Unity, organization and struggle

by Gus Hall, national chairman, Communist Party, USA

This article was reprinted from the January 10, 1998 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

Gus Hall's speech to the open house held at Communist Party headquarters in New York on Dec. 21 was brodcast nationally by C-SPAN television on New Year's Day. Hundreds of thousands watched and listened. Callers from Maine to California swamped the Party switchboard asking to join and for information. A week later, calls are still coming in. The complete text of Hall's speech follows.

If one word, one theme could describe the passing year, it would be change. As we look back at the event-packed year, it seems that just about everything and everyone is going through some dramatic changes.

What was life like in our country, what were the big changes in 1997?

First of all, this year saw the explosion of the myth of an economic boom. The only boom was the explosion in corporate profits and executive incomes. Even the stock market boom turned into a world financial crisis, starting with the bust in southeast Asia that reverberated on the big board at the New York Stock Exchange.

Whatever surge or upturn there was in the U.S. economy, all the benefits went to enrich a tiny minority. For the working and poor people, 1997 brought hard times, insecurity and even despair.

A recent New York Times report found that the income gap between the wealthiest and the poorest grew over the last ten years in 37 states, where 87 percent of the people live.

For example, in New York - the state with the greatest gap - the top 20 percent of families earned an average of $132,390, while the bottom 20 percent averaged $6,787.

Thus, the great class divide between those who produce the wealth and those who steal it is bigger now than ever before. While wages decline and people have to pay more for everything, the richest 10 percent now own 85 percent of the country's wealth.

A reality check for last year

Because of the "Contract on America" right-wing Republican corporate policies, unemployment, hunger and homelessness are spreading like a plague across our country.

* Millions of the poor, sick, disabled and elderly, single mothers and families are now being cut off of welfare and food stamps because of Clinton's so-called welfare reform.

* The millions who now depend on food stamps, rent subsidies, disability checks and relief are facing a dead end.

* Food lines, homeless shelters and emergency rooms are turning away thousands every day. In New York City alone, 400,000 people are going hungry daily, 100,000 of whom are children.

Because of ruthless policies based on a reversal in social philosophy - that government should do less, not more - whole cities, towns and communities are going bankrupt, throwing more millions into poverty and onto the streets.

The same cold-blooded politicians who talk about "self help" and "personal responsibility" blame the victims and keep threatening to cut basic lifelines like social security, medicare and education.

The already poorest families, especially in the African American and Latino communities, are now going from low income to no income.

The small family farmers, who fed generations of Americans, are going bankrupt, thrown off their land and into poverty. Huge agribusinesses are greedily gobbling up the land and now completely dominate U.S. food production from seed to the supermarket, while farmers and their families go jobless, hungry and often homeless. And food prices go through the ceiling.

But perhaps the greatest change is among the millions of working Americans who used to think they had a good job with a pension, union protection and job security.

Today, the great majority of working Americans now live in a daily state of dread that the company they work for will make a "profitability" decision to downsize their jobs - and with it their homes, their children's education, their lives.

And that is just what many corporations did and are still doing. Before the new year even begins, companies like Kodak, the Wiz and others have made announcements of over 100,000 planned layoffs and plant closings.

The people's welfare is gutted, but corporate welfare is alive and well. Companies are declaring bankruptcy and "low-profit margin closings" so they can "restructure," a codeword for the much detested words downsizing and layoffs.

With consumer debt and credit card spending in the trillions, and small business bankruptcies in the thousands, there's no help anywhere.

Then there are the millions of Americans who are working two and three jobs, working part-time or for poverty wages at the Kmarts, Home Depots and Burger Kings of our country. In Black and Brown communities, youth unemployment is as high as 60 percent.

There are the permanently unemployed. There are the many, many millions of young folks who can't afford an education and can't find a decent job. There are the parents who no longer believe that their children can live better than they did. There are over three million infants and children who live heatless and homeless lives.

Neighborhood streets, playgrounds and schools have become dangerous places of crime, violence and drugs, where children can't play and can't learn.

And, perhaps most frightening, 17th-century child labor sweatshops, once the scourge of places like Bangkok and Singapore, are now spreading like a disease to New England, to New York, to Chicago and San Francisco.

Fifty-five million people, including children and babies, have no medical or health coverage of any kind. Malnutrition, starvation and infant mortality are reaching crisis proportions. Child abuse and neglect have become a deadly result of unemployment and poverty.

