Bosses are cutting vacations and holidays. Even when we do have time off, more of us feel the pressure to work right through it, because we can’t pay the bills. Or when we do try to get away, we can’t afford it. The skyrocketing prices for gas, food, flying, come to a small fortune, especially for an entire family.

So, when we do get a few days off, more of us are just staying at home. Some clever journalist even invented a new word for it – a “stay-cation.” Obviously, even if you don’t have to go to work, a “stay-cation” is not the same thing as an actual “vacation.”

But even when we take them, our vacations are being downsized. We have less time, stay closer to home, and cut back on all the little things that make a vacation a little more special.

Needless to say, there are more and more of us who are getting plenty of time off. But then we have no way to go on vacation, because we lost our job and have no money. Feeding the family and keeping a roof over your head takes precedence over a vacation.

Yet, vacations are not a luxury or a frill.

With all of the tensions and pressures on the job, the longer and more aggravating commutes, everyone needs time to get away. We need to decompress. There is less strain and fatigue. It’s good for the heart and health. Doctors recommend it.

Vacations allow people to live longer. That’s a simple fact.

There’s also more to enjoy. On vacation, just buying food can be different. Instead of dashing through the same old super market, there is time to stop and savor different tastes and smells.

A change in scenery is a time of discovery. It also opens up conversation between loved ones and friends. We make new friends, or discover relatives we didn’t know even existed.

Yet, today, bosses are tossing our vacations in the trash can. Just like the cuts to our jobs, wages, health care and pensions, the bosses expects us to sacrifice our vacations, too.

Sure, the bosses have an armful of excuses to justify these attacks: “competition,” “China,” “globalization,” “rising energy costs,” “ the credit crisis.”

But it all boils down to one thing. They tell us over and over that it’s just the way things have to be.

That’s dead wrong!

Workers are not losing out because of a lack of wealth or possibilities in the society. Workers have never been more productive. Society has never been wealthier.

No, the ruling class, boss and company, are keeping more and more for themselves. And they are getting it from what the working class produces.

There’s more to life than what the boss says. There’s plenty to do, to learn and to enjoy. But it should be open to everyone, especially all of us, whose labor makes it all possible.

We need the time to do it. We need the money. And when the boss doesn’t give it, we have to be ready to fight for it, and fight for it together.

Wicks is the second black man Ragan has killed in less than three months. On May 11, Ragan and another cop riddled a car with bullets, killing 19-year-old Michael Byoune and wounding two other young men. The four young men in the car were unarmed.

In fact, even police officials admitted that the May shooting was “unjustified,” that is, murder. Ragan was put on leave, but not for long. Even while still “under investigation,” he was put back on street duty – armed and ready to kill again. And kill he did when he was sent – by mistake – to the wrong apartment.

Neighbors say that four cops came pounding on Wicks’ door at 12:30 a.m., without identifying themselves. The cops also claim Wicks opened the door with a gun in his hand. That’s such an old lie – why would anyone believe them? But even if he had, anyone would be worried about their safety in that situation when four strange men show up at your door like that.

In working-class neighborhoods, especially if the residents are black, cops shoot first and ask questions later. The fact that Ragan was put back on the street after the first murder shows that the powers that be have given them free license to do so.

No doubt, L.A. needs enormous improvements to its transportation system. L.A. traffic consistently ranks as the most awful in the country. And it is getting worse, with traffic delays doubling over the last 25 years.

But why are voters being asked to pay for yet another sales-tax hike? The sales tax already went up by a half-cent in 1980, and another half-cent in 1990. People are still paying those increases! If the new tax goes through, the sales tax will be the highest in the state, 8.75%.

Since the sales tax is extremely regressive, the burden falls disproportionately on the working class and poor. With all the high prices these days, the new tax will be like pouring salt on the wound!

Besides that, there is no way to know if the tax money will be used the way the MTA and the mayor say. When they try to “sell” a new tax, they make it seem like the money will go directly to the new projects.

Since the MTA never provides adequate financing for all its operations and capital improvements, it is always being forced to borrow more money. Currently, the MTA’s debt is almost four billion dollars. And it’s only going to increase with the new round of projects, especially since the final price tag for construction is always much higher than the original estimate.

That means more and more of the budget goes to pay back the loans. According to a 1998 report in the Los Angeles Times, the MTA spends 30 per cent of its budget on “servicing” its debt, including interest and principal. So, wealthy investors and financial companies pocket almost one-third of the entire MTA budget, before any money is spent on operations and construction!

This whole mess doesn’t have to fall on our shoulders. We could fix it by taxing the corporations! The same Wall Street companies that make a profit off the MTA and our taxes should be paying for these projects in the first place. In the last 30 years, the tax burden in California has increasingly shifted to the workers and poor people.

But for corporations, tax breaks are a way of life! Don’t believe anyone who says that California is a “high-tax” state that drives out big business. It’s a myth! A couple of years ago a study found that some of the biggest companies like Walt Disney and Fluor, the big engineering company, paid no state corporate income tax beyond the $800 minimum. In 2007-2008, 12 billion dollars in corporate handouts could have been used to pay for transportation and other services we need.

Instead, the politicians make sure that their buddies and business partners reap all the benefits and pay as little as possible.

And they’ll keep on doing it until working people call them out.

When the war in Iraq started, in order to convince the population to support the war, the White House reassured everyone the war would cost no more than about 50 to 60 billion dollars. Not to mention the fact that they never spoke of the more than a million Iraqis who would lose their lives, or the over 4,000 U.S. soldiers – not counting those who killed themselves when they came back.

Even after the war’s first year, Paul Bremer, then overseeing the US. occupation of Iraq, predicted the price tag would be no more than 100 billion dollars. So much for politicians’ predictions! And the war is not over yet, not by any stretch of the imagination.

When it comes to money for health care, schools, housing, or transportation, there is never any money to be found. But when the politicians need taxpayer money to expand the American empire, the sky’s the limit!

The police spies documented such “criminal activity” as organizing protests and making up fliers. The former state police superintendent claimed the spying was legal. As a result of this spying, a few of the protesters got their names put on a list of potential “terrorists”!

After September 11^th, new laws and new funding from Homeland Security were supposedly going to keep us safe from “terrorists.”

Such spying shows how the government-created hysteria about “terrorism” is being used to block considerable opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan among the U.S. population, and opposition to the death penalty as well.

Of course, the “experts” say that salaried retirees can afford this as long as they shop around for “the best deals.”

What BS! 20 per cent of a hospital bill totaling $60,000 would come to $12,000! How is that affordable for any ordinary retiree?

It is truly a demonstration of whom all these companies and government agencies work for and serve – the rich and super-rich.

Otherwise, GM officials would be in jail for robbery!

Miller is just the latest in news media to be pushed aside by the military after showing certain aspects of the destruction, death and human suffering caused by the war. News organizations in the U.S. and allied countries recently reported that they have a combined total of only a half dozen photographers in Iraq, even though over 150,000 U.S. and allied troops and tens of thousands of contractors are engaged in the war there!

Among the important things that brought the terrible cost of the Viet Nam war home were the televised reports on the war. The U.S. military obviously drew the lessons of Viet Nam and has worked to control access by the media in this war.

According to some reporters and cameramen, U.S. manipulation of news coverage is getting worse. The U.S. government and military are trying to sanitize this deadly war so they can continue to carry it on.

Unexpected? Not really. There was a sinkhole in the same area of the 110, three years ago, caused by corroded drainage pipes under the freeway.

The faulty pipes have never been replaced since 1940, when the freeway was built.

Does it sound like it’s time to replace the pipes? “No funding” is the answer – in the richest state of the richest country in the world!

They may as well put signs up on the freeway saying “Watch for Sinkholes” – if there is funding for it.

Ideal Staffing hired immigrant workers, in some cases gave them fake badges, and exploited their fear of the government to keep them from complaining.

The airlines benefitted from the low wages paid to these workers to keep everyone else’s wages low.

It’s why every worker needs full legal rights, no matter where they come from and how they get here.

Obviously the situation they observed in the Occupied Territories recalled the apartheid they knew in South Africa. The South Africans saw that the “Wall of Separation” and the roads reserved only for Israelis take up much of the territory there; they were created solely to protect Israeli settlers dispersed throughout the territory.

They also saw that Palestinians needed permits to move around, recalling the situation of black people in South Africa under the so-called “pass” system. But some members of the delegation pointed out that the South African system didn’t go as far as the Israeli system. In South Africa, said the visitors to Israel, “There were no separate roads, security checkpoints, different vehicle license plates denoting the different groups, or long waiting lines at the security checkpoints. And the raids by the [Israeli] soldiers are worse ... than they were under apartheid.”

The testimony of these South African militants is shocking. Some of their struggles against apartheid cost them several years in prison, and yet they find the Israeli situation worse.

When authorities tried to cover up the crime, pretending she committed suicide, the girl’s uncle, a teacher, protested against the dishonest inquiry. He was then beaten and killed.

His students and the entire population were enraged and demonstrated by the thousands in front of the police station, burning several administrative buildings and police cars. The government sent reinforcements to repress the demonstrators.

For once, the press picked up the story because of the coming Olympic Games – and because some riot scenes were videotaped and put on the Internet despite the censorship.

But for years now, such revolts have broken out in one region of China after another. The population has become infuriated by the behavior of corrupt and arrogant local authorities, who extort and rob them. The market economy in China, highly praised in the West, has severely impoverished the majority of the population, in particular in the countryside. Some 900 million peasants are left to fend for themselves by so-called economic development, which only enriches a small minority of wealthy people, foreign investors and companies like Wal-Mart.

The exasperation of the population is such that massive revolts can break out at any moment. For example, in December 2004 in Guangdong province, some 50,000 people demonstrated against police who had beaten to death a young migrant worker accused of stealing a bike. The repression that followed left four dead and a hundred wounded.

In 2006, thousands of peasants demonstrated for several days because the authorities had leased their land to a Hong Kong company. In fact, there are tens of thousands of such illegal land seizures each year, about 80,000 in 2004 alone. Some 40 million peasants lost their land in this way during the last ten years.

In response, there have been tens of thousands of protest movements each year, even though we hear about very few of them. The peasants defend themselves and resist. The government doesn’t hesitate to repress them, throwing them in prison, shooting into crowds.

Of course, with the coming Olympic Games, the local authorities were ordered to “protect social harmony and stability and to assure that the Olympic Games take place in safety and serenity,” according to an official slogan.

Safety and serenity – but not for the Chinese population!

It’s enough to cast a glance at what has happened since World War II to understand this.

