Editorial
NEW YORK CITY, Feb. 5 - Every day, the richest bosses trade $billions in the World Trade Center-except when striking building and maintenance worker shut it down.
The Local 32B-J building and maintenance workers strike is over. The union bosses reported a settlement and ordered the strikers to return to work.
It's easy enough to see that the workers were sold out. Wages for newly hired workers will be slashed 20%, a cut of well over $100 a week.
It's easy to contrast the militancy of the rank-and-file with the treachery of the union officials. But there are more important lessons to learn from the strike.
All our lives we have it drummed into our heads that we're too dumb to think for ourselves. We are taught to depend on others-bosses, union hacks, politicians-to do our thinking for us.
But workers can think. This strike gave a small taste of just how much workers can do.
Our Party was up front about our goals from the start. Victory in any strike means winning workers to join and build the Party. The main Party leaflet distributed in this strike was entitled "Two Tiers....Or No Tier?" It contrasted the reform demand of fighting over the degree of exploitation (one wage tier or two) with our aim: to abolish the wage system with communist revolution.
One day, PLP members distributed leaflets and sold Challenge-Desafíos on the picket line at Rockefeller Center. The union official called the strikers "communist" for wanting to demonstrate. The angry workers called their own action, using a bullhorn to chant "Let's go! Lets' march!"
Two hundred strikers defied the hacks and marched through Midtown. The cops ordered them to stop, saying they had no bullhorn permit. The workers rolled their picket signs into bullhorns and kept going.
They invaded a large building. At the bottom of a staircase, the cops again yelled "Stop!" Militant rank-and-filers ran through the cops and up the stairs. They yelled "Come on!" to the rest of the strikers, who followed.
At a World Trade Center (WTC) rally, PLP members handed out Party leaflets, sold Challenges and talked to rank-and-file leaders about marching around the Center. Several hundred did so.
Then they marched to Wall Street. The workers' ranks swelled to between 2,000 and 3,000. The cops tried to cut the main body of marchers off from the leaders. But the workers began cutting in and out of different alleys, tricking the cops. The union hack cried, "This is getting out of hand. Stop! It's over! You'll get beat up."
This union sellout tried to split the PLP members from the workers. He threatened to have the cops arrest the communists. A striker shouted, "No! They are with us!" Turning to the union hack, she yelled, "You are a sellout! They're not going to arrest anyone."
Many workers moved forward and confronted the sellout. He threw up his hands and ran back to the cops for protection. The workers marched all the way to Rockefeller Center, three miles to the north.
At another WTC demonstration, the workers asked the Party for help. They said they had been dirtying floors, messing up elevators, and slashing delivery truck tires. But they wanted to shut the Center.
The workers knew the WTC layout. Using walkie-talkies, they learned the cops' position. Over one walkie-talkie they told the cops about a non-existent problem. The cops were diverted to that spot, leaving one cop behind.
The workers asked a comrade to tell this cop someone was hurt near the escalator. The cop immediately took off. The workers then ran to the front doors, locked them with chains and shut the Center for ten minutes. The cops returned in force and cut the chains.
With the strikers yelling "Shut it down and shut it tight!" the picket captain attacked the Party members as "making it tough for 'my people.'" The workers shot back, "Whose 'people'? We're not 'your people.' " These communists are on our side more than you!" The picket captain ran to the cops. The workers started the march again.
PLP'ers handed out 2,000 leaflets and sold 200 Challenge-Desafíos. They talked with the strikers about building a base for revolution and bringing workers to May Day. Three strikers are now organizing for May Day.
In the day-to-day actions and understanding of hundreds of the 32B strikers we can see the potential for a communist society. To realize that potential we need to build the Progressive Labor Party.
That is the main lesson of the building and maintenance workers strike.
War and capitalism go hand in hand. The bosses of the world cover this us. They justify their wars in the name of religion and nationalism. But that's only the appearance. The essence is that the bosses murder millions to fight for control of cheap labor, resources and markets. The only way workers can escape from this hell is to turn the guns around: to smash the warmakers with communist revolution.
Seven years ago in Feb., 1989, the Russian army left Afghanistan, after a long, bloody war between supporters of the then Soviet Union and forces financed by the CIA, the Pakistani Army and Saudi Arabia.
The so-called "holy war" against the pro-Soviet forces was supposed to end. But the war has just gotten bloodier, as the N.Y. Times (2/5) article, "Afghan Capital Grim as War Follows War" reports: "At least one million have been killed, and two million have been displaced from their homes to other towns and cities inside Afghanistan. Six million have been driven across the borders into Pakistan and Iran…At least two million others…have been permanently disabled, either physically or mentally."
This "holy war" is being waged among several factions claiming to be the true followers of Allah. The real cause of this war is more mundane-control of oil, gas, gold, silver and drugs.
