Vol. 21, No. 5
VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA
25 cents May 1, 1991
[Front page:
Down with Bush's "education strategy"--No more school cutbacks!;
When will the recession end?;
Bush plus Saddam spells disaster--DEFEND THE KURDS!]
IN THIS ISSUE
| Down With Racism! |
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| 'Gates must go!'; Teens denounce police; No to torture; Why leaders avoided protests..................................................................................... | 2 |
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| Strikes and Workplace News |
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| Washington teachers; Rail; Pittsburgh grocery; Injured postal protest; NYC building workers; Mont. state workers; Auto workers protest..... | 3 |
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| Tragic results of Gulf war fuel protests................................................. | 4 |
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| Support Our GI Resisters! |
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| Heavy sentences fail to quash resistance; Navy trumps up charges vs. anti-war sailors...................................................................................... | 4 |
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| What's ahead for Iraqi Kurds?............................................................... | 5 |
| Imperialism no friend of Kurdish freedom............................................ | 5 |
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| Make the Rich Pay for the Budget Crises! |
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| CUNY students sit-in; No to war on poor; Crises deepen recession; Calif, rally; Mass. march; Home care workers strike............................ | 6 and 7 |
| Loyola; Jr. high walkout; Ohio rally...................................................... | 5 |
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| Communism and jobs............................................................................ | 8 |
| Unemployment and the boom-bust cycle.............................................. | 8 |
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| Step Up the Defense of Women's Rights! |
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| 'Parental consent' judicial tyranny; Big stick replaces treatment; 'Pro-life' brings death.................................................................................... | 9 |
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| For Workers' Socialism, Not Revisionist State-Capitalism! |
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| Gorbachev and Yeltsin unite against strikes; Soviet workers rebel; Women pay price................................................................................... | 10 |
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| Bangladesh after the fall of Ershad........................................................ | 11 |
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| Supreme Court rules for police repression............................................ | 11 |
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| The World in Struggle |
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| New Zealand workers fired up; Capitalism ruins Latin Am. Workers; Yearning for change in Africa; Turkey; Brazil; Bolivia........................ | 12 |
Down with Bush's "education strategy"
Bush plus Saddam spells disaster
DOWN WITH RACISM!
Strikes and workplace news
Tragic results of Gulf war fuel protests
Heavy sentences fail to quash GI resistance
Navy trumps up charges against two anti-war sailors
Imperialism--no friend of Kurdish freedom
Make the rich pay for the budget crises!
Unemployment and the boom-bust cycle
Step up the defense of women's rights!
For workers' socialism, not revisionist state-capitalism!
Bangladesh after the fall of General Ershad
Supreme Court rules for police repression
The world in struggle
IN BRIEF
Working parents have been worrying for years over the education of their children. The schools have seen one cutback after another. With the new round of state budget cutbacks, teachers are being dismissed, subjects are being cut from the curriculum, and the students have little to look forward to.
Big words to cover up more cutbacks
But in mid-April Bush rode to the rescue. Bush insists he is the "education president," and he set forth a "national education strategy." Bush's strategy, and an alternative Democratic educational "enrichment" bill in the Senate, are full of talk about all sorts of programs. Both talk of encouraging new types of schools. Both talk of new programs, overcoming the obstacles of poverty, social programs of one type or another, and promise the skies and the moon. And the bigger the rhetoric, the less money is allocated.
The suggested amount of federal money to be provided for all these new and expanded programs combined ranges from half a billion (the Democratic plan in the Senate) to two-thirds of a billion (Bush's). Bush also talks of encouraging private funds. Even adding that in, the amount will be under $1 billion, less than what is being allocated for the bailout of a single large savings and loan association, such as Silverado, ravaged by Bush's son Neil.
Moreover, the state education cutbacks this year far dwarf this amount. California alone will cut from one to three billion dollars from its education budget, several times what the federal bill will provide. Such cutbacks in California, as elsewhere, come after protracted austerity in inner-city schools for the last decade.
The bipartisan education strategy is to let the schools decay. Even the very largest Democratic party plan, put forward in the House by Representative Ford of Michigan, only talks of $2.4 billion. It would leave the cycle of cutbacks in place.
Bush vows no dollars for educating the poor
But, Bush declares in setting forward his strategy, "dollars don't educate students." Instead, the poor are to be fed big words about "choice." If only there is "choice," who needs money?
Let's examine one model of education without dollars. A year and a half ago, the Bush administration pointed proudly [to] the Richmond Unified School District in northern California. Here was a model of choice in action, providing educational improvement without added dollars. And just look at Richmond shining new "System Choice"! It provided a series of "magnet schools," each offering a special curriculum.
But today these schools are all closing, six weeks before the scheduled time. There will have to be a special act of the California legislature if the students are to receive any credit at all for this school year. For, you see, the Richmond school system is bankrupt. It filed its legal notice on April 19. It had gone into the red over $60 million in the last three years, and had been operating on loans. Something like how certain savings and loans associations did it, with a similar crash in the end.
Without money, the talk of new programs is a fraud.
Taking from the poor
Actually, Bush's national education strategy does not simply fail to provide funds; it is even worse. It provides for stripping funds from struggling inner-city schools in the name of rewarding successful schools. Since the school budget isn't to be increased, the rewards for some schools will be taken from the funding for other schools.
And how will success be measured? There is to be a series of national standardized tests. Naturally the underfunded schools, the schools serving the disadvantaged, the schools with large numbers of students for whom English is a second language, and others will generally not show up too well on these tests -- even if the pupils in these schools are making excellent progress.
It is a major scandal that school funding differs radically from school district to district inside a single state. Rich districts provide two or three times the funding per student as the poorest districts. And this is despite the repeated willingness of poor districts to vote heavy tax rates, far heavier than those in the rich districts, to pay for the schools. When it comes to the poor districts, Bush tells them money doesn't make a difference. But when it comes to the rich districts, Bush declares that good schools should be rewarded -- financially, of course.
Real educational reform
Real concern for education requires funds for the schools. It means especially improving the funding of the schools in poor districts. Even school lunch and milk programs have been slashed, and successful programs like Head Start have never, to this day, received sufficient funds to cover all eligible children. And reform means ending the glaring disparities whereby workers and the poor pay sky-high taxes, much higher than rich districts, only to see their children attend schools with far less money per student.
Real educational reform requires involving the mass of working class and poor parents, and not just pouring money into the pockets of contractors and administrators. But the Bush strategy would leave things in the hands of the upper-class snobs who look down on the working masses and their children.
Real educational reform means involving the mass of students. It requires respect for students who speak other languages, and opposition to the growing racist atmosphere that oppresses the minorities. But the bilingual programs have been sliced to ribbons, and the "drug war" lock-em-up mentality means making schools into prisons.
Real educational reform requires a network of social programs for the poor and disadvantaged, but they are still being cut right and left by the wealthy classes and their representatives, Bush and Congress. And the education bills put forward by Bush and Congress are to be paid for by slashing funds from other social programs. Bush and Congress are not giving the schools a new deal, but are simply rearranging a losing hand.
The class struggle is not only apparent in the work place, but in the devastation of the schools. Unless the working class stands up for its rights, it will only see the further oppression of its youth. The money for education will continue to flow to the wealthy districts, and the schools for the working majority will have to make do with less and less. Instead of educating and inspiring the students, the schools will resort to bigger sticks to beat them, and more old-time chauvinism and bigotry to drug them with.
Bush has an educational strategy like the oil companies have an environmental policy -- enrich the wealthy classes and leave a big spreading blight to be dealt with by the working people. It is time that the working class has its own education strategy -- a mass struggle over school issues as well as against work place exploitation.
The economists are arguingover when the recession will end. And every day there's a new prediction. The figures for the first quarter of the year are in and they show the country in deeper crisis than at the end of last year. Still the Pollyannas of capitalism claim the worst is passing and that production will pick up next month, or maybe in the fall, or surely by the end of the year.
But the question that needs answering is when will the recession be over for the masses?
Nobody is saying unemployment will drop any time soon. A few decades ago 5% unemployment was called a depression but today it is called a boom.
Nobody is saying that wages will start to rise any time in the foreseeable future. Indeed, after accounting for inflation, weekly wages have been falling for 17 years and are now down nearly 20% from what they were in 1973.
And nobody is saying that the cutbacks are likely to stop quickly. Indeed, if the recession were to end tomorrow, some 28 states and over half the country's cities would still be facing budget deficits. And that's not to mention the huge federal deficit. Further cutbacks in social programs and rising taxes appear to be what's in store for the masses.
This recession is not only showing how sick the economy really is. It is also revealing that the society is split up into classes -- the workers and poor on the one side, the capitalists and rich on the other.
In the corporate board rooms and halls of Congress the debate on solving the crisis is kept within narrow confines. The bosses argue over how many plants to close and how many takebacks to grab to maintain a profit. The Republicans and Democrats debate how many welfare recipients to drive from the rolls to pay for education, or how many teachers to lay off to pay for health care, or how many hospitals to close to balance the budget. Oh yes, if the capitalists want a war for oil in the Middle East or to bail out the savings and loan corporations, well then the deficit doesn't matter, the costs are taken "off-budget." Either way, all that concerns them is -- how to save the system, how to make the masses pay?
But outside the factories and state houses, in the pickets and protests that are starting to break out, a new cry is being heard -- "Tax the rich! Make the capitalists pay for the crisis!" Here you find the factory workers, and the hospital employees, and the teachers, and the welfare recipients who, despite all their apparent differences, are starting to see they have something in common. Whether it is recession or recovery, boom or bust, they are all sinking. And how can they save themselves except by banding together and making common cause against the capitalists, against the rich, against the exploiters who prosper off the suffering of the masses.
When will the recession end for the masses? This can't be answered by the economists' charts and tables. It will only be settled by the class struggle. The sooner that is realized, the sooner individual grievances can be united into a class-wide battle. A battle that can actually defend the interests of the working masses, that can make the capitalists pay.
[Photo: City U. of New York students fighting against cutbacks - story on page 6]
Bush has sent nearly 10,000 troops to northern Iraq to set up camps for Kurdish refugees. Liberals are praising Bush for his compassion and humanity. The media are showing U.S. troops giving candy to children and providing aid to refugees. Why, you'd think that the Pentagon has become an organization of social workers, and that George Bush is the biggest humanitarian in the world today. Is the Nobel Peace Prize just around the corner for him?
What hypocrisy! What playacting! Some crates of food and medicine will not wash away the stain of the U.S. government's crimes against the people of Iraq, including the Kurdish people.
Bush and Saddam are both the butchers of Iraq
Many a time during the Persian Gulf crisis and war, Bush said that his beef was against Saddam, not the Iraqi people. And how has that turned out? Saddam Hussein's dictatorial regime is very much in place in Iraq, while it is the Iraqi people who have suffered -- both at the hands of Saddam's adventure in Kuwait and Bush's Operation "Desert Massacre."
As a result of the Pentagon's wanton bombing, a whole country's infrastructure stands devastated. Electricity, water supply, and sewage plants were attacked under the lie of destroying military targets. Hunger and epidemic are following in the wake of the ruin.
Some 100,000 Iraqi soldiers, mostly poor draftees in the Iraqi army, were the ones who got killed. Many were massacred in the Pentagon's celebrated "turkey shoot" as they tried to retreat in the final days of the ground war. Several thousand civilians were also killed by the U.S. bombing.
