borders of the U.S. in the media, schools, and universities. And politicians like Hillary Clinton and Obama proclaim this myth as they glorify “American Exceptionalism.”

Hundreds of drone attacks on Pakistan and other places in the Middle East demonstrate that they all lie.  Drones are remote-controlled planes that launch missiles and drop bombs half way around the world, with no accountability or immediate danger to the invading U.S. military.  The danger, however, to the U.S. population from the fury of the innocent victims and their friends and families is profound.

The LA Times just reported that a study by researchers at Stanford and New York Universities showed that the official U.S. claims of minimal harm to innocent civilians from drone attacks have badly understated the numbers of deaths.  The attacks are aimed at killing leaders of Al Qaida and the Taliban, but the study found that among drone casualties only about 2% (!) are leaders of these terrorist groups.  Of the other 98%, many are innocent civilians.  Yet Obama’s top “counterterrorism” adviser, John Brennan, states that civilian casualties are “exceedingly rare.”

The study authors find it is very difficult to estimate the total number of civilian deaths, but state that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (a non-profit British news agency) puts the figure, since 2004, somewhere between 474 and 884, including 176 children.  Even this is likely to be an understatement, since Pakistani officials estimate between 2,500 and 3,300 were people killed by drones over that 9-year period — one quarter of the almost 350 attacks ordered by Bush and the vast majority by Obama.  

Many in the U.S. think of Obama as the lesser of two evils in the race for the U.S. Presidency.  Yet he is the one who has stepped up the drone attacks as a way of extricating combat forces from Afghanistan.  There is little doubt that Romney would do exactly the same.  That’s the kind of choice that elections under capitalism give to the working class.  It helps to remember that lesser evil still is evil.

There is, however, a choice in the upcoming election, between voting, on the one hand, and not voting but instead organizing sharper international anti-racist class struggle, on the other.  In fact, there is only one way for the world’s workers, particularly in the U.S., to extricate ourselves from this continual escalation of death and destruction in the name of maximum profits.  

If we want to save our children, grandchildren, and ourselves, millions more will have to join PLP to build a massive and powerful party that rips this destructive power out of the hands of the small minority of murdering liars and terrorists who control all profits and governments everywhere. Voting doesn’t address this imperative, and never could.

Saguaro Rojo

Monstrous Fascist Assault on Immigrant Mother

A woman “Anna” from El Salvador who I’ve been visiting in detention for almost a year will soon be transferred to a remote location in Utah or Arizona. She contracted HIV in El Salvador because of a gang rape, a total of 75 assaults. With her life in jeopardy, she immigrated to the U.S., crossing the border with the help and sustenance from a group of men. 

Here, she met a man from El Salvador; they have a child, and she came upon the man sexually assaulting his cousin. In stopping him, she was struck by a bottle he’d broken and he proceeded to cut himself as if she had been the attacker. He called the police and Anna was charged with domestic violence. 

She has not seen her three-year-old son in all this time but having lost her court case for asylum will most likely be deported after a year or two more in isolating custody, never to see her son again. Her over-worked attorney neglected to make her HIV illness primary, which might have assured her asylum.  

However, the prosecuting attorney was determined to guarantee her deportation and claimed she was inconsistent, which the judge upheld.  Many social workers, and friends from other countries she has met in detention — two of whom have been released on bails exceeding $9,000 — have returned to visit, pled her case, offered to pay for more lawyer fees and house Anna and her son in their own homes.  Their persistence, internationalism and compassion surpass my own.

Getting CHALLENGE to all these folks regularly will serve to point out that one lawyer or heartfelt support is not enough to battle a system that divides us all with cheapening labor and terror to intimidate us as a class. The women I have met will not be submissive but need the organization of a communist party — the Progressive Labor Party — to fight the capitalist system that controls the courts as well as wage-slave conditions in factories around the world.

Bi-Lingual comrade and visitor

How Can Workers Deal with Crime and Criminals?

The article “Bosses’ Police Declare War on Working Class” (CHALLENGE, 9/19) does a good job of describing how the police shock and infiltrate working-class communities in order to neutralize potential revolutionaries.