Taliban, a fundamentalist group which wants to unite Afghanistan, is the main force waging war against the government of Afghanistan, which basically only controls the capital, Kabul. But Taliban is a force created and controlled by the drug-running Pakistani army.
But there is more than the opium trade involved here. According to Le Monde Diplomatique (11/95), the rulers of Pakistan want to become the "dragon" (main capitalist power) of Southwest Asia. In April 1995, Pakistan signed a deal to import gas from Turkmenistan. Pakistan is trying to revive the Economic Cooperation Organization, a regional group formed originally with Iran and Turkey. It now includes Pakistan and some of the former Soviet republics in the Caucasus (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, Kirghizstan and Azerbaijan).
These countries are rich in natural resources. Uzbekistan has the world's largest gold mine. The world's leading silver deposits are in Tajikistan. Kazakstan has one-fourth of the world's oil reserves (Chevron Oil has invested $10 billion there, while Agip and British gas have signed a deal with a Russian consortium to control the enormous gas reserves of Kazakstan).
With its support of Taliban, Pakistan wants to control access to the enormous mineral resources. Right now, Taliban controls the region through which the Pakistan-Turkmenistan pipeline goes through.
Meanwhile, India, Pakistan's main enemy in South Asia, has formed an alliance with Iran and Russia to support the Kabul forces against Taliban. Each night, "planes carrying arms, ammunition, spare parts and other supplies paid for by Teheran, Moscow and Delhi land at Bagram air base [Kabul]."(NY Times, 2/5).
QUEENS, NYC, Feb. 1 - Tens of thousands of Colombian immigrants live in the Jackson Heights neighborhood in Queens. They are talking about the Narcogate (how the Cali drug cartel gave millions to President Ernesto Samper election campaign).
Why is this open secret of how drug money supports politicians being revealed now?
We must use communist reasoning to understand what is really behind this. It seems to be a fight among capitalists over the control of a bonanza probably as big if not bigger than drugs: the state-owned enterprises in the process of being privatized and the huge deposits of oil (Colombia has one-sixth of the world's known oil deposits, more than Venezuela and Ecuador combined). There are billions to be made out of all of this, and the bosses are fighting for its control.
The Wall Street Journal (2/6) reports how Julio Mario Santo Domingo, probably Colombia's richest capitalist, is the biggest supporter of President Samper. The Santo Domingo group owns Bavaria, one of South America's biggest breweries, as well as the controlling interests in Avianca Airlines, radio stations, magazines and banking and finance institutions.
The Santo Domingo group has enjoyed favorable tax treatment under the Samper administration. In addition, Mr. Santo Domingo wants to have the upper hand when the government opens the bidding for licenses worth hundreds of millions of dollars for TV stations and a long-distance phone service.
For all those reasons, according to the WSJ, "Mr. Santo Domingo's most important media properties-Radio Caracol, a national radio network, and Cromos, a weekly magazine-have gone out of their way to shore up the embattled president."
The people behind the campaign to force Samper to resign are supported by the capitalists who wants a piece of that action, instead of the Santo Domingo forces getting most of it.
Workers have nothing to gain in supporting either side of this capitalist dogfight, which is already turning violent. We must not shed one drop of workers' blood in this bosses' power struggle. We must take advantage of their in-fighting to build the PLP into a mass revolutionary communist movement to destroy all of them and their bloody system.
CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 1 - This country was considered the richest in South America because of its oil wealth. Now it is one of the poorest.
Capitalism has shown itself once again to be a failure as far as workers are concerned. Only a fight to smash the bosses and fight for a dictatorship of workers-communism-can put an end to the hell suffered by the masses of workers and students.
For several days in late January, thousands of youth turned Caracas and many other cities into a battleground against the cops. The youth were protesting the latest hikes ordered by President Rafael Caldera in public transportation and other basic needs.
In two-years, Caldera has brought the economy almost to bankruptcy. While workers, students and even soldiers are suffering misery and unemployment, profits are up for local and imperialist bosses. Corruption has turned many high government officials into very wealthy people.
In Feb., 1994,, Rafael Caldera came to power after being elected as a "solution" to the corruption and misery of CAP-former President Carlos Andrés Pérez The regime of CAP, the top social-democrat of Latin America, brought the country to the brink of civil war.
In Feb., 1989, tens of thousands of residents from working class neighborhoods erupted in a mass rebellion against price hikes. The rebellion, which lasted for several days, was crushed when CAP sent army tanks. Hundred of workers and youth were murdered. During the following years, there were many more struggles, including several uprisings by nationalist soldiers.