The Iraqi Kurds and Shiites took advantage of the Iraqi military's defeat to rise up in rebellion. Their grievances were quite just, and they did not need U.S. encouragement to rise. But the U.S. was not above playing a cynical game of power politics with the rebels. At first, there were hints of support, but when the rebels were winning, George Bush winked at their suppression by Saddam. He had concluded that Saddam was preferable to a rebel victory. Although Bush had called for Saddam's overthrow, he had never wanted a popular uprising against Saddam to win. He had merely wanted Saddam's place to be taken by someone from within his regime, Saddam II.
The Iraqi civil war has now seen Saddam's crackdown which has unleashed a flood of refugees into neighboring Iran and Turkey. Thousands of people have died in their flight.
As the Kurdish refugee tragedy built, the U.S. government played deaf. At first, they even hesitated to provide relief supplies. Then they shed a few crocodile tears, dropped a few crates (killing some refugees that way), and were going to leave it at that. But as the crisis built, and the "great U.S. victory" was becoming tarnished, that policy proved untenable. Now Bush the humanitarian has stepped forth.
Are we to believe that Bush the organizer of so much grief in Iraq has now become a friend of the people? Hell no.
What will the refugee camps that U.S. troops are setting up amount to? Yes, a few people may go there and get some food and medical aid. But the camps will be nothing but miserable tent cities. The U.S. has also promised to make sure that the camps do not become "bases for terrorism" -- in other words, Kurdish guerrilla fighters will be kept under control.
Why is Bush setting up these camps?
The main reason is obscured by the U.S. media. This is the fact that the U.S. government's close ally, the right-wing Turkish government, refuses to let Kurdish refugees down from the mountains into the lowlands. The Turkish rulers are afraid to let the Iraqi and Turkish Kurds mingle with one another.
Moreover, Bush's plan of the "Pentagon as refugee relief' allows him a chance to regain standing among the Kurds. Kurdish refugees had been expressing bitter complaints over the cynical playing with their struggle. Now some candy and tents are to make up.
And as well, the latest intervention serves to keep an occupation force in Iraq. This increases Saddam's political difficulties inside his regime. The U.S. government has not given up the hope of squeezing him out through a military coup.
A war of big and small profit-makers against the working people
The U.S. government is no friend of the Iraqi or Kurdish people. It is out for its imperialist aims. Its war with Saddam was to regain Kuwait for the decadent emir, to safeguard the profits of Big Oil, and to cut down Saddam's regional ambitions. There was nothing the least bit noble or just in this war. For defending oil profits and empire, U.S. imperialism was willing to exercise its high-tech weaponry, massacre so many human lives, and destroy a country.
There was no justice in Saddam's side either. He invaded Kuwait and took his people into a military adventure to get a bigger share of oil profits and expand his control over the region.
Bush and Saddam created this tragedy. And they have both kept at it. The war was a war over capitalist ambitions. But this war should teach the world's people many important lessons. None of the contending powers are friends of the working people. Not the U.S., Western Europe, Russia or China. Not the United Nations. Not the Arab governments. They are all in the control of the lords of wealth, and it is the working people who pay for their squabbles.
We, the working people, will have to make our own world, through our own struggle, against imperialism and all tyrants and oppressors.
(See page [5] for other articles on U.S. policy and the Kurdish struggle.)
[Photo: 5,000 march against racist LAPD chief Gates, April 6]
5,000 angry demonstrators marched on the Los Angeles police headquarters on April 6. Shouting "Gates must go!" and at times "They all must go!" the protesters displayed pictures of victims of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). And they told stories of countless racist murders and beatings at the hands of the cops. At one point a group of 100 demonstrators, shouting "No more Gates," marched up to confront about two dozen cops at the front door of the headquarters. After a tense moment the confrontation evaporated.
This was the largest yet of the weekly pickets at police headquarters since the cops were caught on video tape viciously beating Rodney King. Since April 6, protests have continued. On April 20, about 130 people picketed the headquarters. A number joined with MLP supporters to shout "Gates must go! The racist system must go! Capitalism must go!" The same day about 80 protesters rallied at a park in the black community in southwest Los Angeles. Another major march through downtown L.A. has been called for May 11.
The protesters' anger has centered on Police Chief Gates. He attempted to cover up the brutal beating of Rodney King and then to dismiss it as an "aberration." But the fact that about 33% of the L.A. police force have had formal complaints filed against them in the last two years is an indication that this was no isolated incident. Gates, who has been defended by George Bush, runs one of the most brutal and racist police forces in the country.
The demonstrators are also denouncing the City Council which has been backing Gates to the hilt.
On April 4, after Democratic Mayor Bradley called for Gates to resign, the civilian Police Commission appointed by Bradley temporarily suspended the police chief. They made no charges, or even criticisms, of the police chief. They merely gave him a 60-day paid leave to allow time to calm down the anger of the masses. Mayor Bradley, who has never done a thing to stop the long-term racist police brutality, is now posturing in the hope he can quiet the masses without making basic changes in the police department.
But the next day the City Council, which is controlled by the Democratic Party, overruled the suspension by a 10 to 3 vote. And on April 8 he was reinstated by a judge pending a later hearing on the dispute between the Council and the Police Commission. Anti-racist activists were outraged by this move and have been pouring out their anger especially against the liberal Democrats who voted to reinstate Gates.
Unfortunately, the respectable black leaders of the protest movement have not encouraged the anger with the Democrats into an independent movement. Instead, like Bradley, they promote getting rid of Gates as if that were a panacea to end racist police brutality. As one NAACP leader from the San Fernando Valley put it, "We are not opposed to police, only bad police officers...The unfortunate part of all this is that the LAPD, by and large, is a good police department." But isn't this exactly what Gates himself has been arguing? No, it's not just a few bad apples. The police are organized and trained as a force to suppress the minorities, and for that matter all the working masses, who are growing more restive against the growing unemployment, poverty, and homelessness.
At the same time, the respectable black leaders are trying to channel the mass protest into a tame election movement. Jesse Jackson, at the April 6 rally, declared, "While we've got all this energy on Gates, suppose he leaves tomorrow, then what?...Next is, elect city officials who respect you." Jackson and the other leaders are not really interested in building up a militant anti-racist movement, which alone can fight back against the police terror. Instead, they are using the mass anger to elect some more Democrats.
In Los Angeles we are seeing the Democratic Party game in action. One wing postures against racist police violence. But only to soften up the masses to vote for Democrats who, in their other wing, are openly and vehemently siding with the racist police. The truth is that the Democrats are a racist party of the capitalists, just like the Republicans. The more their influence is combated, the more the movement against the racist police will grow and become strong.
75 black teen-agers marched on the headquarters of Teaneck, New Jersey police on April 16. Frightened, police in riot helmets and with raised nightsticks were rushed to the front door. The youth denounced the racist cops. And the windshield of a police car was smashed as the youth marched away.
This was the first anniversary since the police shot in the back and killed a black teen-ager, Phillip C. Panell. The night after that murder, rioting youth attacked the police station and threw rocks though windows of municipal buildings.
Shouting "L.A., Chicago, New York City, racist cops deserve no pity!" and "Daley and Burge must be purged!" 200 people rallied at the 9th District police station Chicago on April 27. Commander Jon Burge, notorious for using police torture against prisoners, now heads this station. The protesters then marched to the site of a recent racist gang attack and then on Mayor Daley's house.
In 1990 alone, 2,500 formal complaints against the police were filed in Chicago. Torture and brutality of blacks by the Chicago Police Department is well documented by Amnesty International, by doctors and by the victims themselves. Police Commander Jon Burge and many others have been identified as using electroshock and "dry submarino" torture techniques against their victims.
But Chicago's Democratic Mayor Daley -- confronted with evidence of torture as far back as 1982 when he was Cook County State's Attorney -- has continually refused to investigate the atrocities. He has also commended Commander Burge and allowed him to rise to the rank of Commander of Detectives.
Although a large majority of the black people opposed the Persian Gulf war, most of the respectable black leaders avoided anti-war protests like Dracula avoids the cross. And the few who did come out wrapped themselves in yellow ribbons and talked more of "supporting our troops" than of opposing the U.S. war.
Have you ever wondered why? Well, some answers are not hard to find. It turns out that by cheering Bush on they put in their bid to grab lucrative contracts in the Kuwait reconstruction project.
This was made clear in a special appeal to Bush in April by John E. Jacob, president and chief executive of the National Urban League. He said, "The National Urban League was forthright in its support of the allied effort to roll back aggression. We knew the risks of casualties to our constituents in the armed forces were great, but we felt those risks were justified...." He continued, "Given the sacrifices minorities have made...it is only fair that special efforts be made to reach out to include minority-owned and operated businesses in sharing the rewards of peace." (Pittsburgh Courier, April 13)
So, while unabashedly admitting support for Bush's' bloody war for oil, Mr. Jacob also admits the black elite have been licking their chops in expectation of profits from the spoils of war.
Such is the nature of the respectable black leaders. They really represent the black elite, not the masses. They loyally stand with U.S. imperialism in order to get a piece of the action from the white ruling class. But more. Jacob admits that they have no qualms about sacrificing the lives and limbs of the black working people, who populate the military. They are quite willing to trade blood for profit.
[Graphic.]
On April 18, more than 21,000 school teachers in the state of Washington went on strike to demand that the state legislature provide more money for quality schools.
The strike has closed schools in Seattle, Tacoma and other urban and rural schools west of the Cascades. Every day since the strike began, thousands of teachers have picketed the state capitol to press the lawmakers to act.
Governor Booth Gardner and the legislative leaders cry that there is no more money for education and that any increase must come from higher property taxes or cuts in social services. The teachers are not buying this lie. For years, the state has granted corporations major tax breaks. For example, Boeing aircraft, which reaps billions in profits, is exempt from paying sales taxes whereas citizens in Washington must pay a 7% sales tax.
A recent study by the research group Citizens for Tax Justice found that the poorest 20% of Washington residents pay 17.4% of their income in taxes and the middle 20% pay 9.5% But the richest 1% pay only 3.4%. This gap between what the rich and poor pay is bigger than in any other state in the USA. The teachers are demanding that the rich and the corporations pay their fair share.
The teachers were forced to take action after many years of chronic state underfunding of education. The teachers are fed up with overcrowded classrooms, deteriorating school buildings, inadequate supplies, outdated textbooks, and noncompetitive salaries.
Working with lightening speed, Congress ordered an end to the national railway strike just 18 hours after it had started. In the early morning hours of April 18, Democrats and Republicans joined hands to enact the back-to-work measure. President Bush was awakened to sign it, and 235,000 rail workers were forced to end their strike action.
The rail company executives did not immediately get everything they wanted. They had asked Congress to impose a contract based upon the findings of the Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) -- a report which would have cut wages and benefits and gutted work rules. However, the congressional measure sets up a new emergency board of three people (one from the previous PEB and two others handpicked by Bush) to examine the issues. At the end of 65 days, if no agreement between the sides has been reached, the board will impose its own settlement. There is little chance it will be better than the last one.
