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14 IMCWP, Contribution of CPUSA [En.]

Sunday, 25 November 2012 00:00 Communist Party, USA. (CPUSA)

http://www.cpusa.org , mailto: international@cpusa.org

Contribution of the Communist Party USA

14^th International Meeting of CWP

Presented by Erwin Marquit,

Organizational Secretary Minnesota/Dakotas District, CPUSA; member of International Department CPUSA.

We express our gratitude to the Lebanese Communist Party for hosting this important meeting under the present difficult conditions. The Communist Party USA not only welcomes the reelection of President Barack Obama, but actively engaged in the electoral campaign for his reelection and for the election of many Democratic Party congressional candidates. We regarded the 2012 election as the most important in the United States since 1932, an election held in the midst of the Great Depression. The election of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 led to the legalization of the right of workers to organize labor unions and to bargain collectively with employers. It led to the establishment of a compulsory employer-worker funded pension system for retired workers. It also introduced measures that enabled unemployed families to survive the Great Depression, among which were employment in the public sector for the unemployed, work camps for youth, and food provisions for the poverty stricken. Except for the youth camps, which ended with the onset of World War II, all of these are measures that the 2012 Republican Party agenda would have eliminated or greatly weakened. We believed that if the Republican candidate for President were elected and if both houses of the Congress fell under the control of the far right, racist sector (calling itself the “Tea Party”) that now dominates the Republican Party, the nation’s return to pre-1932 conditions would be a real danger. Because of this danger, we viewed our participation in mainstream electoral activity as obligatory, even though both major parties in the United States are dominated by capital, with no effective competition from a mass-scale social-democratic party, We are aware that some on the Left in the United States thought that the correct approach to the elections was either to boycott them, or as a protest, to run or support small-scale left-wing candidacies with no possible chance of winning. We Communists rejected this strategy because too much was at stake. Why did the Communist Party not run a candidate in the 2012 presidential elections? In the 1930s, the CPUSA played an outstanding role in the establishment of industrial unionism and the winning of sweeping social welfare measures. In the course of those struggles the Communist Party grew rapidly, achieving a membership of close to 100,000. At that time, we always pointed out clearly that the lasting solution to the crises produced by the capitalist system was the replacement of the capitalist system itself. In our election pamphlets for the 2012 elections, we continued to emphasize the long-term goal of a socialist transformation of the economy. With the beginning of the Cold War in 1946, the U.S. government introduced a wide range of repressive measures against the Communist Party, which included the imprisonment of its leaders and those that replaced them, and the blacklisting of its members to deny them employment. Eight camps for internment of Communists in case of a national emergency were constructed; Communist-led labor unions were denied collective-bargaining rights; eleven unions that refused to purge Communists from their leadership ranks were expelled from the CIO labor federation, and all but two of these were subsequently destroyed. Under these oppressive measures, the size of the Party was vastly reduced. The internal crises within the socialist countries and the subsequent collapse of socialist systems in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe took a further toll. Anti-Communist sentiment among sectors of the U.S. population was stimulated by the demonizing of Communist-led countries for half a century. The U.S. government and media continually portrayed the socialist countries of Europe and Asia as the gravest enemy of the United States with nuclear missiles pointed toward the United States As a result, in 1984, Gus Hall, the Communist candidate for president in 1984—the last Communist candidate in a presidential election—received only 0.03% of the vote. In small measure, this was partly due to the fact that the United States had, and still has, the most undemocratic electoral system among all bourgeois democracies, with no proportional representation except in a handful of local city elections. In our electoral system, when there are more than two candidates, the candidate with largest number of votes wins without the possibility, in most cases, of a supplementary vote for the two leading candidates. Most voters regard a vote for a minority party as a wasted vote, since it cannot elect any candidates except under unusual local conditions. In the past four years, the Republican Party has succeeded in many states in amending state constitutions to reduce the potential vote for the Democratic Party by placing obstacles in the path of low-income people and the elderly to vote by requiring documentation they often do not possess. Such restrictions are aimed particularly at reducing votes of African Americans and Latinos and poverty-stricken segments of the population. The Republican Party is notorious for its use of illegal means to restrict selectively votes in areas likely to support its candidates. In such areas in Florida, for example, voters had to wait five hours to cast their ballots because the Republicans in office deliberately underfunded voting facilities. The events since the last decades of the twentieth century made clear the urgency of a different electoral strategy. The decrease in industrial employment in the basic industries and the loss of jobs in other industries as a result of computerization produced a precipitous decline in mass-employment industrial enterprises, and led to a decline in labor-union membership, abetted by an increasing assault by big capital on the right of workers to seek union recognition for collective bargaining. The possible attractiveness of a socialist alternative provided by the full employment, universal health care, free higher education, and other social welfare measures in the socialist countries had previously restrained the capitalists from an all-out assault on labor unions. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the European socialist countries removed that restraint. As a result, labor-union membership in the private sector in the United States, which had already begun to decline from its peak of 39% in 1958, declined precipitously to under 7% today. Until last year, the federal, state, and local governments did not show the same aggressiveness against labor unions, so public sector labor-union membership has held steady at about 36% since the 1980s. Two years ago, the far-right elements that now dominate the Republican Party began a campaign to deprive public-sector workers of the right to collective bargaining. The virtual destruction of the labor movement in the US, which the Republicans clearly intend, would be a terrible defeat for the Left and the entire working class. This assault on trade unions is happening just as the major unions in the United States have been breaking with their anti-Communist past and have been moving into positions of authentic solidarity with workers’ struggles in other countries. An example is the support U.S. unions are giving workers in Colombia and Mexico. A key strategy for reversing the decline in labor-union membership is the enactment of a federal law proposed by the labor unions that Obama and the Democrats in Congress were unable to enact over the opposition of the Republicans. This law would require employers to recognize and bargain collectively with a labor union when a majority of their employees have signed statements requesting such recognition, repairing the defect in the present Fair Employment Practices Act that allows employers to delay and block recognition by a combination of legal and illegal maneuvers for which there is no effective redress. The far rightward shift in the Republican Party was narrowing the breathing space for resistance to corporate power by the working class and allied elements of other classes. An important consideration in the 2012 elections was that a Republican victory in the presidential and congressional elections could lead an absolute majority of far-right justices in the current ideologically divided Supreme Court by presidential lifetime appointment of far-right justices to fill an anticipated two or more vacancies due to retirement or death. This raised the threat that the Supreme Court would produce rulings that further restrict the rights of labor unions to organize and bargain collectively; reverse the gains in women’s rights by ruling against legislation that granted women the right to equal pay for equal work, contraception, and abortion; rule against laws outlawing racial segregation, discrimination against women, and laws that protect African Americans and Latinos from discrimination in employment and housing, and that give gays and lesbians equal rights in employment and marriage. A Supreme Court dominated by right-wing justices could even abolish the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The far-right Republican Party agenda includes all these issues. Even with the present Supreme Court, we have been witnessing the erosion of democratic rights. Apart from the drive by the far-right to restrict voting rights, the Supreme Court has upheld the right of corporations to devote unlimited funds to elect candidates that will serve their interests, declaring that corporations are “persons” under law and therefore have the right of freedom of speech! The most import success of the Obama Administration since its election in 2008 was the introduction of a major expansion of the people’s access to financing of their health care. As a result of this legislation, 25 million people now have access to health care who previously did not have it. The repeal of this health care law was one of the main points in the programs of the Republican Party presidential and Congressional candidates in the 2012 election. Even without a repeal, there is still the danger that it will be ruled unconstitutional by the present Supreme Court even though the lower courts have upheld it. Whatever the present Supreme Court might not rule, a Supreme Court loaded with right-wing justices appointed by a Republican president would still be able to do so. Obama has opposed Republican attempts to introduce austerity programs similar to those in the European Union. The Republicans have opposed his efforts to use government funds as economic stimuli to reduce unemployment, as well as his attempts to remove the special provisions of the income tax code that have allowed the rich to be taxed at a lower percentage of income than the average working person, and to eliminate of tax benefits that the corporations get when exporting of jobs abroad. The Occupy movement, with its slogan, “We are the 99 %,” that swept through the country in 2011, sharply drew attention to the power of the top 1%” of the population and stimulated support for Obama’s efforts to require higher taxes for the wealthy. The Republicans have blocked all proposals to reduce global warming, environment destruction, industrial pollution, and other actions arising from corporate greed that that threaten to destroy the biophysical basis of human existence. Republicans even want to privatize the FEMA, the federal agency for disaster mitigation. Another important issue is that of justice for immigrant workers and their families. There are between 10 and 11 million irregular immigrants in the United States, mostly