Do You Want To:
Abolish Wage Slavery?
Fight Racist Cops?
Crush Imperialist War?
If You Checked Any of the Above
You Should March On May Day
Building the Party and fighting for communism is an uphill battle, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The world's working class continues to pay a terrible price for the demise of the old international Communist movement. With all its fatal flaws, the old movement at one time provided a beacon of hope to oppressed workers throughout the world. It proved in the old Soviet Union and China that workers could rule society in their own class interests. It showed in World War II that a fighting, communist-led working class could crush Nazi and other fascist terror. It demonstrated in Vietnam and elsewhere that poor peasants, armed with little more than rifles and political commitment, could paralyze the most technologically advanced and ruthless military machine.
Today, the imperialists, led by the killers in Washington, are getting away with murder. Look at Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo and Iraq. Look at the millions who die or suffer horribly every time the International Monetary Fund announces a new "austerity" loan to an economy in the tank. Look at the huge numbers of workers thrown onto the street by mega-mergers and corporate "downsizings." Millions are being sacrificed on the altar of maximum profit. Capitalism has tremendous problems, but it also has maneuverability. They can close plants in the U.S. and move them to Mexico, impoverishing workers on both sides of the border, unchallenged. Cops walk away from brutal racist murders of black and Latin youth, like writing a parking ticket. This is based, in part, on our Party's present small size and relative weakness. Should we hang our heads because we're not yet big enough to challenge the rulers for power? Absolutely not!
We have a revolutionary line and the ability to carry it out, correct our errors and improve our practice. The bosses have their weapons, and we have ours. They have bombs, money and racism. We have confidence in the working class, the tool of communist criticism-self-criticism, and the philosophy of dialectical materialism, which teaches us to remain objective, to consider all aspects of things, and to look beyond appearances.
Despite the defeat of the old international Communist movement, PLP is here, and growing. With all of our limits and weaknesses, our very presence proves that the specter of communism will haunt the rulers until capitalism has been destroyed. In basic industry, in the military, among youth, in working class communities and internationally, our cadre are proving that communist ideas can become mass ideas.
Things change, sometimes quickly. This is the period of fascism and imperialist war. The next decade promises a steady, perhaps drastic, sharpening of struggle on many fronts. The old Communist movement advanced dramatically in such a period. We can do the same, on a better basis, as we build a mass base for revolutionary communism. As the story goes, the Chinese Communist Party began with twelve guys in a row boat. What we do today will lay the groundwork for tomorrow's breakthroughs.
While we can't promise, "Revolution in our Lifetime," we guarantee a "Lifetime of Revolution." A mass May Day 1999 will strengthen our Party and our class to face the challenges that lie ahead. Every marcher is a potential communist. Every communist is a potential mass organizer. Every communist organizer is a weapon in the arsenal of the world's working class. We have a long hard road before us, and a world to win. History is on our side. With a mass base for communism in basic industry, the military, among the youth, and across all borders, our day will come.
The Party sold about 400 Challenges and distributed 1,500 leaflets attacking the Republicans and the Democrats--especially Clinton--as both being enemies of the international working class. We pointed out that Clinton has attacked immigrants and black workers harder than any other recent president because U.S. imperialism is in crisis, is being challenged by other imperialists, and needs fascism to go to war.
The march was very spirited but the slogans were mostly limited to the demand for legal residence. Besides chants of long live the different countries, a popular slogan was, "We are here and we aren't leaving! And if we are deported, we shall return!" Class conscious slogans were few and far between. Some included: "Workers' struggles have no borders!" "The workers united will never be defeated!" and "Migra you are racist, filthy and murderous!"
The speeches at the end of the march dealt exclusively with reporting the status of the struggle and future plans to pursue it. The speeches had much Central American nationalism and put forward a reliance on friendly Democratic politicians.
We called on workers to fight for communist revolution to end the evils of poverty, unemployment, racism, fascism and war by destroying the system that breeds them. It called on workers to march with us on May Day in San Francisco and to join PLP to build the revolutionary movement we need to fight for a world without borders, bosses or wage slavery. Several marchers gave their names to come to the May Day March. After the march, several demonstrators made plans invite groups to help build the May Day March in San Francisco.
For years MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) mechanics have received a tool allowance. In early December, like a bad odor, a rumor drifted about that painters and body men at Regional Repair Center (RRC) would lose their $310 tool allowance. Sure enough, something was rotten--in the first January check, not one RRC body man or painter got it. Soon a letter came from boss R. Hunt about who was entitled to a tool allowance. "Body men and painters aren't entitled," declared Hunt.
Naturally, these workers were angry about this robbery. A grievance was filed. Although it hasn't been answered, the union executive board told workers to close their toolboxes and take them home.