The railway workers have the potential power to bring the country's economy to a grinding halt. But this would require defying Congress and carrying out an illegal strike. The union leaders, long housebroken from hob-nobbing with the rich, would never consider it. And so the workers are left to suffer the dictates of a congressional board that is virtually in the hip pocket of the railway capitalists.
More than 6,000 workers struck 31 Giant Eagle grocery stores in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on April 22. The workers are demanding increased wages, improved benefits, and job security.
Over half of the Giant Eagle workers make only $4.30 an hour. Only 40% of them receive any benefits at all, and only 20% have health benefits. The company has been hiring most of its workers on a part-time basis so as to avoid having to pay benefits guaranteed full-time workers.
The food chain has a virtual monopoly in the city of Pittsburgh. The company reported profits of over $1 billion in 1990 alone. However, it refused to restore past takebacks from the workers and demanded more. The company is also well known for closing down stores and then reopening them a few weeks later as nonunion "independently owned" franchises. There are 43 such stores operated by franchise owners. It appears the company now wants to smash the union altogether.
Full-page ads have been run in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for replacement workers. Apparently these large ads must have been prepared while Giant Eagle was supposedly "bargaining" with the workers. The company never had any intention of negotiating a settlement.
But the strikers are getting support from workers throughout the city. The company has been forced to cut some store hours and is starting to hurt for business.
The Office of Workers' Compensation (OWCP) in Cleveland, Ohio received a big surprise March 11 when two carloads of postal workers from Detroit walked in and demanded some action on their cases.
Extreme financial difficulties and loss of work time are resulting from the runaround that workers get from both the government office and the Postal Service's Injury Compensation office. So the IHPWU (Injured and Handicapped Postal Workers United) organized the caravan.
Big advances were made in some compensation cases because of the trip. OWCP routinely delays ruling on workers' cases, not even following its own deadlines. And their telephone number connects you to a computer. So you are left with the tedious procedure of resolving your case by mail.
IHPWU is planning more such trips.
(Taken from April 1 "Bulletin"of the IHPWU.)
Over 30,000 building workers struck 4,000 apartment buildings in New York City and part of Long Island on April 21. Picket lines were immediately set up at rental, co-op and condominium buildings by doormen, porters, elevator operators and concierges.
The building owners are represented by the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations (RAB). It is demanding 29 separate givebacks from the workers. Among other things, it wants to force workers to pay part of their health care benefits, change some full-time workers to part-time, cut wages, and not allow workers to take consecutive days off.
On April 24, independent settlements were reached at more than 100 buildings. But the RAB refuses to restart negotiations with the remaining strikers, so the struggle continues.
Members of several unions and many tenants have expressed solidarity with the striking building workers. City sanitation workers and United Parcel Service workers have said they will not cross the strikers' picket lines.
More than 4,000 Montana state employees went on strike April 25 after the state legislature failed to override the governor's veto of a pay increase. In the capital, Helena, strikers picketed outside a state office building. The National Guard has been called in to maintain essential services.
Workers at the GM assembly plant in Van Nuys, California are angry. For years GM has threatened to close the plant in order to blackmail concessions out of the workers. But despite concessions, GM never would guarantee the plant would be kept open. Now it looks to be on the road to closing.
On March 28, second shift was eliminated from the plant. GM has not announced how long first shift will continue to work. Demanding "Keep GM Van Nuys Open," more than 30 auto workers rallied the last day of second shift to protest the gradual closing of the plant.
Every day events show the dirty nature of the Gulf War. One day it is revelations concerning the arrest, torture, and killings of Palestinians, Kurds, and others in "liberated" Kuwait. And the next it is U.S. imperialism's tacit OK to Hussein to suppress the angry Iraqi people. These events show that Bush's war was not for freedom, nor was it a war of liberation. It was simply a war to ensure imperialism's preferred division of the oil profits and the proper relations between master and client in the U.S. empire.
In April, a number of protests against the war continued; Throughout the month GI dissenters had to stand up against courts martial and other persecution by the Pentagon. (See other articles.) As well, on April 6 small protests took place at a number of cities around the country.
Other actions also took place. Notable was a Chicago rally on April 25 that defended the Kurdish struggle. The Kurdish issue has dominated recent news on the aftermath of the war, and it is vital that anti-war activists put forward their own perspective and support the rebellious people of the Persian Gulf, such as the Kurdish movement. Opposition to the war does not require skepticism towards the rebellions against Hussein. The activists should back the people suffering from both U.S. devastation and Hussein's tyranny. Fifty people showed up to demand self-determination for the Kurds. Over half also marched on State Street, shouting "Bush, Hussein, you should know, we support your overthrow!" and "U.S. imperialism, get out of the Middle East!"
Since the end of the ground war, the movement has dropped dramatically in size. But the experience of this struggle hasn't evaporated. Many people entered the protest movement during the war. They are pondering why the war ended as it did and what this shows about finding a solid basis to oppose U.S. empire-building.
The course of the war brought forward many lessons about the nature of the system. Particularly hated, for example, was the capitalist press, which showed that it does not stand for truth or objective reporting, but for boot-licking service to the powers-that-be. As well, the UN, Congress, and the Democratic Party also showed themselves to be no alternative to war, but instruments of imperialism. But still the apologists of the Democratic Party would have us believe that they came within a few votes of having Congress block the war. The "support our troops" slogan was shown to be a trap and a snare. Yet still the liberal wing of the movement would bring it forward, in a futile search to avoid confrontation by pacifying the militarists with a show of softness and supposed common concerns. And the very role of militant struggle has been debated, with the worshippers of the politicians hot and bothered by the desire of the masses for action against the war.
The new wave of protesters is not going to disappear. In a number of circles, there is talk of staying in action by going into other movements and taking up other issues. And the difference between militant struggle and faith in the establishment, the difference between confronting the oppressors and faith in appeals to the smiling, two-faced politicians of exploitation, will continue to develop. The war has brought not only devastation and misery, it has woken up many to the need for struggle.
The U.S. bloodbath in the Gulf gave rise to numerous acts of anti-war resistance within the ranks of the ordinary soldiers. A number of GIs refused orders to be shipped to the Middle East, spoke out against the war, or became active participants in anti-war demonstrations. Thousands of others applied for conscientious objector status or other forms of discharge from the military.
Today, while the Pentagon has parades and medals for massacring fleeing Iraqi troops and bombing defenseless civilians, they are persecuting brave GI war resisters with a vengeance. This has further exploded the fraud that pro-war and anti-war forces could be united under the same banner of "support our troops." Some liberal politicians attempted to suck ordinary people into the yellow ribbon campaign with the claim that one should "support the troops" no matter what one thought about the war. But has the yellow ribbon crowd rushed in to provide comfort and support for the troops who opposed the war? Have they paraded them, organized letter writing campaigns to uphold their morale while they are in the military brigs and stockades, and opposed their courts-martial? Of course not.
No, the warmongers have never supported the rank-and-file soldiers without first distinguishing what stand they had towards the war. For the capitalist rulers, the armed forces are merely their whip to keep the world safe for plunder and profit. They want the soldiers to be mere killing machines to defend Big Oil in the Gulf. It was the fight against the war that truly represented the interests of the sons and daughters of the working people caught in the army. One could not help the rank-and-file soldier without taking a stand against this war of aggression. Let us step up the fight in defense of the GI resisters who risked military "justice" to do the right thing.
With the massacre of Iraqis over, the U.S. military is unleashing its wrath on the soldiers and sailors who refused to be used as killing machines for Bush's "new world order." Dozens have already been sentenced, and many more face courts-martial. At Camp Pendleton alone, a Marine base in California, about 100 GI resisters have been thrown in the brig awaiting trial.
Among the anti-war GI's is Tahan Jones. Jones, a black Marine reservist, applied for conscientious objector status in October 1990 and went AWOL rather than be shipped to Saudi Arabia. He has been a vocal critic of the war, and denounced the hypocrisy of forcing blacks to risk death for a country that subjected them to discrimination.
Jones also denounced the racism of the Marine investigators who dealt with his request for CO status. The captain who interviewed Jones wrote that Jones was "incapable of articulating any discernible thought" on his anti-war views and must have got "coaching" in order to write his request for CO status. Jones sees this assessment as a racial stereotype. It can be noted that Jones has articulated his views quite clearly at anti-war actions.
The Marines are intent on saddling Jones with their charges of "unauthorized absence," "desertion" and "missing a troops movement." Jones plans to turn himself in to fight the charges.
Meanwhile, stiff sentences are being served by other GI war resisters. Ellenora Johnson, an army medical clerk, got three months hard labor for refusing to go to the Gulf. Marine Corporal Erik Hayes was arrested while sleeping in his university dormitory and has now been sentenced to eight months in the brig. Marine resister Greg Dawson got nine months.
About two dozen Marine Corps reservists are being held at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, with trials scheduled for mid-April. They face charges such as unauthorized absence, missing movement, and desertion. The Marine Corps has tried to wear them down with threats, with night-time extra duty that breaks up their sleep, by offering lenient treatment if one signs statements against other resisters, and by a harsh solitary confinement of two resisters in tiny cubicles. Harsher treatment is handed out to those who have spoken to the press. Yet some reservists continue to speak out.
The military has even gone after GI spouses. One case involves an anti-war woman, Annette G, living with her GI husband in Germany. After her husband was stationed in the Gulf, military police searched her apartment and threatened to expel her from Germany for her views and make trouble for her husband.
The military brass is trying to stifle the GI resistance. In so doing, it is further revealing itself that the new volunteer army that devastated Iraq is just as brutal and oppressive towards any rank-and-file soldier with honor or an independent mind as the old conscript army that devastated Vietnam.
[Photo: 1,500 demonstrated against war and racism in San Francisco, April 6]
At the end of March, the Navy ordered the court-martial of Abdul H. Shaheed and James Moss, two sailors who opposed the Gulf war. Moss had applied for conscientious objector status, and Shaheed has stated he wanted a peaceful solution to the conflict. They are now being accused of "urging disloyalty, mutiny or refusal for duty" with respect to sabotage and a prospective kidnapping of the captain of the U.S.S. Ranger while the two were serving aboard this aircraft carrier during the war. These charges could bring sentences of up to ten years.
If these sailors had in fact been organizing a mass anti-war movement among their fellow sailors on the Ranger, it would have been a praiseworthy act. But it appears that the particular Navy accusations are just a ruse to go after Shaheed and Moss because they hated the war. The Navy has admitted that "there was no overt act involved, no destruction of any equipment," so the basic issue is that the sailors made statements the Navy didn't like.
Meanwhile, the sailors, both of whom are black and Muslim, contend they are victims of hysteria against their religion. Indeed, the Navy's charges reek of bigotry. According to the Navy, the two sailors were supposedly inspired by Saddam Hussein's call for a "holy war" against the U.S. If the Navy has to rely on linking the sailors with Hussein on the basis of religious affiliation, this not only shows bigotry but that the Navy must not have much real evidence.
The Iraqi Kurds waged a valiant struggle against Saddam Hussein's military machine. For a few brief weeks, they had a taste of freedom. But in the end, they were not able to stand up to Saddam's counter-assault. Saddam was also helped to some extent by the U.S. government, which had concluded that his continued rule was preferable to victory by the armed rebellion. Over a million Kurds fled their homes fearing the terror of the Iraqi military. The conditions of the refugees are miserable.
