Italian workers refuse to accept new cuts in living standard

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SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1992 15 and FRANCO TURIGLIATTO As they returned from summer vacations at the beginning of September, Italian workers waged massive protests against the austerity package of the government of Social Democratic premier Amato. The anger of the workers was directed at their own conciliatory leaderships, as well as against the regime. The following article is translated from the Oct. 16, 1992, issue of La Breche, the French-language newspaper of the Swiss Socialist Workers Party. It has been edited for space.

Seven million workers took part in regional general strikes. Kicked off by actions in Florence on Sept. 22, and in Milan the following day, they swept almost all regions of the country. Over the last eight days of September, at least a mil lion and a half people came out for rallies.

The bosses and the government were surprised by the high level of combativity and by the spontaneous actions that showed how fed up both young and older workers were.

After experiencing a constant erosion of wages and jobs for years, Italian workers have had to face a ferocious offensive conducted by the bosses and the goverment in "compliance" with the demands included in the Maastricht Treaty [for European economic union].

In fact, Italy is very far from having met the demands of the Maastricht Treaty for a "convergence" of economic conditions in the Common Market countries. This goes for the rate of inflation and interest rates, and above all, the size of the budget deficit relative to the Gross Domestic Product.

In 1992, the deficit will be on the order of 11 percent of the GDP, while the Common Market goal is 3 percent. The total national debt has reached a total of 107 percent of GDP.

This year, the Italian government will pay out about $130 billion in interest on this astronomical debt. Such payments account for about 95 percent of the budget deficit. This represents a considerable income for buyers of government bonds, which yield high interest.

The banks, insurance companies, and "professional tax evaders" —who proliferate in Italy among self-employed professionals and industrialists-get rich by holding these government bonds. Foreign investors have also been major buyers of this profitable financial paper, even if the recent devaluation of the Italian currency has made them less attractive.

Tax burden falls on workers To understand how this growth of the national debt has enriched the privileged at the expense of the wage earners, you have to be aware that in Italy 75 to 80 percent of tax receipts come from wage earners, whose taxes are deducted directly from their paychecks. . The agreement between the trade union confederations, the government, and the employers' associations signed on July 31, the beginning of summer vacations for workers, definitively and completely abolished automatic cost-of-living increases and banned any form of contract negotiations at company or industry level for two years.

By the end of the summer vacations, there was already strong pressure for strikes. And this tension was combined with radical criticism of the union leaderships.

More and more, the workers are seeing that the union leadership is integrated into the state machinery. And the extent to which they share responsibility for the decisions of the government and the bosses is becoming increasingly apparent to workers.

The government destroyed a public health system that was already in bad shape, reduced wages and pensions, raised the retirement age for both men and women, and banned all contract negotiations for public workers. The response was a wave of spontaneous strikes throughout the country.

The reaction of the government and the bosses was an alarmist campaign warning that the national currency would collapse and "the Italian system would go bankrupt," and stressing the danger of "being excluded from Europe" and "thrown onto the other side of the Mediterranean" [that is, reduced to the level of North Africa]. But these threats failed to stop the workers' mobilizations.

The initial response of the three main union confederations-the CGIL (close to the majority of the old Communist Party), the UIL (close to the Social Democrats), and the CISL (close to the Christian Democrats)-was crystal clear. They ruled out any idea of a general strike, despite the scope and severity of the austerity plan.

The workers were getting a clear view of the yawning gulf between their own interests, anxieties, and concerns and the priorities of the union apparatuses.

Spontaneous strikes At the end of September, strikes and demonstrations started in the cities. Often they were initiated by the more militant union activists.

Sometimes they developed quite spontaneously.

The local union leaderships immediately felt the heat. The central leaderships still thought that they could channel the movement by calling for one-day regional strikes and thus avoid a general strike.

The national union leaderships did not want to destabilize the government, which despite its "weak" public support is waging a brutal anti-labor policy.

However, the trade-union leaders' scheme failed in two respects. First of all, the demonstrations in the various regions gained scope and impact in broad layers of the society.

Second, almost everywhere in the big cities where impressive rallies were held, discontent with the trade-union leaders boiled over. The spokespersons of the trade-union apparatuses found themselves unable to speak. They were drowned out by whistles and floods of the fall-harvest vegetables. A determination to organize a general strike took hold everywhere at the end of September.