For over 30 years, for example, China, the largest country in the world, was excluded from international sports competition because the imperialist powers, with the U.S. in the lead, refused to recognize its existence. In the London Olympics of 1948, the Russians, Germans and Japanese were excluded as undesirables. For years, East Germany and West Germany, as well as North Korea and South Korea, presented separate teams, not because the people in these countries felt themselves members of split nations, but because the victorious U.S., British and French imperialisms had divided these countries with the aid of the Russian bureaucracy at the end of World War II.

In 1956 at Melbourne, the games were disturbed by strong international political tensions. A month before the celebration, the French government had ordered the hijacking of the plane in which Ben Bella and other Algerian leaders traveled. At the same time, the student revolt in Budapest broke out, serving as a prelude to the Russian intervention in Hungary. Finally, French and British troops parachuted into Suez in an attempt to prevent Egypt from nationalizing the canal that ran through its country.

Under such conditions, Egypt and Iraq decided to boycott the Olympics in Melbourne since, they said, “the nations guilty of aggression against Egypt aren’t excluded from the games.” Holland, Switzerland and Spain chose to stay away to protest the events in Budapest, Hungary.

In 1968, a week before the games held in Mexico City, the police and army cold-bloodedly fired on a demonstration of unarmed strikers and students in the Plaza of Three Cultures, killing close to 1,000 people, among whom were many women and children. This didn’t bother Avery Brundage, then president of the International Olympic Committee, who affirmed that the games were a “true oasis in this so disturbed world.”

This “disturbed world” included the severe racism of the U.S. which had led to the struggle for Black Power in this country, and the support by all the big imperialist countries for the apartheid regime in South Africa – not to mention the American war on Viet Nam. So, of course, politics sprang up in the very center of the “oasis.” When two black U.S. athletes – Tommie Smith and John Carlos – demonstrated their support for Black Power from the height of the podium, they were immediately expelled from the Olympic village by order of the International Olympic Committee.

In 1972 during the Munich Olympics, a Palestinian commando unit kidnapped Israeli athletes. This event ended in bloodshed when the German police entered, firing on everyone. There were 18 dead, among them eleven Israelis, five Palestinians, and two Germans. The German and Israeli governments preferred to sacrifice the athletes rather than let the Palestinians appear victorious in the situation.

A few days later, U.S. black athletes Matthews and Collins were excluded from the games for having exhibited an attitude called “disrespectful” to the U.S. national anthem.

For the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, the African countries boycotted the games as a sign of protest against the apartheid regime in South Africa. When the Organization of African Unity petitioned the International Olympic Committee to exclude New Zealand because it had recently sent a rugby team to South Africa, the leaders of the International Olympic Committee refused to hear them, alleging that the Committee couldn’t discuss with a political organization.

In 1980, the United States recommended the boycott of the Moscow games and was able to get about 60 nations to refuse to participate. They denounced the USSR’s war against the people of Afghanistan and proclaimed they couldn’t go to Moscow under these conditions. Does anyone believe these same leaders who intervene to oppress people in countries all over the globe pitied the fate of the Afghan people? They used the occasion to score a goal against the Russians; that’s all.

The Russians tied the score with their own boycott of the Los Angeles games in 1984. The Soviet leaders said the organizers of the games violated the “Olympic Charter,” so the Russians stayed away, they said thanks to the lack of security for their athletes in the face of an “unfettered anti-Soviet campaign on the part of U.S. reactionary circles.”

The 1988 Olympic games were held in South Korea. The North Koreans boycotted the games because they weren’t co-sponsors. Ethiopia and Cuba joined the boycott out of solidarity.

In Barcelona in 1992, the German team was united after the fall of the Berlin wall. But war was already breaking out in Yugoslavia. That country was banned from taking part, while athletes from Serbia and Montenegro were allowed to compete – but only as individuals.

In the 1996 Atlanta games, an American terrorist placed a bomb in Centennial Park, which killed two people. The media was quick to blame a security guard who had intervened to defuse another bomb. But in fact the killer turned out to be the same fanatic who had also assassinated a doctor in Buffalo because he performed abortions.

In the 2000 Sydney Olympics, athletes from South and North Korea carried a joint banner at the opening ceremony but competed under the separate flags of their divided nation. The same week, the Pentagon said that it considered North Korea a major threat. U.S. imperialism still props up the division of Korea despite the wishes of the Korean people.

The 2004 Athens Games, the first Olympics after September 11^th, might as well have been called the Police Olympics. About 70,000 cops were deployed to patrol Athens and the Olympic venues. Before the games, police rounded up homeless people, locking them up in psychiatric hospitals. Refugees and asylum-seekers from countries where wars were going on were detained or deported.

As long as imperialism rules, there will be poverty and oppression in the world. As a consequence, the Olympics will not be free of politics.

The first stage of this tour was Afghanistan. When he met Afghan president Kharzai, Obama repeated that it was necessary to bring in an additional 10,000 U.S. troops. Taking up a formula dear to George W. Bush, he declared that Afghanistan was the “central front in the war on terrorism.” And he insisted the situation in Afghanistan, “is perilous and urgent” and troops must be sent immediately.

When he got to Iraq, Obama spoke of withdrawing troops in two years. But, as usual, he didn’t mention that his withdrawal plan counts on leaving troops behind to “continue fighting against al Qaeda, protecting service members and diplomats, while training and supporting Iraq’s security personnel,” as he’s admitted elsewhere. And that’s only if things don’t change!

In any event, the troops withdrawn from Iraq would be redeployed to Afghanistan. On this point, Obama agrees with Mike Mullen, the head of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, appointed by Bush, who declared at the beginning of the month, “Until we get to a point where we reduce the commitment in Iraq, we won’t have enough additional troops to add to Afghanistan.”

When Obama visited Israel, he reiterated a statement he made earlier to the major Israeli lobby group in the U.S., AIPAC. He said he thought that Israel’s capital should be moved to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is part of the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. Making Jerusalem the capital would mean taking even more territory from the Palestinian people, and pushing even more Palestinians out of their homes and neighborhoods.

With this kind of statement, Obama is making it crystal clear that, like President Bush, he completely supports Israel against the Palestinians. Yet the Palestinians are a people under a permanent and bloody occupation, a situation not that different from what black people face in the United States.

The image of Obama, the first black candidate for the presidency having some chance of winning, certainly excites illusions. But his declarations – even before he is elected – certainly puncture them.

A cigarette seller in a working class neighborhood of Baghdad, interviewed by the press during Obama’s visit, had no illusions: “American politics isn’t going to change with the change in the American president,” he said to a journalist who questioned him. Everything Obama said only confirms this view.

George’s parents, environmental activists, shun technology: no washing machine; no electric lights; no car; no TV. Certainly no computer, though George longs for one.

Excitement comes to George when he makes friends with new neighbors: Eric, a scientist who thrives on technology and space exploration, and his daughter Annie, who lives more in the fantasy world than the real.

Eric has a computer, Cosmos, that talks. And, in the story, Cosmos lures Eric, Annie and George into outer space. Their adventures include getting lost in cosmic clouds of dust and gas, passing stars, moons, planets, comets, nebula, asteroid belts, galaxies, and falling into a Black Hole. Black Holes are not as terrifying as they sound. Eric discovers an exit out... IF you are patient enough to wait thousands of years.

Although the book is intended for younger readers, adults could also find interesting the explanations about physics, astronomy and the universe in George’s Secret Key to the Universe.

Julie Nguyen Brown knows this very well. She’s the owner of Plastech, a parts supplier for the Big 3 that recently went bankrupt. Plastech was a part of the whole process the Big 3 did to spin off parts plants into separate companies over the past 30 years. It’s an extremely inefficient way to make cars, and many of those companies went bankrupt over the years, gobbled up by other companies like Plastech, before THEY went bankrupt. But they provided cheap parts to the Big 3 by hiring workers at incredibly low wages. And SOME people, like Brown and her family, were able to make big bucks – even as their companies were going under.

After Plastech declared bankruptcy in February, it cut a deal with Johnson Controls to have that company buy up the majority of Plastech’s business assets. Once the deal was finished at the end of June, some interesting facts came out.

Johnson Controls will pay Brown a total of 9.25 million dollars after the sale, and the “Plastech Holding Company” will continue to exist, 100% owned by Brown – and it will continue to own residences in Arizona and Rhode Island. Any guess who will be using those residences?

Another fact: Plastech had 10 members of Brown’s family on the payroll – and in total, they received 6.4 million dollars from the company in 2007. In addition, Brown’s personal driver, cook and two housekeepers were paid by the company.

Crain’s Detroit Business wonders why Brown tried to keep these facts secret... after all, it says, such numbers are “not out of line” with other companies!

Indy Mac went bankrupt when its depositors lost confidence in its ability to redeem their deposits. In a few days, they withdrew 1.3 billion dollars of deposits out of the 32 billion dollars in the bank. Following the bankruptcy, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took it over, covering losses amounting to eight billion dollars.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that the ongoing crisis will result in one trillion dollars in such losses. Specialists foresee the bankruptcy of 150 banks and financial institutions worldwide. The financial system hasn’t collapsed until now because different nation states, primarily through the central banks of the richest countries, like the U.S. Federal Reserve, have provided hundreds of billions of dollars in public money to the banks.

But still the crisis continues and gets worse.

Speculation fed by the sacrifices

When the mortgage crisis began to unwind, capitalists withdrew their money from real estate and, searching for places to profit, fed speculation in other sectors. They put their money into oil, raw materials or food products. They provoked a general price explosion in all these sectors. It’s estimated that the sum of money that flooded into oil speculation is 30 to 35 times higher than the total that all the oil in the world will actually sell for even at those high prices. This means speculators were buying, selling, buying again, selling again, etc.

In all the countries, including the U.S., working people are suffering a sometimes considerable cut in their standard of living from these price increases.

These trillions of dollars that the bourgeoisie uses for speculation did not come out of thin air. This money was accumulated through dozens of years of sacrifice and exploitation imposed on all the working class and all people. It was produced by layoffs, plant closings, wage and benefit concessions, the economic destruction of entire regions and countries, and an explosion of misery everywhere.

The workers are paying doubly. First, by the degradation of their living and working conditions. Then, even more seriously, because the money accumulated off their labor will have been used for more speculation, thus further destabilizing an economic system that is unstable by nature.

Against a society sick from capitalism, the workers need to defend themselves!

This is the umpteenth variant of the crises which regularly punctuate the functioning of the capitalist system, in which production isn’t carried out to satisfy needs but to generate profits. For decades, the capitalists figured that since the market for consumption was saturated, reinvesting their profits in industry wouldn’t bring a big enough return in profits. As a result, they diverted an ever bigger part of their profits toward the financial sphere and speculation.

The working class will end this never-ending crisis only by taking away control of the economy from this parasitic class, by making sure the economy finally meets the needs of everyone. All wealth is created by the working class. Without it, nothing works, nothing is produced.

