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On March 18, 2007 the war against the
Iraqi people became the second longest war in U.S. history, with the
ten-year slaughter in Vietnam, at a cost of 4 million Vietnamese and
57,000 American GIs dead, still topping the list regarding the duration
of imperialist barbarity, arrogance and slaughter. In contrast to
Vietnam, however, the stakes in Iraq for U.S. imperialism are
qualitatively higher and the political/historical context of the war
fundamentally different.
Vietnam took place at a time of virtually unprecedented U.S. prosperity,
of a tripling of funds to public education, of a so-called "Great
Society" program including important civil rights legislation, of a
generalized expansion of the U.S. economy, of a narrowing of the income
gap between Black and white and all this in the context of an
unchallenged American imperialism that had dominated world markets since
the end of the Second World War in 1945.
Vietnam was in fact more of a U.S. "cold war" effort to
restrict the influence of the Soviet Union and thwart the emergence of
additional workers states than it was a war where critical resources that
literally fuel the world economy were at stake. It was a war fought by a
still triumphant U.S. ruling class, whose enemies and allies alike had
not yet recovered from WWII. Today the U.S. ruling class, in regard to
its previous world economic hegemony, is in rapid decline, threatened by
ever-more economically powerful capitalist competitors.
The defeat in Vietnam, however important in terms exposing the vulnerability
of U.S. imperialism in the face of a determined, united and disciplined
national liberation movement and a massive American anti-war movement,
including its critical GI resistance component, did not shake the
foundations of U.S. capitalism. It did not fundamentally alter the
relationship of world imperialist forces, either among the imperialist
nations or with regard to the deformed and degenerated workers states.
It must be said, however, that the U.S. defeat in Vietnam did result in
the "Vietnam Syndrome," the deeply held belief of the American
people that any U.S. moves to intervene abroad were to be viewed as
highly suspect. This phenomenon helped to stay the hand of U.S.
imperialism for almost two decades.
The present Iraq War takes place in the context of a generalized crisis
of U.S. and world imperialism, of a globalized capitalist competition
that continues to reduce average corporate profit rates worldwide, that
has compelled a consolidation/monopolization of capital and a division between
the rich and poor never before seen, that has driven the world's ruling
rich to every corner of the globe for ever cheaper labor, natural
resources and new military bases to maintain them.
During Vietnam era the U.S. was essentially the world's major creditor
nation, with the entire world subordinate to the U.S. dollar, U.S.
investment, U.S. commodities and U.S. profits. Today, as we have
demonstrated in our Political Resolutions several times over the past
decade and longer, the U.S. is the world's leading debtor nation to the
tune of almost $9 trillion. It runs the largest budget deficit on record
and in world history. For the first time since 1929 the U.S. ran a
negative accounts deficit in regard to investment income. While the U.S.
has run deficits in its trade in goods every year since 1976, until last
year it had still been able to record a surplus in investments. No more!
A March 2007 Associated Press report states: "The U.S. Commerce
Department reported that the imbalance in the current account jumped by
8.2 per cent to $856.7 billion (U.S.), representing a record 6.5 per cent
of the total economy. It marked the fifth straight year the current
account deficit set a record.
"Investment flows turned negative by $7.3 billion from a surplus of $11.3
billion in 2005. It was the first time investment income has been
negative on records going back to 1929. That means foreigners earned more
on their U.S. holdings than Americans earned on their overseas
investments."
The AP article continues: "The Bush administration contends the
large foreign holdings of U.S. assets are a sign of strength. But many
economists worry that foreigners might suddenly decide they want to hold
less in U.S. stocks, bonds and other assets.
"A rapid withdrawal could cause the value of the dollar against
other currencies, as well as U.S. stock prices, to plunge while pushing
interest rates higher. If the disruption were serious enough, it could
push the country into a recession."
The latter is an understatement to say the least. The recent 500-point
downward jolt in the Dow Jones was no accident. It evoked serious
concerns at the highest levels of ruling class politics, including former
Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, who rang the recession warning bell
loud and clear, only to be rebuked by Bush stalwarts who believe that
rhetoric, not hard data, is sufficient to prevent a panic.
We live today in an era where imperialist war and intervention is the
explicit policy of the U.S. Justified in the name of "fighting
terrorism," the U.S. has assumed the right to intervene everywhere
and at any time, from Iran to Sudan to Cuba and Venezuela to the Middle
East and North Korea to the Philippines. While the U.S. stands as the
sole world military superpower, all of Europe is boosting its own
military expenditures, both to defend and expand previous neo-colonial
conquests and in anticipation of future U.S. encroachments.
During the Vietnam era all of Europe cheered on the U.S. intervention
seeing the war as a contest between their own post WWII faltering social
system and an alternative that threatened, however mildly, future
imperialist domination of the globe. The role of the U.S. as world cop
was readily accepted, if not welcomed, especially since a weakened
European capitalism, preferred to expend its resources in rebuilding its
industrial infrastructure as opposed to arming itself for a war against
the USSR and its Eastern European allies.
Today, all of European capitalism, with the diminishing British
exception, sees the U.S. war against Iraq as a challenge to its own
stability, as a threat to its access to Middle Eastern oil and as a move
by U.S. imperialism to solve its own problems at the expense of its
imperialist rivals.
Put another way, with the disintegration of the USSR and its Eastern
European allies as workers states, along with China, Vietnam and North
Korea, we are witnessing a resumption and intensification of world
imperialist rivalry wherein a victory of the U.S. in Iraq represents a
defeat for its international competitors. The combination of conflicting
economic interests and mass pressure from below accounts for the steady
moves across Europe to withdraw troops from Iraq at a time when the U.S.
military effort is badly faltering.
The stakes for the U.S. in Iraq are therefore qualitatively higher. A
loss there, a forced withdrawal, or remaining in the quagmire in a
continual state of chaos, would represent a defeat of historic
proportions. How to avoid this defeat is presently the central political
and economic preoccupation in U.S. ruling circles.
The options are limited as never before. A return to the draft, to boost
troop levels to the magnitude of Vietnam, 500,000 troops, as opposed to
the present 160,000, in the context of the present generalized assault on
U.S. workers at home, would likely spark a resistance that would, by
comparison, make the Vietnam era antiwar movement look like a modest
opposition. The components for a truly massive and working class-based
opposition, combined with a similarly inevitable youth radicalization
would open up new possibilities for struggle in every arena and pose a
threat to U.S. imperialism not seen since the 1930s. The social movements
that have barely begun to emerge in opposition to capitalist
environmental insanity and immigrant repression would undoubtedly find a
natural home in what can only be the broadest radicalization in many
decades. In short, Iraq comes at a time of rising crises that permeate
every sector of American society.
The Iraq War is the most privatized war in U.S. history, with some 80,000
mercenaries hired by U.S. corporations, ostensibly to defend U.S.
corporate interests, as in New Orleans, operating as semi-official combat
police units independent of the control of either U.S. forces or of the
those supposedly acting under the direction of the Iraqi puppet
government.
An expansion of the war to Iran and/or to other Middle Eastern states, or
to Africa or Latin America, would further inflame opposition in every
quarter of the world and, at the same time, require still more troops.
These seemingly insurmountable problems, coupled with massive opposition
to the war in the general population, have led some sectors of the ruling
class to express the view that brute force alone may be insufficient to
win in Iraq.
In most all previous imperialist wars, whatever the political
justification, the strategic goals and tactics were simple. The
employment of overwhelming military force was aimed at insuring a
military victory that was followed by occupation and subsequent
exploitation. In Iraq, in the face of a determined resistance, however
distorted, divided and politically flawed, the greatest military power on
earth cannot achieve any of its central objectives, namely, the military
defeat of a virtually invisible army, the establishment of a politically
stable client regime and the unimpeded extraction of oil.
The present divisions, expressed in the recent Baker/Hamilton Report and
in other ruling class circles reflect this reality. Essentially, within
the complex of political, economic and social relations that constitute
the Middle East today, a section of the ruling class sees the need to
negotiate one or another concession or deal with elements of the ruling
elites inside Iraq as well as with Iran and Syria and perhaps also in
Lebanon and Palestine. Other components in the ruling class tend to
resist any concessions, at least at this time. They see a military
solution, in time, sapping the will of the Iraqi resistance and allowing
a complete U.S. victory. The Bush Administration is representative of
this view.
The Rumsfeld option, to remain in Iraq with a "leaner, meaner
military" went by the wayside with Rumsfeld's dismissal, a defeat
for the ruling class elements who believed that the U.S. could win
without supplementing the present forces with a massive infusion of new
fighting forces.
No sector of America's ruling elite has any principled opposition to the
present slaughter. Both support the present "surge," the clever
term employed to try to assuage popular opposition with the notion that
the sending of additional troops is temporary, while intensifying the
slaughter. The stabilization of Baghdad, every component of the ruling
class agrees, is the immediate order of the day. It is to be achieved, if
possible, by the most ruthless methods yet employed, from massive rocket
bombing and block-by-block destruction and occupation, to the
establishment of fortresses in every neighborhood and the shooting of
every person in sight. This is to be supplemented by death squad commando
units designed to make clear that anyone opposing the U.S. war from any
vantagepoint, will be eliminated.
Thus, the present addition of some 30,000 to 42,000 troops is a united
U.S. ruling class effort to achieve an outright victory in Iraq. Rhetoric
aside, including the submission of numerous bills to Congress regarding
this or that form and timetable for eventual withdrawal, neither
Democrats or Republicans support the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Indeed, discounting this ongoing pseudo-debate orchestrated for public
consumption, neither the Democrats nor Republicans support any form of
withdrawal! Even the one or two Democrats who assert an "Out
Now!" position for public consumption and to disorient the
politically inept and divided antiwar movement, have signed on to one or
another phony bill or "non-binding" resolution calling for a
phased withdrawal. Every such bill includes special provisos or
conditions that negate withdrawal if the president determines that it is
not possible. Virtually no one in the Congress voted to cut off funds for
the war in 2004, 2005 or 2006.