At the end of April, leaders of the Kurdish resistance in Iraq arrived at an agreement with Saddam Hussein. They had been asked to go to Baghdad for talks. It is not yet clear what the agreement will fully amount to. But it appears to promise some type of autonomy for the Kurds in exchange for an end to the armed resistance. The agreement could open the way to the return of the refugees back to their homes.
The details of the agreement are still to be worked out, but it appears it was a compromise between two forces who are both in a difficult position.
The Kurdish resistance was not able to defeat Saddam's military. They had won some spectacular victories briefly but it was not enough to stave off the Iraqi forces. A large part of the Kurdish population was uprooted from their homes as the rebellion was defeated. It was not that promising to have millions of their people languishing in refugee camps, behind barbed wire patrolled by foreign soldiers.
Meanwhile, Saddam appears to also be interested in a compromise. Despite his military victory against the Kurds, all he could look forward to was another dragged-out insurgency in Kurdistan. And the refugee crisis allowed the U.S. a pretext to occupy a whole section of northern Iraq. Meanwhile, he is desperate to have the economic sanctions lifted, so that oil can be exported again for Iraq's devastated economy.
The agreement is thus the result of two forces who could not fully defeat each other. Given that their backs were against the wall, it is understandable that the Kurdish resistance had to make a deal.
But a truce in the struggle is one thing. It would be quite another to fall for the illusion that Saddam will keep his promise of autonomy for the Kurds. Once the situation is stabilized, the Kurds cannot expect any agreement to last.
The Ba'ath regime has made promises before, only to betray them later. And the Kurdish people have paid a bitter price for their leaders putting too much store in Baghdad's promises. Thus many Kurds are right to question why, even if they had to make a difficult deal, the leaders like Jalal Talabani had to go on and embrace Saddam Hussein.
History has shown many times over that Kurdish rights will not come through the goodwill of any of the capitalist leaders of Turkey, Iraq or Iran. Nor will it come from hopes in U.S. and Western imperialism (see adjoining article).
Jalal Talabani and his fellow Kurdish leaders in Iraq may fall for illusions in Baghdad, just as some of them hoped for help from Bush, because they are based on certain classes -- the Kurdish bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. The leaders from this strata have led various rounds of struggle, but they repeatedly fall for the idea that Kurdish rights will come through the goodwill of this or that established power.
This perspective is not the path for freedom for the Kurdish people. The vast majority of the Kurds are toilers: peasants and workers. They provide the backbone of the courageous peshmargas. They need a revolutionary policy that will not only win Kurdish national rights but also bring them out of capitalist and landlord oppression. The leaders of the Kurdish resistance like Talabani or Barzani may fight for national rights, but they do not want the liberation of the toilers.
The liberation of the Kurdish toilers will come only through a policy which is linked to the fate of the rest of the toilers in the countries in which they are fighting. Revolutionary Iran of 1978-79 is a case in point. There the Iranian Kurds won a springtime of freedom as they rose in revolution against the Shah, alongside the rest of the Iranian people. They were not able to preserve their gains in the face of Khomeini's onslaught, but Iranian Kurdish revolutionaries did build up ties with communist workers across Iran. The Kurdish organization Komala, who represented the toilers of Iranian Kurdistan, joined together with other Iranian communists to build the Communist Party of Iran. Through the harsh years of reaction in the 1980's, they have assisted communist workers in the underground throughout Iran to build up a movement against the Islamic Republic. This work has ploughed the ground for another revolutionary upheaval in Iran, and if the toilers can bring such a revolution about, that would be the best guarantee of liberation for the toilers and people of Iranian Kurdistan.
It is the same road which could open the way to Kurdish liberation in Turkey and Iraq. The fate of Kurdish rights is inextricably linked to development of the toilers' struggle in all these countries.
[Photo: Kurdish peshmargas prepare for battle against Saddam's army]
The defeated Kurdish rebellion in Iraq today is just the latest tragedy for the Kurdish people.
The Kurds are a distinct nationality of people, some 20 million in number, who are split up across several states: Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Soviet Union. Most of them live in Turkey, Iraq and Iran, where they face harsh national oppression. In Turkey, they are not even allowed to call themselves Kurds. In Iraq, they have repeatedly faced Saddam Hussein's genocidal assaults. And in Iran, the Islamic Republic has taken away the rights the Kurds won there after rising in rebellion against the Shah.
In all these countries, Kurds have been fighting for their right of self-determination. They have demanded autonomy within the borders of the states they live in, but the reply of the governments has been terror and martial law. Still, the Kurds have persisted with their courageous struggle, through many rounds of torture and massacres.
Their fight for liberation goes back many decades. The struggle has been shouldered by ordinary toilers, but, with a few notable exceptions, their leadership has been in the hands of bourgeois and landlords. These leaders have repeatedly fallen for promises of help by world imperialism or this or that big power -- only to be cynically and cruelly betrayed in a short time.
George Bush's latest cynical playing with the Kurds is part of a long and shameful history by Western imperialism. It brings home the lesson once again, written in rivers of blood, that the fight for Kurdish freedom cannot be based on aid from imperialism.
British imperialism bombed the Kurds
Before World War I, much of Kurdistan was part of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. Turkey was on the losing side in that imperialist war, and after the war, when imperialism was carving up the Ottoman Empire, Britain and the U.S. made the Kurds of Iraq the promise of a national state.
But Mosul province, which was Kurdish, was rich in oil. And the British were not about to give up control of this province, even to an independent Kurdish state which they might have dominated. So they kept it attached to Iraq which was under their control. The Kurds of Mosul, along with other people in Iraq, did not like the British colonial presence; so they rose in armed rebellion.
The answer of the British government was to bomb the Kurds, with explosives and mustard gas. They destroyed whole villages.
A brief taste of freedom at the end of World War II
In 1946, the Kurds in Iran established the Mahabad Democratic Republic. But this could not last long. Britain and the U.S., who were busy propping up the Shah's despotic regime in oil-rich Iran, demanded its dissolution. The Soviet leadership, which had given the Kurdish republic some support, complied in order to make peace with Western imperialism. The Shah's army put down the Kurds. The Kurdish people had again been sold out.
Nixon and Kissinger double deal with the Kurds
In 1973, Nixon and Kissinger had the CIA, via the Shah of Iran, provide some covert aid to rebellious Iraqi Kurds. The U.S. and the Shah wanted to put pressure on the Ba'ath regime in Iraq. When the Iraqi government granted the Shah's border claims in 1975, the Kurds were dumped. Before the ink was dry on that deal, the Iraqi regime went in to massacre the Kurds.
Even before this betrayal, the U.S. government had never intended to help the Kurds wage any type of winning battle. The 1976 Pike Commission in Congress found that "Documents... clearly show that the President, Dr. Kissinger and the foreign head of state [the Shah] hoped that our clients [the Kurds] would not prevail. They preferred instead that the insurgents simply continue a level of hostilities sufficient to sap the resources of our ally's [Iran] neighboring country [Iraq]. This policy was not imparted to our clients, who were encouraged to continue fighting." (Nation, May 6, 1991)
And after the Iraqi counteroffensive created a flight of refugees, the U.S. would not even consider providing relief aid to them. As Kissinger is reported to have told Congress, "covert action should not be confused with missionary work."
Backing Saddam in 1988 during his poison-gas attacks
In the early 1980's, during his war with Iran, Saddam Hussein had promised the Iraqi Kurds some measure of autonomy. But he tore up that promise, and the Kurds organized a widespread guerrilla struggle. Saddam's answer was a scorched-earth policy of destroying whole Kurdish villages and towns. In 1988, he used poison gas on Kurds, killing thousands in Halabja.
And what did the U.S. government do? It would not even condemn Saddam Hussein's crime. It pleaded ignorance. And why? Because Washington was backing Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran. Of course later, during the recent war, it would "remember" Saddam's poison-gas crimes, but then it suited its war propaganda!
These are just some of the worst crimes of imperialism against the Kurds. There is much more, including support for the Shah's oppression against Iranian Kurds and the ongoing backing of the Turkish regime, which is one of the worst oppressors of the Kurds.
Shame on imperialism for this long history of oppression and betrayal!
Students in the City University in New York (CUNY) are on the move against tuition hikes and budget cutbacks.
On April 8, students at City College took over the large North Academic Center. Eventually they occupied three additional buildings. And over the next two weeks, sit-ins spread to 11 of the 21 CUNY campuses. The schools were forced to close, or partially shut down, and 52,000 students were out of their classes. As well, solidarity actions took place at two nearby State University campuses, where the students face similar hikes.
On April 24, over 5,000 CUNY students from all campuses demonstrated in the pouring rain. They denounced the cutbacks and tuition hikes and called for taxing the rich. Marching past Governor Cuomo's NYC office, they raised militant slogans against this erstwhile "friend of the people."
The next day the crackdown began. Security guards forced protesting students out of one administration building. And facing threats of flunking out and police repression, students gave up their occupations on two other campuses. Over the next two days, predawn raids by over 300 city police drove protesters out of several more campuses. At least 30 students were arrested.
But the students have not given up the struggle. On April 30 they will join with public employees, health care workers, and people from the communities for a city-wide action against the cutbacks.
The students are fighting Governor Cuomo's proposed $500 per year tuition increase and a $400 per award cut in Tuition Assistance for low-income students. As well, Cuomo plans a $92 million cut in the CUNY budget which means layoffs of faculty and staff, eliminating courses and cutting heavily into the remedial programs required for many of the students coming out of the substandard NYC high schools. The tuition increase -jyould come on top of a $200 a year rise that took effect this spring.
Cuomo and co. say there is no money to pay for education. But this is just not true. Cuomo has found plenty of money to build prisons and maintain the police forces. At the same time, he has been rolling back state taxes on the capitalist corporations and the wealthy. Why doesn't he tax the rich to pay for the budget crisis? The governor can't answer and simply refused to speak to the protesting students.
Meanwhile, Mayor Dinkins has struck a pose of disagreeing with the CUNY tuition hike and asking Cuomo to reconsider. But he himself has proposed a budget which will mean the layoff of thousands of school teachers, effectively crippling the already lame system of public education in NYC. He has also dropped funding for NYCTC, an important CUNY technical school, from the city budget. And he is as adamant as Cuomo against any further taxes for the big corporations or the high income brackets. What he did was institute a special tax on homeowners, but only to beef up the police. And his reasons are all too clear. While initially saying police should only be used as a last resort against the protesting students, he apparently changed his mind and agreed to the police repression called for by CUNY Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds.
This shows that the state and city governments, with the backing of the CUNY administration, are determined to ram these budget cuts and tuition increases down the throats of City University students. That is all the more reason for the students to stand firm in their protests, and to link up with the growing groundswell against cutbacks on all fronts.
(Taken in part from April 13 "New York Workers' Voice,''paper of MLP-New York.)
[Photo: Striking at City College]
[Photo: Bronx Community College students march]
According to recent surveys, some 28 states and over half the nation's cities are in budget crisis. The deficits total over $44 billion and are still rising. Planned layoffs now exceed 50,000 state and local workers. Budget slashing is hitting virtually all programs except for prisons and police. And a new wave of tax increases generally targets the working masses through user fees, sales taxes, and regressive assessments.
The budget crises are hitting working people hard. They are also deepening the general capitalist recession.