On the day this all happened, an LA Times article offered a glimpse of the rotting mess that capitalism in crisis has become. The Times explained that a November ballot initiative overwhelmingly barred spending on subway construction. MTA and the bankers have tunneled through a loophole big enough to float $125 million in new transit construction bonds. (Votes have never stood in the way of the rich-making money.) MTA will pay over $6 million in tax-free interest to wealthy investors for an unpopular subway. But it won't pay the $310 tool allowance!
The bondholders "covet the bonds because the interest is...exempt from state and federal income taxes." Furthermore, in case of economic crisis, "the bondholders are protected because they must be paid first before MTA operates any buses or trains." (LA Times, 1-28; our emphasis--Ed.). A copy of the Times article passed among the workers with the hand-written addition, "The MTA bosses have their priorities...and they don't include us."
While the union leadership has maintained its distance, talking to workers only over the phone, the body men and painters are responding on their own. A sharp fight is being made on the shop floor against this $310 wage-cut.
Whether or not we get back the tool allowance, the ease with which MTA takes from the workers and gives so generously to the rich leaves the door wide open for PLP's communist ideas. The class dictatorship of a tiny group of bosses over a large number of workers explains the ease with which dozens of workers can be robbed by upper management simply by declaring these workers are "not entitled." Capitalism exists for the profit of these bondholders. Workers' wages, public services and lives are endangered so that rich bondholders can be guaranteed the interest on their stolen capital.
Progressive Labor Party is organizing workers for a revolutionary dictatorship in which those who use the tools and do the work will decide everything. These are the ideas put forward in Challenge by our Party organizers. They main weapons in the class struggle.
As a result of this company attack and workers' fight-back, Challenge has reached nearly all the affected workers--about 55. Some newly hired painters and body men have received it for the first time. The struggle over $310, not revolutionary in and of itself, has opened the door to let in the fresh air of communist ideas and the San Francisco May Day March.
The power plant produces enough electricity to supply a city the size of Boston. The Rouge complex builds the Ford Mustang, and supplies parts to 16 of Ford's 20 North American assembly plants. The aging complex, first opened in 1918, has undergone many rebuilding projects to stay current. In the 1940's about 100,000 workers worked here.
Autoworkers suffer injuries and work-related illnesses at two and half times the rate of other workers, while federal and state occupational safety and health commissions have been decimated by budget cuts. The United AutoWorkers (UAW) is not trusted by most workers to do anything about this. Ron Gettelfinger, UAW international vice-president in charge of relations with Ford, canceled a Local 600 press conference about the blast and instead joined a Ford news conference and praised Ford saying it has "dealt with the human side of this story and I want to applaud Ford Motor Co." When he was asked if Ford's cost cutting and downsizing had resulted in the erosion of safety protection, he defended the company.
The dead and injured are casualties in a war between the world's auto bosses, to produce more for less. They are the victims of imperialism, just as sure as if they had been shot in Kosovo or bombed in Iraq. The best way to respond to this horror is to build a mass PLP among Ford workers, and bring a larger contingent of autoworkers to march on May Day. From there, we can set our sights on striking Ford when the contract expires in September.
The IG Metall union sets wages for 3.4 million workers. The former president is now the Labor Minister of Gehardt Schroeder's Social Democratic government. The industry bargaining body, Gesamtmetall, is offering a 2 percent raise, and says that any larger raise will be accompanied by rising unemployment, already over 10 percent. The union has set February 11th as a deadline to get a more serious wage proposal, and if not, they will schedule strike votes for Feb. 17.
The German metalworkers could also set the tone for contract talks of autoworkers in Italy. Also, the head of the 3.2 million member public and transit workers unions is calling for a 5.5 percent raise.
Contracts are also expiring at the Ford plant in Cuatitlan, Mexico in March, and across the U.S. and Canada next September. These industrial workers are in the front lines of the global crisis of overproduction, and have the potential to turn these contract fights into schools for communism. PLP is forging international solidarity among autoworkers around the world to build a mass communist Party to prepare the workers for the seizure of power. The global crisis is forcing each boss to attack their workers harder, in order to compete with other bosses. A fighting PLP can grow dramatically in this period.
Meanwhile a New York State Health Department report recommended that experiments "involving slight risk" should be allowed on mentally ill and disabled adults even if they are incapable of giving consent. The report was drafted by a task force headed by Herbert Pardes, dean of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons (which supplies many of the researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI).
On January 17th Cardinal O'Connor, while careful not to point a finger at any researcher or to say that fascism exists in the U.S., stated that "...much of what was done under the Nazi regime under Hitler began long before with the experiments of psychiatrists and other medical persons on people who are psychologically incapacitated or otherwise vulnerable." (NY Post 1/18) Cardinal O'Connor was right (as far as he went) about what happened in Nazi Germany. He was wrong not to point fingers or explain that what's going on now is fascism, U.S.- style.
