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Thursday, December 13, 2012

Opening guns of World War III?


Map of the Arctic



The Great Game in the Arctic
Written by Frederik Ohsten
Thursday, 13 December 2012

Climate change, melting icecaps and new opportunities for access to valuable resources have reawakened a struggle for power in the Arctic. The Great powers are jockeying for control of the region.

On the 6th of August 2012, Russia announced that it plans to build a string of naval infrastructure hubs along the Arctic's Northern Sea Route. According to the report, Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev confirmed that, “[A]uthorities have drafted a list of 'key double-purpose sites in remote areas of the Arctic seas along the Northern Sea Route' to enable the 'temporary stationing of Russian Navy warships and vessels operated by the Federal Security Service's Border Guard Department'”.

This is just one of the latest incidents of sabre-rattling in the Arctic region. Canada and the United States are also involved in this struggle for control of this strategic region. So are smaller states such as Norway and Denmark. A relatively new development is the entry of China on the stage.

In August, China sent its first ship across the Arctic to Europe and it is lobbying intensely for permanent observer status on the Arctic Council, the loose international body of eight Arctic nations that develops policy for the region, arguing that it is a “near Arctic state”.

Minerals and Rare Metals

This summer Chinese ministers visited Denmark, Sweden and Iceland, offering lucrative trade deals. High-level diplomats have also visited Greenland, where Chinese companies are investing in a developing mining industry, with plans to import around 5,000 Chinese workers to the island, which only has 60,000 inhabitants.

Greenland is a “self-governing state” within the Kingdom of Denmark. In recent years, various powers have displayed a growing interest in the Inuit country due to the fact that the retreat of its ice cap has unveiled coveted mineral deposits, including rare earth metals that are crucial for new technologies such as mobile phones and military guidance systems. One area, the Kvanefjeld deposit, is estimated to contain 20 per cent of the global rare earth supply, making it the world's second-largest deposit of rare earths.

As improved technology, booming prices and climate change are making the riches of Greenland more available for exploitation; all the major powers have turned their eyes on this remote place. The US has been there in place for decades.

“Flirting Bandits”

In Thule, Greenland hosts the northernmost base for the US Air Force. At a conference in August, Thomas R. Nides, deputy Secretary of State for management and resources, said the Arctic was becoming “a new frontier in our foreign policy.” The message was quite clear: “The Arctic is ours – stay out!”

In June, Antonio Tajani, the EU’s Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship, rushed to Greenland’s capital, offering hundreds of millions (of Euros? DC) in development aid in exchange for guarantees that Greenland would not give China exclusive access to its rare earth metals, calling his trip “raw mineral diplomacy.” Unfortunately for the Europeans, this did not stop the Chinese.

Other prominent guests in Greenland have been the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea. Also, Greenland’s Prime Minister, Kuupik Kleist, was welcomed by President José Manuel Barroso of the European Commission in Brussels. What a long list of “flirting bandits”!

China in the Arctic

Recently, China began seeking to enhance its engagement in the region as a permanent observer in the Arctic Council. The Arctic Council is a high-level intergovernmental forum that addresses issues such as the management of resources, climate change, and Arctic environment maintenance. The Council has eight voting member states—Canada, United States, Russia, Denmark (Faroe Islands and Greenland), Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and Finland—all of which share a border with the Arctic Ocean. There are six permanent observer states—all of which are European—and multiple ad-hoc observer members, among them: Japan, South Korea, and China.

This body previously focused on issues like monitoring Arctic animal populations, but now it has more substantive tasks, such as defining future port fees and negotiating agreements on oil spill remediation. Though Iceland, Denmark and Sweden now openly support China’s bid, Norway is against. The United States State Department has declined to say how it would vote.

A manifestation of this new Chinese strategic interest is the voyage of the world’s largest icebreaker, the Xuelong (“Snow Dragon”) to Iceland. The Xuelong left Qingdao on the 2nd of July for the 17,000 km voyage through the so-called “north-east” route along the coast of Russia.

Following the “north-east” route, the voyage from Yokohama in Japan to Rotterdam in Holland is less than 13,000 kilometres. This is a substantial reduction compared to the “Suez route” which is 21,000 kilometres. The opening of this new trade route could have big consequences.

A retired Rear Admiral of the Chinese Navy, Yin Zhuo, caused a stir in March 2010, when in a speech to the Chinese Peoples' Political Consultative Conference, he declared: “The Arctic belongs to all the people around the world as no nation has sovereignty over it.” China, he said, must also have a share of the region's resources. This clearly reflects Chinese imperialism’s need for expansion. But the other imperialist powers are not eager to let them in.

Another example: In August 2011, Chinese tycoon Huang Nubo made a bid to purchase 300 square kilometres of land in northeast Iceland for an eco-resort. While his efforts are allegedly unaffiliated with the Chinese government, the deal would grant China a significant foothold in the Arctic. The land in question is strategically located near one of Iceland’s largest glacial rivers and several potential deep-water ports. As Arctic ice recedes, this area is destined to become an important port centre on a new maritime transport route between East and West. The government of Iceland ultimately rejected Nubo’s resort proposal, but not without first stirring a heated debate between Icelanders about China’s growing influence.

Military build-up

All the states are building up their military presence in the region in order to boost their interests.

As mentioned, Russia is building a string of new naval bases in the region. According to official sources, these bases are to serve a “double purpose”. However, there’s no word on what those double purposes might be.

The US still holds a decisive military advantage in the form of submarines. American submarines are more advanced, there are more of them, and their crews are better trained.

Still, Russia wants to catch up on the Arctic front. In late June, Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw the construction of another Borei-class nuclear submarine, of which Russia plans to have eight by 2020. ”Obviously, the Navy is an instrument to protect national economic interests, including in such regions as the Arctic where some of the world’s richest biological resources, mineral resources are concentrated,” Putin said.

Also, Russia announced in March 2011 that it would re-equip its motorized infantry brigade based in Pechenga, on the Russian-Norwegian border, as an Arctic brigade.

In September this year, Canada’s military was revealed to be planning to buy drones for one billion dollars. The drones, which are all intended to be armed, are reportedly focused (but not exclusively) on protecting Canada’s claims to the Arctic.

This year, the US Coast Guard has been conducting its largest Arctic exercise, called “Arctic Shield.” The Coast Guard is focused mainly on search and rescue operations; and responding to potential oil spills brought on by expanded drilling. Commandant Robert Papp told a Senate panel that the Coast Guard is “well-prepared” to operate in the region.

Even Norway is building up her Arctic military muscles. Norwegian Defence Minister, Espen Barth Eide, indicated in March that the Norwegian Army 2nd Battalion would be renamed the “Arctic Battalion” and equipped to patrol the country's Arctic territory. The battalion, a mechanized infantry unit based in the northern county of Troms, will be supplied with snowmobiles and other light vehicles for the task.

This followed a statement by Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre calling Russia and the High North “key areas in Norwegian foreign policy” and advocating diverting funds to monitor Russian activity in the Arctic. The Norwegian government also plans to purchase 52 new F-35 fighter jets in 2017, stationing them at Orland Air Force Base in central Norway, with a smaller operating base in Evenes in the country's north for fast-response capabilities.

However, as the Arctic powers – Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the United States – remain at odds over how to divide up the region, arctic warfare seems unlikely. Russia and Norway still continues the cooperation between Gazprom and Statoil, and the two countries even hold some common naval exercises. And while small skirmishes (like the ones between Denmark and Canada over Tartupaluk / Hans Island) cannot be excluded, a larger-scale war seems unlikely because of the uncontrollable and cataclysmic implications it would have.

Imperialism – Still the Same

The whole “Great Game” in the Arctic is being played without the slightest consideration for human life and the environment. Recently, Moscow clamped down on the organisation Raipon which organizes the indigenous Arctic population in Russia. Clearly, the Kremlin was annoyed by the organisation’s criticism of the way oil drilling is being conducted in the region.

The Danish government is no better. At this moment, it is working on a law which will make it legal to employ Chinese workers in Greenland for wages that are even lower than the “normal” low wages in the country. The reason for this is that London Mining (a Chinese-owned company based in Jersey) has demanded the right to import what amounts to slave labourers. The world’s largest Aluminium mining company, the Canadian Alcoa, is demanding that it should pay no taxes at all in Greenland.

