WW News Service Digest #227
1) World Says No to U.S. Space War
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
2) Disney Racism Taints Super Bowl Win
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
3) Protests Grow in Ecuador
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
4) Lockerbie: Behind the Sham Conviction
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
5) Ashcroft and Women's Rights
by [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 15, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
AS BUSH, PENTAGON PUSH NATINAL MISSLE DEFENSE:
WORLD SAYS NO TO U.S. SPACE WAR
By Deirdre Griswold
What is it that propels the U.S. government forward on a
supremely dangerous and costly path of militarizing space,
just when it would seem that finally some swords might be
beaten into plowshares?
The so-called National Missile Defense program now being
vigorously promoted by President George W. Bush and his
cabinet, particularly Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,
has alarmed the entire world. Everywhere, this vague but
broad scheme is seen as the beginning of a deadly new arms
race that will undo existing arms limitation and disarmament
treaties and compel other nations to divert scarce resources
into defense.
Rumsfeld was in Europe the first week in February telling
the members of the European Union that the United States was
going ahead with NMD no matter what they think about it. He
was greeted by thousands of demonstrators in Munich,
Germany. At the same time, Canadian Prime Minister Jean
Chrétien was making an uncomfortable trip to Washington to
visit Bush.
NOT OUT OF LOVE FOR MEXICO
It has been customary for many decades now for a new U.S.
president to visit Canada on his initial trip abroad. Bush
is not doing this, opting instead to make Mexico his first
stop abroad later this month. That led Chretien to come
here.
On the face of it, Bush going to Mexico could be a welcome
break with tradition if it were to acknowledge Mexico's
importance and underline the significance the U.S. attaches
to its relations with Latin America.
That, however, would be to misunderstand Bush's motive.
While Latin America has always been an important source of
wealth for U.S. corporations, and while U.S. presidents as
long ago as James Monroe warned their European rivals not to
contest U.S. hegemony over Latin America, none of this has
anything to do with respect for the peoples or their
culture. It is pure and simple imperialism.
The North American Free Trade Agreement has allowed U.S.
corporations even freer rein in Mexico in recent years and
has opened Mexican markets more widely to U.S. products.
Some elements of the Mexican bourgeoisie have profited from
this, as shown by the electoral victory last year of Vicente
Fox, once Coca-Cola's CEO in Mexico. But for the workers and
peasants, NAFTA means more intense exploitation by both
foreign and domestic capital while imported foodstuffs crush
small farmers and shopkeepers.
Their desperation can be seen in the ever-growing numbers
who risk their lives crossing the border to find hard, low-
paid jobs in the U.S.
Canada, unlike Mexico, is a fellow imperialist country, and
therefore allowed into the G-8 organization of global
plunderers. Usually the political establishments in both
countries boast of their amicable relationship and peaceful
borders. But right now, Bush is signaling his displeasure
with Chretien by making him have to come to Washington.
Why? Because Chretien issued a joint statement in December
with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin demanding that
the U.S. live up to treaties it has signed that limit
nuclear weapons and agree not to militarize space.
The NMD program would unilaterally abrogate these treaties.
A GAMBLER WITHOUT A MANDATE
Since Bush is regarded by the majority of people here and
around the world as illegitimate because of the vote fraud
in Florida, it would seem highly risky for him to embark on
such an aggressive militaristic path right from the
beginning. Again, what is urging his administration on?
It certainly is not any fear of vulnerability. Never before
has any country reigned supreme over the world in the way
the U.S. does today. Again and again we are told that now
there is only one superpower. The U.S. government spends
more on its war-making capability than most of the rest of
the world combined.
Under these conditions, it is difficult to convince the
population that they must pay for a nebulous new-tech system
of lasers, satellites and what-not that is estimated to
eventually cost $60 billion, and will undoubtedly come to
much more once the usual cost overruns kick in.
Nevertheless, the Pentagon and the vast web of corporations
and banks that feed off military contracts are pushing very
hard to create a scare campaign that would justify
developing and deploying this ominous new system. For years
they have tried to frighten everyone into believing that
"international terrorism" is gonna getcha if you don't watch
out.
