Vol. 22, No. 2
VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA
25 cents February 1, 1992
[Front page:
No more welfare for the rich!;
Don't forget imperialism's crimes--One year after the Gulf war;
Solidarity with Korean workers--HYUNDAI WORKERS STRIKE]
IN THIS ISSUE
| Down with racism! |
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| Denver youth get their hands on the KKK................................................... | 2 |
| Down with racist terror in Dubuque, Iowa................................................... | 2 |
| Des Moines anti-racists................................................................................ | 2 |
| Brooklyn protesters vs. police murderers..................................................... | 2 |
| Indians protest 1492 celebrations................................................................. | 2 |
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| Strikes & workplace news |
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| New unemployment bill; Caterpillar; Arizona state workers; Maryland workers; New York hard hats; Garment strike............................................. | 3 |
| Pennsylvania nurses..................................................................................... | 12 |
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| Don't fall for Japan bashing |
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| Bashing Japan won't help auto workers....................................................... | 4 |
| Is Japan a closed market?............................................................................. | 4 |
| Remember Vincent Chin.............................................................................. | 5 |
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| No to the war on the workers and poor! |
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| The Democratic response.............................................................................. | 6 |
| Democrats search for middle class vote....................................................... | 6 |
| New Jersey Democrats against welfare........................................................ | 7 |
| National standards for school financing....................................................... | 8 |
| Head Start: Where is full funding?............................................................... | 8 |
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| Struggle of the homeless |
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| Tucson; Indianapolis; Detroit; Lansing........................................................ | 7 |
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| Defend women's rights! |
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| Breast implants and human guinea pigs....................................................... | 8 |
| Actions on anniversary of Roe v. Wade........................................................ | 9 |
| Bush hails anti-abortion violence................................................................. | 9 |
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| One year after the Gulf war |
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| The 'new world order' a year later............................................................... | 10 |
| Iraqi people are the main victims................................................................. | 10 |
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| CPUSA splits into two reformist wings....................................................... | 11 |
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| On the peace accords in El Salvador............................................................ | 12 |
Don't forget imperialism's crimes
Solidarity with Korean workers
DOWN WITH RACISM!
Strikes & workplace news
IN BRIEF
Bashing Japan won't solve auto workers' problems
Trade with Japan: Lies and reality
Remember Vincent Chin!
Japan bashing feeds racist violence
Democrats in search of the 'middle class' vote
New Jersey Democrats join bandwagon against welfare mothers
Struggle of the homeless
Why not national standards for school financing?
Head Start: We are waiting for full funding
Defend women's rights!
The 'new world order' a year after Operation Desert Massacre
Iraqi people are the main victims of the war
A split among reformists
Class struggle will re-emerge in new forms
On the peace accords in El Salvador
We were promised that on January 28 Bush would finally reveal his plan to pull the country out of recession, to relieve the suffering, to prove that he is the leader who really "cares."
Instead, what we got was more "trickle down" nonsense wrapped up in red-white-and-blue ribbons and "we are number one" tissue paper. Bush's State of the Union address, and his budget proposal released the next day, reveal just another plan to make the workers pay for the high living of the rich. Why, to hear Bush tell it, this is the workers' patriotic duty.
But it was the Wall Street financiers and industrial billionaires that got us into this crisis. And it is they who should pay for it.
The working class has to look out for itself. We need jobs for the jobless. We need homes for the homeless. We need decent health care for all. Taking more from those who have nothing won't help. Bashing the Japanese and the workers in other countries won't solve our problems. Rather, our beef is with the capitalists. It is they who have made a fat living off of our sacrifice. It is they who have extorted hundreds of billions of dollars from the treasury and put the country in debt. It is they who have driven the economy into crisis. The bill is coming due. Let's make the capitalists pay!
More welfare for the rich
Bush's new plan is primarily welfare for the rich. He didn't say that of course. Why, Bush hates welfare. Didn't he denounce the workers who have been forced onto welfare as being lazy and irresponsible?
But what about the lazy capitalist bosses, whose luxury life style is based on squeezing dollars out of the sweat and blood of those who work? What about the irresponsible bankers and businessmen, whose speculation and unbridled quest for profits led to the economic crisis? No, Bush didn't denounce them. He wants to give them more.
Look, for example, at the Savings and Loan sharks and banking tycoons. Driven by the profit drug, their speculation on real estate and junk bonds led to an enormous financial crisis. Is Bush going to make them pay? Not a chance. His 1993 budget allocates another $55.7 billion to prop up the commercial banks and to pay another installment on the eventual $500 billion bailout of the S&L's.
Or what about the real estate developers? Floating on the speculative bubble, they drove up housing prices and built more office buildings and luxury apartments than anyone could use. Will they pay for it? Not if Bush has his way. He wants to allow them to eliminate their losses as a tax write-off, and then extend them additional incentives as well.
And so it goes for one section of capitalists after another. Bush would essentially pay the capitalists 15% of every new investment they make in plants and machinery. But they whine they are still too poor to invest in research and development. So Bush offers them another $76 billion for that. But that's still not enough. So he wants to cut the capital gains tax, giving the richest 1% of families an average tax break of $19,000 apiece. But then, they really need those yachts and personal jets. So he proposes to completely eliminate the luxury tax on those items.
Why, even the supposedly "middle class" tax cuts disproportionately help the more well off. Look, for example, at the proposed increase in the personal exemption for children. A family with two kids in the 31% tax bracket, making over $100,000 a year, would save $310. But those in the 15% bracket, making under $50,000 would get less than half of that. Meanwhile, 25% of all children would get nothing, and that includes 45% of Latino and 50% of black children. They are in families who are too poor to benefit from the exemption.
No jobs from "trickle down"
This is welfare for the rich, pure and simple. But Bush does not call it that. Oh no, he calls it "job creation."
According to Bush if you just give the capitalists more and more money, they will invest it and create more jobs. In 1988, when Bush last ran in the elections, he promised this "trickle down" idea would create 30 million new jobs within eight years. Almost four years have passed, and all we see are layoffs, plant closings, soaring unemployment and mounting homelessness.
The working people have suffered from "trickle down" now for more than a decade. Under Reagan it postponed the crisis, propped up business for a few years, and the rich got richer. But now the program has collapsed. The recession has dragged on for 18 months. And all Bush can think of to do is to give more handouts to the capitalists. And that means more cutbacks on the working people.
Balancing the budget on the backs of the working people
Oh yes, Bush says the budget must get balanced. "We must get the federal deficit under control," he hollered in the State of the Union speech. Well, somebody has to pay for the welfare thrown to the capitalists. And who else can that be besides the workers, the poor, the elderly?
Bush's budget plan is chock full of new cutbacks. Home heating assistance, housing for the elderly and disabled, Medicare, veterans benefits, urban mass transit, and more are to be cut. Meanwhile, taxes on federal, state and local workers are to be raised around 2%.
And that is just the beginning of the squeeze put on the masses. Bush is demanding a new measure to curb the growing cost of virtually all social programs -- costs that are rising especially because soaring unemployment is forcing more people to turn to government programs for help.
Bush would begin with Medicaid, the inadequate medical care program for poor people. Due to the recession and high unemployment, the Medicaid rolls surged to some 30 million people this year. But Bush would limit the rise in the rolls to the growth of the population, instead of the growth in the number of people who need care. In short, he would force many to go without any care at all. As well, it is estimated that the average payment for each beneficiary has been rising at 15% a year. Bush would also arbitrarily limit the payments to only 5-6% a year, a third of the actual cost. And then what are people to do? Get a third of an operation?
You can't eat the flag
But don't worry about keeping your health care or a job or a home. Bush assures us that these problems are nothing because the U.S. is the "one sole and pre-eminent power," the "leader of the world," the "strongest nation on earth." Instead of an economic plan to end the suffering, Bush offered up patriotic flag-waving.
Indeed it appears that -- facing the economic slide of the U.S. and its increasing difficulty competing with other major powers -- Bush wants to hold out the threat of military adventure to solve the country's problems. Although Bush could find no new enemy to make war upon, he demanded the military spending be held up -- essentially limiting cuts to those already in the works. And citing the U.S. victories in the Gulf war and the cold war, Bush emphasized that "Much good can come from the prudent use of power." But what good is hard to find.
Oh yes, at the cost of 100,000 Iraqi lives, the oil monopolies reaped record profits and U.S. imperialism maintained its domination of the Mid-East. But that certainly hasn't helped workers and oppressed nationalities in Iraq or the rest of the region. Nor did it help the U.S. workers searching for jobs.
Oh yes, U.S. imperialism is number one -- first in mass slaughter, first in plunder of other peoples, first in exploiting the workers at home. Patriotic flag- waving just means helping the capitalists plunder the working people at home and abroad.
Workers, watch out. When Bush calls for bringing the "same courage and sense of common purpose to the economy that we brought to Desert Storm" that means trouble for the working people. The "victory" over Iraq was bought at the cost of mass murder, devastation, and starvation of the Iraqi working people. What will Bush's plans for "victory" over the economy cost the workers at home and abroad?
[Photo: Unemployed construction workers demand jobs in New York City protest.]
[Photo: 3,000 unemployed lined up in bitter cold to apply for jobs at Sheraton Chicago Hotel on January 15.]
The Democrats immediately blasted Bush's State of the Union message. "Too little, too late," they shouted. But what does that mean? Is it "too little" welfare for the filthy rich capitalists? Or is it "too late" in giving them bigger handouts?
The Democrats' main complaint is that Bush is not doing enough to increase investments in order to get the economy moving and create jobs. With this in mind, they actually support Bush's bailout of the banks and S&L's and also his tax-write-offs for real estate developers, for new business investments, for research and development, and so forth. While out on the campaign trail, Democratic candidates may complain about Bush's tax-breaks for the wealthy, but many Democrats in Congress are even supporting the elimination of the luxury tax on expensive yachts and airplanes. They say that creates jobs. And, although they've so far blocked the cutting of the capital gains tax, they may end up supporting it, too.
Of course it is true that you need investment if more plants are to be built and jobs created. But it has to be remembered that under capitalism investment is aimed at making profits, not creating jobs. Therefore, the capitalist will invest in what is most profitable at the moment -- yesterday it was real estate speculation and tomorrow it will be something else.
Oh yes, a few Democrats want to control the investment. They talk of an "industrial policy" to encourage investment into new plants, research and development, and rebuilding the country's roads and bridges. But even if you could get a capitalist to invest in these things, it won't be aimed at creating jobs. When a capitalist puts money into building new plants it is also aimed at reaping higher profits. This means, chiefly, making use of more modern technology and rationalizing the work force to cut down the number of workers needed and, thereby, cut their costs. Helping the capitalists become more "competitive," as some Democrats demand, is just another way of sacking the workers -- only perhaps a little more controlled and orderly.
The Democrats, like Bush's Republicans, are a party enthralled to the capitalists. No matter how much they talk of jobs and health care and other good things, they can see no way to obtain them except within the capitalist framework, except by giving more handouts to the billionaires.
For the working class to defend itself, it must break out of this capitalist framework. We must demand jobs and health care and a decent living no matter the cost to the capitalists. And we must build up the fight for these things so that it unites the workers class-wide and prepares them for a struggle for socialism -- for a system where new technology lightens the burden of work instead of eliminating jobs, where investment will actually serve to create the products and jobs people need instead of more profits for a handful of bosses.
A year has passed by since the Gulf War. This was supposed to be America's proudest moment, proof that the U.S. is now standing tall again, that it's No. 1.
