Carl:
A very sincere “AMEN “.
Richard
Sent from my iPhone
On May 18, 2018, at 9:05 AM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
And that's all it is, Richard. A theory, as full of holes as any
other. But seriously, we need some system that brings balance to the
tug of war between People's needs and Corporate Profit. When Donald
Trump campaigned on "Draining the Swamp", many voters thought he meant
ridding us of government corruption. Instead, it appears that
Draining the Swamp means reducing the social services many Americans
must depend on for basic survival.
I found it interesting that Corporations can put up countless millions
of dollars to support their Television Media, but demand that congress
cut funding to so many of our social services. Did you know that Alex
Trevek earns ten million dollars per year? Or that Pat sajak earns
twelve million per year? Or that Judge Judy brings down 47 million
dollars for a 52 day year's work?
Carl Jarvis
On 5/18/18, R. E. Driscoll Sr <llocsirdsr@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl: Very interesting theory.
Richard
Sent from my iPhone
On May 17, 2018, at 9:53 PM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
When American Workers stop segregating themselves into statuses, i.e.
Blue Collar, White collar, Upper Middle Class, Middle Class, and so
on, we can then begin to draft our offensive strategy. It will take a
majority of American Workers turning away from Capitalism, to begin to
reshape our national goals.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/17/18, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2018/8220/822050.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 82/No. 20 May 21, 2018
(special feature)
US class struggle a feature at Havana conference
Panel from US describes capitalist rulers’ offensive, growing resistance
by working people
BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
AND RÓGER CALERO
HAVANA — “Did the 2016 electoral victory of Donald Trump register a rise
in racism, xenophobia, misogyny and every other form of reaction among
working people in the United States? Is that why tens of millions of
workers voted for him?”
That question was posed by Mary-Alice Waters, a leader of the Socialist
Workers Party, in one of the featured talks at a three-day conference
here. The gathering was one of several events held in conjunction with
the celebration of the international day of the working class, May Day,
when more than a million workers mobilized in Havana and across the
island.
Waters also posed a second question: “Is a socialist revolution in the
U.S. really possible? Or are those like ourselves, who answer with an
unhesitating ‘Yes,’ a new variety of utopian socialist fools, however
well-meaning?”
Her talk, which focused on answering those questions, initiated a
two-part program on the class struggle in the United States. The second
part was entitled “From Clinton to Trump: How working people in the U.S.
are responding to the anti-labor offensive of the bosses, their parties,
and their government.” It was a panel of leaders and supporters of the
Socialist Workers Party with years of trade union experience in major
industries and other sectors of the economy, including agriculture. They
described the multifaceted forms of capitalist exploitation and
oppression working people face in the United States, and even more
importantly, the growing resistance that the owners’ offensive is
generating.
The two-part program was a central feature of the 12th International May
Day Conference, held here April 24-26. The main sponsors of the event
were the History Institute of Cuba and the Central Organization of Cuban
Workers (CTC), the country’s trade union federation. It was attended by
some 130 people. Most came from cities across Cuba. Others were from
Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the United States, Spain, and the
United Kingdom.
CTC General Secretary Ulises Guilarte opened the conference with an
address on challenges facing Cuban working people and the unions today,
from the vantage point that here “the working class is in power.”
Presentations were also given by leaders of Cuba’s Commercial and Food
Workers Union and Tourism Workers Union.
Silvia Odriozola, of the National Association of Economists and
Accountants, spoke on the state of the Cuban economy today. Another
feature was a panel discussion on the Cuban sugar industry. Liobel
Pérez, of the state sugar company Azcuba, explained steps underway to
improve irrigation systems and the mechanization of the sugar harvest,
as well as to develop biofuel from sugarcane derivatives.
Orlando Borrego, who fought under the command of Ernesto Che Guevara in
Cuba’s revolutionary war, and served as sugar minister in the 1960s,
spoke about his experiences working with Guevara in the revolutionary
government. He described Guevara’s qualities as a communist leader who
instilled confidence in working people that they could build a socialist
society on new economic foundations and transform themselves in the
process.