Of course, the worst terrorist incident in U.S. history--the
Oklahoma City bombing--was carried out by home grown racists
who'd gotten their training in the U.S. Army. This didn't
stop the Clinton administration from using the incident to
strengthen repressive legislation aimed not at the right
wing but at immigrants.
BLAME THE VICTIM
Now the argument is that north Korea, Iraq and maybe others
could threaten the U.S. at some indefinite point in the
future. And after everything the Pentagon has done to them,
isn't that reason enough to believe they're out to get us?
It doesn't seem to matter to Washington that the government
of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is conducting
historic talks with south Korea aimed at ending the 55-year
division and hostility on the Korean peninsula. Neither the
Clinton nor Bush administrations have given the slightest
indication that they are willing to even consider
withdrawing the nearly 40,000 U.S. troops stationed there
ever since the Korean War.
On the contrary. Despite a growing movement in the south to
end military exercises and remove the bases, and despite
many overtures from the Kim Jong Il government in the north,
Washington continues to insist that it must deploy a
"missile shield" in Asia because of the "threat from north
Korea."
Both Russia and China have denounced the NMD as a
destabilizing threat that would tear down the architecture
of arms control built up over 30 years. It is clearly U.S.
strategy to promote the capitalist market in both these
countries as a way to both "bury communism" and draw them
into a global economy dominated by U.S. imperialist banks
and corporations. So why pursue a military strategy that
could undermine this process?
LUSH CONTRACTS TO DIE FOR
At least part of the answer must lie in the current state of
the U.S. economy. While industrial production has begun to
show weakness, it is precisely the high-tech areas that are
in the deepest trouble. High-tech stocks have fallen off the
cliff, and layoffs in the dot-com companies have just begun.
There is no way of knowing how far the crisis will go, but
it is clear that the whole world capitalist economy has been
moving into recession. And while U.S. corporations at first
profited off disasters like the Asian crash of 1997, buying
up assets at fire-sale prices, this last holdout is now
succumbing to the disease. This can then further depress the
rest of the world.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Roosevelt
administration and its Keynesian economists initiated a "New
Deal" of large-scale public works programs that they
believed would be the recipe for recovery. They argued that
this state intervention in the economy would be a "counter-
cyclical" mechanism to prime the pump of industry and
commerce by putting some money in workers' pockets. It was
also, of course, meant to blunt their growing social and
class consciousness.
However, the New Deal did not succeed in lifting the U.S.
out of the Depression. It was only preparation for war,
first in Europe and then in the U.S., which overcame the
general crisis of capitalist overproduction and started the
economic engines going again.
And it was the horrendous destruction of World War II that
laid the basis for a long period of postwar capitalist
reconstruction.
Today, the social safety net created in the 1930s has been
largely dismantled, first under Reagan and Bush, then under
Clinton with his infamous signing of the welfare reform act.
There is great anxiety among workers in this country who
have been working extra jobs and overtime to make their bill
payments. What will they do if they are laid off? What if
they need medical attention and can't afford it? Will they
lose their homes? Can they keep up payments on their cars--
often a vital necessity in order to get work?
Even though it is clear that hard times are coming, there is
no talk of bringing any of the safety net back.
But there is more than talk when it comes to military
production. The companies now lining up at the NMD trough
for lucrative government contracts desperately want
something dependable to pull them through lean times.
Government cost-plus contracts look mighty good at a time
like this. Worth fighting for--or risking a war for.
One company that is already feeding at the trough is Boeing.
It currently is signed up for $6 billion in contracts, but
that figure could rise to $13.7 by the year 2007. Boeing,
the world's largest aircraft company, is not faring so well
in the civilian area. It is losing out to Airbus of France
in the competition to build a new super jumbo jet able to
carry up to 800 passengers.