The paradox of the Italian social and political situation was strikingly displayed. On the one hand, you could see the big squares full of workers, who took advantage of the calls for token strikes issued by the union leaders to come into the streets and express their total distrust of their leadership.

On the other hand, you could see the leaders standing on esplanades, protected by the police and shielded by plexiglass shields from the avalanche of vegetables.

The change in the social climate was best illustrated on Sept. 25 by the massive strike of workers at Fiat in Turin, the first in 10 years. At the demonstration in Turin, in response to the cries of protest coming from the crowd, one of the CGIL secretaries, Cofferrati, denounced "extremists" and called on the workers to leave the area. Only the leaders left. For an hour, 80,000 workers continued to demonstrate there.

Need for new leadership What happened in Turin highlighted another key contradiction of the social and Union bureaucrat uses shield to deflect the fall tomato harvest thrown by angry ranks during Oct. 13 strike in Milan.

political situation in Italy: The gap between the readiness to fight back, and the difficulty of building an alterative leadership, an alternative orientation.

The lett opposition in the CGIL, "Be a Trade Union," played a part in building the demonstrations. But it did not have the strength and political capacity to fill the vacuum that had been created by the departure of the leaders from the podium.

The Refounded Communist Party, formed by the anti-Eurocommunist minority of the old CP, and including forces such as Democrazia Proletaria [a New Left group] and independents, also played a role in building this mobilization.

But there was a still too much of a disparity between the demands expressed by broad sections of the population and the capacity of this political formation to offer an altemative.

In Rome, on Sept. 26, there was a gigantic demonstration of 200,000 retirees, who were especially hard hit by Amato's austerity package.

Feeling extraordinary pressure, the union leaders made the first timid and embarrassed overtures for a general strike. The objective was not so much to mobilize people as to regain control of the situation. By Sept. 29, the wave of demonstrations had reached the cities in southern Italy.

Under the pressure of the movement, the government parties and the PDS started wiggling. For the entire first phase, the CGIL refused to contemplate a general strike. Then, after a stormy debate in its leading bodies, it made a vague proposal for such an action to the other two tradeunion confederations.

On Saturday, Oct. 2, the demonstration in Rome of public workers and teachers brought out 150,000 people. At this rally, strong opposition was expressed to the govemment, as well as a determined desire for a general strike.

On Oct. 3, the assembly of "Be a Trade Union" was held in the traditional bastion of the Milan workers' movement, Sesto San Giovani. It was marked by a strong contingent of trade-union activists— about 2000 delegates. The meeting confirmed the determination to organize an opposition to the CGIL leadership, and the immediate task adopted was to build a real general Ranks force general strike call On Oct. 3-4, the perspective of a general strike being called by all three trade-union confederations took on more substance. In the following three days, the three confederations called a four-hour general strike for Tuesday, Oct. 13. They excluded the public workers from the call.

The strike platform was vague. It did not go beyond denouncing "austerity," and failed to put forward a demand for the government's resignation. This strike was seen by the trade-union leaders as a means both of regaining control of the movement and making some marginal improvements on Amato's economic program.

The Oct. 13 general strike was a success. La Stampa, the daily paper of Fiat boss Agnelli, headlined: "Half of Italy stopped work, but whistles, bolts, and tomatoes disturbed the demonstrations somewhat."

In many regions and among the strikers, a very clear desire to extend the strike to the public sector was expressed. However, the union apparatuses managed to get the division that they wanted between workers in the public sector, where the CGIL has the strongest organization, and workers in industry. Moreover, restricting the action to four hours made it appear only a token strike and not a real general strike.

Participation in the strike was very high. During the day of Oct. 13, we saw a spread of the social mobilization to the most remote cities. On the other hand, in the big regional capitals, participation was less, or no more than in the strike wave at the end of September.

The antagonism of the masses to the union leaders remained a force. There was a general awareness that the strikes were imposed on the union leaderships by the rank and file.

In Milan and Naples, after the official rallies, alternative assemblies were held, which were followed attentively by thousands of workers.

This happened in Milan, where the alternative assembly was called by the "There was a general awareness that the strike: Rank-and-File Trade-Union Committee at Alfa-Romeo. In Rome, after clashes that occurred on Oct. 2, the unions decided not to call a demonstration. So, the High School Coordinating Committee issued a call that brought out more than 10,000 students.

There were two reasons for the fact that the mobilization in the main cities was a bit smaller than in the previous weeks.

