Everything is a commodity, produced to be sold for profit. If a profit can't be made, it is destroyed.
A startling example of this has just been revealed about the Alaskan salmon industry. About 2.5 million salmon have been ground up and dumped at sea over the last three months. This amounts to one of the biggest single incidents of wasting a valuable fish species in modern times. The fish aren't being destroyed because they can't be used. They are being destroyed because they are not profitable.
This mass destruction of food in the midst of world wide hunger and malnutrition, is the result of capitalists competing for profits. For one thing, the US industry is facing stiffer competition from the salmon industries of Norway, Chile, and (you guessed it,) Japan.
But also, it is the result of big hatcheries, built over the last 20 years with lowinterest state loans, creating farm-bred fish, competing with the small capitalists who catch wild fish. The glut was caused in part, by a huge surge in hatchery-bred fish that occurred when the wild fish runs were also peaking. Alaskan fishermen caught about 186 million salmon a year for the last 5 years.
"They just went out and created too many fish," said a fisherman for 25 years. "Ten or 15 years ago, we would get $1 a pound for salmon. Now most of my catch goes for dog food, and we get 10 cents a pound." At the dock, commercial buyers pay fishermen between $.41 and $1.41 a pound. But in grocery stores, even in Alaska, the prices are often 10 times that amount. Many fishermen cannot afford to buy their own product. A classic case of the big fish eating the little ones. Now the bosses are scurrying to create new markets, like salmon nuggets and salmon hot dogs!
For many years, the US government has paid subsidies to huge agriculture businesses to not grow food, keeping prices, and profits, up. The US killed several hundred thousand Iraqi's in a few weeks to keep Iraq's oil off the market, for the same reasons. It doesn't matter if it's food or steel, cars or oil, capitalism inevitably creates a crisis of overproduction, which leads to greater poverty, fascism, and war. The destruction of salmon is yet another sign that capitalism is heading towards more wars.
Communism is what we need; a system that produces to meet the needs of the working class. When the workers run society, we will own everything we produce. We will decide what our needs are. We will organize to produce and distribute according to those needs. No money will stand in the way of people eating. When money and profits are a thing of the past, we will share our abundance, not destroy it.
Forget it. Those things are ignored because capitalism can't solve them.
What do Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum debate? The things that are important to the rulers. Things like.
Who is getting more money from this or that crooked millionaire.
How should people be thrown off welfare.
Where to drop the next bombs.
A debate about how to meet the needs of the working class? You won't see it on CNN.
Editorial 2
A little over a year ago, PLP organized a group of comrades to travel 60 miles to Woodstock, Illinois to confront a Ku Klux Klan rally. The Klan was given the standard full protection and encouragement of hundreds of cops. The anti-racist crowd was unable to stop the KKK. However, numerous fights broke out. Racists were being beaten by communists. The police waded in to protect the Klan supporters and arrested five PLP members. For a fist-fight, comrades were each charged with two counts of felony battery and numerous assorted misdemeanors.
The State's Attorney made no effort to hide his punitive position. The local police had known that the PLP was coming to Woodstock. They considered us -- not the KKK -- to be the threat to "public safety." We were charged with the more serious felonies to make us pay more in lawyers' fees, to try and make us regret we came to Woodstock to fight the Klan. For over a year, the State's Attorney gathered his "evidence" of video tapes from cops and local TV stations. Of course, as is often the case, especially in a big fight, the cops had no case at all, but that didn't stop them from pursuing the charges.
"Some people think you come to court to get justice," one of our lawyers told us. "That is a big mistake, especially here." He went on to tell us about the State's Attorney, who is running for re-election, who is under investigation for sexual harassment. "He's guilty, a real slimy character," the lawyer said. But then he told us about every judge in that court building. This one is senile, this one is crazy, this one does whatever the state and cops tell him, this one hates communists, this one just hates people. No matter what, there will be no justice in this court, under this system.
When faced with the choice of a long, expensive trial with the possibility of felony convictions, we chose to plea bargain. That's the reality of justice - it's either Russian roulette or, "let's make a deal."
In the judge's chambers, the prosecution demanded that our comrades pay $5000 for restitution to the state. The judge laughed and reminded him that the law prohibits restitution payments to the state. "This whole thing should have been dropped. They were only arrested because this rally was a training exercise for every local police department in the county," said the judge. He neglected to say that the training the cops were receiving was how to attack us. After admitting that we were in court not for what we did, but what we are -- communists who uncompromisingly fight racism, he handed down 10 misdemeanor convictions and levied over $15,000 in fines and assessments (including $2,000 in restitution to the state.) The five comrades, two white, two black and one latin, men and women proud to be communists, unbowed by the bosses' hypocrites and opportunists, accepted the deal as part of fighting to destroy this unacceptable system.
The arrested were separated, into six charged with causing cop injuries, felony battery charges, and sixteen with less serious mob action and similar charges. Of the comrades who are charged with felonies, four are men and two are women. These comrades were selected for particularly cruel treatment by the fascist cops. The men were first beaten in the precinct basement. The patrol wagon transporting them to the County jail six hours later stopped on a side street so cops could again take turns beating the handcuffed comrades. When turned over to the County guards, they were beaten yet again, this time after a lieutenant turned his back.
The second night, after the women were subjected to the indignity of the jailhouse "physical," repeatedly and maliciously threatened with everything from deportation to long jail stretches, the comrades appeared before a bail judge. This pompous, arrogant ass who dispenses drive-through justice, confused the defendants, their names and home cities. He then arbitrarily picked figures that added up to $79,000 or $7,900 cash ransom.
One court bailiff, the cop who moves the arrested in and out of the court, assured our trusting lawyer that he would "help," he would expedite the paperwork to get the six released. He helped all right. He took three of the men into the lockup behind the court and beat them again. The sadistic cop's specialty was grabbing by the collar and repeatedly slapping, about ten times, back and forth with his leathered fist. By this time our comrades expected no less.
"You look all right, there's no blood."
"Yeah, the son-of-a-bitch is mean, but he can't slap for shit."
Thirty-eight hours after the police attack, after the whole bail had been raised from scores of donations throughout the US, the comrades were released. Since then, most of the minor charges have been set aside. However, in the case of the six, many more charges have been added, including numerous counts of "armed violence," which, if convicted, carry a mandatory 6 year sentence.
Some criticized us for "not being prepared" for a police attack. This is a short-sighted criticism. We were adequately prepared to defend ourselves. Our mistake was different. It was not being ready enough to take advantage of the outpouring of support for the Party; to turn the hatred for the bosses and the cops into more recruits to the PLP. The demonstration should have been larger -- we were lax building it and the follow-up, while good, could have been much better.
As it is, a number of new comrades have stepped forward since the police attack. One, a black college student who was enraged at the attack has become the organizer of a new Challenge sale on the west side site. The morale and conviction of each of the comrades facing charges remains high and their commitment firm.
There can be no communist revolution without consequences and casualties. The test for the Party is how it handles the inevitable attacks. The outcome of these attacks is determined by whether or not the Party grows and turns the attack into a counter-attack along the road of turning capitalism into the first casualty of communist revolution.
What's going on? The cutting of welfare, attacks on immigrants, mass firings, and speed up on the job, along with dozens of wars around the globe are leading many people to ask the question "Does the world have to be like this?"