The last budget prepared under the Clinton administration
set aside more money for missile defense than for any other
weapons program. The fiscal 2001 request for national
missile defense was $1.9 billion; all forms of missile
defense add up to $4.7 billion. This money will end up in
the pockets of a variety of military-related corporations
that unashamedly lobby Washington lawmakers to keep the
green stuff coming.
Bush made a point of holding a secret meeting with a group
of high-tech CEOs in the very first days of his new
administration. What promises did he make to them about
government support--that he won't make to the workers of
this country?
An economic crisis brings to the fore the most irrational
and destructive tendencies in the capitalist system. The NMD
program, son of Reagan's Star Wars, certainly ranks among
the worst. It will force many, many people to think
seriously and deeply about how to get rid of the profit
system.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 15, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
SNUBBING RAY LEWIS: DISNEY RACISM TAINTS SUPER
BOWN WIN
By Monica Moorehead
Once again the specter of racism has raised its ugly head at
the most exalted sporting event in the United States--the
Super Bowl.
On Jan. 28, American Football Conference champions the
Baltimore Ravens beat National Football Conference champions
the New York Giants by 34-7 during Super Bowl XXXV.
A big reason for the Ravens' stunning and unexpected
championship was their awesome defensive team. Many sports
commentators have proclaimed their defense as the best ever.
The heart and soul of the Ravens' defense is middle
linebacker Ray Lewis. Lewis, who is African American, is
only the third defensive player to ever be named the Super
Bowl's Most Valuable Player. The middle linebacker is
considered to be the main play-caller for the defense.
It has been a time-honored tradition for the Super Bowl MVP
to make a commercial for Walt Disney World that could then
lead to other corporate endorsement deals for the athlete.
But not in the case of Ray Lewis.
ACCUSED OF DOUBLE MURDER
Just a year ago, during all of the hoopla surrounding Super
Bowl XXXIV in Atlanta, Lewis was accused of the double
murder of two young African American men outside of a
nightclub.
For weeks following his arrest, footage of Lewis wearing
shackles on his ankles and wrists as he was brought into an
Atlanta courtroom was splashed all over the electronic and
print media.
The prosecuting attorney didn't have enough evidence to
convict him. In order to end his ordeal, Lewis agreed to
plead guilty to obstruction of justice and was released.
He was just another Black man caught up in the vicious cycle
of the racist criminal justice system--except that he was
also a well-known football player.
Lewis had hoped to put the ordeal behind him. But to no
avail.
Once the Ravens won the AFC championship, the mainstream
media dredged up the case, demanding that Lewis come clean
with what he knew about the murders. Their reasoning was
that since no one else had been arrested, he must be hiding
some evidence. This became the number-one story prior to the
Super Bowl.
To his credit, Ravens' Head Coach Brian Billick, along with
other teammates, defended Lewis before the Super Bowl. The
media then attacked Billick for defending the player.
THE CASE OF KERRY COLLINS
Compare the media's biased treatment of Lewis to Kerry
Collins, the Giants' white quarterback.
Several years ago, while Collins was quarterback of the
Carolina Panthers, he used racial epithets against some of
his Black teammates while intoxicated at a bar.
During the media blitz before the Super Bowl, Collins was
treated with kid gloves. They asked him about his alcoholism
but said nothing about the racist incident.
Instead of choosing Ray Lewis to be Disney World's
spokesperson, the corporate giant instead chose the Ravens'
white quarterback, Trent Dilfer.
Disney representatives declined to comment on their choice.
But Bob Williams, president of Burns Sports, a business that
hooks up athletes and corporate sponsors, stated: "Disney
feels there'd be a terrific downside to having Ray Lewis
associated with the Mouse. He can hurt the Disney image of
families and children."
This is the same company founded by Walt Disney, a reported
Nazi sympathizer during World War II. This is the same
Disney that produced numerous movies using racist
stereotypes of Black people.
This is the same Disney World that didn't want to provide
full health-care coverage for its workers and their same-sex
domestic partners. The workers were forced to go on strike
to win their rightful benefits.
This is the same Disney that super-exploits sweatshop labor
for profit in Haiti and elsewhere.