Driven by the massive internal and external crises that plague U.S.
capitalism today, the U.S. ruling class as a whole is driven to complete
this war "successfully." The Iraq War is not the product of a
moron, hateful or warmongering president or political party, but rather
the inevitable result of a crisis-ridden capitalism with no other
solutions available. We will return to this later in this resolution.
The 2008 elections
Fully aware that U.S. and world opinion
staunchly oppose the war and that its pretexts - Iraq possessing
"weapons of mass destruction," or being involved, via Al Qaida,
in the World Trade Center bombing - have been exposed as lies, the imperialist
beast, as with Brecht's "Mother Courage," nevertheless presses
on regardless of the consequences. A declining few argue that despite the
lies employed to justify the war, U.S. intervention is needed to bring
democracy to Iraq. The contrast between the policies of the bi-partisan
warmakers and the mass of public opinion is glaring.
The most recent and inept rationalization employed by both capitalist
parties to justify the war's continuation is the absurd notion that
voting to cut off funds for the war will endanger U.S. troops. This is
premised on the ridiculous assumption that absent funds for the war, the
Bush Administration will nevertheless maintain U.S. troops in Iraq, that
is, maintain troops without weapons, bullets, food, supplies, and all the
rest that a modern army requires.
When confronted with the same argument during the Vietnam era the
movement responded to the question, "How can the U.S. just get out
of Vietnam?" with the words, "By boat!"
While the sledgehammer of military terror is daily unleashed on the Iraqi
people, the ruling rich are presently turning to their well-tested
periodic election charade to present a semblance of democratic discussion
of the Iraq War. The American people will again be given the
"choice," first in the year-long primaries and then in the
general election, among and between candidates who all support the war,
rhetoric and obfuscation notwithstanding.
George Bush's mid-term defeats in losing Republican majorities in both
houses of the Congress were insufficient to change the course of the war,
a surprise to only those who harbor illusions as to the peaceful
intentions of the Democratic Party, a declining number. We are now told
by the Democrats that yet another election is required after which
"new and creative alternatives" to the present policy can be
found. Indeed, the election charade began earlier than any time in recent
memory, a full two years before Election Day, November 2008.
As with the 2004 election, the Democrats, the historic graveyard of modern
social movements, plan to submit a host of candidates, designed to
re-enforce the myth that the people really decide politics in the U.S.
Dennis Kucinich, the "leftwing" Democrat first out of the box
told a Cleveland national gathering of US Labor Against the War that he
stood for immediate withdrawal. A few months later, when queried at a
January 27, 2007 San Francisco rally to discuss cutting funding for the
war, Kucinich responded to a question regarding his position on immediate
withdrawal as follows:
"The U.S. occupation is wrong. But wouldn't it be better to have an
international security and peacekeeping force move in as our troops move
out? Š If we simply leave without having a security force there, then
what we're looking at is the people of Iraq being punished even moreŠ
"There is a certain amount of responsibility that we have to ensure
that when we leave that there's a structure for peace that handles things
until the Iraqi people can handle their own affairs.
"Ending the occupation and bringing in an international security
force are not mutually exclusive. The Barbara Lee bill that I'm on says
six months, but this can happen within three months from the time that we
decide to end the occupation. This plan will work."
Kucinich and Lee are the "left" in the Democratic Party. In the
case of Kucinich, his role, as well as other "progressives" who
will enter the Democratic Party primaries in the months ahead, is to
foster the illusion that the debate among the presidential candidates is
real, that the result will have monumental consequences, that a
progressive can and will stop the war. To this end, each candidate covers
their favored constituency, registering the unwary into their war party
in preparation for their promised deliverance. Of course, when the sound
and fury generated by the primaries comes to a close and a capitalist
candidate is chosen, the losers dutifully accept the result and urge
their supporters to do the same.
Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama are more circumspect or, to be more
accurate, fully prepared to support the war come hell or high water.
Their assignment is to harness the "mainstream" or centrist
voters while the "left" and "right" players round up
the rest for the capitalist electoral shell game.
The new Senate Democratic Party majority leader Harry Reid minced no
words. He stated immediately after the 2006 elections that more troops
were needed in Iraq. The new House Intelligence Committee chair, chosen
by House leader Nancy Pelosi, Silvestre Reyes, told Newsweek, "We're
not going to have stability in Iraq until we eliminate those militias
those private armies. We have to consider the need for additional troopsŠ
I would say 20,000 to 30,000." The Democrats voted $100 billion more
for the war while negotiating a meaningless "non-binding"
resolution opposing the "surge," with their Republican war
partners.
Bush's first and central target in Iraq was to be Muqtada al-Sadr and his
Mahdi Army militia, the latter known for both opposing the U.S.
occupation and for taking on U.S. troops in major combat operations as
well as for attacks on Sunni forces who oppose the Shiite majority
government. Al Sadr is presently a member of the government and central
to its hold on a majority in the U.S.-installed al Maliki parliament. But
the U.S. considers both al Sadr and the al Maliki unreliable allies. If
they fail to accede to the new U.S. demands for greater Sunni inclusion
in the division of power and oil, it is likely that al Sadr will be
"disappeared" from the scene, along with all others who fail to
bend to the occupier's demands. To date, al-Sadr has indicated that he
will comply.
Despite the courageous resistance organized by the Iraqi people and their
absolutely inadequate bourgeois leaders, no force exists on the scene
capable of compelling a principled unity against the U.S. colonial
occupation, not to mention a broader unity of the Arab world against U.S.
plans for absolute domination of the region.
In this vortex of contending forces the U.S. strategy is based on a
combination of massive military terror in Iraq and secret negotiations
involving literally all bourgeois forces in the region, from the Iranian
and Syrian governments, the Lebanese Hezbollah fighters backed by Iran,
the Israeli government and the Fatah, if not Hamas forces in Palestine.
The U.S. is counting on the ruling class principle that each and every
one of the above has a price for cooperation, especially when the
alternative is facing the long arm of U.S. imperialist economic
sanctions, direct or indirect military aggression and death squads
secretly assigned to deal with those who resist.
Little or no help for the Iraqi cause can be expected from any of the
above without a mass break with their present bourgeois leaderships and
the independent organization and mobilization of the Arab masses in a
united fight for their own class interest and to rid the region of the
foreign invaders and the native bourgeoisie.
The immediate prospects for such a development are admittedly slim, a
central calculation in the U.S. move to send additional troops and once
again seek an outright victory. But even here, the U.S. pays a price for
its incapacity to forge a quick solution. Its forces are tied down in
Iraq at a time when prospects for a further rise in the Latin American
revolution are promising. Additionally, the contradiction between the
present Iraq War policy and the mass opposition inside the U.S. fosters
increasing doubt as to the legitimacy of the government itself, thus
opening the door a bit wider to the independent organization of the
American people to fight the war and to defend their immediate class
interests in other arenas at the same time.
Again, the present leadership forces on the U.S. scene capable of
coalescing such a movement are terribly inadequate, to say the least. The
leadership void, both in the antiwar movement itself and in the labor and
social movements is unprecedented.
The present antiwar misleadership in virtually all its major components
has set its sights on a Democratic Party presidency in 2008. It is once
again preparing to subordinate the independent mobilization of the broad
forces opposing the war to the election of "liberal" Democrats,
or, as in 2004, "anyone but the Republicans." The phenomenon of
many of the movement's central leaders supporting a Kerry presidency is
likely to be repeated.
The strategy and tactics of Socialist Action in the fight to bring about
an alternative outcome will be covered in a separate plenum report
prepared by Chris G.
The U.S. economy
The pundits of U.S. capitalism are fond of
noting that business profits have been rising dramatically for the past
17 quarters, that U.S. capitalism is growing steadily. This fact is true,
but deceptive. The great proportion of this growth is in the financial
sector of the economy, that is, banks and Wall Street financial houses.
The speculative boom in an unprecedented array of stocks, bonds and other
financial instruments has created a new generation of millionaires and
billionaires who gleefully grant themselves record multi-billion dollar
bonuses to celebrate their achievements. So excessive have these bonuses
been that even sectors of the ruling rich have taken umbrage. But
industrial profits in general, and in the manufacturing sector in
particular, have been dismal or in the negative.
The surplus value extracted from labor, the real source of profit in
Marxist, or materialist terms, shows no significant increase. In critical
industries like auto and steel, real profits are declining. The massive
accumulation of capital by the financial sector is not being reinvested
in new technology and equipment to create new surplus value.
Marx referred to capital accumulated through various forms of speculation
as "fictitious capital," that is, capital having no equivalent
in the production of commodities. A major portion of this has been
invested in property speculation or in China and India where
"super-profits" are extracted from a super-exploited labor
force.
Today, over fifty percent of the top 500 U.S. multi-national corporations
earn over half their profits from overseas operations. A substantial
minority earns more than 75 percent from overseas operations. They do so,
according to the laws of capitalist development explained by Marx, in an
effort to combat the overall tendency inherent in capitalism of the
average rate of profit to decline. They go to China or to India or other
nations where wage levels are at or below poverty levels, where compliant
governments essentially provide a repressed labor force, often existing at
barely subsistence or less than subsistence living standards.
But even with these competitive advantages, achieved at the expense of
hundreds of millions of workers in poor nations around the globe, profit
rates continue to decline simply because U.S. competitors, facing the
same declining profit rates at home, resort to the same cheap labor
sources abroad, thus, in time, in shorter and shorter time intervals,
negating the temporary advantage achieved by being first on the scene.