So what does America look like today? Bush may crow about his "victory" as he did in his State of the Union speech; but even the establishment media is forced to admit, "the glow has faded." And why is that? Because America is caught in a deep economic recession. Layoffs mount, and the corporations and government are engaged in a vicious war on the workers and the poor.
A year ago, the establishment crowed about the nation "standing together." Even then it wasn't true, because the war was opposed by a widespread anti-war movement, which even penetrated inside the military. But where is the nation "standing together" today? The recession has brought to the fore that there are two Americas: the America of the rich and powerful, of the Bush's and Iacocca's, who continue to live high off the hog, and the America of the workers and poor who are on the chopping block.
War showed the ugly essence of capitalist imperialism
The war brought out the ugly face of U.S. imperialism. Behind the hype about "freedom" and "American democracy," the war showed what makes the system actually run. It is greed, pure and simple; greed backed up with murderous force. It is the dictatorship of the super-rich, those who reap all the profits and demand that others do their fighting for them.
What was this war about? It was a war between two capitalist robbers -- the U.S. superpower and the local Iraqi power -- over oil and control of the strategic Persian Gulf region. Iraq invaded Kuwait to get a greater share of the region's oil profits. And though the U.S. had helped build up Iraq's military power in the 1980's, it would not tolerate such a change in the region's balance of power.
To show who's boss, the Pentagon was willing to massacre 100,000 Iraqi soldiers and bomb the country's infrastructure to pieces. And Washington maintains its vengeance today with a continuing blockade, which has meant the death of tens of thousands of children alone, from malnutrition and disease. U.S. imperialism proved it has might. But it did not succeed in proving that might makes right.
The Gulf war was not the first war, "police action," or invasion by the U.S. in recent decades. Far from it. And it won't be the last. These wars take place because the U.S. government sees itself as the world's policeman. Why? Because the ruling capitalists see the entire world as theirs to exploit and plunder. The rich not only live off the labor of the workers of the U.S. but also from the super-profits gained from exploitation worldwide.
The war also showed that imperialism is not some crazy scheme of a few right-wing politicians and generals, but a whole system. The entire establishment joined together to press the war against Iraq. The Democrats linked arms with the Republicans. The businessmen saluted the war drive and fattened their bank accounts. And the media loyally licked the boots of the White House and Pentagon.
The other side: anti-war activism
While the Gulf war brought out the worst of America, it also showed something about the best in this country. And that was the emergence of the anti-war movement.
After the war's end Bush declared "we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all." Since the 60's the establishment has been upset that a massive movement broke out against the aggression by U.S. imperialism. They have wanted to smother this heritage ever since.
But contrary to what Bush said, they didn't succeed. The Gulf war acted as a catalyst for a re-emergence of anti-war activism. Militant demonstrations took place in many cities. In San Francisco protesters blocked the Bay Bridge and trashed the armed forces recruiting center. They blocked roads and highways in Seattle, Chicago, and Boston. The state capitol was occupied by protesters in Olympia, Washington. Hundreds of thousands marched against the war in Washington, D.C. on January 19 and 26. In cities and towns across the U.S., there were actions against the war.
The speed with which the movement took off was notable. Long before a single shot was fired there were numerous demonstrations against the coming war. This showed there is a strong residue of anti-imperialist sentiment among the masses in the U.S. The movement didn't emerge just among veterans of the 60's. Many of them did take part, but also a new generation of youth, including high school students and young workers, took up the anti-war cause.
And there was another important component of the anti-war movement. Dozens of GI's resisted the Gulf war, defying military threats and intimidation. Several of them are still serving time in prison for their courageous stand. The Gl resistance showed that even inside the military, despite the repression and extreme pressure, there were youth willing to stand against the injustice of imperialism.
To disorganize this movement the government launched its cynical "support the troops" crusade. Pretending concern for the ordinary soldiers, the establishment promoted support for the war effort. The media rushed to embrace this theme, and gave themselves wholeheartedly to Bush's war effort. And news editors systematically ignored anti-war demonstrations of thousands, while promoting "support the troops" rallies of just a few people. They knew there was widespread skepticism about the war, but they wanted everyone to think "I may have my doubts, but everyone else is on the bandwagon."
The war ended quickly, and the antiwar movement also came to an end. Still, many of the people who came to political life during the war learned some important lessons about life in America. The alienation from the establishment, which they felt during the war, remains. And this seed will find fertile soil to sprout up in in the future.
For as long as imperialism remains, the danger of military adventures and wars will remain. To do away with imperialist war altogether, the system of rule by the capitalist exploiters has to be overthrown. A new society of workers' socialism must replace the murderous profit-based system of today. A year after the Gulf war ended, we have to remember this truth. We should not wait for the outbreak of wars to build the revolutionary movement against imperialism. Join with us, the Marxist-Leninist Party, in ongoing work to build a workers' opposition to imperialism and war.
On January 16, Korean auto workers occupied five Hyundai Motor plants in the city of Ulsan. They held off police for a week in the action reminiscent of the Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1937. The factory occupations were sparked by a decision by management to lock the workers out after they had voted to strike.
The 30,000 Hyundai workers had overwhelmingly voted in favor of striking. They demanded the company reinstate some fired union activists who are in prison and pay a year-end bonus of six-weeks pay. The company had made a net profit of $105 million last year, but only offered a bonus of two-weeks pay. It refused to concede anything about the fired unionists. The strike vote came after workers had already waged a month-long slowdown. They had succeeded in reducing the company's December export target from 27,000 cars to 24,000.
When management threatened its lockout, ten thousand workers showed up and took control of the plants. They threw out management and the security guards, and barricaded the gates with new cars, tires, car doors, and hijacked fire engines. Some 15,000 police were mobilized outside, but workers declared that any attack on their occupation would be met by destroying the plants.
The government of Roh Tae Woo threatened the workers with harsh retaliation. Leaflets were dropped from the air demanding they leave. The government and media ran a huge propaganda blitz blaming workers for the country losing its international competitiveness. But the workers rejected these patriotic appeals. The standoff continued for a week. On January 21, the workers ended their occupation by slipping away under cover of darkness. They left to continue their struggle in other ways.
Workers in the U.S. should support the fighting auto workers of South Korea. Don't expect the UAW to support them. Instead of organizing a campaign to support the Hyundai strikers, the UAW's director of international affairs commented that the conflict in Ulsan resulted from "the lack of bargaining experience on both sides." He said that Korean companies don't understand how to sit down and bargain, and some union people have "high expectations" about what they can gain.
Mr. Trade Union Bureaucrat, you are so far removed from workers' actual struggles that you can never see anything beyond "sitting down and bargaining." If you were around in 1937, you probably would have made the same kind of pious declaration that the U.S. auto magnates do not have the proper bargaining experience. As for "high expectations," we would never expect that from you. After all, you guys have so lowered your expectations that all you can see is giving in to concessions demands and joining with management to bash the Japanese foreign competition.
On the other hand, the Hyundai workers are a great example of struggle. Not only did they take determined mass action to fight for what they think is just, but they also rejected the patriotic appeal to unite with their exploiters so that they can compete better against the companies' world rivals. That is the kind of spirit the U.S. auto workers need.
[Photo: Striking Korean auto workers rally at Hyundai's Ulsan plant.]
200 angry black, Chicano, Native American and white youths lambasted the KKK in Denver at a Martin Luther King Day rally.
Police lines were set up to separate some 15,000 anti-racist marchers from about 25 Klansmen after a federal judge had ordered that the Klan be allowed to demonstrate. But the angry youth would have none of it. They tossed bottles, bricks, billiard balls, and snowballs over the police lines at the KKK. And when the police tried to help the Klansmen escape in a bus, the anti-racist youth got around, police lines to attack the bus itself, smashing its windows and trying to tip it over.
Then all hell broke loose. The police opened up with tear gas and night sticks against the young militants and other anti-racist demonstrators who were at the rally. More people were drawn into the confrontation with the police. They scuffled with cops, hurled rocks and bottles, turned over police cars, and injured several policemen.
An MLP supporter who was at the rally reported that around 70 people, including a number of children, were treated at the scene for mace, night sticks, and other beating injuries. About 21 of the anti-racist fighters were arrested.
[Photo: Denver police car overturned by anti-racist demonstrators.]
Of Dubuque's 58,000 residents, only 330 are African-American. But they are the target of increasing racist attacks. Since last May there have been 12 cross-burning incidents. Small bands of nazis and Klansmen, including David Duke's National Association for the Advancement of White People, are heavily promoted by the media. But the anti-racists are fighting back.
On January 12 more than 350 people marched against racism in Dubuque. On January 15 another march of 350 was held, this one in 10 degree weather. And on January 18 a racist rally drew less than 25 bigots, while more than three times that number of anti-racists showed up to confront them.
Des Moines anti-racists shout: 'No excuse! No sellout!'
On December 28 a squad of police savagely beat Larry Milton, an African-American resident of Des Moines, Iowa. Milton was clubbed while handcuffed and in leg restraints. The cops screamed "Shut up nigger!" when he called out for them to stop. Milton's wounds were so severe he had to be flown to Iowa City, over 100 miles away, for emergency treatment. Fortunately the cops' racist frenzy was witnessed by dozens of people and could not be covered up.
Word of the attack spread like wildfire through the small black community. A rally of 1,000 people on January 2 protested the beating and demanded the cops be prosecuted. Racist Police Chief William Moulder declared his cops acted properly, and is keeping them on duty. This only added to the outrage. Over 200 people called radio station KUCB on one day of broadcasting demanding that Moulder be replaced and relating their own stories of many incidents of police brutality over the years. On January 6th, 500 people jammed a City Council meeting, demanding justice and chanting "No excused' and "No sellout!"
Officials of the police department have launched a propaganda campaign in the local media to try to silence the growing public outcry. As well, they are calling on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to censor radio station KUCB for providing a forum for criticism of the police. But the people are not intimidated. Neighborhood meetings have continued to deepen the discussion of the role of the racist police. And further mass protests are planned.
Chanting "We want justice," and "Police are murderers," 200 people marched to New York's 83rd police precinct on January 7. Picket signs declared "Stop police brutality!" "You killed an unarmed man!" and "Don't sweep this one under the rug!"
The action was to protest the killing of Hector Rivera, a Puerto Rican delivery truck driver, on New Year's Eve. Originally the police had claimed that they gunned down Rivera when he reached for a gun in his trunk. But it was disclosed that Rivera was standing in front of his house while his car was parked across the street. So then the cops had to switch their story and began to claim Rivera was reaching for a gun in a paper bag. But the only paper bag found at the scene contained no gun. And an eyewitness said Rivera, with hands over his head, had pleaded "I got no gun, I got nothing" before the cops mowed him down.
Meanwhile, a racist wave has been spreading through New York. The day before the march, two black children were attacked by four teenagers in the Bronx. The racists spray-painted the kids with white paint, shouting, "You black bastards are turning white today! " Similar assaults have burst out elsewhere.
The Pasadena Rose Parade this year took the theme of "voyages of discovery." They chose Cristobal Colon, a Spaniard who is a direct descendant of Christopher Columbus, as grand marshal.
But 1492 was not the "discovery" of America by the human race, but the establishment of a link between Europe and the Americas. This accelerated world history. But this joining together took place at the dawn of capitalism, and was carried out as a colonialist venture for the profit of the exploiting classes ruling Europe. It therefore resulted in mass murder, the enslavement of whole indigenous peoples, and the destruction of the local societies. It was an historic holocaust of immense proportions.
With its theme, the Rose Parade was justifying the colonial holocaust. No wonder it met opposition from Indians and other progressive people. To cool things off, the Rose Parade appointed Ben Nighthorse Campbell, an Indian who is a Democratic congressman from Colorado, as co-grand marshal.
