Religion and the Future of China

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இஸ்லாமிய அரசு அமைப்பது கடமையா? .By; PJ (Plus*)

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இஸ்லாமிய அரசு அமைப்பது கடமையா?  ... from Ashkar Fuard on Vimeo.

இஸ்லாமிய அரசு அமைப்பது கடமையா? ...

Al Quran-72:23. “அல்லாஹ்விடமிருந்து (வருவதை) எடுத்துச் சொல்வதும், அவனுடைய தூதுவத்துவத்தையும் தவிர (எனக்கு வேறில்லை) எனவே, எவர் அல்லாஹ்வுக்கும் அவனுடைய தூதருக்கும் மாறு செய்கிறாரோ அவருக்கு நிச்சயமாக நரக நெருப்புத்தான். அதில் அவர் என்றென்றும் இருப்பார்” என (நபியே!) நீர் கூறும்.


(NB: Plus*: ....man was created weak...TMQ 4: 28)  

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How revolutions happen: Patterns from Iran to Egypt

Revolutions can be short and bloody, or slow and peaceful. Each is different, though there are recurring patterns - including some that were on show in Egypt.

Trotsky once remarked that if poverty was the cause of revolutions, there would be revolutions all the time because most people in the world were poor. What is needed to turn a million people's grumbling discontent into a crowd on the streets is a spark to electrify them.

Violent death has been the most common catalyst for radicalising discontent in the revolutions of the last 30 years. Sometimes the spark is grisly, like the mass incineration of hundreds in an Iranian cinema in 1978 blamed on the Shah's secret police.

Sometimes the desperate act of a single suicidally inflammatory protester like vegetable salesman Mohammed Bouazizi in Tunisia, in December 2010, catches the imagination of a country.

Even rumours of brutality, such as the claims the Communist secret police had beaten two students to death in Prague in November, 1989, can fire up a public already deeply disillusioned with the system. Reports that Milosevic had had his predecessor, Ivan Stambolic, "disappeared" in the weeks before the Yugoslav presidential elections in 2000 helped to crystallise Serbian rejection of his regime.

Chinese template

Death - though in this case non-violent - also played a role in China in April 1989, when students in Beijing hijacked the officially-sponsored mourning for the former Communist leader, Hu Yaobang, to occupy Tiananmen Square and protest against the Party's corruption and dictatorship.

But although the Chinese crisis set the template for how to stage protests and occupy symbolic city-centre squares, it also was the most obvious failure of "People Power".

Unlike other elderly dictators, Deng Xiaoping showed energy and skill in striking back at the protesters. His regime had made a billion Chinese peasants better off. They were the soldiers sent to shoot down the crowds.

Protests against Suharto's "re-election" in Indonesia in March 1998, culminated in the shooting of four students in May, which set off a round of bigger demonstrations and more violence until more than 1,000 were dead.

Thirty years earlier Suharto could kill hundreds of thousands with impunity. But corruption and the Asian economic crisis had imploded support for his regime. After 32 years in power, his family and their cronies were too rich, while too many former backers were getting poorer - a poverty they shared with ordinary people.

What collapses a regime is when insiders turn against it. So long as police, army and senior officials think they have more to lose by revolution than by defending a regime, then even mass protests can be defied and crushed. Remember Tiananmen Square.

But if insiders and the men with guns begin to question the wisdom of backing a regime - or can be bought off - then it implodes quickly.

Tunisia's Ben Ali decided to flee when his generals told him they would not shoot into the crowds. In Romania, in December, 1989, Ceausescu lived to see the general he relied on to crush the protesters become his chief judge at his trial on Christmas Day.

External pressure plays a role in completing regime-change. In 1989, the refusal of the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to use the Red Army to back East European Communists facing protests in the streets made the local generals realise that force was not an option.

The United States has repeatedly pressed its authoritarian allies to compromise and then, once they have started on that slippery slope, to resign.

Sclerosis

Longevity of a regime and especially the old age of a ruler can result in a fatal incapacity to react to events quickly.

Revolutions are 24-hour-a day events - they require stamina and quick thinking from both protesters and dictators. An elderly inflexible but ailing leader contributes to the crisis.