But I think there’s a weakness in the article. It doesn’t answer the liberals’ excuse for this fascist activity: the need to protect workers from criminals.

Hired killers, drug dealers, thieves, pimps, con men and so on form what is called the lumpenproletariat, composed of declassed people. Most members of the lumpenproletariat were originally part of some other social class. Originally, some were even ruling-class people.

Since this group has been declassed, its members have no class consciousness. Their main attitude is me-first individualism. Their victims include their friends and families and the working class in general.

Karl Marx explains in “Capital,” chapter 25, section 3 that the lumpenproletariat forms part of the industrial reserve army that is generated by the accumulation of capital. Capitalists need an industrial reserve army to keep wages down and workers demoralized. As a result, there cannot be a real “war on crime” under capitalism, because capitalists need the criminals that the capitalist system produces.

I think CHALLENGE needs to explain how the working class should deal with crime and criminals in the short term, hopefully with some concrete examples. Otherwise, the liberals will persuade workers that they need the police to protect them from the criminals.

A friend

Racist Zionist Lynch Attacks Not Isolated Incidents

The recent murderous racist and fascist lynch attacks by Jewish teens against Arab Palestinian teens are not rare, isolated incidents.

These pogroms have repeatedly occurred, as in the city of Hebron (El Chalil) in the West Bank, where Zionist national guard brutes beat up and caused serious injuries to a nine-year-old Arab Palestinian child. After that incident another young Arab Palestinian was beaten up by Jewish young men in the city of Jerusalem.

Due to Israel’s historical and political character, which can be defined as a racist colonialism, young Jewish “Israeli” children from  their birth are being exposed to a racist socialization process. Two local scholars: Yosi Yona and Yehuda Shenhav summed it up in their research book, Racism in Israel: “Regarding Israeli society we should not speak about racist phenomena inside the Israeli society, we need to define it that Israeli society IS a racist phenomenon.”

This racism is an historical and political process that started with the beginning of the Zionist colonization in Palestine and was intensified by the two major ethnic cleansings that occurred in 1948 and 1967. The crisis of the capitalist system, especially today, makes it harder for the Zionist bosses to bribe Jewish workers with privileges so they need to deflect the workers’ anger into racist and nationalist dead-ends.

 In addition, just a few months ago racist pogroms occurred against migrant workers’ communities  from Eritrea and Sudan. Jewish workers from the Arab countries have held racist demonstrations with terrible slogans such as: “Negroes out!”

Even worse are the consistent slaughter attacks made by the Zionist fascist army against the Palestinian workers of the Gaza strip along with their systematic starvation. The only way to put an end once and for all to these atrocities is by working-class unity of Arab and Jewish workers to destroy the capitalist system that produces racism and replacing it with an egalitarian communist society for the working class and by the working class!

Comrade in Palestine

Letters of October 3

Chicago Teachers Strike: Education on the Picket Line

Walking the picket line with striking teachers in Chicago, one learns quickly that progressive leadership from the Left, PLP, can quickly embolden teachers in need of communist led leadership. 

Teachers appreciated the support from PLP members as we led teachers marching near the South Side of Chicago. Strikers led by PLP members, chanted “Asian, Latin, Black, and White, teachers of the world unite.” 

CHALLENGE was received openly. It was crucial to have a previous rally covered on the front page of the paper as we talked to strikers. 

As the strike continues in the third largest city in the U.S., communists must sharpen the contrdictions of Chicago teachers against the local governments and the union. A contract with the bosses will not eliminate the inequality, segregation, or poverty the students in Chicago and around the world face every day.  A system that allows a few rulers to control the lives of millions must be abolished. 

Capitalist education calls for competition, segregated schools, and individual success leading to  divisions among working-class students. As the teachers continue their struggle, we must continue our struggle for communism; we must advance and sharpen the working class in how they think about the capitalist system.