The true image of everything associated with the Disney name
is racist, anti-gay and anti-labor. How dare the Disney
bosses accuse Lewis of projecting a negative image?
DISNEY'S RACIST RECORD
In fact, this isn't the first time that Disney has opted to
have a white quarterback represent it over a Black MVP
winner.
In 1989 Joe Montana was chosen over his teammate Jerry Rice.
In 1998 John Elway was chosen over Terrell Davis.
Disney wants to preserve the supremacist image of the white
quarterback even though Black quarterbacks are now making
tremendous inroads into that still-privileged position.
Dilfer must also share some of the blame for this slap in
the face to Lewis.
Why didn't he decline Disney World's offer? Why didn't he
call a news conference to denounce what they did to Lewis?
Why didn't he extend a hand of anti-racist solidarity to his
teammate who had been taking so much heat? All of the media
would have had to pay attention.
Dilfer caved in to this insult to Lewis not only because he
lacks any kind of anti-racist consciousness, but also
because he's thinking about increasing his own visibility
with corporate sponsors. Prominent professional athletes
receive many millions of dollars from corporate endorsements-
-much more than their annual salaries as players.
That's what professional sports in the U.S. is all about--
making the almighty dollar and saying to hell with important
social issues like fighting racism, sexism and
lesbian/gay/bi/trans oppression.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 15, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
STATE OF EMERGENCY DECLARED: PROTESTS GROW IN
ECUADOR
By Andy McInerney
Protests by Indigenous and popular forces across Ecuador
have once again thrown the pro-International Monetary Fund
ruling elite into a crisis. Unable to sell the austerity
measures it needs to win approval from U.S. and European
bankers, the regime of President Gustavo Noboa declared a
state of emergency on Feb. 2 to stifle mass protests.
The growing clashes between Indigenous peasants, workers and
students on one side and Noboa's riot police and military on
the other were provoked by a Dec. 28 announcement raising
the price of gasoline, heating oil and bus fares by 75 to
100 percent. The IMF is demanding these hikes as a condition
for a $2 billion loan.
Student-led demonstrations began days after the decree. But
as in past demonstrations, the Confederation of Indigenous
Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) played a decisive role in
spreading the protests across the 12-million-person Andean
nation.
CONAIE launched a wave of road blockades on Jan. 21--on the
first anniversary of the uprising that forced the previous
regime headed by Jamil Mahuad out of office. By Jan. 24, the
blockades came under attack by the Ecuadorian military.
After four Indigenous demonstrators were wounded by military
fire, the protests grew.
"We are not going to back down in front of the military or
the government," CONAIE leader Antonio Vargas told the
French News Agency. "And if we have to die fighting, we will
die."
By Jan. 26, food shortages began to take hold in the major
cities as produce from the countryside was blocked.
On Jan. 28, CONAIE representatives and supporters began to
descend on Quito, the capital. "We call on all democratic
forces to join us and continue to protest until the
government repeals its fuel price hikes," Vargas said.
"We will not back down until the government rescinds
measures that are starving the Ecuadorian people."
Two days later, government troops again tried to crack down.
Police arrested Vargas and Luis Villacis, head of the
Popular Front coalition of unions, student and community
groups. The two were released on Feb. 2 after an
international outcry.
Their release came the same day that Noboa declared a state
of emergency, prohibiting demonstrations and allowing police
searches at roadblocks and in activists' homes. Noboa warned
of groups trying to "disrupt the order in the Republic,
alter the legal system and illegitimately grasp the power of
the State."
By that time, up to 8,000 CONAIE supporters had made the
Salesian Polytechnic University in Quito their home base.
Ominous news reports of troops surrounding the campus
surfaced.
Fifty of the Indigenous activists declared a hunger strike
to protest the repression.
CLIENT REGIMES LACK SOCIAL SUPPORT
The situation in Ecuador is in many ways typical of the
crisis facing Latin America. Crushing poverty and
unemployment afflict millions. Inflation is skyrocketing--in
Ecuador, prices nearly doubled last year. Only 25 percent of
Ecuadorians have full-time jobs, according to a Jan. 3
Reuters report.