from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Our Party supports the regularization of their status, with full rights in the workplace and in the community, and access to U.S. citizenship. The Obama administration has moved too slowly on this issue (and the CPUSA has been sharply critical of this), but it is now taking some modest but real steps. The Republicans, on the other hand, have whipped up a racist frenzy against immigrants that has led to vigilante action and in some cases the murder of immigrant workers. Romney had promised to make life so hard for undocumented immigrants that they would all “self” deport. Faced with a choice between the victory of either the Democratic Party or Republican Party, the Communist Party viewed a victory of the far-right Republican Party as an extreme disaster. In this situation, we saw the necessity of a policy of center-left alliances in order not to separate ourselves from the people’s struggles for dealing with the far right onslaught, The basis of such an alliance now includes the labor movement, organizations of African Americans and Latinos, the women’s movement, gay and lesbian civil rights groups, and organizations of the elderly and retirees. On some issues, these groups are joined by a few far-sighted elements of capital. What do we mean by “far-sighted” elements of capital? As in all capitalist countries, big capital is not a monolith of common interest. Not only are elements of capital in competition with one another, but differences in their investment policies give rise to conflicting political interests. Corporations with investments in the oil, coal, and natural gas industries tend to have the most right-wing orientations. Corporations with heavy investments in China are somewhat wary of China bashing by the Republicans and even by Obama. Some corporations derive their superprofits by operations that do severe environmental damage and contribute heavily to global warming, while others depend on a relatively healthy environment for their maximum profits. That is why some elements of big capital support the Republican Party, while others support the Democratic Party because they can see a limited common interest some issues with the working-class base of support for the Democratic Party. Our present strategy is build alliances both inside and outside the Democratic Party to curtail the dominance of big capital over the lives of our people. We are well aware that mass political activity on issues of social justice domestically and anti-imperialist solidarity internationally will not spring from within the Democratic Party. The Communist Party must continue to work with other components of this alliance to generate mass activity independently of the two parties to pressure the president and the Congress to act on its demands. In our electoral policy, we seek to cooperate and strengthen our relationship with the more progressive elements in Democratic Party, such as the Progressive Caucus in the U.S. Congress, a group of seventy-six members of the Congress co-chaired by Raúl Grijalva, a Latino from Arizona, and Keith Ellison, an African American Muslim from Minnesota. We also will strengthen our relationship to the Congressional Black Caucus (formed by African Americans in the Congress), which has been the point of origin of innovative policies including an end to the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba, and with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In its domestic policy, for example, the Progressive Caucus has put forth a program for using the public sector to deal with unemployment. It has opposed the use of the so called “war on terror” to incarcerate U.S. citizens indefinitely without criminal charges. In its foreign policy, the Progressive Caucus and the Black Caucus are outspoken in their opposition to U.S. imperialist policies abroad. The Progressive Caucus, now that Obama has been reelected, will be playing an important role in contributing to the mobilization of mass activity on critical issues to bring pressure on the Congress and administration to act on them. In this year’s elections, the labor unions made vigorous efforts to involve their members and their retirees in phoning and door-to-door visits to campaign for Obama and the Democratic Party candidates for the Congress and state legislatures. In my state, our Party members preferentially participated in the election campaign through these labor-union channels. In my state, Minnesota, and the states of Maine, Maryland, and Washington, voters were asked to approve or accept ballot initiatives (that is, plebiscites or referenda) to permit or ban same-sex marriage. Because the Republican Party relies not only on financial support from major sections of big capital, but needs the votes of its right-wing Christian evangelical mass base, it has made its support of the ban on same sex marriage a major campaign issue. Our Party, as does the labor movement, and also Obama and the Democratic Party, considers the right of same-sex couples to marry as a civil-rights issue. By campaigning to bring out people to vote against such a ban, they were also bringing out people who would most likely vote for against the bigoted far-right candidates of the Republic Party. In three states, the voters approved the right to same-sex marriage. In the fourth state, Minnesota, the attempt to insert a ban of such marriage in the state constitution was rejected. In selectively cooperating with the progressive elements of the Democratic Party, we generally openly maintain our identity as Communists and seek to build our party through its visible activities. In our foreign policy, U.S. Communists consistently oppose all U.S. imperialist activities abroad. We participate in the Cuban solidarity movement and demand the end of the U.S. economic blockade against Cuba and the freeing of the Cuban Five. We opposed the NATO intervention in Libya and oppose U.S. intervention in Syria. We support