First of all, various politicians used the threat of a govermental crisis to reduce debate in parliament. In this context, many workers wondered what good a demonstration would be if the strike were limited to four hours.

Secondly, while a growing distrust of the union apparatuses was being expressed in the public squares, no credible alternative emerged. And so, a feeling of impotent rage took hold.

[For the weeks following the Oct. 13 strike, meetings of trade-union activists were scheduled that would be a test of the impact the protests made on the union Moreover, during the Oct. 13 marches, a slogan began to emerge for a 24 hour general strike with a national demonstration in Rome. There is no doubt that around this demand, like that for a general strike before, the mass movement has begun a tug of war with the trade-union apparatuses.

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... Free trade vs protectionism "THE A B C OF CAPITALISM IS ALWAYS FOR EACH AND EVERY CAPITALIST TO VIGOROUSLY STRIVE TO REDUCE THE WORK FORCE AS CLOSE TO ZERO 16 SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1992 (continued from page 1: “[One of the disputed issues in the 1992…]”)

anti-worker and anti-environmental feaTures.

But most observers see Clinton's pledge only as a sop to limit the embarrassment of his disappointed supporters in the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, who for many years have put all their eggs in the basket of an alliance with protectionist sectors of the American capitalist class. This notoriously chauvinist AFL-CIO policy went under the slogan, "Buy American!"

Tactical options for capitalists Viewed from a short-term perspective, capitalists whose products are competitive on the world market tend to be for free trade. They are against tariffs and other barriers put in the way of opening up foreign markets for their products (tariffs invite counter-tariffs).

On the other side of the question are the capitalists whose products are not competitive. These capitalists tend to be for tariffs and other ways of blocking (protecting against) the invasion into their home markets of cheaper competing commodities.

Viewed from a longer-term perspective, it can be more complicated because of the possible effect of trade policy on economic conditions in the home market and/or world market as a whole.

Capitalists-both efficient and inefficient manufacturers—might be for one or the other trade policy even if it didn't meet their special immediate needs.

In the current worldwide economic slump, for instance, non-competitive capitalists might favor a free trade policy if they believed it could expand trade and thus give themselves a little more space for their products in an expanded market.

A free trade policy might give these capitalists a little more time to modernize and become more efficient producers, and thus more competitive. Or they might see their best option being to cut their losses, i.e., sell out, and find another arena for investing their capital more profitably.

It's true enough that NAFTA does not serve the interests of American workers. It's only purpose is to improve profits for American capitalists on the world market and to force the least efficient producers (including their own weaker American competitors) out of business—leaving a larger share of the global market to a leaner, and meaner-more competitive-American capitalism.

But it is also true that protectionist trade policies do not provide any advantage for U.S. workers. Its purpose is also to improve profits-and like free trade, at the expense of jobs and workers' interests.

U.S. capitalism after World War II Free trade on the world market had been in the interests of American capitalism for a few decades after World War II because it emerged from the war as the most highly efficient producer in the world market place.

But it was also economically and militarily strong enough to have its cake and eat it, too.

Thus, American capitalism, in the period after World War II, could enjoy the rare luxury of controlling a lion's share of the world market because of its highly competitive productive forces.

At the same time, it kept profits artificially higher in the domestic U.S. economy by selective tariffs designed to minimize competition from a few more efficient foreign manufacturers.

It was not easy for U.S. capitalism's competitors to impose retaliatory tariffs at that time because huge masses of American capital were productively invested inside the competition's domestic economies-and consequently was less affected by the host country's protective tariffs.

Moreover, foreign capitalism was heavily dependent on U.S. military power in the Cold War, as well as on the huge amounts of capital they needed to borrow from the American colossus to revive their own economies.

U.S. capitalism began its shift toward free trade in its domestic economy when measures protecting inefficient U.S. producers in the home market began eroding the efficiency of American industry as a whole.

Through deregulation, the American capitalists removed the crutches that kept marginal U.S. enterprises from bankruptcy, which allowed average productivity of surviving American producers to rise and more effectively compete in the world market.

In accord with the objective laws of capitalist economy, this was the only way U.S. capitalism could defend and broaden its share of the world market in the given economic context.

Therefore, in their struggle to become more competitive and maintain as large a share of world markets as possible, free traders today have just as valid (or invalid) a claim to be "defending" American jobs as was claimed for protectionist measures in the previous phase of world economy.