But since the Rose Parade kept the theme of discovery, protesters weren't satisfied. Fifty or more gathered on January 1 at one point of the route, some in traditional Indian dress or with banners and flags denouncing Columbus. One held up a "wanted" poster, denouncing Columbus "for imperialist crimes against humanity, murder, theft and rape." A number of people passing by expressed their support to the protesters, or joined with them.
At the Superbowl
The oppression of the Indians, begun 500 years ago, continues to this day. So half a month later, 200 Indians gathered on January 19 at the Superbowl in Minnesota. They were protesting the use of caricatures of Indians by football teams and other sports events.
Not all use of Indian names or logos is necessarily disrespectful. But it has been the protests by Indians and the development of the anti-racist struggle that has resulted in a number of teams cleaning up their image. And there still remains much to protest. This year, the Washington Redskins played the Buffalo Bills, and "Redskins" is perhaps the most offensive name for a football team. As well, the use of Indian caricatures continues. The Atlanta Braves, for example, only recently agreed to abandon their use of "Chief Nok-A-Homa," who would do a dance after every home run.
[Photo:200 Native Americans demonstrate against racism on Superbowl Sunday in Minneapolis.]
"I care!" That's what George Bush repeats at every campaign stop and election speech. But the workers had better ask the president, "Care for whom?"
Oh yes, he cares for the Savings and Loan swindlers. Bush's bailout plan for the handful of financial wheelers-and-dealers will eventually cost some $500 billion.
But what about the 16 million unemployed and half-employed workers? Bush, in his State of the Union speech, offered only $4.4 billion to help them. That won't even begin to restore the cuts made in unemployment benefits over the last 15 years. It will only last until July. And it will only reach a small portion of the millions and millions of unemployed workers who have been suffering with no benefits at all.
Nearly 13 million workers left without benefits
Because of years of cutbacks of unemployment insurance, today the vast majority of jobless and under-employed workers get no benefits at all. Back in 1975 some 76.8% of the officially unemployed received benefits. As of December 1991, only about 40% did.
And that only tells part of the story. There are millions of other workers without jobs who are simply not counted as being unemployed.
As of December there were 8.9 million workers officially unemployed. But another 1.1 million workers are classified as "discouraged," rather than unemployed, because they have given up the futile search for jobs. And another 6.3 million workers are classified as "involuntary part-time," rather than unemployed. These are workers who cannot get full-time jobs and -- forced into temporary jobs, day-labor, and part-time work -- are unemployed much of the time.
Together that makes 16.3 million unemployed and half-employed workers. But only 3.6 million were drawing regular benefits in December.
Bush and the Democrats agree to do little
The new compromise unemployment plan, agreed to in January by Bush and the Democrats in the House, will do little to change this situation.
The $2.7 billion measure would last only until July. For that period, it would allow workers whose basic 26 weeks of coverage had run out to extend their benefits another 13 weeks. And this could be added to the 7 to 20 week extension that was passed in November. But that only applies to a handful of states where unemployment is exceptionally high, and will only help a small portion of workers.
Of course any help is appreciated. But this, at most, covers only those who are able to qualify for benefits. Most of the nearly 13 million workers denied benefits will still be left out in the cold.
No end to the restrictions
And the outright denial of. benefits is an enormous problem. Beginning under the liberal Democrat Jimmy Carter, and continuing under Reagan and Bush, a mountain of restrictions have been added to disqualify huge numbers of workers from receiving what is due them.
For example, in the last decade at least 31 states have increased the minimum earnings and the amount of weeks worked needed to qualify for benefits. In Michigan, for instance, you must have earned at least $100 a week for 20 weeks, up from $25 for 14 weeks a decade ago. This cuts out a large numbers of workers -- especially the temporary and part-time workers whose ranks have been growing by leaps and bounds throughout the Reagan years.
As well, many states have added other tough requirements. A longtime worker, for example, may leave her job for another one and then be quickly laid off. Though her previous employer may have paid unemployment insurance for her for years, some states deny her unemployment benefits because she had not been working long enough in her most recent job.
Through these, and other restrictions, millions and millions of workers are being denied benefits. Even though they have been slaving for the capitalists and making profits for them for years, they are being thrown into the garbage like worn-out socks.
Make the capitalists pay
But neither the conservative Bush nor the liberal Democrats are even talking about eliminating the restrictions and restoring the benefits. They aim to placate the growing anger over unemployment with some temporary benefit extensions. Meanwhile, they are maintaining the slashing of eligibility which has been a gold mine for the capitalists.
In many states the capitalist bosses benefited directly from these cuts. Money saved from the slashing of benefits was handed over to the capitalists in the form of cuts in the amount they are required to pay into the unemployment fund.
Beyond this, all the capitalists have benefited, because keeping the unemployed insecure acts as a pressure to drive down the wages and working conditions of the workers who still have jobs.
The problem of layoffs and job cuts is not just an issue at this or that factory' or office. It is a question for the entire working class. The workers -- employed and jobless together -- must mount a class-wide battle for jobs and unemployment protection. They can't trust their fate to the "I care" hypocrisy of both
Bush and the Democrats. The politicians are just serving their capitalist masters. The workers must take matters into their own hands.
Caterpillar workers are continuing their strike against the company's demands for givebacks and separate contracts at each plant. The workers demand that Caterpillar sign the pattern contract which John Deere and Co. agreed to last fall. About 9,300 workers are either on strike, locked out, or on layoff. But because UAW leaders are following a "selective strike strategy" another 7,000 workers are being kept on the job. Splitting up the workers and keeping the strikers isolated appears to have weakened the struggle.
Over 1,000 Arizona state workers descended on the state capital January 13 to demand pay increases. They rallied on the opening day of the 1992 legislative session to let state lawmakers know that public employees are fed up. For the last three years, Arizona state employees have averaged wage increases of less than 1% per year. The wage structure in Arizona is so bad that food stamp workers themselves qualify for stamps.
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At least 20,000 workers, teachers and students marched on the State Capitol building in Annapolis, Maryland January 8. They protested state budget cuts in education, health care, drug-rehabilitation, clinics, housing and other important social services. The demonstrators shouted "Furlough Shaeffer," referring to the Governor's legislation that requires teachers to take unpaid furloughs throughout the school year. "Save our schools" and "These cuts won't heal" were prominent among thousands of banners and placards.
Chanting "We want jobs! " 50,000 construction and allied workers marched across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan December 19. The unemployment rate among city construction workers is running 50%. More than 90,000 building trades workers are unemployed while dozens of construction projects in the New York area are stalled.
Unfortunately, union bureaucrats leading the rally used the occasion to blame undocumented immigrants for some of the job loss. Instead of an appeal to organize immigrants working in construction, the union hacks called for strengthening the police against them. Such despicable racism only splits up the workers and weakens their struggle against the capitalists. The rank and file will have to shove aside this racism if their struggle is to advance.
On January 6, garment workers in El Paso, Texas ratified their first contract with the DCB apparel group. This ends the first successful strike in 20 years by workers in the notorious El Paso garment sweatshops where over 15,000 people work in 120 factories.
The fierce struggle by the mainly women strikers included walkouts, sit-down strikes, hunger strikes, chaining themselves to sewing machines and marching into government offices to make their demands known.
Recently, over 200 people rallied in support of striking nurses at the Greene County Memorial Hospital in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. The nurses were joined by their families, coal miners, steel workers, and other health care workers. The nurses are fighting against the hospital's demand to add one half hour to the nurses' work day.
The chiefs of the Big Three auto companies joined Bush in his trip to Japan. There they joined in the cry that Japan is to blame for the U.S. recession. They made the lying claim that Japan has a closed auto market and demanded Japan open up to more U.S. cars.
The Japanese officials promised to buy more U.S. cars. Not much may come of that; after all, Japanese consumers cannot be forced to buy U.S. cars. More may come of the other promise made, to buy more U.S. auto parts.
But "opening up the Japanese auto market" wasn't really the aim of the Big Three. They have long ceased to make any serious attempt to sell in the Japanese market. What they really want is for Congress to roll back fuel-efficiency standards and to set up new barriers against Japanese imports. And towards that goal, the Big Three launched a frenzy of Japan bashing as soon as they returned to Detroit.
Chrysler's Lee Iacocca led the charge. At the Detroit Economic Club, he made a virulent anti-Japanese speech. He repeated the charge that the Japanese are to blame for all the ills of the U.S. auto industry. He shouted that the key issue is to stop "the flood of vehicles they're sending into this market." He lauded a move in Congress to force Japan to cut back its auto imports by 20% each year.
Iacocca even used language from the Cold War to denounce Japan. He shouted that the Japanese economy is completely unlike the U.S. He said, "It's time...to understand...that Japan's economic structure is as different from ours as ours is from Cuba's." Almost calling Japan some type of socialist country, he shouted, "They have a managed economy, pure and simple." And he demanded that the U.S. has to stop being patient with Japan.
All this was couched under the guise that if Japanese imports are cut back, then hundreds of thousands of jobs will be saved in the U.S. This claim is also made by the Democrats who are launching protectionist legislation in Congress. And it is echoed by the UAW.
What of this claim? Will restraints against Japanese imports help the American workers? We don't need rocket scientists to figure out the answer. Life has already answered it.
Japan is not the cause of the U.S. auto crisis
It is a big lie to blame Japan for the auto companies' crisis in the U.S. After World War II, the U.S. auto monopolies had near complete domination of the domestic auto market. They also dominated huge parts of the world auto market. While they complain of Japanese transplants now, it was the U.S. companies that were then setting up plants and facilities across Europe and elsewhere.
When they had this domination, the auto companies ran the industry as a near-closed monopoly. It has been extensively documented that this led the industry towards stagnation. The corporations looked for the biggest profits. They paid minimal attention to safety, quality, and innovation. Instead they went for such profit-making gimmicks as huge gas guzzlers, built-in obsolescence, and loading cars with options. The oil crisis of the early 70's shattered this situation. The U.S. companies had refused to launch smaller, fuel-efficient cars. They had arrogantly spurned new technological innovations like front-wheel drive.
It was in this context that they were finally faced with serious competition -- from Japanese companies. By this time Japan had built up a production system that was newer, more flexible and efficient in comparison with the U.S.
This is typical under capitalism. No one corporation, no one capitalist power has a god-given right to predominance forever. Even if an industry inside one country succeeds in setting up a total monopoly, the fact that modern capitalism is global means that they will eventually have to come face to face with competitive pressure from outside. The Japanese competition began to succeed because of the stagnation in the U.S. industry.
How did the Big Three deal with the crisis?
The U.S. auto monopolies launched a multifaceted program to deal with their crisis.
They begged for government help. While Chrysler received direct handouts from the government, they all got the Reagan administration to help get them protection. It came in the form of "voluntary export restraints" from Japan. Supposedly this was to provide the Big Three with "breathing room" to restructure.
The restructuring came principally at the cost of ruining the auto workers. The crisis was used to get workers to give up concessions. Promises were made this would save jobs. But jobs they did not save. Hundreds of thousands were laid off. Cities like Flint, Michigan and Detroit were devastated. The remaining workers were sped up further. Both layoffs and speedup came as part of the drive to retool and modernize their production system.
And finally, the auto monopolies sought to increase their profit margins by outsourcing operations to low-wage countries like Mexico and Korea and by buying more cars -- whole or in large pieces -- from the Japanese corporations themselves.
Through this system, the Big Three made a record $61 billion in profits from 1983 to 1989. These were some of the fattest profits they ever made. What happened to these profits? Certainly, the workers or their communities didn't benefit from them. No, it was the executives and management who took record salaries and bonuses. They lined their pockets with gold.