Strike Supporter 

Recently a few retired teachers from NYC went to Chicago to support the teachers’ strike as well as to bring the ideas of workers’ power and communism to this struggle. In the few days that we were there, we were very well received. At the picket lines we gave speeches about international solidarity, the need for unity between parents, students, teachers and education workers and fighting racism. 

In the afternoon rallies downtown, people were literally grabbing our leaflets, which spoke of the link between imperialist war and the attacks on the union. People were very interested in PLP literature and many were happy to see a new leaflet every day. CHALLENGE went like hot cakes! 

It seemed clear to us that teachers had done a good job of building ties with parents and communities. Everywhere we went, there was honking or cheering for the teachers in red t-shirts. I think this is because the strike was directly addressing the injustices that students face, such as overcrowding and lack of air conditioning. Morale seemed high and many of the picket lines boasted 100% attendance from the staff. We also saw a real unity between school support staff and teachers.

Participating in this strike was very inspiring; it reminds us that the working class can rise up and will fight back. We pledged to continue strike support work in NY and to encourage our friends to keep organizing in their unions and keep raising PLP’s ideas in those struggles.

NYC Retired Teachers

I joined the picket lines of the striking Chicago teachers at two schools, and participated in three huge demonstrations downtown. Thousands of red-shirted teachers and supporters marched around city hall and the school board headquarters on the first two days of the strike. On day three, there were three separate large rallies that took place simultaneously. I’ve never seen so many workers organized to fight for better schools, demonstrating against the mayor and his chosen school board who are in the process of privatizing the schools. 

The teachers’ strike has received support from students and many parents. At the schools I visted, parents with their children greeted the teachers and joined the picket lines.  You could tell that the parents and teachers have a lot of respect for each other. Most of the teachers readily took CHALLENGE and leaflets. They agreed that the bosses are not interested in educating young people, especially black, Latino and white working-class children, and since there are no jobs, teaching positions are expendable. 

All the bosses need, in addition to a compliant working class, is an army willing to fight for their investments in all parts of the world.  Teachers complained that many schools have no libraries, not enough aides, counselors, nurses and social workers.  Many schools have no air conditioning, and large class sizes, unlike the private schools the mayor and Obama send their kids to.

The School Board is waiting until the end of the strike to close over 100 schools.  Students will be forced into larger classes and more teachers will join the ranks of the unemployed.  

The Progressive Labor Party is organizing the teachers, students and parents to fight for communist revolution.  The capitalists will be giving the union a few percentage points of a raise, but will take away much more by busting the union and building non-union charter schools.  The strike represents the beginning of the struggle — we have to turn it into a struggle for communist revolution.  In order to have better schools, capitalism must be smashed and power must be in the hands of the working class led by communist ideas.

Unemployed Worker

Don’t Get Psyched Out By Adapting to Capitalism

In early August, I attended the second Marxism and Psychology Conference at the Universidad Michoacana in Morelia, western Mexico. Five hundred people came, mostly students from Mexico, as well as scholars from 23 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. The conference was intense and inspiring. Its participants debated the role of psychology in transforming the world.

The first Conference took place in Canada in 2010, but this second one was far more explicitly political. Recent events were discussed related to the “Capitalist crises,” the European debt crisis, neoliberal politics, the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring and global student movements.

This might not seem remarkable to non-psychologists, but psychology as a discipline rarely addresses societal structures or social movements. Many of the topics could not have been discussed two years ago.

Some presenters advocated our need to expose the psychological damage caused by capitalism’s inequalities, insecurities and competition. Others argued that psychology needs to move beyond helping individuals “adapt” to a damaging and unjust society and rather help build movements to change it.

The conference location helped move it to the left politically. Morelia has highly visible evidence of both colonialism and the huge gap between rich and poor; the region is embroiled in struggle. There were students from the Mexican political movement “yo soy 132,” which opposes the money corruption of elections, often called the “Mexican Spring.”

Representatives were also present from Cherán, a nearby town where indigenous people have struggled successfully against corrupt government officials and the logging companies illegally devastating the communal forests. Students at the conference took notes and often asked questions that cut through the academic jargon to get to the heart of the matter.