The ruling rich of the world know no limits when it comes to defending
their profit system. Whether it be wars of conquest and plunder abroad or
robbing working people at home, the goal is the same, the preservation of
private property for profit and the accumulation capital to keep the
decaying system going.
Nothing else is sacred in this barbaric system. Whatever norms of
"civility" were operative in the past today go by the wayside.
Corporate taxation, the norm for funding government operations prior to
World War II is rapidly declining, with an unending series of tax breaks
legislated to transfer ever increasing billions from working people to
the ruling rich. Jack Rasmus, author of "The War at Home"
calculates since approximately 2000 there has been an annual shift of $1
trillion from the 105 million workers that constitute the bottom 80
percent of income levels to the top one percent. The shift includes tax
breaks for the rich, cuts in healthcare and pensions and more.
Indeed, in many cases, corporation taxes have been eliminated outright
via the simple transfer of corporate headquarters to far off places, tax
havens, like the Cayman Islands or Bermuda.
The role of corruption
According to a six-country survey of 350
multi-national corporations (MNC) reported by Latin American scholar
James Petras and published jointly by the law firm Control Risks and
Simmons and Simmons, "a third of international companies think they
failed to win new business over the past year because of bribery of their
competitors." (Financial Times, Oct. 9, '06)
Petras continues, "Moreover most MNC and banks engage in corrupt
practices through intermediaries. If we include direct and indirect forms
of corruption then it turns out that in some countries 9 out of 10
corporations engage in corruption. According to the survey, "about
three quarters of the countries, including 94 percent in Germany and 90
percent in Britain think businesses from their countries use agents to
circumvent anti-corruption laws." (Financial Times, Oct. 9, '06)
In short, corruption, that is, bribing public officials or otherwise
circumventing the law, like war and non-payment of taxes, are the rule
not the exception in U.S. and world capitalism today. In the case of
corruption, the devise is employed with impunity and serves as just
another aspect of the competitive process, just another "cost of
production."
The Housing Bubble
A major factor in promoting the
"growth" in the U.S. economy has been the massive and
artificial inflation of housing values, promoted by government action to
lower interest rates and related action by lending institutions to grant
mortgages to both "qualified" and unqualified or
"subprime" buyers. The associated use of home equity loans,
that is, loans designed to increase consumer spending based on highly-inflated
housing values, has for some time now been a motor force in the U.S. and
world economy. The devise has literally freed up trillions of dollars to
purchase U.S. commodities as well as their counterparts around the
world.
From 2001 to 2004 alone Americans cashed out almost $500 billion in home
equity loans. Living on credit is the norm in the U.S. today. The average
family spends 2.4 percent more than total family income.
Today, the housing bubble is deflating. Average housing prices are falling
while mortgage rates and rents are rising. Mortgage foreclosures have or
threaten to reach proportions that are unprecedented since the Great
Depression. "The percentage of San Francisco Bay Area subprime
borrowers who fell behind on payments jumped to 23 percent in the last
three months of 2006 from 11 percent in that same period a year earlier
(San Francisco Chronicle, March 13, 2007).
A glimpse into the coming crisis was reported in the March 3, 2006 New
York Times:
"Federal prosecutors and securities regulators," says the
Times, "are investigating stock sales and accounting errors at New
Century Corporation, the biggest mortgage company that specializes in
lending to people with weak, or subprime credit, the company disclosed in
a corporate report filed yesterday.
"The troubles at New Century," [which said that it would
restate its earnings for the past three quarters], "are the latest
sign in the deterioration in subprime lending - until recently the
fastest-growing segment of the mortgage business. The market has
been struggling to contain the fallout from rising default rates and
weakening home prices."
The article continues: "Initially smaller and now the bigger
mortgage companies have been experiencing problems. Late last year, some
smaller lenders started going out of business and last month several
bigger companies, including New Century, started reporting
problems."
The New Century story echoes the scandals that plagued the stock market
and the U.S. economy more generally some five years ago when generalized
accounting fraud and insider trading revealed that the bright financial
picture reported by many leading corporations had nothing to do with
either corporate growth or profits or a stable economy.
New Century, like the others before them, cooked the books to keep its
stock prices artificially high while its top executives bailed out when
the going was good. New Century, which wrote $39.9 billion in mortgages
in 2005, saw its shares fall from $30 since the start of the year to
$1.66 on March 12, when it became clear that the company was near
bankruptcy.
Seeking to play the financial wizardry game to the hilt, New Century had
been converting its mortgage income money to high risk bonds, further
exacerbating its troubles.
We need not go into the housing bubble further at this point. It suffices
to say that for most homeowners, some 59 percent of the U.S, population,
a collapse of the housing market undermines a major, if not the
major source of family financial stability.
A March 13, 2007 San Francisco Chronicle News Service article
reported that: "As many as 2.2 million families around the country
could lose their homes to foreclosure in the next few years, according to
an estimate from the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit advocacy
group."
The article, quoting a specialist in the field, continued: "Congress
can't wait for that many families to foreclose. The economic impacts for
communities and for the country could be devastating."
The loss in home equity will not easily be compensated for by workers
laboring harder and longer. U.S. workers, with the exception of England,
already work longer than any of their counterparts in industrialized
nations. They work 20 percent more hours than the French. This alone, a
major lengthening of the workday coupled with an intensification of the
labor process with fewer benefits and pensions is key in explaining why
U.S. profit rates, however feeble, have been higher than Europe.
Thus, the key factor in maintaining present, but flagging U.S. and
worldwide growth rates, consumer spending, is now operating in reverse.
Alan Greenspan was far from alone in his recent warning of a recession.
While the word "depression" has been informally banned from the
vocabulary of modern day capitalist economists, the present evolution of
the system has all the earmarks of a coming meltdown.
US share of world GDP declines
The U.S. share of world gross domestic
product has fallen from 31 percent in 2000 to 27.7 percent in 2006. At
the same time the BRIC nations, Brazil, Russia, India and China, rose to
11 percent from 7.8. China's share alone is 5.4 percent.
The share of world financial markets dominated by the dollar is weakening
in favor of the euro.
From 2002 to 2005 the U.S. accounted for 34-40 percent of the world's
economic growth, according to Goldman Sachs. But in the second half of
2006 BRIC's contribution to global growth was slightly greater than the
U.S. for the first time. In 2007, the US will account for just 20 percent
of world economic growth as compared to about 30 percent for BRIC. (Data
from James McNeil, head of global economic research for London office of
Goldman Sachs.)
A Jan. 28 NYT article attempted to put a positive spin of this new
phenomenon: "More broadly," said The Times, the fact
that economies that were closed to outside investment for a generation
are now creating systems of market capitalism should be seen as a victory
for the U.S. not a defeat." In truth the growth achieved abroad,
however much it may profit U.S. capitalists, is at the direct expense of
the U.S. economy as a whole. And the economic decline in the U.S. will in
turn have repercussion abroad.
Capitalism's inherent and periodic crises of overproduction, as Marx
pointed out, result in an overall, that is worldwide stagnation in growth
accompanied by an average decline in most all profit rates. Whatever
temporary gains are achieved in the BRIC nations in regard to growth are
in large part due to access to the U.S. market. With the deflation of the
housing bubble coupled with the massive attacks on U.S. workers across
the board, including the off-shoring of a million high wage jobs a year,
the projected decline in the growth of the U.S. economy can only be
expected to spark similar or greater declines in the rest of the world.
The struggle for immigrant rights
The virulence of the present and ongoing
ICE raids is additional testimony to the crisis of capitalism. Finding
that whatever competitive advantage was gained by shifting production
abroad to low wage/slave wage nations was diminished by U.S.
imperialism's rivals following suit, the struggle for ever cheap labor
has shifted back to the U.S. with a vengeance. Just as the compulsion to
introduce ever new and revolutionary technology into the productive
process brings the first capitalists on the scene a temporary advantage,
that advantage is negated when the rest of the pack follow suit.
To date, an estimated 18,000 immigrants have been arrested as part of the
unprecedented and often police-assisted ICE raids that separate family
and leave children virtually helpless while ushering tens of thousands to
Halliburton-contracted concentration camps in Texas and elsewhere. The
methods employed are designed to institute a reign of terror across the
country, to intimidate and divide. The result is intended to be the
creation of a permanent and isolated sector of the U.S. workforce that
dare not consider collective action.
A corollary to this is the downward pressure exerted on all wage rates in
the U.S. The division of the working class based on race and national
origin, immigrant and citizen is no accident or a product of abstract
racist views. It is designed to, as soon as possible, shift overall wage
rates paid to the lowest ranks of the working class. This time around, however,
immigrants are not only in the employers' sights for low wage jobs in
agriculture and domestic service, but for the entire range of jobs in the
U.S. economy, from highly-skilled construction workers to jobs in the
basic industries that produce the major portions of surplus value.
The example of the once highly-unionized and top wage building and
construction trades unions makes this point in bold relief. Over the past
three decades or so these have become a shadow of their former selves.
The unemployment rate in this sector approaches the highest in the
nation, exceeding ten percent.
The contemplated construction of a multi-billion dollar transportation
corridor, the NAFTA Corridor, from Mexico to Canada is a case in point
that has yet to come to the attention of the broad workers movement. In
order to both qualitatively increase the efficiency of the present U.S.
commercial transportation system, including a qualitative reduction of
labor costs, the ruling rich plan to construct a quarter-mile wide,
north/south, multi-lane rail and highway system designed to undermine the
present heavily-unionized rail and trucking industry. The project
includes the substitution of Mexican ports for U.S. and the associated
use of non-union, low wage Mexican and Latin American workers for
relatively better paid Teamsters and Longshore workers.
