The Great Train Robbery

Why do transit fares go up and up while service goes down and down? Whyare late-shift workers left standing on dark street corners waiting for busesthat don't come? Why, when you stop and think about it, do workers have topay at all for transportation, a basic necessity of life?

Because transportation, like everything else produced under capitalism, is acommodity. To the capitalists, a bus or a train is not something to take people where they need to go. It's a way to make money grow, off the backs of the workers.

Capitalists need big-city mass transit systems to move millions of workers from home to jobs and back and to enable workers, as consumers, to get to large stores or attractions to be soaked. And the biggest bosses have always made sure they can profit directly from mass transit. New York City mass transit tells the story.

Bankers Take Workers for a ride

John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan were the original owners of the NYC subways. They made huge profits by running roughshod over the workers and the system. By the late 1930's, the NYC subways were in a shambles. What to do?

The rulers decided that the city government should buy the subways and run them as a "government enterprise." The city would then spend millions to put the sbways back in shape. Where to get the money? From loans from the same Rockefeller and Morgan bosses who were selling them the subways! So NYC borrowed $350 million from banks owned by Rockefeller and Morgan Then they paid triple that figure as interest (bankers' profits) over the next 25 years to the same bosses who had run the subway system into the ground!

Who paid for this "great train robbery?" The workers, of course. The nickel fare could not cover all the subway's expenses, especially the millions paid in interest to the bankers. So, the city took it from the general treasury- which means from taxes, mostly paid by workers in one form or another.

Racist at Any Fare

In the post-World War II period, even that was not enough profit for the bosses. They established "Transit Authorities" in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere. This scheme mandated that all operating expenses had to be covered not by a combination of the fare and general taxation but by the fare alone.

Every time the cost of maintenance, wages, or pensions rose, it automatically jacked up the fare-from a nickel and a dime to the current $1.50 or more. This became an extra tax on workers, the biggest burden falling on the poorest workers. Black and latin workers were hit the hardest. It also pitted worker/riders against transit workers-every wage increase mandated a higher fare. In addition, to upgrade the system, this "authority" could float bonds to be bought by bankers who would collect millions more in interest, again to be paid for by the working class. The supposedly "non-profit" transit "authority" became still another way to rob money out of workers' pockets.

Capitalist Crisis Behind Privatization of DC Metro, Boston MTA

The bosses hold state power and use it to squeeze the last drop of sweat out of the workers' hides. This is especially true now, when the U.S. bosses are locked in a desperate struggle with Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Russian and other bosses for control of resources and markets. The fierce worldwide competition for profits forces capitalists to cut costs and increase productivity. This competition can only be settled, as in the past, by war. Cuts in mass transit are part of the fascist trend towards war preparations.

Privatization currently threatens transit in DC, Boston and Los Angeles. This will mean further cuts in wages, benefits and services. It is especially racist because for many years, transit jobs were among the best available to black workers, who were excluded from the skilled trades. Now, cutbacks are

coming down hardest on black and latin drivers and riders. But privatization should not be viewed as turning "non-profit" transit systems into ones run for profit. The fact is, the bosses are always making profit off workers' labors. The form of making profit has changed but mass transit has always turned a profit for the bosses, on the backs of the transit workers and the rider/workers.

Travel the Road to Revolution

"Always" will not last forever. Communism will eliminate bosses and profits and solve this problem for the working class. Value produced by the working class will no longer be stolen by a small class of billionaire bosses and bankers but rather will become social value. Its distribution according to need will be determined by the working class collectively, led by the Party. We

have some experience in this regard.When communists led the Soviet Union, they built, in Moscow, the best subway, trolley and bus system in the world and charged workers only one kopek-a penny-to ride. Even though restored capitalism has forced the price to go up, it remains one of the best mass transit systems in the world.

But why did they charge that kopek? Because they mistakenly believed they had to build socialism as a stage on the way to communism. Socialism meant keeping wages, money, markets, and commodities, so the Soviet communists charged workers a kopek-though only a kopek-to ride.

Socialism proved to be a stage on the way back to capitalism. Now the PLP understands that communism is what we need, communism is what we must fight for, and communism is what we will build when we have led the working class to take power. Mass transit under communism will need no turnstiles, no guards, no token booths. There will be no fares, only workers operating an efficient system, organized by them, and serving the rest of the working class by transporting them where and when needed.

Chicago Transit

Fascist cuts and democratic sham

In Chicago, the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) is cutting 10% of its bus and rail lines and eliminating conductors on the trains. These racist cuts particularly affect black and latin neighborhoods.

On June 30th, CTA bosses held a public hearing on these cuts. The hearings are a charade to let the worker/riders have a "voice" (let off steam, even let them yell at and boo the bosses). Then they do what they are going to do. This is what democracy is.

PLP was there distributing 1,000 flyers, 500 copies of Road to Revolution 4, and 60 Challenges. Two comrades took over the stage at the beginning of the hearing to denounce the cuts and the hearing, calling for a communist society where everything, including transit, would be available to workers according to need.

The capitalists cut transit for two reasons. One is to maintain lower taxes and make it cheaper for companies to do business. The other is to direct the surplus workers produce towards war preparations rather than to services for

workers. Only communist revolution can change this.

DC Metro

Drivers Plot Against Privatization

Washington DC, June 30 - On June 17th, the Washington Area Regional Mobility Panel ( an organization set up by Metro and the local governments toplan the privatization of the bus system here) met to hear Metro's General Manager (GM) report on privatization. Sixty workers also attended.