But Rafael Caldera's has been worse than the disease of CAP. Today, "inflation and the devaluation of the currency are the highest of the region. The level of poverty, unemployment, malnutrition and crime compete with the worst countries of the Third World." (Luis Ortega, columnist of NYC's El Diario-La Prensa, 2/7)
Voting for one politician as the lesser evil is always deadly for workers and youth. The only way workers and their allies can escape this capitalist hell is to build a mass revolutionary communist Party to wipe out all the capitalists and their politicians. That is the goal of PLP.
LOS ANGELES, CA., Feb. 6 - "Good, they're going to raise the minimum wage" said a garment worker in New Fashion, at lunch time. Another answered, "Yea, but every time they pay us a little more, the boss makes us do twice as much work." Another worker explained, "What we need is to get rid of these bosses and their starvation wages."
A few months ago in this same factory more than 50 workers organized a work stoppage to prevent the boss from lowering the piece rate for a group of workers. A few days before the work stoppage, a worker fought and demanded a one penny raise in the piece rate. The boss tried to cut the piece rate for another worker who was making a little more than the minimum. This cut led to a work stoppage in the plant.
The bosses' taking from one worker and giving to another created competition between the workers. But at the same time, it created strikes and the opportunity to build the Party. Led by communists, workers inside the plant are discussing how wages maintain inequality and the need to fight for communism.
Many of the workers are talking about the much publicized campaign for a "Living Wage" to increase the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.00 an hour, which has been launched on a statewide level in California.
In typical politician's language, U.S. Senator Hilda Solis, spokesperson for this initiative, said, "Now is the time to respect and value the workers who clean the offices, wash the plates in the restaurants, make the clothes, harvest the fruits and vegetables, and care for the elderly and sick." The campaign is fighting for a minimum wage of $5.00 an hour in 1997 and $5.75 an hour in 1998-wages below the poverty level.
Thousands of garment workers make an average of $10,000 a year, less than what is considered the poverty level for a family of three. But garment bosses like the Marciano brothers, owners of Guess Jeans, report "wages" of $10 million per year for themselves. This doesn't include millions more in profits which also go into their pockets.
Paying wages is stealing. The bosses pay workers only a fraction of the wealth that we produce. They keep the rest for themselves and call it profit.
We don't get paid for what we produce. The bosses only pay us enough to keep us coming back every day. Even when wages go up a little bit, so do prices and taxes. No matter how much we get paid we will fall further and further behind the bosses.
In a communist society there will be no wages. Labor power will not be bought and sold! Labor power will be used to produce what the workers need. There won't be bosses or money. The workers' communist party will guarantee the planning of the production and distribution of what we produce according to the needs of each family. People will work according to their political commitment and ability.
CHICAGO, IL., Feb. 3 - There are two men, Abel and David, who work at UIC, (University of Illinois at Chicago).
David is a chancellor.
He does administrative work for UIC for about eight hours a day. Maybe more.
His main role is fundraising for the University, getting grants and so on. He attends meetings and fund-raisers, talks on the phone, dictates letters to his secretary, and reads books. David makes $167,500 a year.
The other man, Abel, works in a cafeteria at UIC cleaning up. He has a long list of responsibilities that include sweeping, mopping, picking-up garbage, taking out garbage, wiping tables, counters, walls and doors, restocking vending machines and refrigerators; the list goes on and on. He is on his feet all day. Abel makes $5 an hour, or less than $10,000 a year.
Both of their jobs are important in a sense. They both play a part in keeping the university running.
What would happen if Abel got sick for a day and no one could replace him. The cafeteria would be a disgusting mess and unlivable. People could even get sick. But what would happen if David missed a day? Who would notice? He is useless to the working class. He, by maintaining the University, is maintaining a vital part of racist and unequal capitalist society. For this, the system rewards him well. Under capitalism, all Abel is worth is his pair of arms, like all the millions of workers of the world. His labor is stolen and unrewarded.
The bosses, in their drive for profit, have created a division between mental and manual labor to justify the inequality that comes with capitalism. They push the lie that "think" work is harder and that only a few people can do it. If they can convince us that mental work is somehow different, more difficult, and more valuable than manual work, they are on their way to convincing us that inequality is okay. It's an ideological excuse to explain why everything that workers produce is stolen by those who sit around all day and "think".
To many people, it seems natural that David would get paid so much and Abel so little. David went to school didn't he? Doesn't he have more "responsibility" and pressure on the job? Bull. Not more than Abel who must do multiple tasks at once and face angry managers if they are left unfinished. But could Abel learn to do the "think" work of David? We say Hell Yes!
But only under a communist society where everyone will be needed to work using both their mind and body .