The ICE raids reveal an aspect of the present labor force that has not
been generally known. As we have reported in our press, the country is
bursting with slave labor-type factories where the poor of the world are
herded and forced to labor at subhuman conditions without the slightest
protection.
Indeed, when the ICE raid's enforcers enter the scene, the last question
to be asked, if at all, is whether the arrested workers have been paid.
We have covered the horror associated with these raids in our newspaper.
Our comrades have jumped into the struggle to defend the victims in
several parts of the country. We have learned that a number of these
originate from Latin American countries, where U.S. neo-liberal policies
and political repression is well known and where organized resistance
movements have won mass support to combat it. There is also an impressive
awareness of the struggles in Cuba and/or Venezuela and Bolivia, where
capitalist prerogatives have been or are bring challenged. An initial
small layer of fighters is emerging in the U.S. to play leading roles in
the coming struggles. A not unimportant but still small layer are turning
to socialist politics and organizations, including Socialist Action.
The present raids take place in the context of a congressional debate
over immigration policy, with the major sectors of the ruling class
lining up behind one or another variant of "guest worker" or
"new worker" bills designed to create a special caste in the
U.S. working class, a group of workers who labor at the mercy of the
employer, who are subject to immediate deportation and compelled to work
at the lowest wage rates.
Of course, the existence of such a workforce exerts a massive downward
pressure on all U.S. wages. When workers with papers, that is, U.S.
citizens, threaten strike action, they will more likely be faced with an
employer/government-organized pool of desperate immigrants who are
expected to be more than willing to take any job available.
It is no coincidence that key ICE raids have been conducted where union
organizing drives are in progress.
The crisis for the entire labor movement conjures up images of the 1930s
when union organizing drives and strike action was often met with
employer moves to use Black workers from the South to counter union
efforts. The history of that period need not be repeated other than to
note that the only effective method ever employed to defeat employer
strike-breaking was the organization of Black workers into the
newly-formed unions with full rights of membership. Where racism and
protectionist attitudes in the white working class were dominant, union
organization was undermined or failed outright.
When class-conscious fighters won a hearing in these early struggles and
Blacks were welcomed into the unions, the entire class advanced to new
levels of combativity and power. The history of the labor movement is
replete with examples.
There are real limitations on the ability of the U.S. ruling class to
export jobs. Critical sectors of the economy like the transportation and
building construction industries cannot be moved, not to mention a myriad
of others. Second, the tendency toward equalization of wages abroad that
diminishes initial competitive advantages brings to the fore the economic
disadvantages of paying substantial transportation costs to bring
foreign-made products back to the U.S. market. And finally, the continual
loss of jobs at home tends toward a radicalization of the U.S. labor
force. The dynamic of the capitalist profit system is replete with such
contradictions. As the process unfolds the result is always new and
deeper crises for the capitalists and increasing misery for its working
class victims.
For now, the present intensity of the moves against immigrants is a
reflection of the fact that capitalists have learned well that the
partially delayed overall assault on all U.S. workers must now proceed at
a more rapid pace. From their vantage point, a victory against immigrants
and their institutionalized or legal subjugation as "guest
workers," also accompanied by terror, is another major step toward
greater victories against the entire U.S. working class.
The mobilization of an estimated five million immigrants on May 1, 2006
frightened the ruling rich. The present ICE raids are at least in part
designed to avoid a repetition.
The importance of this struggle requires a special report and discussion
at this plenum. Jason M. of our Connecticut branch will take on this
assignment and introduce us to a range of ideas of how to best become
involved and advance the cause of our beleaguered immigrant sisters and
brothers under attack.
The state of the trade unions
Andy Stern's book, "A Country that
Works: Getting America Back on Track," has stirred considerable
interest among sectors of the U.S. ruling class. Stern, the Service
Employees International Union's (SEIU) top official, was central to the
unwarranted and bureaucratic split in the AFL-CIO a few years ago. At
that time the naďve or blind in the rapidly declining U.S. trade union
movement believed that Stern was the "left-wing" of the trade
union hierarchy. Few hold that position today.
Former President William Clinton praised Stern's book for its proposals on
health care. Wal-Mart executives also think that Stern is on the mark.
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer and among the largest corporations
in the world, joined Stern to publicly announce a healthcare partnership
to provide "universal healthcare coverage." Wal-Mart has
repeatedly stated, of course, that it has no intention of contributing to
this effort.
"Team USA, workers and corporations working hand in hand against
competitors around the world," is Andy Stern's motto. His praise
from Clinton, whose failed healthcare proposals were the centerpiece of
his first term as president, were no accident. Clinton attracted the
attention of Fortune 500 corporations when he announced in 1993 that the
American healthcare system needed a fundamental overhaul to make U.S.
corporations more competitive in world markets. He based this on the fact
that at that time 12 percent of the average U.S. corporation's payroll
went to healthcare, with big corporations like General Motors paying 17
percent. Various forms of socialized medicine in Europe and Japan left
corporations in these places with zero healthcare costs.
Clinton's extremely vague plan never saw the light of day because more
intelligent sections of the ruling class had figured our better ways to
reduce or eliminate corporate healthcare costs and shift the burden even
more directly to working people.
But Stern conjured up Clinton for the same purpose ¬- to help U.S.
corporations reduce healthcare costs to make them more competitive. Of
course, Clinton and his advocates argued that his plan would create more
jobs in the U.S. and pass along some of the corporate savings to workers.
The latter two presumptions have been proven to be fundamentally flawed
by the entire history of the workers' movement.
But Stern is no fool. He has no intention of organizing anything
resembling a fight for workers' interests. He is among the proponents of
the "guest worker programs" we have already discussed. Stern,
the modern day "labor lieutenant of capitalism" figures that he
can trade his support for healthcare plan reductions for the present
workforce for agreements with government and employers to allow the
unionization of the legally constituted pools of guest workers. This
labor faker plans to collect dues from these super-exploited workers to
maintain the present privileges of the union bureaucracy. Of course,
Stern will pay more than lip service to whatever bills are presented by
his friends in Congress that relieve employers of health care obligations
while passing on the burden to workers.
Even without guest worker programs, the SEIU in California and other
states has already made similar arrangements with employers and state
governments that allow for the "unionization" of
government-created and dues-generating healthcare "bargaining
units" in return for union support to various bills that transfer
state funds to corporate hands while essentially guaranteeing no union
actions that infringe on profits. The UFW has negotiated similar
contracts in the state of Washington, with state and employer approval to
provide a fig-leaf of union protection to agricultural corporations that
import Thai workers at virtually slave labor wages and working
conditions.
A recent Wall Street Journal article quoted Stern as follows: "We
must try to be partners with our employers, who have told us we should
change our understanding of their competitive issues and try to add
value, not create problems"
Stern continues: "Unions need to appreciate there are ways we can
add value and can be helpful. This is especially the case in relation to
healthcare. The employer-based health care system is dead. It's a relic
of the industrial economy, and it makes corporations unable to compete
fairly when America is the only country that asks its employers to put
the price of healthcare on the cost of its products." (Emphasis
added)
Crystallized in this short paragraph is virtually everything backward and
corrupt in Stern and the vast majority of today's union officialdom.
Historically, the mission of unions has been to subtract, not add, value
that is, human labor power, worker's labor, to the boss's profits.
Stern is among the first to proclaim the death of the employer-based
healthcare system. The only real "flaw," using the term
loosely, in this system is that it is not universal. That is, the U.S.
labor movement, unlike their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere, never
forced all employers and their government to pay for healthcare. Instead,
the misleaders of American labor, in their best days, led struggles that
extracted healthcare from individual employers, all to the good. But the
same bureaucracy never fought the capitalist state that represents the
employing class as a whole for universal, free healthcare.
Stern's proclamation that employer-based healthcare is dead, absent any
serious union plan to fight for government paid healthcare by taxing the
rich, is a lethal blow to all U.S. workers. The truth is even worse.
Stern's plan, at best, aims at workers purchasing their own healthcare,
perhaps with some government tax breaks to soften the blow. Similar
schemes, like Clinton's 1993 plan, envision increasing taxes on working
people to pay for healthcare.
When European workers fought for and won socialized medicine it was not
financed by universal worker taxation. It was based on forcing the
capitalist states to tax the hell out of employers to provide healthcare
for all.
The strategic basis of the fight for socialized or government-paid
healthcare for all in Europe consisting in strike action on a national
scale to force "employers to put the price of healthcare on
the cost of its products," or, more accurately, on the cost of
production. In England, the "force" emanated from a near
revolutionary and angry working class that had experienced first hand the
capitulation of the European bourgeoisie to fascism and its acquiescence
to the Hitlerite occupation of Western Europe. In France, the near
revolutionary upsurge in 1936 forced the Popular Front government to
grant national health care. The rise of the mass socialist movement in
Germany at the time of the earlier Bismarck regime did the same.
In an example of self-humiliation that is new to even the present layer
of trade union bureaucrats, Stern categorically rejects
"asking" employers to contribute to any form of healthcare.
Note that Stern uses the term, "a relic of the industrial
economy" as if the still most powerful capitalist nation on earth,
the U.S., no longer has an industrial economy. Here again, Stern accepts
a malignant capitalist assumption of the present era, that is, that U.S.
corporations can and will produce industrial products outside its borders
with impunity and essentially, if not inevitably, convert this country
into a low-wage service sector-based nation. Andy Stern sees a place for
himself and the Service Employees International Union in this set-up. His
outlook, identification with the plight of a failing and predatory
capitalism, compels him to offer up the hard won gains of working people
to help save the system that has oppressed and exploited workers for
centuries. But Andy Stern-type "leaders" are the rule, not the
exception in the trade union movement today.