So what does the future hold?
That is what happened the last time the auto companies got barriers against Japanese imports. They may claim -- for the public's sake -- that they are out to protect "American jobs." But if you believe in that, you're falling for the fairy tale that the capitalists are in business to provide jobs when in the real world, they're in business to make the fattest profits they can.
And whether they get new protectionist barriers or not, they will do the same as they did earlier. They will pressure for new concessions to speed up existing auto workers. They will lay off more workers as they continue to modernize and outsource. They will even make more deals with the same Japanese companies they are hysterically shouting against. After all, the shouts are for public opinion, the business deals are for making money.
The restructuring of the auto industry is a painful experience for the auto workers, and there is more pain to come. The reality of the competitive system of world capitalism is such that there is no going back to the time when the U.S. auto industry was free of pressure from rivals. Workers cannot unite with the corporations in the vain hope that this will somehow defend their jobs and income.
Instead, the auto workers have to take the necessary steps towards rebuilding their struggle. This is not an easy task, but there is no alternative to that. What are some of the issues involved in building the fightback?
It means standing up against the plan to make the workers pay for the auto monopolies' crisis. It means a serious fight for jobs or a livelihood. It means building a movement demanding that new jobs be provided to those being discarded, including the necessary retraining. The workers have to shout out their demands loud and strong through mass actions; being quiet means committing suicide.
What is more, the workers have to link up with, and provide concrete support to, the lower-wage workers in the industry, whether they be elsewhere in the U.S. or across the borders -- in Mexico, Korea or Japan. A serious effort has to be made to organize the unorganized in the Japanese transplants and in the parts plants. Strikes in Korea and Mexico have to be strongly supported. In the long run, progress for the auto workers here is completely bound up with success in developing the worldwide unity of the workers.
For real solutions, question the profit system
The auto crisis has provided a glimpse of the deep, structural problems afflicting capitalism in the U.S.
It shows that whether they function as a closed monopoly, or they face increased competition, industry under capitalism inevitably runs into trouble. It means stagnation, crisis, and restructuring -- eventually leading to crisis yet again. While in some boom times, workers may get some benefits, in general for workers this system is a disaster.
Today, their deep problems and growing competition are forcing the auto monopolies to restructure. And this restructuring is being done on the backs of the workers.
That is the logic of how capitalism works. But that makes no sense at all for the workers. It appears even at a time when the working people's transportation needs are not being adequately met. Factories are shut down, workers are laid off, yet it can't be said that every worker is provided with decent, adequate means of transportation. Moreover, as the auto companies restructure -- inevitably with fewer workers -- workers' incomes are slashed, their ranks are depleted, their health and safety are hurt, and whole communities and cities are ruined.
This is proof that the logic of capitalism is a logic which runs counter to the workers' needs. The working class cannot afford to have its communities destroyed. It cannot afford to see more and more of its ranks ruined. It cannot afford to see its own transportation needs suffer.
To meet the workers' needs, we have to question the profit system. The workers need a different system. We need a system that is based not on profit, but on meeting the needs of the workers. We have to think about alternatives to the "rationality" of capitalism and build an actual movement to fight for a workers' future.
Today this means that workers cannot get caught up in the framework of protectionism vs. free trade. The auto monopolies would dearly love to get us in that trap. That means we would unite with them against their rivals and competitors. No, workers need to seek an alternative within the framework of struggle: struggle against the bosses and their unjust, unfair, irrational system. We need a movement that will prepare conditions for a new society, socialism. We need a society where technical progress and restructuring are not a source of pain and destruction, but instead usher in a more happy, cultured life.
Lee Iacocca, the politicians, and AFL-CIO leaders keep repeating that "Japan is a closed market." Supposedly, the problems of losses in the U.S. auto industry can all be traced to the fact that while the Japanese are marauding the American market, they won't let U.S. goods in.
This is a lie. While the capitalists may shout about "free trade," pure "free trade" is largely a myth. The Japanese capitalists are, like their American counterparts, protectionist in some sectors, open in others. In general, there isn't that much difference in how the Japanese and American capitalists trade.
Workers will only drive their conditions down further if they begin to take sides in the competition among the exploiters -- whether within this country or across national borders. Our enemy isn't the Japanese, it's all the exploiters and the profit system they represent. Modern capitalism is a global enterprise. The capitalists of the world work together to exploit the world's workers. The workers' movement must be built with new bonds of international solidarity to counter the combined power of world capital -- U.S., Japanese, etc.
Let us look at some facts which show that the Japan bashers are liars.
Are Japan's markets closed?
Japan is a huge importer; thus its markets can hardly be closed. In 1990, it was the world's third-largest importer; it bought $235 billion worth of foreign goods. About half of that was food, fuels, and raw materials, while the other half was manufactured goods, machinery, chemical products, etc.
As far as trade barriers go, Japan's average tariff on industrial products is 2.6%, compared with 3% in the U.S. and 2.9% in the European Community. Over the last decade, non-tariff barriers have grown, such as quotas, licenses, and "voluntary" import restraints. According to the London Economistof January 11, a World Bank study has shown that the extent of such barriers is similar to that in the U.S. The chief difference is that Japan is said to use more such barriers to protect agriculture, while the U.S. uses them in manufacturing.
It is also said that the real barriers to imports in Japan are informal arrangements among Japan's close-knit industrial groups (the so-called keiretsu).The keiretsuare a Japanese form of monopolization; the U.S. economy is also marked by its own giant monopolies. With respect to the charge about the keiretsuacting as barriers to imports, the Economistreports that a study by the Brookings Institution did find that such groups repel imports but could not say by how much. Moreover, the same study included a finding that many keiretsubuy from each other, instead of importing, because they can get a better value. That hardly makes legitimate a complaint about "unfair trade," especially when it comes from competing monopolies.
Look at another fact. U.S. exports to Japan more than doubled in real terms between 1979 and 1988, showing that more U.S. goods than ever are being sold in Japan. Of course, during the same period, imports from Japan increased 242%. But the imbalance is not explained by trade barriers -- it largely reflects the fact that Japanese exporters have competed better in many sectors of the U.S. market.
Is Japan closed to foreign cars?
Iacocca and his fellow auto billionaires accuse Japan of keeping out U.S. cars. However, the truth is that the U.S. auto companies have long given up trying to compete in the Japanese market.
In fact, during the last decade many European companies have stepped up efforts to sell in the Japanese market. And although their total sales are not huge yet, the European carmakers have seen their sales climb six-fold since 1983. So how did they do it in contrast to the U.S. companies? Apparently, they tried to adapt to Japanese market conditions instead of whining about unfairness.
For example, in Japan people drive on the left side of the road; thus cars are built with steering wheels on the right side. The American carmakers refused to supply right side steering columns; the Europeans did. They also modified cars' headlamps and license plate shapes to local needs, and provided kilometer-per-hour speedometers. As well, they added a warning light to show when pollution control equipment was overheating. This is important in a country with chronic traffic jams. American carmakers, by contrast, complained for years that this was an import barrier and sought to get it abolished. It wouldn't be a surprise to see them complain that right-hand drive cars are also an "unfair trading practice," and should be abolished to accommodate the U.S. way.
The point of this article is not to show that Japanese capitalism is better than the U.S. In fact, they're both the same profit-based system, differing in details but not in fundamentals. This article is meant to expose some of the stupid lies that "our" capitalists cook up as they want us to join their flag-waving, nationalist crusade against their Japanese rivals. Instead of joining this crusade, workers in the U.S. must build links of solidarity with the Japanese workers and workers of all lands -- in a common struggle against the capitalist system itself. Not the Japanese, but the profit system is the workers' enemy.
These are tough economic times. People are hurting and angry. As usual, the wealthy who hold power in this country are pointing at scapegoats for America's economic ills. From way back, foreigners have been a favorite target in the U.S. And this time it is no different. From Bush and the Democrats to the newspapers and TV, bashing the Japanese has become a favorite pastime.
And thus it is no surprise, that around the country, this ugly atmosphere is leading to a new wave of racial assaults and harassment of Asian people.
In November, a Japanese community center in Norwalk, California, was vandalized and painted with graffiti saying "Go back to Asia." On December 7, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, a Japanese restaurant in Lompoc, California, was hit by a small bomb. The same week, a Vietnamese restaurant in San Jose was set on fire.
A postal worker in a Detroit suburb reports to the Marxist-Leninist Party that Asian postal workers at her station have faced racist harassment in the community. This is unlikely to be a unique incident. In Detroit, the local establishment -- from the politicians and media to the United Auto Workers leaders -- are heavily promoting Japanese bashing. Hardly a day goes by when the media does not carry new stories scapegoating the Japanese.
In this atmosphere, it is only a matter of time before things get uglier. It may be recalled that the wave of Japan bashing that took place in the early 1980's ended up with the savage murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit.
Let us not forget Vincent Chin
Vincent Chin was a Chinese-American engineering student. In the summer of '82, while he was in a bar near Detroit, he was taunted by racist insults from Ronald Ebens, a white foreman from an auto plant. Ebens harassed Chin because he thought he was Japanese, making innuendos about auto plant layoffs. When Chin denounced the remarks, a fight broke out. Ebens, and his nephew Michael Nitz, followed Chin down the street and bludgeoned him to death with a baseball bat.
Despite Ebens' and Nitz' admissions of guilt, a local court put them on probation and only fined them $3,700 each. Later, protests around the U.S. and abroad forced the federal government to try them on charges of civil rights violations. Ebens was found guilty (though Nitz was acquitted), but a federal appeals court later overturned the guilty verdict. The Chin murder trial was from beginning to end a travesty of justice -- the establishment showed where it stood in the conflict between justice and the Japan bashing crusade.
What was the cause of Vincent Chin's murder? That was no mystery: it was Japan bashing by the corporate establishment and the UAW. Starting in the late 70's, the auto industry was hit by a massive crisis. The auto capitalists set out to modernize their plants to maximize profits, hitting workers with massive layoffs and takebacks. To get the workers behind them, the capitalists orchestrated the anti-Japanese hysteria. And instead of organizing the workers to fight back, the UAW bureaucracy caved in to the corporations and became some of the biggest champions of anti-Japan hysteria. Vincent Chin's death was the end result of this crusade.
Workers must take heed of the lesson of Chin's death. Workers must stand up against racism and reject those who want them to look for scapegoats for capitalism's ills. Instead of falling for Japan bashing, workers need to organize a movement against the bosses and the profit system.
U.S. society is more and more splitting apart -- into the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots, the capitalists and the workers. For years, the capitalist class has been hauling in more wealth than ever by driving down the working people with plant closings and wage cutting and the slashing of social programs. One measure of this class' polarization is the figures for after-tax family income. According to a report by the Citizens for Tax Justice, the top 1% of families -- those whose income averaged $676,000 in 1992 -- have seen their incomes soar some 136% in the last fifteen years. Meanwhile, the lowest 60% of families have seen their incomes slashed by 8-12%.
This class polarization increasingly makes people wonder: which side of the great divide do they find themselves on? Must they worry each day about their job and livelihood, or do they spend their time playing with tax breaks and treasury bills?
This contrast seems obvious to many. But it is not to the Democrats. They don't want to openly proclaim themselves for one side against the other and, instead, are searching for a more moderate course. Rather than raise the fighting banner of "Make the rich pay!" the Democrats are whining they must "save the middle class." In fact, appeals to the middle class has become the favorite Democratic Party strategy for the presidential campaign against Bush.