Compared to a system that throws away food while people starve, that lets buildings sit empty while people are homeless, a society based on producing for the needs of the working class stands out as a better way to organize the world.
Even though the schools, media, and politicians tell us that communism won't work, our Party's ideas makes sense to millions who are experiencing the failures and limits of capitalism. As you can see in this issue of Challenge, more and more people are looking to communism as the future. HS students are distributing our paper to their friends. Boeing Aircraft workers, inspired by our Party, are mocking their bosses as fools. Hundreds of new members in New York City are bringing Challenge to their jobs and neighborhoods.
But you won't hear about this sentiment on the six o'clock news. The ruling class doesn't want to let the big secret out of the bag. The working class desires communism.
Sometimes it's hard to see the forest from the trees. We live in a time in which there is a great desire for communism and a shortage of revolutionary leadership. This makes the process of changing the world seem impossible to some people. Affected by the anti-communism of this society many people don't have confidence in those around them. They think "Sure, I'm all for communism, but we'll never convince everyone else."
Does that mean everyone is a great communist? Of course not. It would be foolish to think we are not affected by the greed and selfishness of this society. There are many backward ideas to overcome. But if you feel that communism is a better way to organize the world, you are not alone. Thousands of others are reaching this same conclusion. It is now a matter of turning this sentiment into a force for revolution. That means transforming ourselves and those around us into revolutionaries
The opportunity for the party to grow is the greatest it has been in years. These times demand much from us. More time distributing Challenge and talking to people about communism. More thought into understanding and expressing the Party's ideas. More effort into developing new leaders for the Party.
Vigorously carrying out the campaign to double the distribution of Challenge is a good place to start. Doubling the distribution of Challenge is a difficult task. It requires that we explain our Party's ideas to people week after week. It will draw us into more struggle against the ruling class as people take us at our word that we want to fight.
In the process of winning our friends to the Party, our own ideas and understanding about communism will be challenged. Our friends won't be satisfied with just slogans. Their questions will force us to think about the world in a new way. As people around us see our committment and understanding grow they will change too. Our activity will inspire others and our changing the way we think and live will give people a way to see the possibilities of communism.
On Chicago's West Side, a woman who, along with her family, has known the party for years, recently started distributing Challenge in her neighborhood and collecting money. Her efforts have made others see the Party in a new way, and a club is now meeting regularly. This group has organized several meetings, has gone to the local welfare office with our literature, and others are now helping to distribute the paper. This woman, who never really had to explain communism to others, is now striving to better understand and explain what communism is because she sees the possibilities of the people around her becoming revolutionaries.
There are no short cuts, no easy way to change the world. We cannot make revolution without becoming revolutionaries. While the thought of changing may be scary, the possibilities are great and many people will be with you.
"Will you help the Party get out its ideas through Challenge newspaper?" asked a PLP member to a garment worker.
"Sure, give me ten for my co-workers and music friends."
400 workers and students in New York City and New Jersey, PLP members and study group participants, are reading Challenge every week and helping to distribute the paper on the job and in schools.
Over the years our workers club in Upper Manhattan has fought for increasing the circulation of C-D, mainly by relying on hand to hand network distribution, but also on public sales. We struggle to get our new members to begin to show C-D to co-workers, family and friends, then increase the number of workers who regularly read C-D and then get workers to help distribute the paper. Our experience has been that it is usually some of those workers who read and help distribute C-D that we can recruit to the Party.
In the last six months we have begun to grow. We now have three worker clubs in our branch in Upper Manhattan /Bronx with 42 workers participating in some way with the clubs. 30 workers help distribute C-D hand to hand, known as network sales. Seven workers are distributing the paper on the job. Our weekly distribution hand to hand and through networks is 225-250.
In discussions so far in our clubs and the leadership collective we have come up with the following plan to increase the Challenge circulation by 125 by the end of Jan. '97 and 125 more by May Day '97:
1) There are 14 members in our clubs who are now reading one Challenge. We will ask these workers to take more papers, 2,3, 5, whatever is possible.
2) We will struggle to get our members to introduce and/or increase the papers we are circulating on the job.
3) We have identified a group of 20 new members and friends who are not yet active with the clubs. Through our telephone tree and visiting we will ask these workers to become readers and/or distributors of C-D.
4) There are 7 former readers and subscribers who we will contact.
5) We can increase the number of members and friends who sell C-D publicly in the neighborhood and at 2 or 3 factories, the Harlem NYC transit bus barn and the garment center.
6) We have assigned a young comrade in our branch to be responsible to collect Challenge figures, write a check to Challenge Periodicals for our papers every 2
weeks and to focus on our collective efforts to double our C-D distribution. This is an important political and organizational task.
Not everyone in our clubs thinks our goal is possible. Leadership will have to begin to get results in order to build enthusiasm and confidence. Constantly reminding ourselves and our members and friends just how important Challenge is to our revolutionary task will energize all of us.
For the past month, the bosses in our zone have pulled workers from the shop floor to figure out the details of the "lean" plan to eliminate jobs. They hired high-paid consultants (read: job killers), Booz-Allen. The bosses' hatchet-men came down to the shop floor to mark which machines were to be "surplused." Naturally, our production plummeted that month.
Meanwhile, Boeing increased the production rate because of an increase in orders. Apparently, the production drop in the Sheet Metal Center (SMC) came to the attention of Ron Woodard, president of Boeing Commercial Airplane Group (BCAG). He made a special trip to the SMC. The next day the general was calling for all of us to "work together" to decrease the backlog. "Let me get this straight," said one worker. "You bosses take a quarter of the workforce off the machines, to organize meetings to eliminate our jobs. Then we become the assholes if we don't volunteer for overtime-to get you out of the hole you dug for yourself. You got to be kidding."
"Yes," the supervisor responded, "the lean meeting was one of the things we had to do, but that came from higher- up in corporate." "Then, let those higher ups come down here and put out these parts," shot back another worker. "Volunteer means I can say no," began a third crew member. "I got a dictionary over there. You want to see it." At that point, the majority got up and left the boss to answer the complaints of the few workers that stuck around.
"How many workers should we hire," he asked. "It's a complicated question." The sentiment of the crew was, "Just fill up all the machines!" The general was looking for a way to hire as few workers as possible. One worker started to mimic the boss. "You got to pick up the pace," he said sarcastically. "You got to improve the process." The crew broke out in laughter. It was time for the general supervisor to leave.
"People are beginning to read the paper in my area," commented a new distributor in the plant. "They may not read the whole paper, but I've seen them read some articles." When more workers in this new seller's area read Challenge, along with workers in other areas, we'll have more serious rebels. Rebels, armed with a communist analysis, turn into revolutionaries. With more revolutionaries at Boeing, we can target the capitalist system-not just a boss or two.
Two factories where I worked closed, and in the last one they've laid me off 3 times in 3 years," said a steelworker at Kaiser Aluminum during a discussion with a co-worker. "I earned $16-an-hour in the first factory. I was comfortable and could buy the basics we needed. In the second factory, I earned $11-an-hour. It was harder, but we could make it. Now when I work I get $8.30- an-hour and since I'm laid off I get $160 a week and it's impossible to cover the bills." Many of these workers are laid off every year at Christmas time Then they're called back after the New Years, so Kaiser doesn't have to pay them for the holidays.