The report promised the riding public a five-year freeze on fares. They promised the local governments a freeze on subsidy payments for the same period. The GM's plan was a clear attempt to win the riding public to support privatization. In public hearings on privatization over the last several months, most riders have spoken out against the plan. The plan also provides for privatization to occur over several years to avoid massive layoffs and head off a mass rebellion by the drivers. The bosses are using the "grind them down" approach.

Following the meeting, from which most drivers walked out in disgust, a group of Metro workers met to discuss a communist response to the bosses' plan.The first question discussed was how to win the riding public to our side. Since the GM was advocating a fare freeze, we advanced the idea of abolishing the fare. Can we win this? Probably not, but it can give workers a glimpse of what communist society is like, where services are provided to the working class based on need and not the ability to pay. One worker expressed skepticism about our ability to make much of an issue of the fare, but agreed to try at the next union meeting.

Will having the riding public on our side stop privatization? No, but it will make it more politically costly to the bosses since they cannot pretend they are privatizing to help the riders. Everyone will know that it is being done to save money for the bosses.

We then discussed the possibility of a work action to stop privatization since some union officers are raising the issue. The point was made that while this was good, we should expect an attack rather than concessions, and thus be prepared to up-the-ante. The union officers will not do this. They will sellout.The discussion then moved onto what motivates workers to become involved in this struggle. How can we get more workers into our group? We know from the last round of layoffs at Metro in 1995, that workers will become involved temporarily when the bosses threaten their jobs. This did not lead to long term commitment because they either got their jobs back or found work elsewhere.

Long term commitment requires a vision of the future and the hope of achieving it. Unless we can win workers to a communist vision of the future and develop their commitment, our caucus will continue to be a revolving door of people coming and going based on their immediate needs. Only the communist vision of a society based on cooperation, without war, racism, or a wage system; coupled with a growing Party, can motivate millions to commit themselves to the revolutionary struggle.

L.A. Transit

Pension Secure? Forget About It

Being covered by medical insurance during working years and retirement has a wide appeal. Unfortunately, the union medical plans at the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) will not deliver on that dream.

The Federal government is cutting money to mass transit. So MTA is forcing 1800 ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) members to pay an extra $130/month for medical. The 4,200 member UTU (United Transit Union) figure will be similar.The ATU is offering a plan to invest our medical fund in the stock market to offset the company's cuts. This plan tries to cure a problem caused by capitalism with a bigger dose of capitalism. It is a desperate move and a sure loser. Here's why:

• Our pension plan is already in the stock market, which, despite its growth, is not a healthy place. The growth of the stock market rests on two feet-both of which are used to kick workers, as a class, in the teeth.
• First, downsizing (mass job cuts) raises the value of stocks. So does wage cutting, job exporting, and speed-up schemes. Thus, the success of the new medical fund will rest (like the pension funds) on the miserable pay and lousy working conditions for our sons and daughters. As a class, we pay for our "success."
• Secondly, most of the stock exchange's success is due to stock speculation (rather than productivity moves like downsizing). For years, the market has grown faster than the economy. This means that the paper value of stocks is way above their real value.

AC Transit Contract

Do Workers Need a Union or a Communist PLP?

Oakland, CA, June 27- Today, AC Transit workers voted on a three-year contract which aims to put a friendly face on fascism. In a nutshell, retiring workers are offered an improved pension package in exchange for allowing workfare, part-timing for newer workers, and a 7% real wage cut for all workers.

PLP members changed the way we usually respond to these attacks. Rather than picking apart the contract in detail, we focused on the general crisis facing the entire working class. At the heart of these discussions was the question, what sort of organization do workers need-a union-management partnership or a communist Party? Modestly and somewhat awkwardly, we advanced communist politics. We discussed that the union is an ally of U.S. capitalists deep in crisis. They tell us we can keep our jobs only by becoming partners in managing a devastated transit system. If workers accept cuts, they say, labor and management can avoid the threat of privatization.

Furthermore, the union says our future must be tied to feeding a stock market hopelessly addicted to speculation and dripping with the blood of downsized, laid-off workers.

Even those close to retirement agreed that the contract was no good. They agreed that fascism-in the form of privatization and workfare-hover over us like vultures. All around us are private buses, vans and para-transit taxis paying workers $7-10 per hour with no benefits. Many agreed that a majorchange was necessary, but doubted whether it could happen.

We're talking more about revolution and this brings out workers' fears and attitudes. One older worker and longtime friend said that revolution was possible-he had seen it in his home country. He said that the economic strengthof capitalism wasn't the key factor but rather the social satisfaction of the workers. Another expressed fear of joining a communist Party because she felt that the government watches all big meetings and movements.

Only PLP organized any opposition to the contract. Several workers helped us distribute hundreds of Transit Challenge newsletters. We have asked more workers to PLP study groups. We will struggle with our friends to help us through increased Challenge sales and campaigns in the union against workfare and the AFL-CIA sabotage of workers struggles in Africa.

Mark Fuhrman Award

Cops Terrorize School Children

The Mark Fuhrman Award this week goes to Larry Hutchens, assistant chief of school police in LA. On June 13th Nazi cops forced three middle school students to lie on the ground at gunpoint outside their classroom. The cops were called to Markham Middle School in the all black section of Watts based on a report of a child with a gun. Several students and staff members heard the cops cursing and swearing in the hall, and ran out of their classrooms shocked to see guns pointed at the heads of three of their classmates.

