OSHA is toothless. But business still hates it.

source: Daily Kos

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

12-15-14

Michael Bloomberg’s Business Week has a little snippet in its December 8^th anniversary issue about the merits of the Occupational Health and Safety act that was past in 1970. But business groups have waged a 40-year war on OSHA despite it being a relatively mild workplace safety regulation.   The presence of unions in the workplace, especially a strong rank and file shop steward movement is the best safeguard against injury and unhealthy conditions.

BW points out that since OSHA’s passing, the US workplace death rate has declined by 81%.  Still, according to David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz Huff Post political bloggers, as of 2011 more than 3 million workers a year suffer some form of work related illness. It is almost impossible to say how many actually die of work related illnesses. The authors add “….workplace accidents fell from 13,800 in 1970 to 5,657 in 2007.”

Workplace deaths still average 13 a day with the construction industry at the top of the list but as BW points out, deaths from work related illnesses like lung cancer could be 10 times as high.

Michael Bloomberg, the owner of Business Week is worth $34 billion according to Forbes, it’s not likely he’s a big fan of OSHA.  The US Chamber of Commerce opposed OSHA as it has most agencies that protect worker’s rights, even feebly.  The US Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, Business Round Table and other big business gangs consider unions and all worker organizations, as well as government regulation as attacks on their freedom, freedom to make profits that is. 

The Chamber of Commerce introduced a $100 million campaign to “defend and advance economic freedom.” largely in response to the Obama Administration’s efforts to launch a consumer protection agency. The Chamber’s ally in that little venture was the banking lobby. This has been the history of Business Associations of one type or another.  They are by far the most ruthless of all of society’s gangs, the Crips, Bloods, Norteños have nothing on them…..and they’re legal which helps.

If we read labor history we will find that every advance working people and all oppressed people made was blocked by the likes of Bloomberg and the legal gangs that represent the interests of big business. Every right, every benefit every freedom we have we fought for against one of the most ruthless ruling classes in history. They opposed the eight-hour day movement, said it would destroy society.  Read the papers of that period.  “A few years after the law was passed…” Rosner and Markowitz write, “ ….a Chamber of Commerce pamphlet declared ‘This is the sorry history of OSHA - a statute which serves little useful purpose; and in its administration is even threatening the entire business system.’”

Bloomberg is not likely to be in the forefront of a movement to defend OSHA, that it exists at all is in spite of people like Bloomberg and magazines like Business Week. The agency has come under attack more and more of late and only has 2, 218 inspectors nationwide. This is a joke when we consider the number of workplaces and OSHA generally doesn’t appear on the scene until workers die. Workers can’t rely on OSHA or the US Congress to protect our workplace safety; the US Congress has blocked any efforts to increase OSHA’s effectiveness.

It should be mentioned that one of the reasons for a decline in workplace deaths other than unions and OSHA is the reduction of blue-collar factory jobs and the de-industrialization of America.  Needless to say, true workplace safety will begin when those that do the work control the labor process and the workplace with it.

Industries With the Most Fatalities 2013

·      Construction: 796

·      Transportation/Warehousing 687

·      Agriculture Forestry Fishing and Hunting 479

·      Professional and Business Services 408

·      Manufacturing 304

Source: Business Week.

Santa Barbara massacre: “Misogynist” Violence?

Facts For Working People received the following article from Susan Rosenthal.  Comrade Rosenthal is a physician and socialist living in Canada. You can read her bio The Doctor's Dilemma Resolved here.  Her website is here.

Tue, May 27, 2014

Elliot Rodger clearly hated the women who rejected him. However, portraying the Santa Barbara massacre as “misogynist” violence minimizes the problem and makes it harder to solve. Rodger stated that he wanted respect as an “alpha male,” and he chose to establish his masculinity by killing people – women and men. Such twisted thinking is cultivated in a society that depends on the oppression of women and on gender stereotypes that help trap women (and men) in an oppressive family system.

The concept that real men are aggressive and real women are submissive is not based on biology. These gender roles are imposed by a capitalist family system that relies on women’s unpaid labor in the home – financially valued at more than $11 trillion world-wide. That’s 11 trillion reasons to keep women oppressed. The family system also traps men in the home with the legal obligation to financially support women and children, a responsibility that the ‘real man’ does not shirk.