The immense force of the workers is simply asleep today. If it is put in motion, the workers united in a common struggle easily have the force and the means to ensure everyone can finally live in a fashion worthy of their labor.

What they don’t say is that only a very small minority of the millions of homeowners at risk of foreclosure will get this mortgage relief. And whatever reduction they get will be so small, even the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 40 per cent of those holding these new mortgages will still lose their homes.

In fact, the bill was really set up to funnel countless billions to the banks and Wall Street companies. It will allow them to unload hundreds of thousands of bad mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration. When those mortgages default, it will be the taxpayers who pay the tab.

President Bush had earlier threatened to veto the bill over one provision that provides grants of four billion dollars to local government to buy up vacant foreclosed homes. Certainly, this provision is nothing but a bailout of the banks that own the foreclosed property. But obviously Bush threatened a veto as a way of distancing himself a little from the bill, to blame the Democrats, especially if the cost of the bailout skyrockets, which is very likely given the collapse of the housing market.

The bill also gives the Treasury Department the authority to shore up two mortgage company giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Today, over five trillion dollars of the nation’s 12 trillion dollars in mortgages are either owned or guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie.

Ever since the housing crisis broke open, a growing proportion of those mortgages have gone bad. Publicly, the politicians and government bureaucrats claim that it might cost 25 billion dollars to bail them out. That’s already a huge amount of money. But most believe that the real cost of the bailout will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. This is confirmed by the new bailout bill itself, which gives the U.S. Treasury the authority to borrow up to 800 billion dollars to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac! That is bigger than the entire economy of most countries!

Thus, the very same banks and Wall Street financial companies that profited so much from the housing bubble are now bailed out by the taxpayer – first and foremost, by the working class.

Big surprise!

How many people can pay rent, food, gas and electric, telephone and transportation to work on wages like those – plus raise a family?

The new minimum comes to less than $1200 a month – if you’re working full time.

Minimum? No, it’s pitiful!

The Democratic primaries were barely over before Barack Obama began demonstratively to move his campaign to the right. Only a few hours after the last primary votes were counted, he addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the primary pro-Israel lobby in the United States. He asserted Jerusalem “should remain 100% undivided” under Israeli control, and he pledged to work to “isolate Hamas.” Calling Iran the biggest threat to peace in the region, he tried to explain away his earlier offer to meet the leaders of Iran, without any preconditions, saying instead, “I would be willing to lead tough and principled diplomacy with the appropriate Iranian leaders at a time and place of my choosing if, and only if, it can advance the interests of the United States.” Taking a page from George W. Bush’s book, he blustered, “I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel.” Ironically, he put the emphasis on the military threat exactly at the point the Bush administration was moving to soften U.S. relations with Iran, hinting the U.S. might establish an embassy in Tehran for the first time in 28 years.

A few weeks later Obama threw out that calculated bombshell, saying “When I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to revise my policies.” Even if he rushed to bend the stick the other way later in the same day, he had made the point: his position on Iraq and withdrawing troops was not nearly as firm as many people had taken it to be.

But it was on the domestic side that his move to the right was particularly glaring. Calling public financing a barrier to the influence of wealth over the elections, Obama had pledged to keep his campaign within its limits. Instead, he became the first presidential candidate since public financing was enacted in 1971 to turn his back on it.

Having once urged a moratorium on the death penalty on the grounds that its imposition was “flawed,” he now declared himself in agreement with the minority opinion presented by the two most reactionary justices on the Supreme Court – Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia – who argued for its expansion to cover crimes less than murder.

In mid-June, he met privately with extreme right-wing evangelical leaders – including several of the most vociferous opponents of abortion and public schools. Two weeks later, he announced that not only would he continue Bush’s program of handing over government money to religious institutions, he would expand it. And, in an interview with Relevant, a Christian fundamentalist magazine, Obama showed himself ready to chip away further at Roe v. Wade: “I have repeatedly said that I think it’s entirely appropriate for states to restrict or even prohibit late term abortions as long as there is a strict, well-defined exception for the health of the mother. Now, I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother.” Like many other politicians who pretend to defend women’s right to choose, Obama was ready to erect still another limitation on that right in order to pander to the anti-abortion crowd. These limitations, taken together, have seriously reduced women’s legal access to abortion.

The clearest expression of how much Obama was trying to reposition himself was his vote for Bush’s bill, expanding the legal authority of the executive to spy electronically on American citizens, while guaranteeing that any company that had earlier broken the law helping the government to spy would not be prosecuted. For months, he had promised to help bottle up the bill in debate, which would have prevented the Republicans from easing it through while Bush was still in office. But when the vote came, he broke off his campaign to return for the vote, joining a minority of the Democratic Party to give Bush what he asked for – and what one of Bush’s advisers called “more than the President had hoped for.”

Certainly, Obama isn’t the only slippery character running for president. John McCain had already been moving to junk the image he had cultivated as a “maverick,” a different kind of Republican who, on a few high profile issues, had appeared to take more “liberal” positions, almost like a Democrat.

McCain had once voted against Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, saying: “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who most need tax relief.” Today, his good conscience seems to have deserted him – he says he would reinstate those tax cuts for the wealthy, which are scheduled to expire in a few years.

He once opposed off-shore drilling for oil and natural gas on environmental concerns, as well as on grounds that the oil companies benefit too cheaply from public lands. Not now. With the current high oil prices providing the pretext for additional hand-outs to these monstrously wealthy companies, McCain rushed to give them another chunk of public resources, announcing his support for these giants on the same day Bush did.

McCain once had said that, although morally opposed to abortion, he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade because it would force innumerable women to go through “illegal and dangerous operations.” Today, not only does he say he favors overturning Roe v. Wade, he denounces abortion regularly, even when it’s not on the agenda, for example, in a recent forum on the economy. Having once called right-wing Christian fundamentalist leaders “agents of intolerance,” and “corrupting influences on religion and politics,” McCain embraced those same “agents of intolerance,” seeking their support.

On immigration, McCain had differentiated himself from most of the Republican Party with his proposal to offer legalization, even if very limited, to some of the immigrants without papers. But from the moment he started campaigning, McCain began to focus his comments on “closing the border.”

Both candidates had built up a certain aura of a “new politics” – McCain with his “maverick” stance, and Obama with his talk about “change.” But this “new politics” was clearly and always only a stance. McCain, a maverick? Not hardly. His own record shows it. In 2007, McCain voted with the Bush administration 95% of the time. So far in this election year, 2008, he has given his vote to Bush 100% of the time.

Obama’s idea of “change”? It’s a return to the same old Democratic Party apparatus and leftovers from previous Democratic administrations. Take one look at his closest advisers, starting with his key economic adviser, Jason Furman, who has close ties to Robert Rubin, Clinton’s Treasury secretary who moved on to head Citigroup. The AFL-CIO describes Furman’s views as “focusing too much on corporate America and not enough on workers.” Among other things, he applauded Wal-Mart – whose anti-labor policies are well-known – calling it a model for other businesses to follow. Or look at Obama’s foreign policy team. Most of the 300 and some “experts” come right out of the Clinton administration – which, according to the Wall Street Journal, committed troops to more parts of the globe than any other administration since World War II. It also laid the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq.

The media pretends that candidates must move to the right to get elected. Not true! Above all, not this year. Why has there been so much enthusiasm and attention during this year’s election campaign if not for the popular hope that this year’s candidates represented a change from politics as usual in Washington? Only one quarter of the population supports Bush and his policies – how could anyone pretend that it is necessary now to start embracing many of those same policies to get elected?

Perhaps McCain feels he must move to the right to reinvigorate that coalition of well-off petty bourgeois and right-wing religious fundamentalists who have been the base of the Republican party for years. But Obama’s move to the right can only harm his chances, since a Democrat depends on votes from the working class and poorer parts of the population to get elected.

In any case, both candidates are junking their earlier pose of a “new politics” in order to prepare for assuming the presidency, getting ready to carry out the policies that the bourgeoisie wants – and to do it without having to face a population in which they had cultivated too many illusions. This is especially true on the issues that matter most to the population today: the war, health care and the economy.

Both Agree: Extend the U.S. War on Iraq into Afghanistan

The 2006 mid-year elections were strongly marked by the population’s dismay over the war in Iraq, and it cost the Republican Party dearly. McCain and Obama both became more vocally critical of the Bush administration, even if they seemed to be staking out nearly opposite positions on the war.

McCain criticized the administration for how it was carrying out the war, and particularly for not sending as many troops as the military had asked for. Thus, when the Bush administration moved at the beginning of 2007 to increase the U.S. force in Iraq, McCain put himself forward as the strongest defender of this so-called “surge.” Today, claiming the “surge” has dramatically changed the situation, McCain claims the credit for pushing the administration to carry it out. In other words he was more of a “hawk” than Bush.

Obama, on the other hand, faced with the growing opposition to the war in 2005-2006, began to pose as an opponent of the war “from the beginning. ” In reality, his early opposition boils down to little more than one speech he made in 2002 in Chicago before the war started – a very timid speech, characterized by his insistence that he was not against all wars, or even most wars. He was against invading Iraq because it would be “a stupid war,” which interfered with the wars the U.S. should be waging! And by mid-2004, he was giving practical support to this “stupid” war. When running for the Senate, he was asked by the Chicago Tribune what differentiated Bush’s policy on Iraq and his own. Obama’s answer, July 24, 2004: “There’s not much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage. The difference, in my mind, is who’s in a position to execute.” And, when he got to the Senate, he voted for the very first Iraq funding bill to come up and every subsequent one, right up to the point he officially started his presidential campaign – hardly the anti-war candidate he made himself out to be at the beginning of the primaries.

Today, both Obama and McCain effectively line up behind Bush, as they each prepare to take over as “commander in chief.” They may dispute with each other, but both pretend, as Bush does, that the situation in Iraq has “improved.” McCain regularly gives credit to the surge. Obama credits the “new tactics” devised by General Petraeus and the “brilliant performance” of U.S. troops.

You would think they were talking about a board game rather than a war that has already killed nearly a million Iraqis and displaced five million more, the majority of whom were driven out of their homes in ethnic cleansing campaigns that were the hallmark of the “surge” – or of the “new tactics” devised by General Petraeus. To say, as Bush, McCain and Obama all do, that the level of violence is “lower” today in Iraq is like saying that the graveyard is quieter.

The situation for the population of Iraq is catastrophic – and it is not over, no matter who wins the U.S. election. Nor is it over for U.S. troops. McCain quite openly calls for continuing the war on Iraq. Obama, while repeating his pledge to bring the troops out 16 months after coming into office, now hastens always to say that he would leave a “residual force” in Iraq. And lately his advisers have been informing the media that this “residual force” could amount to 50,000 troops!