Joseph Morgan, 13 years old, just finished an errand for his teacher and was returning back to his class when two cops with their guns drawn confronted him. Joseph tried to explain to the cops that he had a pass. "Shut up! We don't care about your pass. If you don't shut up we're going to slam you against the wall." The other boys tried to calm Joseph down but he burst into tears. The cops grabbed Joseph by the neck and slammed him into the ground. " I thought they were going to shoot me," he said.

At least two administrators witnessed the cops terrorizing the students, and said nothing. The Principal of Markham, John Miller, swears that he could not remember anything out of the ordinary that happened that day. Lee Byrd the Assistant Principal decided to take the Fifth. PLP is planning to make Markham School part of our Summer project, organizing to win students, teachers and parents to communism and to build a movement against fascist cops.

Politics Can Be Raised About Everything

This is the last of a series of articles on how to make politics primary in our Party work on the job and mass organizations.Sometimes we are reluctant to raise political issues on the job or within different mass organizations. Hesitation often stems from the mistaken belief that workers are not interested in things outside of their immediate on the job concerns or daily living. As it turns out workers are interested in matters of international, national and local political issues.

A few articles in Challenge on workers' responses to articles on mass murder in Africa by imperialists and their local henchmen indicate that there is fairly wide interest in this question. The last issue of Challenge described the relatively large mass movement built by the Democrats and their liberal "left" stooges on the issue of rent control. There is little doubt that we can raise communist politics around this question with other workers and friends in the mass movement. We could have used this issue to slowly develop our communist leadership over groups of workers.

Tyson bit Holyfield's ears. Nonsense, you say. Well, the brutality and gangsterism in the boxing game enables you to raise zillions of questions. A system that encourages brutality, sadism, and 'bread and circuses' is rotten to the core, and shouldn't exist. We are sure that many workers either watched the "fight" or talked about the chewed ears.

What about Michael Jordan and his trillions. Jordan is a phenomenal athlete, but a typical entrepreneur. Remember his coarse statements about Asian workers working for pennies on Nike shoes. In other words Jordan couldn't 't care less, and said something to that effect when questioned about his relationship to Nike.

What about "family values?" We're for close, constructive family values. But the rulers' hypocrisy around this question knows no limits. From the philandering of Clinton and Kennedy to the filthy exploitation of women in all aspects of culture, capitalist family life is weak. Just look at the 50% divorce rate. What about low wages, no wages, or lower wages of women, blacks and latins. All this, among many other things destroys family life.

Once again war, fascism, and racism come to the fore. Almost every issue on and off the job can be connected to these questions. This is no exaggeration. For example: Lay-offs, ("downsizing") usually can be explained by the "crisis of overproduction"-increasing national and international competition.

The constant improving of production methods results in increased productive capacity that can't be used. This crisis forces the rulers to bear down on workers using racism, fascism, increased exploitation in one form or another.

This situation must lead to all types of wars, ultimately world war.Based on our plan of concentration in key areas and consistent communist work, combined with the growing inability of workers around the world to live in the old way, our Party will grow and grow some more. National and international PL organizations will eventually give us the leverage to move for power in one and another country. Using our base in one area can give us the ability to spread out.

But like the man said you have to start some place. Given the unevenness of all processes, there is always a first. A good critical letter in last week's Challenge said, "the logical place to start recruiting is with those workers we already have a tie of some sort." Presumably these ties will be political. Undoubtedly, since everyone is not the same, the workers we have the closest political ties with will get recruited. If we do not have political-personal ties we won't recruit anyone. But that's not the case.

The ones, twos and threes we recruit now are crucial. Slow recruiting can ultimately lead to mass recruiting. As our letter writer points out millions of workers will be open to communism. A small, cadre (leadership) party is not what we are after. Millions of workers armed with some understanding of communism will enable us to take power and hold power more successfully than our predecessors.

The bosses said, "It couldn't be done." It was done in China and Russia! Power was lost by the workers in both countries. Again the bosses rail "you see, we told you it can't be done." Facts are "stubborn things." It is slowly being done by us. Our Party will take advantage of capitalist contradictions.

Fascism will enable our Party to take advantage of the glaring capitalist weakness of fascism. The Party can be built in a way that it can never be blown away and it will grow. Capitalist wars will prove that you cannot live with the profit system. Workers are learning (maybe most have) that their interests have nothing in common with the bosses and will increase the class struggle with our leadership. Patient, persistence, more intense practice will win the day. "With feet on the ground and heads on our shoulders we will vanquish all that stands in our way."

Kickback Against Boeing Bosses

SEATTLE, WA, June 30 - "The faces up there change," said a machinist pointing to the managers in the front of the crew meeting, "but it's always the same. They're always kicking us!

"Experience has taught this worker a valuable lesson about capitalism. The problem is the system, not the personality of this or that boss. This crew meeting was called to berate us because our productivity hadn't improved despite the bosses best laid "lean" plans.

"If you want more parts, buy more machines and hire more operators," we told the bosses.

"But if you want the company to buy more machines, you have to increase productivity to lower cost." said John Burns, the plant superintendent. "Otherwise, Boeing will offload the work to a cheaper subcontractor. That's the reality of how business decisions are made."

"Isn't it funny how business decisions always end up kicking us," we shot back. "The system is set up to kick us!" Burns left this stormy meeting complaining how "frustrated" he was.

For the past several weeks, frustrated bosses have faced rebellious crew meetings and quarrelsome larger "all-hands" meetings. The bosses' speed-up plans have not been taken lying down. Even more significantly, after several of these meetings, we workers are beginning to discuss among ourselves some fundamental questions.

Whose plant is this anyway?