Racism kills. It is still the nation's most dangerous pollutant. Every problem and crisis in our society hits the victims of racism like a double-edged sword.

Racism means discrimination, poverty, oppression, police brutality, no health care, poor education, unemployment.

To all this we have to add the corporate-government attacks against Ron Carey and other trade union leaders, and against the teachers' and laborers' unions. These attacks are the opening shot in an all-out war against labor.

Capitalism doesn't work

These are part of the permanent overall class struggle between the haves and the have-nots, the capitalist class and the working class, that will go on year after year until the great majority of the American people decide the system is broken, can't be fixed and can be replaced with a much better one - socialism.

Yes, more than ever we do advocate socialism as a logical, even a great replacement for capitalism. But we have always said that it is the people, the working class, who must decide when they have had enough of capitalism.

Socialism will come into being when the majority are convinced that it is a better society and necessary for improving their lives.

On the other side of the coin, there are the changes that are good and positive. Workers are increasingly winning strikes, wage increases, pension struggles. The victories in the UPS and Wheeling-Pitt strikes are victories for the whole working class. The working class defeat of Clinton's attempt to ram through fast-track authority for his global trade deals without congressional debate is another signal of the new power of the trade union movement.

The 1997 organizing drives, the "Union Cities" and other exciting programs show that the new AFL-CIO leadership is more militant, more honest and activist.

It has been a full year of mass actions and demonstrations by labor, united with people's movements, in the struggles to win jobs, save social programs and affirmative action, to demand an end to police brutality and to save the environment.

But while all the downhill changes and uphill battles were taking place, corporate profits were taking off.

So why doesn't the system work? You might well wonder, if the corporations can accumulate such vast wealth, making profits in the billions, even trillions; if the U.S. government can send manned space stations into space, orbiting for months at a time; if U.S. science and technology is the most advanced in the world:

Why can't this great nation of ours guarantee such basic human rights for everyone?

* A decent job at union wages.

* A decent, affordable place to live.

* Free child care and a free education.

* Free health, medical and dental care.

The answer is simple. Corporate profits. Corporate greed that gets more insatiable and ruthless every year.

The world crisis

On the world scene the changes are perhaps even more earthshaking.

The global financial crisis and the crash of the world's stock markets, including big losses on Wall Street, are still sending shock waves around the world. The crisis is revealing the extreme instability of the capitalist system.

The globalization processes that are being pushed by world capitalism are precipitating crisis after crisis as U.S. imperialism strives to totally dominate world markets and plunder whole economies.

When desperate nations fall prey to U.S. finance capital, the world financial institutions under its control impose so-called austerity measures that open the door to plunder, penetration and profiteering by mainly U.S. transnationals.

The big U.S. corporations are using the crisis to further take over banking and financial institutions in the smaller countries. It is an imperialist free-for-all. As long as developing countries have to borrow more money just to make the interest payments on what they've already had to borrow, they will keep sinking deeper into the imperialist bottomless profit pit.

The world crisis is affecting most countries, including the ex-socialist countries. It is a crisis of privatization, of creeping capitalism that is destroying the socially, publicly owned economic bases of whole countries. Industries that under socialism were owned by workers are being privatized, robbed and ruined by the new Russian capitalist "entrepreneurs."

The growing resistance in these countries raises our confidence that the working people will soon fight their way back to socialism.

Winning new victories

All human progress depends on three concepts: unity, organization and struggle.

Early in U.S. history, the citizen soldiers who fought the British for independence could not have won without unity, organization and struggle.

Without unity, organization and struggle, the Civil War against slavery could not have been won.

Without unity, organization and struggle, the New Deal, social security, unemployment insurance and labor rights could not have been won.

Without unity, organization and struggle, the civil rights laws could not have been won.

The UPS and Wheeling-Pitt workers could not have won their strikes without unity, organization and struggle.

The billions in corporate profits come from the hard labor of workers and the high prices they pay for all consumer goods. Without unity, organization and struggle the prices of all goods will keep going up.

These examples from U.S. history show that in the good fight for a better life, the key is unity, organization and struggle. The working class cannot win against big business without unity, organization and struggle. Trade unions and people's movements cannot defeat the ultra-right Republicans in Congress or elect workers to public office without unity, organization and struggle.

So, let us unite, organize and struggle. We have big battles to fight and new victories to win.