And that’s only the half of it. McCain and Obama both would take whatever troops were spared from Iraq to expand the war in Afghanistan. Obama has said he would send at least two additional combat brigades, an unspecified number of troops needed for support, plus additional troops from other NATO countries, plus “more helicopters, more satellites, more Predator drones in the Afghan border region [with Pakistan].” McCain has said he would send three additional brigades, counting NATO troops, plus money to double the size of the Afghan army, plus pressure to unify the military command in Afghanistan. Obama goes so far as to say that if the Pakistani government doesn’t do what the U.S. requires in the tribal regions, he would send U.S. troops into Pakistan. In reality, McCain and Obama are simply proposing to do more of what Bush has already begun to do: in the last year, the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan increased from 26,000 to 34,000, with more increases on the way, as the military continues to announce more extended tours for Marine units scheduled to leave Afghanistan.

Today, the U.S. government imposes the rule of U.S. corporations around the world, under the pretext of fighting terrorism, just as in earlier decades it did so under the pretext of fighting “communism.” Of course, neither the Democrat nor the Republican question that. They both, as Bush did, dredge up the “terrorist threat” to prepare the U.S. population to be both cannon fodder in more wars and executioner of other peoples throughout the Middle East.

As a Wall Street Journal opinion piece somewhat cynically commented, June 2, 2008: “Want more George W. Bush foreign policy? Elect John McCain – or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Regardless of who wins in November, the current foreign policy will live on in the next White House. None of the main candidates has disavowed the war on terror. Each has called Mr. Bush tactically deficient. But the debate over the war on terror is over how, where and when. The candidates have all argued they would do a better job of fighting it.”

Reforming Health Care in the Interest of the Insurance Industry

“Our nation must make a promise, a solemn promise. We must pledge to help our citizens find affordable medical care.... These reforms are the act of a vibrant and compassionate government.”

Who said that? In fact, it was Bush when he was pushing the Medicare D “reform” through, but it just as easily could have been either McCain or Obama today, because they make the same kind of grandiose statements about reforming the medical care system in the interests of the population – even while using that system to provide more money to big business, just as Bush did with Medicare D.

McCain says he will simplify the system, making it possible for everyone to have insurance – then offers a $2500 “rebate” to every individual and $5000 to every family to pay for their own medical insurance, to be paid to the insurance companies. In fact, it’s clearly a way to make it easier for employers who currently offer medical insurance to get rid of it. All the more so, since workers who fight to keep their employer-based insurance would discover that they would be penalized, with their benefits counted like wages on their W-2 tax forms. Finally, McCain offers to let individuals put part of their rebates into “health savings accounts” if they buy “less expensive” insurance coverage. McCain’s “reform” is nothing but a way to put the responsibility on every individual to come up with the money to cover their own medical expenses – while leaving in place a system that prices medical care and medical coverage out of the reach of ordinary working people, and even of a great many middle class people. It’s obvious that the rebates don’t begin to cover the costs of medical insurance for a family, not to mention all the other medical expenses. They are simply another Trojan horse attacking existing social programs.

Yes, McCain, like Obama, promises to “control costs.” But many of their cuts of so-called “unnecessary” costs would harm the population: for example, reductions in Medicaid payments for long-term care. Another example: both would cap settlements that hospitals or doctors have to pay when their sloppy work harms someone – as though it were outrageous settlements, rather than outrageous medical errors, that are the problem. As for other high costs, both propose to encourage “competition” in the medical insurance industry, claiming this would make the industry itself lower its own costs. Bush made the same claim about competition controlling drug prices when he was pushing Medicare D – and we see how well that worked!

Obama’s major proposal is to legally require all parents to get medical coverage for their children. They could get coverage through an employer-based plan, if they still had it; they could buy private insurance if they have the money; they could register for medicaid or SCHIP if their income is so low they qualify. Everyone else would have to buy insurance from a new “public insurance plan,” to be administered, of course, by private insurance companies.

While leaving the current expensive system in place, Obama would require people who can’t find the money to buy medical insurance to find it anyway! Just like McCain, he puts the responsibility on the individual, without changing the circumstances that make it impossible for most working people to buy insurance today.

Of course, concrete details about McCain’s and Obama’s plans are missing – just as they were in 2003 when the Medicare D “reform” was passed. But, just as with Medicare D, McCain’s and Obama’s proposals both clearly offer more benefits to employers whose workers demand medical coverage, and they offer a bigger boondoggle to the medical insurance industry. Neither does anything to touch the existing market-based system. They just reinforce the provision of health care by profit-making entities – which is at the root of the enormous inefficiency and lack of access to medical care that exists today in the United States.

Economic Programs as a Way to Subsidize Big Business

Right after the end of the primaries, Obama announced he would focus his campaign on the economy. And McCain regularly makes speeches about it. Both campaigns feature “Economic Plans” prominently on their websites.

But which economy? Plans for which class?

Obama and McCain would both tinker once again with the tax code, giving tax credits or exemptions, which each claims would lower the total tax bill of working Americans. But these are the kind of promises that get made with every new tax bill, with what results we should all be familiar with by now. Every tax cut pushed through by the Bush administration was justified by a similar claim. No matter what was said about providing tax relief for the working population, every tax cut served to reduce the share of the overall tax burden paid by the corporations and the wealthy.

This time also, the largest share of the tax cuts would go to the corporations and the wealthy. With McCain, this is more obvious, since from the beginning he has said he would extend the Bush tax cuts set to expire in 2010 – tax cuts which provided 66% of the benefits to the wealthiest 20% of the population.

Obama, by contrast, began his campaign promising to tax the wealthy, while cutting taxes for those most in need. But he has already “refined” that position quite a bit – changing his definition of those most in need to include people making a quarter of a million dollars a year!

But the real benefit for the wealthy in Obama’s tax plans rests on the multitude of special tax cuts for various businesses – for example for businesses producing ethanol, “clean coal,” wind energy, or hybrid vehicles, or for big companies engaged in “advanced manufacturing,” or for “small businesses” – and that barely begins to scratch the list of all the various ways he proposes new tax breaks for business. Like other Democrats before him, Obama widely adds special tax breaks to specific businesses, making the tax code ever more complex so that no one has any idea of who is getting what – other than the wealthy who hire accountants to get it for them.

What about the real problems facing the working population – like prices and jobs, for example?

Bring up the high prices of food, energy and housing, and Obama and McCain both use them as the pretext for offering more government money, in the form of subsidies or tax breaks, to the big corporations. McCain spoke about high oil prices, then offered to open up off-shore drilling to the big oil companies. Obama denounced him for it, only to turn around and say he might “compromise” and do the same. McCain said he would impose a three-month gas-tax holiday – without requiring the oil companies to lower their prices at the pump! Obama offered another tax incentive package like Bush’s recent ones. Those incentives have already been more than eaten up by the increasing inflation of the last few months. Neither Obama nor McCain even talks about reining in the massive price increases.

What about jobs? Both candidates propose the same remedy: give more tax cuts to the corporations, under the pretext that this will encourage them to create jobs. That’s nothing but what Bush has been saying for the last seven years – and how many jobs did his tax cuts help create? Jobs, no. Those tax cuts simply lined the pockets of the biggest corporations and of the wealthy who benefit from their investments in these corporations.

No, McCain and Obama are not talking about creating jobs – and sometimes they even admit it, even if indirectly.

McCain, for example, said it might be necessary to offer GM a government sponsored bail-out based on the provisions of the Chrysler bail-out of 1980. That bail-out prominently featured the government’s demand that workers at Chrysler give up concessions in their wages and benefits. It was, in fact, the first open demand for concessions in the auto industry. And it laid out the path that the Big 3 would follow in the nearly three decades since: reducing wages and benefits through various schemes, while cutting jobs ferociously.

Obama, for his part, recently praised Ford for its newest “restructuring plan,” claiming as Ford did that it would create jobs in the U.S. If there is anything a Ford restructuring plan won’t create, it’s jobs. Every “restructuring” the big auto companies have carried out has focused on reorganizing work and the production process in order to eliminate jobs. The same is true in every other big industry – which can be seen by comparing today’s employment and production figures to those of a decade or so ago.

Obama and McCain’s “economic plans” are only more of the same that has made the population pay for the vast increase in wealth of this tiny minority that owns, runs and benefits from the biggest companies in the country.

Don’t Go Out of the Voting Booth with Illusions

It’s understandable that many workers, white and black, want to vote against the people who have held office during this disastrous last period, especially against the Republicans – if for no other reason than to express their anger.

And it should come as no surprise in a country as profoundly racist as the United States that a big majority of the black population would want to vote for Obama. His candidacy represents, at least symbolically, the falling of barriers standing in the way of the black population. There is an enthusiasm for the idea that there could finally be an African-American president. As many people said: “It’s time, it’s past time, it’s overdue.”

But Obama’s candidacy does not open the door for the large majority of the black population who are working class or poor.

In the first place, to say that is to read the pages of history backwards. Doors were not opened by Obama, but for him. His candidacy was paid for by the bitter and angry struggles of generations of black people in the streets of this country – struggles that radically uprooted the legalized system of Jim Crow.

Obama does not represent the interests of the black working class population. In fact, he reproaches the ordinary black population with the accusation that they themselves carry an important part of the responsibility for their situation – a situation marked by severe poverty, high unemployment and lack of educational opportunities.

He blames the victims of poverty and misery for the poverty and misery in which the society has mired them. It is his way of reassuring the bourgeoisie and the reactionary petty bourgeoisie, white and black, that he is not the “black” candidate held hostage by “black special interests.” It’s why, for example, he distances himself from even the social-democratic-style reformists, like Jesse Jackson, whom the bourgeoisie has always been a little wary of. By his very words, his very campaign, Obama makes it crystal clear ahead of time that the vast majority of the black population, especially its poorest layers, should expect nothing, absolutely nothing from him if he is elected.

Whether Obama or McCain is elected, the wars will continue – and grow wider. They both say it. The corporations and the wealthy who own them will continue to be given hand-outs by the government – and they both say that. Neither represents the interests of the working class.

The big bourgeoisie certainly has no fears about either of them. The bourgeoisie know they will be served by either one. That’s why they have been ready to finance both. If they have given significantly more to Obama up to this point than they have to McCain, it’s not because they distrust McCain. Perhaps they think Obama can do a better job of diverting the population. In any case, whichever one is elected will be their servant.

Workers must have their own policy and they must find the way to carry out their own policy, which means to organize their own struggles, no matter who is elected.

... Skyrocketing oil prices were on the agenda at the G8 summit of the eight major industrial countries, with China, India, and Korea in attendance this time. Representatives of the countries discussed how oil price increases were threatening the economy. “If we do not do something about the situation, it could bring on a global economic recession,” shouted one minister of energy. But officials did nothing but talk. The price of oil will continue to rise if that’s what is wanted by the small handful of oil companies dominating the worldwide distribution of oil. Under capitalism the real power is not in the White House – where a discredited Texas clown is at home – nor in France’s Elysée Palace nor in England’s #10 Downing Street. The real power lies in the board rooms of the big industrial or financial companies.