Where capitalism requires the division of mental and manual labor to maintain inequality, communism has to get rid of it, to build equality. We will activate and depend upon the fullest potential of everybody's thinking and doing abilities. So although there won't be jobs like David's under communism, we do have to figure out a way to take care of the work that Abel does. But with so many more resources available, no one person will have to work on it for eight hours every day. And Abel, like all workers will "work" in a variety of areas. He might clean for an hour or so, but then he'll teach a class, take a class, practice violin, or do some research on disease prevention. Probably all four. And all four will be valued "work" under communism.
In an even more practical sense, something we can apply now, we need masses of people at UIC to figure out how to get rid of this system that thrives on inequality. Abel probably already knows we don't need David and the rest of his class. The next step is for him to see that the only way to get rid of David is by getting rid of capitalism.
This will take a collective, concentrated effort of workers and students, designing a plan based on their experiences and knowledge, and then carrying out that plan within a mass communist party. In order to have a communist revolution, it is necessary for the whole working class to be both thinking about and carrying out the ideas of communism, the ideas and plan of the working class.
LOS ANGELES, CA., Feb. 5 - Students at Washington Prep H.S. are rebelling against the uniform policy by not wearing them, not tucking in their shirts, by walking away from administrators, or simply by jumping the fence. Even more important, the students are organizing themselves with the Party.
Students have organized petitions, walkouts, and have circulated hundreds of leaflets against the uniform policy. The students are told uniforms will stop gang violence, focus them more on learning and "would prepare you more for the real world."
This is the administration's "Plan for Success." They said that in the world of work, students will wear uniforms and tuck in their shirts, so they better start now. These were the reasons the administration told parents, teachers and students.
A uniform policy at Washington is a fascist control measure that prepares students for order and discipline under capitalism without even questioning whose order and whose discipline we are following-and for what goal.
Capitalists schools are instruments of the bosses' dictatorship. In prison they lock you up behind bars. In schools they lock you up in a room and incarcerate you with racist, sexist and nationalist education. Students are seen as slaves that are given permission when to speak, when to get up, and when they can leave. They want students to wear uniforms to accept all this. The hell with that, who needs it!
The administration wants to use uniforms to train the students to be good, passive, disciplined workers for some boss, or soldiers in the bosses' army. They want the students to passively accept capitalism, its domination, and its system of wage slavery.
What the leaflets haven't emphasized enough until now is the need to join the Party and fight for communism to do away with the bosses dictatorship. We need a system of communist equality where every young person will have a future doing needed work and contributing to build a society of equality. A system where discipline will come from conviction because we will know that we are fighting for the interests of the majority.
The Red Army, with the help of the working class, will overthrow the bosses and all their racist lies and tactics. This Red Army will be disciplined and will wear uniforms; but its discipline and its uniform will not be a form of control or blind obedience to some boss or official but rather for liberation and collectivity. The uniform of the Red Army will represent a high level of dedication to smash racism, sexism, nationalism, and wage slavery. This dedication will come only when each soldier has an understanding of why we need communism. This understanding is necessary for communism to work. These soldiers of the working class will proudly wear their uniforms because they are convinced, not because they are forced to.
The main job of the police is to terrorize workers. The bosses use them especially against black and latin workers and youth who are oppressed most by capitalism. The cops' job is to keep these super-oppressed workers from being the most militant fighters against the bosses. Racism goes with the badge. But some cops qualify for the Mark Fuhrman Award because of their exceptional racism and brutality.
Racism against the Canadian working class is on the rise. Reports from the province of Ontario reveal that widespread and systematic racism grips the courts, prisons and streets. Today, around three percent of the Ontario population is black, but blacks make up 15 percent of the prison population. Apparently in Canada, as in the U.S., it is a crime to be black.
Kenny Belmar was waiting for a bus outside his house in Toronto when two cops accused him of stealing an outboard motor and arrested him.
Anthony Morrison left his house to go get a container of soup from his car when the cops, who had been called to the building for something else, arrested him. No explanation was given.
Since 1986, the number of black prisoners has increased by 204%. Nearly 50% of urban black youth between 18 and 24 were stopped at least twice by the police in the past two years.
Yet, the real criminals go unpunished. A recent report revealed that Ontario police have shot 10 black workers to death, and nine cases of criminal charges have been brought against the officers. Not one was convicted.
Do you know a racist cop who deserves a Mark Fuhrman Award? Send his or her name and description to this newspaper. If there have been protests against this racist cop, let us know about that, too.
The PLP organizes for communist revolution to put the working class in charge. Under communism, Red-led workers' militias and the communist Red army will terrorize and suppress the racists and wanna-be exploiters. There will be no racist cops under communism.
Don't let the cops get away with racist murder. Organize, organize, organize!
HAVERFORD, PA., Jan. 31 - Today a crowd of more than 200 students heard candidates from PLP talk about the need to be actively involved in the struggle to destroy capitalism.
The communist candidates were the only ones who brought pro-working class ideas to the race, as well as having a plan to increase class struggle at this Quaker College.