From the cancer-stricken Shah of Iran via the ailing Honecker in East Germany to Indonesia's Suharto, decades in power had encouraged a political sclerosis which made nimble political manoeuvres impossible. As Egypt reminds, revolutions are made by the young.

Graceful exits are rare in revolutions, but the offer of secure retirement can speed up and smooth the change.

In 2003, Georgia's Shevardnadze was denounced by some as a "Ceausescu" but he was let alone in his villa after he resigned. Suharto's generals had ensured he retired to die in peace a decade later - but his son "Tommy" was imprisoned.

Often there is a hunger among people to punish the fallen rulers. Their successors, too, find retribution against the old leader can be a useful distraction from the economic and social problems, which don't disappear with the change of regime.

Oxford historian Mark Almond is the author of Uprising - Political Upheavals that have Shaped the World. (BBC)

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World Economy Faces Deepening Turmoil

The New Year has opened with expressions of concern that two years after the financial meltdown sparked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the global economy and financial system, far from recovering, has entered an era of unprecedented economic and political turmoil. In short, the realisation is growing that the financial crisis was not a cyclical downturn to be followed by an upswing, but the beginning of a new era of economic breakdown.

In a comment published last month, Jeffrey Garten, undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration and now Yale University international trade and finance professor wrote: “As the first decade of the 21st century comes to a close, leaving the steady growth of last century’s second half a distant memory, what does the future hold for the global economy? For the next several years, we can expect exceptional turbulence as the waning days of the global economic order we have known plays [sic] out chaotically, possibly destructively.”

The focus of immediate attention is Europe where, according to a comment by former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson, published in the New York Times on December 30, “most experienced watchers of the eurozone are expecting another serious crisis in early 2011, tied to the rollover funding needs of its weaker governments.”

But as Johnson went on to warn, the turbulence will not stop at the Atlantic. “When the financial markets are done with Europe, they will come to test the fiscal resolve of the United States.” Notwithstanding the belief of the entire American elite that “we are different from the Europeans because we issue the dollar and therefore have some special privileges” the age of American predominance, he insisted, was now over.

The Financial Times also pointed to the likelihood that the European financial crisis would spread in the next few months. “Last year brought the eurozone debt crisis. Greece and Ireland had to be bailed out and big question marks still hang over Portugal and Spain. But the focus is now likely to widen. The question for 2011 is how much of the western world will be caught up,” it noted on January 3.

The FT comment cited a survey conducted by a major US investment bank of its largest institutional investors, who were asked when they thought the debt crisis afflicting Europe would reach the United States. Fewer than 10 per cent said “never”.

As economic and financial problems deepen in Europe and the US, the still growing Chinese economy, far from providing a new foundation for global economic expansion, may itself become the source of a new wave of international turbulence.

Rising inflation has led authorities to lift interest rates, sparking concerns that if these increases are too rapid, they will cause a collapse of the investment and real estate bubble—much of it promoted by local government authorities—that has played such a central role in Chinese economic growth over the past two years.

According to Beijing university professor Michael Pettis: “Debt levels are worryingly high and starting to act as a serious constraint on rebalancing. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the People’s Bank of China to raise interest rates without causing a great deal of financial distress in government related entities.”

The deepening problems within the Chinese economy, while exacerbated by the global financial crisis, are rooted in long-term processes. According to a comment by a former member of the monetary policy committee of the Peoples’ Bank of China, Yu Yongding, published in the December 23 edition of the China Daily, the “East Asian growth pattern” that formed the basis of China’s progress over the past three decades “has now almost exhausted its potential.” Consequently “China has reached a crucial juncture” and “without painful structural adjustments, the momentum of its economic growth could be lost.”

The actions of the United States are fuelling the escalating turbulence in the world economy.

For much of the post-war period the US functioned as the anchor of the world capitalist economy. Today it is one of the main sources of destabilisation as it seeks to overcome its mounting economic problems at the expense of its rivals.

The US Federal Reserve’s policy of so-called “quantitative easing,” which sees it pumping billions of dollars into the global financial system—increasing the availability of cheap finance and pushing down the value of the US dollar—is sending shock waves through the world economy.