But what is this "middle class" the Democrats want to save? They don't define it. Indeed, they say one of the chief virtues of the term ii its vagueness. Their pollsters declare that some 94% of the people consider themselves to be middle class. And the Democratic candidates shout "hooray!" they've finally found a way to promise something to nearly everybody.
But, in truth, there is more to it than standard election-year posturing. The appeal to the middle class is the Democrats' attempt to soften the class struggle, to turn down the heat against the wealthy capitalists. And, at the same time, it is an open door for intolerance and bigotry against the workers who have been driven into poverty.
Just take a look at some of the "middle class" programs of the Democratic candidates.
Who benefits from "middle class" projects?
The appeal to the middle class does allow the Democrats to posture as if they are against the wealthy. They are not for the filthy rich like Bush. Oh no, they are for the middle class. Indeed, they even talk about making income taxes "fair" by getting the richest one percent to pay a little more. But don't shout "tax the rich!" On no. The measures must not be too radical, and they must help the respectably prosperous sections the most.
A case in point is the tax plan of Bill Clinton, the Arkansas governor who is campaigning for president under the theme of saving "the forgotten middle class." His plan would raise income taxes a bit on families with incomes over $200,000 a year to pay for a tax break for those with less. But his plan would primarily benefit those who make just under $200,000. Families with an income of $100,000 would save about $800. But families making $20,000 would save only $100. This is what the Democrats' middle class appeal amounts to -- slightly adjusting incomes so that the very richest share some of their bounty with the next richest.
Intolerance for the poor
On the other side, the Democrats' appeal to the middle class allows them to avoid confronting the capitalists' crusade against the most oppressed.
The Democrats are quite aware that Bush, and Buchanan, and David Duke are campaigning on the theme that the middle class is being squeezed by too much spending on welfare mothers, homeless people, immigrants, and minorities. This crusade not only drives down the poorest, but also, acts as a club to beat down the whole working class.
But rather than confront it, the Democrats' appeal to the middle class studiously avoids showing any concern for the most downtrodden.
It stands out, for example, that among all of the campaign pamphlets and position papers not a single Democratic Party candidate has issued a program to deal with homelessness. Tim Raftis, the campaign manager for Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, explained his own candidate's heartlessness this way: "Most people have a deep and abiding concern for the homeless and less fortunate in our society, but it's hard to lend a helping hand when your own footing is pretty slippery." (New York Times, Jan. 11) In other words, Harkin won't stand up^for the homeless because that might turn off the middle class.
In fact, some of the Democrats actually join in outright bigotry. Bill Clinton, for example, calls for "an end to welfare as we know it." (In These Times, Nov. 20-26) Oh yes, Clinton like Bush says he's against racism. But, just like Bush, he is more than willing to use the racist code words and to base his middle class appeal on stepping up attacks on the poor.
The champions of Japan bashing
And if scapegoating the downtrodden at home is not bad enough, the Democrats go on to blame the ills of America on foreign workers.
Some of the Democratic Party candidates are protectionists. Some consider themselves free traders. But most of them have spent much of their campaigns bashing the Japanese.
The free traders, like Clinton and Kerry, want to help the U.S. monopolies become more competitive through cost- cutting and tax incentives. The protectionists, like Harkin, want to help U.S. monopolies compete by punishing the Japanese and using tax incentives to "force" the U.S. corporations to invest. In either case, they seek to divert the working people's anger away from our own ruling class and to give "our" capitalists patriotic assistance against the foreign danger. And this they call job creation for the middle class.
Let the working class be counted
Such are some of the features of the middle class fad among the Democrats.
In a society increasingly split into two contending classes there are unquestionably people in the middle -- professionals and small owners and managers and others -- some of whom are being pressed down into the ranks of the workers and others who are climbing up the ladder to join the wealthy. But this middle class can have no stable position of its own. The Democrats' platforms are a good example of how an appeal to the middle class to fight to preserve a comfortable niche of its own ends up just being more service to the capitalists, more help in the war against workers and the hungry.
The union bureaucrats are enamored with this middle class rigmarole. But the rank-and-file workers must reject it. They must come to see they cannot defend themselves except by taking their own class stand, by mounting their own independent movement, and by bringing all the oppressed into the struggle against the capitalist exploiters.
New Jersey has put forward the latest entry in the contest to see which state can most cruelly bludgeon the poor. On January 21 it became the first state to pass a law denying AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) benefits for children who are born after a mother is on welfare. This is part of a package of welfare bills.
This measure cannot be implemented until the federal government approves it, as it goes against present rules on the use of AFDC funds. However, in his State of the Union message, Bush promised to allow the states to change the rules as they wished.
The New Jersey laws show that the war on the poor is not confined to Bush and immigrant-bashing Republican governors like California's Pete Wilson. New Jersey's Governor Florio is a liberal Democrat. And the New Jersey bills were pushed through the state legislature by the Democratic Assembly Majority Leader, Wayne Bryant, a black politician from Camden, one of the poorest areas in the state. Indeed Mr. Bryant boasts that he has been meeting with Bush administration officials to convince them to waive federal regulations that interfere with the bill.
The whip against the poor
Liberal Democratic governor Florio says that these measures will overcome the "moral bankruptcy" of the old welfare system. But in the name of family values and morality, he is wielding the whip against the poor.
What does it mean to ban aid for children borne by a mother on welfare? Presumably Florio thinks that it is immoral behavior, encouraged under the old system, for a woman to have a child while on welfare. Presumably the new morality is that if a poor woman has a child, she should let it starve. The old AFDC benefits are already so low that they force recipients to choose between eating and other necessities. How does Florio expect the poor to stretch them to cover the expense of a new child?
The new morality looks a lot like the old racist stereotypes of the past about welfare mothers. In the name of the family, it denies the love of the poor for their children. But if it is really the case that some women time having their children in order to get a pitiful $64 a month extra from New Jersey, then one would think that the real immorality would reside in an economic system that leaves people so close to the edge of starvation. One would think those responsible should be punished. Yet the cuts in AFDC and other welfare benefits are to reward those responsible -- the businessmen who benefit from the layoffs and wage-cutting that keep much of New Jersey desperate and destitute.
And the trumpeted centerpiece of Florio's new moral code is the Family Development Act, which would also axe women from welfare if they don't take part in either job training or schooling or some other approved activity. Real job training and education would be just fine. But how can poor single mothers go to job training without daycare and transportation? Florio's welfare package offers no help here, just get-a-job lectures and the establishment of a telephone "social services information" line to refer callers to that vast array of services which, however, only exist in the flowery language of the born-again moralists. Indeed, can one expect New Jersey, which has let its public schools decay, to lavish money and resources on job training and adult education?
So the new moral order will leave poor women with the choice of abandoning their children or starving.
The human face of the whip
The New Jersey welfare package does contain some sugar to sweeten its bitter taste.
It allows a welfare mother who works to keep a certain amount of her earnings before her welfare benefit is cut. And it also ends the practice of cutting off all AFDC benefits when an AFDC mother marries. Benefits for children (except of course for those borne while on welfare, who don't get any support at all) will be continued for a while after marriage.
But the legislators didn't act from the point of view of humanity or morality. If they had, they would have made some reforms decades ago. What is on their minds is the last New Jersey election, in which the businessmen kicked out many politicians and demanded that no more money should be spent on supporting the poor. The legislators believe that by encouraging marriage, providing a bit of a financial incentive to work, and forcing welfare mothers into what passes for job training, they will provide full employment and cut the welfare rolls. As Mr. Bryant said, self-sufficiency "generally speaking, translates into a full-time job in the private sector." (New York Times, Jan. 14.)
So they believe that, if only poor people were "moral," the jobs will be there. Is there a single serious economist who really believes such rot?
What happens when Florio and the legislators discover that unemployment continues? Will they continue their minor financial incentives to the poor? Or will these vanish, leaving only the real core of the package, such as the denial of benefits for children born while on AFDC and for mothers who can't find an appropriate job training program?
Whose moral bankruptcy?
Yes, the old welfare system had rampant immorality. But it wasn't the immorality of the poor, but of the wealthy businessmen who didn't want to spend even a penny to support the poverty- stricken, and of the politicians who gather votes by hitting on the poor. And today this immorality is running rampant, stronger than ever.
For 15 days 100 homeless activists maintained a protest camp at the Pima County Old Courthouse in Tucson, Arizona. Evictions of over 1,000 people were ordered from this courthouse last year. The homeless activists demanded funding for emergency rental assistance to prevent such evictions. They also demanded the government recognize the right to decent housing.
On January 7 they ended the protest after the County Board of Supervisors voted to allocate $50,000 for emergency rents and challenged the Tucson city government to match that amount. It also agreed to lobby the state legislature for further funds.
More than 300 activists picketed the State House in Indianapolis as the legislature convened the new year's session. The protesters demanded $2 million in state aid to homeless shelters, the establishment of health and safety standards at the shelters, and affordable housing. Activists estimate that there are 60,000 homeless people in Indiana, some 47% of them children. A growing number are minimum-wage workers who can't afford a place to live.
Homeless protesters sat-in at the Detroit City Council meeting January 15. The protesters held signs and wore gags over their mouths, to decry the City Council ruling forbidding them the right to speak about plans to demolish 737 apartments at the Parkside Homes project.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is requiring that the city raze the apartments before it would approve funds to build 100 new units. The City Council approved the plan to demolish the apartments. This action shows that, for all the talk of Mayor Young and HUD chief Jack Kemp about helping the homeless, HUD and the City government are more interested in destroying public housing than developing it.
The homeless protesters were demanding that the apartments be renovated. But the Council refused to even let them speak.
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Despite blizzard conditions, some 3,000 people marched to the steps^of the Michigan Capitol on January 15 to protest homelessness. Governor Engler eliminated the General Assistance program last year, throwing 90,000 people off welfare. These and other cuts, along with huge layoffs in the auto industry, have greatly aggravated homelessness in the state. The protesters demanded the state restore all of the budget cuts, open vacant public housing, and provide affordable housing and jobs.
Jesse Jackson led the protest. But instead of calling for building up the mass struggle, he turned the event into a voter registration rally aimed at electing a Democrat for president.
But, while the Republicans are bashing the poor, the Democratic presidential candidates are refusing to say a word in defense of the homeless. (See "Democrats in search of the middle class vote" on page 6.) No help can be expected from either party. The workers must get organized independently to make the capitalists provide homes for the homeless and jobs for the unemployed.
Bush talks about the wonder-working powers of establishing standardized national tests for all students. On January 23, following in his wake, a panel appointed by Congress reported that what was needed was national standards and tests. Not just any tests, mind you, but tests with "high expectations, not minimal." But, the panel says, it could take another five to ten years just to come up with them.
But if these tests are never developed, it will be no big loss. Setting "high expectations" means little if there are no resources available to achieve them. What about such things as crumbling buildings, lack of equipment and books, overcrowded classrooms, and the under-staffing of teachers? These are all faced by the children of the poor when they enter the schoolyard.
Solving these problems requires money and resources, not empty words. But there are vast gaps between the money spent on rich and poor students. This is inevitable when the main funding for each school district comes from local property taxes. Funds don't go where they are most needed but are hoarded by richer school districts. Working class parents vote high tax rates or millages on themselves, much steeper than the tax rates paid in the wealthy areas, yet their schools end up with inadequate funds. It is common to see two or three times more money spent per student in well-off suburbs than in working class suburbs. As for the schools in the inner-cities or the black and Latino ghettos, they are left to die a slow death.