The local ruling classes, backed by U.S. imperialism,
continue to seek more profits from an already super-
exploited continent. Nearly 60 cents of every dollar that
the Noboa regime gains if its austerity measure goes through
will go directly to U.S. banks in the form of loan
repayments.
The Noboa regime is the fifth in as many years in Ecuador.
Two presidencies have been toppled by mass protests. In
January 2000, CONAIE in alliance with low-ranking military
officers and other popular forces briefly set up a people's
government, although it could not withstand the pressure of
the U.S. and the Ecuadorian military high command.
The main contradiction for the IMF bankers is that the
client regimes in Ecuador--and increasingly throughout Latin
America--cannot impose the bankers' dictates. Any move
toward austerity generates mass protest amid an increasingly
fragile system of exploitation.
Ecuador's workers and peasants have shown their
determination to resist the IMF program of mass austerity
and privatization. They have called a national mobilization
of strikes and protests on Feb. 7 to continue the campaign
to turn back Noboa's decrees.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 15, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
EVIDENCE "VERY WEAK": WASHINGTON USES LOCKERBIE
TRIAL TO ATTACK LIBYA
By John Catalinotto
Even Robert Black, the Scottish law professor who devised
the trial, called the evidence "very, very weak." But that
didn't stop the court from finding Libyan Abdul Baset al-
Miqrahi guilty and sentencing him to life imprisonment on
Feb. 1.
And it didn't stop the U.S. and British governments from
stating that they would continue nine years of sanctions
against Libya and demand that Libya pay "compensation" to
the families of those who died when Pan Am Flight 103
crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
What Black's statement did, however, was show that the trial
held in Camp Zeist in the Netherlands was a political trial.
Its aim was to continue pressure on Libya and to show the
power of U.S. and British imperialism to punish whatever
"enemy" they choose, regardless of evidence.
The second accused person in the Lockerbie issue, Elamine
Khaleifa Faheima, was found not guilty by the court. He
arrived back in Tripoli, Libya, a day later.
Libya's leader, Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, denied a Libyan
role in the bombing and insisted that Al-Miqrahi was
innocent and a hostage of the U.S. and Britain. He asked
that the sanctions end, as did the Arab League and the
People's Republic of China.
International pressure has been growing to end the sanctions
against Libya, just as it has for ending the sanctions
against Iraq.
The strongest evidence that a Libyan had a motive for the
Pan Am crash--any Libyan--was the crimes of U.S. imperialism
against that north African country. The rest was concocted
by U.S. and British government agents and experts who had
control of the evidence.
To understand how the U.S. government manipulated the
propaganda around the trial, it helps to review some of the
events leading up to the December 1988 crash.
CRIMES OF U.S. IMPERIALISM
In 1986, the U.S. launched a sneak bombing attack on the
Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi from air bases in
Britain. The public excuse from the Reagan administration
was that Libyan agents allegedly set off a bomb at a Berlin
disco frequented by U.S. soldiers in the then-divided city.
These charges were later abandoned.
The real reason was that the Libyan government was trying to
defend its sovereignty against imperialism. A clash had
taken place in early 1986 between U.S. warships trying to
invade Libyan territorial waters in the Gulf of Sidra and
the Libyan coast guard.
The Reagan administration was constantly tightening economic
restrictions on Libya in that period. It used Libya's
alleged connection with the Berlin blast as a pretext to
launch the 100-plane bombing raid, which targeted Qaddafi's
family home as well as air bases and barracks. One of
Qaddafi's young daughters was killed in the raid, along with
other Libyans.
The French Embassy in Tripoli was also bombed, which the
Pentagon claimed was a mistake. France had refused to let
U.S. bombers fly over its air space on their way to bomb
Libya.
This was a state-sponsored terrorist attack on Libya with
the aim of assassinating that country's president. The media
here presented it differently. But the rulers knew what they
were doing, and they knew it was a crime. They knew Libya
had every moral right to strike back.
