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Obama’s Community College Scam (Part II):

Do You Want to be a Capitalist Tool or a Communist Leader?

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Obama’s community college initiatives serve industry, not working-class students.  They are “good” only if you believe the bosses’ lie that capitalist exploitation is the best we can hope for.  Actually, capitalist competition today is leading to wider wars.  That’s what the new vocational-education movement is about. 
Obama’s 2012 Community College to Career Fund planned to turn community colleges into “community career centers where people learn crucial skills that local businesses are looking for right now.”
Skills for America’s Future was “an industry-led initiative to improve industry partnerships with community colleges” and “to provide 500,000 community college students with industry-recognized credentials that will help them secure jobs in the manufacturing sector.”
The Trade Adjustment Community College and Career Training program tried, said Labor Secretary Tom Perez, “to align curriculum with the needs of businesses – so ready-to-work Americans can move right into ready-to-be filled jobs.”  Employers would “help design the credential.”

Bosses see workers as just another item needed in the production process.  They want to custom-order us, like a specially-designed airplane part.  But our labor power is their only source of profit.  They need us – but we don’t need them. 
Last month, Obama proposed an American Technical Training Fund to finance 100 centers to train low-wage workers for jobs in fields like energy, computers, and advanced manufacturing. 
Motlow State Community College (Tennessee) trains students to work for Bridgestone Tire Company in classes held on-site at Bridgestone.  This saves Bridgestone the cost of on-the-job training.
This program, praised by Secretary Perez, helps the military, because Bridgestone is a war research contractor and a major supplier of tires and specialty products to the US military.  

These US initiatives have Chinese parallels.  Last year, the Chinese rulers launched a major campaign to strengthen vocational high schools and colleges.    “There is rising demand for graduates from vocational schools,” said the director of a central China automotive engineering college that was custom-built in cooperation with BMW of Germany. 
China plans to convert 600 universities to vocational training centers.  If this isn’t yet happening at US universities, it is at community colleges. In both countries, publicity tries to convince students and parents that a so-called “liberal education” is not in their best interest.  
So there is a growing “arms race” for technically-trained workers between two imperialist powers on a global collision course. 

Class society divided “mental” from “manual” labor.  Rulers everywhere have always claimed that only they were capable of thinking, planning, and governing.  This big lie was key to capitalist work and education. The idea of “liberal education” emerged to distinguish future rulers and professionals from industrial workers and farmers. 
In the late 1960s, masses of Chinese youth and workers rose in the Cultural Revolution to denounce capitalist schools and universities.   In the US, black workers rebelled massively in the cities as students mobilized against the Vietnam War. 
The rulers responded by expanding public higher education, especially community colleges.  The new big lie was:  “You, too, can school yourself out of manual labor!” 
Now US and Chinese imperialist rulers are caught in a contradiction: They won masses to believe their lies about “liberal education” and the superiority of keeping your hands clean, but now their factories need trained skilled workers for their trade wars and, not too far off, their shooting wars. 

Communists understand that all work requires both “head” and “hands.”  We must recruit masses into the International Communist Workers’ Party to win a revolution and start governing ourselves.  In our reorganized workplaces, everyone will participate in making and carrying out all decisions involving production, education, and everything else.  Work and learning will go hand-in-hand.
Communist leaders in the young Soviet Union struggled sharply over how to implement the Marxist principle of combining education with manual work. 
 Lenin and Krupskaya fought for “polytechnical” education:  All children would learn science, political theory, and technique.  Other Party leaders fought for “trade schools” for most and university training for a few. 
The pro-capitalist second line inevitably won out, since Soviet society was socialist instead of communist.  Its capitalist production relations (money, wages) demanded capitalist education.

Now we understand the need to mobilize the masses directly for communism.  In our Party today, we struggle for all comrades to unite theoretical and practical work around our political line.  Youths should take advantage of opportunities created by the bosses’ vocational-education war plans to enter industry or the military and proudly organize for communist revolution. 

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