If Bush or Congress were really concerned about education, they would start by abolishing the inequality in school funding. Instead of standardized testing, how about a national standard for the financing of the schools? How about sufficient money for each school to meet the basic requirements of each student? Or at least equal financing for all students, if the government can't get itself to meet the extra requirements for schools in poverty-stricken areas?
In fact standardized tests without standardized financing may only make things worse. For example, Bush and the conservatives suggest that the schools in working class areas don't need more funds. Instead, they say, all one has to do is imitate the "magic of the marketplace" and shift the funds from schools with low scores to schools with high scores. Since schools in poor areas, or that have large numbers of non-English speaking students, or that take upon themselves the task of dealing with students with problems, will generally do worse on the standardized tests, they will lose funds. This will only increase the education gap between rich and poor.
Another danger is that the emphasis on standardized national tests will encourage the movement to reduce teaching to preparation for an all-encompassing system of tests. Instead of fostering thought and critical thinking, instead of inspiring any initiative among the students, classroom time is sucked up with rote memorization geared to the tests. The schools that are most at risk, the schools where the students feel most alienated, are given an agenda that can only exaggerate their worst features. The students are reduced to robots who have been programmed to spit out some memorized words on command. And if they rebel, harsher and harsher discipline is to be imposed.
But just as free labor is more productive than slave labor, so only schools which allow the students to think can prepare them for the complex demands of the modern world and of the struggle between rich and poor. That of course is why the politicians only want the children of the rich to have good schools, while the children of the poor are to be left powerless and half-literate.
Bush has just declared that he stands for full funding for the Head Start program, which helps the preschool children of the poor. What a kind man! What a humanitarian!
But at the same time, he said that there is no point in having three-year-olds in Head Start, only four-year-olds. So much for full funding. It is at most half funding.
Bush also stated that it is a waste for children to attend Head Start for more than one year. Since this program is open to three, four and five-year-olds (especially when kindergartens are not available), this means perhaps only one-third funding.
Moreover, Bush then proposed $600 million more for Head Start. This won't even allow all eligible four-year-olds to attend half-day sessions. So Bush's real proposal is to let Head Start vegetate.
Still less would Bush allow Head Start to have full-day sessions. And as a half-day program, Head Start can hardly serve the children of the working poor, or of welfare mothers in job training.
What a liar Bush is! What an evil man! He would even take candy from preschool children. He seeks the trust of parents with "kinder and gentler" words about helping the disadvantaged, but then won't even give their children a Head Start.
It has never been fully funded
The Head Start program prepares poverty-stricken three, four and five-year-olds for school. 90% of the children in it are from destitute families, and 10% are handicapped.
Children who take part in Head Start do better in the first few years of school. It is one of the few federal programs that everyone agrees is successful, and that doesn't cost very much. It really does help disadvantaged children. It is hard to find a politician who will deny this.
But for decades on end, it hasn't had adequate funds. Not under Bush. Not under Reagan. Not under Carter. Not ever.
Today, it serves only a third of the eligible children. At most. Some government sources say it only reaches a fifth of those eligible.
Is education a mystery?
The politicians moan that it is so hard to find out how to fix the schools. They say they tried to throw money at the problem, and it didn't work. They shake their heads, saying it's all just a mystery. Maybe, they suggest, the problem is moral values, and the poor should be forced to go to church on Sunday.
But it is all a lie. Head Start is one example of a program that works, and all that has to be done is fund it. But it has never had money thrown at it.
This isn't the first time Bush has talked about full funding for Head Start, and meanwhile Head Start has got less and less money. Nor have the Congressional Democrats been much help.
Why not fund Head Start? Why not create additional follow-up programs to help disadvantaged children in school, just as Head Start helps them in the preschool years? So long as this isn't done, it means that the educational crisis is simpler than it seems: the businessmen don't want to spend a penny on the education of the working people.
January 22 this year marked the 19th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision of the Supreme Court legalizing abortion. This year it is expected that the Supreme Court will water the decision down to nothing, if not overthrow it outright. But did this make the pro-choice activists dispirited and listless? Did they go around with their heads down and their hands in their pockets?
Not at all.
There were pro-choice rallies across the country. And when the anti-abortion crusaders tried to blockade clinics that perform abortion, they were met once again by vigorous defenders of women's rights.
The right for legal and safe abortions was not a gift from nine purveyors of legal mumbo-jumbo on the Supreme Court, or from some Democratic politician in Congress. No, it was won by years of mass struggle. It was a byproduct of the great upsurge of the 1960's and 70's, which included the awakening of millions of women. The struggle for abortion rights took place against the backdrop of the hurricane of the black people's movement and the tidal wave against the war in Vietnam. Only after years of mass activity did the Supreme Court suddenly find in 1973 that the right to abortion was in the Constitution. And if the Supreme Court now takes away the constitutional right to abortion, as it has taken away one right after another in recent years, it cannot take away the real basis of abortion rights -- the determination of millions of people to defend their rights. Not lobbying the politicians, not crossing one's fingers over court decisions, but rallying millions of working class and poor people against the entire anti-women offensive including cutbacks and mass impoverishment -- that is the future for the struggle for women's rights.
3,000 march for abortion rights in Boston
3,000 people took to the streets of Boston in the early evening of January 22 to stand up for abortion rights. It was a short march from the State House to a nearby church for an indoor rally, but quite noisy and boisterous. Over half the crowd were young activists and groups of students. Slogans rang out like "What do we want? Abortion rights! When do we want them? Always!" Many slogans were led by a contingent organized by the
Boston Branch of the Marxist-Leninist Party. As the marchers filed into the church, which took quite a bit of time, they surrounded and denounced a handful of "pro-life" pickets gathered there: "Pro-life, your name's a lie, you don't care if women die!"
Despite the large size of the march the main bourgeois papers in Boston virtually ignored it, including the Heraldand the nationally-known liberal Globe. By contrast, the papers had loving coverage of an indoor anti-abortion rally of half the size held three days earlier. This event was picketed by about 75 pro- choice activists.
In Chicago
Pro-choice militants were active throughout the day. Four hundred people demonstrated in downtown Chicago in favor of abortion rights. After a rally in Federal Plaza they marched up and down State Street. It was a lively crowd, with many college-age women. Earlier in the day, there were marches in favor of Roe vs. Wade at Northwestern University and Loyola College.
The "pro-life" opponents of women's rights held their own meeting with tight security, but pro-choice activists got in and heckled anti-abortion big shot Joe Scheidler. There was also a pro-choice picket outside.
Meanwhile "pro-life" Cardinal Bernardin pontificated to the faithful that "if an unborn child can be killed just because it's an inconvenience, what does this say about the handicapped, the homeless, are they just an inconvenience too?" Indeed, Cardinal, what an excellent comparison. It is precisely the defenders of women's rights who also demonstrate for aid to the homeless, against cutbacks in welfare, and against the deadly wars. And it is "pro-life" Bush who has nothing to give the homeless but a "point of light," who has crippled Social Security disability allowances and thrown many people off the rolls, and who is searching for a new enemy to justify an astronomical military budget. So by your own admission, Cardinal, it is the pro-choice forces who really stand on the side of humanity, while the anti-abortion crusaders are sanctimonious hypocrites and liars.
Clinic defense in Detroit
Activists from around Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan successfully defended the Midwest Clinic in the Highland Park community in Detroit on January 25.
About 75 "pro-life" bullies from Operation Rescue had gathered at the clinic with a few blockading the front door and the rest picketing. But well over 100 clinic defenders quickly arrived on the scene, and set up their own picket.
Under the watchful eye of the activists, police cleared out the front door blockaders by the time the first patients arrived. (Nine blockaders were arrested for disorderly conduct.) But anti-abortion zealots were still around to harass women entering the clinic. The pro-choice people formed human walls to protect the patients. Shouting "Operation Rescue, out of our way, women's rights are here to stay!" the activists also grouped up around the patients and escorted them from the parking lot in the back to the front door.
There were many new faces bolstering the ranks of the clinic defenders. In past clinic defenses in the Detroit area, OR usually outnumbered the pro-choice forces, but this time they were outnumbered. As well, the anti-abortion crusaders had also flopped a week earlier at their annual rally in downtown Detroit on the anniversary ofRoe vs. Wade. Their numbers were less than half what they were a year earlier. Meanwhile 50 pro-choice militants held a spirited counter-demonstration across the street from them.
On January 25, it had at first been thought that the local Planned Parenthood clinic in nearby Warren might be attacked by OR. This clinic had been successfully defended by activists on October 19 last year, while police had sat on their hands, until after a few hours the police cleared away both OR and the clinic defenders. They had arrested some clinic defenders as well as OR. This time the clinic itself made a deal with the police to arrest both clinic defenders and anti-abortion blockaders. So when some pro-choice activists arrived to defend the clinic in case of attack, they were harassed both by police and by clinic personnel. Some were even followed around or stopped by police as they sought to find a parking space or go to a nearby restaurant. Here is an example of the treachery of the establishment-minded wing of the women's movement. They even give a green light to the police repression of women's rights activists.
[Photo: Women's rights activists confront anti-abortion bullies in Washington, DC.]
[Photo: 400 pro-choicers rallied in San Francisco on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade.]
In late January a horde of anti-abortion fanatics invaded Washington, D.C. They blockaded health clinics which perform abortions, terrorizing the patients. 386 were arrested. Then on the 22nd, Bush hailed the "righteous cause" of the anti-women mob in a piped-in telephone speech to one of their rallies.
In his speech, Bush talked about equal rights -- not for women, but for fetuses. He asserted that "Jefferson's concept that all are created equal...doesn't say 'born' equal. He says 'created.'" How profound! We are supposed to believe that Jefferson distinguished between "born equal" and "created equal" when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, and that this Declaration was really an anti-abortion manifesto. Too bad for Bush that abortion was legal and widely accepted at the time, both by the British and the revolutionaries.
Bush's fantasy-world history shows how lame the anti-abortion arguments are. But, then again, he is following the "founding fathers" in one respect: hypocrisy on the question of equality. Just as our country's founders only declared that "all men" are created equal, so Bush today denies women's rights. Just as our country's founders talked of equality and tolerated slavery, so Bush today talks of equality of fetuses while condemning any effort to overcome the utter poverty afflicting millions of children.
In fact Bush wants to ensure that his reactionary friends are more equal than others. Working class and minority children face crumbling schools, while Bush's cronies send their offspring to rich academies. Working class and minority protesters face police batons and more jails, but when right-wing bigots trespass against clinics and harass women, Bush offers congratulations and has his Justice Department defend them in the courts, as it did after the goon squads of Operation Rescue besieged Wichita.
As many as two million women have had silicone gel breast implants. Yet it turns out the manufacturers like Dow Corning never conducted proper testing of their product, and they covered up the problems that appeared in the tests that they did do. And so today the terrible problems afflicting some of the women with such implants have been in the headlines.
The silicone implant scandal is a story of how women were used as human guinea pigs for decades while money-hungry corporate executives and plastic surgeons made a fortune.
The danger of silicone implants
The silicone gel implant is not the only type of breast implant, but it is presently the most popular type. And also the most dangerous type.
The silicone in the implants can escape, either through leakage or through rupture of the implant case. The silicone travels throughout the body, and it can provoke a response from the immune system. This can lead to arthritis, lupus, or hardening of tissues in the lungs and elsewhere.
Silicone implants can cause the growth of painful and disfiguring fibrous tissue around the implant. Some doctors estimate this occurs in one of ten women.
And silicone implants also show up opaque when x-rayed. This makes cancer detection through mammograms difficult, if not impossible. A woman with silicone implants is many times more likely to have her cancer undetected until it spreads.