immediate withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan and oppose the use of drones for assassination and bombing. We call for the end of sanctions against Iran. We oppose the intrusion of the United States militarily and politically in the affairs of Southeast Asia. We oppose the China-bashing policies of the U.S. government. We welcome the election of several progressive, anti-imperialist governments in Latin America and oppose U.S. attempts to undermine them. This leftward shift in Latin American, opening a path to possible socialist development, is of tremendous importance in the worldwide anti-imperialist struggle. We call for the replacement of U.S. support of the apartheid regime in Israel by support for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with the right of return of Palestinians to their native cities and villages. The day before the elections, the New York Times, in discussing the prospects of a Palestinian/Israel agreement, wrote: “Whatever chance exists of a new American peace initiative after the election is likely to vanish if Mitt Romney wins; at private fund-raising event, he said that the Arab-Israeli conflict was ‘going to remain an unsolved problem’ and seemed unconcerned about it.” With the elections now over, there is a prospect that growing support in the United States for a just Middle East solution can induce President Obama once again to put pressure on the Israeli government to end the settlement expansion and resume negotiations leading to such a solution. An indication of such growing support is the letter on 19 October 2012 signed by fifteen leaders of the principal U.S. Christian churches calling upon the Congress to reconsider giving aid to Israel because of human rights violations. Reverend Gradye Parsons, the top official of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) said, “We asked Congress to treat Israel like it would any other country, to make sure our military aid is going to a country espousing the values we would as Americans—that it is not being used to continually violate the human rights of other people.” The letter said that Israel had continued expanding settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem despite American calls to stop claiming territory that under international law and United States policy should belong to a future Palestinian state. This is a sharp contrast to the evangelical Christian churches, which have been part of the core of the far right support of the Republican candidates for president and the Congress. A Jewish-American organization called “J Street,” first organized six years ago as a “pro-Israel pro-peace” organization, has been gaining growing support among Jewish Americans for its advocacy of an end to the settlement expansion and a two- state solution based on the 1967 borders. In the 2012 elections, it contributed 1.8 million dollars to support the election of 72 candidates for the U.S. Congress, of which 71 were elected, The Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, had direct links to some of the most reactionary elements in U.S. politics and with right wing extremist groups in other countries who brought us not only the Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, but also the contra wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. He sought support from the extreme right wing Cuban exile mafia in South Florida. The election of Romney would have greatly increased the probability of direct U.S. military intervention in Latin America in the coming period. The Republicans in the Congress prevented Obama from shutting down the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the U.S. naval base in Cuban territory that has been occupied illegally since 1903. A key element of the Communist Party’s strategy of alliances is to imbue the struggles of these alliances with enhancement of the democratic rights, and to promote the increasing use of the public sector to extend the acceptance of a socialist consciousness. Obviously the Communist Party needs far more growth than it has been able to achieve. We are, however, effectively using our participation in people’s struggles and the Internet to recruit new members. We have an online daily news publication, People’s World, www.peoplesworld.org, a monthly online theoretical journal Political Affairs, www.politicalaffairs.net, as well as national and district Websites. As a result of our online activities, we have been forming Party clubs in states in which we previously had very few or even no members. This influx of new members led us to have a national Party school earlier this year to acquaint new members with the Marxist-Leninist orientation of the Party. The reelection of Obama places before us the high-priority task of reversing the decline in labor-union membership by securing the enactment of the law requiring the recognition of labor unions when supported by the majority of workers of an enterprise and securing passage of other legislation that benefits the working people. The fact that the composition of the new Congress did not change ideologically enough to facilitate passage of this law still presents us with a difficult struggle. The fact that Republican Party still controls the lower house of the Congress and has enough votes in the upper house to block legislative changes of a highly progressive nature presents an obstacle that we will have to combat until it can be changed in the 2014 elections. We still have the task of strengthening the center-left alliance and enriching its anti-imperialist character. While the victory of Obama is a welcome aid for us in our domestic struggles, we still face the challenge of mobilizing mass pressure on his administration to reverse the imperialist character of U.S. foreign policy. The CPUSA will pursue this formidable task vigorously in alliance with domestic progressive forces and with our comrades in the Communist and Workers’ Parties and their allies throughout the world. 