A March 2, 2007, Wall Street Journal article recounts the same
phenomenon in another union. It reads, "For years, Jerry Sullivan,
head of the largest UAW local at Ford Motor Co. [Local 600] fought for
higher pay, job protections and limits on the work his members had to do.
"But in the past year, as Ford teetered financially, the 59-year-old
Vietnam veteran has changed course. These days he has urged his members
to accept the outsourcing of company factory jobs to lower paid
[non-union] workers, and to work new shifts without the tens of thousands
dollars in overtime that they would have formerly earned."
Ford, which lost $12.7 billion last year and has closed and will continue
to close auto plants across the country, has been asking local officials,
with UAW encouragement, to sign separate agreements that negate important
contract provisions. The gleeful Journal article returns to
Sullivan's conclusion, "If this company goes down, I want to be able
to look myself in the mirror and say I did everything I could." As
with the rest of the bureaucracy, "everything" means the
near-obliteration of the union contract in the name of preserving the
viability of a capitalist corporation. Sullivan's "everything,"
of course, excludes one thing, strike action or class struggle politics
in any form.
The politics and practice of Andy Stern and Jerry Sullivan, two
convenient examples that happen to be in the news today, are more or less
representative of the movement's overall state of impotence. These
misleaders see the trade unions' future, and perhaps more accurately
their own, as intimately tied to the success of American capitalism. Over
the course of the past several decades, with few exceptions, they have
subordinated the unions' most pressing needs to capitalist/reformist
schemes to keep corporations profitable. They have or must become, they
believe, "partners" with the bosses. They grant
"concessions" to the bosses to keep them afloat. They support
the boss's political parties, mostly the Democrats, and beg for the most
modest of concessions.
"Trade Union in the Epoch of
Imperialist Decay"
"Trade Unions in the Epoch of
Imperialist Decay" is the title of Trotsky's insightful and
partially-completed 1940 pamphlet. It was written at a time when the
immediate potential for a real fight based on powerful unions that had
fought for and won important victories less than a decade earlier was
within the immediate reach of the labor movement. Trotsky argued
effectively that trade unions will either become instruments of
revolutionary change or be absorbed into the institutions of the
capitalist state. In his time, with fascism on the rise and Hitler in
power in Germany, and with World War II in progress in Europe, that is
precisely what happened in the Axis nations. In the Allied imperialist
"democracies" opposing Hitler, the unions became essentially
subordinate to the war policies of the bourgeois state; in the U.S. this
included immediately after the war with Japan commenced in 1941, a
"no strike" pledge and "voluntary" wage freeze while
war-profiteering capitalists flourished.
Earlier in this report we referred to the breathing spell achieved by
U.S. capitalism following its victory in World War II and the associated
destruction of the economies of their enemies and allies alike. The
post-World War II order that raised U.S. capitalism to the pinnacle of
its power came at the expense of an imperialist war that took the lives
of 84 million workers and that re-divided the colonial and semi-colonial
world to the advantage of the victors.
We have often recorded the complex of events that molded the U.S. trade
unions from the end of that war to the present. It is not our intention
to repeat this important history. We will limit ourselves to the broad
generalization that the intensified attacks on every gain of the labor
movement over the past 60 years more or less parallel the rebuilding of
the conquered and/or devastated nations and the resumption and
intensification of imperialist rivalry.
Today, however, even at their lowest level of organization in the past
100-plus years, and saddled with a bureaucracy that exceeds in its craven
adherence to capitalism and undemocratic functioning any before it, the
ruling class still see the union movement as an obstacle to their
struggle for survival, if not supremacy in world markets.
A few in the socialist movement, perhaps in jest or frustration, used to
postulate that the ruling rich prefer the current bureaucracy to the
outright abolition or smashing of the unions, the latter option perhaps
serving to open the door to new and independent (of the capitalist state)
forms of organization and the emergence of a fighting leadership.
It is clear that this kind of idle speculation, with an unstated
half-wish that the bosses succeed, was more a reflection of
demoralization at the prospect of effectively engaging in the difficult
and long-term work involved in reinvigorating the unions than it was an
accurate insight to the future. As crippled as the trade unions are,
their past achievements, still codified in contracts that preserve
important gains despite decades of concessions, remain an obstacle to a
failing capitalism. Equally important, the trade unions still organize
key sectors of the economy. When they decide to fight, and in time and
with a new leadership, they will, they retain the capacity to shut the
nation down and inspire the broad working class that a fighting union
movement can win and is a critical ally of every progressive social
struggle.
We are quite a way off from that day, but even farther away is the
mistaken idea that the unions today can be bypassed with abstract calls
for new forms of organization without the working class muscle to make
them a reality. This is not to say that new forms of working class
organization will not emerge. We may see them in the immigrant rights
movement as changes in the nature of the existing workers' centers open
up new possibilities. Or they may appear in other forms, - in left splits
from the existing labor federations or in new formations altogether. We
have no way of predicting which variant or combination of variants will
open the door to a class struggle fightback.
But the most likely variant for a new direction for labor is the one we
have seen before, in the 1930s, the rejuvenation of the labor movement
under the impact of traumatic attacks on the broad working class and in
the context of the growth of revolutionary currents capable of
challenging the trade union status quo and helping to organize and lead a
class struggle leftwing current to confront the boss class head on.
Again, the construction of the initial nucleus and then the broad ranks
of a revolutionary socialist party, of Socialist Action and other
currents that demonstrate the validity of their program in practice, will
prove critical to any break with the present trajectory toward
deeper and deeper defeats.
The conditions for all of the above developments are maturing under the
hammer blows of a crisis ridden capitalism. What we do now to prepare for
them is essential to our future and to the class struggle in general.
Trotsky's analysis was designed to explain a hard fact of capitalist
development, its absolute need to eliminate any and all obstacles to the
accumulation of capital by any means necessary. Today these means include
the destruction of the environment to the detriment of hundreds of
millions of the earth's inhabitants, never-ending war and the reduction
of the people's of the world to a poverty never seen before. They also
include the reduction of the trade unions to near total impotence, that
is, incapable of defending even the most elementary interest of workers, giving
up virtually all past gains. This is central to the present ruling class
agenda.
Trotsky's insight was aimed at fighting for a revolutionary program and
class struggle methods inside the unions rather than at providing a
rationale for abandoning them, no matter how decrepit, as some ultralefts
have done.
Today, union power and influence has declined to the point where the vast
majority of the working class stand outside any form of organization.
That too will change in the years ahead.
The tendency in capitalist development toward the incorporation of the
unions into the bourgeois state or the outright destruction of the unions
holds true for other mass organizations of the working class, including
reformist political parties like the social democracy in Europe. The
latter are experiencing the same process of
"bourgeoisifcation," ever more serving the interests of capital
and becoming less and less recognizable as instruments to defend working
class interests.
Our comrades in Europe have judged that in some instances, various social
democratic parties can no longer be considered as class organizations of
the workers, due to the change in their social composition, not to
mention their bourgeois program. As a consequence, they no longer offer
these parties "critical support" in election contests on the
grounds that they are indistinguishable from the traditional bourgeois
parties.
We have made no such judgments, lacking the facts and experience to
accurately gauge the state of degeneration of the social democracy in
Europe. But posing the question itself highlights our main point, that
is, in the present era of imperialist crisis reformism in both the unions
and in the political arena, has little or no future. The European social
democracy stands discredited as it is ever more identified with
capitalist austerity, as with the Tony Blair "Labor Party"
government in England. U.S. trade unions, ever in search of a partnership
with capital, have reached the lowest numerical levels of organization in
the past century.
In the trade unions, however, there is an important point to consider.
These organizations remain workers' organizations in social composition.
In the case of social democratic parties, this is not at all clear, with
many essentially consisting of middle class politicians accompanied by an
ever-declining layer of workers organized in unions. In the trade unions,
the social composition has not changed, requiring us to retain our class
designation, despite the pitiful nature of the present leadership. In the
same vein absent real working class alternatives, that is the rise of new
union organizations, we are compelled to participate in the present
unions, however difficult, and do the best we can to win the ranks to
class struggle politics.
We view as positive, but still limited, the emergence of the Labor Party
and its achievement of ballot status in South Carolina and the emergence
of trade union-based organizations like U.S. Labor Against the War, the
latter proving capable of organizing significant labor contingents in
national antiwar demonstrations based on the critical and principled
"Out Now! demand. USLAW's role in making possible a message of
solidarity delivered by USLAW leader Fred Mason on behalf of the
AFL-CIO's president to the January 27, 2007 UFPJ-initiated national
antiwar march in Washington was an important contribution to building the
fight against the war in Iraq.
The attack on civil liberties
We have written much on the cases of Lynne
Stewart and Mumia Abu-Jamal as well as the broad attacks on fundamental
civil liberties and democratic rights incorporated in the Patriot Act,
the 1996 Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Act and related reactionary
legislation. Today we add to the list of government encroachment on
rights that were won hundreds of years ago, the 2006 Military Commissions
Act obliterating habeas corpus, legislation creating concentration camp
type detention centers in the U.S., laws opening the door for the use of
U.S. troops against domestic unrest inside the U.S. and now even more
extensive legislation virtually eliminating the right to habeas corpus.
In a real sense the latter puts us back to a time, at least in regard to
non-citizens anywhere in the world, when a monarch could order the arrest
and imprisonment of virtually anyone and deny that person the right to
appeal to any court. It is not clear whether the present day U.S.
would-be monarch, in the name of national security, intends to use the
same kind of legislation against U.S. citizens.
The combined effect these laws is to put into place a "legal"
basis for future mass repression. The ruling class elites harbor no
illusions that their aims can be fully achieved without the use of force.
History teaches them and us that workers must and will fight back when
they have no alternative, when that special point in their lives is
reached when acquiescence to a system that reduces them to a totally
unacceptable state of being compels them to act. That point, when the
"I can make it by myself" becomes "Only we fighting
together can win" must come.