Violence against women takes two forms: inside the family and outside the family.

The family is the most violent social institution for both women and men, caused by unrelenting stress that builds to the point of explosion. A 2010 survey found that 1 in 4 American women and 1 in 7 American men have experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner at some point in their life, that means being hit with a fist or something hard, beaten, or slammed against something. Sons of violent parents are 1,000 times more likely to batter their partners. Daughters of violent parents are 600 times more likely to batter their partners.

Violence against women outside the family is part of the widespread violence that is directed towards members of all oppressed groups. Capitalism grinds us down, and our anger is misdirected against those who are weaker, not against the system itself. That is why we have a ‘culture’ of violence, sexism, racism, and war.

Rodger could have turned his rage at being a social failure against any oppressed group: Blacks, gays, immigrants, Muslims, etc. Failing socially is not a personal problem, nor is it caused by women. In a class-divided, hierarchical society, the majority are set up to fail.

Rebecca Solnit is wrong when she states, “Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.”

Violence certainly does have a class, the capitalist class. The process of capital accumulation results in hazardous working conditions, environmental pollution, poverty and war – all of which kill  women and men.  Class inequality on its own is a major killer of both sexes.

Violence does not have a gender. In Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and its Causes, James Gilligan dismantles the myth that most perpetrators of violence are men and most victims are women.
More men and women kill men than they kill women. Overall, men die violent deaths from two to five times more often than women.

Inter-personal violence is a social problem, a sign of how desperate life is under capitalism, so desperate that 800,000 women and men kill themselves every year. Far more women die from suicide than from murder.

Dave Zirin is wrong to argue that men have a “collective responsibility” to end violence against  women. Men, on their own, cannot solve a problem that is embedded in capitalism. And not all men have an interest in solving it. Men (and women) in the capitalist class enrich themselves by perpetrating all kinds of violence on the rest of us.

During times when the working class is gaining strength, inter-personal violence diminishes because people are working together to solve their common problems. During times when the working class is weak and divided, inter-personal violence increases.

The only effective solution to ending violence against women is for working-class women and men to unite against a capitalist system that immerses our lives in violence.

Massey Mine official a 3 year sentence. 29 workers go to their graves.

Memorial to the dead Massey miners

A former co-worker and good friend of mine served five years some time back for robbing a bank, or attempting to rob a bank.  He had a gun, which wasn't a good thing, but he was always a decent guy driven by desperation like many of us are at times, to do the wrong thing.  His inherent decency ensured that he never put any bullets in the thing.

So, this working class man serves five years.  In contrast, I read today that a former Massey Energy Co. official was sentenced yesterday to three years for "obstructing" the government's criminal investigation in to the explosion that killed 29 miners at Massey's W. Virginia facility. The official was convicted in October and prosecutors were asking for 25 years. 

The official, Hughie Stover, was the top security guy at the mine.  He was convicted of lying to federal investigators and obstruction for "ordering the destruction of more than 50,000 documents" the Wall Street Journal reports.  Investigators concluded that the explosion was the result of the Mine's management's "failure to follow standard safety procedures that should have prevented a small methane ignition" from becoming the massive explosion that led to the deaths.

The judge gave the three years as opposed to the 25 prosecutors were seeking because although he burned 50,000 documents that hid who knows what, the prosecutors didn't provide evidence that Stover "directly caused" the explosion.  She admonished him as he "held a position of trust" and that he clearly had a "willful intent to deceive."

How long safety was ignored  and to what extent safety was ignored was ignored in favor of production and profits we won't know thanks to the burning of important evidence.  It's the same as the BP spill that killed eleven workers.  There won't be too many people going to jail for that.  The CEO of BP got a demotion to Russia and a $1 million a year salary for his punishment.

The federal OSHA program is a joke. I always used to comment in our safety meetings that Cal OSHA had 20 inspectors and 500,000 workplaces.  These were figures I just threw out there to make a point.  But it is not a government agency that is designed to work unless it cannot avoid doing so.  The state apparatus that, as Marx pointed out was but the "Executive Committee" of the bourgeoisie (the owners of industry, the finances houses etc.) will not have within it an agency that puts workers' interests, including safety, above profits no matter what it's public proclamations.  It will ensure that it is either short staffed or exists in such a way that it is ineffective. They tell us that cuts in social spending etc. is because there's no money yet we know this not to be the case. As the piece by Michael Roberts pointed out the other day, public expenditure crowds private capital out of the market which means that profit making is adversely affected.