According to the April 22 issue ofBusiness Week,state and local spending helped overcome past recessions. Outlays by state and local governments, adjusted for inflation, actually rose by an average5%during past recessions. This was mainly because rising federal grants offset sagging tax revenues.
But this time around federal aid is being cut back and real spending is headed down. It is estimated the cuts in state and local spending will subtract as much as $10 billion from growth in the Gross National Product in this year alone. Instead of relieving the crisis, state and local budget cuts are adding fuel to the fire.
10,000 denounce education cuts in California
Over 10,000 students, teachers, and parents rallied in Sacramento, California April 3 to protest the plan to cut $2 billion from state public education. Some 10,000 California teachers have already received pink slips.
Governor Pete Wilson is trying to fix the $13 billion state deficit by gutting education, welfare, health care and other social programs. At the same time, he is proposing to increase sales taxes and to suspend collective bargaining rights for many teachers, whom he calls a "special interest." However, Wilson has rejected raising income tax rates for the wealthy or imposing business taxes.
Unfortunately, union leaders are not putting up much of a fight against the cuts or taxes on the poor. In Los Angeles, for example, leaders of the teachers union have even refused to call mass meetings for fear they would get out of control. Yet rank-and-file teachers and workers have begun to organize and call for mass struggle. Independent action is what is needed to build up the movement against the cuts.
20,000 state workers march against Massachusetts cuts
The cry of "No layoffs! No furloughs! Make the rich pay!" was heard in Boston April 13 as some 20,000 state and municipal workers rallied against the Massachusetts budget cuts. They were protesting the recent round of cutbacks by Governor Weld which include two to three week furloughs, pay freezes, increased payment for health care, layoffs, and social service cuts.
Protesters marched to the State House along the "Weld Walk of Devastation" which included 13 stops around Boston Commons at various social service and government agencies that have endured cuts. They also protested at law firms and lobby groups who have fought higher business taxes.
The Marxist-Leninist Party joined with a militant contingent of hospital workers and encouraged slogans like: "They say cutback, we say strike back!" "Republicans, Democrats, no more cuts!" "Tax the rich, not the poor, no more cuts!" The big MLP banner read "No Cutbacks, No Furloughs, No Layoffs, No Wage and Benefit Cuts, MAKE THE RICH PAY!"
Over 2,000 copies of the April 9 issue of theBoston Workerwere grabbed up by protesters.
The masses were angry and not willing to put up with the usual empty promises from the capitalist politicians. When Boston Mayor Ray Flynn rose to speak, he was booed. And most people left the rally site rather than listen to the politicians and union bureaucrats.
TheBoston Workerpointed out, "The fight against cutbacks will not be won with one demonstration. And it will not be won by putting our faith in Democratic 'friends of labor' as our union leaders so often tell us. These so-called 'friends of labor' have gone along with every cut in domestic programs of Reagan and Bush. They passed the tax breaks for the wealthy. When Weld said 'Furlough the state workers!' the Democrats said 'Make them work without pay.' The squabbles between Weld and the Democratic-controlled legislature are only minor points. The attack on the working people is a bipartisan policy... Workers, the fight against cutbacks is a class battle. It can only be won if we learn to fight independently of all the politicians of the rich. We must rely on our own strength, our own mass actions, our own organization."
Layoffs are mounting. Poverty is spreading like a plague. And many people are turning to their last refuge -- the welfare programs. But all too often they are finding that they cannot get into the programs. And, even if they do, the benefits have been slashed to starvation levels.
In January, for example, the AFDC (Aid for Families of Dependent Children) caseload grew to a record 4.26 million families. That is about 12 million individuals, two-thirds of them children. But if inflation is taken into account, AFDC and food stamps benefits together have fallen by about 25% in the last twenty years. In some states you have to be suffering at 70% below the official poverty line to receive welfare. And then what you get will hardly feed you.
Still, this year, AFDC and other welfare programs have become the favorite target of the Republican and Democratic budget slashers. Of course the way the capitalist politicians talk you would not know that they are grabbing the last morsel from the mouths of hungry children. Oh no, they claim they are "helping" the poor. They say they are "breaking the cycle of dependency," or "re-establishing the primacy of the family" or emphasizing "preventative" programs.
The highly moral capitalist politicians would never think of attacking the poor. Heavens no. They will help the poor -- even if it starves them to death.
Breaking the "cycle of dependency" or breaking the poor
A series of programs -- from "workfare" to "learnfare" -- are being launched to supposedly "break the cycle of dependency" on welfare. Of course welfare is a humiliating system which not only keeps the poor in poverty but also forces them on their knees before the degrading bureaucracy. But the new programs should really be named "NoFare," because far from uplifting the poor they are simply cutting benefits and punishing the poor for their poverty.
Workfare was lauded to the skies back when it was launched nationally by Congress in 1988. But neither Washington nor the states have provided the necessary funding for childcare, medical benefits, job-training or decent-paying jobs that would allow welfare recipients to become workers. The program was collapsing even before it started. And now, faced with budget crises, even states that were praised as workfare pioneers -- like California -- are slashing their programs.
As well, many states are using the same "workfare" rational to simply slash welfare. Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and other states, for example, have plans to simply abolish General Assistance welfare. They claim this program benefits only able-bodied people who should be working. But when asked where these people are to find jobs, an aid to Michigan's Governor Engler recently replied that they should "move to Indiana."
No learning from "learnfare"
Many states are also launching "learnfare" programs. In Wisconsin, Michigan, and some other states the plan is to cut all benefits for teen-agers who have a poor school attendance record. Although most people recognized that poverty itself is the biggest cause for bad school attendance, the states are taking the unique approach of intensifying poverty rather than alleviating it.
The fact that this program is really not aimed at improving schooling was graphically demonstrated in Michigan when Governor Engler recently declared it would save the state $1 million next year. Cuts, not education, is the real name of the game.
Barring the poor from having children
The capitalists seem to see the ultimate solution in simply preventing the poor from having children. In the 1960's, the bureaucrats sterilized many welfare mothers -- sometimes without their knowledge, sometimes under pressure. Now some states want to create a system of economic coercion for the same purpose. In Wisconsin and Michigan, for example, there are plans to allow welfare families no additional stipend when they have more children. In Kansas a bill has been put up to pay $500 to a recipient who agrees to have long-term contraception surgically implanted.
And the list of outrages goes on. The welfare system is, of course, no solution for poverty. But cutting the existing crumbs of assistance is just sentencing the poor to worse misery. Workers everywhere must help the poor fight back against the cuts. Confront the capitalist system that condemns a whole section of working people to such poverty.
30,000 home care workers held a one-day strike in New York City on April 17. They demanded a new contract and denounced the budget cuts called for by Mayor Dinkins and Governor Cuomo. Thousands marched through Manhattan's financial district carrying signs reading "Justice for Home Care Workers" and "On Strike for Our Clients, Our Families and Ourselves."
Home care workers do housekeeping, cooking, shopping and other services for some 50,000 indigent and elderly clients who would otherwise be forced into nursing homes. They are employed by private agencies that are under contract with the city's Human Resources Administration. Funding comes from both the state and city.
Overwhelmingly women and minorities, they make at most $6.60 an hour, get minimal health coverage and no pensions. They have been without a contract for almost a year. And Mayor Dinkins, who would like to carry out cuts against them, has so far refused to negotiate a new contract. Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo has proposed eliminating all funding for the housekeeping program, which would wipe out 15% of the home care workers' jobs. As well, cuts planned in Medicare and Medicaid would result in further job cuts.
Loyola University students rallied against tuition hikes at the steps of the student center in Chicago on April 24. About 50 students listened to LU students denounce administration plans to increase tuitions and to cut back popular programs such as Black Studies and Women Studies.
Loyola has been spending money hand over fist for such things as expanding into the community, gobbling up other schools, and unsuccessfully building an illegal landfill in Lake Michigan. No, they want to make the students pay. But student organizing has begun.
Hundreds of students walked out of Kennedy Junior High School in Pontiac, Michigan on April 17. They protested the announcement that Kennedy and another local public school will be shutdown.
Voters in the Pontiac school district had just approved a $55 million bond issue in February. That was supposed to pay off an accumulated debt, renovate schools and prevent school closings. But now the school board claims that is not enough. General Motors plant closings have hit the city hard. But the capitalist politicians would never think of making GM pay to keep the schools afloat.
10,000 state workers, welfare recipients, and community activists rallied at the Ohio Statehouse on March 20. They denounced plans to eliminate General Assistance welfare, lay off thousands of state workers, and other cutbacks.
Some 16 million unemployed or half-employed? Don't worry. President Bush says if we just let the "free market" do its work then jobs will come.
Don't believe it!
Capitalism means crisis
The "normal workings" of the capitalist "free market" in the U.S. have meant eight economic crises since World War II. And in each millions and millions of workers have been tossed out of their jobs.
In these crises, people are forced to go without necessities not because those goods don't exist but, rather, because they have been overproduced. Workers are forced to go without jobs not because they don't want to work but, rather, because the capitalists can't make a profit by employing them.
This is crazy, but it is what Bush's "free market" is about. Capitalism means economic crisis and the enormous unemployment that comes with every bust in the cycle.
A permanent army of unemployed
But more. Even when the boom comes, even when capitalist production is again running full tilt, unemployment has not fallen back to its previous lowest level. What the American capitalists used to call "full employment," back in 1944, meant some 1.2% of the workers were without jobs. But today the capitalists call it "full employment" when over 5% are officially unemployed. The fact is that capitalism produces, along with vast wealth for a handful of bosses, a more-or-less permanent army of unemployed. Take, for example, technological innovation. Computerization, robotization, and other technological advances lighten work and speed up production. This should be a tremendous gain to the working masses. But under capitalism every gain goes not to the masses but to the capitalist owners. Instead of helping the masses, technological advances are used to increase profits by throwing many workers out of their jobs. And then the capitalists use this army of unemployed like a weapon to enforce overwork and to drive down the wages of those lucky enough to find jobs.
Long ago Frederick Engels, the founder of communism along with Karl Marx, explained that under capitalism "the perfecting of machinery...means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army... available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead weight upon the limbs of the working class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for the keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital. (See Engels' Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Section III.) Bush's "free market" won't solve the unemployment problem. It may eventually get out of this particular crisis and call back some workers to slave until the next inevitable crash comes along. But it also means the continued growth of a whole strata of employed and half-employed workers -- an industrial reserve army, as Engels called it, which is used to drive down the livelihood of all the workers.
Neither the free market nor state capitalism can solve the unemployment problem
Capitalism simply cannot solve the jobless problem because economic crises and the creation of a whole army of unemployed are basic conditions of its existence. To eliminate unemployment we have to do away with the system that produces it. We have to move forward to a new system, to communism.
But the second you mention it, Bush and his apologists rush forward to heap ridicule on the so-called "socialism" of the Soviet Union. Oh, unemployment was held down there for a time, but their economy has stagnated with unproductive, backward industries that cannot even produce necessary consumer goods for the masses. And now they are in a real mess.
Of course all of that is true. But then the Soviet Union is not socialist. It is a state-capitalist regime where production is for the profit of a wealthy bureaucratic ruling class.