The peoples of the Arctic are looking at the new possibilities for exploiting the region’s resources. In this they see the possibility of improving their lives. This is understandable. But on the basis of capitalism, this cannot be achieved. The imperialist plundering of the resources, accompanied by a huge waste of money on military spending, will not bring prosperity to the peoples of the Arctic. Capitalism is not about the environmental and human needs. It is about profits and “spheres of interest”. So it was, so it is and so it will ever be, until this system is abolished and replaced by an International, Socialist Federation.

http://www.marxist.com/the-great-game-in-the-arctic.htm

Friday, December 7, 2012

Mike Gimbel on today's BLS report analysis


 
This morning's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report was purportedly showing a big drop in unemployment from 7.9% to 7.7%.
 
The REAL unemployment rate, however, remained virtually unchanged in November, 2012 at 16.63% from 16.62% in October, 2012.
the REAL unemployment + underemployment rate improved to 21.39% in November, 2012 from 21.47% in October, 2012.
 
Looking further inside the BLS report:
 
  1. The Civilian Labor Force actually SHRUNK in November, 2012 by 350,000, as reported by the BLS report. The civilian labor actually INCREASES, on average, by more than 100,000 every month.
  2. The number of employed actually DECREASED by 122,000 in November!!!
  3. The number of those listed in NOT IN THE LABOR FORCE increased in November by 542,000.
 
The above three items are BAD!!!! In other words, the supposed labor situation, as reported by BLS, was not as rosy as being reported in the media. At best, the November BLS report was little changed from October, 2012.
 
This "recovery", such as it is, continues to be extremely weak and the length of the recovery means that the next "bust" will be on top of the current "bust", not at a point of economic "boom". This continues to be a "jobless recovery".
 
--Mike Gimbel
 
The stupidities and absurdities by which mathematicians have rather excused than explained their mode of procedure, which remarkably enough always lead to correct results, exceed the worst and real fantasies of the Hegelian philosophy of nature.
 
                                                                  --Frederick Engels
 
Good physics is the study of three-dimensional matter in motion. Good mathematics involves unlimited dimensions, from utilization of just one dimension, two dimensions, four dimensions or as many dimensions as can be imagined. This is bad physics, however. Matter has only three dimensions: Length, Width & Height.
 
Physics has been in crisis for a century due to the intrusion of the field of mathematics. String Theory is the ultimate result of this nonsensical mathematical intrusion into physics.
 
Please read my book! You can get it on Amazon.com at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0984677801

"Drop dead, milord!"


- Proletarian: December 2012/January 2013 issue -

 

:: TOP STORIES ::

Europe in chains: lessons of the economic crisis
The working class in Spain has produced too many homes (in relation to what the market can bear), so as a result hundreds of thousands of Spanish workers are rendered homeless. This is the logic of capitalism. An estimated 2 million homes are lying vacant and unsaleable, yet hundreds of thousands of workers are on the streets.
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=875

Israel's latest massacre in Gaza met by renewed Palestinian resistance
The truth is that the shells and bombs which rained death on Palestinian heads in November were a sign of panic and desperation right across the imperialist camp, not of confidence or strength. What can the warmongers achieve by shooting at the captive inhabitants of what is in effect one vast concentration camp? It has only intensified Israel's international isolation whilst reinforcing popular support for the Palestinian resistance.
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=874

Imperialists threaten all-out war against Syria
Openly declaring that intervention in Syria was more likely after the US presidential election, Prime Minister David Cameron promptly set off on a weapons-selling trip to the traditional British client states in Jordan and the Gulf. Whilst in the region, he declared that Britain will open direct talks with the armed rebel groups themselves, rather than merely their supposed political proxies.
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=888

 

:: BRITISH POLITICS ::

Industry matters: Blacklists in the dock
The public was shocked to learn how no less than 44 construction firms, including household names like Balfour Beatty, Costain, Corillian, Wimpey and, most notably, McAlpine, had long been availing themselves of blacklist-keeper Ian Kerr's services, paying him handsomely to finger any worker who had at any time been dubbed a 'militant' or 'troublemaker' by a boss.
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=877

Work for the pensions we have already earned? Drop dead milord!
Now that the 'pension burden' on the state is being reduced by making people pay more, work longer and get less at the end, voices are being raised to suggest the logical next step. Why not treat pensioners the same as people of working age? Why not make them work for their pensions?
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=890

Highlights of the CPGB-ML congress
Our party is building new levels of organisation and discipline, and remains firmly oriented on the path of revolution
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=886

Scotland: a part of the British nation
Scottish people -- from all classes, not just the bourgeois sections of it -- played a vital role in building the British nation, of which they have been an integral part ever since.
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=887

Lessons of October for the builders of Britain's bolshevik party
Our society is dominated by the ideals, morals, culture and political outlook of the bourgeoisie. It affects us all and permeates and pollutes our own ideas, behaviour and outlook. As communists, we have to challenge this head on and face reality as it is.
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=880

 

:: WORLD ::

Editorial: Obama's re-election promises austerity at home and war abroad
Republicans and Democrats have lost no time in putting aside the contrived playground insults of the election campaign to effortlessly forge a bi-partisan consensus that will be based on swingeing cuts to such programmes as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=876

Industry matters: Greek resistance grows
Greek doctors have "set up a surreptitious network to help uninsured cancer patients and other ill people, which operates off the official grid using only spare medicines donated by pharmacies, some pharmaceutical companies and even the families of cancer patients who died".
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=889

Historic victory for Palestine: another rejection of occupation
What the zionist leaders of Israel fear, as they franticly try to intimidate the region by stockpiling American weapons, and all the while grabbing more Palestinian land, is that the 29 November UN resolution may be a game changer.
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=878

Libya: Green resistance on the rise
Symptomatic of the enduring loyalty and patriotism of most Libyans has been the refusal of the citizens of the northern city of Bani Walid to bow the head before the quisling government in Tripoli, instead preserving their town as a bastion of sanity whilst much of the country is torn apart by imperialist subversion and tribal conflicts.
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=879

US and British war crimes in Afghanistan
One victim screamed "We are children! We are children!" before being shot to death by an American 'hero'.
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=881

 

:: CULTURE AND LETTERS ::

Review: Ten Mile Inn by David and Isabel Crook
"The women of Ten Mile Inn, who in the past had been forced into unemployment by lack of capital and by urban machine competition, were able to earn money. This improvement of their economic position was the most powerful factor in the beginning of the emancipation of the women of Ten Mile Inn. Perhaps the chief characteristic of the women's work at this period, however, was that it was in the nature of an offensive on all fronts at once. It called for equal rights for women, freedom of marriage, no beating by husbands or parents-in-law, increased production of all sorts (including farm work, but especially spinning and weaving), economic support for the front through rear service (making shoes, uniforms, etc), and besides all this, literacy classes, bobbing of hair, unbinding of feet and opposition to face-saving."
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=882

Letter from Comrade Isabel Crook in China
I treasure Proletarian and Lalkar more and more since Syria became a battle ground between imperialism and anti-imperialism. These two papers make such a thorough and factual analysis, which differs so sharply from the BBC.
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=883

Poem: Postgraduate Defending Her Lament
but work to live,
don't live to work ...
society's imposed values are berserk!

http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=885

Letter: Marxism and psychiatry
What Marxism Leninism has never done is to fetishise the empiricist method to the extent that all creative thought is stifled. Yet this is exactly what has happened to medical practice in the western capitalist countries in recent years with the advent of so-called 'evidence-based medicine'.
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=884

Letter from the Korean embassy
The Great October Socialist Revolution was a landmark of the history of the world socialist movement, which inspired and guided the oppressed masses to the struggle for a new society.
http://www.cpgb-ml.co.uk/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=891

 

 

 

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Pearl Harbor

A Statement on the War
James P. Cannon

Source: Fourth International, New York, Volume III, No. 1, January 1942, pages 3-4.

December 22, 1941

The considerations which determined our attitude toward the war up to the out break of hostilities between the United States and the Axis powers retain their validity in the new situation.

We considered the war upon the part of all the capitalist powers involved—Germany and France, Italy and Great Britain — as an imperialist war.

This characterization of the war was determined for us by the character of the state powers involved in it. They were all capitalist states in the epoch of imperialism; themselves imperialist—oppressing other nations or peoples—or satellites of imperialist powers. The extension of the war to the Pacific and the formal entry of the United States and Japan change nothing in this basic analysis.