Abuses and safety violations occur especially in private industry every minute of every day in the nation and the world's workplaces. In the workplace there are two sources of power, the boss, which has the backing of the state and its laws; and the organized workers.  A strong, conscious organized workforce is the best protector of our rights and our bodies----in the individual workplaces and in the nation and the world.  Global Unionism along with global political struggle, is one of the ways we can and must fight global capitalism.  While we can sometimes use the courts.  They can only be an adjunct to organized workers' power in politics coupled with mass direct action. We can't rely on the courts to protect us at work no more than we can rely on them to protect us in society as a whole.

Capitalists waging an ideological war for the consciousness of the working class

The capitalist media, especially its right wing, is waging a war on consciousness in the aftermath of the Arizona shootings. The purpose of this ideological warfare as has already been explained in previous blogs, is to convince the US working class that the events that took place in Tucson are not connected in any way to society, to the environment in which we live, and especially, to the system of economic production we call capitalism.

The killer was a “loner” he was “schizophrenic” and had “incoherent ideas, erratic behavior and most certainly was seriously mentally ill.” Writes mental health expert E. Fuller Torrey, in today’s Wall Street Journal.

The Journal’s main editorial continues the thread, “Loughner’s Sickness” is the title. Loughner’s actions, “Weren’t the harvest of the national political tone or the latent neurosis of society, or the anthropology of Arizona” the editorial states. No, the murders were “the result of an individual’s mental illness.”

This mouthpiece of capitalism makes it clear that only a credited expert an “attending physician can diagnose Jared Louhghner.” but it seems clear to the Wall Street Journal editorial board that Loughner’s a “schizophrenic.”

Both the editorial and Torrey’s piece take the opportunity to explain why schizophrenics are killing people all over the place, “five decades of failed mental health policies.” When they threw the mentally ill out of the hospitals and care facilities and in to the streets in order to save money, they failed to institute programs to care for them once they were out there. Actually, they never “failed” or forgot; they simply didn’t care. Taking care of the mentally ill is “money out”. It is not profitable; not a good business decision.

Anyway, they have to come up with something given the shockwaves this has caused in US society in an economic environment that is causing considerable misery for workers and the poor. The right wing is on the defensive a bit.

Sarah Palin also made similar statements today. She consulted with advisors and came up with a short statement about individual responsibility. Palin quotes Ronald Reagan, a B movie actor and political figure who inflicted considerable violence on the workers of America, “We must reject the idea that every time a law is broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker.”

“Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own,” she continued. “They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of the state, not with those who listen to talk radio…..”

I would say the killing of three million Vietnamese is an act of “monstrous criminality” but none of the criminals responsible for orchestrating that slaughter have been brought to trial. Throwing people out of their homes is an act of “monstrous criminality” as well but it is legal in Palin’s world.

On the subject of law, the ruling class in society makes laws for society as a whole; laws that we are all forced to abide by. But these laws are made to serve the interests of the ruling class alone. Capitalist society cannot create equal rights for all of us. How can it? By its very nature it’s an economic system that creates haves and have-nots, the rich and the poor. All workers know this. We don’t need degrees in philosophy or law or sociology to understand this, we experience it every single living moment, in the workplace, the school, and especially the institutions of capitalism, the courts, the universities etc. People experience racism, sexism, all sorts of discrimination that is built in to class society; this is not an individual issue, it’s a social one. We know society is unfair; most of us just don't have an alternative.

There cannot be equality between exploiters and exploited as many have said. So they make laws that perpetuate and defend this set up. So when we collectively break their laws in the pursuit of justice and equality that is a righteous thing, a good thing. We cannot advance humanity without collectively breaking their laws. Unions were illegal once. So was interracial marriage.

The capitalist class is currently waging a war to convince us we have “free will” and we have to bear the consequences of our actions, this way we don’t direct our anger against the system that exploits us. What we do as individuals, what happens to us as individuals, has nothing to do with society. The fact that we have mental illness has nothing to do with society. But we know that’s nonsense.