As the movement against fascist research grows and strengthens it will continue to identify and go after targets, especially Pardes, Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Thousands of children (and their parents), mostly Latin and black, have been and are being duped, bribed, lied to and intimidated by NYSPI researchers into becoming the victims of these Dr. Mengeles.
Now nervous about community outrage and publicity, NYSPI has requested to meet with activists. Some people in the movement are pushing for a meeting, which they say, would yield positive results. However, others are arguing that the movement against racist/fascist research can't be built by "sitting down at the table with" and being on "oversight committees with" the fascists. The movement must be built by raising the political consciousness of the working class and others, forging unity between the working class and its allies, and by actively fighting each experiment and abuse. We can expect this ideological struggle to sharpen within the movement.
Ultimately fascism cannot be defeated without a mass revolutionary communist Party with a long-range strategy to put workers and soldiers in the forefront of revolutionary struggle to destroy capitalism. PLP continues to introduce our ideas and literature to more people in the movement. Reactions vary. "We're not surprised that you are a communist." "Communism won't by itself end fascism and racism." "Communism hasn't worked." "I lean in the direction of communism." "There's always been and always will be exploitation." "The liberals are not good, but better, democratic." "I'm agreeing with you more than before." "The working class has been manipulated by communists." "I think we have more in common than you think."
Sometimes it's hard to be objective: to welcome the ideological struggle for communism, not as a self-defense against red-baiting, but as a way to make communist ideas and communist historical analysis clear to our friends and ourselves. Both in individual and group settings we are trying to be more direct in asking our friends to join PLP while maintaining solid friendships with those who do and those who don't join. What more important thing can we do with our lives?
The official reason for CASE (Chicago Academic Standards Examinations) is to make all teachers teach the same thing. They will also be used as an excuse to keep tenth-grade students from being promoted. Many teachers and students are up in arms because they correctly see these tests as an attack.
Substance reprinted five whole CASE tests and parts of another, along with sharply critical comments. Over 1,000 subscription copies had already been mailed out, and hundreds more distributed, when the Board of Education lashed out with a $1 million lawsuit. The Board claimed it had spent the million dollars (half of it from the MacArthur Foundation, a bosses' private outfit) creating the tests. A million dollars on 22 tests? Over $45,000 per test? "I could write a better test in half an hour," several teachers commented.
Remarks by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley show how the CASE issue is linked to Clinton's national "education reform" program. "They [the editors of Substance] are the same people who socially promoted children," Daley lied. "This is a standard exam. Standard exams are to help kids." Yeah, sure. Just like the Board of Education's agreement to share students' records with the Chicago police helps students!
The Board went to federal court for a temporary restraining order to prevent the legal distribution of the paper. It also asked the court to "order retrieval of every single copy of the Newspaper...even if it takes the U.S. Marshals going to every Chicago Public School teacher's home."
The judge issued a "writ of seizure" that would have allowed the Board to get U.S. Marshals to raid the Substance office, but the Board didn't act on this during the three days it was in effect. However, Substance editor George Schmidt was served tonight, at home, with a letter removing him from Bowen High School while his case was "investigated."
Publication of the tests has served its intended purpose of generating widespread public discussion of CASE. Many Chicago high school teachers (along with students, parents, and other educators) have been emboldened to speak out. "I did everything they told me, I tried to teach to the test, and it accomplished nothing at all," commented one English teacher. "I should have just taught the students what I think they need to know, forget the tests, forget the statistics." New subscriptions, donations for a legal fund, and messages of support are pouring into the Substance office. A New Zealand educator e-mailed:
"Our Ministry of Education wants us to use standardised tests for the same `reasons' Paul G. Vallas hides behind. Like you, we believe this form of assessment is educationally unsound and therefore damaging to students. Be strong."
This struggle can and must be spread. Most teachers and students think that the Board's threat to bring in the U.S. Marshals is some kind of joke. But we must not underestimate the danger of fascism.
The international crisis of capitalism--from Detroit to Moscow, from Brazil to Iraq--forces the U.S. bosses to go to war. These rulers must be deadly serious about their plans to gear up the working class--and especially working-class youth--for this war. "School Reform" is central to these plans, and Clinton constantly cites Chicago's example. In this context, Mayor Daley's ranting and the Board's fascist threats are no joke at all.
The Board's legal action against Substance shows that the capitalist rulers are strong, but also very vulnerable. But not because the "first amendment" to the U.S. Constitution supposedly guarantees "freedom of the press." The rulers are vulnerable because they must rely on the very workers they most exploit and oppress to fight and die in their profit wars. Relying on the bosses' constitutional "safety net" to defend workers' right is as hopeless as relying on their social "safety net" to protect our standard of living. We, too, must rely on the working class, recognizing its need and its potential for communist revolution.