The Skyrocketing Price of Oil

After several years of progressively higher prices, the price of oil really skyrocketed this year. For ordinary people in the rich countries, especially wage earners, this price increase in oil came on top of other price increases, especially food. These factors raised the cost of living... and also hit many small businesses, like trucking.

Of course there are many big companies that are also hit by the increase in oil prices, such as the airlines and the U.S. auto industry.

The rise in oil prices is another contributing factor in the instability of the world economy, which is buffeted by financial and banking crises. As always in a period of crisis, those who are the strongest will find the way to make others pay for their higher costs. Companies that don’t have such possibilities will sink, bringing down with them their entire workforce.

Some already are talking about the “third oil shock,” referring to the 1973 oil crisis that shook the world economy. What the oil shocks of 1973 and 2008 have in common is that they are both an expression of the economic crisis. More precisely, they represent the oil companies’ strategy to anticipate the consequences of the crisis. Yet, at the same time, they are a major aggravating factor in the crisis.

During the first oil shock, crude oil prices tripled in a few months. This time, the huge price increases came after a long period of gradual increases.

Within a period of seventeen years, from 1986 to 2003, crude oil prices remained relatively stable at $20 to $25 a barrel. In 1998 oil prices even dropped to $10 a barrel.

But since 2003, prices have never stopped going up. In early June 2008, the price of a barrel of oil on the world market approached $140. Prices had gone up over 500% in five years, that is, they are five times higher in 2008 than they were in 2003! And these prices are fourteen times higher than they were ten years ago, at their lowest point in 1998....

As during previous oil price increases, the government and news media strive mightily to invent explanations. These range from the changing climate to the political problems of one or another oil producing country, to the unquenchable thirst for oil of China or India.

And each time, the media pulls out the old refrain about how limited oil resources are. Despite the lies, the truth spilled out of the mouth of Jean-Jacques Mosconi, a director of French oil giant, Total: “The high price of oil is not caused by a lack of oil reserves but by a lack of productive capacity.”

Those old enough to remember the oil crisis of 1973 may recall the experts saying at that time that there were only 30 years of oil reserves left in the earth. In other words, the gas pumps should have dried up five years ago.

If there is a limit to the oil reserves, it has not been reached. The directors of Total expect a continual increase in worldwide production until about 2020; then they expect production to level off. They estimate their own reserves will last 40 years. And that doesn’t take into account any new discoveries during that time period.

Oil company directors are quick to blame the oil producing countries for the lack of oil production. During the G8 meeting in June, they called on OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, to increase their production. History repeats itself. Thirty years ago, political leaders and the news media accused the “oil sheiks” of causing the first oil shock. Today, they explain that it is caused by instability in Iraq – which is real but whose fault is that? – or in Nigeria. Sometimes they blame Malthusian policies of oil producing states that want to conserve their oil reserves. But the last decades have proven that the oil producing states, with their differing situations and interests, have never been able to agree on a common strategy... except when it corresponded to the wishes of the major oil companies. The major oil companies may not always control the extraction of oil but they control all refining and distribution. They are able to influence the petroleum markets much more than can OPEC, since each OPEC member carries out its own policy. In addition, there are plenty of oil producing countries that do not belong to OPEC, notably Russia and Norway, both large exporters.

Production Capacity Deliberately Reduced by the Oil Companies

The oil companies today are following the same strategy as the one that brought about the first oil shock of 1973. Instead of massively investing in exploration, instead of building new refineries and transport, such as super-tankers, pipelines, etc., they prefer, in a period of economic instability, to raise their prices to increase their massive profits. As a monopoly, they are able to implement this strategy.

To gain the maximum profits from oil with a minimum of investment is the best way for the oil companies to force consumers to pay in advance for exploration and future investments in new forms of energy, which the big oil companies plan to control.

The tendency for prices to rise, coming from the oil companies’ strategy, fosters speculation because other industrial and financial groups gamble on raw materials, especially oil.

This scenario is well known and described regularly by economic commentators. After being driven out of real estate speculation, massive amounts of capital in search of profits descended on raw materials.

Oil, in particular. Such an indispensable product necessarily attracts capital searching for a place to make a bigger profit when the price of oil seems to be permanently on the rise.

Investors or speculators buy a piece of paper representing a certain quantity of oil and then sell it at a comfortable profit at a specified date. The pieces of paper that represent the buying and selling take on a life of their own, being bought and sold in their turn.

According to a recent investigation by the newspaper Le Monde, these fixed term contracts for oil represent 30 to 35 times the volume of real trading in oil. According to a researcher at French bank, Société Generale: “From 2000 to 2006, the amount of oil has increased 13% while the amount of derivatives, that is, the speculative pieces of paper representing the buyings and sellings at fixed terms, increased 260%”!

In other words, this increase in speculative demand pulls prices upward. This speculation causes a much greater increase than does real demand by China or India!

How much does speculation account for the actual increase in oil prices? Who can say? The question has no real meaning since the oil companies themselves speculate on the prices of what they produce.

On June 6^th, the price of a barrel of oil increased by $11 on the New York Mercantile Exchange in a single day, which has never happened in the entire history of the oil industry. Obviously it was not due to growing demand from China or India. Nor was it due to the hypothetical exhaustion of the oilfields in 40 years. It can be explained only by short term speculative maneuvers.

Speculative Boom in All Raw Materials

The same kind of thing is happening to most raw materials. We hear less about it because consumers are not directly affected by the rise in prices of copper, aluminum or nickel. But obviously they are indirectly affected because when these prices go up, the big companies pass on the price increases to consumers. Or at least the companies powerful enough to pass on price increases do so.

In any case, the prices of copper and aluminum have raced upward for three years. In 2003, a ton of copper traded for $1,544. By mid-February 2008, it peaked at $8,884 a ton.

Just as with oil, the big companies have decided not to invest and just as with oil, speculation has vastly increased the rise in prices.

Speculative funds don’t come from outside the industrial and banking universe, but rather emanate from that universe. These speculative funds may not know anything about copper, aluminum or nickel, but they know about financial instruments. That allows them to work with capital far beyond their own. They use the capital of the big capitalist groups that turn to them to make profits; they also mobilize credit from the banks. By speculating using largely borrowed money and by juggling a multitude of instruments that the world of finance has invented over the last 20 years, some groups have made 100% profit in just a year of buying and selling raw materials.

“The massive amounts of capital flooding into markets for raw materials, which have been turned into financial assets like any other, do not correspond to the amounts of these products actually traded,” sadly wrote a commentator in Le Monde. The article adds that all this kind of trading corrupts “the normal functioning of the market.”

But where does the normal functioning of the market end? And at what point does it become cancerous?

It is the same capital. One part is invested in production to extract surplus value through exploitation, while another important and growing part is used for financial operations. These financial operations dealing with credit and currency exchange and the raising of capital are indispensable for the functioning of companies. Even “derivatives,” which today make up the most dangerous forms of speculation, were invented to protect corporations from various risks. The line between speculative capital and the so-called normal workings of capital is thin and quite elastic.

Despite the fact that raw materials have been turned into “financial assets,” they remain indispensable for industrial activity. Speculation does not take place in a financial sphere that is disconnected from production. So it enlarges the convulsions of the capitalist economy.

Partisans of the capitalist economy think that the market economy cannot be surpassed. They say society has not found anything better than the law of supply and demand to match society’s ability to produce and fulfill its needs. But this so-called “law” takes into account only the demands of those with the money to pay and thus rejects the elementary needs of most of humanity. Furthermore, with the growing financialization of the economy, even the demand of those who can pay becomes more and more of a fiction since it mixes demands corresponding to real needs and demands that come from speculation.

Food Has Become a “Financial Asset”

The consequences are particularly drastic when the raw material turned into a “financial asset” is food. It’s nothing new to speculate on cereals and thus starve people to death. But modern capitalism invented financial instruments that take this speculation to an unprecedented level. In so doing, it multiplies the number of victims.

Certainly, speculation does not explain everything. It only amplifies things. Behind the inability of a growing number of poor countries to feed their population is an entire evolution, a history intertwined with the history of capitalism.

After numerous hunger riots in the poor countries, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation, the FAO, held a summit on “food security.” Those blabbermouths produced a lot of resolutions and declarations about the 800 million people who regularly suffer from hunger and malnutrition, those reduced to famine by the brutal increase in agricultural prices.

The FAO’s director confronted the states with their responsibilities: “These sad developments are merely the chronicle of a predicted catastrophe.” Yes, it is a catastrophe and the whole world sees it coming. But no one does anything about it!

During the FAO summit the French agricultural minister gave what amounts to a sort of self-criticism: “After decolonization we didn’t provide enough aid to these countries to help them develop their agriculture and feed their population.”

“Not enough aid”? How dare he say it? What about the responsibility of colonization? French colonialism used the whip to impose the cultivation of cotton in Chad and oil seed in Senegal, to profit French companies Boussac and Lesieur! Big import-export companies got rich from the international trade in rice that replaced local food staples driven out by the cultivation of oil seed or cotton. And the French used forced labor to build the few railroad lines and roads designed for transporting those products back to France.

Self-sufficiency in food did not disappear by chance, or even by some decision of the local population. It was deliberately destroyed, first and foremost, by the colonial powers and then by the capitalist market.

The workings of the capitalist economy are so marvelous that the capitalists no longer need whips or forced labor to impose market crops for the rich countries on the farmers of the poor countries and their venal governments. Included for this overseas market are fruits and vegetables out of season, products which the local population never sees. The latest “innovation” taking up more and more land once used to produce food is the production of biofuels. A vicious circle is complete. Because they systematically increased the price of oil, the oil companies made the production of biofuels profitable enough to attract capital. Ever more peasants are forced to abandon food production. Instead of producing food, they must buy it in the marketplace. On the world market the agricultural production of the industrial countries, which is mechanized and often subsidized, is more profitable.

A number of poor countries, especially in Africa, although once self-sufficient in food, have become dependent on the world market, on its fluctuations, its convulsions and, as a consequence, on its speculators and its speculation.

Humanity has paid dearly for the basic inability of its economic order to satisfy the elementary needs of society. Not only is it unable to deal with shortages, it creates them!

A Fundamentally Irrational Economy

Political leaders are completely unable to avert the catastrophes brought about by the functioning of the economy. That is not their role. Their role is to open wide the coffers of the state to the big companies. It is to implement the policy required by the big companies. And it is also to justify this social order to the population. And when they do not fulfill this role efficiently, they are meant to be used as a safety valve: they are kicked out by elections in imperialist countries or by armed violence in poor countries. So the system goes on, and nobody sees the economic powers that manipulate them behind these political puppets.

