http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/china150610.html


Translator's note: "Regarding the present upsurge of worker action in China, liberals have used their discursive power in the overseas media to frame the strike wave as a tale of workers' struggle for 'independent unions,' as if this were a repetition of Solidarnosc. What do Chinese workers want? What is the direction of the Chinese workers movement? Those who support the movement and are concerned about the fate of the working class should provide an account matching the reality of the movement. This letter of support provides a perspective different from those predominant in the mainstream media."

Uphold the Constitution, Respect and Ensure Human Rights,
Support Honda Workers' Just Struggles,
Condemn Foxconn's Inhumane Management
(June 6, 2010)

To:
General Secretary Hu Jintao and Members of the Central Party Committee,
Chairman Wu Bangguo of the People's Congress
Premier Wen Jiabao, Vice Premiers, and Members of the State Council
Compatriots throughout China, and all Media Outlets:

There have recently occurred numerous incidents in our country that signal intensified social contradictions. According to media reports, Shenzhen-based Foxconn with Taiwanese investment have treated workers as machines (or worse, just spare parts!) to generate profit for the company and instituted an inhumane management system that destroys the health and spirit of workers to the extent that some have felt that life is not worth living. Thirteen workers in this company have jumped to their own deaths in a short period of time. Their tragic deaths break our hearts. It is a situation that has shocked the world!

Based in Foshan, Guangdong, Honda Auto Parts Manufacturing Co., Ltd. is a Japanese-owned company. While the capitalist owner has made a huge profit, the wages are too low to support workers' livelihoods and the company's union does not represent the interest of the workers. Nearly two thousand workers have gone on strike in their struggle for wage increases and to initiate a reform of the union. But the Japanese management only agreed to a small increase, far from what the workers have asked. Moreover, the management unjustifiably demanded workers to sign a "no strike" commitment and threatened to fire workers who take part in the strike. They indeed fired two leaders among the workers.

Other incidents in the media also show increased conflict between capital and labor. Some workers in Chongqing Qijiang Gear Transmission Co. Ltd were forced to work overtime during weekends and died from overwork. The long-term exhaustion, low pay, and management corruption led workers to strike. Close to 1,700 workers from Taisheng Furniture Company, based in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, had a three-day strike to protest against overstress and low pay. Over a thousand workers in the spare parts factory that supply Beijing-based Hyundai went on a strike to demand a pay raise. Workers at Lanzhou Vinylon Company went on strike because they cannot sustain a basic livelihood. In Datong City (Shanxi Province), the state-owned enterprise Xinghuo Pharmaceutical Company was forced into bankruptcy and its laid-off workers had their numerous petitions refused. Following this, over 10,000 people staged a sit-in at the municipal government building; some of them were beaten up by armed police. Workers on strike from Pingdingshan Cotton Spinning Mill (Henan Province) were brutally beaten by thugs brought in by police vehicles, resulting in injuries of many women workers. In Shenzhen workers who are taking the lead to demand back pay or protect workers' rights have had their names placed on various blacklists, which makes it difficult for them to obtain employment. These are just some of the recent incidents that illustrate the scope of the problem.

On the whole, the bourgeoisie have transferred the burdens of the economic crisis onto the workers and have waged a more fierce attack on them. The working class is forced to rise up and resist. But as workers have become a weak social group in recent years, and with the deprivation of basic rights prescribed by our country's constitution, they are in the sad situation where their deaths are unanswered, their strikes unsupported, and their grievances unheard. According to our country's constitution, particularly the four basic principles and the basic rights accorded to citizens, we issue the following appeal to address the current situation and problems.1

First, we should firmly support workers in Foshan Honda and other factories in their just struggles for survival and against oppression. Article 33 of our country's constitution states, "the state respects and ensures human rights." The right to strike is an inseparable part of human rights and is also a basic civic right prescribed by constitutions around the world. We firmly support all reasonable demands that Honda workers have raised so as to change their harsh working conditions and low wages. We are strongly opposed to the management's threat to fire workers. The two leaders who were fired should be immediately given back their jobs.

We believe that our call will be supported by all those who uphold the authority of the constitution, respect human rights, and stand for justice.

Second, we should demand Foxconn and other similar enterprises to immediately stop their inhumane and harshly exploitative management methods. We demand that the management respect workers' integrity and dignity, obey the state laws, improve working conditions, strictly implement a 8-hour working day, and compensate workers for overtime. They must ensure that workers are paid wages that are enough for their own sustenance and their reproduction. This is the only way to ameliorate labor-capital conflicts and reduce or prevent the so-called "psychological" problems. To elide the fundamental labor-capital contradiction by one-sidedly emphasizing "psychological counseling" is to intentionally cover up the contradiction and to confuse cause with effect. It has been reported by the media that some who committed suicide also showed signs of bodily injuries caused by beating. There was also suspicion of some being pushed off buildings. These already warrant a criminal investigation. Government agencies should deal with it seriously and find out the truth.

Third, unions should clearly stand on the side of the working class to represent and uphold the interests of the working class as prescribed by the constitution. If any union organization ignores the constitution and "take the boss' shillings and do the boss' bidding," then they will be spurned by the working class. The leadership of the union in each enterprise must be democratically elected by its members. Relatives and representatives of the bosses should not be allowed to take any leadership position in the union. If such a case is found, it should not be approved by the union at higher levels. The union at higher levels should instead help such enterprise-based unions organize an all-members meeting and help rebuild each enterprise's union through democratic election.

Fourth, government at all levels, particularly the local government, should protect civic rights by strictly following the law, earnestly resolve labor-capital conflicts, and ensure citizens' freedom of speech. Government should administer according to the law and should prevent and stop incidents that violate basic civic rights prescribed by Article 33 of the constitution and other related regulations. It should actively deal with cases of labor-capital conflicts according to the law. Ignoring workers' reasonable demands either through inaction or siding with management should be resolutely corrected. In order to ensure people's right to information and right to supervision, media should be allowed to freely and truthfully report on labor-capital conflicts and other cases and convey people's voices without obstruction and interference.