For several decades after World War II, the Soviet regime held off the periodic crises of capitalism and bought labor peace through rapid expansion of the war-torn economy and providing jobs and some social programs for the masses. But expansion, when run by a privileged ruling elite, ends up creating great disproportions in the economy. This was intensified by the building to the skies of an unproductive military machine while failing to develop new technology or increase productivity for many other industries. Eventually the contradictions caught up with them. All-sided economic crisis, temporarily staved off, broke out with a vengeance. Unemployment, temporarily kept low, began to mushroom.
Economic crisis and the creation of a whole army of unemployed are basic to capitalism. They may be held off for a time -- such as favorable conditions allowing great expansion like in the heavily state-regulated economy of Japan or through creating conditions for an even more devastating crisis as in the state-capitalist economy of the Soviet Union. But sooner or later the basic laws of capitalism have their way.
Communism needed to end unemployment
Communism is what is needed to put an end to the economic crises that periodically devastate the masses.
Frederick Engels explained the question this way: "As soon as private gain, the aim of the individual to enrich himself on his own, disappears from the production and distribution of the goods necessary to life, trade crises will also disappear of themselves. In communist society it will be easy to be informed about both production and consumption. Since we know how much, on the average, a person needs, it is easy to calculate how much is needed by a given number of individuals, and since production is no longer in the hands of private producers but in those of the community and its administrative bodies, it is a trifling matter to regulate production according to needs. (Speeches in Elberfeld,1845, emphasis as in original)
Here Engels is explaining that once the private market is overcome, once production is regulated directly and not through various financial levers and other indirect means, then organizing a planned economy to serve the needs of the masses is relatively easy. But overcoming the market and making the transition from capitalism through various stages to communism is a hard struggle -- a struggle in which the working class must take power, learn to organize work consciously rather than need the whip of hunger, and step-by-step radically transform the entire economy.
Production for profit and capitalist methods are gradually overcome in one field after another, and production is freed to grow to serve the needs of the masses. This will not just be a consumer society with more things, but the end of the profit system will unleash gigantic forces to really tackle such problems as transforming production to be in tune' with the environment, making the workplace worker-friendly, etc. The vast fields of useful endeavor opened up will mean that communism always has work enough for all. And, what is more, putting the jobless to work, technological advances and increased productivity become means to improve the lot of the masses by, for example, shortening the working day.
As Engels described, "you will find that human society has an abundance of productive forces at its disposal which only await a rational organization, regulated distribution, in order to go into operation to the greatest benefit of all...we can assume that given this kind of organization, the present customary labor time of the individual will be reduced by half simply by making use of the labor which is either not used at all or used disadvantageous." (Ibid.)
With full employment, and with the shortening of the working day, the masses are no longer slaves scrambling through their lives to make ends meet, but are freed to do other things, to join in the collective running of the society, to add their individual inspiration to the improvement of the life of all.
Of course, these changes cannot come all at once. But they will begin only through a revolution. A revolution in which the working class will overthrow the capitalist ruling class. A revolution in which the working masses will rid themselves of all the backward muck of the past and become fitted to found society anew.
In March "official" unemployment soared to 8.8 million workers. But that is only part of the story. There were another 6.2 million "involuntary part- time" workers -- those who want full-time work but can find only part-time jobs. And on top of that, there were another one million "discouraged" workers -- those not counted as unemployed simply because they could not find a job and have given up looking.
That is a total of 16 million unemployed or half-employed. But only 26% of them -- about 4.2 million workers -- were allowed to draw unemployment benefits.
Today's unemployment is but another wave in the boom-bust cycle of capitalism -- a cycle in which there has been a growing strata of a more-or-less permanent army of unemployed.
Look at the chart below. Since World War II the economy has gone through a crisis on the average of every five or six years, and millions are thrown on the unemployment lines. It then takes months, and even years, before production again soars and workers are called back to a job.
But even then, when employment reaches a new peak there are still more people unemployed than in the previous boom. In every cycle since World War II, except for 1968, the number of unemployed grew from boom to boom.
Oh yes, it has been claimed that unemployment fell during the Reagan "recovery." But, in fact, there were more people unemployed at the peak of the recovery in 1989 than in the previous boom in 1979. What fell under Reagan was not the number of unemployed but, rather, the official rate of unemployment (to a low of 5.1% in June of 1990 from 5.8% in 1979).
And even these figures cover up a basic fact of what has been going on under the Reagan and Bush government -- the growth of a huge stratum of underemployed or half-employed workers.
Just look at the growing number of "involuntary part-time" workers -- those who want full-time work but can only find part-time jobs. In 1978, before the bust-end of the cycle began, they numbered about 3.5 million. Through the 1980's the number grew steadily until it reached 6.2 million in March 1991. That means there has been a shift of some 2.7 million workers to the lower-paying and very insecure part-time jobs.
Reaganism did not put America back to work. Rather, the "recovery" actually enlarged the army of unemployed and half-employed and used it to pressure the employed to give in to takebacks of wages, benefits and work rules.
[Chart: Unemployment in the boom years--The numbers keep rising even in the best of years]
This March, a parental consent law took effect in Michigan. It requires women under 18 who want an abortion to get written consent from a parent or guardian. There is also the alternative of getting a judge to approve the abortion.
The "pro-life" hypocrites promote such laws as strengthening family relations. In fact, they only intend them to make the exercise of women's rights as difficult and painful as possible. It is no secret that good family relations cannot be enforced by government decree. The real effect of the law is to create potential tragedies by forcing young women to submit to the least understanding parents, or even absent and abusive parents, and the arbitrary whim of judges.
The anti-abortion crusaders would prefer to ban all abortions, but they pretend that the present laws are oh so kind by allowing for a judicial bypass of parental approval in cases of necessity. This has won the hearts of the U.S. Supreme Court which has ruled that parental consent laws are constitutional as long as there are judicial waiver procedures. But the red tape of legal procedures is a serious obstacle to most young women. Moreover, all judges are not going to be sympathetic to young women, especially poor and minority women. In fact, many judges will simply impose their anti-abortion prejudices or upper-class snobbery on women.
Just look what has gone on in Michigan in the last few weeks.
Clinton County probate judge Marvin Robertson announced he planned to appoint a guardian for the fetus in any parental consent case he handles. Presumably this is a signal that he will not only deny abortion but consider giving custody of the fetus to a stranger. In any case, Robertson will either appoint a complete stranger to argue for the birth of the fetus, or else he will call in relatives or the parents themselves. Instead of the idyllic pictures of a private, sympathetic hearing by a caring judge, the young women may be faced with an adversary proceeding, presumably complete with cross examination, attacks on her character, investigation into her background and the calling of witnesses.
Meanwhile, Kalamazoo County probate judge Donald Halstead recently dismissed the court petition of a young woman seeking an abortion on the grounds that he thinks the whole idea of having a judicial bypass of parental approval is unconstitutional. Getting an abortion approved in his court will be like making ice cubes on the sun.
Then there is Judge Francis Bourisseau of Mason County. He announced in advance he would only grant abortions in rare cases. The Ludington Daily reported that he gave such examples as rape by a family member and if a white girl was raped by a black man. Lovely, is it not? You may actually get an abortion waiver from Bourisseau provided that his disgusting racist stereotypes overrule his anti-women prejudices.
These black-robed bigots show that the judicial bypass procedures submit young women to arbitrary judicial tyranny. And they also demonstrate the sort of racist and sexist idiocy that permeates the ranks of the anti-abortion crusaders. It shows why the decision of whether to bear a child must rest with the pregnant woman.
Encouraged by Bush and the U.S. Supreme Court, bigoted forces in state after state have been attacking abortion rights. In January, Utah jumped on the bandwagon. A new law bans almost all abortions. The only exceptions are when the pregnancy threatens the woman's life or in cases of rape or incest, providing the crime is reported within 20 weeks.
Thus the "pro-life" forces have taken another step to drive women into mutilation and death in illegal, back-alley abortions or force them to have a child against their will. To top it off, the Utah law contained language making it possible for a woman to get the death penalty for having an abortion.
The backers of this law tried to deny this. But now the law's author himself, Senator LeRay, admits it, and concedes there should be a special legislative session to amend the bill.
Perhaps the Utah legislators did not really intend to kill women who have abortions. But since the "right-to-life" rhetoric equates abortion with murder, the death sentence is only logical. And this anti-woman logic has already inspired the bombing of health clinics and the harassment of women, doctors, and nurses at health facilities. Indeed, only last month the Bush administration reaffirmed its position that family planning clinics receiving government funds should not be allowed to mention abortion to a woman even if it was medically necessary to save her life.
And even if the "pro-life" Utah bill is amended, it will still subject women to a potential death sentence at the hands of back-alley butchers.
In mid-April, a Florida appeals court upheld the conviction of Jennifer Clarise Johnson for having used cocaine while pregnant. In order to convict her as a drug-dealing felon, rather than provide treatment to her as an addict, she was charged with "drug dealing" through her umbilical cord to her newborn infant. Johnson had sought treatment while pregnant, but was refused.
Such "drug dealing" charges, sometimes involving the legal drug, alcohol, have become something of a fad. Nationwide, there are already 35 such cases. For example, in early April prosecutor Tague in Muskegon County, Michigan was about to try such a case against Kimberly Hardy, but the state Court of Appeals squashed the charges. And in February, Wyoming authorities went so far as to arrest a pregnant woman who had sought treatment in a hospital emergency room after being beaten by her husband; she was charged with child abuse because the hospital told the authorities the woman was drunk.
So far, in most cases the charges either have been thrown out of court, or the convictions have been overturned by higher courts. But many of these cases are still to be considered by yet higher courts. And the Florida case reportedly marks the first time a state appeals court has approved such a conviction.
The arrests of pregnant women are being carried out in the name of protecting the fetus. But in reality, the threat of prosecution is another obstacle preventing women with drug problems from seeking and getting treatment. Already pregnant women, especially poor women, are routinely excluded from most drug treatment centers. Often, it is precisely because they seek treatment that they are identified and turned over to the police. The moralizing prosecutors see nothing wrong with clinics turning away pregnant women, or politicians failing to fund these clinics, but prefer to jail women,, take their children away from them, or otherwise ruin their lives.
In the Florida case, the woman was not sent to jail but was sentenced to 14 years probation and participation in a drug treatment program. By including drug treatment, the Florida court hoped to look humane and caring. But if treatment had been the issue, there was no need for criminal charges at all, as Jennifer Johnson had sought treatment on her own before the law was ever involved. And what does 14 years probation mean? That a single misstep will mean jail and forcible separation from her children? That state officials will hound her and her family for years?
Chalk up another one for Bush's fraudulent "war on drugs." It means less and less money for clinics and treatment centers and more and more money for prosecutors, prison guards, and jails. It will not stop the ravages of drug addiction or save babies, but it will provide self-righteous excuses for beating up on women.
The nationwide strike of Soviet coal miners has completed its second full month. Some 3-400,000 miners have walked off their jobs in a protest demanding economic changes, as well as the resignation of Gorbachev and the current Soviet parliament.
With the massive price hikes announced by Gorbachev's regime in early April, the miners have been joined by many other striking workers.
At the center of a growing strike movement
The coal miners are not satisfied with carrying out local strikes. They are organizing themselves on a national basis through industry conferences. And they are also helping organize other sections of workers.