Dow Corning experiments on women
Despite the evidence to the contrary, the dominant manufacturer of the implants, Dow Corning, continues to insist its implants are safe. But its "testing" procedures have been a farce. Even some Dow officials involved with the silicone project expressed worry and shock in internal company memos. But Dow Corning pushed on. Indeed, thousands upon thousands of women received implants before any animal studies were made at all. And then Dow Corning avoided putting the implant in breast tissue during the animal tests. But when the animal studies showed serious problems anyway, Dow Corning simply falsified the data for the FDA and continued using the implants.
Dow Corning never carried out a study comparing the health of women with and without the implants. Yet it knew right from the start that silicone leaked and migrated throughout the body from the implant it introduced in 1975. But it was an article of faith that silicone was harmless.
The race for profits
Furthermore, since Dow Corning had a market for its silicone implants, it wasn't interested in alternative implants that might be safer. A saline solution- filled implant became available in 1967. And a peanut oil-filled implant was developed by doctors in St. Louis and presented to Dow Corning in 1987 as a possible alternative. But Dow didn't want the startup and testing costs, or to give up its silicone gold mine.
The dangers of silicone implants were also ignored by many plastic surgeons. Indeed some of them have grown so attached to the big bucks they make with implant surgery that they have already announced they will defy the FDA's recent moratorium.
It happened before
Moreover, this is not the first time that Dow Corning has been involved in a breast implant scandal. The first time was its manufacture of silicone liquid for direct injection into women's breasts. Not only were women's breasts damaged, but scars and other problems would appear in the abdomen, chest, arms and back from silicone that had spread throughout the body. Dow Corning didn't care, but Nevada banned the practice, and then California. Finally even the FDA acted, and banned it nationally.
Did Dow Corning learn anything? Was it remorseful? Not at all! When it developed the silicone gel implant, which seals the silicone in a case, they rushed to put it on the market no matter what it did to women.
Where was the FDA?
The FDA officials have complained about how Dow deceived them in various reports. But they didn't care much more about women's health than the company. They had dragged their feet on the silicone injections promoted by Dow Corning, and they dragged their feet again on the silicone gel implants. In fact, the silicone gel implants were on the market for 14 years before the FDA required manufacturers to show any safety data at all.
It wasn't until a jury in California awarded a woman who sued Dow Corning some $7.3 million in December 1991, that the FDA decided to declare a moratorium on the sale of the implants. Clearly, only when the matter had become a public scandal did the FDA act. And even now it is hesitant.
The inequality of women
This is not only a general scandal of profit making. It is also another example of the oppression of women in this society. Capitalist medicine is quite capable of dangerous procedures on anyone, but it is notable how many times women bear the brunt.
How much of the excessive recourse to major surgery falls on women, through an incredible proliferation of Caesareans and hysterectomies and radical mastectomies (removal of the entire breast)! And what a relatively minor effort has been put into providing alternatives!
There is also the tendency of doctors to disregard complaints from women as whining, when similar complaints from men would result in tests for heart disease or other problems.
Again and again, women's interests aren't taken seriously.
What kind of culture?
And there is also the question of why so many women seek to modify their breasts. Some women need reconstructive surgery following mastectomies. But up to 80% of the implants were to enlarge healthy breasts for cosmetic reasons.
This reflects the social pressure on women. Emphasis is put on physical appearance in this society, and especially so for women.
This pressure cannot be removed by moralistically restricting access to cosmetic procedures when they are safe. Still less should people be condemned for having these procedures done: that would also be to stay within the bourgeois culture's framework of judging people on superficial external features. However, the large number of implants into healthy, normal breasts shows how artificial and grotesque enlightened bourgeois money culture is. And the harm to women's health concretizes how painful this culture can become for people.
This culture cannot be fought through moralism. It is only as progressive women, and men, organize to change the world, and gain confidence in their ability to build a working class alternative, that the bourgeois cultural standards about women will begin to fall. In this process, new standards of beauty and self-esteem will arise.
Down with the disregard of women's health by profit-seeking manufacturers and surgeons! Let us build a movement for a new, socialist world, where medicine is to help people, and not the balance sheets of rich executives!
A year ago, the entire ruling establishment puffed itself up about its "great victory" in the Persian Gulf war. This war was supposed to usher in a "new world order" of U.S. supremacy into the 21st century. But the anniversary celebration has been muted. Today's media headlines are more like "Hollow Victory," the title of the anniversary feature in U.S. News and World Report.
So what's behind this? What did U.S. imperialism achieve and what is it worried about?
Stability in the Persian Gulf?
The key issue in the war was domination over the oil-rich strategic Persian Gulf region. After World War II, U.S. imperialism dominated this region through shoring up the medieval-style kingdoms of the Arabian peninsula and by putting in power the Shah of Iran, who would serve as the local cop for U.S. imperialist interests. The overthrow of the Shah in 1979 broke apart this old order. Since then, the U.S. government has worked to use the rivalry between Iran and Iraq so that a new ambitious upstart could not emerge. This is why they armed both Iran and Iraq during the bloody war between those two states.
Saddam's Kuwait adventure was a move for regional supremacy by the Iraqi state. Though the U.S. had cultivated close ties with Saddam in the 1980's, it was not willing to tolerate Iraqi regional supremacy.
Yes, Washington did succeed in restoring Kuwait to the al-Sabah ruling monarchy from Saddam's control. And it did get to station U.S. forces in the Gulf region, which was something the Pentagon wanted from many years back. But the idea that the Gulf was going to be restored to the old order before the Iranian revolution has proved elusive.
For one thing, Saddam remains in power. Moreover, the balance of local power is shifting towards Iran once again. The Iranian regime has restored many of its ties with Western imperialism and seeks economic assistance to build up its strength. What is more, the collapse of the USSR has opened up new sources of arms and Soviet Central Asia has emerged as a region where Iran seeks to exert its influence.
A new order in the Middle East?
A lot of noise has been made about how the new realignments among the Arab governments would bring a peace solution for Israel.
True, the realignments have meant that Washington was able to use its Gulf war leverage to get the Middle Eastern peace conference going. But stability for Israel is elusive -- for the simple reason that Israel remains intransigent about giving up the territories it occupied in 1967 and 1973 from the Palestinians or Syria, to say nothing of abolishing its theocracy and giving full rights to the Palestinians.
Without self-determination for the Palestinians, there will not be stability in this corner of the Middle East. The Israeli ruling class is adamant against this and Washington is not willing to support it either. After all, Israel is U.S. imperialism's closest ally.
Leverage over Europe and Japan?
It was not stated openly by the U.S. government, but the hope was voiced quite widely in U.S. ruling circles, that in the post-Cold War era where the U.S. was slipping in its economic competition with Europe and Japan, the Gulf War would prove useful to shore up U.S. hegemony over those allies. It would show that Washington could use its military superpower status to get economic concessions in trade, finance, etc.
Europe and Japan did line up behind Washington against Iraq and did end up bankrolling the war (along with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia), but the idea that this would lead to some easy leverage by the U.S. over them has not been achieved. In fact, the economic competition grows fiercer each day and neither Europe nor Japan are inclined to cave in to all U.S. economic demands -- whether that be trade concessions in Japan or the demand that Germany reduce its interest rates.
Maintaining the military-industrial complex?
The Pentagon and the military-industrial complex saw in the Gulf War an opportunity to show the country that high levels of military spending had to be maintained even after the "Soviet threat" was dying away.
This still remains their goal, but after defeating Iraq they are finding it hard to find sizable "enemies" that would justify spending on Cold War levels. Some cuts in the size of the military and military weapons systems orders have had to be made, and the people are bound to press for more in coming years.
Watch out
The fact that Washington did not fully achieve all its aims does not mean all is well and we can breathe easier. In fact, they show that the threat of future wars and interventions remain very much alive. Washington has after all not given up its self-declared role of world policeman. The Pentagon is not about to close up shop.
Never underestimate the Pentagon warmongers. They keep finger-pointing and making contingency plans for armed intervention. One day it is the alleged North Korean nuclear threat, though that one is dying fast as North and South Korea appear to be coming to accommodation. The next day, it is Libya who won't turn over two alleged terrorist suspects, but even that is hard to maintain when Libya is willing to make concessions. There is always Saddam to bash, and plans have been leaked out about providing U.S. military backing for new efforts to force Saddam from power. Then there is the "upcoming Iranian threat." In this hemisphere, the Pentagon has been steadily expanding its intervention in the Andes countries of South America, under the guise of the "war on drugs." And the current wave of Japan bashing will sooner or later be used to show that the U.S. must maintain military preparedness against the Japanese threat.
The "new world order" is one in which the struggle against militarism and imperialism remains firmly on the agenda.
[Photo: Domestic workers in Kuwait are imported from outside and virtually enslaved by the Kuwaiti elite. They are so brutalized that they often have to seek refuge, as these Filipino women are doing at their country's embassy.]
Bush and Saddam went to war a year ago over whether Iraq would be allowed to expand its power in the Persian Gulf region. Bush said his quarrel was with Saddam, not the Iraqi people. But the way the U.S. government carried out its war, and the vengeance with which it continues the economic blockade of Iraq, proves otherwise. It shows that it is the 18 million Iraqi people who are the real victims of this war between the imperialist superpower and a would-be regional capitalist power.
Thousands of Iraqi civilians died under the Pentagon's bombing, not to speak of the 100,000 or more soldiers who were killed. But the death toll did not stop there. According to some sources, as many as 100,000 children under the age of five, for example, have died from the delayed effects of the war, such as malnutrition and disease.
Having an economy dependent on oil, Iraq mainly depended on imports to feed its people. But since it cannot sell oil because of the United Nations embargo, it cannot import food. The result is starvation and malnutrition. One third of the children are malnourished.
During the war, the Pentagon put special emphasis on smashing Iraq's infrastructure, including its electrical grid, water supply, and sewage system. Unable to get new parts to replace damages because of the ongoing economic blockade, much of this destruction remains un-repaired. By September of last year, only 37% of electricity generation capacity had been restored.
The inevitable result is the spread of disease and epidemics. The country is being plagued by cholera, typhoid and hepatitis. And since medical supplies are also in short supply, suffering and death are extensive.
The end result of all this? Iraq, which used to have a relatively high standard of living compared to other third world countries, has been reduced to nutrition and health levels closer to India or the Philippines.
The long-simmering crisis in the Communist Party of the USA has finally been resolved -- by the shattering of that party. At its 25th National Convention held in Cleveland last December, the old-line revisionists around Gus Hall pulled off a coup against their opposition. The dissidents, who included most of the party's black leaders and represented a third of the CP's membership, have formed a loose grouping called the "Committees of Correspondence."
The CPUSA has been communist only in name. For a long time now, its brand of "communism" has been a travesty of the working class struggle for political independence and a society without exploitation. Instead of organizing the working class as an independent class force, the CPUSA has Chased after the capitalist Democratic Party. And instead of upholding socialism as a worker-ruled society, the CPUSA championed the state-capitalist bureaucracy that was in power in Moscow until last year.
The coup
Gus Hall's maneuver at the convention was in the style of bureaucratic hacks long used to distorting the socialist organizational concept of democratic centralism into an excuse for tyranny and suppression.
Last fall the opposition had launched a petition called the "Initiative to Unite and Renew the Party," which had made a series of criticisms of the Gus Hall leadership. It had gained 800 signatures, including 40% of the CP's National Committee. It clearly reflected a deep rift in the CP. But Gus Hall was not about to tolerate the opposition any longer. His faction, through their control over the national apparatus, apparently rigged the convention's delegate-selection process. At the convention itself, they made life unpleasant for opposition delegates. They removed from the leadership all those who had signed the "Initiative" petition.