Fifth, we call for the restoration of the working class as the leading class of our country and the re-establishment of socialist public ownership as the mainstay in our national economy. Article 1 of our country's constitution states, "The People's Republic of China is a socialist state led by the working class on the basis of a worker-peasant alliance." Article 6 of the constitution states, "The basis of socialist economy of the People's Republic of China is socialist public ownership of means of production, that is, all people's ownership and laborers' collective ownership." "In the primitive phase of socialism, the state should build an economic system with public ownership as the mainstay and co-development of the economy through other ownership forms. Distribution should be based mainly on each according to his/her labor, with co-existence of other distributive methods." The Chinese Communist Party must be the real vanguard of the working class, strengthen its leadership of the people's polity, and reinforce the people's democratic dictatorship. We call for a reestablishment of public ownership as the principal part of the national economy. Only in this way can workers, peasants, and people in general become masters of enterprises and the country and truly implement a distribution system primarily based on labor contribution. At present, it is imperative to improve working conditions and increase wages and benefits in the private economy (funded by domestic and foreign investments). It is completely just to actively support workers' struggles towards that end. But in so far as the capitalist privately-owned economy rather than the socialist publicly-owned economy dominates, the working class cannot change their weak position under structures of exploitation, nor the unfair distribution system and the disparity between the rich and poor. Under this condition, it is also impossible to transform our export-oriented economy to one that is independent, self-reliant, and seeks to satisfy the material and cultural needs of people in the country.

Based on the present conditions, it will only be through a long-term struggle that the working class can restore its leadership position and the national economy can be transformed into one primarily based on public ownership. We have the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and have the constitution, particularly the four basic principles at its core, as our legal instrument. All members of the Communist Party and all people should abide by the constitution. The socialist modernization that we uphold fits the interest of the broadest range of people and corresponds with historical development of mankind. If all people who support socialism, love their country, and abide by the constitution are united and persistent, then through a long-term struggle, we will be able to realize our goal.

Signatories:

Li Chengrui (Former Director of the State Statistic Bureau)

Gong Xiantian (Professor of Beijing University)

Han Xiya (Former Alternate Secretary of the Secretariat of All-China Federation of Trade Unions)

Liu Rixin (Former Researcher at the State Planning Commission)

Zhao Guangwu (Professor at Beijing University)



1 The four basic principles include socialism, people’s democratic dictatorship, the leadership of the Community Party, and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.
The statement above was first published by China Study Group on 13 June 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes. The Chinese version is available at Critique & Transformation

http://www.iwallerstein.com/ponzi-solitaire/

Reading newspapers can be a startling experience. On July 26 this year, U.S. papers ran two quite contradictory stories. In the first news article, USA Today reported on its quarterly forecast of economists. The headline read: “Economists’ optimism wanes.” It seems that the combination of “turmoil in Europe, lackluster job growth, a weak housing market and a slowdown in factory output” make it very unlikely that the United States can recover the lost 8.5 million jobs “at a more-than-glacial pace.” In addition, they fear “global financial instability.”

So, quite reasonably, they are not optimistic. One could say that the economists’ congenital optimism about the world market has finally hit the hard rock of reality. Some of us came to this conclusion a lot earlier. So how is it possible that, the very same day, the New York Times ran a front-page story about the “surging profits” of U.S. industries?

The answer is again in the headline: “Industries find surging profits in deeper cuts.” It is not that the industries are selling more products. They are indeed selling fewer. But they have been cutting costs – that is, they have been firing workers.

They have found that, if they fire enough workers and make the remaining workers work harder, they may have fewer sales but they have greater profits. This is called a “triumph of productivity.” Ethan Harris, chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, is quite honest about it: “Companies are squeezing their labor costs to build profits.”

However, as the Times notes, the result is that “the benefits are mostly going to shareholders instead of the broader economy.” And the industries do not intend this to be a temporary solution. For even if sales improve, they are not planning to hire more workers. On the contrary, according to one chief executive of a large firm, “the last thing we’re worried about is when we are going to have to add more capacity.” Rather, we’re “reconfiguring our entire operational system for greater flexibility.”

So, have U.S. industries (and industries elsewhere in the world) found the magic bullet that will enable them to expand profits ever into the future? You’ve got to be kidding. In the 1920′s Henry Ford famously paid his workers higher wages than was the norm because, he said, he wanted them to be his customers. His successors at Ford today have reduced their North American work force by over 50 percent in the last five years. More profits – but fewer customers.

There’s the little problem of what Keynes and Kalecki wrote about – effective demand. In any medium-run calculation, if there are not enough customers, there will not be enough sales, and very soon the profits will dry up. The industries that are increasing their profits by reducing their work force and squeezing their remaining laborers are going to have surging profits for a very short run until they run into the hard brick wall of serious deflation. And then they’ll crash.

Can’t they see this? Sure, some can, but they are operating on the hedonistic principle of eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die. It might be called “Ponzi solitaire.” In ordinary Ponzi schemes, the operator bilks other people until the house of cards collapses – as it did for Bernie Madoff. In Ponzi solitaire, you bilk yourself until you crash. And just as the investors in an ordinary Ponzi scheme (potential victims) hope that the crash will come only after they have gotten their profits, so the players of Ponzi solitaire (industry executives) hope they’ll escape with their personal profits before the whole industry collapses. Good luck!

(The following article is from the August 1-31, 2010 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)

http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/articleprint62/04%29_WIKILEAKS_AND_CANADA.html

The reaction from the ruling class and its bootlickers to the latest WikiLeak revelations of the military occupation of Afghanistan are predictably self-serving.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon warned that such leaks "endanger the lives of our men and women in Afghanistan." Without a hint of irony, the Minister went on to assure Canadians that "we are extremely transparent" and that adequate information about the Afghan mission is passed on to the public.