But whether advanced by free traders or protectionists, this argument is false to the core. All capitalists are always driven to eliminate jobs!

The A B C of capitalism is always for each and every capitalist to vigorously strive to reduce the work force as close to zero as possible, while simultaneously increasing the rate at which commodities are produced-that is, endlessly multiplying the rate of labor productivity, so that an ever-greater quantity of products are produced by an ever-smaller number of workers.

This is the essence of the matter for capitalists. No capitalist has the slightest interest in saving jobs. In fact, one can sum up the nature of capitalist competition as a contest over which capitalist can most quickly reduce the number of workers required to produce the greatest number of goods.

The capitalists who win, survive; while those who lose this never-ending cut-throat competition are driven into bankruptcy. The result is ever-fewer, but ever-bigger, ever-more concentrated and monopolistic giant enterprises.

America vs. Germany and Japan To see more clearly the hopeless bankruptcy of the AFL-CIO's class collaborationist strategy, we must view from still another angle the complex interaction between the world's competing masses of capital.

NAFTA must be seen in the larger context of the struggle between the three main capitalist contenders for world economic domination. Viewed from this perspective, each of the three contending free-trade blocs includes within them the element of protectionism, but on a larger scale.

For example, the current trade dispute between the United States and Europe, primarily over French subsidies to agricultural exports, exemplifies how the three free-trade regions of the worlddominated by the United States, Germany, and Japan—are also three protectionist regions.

The current dispute over Europe's subsidies to selected agricultural and other export-oriented commodities (reducing their export prices and thus underselling U.S. exports) could break down into an old-fashioned trade war—with each bloc, if not each nation, erecting tit-for-tat trade barriers against each other's exports.

This, of course, would do no good for world capitalist economic stability and therefore serves to discourage opposing AS POSSIBLE..."

trade blocs from going over the brink. But U.S. capitalism, so far unable to get acceptable reductions in European export subsidies, is playing the game of economic brinksmanship by threatening to levy heavy tariffs on wine, cheese, and perfume to force reductions in European export subsidies.

It should be obvious that in this war for markets, victory for one nation is always at the expense of the others. And in the short run, the workers in the victor nation may experience a temporary rise in employment and even other economic benefits. But in the long run, no matter which nation's capitalists win, all workers will lose.

In this light it should be even clearer that there is no capitalist solution to deepening unemployment. And at this stage in world history, no matter which trade policy is opted for, there will be fewer jobs as world capitalism enters the latest stage of final decay.

Why bureaucrats want protectionism The labor bureaucracy long ago made its peace with capitalism and sees itself as a player on the bosses' team.

Their fundamental outlook is simply to subordinate workers' interests to the employers' inalienable "right" to make a profit. As they see it, if the employers cannot make a "reasonable" profit, they have every right to shut down and throw their employees on the scrap heap. They feel no shame since they reject the working-class solutions advocated by revolutionary socialists to fight unemployment.

They are convinced that the capitalist class is intrinsically stronger than the working class. They reject a campaign to expand employment by reducing the workweek (with no reduction in pay) because it would reduce the rate of profit, and therefore, because of capitalist opposition, cannot succeed.

This defeatist conception leads inexorably to the conclusion that since workers can't beat the boss class, they have no choice but to join them. That's why the bureaucrats long ago opted only for "solutions" of society's problems that were acceptable to the U.S. capitalist class.

This bankrupt policy has led the working class into a decades-long retreat during which there has been a gradually accelerating loss of the ground gained by labor in the course of the great class-struggle upsurges of the 1930s and '40s.

In the light of this historic retreat, it's all too evident that the bureaucratic thesis that capitalists are stronger than workers is a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is because class collaboration does make workers weaker and capitalists stronger!

But the history of the class struggle in every country proves the exact opposite. Given a leadership capable of mobilizing the workers independently as a class—in their own class interests—the workers are the stronger class. That was the lesson of the great labor victories of the past.

On "dividing" the enemy However, in the face of growing mass worker discontent, the class collaborationists must conceal and rationalize their defeatist view of the objective relations between class forces.

The most sophisticated apologists for the labor bureaucracy conceal their subordination to the capitalist class by citing the need to "divide" the class enemy.

They argue: We must take sides with that faction of the bosses (in the case before us, the protectionists, and more generally the Democratic Party) that holds positions allegedly coming closest to those benefiting workers.