But PLP isn't the only one under attack:
* 134 teachers have been fired because the Board can't find a place for them in the school system;
* Hundreds of eighth graders have been held back and the new CASE exams will keep many students from becoming Juniors;
* The editor of a teachers' newspaper was removed from his school for printing copies of the CASE. [See adjoining article]
Students have circulated petitions, written letters, confronted the principal in the hallway, and passed out flyers. The most recent, "Let the Truth Be Told," was written by a PLP student to counter the anti-communist lies being spread at the school. Students, parents, and teachers demonstrated at the last Board meeting against the removal of the communist teacher. Parents have voiced their disagreement with the Board's actions. A caucus in the teachers' union is discussing how to fight the attacks.
Anti-communist teachers are having long talks with students in an attempt to convince them to stay away from PLP. The principal is calling parents, telling them to keep their teens from attending communist meetings. Some parents have told their kids not to listen to the principal and do what they think is right. Students and teachers are arguing among themselves for and against the PLP teachers. Some are confused. Some are angry. Some have moved closer, some further away. Such is the nature of struggle and development.
Communists directly challenge the whole purpose of the schools. As the rulers prepare for war, they fear not having a reliable army to fight for them. As they fight for profits in the midst of worldwide economic crisis, they're worried that workers won't accept lower wages and longer hours. The capitalists can't tolerate communist organizers in their schools.
School administrators have been installing metal detectors, getting rid of half the teachers, testing students to death, and harassing them about uniforms and tardiness.
Communists have been fighting back. We've organized against oil war in Iraq, against the CASE exams, and against police searches. We've fought the total disregard the school shows for the students by changing their programs, not ordering books on time, and not having enough teachers. We've organized meetings to discuss police brutality, the history of racism, the worldwide economic crisis, the growth of fascism, and the meaning of communism. We're accused of brainwashing students, but as any student who attends our meetings knows, what we do is make them think, question, read, and argue their ideas. This is the opposite of exactly what goes on in school.
The anti-communists are using nationalism. "Stick with their own race," they tell students. "Capitalism has gotten better for blacks and all we have to do is study to get ahead." They push the illusion that life is better for black workers, and education is the key to success.
Reality is quite different. Blacks are jailed three times as often as whites. High paying industrial jobs that black workers held have been wiped out. The income gap between black and white families is greater now than before the civil rights movement, even though many more black students graduate high school and go on to college. Maybe things have improved for a few athletes and politicians, but for most of us, capitalism means racist murder and oppression. In the next oil war, the bosses will ask these most oppressed young workers to kill and die for Exxon's oil profits. Black workers and students are the key force for revolution. The bosses will stop at nothing to keep them out of PLP.
Students and parents at CVS have played a leading role in this fight. They represent the future of our class. Their determination to fight for what's right and stand up to anti-communist and nationalist attacks is inspiring. What a contrast to the scheming, opportunist, self-serving actions of Principal Green and the School Board! By organizing ourselves into a fighting army of young red soldiers, we will destroy this racist capitalist system forever. This future starts now at CVS and everywhere.
The PLP comrade who leads the group recently asked the workers their choice of topics. "Mix it up!" he was told. So the last discussion was about the world situation, the struggle against Workfare at Jefferson Hospital, and Section One of the Party's political economy pamphlet.
Kathy's statement about the slavery of the working class came when we were discussing earlier class societies, like slavery and feudalism. That led us to realize how we're all wage slaves now. "Yeah, the boss has his way with us," said Bill, "and he knows it." This led to discussing Workfare, how it was a deeper form of capitalist slavery--what PLP describes as fascism.
The Jefferson bosses told the 1199C hospital workers union delegates that 10 Workfare workers will be doing union jobs, and paid $5.15 an hour for a 25-hour workweek. They will be considered "employees" of Philadelphia at Work--the organization administering this part of Workfare.
Philadelphia at Work is the creation of a Philadelphia "civic" organization called the Private Industry Council (PIC). PIC oversees Workfare for Philadelphia. PIC's members include various bankers, politicians, and--surprise!--our own union leader, Henry Nicholas.
This helps to explain why President Nicholas attacked the Jefferson delegates at the January citywide delegate meeting. "Some people oppose Workfare just for ideological reasons!" he declared. "The welfare recipients have no choice, the government's making them do this!"
Unfortunately the union delegates missed the chance to point out to Nicholas that it was his friend Bill Clinton who signed the "Welfare Reform Act" into law--the same Clinton who Nicholas wanted us to pray for at Jesse Jackson's anti-impeachment prayer vigil in December while Clinton was bombing Iraqi workers! Analyzing mistakes like this will help the delegates and the workers learn how to better fight this struggle inside the union.
The fight against Workfare is just beginning and the workers and comrades involved in it have much to learn. Yet even this modest fight-back has stirred up other things. Union delegates who were cynical and inactive are getting involved in this fight, which can involve still more workers. Other delegates, very busy with the "day-to-day" fight of union grievances, are now more sharply confronted with the idea that the "big picture" is most important--a long-standing struggle between PLP members and these honest fighters for the workers.