Earth to Mr. Cannon: over 150 Canadians have already died in Afghanistan, not to mention many thousands of Afghan civilians. The only way to save lives is simple: bring the troops home. As for "transparency," perhaps the Minister was subconsciously referring to the fact that most Canadians see right through the feeble justifications for this brutal war.

Then there's Christie Blatchford, chief flagwaver for the Armed Forces at the Globe and Mail. "There's no doubt," wrote Blatchford, "this is a dirty, costly, horrible war being waged in a country inured to death and corruption and hopelessness.... The truth is, no one who paid the slightest attention to the war in Afghanistan could be surprised by the latest WikiLeak." Of course, Blatchford remains stubbornly confident that this is an honourable war, despite the nasty realities.

In fact, many Canadians, like citizens of other NATO countries, have been paying close attention to the war, and we are not surprised. Despite frantic efforts to promote the Armed Forces by the mass media and politicians (even the NDP's Jack Layton, sadly enough), some 60% of Canadians want to exit Afghanistan and end this shameful chapter of our history. The WikiLeak files are a valuable tool for the anti-war movement, which has heroically struggled for nearly a decade to achieve this goal.

http://inter.kke.gr/News/2010news/2010-07-30-oikonomika


“Through the bill of the Ministry of Interior on the expenditure of the candidates in the regional and local elections the government seeks to kill two birds with one stone” commented Aleka Papariga, General Secretary of the CC of KKE and added: “one the one hand, it seeks to beautify the political system that produces anti-people policies like those implemented nowadays and on the other, it seeks to inflict the political activity of KKE that opposes these policies”.

This bill actually imposes to the parties to hand over the lists of their supporters to the bourgeois state under the pretext of the combat against “black money” in politics.

In her speech at the Parliament, Aleka Papariga reminded that in the past, KKE, its members, its cadres, its friends but also people who supported the party financially from the little they had, were sent to prison and exile. The General Secretary of the CC of KKE underlined that KKE will not comply with this law, that it won’t hand over the lists with the names of its contributors; it will continue the policy of collecting money through coupons and it will it not hand over the names of thousands of people who support it financially.

She added that this law “is fully in line with the proclamation of anticommunism to official ideology of the EU and the Europe in general” reminding the anti-communist decisions of the EU, the European Parliament as well as the Council of Europe.

e-mail:cpg@int.kke.gr

General Conclusions:
Written by International Communist Seminar


The Communist Parties facing the deepening of the capitalist systemic crisis. The consequences of the economic crisis and the intervention of Communist parties.

I. The deepening of the crisis of the system

1. The Declaration of the 2009 ICS made the following observation: The capitalist system is confronting the most serious crisis since the depression of 1929. We are not speaking of a transitory and cyclical recession but of a generalized crisis of the capitalist system, with its roots in the sphere of production. This crisis will be long and deep, and we are merely at the beginning of it. This prospect has been confirmed by facts. A crisis on all levels continues to hit the entire planet, the main imperialist centres (US, EU, Japan) as well as the majority of other countries, particularly the developing countries. This way, capitalist globalisation is showing its downside: it also brings about globalisation of capitalist crises, and in a much faster and more global way than in the 1930s.

2. It is a characteristic of capitalism to restore the rate of profit by cutting wages and boosting unemployment. We are in the midst of a period of restructuring, delocalisation, closures and lay-offs. By means of this restructuring, the industrial and banking monopolies reconstitute their funds and restore their profit margins. In times of crisis, more than ever, the larger monopolies strengthen themselves at the expense of the smaller ones. Millions of industrial and agricultural workers lose their job and salaries are slashed. On a global level, 50 million workers have been dismissed and the number of 'working poor' is rising very fast. In the OECD countries, the rise of unemployment particularly hits the youth that were employed in unstable, super-flexible jobs. In the Euro zone 20 percent of the youth under 25 years of age are looking for a job, with a record figure of 40 percent in Spain. The crisis and the offensive of capital particularly underscores the exploitation of women. Many single women, with or without children, live below the poverty threshold because of unstable, part-time or temporary jobs. Women workers are strongly represented in sectors with low-paying, contractual and feminized jobs.

3. Throughout the world, the crisis has deepened the gap between rich and poor. The countries from the South are the first victims of a crisis that is generated and managed by the imperialist centres. Most of these countries are dependent on the production of raw materials and agricultural products for export and only a few have some manufactures and semi-manufactures for export. IMF, WTO, US and EU dictates have destroyed their local industries and agriculture and brought their economies increasingly under the control of transnational corporations. This has made them dependent on the economic trend in the developed world. They are now in dire straits as demand for their exports has fallen drastically, export prices are plunging while prices of imported goods rise and the conditions of international creditors have tightened. Their vulnerability will push them once more in a cycle of borrowing, growing debt and new imperialist dictates. The workers and poor and middle peasants are confronted with rapidly worsening conditions of unemployment, poverty and exclusion. The Millennium Development Goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015 is actually being reversed: for 2009 the United Nations report 90 million more human beings living in extreme poverty than before the crisis, and more than one billion people suffering from hunger (as against 840 million in 1990). In India, an "emerging economy", 77 percent of the population — or 836 million people — have to make do with a daily income of less than 20 rupees (0,5 Euro). In 2009, the number of India's dollar billionaires has doubled. There are 52 of them, with a joint fortune of 276 billion dollar, or 1/4th of the country's GDP.

4. The most devastating effects can be seen in most of the African countries. Due to the weakness of the progressive, popular and resistance forces, the imperialist powers are not in the least inhibited to impose their draconian measures. Whatever the imperialists had conceded to the compradore bourgeoisie in the 1960s has been eroded, and countries are once more put under tutelage. State subsidies for the prices of basic necessities are eliminated, prices are skyrocketing, education and health care are abandoned by the State and left to be privatized. Wars that are supposedly ethnic in character, are in reality wars of rape by imperialist transnational corporations, wanting to put their hand on the immense natural resources, particularly energetic resources.