But Libya was not alone in this condition.
U.S. TERRORISM AGAINST IRAN
In the summer of 1988, the USS Vincennes, stationed in
Iran's territorial waters in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, shot
down an Iranian airliner. Some 290 civilians were killed.
The official Pentagon story was that this was an accident.
The Pentagon had intervened in the war between Iraq and
Iran. U.S. policy, as explained so coldly by Henry Kissinger
later, was to goad the Iraqis and Iranians into killing each
other to weaken both. By 1988, however, Washington was more
interested in weakening Iran, then considered more hostile
to U.S. interests.
This may seem strange after the last 10 years of open U.S.
aggression against Iraq, but it was the situation then. U.S.
imperialism, like British colonialism of the 19th Century,
has no permanent allies. Washington has only the permanent
interests of the bankers and billionaires it represents.
Shooting down the civilian airliner was another type of
terrorist attack that U.S. forces carried out, not with a
hidden bomb but with a sophisticated rocket.
By ordering the murder of civilians in Libya and Iran, and
later in Iraq, by its aggression not only in the Middle East
but worldwide, Washington puts the lives of ordinary U.S.
citizens at risk. Then when someone strikes at a U.S. target-
-be it a warship off Yemen, an airbase in Saudi Arabia, an
airliner or a skyscraper--Washington knows it has lots of
enemies to choose from.
U.S. POLICE AGENCIES LIE
That it has enemies, however, doesn't mean that they carried
out a particular action against U.S. imperialism. Nor does
it mean that "evidence" is more important to Washington than
its immediate political needs.
In August 1998, for example, someone bombed U.S. embassies
in Tanzania and Kenya. The Clinton administration claimed it
was a team directed by Osama bin Laden, and ordered rocket
attacks on an alleged mountain base in Afghanistan and on a
medicine factory in Sudan.
During the civil war in Afghanistan, Bin Laden was an ally
of Washington against the USSR and received weapons from the
U.S. The factory in Sudan made medicine, not chemical
weapons as the Clinton administration charged, and had
nothing to do with Bin Laden. Yet this didn't stop the
attack.
To consider a domestic example, the FBI and U.S. courts will
concoct a case against someone like Leonard Peltier--a
political leader of the American Indian Movement at Pine
Ridge, S.D.--when it has no real evidence he shot two FBI
agents who had invaded the reservation. They will do the
same against Libya or Iran or north Korea or Yugoslavia or
whatever "enemy" they wish to demonize.
It is unfortunate that the honest and heartfelt feelings of
grief and anger of the relatives of those who died on Pan Am
Flight 103 have been manipulated against Libya. It would be
more fitting if they would join with Libyan, Iranian, Iraqi
and other victims of U.S. aggression and exploitation and
point their fingers at the real terrorists in Washington and
the Pentagon, in the CIA and Congress, who assault the
people of the world.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 15, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
"WE WON'T GOT BACK!": ASHCROFT AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS
By Naomi Cohen
The Feb. 1 confirmation of John Ashcroft as attorney
general, with eight Democratic senators joining with the
Republicans to vote in his favor, is in many ways the
logical conclusion to the period of reaction in the decade
since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the European
socialist bloc. It signals that a significant section of the
U.S. ruling class is willing to abandon all pretense of
working toward social justice or equality for people of
color, women or lesbian, gay, bi and trans people.
It is hard for some to imagine a man with such a record of
unabashed, unrepentant racism, sexism and homophobia being
appointed to head up the U.S. Justice Department. But it is
entirely fitting also. It is fitting because the rule of law
in the U.S., as in any capitalist country, is the rule of an
exploiting class. It is the rule of a class that lives by
stealing the labor of the poor and the oppressed, and by
dividing the working class with backward ideas of racism,
misogyny and anti-gay bigotry.
In some periods the ruling class feels the need to hide its
medieval ideas. But in times of reaction, they feel free to
flaunt their hateful ideology.