Following Lenin, it made no difference to us which imperialist bandit fired the first shot; every imperialist power has for a quarter of a century been "attacking" every other imperialist power by economic and political means; the resort to arms is but the culmination of this process, which will continue as long as capitalism endures.

This characterization of the war does not apply to the war of the Soviet Union against German imperialism. We make a fundamental distinction between the Soviet Union and its "democratic" allies. We defend the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is a workers' state, although degenerated under the totalitarian-political rule of the Kremlin bureaucracy. Only traitors can deny support to the Soviet workers' state in its war against fascist Germany. To defend the Soviet Union, in spite of Stalin and against Stalin, to defend the nationalized property established by the October revolution. That is a progressive war.

The war of China against Japan we likewise characterize as a progressive war. We support China. China is a colonial country, battling for national independence against an imperialist power. A victory for China would be a tremendous blow against all imperialism, inspiring all colonial peoples to throw off the imperialist yoke. The reactionary regime of Chiang Kai-shek, subservient to the "democracies," has hampered China's ability to conduct a bold war for independence; but that does not alter for us the essential fact that China is an oppressed nation fighting against an imperialist oppressor. We are proud of the fact that the Fourth Internationalists of China are fighting in the front ranks against Japanese imperialism.

None of the reasons which oblige us to support the Soviet Union and China against their enemies can be said to apply to France or Britain. These imperialist "democracies" entered the war to maintain their lordship over the hundreds of millions of subject peoples in the British and French empires; to defend these "democracies" means to defend their oppression of the masses of Africa and Asia, Above all it means to defend the decaying capitalist social order. We do not defend that, either in Italy and Germany, or in France and Britain—or in the United States.

The Marxist analysis which determined our attitude toward the war up to December 8, 1941 [i.e. up to the Pearl Harbor raid] continues to determine our attitude now. We were internationalists before December 8; we still are. We believe that the most fundamental bond of loyalty of all the workers of the world is the bond of international solidarity of the workers against their exploiters. We cannot assume the slightest responsibility for this war. No imperialist regime can conduct a just war. We cannot support it for one moment.

We are the most irreconcilable enemies of the fascist dictatorships of Germany and Italy and the military dictatorship of Japan. Our co-thinkers of the Fourth International in the Axis nations and the conquered countries are fighting and dying in the struggle to organize the coming revolutions against Hitler and Mussolini.

We are doing all in our power to speed those revolutions. But those ex-socialists, intellectuals and labor leaders, who in the name of "democracy" support the war of United States imperialism against its imperialist foes and rivals, far from aiding the German and Italian anti-fascists, only hamper their work and betray their struggle. The Allied imperialists, as every German worker knows, aim to impose a second and worse Versailles; the fear of that is Hitler's greatest asset in keeping the masses of Germany in subjection. The fear of the foreign yoke holds back the development of the German revolution against Hitler.

Our program to aid the German masses to overthrow Hitler demands, first of all, that they be guaranteed against a second Versailles. When the people of Germany can feel assured that military defeat will not be followed by the destruction of Germany's economic power and the imposition of unbearable burdens by the victors, Hitler will be overthrown from within Germany. But such guarantees against a second Versailles cannot be given by Germany's imperialist foes; nor, if given, would they be accepted by the German people. Wilson's 14 points are still remembered in Germany, and his promise that the United States was conducting war against the Kaiser and not against the German people. Yet the victors' peace, and the way in which the victors "organized" the world from 1918 to 1933, constituted war against the German people. The German people will not accept any new promises from those who made that peace and conducted that war.

In the midst of the war against Hitler, it is necessary to extend the hand of fraternity to the German people. This can be done honestly and convincingly only by a Workers' and Farmers' Government. We advocate the Workers' and Farmers' Government. Such a government, and only such a government, can conduct a war against Hitler, Mussolini and the Mikado in cooperation with the oppressed peoples of Germany, Italy and Japan. Our program against Hitlerism and for a Workers' and Farmers' Government is today the program of only a small minority. The great majority actively or passively supports the war program of the Roosevelt administration. As a minority we must submit to that majority in action. We do not sabotage the war or obstruct the military forces in any way. The Trotskyists go with their generation into the armed forces. We abide by the decisions of the majority. But we retain our opinions and insist on our right to express them.

Our aim is to convince the majority that our program is the only one which can put an end to war, fascism and economic convulsions. In this process of education the terrible facts speak loudly for our contention. Twice in twenty-five years world wars have wrought destruction. The instigators and leaders of those wars do not offer, and cannot offer, a plausible promise that a third, fourth and fifth world war will not follow if they and their social system remain dominant. Capitalism can offer no prospect but the slaughter of millions and the destruction of civilization. Only socialism can save humanity from this abyss. This is the truth. As the terrible war unfolds, this truth will be recognized by tens of millions who will not hear us now. The war-tortured masses will adopt our program and liberate the people of all countries from war and fascism. In this dark hour we clearly see the socialist future and prepare the way for it. Against the mad chorus of national hatreds we advance once more the old slogan of socialist internationalism: Workers of the World Unite!

New York, December 22, 1941

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1941/dec/21.htm

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Anti-imperialist youth to meet

WFDY projects 2013 anti-imperialist world youth festival in Ecuador

BY ALEX XEZONAKIS
AND JACOB PERASSO 
QUITO, Ecuador—At a Nov. 8-10 meeting here, the General Council of the World Federation of Democratic Youth decided to recommend the 18th World Festival of Youth and Students be held in this city at the close of 2013.

The World Festival of Youth and Students, generally held every four years, is an international gathering that brings together thousands of youth from around the world under the banner of the fight against imperialism. It provides an opportunity to discuss, share experiences and learn about social struggles around the world.

In endorsing a proposal from youth organizations in Ecuador to host the festival, a number of WFDY delegates pointed to the impact of the world crisis of capitalism and the opening it creates to attract broad participation of youth worldwide.

The last World Festival of Youth and Students, held in South Africa in 2010, drew 15,000 people and featured workshops, rallies, panels, film showings, as well as music, dance and sports.

Other festivals have been held in Venezuela (2005), Algeria (2001), and Cuba (1997). Between 1947 and 1989, the festivals were generally held in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. After an eight-year gap following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the festivals were revived by those responding to initiatives from the revolutionary government in Cuba. At recent festivals, many organizations have sought to involve a wider spectrum of anti-imperialist organizations from across the globe.

Of the 38 WFDY member organizations who met to debate and decide on the proposal to host the next festival here, most came from Central and South America. Others came from the three countries of North America; throughout Europe, from Portugal to Greece; nations spanning the Asian continent from India to Vietnam; and across the Middle East and Africa, including oppressed nations from Palestine to Western Sahara. Representatives of the Continental Organization of Latin American and Caribbean Students (OCLAE) also participated.

An International Preparatory Meeting, projected for the beginning of 2013, will draw together all interested organizations to issue a call for the festival and open discussion on its slogan and themes. 

http://www.themilitant.com/2012/7645/764556.html

Editorial: The Militant

The Militant (logo)

Vol. 76/No. 45      December 10, 2012

No worker has to die on the job! (editorial)

No worker has to die or be maimed on the job!
But nonetheless, our lives and limbs are sacrificed day in and day out on the altar of sharpening competition for markets among capitalists worldwide—from garment and textile plants in Bangladesh to chemical factories in Quebec to coal mines in New Zealand and the U.S. The bosses never value our lives more than the monetary cost of replacement.
Garment bosses in Bangladesh forced workers to remain in a burning building rather than lose a minute of profit squeezing. Like the New Zealand mine explosion that killed 29 workers in 2010, it was a large-scale disaster waiting to happen and a direct result of the bosses’ relentless drive for production. And in both cases, corners were cut that turned the workplace into a death trap from which many would not be able to escape.
The New Zealand mine bosses were pressing to meet impossible production quotas in hopes of super-profits during a period of high coal prices. Garment bosses in Bangladesh have captured a substantial share of production worldwide by pushing workers who today are the lowest paid in the industry.
The same question is posed everywhere. Only workers themselves have an interest in safe working conditions. Only their organization and use of union power—including the ability to shut down production—can enforce it.
Safety inspectors, whether from capitalist government agencies or from so-called nonprofit NGOs, have neither the same interest nor power. They end up serving as cover for the bosses unless and until the fighting union of workers is brought to bear.
Workers at the Illinois mine where Chad Meyers was killed were fighting for a union and a union safety committee. The National Labor Relations Board took 15 months to recognize their democratically elected union. And the company has made clear it would rather shut down the mine than recognize a union that would put workers in a stronger position to enforce safety.
Thousands of garment workers in Bangladesh are demonstrating out of necessity to protect their very lives after the killing of 112 fellow workers. They represent a union in becoming.
In every corner of the globe where capitalism holds sway, working people must fight today to protect each other from the growing ravages of private profit. This fight is a necessary struggle along the road through which the working class can become strong enough to wrest political power from the capitalist exploiters.
When the working class is in power, as it is in Cuba, production is organized to meet the needs of humanity. Under workers power, safety on the job is an essential aspect of production, not a contradiction.