5. A major difference with the financial collapse of 1929 is the immediate and massive state intervention. Almost 3,000 billion dollar has been disbursed by the states of the imperialist world in order to stop the disintegration of the financial system, and the same amount in state guarantees has been accorded to the banks. Equally dizzying amounts have been handed out to industrial monopolies in the form of recovery plans. This way, a downslide into a period of deflation has temporarily been avoided. As a consequence, the capitalist states are now in the eye of the storm of the economic and financial crisis. Several states show budgetary deficits surpassing 5 percent or even 10 percent of GDP, and the level of indebtedness of most capitalist states has grown rapidly.

6. The Greek crisis has developed to a global risk for the capitalist world because it can lead to a new widespread financial crisis. It might expand to other European states: Spain and Portugal in the first place; Ireland, Italy, Great Britain and Belgium may follow, and even France. If the contagion would spread, it can become a threat to the survival of the European currency.

The crisis has widened the gap between the strong and more powerful states of the EU and the weakest from Southern and Eastern Europe. A nationalist reflex is sharpening the contradictions. The German government was facing a dilemma: refusing any assistance to states in trouble would be tantamount to endangering the Euro, whose fall would also affect German domination in the EU. Germany finally accepted the founding of a 750 billion stabilisation fund, put together by the EU and IMF to support failing European states. It shows that the common interests of the European monopolies still prevail. They need the European Union and the euro for their struggle against American, Japanese and Chinese competitors. They need the euro as a straitjacket to impose restrictive discipline in the participating countries.

But the contradictions have not vanished. The German government refuses to review its extremely aggressive policy of pay cuts that benefits German monopolies and allows it to remain the world's first or second largest exporter. Hence the Merkel government continues the policy of its social democratic predecessor, Schroeder, at the risk of causing the disintegration of the Euro zone or even the EU. To avoid this scenario, the German government imposes strict anti-social policies on the whole EU, demands that the Stability Pact and the Maastricht criteria would come into effect again, including sanctions for non-appliance.

Hardly two months after the Lisbon Treaty came into effect, has it become clear what the expanded powers of the European institutions are meant for. The Treaty was hailed by social democracy as a victory for democracy. Today, it proves to be an instrument to impose more discipline to member states and to impose austerity dictates upon the workers. It is the intensification of European policy's realignment with the interests of financial capital in the name of rescuing the Euro.

7. Currently, Greece is the European Union's anti-workers laboratory. The extremely severe attacks that have been launched against the Greek workers by the social democratic PASOK government mean, on average, a 30 percent loss of income for the workers. They include drastic cuts for government employees, the reduction of retirement benefits and extension of the retirement age, the increase of direct and indirect taxes, flexibility and new advantages for the employers in the name of unemployment, anti-people reforms with regard to financing of health care and education, and faster privatization of the public sector. The social democratic party (PASOK) is serving monopoly capital as the most suitable party to ensure that the draconian social setbacks will pass. If they will, they will make the Greek people suffer hard. The same range of anti-social measures is on the agenda in all countries. They aim to intensify exploitation and to rescue monopoly capital at the expense of the workers. While the people are suffering, speculative funds and financial institutions who are thanking their survival to the generous intervention by the states, are now unscrupulously speculating against these very states. This shows how these financial vultures are given absolute liberty, in spite of all the catastrophes they have already brought about. It clearly demonstrates the capitalist system is rotten to the core.

8. The worldwide crisis of overproduction is far from solved. The contradiction between the development of the productive capacity on the one hand, and the relative decrease in purchasing power of the masses on the other, is at the origin of the crisis of overproduction. This contradiction inevitably reproduces itself under capitalist relations of production, as it is a small minority that owns the means of production and enriches itself by exploiting the labour force of the big majority. The crisis lies in the nature of the system. Its root cause lies in the contradiction between the social character of production and the private appropriation of its products, due to the private ownership of the means of production.

For capital, the way out of the crisis lies in the massive destruction of the means of production and in the intensified exploitation of the labour force. That is what the workers all over the world are facing now. In a crisis as deep and global as the current one, this phase can take a long time, because the 'solutions' of capital create internal contradictions. The massive increase of unemployment, the wage cuts and the dismantling of social protection undermines any perspective of stimulating the purchasing power of the toiling masses. Most probably, the anti-social offensive will even worsen the crisis of overproduction and can still lead to deflation in the years to come. A switch to 'Keynesian' recipes of state investments would only have a very limited effect. Moreover, this room to manoeuvre is even more reduced than during the thirties because of the generalized crisis of public finance, due to the massive bailouts of the financial sector. Besides, it was not the 'new deal' that put an end to the crisis of the thirties but the war production and the Second World War.

9. There is a major political lesson to retain from the actual crisis. Massive state intervention has smashed the social-democratic myth that capitalist globalisation would have rendered the capitalist state 'powerless'. The succession of liberal and interventionist policies responds to the objective needs of capitalist monopolies in a given period. According to need, the social democrats may become market prophets, as we have witnessed the last decades, or the liberal parties may become furious interventionists as we witness since 2008. Their common loyalty to the capitalist system dictates the orientation, in line with the needs of capital. Whether a social-democratic or liberal party is in power (or both), the aim of capital always remains the same: to remedy the fall of the rate of profit and to secure the extensive reproduction of capital. Marx and Lenin are proven right more than ever: the real centres of power in the bourgeois states are the big monopolies.

10. The economic crisis also provokes a political crisis among the ruling class. To impose the dictatorship of the monopolies, a fascisation of bourgeois regimes develops. Faced with the growing revolt of the working masses in Greece, Portugal, France,... the European Union is developing its plans for repression and surveillance. In order to impose this dictatorship of the monopolies, the bourgeois democratic regimes are continuously taking anti-democratic measures. It is now clear that the 'war against terrorism' has served primarily to fight the enemy within. The achievements of 1945 are systematically undermined and dismantled, while racism and nationalism are spreading. Therefore the capitalist state is focusing increasingly on its most essential role, its role as the last bulwark against popular revolt. Violations of the right to strike, emergency laws, and violations of basic democratic rights are becoming the rule. The anti-communist campaigns waged against several Communist Parties in Central and Eastern Europe and the attempts to rewrite history through a web of lies about the Second World War complement the anti-people policies pursued by imperialism. Rewriting history and claiming that communism and fascism share responsibility for the millions of deaths during war serves today as a pretext to legitimize anti-labour, xenophobic and militaristic policies, all of which had been expressed in their most extreme forms under fascism. These attacks come from the traditional parties, particularly the social democratic parties. On the other hand, provocative attacks by opportunistic groups of the right, but also of the 'left', are increasing.