Why is it, we ask ourselves, that a boss can come in and tell us to speed up after being at the plant just a few months? Why does he get to make the decision of whether to buy a new machine, to hire a new worker, or to force us to work extra hours? After all it was our work-over many years-that made the money to build this plant, but we don't own any of it. The capitalists own the means of production in this system.

The law, enforced through the bosses' state, guarantees that the capitalists own the factories. We must smash the bosses' state; we must take back the means of production. Otherwise, we will always be at the mercy of the

capitalists. We can then organize production for the needs of our class, not the profits of the bosses. Business decisions will be replaced by human decisions. Leaders will earn their authority by fighting for the needs of the working class, not their willingness to screw workers to maximize the profits of the capitalist ruling class.

To hasten that day, our prime task must be to build the Party. More communists is what we need out of every battle-big and small.

Defend Communism! Join the Party!

Already, some workers in our base are defending communism to their friends.After one of these meetings, a woman admitted that she "just had a hard time saying communist.""I know it's probably just because of things I was told as a kid, but I still have a hard time with the word."

"Why is that?" asked a friend of the Party. "When you think about it, communism is what you-and all workers-really think is the way the world should be." ...And so it shall be: when this friend joins and builds the Party among her friends.

Workfare Kills,

Liberals Hold the Wake

New York City, July 1- Marsha Motipersad died of a heart attack two weeksago, while on a lunch break from her Parks Department workfare assignment.Previous heart attacks forced Ms. Motipersad to give up the job she held for seventeen years. She was murdered by a fascist law that forces "employable" welfare recipients to work off their benefits or lose them.Thousands of other welfare recipients have also been reclassified from unemployable to employable status to increase workfare rolls. Forty thousand people already hold slave labor jobs, and nearly a quarter of a million more have been harassed off welfare altogether.

Today the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) arrived in New York aftermarching from Philadelphia with a coffin filled with documentation of deaths and misery caused by poverty and welfare "reform." (See photo above) Henry Nicholas, president of hospital workers' union 1199C (AFSCME) in Philadelphia, endorsed this march but did nothing to organize workers to go. When a PLP comrade called for NYC AFSCME local 371 to join the KWRU march, local President Ensley refused, saying that AFSCME international President McIntee had not endorsed it.

This took many of us by surprise, because Local 371 has supported past protests against welfare reform. But now McIntee & co. want to organize workfare slaves as second-class union members who will pay dues without getting equal pay or benefits. Workfare recipients will be allowed to struggle for better working conditions but not against the existence of slave labor itself. "Get out to vote against the Republicans," union leaders say, "so the welfare law won't be so bad."

PLP should have been better prepared to expose AFSCME's position as a plan, not to fight against workfare, but rather to institutionalize it. The "labor lieutenants of the capitalist class," as Karl Marx correctly called them, are bent on becoming the wardens of slave labor welfare. If McIntee were in Nazi Germany, he'd probably organize the concentration-camp guards and then try to collect dues from the starving prisoners!

While the U.S. bosses are sharply divided on many things, they are united on smashing welfare. This is part of their plan to boost profits by driving down wages across the board. For the ruling Clinton/Rockefeller faction, instituting fascism is also part of preparing itself for their next war. In this light, KWRU's demand of "jobs at a living wage" builds the dangerous illusion that workers can better their lives without destroying capitalism itself.

Like AFSCME, KWRU is leading workers into the arms of the ruling class' plans for war and fascism. Only communist revolution can crush these killers, and then build a system that can provide meaningful work and the other

necessities of life for all workers.

Marsha Motipersad's death was not the first nor will it be the last caused by the rulers' workfare program. We should do more than mourn for her; we should organize like hell to overthrow the system that is planning to outdo the Nazis, murdering millions more through war and fascist terror.

Mexico City Elections:

Global Bosses' Dogfight

Mexico City, July 1- The PRI will probably lose control of Mexico City and of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the July election. CuauhtémocCárdenas of the PRD will likely become the mayor of Mexico City. Three million supporters have been campaigning for the PRI. Millions of others have done the same for the PRD and the PAN, the two major opposition parties. But Cárdenas' victory won't help Mexican workers one bit!

The main aspect of the Mexican elections is intensifying bosses' rivalry in the face of global capitalist crisis. This contradiction impacts the lives of all workers everywhere, and is behind all the capitalists' important decisions. U.S., European and Asian bosses are fighting over Mexico, and the Mexican ruling class is divided over which imperialist to ally with.Bosses Alliances:

Circles Within Circles

The PRI, allied with U.S. imperialism, has run Mexico since 1929. Some PRI elements (the "technocrats") continue to support this alliance. But the Rockefeller wing of the U.S. ruling class knows that the openly corrupt PRI can no longer rule Mexico peacefully. And some PRI elements (the "dinosaurs") support the Europeans and Japanese. The U.S. rulers therefore want to break the PRI's political monopoly.

U.S. bosses turned first to the PAN, which represents Mexican bosses, including powerful Monterrey industrialists, who are allied with the Rockefellers. But PAN was stopped short in the Mexico City mayoral election when the PRI exposed its connection with the notorious ex-President Carlos Salinas.

The U.S. bosses then quickly changed tactics and decided to go temporarily with the probable winner, the PRD.

This is something of a contradiction, because the PRD represents mainly the Mexican bosses who want to diversify foreign investments, giving greater participation to the European and Japanese imperialists. For example, the PRD opposes the New York banks' swallowing PEMEX and the weak Mexican banking system, yet it doesn't object to Spanish banks' recent buying spree of Mexican banks.