Gus Hall also organized a coup at People's Weekly World, the CP's newspaper. The staff of the paper was barred from their offices just before the convention. When they returned after Cleveland, they found that the locks on the building had been changed, and that they had been fired.
Shut out at the convention, the "Initiative" grouping held a mini-convention of their own nearby. There they voted to set up the Committees of Correspondence.
A split within reformism
So what's this split all about? Does either side represent a potentially healthy force for the workers' struggle for class independence or socialism? Unfortunately no. This was a split within reformism. Both camps are hopelessly mired in the tired, old politics of trailing behind the Democratic Party. And while Gus Hall continues to stick to the revisionist, state-capitalism of the erstwhile Soviet Union, the dissidents' vision of the future is the reformed capitalism of the social-democratic welfare state.
A glance at history
The CPUSA was born in 1919 as a revolutionary party of the working class. It played a pivotal role in the militant workers' movement into the 1930's. During that time it had had various weaknesses, but also had shown promise in overcoming many of them. Unfortunately, in the mid-30's it radically changed its course, abandoning a revolutionary orientation in favor of tailing behind liberal-labor politics of the Rooseveltian Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracy. It took this road under the pressure of both Rooseveltian liberalism and the right turn in the Communist International at that time.
Since then, the CP's militant character eroded away and the party became a mere tail of the Democratic donkey. All the while, the CP remained distinguished from other varieties of American reformism, though, by one other feature: a thorough slavishness to the state-capitalist bureaucracy in Moscow. There was no crime of the revisionist traitors in Moscow that the CPUSA did not support: from Stalin down to Gorbachev.
In recent years, the crisis of the Soviet Union put tremendous pressure on the CPUSA. While it supported Gorbachev (out of its inertia of slavishness), its leaders became more and more uncomfortable with him as he criticized the Brezhnev era (particularly loved by Gus Hall) and moved away from traditional state-capitalism to a more Western-style capitalism. Two tendencies emerged: the Gus Hall leadership looked forward to a return to the Brezhnevite past, while the dissidents embraced Gorbachev. The coup in Moscow last August forced the issue.
As Gus Hall sympathized with the coup, the dispute in the CP came out into the open. Meanwhile, other differences had grown sharper. There were grievances over Hall's undemocratic leadership, but the more serious issue underlying the split was that the dissidents were becoming more and more uncomfortable in keeping their reformism within the CP framework. While they claimed to want to "renew" the party, this was mainly to be able to get control of its assets; their real model was a more openly social-democratic style of organization. The CP's bag and baggage had become liabilities to the dissidents who wanted to climb up the ladder of influence within the left wing of the Democratic Party, especially Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.
The future?
Their Committees of Correspondence are a loose network, and not much has been heard of them since their founding. This reflects the fact that there is little cohesion among them. Some look forward to joining the "democratic socialists" of DSA, others are eager to just melt away in the Democratic Party, while still others will bow out of political activity altogether.
The fact that there is no depth in their difference with Gus Hall's CPUSA will be shown this year during the elections. Both sides will undoubtedly campaign for the Democrats -- there has been no dispute over this key question. This will show that the difference among the two factions is one of detail, not fundamentals. Both sides are caught up in the reformist framework which sees the capitalist Democratic Party as the only arena for politics and thus avoids the work needed to win the workers and minorities away from the establishment towards an independent political movement.
Meanwhile, Gus Hall's CP will hang on -- at least for a while -- falsely claiming to be communist. It will continue to do the disservice of passing off bureaucratic state-capitalism as socialism. Today the CPUSA ardently champions the feudal-style state-capitalism of North Korea, whose "great leader" Kim II Sung is passing his reign to his son in the first dynasty to be seen among the contemporary state-capitalist societies. The CPUSA also shouts about democratic centralism, but as the recent convention demonstrates again, this is distorted into organizational tyranny. And the CP's claim to be Marxist-Leninist is likewise a fraud; it will falsely pass off the militant heritage of Marx and Lenin as empty of revolutionary spirit. But the CP's politics won't wash. The collapse of the Soviet revisionist bloc has in fact hit them with a terminal blow. It has shattered their arrogance, not to speak of doing away with much financial support they used to receive.
The real opposition to these sordid politics comes not from the CP's dissidents, but from those who have been organized to rescue communism from the revisionist distortions. The predecessor organizations of the Marxist-Leninist Party were born in the late 60's because they wanted to be revolutionary communists and could see the forgery that the CPUSA had become. We will continue our long fight to build a workers' movement along truly communist lines and to reconstruct a vision of the future worker-ruled society rescued from the cruel distortions of what has been passed off as communism in recent years -- the state-capitalist tyrannies of Moscow, Beijing, etc.
On January 16 in Mexico City, the right-wing Salvadoran government and the leftist FMLN guerrilla coalition signed an agreement to end the country's long civil war. The agreement was mediated by the United Nations.
As the accord was signed, tens of thousands of supporters of the FMLN gathered in San Salvador to celebrate the end of the war. While it's not clear what the rank-and-file fighters think of the details of the accords and the prospects ahead, it does however appear that most of them are breathing a sigh of relief at the end of the war.
The Salvadoran government claims that a new day of reconciliation is here. The FMLN leadership and their loyalists, both in El Salvador and here in the U.S., go even further, claiming that El Salvador has been transformed. They even go so far as to say that a "revolution by negotiation" has been carried out. Some of them say this is the new model for change in the third world.
Would that it were true. Unfortunately it is not. History has never seen "revolution by negotiation" and El Salvador is no exception. So what do the accords amount to?
The agreement represents a recognition by the regime and its U.S. imperialist patron that they could not win their counterinsurgency war by military means. And it also represents a recognition by the armed opposition that they too were stalemated.
As for the accord itself, various promises of reform have been made in exchange for the guerrillas laying down their arms. Some of them may be implemented, while others will remain on paper. However, they do not add up to any radical transformation. They cannot, because the basic division of Salvadoran society remains -- between the rich minority and their military terrorists and the poverty-stricken workers and poor. Since the military will have guns and the opposition won't, state power remains in the hands of the wealthy.
Under these conditions, the accords can at best be a truce in the class war. Unless some unexpected turn of events, like an ultra right-wing coup, takes place, the accords will probably signify a change in the form of the class struggle -- from an armed insurgency to the rebuilding of new mass struggles by the workers and rural poor.
The accords
The war is to end with a ceasefire on February 1 and the FMLN disarming itself in nine months. In return various reforms have been promised. Let's examine the main ones.
The government agreed to cut the size of the army by 50% over a two-year period. But what does that mean when the army claims to have over 63,000 troops while the FMLN charges that there are only 35,000? Going by the army's figures, a 50% cut would thus mean keeping the army at virtually the same size it is now. Moreover, in recent weeks the army went on another round of forced conscription of youths. No matter what, the military will remain a sizable force to back up the exploiters.
Security forces like the Treasury Police and National Guard are to be abolished. A new police force is promised, which will incorporate some of the former FMLN guerrillas. But how will this process take place, and what will it mean? The new police will most likely be headed up by the current officials, and the recruits from the FMLN will be marginalized. And even if the police are moderated, it's not as if the police are the only armed force at the disposal of the exploiters.
Land redistributed to peasants in the guerrilla areas are to remain in their hands. And the government promises a broader agrarian reform. The fact that liberated land will remain in peasant hands is probably one of the few real changes in the accords. The promises of a broader land reform aren't worth much. Such promises have been made before, but they haven't been implemented because the landowning elite, alongside the urban bourgeoisie, forms the ruling class in the country.
Various promises have been made about investigating human rights abuses. Don't expect much from these promises, either. Investigations will be in the hands of bureaucratic commissions, in which the left will be a small minority. Besides, the ruling ARENA party is trying to put in place a general amnesty. It justifies this on the premise that the spirit of the accords is letting bygones be bygones.
The FMLN is supposed to be given space to take part as a legal, electoral opposition. It will be allowed to keep its two radio stations. But the FMLN leaders are dreaming if they think they can radically reform El Salvador through the electoral system. U.S. imperialism and the bourgeoisie hope to fragment and marginalize the opposition. They are encouraged by the fact that the FMLN leaders have given up aspirations of radical change and professions of Marxism and instead merely want a liberal capitalist order.
However, there are those in El Salvador who do not tolerate even a liberal order. The death-squad threat is far from over. In this regard, the recent experience of Colombia is instructive. There in recent years, various guerrilla groups have signed peace accords like the Salvadoran one in exchange for electoral participation. And what has happened? Hundreds of left-wing activists have been gunned down by death squads.
The rise and fall of the revolutionary movement
The accords cannot change Salvadoran society because the basic class structure remains intact.
For decades now, a small handful of capitalists and landlords have ruthlessly oppressed the workers, poor peasants, and other toilers. Their power has been enforced by the military and its death squads. They have been backed up by the full support of U.S. imperialism.
It was this class structure that gave rise to the civil war. In the 1970's, the country saw an explosion of mass struggle and the emergence of guerrilla movements. These struggles nearly led to a successful revolutionary victory in 1979-81. But the U.S. government stepped in to help the Salvadoran exploiters crush the popular movement. The military and death squads killed some 75,000 people over the last dozen years and forced out a million refugees.
The Salvadoran guerrilla movement became one of the most successful insurgencies in Latin America. Despite the U.S. pouring in about $5 billion to aid the Salvadoran government, they could not destroy the movement. But they did succeed in blocking a rebel victory. The guerrillas did get support from a solidarity movement in the U.S., but this was not strong enough to block the U.S. government from propping up the death- squad regime. Had it been able to do so, things might have turned out differently.
As the years dragged by, the FMLN leadership began to give up revolutionary goals and looked for a short-cut through a negotiated deal. They lowered their sights several times, but U.S. imperialism kept rebuffing them. However, after the Sandinistas were forced out of power in Nicaragua, and with the collapse of the Soviet revisionist bloc, the U.S. government finally agreed to seek a deal with the FMLN. Washington saw that now the FMLN leaders had lost their main regional and international support.
Washington pressured the right-wing Cristiani government to agree to a deal. The Salvadoran ruling class was not initially eager to make this deal, but eventually Uncle Sam prevailed. After all, after a decade of civil war, the Salvadoran government is nearly totally dependent on U.S. largesse.
The future?
While the FMLN leaders talk big about revolutionary changes being underway, many in the Salvadoran left remain quite apprehensive about the future. They have known the Salvadoran exploiters and their military long enough not to trust in an agreement on paper. At the same time, it appears to be the case that no section of the movement saw any realistic prospects in merely carrying on the guerrilla struggle. After all, the conditions in which the FMLN was formed and articulated its strategy and tactics have all changed: the Nicaraguan revolution has been turned back, the Soviet bloc has collapsed, and their own leaders have abandoned the idea of revolution.
In fact, the accords reflect that the wave of the revolutionary movement which emerged in the 1970's has exhausted itself. The future prospect of radical social change in El Salvador depends on a new revolutionary wave coming up in the years ahead. That depends on a new growth of the class struggle and the emergence of new strategies and a new leadership. This will not come from the FMLN leaders who are dreaming about the wonders of being a parliamentary opposition; it will have to come from the militants engaged in the actual class struggle.
We cannot predict when and how the class struggle will revive, but in our minds there is no doubt that it will. The system of exploitation remains, the murderous right wing has not been destroyed, and imperialism remains the backer of capitalism in El Salvador. Given that oppression, resistance by the toilers is inevitable.
[Photo: Victims of the brutal Salvadoran security forces. The U.S.-backed death-squad regime murdered 75,000 people during the civil war.]