11. The crisis sharpens the contradictions between major imperialist forces and accelerates long term changes in the correlation of forces of the international imperialist system. The imperialist powers are competing in a struggle for the re-division of the world. They compete to control the sources of raw materials and cheap labour, markets, investment opportunities, spheres of influence and strategic areas. The European exporting countries derive some temporary benefit from the weakening of the Euro, but this widens the contradictions with the United States. The main weakness of the US is the large trade deficit, a time bomb under the position of the dollar and global monetary relations. The crisis also leads to sharpening contradictions between the major centres of Western and Japanese imperialism on the one hand, and emerging powers on the other, such as China, Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa.

Nevertheless, where their fundamental common interests and the prevailing capitalist and imperialist world disorder are at stake, imperialist powers still find common ground. They are one in oppressing the peoples and nations of the world and in passing on the burden of the crisis to them. Moreover, the aggressive NATO block is aligning itself with Russia in their fight against national liberation movements under the pretext of the so-called 'fight against international terrorism'.

The United States is struggling to keep its position as a superpower and make use of NATO to include its allies in its strategy of world domination. The NATO summit in November this year will formally approve the new strategy of extending the organization's range of intervention to the entire planet. At the same time, member countries will be obliged to increase their military spending.

12. The crisis reinforces militarization; war factors accumulate. The US continues its military strategy in the Middle East, for total control of the largest oil reserves in the world - which also helps to control energy resources of major competitors, primarily China. The US administration and the Pentagon are concentrating more and more military equipment close to Iran, including the Island of Diego Garcia, where thousands of conventional bombs are stocked that can penetrate deep into the ground to destroy underground facilities. The scenario is similar to that which led to the attack on Iraq: Iran is accused of intending to produce nuclear weapons, without any evidence whatsoever. The US continues to support and protect the Zionist Israeli state and is putting strong pressure on Syria to abandon its anti-imperialist role in the region.

The Latin American countries are concerned because of the increasing number of military bases and US warships in the region. The US aims to control the economic resources and the markets. The US opposes the social development that results from anti-imperialist initiatives for regional integration, like ALBA. This way, it is a permanent threat for the peace and stability in the region.

Africa's enormous wealth is still the object of the imperialist powers' greed. The US is reinforcing its military presence and seeks to establish the AFRICOM command in Africa.

The US position on the denuclearisation is hypocritical from beginning to end. It got rid of a thousand obsolete ballistic missiles - yet it still has about 8,000 of them. Washington refuses to commit never to be the first to use nuclear weapons or never to use them against countries that do not possess nukes, because it makes exceptions (Iran, the DPRK, ...). Meanwhile Obama allocates more funds to the modernization of the operational nuclear weapons, and the production of mini-nukes is continuing. His goal: to preserve US supremacy in military matters (45 percent of global military spending), especially when it comes to weapons of mass destruction. Weakened from the economic point of view, the United States - with its NATO allies - is strengthening its military capacity.

13. The depth of the generalized crisis we are living, is pushing the vast majority of the world population deeper in intolerable situations. Given the rapid deterioration of the imperialist system and the increasing misery of the peoples of the world, the only viable alternative is a socialist society. The capitalist system cannot be spruced up by some reforms, by a bogus regulation or by some other social democratic accents. The capitalist society knows only one law: that of maximum profit for capital. Its very foundations have to be turned upside down through revolution. This revolution involves the abolition of capitalist ownership through the socialization of the basic and most concentrated means of production, and the submission of the economy to central planning, run by a socialist state which is in the hands of the workers. The socialist economy takes care of distributing the wealth that is produced equitably and justly, and ensures that the services that meet people's needs, such as public health, the education system, social security are free and exclusively public. This economy is based on another power which will overthrow the power of monopolies and build new popular institutions. On this basis can develop international cooperation.

14. The socialist countries in the world, who do not bear any responsibility for the worldwide crisis of the capitalist system, continue to grow at a steady pace. Even if they face complex and difficult conditions (like the US blockade) they are able to minimize the impact of the crisis on their population. This shows in a convincing way the superiority of socialism over capitalism. The progressive governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and other Latin American countries head the challenge of proving that their anti-imperialist policies and regional cooperation continue to generate a social surplus, even in this period of crisis.

15. The proletariat and peoples of the world are rising up to wage various forms of struggle in response to the worsening conditions of global economic and financial crisis and the escalation of imperialist plunder and wars of aggression.

In the imperialist countries, the monopoly bourgeoisie is waging a ferocious class struggle against the proletariat and is pushing the proletariat to fight back. The level of discontent and protest is rising because of the increasing rate of unemployment, the erosion of social benefits and the deterioration of the living conditions.

The peoples in the oppressed countries, subjected to ever rising levels of exploitation and oppression, are waging various forms of resistance against the imperialist powers and their local puppets.

The conditions of crisis, while also fraught with dangers and further attacks from reactionaries, create favourable objective conditions and opportunities that Communist Parties must seize in order to advance the cause of the proletariat and other toiling masses, to advance the struggle for a better world, free from oppression and exploitation.

II. The Communist Parties in action

1. The generalized crisis of the system forces Communist Parties to fully assume their role as vanguard of the working class. This means taking up their responsibility to mobilise, organise and orient the exploited masses. It also means unveiling the roots of the growing misery, and helping the masses advance on the road of socialist revolution.