The problem of language — in two senses — challenged the conference organizers. First, almost every talk was translated between English and Spanish in order to allow the diverse group to communicate. While important, the translations — done mostly by students without translation training — took time and limited the amount of discussion.

A second “language” problem was the specialized academic jargon that keeps professors from different disciplines and sub-disciplines from fully understanding each other. These different “languages” serve the capitalists in making it difficult for us to build unified collective movements.

The most important outcome of the conference was the recognition that we must work from every direction to bring about communism. There’s a need for new ways to help transform the world; yet it’s only in transforming the world that these new ways can fully emerge.

Scholars of psychology and Marxism can begin some important conversations and offer important insights, but the very nature of our work often confines us to the “ivory tower.”

Instead of concentrating on individualistic adaption to a capitalist world, we need to break out of the walls of academia and join with workers in struggle.

A Marxist Psychologist

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

Letters of September 5

Carpenters in Contract Fight,Win Anti-Racist Demand

The working class is under attack. New York Consolidated Edison workers, recently locked out of work by management for several weeks, just got a sellout contract. Another group of unionized workers in a sharp contract battle are New York City carpenters. 

The carpenters union is simultaneously negotiating five different contracts for five of the associations it represents. Workers rejected four out of the five contracts. The hoisting contract, covering carpenters working with cranes, was accepted.

The bosses want a 20 percent wage-cut and “full mobility,” the option to pick and choose all carpenters on the worksite. Currently 33 percent of carpenters at any union site must be staffed by the union hall, an anti-racist reform won partly to ensure black workers were not turned away by racist bosses. Full mobility is a racist attack on the carpenters.

At one point in the negotiations, the bosses were willing to give a pay raise in exchange for full mobility. But the workers rejected it.

The carpenter’s contract expired June 2011. But union delegates recently put $40,000 in a strike fund. The only reason carpenters are still working is because of the evergreen clause, which extends the old contract year. Now that the evergreen clause expired they are still working under the old contract. But from talking to carpenters, some are willing to strike because there’s no new contract, especially guys at the hall.

Carpenters may or may not strike. But if they do, PLP should be ready to support striking workers on the picket lines. We should be prepared to bring friends, co-workers, students, community members and fellow churchgoers to the lines.

Red Steel

Algeria: Muslim Workers Fight Sexist Attack

On August 1, in Tiaret, Algeria, 90 percent of the workers at the provincial central seat of the Algerian National Health Insurance Fund held a two-hour work stoppage here today to support a female co-worker who had filed a sexual harassment charge against a driver employed by the Fund. The workers were protesting the driver’s return to work after having been transferred last year. The bosses claimed the anti-sexist stoppage was “illegal” but that didn’t prevent the workers from refusing to work. The action was notable since it reflected male Muslim workers backing a female colleague’s fight against sexism.

Comrade 

Spain: Workers Seize Food for Jobless

In Marinaleda, Spain on August 7, two left-wing militants were arrested after leading a raid to expropriate food from two Andalusian supermarkets. “This is a really tough time for a lot of families,” said a local union official.

The action was protesting unemployment here and the depressed economic situation workers in Andaluse. Twenty shopping carts loaded with food were taken from the markets “so people could eat. People don’t have money to pay for their house or electricity or water….Many families have had their water cut off,” , which is what prompted the action, said the demonstration leader Diego Cañamero

Red

Disputes Idea of All-out U.S.-China War

In CHALLENGE (8/1), the box on page 2 ends: “History tells us that the U.S. capitalists will go to any lengths to meet the challenge of a rising China in a competition for the world’s vital resources, especially oil and gas. Can World War III be far behind?”

It is true that capitalism means war, but there are choices available in making war. For instance, when Britain got strong enough to decide that its next step was to smash India’s industry, it did so. But they did not massively invade India. They achieved their aim by a divide-and-conquer tactic, supporting various nationalistic or religious forces and getting other to do most of the fighting. This is an old tactic.

The U.S. today is certainly responsible for a lot of shooting. But it is mostly carried out by nationalists — usually corrupt — who agree to run the country in ways that suit U.S. bosses.