Last Updated on Thursday, 06 December 2012 14:38

The capitalist multi-national corporation Foxconn and socialist China

Because there is little to no understanding here in the United States about the nature of capitalism in its most savage, barbaric and cannibalistic stage of imperialism it has been difficult to understand why workers are being so severely exploited and abused at Foxconn in socialist China.

One writer among many, a retired United Electrical Union (UE) staff person, John Case, who is also an unrepentant Obama supporter and self-avowed member of the Communist Party USA’s Economic’s Commission wrote the following muddle-headed, confusing article in the revisionist-led anti-Marxist  CPUSA’s on-line newspaper, People’s Weekly World.

John Case somehow managed to write a lengthy article without so much as mentioning that Foxconn is a multi-national corporation which has become a major player in China’s Wall Street dominated economy where a sell-out, revisionist Communist Party leadership wants to integrate China into the Wall Street dominated world imperialist system while deceitfully covering up their dirty deeds with claims of strengthening socialism— calling this “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

The wanton multi-national capitalist exploitation and abuse of working people has nothing to do with building socialism; it never has and never will.

Here is the article written by John Case making excuses for the despicable living and working conditions one would hope Case never would have accepted and tolerated for workers he was supposed to be representing in this country: http://www.peoplesworld.org/foxconn-and-socialism-in-china/

Obviously, John Case never read nor studied V.I. Lenin’s, “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism,” < http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ > which provides a basic understanding of what imperialism imperialism is all about.

No doubt these Chinese leaders have been tutored well on deceiving working people by the same hacks who have trained Obama so well in using left-sounding rhetoric he learned from his “mentor,” Frank Marshall Davis, to cover up his thoroughly rotten and reactionary Wall Street agenda of waging wars abroad paid for with austerity measures here at home to enforce Wall Street’s imperialist agenda in quest of maximum profits resulting from the rape of Mother Nature and the exploitation of labor.

We should not have to turn to the Huff Post and Reuters < http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/30/foxconn-working-conditions-2012-hours_n_1390541.html > to find out what is going on with problems of working people in China— Communist newspapers like the People’s Weekly World should have been among the first to expose what is going on with exploitation and abuse of working people while exposing the treachery and betrayal of Communist “leaders” who have sold their souls— and the working class— to Wall Street.

This kind of exploitation and abuse of working people that this capitalist multi-national corporation Foxconn is engaged in— not only in China but all over the world— certainly has nothing to do with the building and uneven economic development of socialism in China as John Case suggests in no uncertain terms.

I find it very interesting John Case and the Obama-loving leadership of the Communist Party which has lost over twenty-thousand members under the “leadership” of Sam Webb is willing to overlook the injustices in China the same way they willfully sit in silence in refusing to condemn or organize against injustices right here in our own country.

Like the Chinese “leaders,” these CPUSA leaders like John Case have given up on the working class winning the class struggle here in our own country and in China. Thus they tell us socialism is for a far distant future.

When all is said and done, what is the class struggle all about from a working class perspective? Is the class struggle not a struggle on the part of working people and the working class a struggle for social and economic justice?

Recently I took a photograph of an owl— he would turn his head away thinking that I was no longer there because he couldn’t see me.

Well, CPUSA “leaders” like John Case and his fellow Obama-loving buddy Sam Webb have turned their heads in indifference to these injustices in China while these worthless, imperialist serving Chinese leaders have lied about these social and economic injustices they have been a party to enabling to go on in China.

Foxconn is not a company which has to employ workers at poverty wages working long hours no human being should be forced to endure. Foxconn is an extremely profitable multi-national corporation. Contrary to what many would like us to believe, Foxconn is not a Chinese enterprise. Foxconn is a multi-national corporation part of the imperialist scheme of things striving for MAXIMUM PROFITS resulting from the brutal exploitation of labor— the abuse of working people.