2. In order to assume these tasks, communists must seize the opportunities that present themselves. For this, any spirit of routine needs to be cast away. There are opportunities to develop, consolidate or build Bolshevik parties. It is in the heat of class struggle that such parties accumulate experience and become steeled by fire.

3. Being fully submerged in class struggle offers an excellent opportunity to train new generations of cadres. A major part of today's youth, and certainly the generation that has known the anticommunist wave since 1989, has never experienced a crisis of the current magnitude or seriousness. It is today that this generation is preparing itself to take up its revolutionary role for the coming decades.

4. Every Communist Party is faced with the challenge to acquire a profound knowledge and a Marxist analysis of the systemic crisis. The writings of Marx and Lenin are astonishingly relevant today to understand the profound origins of the current crisis and to formulate a socialist alternative.

5. Today, Communist and workers' Parties have an excellent occasion to strengthen their links with the masses. Marxist-Leninist theory has to be a guide for practice. It depends on the work of the communists among the masses, particularly in the class struggle, to what extent the conscientisation of the masses broadens and deepens. This means that first and foremost, they have to be present and active in every struggle, to support the demands put forward by the workers themselves. Communists must propose a complete package of demands, based on the workers' needs. The class in power has accumulated its wealth on the back of the workers and they continue to enrich themselves during this very crisis. For the struggle to advance, it is important to formulate demands that put the burden of the crisis on the side of the big fortunes and the big capitalists.

6. Throughout these struggles, the perspective of socialism must be made clear. Communists must bring forward demands for which the workers are willing to fight today, while orienting them towards socialism. The Communist Parties must advance demands that break with the logic of capitalism, that enhance political consciousness and that forge class unity. It is of the highest importance that this struggle is politicised, allowing people to understand that more fundamental changes in the balance of power are necessary in order to enjoy the wealth that they themselves produce. Every struggle must serve to broaden class solidarity, to build alliances, to counter division, racism, bourgeois nationalism and yellow trade unionism. The yellow trade unions accept the governments' plans for social destruction in the name of the 'salvation of the nation'. In reality, there is no common interest the working class and the bourgeoisie.

7. It is important to support the troops' morale. We must have a feeling for the issues the masses are ready to mobilise for and to obtain small victories. We must continuously fight for immediate demands, for concrete measures that cushion the gravity of the problems and offer some relieve. They must be imposed through the power of the movement. Nevertheless, under capitalism these gains will be temporary and precarious. The militancy of the working class will be intensified as long as the struggle maintains the perspective of overcoming the capitalist framework and challenging the bourgeois power.

8. For the Communist Parties, parliamentary work serves to better develop the struggle. Any fundamental change depends on the mobilisation of the masses. In the capitalist system, there can only be victories through the development of class struggle. We should not count on parliaments but develop extra-parliamentary movements.

9. Strengthening the Parties as such deserves particular attention. We must recruit new members, convince and organise them. The role of the communist newspaper is irreplaceable and an important tool for the mass work. In addition, it is necessary to make better use of the new technologies for our propaganda work and to broaden the contacts.

10. The work among the masses requires a reinforced commitment in the trade unions and the other mass organisations of the working class.

11. An important task for the communist movement is to draw lessons from the experience of socialist construction in the Eastern European countries, defending socialist construction and its timeless necessity. Communists will not remain silent against the anti-communist campaigns that go hand in hand with the attempts to re-write history with lies. Communist Parties will defend the historical gains of the 20th century experiences of socialism by all means, while debunking the lies of imperialism to slander these experiences and to suppress the communist movement.

12. Communist Parties must launch themselves in all fronts against imperialist anti-people aggression. Particularly the expanding role of NATO should be challenged, and the increasing military threats that will be put in a more aggressive 'strategic framework' in this organization's upcoming summit.

13. Time is ripe to advance in the development of international campaigns, which will require more collaboration of Communist Parties on an international level. In case of struggles, active solidarity must be developed. We must actively search for common slogans. We must actively participate in campaigns like those to free the Cuban five, for the withdrawal of the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Signatories of the General Conclusions
1. Afghanistan, United Party of Afghanistan

2. Albania, Communist Party of Albania

3. Algeria, Parti Algérien pour la Démocratie et le Socialisme (PADS)

4. Bangladesh, Communist Party of Bangladesh

5. Belarus, For the Union and the Communist Party of the Union

6. Belgium, Workers' Party of Belgium

7. Brazil, Partido Comunista do Brasil (PcdoB)

8. Brazil, Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB)

9. Brazil, Partido Patria Livre

10. Bulgaria, Party of Bulgarian Communists

11. Canada, Communist Party of Canada

12. Congo, Democratic Republic of, Congolese Communist Party

13. Costa Rica, Partido Vanguardia Popular

14. Cuba, Partido Comunista de Cuba

15. Denmark, Communist Party of Denmark

16. Denmark, Danish Communist Party

17. Denmark, Communist Party in Denmark

18. El Salvador, Partido Comunista de El Salvador (PCS)

19. France, PRCF - Pôle de Renaissance communiste en France

20. France, URCF - Union des Révolutionnaires-Communistes de France

21. Greece, Communist Party of Greece

22. Hungary, Hungarian Communist Workers' Party

23. Italy, Rete dei Comunisti

24. Lao, People's Democratic Republic, Lao People's Revolutionary Party

25. Latvia, Socialist Party of Latvia

26. Lebanon, Parti Communiste Libanais

27. Luxemburg, Parti Communiste du Luxembourg (KPL)

28. Malta, Communist Party of Malta

29. México, Partido Popular Socialista de México

30. Morocco, Voie Démocratique

31. Netherlands, New Communist Party Netherlands (NCPN)

32. Pakistan, Communist Party of Pakistan

33. Palestine, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)

34. Peru, Partido Comunista Peruano

35. Puerto Rico, Refundación Comunista

36. Russia, Communist Party of the Russian Federation

37. Russia, Russian Communist Workers' Party – Revolutionary Party of Communists

38. Russia, Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)

39. South Africa, South African Communist Party

40. Spain, Partido Comunista de los Pueblos de España

41. Sweden, Communist Party (KP)

42. Syria, Syrian Communist Party

43. Syria, Communist Party of Syria

44. Taiwan, Chinese Province of Taiwan, Lao Dong Dang (Labour Party)

45. Tunisia, Parti du Travail patriotique et démocratique de Tunisie

46. Turkey, Communist Party of Turkey (TKP)

47. Ukraine, Union of Communists

48. United Kingdom, Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

49. USA, Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO)

50. Venezuela, Partido Comunista de Venezuela

51. Vietnam, Socialist Republic of, Communist Party of Vietnam

As of June 17, 2010; open to further endorsements.