The conference program included more than 20 panels. Some discussed the
situation facing working people internationally, from Argentina to
Venezuela. Others took up the history of the working-class movement in
Cuba, from the role of Julio Antonio Mella, founding leader of the Cuban
Communist Party in the 1920s, to the textile workers strike during World
War II. Another series focused on women in the Cuban workforce and
unions.
The conference itself was held at a historic trade union and cultural
center, the Cigar Rollers Palace. Founded by the tobacco workers union
in 1925, it served for decades as a broader center for educational,
social and organizing activities of the labor movement. It is now being
restored to become a social center and museum on the history of the
Cuban workers movement.
Presentation on U.S. class struggle
The final day of the conference featured the two-and-a-half-hour program
on the class struggle in the United States. In her talk, titled, “In
defense of the U.S. working class,” Waters addressed misconceptions and
prejudices about the U.S. working class that are common in Cuba and
elsewhere.
In replying to the two questions she posed, Waters described in some
detail the importance of the teachers strike that exploded in West
Virginia and has spread to Oklahoma, Arizona, and elsewhere. She
explained how it is a response to decades of attacks on the living
standards of working people by the owners of industry and their
government. In West Virginia, she noted, the teachers strike “became a
genuine social movement fighting for the needs of the entire working
class and its allies.”
Waters said it’s not surprising that most of the states where teachers
have walked out are where Trump won big majorities in 2016. She quoted a
teacher from West Virginia — one of the most economically ravaged
regions in the country — who said that people there voted for Trump for
the same reason they went on strike. They have nothing but distrust and
growing hatred for what they call the political establishment, both
Democrats and Republicans, from Washington to state Capitols across the
country.
Far from growing reaction, what we’re seeing among working people in the
U.S., Waters underlined, is greater openness today than at any time in
our political lives to consider what a socialist revolution is and why
our class should take state power. That’s what SWP members have learned
firsthand as they go door to door talking with working people in rural
and urban areas across the country.
Is a socialist revolution in the U.S. possible? Waters answered, “Not
only is it possible, but even more important, revolutionary battles by
the toilers are inevitable.” What is not inevitable is victory. That
depends above all on the caliber of proletarian leadership.
As evidence of the kinds of battles to come and the revolutionary
capacities of the working class, she pointed to three of the most
important class-struggle upsurges in the U.S. in the last century. One
was the mass labor battles of the 1930s that organized millions of
workers into the industrial unions, and especially the union-organizing
drive led by the Minneapolis Teamsters throughout the Upper Midwest, who
had a class-struggle leadership that included members of the Socialist
Workers Party.
Another was the mass Black, proletarian-led movement of the 1950s and
’60s, which brought down Jim Crow segregation. Combined with the deep
impact of the simultaneous example of Cuba’s advancing socialist
revolution, it gave new generations unshakable confidence in what the
working class could achieve.
These struggles became intertwined with what became the millions-strong
movement against Washington’s war in Vietnam, which reached into the
draftee army and shook the confidence of the U.S. ruling class.
In the second part of the program, Jacob Perasso, a union freight rail
conductor in Albany, New York, described working conditions in the
industry as bosses reduce crew sizes, extend workdays up to 12 hours,
and cut corners on safety. He noted how his co-workers are seeking ways
to resist these attacks and their openness to discuss what socialists
put forward.
Alyson Kennedy, who was part of the first wave of women who fought their
way into underground mining jobs, related some of the battles she was
involved in, from West Virginia to Alabama to Utah during her 14 years
as a coal miner. Currently working as a cashier at a store in Texas, she
talked about the teachers strike in Oklahoma and its impact on working
people throughout the region.
Willie Head, a small farmer in south Georgia, described the long
struggle by farmers who are Black to keep their land and some of the
forms of discrimination they face from the banks and the government. He
explained how, like most small producers, he has had to work many
different jobs off the farm in order to earn enough income to keep
farming.
Róger Calero, drawing on his involvement in union struggles by
meatpackers in Minnesota and coal miners in Utah, explained how
anti-immigrant prejudices are driven by the U.S. rulers, not working
people, and why the fight to prevent scapegoating of immigrant workers
and win amnesty is a life-and-death question for the working class.