What is happening in the rich industrial countries and more disastrously in the poor countries shows that the laboring classes have to defend themselves even to prevent a catastrophic decline in their living conditions.

The price increases for oil and other raw materials have already revived inflation worldwide, adding to the banking crisis and the subsequent credit crisis. These prices have also increased the rivalry between corporations involved in successive stages of production because they want to make their clients or their contractors pay for the increasing costs. Obviously, all of them look for ways to make their wage earners pay. Each company will try to compensate for the increase in the cost of raw materials by squeezing labor costs.

In all the countries, the first oil shock was followed by an offensive against all wage earners. The same thing is happening today. Over and over, there are commentaries asserting that wages must not go up so that price increases for raw materials and food staples don’t lead to high inflation. This is part of the psychological warfare against the working class carried out by the politicians and the lackeys in the media in the interests of the bourgeoisie. In other words, one more time the capitalist class will try to make the wage earners pay for the disorders of its economy and the plunder by its big trusts.

It has become vital for the working class to defend itself against the two main diseases that hit the productive class of this society: unemployment and the plunge in purchasing power of their wages.

To defend themselves against unemployment means to impose a redivision of work among everyone without a loss in wages. To defend themselves against the loss of purchasing power means a general increase in wages and a sliding scale of wages, that is, an automatic indexing of wages to the rise in prices. In addition to these two main objectives, the governments must be forced to repeal all the measures they have taken to impoverish the laboring classes in order to enrich the wealthy (like cuts in public services and schools and health care, increases in the age at which Social Security can be obtained, etc.)....

All these struggles are necessary to prevent the laboring classes from plunging into poverty. But they are purely defensive. As long as capitalism remains the economic and social organization, it will continue to reinforce the grip of the big groups over the planet, with all its dire consequences. That means continued rivalries over profits, speculation, colossal waste on the one hand and famine on the other. It is not possible to regulate the basic problems of society within the framework of the capitalist economy.

There are many who recognize and denounce the threat for humanity represented by the growing control by a few hundred big financial groups on the planet, those which dominate the production of raw materials, energy and food. Less numerous, however, are those who understand that this domination is inseparable from the capitalist order and that, for a long time, it has caused humanity to go backward. Today’s crisis and its dramatic consequences are the expression of the impasse of the economy and the failure of the bourgeoisie, the social class that dominates and feeds off the society.

The problem is not simply to be conscious of these problems but to prevent humanity from rushing toward a precipice. There is no other alternative to the present evolution of society than the political overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the destruction of its economic domination.

But for this alternative to be realized, what is necessary are forces that defend a policy with this perspective. The multiple and often massive and violent responses against the price increases for oil, raw materials and food show that capitalist society is no more stable than it was when a powerful workers movement consciously aimed at overthrowing it. The only difference is the profound retreat and atomization of the workers movement itself.

The plundering by the big capitalist groups, their contempt for the basic interests of the vast majority of the population causes, as it did in the past and as it will in the future, reaction by the population, riots and revolts. Many of these could ignite a revolutionary process able not only to threaten capitalism but to overthrow it.

Globalization – about which there is endless talk concluding that nothing can be done – is not just globalized plunder by the big trusts. It has also reinforced the global proletariat by transforming tens of millions of peasants in China, India or Africa into proletarians. It has brought them together in immense slums where there are the same conditions that existed in the industrial cities of England during its industrial revolution. But today’s slums exist on an incomparably larger scale. And globalization, as it pulls down certain barriers between nations, mixing peoples, unifies their destinies.

Revolutions are the conscious expression of unconscious processes that develop in the depths of society. What is missing and missing drastically today is this conscious expression, with the will to push economic and social evolution to their ultimate transformation: the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, the overthrow of capitalism and the reorganization of the economy on the basis of collective property.

More than a century ago, Trotsky spoke about the crisis of leadership of the working class. Today that leadership crisis has spread to the entire workers movement and its organizations. It is precisely this retreat of the workers movement that leaves the door open to all sorts of organizations, which are virulently reactionary, nationalist, fundamentalist and ethnicist. But paradoxically the fact that these reactionary forces act today shows that society is pregnant with serious social calamities.

Lenin said that bourgeois society is always oozing a multitude of crimes that can ignite a revolution. The hunger riots in the poor countries and, in a certain way, even the waves of protest against the rise in prices show that his remarks have not lost any of their currency. But in order that a revolt not be stifled as soon as it begins or for it not to be taken advantage of by forces ready to channel social anger but not to transform society, the proletariat has to be able to intervene in events as a social force conscious of its own political interests.

The only question of our epoch is how and when a political force capable of embodying this perspective will arise and win, on this basis, the confidence of the only social class able to carry out such a transformation – that is, the proletariat of our times in all its diversity.

The wave of xenophobic attacks that took place in the poor ghettoes of South Africa’s urban areas in May came as a shock, due to the horrific pictures of the events shown by the media, particularly pictures of people who were burned alive. There was also some disbelief that the so-called “Rainbow Nation” founded by Nelson Mandela, born out of decades of struggle against the racial segregation of the apartheid system, should be shaken by xenophobia on such a scale.

What these attacks actually showed, however, is that not only are some of the wounds left by the apartheid days still open, but also that the post-apartheid regime’s policies have done little to heal them. This wave of xenophobia is the by-product of the regime’s ongoing anti-immigrant demagogy combined with its anti-worker policy that has become increasingly intolerable for the vast majority of the population over the years.

Alexandra Reaches Boiling Point

The attacks began in Alexandra, a mainly black township located within the municipal boundaries of Johannesburg (the economic capital, and center of gold mining). Alexandra is just two miles away from the wealthy town of Sandton, the glossy financial center of Gauteng province.

On May 11 – a Sunday night – what was described by the media as an “enraged mob” went on a rampage in the poorest streets, picking out mainly Zimbabwean immigrant residents and venting their fury on them. Apparently they accused them of stealing their jobs and houses and causing crime.

Over the next three nights door-to-door checks for “foreigners” took place. South Africans had to show their ID cards to be passed over. Immigrant families were told to just get out and leave their belongings, which were then looted. Dozens of immigrants were severely beaten, whipped and stoned. By the end of these first days, three men had been killed. Two of these men were not actually immigrants, but native South Africans, and it seems one of them was shot because he had refused to take part in the violence.

One Malawian, who had lived in Alexandra for 23 years, described how a gang of 10 men broke into his house, ransacked his possessions and beat him up. A Zimbabwean woman told how she was set upon and beaten until she fled, bleeding badly from the head, with her own neighbors shouting “Good riddance. Go away Makwerekwere” (dirty foreigner).

Hundreds had no option but to seek refuge in the local police station, even though the police have a terrible reputation among immigrants, because they regularly extort, beat up and arrest migrant workers, regardless of whether they have the correct papers or not. (Immigrant workers are obliged to have with them at all times papers certifying that they are allowed to work, have paid for their visa, etc.)

Five hundred extra police were deployed in an attempt to calm down the situation, resulting in running battles between the population and the police, many arrests and with rubber bullets injuring quite a few more people.

Xenophobic Attacks Spread

By May 15, the xenophobic attacks had begun to spread. In Tembisa, a township north- east of Alexandra, two more people were killed and more than a dozen shacks were torched. One of those killed was Walter Ntombela, who had been a Metal Workers’ Union shop steward for 10 years and was long-settled there, but happened to come from Mozambique originally.

The violence also spread to Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg, where mainly Somalis were targeted. In Kya Sands, also in the north, a mob set afire a barricade of wood, furniture and gas bottles to prevent police from getting through, while they went on a rampage, looting, burning and beating up anyone identified as “foreign,” whether they were indeed “foreign” or not.

Some of the worst attacks took place in townships and settlements in the urban sprawl which follows the gold reef, along which are the gold mines reaching to the southeast of Johannesburg. In Reiger Park’s so-called “Ramaphosa Informal Settlement,” further gruesome burnings, toy-toying (jump-dancing which symbolized the victory of the poor against apartheid) and attacks against Mozambicans and other migrant workers occurred. This was where burning blankets were thrown upon a man who had been beaten almost senseless, thus causing him to burn to death. It was this picture of a human fireball which was to symbolize the spate of horrific xenophobic violence.

In Thokoza, many shacks were burned. In Actonville, the black owner of a small business was killed when his house was burned with him inside it, after he was accused of hiring foreign workers. The men who killed him were said to have come from the local mine hostel and adjacent settlements. One immigrant was killed and two critically injured in the “Joe Slovo Settlement” in Boksburg.

Shopping streets in the center of Johannesburg were looted. By the end of the first week one of the main streets was crisscrossed with makeshift barricades of barbed wire, concrete and tires. Just south of the center, in Jeppestown, shops had their shutters ripped off and were stripped. Many of these were owned or rented by Nigerians or other immigrant traders. Gangs wielding machetes and clubs went door to door, slashing and beating up foreign nationals who had lived in the area for years.

One eyewitness reported what happened: “The pavements ... are thronged with knots of men, many of whom are drunk and carry sticks which they drop hurriedly when they see the cops approaching. The officers stand guard, rifles at the ready, as the family pack up their stock and household goods. The landlady is disgusted: ‘If they are forced to move out, no one else must try to come in here. I refuse to rent it to anyone else. Let it stand empty.’ Sylvia Khumalo (63) sits on a bench on the other side of the road, watching in disbelief. ‘This is terrible, we don’t understand what is going on.’ And the other old women murmur their agreement.... Not everyone shares their compassion. A group of young women passes by and they laugh scornfully; ‘Let them go. We will live in their rooms for free.’” Reports say that up to 12 people were killed in these particular attacks. As many as 2,000 Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and Angolans took refuge in Johannesburg’s Jeppestown police station.

The violence also hit the harbor city of Durban in the KwaZulu-Natal province. A report from its Cato Manor slum township described how Mozambicans were beaten. It mentions a “test” that was used to identify foreigners: they were asked by gestures to pronounce the word meaning “elbow” in the local Zulu language; if they gave the wrong answer, they were beaten and told to go home.

In Cape Town, the main targets of the attacks were Somalis and Zimbabweans, although in certain places, no migrant worker was really safe. Just as in Johannesburg, homes and shops were looted.

However, in fact, it was not just foreigners who were targeted. The rioters’ xenophobia also included anyone from elsewhere, that is, anyone considered an “outsider.” In Gauteng, South African nationals who came from the far north of the country, or the east, or even from the Eastern Cape province, were targeted because they spoke the Pedi, Shangaan or Venda languages used in the areas they came from. For instance, a man living in a shack in Johannesburg’s Jules Street was beaten for being an ethnic Pedi originating from Pretoria. He was robbed of all his money and had to leave behind his wife to an unknown fate.