Workfare slavery at Jefferson also makes the Party's ideas more immediate to the workers. More workers are interested in Party discussion groups. These discussion groups can become PL clubs, especially if the workers in them are involved in class struggle.
At least once during every discussion group, the worker Kathy always asks, "What can we do?" In the past we weren't very good at presenting a clear idea of how they could build the Party and fight the bosses. But now our struggle with Kathy is bearing fruit. She's ready to go, distributing Challenge and May Day tickets to six workers. With a few more "Kathys," PLP could double or triple our size by May Day!
The earthquake immediately exacerbated the already sharp contradictions here where the drug cartels and the paramilitary death squads have murdered thousands in the last few years.
The quake paralyzed the local civilian and police authorities in Armenia. The police headquarters collapsed, and many cops, including members of the hated secret police, were buried alive. This, along the total impotence of the civilian governments, meant that masses of people could take control of the city for several days. A social earthquake, brewing for years, shook the city and the masses took over. In a desperate situation large numbers of people took desperate actions, sometimes behaving in a conscious way ignoring the old social order, its money, private property, authorities and the old array of social laws the bourgeoisie use to keep workers and their allies down.
The rulers had to bring out their ideological weapons to control the masses. Priests, preachers and others were brought in to stop the angry masses. Finally, the army was sent to Armenia to do their real job, to protect the bourgeoisie from the people.
Finally, very little of the international aid (including that collected by Colombian immigrants and other workers in the U.S.) is reaching the victims, just as the victims of the Hurricanes George and Mitch have gotten very little of the aid sent to them after being ravaged in the Caribbean and Central America.
As we in PLP have said so many times, capitalism is the worst disaster for workers and their families. We need to fight for a workers' led communist society, where workers' needs are met above all, where we can use all the technology available to build houses that can withstand these natural phenomena. Join with us in the PLP to bury the bosses once and for all!
There is no honor among thieves and traitors. Showing his true colors, Villalobos has become a stool pigeon, the lowest form of human life after a scab and a boss. To regular readers of Challenge-Desafío, this should be no surprise. Before they openly sold out, the true nature of these guerrilla commanders had been exposed by PLP based on our analysis that they weren't real revolutionaries, but nationalists fighting for a bigger piece of the capitalist pie.
As soon as the FMLN signed a peace deal with the government a few years ago, Villalobos and his Party of the Salvadoran Revolution split from the FMLN after losing a power struggle for control. Their basic disagreement was over which group of bosses and imperialists they should suck up to. Villalobos leaned more towards the U.S. while Shafik Handil was more pro-European. Villalobos is also being accused of being part of a rightwing plan to destroy the FMLN, now one of the leading opposition electoral parties. This plan is led by former President Cristiani and his reactionary Arena Party and the current Minister of Public Safety, Hugo Barrera.
Obviously, whether Shafik was behind these kidnappings even after signing a peace deal is not the important thing in this struggle. After all, Villalobos' group was one of the first to use kidnapping to raise money and kill some members of the bourgeoisie. We in PLP must make workers understand that this is just part of the power struggle between different sections of the bourgeoisie, just as the impeachment trial of Clinton in the U.S. is, and as some governors in Brazil are now refusing to pay their debt to the federal government there. In this day and age of worldwide capitalist crisis, the dogfights among the bosses and their lackeys are getting sharper and sharper.
PLP communists also have to struggle with some of our friends who are in the rank-and-file of the FMLN to see that alliances with any bourgeoisie or any imperialists are deadly for workers. The bosses use us workers as pawns in their struggles for their right to be Numero Uno in exploiting and killing us. The only solution is to join PLP and build it into a mass Party capable of doing away with the rulers and their stool pigeons--to build a society based on workers' power, communism.
Giving Elia Kazan a lifetime achievement award is not very different from showing the paintings of Adolf Hitler and calling them great. The reality is, the better their art, the worse it is since that skill reaches and influences people! Further, their other "achievements" (informer. scab, ruiner of lives, etc.) by comparison becomes reduced in people's eyes.
Kazan's ultimate lifetime achievement specifically glorified one thing: Friends and comrades mean nothing, and selling them out is an admirable deed.
The informers have denied this motive for years, but Marlon Brando, who won the Academy Award for his role in On The Waterfront has defined the movie as a glorification and justification of informers. He has repeatedly said he was wrong to have been in it and that this was probably the biggest mistake of his life. Brando's no communist, but his self-criticism elevates him way above an actor's "lifetime achievement."
On The Waterfront will be remembered before almost any other of Kazan's movies. It was made in 1954 at the height of the McCarthy era. Many of the principals involved in the movie were ex-Communists who--under the threat of losing their careers to the blacklist--informed on people who trusted them in a great fight, whatever mistakes may have been made.