Another worker who is in PLP answered, "You haven't had bad luck. You've been hit by the crisis of the capitalist system. The bosses are competing to the death for markets against the bosses of Japan, Germany and others. The US bosses want to keep maintaining their rate of profit at all costs. This means lower wages, layoffs, closing factories, , or moving them to other countries or states where they can pay even lower wages."
In the last 10 years, many steel factories like Bethlehem Steel, ALCOA, Reynolds Aluminum and International Light Metal, have closed or moved to other states or countries, laying off hundreds of thousands of workers. Factories like Kaiser Aluminum which still produce here in California, employ these workers who have experience but who earn poverty wages.
With the illusion that this factory won't close, or won't lay us off, some workers work very hard to get out maximum production. They even avoid going to the bathroom or they pressure other workers to kill themselves working. But in the long run the bosses don't care how loyal you are, the only thing they care about and the basis of all their decisions are their bloody profits.
Fifteen workers read Challenge in Kaiser Aluminum. And the plan is to continue winning more workers to be readers and sellers of the paper. Some of them have shown enthusiasm about coming to the PLP Dinner. .
We met the wife of the worker who talked to us about his "8 years of bad luck." He introduced us and we reached out to shake hands. The he told his wife, "This is the friend who passes me the communist paper." She answered, "Then let me shake your hand again." Communist ideas are well received by the working class.
The way we're going to change this "bad luck" for millions of workers is by recruiting and organizing the Party among millions of industrial workers who have the power to paralyze production and the whole capitalist system. These workers are key for the construction of a communist system where we'll produce steel for the needs of the international working class, and not for the profits of the bosses.
UCH workers are facing tremendous uncertainty as our contract is being negotiated, and the bosses are about to open the new $150 million Center for Advanced Medicine (DCAM) outpatient center. We have gone through one round of layoffs, and more are threatened. Two and three jobs are being combined and reclassified. There is increased harassment, especially against lower paid black workers, to terrorize us into accepting whatever they have in store for us.
For example, Earline Joiner, a food service worker for more than 20 years, was just fired for allegedly not paying for a cup of grits! These same racist food service bosses grabbed a visitor for eating a package of crackers a few months ago. They suspended another woman for five weeks for nothing, and harass women servers for not smiling enough! The yuppie bosses have no respect for the workers, and no fear of Teamster local 743.
The overwhelming majority of workers have lost all confidence in the union. At best, we rely on the steward to fight a personal grievance, and are hoping against hope, that the new contract isn't as bad as the last one. But deep down, we know better.
The Hospital is demanding a two-tier wage system, like the one the union just gave them at the University. Current workers get a tiny raise, to be paid for by new hires who will make less money and fewer benefits. Two-tier wage systems are spreading. The bosses are desperate to drive down wages and increase profits. Forcing us to do the work of two or three workers, is one way. The other is to pay the next generation of workers lower wages. Over the next few years, millions of workers will be retiring. The bosses not only want to replace them with fewer workers, but with lower paid workers. Below this tier, will soon be thousands of unemployed workers, working for their welfare checks at half the minimum wage, now that Clinton/Dole have "ended welfare as we know it."
The Teamster leadership will tell us, "Think about yourself. Take your raise. Besides, it's happening everywhere, there's nothing we can do." That's the difference between their leadership and ours. PLP says, "It's happening everywhere. The whole system is rotten. Workers must seize power and fight for a communist society and abolish wage slavery." Any contract that includes a two-tier wage system should be answered with a strike, disrupting the move to the DCAM, and recruiting dozens of workers to PLP.
Could there be a better example of why workers need communism? Communism will abolish money. Medical care will be given to workers based on need, not the ability to pay. For many years Ann labored with thousands of others, first in garment factories and then in a hospital, producing millions in profits. Those profits went to serve the needs of the tiny group of capitalists, who aren't bothered one bit by the needs of the workers. So if Ann gets sick and can't work, well, she's "lucky" to get union medical benefits for 6 months. But if she's sick longer than 6 months, well, she's on her own to find a way or die.
This is how the Jefferson Hospital "family" does "one of their own." Of course, everyone in the Jefferson "family" isn't treated the same. Earlier this year, Jefferson bribed hundreds of workers and doctors, to quit their jobs so Jefferson could save money. One doctor, who earned $91,000 a year, received 5 years of medical and dental benefits for himself and his wife! ! Ann earns less than a third of the doctor's salary, and her medical benefits lasted only 6 months.
That's the rule of capitalist distribution, those with more money get more. Those with less money and greater need, get less.
Ann has been a PLP member for many years. We are meeting with her friends at Jefferson, to force the hospital and the union to pay her medical benefits. It's no accident that the workers closest to Ann, and the most interested in this campaign, are the workers who Ann gave Challenge to over the years! We are also planning several fund raisers to pay for her medical benefits. Communism, and the communist PLP, fights for life for the working class.
So does the school. As Challenge gets into the hands of so many students the school bosses are going nuts. Their greatest fear is coming true. Students are learning how to fight back. We are distributing at least 150 papers now at the school. This includes ones taken inside and distributed by students and our weekly Challenge sale outside the school. Meanwhile, the principal has started a new wave of fascist terror in the school. Last Friday, 45 students were suspended for being in the hall. Another club member described the scene, "They almost got me because my teacher kept me after class. So by the time I headed for my next class they were picking kids up to suspend them. They asked for my ID, and I ran away."
We proceded to discuss the meaning of fascism and how this new policy is an example of it. We started writing a leaflet about fascism at Prospect Heights. More importantly, we developed the young comrades understanding of what is going on in the school so that they can explain it to their friends. In other words we developed a communist voice within the students that will strengthen the effect they have when they distribute Challenge.
"And I want to be in the next article," continued the first young comrade, "so I'm a part of the story." Well developing from a student who read Challenge because it was assigned in class to a leader who wants to write for the paper, and who distributes it to her friends, is the story! It was certainly important that their teacher used Challenge in her classroom. It introduced the paper to hundreds of students and staff. But Challenge has become a much more powerful weapon as it is taken up by the masses of students at the school.Every fascist attack from the bosses, from firing Mrs. Lonergan to the new hall sweep policy, has advanced this process.
The school understands this. They have begun to openly attack the outside Challenge sale. After sending administrators and the local cop outside to try to intimidate us into leaving, they have now told us we will be arrested if we return. If? You mean when - we are planning a major rally for Tuesday Oct. 15. (we did rally on the 15, a group of ix came out, including one new person, hundreds more buttons demanding Mary be rehired were ditributed and 150 C-D were sold).
Like all capitalists, these bosses turn more and more to open terror and fascism as they lose their control over the school. They have nothing to offer students. Another member at the club meeting described the feeling of many inside the school, "These days things have been changed in my school. Murdock who's the principal is forcing students to go to class instead of helping them. He just helps those that he thinks are better but I believe everybody on this earth are equal no matter who they're."
Communism is the only society that will realize that potential. It is good for young people to have dreams for their future. We will make many of them happen as we build a communist world.
At one school last year between 30 and 40 students and teachers regularly received Challenge newspaper. This year we are distributing between 60 and 70 copies a week. Slowly but surely Challenge, the Progressive Labor Party and the debate and discussion of communism are openly seen and heard. As one reader said at the lunch table, "I'm tired of talking about this in hushed tones and of changing the subject when someone else sits down." It's not unusual to see students in the halls with Challenge in their hands. Several times this year students have brought Challenge to their friends, only to hear, "Thanks but I already got mine!"
