Solutions to racist war at home and abroad

Monica Moorehead WW photo: Liz Green

The following is excerpted from a talk given by Workers World managing editor Monica Moorehead to a Feb. 18 Black History Month forum sponsored by the Boston branch of Workers World Party.

An article in the New York Times on Oct. 23 entitled “For Blacks, a Dream in Decline” summarized the current state of Black people in the U.S.:

“The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. set forth the goal. Civil rights and union membership were to be intertwined. The labor movement, Dr. King wrote in 1958, ‘must concentrate its powerful forces on bringing economic emancipation to white and Negro by organizing them together in social equality.’

“That happened in the 1960s and 1970s. But then unions lost bargaining power and members. And while labor leaders called attention to the overall decline, few took notice that blacks were losing much more ground than whites.

“In the last five years, that trend accelerated. Despite a growing economy, the number of African Americans in unions has fallen by 14.4 percent since 2000, while white membership is down 5.4 percent.

“For a while in the 1980s, one out of every four black workers was a union member; now it is closer to one in seven. This loss of better-paying jobs helps to explain why blacks are doing worse than any other group in the current recovery.”

These figures are an important remind er that the struggle for Black equality and workers’ rights is both interconnected and far from being over.

The deteriorating situation of Black workers cannot be divorced from the criminal offensive being carried out by monopoly finance capital on the living standards of the workers in the U.S. and abroad. Transnational corporations like GM, IBM, Ford and others are reneging on pensions; workers are being forced to pay higher premiums for health care; and lack of job security, wage cuts and outsourcing to other factories where the labor “costs” are lower are threatening the existence of unions.

Global competition is a capitalist law that drives corporations to produce the cheapest goods with the lowest wages to make the most profits and gobble up their competitors in the process. This kind of cut-throat competition for higher profit margins at the expense of providing for human needs is the root cause for deepening hunger, poverty and suffering for millions of people. For the bosses, a “recovery” means being in the black while workers and their families are finding it much harder to make ends meet. The workers and oppressed are facing a brutal kind of war for empire at home.

As these assaults on the multinational working class on the whole intensify, so do the weapons of racism and national oppres sion. These weapons that the bos ses, the government, the media and the repressive arms wield at will to keep the workers divided come in many forms: immigrant bashing, especially against those who migrate from poor Latin Amer ican and Caribbean countries; police brutality; the growing prison population where there are more young Black men in prison than in college; and racial profiling against Arabs, South Asians and Muslims since 9/11. And they are just the tip of the iceberg. All too often these forms of racism against oppressed peoples are either isolated or ignored by the media.

It was only after Hurri cane Katrina hit last August that millions of people inside the U.S. and through out the world could no longer deny that racism and poverty are endemic here. The abominable treatment of the Katrina survivors then and now, with the mass evictions that have already taken place and more that are scheduled for March, show the racist, callous disregard for the suffering of Black and poor people in the richest imperialist country. To add insult to injury, evacuees have been incarcerated for trying to find housing in abandoned buildings—because the homeless shelters are filled beyond capacity.

This war for empire at home extends to a war for empire abroad. In 1992, George H.W. Bush was president and the Soviet Union and the socialist camp had just been dissolved. That year, the New York Times leaked a Pentagon document called the National Defense Review, which declared that no country, developing or capitalist, had better try to challenge the hegemony of the U.S. militarily, politically or economically. This laid the foundation for the infamous National Security Strategy document of 2002 that advocates endless war, including the so-called war against terrorism since 9/11.

War for empire includes the war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and threats of military attack against Iran and North Korea, using the “nuclear threat” as an excuse. Condoleezza Rice just announced a $75 million plan to undermine the Iranian government, a clear violation of any country’s right to sovereignty.

The U.S. is using the United Nations as a cover to justify the occupation of Haiti and countries in Africa. Bush and Blair have imposed sanctions against Zim babwe. The FBI assassinated Puerto Rican liberation fighter Filiberto Ojeda Rios last September and recently raided the offices and homes of other Puerto Rican independentistas. The U.S. and Israel are trying to sabotage the electoral victory of Hamas by stopping financial aid to the Palestinian Authority. Washington continues to threa ten President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and maintains its long-stand ing hostility towards President Fidel Castro and socialist Cuba after almost 50 years.

Which road to liberation?

Black History Month is an opportunity not only to reflect on the past but to learn important political and strategic lessons that will help move the struggle forward in the interests of not just Black people but all of humanity.

The struggle of Black people in the U.S., in Africa, in South America, the Caribbean and elsewhere is part and parcel of the worldwide struggle for the liberation of working and oppressed people. The concept of internationalism—having an independent world view of the class struggle and solidarity—is not a new one but needs to be rejuvenated and embraced by all of those seeking revolutionary change. Leaders like Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King were beginning to understand the need to build internationalism in their own way before they were both cut down by assassins’ bullets.

Internationalism does not mean looking toward the Democratic Party—historically the party of slavery and war—for any real justice or equality. Recent history has shown that the Democrats, especially if they are white and in powerful positions, will not stand up to the neo-cons in the White House and Pentagon on the issues of defending civil rights, women’s rights, lesbian, gay, bi and trans rights or stopping war. What the Democrats really care about is dominating Congress and winning the presidency in the 2006/2008 elections to prove their loyalty to the capitalist class—just like the Republicans.

It’s not just that the Democrats or Republicans won’t save the workers and oppressed from exploitation. The capitalist system can’t save the workers because in order for capitalism to make profits, it needs to promote racism, national oppression, women’s oppression, LGBT oppression and more inequalities that superficially divide us when we should be uniting against this monstrous capitalist and imperialist system. As much as Bush is hated as a warmonger, and understandably so, he is the symptom of the problem and that problem is imperialism.

We must continue to organize independently from the big capitalist parties that want to keep the workers and oppressed enslaved. Progressive movements, especially those focused on ending war, must encourage and politically embrace the leadership of people of color, whose issues and struggles especially on political and economic repression have been historically ignored or relegated to the back burner. The Vietnam anti-war movement is a case in point.

Connecting the war at home and the war abroad is central to moving the class struggle in a more independent, anti-racist, working-class direction. We must continue to organize united fronts that are inclusive of all the issues, whether it’s supporting the right of return for the Katrina survivors or the right of return of the Palestinian people to their rightful homeland, Palestine. And we need to take this organizing to the next step on the weekend of March 18 and 19, the third anniversary of the war, which has evolved into an international day of protest along with military counter-recruitment actions.

In the long run, we must fight for a new economic system where people work to provide human needs, not to make profits for a boss; a system that will empower the workers and oppressed, not oppress and exploit their labor. That system is socialism.

Socialism is the road that President Hugo Chávez is attempting to take with the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. Despite the U.S. attempts to sabotage and intimidate the Cuban revolution for 45 years, that revolution has not only survived nine U.S. administrations and an economic blockade but its socialist economy is getting stronger due to the growing anti-imperialist wave sweeping across Latin America and the Caribbean.

It is important to revive the struggle for socialism worldwide, including the U.S. One of the greatest lessons to be learned from the fall of the Soviet Union is that socialism must be free to develop worldwide without imperialist intervention.