One of the immediate consequences has been renewed speculation in food and other basic commodities, such as oil. This week, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization issued a warning that food prices had now surpassed the levels reached in the price hikes of 2007-2008.

Faced with “hot money” inflows sparked by quantitative easing, a number of countries have sought to impose new financial controls. Brazil has just announced new banking regulations to try to curb the inflow of finance, while Chilean authorities have intervened in money markets to try to hold down the value of the peso.

Pointing to the deepening divisions in the world economy, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz noted that the coordinated policy response of the major powers to the economic crisis in 2009 was now a “faint memory”.

“Worse,” he continued, “America’s quantitative easing is now viewed as an update of the policies that marked the Great Depression. The world is waking up to the way that exchange rates can be used in self-promotion at the expense of others—discouraging imports and enhancing exports.… Such beggar-thy-neighbour policies didn’t work in the 1930s, because countries responded in kind. Today the same will happen.”

The eruption of currency wars threatens to fracture the world market in the same way that tariff barriers in the 1930s divided the world into a series of hostile economic blocs, leading to the eruption of war by the end of the decade.

Mounting tensions between the major powers are being accompanied by an increasingly ferocious assault on the social position of the working class. The unleashing of state violence against students, youth and workers by governments in Britain, Greece, Spain and France in order to impose the austerity measures being dictated by banks and financial markets is only a foretaste of what is to come as the ruling classes everywhere seek to make the working class pay for the historic bankruptcy of the profit system.

Just as the breakdown of the capitalist order proceeds across borders and continents, so the working class must develop its own global response. The task ahead is to develop a unified movement of the international working class that will take political power and establish workers’ governments, placing key economic and financial resources in public hands and reorganising the economy to meet social needs. That is the perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International. (WSWS)

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China and Russia strengthen strategic ties

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to China on September 25-27 is a further sign that Moscow and Beijing are consolidating their ties in order to counter the US and its main ally in North East Asia, Japan.

Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao issued a joint statement that called for “comprehensively deepening strategic cooperation,” amid mounting threats and challenges in the Asian Pacific region. The statement emphasised mutual support for each other’s core interests—Russian support for Beijing’s sovereignty over Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang, and Chinese support for Moscow’s “efforts to promote peace and stability throughout the Caucasian region and the Commonwealth of Independent States”.

While not naming the US, the statement was clearly directed against Washington. In 2008, Russia waged a war with the US-backed Georgian regime to support the independence of two Georgian provinces. In Asia, US-China tensions have sharpened during the past year as the Obama administration has intervened aggressively in the region over a range of issues—from selling arms to Taiwan to backing South East Asian nations in their territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea.

Just as significant was a second joint statement marking the 65^th anniversary of the end of World War II. The two countries condemned attempts “to glorify Nazis, militarists and their accomplices, and to tarnish the image of liberators”. The statement was aimed not only at Western criticisms of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, but also right-wing nationalist politicians in Japan who whitewash the crimes of the wartime militarist regime.

“The fascists and militarists schemed to conquer and enslave us two nations, other countries and the whole [Eurasian] continent. China and Russia will never forget the feat of those who checked the two forces,” the statement declared. It went to proclaim that the “glorious history” of Soviet-Chinese wartime cooperation against Japan “has laid a sound foundation for today’s strategic partnership of coordination between China and Russia”.

The statement was directed against Japan in particular. It came during a bitter diplomatic row between China and Japan over the disputed Diaoyu islets (known as Senkaku in Japan) in the East China Sea, triggered by Japan’s detention of a Chinese trawler captain.

Medvedev began his trip by visiting the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian, where he paid his respects to Soviet soldiers who died fighting to expel the Japanese army from Manchuria in August 1945. Significantly, he also paid tribute to Russian soldiers killed in the 1904-05 war between Tsarist Russia and Imperial Japan—a conflict between two imperialist powers.

Following Medvedev’s visit, China’s official Xinhua news agency accused Washington of “protecting large numbers of militarist war criminals in Asia”, especially in Japan, after the end of World War II. The comment also accused the US of betraying the post-war agreements among the Allies, which included China. Xinhua highlighted the fact that under the 1945 Potsdam agreement, Japan had to return all territories annexed during and prior to the war. However in 1971, the US unilaterally handed the Diaoyu Islands back to Japan, despite China’s objections.