By the time the wave of xenophobic riots ended (although possibly only temporarily), the official national death toll had reached 62. Over 740 people had been badly injured. It is thought that as many as 80,000 people may have been rendered homeless and displaced. Others (Zimbabweans and Malawians) fled to the borders in order to return home. Some even asked to be taken to deportation centers like the Lindela barracks, which is notorious for its ill-treatment of immigrants.

A “Third Force”?

The government’s first response to these events was typical of its disregard for the poor. Beyond moralistic remonstrations aimed at the rioters, it had nothing to offer to those who were at the receiving end of these attacks – except a blunt denial that its own policies could have played any role in bringing about this situation.

President Mbeki was at a meeting in Mozambique when he issued a statement condemning the “xenophobia” and urging the police to act “strongly” against the perpetrators. Then, he went on to Japan. On May 18, he announced that a “panel” was to be set up to investigate the attacks – as if such a “panel” could protect potential victims and bring them the aid they needed!

Ten days after the attacks began, following a request from the police who were not able to cope, Mbeki called in the army to intervene in Gauteng province. However, at the same time, rumors about a so-called “Third Force” being involved in the attacks in and around Johannesburg started to spread. This was clearly the point of view of National Intelligence Agency Director General, Manala Manzini, when he stated that the violence was being deliberately unleashed ahead of next year’s general election.

Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils was only slightly more nuanced when he declared that while there were “pure criminal elements at work,” his agency was looking carefully at “other sources motivating this with their own political agendas.... I’m not pointing at any political party as such, I don’t believe that,” he said, “but at community level, at levels of organization, residents’ organizations, we have come across some elements there who have been talking in a very anarchistic way.”

Undoubtedly, some ministers were pointing a finger at the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, and its potential ally, the Inkatha Freedom Party, which champions a “Zulu identity” under Chief Buthelezi. At the same time, the government sought to pre-empt criticisms on its left. A cabinet statement was issued, saying that the attacks appeared to be instigated by elements bent on taking advantage of community concerns. It went on to stress that “...no amount of economic hardship and discontent can ever justify the criminal activity and bigotry that these attacks represent and any suggestion that poor service delivery and the rising cost of living are to blame for these attacks must be rejected with the contempt it deserves.”

On the other hand, some circles of the ruling ANC (African National Congress) issued statements which contradicted the official line. For instance ANC deputy president Mothlane pointed out that “it only takes one incident” to spark violence when people are living in squalid conditions. At the same time, a former cabinet minister, Asmal Kader, urged the government to grant a general amnesty for those migrants without legal documents (the vast majority) and said that “South Africans had remained collectively silent at the abuse of police power, the arrogance and cruelty of officials, the occasional heartlessness of our medical services and previous violence against migrants.”

It would have been necessary to provide immediate help to the migrant workers and their families who had been terrorized and rendered homeless by the attacks. Instead, the authorities tried to take what amounted to scandalous measures in some cases. For instance, in Johannesburg, a court order had to be taken out in order to stop officials from moving refugees who were sheltering in the police stations to a temporary shelter right next to a hostel from which gunshots had been fired during the violence and where it was suspected some of the perpetrators had emanated.

The Bloody Legacy of Apartheid

It is impossible not to draw a link between these recent events and the legacy of the apartheid days, which still weighs heavily on the fabric of South Africa’s society.

The apartheid system of institutional racial segregation was designed to divide the population into race and language groups, with white Afrikaners at the top and black foreign migrant workers at the very bottom. These multiple divisions were exploited in every possible way, not least because the regime strove to weaken the resistance of the black working class.

In 1986-89, when the mobilization of the black working class in the mines, factories and townships was at its highest, most of apartheid’s restrictions were finally removed. Up until that point, not only were blacks and whites segregated completely, but each section of black people was allocated to its own “homeland” or “bantustan” according to language/tribal group. It was illegal for them to move where they liked. They had to stay in their allocated “homeland” and could only live in an urban area if they had a special permit. Movement to cities for work was strictly monitored through the “passbook” system.

The mine companies recruited mainly among the Zulus for their core workforce and team leaders (they called them “bossboys”) and housed them in their own compounds, separate from the other workers. As a result Zulu workers were seen as having a status somewhat above the others, if only because jobs were reserved for them and because even living in the hostel compounds was a little less sordid than the haphazard slum housing conditions for the rest of the black working class.

It was this wedge driven deliberately between sections of black workers that was exploited by the apartheid regime when the white bourgeoisie realized it was going to have to agree to power sharing with representatives of the black majority. In the second half of the 1980s, the white nationalists helped to fund and organize the Inkatha Zulu militias. These militias were used as a kind of “third force,” in order to divide and weaken the black working class as well as the anti-apartheid organizations – the ANC and SACP (South African Communist Party). This led to a near civil war in the Johannesburg and Natal townships, in which Inkatha used its armed militias to try to lead the Zulu workers into a fratricidal war against the majority of the black population, which in general supported the ANC or SACP. These violent attacks led to retaliation, causing thousands of victims and resulting in a bloody split between the two sides.

It should be added that such “black on black” violence was also given a certain legitimacy by the ANC-SACP alliance itself. In its efforts to gain total control over the townships in the run-up to the first post-apartheid election in 1994, the alliance resorted to using gangs of thugs who terrorized the population by killing opponents (including members of other political tendencies accused of being “workerists” or “Trotskyists”), on the grounds that they were collaborators, or spies for the regime. These gangs made the so-called “necklace” famous – a tire filled with gas, which was placed around the neck of the victim and then set alight.

In several respects, today’s attacks are a gruesome reminder of those days. Indeed there were a number of cases reported of “necklacing” of “foreigners,” even before this latest xenophobic wave. Likewise the role played by Zulu gangs in some of the May anti-immigrant attacks may well have something to do with the fact that a large part of the Zulu miners of the apartheid days have now been replaced with immigrant workers from Mozambique and Lesotho, who make up to 60% of the workforce in some cases – to the point that some mines had to close down temporarily because their workers were displaced or had fled.

The Poor’s Bitterness Against Social Apartheid

The smooth transition from apartheid led jointly by Nelson Mandela’s ANC and De Klerk’s National Party – the very same party which had introduced apartheid in the late 1940's – was designed to protect the interests of imperialist and South African capital against the aspirations of the black poor. Naturally, the poor expected that the end of apartheid would mean the end of poverty. But the advent of the post-apartheid regime in 1994 only heralded another form of apartheid, this time purely class-based.

The ANC had promised that everyone would be housed within a few years, that malnutrition and poverty would be tackled and that clean water and electricity would soon be available for all. But this could only have been achieved by expropriating domestic and foreign capital – in particular, companies like the mining houses of De Beers and Anglo American, and the big banks, like Sanlam and Standard Chartered. In reality, the only promise that the ANC intended to keep was the one it had made to its imperialist partners in London and Washington – that these giants of capital, which had made their billions on the backs of the black working class, would be left untouched.

Instead of measures aimed at alleviating the dire poverty of the majority of the population, steps were taken to develop a black capitalist class. Under the guise of “black empowerment,” a policy of positive discrimination was implemented to counteract the exclusion of black people from office in the state apparatus and in the business world during the decades of apartheid. As a result, a small but very rich black bourgeoisie began to emerge, with billionaires being created almost overnight. Among the most notorious are the former mineworkers’ union leader, Cyril Ramaphosa, and Tokyo Sexwale, a former member of the ANC’s armed wing who served 13 years in the Robben Island detention center with Mandela.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the population has remained in abject poverty. Initially there was a pretense at addressing the problems of the poor resulting from the legacy of apartheid. But, in practice, little was done. And in the last decade, there has been a drastic social deterioration, thanks to the slavish adherence of the government to the diktats of the capitalist market. This has resulted in the slashing of public sector jobs and the opening up of what had been a very large state sector to private capital, with the privatization of utilities and yet more job losses.

Despite the lack of jobs, poverty has generated a constant flood of workers into urban areas and cities from the rural areas, both from South Africa itself and from outside its borders. Appallingly overcrowded shanty towns now exist all over the urban areas.

Hotly Contested Slum Dwellings

This general degradation of social conditions and growing inequalities has engendered a profound bitterness in the ranks of the black proletariat, which is expressed by, among other things, the decreasing turnout in elections since 1994. But this degradation in living conditions is unquestionably one of the factors behind the recent wave of xenophobia. Otherwise it would be hard to understand why this wave started in Alexandra which, in many respects, was the least likely place for it to happen, due to its particular traditions.

Indeed, the township had always been a hotbed of resistance against apartheid. Even in the dark days of the 1940's and 1950's, it fought against the implementation of apartheid, during the strikes and the famous bus boycott against segregated transport. Repeated attempts by the apartheid regime to remove its residents outside of Johannesburg failed, thanks to their steadfast resistance. In 1976, its youth played as important a part in the uprising as those in Soweto, and 19 were killed as a result. In the 1980s, Alexandra was at the forefront of the townships’ mobilization, with one of the most important “civic” committees in the country – and one of the very few which preserved its autonomy and its character as an organ of direct democracy, despite the attempt of the ANC-SACP alliance to control it.

A survey conducted in 2004 showed that Alexandra retained this political tradition. It was one of the most politicized places in the country, with over 70% of the population belonging to some political party and/or to a union or an organization – most of which are, even if only symbolically, opposed to xenophobia.

But Alexandra has always been very crowded, neglected and poorly supplied with services. The fact that, since 1994, it has been a natural destination for workers looking for jobs, due to its proximity to Sandton and the adjacent industrial zones, has only made matters worse, resulting in intolerable overcrowding. Today shanty shacks are everywhere. The roads are mostly unpaved gullies. 35% of houses have no access to piped water. 80% have no toilet. 35% have no refuse collection. Cholera was recently found in the local river which bisects the township.

In an area originally meant to house maybe 30,000, it was estimated in 2004 that there were around 700,000 people living there. In 2004, the average population density was already twice that of Paris, which is the most densely populated city in western Europe. Bearing in mind that there are only three “high rise” buildings in the township – the single workers’ hostels – and that all the rest are single story shacks and houses, this should give some idea of how bad it is. Especially by now, since the population may have reached one million.

Similar conditions, or worse, prevail across all the black working class areas in South Africa. “Informal settlements” outnumber the formal ones. These informal settlements are shanty towns built on government-allocated land, sometimes, but not always, with a tap for water, but nothing else. Homeless families are told they can set up their own shacks there at their own expense. This is the supposedly temporary measure to make up for the fact that the three million homes promised in 1994 have not materialized! There is a cynical irony in the fact that these slums are named after people like Joe Slovo, the SACP leader who promised the three million homes in the first place, or Cyril Ramaphosa, the black billionaire!