Waterfront was a justification of being a stool pigeon. It tells the story of a corrupt longshoreman's union which comes under attack by the government. (It was no coincidence that this union, like the Teamsters a few years later was powerful and could easily shut down movement in the country. There was no similar indignation over one of the most corrupt unions ever, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. ILGWU goons regularly beat up wildcat strikers, to the applause of the government and the press.)
Now we're asked to honor the Maestro of informers, Elia Kazan!
Two years before he made Waterfront, Kazan filmed the anti-communist liberal Viva Zapata (also with Brando) in which the Mexican peasant revolutionary is favorably contrasted to a so-called communist.
Kazan directed Waterfront, Budd Shulberg wrote it and one of the principal actors in it was Lee J. Cobb--all self-justifying informers. Almost all the press and Hollywood raved about the movie--it was awarded a sweep of Academy Awards that year. Cobb apparently regretted his role and later vaguely attempted to atone. It was too late. Like Kazan, he had chosen to define himself in the ranks of the most despicable of humans--the betrayer.
In fact, Arthur Miller, then a leftist of sorts, wrote A View From The Bridge as a specific reply to Waterfront. In A View the informer is killed by friends of the informer's victim, a traditional, accepted and deserved fate for such rat bastards. Kazan's life was a "success"--he made a lot of money for himself and Hollywood.. But his reputation was poison to any decent person. Any movement to redeem Kazan for his "artistic achievement" has until now failed.
Why? This is not merely an intellectual squabble where the good guys finished last. Thousands and thousands of actors, directors, writers, and technical workers' lives and livelihoods and craft were destroyed by people like Kazan.
And never forget that teachers, artists, workers of all sorts also fell victim to this capitalist onslaught of witchhunts that after World War II was helping establish U.S. imperialism worldwide. The leading force in this was by no means McCarthy. It was started by the "great" liberal Democratic Party under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and fully blossomed under that other "great" liberal leader of the Democratic Party, Harry Truman. Although Waterfront was a successful major motion picture glorifying informers, it was not the first. It is interesting to note that the first film in which an informer was a hero was Kiss of Death, made in 1947 just at the beginning of the Cold War. This was not only part of the move to push the communists and their working class influence out of Hollywood. It was also part of the attack on the then communist leadership of the labor movement and help lay the groundwork for their ouster from the basic industries. A crucial component of U.S. capitalism's ability to wage war. This also allowed the ruling class to wage ideological warfare against communism. Anti-communist movies were rampant during this period.
Being a stool pigeon was not just some individual's weakness. Informing flowered with the encouragement and endowment of the most powerful social forces. What Kazan and his group of prostitutes did was to even further justify their crime, and try to get recruits.
This special lifetime award is the declared triumph of a fascist U.S. ideology that was never repealed even though a few people eventually won a court cast here, a reinstatement of their jobs. The award affirms this fascist ideology.
The late actor and communist sympathizer Zero Mostel later told an interviewer, "They say we should forgive and forget." He paused and from the memories of all the sanctimonious betrayals said, "I won't forget."
Fifty years later many of the victims of that awful era are dead or too old to continue the fight against one of the most infamous anti-communist periods of U.S. history. Now is the time when the fascist elements of Hollywood and the U.S. want to continue onto ultimate triumph.
But there are those of us still here who remember. We also won't forget or forgive. And we're recruiting.
The figure of 66 million is utter nonsense, of course. PLP has written extensively about the capitalist attack on Stalin before (most of these articles can be found on our Web page, http://www.plp.org). Bourgeois, anti-communist researchers have long since disproved these fantastic numbers of casualties.
But why do capitalist writers keep on spreading these lies? And why do so many people in Russia admire Stalin so much?
Capitalism causes tremendous suffering, poverty and misery for literally billions of workers around the world, and for tens of millions of others, including "middle classes," too. Now, capitalists try to teach us that this world of misery is `the best of all possible worlds.' Their best shot at getting us to swallow this fairy tale is to try to argue that the only alternative--communism, rule by the working class, the abolition of exploitation--is even worse!
To do this, of course, they have to lie--there is no other way! Lies about Stalin and the Soviet Union during his time are one of the main ways the bourgeoisie tries to convince us not to fight for communism.
As for Russia, millions of workers know well that under Stalin--the "dictatorship of the working class" as best the Bolsheviks knew how to make it--the working class was in control; inequality was greatly reduced, though not ended; unemployment was eliminated, and scarcity shared by all. To put it bluntly: it was a far better time for most than today!
We in PLP are proud of saying we are building our movement "on the shoulders of giants." Learning from their achievements and mistakes. Unlike the bourgeoisie, however, we have a different goal: to learn to do it better the next time. Unlike the exploiters, we have no reason to lie, no "vested interests" to defend. As Marx understood, the working class "has nothing to lose but its chains."