Perhaps it is no accident that the Ashcroft confirmation
follows close on the heels of white rapper Eminem's Grammy
Award nomination. In two different arenas the same hateful
misogyny, racism and homophobia are put forward for mass
consumption. In the latter case, it is the giant music
industry that is sponsoring the dissemination of violently
racist, sexist, and anti-gay ideas.
In addition, the appointment of Tommy Thompson as secretary
of health and human services signals an attempt to dismantle
whatever is left of the social services won by the great
mass struggles of the 1930s and 1960s, including welfare and
affirmative action. Thompson is the man who boasts about the
Wisconsin Works program, also called W-2, which became the
national model for destroying the entire welfare system
under the Clinton administration.
Activists in Milwaukee are mounting a campaign to expose the
devastating effects of W-2 on Wisconsin's poor. According to
them, in the program's first year, the Black infant
mortality rate in Milwaukee shot up 37 percent. In other
words, health care for poor women, access to pre-natal care
and adequate nutrition are so lacking that infants are dying
at birth at rates usually seen in the most poverty-stricken
developing countries.
CAPITALISM PROFITS FROM DIVISIONS
This is the nature of the "compassionate conservative"
administration that the workers and oppressed peoples are
faced with. It is no accident that the struggles against
racism, sexism and homophobia intersect in the person of
Ashcroft. It's not simply that he represents backward, right-
wing religious fanaticism, but rather that the capitalist
system itself profits from the division of the working
class.
Capitalism is a system based on exploitation and oppression.
At its core, the profit system needs cheap sources of labor.
And keeping the working class divided along racial, sexual
and gender lines, as well as pitting documented against
undocumented workers, adds up to more profits and freedom of
exploitation for the bosses.
Keeping women down, for example, means paying one half of
the working class lower wages--on top of the unpaid labor
they do in the home. And denying women reproductive freedom,
such as easy access to birth control and abortion, reduces
women to the status of semi-slavery. No human being can be
called really free if they do not have the right to make the
most fundamental decision about their own destiny, such as
the decision about whether or when to have a child.
Once a person is denied the right to decide her own fate in
terms of childbearing, it's not hard to see how women can be
marginalized as workers as well. If a woman is beaten or
even killed by a spouse or partner, it's no surprise that
the capitalist state in the form of the police, judges,
prisons, etc., often do not regard it as a crime worth
punishing. After all, women are still regarded as property
at the disposal of the men around them.
In this sense, it is very similar to the way racism works to
devalue people of color and homophobia demonizes lesbian,
gay, bi and trans people. Once people are targeted in this
way, it is open season for the racists, bigots, and police
to beat up, arrest or even kill with impunity.
This has been starkly illustrated recently with the spate of
revelations about police targeting of women for sexual abuse
and rape. The struggle in African American communities
across the country to end racial profiling by police has now
helped to uncover another form of profiling--sexual
profiling.
In New York's Nassau County, for example, several officers
have been charged with sexual abuse and rape. A lawyer for
several women told the Feb. 3 New York Times: "This is all
different officers. It is not one cop who has gone awry."
In other words, this is the accepted practice of dealing
with women, particularly poor women and women of color, by
men who have the power of life and death over them.
MARXISM ON WOMEN'S OPPRESSION
Marxism has a long history of recognizing the oppression of
women as an integral part of the basic structure of all
class societies. Frederick Engels explained in his
groundbreaking work, "The Origin of the Family, Private
Property and the State," that the patriarchal family
contains within it the seeds of all forms of class
oppression--slavery, feudalism and capitalism. Here the
women and children are regarded as the private property of
the male "head of household."
Even though the modern working class does not have any
property to hand down to its "heirs" as the capitalist class
does, the social relations in capitalist society today still
reflect the oppressed status of women.
Just a glance at poverty figures for the population as a
whole reveals that the vast majority of the poor are women
and their dependent children. Along with this second-class
status goes unpaid labor in the home, job discrimination and
low pay, sexual harassment, battering, rape, and now, more
and more, denial of a woman's right to control her own body.