But the U.S. rulers' plan to use short-term support for the PRD to remove the "Estado de Mexico" group, headed by C. Hank, from the PRI leadership. "Estado de Mexico" and their European imperialist backers are the main obstacle keeping PAN's northern industrialists from seizing the political and economic control of the whole country. Hank, who has strong German ties, owns many companies and banks and is a partner in Mercedes Benz, which controls the Mexican truck and bus market. It was no coincidence that the U.S. government exposed Hank's drug money laundering!

In sum, the Rockefeller strategy is to strengthen the "technocrats" group in PRI at the expense of the Estado de Mexico "dinosaurs," to waste the PRD politically in the next three years, and prepare the PAN for the year 2000 elections.

PRD Builds Illusion of Change

The PRD attracts many dissatisfied small and medium capitalists who were devastated by NAFTA. "The PRD's economic program defends the majority of businessmen who have been affected by the 'economic liberalism,'" said PRD senator Pedro Entiens.The PRD hopes to develop the internal economy, reviving workers' buying power. Companies like Ford support this program because they can't depend only on exports. But the program is doomed to failure. Imperialists and local bosses alike are struggling to compete by lowering wages, not raising them.

The PRD is building illusions with its liberal-democratic program to try to stop a social explosion. It hopes to create an atmosphere in which to peacefully exploit the workers, not to solve any of our problems.The Mexican ruling class and its New York banker partners are praising Mexico's new democracy to the skies. But the millions of dollars spent on the current electoral circus cannot solve the crisis of overproduction that has gripped world capitalism and has hurled the world's working class into the depths of misery. Mexico City has more unemployment, poverty and pollution than any other city in the world.

Only by joining the PLP and organizing for communist revolution will the working class in Mexico and everywhere ever rid ourselves of capitalism's crises, wage slavery and war. We must intensify our efforts to patiently and persistently win Mexican workers to this outlook.

Racist Bosses Free One, Jail Thousands

Black Panther Geronimo Pratt was recently set free on bail. His conviction was overturned, he waits to see if he has to stand trial again. Pratt served 27 years on trumped-up murder charges, framed by a paid government informant.

The U.S. ruling class in the '60s faced a rebellious working class that was taking to the streets, protesting the war, police brutality, and open racism. The rulers feared a revolutionary-minded working class, especially black workers who had led many urban rebellions. They targeted the Black Panther Party (BPP) and its leadership for special attack. The Nixon New Money bosses, then in the White House, organized COINTELPRO to try to infiltrate and destroy any and all organizations, including PLP, that opposed the bosses' capitalist system of exploitation, war, and mass racist murder. COINTELPRO framed Geronimo Pratt.

By the mid-1970's, Old Money bosses had retaken the White House. As PLP pointed out in 1979, the Rockefeller-Ford-Carter crew publicly exposed COINTELPRO's dirty tricks in order to discredit their New Money opponents and to make their own police machinery look "fair and square." Today their system is dirtier and more vicious than ever, as the big bosses make and implement fascist laws to tighten their control over their capitalist rivals and the working class.

Now the bosses have freed Pratt, the better to lock up tens of thousands more young black men. As a black woman worker said, "they're releasing him to quiet the natives." The capitalist prison system is swelled with mainly black and latino men. In 1990 there were 84,000 inmates in California prisons. By 1995, there were 135,000. Eight percent of the men in their 20's in California are black, but 29% of the 20-year old men in the criminal justice system in California are black. In the U.S. in 1993, black men were 7% of the population but 48% of the prisoners. The racist bosses are the real criminals!Geronimo Pratt's release is related to Old Money's so-called "anti-racist" campaign. They are preparing for war and they want to convince us that this system is not racist, that this system is just, and that we must defend it. Thirty-one percent of the enlisted soldiers and the non commissioned officers in the army are black. The rulers want to win these young black men and women to kill and die for U.S. imperialism in Central Africa, the Middle East, or wherever their bloody interests are at stake.

Pratt thanked the judge for his decision, but youth, soldiers, and workers must not fall for Clinton and his running dogs' attempts to win our hearts and minds. We ourselves live the reality of capitalism, and we will not be won to defending this system of mass murder and exploitation.

We will build the Progressive Labor Party and prepare ourselves and other workers, soldiers, and students for communist revolution. Forty students have signed up for the LA summer project, which will teach communist ideas while targeting police terror and prison labor. Communism will liberate the bosses' political prisoners and the entire working class.

LETTERS + LETTERS

Struggle for communist summer project

Dear Challenge:

Last week a fellow teacher and occasional Challenge reader told me that she was offering the chance of two weeks in an upper-middle class art colony to one of our student comrades and four other students. I told her that I thought that crumbs like these were racist and built wrong ideas that the "best" we can hope is for a few to "make it" out of the working class. My colleague was offended and told the students that although I-the communist-didn't think they should have this opportunity, she-the liberal-was offering it to them.

I told the young comrade that whether he went or not, it was important to understand the ruling class' game. They may try to buy him off, but (as he himself said at May Day) they can't buy off his whole class. Many of his class brothers and sisters will die in the next oil war whether he gets bought off or not. We want him in the Party, not because he's a loser and couldn't do anything else in his life, but because he chooses to fight for a communist system in which everyone can realize his or her potential, not just a few.

This trip is at the same time as the summer project. After we talked about it a lot he said, "I've realized that the summer project is more important. Being a communist is the ultimate decision that I've made. Being a communist means giving up all the trash that capitalism offers. I've decided I will be a communist for life." Over forty youth have agreed to be in our Summer Project, and they need leaders like this comrade! The Party needs committed comrades like him, and we will fight for a world in which art serves the working class, and is not used for capitalist profits.