The PLP candidate for Vice-President denounced the capitalist nature of grades. He called on students to evaluate their work through criticism and self-criticism and to join the PLP in order to learn how to run a cooperative, communist society.
Another PLP member ran for President of the Student Council. He summarized the latest accomplishments of capitalism: mass unemployment, rampant poverty, and imperialist war. He also spoke about some of the problems rape victims and minority students have at Haverford. "Will we let these things continue, or shall we change them?" he asked the crowd.
Two days after the speeches, the students voted. The PLP slate got 20% of the vote. We built a base for the Party by having independent activities such as Challenge sales, study groups and participation in different campus organizations. Through this, we have learned that many students are tired of the usual reformism that occurs on liberal campuses.
After the election, many students came up to express disappointment at the results. We thanked everyone for their support and made it clear that winning the election was not the reason we ran. We told them that winning students to the revolutionary ideas of the PLP was what really mattered.
We plan to run for dorm representatives to further spread our ideas. Our goal is to make communist ideas the main subject on the Haverford campus. This Spring let's bring a communist onslaught against the bosses.
The bosses pushed Kwanzaa big-time this year. It was all over the newspapers and celebrated at many schools. Barnes and Noble displayed Kwanzaa books prominently, and Afrocentric shops did a hot business.
Kwanzaa is a made-up "African" holiday. The U.S. black nationalist Maulauna Ron Karenga founded it in 1979. Syndicated black columnist Conrad Worrill promoted it.
Kwanzaa bases itself on African harvest rituals. It celebrates principles said to be traditional in African society. These include unity, self-determination, faith, respect of elders, and economic cooperation.
I am suspicious of anything that comes from Ron Karenga.
In the late 1960s, California Gov. Reagan and President Nixon launched their "Cointelpro" counter-intelligence campaign against the Black Panther Party and other groups. Karenga was Cointelpro's point man in California.
His organization United Slaves (US) carried out a bloody assault upon the Black Panther Party. No US member ever went on trial.
Karenga was later convicted of prostituting young women living in his house. Again he got off light. A few years later he got a graduate degree in African Studies and was hired as Chair of an Afro-American Studies program in southern California.
Karenga has a copyright on all Kwanzaa-related items. He gets a cut on the profits of the growing Kwanzaa industry.
Karenga is a cop and a businessman who never did a thing to fight racism.
Kwanzaa promoters claim that its principles are intrinsically African. If this is meant in a genetic sense, it's clearly racist - and absurd. It would accept the unscientific notion that "race" is biological and promote the flip side of the white supremacist lie that "whites" are better than "blacks." If it is meant in a cultural sense, then it goes against history. It wrongly presumes that there were no class societies in Africa before Europeans invaded. Egyptian pyramids were built for black pharaohs by enslaved black laborers while other Africans, and many people elsewhere in the world, were living in classless societies. Kwanzaa tells black people in the U.S. that their "essence" lies in their preindustrial "roots." Of course these roots exist, but they don't define what is primary. Most black people in the U.S. are workers, as are most people of all "races" or ethnic groups. Their relation to capital - being wage-slaves - is above all else what defines their lives. Sheaves of Kwanzaa corn direct black workers' consciousness back to a mythical agrarian golden age and away from the class struggle for communism in the industrial present.
The seven principles of Kwanzaa encourage inner spiritual peace and push black capitalism as the solution to the economic crisis facing so many U.S. black working-class families today.
This black nationalism helps capitalism super-exploit black workers by convincing them that their interest lie with a black boss rather than with uniting with their white working class brothers and sisters.
The overlap with the program of the leaders of the "Million Man March" is obvious. Get your own house in order, love your "own" people, don't fight back.
What black workers - all workers - need is not the narcotic of inner peace through meditation, or unity with Colin Powell and Clarence Thomas, or more black-owned businesses that will exploit them, but a revolution to abolish capitalist inequality.
Who celebrates Kwanzaa? All kinds of people.
At one New Jersey high school, the most anti-communist teacher organized the Kwanzaa assembly. She prevented a PLP student from speaking, verbally abused another, and shoved students doing an African dance.
This same teacher has gone to students' homes to warn their parents against communists and to stop the students from going to May Day. She is always praising the U.S. government for the freedom it supposedly guarantees.
But wonderful people celebrate Kwanzaa too. Recently we visited our cousin Jeanne, who is in her mid-fifties, profoundly Christian and very antiracist.
She had the candles, the log, the corn, and the Kwanzaa gifts laid out in her home. She said she needed these ceremonies in this time of confusion, consumerism, hopelessness, crisis. Her Kwanzaa manual mixed spiritualist tidbits, procapitalist ideology, and a few choice phrases about the blue-eyed enemy.
