As we look at the economic crisis affecting the US working class, especially African American and Hispanic workers, we can also point to the fact that the US is involved in at least three armed conflicts draining the economy of trillions of dollars. Alone, the intervention in Libya is costing billions.
Recently, a Cuban analyst on the Telesur TV program Mesa Redonda (Roundtable) was talking about the cost of each US missile launched into Tripoli. Each missile is estimated to cost about a million dollars. This highlights the cost of war and also who is profiting from this imperial aggression.
Yet there is no mass response to the imperialist aggression against Libya, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The US and its NATO allies continue to use military might against nations that do not fit neatly into their scheme of things. This is especially so if they have, as in Libya oil and uranium.
Where is the peace movement?
Where is the party of the working class that can play a key role in the response to a ruling class that is waging war against its working class and the workers of the world?
Right here in our hemisphere the workers of Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay and today Peru have set a new course. They are leading the national liberation struggle of Latin America and the Caribbean towards a second independence. They are building societies based on social and economic justice.
The Bolivarian Revolution led by Venezuela and inspired by the Cuban Revolution has fostered new institutions free of US and Canadian influence. The new institutions are, for example, ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America), Petrosur (an agency that coordinates the energy policy of Latin American oil-producing states ), Petrocaribe (which does the same for the Caribbean area), the Bank of the South, UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations) , CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, a regional cooperation bloc, to be formed in December). The progressive trends and new institutions defeated the imperialist Free Trade Area of the Americas.
Because of these achievements and Cuba’s and Venezuela’s strategic importance for the continent and the world, imperialism has not ceased its aggressive and destabilizing campaigns against the Bolivarian Revolution and the Cuban Revolution.
These campaigns manifest themselves in Plan Colombia, the attempted coup of April 11, 2002 and the oil work stoppage in Venezuela. US hostility is also seen in the presence of the US Fourth Fleet in the Caribbean Sea (anchored in Costa Rica) and the coup in Honduras, the attempted coups in Bolivia and Ecuador, the building of new military bases in Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica, and the recent aggression by the US empire imposing sanctions on the Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company (PDVSA).
The intense and permanent national and international media campaign against the Bolivarian Revolution and its main leader Hugo Chávez FrÃas, has these goals: to weaken the social and economic gains of the Revolution, to undermine the unity of the people, the progressive governments and the political parties of the left as well as the social movements, to create opposition from the so-called middle class so that they can be presented as victims of "populism," to minimize the impact of Bolivar, Marti and other patriots of Our America, and to foment racism and negate the presence and culture of our indigenous peoples.
US and European imperialism see the electoral processes that will take place in the nations of the ALBA and Latin America as key moments to intensify their destabilizing and meddling activities. We must also make mention of an attempt, denounced by the leader of the Venezuelan Communist Party Oscar Figueroa in the National Assembly of Venezuela, to take advantage of the illness of Hugo Chavez to execute another coup through so-called legal and constitutional maneuvers.
Recently, intellectuals, professionals and many nations and social movements came together in Cuba to form an International Committee in Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela, the Nations and Processes of ALBA. Its purpose is to let imperialism know that the world supports the independence struggles taking place in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The voice of the US working class needs to be heard in this important development.
Another situation that demands resolution is the colonial situation of Puerto Rico as noted recently by the President of the National Assembly of Cuba, Ricardo Alarcón, in a commemoration marking the 45th anniversary the Mission of Puerto Rico in Cuba. In Puerto Rico the hypocrisy of the US discourse on democracy is more than evident especially during the much touted visit of US President Barack Obama. This case of colonialism blocks the ability of Latin America and the Caribbean to achieve their real, second independence by giving the US a strategic base of aggression in the region.
Alarcon noted that the Puerto Ricans are part of Latin America and are waging a heroic battle against the fascist neo-liberal policies of a colonial government that is completely backed by the US Administration and the US labor movement.
In a recent issue, War Times pointed out:
"Painfully, the fractured state and reduced clout of left-leaning social movement means there is no counterweight to the incentives for Democratic leadership to join with Republican right-wingers and corporate donors in imposing austerity.
"But in class war, as in all war, war-makers have to deal with the law of unintended consequences. Besides deepening the heartache of the poor, working and unemployed, the outcome of today’s austerity crusade is unknowable. Perhaps we are on the edge of rebuilding progressive clout based on the momentum and lessons of the Wisconsin upsurge, via new efforts like the Rebuild the Dream, or through a revitalization of the labor, immigrant rights or Black Freedom Movements – or some combination of them all?"
All this won’t happen by chance or by divine providence.
We need a party that can be a leading part of the movement in solidarity with the peoples of Latin America and Africa, that can be an integral part of a reinvigorated US peace movement and the social movements of this country.
Communists cannot sit idly by while the US ruling class wages war against the working class of the US and the world, especially of Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa.
We need a party that can be a unifying force in leading the working class to force the present Administration to take on the Tea Party and the ultra right, and a party that can lead the fight for socialism: a true anti-imperialist revolutionary party of the working class.
August 1, 2011