Everyone knows you can't make a revolution by yourself. Even though the articles in Challenge report on the Party's activity in many different cities, the mass Challenge sales outside several schools this summer showed that the Party is a real, active organization. Many people who thought other students would never be interested in communist ideas saw students buy Challenge and sign up to get more information. As more people respond to the Party's efforts, everyone's confidence grows. At one school where only 2 people distributed Challenge inside the school last year. Now at least eight do.
Why are people responding more openly to Challenge and the Party? Life isn't getting any easier. Everything under capitalism seems to be moving backwards and getting worse - cuts in welfare, destruction of affirmative action, attacks on immigrants, a return to war in the Persian Gulf, more police brutality. While other newspapers make excuses, Challenge tells the truth. No one who really thinks about it believes that life under capitalism is going to get better. We know that racism won't be voted away. Oil companies won't sacrifice their profits to save lives. Challenge says we need a communist revolution. Do people believe that is possible? The more papers we distribute, the more open and active the Party is, the more people really do.
During contract negotiations, readers were encouraged to write in about their "horror stories with Muni operators." The newspapers are succeeding. Public written complaints (PSRs) about operators are rising. On the #30 Line, which goes through the very crowded Chinatown district, operators are getting PSR's for being stuck in traffic, as if they are to blame for the chaos of capitalist transportation.
Muni operators die or are disabled at an early age. A study published in 1990 found that regardless of age and race, Muni operators suffer a high rate of stress-related illnesses like high blood pressure. In light of this, the media campaign is particularly vicious. These are racist attacks in a city where black workers are being forced out. The mostly black Muni operators are a very obvious reminder that there is a working class, with a militant history.
To get to the essence, put this incident in the context of the economic crisis. To compete internationally, the rulers are devastating our jobs. Downtown businesses refuse to pay for the mass transit on which their profits depend. When the capitalists are faced with economic crisis, they carry out systematic terror against the working class and prepare for war. Suddenly, a Sunday afternoon of overtime ends up in handcuffs.
This terror is fascism. Using welfare and prison labor to replace transit jobs is about cutting wages for the whole working class down to subsistence level. At Muni, the money saved by paying on new part-time workers less, will cover older workers' raises, and plunge young families into poverty. The TWU contract in NYC, replaces 500 union jobs with thousands of "workfare" workers, working off their welfare checks at about half the minimum wage.
The media is part of a class dictatorship. Muni workers feel overwhelmed by this campaign for good reason, we have no power over this ruling class weapon. We have an alternative. PLP and Challenge hold the potential for communism, where work, human relations, and our lives are transformed to produce what humanity needs to survive and flourish. Conflict with the ruling class is unavoidable. We will turn this attack on its head.
How do they plan to do this? A few, the owners of the largest factories, are modernizing their factories, introducing the latest in technology, and cutting jobs. Others, the vast majority, since 90% of the contractors employ less than 50 workers, are turning back the clock to the times of the sweatshops based on slave labor.
The garment industry has always been one of the most exploitative, with miserable wages and no benefits. But to "survive" now, these bosses need to intensify their super-exploitation even more. And they're doing it.
"It's difficult", a young garment worker explained to us. "Yesterday I worked 11 hours, working hard, and I barely made $30." A woman from another factory complained, "I worked all week and the boss gave me a check for $60."
But can this bad situation get worse? Certainly! When it comes to pushing the working class further into poverty, capitalism is a bottomless well. This is what capitalist competition dictates. The bosses who survive the competition are those who exploit the workers the most--here or in other countries. That's why the big stores export more of the manufacture of their clothes to other countries. In addition to saving them a lot of money, this has eliminated more than 500,000 garment jobs in the US , making work scarce for a big part of the year and creating an enormous army of unemployed which is getting more desperate.
If we add to this the laws which get more repressive each time against undocumented workers, we can see how this makes it easy for the bosses to impose their slave labor factories. And they exist. For example, in El Monte, Calif., 72 Thai workers were locked in, working day and night for 5 years. Three other factories were exposed in LA where latin undocumented workers worked under slave like conditions for less than $1 an hour. It is calculated that hundreds of shops in the LA area are illegal. How many are working under similar conditions, and how many other illegal factories will follow?
What can we do about this situation? Organize the PLP and fight for communism. Capitalism is a monster that can only survive by devouring workers. It can't be reformed. It must be destroyed. In its place, we'll build communism, where we'll produce for the needs and survival of the international working class, not the bosses. That's why we need a Communist Party with millions of workers.
Can we achieve this? Certainly! The capitalist crisis, the rise of fascism, and the coming world war create the opportunity for the workers to organize and take power.
For example, recently one of the garment clubs in LA has recruited three workers from the distribution of Challenge in the streets of the garment center. One of them invited us to a dance where there were about a thousand workers. He knows many of them. He has recruited two of his friends. Now there is the potential that these three recruit dozens. The other two are working hard and enthusiastically to recruit their friends and fellow workers, showing them Challenge and paying for the Challenges they take. They are inspired by the fight for communism.
Okinawan governor Ota recently announced that he would shift course and take legal steps to force local landowners to lease their land to the U.S. military. His decision to cooperate with the central government came after a meeting earlier in the week with prime minister Hashimoto. Japanese bourgeois media are describing this move as a dramatic "turnabout."
Should we really have expected anything else? Ota said "If we continue to resist, we will only get hit by special legislation." The movement representatives had no response because the political line they have adopted has led them to a dead end.
Given the cultural nationalist and liberal character of the movement, Ota is more or less right. What more can they get? Ota is like a labor leader who, after a long strike, says, well, we did what we could, and now it's time to cut a deal.
One year has passed since a rape case rekindled the ever-smoldering anger of Okinawans against over a century of oppression by Japanese and U.S. imperialists and the presence of thousands of U.S. Marines on their islands. Okinawans staged mass demonstrations against U.S. forces in Japan, 70 percent of which are stationed in Okinawa. They pointed to racist discrimination and the unemployment rate in Okinawa, which is 200 percent greater than the rest of Japan. They also pointed to a long history of oppression from both Japanese and U.S. bosses and their military machines.
Bowing to the pressure of the U.S. and Japanese governments, liberals, nationalists, and revisionists (fake communists) have steered the anti-base movement in an counter-revolutionary direction. Local cultural nationalists argue that Okinawans are culturally different from the Japanese, and that, because of the discrimination they face, Okinawa should be "independent," i.e., ruled by Okinawan bosses. Hypocritically rofessing sympathy for the Okinawans, ruling-class parties have tried to divert the movement into the trap of legal struggles and election campaigns.
Okinawan workers are not lining up behind the nationalists, and electoral politics have not gotten much of a response. This weakened Governor Ota's hand. Hashimoto recently promised Okinawa a bigger "development budget," and Ota figured he and his pals should grab it. The Japanese capitalists played the old "good-cop, bad-cop" game against the Okinawans.
Their court system rejeced legal appeals. Their riot police arrested militant demonstrators. Their parliament threatened legislation helping the government to grab Okinawan land for military purposes. Then, after a recent poorly-attended plebiscite, Hashimoto announced that he had found an extra 5 billion yen to promote industry in Okinawa.