Related articles:
Bangladesh workers fight for safer work conditions
Bangladesh workers fight for safer work conditions
Calif. postal workers protest privatization, layoffs, cuts
On the Picket Line
Report: Bosses at fault in deaths of 29 New Zealand miners in 2010
Worker killed on job at Peabody mine in Illinois
3 die, 18 injured in Quebec plant explosion: ‘There was no safety’
Millions forced into part time as bosses cut costs, drive speedup 

Philosophy for Militants by Alain Badiou


Wednesday, November 28, 2012

"TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA REVISITED!"

RAY O' LIGHT NEWSLETTER

November-December 2012
Number 75

From the Belly of the Beast


Publication of the Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA

The 2012 U.S. Election Results:
The U.S. Empire Wins and We Lose

-Statement of the Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA
   November 10, 2012-

The results are now in on the 2012 U.S. Election. Imperialist apologist George Will accurately summed it up, as follows: "A nation vocally disgusted with the status quo has reinforced it by ratifying existing control of the executive branch and both halves of the legislative branch." ("And the winner is: The status quo," Washington Post, 11-7-12)

Will pointed out that the voters are worse off than they were when Obama entered office; they have less net worth; they have less income and official unemployment has been more than eight percent in forty-three months under Obama, more months than the total under all eleven previous presidents over the past sixty years combined. "Yet voters preferred the president who presided over this to a Republican who … made his economic expertise his presidential credential," said Will. (Will could have added many other seemingly contradictory facts, including: that Obama beat Romney, the supposed candidate of the rich, in eight of the ten wealthiest counties in the USA, and that, compared to his 2008 election contest with John McCain, there was a sharp increase in Obama's share of the important Latino vote which climbed to 70% against Romney, despite the fact that the Obama Regime more than doubled the deportations of Latino immigrants from the Bush years!) Will points out, compellingly, that the voters in this same election "ratified Republican control of the House, keeping in place those excoriated as obstructionists by the president the voters retained." (ibid.)

Will, the reactionary, appears baffled by the seeming contradictions in the 2012 voters decision-making. This is because he, like all the U.S. imperialist-sponsored pundits, frames the political scene in the USA as a "battle" between the Republicans and Democrats.

These election results become quite understandable, however, when we take into account two important facts: First, political rule on behalf of Wall Street finance capital, the ruling class of the USA, is carried out by the "Republicrats." The Democratic and Republican Parties (some tea party forces excluded) operate, they fight and cooperate, as a dialectically intertwined single force in defense of the U.S. Empire at home and abroad. The clearest indication of this fact in the 2012 campaign was the content of the third televised presidential debate between Obama and Romney in which their political unity on virtually every foreign policy issue regarding war and diplomacy, and the strategic military and economic interests of U.S. imperialism was unmistakable.

Secondly, this was the first U.S. election conducted during the Citizens United era of unlimited, untraceable corporate cash. A whopping six billion dollars was spent, mostly by Corporate America and Wall Street finance capital, the U.S. monopoly capitalist and imperialist ruling class. And they got what they paid for. For there was no political fall-out, no sweeping out of either the incumbent Congress, with its record low popularity, or the incumbent president, presiding over the ongoing economic crisis plaguing the 99%, because of their "Republicrat" bail-outs of Wall Street, their failure to provide any relief for Main Street, and their ongoing efforts to increase their austerity measures aimed against the 99% of us, and especially against the U.S. working class and oppressed nationalities. Watch out for the "fiscal cliff" negotiations and revival and implementation of Obama's bipartisan (i.e. Republicrat) Simpson-Bowles Commission austerity plan recommendations in 2013!

From these election results it should be crystal clear that New Jersey's Larry Hamm, leader of Peoples Organization for Progress (POP), had it right when he said six months ago, "The most important day of the 2012 election season will be the day after the election. We'll need to be out in the streets demanding decent jobs and homes, etc. …" On the eve of the 2012 election, brother Hamm and POP announced: "On November 13th we will march to demand a national jobs program, a moratorium on home foreclosures, universal health care for all, an end to student debt, and the immediate return of all U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan." According to brother Hamm, the November 13th New Jersey demonstration will make a call for a National March for Jobs in Washington, DC.

Across the USA, we should follow the good example of New Jersey POP in the days ahead as well as respond to their call. Mass protest actions against the "Republicrat" austerity measures through which the Wall Street finance capitalists want to permanently place the burden of their capitalist economic crisis on the shoulders of the workers and oppressed nationalities of the USA are vital to our survival.

— But they are not sufficient. Short run resistance to the monopoly capitalist and imperialist offensive, to its unrelenting effort to place and keep the burden of the world-wide capitalist economic crisis on the shoulders of the workers and oppressed, can only be effective when it is dialectically interconnected with the long run aim of socialist revolution. We need only recall the rich revolutionary experience of the workers throughout the USA and the world during the 1930's and the last great capitalist economic depression to recognize this truth. On this 95th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia let us reclaim the marvelous legacy of the Soviet Union that grew, flourished and prospered while surrounded by a hostile capitalist world engulfed in and paralyzed by the economic crisis in the Great Depression, the Soviet Union whose legendary heroism played the decisive role in the defeat of fascism in World War II. For this Soviet legacy contains the path forward for the working people of the USA and the world out of the jungle of capitalist enslavement.


 



On the 95th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA REVISITED!

by RAY LIGHT

The 2012 U.S. presidential election campaign has been held in the midst of what even the most hardcore U.S. imperialist apologists have admitted is the worst and most persistent economic crisis in the USA since the Great Depression of the 1930's. Immediately after the crisis became acute in the Fall of 2008, the "Republicrat" government began its massive bail out and rescue of the Wall Street ruling financial oligarchy, first under President George W. Bush and ever since then under President Barack Obama. Under Bush and Obama, not one criminal Wall Street banker has been charged with a crime, let alone convicted and imprisoned. And this same imperialist government has refused to provide relief to the hard-pressed masses of the working class and the shrinking middle class even four years later. Instead, increasingly, austerity measures are being introduced against the 99% of us straining under the yoke of the dictatorship of Wall Street finance capital.

Nevertheless, initially, and for much of this period, the only significant political mass mobilization of the angry mass response to the monopoly capitalist-dominated U.S. government took place among the ruined petty bourgeois small businesspeople and other increasingly desperate middle class folks as they were organized by right-wing, semi-fascist forces into a variety of reactionary "tea party" groups around the country.

Finally, in February 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring and by the massive working class resistance throughout Southern Europe to European Union-dictated austerity measures, a powerful public sector union-led occupation of the Wisconsin State House broke out in response to an all-out assault on collective bargaining by newly elected tea party Governor Scott Walker. It was followed by militant actions and effective electoral referenda work of organized labor in neighboring Mid Western states including Ohio.  In September of 2011, working people and distressed youth and elderly folks began to come together spontaneously in "Occupy" groups across the USA, beginning with the very positive Occupy Wall Street initiative in New York City. Thus, thousands of U.S. workers and tens of thousands of unemployed, underemployed (including college youth saddled with heavy student loan debt), those without health care, the homeless and those on the verge of being homeless, finally began to express some anger and outrage directed politically at various branches and sectors of the U.S. government and at the Wall Street ruling class.

Unfortunately, since then, while the conditions of the U.S. working class and the poor have continued to deteriorate, this progressive mass motion has been undermined, disrupted and diverted into "toothless" electoral activity around the 2012 Presidential campaign (in support of Obama and the Democratic Party) for most of this year.* That is, until now.

* One exception was the brief but explosive USA-wide mass protest demanding that the murderer of Trayvon Martin, a clearly innocent Afro-American youth, be arrested.