In Japan, the joint statements by Russia and China have been interpreted as a common front against Japan. Russia and Japan also have a longstanding territorial disagreement over four of the Kuril Islands closest to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. The Yomiuri Shimbun warned last week that China and Russia were “presenting a united front in their claims over Japanese territories”.

Medvedev originally planned to visit the Kuril Islands on his way home—the first Russian leader ever to do so. Tokyo responded by summoning the Russia ambassador and warning that a visit to the Kurils would “seriously hinder” Russo-Japanese relations. Moscow responded by declaring that “no approval” was needed for the Russian president or any citizen to visit the islands. While the trip was postponed due to “bad weather,” Medvedev announced that he would visit the islands in the near future.

In July, Russia conducted “Vostok 2010”—its largest military exercise in the Far East since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The naval manoeuvres took place around the Kuril Islands, provoking protests from Japan. The exercise, together with ambitious plans to expand the Russian Pacific fleet over the next decade, indicate that Moscow is determined to reestablish a strong presence in the Pacific.

Moscow and Beijing are already cooperating in countering US influence in Central Asia through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) formed in 2001 with four Central Asia republics—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Last month, the SCO held a major 16-day joint military exercise, “Peace Mission 2010,” in Kazakhstan. While the official scenario was “counter-terrorism,” the scale of the exercise, which included around 5,000 troops, tanks and war planes, suggested a joint drill in conventional warfare.

The Russian-Chinese “strategic partnership” is also based on expanding economic ties. Medvedev’s visit marked the completion of an oil pipeline from East Siberia to the Chinese city of Daqing that will deliver 15 million tonnes of oil to China annually for 20 years. The pipeline is part of a $US25 billion “loans for oil” agreement that China signed last year with Russia’s state-owned energy giants.

By securing oil via land, China lessens its reliance on sea routes to the Middle East and Africa that are currently under the control of the US navy. Russia is also seeking to reduce its dependence on the European energy market by building pipelines to supply not only China, but also Japan and other Asian countries.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin accompanied Medvedev to Tianjin for a groundbreaking ceremony to initiate a $5 billion oil refinery to be jointly developed by Russia and China. Sechin told his Chinese hosts that Russia was “ready to meet China’s full demand in gas” as well. Disputes over prices have stalled a 2006 agreement to deliver 60 billion cubic metres of gas annually to China from 2011. The latest talks agreed that gas supplies would start in 2015 for the ensuing 30 years.

Medvedev called on China to invest in Russia on a large-scale to modernise his country’s decaying industrial base. During Medvedev’s trip, a joint venture was planned between China’s FAW Group and the Russian GAZ Group to manufacture heavy trucks in the Urals. China now makes half of the world’s trucks and is starting to export vehicles. In the past decade, trade between Russia and China increased 12-fold, allowing China to overtake Germany as Russia’s largest trading partner.

The closer strategic and economic ties between China and Russia are a reaction to the Obama administration’s efforts over the past year to forge closer ties with Japan and other Asian countries to undermine Chinese influence in the region. All these steps heighten tensions in Asia and the potential risk of conflict. (WSWS)

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India-China relations strained

Tensions between India and China stepped up a notch last month after reports that thousands of Chinese troops were in the Gilgit-Baltistan area of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir near the border with China.

The controversy was sparked by an inflammatory article by Selig Harrison in the New York Times on August 26 declaring that Islamabad was “handing over de facto control” of the strategic region to China by allowing the entry of between 7,000 and 11,000 Chinese soldiers. His article was based on “foreign intelligence sources, Pakistani journalists and Pakistani human rights workers”.

Harrison was compelled to acknowledge that many of the “troops” were in fact involved in construction work on road and rail links between China and Pakistan. That did not prevent him from speculating—without a shred of evidence—that 22 tunnels under construction could be used for “missile storage sites”.

The article had the hallmarks of a story planted by US intelligence to undermine relations between Pakistan and China. Commenting on the land routes from China via Gilgit-Baltistan to Chinese-built ports in southern Pakistan, Harrison declared: “Coupled with its support for the Taliban, Islamabad’s collusion in facilitating Chinese access to the [Persian] Gulf makes clear that Pakistan is not a US ‘ally’.”