There are choices capitalists make regarding war. The idea of a ruling-class leadership deliberately opting for all-out war with China is preposterous. The same goes for China wanting an all-out war with the U.S. Both parties want maximum advantage and profit, but it is impossible to outline a scenario which would lead to one of these two benefitting from an all-out war. How would it help profits?

Well, you may think, military threats may start small, but then things can get out of hand. In other words, the ruling class will obligingly make it easier for PLP to take steps toward a workers’ victory. An alluring idea, but don’t bet on it!

Ancient Red

Thank you for your comments. We invite our readers to participate in this discussion. -Ed.

PLP’s May Days Inspire Red Friend from China

This May Day, a friend, a member of the Chinese Communist Party, attended our dinner. Since being in the U.S., he has missed the last two May Days — the only two in his life.

He was surprised by the celebration. While it was definitely different than what he was used to, he saw interesting aspects in our gathering. “It reminds me of the stories of May Day celebrations before the Chinese revolution,” he said to my delight.  Having had many conversations with this friend, it is clear that it has been decades since the fight for communism in China.

He sees that capitalism has swept over China. Most importantly, he sees his friends in PLP as good, fighting, anti-racist workers.  PLP has a long road ahead for a worldwide communist revolution. But, now we are inspiring our friends to see capitalism as a system that must be destroyed in order to end the suffering of our sisters and brothers internationally. Now, more than ever, I am proud to be a communist in Progressive Labor Party.

Red Organizer

Letters of August 15

Jenga and Dialectics: From Small Steps to Giant Leaps

Who would’ve thought that Jenga, a kid’s game, would be a great way to introduce dialectical materialism? In our recent study group, we illustrated the idea of quantitative change leading to qualitative change by collectively removing and stacking Jenga blocks. For every block that we removed we changed the quantity of the blocks.

After removing and stacking over twenty blocks, everyone was nervous and on the edge of their seats. For each block removed the tower became increasingly unstable, moving closer to a qualitative change. Eventually, after removing the 25th block, the tower came crashing down. It crossed a tipping point (dialectically and literally) and went from many quantitative changes to a qualitative change in an instant!

While everyone wanted to blame the last person for the collapse of the tower, we recognized that it was the collective effort of the group with the movement of each block that led to the tower’s qualitative collapse. The game clearly showed that small changes can lead to big changes.

Although we might not see qualitative changes as fast as we’d want to see them, small steps can eventually lead to giant leaps. So as communists we must realize that every march we go to, every study group we have and every person we win to the Party is like a block being nudged or removed from the Jenga tower of capitalism. Ultimately, the qualitative change will be the destruction of capitalism through communist revolution. 

Red youth

Hispaniola’s Tourism A KKKapitalist Killer

There is an underlying pain that belies the physical beauty of this island and friendliness of the people who comprise Hispaniola. Haiti and the Dominican Republic (DR) inhabit it. The goal of workers here should be communism. To reach this goal, international unity of workers with the leadership of the PLP is vital. No other way exists for our class to avoid the calamities capitalism imposes on us.

Tourism has become a major source of foreign investment and profit. DR has been a tourist destination for over 100 years. Only in the past 15 years has tourism so increased that it has become first an industry and then the largest industry in DR. With this growth, tourism also employs the largest number of workers in DR. Now impoverished Haiti wants to copy this model. Why?

A brief look at the tourist industry in DR and the impact it has on its workers in particular and the country as a whole can explain why. Today, almost 200,000 workers are in the “formal” economy. Many more work “off the books.” Most of the “informal” work in DR is in tourism. Those directly employed are subjected to low wages (RD$58/hour or about US$1.50/hour) with little or no benefits. Attempts to protest these conditions or unionize are squashed by the bosses.

Tourist-related taxes are a major source of revenue (6 percent of total tax revenue; 75 percent of this amount is from the Value Added Tax or VAT) for the DR government. The industry makes up 16 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 12 percent of national employment and is the main source of FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) at 15 percent.