The ruthless and certainly not stupid ruling class representatives in
charge of maintaining the "public order" are fully aware that
the reactionary legislation already in place will prove insufficient when
a challenge emerges from a consciously-led mass force. The ruling rich,
in accord with the iron laws of history will not limit themselves to the
formalities of the legal or judicial system. It is now readying to
respond with force and violence. When its democratic trappings prove
useless to derail powerful challenges to its very rule, it will
inevitably turn to Jack London's "Iron Heel," to fascism, to
save its beleaguered and dying system.
The government-ordered Halliburton detention centers are not only meant
for immigrants without papers or to house and then deport those who cross
U.S. borders in search of work. Neither are they primarily designed to
further pad the record profits of an 86-year old corporation, whose 2006
net income of $2.4 billion last year was its best performance ever.
They are meant to house, persecute, torture and even murder the most
effective of the emerging leaderships and revolutionary political parties
that aim to challenge capitalism itself. This includes Socialist Action
in the same way as it included the Socialist Workers Party in 1941, when
the reactionary Smith Act was passed by Franklin Roosevelt's Democratic
Party-controlled congress and employed against the Trotskyists who, seven
years earlier, had led the 1934 Minneapolis Teamster strikes that
provided a critical impetus to the 1937 formation of the CIO. In
1941 the Smith Act was employed to arrest and imprison the central
leadership of the SWP, eighteen comrades who has distinguished themselves
in the class struggle as well as in their opposition to U.S. plans to
enter World War II.
The best and only defense the revolutionary movement has against the
inevitable government attempts at its repression is its deep and intimate
connection and involvement with a rising and revolutionary-oriented
worker's movement, allied with the rising movements of all the oppressed
and exploited and imbued with a degree of solidarity not seen in this
country for some seven decades.
For now, our involvement in struggles to challenge all reactionary legislation
is essential. The credentials we win here, as with our work in every
arena, provide the basis for the recruitment of the new generation of
fighters who will take their place in the leadership of the big battles
to come.
The present attacks, as always, are conducted in the name of
"defending the national security interests" of the United
States. By "national security" the ruling class means their
class's national security, their state power, their capital, their system
of repression, hate, racism and sexism, not ours. The distinction is
essential as we seek to convince working people that their interests have
nothing in common with the boss's.
The success that Socialist Action has already achieved in defending the
civil liberties and democratic rights of Lynne Stewart and Mumia
Abu-Jamal, of the Cuban Five and the Black Panther 8, of the torture
victims in Guantanamo, the victims of racism during and in the aftermath
of Katrina, of immigrant workers, political prisoners, of victims of
police brutality and racist police murder, of Blacks, Latinos and women -
capitalism's specially oppressed and exploited - of the youth whose
prospects for a better future are in steep decline, of the gay and
lesbian rights movement, and all the rest, is essential to the construction
of the kind of multi-national, multi-racial, inclusive party of
revolutionary fighters capable of meeting the challenges ahead.
The tempo of the Latin American Revolution
It is not our intention at this plenum to
significantly update our views on important struggles in Latin America or
to present a separate report. We have thoroughly covered in our press the
unfolding events in Mexico, Bolivia and Venezuela for some time now as
well as the continued advances of the Cuban Revolution.
Here, it is sufficient to limit ourselves to a few important conclusions
based on Gerry Foley's informative articles and the past two Political
and International Resolutions
Mexican election fraud and Oaxaca
The year 2006 saw in Mexico the largest
mobilizations of working people and the poor in any country in Latin
America. The demonstrations against the July election fraud that
challenged the rightwing capitalist PAN candidate Felipe Calderon's
stealing of the presidency from his bourgeois opponent, the PRD's Andres
Lopez Obrador, were massive, including at one point 2.5 million people in
Mexico City.
Our sister party, the United Socialist League (LUS), correctly supported
these mobilizations for elementary democratic rights, including the right
to a legitimate election, without extending any form of support to Lopez
Obrador or the PRD. These mobilizations forced Lopez Obrador to call a
National Democratic Convention in September where the millions present
essentially ratified Lopez Obrador's presidency.
The event was designed to conjure up the example of the early 20th
century revolutionary actions that toppled Mexico's semi-feudal
dictatorship. But the modern day bourgeoisie had no intention of toppling
any bourgeois government.
The stealing of the presidency is far from a first in Mexico, a nation
with a long history, 70-plus years, of one-party PRI rule, election fraud
as well as death squad murders and disappearances of the politically
dissident.
The Mexican events took place in the context of a generalized
radicalization in Latin America fueled by the deepening imperialist
looting of the continent and the associated yawning gap between the mass
of the poor, workers, peasants and indigenous peoples and the small layer
of rich that absorb an increasing portion of the social surplus.
The Oaxaca events were sparked by a May statewide teacher's strike of
tens of thousands aimed at improved pay and working conditions and a
raising of the minimum wage for all, the latter demand serving to cement
support for the striking teachers among the broad masses. The strike was
met with massive repression, including murders and disappearances. The
response was the formation of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of
Oaxaca (APPO) and the seizure of the city of Oaxaca, the capital of the
Mexican state of the same name.
One and half million Oaxacans had demonstrated against the corrupt
governor, Ulises Ruiz, who had also secured his election by fraud and who
had first used local police to crush the strike, then state police and
finally on November 25, with the support of PRI and PRD Oaxaca senators,
called in federal troops to crush the movement.
At least six APPO supporters were murdered on that day. Hundreds were
arrested, including former Oaxaca PRD head and APPO leader Flavio Sosa in
Mexico City, following Calderon's assumption to the presidency on
December 1. In the days that followed some 20 more were murdered and 30
others were "disappeared" or killed.
During the height of the Oaxaca events, repeated mass mobilizations were
able to repel police attacks, retake significant portions of the city and
occupy and operate a university radio stations as well as other radio and
television facilities. Again, this was in the face of police murders and
mass repression. APPO leaders organized huge contingents to join the mass
mobilizations in Mexico City against the Calderon election fraud and
sought to spread their movement there and nationally.
The APPO sought to operate as an independent soviet-type structure, with
democratic elections of its leadership, immediate recall and decisions
made dealing with a broad range of social issues. While the APPO's
politics were to the left of the PRD, the influence of the latter was
significant. Similarly, central leaders of the teacher's union preferred
to support Lopez Obrador's presidential campaign. They were also
successful in winning an acceptance vote for an inferior contract days
before the federal intervention, although many teachers refused to return
to work.
Most of the country's PRD leaders abstained from the struggle or opposed
Lopez Obrador's challenge outright, preferring mild protests or total
submission to the fraud to the national mobilization of the masses aimed
at a struggle for political power. Lopez Obrador himself remained within
bourgeois limits, preaching non-violence and refraining from appeals to
Mexico's workers and peasant for strike action or any other move that
would give the appearance of a real struggle for power.
The absence of a mass revolutionary party in Oaxaca and nationally
severely limited the movement's capacity to expand and crystallize the
mass power that was in the streets without an experienced leadership.
Indeed, the absence of a revolutionary party was central to the
movement's demise as were illusions that any bourgeois force in Mexico,
or anywhere else in the world, could play a revolutionary role in the
mobilization of the masses for any significant challenge to the
capitalist order.
But such a party is never built overnight. The best of the revolutionary
forces, including the LUS, participated in the struggle to the best of
their ability, learned from the experience and established new links to
the masses. Mexico 2006 once again demonstrated the willingness of the
masses to fight. It is just a matter of time until a revolutionary
leadership is constructed that proves capable of channeling this energy
and anger at the bourgeois order in a socialist direction.
Venezuela in limbo
The mass radicalization in Latin America
is the most promising development in the world today. And of all the
governments that have been raised into office on the back of this wave of
revolt, the Venezuelan regime of Hugo Chavez is the most outspokenly
anti-imperialist. For this reason it has raised great hopes in the left. We
are also hopeful. But we realize that it is essential to analyze the
Venezuelan experience critically. We remember that in the past period of
radicalization in the underdeveloped world, many leaders and governments
adopted very radical stances but ended up defusing the radicalization in
their countries rather than leading it to a conclusion in a socialist
revolution.
It is clear that the Hugo Chavez government retains mass support among
Venezuela's poor and working class population and that Chavez has instituted,
often independently of this government, several social measures in the
areas of health and education that have significantly benefited important
sections of the nation's poor. His statement of intention to substitute
the Bolivarian Circles or community councils for the present bourgeois
government indicates that he is well aware of the mass discontent with
the present parliamentary institutions of the Parties of the Fifth
Republic and their bureaucratic apparatuses. But to date these councils,
virtually dependent on Chavez's largess, are extremely limited with
regard to substantial decision-making.
It is evident that Chavez's relations with Cuba, including exchanging
cheap oil for education and medical personnel, has greatly benefited both
nations. Chavez has on occasion proclaimed his adherence to the ideas of
Trotsky and permanent revolution. Chavez's references to socialism,
coupled with the important advances Venezuela has achieved, serve to
legitimize socialist ideas and perspectives. However, to the extent that
his words are not matched by socialist deeds, in the long run the
opposite might well be the result, that is, the discrediting of socialism
by its association with the measures of a capitalist regime.
The advances in education and healthcare have largely been obtained via
the massive spike in world oil prices, as opposed to any structural
changes in the economic underpinnings of Venezuelan society. There has
been no major land reform. The vast proportion of the land put to
productive use, and even so-called land not in production is still owned
by the former ruling rich and/or foreign corporations. The old ruling
class elite essentially retains ownership or control of the nation's
banks, financial institutions and even important portions of the nation's
oil.