With not much more than a month left in the campaign, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), aroused and mobilized by a Black woman-led militant and democratic union leadership core, with impressively strong backing of parents and the Chicago labor community, launched and won a daring strike to defend public school education and their students as well as their own working and living standards. What made this strike all the more noteworthy is that, while the national leadership of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and of the entire AFL-CIO has been pressuring the CTU membership to support the Democratic Party and its candidates, the main adversary and target of their strike was one of the most powerful Democratic Party personages, Chicago Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's first chief of staff and one of his closest political friends!

The Chicago teachers' bold and well organized strike has, in turn, inspired Walmart workers in Illinois and elsewhere to dare to begin to take on that global giant retailer, a monster corporation more powerful than many governments. Walmart worker protests are continuing to spread across the USA as we write these words.

But all these mass protests, strikes and organizing drives will lead nowhere over the long run without a political break with the Democratic Party — a political break with U.S. monopoly capitalism and imperialism. What is most seriously missing and needed in the current U.S. situation is the presence of a substantial communist party connected to all these "green shoots" of working class, unemployed and underemployed youth and oppressed nationality rebellion and connected to a vibrant, revolutionary international communist movementactively working toward the goal of replacing moribund, destructive capitalism with a bright and beautiful socialist future for toiling humanity.

The aim of this article is two-fold. First, is to make clear the nature of the current U.S. monopoly capitalist and imperialist offensive against the workers and oppressed peoples within the USA. The goal of this Wall Street drive to further impoverish the 99% of us, is to place and keep the burden of the world-wide capitalist economic crisis on the shoulders of the workers and oppressed. Indeed, in our previous issue, I asserted that the 2012 Presidential Election in the USA, rather than being about Romney versus Obama, Democrats versus Republicans, etc. has been mainly concerned "about positioning the U.S. government so as to give it the best chance for implementing a most severe austerity program against the 99% of the people of the USA in its desperate effort to save the U.S. monopoly capitalist and imperialist ruling class and, if possible, to preserve its hegemonic position in the world capitalist system. This requires that the government lead the effort to impoverish the people of the USA, U.S. society, deepening the basis for the super-exploitation of the workers and oppressed nationality people within the U.S. multinational state." ("The Declining U.S. Empire and the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election," Ray O' Light Newsletter #74, September-October 2012)

The conclusion from this first point is that the working people in the USA have no choice but to militantly resist the Wall Street finance capitalist ruling class and its "Republicrat" imperialist state apparatus.

The second point is to establish the fact thatshort run resistance to the monopoly capitalist and imperialist offensive, to its unrelenting effort to place and keep the burden of the world-wide capitalist economic crisis on the shoulders of the workers and oppressed, can only be effective when it is dialectically interconnected with the long run aim of socialist revolution. And the conclusion we hope you draw from this article is that the socialist revolution is not only good and necessary for working class and oppressed nationality folks like us but that the struggle for socialism is such a noble and realizable aim that you become inspired to "get on board."



At this point it is worth recalling that, as the world capitalist economy, including the U.S. capitalist economy in particular, was collapsing in 2008, Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, declared: "This is no time to experiment with Socialism."  Such has been the weak and bankrupt state of the U.S. and international communist and workers movement in recent years that her ignorant and counterrevolutionary statement went virtually unchallenged!

Indeed, Sarah Palin's position is supported in the 2012 election campaign period by arguably the most "left-wing" Democratic Party functionary of this period, Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor in the first Clinton Administration. The current issue of The Progressive (November 2012) contains a substantial interview with the "left progressive" Reich. After boldly exposing Obama as a "Rockefeller Republican," thus ridiculing the Republican Right's accusation that Obama is a "socialist" but also unwittingly exposing the bankruptcy of most of the U.S. left (for their support of Obama) at the same time, Reich makes clear his own anti-socialist viewpoint. Reich asserts that, "it's not a matter of capitalism versus socialism or capitalism versus communism. There are no other isms in the world [other than capitalism]. There never really were. Russia was not a communist state. It was a totalitarian state. European socialism was really European democratic socialism … not really socialism." (My emphasis)



Soviet Union Coat of Arms

This year the U.S. presidential election takes place on November 6th, the day before the 95th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia. So it is fitting that we expose "the Big Lie" of Palin-Reich and the "Republicrats" as we commemorate the earth-shaking revolution's anniversary. This great proletarian revolution led to the creation of the magnificent Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) with its unprecedented successes in turning that prison-house of nations into the model for solving the problem of nationalities living together in peace and harmony. The Soviet Communist Party, while still under Lenin's leadership, as part of the consolidation of the USSR, led in the establishment of the Communist International (Comintern) that inspired the creation of revolutionary communist parties all over the world.

The USSR, under the leadership of Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made the decisive contribution to the defeat of world fascism in World War II, ushering in a period of unprecedented flowering of political independence for oppressed peoples throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, crowned by the victorious Chinese national democratic revolution, and the establishment of a Socialist Camp that rivaled the imperialist world capitalist camp in its size and scope. Finally, perhaps even more buried than these gigantic achievements, were the unprecedented economic, social and cultural accomplishments of the Soviet people in developing the USSR from a backward to an advanced country in little more than a generation. Even more striking, most of this was accomplished while the rest of the world, the capitalist world, was mired in the Great Depression.

Among so many other significant contributions to world proletarian revolution, the victorious Russian Revolution inspired the creation of the Communist Party of the USA and drew the veteran Irish-American militant working class leader, William Z. Foster, into the ranks of world communism.*

* Foster was widely known, even before the founding of the CPUSA, because of his outstanding leadership of important national strikes in the meatpacking and steel industries during and just after World War I. Thus he was already deeply feared by Corporate America as well as its labor stooges, the bankrupt AFL top leaders (from Gompers to Woll to Green).

Eighty years ago, in 1932, in the first U.S. presidential election during the Great Depression, William Z. Foster was nominated as the Communist Party candidate for President of the USA.* With the strength of their connections to the Comintern, Foster and the CPUSA were already widely seen as the outstanding champions of the unemployed and the impoverished masses of the USA.**

* His Vice Presidential running mate was veteran Afro-American communist James Ford – in 1932, in the teeth of U.S. apartheid!

** The Communist International (Comintern) resolved to hold "International Unemployment Day" demonstrations all over the world on March 6, 1930. In the USA, it became "the first major protest demonstration of the Depression years," as thirty-five thousand workers, led by Foster, marched in the face of the New York City police and spectacular demonstrations of the unemployed were held in other large cities across the USA as well. As the CPUSA's most prominent leader, Foster was arrested that day in New York and was sent to prison for more than six months.

The small and weak proletarian revolutionary forces in the USA today as well as the working class and oppressed nationalities in this country are currently experiencing the first U.S. presidential election in the midst of the most acute capitalist economic crisis since that great depression. And this current crisis, showing no signs of resolving or being overcome anytime soon, could yet become an even deeper and more intractable crisis than the Great Depression.


William Z. Foster

In the lead-up to the 1932 election campaign, to cultivate and take advantage of the renewed interest in the Communist Party's program and practice among hard-pressed working people in the Depression-ridden USA, Foster wrote a book, entitled, Toward Soviet America. "Its central purpose is to explain to the oppressed and exploited masses of workers and poor farmers how, under the leadership of the Communist Party, they can best protect themselves now, and in due season cut their way out of the capitalist jungle to socialism." (p. vi) 

In light of the fact that there is today no genuine and militant communist party in the USA with significant influence among the working class and the oppressed masses and linked to a vibrant international communist movement, I am revisiting Foster's Toward Soviet America with the hope that this eighty year old CPUSA book and political experience will help us find our way back to the winning ways of our now distant past.