This brutal and savage abusive exploitation of working people is not an accident, oversight nor is it in any way a requirement for building socialism in China anymore than such brutal exploitation is necessary for an outfit, a huge sweatshop, like Lillian Vernon in Virginia Beach, Virginia employing 5,000 workers— mostly people of color— to be forced to work 10 and 12 and even 16 hours a day six and seven days a week for months on end. Perhaps if John Case had to work in one of these sweatshops living these kinds of injustices described he would have a better understanding of the nature of imperialism. Why doesn’t John Case go live and work in Foxconn’s China “compound.” Case could write from his own first-hand experiences; this is what a Communist writer would do. Of course no real socialist government would be opposed to a Communist writer doing this.

While working at Lillian Vernon, upon being told by the plant manager as he strutted down the long line of Meistergram machines where workers were forced to stand because if the stools he took away were returned someone might “sew off a finger if they got so comfortable they would fall asleep;” he declared to the elderly black woman at the machine in front of me that working 12 hours a day six days a week would be mandatory for the next three weeks, she responded with what we all wanted to say but didn’t, “Why don’t you people just bring back the chains.”

Lillian Vernon is an extremely wealthy woman; she and her business partners did not have to operate this plant as a sweatshop enforcing these sub-human labor conditions— Lillian Vernon and her business partners chose to operate this plant in this way in order to make maximum profits just like Foxconn does in China.

Lillian Vernon has been a big-time supporter of the Democratic Party and these worthless creeps like Barack Obama.

Lillian Vernon purchased product from the sweatshops in China , India, Bangladesh and the Philippines.

The AFL-CIO was willing to over-look these injustices workers were subjected to at Lillian Vernon because she was a big-time contributor to the Democratic Party.

I spoke in person with both Andy Stern and John Sweeney together about the possibility of organizing Lillian Vernon’s sweatshop— they didn’t even want to hear about these injustices working people were forced to endure not far from their fancy offices let alone provide the organizing resources. Miss Lillian might be offended and withhold her contributions derived from unpaid labor forced to work long hours no human being should have to endure.

It is not coincidental that these labor-fakers are joined with sell-out “Communist” apologists for imperialism like Sam Webb and John Case as they meet in “unity” behind supporting these politicians like Barack Obama who serve Wall Street’s interests so well.

After all, if they were to attack these inhuman working conditions in China, they would have to do something about the injustices right here in our own country. Wouldn’t that be a novel idea for labor leaders and Communists who used to be well known for organizing unions to stand up to injustices right under their own noses.

But one cannot expect those like John Case who would use a Communist publication to make excuses for a bunch of perverted, Wall Street serving “Communist” leaders in China to vigorously speak out against injustices in China because then these revisionists would have to acknowledge Obama’s role in Wall Street’s imperialist agenda for workers of the world… from Virginia Beach to China.

These labor “leaders” like Sweeney, Stern and now Trumka use the perversions of deceitful Communists in China serving Wall Street’s interests to attack socialism while their new found friends like “Communists” Sam Webb and John Case give socialism a bad name by claiming these injustices are a requirement for building socialism which they don’t support anymore anyways.

All of this attempt to evade the injustices— created by capitalist multi-nationals given free reign to plunder and exploit in China under the guise of being necessary to building socialism by so-called “Communists” as their new-found partners, the sell-out union “leaders” use these injustices as an excuse to smear socialism, spins massive confusion among working people about the only alternative to this rotten capitalist system: socialism.

If we are going to turn our own country around we will need a strong and vibrant Communist Party; we will need a militant and united labor movement led by the “reds;” we will need a strong, militant, united anti-imperialist organization integrated with the struggles of working people all over the globe; we will need to free ourselves from this two-party trap by creating a new labor-based people’s party. The basis of unity must be the struggles against the social and economic injustices created by capitalism with a clear understanding about the nature of capitalism in its highest imperialist stage.

If these over-paid, muddle-headed apologists for imperialism had to work in a sweatshop they might be able to more accurately write about injustices— here and in China.

Make no mistake— the source of the injustices for the people working in the sweatshops of Foxconn can be found in capitalism and the corrupt relations with the sell-out leaders of China; not with socialism.

Here is the Foxconn website: < http://www.foxconn.com/ > This a capitalist multi-national corporation whose exploitation and abuse of workers should be restrained and prohibited and not enabled by a real socialist government.