He also promised to use "every possible means" to reduce U.S. military presence on the islands. This probably will mean a gradual reduction of the not-so-important U.S. Marine facilities on the islands, while the strategic Kadena U.S. Air Force Base will remain intact.
What about "left-wing" forces? The old Japan Socialist Party is now part of the coalition government. They and their reformist labor leader pals helped divert the movement into meaningless court cases. The Japan Communist Party (JCP) is a completely sellout electoral organization whose strategy against U.S. bases has always been to appeal to Japanese nationalism. Along with calls for "clean government," their main slogan has been "Japan doesn't need foreign bases on its soil." In other words: support Japanese imperialism vs. U.S. bosses.
Workers who would like to see a revolutionary movement develop in Japan have not been sure what to do. Their main tendency has been to tail after the nationalists. They have been stuck in this rut for 25 years, and they need revolutionary communism to break out of it. There is very little talk of solidarity with workers in other parts of Asia or of reaching out to rank-and-file GIs who are also super-exploited by the system.
The big ideological battle in Japan is to convince workers that the capitalist system and the imperialist war machine are not in their interest. Relentless propaganda by the bosses has convinced all too many workers that the ongoing military build-up and a military alliance with the U.S. are necessary to protect the country from possible attacks from the Chinese or the North Koreans.
The main purpose of the bases and the U.S.-Japan "security" alliance is to maintain the fascist conditions in Asia that allow U.S. and Japanese bosses to exploit Asian resources and super-exploit Asian workers. The U.S. and Japan are rivals in the race to squeeze as much profit as possible out of poorer nations around the globe, and Japan is winning the race. Sooner or later the Japanese rulers will want to expel the U.S. military, but only when they consider the time right, and only on their own terms. C-D will continue to report on the sharpening rivalry between U.S. and Japanese imperialists. Its logical outcome is war.
Pacifist and local nationalist movements cannot end the oppression of Okinawan workers by Japanese or American militarism. We have to build a revolutionary communist movement here, led by the PLP, in the process of fighting racism and imperialism. We call on Japanese workers to read Challenge, to learn more about PLP, and to join the Party.
Turns out, the US government has been teaching this for decades. According to the Oct. 6, 1996 NY Times, "Through the 1980s, the United States Army trained Latin American police and military officers in techniques that the Pentagon now acknowledges were 'clearly objectionable and possibly illegal': torture, extortion, censorship, false arrests, execution.These lessons appeared in some of the Army's training manuals, manuals that were used at the School of the Americas, a military academy at Fort Benning, Ga., and that were distributed in Columbia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala and Peru --.The Army compiled these manuals in 1987, using lesson plans used since 1982. These lessons, in turn, were based upon what the Pentagon called 'old material' from the 1960's."
57,000 Latin American cops and military officers went through the School of the Americas (SOA). Among the graduates were Manuel Noreiga of Panama and Roberto D'Aubuisson, head of the Death Squad in El Salvador. Forcing people to become informers against rebel movements was a "vital part of the program," according to one of the US Army manuals. This manual explained, "The C.I. [counterintelligence] agent could cause the arrest or detention of the employee's [informant's] parents, imprison the employee or give him a beating as part of the placement plan of said employee in the guerrilla organization."
All this stuff is coming out now because of a report by the Intelligence Oversight Board, a commission created to investigate abuses by the CIA and other US intelligence organizations. There has also been pressure to close the School of the Americas from Joe Kennedy and other liberals in Congress.
Does the US government intend to stop relying on terror in Latin America? How could it? US companies such as Ford pay workers in Latin America 10% of what they pay workers in Detroit.
To get away with this requires suppressing strikes, rebellions, and opposition movements. Profits from Latin America are vital to US imperialism in its worldwide competition against European and Japanese capital.
So why expose the School of the Americas? Its' graduates got out of control. Noreiga is in a US federal prison now because he allowed European and Japanese capitalists to stuff his pockets and opened Panama to them, even though he was on the CIA payroll. SOA graduates in Guatemala murdered Michael DeVine, a US citizen, and tortured Efrain Bamaca, the Guatemalan husband of a US lawyer. They also tortured a US nun, Dianna Ortiz. SOA graduates in El Salvador massacred six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter.
For Washington, that means housecleaning time. Close the SOA or reform it, but keep helping US allies in Latin America maintain power through terror. Just keep them away from US citizens, priests, and nuns, so it doesn't look so bad. Amnesty International, a liberal organization, demands that the US Government take "steps to ensure that this never reoccurs." What a sick joke. In fact, the police inside the US are stepping up terror, especially in working class black and latin communities. As the capitalist crisis deepens, this will get worse. What you see in Latin America is what you will get in the US Capitalist state power is fundamentally organized violence against the working class. Join PLP to take the only step that can "ensure it never reoccurs" -- communist revolution.
The Russian Revolution was the first of them, blazing the trail for us and for all revolutionaries to come. Its history -- its successes and failures -- are the essential textbook for all workers and others who recognize the need to get rid of exploitation and build a better world run by those who toil.
Naturally the world's capitalists do not want this learning process to happen! So the ruling class tries try to fill our heads with wrong ideas -- ideas that serve its their interests interest and make us passive. These wrong ideas -- wrong both in the sense that they are incorrect AND in that they serve the exploiters' interests, not the interests interest of us workers -- include racism, religion, sexism, and anti- communism.
The main form anti-communism has taken for the past several decades has been anti-Stalinism. If we can be convinced that any attempt to build a communist society -- one based upon need, without exploitation, run by and for the working class -- will end up "as bad as or worse than" Nazi Germany, we will never really make the attempt. This means we'll struggle only for reforms under capitalism, acceptable to the capitalists since it leaves them in control forever!
A second way the bosses use anti-Stalinism is to justify fascist repression and murder of any workers' attempts to rebel against capitalism. After all, if "Stalinism" -- the anti-Communist name for communism -- is "worse than Nazi Germany", and if any attempt to build communism can lead only to "Stalinism", then any and all repressive measures to suppress revolution are justified, including torture, mass murder, and fascism itself.
Fighting anti-Stalinism is therefore a vital, life-and- death issue for the world's workers -- for all of us. This review essay will show how a new (1996) book, can be useful in doing just that, and also outlines the limitations of that book.
1. The purges purge of 1936-38 in the USSR were not planned, but were panicked reactions to plots to overthrow the Soviet government;
2. the purges were not intended to, and did not in fact, spread "fear and terror" throughout the Soviet population, but rather were carried out against perceived enemies with the support and often the active participation of the Soviet population;
3. The purges occurred at a time when the USSR was under enormous threat from hostile nations, and communists the world over were being imprisoned, tortured and murdered by capitalist regimes;
4. the scope of the purges -- the numbers imprisoned and executed -- was far less that the inflated estimates claimed by anti-communist sources;
5. that, rather than being cowed and demoralized by the purges, the growing Soviet industrial working class enjoyed an active voice inside the factories, encouraged by Soviet leaders to speak out about conditions in the plants and outside;
6. the "acid test" of whether the workers and peasants supported Soviet socialism or were alienated from and hostile to it came with the Nazi invasion -- a massive onslaught that the Soviet people determinedly repulsed by rushing either to join the Red Army or the factories to increase military production, while the Red Army fought with a dedication, effectiveness and morale utterly unmatched by the best Western capitalist armies.