Why are there very few women pilots, or another example, black pilots? Is it because women or blacks do not have the skills? Are they more stupid than white pilots? Are they simply choosing not to be pilots? Do people sleep under freeway ramps because they want to? Even if they want to, in most cases they would not be in command of their faculties and need help from society. Blacks are almost 50% of the prison population but only 13% of the total population. Why is this? They make bad choices? No, racism is the cause of this. Society is the cause of this. Even if they are all “guilty” by the standards of capitalist courts, it is the justice system and the system that perpetuates it that is at fault. The problem for the capitalist class is that if we clearly understand this then we naturally try to change the system. It’s like when the alcoholic finally admits to being an alcoholic, we can deny it no longer; something has to be done.

This is not to say that those of us that hold this view don’t believe people have a certain amount of free will and responsibility for the choices they make; they do. But, as Marx explained, we make choices but we don’t get to make the circumstance under which these choices are made. And we know how insecurity, hunger and fear of losing one’s job affects the choices we make.We change the conditions, we make different choices. Rich people don't rob liquor stores because they can rob legally.

“Violence bred of illness is hard for free societies to stop” the Journal editorial concludes. What sort of violence is was it that we saw as US attack helicopters mowed down innocent Iraqi's I wonder? And Loughner may well be mentally ill, but society causes as much mental illness as it does physical ones. Many of the family annihilations that have take place over the last few years are a product of society. We have accepted certain expectations of us. We work hard, we do everything right, but we still end up losing our home, our job, our children’s education goes out the door. When this world falls apart, some of us simply crack.

This individualistic and false view of the world is designed to prevent us from thinking about society and our role in it. Those of us that are old enough to remember the cold war between the Soviet Union and the west recall that western propaganda always spoke of the “failed system” of communism. Stalinism was not communism but nevertheless we were taught to recognize that a certain system of production failed. Every ruling class teaches that that the society it governs is the best and only way to organize our productive life, so capitalism cannot be to blame. They don’t even want us to consider that there is an economic system called capitalism and such a thing as the working class and the capitalist class. They refer to these in the journals they produce for themselves, not in those they produce for us.

They all stick together in the end. An Obama spokesperson had this to say:

“The president believes that right now, the main thing we should be doing is offering our thoughts and prayers to those who’ve been impacted and making sure that we’re joining together and pulling together as a country,”

No anger, no questioning about what leads someone to do what Loughner did. Just pray. And we are advised to join together with the very people who are cutting education, health care for the poor and disabled, throwing people out of their homes and in to the streets; and last but not least, waging war on people throughout the world.

Now that’s nonsense.

Violence: From Tucson to Datta Khel by Cindy Sheehan

“Violence is a part of America. I don't want to single out rap music. Let's be honest. America's the most violent country in the history of the world, that's just the way it is. We're all affected by it. “
Spike Lee

 

“I do not know a method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.”

Edmund Burke

January 8, 2011 was a tough day—six people were killed and many more wounded in a cowardly act of unspeakable violence.

These people awakened on that day, ate their breakfasts, played with their children/grandchildren/parents/friends, made love, brushed their teeth, used the toilet, and any number of other “normal” activities we do every day, and they probably didn’t even imagine that it would be their last day on earth—beating hearts silenced by hatred, ignorance and bigotry. Lives cut short and futures canceled by a murderous and unconscionable massacre.

I hope for the sake of the victim’s families and for international justice that those responsible for this massacre will be held accountable, but unfortunately, they are not even in custody—or even “persons of interest” in this despicable crime.

Oh, did you think I was talking about the “massacre in Tucson” that has been in all the news? Although, that was also a horrible, unspeakable act of violence, I am actually talking about the fact that at least six people were killed in North Waziristan by a Hellfire missile dropped from one of Obama’s drones.