Here is a link to The Manifesto of the Communist Party— The Communist Manifesto:  < http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ > Read it; study it. See if it isn’t as relevant as the day it was written. Understanding it helps if you have worked in a sweatshop but anyone who has an open mind believing that social and economic injustices must end shouldn’t have too difficult of a time understanding the message.

Why we need to re-organize the Communist Party here in the United States with a Marxist-Leninist leadership and membership

[Note: This is a guest blog written by an unemployed Ford worker who feels his efforts to gain employment might be hindered should he provide his name. I thought he was entitled to express his views anonymously under these circumstances. Alan L. Maki]

The present liquidationist "leadership" of the Communist Party USA intended to "phase out" the organization and establish in its place a social democratic type organization as a support group for the Democrats. Most of this has been accomplished although the remaining 184 members of the organization, mostly high-paid staff, have been reluctant to abandon the Party's name fearing working class revolutionaries will re-establish the Party as a class conscious revolutionary anti-imperialist Marxist-Leninist working class organization.

This article tells us all we need to know about what is wrong with the CPUSA today (see full article at the very bottom):

http://www.peoplesworld.org/locked-out-workers-and-supporters-converge-on-minnesota-town/

Mark Froemke who is on the National Committee of the CPUSA is a "leader" of this union and a Vice-president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO and big-shot in the Democratic Party.

Being a Communist, one would think Mark Froemke would understand how to handle a situation when the employer announces months in advance that it would be locking out workers should they not agree to managements "final offer."

Instead of bringing forward the idea of occupying the plants, Froemke and this bunch of union "leaders" threatened and intimidated rank-and-file workers who began discussing the need to occupy American Crystal Sugar's plants instead of leaving the plants as ordered and instructed by management.

Mark Froemke, along with the rest of what remains as a "leadership" in the CPUSA, has spent their time trying to get workers engaged in supporting Barack Obama and the rest of these Dumb Donkeys instead of preparing the working class for these battles.

Even at this late date as can be seen in the article below, there is no suggestion as to what needs to be done when employers use the lockout as the weapon of choice in busting unions.




Mark Froemke sporting his Obama cap.

When employers notify workers they will be locked out and replaced by scabs any union leader worth his/her salt would respond by asking workers if they want to occupy the plants. This is the class struggle approach.

Instead, Froemke and his fellow union leaders ordered workers to leave the plants as instructed by management. What did Froemke and these union leaders expect; that Barack Obama and Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton would join them in holding up signs as the scabs pass them by going to work?

No attempt has even been made by the labor movement to organize massive protests which would be required to stop the scabs.

Labor "leaders" come and make nice tough sounding speeches about the "united strength of organized labor" but do nothing of any consequence to stop the scabs. All talk; no action.

American Crystal Sugar workers have now lost more than they can ever hope to win in the next thirty years--- if they can even save their jobs after management secures replacement workers they will train who will have no union that management will have to contend with.

Why does this article not explain the terms and conditions under which Leo Gerard and the USW "leadership" will force workers back to work at Cooper Tire?

If the "pattern" continues for American Crystal Workers they will go back to work looking down at their feet accepting a contract providing them with substantially less than management's initial "final offer." All because these union "leaders" like Mark Froemke convinced workers to put their trust in worthless Democratic Party politicians instead of teaching working people that their strength comes from militant, united action which in this case required occupying and taking over the American Crystal Sugar's plants, and now requires stopping the scabs.

After failing to take the appropriate action the first time around by occupying the plants, one would expect union leaders to at least recognize after seven months this is a struggle which can't be resolved (there is nothing any longer to win) without stopping the scabs.

I find it interesting that Mark Froemke and his gang have no problem physically attacking progressives at Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party conventions where they are used to prevent progressive alternatives from reaching the convention floors; but, when it comes to stopping these dirty scabs Froemke and his ilk cower before the company security and state and local police guarding the safe passage of these scabs depriving workers of their jobs and livelihoods. 

Everything that is wrong in the CPUSA and in the U.S. labor movement can be seen in these 1,300 American Crystal Sugar workers being locked-out of their jobs left without any incomes or livelihoods.

This "Journey for Justice" should have begun long before the contract expired with workers and union leaders knowing they were facing a lockout with scabs being brought in.

