Vol. 81/No. 15      April 17, 2017

 

25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

 
April 17, 1992
With the April 1 announcement that it would begin hiring scabs to break the five-month strike by the United Auto Workers union, the Caterpillar company has now declared war on the labor movement.

For the first time since World War II a major corporation has decided to go all out to inflict a crushing blow on the UAW. Caterpillar hopes to open another rout of the labor movement, more devastating than that which occurred in the first half of the 1980s when two-tier contracts, wage givebacks, speed up and other concessions became widespread.

Millions of working people can be organized into this fight. Union locals should send reinforcements to the picket line and bring back reports to public solidarity meetings.

April 17, 1967
The Cuban people are making vigorous efforts to shape their own socialist destiny.

To accomplish this aim, an educational process is going on throughout Cuba on the need to shape a socialist man capable of living in a cooperative society. A deep-going struggle is being waged against the development of a privilege-seeking, politically conservative bureaucracy.

At the same time efforts to raise productivity are being geared around moral incentives rather than personal material gain.

Leaders of the revolution are taking the position that people will contribute the most if they are convinced that society as a whole will benefit from their efforts and not simply that they will gain in an individual sense.

April 18, 1942
In the final analysis Bataan fell for the same reason that Malaya and the Dutch East Indies fell: the failure to mobilize and arm the native people to fight against the Japanese. The Philippine Islands have been under American rule for over 40 years.

The imperialists feared the subject people as much, if not more, than they feared the rival imperialists. The Filipinos have always fought to rule their own destinies.

The Filipinos have shown no eagerness to fight and die for the difference between the old masters and the new.

Bataan will fall again — to the Filipinos, to the people to whom Bataan belongs. And no foreign ruling class — not Japanese, nor American, nor any other — will be able to take it away from them again.  
 
 
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