We have followed developments in Venezuela closely. The recent oil
nationalizations in the Orinoco River area as well as the utility
nationalizations have been accomplished with full compensation to the
imperialists. Nothing has been expropriated. The price paid is full
market value. The Chavez government simply purchased some 60 percent of
the stock. In the case of the utilities, the purchase amounted to a
return to the policies of previous Venezuelan governments.
The issue of nationalizations from the vantage point of the distribution
of wealth has always been a complicated matter. "The devil is in the
details" as the saying goes. And it is almost always the capitalist
corporations and their legal specialists who write the details, while the
general lines or consequences are approved by usually politically
conscious capitalist state representatives.
In the ex-USSR, for example, important Russian oil resources were sold to
imperialist corporations, the U.S. in particular, on the basis of
"Profit Sharing Agreements" (PSAs). These are based on
agreements that the imperialist corporations will first deduct all of
their so-called expenses related to oil production - that is, labor
costs, technology, refining and transportation as well as a multitude of
other "costs of production." What remains is designated
"profit," an amount to be divided between the corporation and
the government that has "nationalized" their oil or other
hydrocarbon resources.
In the event of disputes, the agreements usually prohibit resolution
through Russian courts. These are presumed to be biased. Instead, the
aggrieved party, always the state owner of the "nationalized"
oil, must resort to an international arbitration agency. The latter is
little more than a tool of the imperialists.
PSAs in several countries have amounted to little more than devises to
benefit imperialist corporations and a small layer of the local
capitalist elites, whose services resulted in the original deal.
Few, if any people have access to the fine print of the agreements that
have been negotiated or are under discussion in Venezuela. But in
Venezuela the repeated promises of the Chavez administration that
imperialist oil companies will not be expropriated, combined with the fact
that there have been few complaints from these corporations, indicate
that the financial gains to Venezuela and losses to imperialists have
been minor, at best. To date all foreign oil corporations have been able
to operate at a rate of profit sufficient to mute whatever criticisms
they have.
More recently, however, as negotiations proceed between Venezuelan
authorities and the powerful international oil corporations who have
major interests in the Orinoco region, the Chavez government has
threatened some outright expropriations to pressure the foreign
corporations for a better deal. The nature of any agreements reached are
usually reported in broad outline. It is rare that precise information is
made available for public scrutiny.
To date, we must make clear that we have no knowledge of the critical
terms that are operative in Venezuela' oil contracts today, including
whether Venezuela's agreements resemble the worst forms of PSAs that
benefit foreign capital or, also possible, agreements that largely
benefit the Venezuelan state. But the fact that the state itself remains
capitalist tells us that the issue of how oil income will be distributed
is far from resolved.
We know from experience that the vast number of agreements reached with
the world's major oil corporations are to the disadvantage of the
oil-producing nation, excepting the major national capitalists whose
interests are protected by the state over which it presides. A serious
move by the Chavez government to expropriate foreign oil interests with
little or no compensation, coupled with a move to seriously challenge the
oil profits of Venezuela's national bourgeoisie, would signal a change
that revolutionaries would be bound to lend the greatest attention.
"Worker's control"
A recent report by the International
Marxist Tendency (the Grant/Wood group which tends toward uncritical
support to Chavez) indicates that only a single plant remains of the
several that had been previously operated on the basis of one or more
forms of "workers control" or "co-management." All of
the other projects have been abandoned or disbanded. Here too, the
worker's control experiments were more often than not occupations of
inefficient or abandoned plants or factories where various
"co-management" schemes were employed that proved to be
incapable of generating a profit sufficient for the state to continue its
operation. The IMT article indicates that various forms of bureaucratic
intervention by state officials and the absence of an organized
opposition among workers accounted for the retreat. Indeed, the entire
concept of workers control or co-management rapidly looses its meaning
when the state itself remains in capitalist hands and when workers are
reduced to assisting in the management of plants that must compete
against others in an overall capitalist framework. In short, the concept
of workers control absent an aroused and organized working class with a
conscious leadership oriented to socialist revolution can easily become
little more than empty rhetoric.
United Socialist Party of Venezuela
The announcement that Hugo Chavez had
formed a new United Socialist Party of Venezuela has not been followed by
any statements or other information regarding the program of this party
or a precise date when the party congress will be convened. Chavez has
stated that his new party will be open to national capitalists.
Three parties associated with the Bolivarian Fifth Republican government
have announced their withdrawal - PODEMOS, Fatherland for All and the CP
- with the latter stating that they were withholding a decision until the
new party's program was released, or at least, perhaps, a draft of that
program. Under these conditions, it certainly seems premature to grant
Chavez's new party any form of support, especially when support to it was
almost immediately announced by the discredited Movement for the Fifth
Republic, the bourgeois party on which Chavez has based his government.
Chavez's recent tour of Latin America was aimed at undermining President
Bush's tour at the same time. Chavez focused on promoting unity in Latin
America against American imperialist domination. It is highly unusual for
any Latin American leader to take on a president of the U.S. in such a
direct manner. Our newspaper covered the tour, estimating that Chavez got
the better of the venture and that President Bush gained nothing.
Chavez's activities included speaking at a mass demonstration in
Montevideo, Uruguay across the Rio Plata River from Buenos Aires,
Argentina, where President Bush was visiting. Inside Argentina, President
Kirchner facilitated a Chavez mass rally at a major sports stadium, where
Chavez was enthusiastically received.
In Haiti, he was afforded a similar welcome, although his failure to
comment on the policies of Latin American countries that currently
provide troops for the imperialist occupation of Haiti, including Brazil,
was noted by serious observers, including important Trotskyist currents
in Latin America.
In summary, while we remain open to and will support any future
developments in Venezuela that indicate that a real challenge to
capitalist prerogatives is in the making, we do not see any of the recent
measures as indicating that, rhetoric aside, these are on Chavez's
agenda.
We retain with full force our view that Venezuela remains a capitalist
state with a capitalist government. We support the construction of a
revolutionary socialist party in Venezuela to advance the political
development of the working class and its allies, to mobilize the working
masses to defend and advance their interests and to organize for the
revolutionary construction of a socialist society.
Given the important contradictions in Venezuela today, including the
Chavez-led mass mobilizations that thwarted previous imperialist efforts
to destabilize and/or overthrow his government and Chavez's overwhelming
defeat of the imperialist-backed referendum that sought his ouster by
other means, we cannot rule out momentous changes in the period ahead,
including a sharp turn in a revolutionary direction.
Over a year ago we noted in our Political Resolution at that time that we
had not explicitly urged a "No" vote on the U.S.-backed
referendum to remove Chavez. Our correction was important to inform our
ranks that we hold no sectarian views that prevent us from recognizing
genuine advances, if not qualitative changes, in Venezuela that would
point to moves to establish a workers' and farmers' government and an
associated advance toward the abolition of capitalism. But, we see no
such advances today.
Lacking any forces on the ground in Venezuela to advance our views, our
role has been restricted to participation in united front-type coalitions
aimed at opposing any form of U.S. intervention in Venezuela and
supporting Venezuela's right to self-determination. That is our central
responsibility in this country.
Bolivia's hydrocarbon
"nationalization"
At the level of government Bolivian
capitalism remains in a political logjam, the product of a Constituent
Assembly whose rules require a two-thirds majority for any major changes
that could effect the great mass of the population. The Evo Morales
government has refrained from any mass mobilizations that challenge the
power of this Constituent Assembly, whose national bourgeoisie retains
essential veto power. It has been largely reduced to a format for debate
with no possibility of serving as a political vehicle at the service of
the workers and peasants. Whatever efforts to mobilize mass support that
have been undertaken by Morales have been subordinated to threats by the
still powerful ruling oligarchs to use force to defend their interests.
The Morales government has defaulted essentially in its pledge to
nationalize the gas and other fossil fuel resources of the country.
Morales's original hydrocarbon minister, Andres Soliz Rada, who favored a
nationalization that would fundamentally alter the ownership of Bolivian
hydrocarbons in favor of the new government, has resigned his post in
protest, stating that the agreements reached with foreign oil
corporations were to the detriment of Bolivia's national economy.
The industry today operates with essentially the same management that
presided prior to Morales' election. The 2006 Morales government
"renegotiation" and "nationalization" agreements with
imperialist oil corporations effectively legalized the previously illegal
operations of these corporations and guaranteed their right to extremely
profitable and continued exploration and exploitation of Bolivian
hydrocarbons. A fictitious or nominal value added tax has been placed on
the proceeds from oil production, an agreement without much substance
that has been used by Morales to hype his government's policies.
As with Venezuela, Bolivia's future lies in the capacity of the worker
and peasant masses to construct and strengthen independent mass
organizations aimed at educating and mobilizing the oppressed and
exploited to challenge ruling class prerogatives and fight for a
socialist future.
Palestine at an impasse
Under the impact of the U.S.-imposed and
Israeli enforced embargo/blockade and war against the Palestinian people,
for the first time ever, major sections of the Palestinian population
have become demoralized regarding prospects for any form of effective
fightback.
Fueled by constant Israeli attacks and assassination squad murders, by an
embargo that has made the importation of food and/or the growing or sale
of food extremely difficult, by an unemployment rate that approaches 70
percent, by total Israeli control of the basic necessities of life,
including water, there has been a growing and massive exodus of
Palestinians from what remains of their historic homeland.
The incapacity of the opposing factions of the Palestinian Authority,
Hamas and Fatah, to form anything resembling a stable government capable
of organizing any form of resistance has exacerbated the plight of the
long oppressed Palestinians. It was this imperialist-promoted and Israeli
implemented crisis that led the Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon to launch a
rocket attack on Israel, inflicting minor damage or casualties on both
property and the Israeli civilian population.