19th International Communist Seminar

Brussels, 14-16 May 2010

www.icsbrussels.org , ics@icsbrussels.org

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Greek truck drivers clash with riot police in Athens Greek truck drivers clash with riot police in Athens. Photograph: John Kolesidis/Reuters


Government issues emergency order as fuel shortages strand tourists and disrupt food and medical supplies




The stand-off between striking truck drivers and authorities in Greece intensified today hours after the government issued an emergency order to force protesters back to work.

With fuel shortages stranding thousands of tourists and disrupting supplies of food and medicines nationwide, prime minister George Papandreou resorted to emergency legislation, more usually used at times of war or great natural disaster, to end the walk-out.

But hopes of a return to normal were quickly dashed when riot police fired tear gas at thousands of truckers gathered outside the transport ministry this morning.

"The order is coming through to [drivers] but I have no idea how they are going to react to it," said Giorgos Stamos, a member of the truck drivers' union. "It is highly unusual that after just three days of going on strike we should be mobilised in this way."

The ruling socialists called for the mobilisation – the fourth time since the collapse of military rule in 1974 that such an order has been issued – as it became clear that Greece was facing a public health crisis because of the strike.

On islands, where fuel supplies have totally run out, tourists could be seen abandoning rented cars by the side of the road while yachts remained docked in harbours or drifted out at sea.

Under the order – which followed a plea by the Greek Tourist Association to stop the strike – authorities were given the go-ahead to requisition vehicles and services, with the owners and drivers of trucks being told they had to resume work or face stiff fines.

"To allow the strike to continue would threaten the normal functioning of health and welfare services and public order," the government announced.

The mayhem began on Monday when some 33,000 licensed truck drivers walked off the job in protest at government plans to open up the freight industry, one of many 'closed–shop' professions blamed for keeping the Greek economy isolated and uncompetitive.

The debt-stricken country is under intense pressure from the EU and IMF to make the changes – a condition of the €110bn (£92bn) of emergency loans it received from eurozone nations and the Washington-based body in May.

With officials from both organisations visiting Athens to prepare a first assessment of the progress made under the €30bn austerity program that the government has also been forced to implement, the Greek finance minister insisted that "every closed profession" would soon be opened up.

In the case of truckers, the first group to be tackled, it will mean that new licences will be issued at lower costs and in greater number. The sector wants the government to delay the introduction of a bill to allow for more talks with the industry.

The truckers have shown this week that such reforms will not be easy.

In a culture where workers' rights are seen as sacred, militant unionists have reacted furiously to the mobilisation.

"The government is aiming to smash every striker's right," Rizospastis, the newspaper of the KKE communist party proclaimed on its front page. "There is nothing but to gather forces and fight."

The strike has further dented tourism – widely seen as the linchpin of the country's economic recovery this summer. With one in five Greeks working in the sector, tourism accounts for almost 20% of GDP.

The trucker's strike "is a huge problem for bookings that our country needs, to cover part of the losses that have occurred in recent months," said Andreas Andreadis who heads the Greek Hotel Federation.

• Hundreds of civilians killed by coalition troops
• Covert unit hunts leaders for 'kill or capture'
• Steep rise in Taliban bomb attacks on Nato



US soldier in Afghanistan The war logs reveal civilian killings by coalition forces, secret efforts to eliminate Taliban and al-Qaida leaders, and discuss the involvement of Iran and Pakistan in supporting insurgents. Photograph: Max Whittaker/Corbis

A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers' website Wikileaks in one of the biggest leaks in US military history. The files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the last six years, which has so far cost the lives of more than 320 British and over 1,000 US troops.

Their publication comes amid mounting concern that Barack Obama's "surge" strategy is failing and as coalition troops hunt for two US navy sailors captured by the Taliban south of Kabul on Friday.

The war logs also detail:

• How a secret "black" unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for "kill or capture" without trial.

• How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.

• How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.

• How the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of its roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.

In a statement, the White House said the chaotic picture painted by the logs was the result of "under-resourcing" under Obama's predecessor, saying: "It is important to note that the time period reflected in the documents is January 2004 to December 2009."

The White House also criticised the publication of the files by Wikileaks: "We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations, which puts the lives of the US and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security. Wikileaks made no effort to contact the US government about these documents, which may contain information that endanger the lives of Americans, our partners, and local populations who co-operate with us."

The logs detail, in sometimes harrowing vignettes, the toll on civilians exacted by coalition forces: events termed "blue on white" in military jargon. The logs reveal 144 such incidents. Some of these casualties come from the controversial air strikes that have led to Afghan government protests in the past, but a large number of previously unknown incidents also appear to be the result of troops shooting unarmed drivers or motorcyclists out of a determination to protect themselves from suicide bombers. At least 195 civilians are admitted to have been killed and 174 wounded in total, although this is likely to be an underestimate because many disputed incidents are omitted from the daily snapshots reported by troops on the ground and then collated, sometimes erratically, by military intelligence analysts.

Bloody errors at civilians' expense, as recorded in the logs, include the day French troops strafed a bus full of children in 2008, wounding eight. A US patrol similarly machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers, and in 2007 Polish troops mortared a village, killing a wedding party including a pregnant woman, in an apparent revenge attack.