We in PLP need to build a mass communist party with a vision and a plan for an egalitarian society. We will win the cousin Jeannes away from Maulauna Ron Karenga and into a working-class movement of millions that will take us into a future far better than any imaginary, copyrighted past.
Red 'n Ed Talking Health
Shrinking benefits or free care?
Ed: This job is pretty bad sometimes, and none of us is getting rich. But at least we've got the health plan.
Red: True.
Ed: Remember when my daughter had her appendix out last summer. There's no way we could have paid that out of pocket.
Red: Yeah, I guess things could be worse. We could be like the 40 million people in the U.S. who don't have any health coverage at all.
Ed: Don't get me wrong. I know there's a lot of folks out there with no coverage. People who can't find work or are laid off. But that's my point. You hold down a job, you've got protection.
Red: Well, I hate to disappoint you, but look at this news article. Of all the medium and large U.S. companies in 1980, 95% provided health insurance. Now only 80% do.
Ed: So 20% of workers in large U.S. companies don't have any kind of health plan through their job.
Red: That's what it says. And workers in the low-wage service industry or in small businesses have it the worst when it comes to employee health benefits.
Ed: How so?
Red: Remember my cousin who works for Wal-Mart. Well, only about 40% of the workers there have health insurance.
Ed: So more than half of them have no coverage at all?
Red: Yup. Now my cousin, she does have insurance there. But I think she pays something like $60 a month for the family plan. And guess what her deductible is?
Ed: Oh, yeah. What they deduct from our wallets before the insurance kicks in.
Red: At Wal-Mart the deductible is now $1000!
Ed: Geez. That's a killer.
Red: In more ways than one. Unless somebody is really bad off, they don't even go to the doctor.
Ed: Well, our deductible isn't as high as that. But they did jack it up last year. And my brother's place, they did the same thing.
Red: Another thing. Some companies now let workers choose benefits.
Ed: I heard about that. You can choose between, say, more health coverage and more vacation days. I wouldn't mind having that choice.
Red: Forget it. It's a con. When you add up the overall benefits package the company provides, it's smaller than before.
Ed: It figures.
Red: Not surprising that workers in a lot of places are getting fed up.
Ed: Like you were telling me about Boeing.
Red: Yeah. Each worker there was going to lose $914 a year in health benefits even though the company made $6.6 billion since 1990. So over 30,000 workers struck Boeing for a month and a half last fall. Health benefits were one of the main grievances.
Ed: Well, you're always going on about how workers need to fight back.
Red: Yeah, but it's like being on one of those treadmills that's picking up speed. You have to run faster just to stay in place.
Ed: What?
Red: Look. A lot of unions fought to get health plans a while back. Now the bosses are in one of their economic crises. They need to jack up their profits, improve their competitive position. So they save money by cutting health benefits for workers.
Ed: Now you'll tell me that communism will make it all better.
Red: Think about it. Workers create plenty of wealth in the world, more than enough for drugs and medical equipment. And there are plenty of workers around with the skill and desire to help others.
Ed: So?
Red: Well, that's basically all you need for health care. So why should we settle for some benefits the bosses can just whittle away? Why shouldn't we have communism and health care be free for everyone. You need health care, you get it. Period.
Ed: The government, the big businessmen, they'll never let it happen.
Red: So get rid of 'em.
Dear Challenge:
Lately, the Party has had many discussions about "Road to Revolution 4½-Smash Reformism" concerning reform and revolution. It has been the topic of heated discussions. In the last couple of weeks, our decision to stop building reform and focus on the ultimate goal of revolution has turned the Party upside down.
Some of the main questions of concern seem to be: What does this mean in terms of our work? Why did the Party "radically" change its line? How did the Party come to the conclusion that we must only fight for revolution? I would like to focus on the "why" and "how" in this letter.
I knew the reason we changed our line was because fighting for reform actually hurts our fight for revolution. I never pondered the reasons why and how we came to this conclusion until a couple of weeks ago. A comment at the last club meeting by a veteran comrade made me think about this. "We did this before," she said. " First, we think we're not involved enough in the mass movement. We build organizations like SOC and InCAR. We then find we aren't recruiting enough people so we try to correct this by emphasizing the Party. It seems like we've been swaying back and forth. Is this just another case?"
This is not "just another" correction. This is a significant change in the Party's line. Before now, the Party never said that we shouldn't build reform in any way. At the very least, the Party has never stated this so strongly and unconditionally.
The swaying action, described by our comrade, is part of the learning process. We thought we weren't involved enough in the mass movement (or we weren't leading the reform movement), so we created Workers Action Movement (WAM). It wasn't building the Party or communist consciousness enough, so we emphasized the Party - somewhat separating ourselves from the mass movement. We tried again with InCAR with a slightly different approach. This is how you learn. Something is tried and it fails. It's evaluated, changed and tried in a slightly different form again.