Omari Musa, a veteran of decades of union battles as well as the Black
rights movement, gave numerous examples showing how and why today it is
harder than ever for the U.S. capitalist rulers to use anti-Black racism
to divide workers, and how this has strengthened the working class.
One panelist, Harry D’Agostino, a musician, who was unable to
participate at the last minute, wrote out his remarks, which were
distributed to everyone present. He discussed the particular challenges
faced by young people just entering the workforce — and the impact of
seeing the working class in action for the first time.
‘Amazed at conditions in U.S.’
After the presentations, a Cuban audience member asked why all the
struggles in the United States seem to be by different “sectors”
isolated from each other.
Waters replied that the apparently disparate struggles register the fact
that working-class resistance in the U.S. is only now beginning to
develop into a social movement, led by the working class, that can
eventually become strong enough to bring together fights on different
fronts so they reinforce each other. These different fronts are all
class questions, she said, part of the fight to unify the working class
in struggle.
The discussion continued informally over the next few hours. Numerous
delegates said they especially appreciated the concreteness of the
descriptions of job conditions and labor struggles in the United States
— and were amazed by the facts presented.
A teacher from the Autonomous University of Chapingo, Mexico, told
Waters that what she learned “completely changed” how she viewed what is
happening in the United States today. Two Argentine teachers from the
National University of Southern Patagonia told the Militant they were
glad to hear the discussion on the need to defend immigrant workers in
face of deportations, an issue posed in Argentina as well, where the
ruling class scapegoats Bolivian and other immigrants.
Discussion on Cuban economy
The economic and political challenges in Cuba today were a central
thread of discussion at the conference. CTC General Secretary Guilarte
reported that 584,000 people now work in what is often called here the
“nonstate” sector of the economy. These include both owners and workers
at private restaurants, landlords who rent rooms to tourists in private
homes, members of cooperative enterprises in construction,
transportation, and many other small businesses. Guilarte as well as
economist Silvia Odriozola explained that the CTC is seeking to organize
all those involved in the “nonstate” sector.
A Chilean delegate asked if that meant the CTC is organizing both owners
and employees of small businesses as if they are all workers. Odriozola
said that was accurate and argued in favor of the policy, saying that
“many things are new and changing, and the problems are still being
worked out.”
During a panel discussion on “regional economic integration,” an
important debate took place between Pedro Ross, former longtime CTC
general secretary, and one of the Argentine participants. Ross took the
floor to argue that the fundamental problems facing workers and farmers
in Latin America will not be addressed until capitalism is overturned,
as was done in Cuba. He reinforced a point made by two University of
Havana students on the panel who said the world capitalist system is in
a long-term economic crisis that means no end to unemployment and
poverty for millions.
When panel moderator Nerina Visacovsky, a professor at the University of
Buenos Aires in Argentina, began to close the discussion period, saying,
“We all need to learn from Che,” Ross interjected, “And Marx, Engels,
and Lenin.”
Visacovsky replied, “Yes, it’s true we must study the classics of
Marxism, but we also need to see how conditions today have changed so we
don’t follow outdated recipes.”
Ross responded in turn, “In Cuba we made a socialist revolution. Ours is
a proven ‘recipe.’ Capitalism must be overturned.” He added, “And to
learn more about this, I urge everyone to listen to what the American
compañeros will say,” referring to the panel on the U.S. class struggle
scheduled for the next day.
Closing the final session of the conference, Cuban History Institute
President René González Barrios thanked the U.S. socialists not only for
the presentations but for bringing an array of books on the subjects
discussed. Over the course of the three days, conference delegates
purchased some 140 of them.
Among the most popular were Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible?
by Mary-Alice Waters, and two books by SWP National Secretary Jack
Barnes: Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? and The Clintons’
Anti-Working-Class Record. A good number of participants got one or more
volumes of the four-part series by Farrell Dobbs on the 1930s Teamsters
battles, now available in its entirety in Spanish.
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