Dividing the enemy class is certainly an important consideration. But to illustrate the fallacy of the class collaborationist's interpretation of this tactic, an analogy is appropriate: For those who are opposed to the death penalty, it does no good for the struggle against it if you take sides with the advocates of lethal injection against the advocates of the gas chamber.

That's the real choice we have between opposing capitalist "solutions," including the choice between opposing trade policies.

Most importantly, when labor bureaucrats and their apologists oppose free trade without also opposing protectionism, they give aid and comfort to its anti-worker, chauvinist consequences.

But in the eyes of the top echelons of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, the demoralization of the working class is the lesser evil (it poses no threat to their dominant position) even if it results in a smaller and weaker union movement. The bureaucracy fears more than anything else an inspired, confident, combative working class. This, for them, is the greater evil.

History shows, however, that despite the obstruction of their misleaders, workers will ultimately be forced to explode into defensive action. And once they win even the most modest victory against the boss, they will confidently and readily turn their attention to dealing with the obstructionist union misleadership.

History also teaches that compared to winning a battle against the boss, sweeping the bosses' "labor lieutenants" out of the way will tend to be a relatively easy job of housecleaning. "Left" apologists for bureaucracy In recent months many political groups which claim to be socialist, even a couple calling themselves revolutionary, have jumped aboard the labor bureaucracy's protectionist bandwagon.

Up until recently, some of these groups (continued on next page)

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WHATEVER TO DO WITH WHETHER OR NOT CAPITALISTS WILL CONTINUE THEIR RELENTLESS ASSAULT ON THE CLASS INTERESTS OF WORKING PEOPLE."

SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1992 17 (continued from preceding page)

had kept some distance from the AFLCIO's protectionist trade position when the latter nakedly supported repressive restrictions against competition from "illegal aliens coming up from south of the border to take Americans' jobs."

Labor Notes, a radical journal published monthly in Detroit by the Labor Education and Research Project, has entered into the front ranks of opposition to NAFTA.

Its Executive Director, Kim Moody, wrote two articles in the journal's October 1992 issue explaining why Labor Notes is supporting a campaign of opposition to NAFTA by "labor, farmers and environmentalists."

(Moody previously co-authored with Mary McGinn a Labor Notes pamphlet, "Unions and Free Trade-Solidarity vs Competition," published in January 1992.)

Basically, the arguments advanced by Labor Notes for its opposition to NAPIA are anchored in the same pro-capitalist premises advanced by the labor bureaucracy and have absolutely nothing in common with international worker solidarity or with an authentic defense of working-class interests.

But Labor Notes attempts to make a more convincing case by including a few pages of "leftist" window-dressing. In one of the articles by Kim Moody (Labor Notes, Oct. 1992, page 8) he writes:

"Until now, most trucking cargo between the U.S. and Mexico had to be transferred at the border. Mexican drivers could not deliver in the U.S. and U.S. drivers could deliver only to certain plants in a narrow zone along the border. ..Over 10 years all such national restrictions ... in any of the three countries will be eliminated. Mexican firms, paying only a fraction of the wages earned by U.S. drivers, will be able to deliver and pick up international cargo anywhere in the U.S. and Canada at the end of a three-phase process.... " [Emphasis added] This kind of chauvinist argument is central to the protectionist thesis and has no redeeming virtues. It derives directly from and is designed to further the viewpoint that U.S. trucking bosses and trucking workers have a community of interest in keeping out their Mexican counterparts.

There is absolutely no good reason for linking the counterposed interests of trucking bosses and truck drivers.

However, Labor Notes seeks to cover its left flank with a page in its pamphlet headlined, "How Restricting Immigration Hurts All Workers." This one-page box correctly lays out the arguments against any restrictions on undocumented workers. Such laws they correctly state, are equally harmful to all workers.

Good. But in no way does this undo the damage of the Labor Notes argument (quoted above) warning against NAFTA's allowing low-paid Mexican truckdrivers to work north of the border and thus undermine U.S. wages! This contradicts its lip-service to international class solidarity.

The best traditions of the workers' movement points to a diametrically opposite approach to the question of how to deal with the problem of superexploitative wage levels imposed on Mexican and other workers.

Organize the unorganized!

If these workers are unorganized, help them organize themselves into unions. In any case, help them fight to raise their wages to the level of American truckers.

This approach has a logic that ultimately links North American workers in a common struggle that can raise living standards for all. Moreover, it helps set into motion the broader movement— beyond North America-toward international working-class solidarity.