Since Obama is Commander in Chief, I want him arrested for these, and other murders. Not only has Obama tripled troop strength to Afghanistan, he has quadrupled bombings in Pakistan by un-manned aerial vehicles since he ordered his first drone strike on January 23, 2009. Being an over-achiever and Nobel Peace Laureate, I guess he didn’t want to be outdone by his predecessor in the senseless carnage department. Obama is targeting whomever he wants to target with his Presidential Execution Program and has been indiscriminately using drones in Yemen. The serial-imperial killer Barack Obama had this to say about the tragedy in Tucson on January 8: “Such a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society." First of all, I wonder what country Obama lives in and, secondly, he presides as president of the Empire over much of these “terrible acts of violence.”

While we’re at it, throw Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates into the brig at Quantico with no possibility of bail and treat him the same way PFC Bradley Manning has been treated: 23 ½ hours per day of solitary confinement with no books, no TV, no exercise, no variation of lighting, no communication with fellow prisoners, etc.

Since the CIA is the institution that facilitates the drone-bombing crimes in Pakistan—I want Leon Panetta arrested. Since the CIA is also responsible for torture and false imprisonment in many “black sites” around the world, I want him incarcerated in Guantanamo or Bagram and detained indefinitely until or if his military commission is ready.

Not forgetting the Bush administration that set these programs in motion, I would like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Yoo, etc, arrested and incarcerated until their kangaroo courts are convened—the same kind of ridiculous trial that was afforded to Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. Being “kangaroo courts,” when they are found inevitably guilty, I hope they are each given 86 years, plus life, in prison, like Dr. Siddiqui was.

The drones that carry out these despicable attacks on “suspected terrorists” and their neighborhoods and families are piloted from Air Force bases in the U.S. —the pilot who followed an illegal order (condemned by the U.N., among others) should be court-martialed and tried for his part in the war crime that occurred on January 8. In our top-down, violent society, though, people that kill civilians in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are usually given commendations; but people that shoot “raunchy videos’ are relieved of duty.

Vietnam war criminal, John McCain, who dropped bombs on innocent civilians during his stint and was responsible for “wet-starting” his jet while “hot dogging” on his aircraft carrier, the USS Forrestal, and incinerating 134 of his fellow crewman, called the Tucson shooter: “a disgrace.” How ironic that such a criminal (who also crashed five jets and graduated very near the bottom of his class at Annapolis) would call anyone else a “disgrace.”

We live in a society where we are taught that violence solves everything, indeed, scoundrels like McCain rise to the very top. Those of us who strive and advocate for non-violent, creative solutions to problems are perceived as being “crazy, weak and traitorous," while history bears out that those using guns, tanks, planes, and drones are the weak ones.

Although top-down violence is oftentimes rewarded, bottom-up violence is usually vigorously prosecuted, even though, it’s possible, that if the same amount of resources and commitment were devoted to education, mental health care, and our communities, many of these bottom-up crimes could be prevented. You know the old saying: Prevention is the best medicine.

Whether it was the tragic massacre in North Waziristan, or the tragic massacre in Arizona, the same rotten imperial system is to blame—but only those of us on the bottom of the so-called food chain are required to pay for our crimes.

Bombs are dropped on real people by real people who basically want the same things out of life: love, happiness, security and prosperity. Violence is also perpetrated by individuals--like some sort of Palinesque sicko that snuffs out the life of a nine-year old (and others) because of some manufactured psychosis perpetuated by the collaborators in the US media.

What did young Christina Greene ever do to the demented shooter in Arizona that deserved her unnecessary death at the too young age of nine? Christina was tragically collateral damage and my heart breaks for her family. Similarly, what did the hundreds of thousands of the nameless and uncounted youngsters in our war-torn countries ever do to us? They are tragically just collateral damage, too, and my heart is torn apart for their families. Twenty-two year old white men and women kill nine-year old people in our war torn countries every single day and I hear few politicians or news commentators crying over their mangled bodies. The disproportionate outcry over the attempted murder of a US Congressperson over the murders of innocent people by our wars is the elitist way of saying: "Our lives count more than theirs or yours."

The only people who are our enemies and the enemies of universal love, happiness, security, and prosperity are sitting happily in their comfy and opulent homes (in Wasilla or DC) while at least one-dozen families are in profound mourning right now.

There is only one solution to this acute problem—whether the pilot who killed six in North Waziristan, or the shooter that killed six in Tucson—we have to stop killing each other to satisfy the blood lust and greed of the Robber Class.

We lose, they win. 