A major center of the miners' activism is Novokuznetsk, in the Kuzbas region 2,000 miles southeast of Moscow. Two-thirds of the coal mines in this region are on strike. The local strike committee in Novokuznetsk has sent delegations of miners as far as Moscow and Leningrad to organize factory workers. This work has borne fruit. New sections of coal miners join the strike every week, even though a few have gone back. In April miners on the island of Sakhalin, off the Pacific coast of Siberia, joined; also miners in the Kursk-Belgorod district of European Russia. The national newspaperIzvestianow estimates that coal production is down 80%.
The miners are rallying a growing number of other workers to industrial action. In Lithuania a dock workers' strike has virtually closed the port of Klaipeda. One-day strikes are being used by many sections of workers, including Siberian gold miners, who struck on April 22.
In some areas the one-day strikes have mushroomed into general strikes. The entire city of Donetsk, center of the Donbas coal region in the Ukraine, was shut down on April 15. Some 20,000 workers rallied in the city's central square in support of the coal miners' demands. A similar citywide strike occurred April 16 in Kiev, the country's third largest city.
Upsurge in Byelorussia
The biggest strike rallies so far were in Minsk, capital of Byelorussia. On April 10 some 100,000 people clogged the streets to support striking workers and to denounce Gorbachev's price rises, which went into effect April 2. The protesters demanded the resignation of both the national government headed by Gorbachev and the government of Byelorussia. When their demands were not met, another rally was held on April 23. This was smaller, with about 20,000 people, but organizers vowed to continue their protests and to work toward an indefinite general strike.
Byelorussia has been considered a fairly quiet part of the country, and the size of the demonstrations there caught the government by surprise. But the workers here too are learning to take action, and resentment against the ruling authority is intensifying.
Striking workers are supported by other sections of the populace who have deep, long-term grievances against the government. One of the big unresolved issues in Byelorussia is Chernobyl. Five years after the nuclear plant's partial meltdown the government still has done little to assuage the effects of radiation poisoning, which affected many people in Minsk and throughout Byelorussia.
Another big issue in Byelorussia is housing the Soviet troops who are being withdrawn from Eastern Europe. The government has no jobs to offer returning soldiers, so they remain in the army. But the government has no place to put them either, so they are simply warehoused in Byelorussia, the Soviet republic closest to Eastern Europe. There they are maintained at the expense of local governments.
No saviors among the rulers
The rising strike movement in the Soviet Union shows the utter disgust of the workers for the phony "socialist" government headed by Gorbachev. In a worker-run society the coal miners and other workers would be the firmest supporters of the government, and active participants in it. The Russian revolution in 1917 had been made by the workers, and for a while the workers did rule there. But the leaders eventually turned into bureaucrats, and capitalism was restored, although socialist labels were kept on. The workers have grown to hate the bureaucrats who have exploited them for decades.
The Soviet system went into deep crisis in the 1970's, and Gorbachev came on the scene in the mid-80's promising renewal. This was not a socialist rejuvenation as he postured, but transforming the Soviet Union from a state-capitalist system into a Western-style mixed economy, combining state-run enterprises and private capitalism.
Workers in the Soviet Union have become thoroughly disgusted by Gorbachev. His program has only landed the economy into chaos, and all the workers have to look forward to is unemployment, price hikes, and shortages. Thus the cry goes up across the Soviet Union from the workers: Gorbachev must go! This has become the main demand of many of the current strikes.
The workers' movement quite properly wants change from the present chaos. But the workers have many vague ideas about what to replace Gorbachev with. Unfortunately, many workers think that the liberal free-marketer Boris Yeltsin and his like-minded "democrats" offer an alternative. Yeltsin has demagogically claimed to support the strikes, and he rails against Gorbachev's blunders.
Yeltsin is not the workers' friend
But Yeltsin is a no-win answer. He stands for an even faster pace of the free-market capitalist economic reforms which are ruining the workers. And he has just joined Gorbachev in a new agreement on economic and political reform, an agreement which spells even worse days ahead for the workers. This agreement calls for the price hikes to continue and strikes to end; it holds out threats of force against the workers. Some type of deal has apparently been worked out for a coalition government that would bring Yeltsin and his allies into power at the federal level.
And thus today Yeltsin and his followers within the new workers' unions are already urging the strikers to return to work. But many workers quite justly cannot see what has changed. In many areas they are defying this advice and staying out.
The Soviet workers are right to urge that the existing system should go. But they have to build their own alternative if the workers' interests are to be safeguarded. Neither the discredited state- capitalism of the past, nor the free-market alternative a la Poland will serve the workers. Now more than ever, workers in the Soviet Union need to develop and fight for a program of workers' rule and economic transformation to meet the needs of the working majority. Given the despair caused by the failure of the present system which falsely claims to be socialist, this may not take place soon -- but eventually the workers must turn the skills they are showing in organizing their ranks for strikes into the skill to run society themselves.
[Photo: Striking workers in Minsk demand Gorbachev's resignation]
The Soviet Union is seeing a rash of strikes this spring. What is the economic background to these actions?
Coal miners in the Soviet Union are striking because they have reached a point where it almost makes no sense at all to work. The miners are paid a relatively high wage for Soviet workers. But consumer goods -- food, clothing, etc. -- are in very short supply. And you can forget about such things as appliances. Hunger is spreading, and medicine is scarce.
The miners' living and working conditions have generally been poor too. They perform some of the most arduous and dangerous work in industry. Yet many of them live in antiquated communities with unpaved roads, meager electricity, and cabin-style homes lacking indoor plumbing. Their conditions of work are atrocious, with many falling victim to death and disease. Their bosses treat them like serfs, and the old, official unions were just another arm of the state-capitalist bureaucrats.
Gorbachev promised much, delivers nothing
Gorbachev ended the 1989 coal strike by promising to deliver the goods to coal communities. After the strike Gorbachev sent buyers to Western countries to snatch up foods and other consumer goods -- TVs, radios, etc. But after a short buying spree the goods were gone, and the miners were left to fend for themselves again.
Gorbachev promised that perestroika would free up economic forces and produce a greater variety of goods. But after six years things have only gotten worse. In the first quarter of 1991 production actually declined by 10% while retail prices leapt up 123%. As a result, consumption declined by 6%.
Then, on April 2, came the hardest blow of all: across-the-board price hikes on the entire range of consumer goods. Prices generally doubled. Bread and meat went up some 300%.
The government offered wage increases to many workers to offset the April 2 price hikes, but they don't come close to making up for the jump in prices. And there's still very little to buy in the stores -- little food, no toiletry articles, etc.
The price hikes, coming in the wake of widespread shortages, have been the last straw for even larger sections of workers. This is what sparked the strike by workers across Byelorussia and elsewhere.
German unification, which was supposed to bring heaven on earth to the workers of East Germany, is making a hell out of their lives. Every day brings higher prices and more unemployment.
But within the working class, some sections are picked out for special oppression and exploitation. This is a rule followed in all "free-market" economies. And it is being enforced today in East Germany. Racist attacks on immigrant workers are becoming more and more common. And women are being forced to bear an extra burden of oppression.
East Germany's old false communist (really state-capitalist) regime stifled the workers' political life and thinking and brought economic stagnation, but it did have a wide system of social programs that helped free up women for employment. This included day care and kindergartens, long-term maternity leave with employment guaranteed afterwards, and paid leave to care for sick children. All women had free access to contraception and abortions.
But now the "free market" governs all. And that means massive cutbacks in subsidized day care centers, maternity leave, etc. And East Germans will likely be forced to accept West Germany's reactionary laws banning abortions.
The cutbacks are making it more difficult for women to work. At the same time, employers are laying off women at a faster rate than men, since they consider women an economic risk factor. This is another of the "wonders" of the "free market" -- driving women out of social life, forcing them to sit at home and wonder how they are going to make ends meet with soaring prices for rent, utilities, transport, etc.
East German psychologists and social workers report a jump in alcoholism and family violence since German unification. Apparently this is part of the wonderful "traditional family" that the conservative bourgeois hail as the "natural foundation" of bourgeois society.
Last December a mass upsurge toppled the tyranny of General Ershad. What's been taking place in Bangladesh since? We are carrying a series of articles on the revolutionary movement in Bangladesh. They are written by a contributor to " Workers' Advocate" who recently visited Dhaka.
DHAKA (SPRING 1991) - Elections for a new National Assembly took place at the end of February, and the fading remnants of the campaign are still visible everywhere. Every neighborhood is still covered with election slogans and posters.
In the newspapers the political parties are squabbling over whether the British- style parliamentary system or a U.S.-style presidency would be best to restore. In two decades of independence, Bangladesh has seen both models, and to the poor, working people in this land of 120 million, it hasn't made one bit of a difference. Meanwhile, the real business of bourgeois politics is being talked over in the drawing rooms of the rich, and it finds its way as rumors into the press: who will get what ministerial posts in the new government.
In the press coverage, the political debates, and in the election graffiti, one is struck by the absence of concrete alternatives. The establishment does not discuss real issues. And it's not as if there weren't serious concerns demanding urgent attention. You cannot walk the streets of this city, or elsewhere in Bangladesh, without confronting these issues.
The overwhelming majority still lives in the countryside, and the conditions of the rural masses is beyond desperate. More than three-quarters are virtually landless, and there isn't enough day labor for most to live on. Millions flood into the cities, but there isn't much work there either. The thousands who go in for pedaling rickshaws -- for 12 hours a day, seven days a week -- make about one dollar a day and quickly grow old and sick. Even those fortunate enough to be industrial laborers make far below what is needed to live on. You can see malnutrition all over. And the spiraling cost of living hits not just the toilers and poor, but even the middle class. Students graduate from colleges without much prospect of jobs.
Side by side with this Bangladesh is another: that of the small number of wealthy whose model of life is that of the Western-style yuppie. Their wealth comes off the exploitation of the majority and the innumerable legal and illegal methods they have come up with to rip off the government treasury and the foreign "aid" which is provided by imperialism to prop up capitalist stability in Bangladesh.
These issues are not discussed, because none of the bourgeois parties have any idea to change any of this. They cannot because they profit from this system which has reduced the majority to a near animal-like existence.
Oh yes, promises flowed like honey during the elections of how each party would restore the mythical "Golden Bengal" of yesterday. The conservative Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which won the majority, speaks of the free market. But how much more freedom do the exploiters need that they haven't already had? The Awami League, the major voice of social-democracy here, speaks of the mixed economy. But isn't that just the status quo where private businessmen and public bureaucrats steal side by side? The Islamic fundamentalists speak of "God's rule" but they don't say why their worldly party and its men are needed to establish such a divine rule -- or what God's rule would do to solve the problems in the here and now. Meanwhile, the reformist left doesn't have much to say either, serving merely as the tail of the other bourgeois parties. They were relieved to have their few elected deputies occupy the cage of therevisionisms near-extinctusin the parliamentary zoo.
This would appear to be a depressing state of affairs. But only if one looks at the surface of things. There is much more to Bangladesh than the hollow press and the talkshop political salons of the elite. This is a land where only last year a renewed mass movement grew into a powerful upsurge and toppled the hated rule of General Hussein Mohammed Ershad. The military dictator had ruled for nearly a decade. This movement was cut short -- it did not have the strength to establish a revolutionary power which could have taken the people's needs into account -- but the sidetracking of that movement into electoralism did not do away with the social forces that the movement unleashed.