Thurston's introduction outlines what he calls the "standard version" (xiv) or "orthodox view" (xvi) of Stalin and the USSR in the `30s, invoking the name of Robert Conquest -- which he will then prove wrong. (Conquest, a former British Secret Service agent, is the foremost anti- communist liar about the Stalin years). He also points out also how the present capitalist rulers of Russia have every motive to build anti-Stalinism.
This chapter also points out how the Soviet legal system was evolving along recognizably capitalist lines in terms of its judicial process during the early `30s. On the one hand, this contradicts the view of the cold-warriors that the USSR was "totalitarian", and this is Thurston's main point: that the USSR was becoming more "liberal," giving citizens protection against arbitrary police action, for example.
It also reveals, however, how much the Bolsheviks relied on Western capitalist models, in the judicial system as elsewhere (education, culture, manufacturing) for examples of how to build a communist society. Here as elsewhere, the Bolsheviks' view of communism was, as we can see now in hindsight, in many respects a "reformed" view of capitalist relationships. Learning from the Bolsheviks' shortcomings as well as from their own experience, the Chinese Communist Party overthrew reliance on police, courts, and taking the process of justice away from the workers, by reliance on the working class and poor peasants through political struggle, public trials, and an emphasis on self-criticism and being held accountable to the masses - - a process that eventually reached its high point during the Cultural Revolution.
Chapter Two disposes of some ancient anti-Communist lies. Thurston shows there's no evidence Stalin murdered either his second wife in 1932 or Politburo colleague Sergei Kirov in 1934. Both of these fairy-tales are "mainstream" for the anti-Stalinists and both have been refuted by others before this. Concerning the three big "Show Trials" of 1936- 38, Thurston highlights the evidence that the basic charges against the defendants were in fact true: there was in fact a "bloc of Rights and Trotskyites". This was generally accepted even by keen Western observers at the time, like Joseph Davies, sent by Pres. Roosevelt to check out the Soviet government (see his book Mission to Moscow).
Thurston admits there was "wrecking" -- industrial sabotage -- in the economy under Yuri Pyatakov, whose testimony is also shown to have been voluntary (46). Even the charges against Nikolai Bukharin, main defendant in the `38 trial, are shown to have been true in the main, as documents from Bolshevik archives prove (35-42). Thurston also charges that some accusations against the accused were "fabrications," but he never gives any evidence to support this charge. In fact, suspicions of "wrecking" probably were exaggerated by the recklessness built into the industrialization campaign caused by the emphasis on "increasing productive forces" by sharpening wage differentials, privileges, and therefore class antagonisms: in short, by socialism.
Finally, Chapter Two also reaffirms that the massive arrests did not take place until after the arrests and executions of the high-ranking military leaders led by Marshal Tukhachevsky, in June 1937. Stalin and the Bolshevik leadership thought there was a real conspiracy, and there's much evidence that such a conspiracy indeed existed. Chapter Three demonstrates that the Soviet government reacted in panic to the disclosure of such high-placed treason. There's no evidence at all that Stalin was out to "terrorize the country".
Nikolai Ezhov, the leader of the political police, or NKVD, and thus the person most directly responsible for the massive arrests and executions, was a long-time Communist with an honorable record, a worker since the age of 14, before being entrusted by the Politburo with the task of directly overseeing the repression of what all thought was a massive counter-revolutionary plot.
Ezhov set high quotas for executions which the police felt had to be met, so many, many people were shot on these flimsy bases alone. There were many examples of police arresting and executing people either to "meet quotas" or from outright corruption.
Recent research by Thurston 's colleagues suggests that between six and seven hundred thousand persons were shot during 1937-38.
A few comments are in order here. First, the concept of "quotas" for executions appears to come (Thurston does not say so) from Lenin's practice during the Civil War. After the Bolsheviks revolution privileged and propertied people throughout Russia opposed the Bolsheviks and Red Army, and White (anti-Communist) forces routinely executed Communists, workers who supported them, and all Jews. Under Lenin's urging the Bolsheviks would take hostages from among the upper classes, threatening to execute them if the Whites opposed them.
It should be clear that such "quotas for execution" were completely inappropriate in a situation in which the Bolsheviks held state power and could confine anyone suspected of anti-Communist activity until their cases could be investigated. Such executions, whether of the guilty or, as was inevitable, of the innocent, serve no mass political function, as would public trials, investigations, and a concept of justice based upon the direct participation of the working class.
Anti-Communist "scholars" have repeatedly produced ridiculously high figures for Soviet executions and jailings during the "purges." Thurston challenges those inflated numbers with strong archival evidence. On page 137 he explicitly states that the inflated estimates are too high. On page 11 Thurston has a chart showing there were 1,196,439 prison inmates, a slight decline from the previous year (and this included criminals as well as those arrested for political crimes). This is much smaller than the US prison population today! While it seems clear to us now that many of those prisoners were not in fact guilty of political opposition, still that prison population is a long way was from the Cold-War anti-Communist "guesstimates" of between 7 and 15 million prisoners -- and some guess much higher still, 20 or 30 million!
Thurston shows there were, in fact, other real anti- Soviet plots in addition to the "Tukhachevsky Affair", including some spies within the NKVD itself. He also provides overwhelming evidence to show that the arrests targeted elite sectors -- managers, specialists, intellectuals, party officials, and not "workers or poor peasants, the favored children of the new regime." Naturally we do not support unjust accusations against anyone, regardless of their class background. What this fact shows is that "socialism" -- the continuation of capitalist relations of production and a capitalist notion of economic development -- caused the continuation of class antagonisms under somewhat different forms, class antagonisms that found expression in the "purges".
Thurston puts the mass arrests and executions of 1937- 38 squarely in the context of the aftermath of the extremely violent years of 1914-21 (the beginning of World War I to the end of the Revolution and very bloody Civil War) and, more immediately, of the sharpening international situation of the late `30s, when Nazi Germany and all the imperialist countries were unmistakably bent upon surrounding and destroying the USSR.
However, even at that Thurston underplays the danger facing the Communist movement. On pages 34-35, he mentions the German reoccupation of the Rhineland in March 1936, unchallenged by the French who wanted Hitler to rearm, so as to pit him against the USSR. He mentions the start of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, but does not mention the huge military support given to Franco, leader of the Spanish fascists, by Nazi Germany German and fascist Italy, nor the phony "neutrality" of England, France, and the USA which cut the Spanish Republic off from international aid. He mentions fascist Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in December 1935, unchallenged by the other imperialists, but never the Japanese fascists' seizure of Manchuria in 1931 or the Anti- Comintern Pact between Germany, Japan and Italy (1936-37), or the Japanese invasion of China (1937). Stalin would later express the Soviet view that the other imperialists were encouraging the Germans to attack and destroy the Soviet union:
"They kept on urging the Germans to go farther and farther east: `You just start a war against the Bolsheviks, and all will be well' " (quoted in Alexander Werth, Russia at War, p. 39).
Also left out is the Nazi decimation of the German Communist Party, the largest in Europe, beginning in 1934. In 1936, when the Soviet "purges" began, German Communists were being tortured and murdered by the thousands in German concentration camps. Is it any wonder the Soviets weren't prone to treat too kindly people it considered to be German spies and agents?