However, the tax revenue from tourist corporations are almost nil, due to special incentive schemes for this industry. Almost all tourist tax revenue comes from the individual visitor. Foreign investors receive a 10-year 100 percent tax exemption on investment income (profits), relief from impost duties (taxes), no VAT on construction materials purchased in DR, no taxes on real estate holdings and money transfers. Almost all tourist operations are foreign-owned, the great majority European.

To this poison, add widespread corruption between public officials and the private sector. The capitalists routinely buy off “public servants.” DR is known as an open investment regime by international finance. Except for Cuba, so are all other Caribbean nations.

A May 2012 report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) states that working conditions for DR tourist workers are similar to those of all the other Caribbean nations competing with DR for the tourist dollar: awful. 

Frank Moya Pons, a DR historian, showed that the result of these economic policies increase the severity of poverty. Now Haiti wants to follow this path. Haiti has similar economic problems as DR, only much worse. The rulers of Haiti, with their imperialist overseers in the U.S., see tourism as an important source of profit. As with DR, a major issue for foreign capitalists is how to lower the already very low Haitian labor costs ($3.75/day USD) to increase those profits on the backs of workers.

Workers in Haiti and DR must make crucial decisions. Will they allow themselves to remain in the trap of wage slavery offered by the tourist bosses or other capitalists? Or will they follow the path towards winning a society based on equality? We will try to struggle alongside our comrades in Hispaniola to win communism with international working-class unity.

Westchester Red

‘Seizing the Moment’ in the Harlem Rebellion

The great “Wanted for Murder” CHALLENGE front page (7/4) reminded me of a similar situation in 1964 and PL’s reaction to it. A cop had murdered a black teenager in cold blood which set off the Harlem Rebellion, the first of the big-city black uprisings. PLP’s forerunner PLM (Progressive Labor Movement) issued a poster with the cop’s picture on it entitled “Wanted for Murder, Gilligan the Cop.” It immediately became the rebels’ flag. They put them up on every lamppost and marched through the streets displaying CHALLENGE’s front page with that message on it, similar to our recent issue.

While PLM was a small, pro-communist organization and barely a year old, we soon became “the talk of the town.” We were the only group that supported the rebels. All the reformist leaders, black ministers and the corrupt “Communist” Party pleaded with the rebels to “cool it,” and condemned PLM as “adventurist.” But the rebels streamed into PLM’s Harlem headquarters, grabbing copies of the poster and CHALLENGE (our paper was barely a month old at the time) to plaster them throughout the city.

The ruling class was frightened as hell and its judge issued an injunction banning us from “congregating” in Harlem, between 110th St. and 155th St. in Manhattan, from river to river. In the teeth of this fascist act (a first in the city’s history), we decided to break the ban and hold an outdoor demonstration in the heart of Harlem. The cops immediately arrested our Harlem leaders and eventually indicted and convicted them for “inciting to riot” and a host of other ruling-class laws.

The bosses’ newspapers, editorial writers, politicians and TV stations became a chorus of attacks on PLM. Scores of PLM members were called before a Grand Jury on the basis that we had organized the rebellion (which, unfortunately, was untrue). We refused to cooperate with this rich man’s jury and many were jailed for contempt. The Harlem leaders and the PLM printers who had printed the poster were sentenced to prison terms and several young women comrades were jailed “until they talked” (which they didn’t). Through those comrades we exposed the Greenwich Village Women’s House of Detention as a House of Horrors, which eventually led to its closing.

PLM organized support rallies in other boroughs and PLM members were invited to speak on campuses throughout the country. The Vietnam War was raging at the time and our reaction to the Harlem Rebellion, plus other actions exposing this imperialist war, helped catapult us into the forefront of the anti-war movement.

So even though we were small in numbers, by “seizing the moment” PLM was able to influence tens of thousands about the nature of racism and capitalism, an important lesson for today.

One cautionary note: although hundreds responded to our actions, we erred in not collecting their names and phone numbers and therefore were unable to follow them up and bring them closer to, and into, the PLM, a mistake we can learn from.

A PLM old-timer