We finally figured out that we couldn't build reform and revolution at the same time. One contradicts the other. The Party only learns this from trying and failing many times.
That's how we learned socialism doesn't work. It was tried many times by earlier comrades in the USSR, then China and other countries. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in China tried to build socialism with a slightly different form (continuous class struggle under socialism). Socialism in all its manifestations failed. Past comrades thought they could control the capitalist aspects of socialism. In some sense, they thought they could "reform" socialism into communism. We now know it doesn't work. We must go straight to communism.
We now realize that reform organizations like WAM, InCAR, and SOC, and reforms like 6-for-8, don't work either. Halfway houses to communist ideas and practice don't work.
This change in the line is not just another temporary correction. We have to realize we can't totally submerge ourselves in the mass movement, nor totally isolate ourselves. We must go into the mass movement as communists. We're not swaying. We're changing our line because of what we learned through practice.
Seattle high school comrade
When the 32B workers in NYC were out on strike, I went around the hospital where I work asking friends for donations for the strikers. Every hospital worker I went to thought it was a great idea, and all but one gave me money. They said things like, "That's great, we should all stick together; if they get busted it'll kill us in our industry, tell them good luck for me." While I invited a few of them to come to the picket line, none of them would.
So, I went to the picket line with the workers' donations. The strikers were so touched that people in another industry cared about them, that a few were almost in tears. It was a great experience.
Since I had read the new "Road to Revolution 4½-Smash Reformism," I was trying to put some of its ideas into practice. The hospital workers all knew that the real estate creeps were making plenty of profits. And they knew that if the strikers lost their struggle, it would break their union.
After listening to their stories, I asked, "Wouldn't it be better if workers ran things and we didn't have bosses on our backs at all?" I brought out Challenge-Desafío and tried to interest them in its ideas. A few said that things would always be this way. "All you could do was fight every day for your daily bread," one worker suggested.
Some strikers took Challenge-Desafío. One worker warned me, "Better keep that away from the [strikers who are] Russians; they go ballistic when you mention the word 'communism." But the Polish and Russian workers I spoke to told me that they hated capitalism. Although they didn't take Challenge, they spat on the bourgeoisie in their country as well as here.
I felt a little awkward talking about communism because it wasn't my strike. I was afraid that some strikers would feel that I was taking advantage of their situation to promote my ideas, as if I were "crashing a party I wasn't invited to." After talking about my fears with a comrade, I realized that they came from not believing that communism really was the answer that the striking 32B workers needed to hear, that we all really are brothers and sisters exploited by the system.
I still worry about bringing the Party's idea to workers and friends. Now that the strike is over, I'm trying to use my experience on the line to talk to hospital workers about the central issues: like why do we have bosses, why isn't health care universal? Why are we all afraid we'll lose our job all the time? Wouldn't it be better to live in a world where a job and a living were a birthright that couldn't be stolen from us? Do we really need a system this awful?
Dear Challenge:
It's always good to read the Letters Page of Challenge-Desafío, especially letters about workers' struggles.
I would like to comment on the letter from a Chicago Cook County Hospital worker about the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). I think it is a mistake to view the establishment of the EEOC as a "partial victory" for workers. Its function is to control workers' anger and direct it into legally acceptable channels under capitalism.
Communists should participate in the anti-discrimination fightback at Cook County Hospital. But we should use this fight against "discrimination and harassment" which is part of the class struggle as a school for communism. As the writer correctly pointed out that means calling for workers' power.
Just as important we must expose how racism originated with capitalism, how the concept of "race" is a lie created by the capitalists and how only by establishing equality and abolishing the wage system can we set the conditions to eliminate "discrimination and harassment."
As the Cook County worker wrote, "we must go for the whole thing," that is power, but not in order to control the EEOC, labor boards, courts, commissions or unions. These institutions, and others, have been formed and fine-tuned to suit the needs of capitalism. The PLP envisions that the only organization that will lead communist society will be the mass communist party which is based on the method of democratic centralism and the principles of social equality and collectivity.
Communist society will be qualitatively different from capitalist society in form and content. It may be helpful to envision this: as communists participate in the class struggle and inside capitalist institutions we fight for political leadership by fighting for communist ideas, principles and practice and by building the Progressive Labor Party. So, as the Party grows and communist ideas take root, the contradiction between the Party and the capitalist institutions will intensify. Far from controlling or transforming these institutions we will destroy and dismantle them, but not without prolonged struggle, even after communist revolution.
NYC comrade
Dear Challenge:
"Communism and Anti- Communism." was the title of a PL forum at Chicago State University (CSU). The forum responded to an anti-Communist attack on a PL professor by his department chair (previously reported in Challenge-Desafío).