It is futile and impossible to judge a political leader or a society, accurately without taking a class viewpoint. Stalin and the Bolsheviks fought ferociously for the working class around the world, including leading the Red Army that crushed Hitler's war machine. Stalin was on our side. The "best" of capitalist reformers is always on the exploiters' and murderers' side. They are in another category altogether.
The "denigration"--attacks to slander Stalin and make him and, by extension, communism itself--looks bad, has a long history. We predict it will never stop until the last capitalist draws his last breath.
Stalin gave the capitalists of his day a lot to worry about. He still does! PLP, in its short history, has been attacked and slandered many times by the bosses and their apologists. The more we do to destroy their rotten system, the bigger the attacks and lies they will use against us. We are proud of this, since it means we are doing something right.
I am writing about the senseless killing of a high school student in Brooklyn, NY named Michael Bennett. He was beaten to death by members of an opposing basketball team run by the Jackie Robinson Youth Center. After a heated game, where young Bennett was the lead scorer, a fight broke out which continued into the neighborhood.
PLP teachers and students are active in the neighborhood where young Bennett was killed. We are raising money for flowers from different union groups and sending telegrams of support to the family. We are urging our friends and co-workers not only to condemn this crime, but also to understand why competition in sports is such poison for the working class.
In discussing what happened, it's clear that parents and other adults involved in sports' leagues know about the "frenzy" that is part of many teams and games. In fact, entire teams have been disqualified from leagues because of the "bad behavior" of the parents. Violence has broken out at many games all over the country when parents don't approve of the scoring or the calls by the referees. Capitalist competition ruins these sports by destroying the enjoyment of them and training us to think about winning as the most important thing. Even the youngest soccer players learn to spit on their hands before they shake hands with the opposing team!
My co-workers and I were outraged about this horrible death. We had many questions, especially-where were the adults needed to supervise these young people? The New York Times says there was one security guard present and clearly states that the dispute began in the center. The Board of Education paid for the funeral, which is almost unheard of. We also discussed the fact that sports and recreation programs have been cut all over the city and both the state and city budgets will be slashed again.
According to The New Yorker (2/8) in 1981 alone the number of youth sent to prison jumped 113% in Cook County, which is representative of the entire country. Jailing youth is not the solution--building a society based on the needs and aspirations of workers is! Join PLP.
Brooklyn Red Teacher
I am a junior at CVCA (Chicago Vocational Career Academy) High School in Chicago. In my fourth period Spanish class my teacher and I got into an argument about the meetings that another teacher at my school was arranging. The Spanish teacher said that it is wrong to force a child into joining with the communists. When I heard the things that she was saying I couldn't believe it. I said, "She isn't forcing any of us to do anything. She talks to different students about communism and if they are interested then she comes and talks to their parents about it."
Then my Spanish teacher said what if she was for child pornography and she tried to get her students to be involved also. I said, "That is totally different. For one thing, child pornography is illegal and harmful, it's not trying to fight for something that's right."
Then she brought up another point, that in the Bible it says that you are supposed to follow whoever is over you. "But," I told her, "not when they're treating you wrong or telling you the wrong thing!"
In my opinion I would like to say that through life you are going to be introduced to many things and either you'll say yes or no. If you don't know what something's about, then don't try to place an opinion. And if you don't want to be involved with something, then don't, but keep your mouth shut.
CVCA Student
I appreciated the article from Chicago about the struggle against the CASE test. Testing, standards, peer review, are all part of the latest school-centered attack around the country, and it's good that we're fighting them, and writing about it for Challenge. We are involved in a similar campaign in Los Angeles against the Stanford 9 test.
The ruling class has made education their issue. They take the honest concern of parents and teachers over the dismal failure of capitalist education and turn it into a bigger and broader attack on youth and children. They plan to have a more tightly controlled national school system, with teachers helping to fire teachers who don't toe the line, and tests to make sure that the correct lies are being taught. They use the honest concern of parents and teachers to win them to this fascist plan.
As we fight these tests, we always have to acknowledge that we do take seriously the concern that parents and teachers have about the failure of capitalist education. We can't just say that tests stack the deck against working class and black and Latin students and that we should fight the tests. We can neither have nostalgia for the '60s and '70s liberal multi-cultural reforms which ended up dumbing down education, nor for the back-to-basics '50s when open racism, anti-communism and flunking out the working class was the norm.
Working class children and youth want to learn the truth about how things work. It is our responsibility, in the classroom and within the Party both to teach them to understand the world, and how to change it. Working class youth can learn to read and analyze the bosses' lies--compute the bosses' profits off our labor--learn the truth about the history of our class, and the potential of our class to rule the world. Teachers in the Party can help teach them to do that. Then these youth can help teach all of us how to change the world!