And Thurston repeats, time and again, what his sources show him: the Soviet government favored workers and poor peasants over all others in the population, while they were being exploited, killed, etc., in every other country in the world! Thurston's own evidence shows that the USSR was a "dictatorship of the working class".
Some police agencies treated evidence as very important, though many did not. Conditions in the labor and punishment camps, the so-called "Gulag," Thurston argues, were bearable both before and after the period 1937 to 1938, but very bad during this period, reflecting the fact that most police, and even prisoners, were convinced those arrested during this time were traitorous conspirators who deserved the worst treatment.
By January 1938, the book shows, complaints of unjustified repression were flooding the Central Committee, and the Plenum began to demand that expulsions from the Party be reviewed for unfairness. The next month Andrei Vyshinsky, formerly the head prosecutor at the "Show Trials", complained about conditions in the labor camps and demanded punishment of camp officials who permitted bad conditions. He also insisted that those who fabricated evidence be arrested, and a number of trials of such fabricators took place that this year and the next, often with great publicity.
The need to pay greater attention to physical evidence, as opposed to confession, was re-emphasized. By the middle of 1938 the great period of panic, mass arrests and executions, was over. Police procedures were regularized; conditions in the camps improved; many of those falsely arrested were released and exonerated. Trials of NKVD men who had tortured and framed people were held, and the NKVD purged of such people.
Certainly the Soviet state was justified in acting to arrest preemptively, in times of crisis, anyone suspected of treason. Communism is "the dictatorship of the working class". But there was no reason for executing people on the same flimsy basis; they could certainly have been imprisoned pending a serious review of their cases. Had this been done, many executions would probably not have taken place.
Chapter Six, "Life in the Factories," shows that the Stakhanovite movement was, in fact, a mass movement which gave all workers the opportunity to gain recognition for improving production and technique, rather than a cynical way of "speeding-up" the workers, as it has been described by anti-Communists. Thurston argues that, in fact, Stakhanovism gave workers more power. Workers' views and criticisms were respected; supervisors and foremen ignored them at their peril.
Thurston quotes some American workers who had also worked in the USSR as saying that conditions of work, and the atmosphere in the factories, were better for Soviet workers in the 1930s than for workers in the US (192). But he then undercuts their view - far more informed than his own -- in the next sentence, where he writes that "Soviet workers were hardly better off or freer than their American counterparts."
Ironically, he has already cited evidence on page 170 that at least some Soviet workers had shorter working hours than US workers. Many people thought Soviet workers were better off than American workers. One of them was Walter Reuther, later the anti-Communist president of the United Auto Workers, who worked in a Soviet auto factory in the 1930s. He wrote home:
"Here are no bosses to drive fear into the workers. No one to drive them in
mad speed-ups. Here the workers are in control. Even the shop superintendent
had no more right in these meetings than any other worker. I have witnessed
many times already when the superintendent spoke too long. The workers in the
hall decided he had already consumed enough time and the floor was given to a
lathe hand to who told of his problems and offered suggestions. Imagine this at
Ford or Briggs. This is what the outside world calls the "ruthless dictatorship
in Russia." I tell you ... in all countries we have thus far been in we have
never found such genuine proletarian democracy..."
The final chapter deals with the response of the Soviet population to World War II. Here too Thurston concludes that the Soviet regime retained much loyalty and enthusiasm among the population. Soviet soldiers fought against the Japanese in Mongolia with high morale in 1938, where their military leadership was excellent, and against Finland and then the German Wehrmacht in 1940-41, where both political and military leadership was, initially, poor and led to larger casualties than that necessary.. In the opening days of WWII, the Red Army fought well, counterattacking against far superior Axis forces, often fighting to the last man, rarely surrendering unless surrounded or demoralized by huge casualties and a hopeless situation. German officers uniformly remarked that the Soviets fought far better than any Western army (215).
Civilian morale was generally high in June 1941, even in Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland. The Polish fascist state had been racist towards Jews and Ukrainians in Eastern Poland, and therefore many of the Ukrainian population were supportive when the Soviets marched in, especially since the Soviets mainly repressed the enemies of the workers and peasants -- landowners, Polish officers, and police -- and did not collectivize the peasantry. But Ukrainian nationalists in Poland had already basically turned towards the Nazis, so many "Western" Ukrainians welcomed the Nazi invasion. German officers recognized that the Ukrainians in Soviet territory were very different, much more loyal to the USSR and often very hostile to the pro-Nazi West Ukrainians, as Thurston shows.
Even more serious are Thurston's historiographical shortcomings. Not a Marxist of any kind, Thurston frames his analysis entirely in bourgeois historical terms. Therefore, Thurston's book is valuable when, and only when, he bases his conclusions on primary source evidence. Even when he does, this evidence must be put into an historical materialist (Marxist, or communist), scientific framework in order for important lessons to emerge clearly.
Like all the other works of the anti-Cold War researchers -- called "revisionists" -- who have helped to refute anti-Stalin and anti-Communist lies, this is a work of bourgeois history. These books take capitalism for granted, and so have a capitalist bias from the outset. Though they come up with important evidence, and often use it well, they do so from an academic perspective. They may refute egregious Cold-War lies, but they never reject anti- communism, the fundamental premise of capitalist scholarship.
Although they can't provide answers to the questions we as revolutionary workers and communists need to ask, Thurston's work, like those of other more objective, though bourgeois, researchers, can help us if we use them according to historical materialism, the scientific method of Marxism or communism. Here are two examples.
1. Capitalist Relations and Class Antagonisms within the USSR.
Thurston shows time and again that those most likely to have been arrested and executed during the panic of 1937- 38 were officials, leaders, managers, officers, and "higher- ups" in general. This fact shows that there was a considerable divorce between "leaders" and ordinary workers and other citizens. How could this be?
Marx recognized that "all history is the history of class struggle." The Bolsheviks believed that everything must be subordinated to the fight for industrialization and production. After the early `30s they used "material incentives" to reward workers and managers, developing large wage differentials and, therefore, differences in living standards among workers and between workers and managers, Party leaders and rankand-file members, and in every other aspect of society. Believing too that productive technique was "class-neutral", they kept capitalist production relationships in the factories and capitalist relationships of hierarchy and inequality generally in society. Women still did all the housework as well as their jobs.
In short, social relationships in the USSR were "reformed" capitalist relationships more than they were truly communist egalitarian relationships. This had to give rise to new class antagonisms and create resistance to the disappearance of old ones. (For a thorough discussion of this essential point, see "Road to Revolution III" and "Road to Revolution IV" by PLP, on the Web Page or from the PL Office)
Thurston's research can help us see that the mass arrests and executions of 1937-38, which were "concentrated among the country's elite" (232), reflected these class antagonisms at the same time Stalin and the Soviet leadership believed they had abolished class warfare. Without these capitalist relations the "panic" of the late `30s and, in fact, the future evolution of the Soviet Union towards, first, state capitalism and, as now, "freemarket" capitalism, would not have been possible.
In 1938 and thereafter specific cases of police corruption, neglect of evidence, frame-ups, and other negligence were publicized and those guilty punished. Many cases of rehabilitation, both of the living and of those unjustly executed, took place. Nevertheless the Bolshevik leadership under Stalin never really underwent a thorough, public self-critical review of how any injustice could have happened, in order to get to the bottom of it.
