Zambian miners kill Chinese Mine Boss: Indian workers kill theirs.

Source: BBC

We have blogged on the situation in Africa and in particular Zambia between mine workers and Chinese owned firms.  There have been huge clashes over pay and firings of workers, some ending in deaths.  

There were further clashes yesterday and a mine supervisor at the Collum mine was killed by workers who are fighting for better pay and conditions.  Whether in this case the death was accidental or intentional we are not sure, the Chinese manager was hit by a trolley as he was running from angry workers.  Last year, charges were dropped against two bosses at the same mine after 11 workers were shot during protests for better pay and conditions.

Resistance to the activities of global capital has been increasing everywhere although here in the US, where the mass media is the most censored and controlled of all advanced capitalist countries and many autocratic ones no doubt, we would hardly know this.  A boss was killed at the Maruti Suzuki auto factory in India a few weeks ago during a strike for better conditions and pay and hundreds of workers have been arrested and will be charged with murder. The workers set fire to the factor that was also in response to a Union worker being fired

"Armed with iron rods and door beams of cars, the mob spread out in groups in the factory area and targeted supervisors, managers and executives... rendering many of their victims bleeding and unconscious," Maruti said in a statement.

When workers are driven to such activity it is always described in the capitalist press as mob activity or a riot.  And although some activity can accurately be described as "riotous" it is actually a war, a class war, not some blind undirected activity.  The teams of bosses and overseers whose job it is to ensure workers are kept in a state of servitude and poverty are never described as mobs.  The slaughter of millions in Iraq or Afghanistan is never described as "mob" action or a riot.  These are necessary ventures in the struggle for peace and the victims, many of them, simply collateral damage.

The president of the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU) Ram Meher explains how there is a little more to it than workers running amok unprovoked by the professional gentlemen and women that oversee their work.

In a public statement, Meher accused the company of "anti-worker and anti-union activities"

"The gates were closed by the security on behest of the management and the bouncers brutally attacked the workers with sharp weapons and arms. They were joined by some of the managerial staff and police later, beat up a number of workers who have had to be hospitalized with serious injuries. The bouncers, who are anti-social elements on hire, also destroyed company property and set fire to a portion of the factory,"  

We might think Meher a liar.  But this is standard procedure.  It was standard procedure in US history as well until workers organized and stopped it.  Here in the US we were shot, tortured, deported for organizing to improve working conditions. The Pinkertons were the armed thugs of the bosses for years.  Criminal records and thuggery were an asset if you were willing to beat up workers.

Events like these are occurring daily throughout the world.  We have covered some of them on this blog from the striking miners in Asturius Spain to the land occupations by the indigenous comrades in Ecuador and throughout Latin America.  The news of these struggles are kept out of the public eye as much as possible here as the 1% attempts to isolate us from the rest of the world in order to get us to buy in to the idea that the rest of the world hates us and we are the only civilized people's.  Not so. It's all part of the divide and rule strategy, just like racism, sexism, nationalism.

What is lacking is a united front of all oppressed people's that can coordinate a global response to global capitalism.   Conditions are overripe for an international workers', peasants and indigenous people's movement that can transform our global society from the madness of the market to a world federation of democratic socialist states and a truly collective world economy in harmony with our natural world.