At my young comrade's urging, I told my teacher friend what I had told him: this is how education in capitalism functions. The capitalist class has always used the schools to try to co-opt the students they consider the "brightest" of our class. As the ruling class prepares to send our youth to the Middle East to die for oil, they will need the illusion that the system is "fair" to win them to die for "their country."

Many very committed teachers believe we should provide opportunities for the "best" of our students. Communist ideas call into question how they spend their time at work. But this teacher's dying mother is being neglected by the HMO. We talked about health care for profit as fascism is consolidated in the U.S. She will probably agree with us about health care before she accepts that the main thing that all teachers do in the classroom strengthens the system. We have to have a long term principled approach with this teacher and others like her.

LA Teacher

Inspired by workers' interest in Party

Dear Challenge:

I was very inspired as one of the PLP comrades that attended Action Motown '97 in Detroit, Michigan during the June 20-21 weekend. One worker that I was fortunate to meet told me some of his life history. He told me how he had been in the military in 1976. At the time, the U.S. was set to fight against Idi Amin in Uganda in support of England. However, his unit which was 65% black, refused to kill other blacks and, so, the command to fight was recanted by the military bosses. The military continued to try to win him to their imperialism by paying over $50,000 for him to attend an Ivy League college. But it was while he was in jail for petty crimes that he realized that it was the bosses that set society up to physically incarcerate and mentally enslave young black men like him.

Later as a parole officer, he would try to help the young men under his watch find work once they were paroled. However, he was told by his supervisor that he was not a social worker and that he worked for the warden to keep these men in jail.

He was then assigned to work as a grounds keeper for the City of Detroit which is what he does now. He was attending the rally as a City employee union worker. As I handed him a copy of Challenge, which he donated $1 for, I explained that we need more workers like him in our fight for communism. Isn't it ironic, yet very fitting, that in a capitalist ambushed city that has all

but surrendered, one can be inspired to fight for communist revolution? That amongst the thousands of workers who marched behind the union bosses, there are some who are only a few steps from real revolution. That those who walked down the streets of Detroit as strikers will one day march up the road to communism as revolutionaries. That those workers who knocked down newspaper dispensers will one day be revolutionaries destroying capitalism. And as workers, we will build up a truly communist society.

Chicago Student

Workers need PLP, not LP

Dear Challenge:

As last week's article about the Detroit march said, the new "Labor Party" is hopelessly mired in narrow trade-unionism and liberal blather about "workplace democracy." But their action program may attract significant support.

The LP recently launched a campaign around a proposed 28th Constitutional Amendment to ensure that everyone has a right to a job at a livable wage. Their plan includes going door-to-door in working-class communities, taking the campaign to local unions and "community groups of all types." and recruiting to the LP as a mass organization. They will ask other organizations "to pass the campaign resolution and to push the campaign petition through their own memberships."

The LP is not presenting itself as a single-issue group, or as a coalition of interest groups, but as a way to unite workers. Their program includes "30 hours work for 40 hours pay" and opposing slave labor in prisons and welfare. They put forward the strategy of building a mass movement to force politicians to meet workers' demands. This ignores the crisis of capitalism, which forces the bosses and the politicians to turn the screws on the working class as they prepare for war. But for many it sounds a lot better than standard electoral politics.

The LP's militant reformism is the opposite of PLP's revolutionary communism. The problem is not that they fall short of our program. It's more like they're fiddling (about narrow economic demands) while Rome burns (with fascism and war). And their leaders include die-hard anti-communists like OCAW unionist Tony Mazzochi. But their jobs campaign might well develop into a mass movement that would create plenty of opportunities for us to explain all this both to LP activists and to the workers they're organizing.

Midwest Red

New Money avoids big banks

Dear Challenge:

A letter in Challenge (7/2) mentions the interlocked banking system as a reason for which civil war among U.S. bosses' factions is impossible or unlikely. True, many of the main Eastern Establishment banks and corporations are more interlocked than ever. This consolidation of capital characterizes the big bosses' drive toward their own brand of fascism. But the writer misses a few fundamental points.

Until now, the leading forces in the "New Money" camp have managed to stay relatively free of Old Money's banks. With strong sales and virtually no debt, upstart companies like Microsoft and Intel aren't bound to the Rockefellers' yoke. The Koch group, who represent this faction's main industrial (oil) and financial force, can say the same. Elements within this camp control a bank outside the "Old Money" loop, H. Ahmanson's Home Savings of California. Often, the Establishment's struggle to dominate the upstarts can be a lengthy process. Earlier in the century, the Eastern banks needed 50 years to gain control of Ford Motor Co.

 For this reason, "Old Money vs. New Money" remains an apt formulation. The basic fight is between capitalists that have come under the sway of the national, interlocked banks and those that haven't.

The comrade who wrote the letter cites the old PLP pamphlet "Who Rules America?" This was a useful pamphlet. However, among its weaknesses was the lack of analysis about contradictions within the ruling class. This weakness was somewhat rectified when PLP characterized the "Watergate" affair as a sharpening dogfight between rival gangs of U.S. capitalists. We used the "New Money"/"Old Money" formulation in this analysis.