LA Teacher
A health care worker wrote a letter to a comrade in which she took it for granted that everyone would agree that violence was always bad. The comrade sent back a reply which I think everyone would benefit from reading (though I have paraphrased it)
Violence is not a thing. It's lots of things, in different situations. The violence committed by rebelling slaves or the Union Army during the Civil War was not the same as the violence of the plantation master, fatally flogging a black field worker whom he held as chattel. On one level of abstraction they are both violence, but a deeper examination is necessary to decide on the proper attitude to hold towards it.
As a different example, if I boil tea on the stove I am using fire, and if my house burns down it is also from fire. But my attitude towards fire is completely different in these two situations. In fact the very use of the word "violence" connotes much more than some sterile physics definition. The word carries with it the concepts "bad," "anti-social," "danger to me," etc.--a whole series of negative associations. That's why the media, textbooks, and politicians reserve the word "violence" for, say, what youth do in oppressed communities, but never use the word "violence" for what police do when they kill youth. The police are said to be "keeping the peace" or "enforcing the law." Anything but "violence."
Or the word "violence" is never used for what the military does when it drops bombs on Iraqi citizens, killing them, and destroying their homes and hospitals. The military is said to be "defending against weapons of mass destruction," or "defending the national interest."
Just as with fire, violence can be put to good use in some situations and bad use in others. And which is which depends on your point of view. In particular, when it comes to violence it depends on your class point of view. From the point of view of the working class, violence used by bosses to keep workers in line is bad, and violence used to defend workers or to overthrow the power of the bosses is good. The opposite is, of course, the point of view of the bosses, and they don't even use the word violence for what they do to keep workers in line.
So just as it would be self-defeating for us to reject all use of fire simply because it can burn down your house, so is it self-defeating for us to reject all use of violence just because it is often associated with our oppression?
Comrade Who Knows A Good Argument When He Sees One
Challenge (2/3) contains a good article about how the "economic miracle" in the U.S. is based on the increasing use of unpaid labor power, prison labor, Workfare, and other schemes to lower our wages. But the article is marred by a confusing explanation of surplus value.
The key to the confusion is that the article says, "capitalist profit is based on stealing." This is wrong. Under capitalism, commodities, including our labor power (our energy, strength, intelligence, generally our ability to labor), exchange at their value; the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labor required for its production. So when we sell our labor power to the bosses, they purchase it at its value, what it costs to sustain us and our families. But then the bosses use our labor power: they put us to work laboring. In laboring we create more value than the value of our labor power, and that value belongs to the capitalist as surplus value, the source of their profits.
This is not stealing or theft, not even legalized theft. It is the very essence of capitalism. Each society defines its own rules, including rules of property and theft. What they do is not theft. It is the taking of surplus value by the rules of the game. After all, it is their game.
Is this more than a verbal point? I think so. Marx argued against his contemporaries' demand for justice (an end to stealing!) on just the grounds I gave above. I am sure that the writers of the article are clear that the problem is capitalism. But we should avoid the opportunist rhetoric of stealing and theft, which may mislead workers into thinking we want justice. We don't want justice; we want communism.
The article makes the further point that in crisis they do not even adhere to the ordinary rules of capitalist exploitation, but bend and break their own rules to make ever greater profits.
Chicago Reader
This is in response to a letter in a recent issue of Challenge concerning the so-called victory march in Madison, Wisconsin to celebrate the fact that the Klan did not show up. I would have to agree with the author of this letter that it probably had nothing to do with the fact that there were counter-demonstrators prepared to protest them.
Basically, the liberal position on the Klan out in the hills of the coal country has always been to tell people to ignore them or hold prayer services or have a rally at another location featuring preachers, local politicians, and union head honchos. All of the rallies are organized by one woman who heads the state Unity Coalitions and she comes in and hand picks the speakers. Personally, I think that she is on the bosses' payroll.
But when the Klan came to my area in March, 1989, we held a militant counter-demonstration at the site where the Klan gathered and we had more people than the Liberal rally held at a school. Yet, for the most part, the Klan is made up of poor whites who feel alienated and are given a simplistic answer and a feeling of belonging and power by the Klan. This does not mean that I am apologizing for them. Certainly, the working class must be mobilized to smash them. But my point is this. The Klan is a product of the class divided, racist capitalist system. It is easy for the liberal Unity Coalition types to take a stand against the Klan, but the real point is that it is the capitalist system and its increasingly police state regime that is more dangerous than the Klan. Let's face it. The Klan didn't bomb Iraq. The Klan didn't pass the Welfare Reform Bill. The Klan isn't getting rich building prison after prison. The Klan doesn't move factories to low wage countries to exploit the workers there. The Klan exists to terrorize for the bosses and divide the working class, of course. But who is really the main terrorist? I think that most readers know the answer to this question, and we know it isn't some clown dressed up like a nun and spouting racist garbage that he heard from his Grand Dragshithead. Most of them either wear nice blue uniforms or three piece expensive suits.
Red Rocker