Marx and Engels, and Lenin after them, recognized that the
only way to free women from these patriarchal, oppressive
conditions was to establish institutions to socialize the
work that was traditionally labeled as women's work, like
childcare, cooking and laundry. In fact, the Russian
Revolution of 1917 was the first in the world to pass equal-
rights legislation for women, including the right to vote
and the right to abortion.
The revolution also established cafeterias for workers'
families, public laundries, paid maternity leave and
universal day care, as well as universal health care and
access to jobs outside the home with equal pay and benefits.
These were revolutionary steps at the time, unseen in any of
the more developed capitalist countries.
In 1919, Lenin wrote, "Not a single democratic party in the
world, not even in the most advanced bourgeois republic, had
done in decades so much as a hundredth part of what we did
in our very first year in power.
"We actually razed to the ground the infamous laws placing
women in a position of inequality, restricting divorce and
surrounding it with disgusting formalities, denying
recognition to children born out of wedlock, enforcing a
search for their fathers, etc., laws numerous survivals of
which, to the shame of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism,
are to be found in all civilized countries. We have a
thousand times the right to be proud of what we have done in
this field.
"But the more thoroughly we clear the ground of the lumber
of the old, bourgeois laws and institutions, the more we
realize that we have only cleared to build on, but we are
not yet building.
"Notwithstanding all the laws emancipating women, she
continues to be a domestic slave, because petty housework
crushes, strangles, stultifies and degrades her, chains her
to the kitchen and nursery, and she wastes her labor on
barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, stultifying
and crushing drudgery.
"The real emancipation of women, real communism, will begin
only where and when an all out struggle begins (led by the
proletariat wielding the state power) against this petty
housekeeping, or rather when its wholesale transformation
into a large-scale socialist economy begins."
The limitations of the socialist revolution in Russia,
recognized by Lenin from the beginning, worsened after his
death. And some of the gains made by women in the early
years of the revolution were reversed. Long years of civil
war, imperialist encirclement and intervention, along with
the underdevelopment in the country itself, led to a
political reaction in the USSR. However, the concepts of the
socialization of housework and the responsibilities of
society to women and children were reflected in progressive
programs in all the socialist countries that followed, to
one degree or another.
CAPITALIST REACTION OUT IN THE OPEN
Today, with the collapse of socialism in the USSR and
Eastern Europe, the status of women in that part of the
world has sunk alarmingly. Now there is massive
unemployment, loss of childcare and health care, leading to
poverty and illness among women and children unseen in over
50 years of socialist development.
With the example of the Soviet Union gone, it is easier for
capitalist politicians like Bush and Ashcroft to try to
revive medieval ideas about women's "place" as homemakers
and mothers. They think that they no longer have to justify
their reactionary, oppressive ideas.
But women will not be driven back a century. They are almost
half the workforce and absolute necessity drives them to
demand better pay and working conditions.
Ashcroft and Bush hope to usher in a new era of reactionary
ideas and repressive legislation. But now that the ugly face
of capitalist reaction is out in the open for all to see, it
can help to clarify the class relations and the true
character of the capitalist state. This is not about a
Democratic or Republican administration. It is about the
system that underlies both.
When Janet Reno headed the Justice Department under Clinton,
in spite of her being a woman and a so-called moderate, the
prisons were filled to overflowing with Black, Latino and
other people of color out of all proportion to their numbers
in the population. And the incarceration of women on petty
drug charges skyrocketed.
During her watch, the terrorist campaigns against women's
health clinics and abortion providers went on unabated. And
the gay-bashing of people like Matthew Shepherd, as well as
the execution of Wanda Jean Allen, a mentally disabled
lesbian, went on and on.
Now it will be clearer that our only means of putting an end
to the agenda of the Bush administration, which is really
the agenda of the capitalist class itself, is to fight them
everywhere, to mobilize and organize.
This fight is not simply for a more democratic capitalist
system. The fight is to abolish private property, which is
at the root of all oppression, and replace it with
socialized property organized to better the status of all
humanity.