Foster outlined the Party's approach to the Capitalist Economic Depression and why and how the U.S. working class needed to take the revolutionary path out of the crisis. Essential to Foster's argument were the undeniable, unprecedented accomplishments of the first 14 years of the Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR. And, by 1932, these marvelous Soviet accomplishments were in stark contrast to the rest of the world, mired in the misery of the world capitalist economic crisis, the Great Depression! Thus, Foster opens Chapter I with the following: "The most striking and significant political and social fact in the world today is the glaring contrast between the industrial, political and social conditions prevailing in the capitalist countries and those obtaining in the Soviet Union." (ibid., p. 1) 

In this chapter, entitled, "The Decline of Capitalism," Foster documents the unprecedented rapid decline in business, trade and industrial activity, the closing of banks, retail stores, bankruptcies of cities and towns. He states: "Since the onset of the present economic crisis, American workers and poor farmers, through unemployment, part-time work, wage-cuts, reduced prices for agricultural products, tax increases, etc. have suffered a general decline in their living standards of at least 50%." "The standards of living of the producing masses have declined catastrophically, mass starvation existing in every capitalist country, including the United States." (ibid.) This result is due to the fact, as Foster explains, that, "Throughout capitalism the policy of the ruling class is to try to find a way out of the crisis by throwing its burden upon the shoulders of the working class, the poor farmers and the lower sections of the city petty bourgeoisie." (ibid., p. 7)

After surveying the capitalist offensive throughout Europe featuring wage cuts and reduction of unemployment benefits and social insurance generally, Foster describes the crisis of famine in China and India and the health crisis in Brazil. Foster concludes: "The world over, the bankrupt capitalist system is physically destroying the producing masses … All this is a picture of a society in decay. Great mills and factories standing idle and warehouses piled full of goods, while millions of toilers starve and lack the necessities of life … never until capitalism appeared upon the world scene was such an anomaly possible – starvation in the midst of plenty … it is a crime against the human race."  (ibid., pp. 14 & 15)

The remainder of Chapter I features an astute Marxist analysis of the basic ingredients that made the Great Depression not just another cyclical crisis that capitalism had experienced for generations, but a general crisis of capitalism. These ingredients include:

a) overexpansion of industry – for example, the U.S. auto industry with an estimated yearly capacity of ten million cars was at 20% capacity the year he wrote the book [in the current crisis: the Obama-led bail out of the over-extended auto industry featured drastic worsening of auto workers' wages and working conditions];

b) chronic industrial stagnation, especially of older industries such as shipbuilding, coal and textiles, a problem that plagued older industries in all the capitalist countries [replicated today when the only growth industries are in new age computer-related industries, robotics, etc.];

c) permanent mass unemployment – during the boom period of the 1920's there were still three million U.S. unemployed [in the post World War II period, U.S. economists created the "discouraged worker" category that made millions of long term unemployed statistically disappear when they became too discouraged to look for work];

d) choking of international trade – with "the tendency for each capitalist country to wall itself off from the commerce of the others" [in the current crisis there are increasing suits filed in the World Trade Organization and elsewhere by the USA, China, the EU and other global powers against each other's anti-competitive maneuvers]; 

e) breakdown of the medium of exchange – "more than half the capitalist world off the gold standard" "with various systems of inflating the currency in effect" [in 1971, Nixon took the USA off the gold standard and made the dollar the dominant medium of exchange, on the basis of the hegemonic military, political and economic power of U.S. imperialism; in this crisis period the U.S. government has engaged in "quantitative easing," deflating the value of the currency by printing more dollars and making those in possession of current dollars such as the Chinese and Japanese creditors less wealthy];

f) "the development of fascism in various forms in all capitalist countries" [in the current crisis in the USA – the scapegoating of Latino immigrants and the proliferation of anti-immigrant laws in Arizona and elsewhere, the proliferation of white supremacist vigilante organizations, and the tea party-Republican-led effort to "take back" the United States from the non-whites, the increasingly ignorant, vicious and open attacks on the status of women, and the increasingly repressive domestic laws such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the National Defense Authorization Act];

g) the birth of a new world social system – with the rise of the USSR, capitalism has lost territorially one-sixth of the territory of the globe "and is rapidly losing more to the Chinese Soviets …" (these excerpts quoted from pp. 33-40) [point g is the one big difference between the Depression-era global environment described by comrade Foster and the current global situation when the vibrant, expanding Socialist Camp established on the basis of the Soviet-led victory over global fascism in World War II has disintegrated, as the victorious Chinese Revolution of 1949 never proceeded to the socialist stage by advancing back to Chinese Soviets when the conditions had arrived to do so and the Soviet Union itself degenerated to a point where it could be openly replaced by capitalism.] 

As indicated above, this chapter has such a familiar ring to it for those of us experiencing today's economic crisis in the USA. As another example, in the first few years of the current crisis, we had taken note of the fact that just about every day bourgeois political and economic "experts" claimed that the worst was over; there was good news on the jobs front; sales were up, etc. etc. Such pieces of "good news" are now called "green shoots" and putting a positive "spin" on the crisis is considered a patriotic duty by the media folks fronting for the U.S. monopoly capitalist ruling class and its bankrupt system. Eighty years ago, Foster described "the cultivation of prosperity illusions" as "one of the principal methods of the capitalists to break the resistance of the workers against wage-cuts, starvation, relief systems, etc." (ibid., pp. 18 & 19)  In this regard, Foster quotes U.S. President Herbert Hoover's ludicrous assertion (just two days after the great CPUSA-led national demonstration of the unemployed exploded across the country on March 6, 1930) that, "The depression will be over in 60 days." 

Foster concludes this chapter with the following: "Capitalism has created the objective conditions for Socialism. But it can go no further. It cannot carry society to higher stages of development, to Socialism and Communism; it has become an obstacle in the upward path of humanity, a means of condemning hundreds of millions of people to mass starvation and death. History will soon sweep aside this obsolete system." (ibid., pp. 69-70) But Foster also warns: "Where there is no strong revolutionary movement the capitalists will find a way out at the expense of the toiling masses; that is, the economic crisis, following the laws of cyclical crises, will eventually wear itself out by reducing production, slashing prices and wages and drastically reducing the living standards of the masses."(ibid., p. 68)

Chapter II is entitled "The Rise of Socialism." Foster cites the 22% to 25% yearly increase in the USSR's industrial production as never before seen in history. The best average achieved by the USA, from 1870 to 1890, was 8.3%. Writing for The Nation magazine, never known as a communist journal, Louis Fischer is quoted by Foster as follows: "The Soviet frontier is like a charmed circle which the world economic crisis cannot cross. While banks crash, while production falls and trade languishes abroad, the Soviet Union continues in an orgy of construction and national development. The scale and speed of its progress are unprecedented." (The Nation, 11-25-31)

The "right to work" established in the USSR was no empty gesture as unemployment was eliminated. Already by 1932 there was a seven hour day and five day work week. Workers on disability received full wages. There was a concerted and effective campaign to wipe out illiteracy and already the USSR was the biggest publisher of books in the world, ensuring that the Soviet population would be well informed. As the hard-core working class leader Foster put it, "Under Socialism wages are as high as the total economy will permit; under capitalism they are as low as the workers can be compelled to accept." (Toward Soviet America, p. 101) According to Foster, "the wages of Russian workers are now about double what they were before the revolution … in contrast to rapid wage declines in all capitalist countries." (ibid.)

Moreover, at a time [1932] when virtually no Afro-Americans could vote in the Southern USA and millions of northern workers in the industrial heartland were immigrants whose right to vote was being denied wherever possible, "citizenship in the Soviet democracy is based upon work … whoever works can vote … [with] no qualifications of sex, nationality, residence, etc." In direct contradiction to today's "prevailing wisdom" that Soviet or socialist society was a liberal welfare state without a healthy work ethic, Foster explained that "The dictatorship of the proletariat, unlike the capitalist dictatorship, makes no pretenses of being an all-class democracy, a democracy of both exploiters and exploited. It is frankly a democracy of the toiling masses, directed against the exploiters. Its freedom is only for useful producers, not for social parasites." (Ibid., p. 134, my emphasis)

Foster exposed how the workers and poor peasants of the Soviet Union decisively answered the "left" and right opportunist critics of the building of socialism inside and outside of the USSR, in the first place with their heroic labor. At the time of his writing of this book, the first great Five Year Plan, which western imperialist experts and social democrats had laughed at as an unreachable goal, had already been completed — a year ahead of schedule!

Lenin had taught that, "The Soviet democracy consists of workers organized so informally that for the first time the people as a whole are learning to govern." (Cited by Foster (p. 139) from "Soviets at Work") In this connection, says Foster, "the Russian workers and peasants have built up the most gigantic mass organizations in human history." Among the most important of these organizations, Foster lists the "communist organizations proper (the Party, the Youth and the Pioneers [children])" with about 15 million members, the trade unions with 17 million members, and the consumers coops with 70 million. In addition, there were many huge organizations for culture, sport, defense, aviation, etc. containing scores of millions more. Finally, he lists "the Soviet electorate of 85 million voters, the largest in the world." Foster refers to these mass organizations as "the very backbone of the whole Soviet system." (ibid., pp. 139-140)

No wonder the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) had grown seven-fold (from 440,000 members to 2.8 million members) in the eight years since Lenin's death. For the Communist Party was then the leader and organizer of the proletarian dictatorship ushering in the bright future of socialism and communism. 