Questionable shootings of civilians by British troops also figure. The American compilers detail an unusual cluster of four British shootings in the streets of Kabul within the space of barely a single month, in October/November 2007, culminating in the killing of the son of an Afghan general. Of one shooting, they wrote: "Investigation is controlled by the British. We not able [sic] to get the complete story."

A second cluster of similar shootings, all involving Royal Marine commandos in the ferociously contested Helmand province, took place in a six-month period at the end of 2008. Asked by the Guardian about these allegations, the Ministry of Defence said: "We have been unable to corroborate these claims in the short time available and it would be inappropriate to speculate on specific cases without further verification of the alleged actions."

Rachel Reid, who investigates civilian casualty incidents in Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, said: "These files bring to light what's been a consistent trend by US and NATO forces: the concealment of civilian casualties. Despite numerous tactical directives ordering transparent investigations when civilians are killed, there have been incidents I've investigated in recent months where this is still not happening. Accountability is not just something you do when you are caught. It should be part of the way US and NATO do business in Afghanistan every time they kill or harm civilians."

The reports, many of which the Guardian is publishing in full online, present an unvarnished and often compelling account of the reality of modern war. Most of the material, although classified "secret" at the time, is no longer militarily sensitive. A small amount of information has been withheld from publication in the Guardian because it might endanger local informants or give away genuine military secrets. Wikileaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, obtained the material in circumstances he will not discuss, also says it redacted harmful material before posting the bulk of the data on its own "uncensorable" series of global servers.

Wikileaks published in April this year a previously suppressed classified video of US Apache helicopters killing two Reuters cameramen on the streets of Baghdad, which gained international attention. A 22-year-old intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, was arrested in Iraq and charged with leaking the video, but not with leaking the latest material. The Pentagon's criminal investigations department continues to try to trace the leaks and recently unsuccessfully asked Assange, he says, to meet them outside the US to help them.

Assange allowed the Guardian to examine the war logs at our request. No fee was involved and Wikileaks has not been involved in the preparation of the Guardian's articles.

Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples’ Struggle

Bulatlat http://www.bulatlat.com/main

URL to article: http://www.bulatlat.com/main/2010/07/24/ilps-condemns-us-and-rok-for-anti-dprk-provocations-as-attack-on-korean-sovereignty-and-peace-in-east-asia/


The International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) hereby condemns in the strongest terms the US and its South Korean puppet government for a crescendo of provocations against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). These provocations constitute an attack on the national sovereignty of the Korean people and threaten the peace in East Asia and the whole world.

The sinking of the Cheonan was obviously perpetrated by the US in order to stem the tide of popular opposition in Japan against US military bases and to justify a series of hostile actions of the US and its South Korean puppet government against the DPRK and the national sovereignty of the Korean people and the just position of the DPRK for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and reunification of the Korean people.

The hostile actions of the US and the puppet Republic of Korea (ROK) include the baseless accusations against the DPRK for the Cheonan sinking, the announced holding of joint US-ROK military exercises against the DPRK and the adoption of new sanctions against DPRK in relation to its program of nuclear research and development for national defense, pursuit of peace and economic development.

The US is an old hand at fabricating incidents in order to justify US aggression, such as the February 4, 1899 incident in the Philippines, the August 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident and similar incidents in Asia and elsewhere. It is obvious that the US staged the Cheonan sinking several months ago in order to justify and escalate US military presence in East Asia, to generate new tensions in the region, to prepare for a bigger act of aggression against DPRK and divert attention from US military failures in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US and ROK are poised to undertake a series of largescale military exercises. The first one called Invincible Spirit is meant to humiliate DPRK, force it to take the blame for the US criminal act of sinking the Cheonan and accept talks on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles under US terms. The next military exercise called Freedom’s Guardian would immediately ensue. It is planned to be more aggressive and more challenging even to China.

The forces being mobilized for Invincible Spirit include the USS George Washington Carrier Strike Group and ROK Navy ships, aircraft fleet from the US Seventh Air Force, the George Washington Air Wing, the new F-22 Raptor aircraft, the ROK air force and ROK anti-submarine aircraft. In the meantime, the US and ROK forces are escalating psychological warfare along the 38th parallel as complement to the war preparations.

The sanctions being prepared by the US will aggravate and expand the existing financial, commercial and travel sanctions already imposed on the DPRK. Additional categories of DPRK personnel, assets and transactions will be banned or frozen. Even the diplomatic privileges of DRKP personnel will be curtailed. More aggressive actions are being planned against DPRK ships and planes.

In view of the extremely hostile actions and war plans of the US, the DPRK is fully justified in developing its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in order to counter the longrunning nuclearization of South Korea by the US and the continuous military and nuclear threats from US military bases in East Asia and the Pacific. The Korean people can never forget how the US collaborated with Japan to allow the latter to colonize Korea in the first half of the 20th century and how the US murdered more than three million Koreans in the US war of aggression against Korea from 1950 to 1953.

The people of East Asia have suffered so many gross acts of brutality and violations of human rights unleashed by US imperialism. These include the killing of 1.4 million Filipinos in the Filipino-American War, the killing and maiming of hundreds of thousands in the US atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the killing of millions of Chinese by the US-supported Guomindang in the Chinese civil war, the killing of more than three million Koreans, the killing of more than six million Vietnamese and other Indochinese and the massacre of three million Indonesians by the US-supported Suharto fascist clique.

It is a gross act of hypocrisy and malice for the US to be prating about peace and stability in East Asia while it casts false accusations against the DPRK in order to obscure a long history of US aggression in East Asia, to justify continued US military presence in the whole region and to push forward a new plan of aggression against the DPRK and the Korean people.

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle stand in solidarity with the Korean people of both north and south in their struggle against US imperialism and its renewed acts of aggression against them and against the DPRK. We call on the people of the world, the member organizations and allied forces of the ILPS to make manifest their support for the national sovereignty of the Korean people, condemn the aggressive presence of US imperialism in the Korean peninsula and demand its withdrawal.