In fact, Pakistan broke ties with the Taliban in 2001 and, under US pressure, is waging a vicious war in its border areas to suppress Islamist insurgents fighting the US occupation in neighbouring Afghanistan. As for transit through Gilgit-Baltistan, Harrison is speaking for sections of the US military and foreign policy establishment that oppose Pakistani “collusion” in China’s plans for overland trading and energy routes to the Arabian Sea.

Both Pakistan and China flatly denied the story. China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told the press: “The story that China has deployed some military in the northern part of Pakistan is totally groundless and out of ulterior purposes.”

As reported in the Dawn on September 1, Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said: “The Chinese were working on landslide, flood-hit areas and on the destroyed Korakoram Highway with the permission of Pakistani Government ... The statements are based on incomplete information.”

The Indian government and media nevertheless continued to pursue the issue. Gilgit-Baltistan is part of Kashmir, which is claimed by both Pakistan and India. The region has been divided into Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir, and Pakistani-controlled Azad Kashmir since the two countries fought a war for its control immediately after independence and the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.

India has repeatedly opposed any Chinese involvement in what it regards as its territory. New Delhi objected to Chinese assistance for the construction of the Bunji dam and hydro-power generation project. India also condemned Pakistan’s decision last year to grant self-government to the region, renaming what was previously the Northern Area as Gilgit-Baltistan.

In response to the New York Times article, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh briefed various Indian newspapers on the dangers of China’s alleged military presence in Gilgit-Baltistan. As reported in the Times of India on September 7, Singh declared: “China would like to have a foothold in South Asia and we have to reflect on this reality.” He went on to warn of a “new assertiveness among the Chinese”. Singh said China could use India’s “soft underbelly” of Kashmir “to keep India in low-level equilibrium”.

On September 13, India’s defence minister A.K. Antony told a military conference that “we cannot afford to drop our guard” in relation to China. “We want to develop friendly relations with China ... However, we cannot lose sight of the fact that China has been improving its military and physical infrastructure. In fact, there has been an increasing assertiveness on the part of China,” he said.

While the Indian and Chinese governments have subsequently downplayed the Gilgit-Baltistan issue, it continues to reverberate in the Indian and Pakistani press. Last Sunday, a comment in the Dawn denounced Harrison’s article in the New York Times, declaring that he had “picked up the Indian script on Gilgit-Baltistan”. In a comment on Wednesday, former Indian foreign and defence minister Jaswant Singh warned of the large number of Chinese troops in Gilgit-Baltistan, warning: “It is now a China hungry for land, water, and raw materials that is flexing its muscles, encroaching on Himalayan redoubts and directly challenging India.”

The continuing controversy is a further sign of friction between the two rising economic powers, which fought a border war in 1962. China also claims about 90,000 square kilometres in what is now the north eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh; while India asserts its right to 33,000 square kilometres of the Aksai Chin region of China near north western Jammu and Kashmir. In 1962, Chinese forces advanced rapidly into the disputed areas, declared a ceasefire and then voluntarily withdrew in 1963.

The unresolved border claims continue to strain relations. In April 2009, Beijing attempted to block a $US2.9 billion Asian Development Bank loan to India that included a flood control project in Arunachal Pradesh. India finally obtained the loan in June, apparently with the backing of the US and Japan, but over the protests of China. Also in June 2009, India announced the deployment of 60,000 additional troops, along with tanks and warplanes, to Assam, near Arunachal Pradesh, triggering an angry reaction in the Chinese media.

The border areas are sensitive for both India and China. Arunachal Pradesh is adjacent to Tibet where China has faced repeated protests against Chinese rule. Beijing objects to New Delhi’s hosting of a virtual Tibetan government in exile headed by the Dalai Lama in northern India. The disputed areas of Kashmir and of Aksai Chin are next to the Chinese province of Xinjiang where Beijing confronts a Muslim separatist movement. As for India, China’s collaboration with Pakistan in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir helps undermine New Delhi’s claims to the area.