 The comrade's letter strongly implies that the current battle does not reflect a struggle for control of state power. Hardly a day goes by without further proof that this is a serious mistake. Rockefeller & Co. are out to rule the world. Control of Middle Eastern oil remains absolutely crucial to this goal. As we have often pointed out, the main U.S. imperialists are preparing to spill oceans of workers' blood to protect Exxon et al's overseas interests. Koch and the rest of the Oil Patch gang have diametrically opposed interests. They want to be freed of environmental regulations that are literally drying up their domestic oil wells-and they want to open up Alaska. Well, only two weeks ago, the Rockefeller-controlled Supreme Court shot down this ambition once more, when it ruled that major tracts of Alaskan oil lands belonged to the Federal government and not the state. Koch & Co. cannot indefinitely allow this use of state power against them without sharpening the struggle. They are doing so on many fronts.

NYC Comrade

Profs listen to communist ideas

Dear Challenge:

I just finished a two week seminar with an interracial group of about 20 faculty from black colleges. We read social science writings on the "Black American Experience" and discussed topics such as the social construction of race, slavery and racism, social science and revolution, black nationalism, and black feminism. The discussions were very lively and continually provided opportunities for me to put forward our views.

The readings criticized black nationalists mainly for being sexist and homophobic. They never addressed the most important criticism of nationalism: that it promotes unity of workers with bosses of their nationality, while dividing workers from workers of other nationalities. When I argued that nationalism and feminism should be rejected because they promote class collaboration, many of my colleagues looked like they had never heard that argument before!

Liberalism among white faculty was more of a problem than nationalism among black faculty. I gave everyone copies of "Road to Revolution IV" and made a few good friends. It did not isolate me to put forward our ideas. I tried to address the particularities of the discussions, and no one appeared to feel that I was just haranguing them. One white woman from a small southern college told me, "You are the first Marxist I have gotten to know well enough to figure out whether I like you or not. I like you and the contribution you made to the seminar."

On the other hand, no one really pursued discussions on fascism and imperialist war. Only two people asked any questions about the Party. Most faculty there agreed with a lot of what I said and sometimes said some very sharp things themselves, but they didn't seem ready to take the next steps. Our work among faculty can make us many friends and expand our base, but it may well not yield much recruitment until conditions change in ways that make faculty ready to declare war on the system. We have to get more experience and learn how to function in this period without getting subjective and reformist.

The fact that professionals are not flocking to join us does not mean that our line turns them off. We are reluctant to believe our own line and accept its implications, so we should not be surprised that our friends are too.

Red Sociologist

Red Pizza Hut worker in San Salvador

Dear Challenge:

Bosses in Pizza Hut in San Salvador use mass unemployment as a club against their very low-paid workers. Dozens of workers go looking for work at Pizza Hut, and the bosses use this to force us to work even more. Right now, we are scolded for any little mistake, like spilling a glass of water, or not smiling enough at the customers, etc. The bosses keep telling us that there are many others willing to take our jobs.

Many people see workers smiling and think that our jobs are wonderful. Pizza Hut, owned by Pepsi-Cola, makes millions out of cheap labor here and all over the world by selling not-too-healthy food. Indeed, my job has convinced me that a system that produces exploiters like Pizza Hut must be destroyed.A Pizza Hut Wage Slave,

San Salvador

Biter and Butthead

Dear Challenge:

Much has been said about the Tyson-Holyfield re-match fight. Most of the comments have been attacking Mike Tyson's "lobe blow." I just want to add a few things besides the obvious biting of Evander's ears. First of all, boxing is about two guys (or women nowadays) beating each other up. True, Tyson and Holyfield are not in the categories of Joe Louis, Ali, Frazier, Teofilo Stevenson, and even George Foreman in his prime. So, considering this, Tyson's biting and Holyfield's head-butting are not that outrageous.But one fact that has been ignored in most of the commentaries about this fight is the religious and political connotations brought to the fight, particularly by Holyfield, who wrapped himself under the halo of Christianity and gospel music, against Tyson, who became a Moslem in jail.

Holyfield knows how to use old-fashioned American prejudice to build himself up. He knows that being anti-Moslem brings to your side the powers-that-be in this day and age when U.S. bosses are preparing another "holy war" for Exxon in the Middle East. Sports, like everything else in this society, cannot be separated from politics.S. Port

Communists in unions

Dear Challenge:

I have been following the recent debates in Challenge regarding unions, strikes, and Party leadership. I have several things to say about the debates.First, in the June 11th issue "Joe Red" made a false assertion when he mentioned that strikes never led to revolution. The Russian Revolution, for example, was a process that included strikes. The Bolshevik Party used strikes as ways to fight the class enemy and win workers into and/or to support their organization. At times similar to ours today, the Bolsheviks were ever present in strikes led by the class enemy in order to expose them and win workers away from reformism and into the line of the revolutionary Bolsheviks.

Second, the criticism made to Party leadership in its Challenge editorial should also have pointed out how such lack of clarity in leading the class struggle on the job is affecting our practice. I agree with the writer of the letter that Challenge is at best ambiguous about the role of communists in unions. Articles about strikes, union meetings or other struggles on the job are usually limited to describing how capitalism causes "X" problem. Comrades usually write about how they told this to other coworkers. However, little is said about how what the Party is doing to change the situation on the job, other than speaking with the workers. Some other articles have even shown comrades doing oral agitation against union hacks, only to later sit down and shut up after the hacks ordered such comrades to do so (D.C. transit article).We definitely need to give more thought about our role in leading class struggle.

Another Red

Salvador boss no savior

Dear Challenge:

Last month, Armando Calderon Sol, President of El Salvador, went to the U.S. to beg that Salvadoran immigrants not be deported. This is the same guy whose government and party are responsible for the massacres, oppression and misery which forced tens of thousands of workers to leave El Salvador. But now, these workers send $1 billion a year to their families in El Salvador, and the bosses, bankers and government of El Salvador make huge profits out of that money. Without that money, conditions for workers in El Salvador will worsen even more, threatening capitalist stability here.