There is also the question of why people like Zinoviev and Bukharin were in important positions of power to begin with. They had demonstrated rotten politics for years. Zinoviev had quit the party in fear rather than take part in the October Revolution; Bukharin had lied many times -- Thurston shows this -- and had even plotted with the Socialist Revolutionaries against Lenin during the Civil War; the S-R's then plotted to overthrow Lenin, and very likely tried to kill him. They had been expelled from the Party. What was the point of handing them major leadership posts? The Bolsheviks should have trained other members to do their jobs and not relied on these particular intellectuals. Perhaps the concept of a party of "professional revolutionaries", a "cadre" party -- Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin and others had worked for the Party all their lives -- had not yet been entirely abandoned for the correct concept of a mass party of the working class.
After you have read this review, we urge you to read the important PLP documents which explain how we have learned from the successes, and failures, of the heroic communists of the past. Read our newspaper Challenge/ Desafio, where our struggles world-wide are reported and further lessons and inspiration gathered. Most important: Join with us in the historic struggle to build a new, communist world!
The last issue of Challenge with the headline, "Bosses push drugs to stop workers revolution," had a great effect on the workers and patients at Cook County Hospital. We sold over 70 papers in front of the hospital in less than an hour. Several workers gave me $1 bills. One man in his early 20's was walking into the hospital to get admitted. I stopped him and offered him Challenge, saying that it was a communist paper which called for a revolution to get rid of drug pushing bosses. I explained a little more about how the bosses use drugs to control workers and make billions in profit. He said, "You know what? I was just thinking about that when I was walking over here! Here's two dollars, give me that paper." The next day a hospital worker from patient transportation called the party office and said, "I bought your paper in front of the hospital yesterday. I read that article on drugs and I really liked it. How can I join your party?" He is coming to our Challenge dinner.
Challenge can win workers to the party, but only if we put it out there with a passion.
CCH Challenge Seller
PLP members at Franklin High school here in Seattle organized their first lunch meeting on Oct. 9th. We talked to our friends, put up signs, and ran announcements in the bulletin, and 23 students showed up.
Some were ready to take action while others were ready to talk about political issues.
"I'm tired of opportunists... It's time for the revolution now!" one woman said after the meeting. The sooner people like this join the Party, the sooner we'll have revolution.
Most of the multi-racial group of students at the meeting knew about PLP and who the communists are in the school but others are not so clear. After we distributed Challenge at the meeting, many of these students wanted to know more about the Party. "Do I have to be a communist to be in this club?" someone said. "No, but we'd like you to become one," a comrade answered.
We didn't get to have much discussion because we only had 30 minutes to meet. We spent most of the time setting up the club. There was a sign-up list, we gave out Party literature (Road to Revolution 4, Voting, the Big Con, a leaflet on the CIA drug connection and Challenge-Desafio) and discussed what we wanted to talk about. After the meeting, the students wanted to have another one the following week. The CIA drug connection seemed to be the topic of choice for that discussion.
At the next Challenge sale, one comrade received a donation of a dollar each from two students. That week, we distributed 60 Challenges at Franklin, almost twice as many as usual.
This good response didn't happen just because of luck. We've been having a weekly Challenge sale at Franklin for about a year, so a lot of students have seen the paper. Also, last year a comrade ran a study session on communism in his history class. Many students liked it and wanted to have another one. These sales and classes laid the groundwork for the large turnout at our meeting.
Young Seattle comrade
We think there is some misunderstanding about what took place during the demonstration in Chicago as well as a lack of political clarity. Some comrades are saying that if the Party were more organized 22 people would not have been arrested.
They are also saying that the reason people were beat up by the police was because comrades fought back. I think the reason for this view is a misunderstanding of what it means to hold state power. State power means they can do whatever they want. They can arrest and beat up people for no reason. The police could have killed us if they wanted to. PL did not make the decision whether or not to be arrested.
When we sell Challenge we are used to the cops telling us to move to the other side of the street or threatening to arrest us. The police did not give us that choice here. They surrounded people and beat them to the ground. The bosses know that communists are their worst nightmare.
We are their worst nightmare because we do not want better schools or more jobs. We want state power. Some people have the illusion that we will only get arrested if the Party makes a mistake like poor organization or lack of discipline. Sometimes people forget that we are out on the streets saying we want to kill the bosses and that they are fascist murderers. When communists expose the bosses' murderous capitalist system, the bosses' have to fire, arrest, and jail us to protect their profits. This is not always bad. When the bosses attack us it shows workers the brutality of cops and sharpens people's ideas about who the enemy is. The vicious attack in Chicago caused people to see the urgency of joining the Party because fascism smacked them right in the face. They also saw the Party as a force to be reckoned with as we marched arms locked boldly through the neighborhood after being attacked.
The growth of fascism is a difficult reality to face. We as communists must be in the forefront of the fight against fascism because we are the only ones who have the solution to increased racism, unemployment, police brutality, and starvation. We want all working class people to join us in the streets chanting boldly, "The Only Solution is Communist Revolution".
New York PLP student
The editorial in the October 2, 1996 issue lacked the revolutionary stance necessary for communism.
Entitled "Capitalism is a Failure," the editorial listed many statistics that are, to say the least, horrible from the standpoint of the workers. These bad statistics, however, do not show that capitalism is bad and a failure. What if the statistics improve? Would capitalism cease to be a failure? Of course not. The article did not explain how misery and war are built into capitalism. Capitalism is rotten at the core. It exploits the workers and steals their labor. The workers can never get out what they put into the system. We, as communists, must make this a central issue using the statistics as a secondary point, not a primary one. In short, that editorial calls for reform, not revolution.
An Indiana Comrade
In the Challenge article (10/16) about the killer cop Livoti--who was acquitted of murdering Anthony Baez in the Bronx in spite of all the evidence against him--said that another cop, Speringo, was going on trial for killing Maria Rivas, a young Dominican worker, and will probably go free. Well, Challenge "was wrong." Under pressure from the outrage and protests over the no-guilty verdict of Livoti, Speringo was found "guilty."
But wait, most likely this won't break the record, also cited in Challenge, of cops not getting jail time for racist murder. Speringo was convicted only of the lesser "criminally negligent homicide" instead of the more serious charge of second degree murder. That means he will be probably be put on probation and not spend a day in jail.
A Reader
Believing that the building of our Party is a collective mass activity, our group here in the Dominican Republic has begun to organize workers to lead this process. In July, we held a successful cadre school, forming a workers' section. Since then, we have held 3 other schools to win workers to leading the Party. There were 30 workers in the city of Santiago, who came to the most recent school, all committed to building PLP and developing themselves as communist leaders.
We discussed recruiting workers and others and consolidating them into the Party. We also discussed the role of Challenge in that process of training and winning our comrades. We formed a group in charge of the distribution and study of the paper, as well as collecting money for it.
It was also agreed to build a youth group to help organize workers and to train the future workers and leaders of our Party. It was also proposed to form a teachers' group, since several comrades are teachers. The workers' section is putting out a Challenge Newsletter to denounce the attacks on textile workers where our organizing is concentrated.
The future is bright for a more dynamic building of PLP.
A Comrade