We have written widely on the war that followed, with Israel saturation
bombing destroying major portions of Lebanon while reducing hundreds of
thousands of Lebanese to refugee status. What was not expected by the
imperialist forces was the significant capacity of the Hezbollah fighters
to resist the Israeli intervention and to inflict major casualties on the
previously invincible Israeli military forces.
So stunned was the Bush Administration at the failure of the Israeli Army
to swiftly still the well-prepared Hezbollah militia that it delayed
political intervention to stop the war for several days, granting their
Israeli surrogates additional time to try to accomplish their central
military goal, the complete annihilation of the Hezbollah. It was only
when this proved impossible that the U.S. intervened to essentially
impose a ceasefire and the withdrawal of the battered Israeli forces.
The Israel defeat, more significant in its political impact than its
military consequences, sets the stage for future U.S.-backed Israel
incursions in Lebanon and the Middle East more generally.
The war demonstrated once again that the issue of Palestine is
inseparable from both the U.S. war against Iraq and the overall U.S.
imperialist policy in the Middle East. We will return to this in our
separate report and discussion on the fight against U.S. imperialist war.
We will conclude this section with an observation that the continued
U.S.-backed Israeli horrors inflicted on the people of Palestine, coupled
with the never-ending construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian
land has had the unexpected effect of significantly undermining the
notion that a "two-state" solution has any viability. What
remains of the original, or historic, Palestine is no longer considered
by any serious observers, not to mention the overwhelming majority of the
Palestinian people, to be a viable state entity. In this context, Israel
is increasingly seen as the Zionist, colonial, settler state in the
service of U.S. imperialism that it is. A renewed interest in and support
for a democratic and secular Palestine is the result. But it is a result
that derives from a defeat, from decades of defeat despite the incredible
and courageous Intifada resistance. The recognition that
imperialist-backed Israel will never accede to any form of viable
Palestinian state, not to mention the restoration of the pre-1947
Palestinian homeland, derives from this defeat as opposed to a massive
and united movement of the oppressed Palestinians and their potential
allies in the Middle East to win Palestine's liberation from settler
rule..
Socialist Action continues to support the demand a democratic and secular
Palestine while we simultaneously support all struggles for a united
socialist Middle East.
The coming environmental catastrophe
A March 3, 2007 New York Times
headline summarizes U.S. ruling class policy in a brief six words. The
headline reads, "U.S. Predicting Steady Increase in
Emissions"
Entitled, "United States Climate Action Report," the document's
release was delayed for a year by the Bush Administration. According to
the Times it was "given by an [unnamed] government employee to an
[unnamed] reporter." The Times' awkward phrasing was designed
to imply that it received the text through less than official channels.
The document's central assertion is that, "The administration's
climate policy will result in emissions [that cause global warming]
growing 11 percent in 2012 from 2002." In the previous decade,
that is, from 1992 to 2002, emissions grew at a rate of 11.6 percent,
according to the Environmental Protection Agency." In short, and
leaving aside the likelihood that the above figures were fudged to some
extent to lessen the intensity of their impact, the government has
absolutely no plan to cut the rate of greenhouse gas emissions. The
government stands squarely opposed to many of the world's most prominent
scientists who insist that the implementation of serious plans to rapidly
cut the expected greenhouse gas emission rate by some 70 percent,
starting now, is necessary to maintain the earth's ecological balance and
prevent catastrophe.
A major report a few weeks earlier, that virtually no scientist in the
world disputed, affirmed that global warming was no longer a theory but a
confirmed fact. Exxon Mobile, reversing its previous position, agreed.
The world's largest oil corporation, if it were a nation, would be the
world's sixth largest producer of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Exxon,
for the public record, agreed to take measures to join the environmental
movement to fight global warming. But few, if any, believe, that it will
counterpose its unprecedented fossil fuel-based profits, among the
largest of all corporations, for the good of the earth.
Indeed, a front page article in the March 5, 2007 New York Times
entitled, "Oil Innovations Pump New Life Into Old Wells"
reported that significant technological breakthroughs in the extraction
of oil and other sources of fossil fuel from previously mined locations
today make it possible to return to these locations and extract oil at
highly profitable rates of return. The quantity of these previously
unavailable fossil fuels is staggering, pushing Hubbert's curve significantly
forward, that is, giving the world's fossil fuel industry even more time
to destroy the planet's fundamental ecosystems. The Times aptly
quoted an oil industry specialist who stated bluntly that with the
current price of oil no one in the industry can refrain from utilizing
the new technology, global warming notwithstanding.
We have written widely on this subject and therefore need not review here
the horrendous effects that global warming will wreak on the planet,
other than to say that the future of vast portions of humanity is at
stake. But a few critical points in regard to the immediacy of the crisis
are well worth our consideration.
First, it is now known that global warming will not progress on the basis
of regular or roughly equal relatively small yearly increases in global
temperature. A series of "positive feedback mechanisms,"
according to scientists like James Lovelock, "amplify the earth
warming tendency." Lovelock states: "The destructive effect of
increasing global temperatures on ocean algae and tropical forests (on
top of the direct removal of the forests) will, it is feared, reduce the
capacity of the oceans and forests to absorb carbon dioxide, raising the
global temperature still further. The freeing up and release into the atmosphere
of enormous quantities of methane (a greenhouse has twenty-four times as
potent as carbon dioxide) as the permafrost of the arctic tundra thaws
due to global warming, constitutes another such vicious spiral. Just as
ominous, the reduction of the earth's reflectivity as melting
[reflective] white ice at the poles is replaced with [heat absorbing]
blue seawater, is threatening to ratchet-up global temperatures."
Second, in regard to what appears as the most immediate threat to
humanity, a NASA-associated scientist and one of the earliest global
warming experts, James Hansen, points to, "the destabilization of
the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica." This will almost
certainly lead to a rise in sea level by as much as 80 feet, he asserts.
"We have," Hansen says, "at most ten years - not ten years
to decide upon action but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory
of greenhouse gas emissions."
The above data is contained in "The Ecology of Destruction" an
insightful article by John Bellamy Foster in the February 2007 issue of
Monthly Review. Bellamy, MR editor and a leading Marxist
economist and ecologist, affirms that this ten-year period will determine
"if we are to prevent such disastrous outcomes from becoming
inevitable."
Bellamy concludes, "One crucial decade separates us from
irreversible changes that could produce a very different worldŠ There is
no longer any doubt that global warming represents a crisis of
earth-shaking proportions."
Third, the global warming crisis comes on top of the already lethal blows
that capitalism has leveled on the planet. Bellamy provides a frightening
list including, "extinction of species, loss of genetic
diversity, acid rain, nuclear contamination, tropical deforestation, the
elimination of climax forests, wetland destruction, soil erosion,
desertification, floods, famine, the despoliation of lakes, streams and
rivers, the drawing down and contamination of ground waters, the
pollution of coastal waters and estuaries, the destruction of coral
reefs, oil spills, overfishing, expanding landfills, toxic wastes, the
poisonous effects of insecticides and herbicides, exposure to hazards on
the job, urban congestion, and the depletion of nonrenewable
resources." One could add to the list the fact some 50,000 carcinogens
are employed daily in the normal course of capitalist production.
Kristen A. Hellmer, A White House spokeswoman on environmental matters,
according to the NYT, "defended Mr. Bush's climate policy. Saying
that the president was committed to actions like moderating gasoline use
and researching alternative energy that limited climate risks while also
increasing the country's energy and national security. She said Mr. Bush
remained satisfied with voluntary measures to slow emissions."
The Times article went on to quote Myron Ebell, director of the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, "a group aligned with industries
fighting curbs on greenhouse gases." Said Mr. Ebell, according to
The Times, "Mr. Bush was right to acknowledge the inevitability of
growing emissions in a country with a growing population and economy.
Ebell added that the U.S. was doing better in slowing emissions than many
countries that had joined the Kyoto ProtocolŠ"
The evidence is in on global warming. It is also in on the attitude toward
it of every capitalist nation on earth. Not one has the slightest
intention of fundamentally altering any aspect of the system of
capitalist production. The U.S. war on Iraq says everything we need to
know on this question. A major imperialist war is fought for the
subjection of Iraq and the extended influence of American imperialism
over a resource, whose continued extensive use threatens life on earth as
we know it.
Ian Angus, the author of the excellent line article in the March 2007
issue of Socialist Action, "Confronting the climate change
crisis," aptly concludes: "Only an economy that is organized
for human needs, not profit has any chance of slowing climate change and
reversing the damage that's already been done. Only democratic socialist
planning can overcome the problems caused by capitalist anarchy."
The same can and must be said of every crisis the world faces today, from
ongoing imperialist war, including nuclear war, never-ending attacks of
every kind on working people across the globe to the threatened near
extinction of human life and on earth.
In regard to global warming Angus concludes: "But that doesn't mean
we should wait for socialism to challenge the polluters. On the contrary,
we can and must fight for change today. It's possible to win important
gains, and building a movement to stop climate change can be an important
part of building a movement for socialism." Angus suggests some
essential demands to serve as the core political basis for this movement.
Today, as never before, the fight for every gain, the fight to organize
resistance in all forms to capitalist greed, plunder, repression, war and
environmental catastrophe, serves to educate about the fundamental origin
and cause of all these plagues on humanity.
Our method centers on the promotion of proletarian forms of struggle,
that is, on the independent organization of massive and united action on
the part of capitalism's victims to fight for their own interests, for
their own freedom and liberation. "Capitalism creates its own
gravediggers," said Marx a long while ago. Our job is to organize
the gravediggers, the working class and all its allies among the
oppressed and exploited into a fighting force to challenge the day to day
incursions on their lives. In the process, we build our revolutionary
nucleus to recruit the best fighters and awaken them to the cause of
socialism, the cause of all humanity.
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