My heart goes out to the people in Tucson, Datta Khel and everywhere who are the victims or survivors of violence.

As an American, the shame I feel for my country is profound. 

http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2011/01/violence-from-tucson-to-datta-khel-by.html

Killings in workplace in Connecticut.

A worker in Connecticut who was going to be fired yesterday killed eight other employees of the firm he worked for. This was reported on the front page of the New York Times today. On the same page this paper ran an article headed: "More workers face pay cuts..." They deliberately made no connection between the two articles. But of course as workers lives become harder, (some estimates say there is 20 to 30 million unemployed, that 2 million of these have no income at all) as the bosses become more vicious and cruel, as the corporations profits soar, as the union leaders refuse to organize their members to fight, then more and more workers reach breaking point and things like this will tend to increasingly happen. Actions like this worker took are counterproductive and we oppose them however we have to understand why they happen. They happen because capitalism makes more and more workers lives unbearable and the union leaders will not lead a movement to end it.

Look at this in a bit more detail. Omar Thornton the man who did the shooting was bankrupt by age 24. When he killed himself yesterday on the verge of being fired he owned only $250 worth of clothing and $600 in a bank account. The New York Times reports: "He was hounded by debt collectors for years." Capitalism drove this man to take this action. But it was not only an economic question. Omar Thornton, an African American was racially insulted and harassed at his work. Racial epithets were written on the bathroom wall along with a noose. On one occasion he held up his phone to let his girl friend hear a supervisor and another workers talk about African Americans in a derogatory way.

Omar Thornton was a member of the Teamsters union. What did they do about this racial harassment? Teamster officials are quoted in the New York Times as saying that Omar thornton "never registered an official complaint." It is like listening to a slick lawyer. So did he register an unofficial complaint? But whether he registered a complaint to the union or not is not the issue. The Union should have taken up a battle against racism and given a way out for Omar Thornton instead they bleat that he did not register "an official complaint." Where was the union in fighting to save Omar thornton's job? Where was the union in fighting to increase wages and give a better live for Omar Thornton and all the Omar Thornton's out there? These union officials refusal to fight and organize their members is a major factor in why things like these happen.

Then there are the owners of the company. Like the union officials they too are running for cover and trying to escape blame. The New York Times says the company had an "intimate culture." Some intimate culture when nooses are being drawn on the bathroom walls. A spokesperson for the owners whined: "We did not just lose employees. We lost family members." The owners go on to say how they were so benevolent and family like. But again where were they when the nooses were being drawn. And of course they paid their workers as little as they could get away with and as a result made their lives as stressful and difficult as could be and created the environment in which Omar Thornton was formed.

The capitalist system drove Omar Thornton to this. His direct employers represent that system. They drove him to this. The union leaders refused to fight in the interests of Omar Thornton and all workers in the plant and so Omar Thornton was isolated and felt he had nowhere to go but to strike out in this negative manner. These are the actors in this tragedy to whom the blame has to be allocated.

But there is one other force that has to be mentioned. The union members in the plant themselves. They too had a duty to act against racism and they too had a duty to build an opposition caucus to the local union leadership and international union leadership and fight for better wages and benefits for all and to oppose any lay offs. They too had a duty to organize and fight. They too bear some of the blame. The owners claim that Omar Thornton stole some beer and this is why he was going to be fired. Who knows if this was true. but even if it was it is not a reason to be fired. the Wall Street criminals were paid off with working peoples taxes and kept in their jobs. They were not fired.

There has to be a fight back or things will only get worse. In a survey done by the National League of Cities 51% of those that responded said they had either cut or frozen salaries of city employees, 22% said they had revised union contracts to reduce some wages and benefits, and 19% said they had instituted furloughs." And in the private sector also pay cuts are being imposed similar to those of the 1980's. As an example General Motors is paying new workers $14 an hour half the rate it pays its long term workers. One group of workers who have struct against these cuts are the workers at Mott's apple juice and sauce plant in Rochester, NY. As one worker says:"they keep piling more and more work on us, but they want to pay us less and less. It is a slap in the face."

The way to avoid workplace killings and the general suffering and violence in society is to build a society where all have a decent and secure life. this is only possible by ending capitalism and establishing a democratic socialist society.