Mark Froemke still wears his Obama cap even though Obama has ignored the plight these 1,300 workers living in the Red River Valley find themselves in.

The rank-and-file will have to develop a new union leadership quickly lest they wind up without a union contract and without jobs.

Another thing complicating this situation is that for years Mark Froemke has been doing the dirty work for the well-heeled Summit Hill Club in the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party by attacking those seeking real reforms and standing aloof of auto workers trying to save their jobs as the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant closed. Fromeke and this joke called the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers' International Union (BCTGM) which passes itself off as a union has never demonstrated let alone shown any sympathy or support for other working people and their struggles for justice. Had they, workers would have turned out to stop these scabs many months ago.

The working class needs a strong Communist Party now more than ever so these mis-leaders of organized laborcan't continue to sell out the working class.

We didn't learn that our union leaders in the UAW had sold us out until it was too late. We believed all their tough sounding talk about how they would never allow our plant, the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant to close. The CPUSA and the Democrats sold us out. So did the Trotskyists like they usually do. American Crystal Sugar workers still have their union. If they don't take a stand and stop the scabs they will be no better off than us Ford workers.

Locked-out workers and supporters converge on Minnesota town

by: John Wojcik

February 24 2012

tags: Minnesota, worker rights, lockouts

CHASKA, Minn. - Locked out workers and their supporters from all over the Midwest were on the move yesterday.

The workers  locked out from American Crystal Sugar's plant in Mason City, Iowa, traveled north to join the Journey for Justice entourage as it pulled into this Twin Cities suburb.

The rally they held here and a picket line brought together in one big crowd locked-out workers form five Crystal Sugar plants -  Mason City, and four Minnesota plants: Chaska, Moorhead, Hillsboro and Drayton - as well as locked-out workers from Cooper Tire in Findlay, Ohio.

Later in the day the Steelworkers announced a tentative agreement had been reached with Cooper Tire to end that lockout. The agreement will be outlined for 1,000 members Saturday and they will vote on it in Findlay on Monday.

Michael Moore, press director for the Journey for Justice, told the People's World today that the Cooper Tire workers would continue on the 1,000-mile Journey for Justice in solidarity with the locked-out American Crystal Sugar workers.

He said that while the locked-out Cooper Tire workers "haven't yet broken out the bottles of champagne, they are guardedly optimistic." Cooper Tire workers had rejected the last contract offer in November. Terms of the new agreement won't be disclosed by the union until members have had their chance to see those terms.

Before rallying and throwing up a picket line here the eight Journey for Justice riders entered CoBank, the primary lender for Crystal Sugar.

They delivered a letter telling the institution's officers that CoBank is incurring increased risk by doing business with Crystal Sugar during the lockout. The letter explained that it is costing the company more money to transport scabs in and out of the facility, in addition to having to feed and house them. The scabs, the letter points out, are also less productive than Crystal Sugar's union workers.

Workers note that the proof is in American Crystal's profits which, according to the letter, fell 39 percent in the first quarter after the lockout began August 1.

A representative of the bank accepted the letter, promising to get it to the bank's executives.

The eight locked-out workers gave CoBank 24 hours to respond to the letter or be faced with a demonstration outside its corporate headquarters later today.

Robert Greer, one of the eight making the 1,000-mile Journey for Justice through six states,  was locked out from Cooper Tire after working for the company as an electrician for 22 years. Greer, the Rapid Response Political Action Coordinator for Steelworkers Local 207L, which represents Cooper workers,  says companies have what they consider good reasons for paying the high costs of lockouts.

"You have lockouts going on all over for the same reason you have right-to-work-for-less laws being pushed in the states. They want to take advantage of the economic climate and use it to cut pay and benefits and to destroy unions," Greer said.

Greer said it is important that all workers, union and non-union, see the importance of stopping lockouts and other corporate attacks on collective bargaining rights.

"We've lost 58,000 manufacturing plants during this recession," Greer said. "The attacks on unions have created a situation that in a town like mine jobs now start at $8 or $10 an hour. This hurts everyone, including the people not in unions. You can't raise a family on the kind of money they are paying. Everyone needs to see this as their fight."

Photo: Workers from five American Crystal Sugar facilities across the Midwest converge on the plant in Chaska, Minn. Photo courtesy of Bakery Workers union.