The PL professor addressed 20 students and faculty on the need for communism and why he defends the ideas of communism in his classroom. He talked about how capitalism cannot work for the working class and how communism will rid the planet of racism and inequality.
He also addressed why any attack on communism was based on lies. The bosses have to lie about communism because if workers knew what communism really was, they would want it. Only the bosses and their running dogs lust for the inequality of capitalism. Workers lust for equality.
Most of the students were in agreement with the general ideas of communism, but they had a lot of nitty gritty questions. How will we get it? Is PLP really the vehicle for revolution, as put forth by the presenters? Who will rule? How do we distribute the collective wealth?
Those who disagreed with communist ideas stimulated the discussion. As a result, non-Party members defended our line and the concept of communism.
Several students signed up at the forum to be a part of the May Day committee. They will help us build communist ideas on the campus. We are working to get a large group of CSU students and workers to march down 87th St. on May 4, waving the Red Flag of communist equality.
CSU comrade
Thirty anti-racist, anti-sexist activists demonstrated against Christian Coalition (CC) head Ralph Reed. He spoke Jan. 18 at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. The CC played a major role in helping elect the Gingrich "Contract on America" majority in Congress in 1994. Under the cover of "family values," the CC wants to end welfare, legal abortions, and what is left of government assistance to workers and the poor.
The CC is an example of how religious fundamentalists help the ruling class build a racist and sexist base for fascism. They try to unite the working class with the capitalist class around fear of "moral decay" that can only be reversed with fascist policies.
Dear Challenge:
According to Webster's Family Encyclopedia, communism is a movement based on the principle of communal ownership of all property. It is associated with The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx. He wrote that the capitalist system of private ownership will be replaced by a communist society in which the means of production are communally owned. According to Webster, this process is initiated by the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie.
This is what communism really is. But some people say that it is an act of devil worship. The PLP knows that it is not. They know what it really is.
Why don't we ask some students what they think communism is?
So I asked a few students from one local neighborhood. One said that he thought it was just another word. Someone else said that it sounds like a disease. One said that it was a group that wants to take control of the minds of everybody.
So my point is that not too many people know what communism is. So spread the word of what it really is. Pass around an edition of Challenge-Desafío. Help someone else find out what communism really is.
Chicago high school student
Dear Challenge:
What will sports be like under communism? How do you feel about the new downtown stadium for the San Francisco Giants?
Last week I was at the 24 hour Nautilus in San Francisco working out. Several of us work out and discuss sports and politics everyday. One of my friends said, "What do you think of the idea of the new $225 million downtown stadium in China Basin for the Giants?"
I said, "This is just more 'Bread and Circuses!' Workers need a new society based on communist equality." My friend said, "What do you mean, I know you like participating and watching sports as much as I do!" I said, "I do, but sports are just as big a diversion under capitalism as they were in ancient Rome! What kind of society pays millions of dollars to Al Davis (the owner of the Giants) and Michael Jordan, while millions of workers go jobless and homeless?"
My friend said, "You got a point, but what does this have to do with communism?"
I replied, "Under the society based on communist equality, workers would stress the participation and development of all workers! We won't have any Al Davises or Michael Jordans!"
My friend said, "What do you mean?"
I replied, "Why don't you check out a copy of Challenge It discusses some of the ideas we've been talking about and we can continue our discussion tomorrow!"
My friend said, "OK, but I have a lot more questions!"
I said, "Good, see you tomorrow!"
Keep up the good work in Challenge, it's getting better and better all the time!
Oakland comrade
Dear Challenge:
I have been impressed with the growth and improvement Challenge-Desafio has achieved recently, but an article in the 1/31 issue contained a one-word "slip" that I think represents a serious departure from communist politics.
The article entitled, "Which Side Are You On?" was about how transit workers in Emeryville, Calif. are fighting back against anti-communist, anti-worker attacks from union bosses. It explained how the leader of these attacks, hack Dave Nelson, owes his cushy position in the union brass to the fact that he is the boyfriend of union president Christine Zook. The article then goes on to refer to Nelson by the name he is frequently called: "Hillary."
It is of course a good thing to call people like Dave Nelson and Hillary Clinton names that identify them as the enemies of the working class, but it's a very bad thing to be calling either of them (or anyone else) names that use sexism for their derogatory effect, such as calling Nelson "Hillary" clearly does.
Instead of blasting Hillary Clinton along principled political grounds, the sexist imagination envisions her as a pushy, manipulating loudmouth who doesn't know that her place as a woman is to be seen in fashionable clothes and not heard.
Instead of blasting Nelson as the bosses' lackey that he is, calling him "Hillary" is more of an unprincipled attack on his "manhood" using a very sexist idea of what manhood is. He plays "second banana" to his girlfriend, he does not "wear the pants" in his r