As for the workers’ hostels, like those where the violence this May is said to have started, these are remnants of the past. They date back to the height of apartheid, in the 1960s, when huge blocks of dormitories or single rooms were built to house workers for the mines. It was expected that the hostels – which are a potent reminder of apartheid oppression and exploitation – would have been pulled down by now, or at the very least converted into decent housing. But instead, they remain, just as crowded as before, but more dilapidated.

They are still organized with an “induna” – or chief – in charge, to whom the mainly Zulu migrant workers (who are still the main residents of these hostels) are meant to defer. At the Jeppe Hostel, many rooms are shared by two or more men, with curtains marking each man’s space. There are leaking pipes on every floor of the building and every room has broken windows. Yet each man pays $5 per month for his shared space. As one resident was quoted saying, “Not even a pig would live here. There was a time a few years ago, when we were taken to Zuurbekom and told we were going to move into RDP [the Reconstruction and Development Program] houses there, but that never happened.”

In Alexandra’s hostels, the pipes are broken and in one of the male hostels, raw sewage seeps out. The township authorities claim that the local “indunas” oppose the relocation of hostel dwellers and that residents have resisted the renovation of the buildings and their conversion into family units. But the truth is that the authorities were not offering decent alternative housing, before trying to evict the hostel tenants. What is more, some of the houses built under the Alexandra Renewal Project were rented or sold to the highest bidders with no respect for the waiting list, with a lot of bribery and corruption involved. This has undoubtedly added fuel to the fire of resentment among the population of the township.

Xenophobic Demagogy of the Politicians

It was against this backdrop of persistent, if not increasing social inequality and worsening conditions, that anti-immigrant violence became a recurrent feature of society – long before these latest attacks. From this point of view, the regime and its pro-business policies bear a heavy responsibility in this violence. But it also bears responsibility for another reason – because, right from the beginning, it has whipped up xenophobic prejudices, by resorting to an anti-immigrant demagogy aimed at diverting attention from its anti-worker policies.

The very first Home Minister was none other than the Inkatha Freedom Party’s leader, Buthelezi – the instigator of the violence by Zulus against the Shangaans, Vendas, Pedis and others in the 1980s. And in the very same year he took office, in 1994, the IFP was already marching against the admission of immigrants into the country, under the banner of “Buyelekhaya” (go back home). But it was not just Buthelezi who played the anti-immigrant card. That same year, SACP minister Ronnie Kasrils announced that a fence was to be erected on the border with Botswana to keep immigrants out.

Over the period from 1996 to 1998, 142,644 prisoners were held in the privately-run Lindela Repatriation Center prior to deportation. Many were held much longer than the legal limit of a 30-day detention. Twenty percent of those interviewed reported physical assault and violence from both the police and the security guards as well as extensive corruption among both. Deaths as a result of beatings have been documented by refugee groups. Indeed, the main perpetrators of physical violence and intimidation against migrant workers have been officials, the police and the prison officers at deportation centers like Lindela, under instruction from the ANC-led government.

In 1997, Defense Minister Joe Modise explicitly linked the issue of increased migration to increased crime in a newspaper interview. At the same time Home Affairs Minister Buthelezi was claiming that “illegal aliens” were costing South African taxpayers billions of rands every year – which was a way of blaming immigrants for the regime’s failure to improve the material conditions of the population.

In 2000, a ban was placed on asylum seekers working or studying in South Africa. Two years later this ban was declared unconstitutional. Nevertheless, a finger had been pointed at asylum seekers as “taking South Africans’ jobs,” and regardless of the court’s decision, this was bound to leave traces.

By 2001, an official “Proudly South African” campaign was launched. By then quite a few people were asking if South Africa was not, on the contrary, “proudly xenophobic.” It soon became a nationalistic “buy South African goods” campaign.

Ever since the Immigration Bill, originally drafted by Buthelezi’s department in 2002, there has been a tightening of anti-immigrant legislation with, among other things, the introduction of skills-based quotas determined by the government – which, once again, pointed at immigrants as taking local jobs.

South Africa has nevertheless continued to be a magnet for immigrant workers, since it has the biggest economy in Africa and far more to offer than all the impoverished sub-Saharan countries. So that, by 2001, an unofficial figure given for undocumented immigrants was already seven million, although five million is the usual number quoted these days.

A total of 678,697 “illegal” immigrants were officially deported from South Africa between 2002 and 2005. Since the “International Organization of Migration” opened its offices, in 2006, on the gateway between Zimbabwe and South Africa, 177,514 deported Zimbabweans passed through its reception center alone. In April this year, discussions took place within the government on reviewing the policy of deporting migrant workers, not on the basis of human rights, but because of the escalating cost involved in their deportation! This was after 4,000 Mozambicans living illegally in South Africa were repatriated in the single month of March 2008.

However, the ANC-SACP coalition in power isn’t the only one to play with anti-immigrant demagogy. The opposition parties – the Democratic Alliance and Inkatha Freedom Party – have long been trying to outbid the ANC-SACP alliance on the issue of immigration by demanding even more drastic measures against immigrants. The Democratic Alliance in particular chose to make immigration one of the axes of its campaign for the 2009 elections. So on April 29 this year, the Democratic Alliance presented a document titled “Sealing Our Borders” and demanded in parliament that something be done to stop the 28,000 Zimbabweans, Nigerians, Kenyans and Congolese flooding into the country weekly through borders which were “as porous as a sieve.” They wanted the army to be sent in and a specialized paramilitary unit to be created to patrol the borders. Each week, they claimed, gun smugglers, drug traffickers, stock and car thieves were streaming into the country. With such demagogy across the political spectrum widely spread by the media, it’s not astonishing that a xenophobic atmosphere weighs on the country. Its echo could be heard during the burning and killing in the townships when some of those interviewed said “they are criminals, they sell drugs, we can kill them....”

A History of Xenophobic Violence

The recent wave of xenophobia has not exactly been a storm breaking out in a bright blue sky. Undoubtedly, this is the most important wave of this type since 1994, but this follows a long series of gruesome attacks against immigrants, with only a small number of them being publicized by the media.

In 1998 a Senegalese mysteriously “slipped out of a balcony window” to his death in the presence of police officers. The same year, two Senegalese workers and a Mozambican were killed by being thrown from a train. These latter murders were apparently perpetrated by members of the Unemployed Movement, UMSA. UMSA did not condone this act at the time, although its policy of blaming foreigners for being responsible for job losses and poverty was indirectly responsible for the acts of its members. “They will work for wages that are lower than we can live on because we pay for services,” is what Godfrey Dibela, its president, claimed in June 2000.

Also in 1998, street vendors in downtown Johannesburg launched physical attacks on their immigrant counterparts, with the chair of the Inner Johannesburg vendors committee quoted as saying: “We are prepared to push them out of the city, come what may. My group is not prepared to let our government inherit a garbage city because of these leeches.”

In 2000, a Sudanese refugee was thrown from a train and a Kenyan shot in his home – both attacks being put down to xenophobia. But, at the same time, the state ordered a so-called “Operation Crackdown” in which the police and the army arrested 7,000 people on the grounds of being illegal – precisely the kind of operation which was most likely to encourage xenophobia!

In 2006, Cape Town’s Somali organizations reported that 40 Somali traders had been killed in targeted attacks between August and September. During that year, in Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg, a Somalian settlement was regularly torched.

In 2007, the UNHCR (U.N. High Commission on Refugees) stated its concern over the increase in the number of xenophobic attacks on Somalis. As many as 400 had been killed in South Africa since 1997. In May 2007, shops belonging to Somalis and other foreign nationals were torched during an anti-government demonstration in Khutsong, a small mining town 30 miles southwest of Johannesburg.

In January 2008, two Zimbabweans were killed in the “Shoba informal settlement” and many injured. This was after a rumor had begun to circulate that a man had been killed by a foreigner. In Johannesburg, during the same month, the police were called to help 1,500 Zimbabweans who had taken refuge in the Central Methodist Church. Instead of helping the refugees, the police beat up the pastor and arrested all the Zimbabweans.

In March 2008, another two immigrants were killed in Atteridgeville, near Pretoria, and a thousand were left homeless after they and their shacks were burned down. In April, shacks belonging to Zimbabweans were again set on fire in the same area.

So while this May’s xenophobic wave may have been the largest to date, no-one in South Africa could really claim to be surprised when it broke out.

The Price Hikes Fuel the Blind Attacks

Chris Rock, a comedian about to tour across South Africa, made a rather apt point by saying that the xenophobic attacks were not “black on black” violence, but “broke on broke.” This was formulated in another way by the audience at a public meeting held by Jacob Zuma, the new ANC president. When he moralized, “We cannot allow South Africa to be famous for xenophobia,” someone asked, “Tell us how we are to eat?”

In recent months, despite the wealth of the country’s mines and industries, South Africa’s population has been severely hit by the increase of food prices. It may not be as dramatic as in the poorest African countries, where people already were barely surviving long before these price increases began, but it is enough to push millions of South Africans to the brink of a social catastrophe.

According to official statistics, food prices have increased by 16% over the past year, while the poorest are said to spend half their incomes on food. But of course it is much more likely that those who are really poor spend every cent they have on food. Anyway, the price rise for basics is far more than the official 16% figure. Among products the poor consume the most, white bread has gone up by almost 20%, flour by 26%, spaghetti by 29%, and the staple, maize meal, from 22% to 28% and cooking oil by 66%! Meanwhile, gasoline has gone up by 66% just in the last two months.

And this is taking place in a context where unemployment is officially 39%, but really as high as 60% or more. Nearly 60% of the black population is living in “relative poverty” according to official figures.

The endemic poverty is aggravated a thousand-fold by the HIV crisis. As many as 1 in 20 of the population is infected, but the government only began last year to supply anti-retroviral drugs to those who most need them. Bearing in mind that Zimbabwe has the highest HIV infection rate in Africa at present (a life expectancy of 35 years), this means that many immigrants are also infected. But they are denied their anti-retroviral drugs, whenever they are detained by the police. And if they present themselves to a public hospital in need of treatment, they are told they do not qualify, since they are not South African citizens (even if this goes contrary to the country’s own constitution). Obviously this can only make a bad situation, with respect to the spread of HIV, worse.

This situation, especially the recent worsening of conditions resulting from the price hikes, has certainly played a role, if not in sparking the xenophobic wave, at least in giving some justification to the murderous logic of these xenophobic attacks in the eyes of those who took part in them. It is no coincidence that many of the attackers targeted food traders, whose stock vanished with the rioters.

A By-Product of the Nationalist Dead-End

For those who see South Africa’s black working class as an example of militancy and consciousness, it may be hard to understand what has been happening