In late August, China refused a visa to General B. S. Jaswal, who heads the Indian army’s Northern Command, on the basis that he was from Jammu and Kashmir, the territory disputed by Pakistan. Jaswal was to be part of a high-level Indian military delegation to China. New Delhi responded by refusing entry to two Chinese officers who were scheduled to attend an Indian defence course. A Chinese colonel was denied permission to deliver a speech at an Indian army-run institute.

The key destabilising factor in an already tense situation is the United States, which over the past decade has developed a close strategic relationship with India, aimed at countering growing Chinese influence in Asia. Over the past year, the Obama administration has intensified pressure on China over a range of issues in North East Asia and South East Asia, which will have encouraged India to take a more assertive stance.

An important aspect of US-Indian relations was the signing of a nuclear deal in 2008 opening the door for India to buy fuel and technology to expand its civilian nuclear power program even though it is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has nuclear weapons. The US, however, has objected to China’s plans to build nuclear reactors for Pakistan, which also has a nuclear arsenal and has not signed the NPT.

Relations in South Asia are further complicated by Washington’s heavy dependence on the Pakistani military to wage a war against Islamist insurgents in areas bordering Afghanistan. US support for the Pakistani government has raised concerns in India about the strength of its own strategic relationship with Washington. At the same time, New Delhi would quietly welcome any US efforts to undercut China’s longstanding relationship with Pakistan—particularly in the sensitive border areas in disputed Kashmir.

By alleging “de facto Chinese control” of Gilgit-Baltistan, the New York Timesarticle inflamed a contentious issue and threatened to bring the US into a dispute that involves three nuclear armed powers—India, Pakistan and China.

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China-India border talks highlight rising tensions

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“The Breakdown of Capitalism and the Fight for Socialism in the US”

The Socialist Equality Party (US) today announces the publication of a printed version of its program, “The Breakdown of Capitalism and the Fight for Socialism in the United States,” adopted at its First National Congress in August. The 56-page booklet includes graphs and photographs documenting the crisis of capitalism, growing inequality, and the emerging struggles of the working class. The WSWS urges all readers to purchase your copy today.

The program of the SEP is a fighting program for the working class. It presents a series of basic rights that must be guaranteed to all—including the right to a job, to a livable income, to education, housing and health care—and explains how these rights can be won: through the independent political organization of the working class in the fight for socialism.

 

Everywhere the working class is under attack. After handing out trillions to the banks, the ruling class—led by the Obama administration—is demanding austerity. The entire political establishment is moving to the right. Regardless of the outcome of the November midterm elections, the government is planning devastating attacks on social programs, mirroring similar measures adopted internationally.

 

As the social crisis deepens, the Obama administration is also expanding its wars abroad and launching unprecedented attacks on democratic rights—including in the recent FBI raids of antiwar activists and political opponents of US policy.

 

The working class in the United States is beginning to fight back. The determined resistance of workers in Indianapolis—and the formation of a rank-and-file committee to oppose the demands of the corporations and the UAW—is an initial sign. Opposition will grow, expanding throughout the country and linking up with struggles throughout the world.

 

The question is: What political program can lead the working class to victory? Such a program will not come form the Democratic or Republican Parties, both equally determined to defend the interests of the financial aristocracy. It will not come from the trade unions, which for several decades have collaborated in the corporate-driven attack on workers. It will not come from the various middle class organizations, tied with a million threads—political and financial—to the Democratic Party and the trade union apparatus.

 

The program of the Socialist Equality Party is imbued with immense confidence in the revolutionary role of the American working class. It is a declaration of war against the capitalist system, against the domination of the giant banks and corporations, against a new aristocracy that is expanding its own wealth on the backs of the impoverishment of the vast majority.

 

This program will get a mass following. It will be distributed at factories, offices, workplaces and schools throughout the country. It will form the political basis for a new upsurge of the American working class, as part of the struggle of the international working class against the capitalist system.

 

We urge all readers of the WSWS and supporters of the SEP to purchase a copy of the program today. Multiple copies can be purchased at a discount to distribute to your coworkers. Contact us with comments and questions. Study the program and make the decision to join the Socialist Equality Party. (WSWS)

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