Calderon is an example of how the bosses and their politicians cause our problems, and then try to pass themselves off as our "saviors" from their attacks by blaming others.

We in PLP here will do our best to organize workers to fight wherever they are, whether in San Salvador or Los Angeles, and make sure the instability the bosses fear so much turns into a revolution to smash their system with communist revolution.

A Comrade, El Salvador

Learn from Dazhai: Masses of Workers Must Reject Wages

High in the rock-strewn mountains of China sits a village called Dazhai which holds many lessons for the world's working class.

Before the revolution of 1949, Dazhai's rugged and eroded land was privately owned, and 80% of its people worked as hired laborers for the landlords. Many of them were so poor that they were forced to sell their children. The farmland was divided up into 4700 little strips on hills, ridges and gullies. Nine years out of ten it was subject to natural calamities like droughts and floods. It did not produce enough to feed the people who lived there.

The Transformation of Dazhai

By 1964, Dazhai was so transformed by the collective labor of the workers that the left wing of the Chinese Communist Party created the slogan: In Agriculture, Learn from Dazhai. The mountain sides were terraced, irrigation canals dug, the soil stabilized and enriched; the bare mountains turned green. Each year, despite natural disasters, the output increased until there was a large surplus. Dazhai was growing grain at a rate that rivaled Iowa! Solid new houses were built for the workers, with electricity and running water in each one.

When the secretary of the Dazhai Party branch was asked how this all happened, he said, "The fundamental reason is that people have changed their thinking. People can change the land, technique, output and village because they have changed their thinking. This change is the result of arming them with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought." As PLP says today, politics is primary. When communist ideology is grasped by the masses, it becomes a material force that can change the world!

Under the leadership of the Party branch, the several hundred . . . commune members of Dazhai who have made such extraordinary and heroic achievements have paid attention always to giving first place to proletarian politics in their work . . . They have fostered the spirit of self-reliance and hard work and the communist style of cherishing . . . the collective. Their lofty aim is to farm for the revolution. . .

"The Dazhai Brigade emerged as the standard bearer of China's socialist agriculture in a fierce struggle over more than two decades between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and between the socialist and the capitalist road." (Fan, From the Other Side of the River.)

Meetings, Meetings and More Meetings!

These two decades of struggle were after the Revolution! Right wing forces fought tooth and nail for individual ownership. At every turn, the Party organized meetings and discussions of which way to go. For example, when a neighboring village "offered to buy Dazhai's surplus hay at a high price the Dazhai Party branch lost no time in organizing the commune members to discuss 'What should we do when other brigades have difficulties?' The [workers] angrily denounced profiteering as they recalled how in the old society the landlords . . . fleeced the poor people and forced them to sell their children by raising food prices in lean years. They declared that they should not sell their surplus hay for profit. The brigade then unanimously decided to sell the hay to the neighboring brigade at the state price." (Fan)

This quote shows both the strength and the fatal weakness of the Chinese Party's practice. On the one hand, the Party led a long, stubborn and intricate struggle to win everyday workers to understand and put politics first in their practice, and they made almost unbelievable gains. People worked extremely hard, winter and summer, to transform eroded and rocky land into rich land, to transform poverty into surplus and to transform self-centered lives into a commune which put the good of the world's workers ahead of all else. But on the other side of the coin, the grain and other products they produced were still commodities. That is, what the commune didn't use was being produced for sale. In addition, even though much of the work was 'community labor'-everyone pitched in and worked together-workers still earned 'work points' for their labor. When their crops were sold, each received a portion of the money according to how many work points they had earned. This was a form of wages.

So while the Party was teaching workers to put politics first, at the same time it was training them that wages and inequality were okay. The working class, while moving to the left, was simultaneously undermined in its ability to fight off the return of capitalism. The seeds for the defeat of workers' power were sown by the Party. And capitalism returned to China with a vengeance.

'Privatization' = Disaster for the Working Class

What has happened to Dazhai since the 'capitalist roaders' took firmly in hand the reins of Party and government? It has been forcibly 'privatized' from above, against the resistance of the workers. The commune has been dismantled and replaced by private ownership and hired wage labor. People who worked together as a collective one year were divided the next. Two or three now 'own' the jobs and the rest have to hire out their minds and their labor to these two or three. The fake 'Communist Party' has the audacity to present this as a step forward. It is a disaster in every way.

Agricultural output has declined. The roads and stone retaining walls, built by heroic collective effort to stop erosion and create new fields, are in disrepair. Projects the commune started-a noodle factory, animal raising projects, a blacksmith and welding shop, among others-have been abandoned. Fruit and nut trees are neglected.

Where commune members used to regard housing, medical care, fuel, electricity and many other goods and services as problems for the collective to solve together, they now mainly get money wages. Now it's back to 'paying for my house,' or 'buying food for your children.' With wages comes inequality. Some people in Dazhai today have sunk to bare subsistence, while others 'earn' forty times more. (Information from Hinton, The Great Reversal.)

Reclaim the Revolution: Put Politics First

The destruction of Dazhai shows us that communism must destroy wages. The socialist slogan "from each according to ability, to each according to work" has proven to be treason to communist revolution.

But we must also take leadership from the workers of Dazhai in the 1950s and 60s. We must learn to put politics first in our everyday lives. If the Chinese Party could lead workers in a mass way to grasp and implement communist ideas, our party can certainly do the same today! Then one day soon, a new international communist movement will emerge which will reclaim Dazhai-and the world-for the working class!