Chapter III is entitled, "Capitalist Attempts to Liquidate the Crisis." Among the futile efforts of the U.S. monopoly capitalists and imperialists to solve the economic crisis of the Great Depression many of the same maneuvers used then are again being foisted upon the working class today. Foster describes the introduction of intensified speed-up, greater efficiency and productivity. Today, these not-so-modern "techniques" have helped to generate what the Obama Regime and the Republicrat Congress have demagogically spoken of as the "jobless recovery." With these "techniques," the working class and especially the working poor continue to experience chronic and epidemic unemployment and underemployment as well as pay cuts, while Wall Street has experienced near record profits.

Likewise, Foster discusses the efforts by the trusts and cartels to boost their profits by destroying huge sections of their commodity production. He gives examples of one hundred thousand gallons of milk dumped into a river in Oakland, California and similar efforts with salmon in Alaska, as well as the destruction of cabbage and eggs to keep them off the market. Because these concentrated capitalist combinations stimulate production in the midst of a crisis of overproduction (where the working people cannot buy back what they have already produced because they are systematically shortchanged when they exchange their living labor for a wage from the capitalist), the trusts and cartels only aggravate the crisis. This is also the underlying problem with efforts at state capitalism or planned capitalist economy. In the current crisis, the several trillions of dollars of our tax money used by Bush and Obama to bail out Wall Street did not result in the recipient financial institutions making loans to small businesses and new mortgage buyers. Instead, it was used to buy up distressed companies and further consolidate and concentrate U.S. finance capital.

In addition, Foster exposed quite thoroughly the fact that the treacherous main leadership of the American Federation of Labor (Green, Woll and company) was an integral part of the monopolists' attempts to get out of the crisis. "Their support of the rationalization of industry is part of the speed-up program of the bosses. Their systematic betrayal of the Negroes, women and young workers dovetails into the employers' special exploitation of these sections of the workers." At their worst when dealing with the key Depression-era issue of unemployment, Foster cites the 1931 AFL Convention held in Vancouver that reaffirmed the existing policy opposing unemployment insurance for the working class in the USA such as was already provided in Great Britain and Germany! Foster said that the AFL's rank and file members supported unemployment relief and that "the AFL Convention which could adopt such a decision was made up of 90% high-paid officials; the workers had no voice or representation."

Unemployment relief is a concrete demand that was won under the leadership of Foster and the CPUSA during the Great Depression and the only significant benefit that U.S. workers have had in this current crisis. But the treacherous role of the current AFL-CIO leadership (so similar to that AFL leadership eighty years ago as described by Foster) has been crucial to the fact that there has been so little militant trade union resistance to the Wall Street bailouts made by the current Republicrat government and to the mortgage foreclosures, wage cuts, layoffs, education cuts, et al. that have ravaged the 99% of us.

So Foster's description of the U.S. monopoly capitalist ruling class efforts to escape the economic crisis of its own making through speed-up, greater efficiency and productivity, through trusts, cartels and tax-payer subsidized state monopoly capitalism and through the treachery of the top leaders of the trade union movement have much in common with efforts of the U.S. ruling class to do so today.

Chapter IV is entitled, "The Revolutionary Way Out of the Crisis." Here, among other things, Foster presents "The Communist Party Program of Immediate Demands." He explains that "the Party bases its immediate struggle upon partial demands corresponding to the most urgent necessities of the toiling masses."

Foster then states: "The most important of these demands are concentrated in the Party's 1932 election platform, as follows:

1.   UNEMPLOYMENT AND SOCIAL INSURANCE AT THE EXPENSE OF THE STATE AND EMPLOYERS.

2.   Against Hoover's wage-cutting policy.

3.   Emergency relief, without restrictions by the government and banks, for the poor farmers, exemption of poor farmers from taxes, and from forced collection of debts.

4.   Equal rights for the Negroes, and self-determination for the Black Belt.

5.   Against capitalist terror; against all forms of suppression of the political rights of the workers.

6.   Against imperialist war; for defense of the Chinese people and of the Soviet Union." (ibid., pp. 247, 248)

Foster made a detailed, well thought out explanation of each of these demands and the militant struggle that would be required to win these demands. This was a serious communist party with deep connections to the U.S. and international working class. Its serious and battle-tested leader, William Z. Foster, explained many of the challenges facing the communist movement in the USA on the revolutionary road out of the crisis. Foster observed that, "… on the surface of things, the workers of the United States are the most conservative of any great industrial country. This is primarily because, living in the land of the most powerful and rapidly rising imperialism, their standards of living have been somewhat higher than those in other countries. Besides, their class consciousness has been greatly hindered by the so-called democratic traditions in the United States, harking back to the days of free land." (ibid., p. 260) Foster also points to "the lack of homogeneity among the workers – many races, many nationalities, many traditions" and the unparalleled flood of propaganda "through countless newspapers, schools, churches, labor leaders, politicians, radios, motion pictures, etc." by which the capitalists exploited all these factors.

Despite all these challenges, Foster believed that, while large numbers of these conservative U.S. workers would fall victim to social reformism "…hence, the great danger of the Socialist Party and the A.F. of L. leadership … ," he was optimistic. He felt that "the conservative American workers did not have to pass through a stage of social reformism before they will accept the Communist program." According to Foster, already in 1932, "experience already amply demonstrates that the Communist party, with its program of partial demands and united front policy, coupled with its ultimate revolutionary objectives, can and does successfully mobilize masses of these workers just breaking from the two old parties." (ibid., p. 266)

 


Foster understood that "the capitalists, in the midst of the sharpening general crisis of capitalism, are determined to force the living standards of American toilers down to European levels or lower." As a result, he believed, "The workers will respond to this offensive by increasing class consciousness and mass struggle. More and more they will turn to the Communist party for leadership … The working class of this country will tread the path of the workers of the world, to the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a Soviet government."  (ibid., p. 267)

Chapter V is entitled "The United Soviet States of America." Comrade Foster opens with this profound observation: "The Marxian principle holds true that the prevailing mode of production and exchange determines the character of the general organization of a given society. Thus the pioneer British capitalist society, based upon the private ownership of industry and the exploitation of the workers, forecast the type which, with only minor variations, came later to be developed by the whole capitalist world. Its parliamentary democracy, rampant patriotism, robot-like education of the masses, reformist trade unionism, etc. fitted naturally into the capitalist scheme of things everywhere. By the same principle, the Soviet Union now forecasts the general outlines of the new social order that the world is approaching." (ibid., p. 268)*

* The authoritative History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) describes the emergence of the Soviets, as follows: "… in the fire of the struggle against tsardom, the revolutionary creative initiative of the working-class masses forged a new and powerful weapon – the Soviets of Workers' Deputies. The Soviets of Workers' Deputies – which were assemblies of delegates from all mills and factories – represented a type of mass political organization of the working class which the world had never seen before. The Soviets that first arose in 1905 were the prototype of the Soviet power which the proletariat, led by the Bolshevik Party, set up in 1917. ... They were set up exclusively by the revolutionary sections of the population, in defiance of all laws and prescripts of tsardom. They were a manifestation of the independent action of the people who were rising to fight tsardom. The Bolsheviks regarded the Soviets as the embryo of revolutionary power." (p. 79)

Foster continues, "From capitalism to Communism, through the intermediary stage of Socialism; that is the way American society, like society in general, is headed. It represents the main line of march of the human race to the next higher social stage in its historical advance. It is the trend to which all the economic, political and social forces of today are contributing." (ibid., p. 269) "A Soviet government will provide the workers and poor farmers with the political instrument necessary to defend their interests. The whole purpose of such a government will be to advance the welfare of those who do useful work." (ibid., p. 275)

There are so many wonderfully enlightened political expressions in this final and most speculative chapter in the book. For example, Foster, in 1932, is projecting that the United Soviet States of America (USSA) will provide free medical care in the USA with the emphasis on healthful living.* Compare this to the current U.S. obesity epidemic largely generated by the monopoly fast food restaurants, and soft drink corporations, etc. He discusses the need for the USSA to eliminate the adulteration of our food, decades before genetically modified crops. He sees the value of the USSA eliminating congestion in cities through urban planning. He expressed similarly enlightened views on crime and incarceration, eliminating Prohibition and making the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages as well as education against excessive drinking all the responsibility of the socialist state.