Worse yet, by demanding that all three capitalist North American governments reject NAFTA, Labor Notes puts in first place the status quo, which bars workers from south of the border from freely entering and working in the U.S. And even worse, this policy places confidence in capitalist governments (providing they reject NAFTA) as the main force for "defending" American workers' rights.

Furthermore, U.S. truckdrivers, orga"THESE TRAD nized in one of this country's strongest unions, the Teamsters, are in a uniquely powerful position to help Mexican teamsters reach parity in wages and working conditions with their class sisters and brothers above the Rio Grande.

A brief glance into history shows that the Teamsters' union was built into one of the nation's most powerful unions by the class struggle methods of organizing over-the-road drivers—the same strategy that is desperately needed by North American truck drivers today.

The Teamsters in the 1930s—led by American Trotskyists like Farrell Dobbs, Carl Skoglund, and Vincent Ray Dunneorganized the warehouses and depots in key cities across the main trucking routes, and then utilized the traditions of class solidarity to exclude unorganized trucking bosses from loading or unloading.

This is the tried and tested proletarian road to international class solidarity.

"Long-term goals of solidarity"

In chapter 8 of its pamphlet "Unions and Free Trade," Labor Notes again seeks to cover itself from criticism on the left.

It lays out what it calls the "long-term goals of [its] solidarity strategy." The journal lists a few working class demands, including the eventual convergence of wages, benefits, and working and living conditions for workers in all three North American countries; a shorter work week with no reduction in pay; national health care; and cancellation of Mexico's debt to U.S. banks.

But, unfortunately, only a very small part of this pamphlet is devoted to these "long-term goals" and is counterposed to the pamphlet's unmistakably central thrust in favor of one pro-capitalist trade policy against another.

The "long-term goals" come as an afterthought. The real effect serves as a screen for Labor Notes, while it puts itself at the service of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy and their attempt to maintain an alliance with the few protectionist capitalists still in opposition to NAFTA.

If the executive director of Labor Notes were truly concerned with organizing the workers of North America to defend themselves against the adverse consequences of free trade, it would not be necessary, in WE CANT, E POLICIES HAVE NOTHI the slightest degree, to support either protectionism or free trade.

Both trade policies serve capitalists in their relentless assault on the class interests of working people. Moreover, we can be sure that the antilabor offensive of both protectionists and free traders will deepen, not ease up.

So, in what way does taking a stand in favor of either of the ruling class's trade policies help workers defend their living standards? The answer to this question is never given by the labor bureaucracy or its apologists. It is only implied that labor's interests can be served by supporting one wing of capitalists against another.

Working-class policies

Which trade policy is in place is irrelevant to the workers' struggle to defend their class interests. Supporting or opposing either trade policy adds nothing to the fight to defend labor's interests—unless one thinks that leaving the door open for a section of capitalists to "join" labor's defensive struggle will strengthen labor's position.

On the contrary, this approach detracts from workers' defensive efforts by throwing a cloud over the real issue-the fundamental fact that the interests of workers and bosses are diametrically counterposed—no matter what trade policy the bosses support at any given time.

Worst of all, by directing labor's fire against one or another capitalist trade policy, the main culprit, the capitalist system itself, is let off the hook.

Furthermore, supporting free trade or protectionism is a hopeless and reactionary utopianism because no man-made law can be higher in capitalist society than the laws of capitalist production.

For instance, despite all the "trust-busting" laws passed against capitalist monopolies—from the 19th century to the end of the 20th—monopolization has not been slowed in the slightest.

Monopoly is an inexorable product of capitalist development and nothing but socialist revolution-the conquest of state power by a democratic, revolutionary working class government-can stop it. Moreover all, capitalist "restrictions" on the excesses of capitalism wind up, like antitrust laws, being applied against the workers' "trusts" —that is, the unions!

Defending against the consequences of either free trade or protectionist trade policies-such as against the growing scourge of unemployment, against runaway shops, against any and all attempts to remove health, safety, environmental, or any other regulations serving the interests of workers and society as a whole-has nothing whatever to do with whether or not NAFTA is ultimately approved.

These attacks on socially progressive regulations have been going on since long before NAFTA was even a gleam in some capitalist theoretician's eye.