The struggle against Ershad, and the 1990 movement, opened up a new period in Bangladesh politics. It let loose social factors which will get past the current diversion into electoral politics and cabinet shuffling. A renewal of the mass movements of the working people -- with their own demands -- is very much on the order of the day. In the elections of the wealthy class, the poor did not have their voice. But in the coming years, they are bound to speak out forcefully.
This is not just wishful thinking. To see that, next time we will take a step back into the turbulent struggle against Ershad's tyranny.
The vicious, unprovoked beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles policemen has unleashed a flood of stories about police abuse across the country. Meanwhile the Supreme Court has been busy stripping people of any protection from the, police baton. Reinforced by Bush's appointment of law-and-order fanatic Judge Souter to the court, the conservative majority is busy strengthening police tyranny.
What's so bad about the bloodstained "third degree"?
On March 26 the court loosened restrictions on confession obtained by torture or abuse. In 1967, the Supreme Court had ruled that any use of a coerced confession in a trial must taint the trial beyond repair. This ruling did not stop the beating of suspects, or provide for the punishment of police responsible for such abuse, but it prevented lower courts from openly using these confessions to convict the accused.
This time the court ruled 5-4 that presenting a confession obtained by duress or torture might well be regarded as a mere "harmless error," and a conviction at such a trial could be permitted to stand. The court only required that there be other evidence at the trial which could be declared adequate to make a guilty verdict seem reasonable. In such a case, even if the jury is swayed by the confession, the guilty verdict will stand.
It can be noted that beating and terrorizing suspects is illegal. But it happens all the time. And if it is proven to have taken place, the police almost never suffer any penalty except the exclusion of coerced statements from use at a trial. The interest in the conservative majority in allowing trials with coerced statements obviously flows from the fact that they don't think such trials are rare exceptions. Their conclusion is not to call for steps against police lawlessness, but to loosen the rules of evidence.
Anti-racist lawyers can be fined
On April 15 the Supreme Court refused to intervene in the case of heavy fines levied against civil rights lawyers as punishment for taking part in unsuccessful lawsuits in federal courts against racial discrimination. In 1982 the federal court system created the rule that allows heavy fines for supposedly frivolous lawsuits. And now the federal system, packed with reactionary judges by Reagan and Bush, is not only endorsing injustice, but fining the lawyers who dare to raise their voice against it.
Only one appeal against injustice
On April 16 the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that prisoners convicted in state courts may only appeal to federal courts once, except in unusual cases. Such appeals, called petitions of "habeas corpus," are how prisoners attack state courts for violating the constitution. Under previous law, if a prisoner made an appeal deemed frivolous, the court would deny it. Under the present Supreme Court decision, courts will almost always be required to deny second appeals. Even if an issue of important injustice is involved, if it was not technically impossible to raise the issue in the first appeal, then a second appeal must be denied.
But what if, as is common, a poor or disadvantaged person has a court-appointed lawyer who only spends a few minutes on their case, and screws it up? And suppose the first appeal is mismanaged. The unfortunate prisoner is to rot in jail forever. Rich people, however, tend to have high-powered and high-priced lawyers from the start, who will usually not make such mistakes. And besides, courts always regard it as a "fundamental miscarriage of justice" to keep them in jail.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing the majority decision limiting the right of appeal, focused on death row inmates. He was upset at the slow pace of executions, and wanted blood. Apparently regarding the death sentence as the high point of legal action, he believed that such delay encourages "mockery" of the legal system. He complained of the gap between conviction and execution, which he said averaged nearly nine years. So he arbitrarily cut down the number of appeals allowed to one, unless the second appeal could point to what he would regard as "a fundamental miscarriage of justice."
On the other hand, he didn't worry about the right of corporations to litigate damage suits for years or decades on end. This did not make a mockery of the law for Justice Kennedy. But just imagine all those prisoners eager to spend years on death row in order to mock poor Kennedy!
Chase anyone without cause
On April 23 the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to endorse the police chasing suspects without cause, and specified that anything lost or discarded in the chase might be used by the police as evidence. In the past courts had frowned on chases without cause, and often regarded them as a violation of the Fourth Amendment ban on "unreasonable searches and seizures." This decision now makes frightening people into running into an acceptable police procedure for investigation.
[Graphic.]
[Photo: 4,000 marched in Auckland, New Zealand against benefit cuts, Feb. 1]
On April 4, some 100,000 New Zealand workers marched and rallied in the largest mass protests in a decade. They were protesting new anti-union legislation now before parliament. This also marked the beginning of a nationwide strike by the country's 50,000 school teachers.
10,000 workers marched in Auckland, the largest city, and burned in effigy members of the cabinet. In the capital city of Wellington some 5,000 workers demonstrated outside parliament. Government offices and many other enterprises were closed by one-day strikes.
The workers were angry with the proposed Employment Contracts Bill, which would abolish the closed shop, scrap all national contracts, and introduce individual or local contracts with no-strike clauses. Workers who refused to accept such contracts, and lost their jobs, would be ineligible for unemployment benefits. To add insult to injury, the government plans to pass and sign the bill on May 1, International Workers' Day.
Right-wing government follows in footsteps of Labor Party
This bill is just the latest attack on the masses by the right-wing government of the National Party, which came into office last fall. This year's budget, passed in December, included massive spending cuts. Benefits for the unemployed, the sick and disabled, people on pension, and for welfare recipients were cut by 25%. The country has since then seen many demonstrations and rallies by working people determined to beat back the savage cutbacks.
Before last fall's election, the government was in the hands of the Labor Party, which pretended to rule in the name of the working class. But the Labor Party was following similar policies, slashing social programs and forcing thousands of workers into unemployment, which now stands at 13.5%. The rightist National Party took up where Labor left off, further decimating living standards and now directly attacking the labor unions.
Union leaders want to "debate, not defeat" the bill
The April 4 demonstrations were endorsed by the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions (CTU). But this endorsement by the top union bureaucrats only came after mass meetings of workers across the country demanded action.
One would think that the union leaders might directly oppose the Employment Contracts Bill, since it directly attacks labor unions. But the bureaucrats are more concerned about keeping the workers passive than in defending their own unions. CTU President Ken Douglas told a parliamentary committee that the CTU wanted to "debate, not defeat the bill" and "recognized the need for change." He warned them though, that by pursuing the bill in this way, the government risked provoking the workers into a conflict that the bureaucrats might not be able to control.
Thus the labor hacks are organizing some protests, but at the same time they hope this will only let off steam.
A recent report by the Inter-American Development Bank shows that the everyday "progress" of capitalism is ruining millions of workers throughout Latin America.
The report confirms that "Latin America and the Caribbean suffered economic contraction last year... Per capita consumption in the region declined, and attempts to keep government budgets in check have reduced state assistance for health, nutrition, education and housing." (Financial Times,April 8)
As if to confirm this, a cholera epidemic has broken out in Latin America. Starting in Peru, it is spreading rapidly to neighboring countries and claiming more victims. Cholera epidemics are entirely the product of inadequate sanitation and public services.
Meanwhile it never occurs to the imperialist "development" banks or the bourgeois governments to balance their budgets by cutting into the profits and privileges of the rich. Oh no, it is the working masses who must suffer, who must pay higher taxes and fees but suffer cutbacks in government services. At the same time the capitalist employers are cutting wages and laying off workers.
There is no natural law which says this must remain so. The workers cannot be satisfied with this system. Their struggle against austerity must raise up a call for a new society run in the interests of the working majority.
Africa has been raped many times over by European imperialism. Black Africa began to throw off the colonial yoke starting in the 1950's, but the end of colonialism did not bring liberation to the worker or peasant. Africa did take a step forward -- but it was a step into the class struggle. European rule was replaced by the local African bourgeoisie -- a small elite of businessmen, bureaucrats and military men -- who rule in collaboration with European and American imperialism.
The class of money -- both those in the African capitals and in the West -- has kept the working people in continued bondage. While the people's resources and labor have continued to profit the few, their protests have been ruthlessly suppressed by dictatorships. Some ruled in the name of "socialism" while others sang the glories of capitalism -- but everywhere in reality it was the savagery of capitalist oppression that was the rule.
During the 1980's, the African people became poorer still. But the masses are not sitting still. They are more and more in the streets, demanding democratic change. Tyranny must go and democracy must come, but if the working people are to lift themselves out of poverty, the end of tyranny can only be a first step -- the rule of the capitalists and imperialist domination must end.
The first months of 1991 have seen upsurges of struggle in several countries:
Cameroon: A month of protest has rocked the one-party dictatorship of President Paul Biya in this Central African nation. There were demonstrations, barricades on roads, and transportation strikes. At least 30 people were reported shot to death. In the face of the mass outcry, Biya has reshuffled his cabinet, declared an amnesty for political prisoners, and promised multi-party elections by the end of the year.
Togo: On April 5, soldiers in this West African country shot and killed two youths who were trying to tear down a statue of General Gnassingbe Eyadema. Eyadema has ruled since a coup in 1967. Angry at this murder, 1,000 people massed in the streets of Lome, the capital, on April 8 to demand the resignation of Gen. Eyadema. They threw up barricades and blocked streets. The next day soldiers tried to break through, attacking with tear gas and truncheons; but the workers fought back with stones and sharpened metal bars.
Mali: In March, the people of this country in the northwestern part of the continent succeeded in bringing an end to the rule of military dictator Moussa Traore. They had waged a powerful campaign of strikes and demonstrations, in which many Malians sacrificed their lives. A military regime has taken power, promising free elections. The working people have warned that they will resort to struggle if they are cheated.
Ethiopia: Armed rebels, who already control much of the northern part of this country including the entire province of Tigre, said at the end of April that they had captured Ambo, only 65 miles west of the capital Addis Ababa. The government of Mengistu Haile Mariam is in its worst crisis to date. Already it has lost much of Eritrea to the national movement there. Besides continuing its brutal civil wars, Mengistu is reshuffling his government. He is also hoping that U.S. imperialism, who he has been wooing to replace his past Soviet mentors, will somehow help pull his chestnuts out of the fire.
[Photo:Celebrating fall of Mali tyrant]
Workers in Turkey are continuing their strike against the state-owned airline, THY. The 8,000 THY employees have been joined in their strike by 2,500 airport workers. They are demanding a pay raise of some 600%, needed to keep up with soaring inflation. The strike has grounded most of THY's flights. THY carries 80% of Turkey's domestic air traffic and 50% of its international traffic.
Metal workers in the Sao Paulo region, Brazil's industrial heartland, began a strike April 15. The strike has idled auto plants owned by GM, Ford and VW. The workers are demanding a pay raise of over 200%, but even that will not keep up with Brazil's skyrocketing cost of living.
Workers in Bolivian state-owned enterprises walked out for one day on April 9 to protest the arrival of U.S. military personnel. President Jaime Paz Zamora has accepted the presence of scores of U.S. troops in Bolivia on the pretext of the "war on drugs." But workers denounced Zamora for kowtowing to Washington. The strike disrupted normal operations at airports, public schools, universities, and tin mines.
This protest came in the midst of flaming anti-Yanqui sentiment across Bolivia during the Persian Gulf war. After the middle of January, the slogan Bush-Assassin could be seen splashed across buildings on every block.