* Of course, the USSR was then the first and only country to have universal free medical care.

With regard to the capitalist charges about "forced labor" in the USSR, Foster exposes the fact that "forced labor is native to capitalism, not Socialism. The whole Socialist system is utterly antagonistic to any enslavement of the workers."  (ibid., p. 330) Among other things, Foster cites a newspaper quote from R.T. Rainey, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives asserting that, "Labor is freer in Russia than in any other country in the world." (New York World-Telegram, 4-8-32) With regard to the wages received by the leaders of the ruling Communist party in the USSR, Foster observes: "Besides the revolutionary enthusiasm and initiative of the masses and many other indications already present of the eventual wageless system, there is the 'Party maximum.' That is, the members of the Communist party have a set wage limit above which they cannot go. Thus Stalin gets the same wages as many hundreds of thousands of other workers and much less than large numbers of non-Party mechanics and engineers." (ibid., p. 331)

Finally, Foster addresses the issue of Collectivism and Individualism. "Defenders of capitalism declare that Socialism destroys individualism … They mean that the anti-social individualism of capitalism will go. Under Socialism no one will have the right to exploit another; no longer will a profit-hungry employer be able to shut his factory gates and sentence thousands to starvation; no more will it be possible for a little clique of capitalists  and their political henchmen to plunge the world into a blood-bath of war. Yes, such deadly individualism is doomed. But the revolution will create in its stead a new and better development of the individual. The collectivist society of Socialism, by freeing the masses from economic and political slavery will, for the first time in history, give the masses an opportunity to fully develop and express their personalities." (ibid., p. 333)

In this spirit of collectivism, let's pause to reflect on where the people of the USA are in the aftermath of the lose-lose 2012 U.S. Election season. Carl Sandburg's epic poem, The People Yes, has insight and encouragement for us.

Excerpt from The People Yes by Carl Sandburg

"The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
    They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
     The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
     You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
  ...

The people know the salt of the sea
    and the strength of the winds
    lashing the corners of the earth.
    The people take the earth
    as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
    Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
    They are in tune and step
    with constellations of universal law.
  ...

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
    the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people march:
     'Where to? What next?'"



Some concluding thoughts about Toward Soviet America

1)   Toward Soviet America reads extremely well, even with eighty years of historical hindsight. The imperialist powers' war preparations directed against the USSR and the rising Chinese revolution as described in the book was key to the outbreak of World War II. Indeed, the world capitalist system only recovered from the Great Depression on the basis of the incredibly destructive and bloody World War that cost sixty million lives, including almost thirty million Soviet citizens. The menace of fascism was real and the German fascist war machine's invasion of the USSR, in June of 1941, was arguably the most powerful and brutal such invasion in modern history. And it took legendary heroism and sacrifice on the part of the Soviet people and the Red Army under the leadership of Stalin and the CPSU(B) to militarily defeat Nazi Germany. The terrible toll of the war left the Soviet Party and people with more of an orientation toward peace than revolution, a weak strategic position from which to deal with predatory U.S. and international imperialism. And neither the Eastern European democracies (other than Socialist Albania) nor China, Korea and Vietnam ever actively reached for the goal of developing Soviet power in their countries thereafter.

2)   I found only one significant political weakness in the book, Foster's use of the concept of "social fascism" as a substitute for "social democracy." This was no doubt a reflection of the left sectarian tendency during the Cominern's Sixth Congress to rely so much on the mighty USSR that communists around the world were under the illusion that they did not have to seek allies in the struggle against capital. To overstate the reactionary character of social democracy in the short run by calling it "fascist" meant to abdicate our communist responsibility to unite the proletarian and peoples forces to the maximum while isolating the enemy to the maximum. It served to hand over large sections of the masses to the enemy. Indeed, from 1924 on, the CPUSA had run its own presidential candidate, Foster himself.  And Foster had recognized, especially in 1924, that the CPUSA had unnecessarily isolated itself from its previous allies in and around the labor movement, important labor people such as Debs and John Fitzpatrick, as well as the Farmer-Labor Party, the LaFollette movement, etc. by running its own slate. 

For the purposes of this revisit to Toward Soviet America, however, I believe the most compelling point is just how spectacularly successful the Soviet Union itself was in such a short period of time. This proletarian truth is completely contrary to the conventional wisdom of the pathetically weak, social pacifist and social chauvinist social democratic U.S. left today and various Trotskyite, revisionist and reformist NGO forces around the world that the Soviet Union was a "failed project" which should be permanently abandoned. The incredible success of the USSR is reflected in every page of Toward Soviet America. And, in reality the emergence and persistence of this left sectarian error, not only on the part of the CPUSA but of communist parties all over the world that were connected to the mighty USSR, reflected this truth as well.

In order to correct this error, in 1935 the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) under the leadership of the legendary anti-Nazi Bulgarian Communist hero, Georgi Dimitrov, charted a "united front (with social democracy) against fascism" strategic corrective of what Dimitrov referred to as "self-satisfied sectarianism."  The Seventh Congress "rightist" correction of the left errors of the Sixth Congress period never had the opportunity to be recalibrated by an Eighth Congress since the Comintern was dissolved in 1943 and never reestablished in the post World War II period.

3)   In Toward Soviet America, Comrade Foster reports that, on the 14th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, November 7, 1931, a Provisional Chinese Soviet government was organized with 70 million people living in the territory where the Chinese Soviets held power. Comrade Foster believed that, "It was largely the fear of the growing Chinese revolution, its tremendous effect upon the vast millions of Asia, the danger of a great Russian-Chinese Soviet Union, that determined the imperialists upon their present war to partition China and to lay the basis for an attack upon the Soviet Union." (Toward Soviet America, p. 60, my emphasis)

In 1935, at the same time that Mao Tse-tung came into Chinese Communist Party leadership, and the "right" correction of the Comintern Sixth Congress line was implemented all over the world, the Chinese Communist Party, implementing the "united front against fascism" line, abandoned the goal of a "Soviet China" in favor of a "Peoples Republic." Even in all the more than six decades since the world-historic victory of the Chinese national democratic revolution in 1949, there has been no apparent serious effort to advance to the Soviet, socialist stage of the revolution in China.

In the main military battles between the communist and capitalist forces in the twentieth century, it was the communist forces that prevailed. But, beginning in the post World War II period, and especially since the death of Stalin, imperialism, headed by U.S. imperialism, has been able to win the peace. Sun Tzu, the ancient and legendary Chinese expert on the art of war, taught: "supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." The fact that the goal of Soviet power has been discarded and abandoned along the way by the so-called international communist movement has been key to the successes of U.S. imperialism and world reaction in their struggles against the international working class and the oppressed peoples over the past fifty years and more.

4)   Last but not least – impressively, most of what Foster projected with regard to the USA and the CPUSA in Toward Soviet America actually came to pass. While the country has not yet become the United States of Soviet America, the CPUSA did lead the U.S. working class throughout the Great Depression. It led in the creation of the militant and democratic Congress of Industrial Organization, the CIO, the industrial union that united the skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers, men and women, the native-born and immigrant workers, the Afro-American and white workers. It led in the establishment of the unemployed councils that actively led the fight against evictions in cities and towns throughout the USA that helped achieve and maintain unity between the employed and unemployed sectors of the working class. And the CPUSA, including through its mass influence, and its own members' and contacts' participation in the war against fascism, contributed to the Soviet Union-led global defeat of world fascism.

      This magnificent victory ushered in the immediate post World War II period of the flowering of the national liberation movements of the oppressed peoples of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East against international imperialism, culminating in the victory of the Chinese national democratic revolution in 1949 that liberated one-quarter of humanity. And it led directly to the creation of a Socialist Camp that, with the liberation of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Red Army and the liberation of half of Korea and Vietnam, equaled in size and scope the capitalist camp and threatened to end capitalism as a powerful force in the world.

LET'S GO "BACK TO THE FUTURE" OF SOVIET POWER!

LET'S FIGHT FOR A UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA!

LET'S FIGHT FOR A SOVIET SOCIALIST WORLD!

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