Like all antilabor and antisocial measures, levied with increasing severity for at least the past 45 years, it is a consequence of the developing world capitalist crisis—at the heart of which is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

The generalized assault on workers' living standards on every level-wages, benefits, social services, taxes, and all manner of environmental controls—is designed by the capitalists to bolster declining profit rates. That's a simple fact of life in capitalist society.

Fight unemployment-jobs for all!

• The central demand for a shorter workweek with no reduction in pay should be high on the workers' list of demands.

And more exactly, since the productivity of labor is limitless with applied technology, labor's program must include the demand for a sliding scale of hours with no reduction in pay.

This means that our goal is ultimately to divide the total number of hours required for production of all the things that society needs by the total number of workers-this goal points directly to a socialist society, where human needs will come first.

The labor bureaucracy, committed to maintaining the profitability of U.S. capitalism, has dropped any mention of labor's historic struggle for the shorter work-day/work-week with no reduction in pay as the workers' answer to capitalist unemployment.

Despite historic victories won in the United States for the eight-hour day and five-day week, this has become a virtual dead letter, as the eight-hour day and fortyhour week have become things of the past for ever more American workers.

This default of responsibility must be turned around 180 degrees. Moreover, it would be a betrayal of working-class interests to relegate this most burning of all questions to second place, substituting for it a campaign to support this or that capitalist trade policy.

• To stop the shut-down of plant after plant in auto, steel, and other industries because capitalists cannot continue prof itably producing the goods that society needs, revolutionary working-class fighters should demand that abandoned workplaces be expropriated and production resumed under control of their workers.

If capitalists want to run away to low wage areas of the world, let them go-but keep the workshops, created by the sweat and blood of workers where they are-and place these productive forces at the service of society as a whole.

• Furthermore, to get people back to work more swiftly, a massive public works program should be initiated at once.

Construct an environmentally-compatible mass transit system on a scale that would gradually phase out the current dependence on ecologically destructive, gas-guzzling automobiles.

Also necessary for getting the country back to work, is a massive campaign to provide publicly-financed housing for all who need it, as well as schools, hospitals and other necessary social institutions.

• How would it be financed? By taxing the rich, not the poor. No taxes on incomes below $75,000 a year; and a steeply graduated tax on all incomes above that amount, reaching a 100 percent tax on annual incomes above $500,000.

These demands would be a good beginning line of defense for the vital interests of the working class in this country-free trade or protectionism notwithstanding.

And we should do everything in our power to encourage and assist the workers 'of the whole world to follow this example—not ask them to choose between two pro-capitalist trade policies.

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"WE ARE LIVING IN AN ERA OF REVOLUTION. AND THE REVOLT OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO IS PART OF OPPRESSION AND COLONIALISN ... Malcolm X (continued from page 20)

leaders, and have the right to self-defense in the face of racist attacks.

Educate and organize

In his last year alive, Malcolm X was hounded, harassed, and faced with the constant threat of sudden death. Despite these obstacles, he worked frantically to build an organization.

(When he was killed he was about to give a speech to open discussion on the program of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), the group he founded to politically organize the Black community.)

Malcolm X was vilified and slandered because he called American society by its right name-racist. He was against "non-violence" when Blacks were physically attacked by racists and he advocated Black self-defense. He was called a "Black racist," an "extremist," and a "hate monger" by so-called liberals because he could not see the efficacy of "turning the other cheek."

Malcolm X said, "If we react to white racism with a violent reaction, to me that's not Black racism. If you come to put a rope around my neck, and I hang you for it, to me that's not racism. Yours is racism. ...My reaction is the reaction of a human being reacting to defend and protect himself."

When Malcolm X spoke, Black people listened. A brilliant speaker, who stripped American racist society to the bare bones, Malcolm X smashed illusions in gradual reform: "You've been waiting over 400 years for your freedom."

He exposed the hypocrisy of the liberals, who cautioned Blacks to go slow and be "non-violent." "They want you to be E AMERICAN NEGRO THE REBELLION AGAI PRESSION AND COL WHICH HAS ARACTERIZED TH OF REVOLT O IS PART NST THE NIALI Wide World Photo stressed the need for all tendencies and organizations in the Black movement to come together—in action.

He advocated and promoted a united front of all Black organizations independent of the "white power structure." He stated repeatedly: "There must be Black unity before there can be Black-white unity." Once that was accomplished, Malcolm X was willing to work with any person or group who wanted to help.

He considered himself a Muslim, a Black nationalist, and a revolutionary.

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were imposed on the unior leaderships by the rank and file."