Our party focused on the auto, steel and aerospace industries last summer. Basic industry, we reasoned, was crucial to the US bosses' strategy to maintain their empire with fascism and war in these times of crisis. Rockefeller & Co. didn't stand a chance of dominating its domestic and international rivals without the allegiance of workers in basic industry. Similarly, for us, communist revolution was impossible without a solid base in this key section of the working class.
Contracts in all three of these industries expired within a month of each other, at summer's end. We thought last summer was an opportunity to expand our forces as the contract battles revealed the contradictions of capitalism.
Our club gave the party a passing grade for the summer project in basic industry. We did greatly expand our literature distribution. We grew modestly. We raised the revolutionary alternative among many thousands of workers in basic industry. More workers than we thought possible welcomed our ideas.
In essence, the union leaderships are committed to deliver us into the hands of the capitalists. Rather than fight for jobs for our class, the unions have turned the battle into a call for "job security." That means thinking about your own job only. Inevitably that means job security for fewer and fewer workers.
All the contracts contain language equating job security with support for our bosses against competing bosses. In the final analysis, the union's definition of job security means supporting the Rockefeller gang's imperialist war adventures. Reform leaders and organizations must inevitably support imperialism because they can't conceive or want an alternative outside the system.
It's problematic whether we could have won workers to strike, even if we had more clearly aimed at the enemy within our ranks. We would have, however, been better prepared to recruit even more to the party.
Like the comrade said, "We won't make that mistake again!"
In a world where the capacity exists to make far more steel, autos and commercial planes than the market can possibly buy, labor contracts are manipulated to give the bosses a free hand to cut the workforce. Yet, at the same time as trade wars threaten real wars, the main job of the union leaders is to win, or buy the allegiance of, the strategically key workers in the war industries. The unions have a difficult job. PLP's job is to win workers to break with the bosses' plans for war and fascism, fighting instead for workers' power and communism.
The deal "has not caused Detroit [bosses] to panic about soaring costs or plummeting competitiveness; the accord gives DaimlerChrysler considerable leeway to increase its productivity by reducing its workforce through attrition. The U.A.W.'s 1996 contracts placed harsh restrictions on the Big Three's ability to cut employment at many factories by more than 5 percent, except in the case of recession...Because of the opportunities this agreement creates for DaimlerChrysler to get leaner, the corporation will be able to increase productivity and profitability." (New York Times, 9/23/99)
Maxxam, Inc., a Houston-based holding company, owns Kaiser Aluminum. Maxxam was started with money from MCO, a domestic oil exploration business run by Charles Hurwitz. Hurwitz, now Maxxam's CEO, shows no signs of wanting to take the USW on as a junior partner.
Hurwitz has a strained relationship--at best--with the Rockefeller Eastern Establishment. He's been sued by almost all arms of state power under Rockefeller control. In the 1970s, Hurwitz had to plead "no contest" before the Securities and Exchange Commission for illegal stock market dealings. Next, he admitted looting Summit Insurance for $400,000 before the Superintendent of Insurance Of New York. Later, the FDIC sued him to recoup $1.6 billion in losses from a failed Texas Savings & Loan. He acquired Pacific Lumber and Kaiser Aluminum with junk bonds arranged by convicted Wall Street swindlers Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky.
Hurwitz doesn't have an imperialist empire to defend. He's strictly slash and burn; take the money and run. Hurwitz's first sin is not cutting the Rockefeller mob in on the action. Even worse, from the biggest imperialist's point of view, he threatens to upset the whole apple cart.
It's not that Rockefeller & Co. aren't even bigger swindlers; it's that Hurwitz makes it harder for the union leaders to play their appointed roles. The union leaders hate Hurwitz because he makes it impossible to deliver workers' allegiance to the biggest imperialists in exchange for some chump change for a few senior employees.
This group is the core of activists that remains from a coalition of hospital workers and janitors who challenged the leadership of SEIU Local 399 four years ago and won 21 of 24 union positions. But before these workers could walk into the union office, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney put the local into receivership and installed Mike Garcia, one of his thugs from a San Jose local, as president. As a construction worker in the Alliance said, "For the bosses [and Sweeney certainly serves them], their democracy begins where the workers' ends."
These workers will be demonstrating outside the convention center against Sweeney & Co. But why are they demanding "union democracy" and one man, one vote in union elections? It's because some of them believe they could become the honest leadership of their union in place of the rotten misleaders installed by Sweeney.
A number of illusions--about democracy and about making capitalist unions serve the working class through honest leadership--persist among some workers. One vocal member of the group suggested that five Alliance members present a letter to Al Gore at the labor convention, informing him of events in the local. This was rejected by most. But it shows how honest workers, lacking a clear communist alternative, can be driven to desperation by illusions in capitalist democracy. Such workers end up presenting a letter to a bosses' politician who is organizing the spread of prison slave labor here and imperialist invasions abroad, in Kosovo, Iraq and Colombia.
Some activists have begun to counter the dead end of these illusions by explaining and exposing how U.S. unions are always a capitalist tool for organizing workers to cast their lot with the Democratic Party.
Someone pointed out that the Democrats picked a latin woman, Lydia Camarillo, as the figurehead leader of the Democratic National Convention in LA in 2000. She ran the Southwest Voter Registration Project, the nation's largest. An LA Times article describes her as the latina face beaming out the message that the Democrats are "the party of diversity."
The Rockefeller wing of the U.S. bosses are building a cadre of loyal latino and black politicians who will fight for their outlook and empire and deliver the workers into the arms of fascism. LA is the focus of the Democrats and their capitalist base-builders, the AFL-CIO union leaders. Their chief function here is to win workers to vote in next year's election for the Democrats and their imperialist foreign policy that is leading to war abroad and fascism in the U.S. Once the 2000 election is over, it will be adios to all the Democrats' promises made to workers.
The so-called latino wave of political power and equality of opportunity is increasingly becoming the "opportunity" to send their sons and daughters into the U.S. army to fight for Exxon and Rockefeller's oil in Colombia, Venezuela, Kosovo or Iraq.
Meetings with workers have included exposure of the real meaning of democracy: "freedom" to decide who among us will be laid off, freedom to "vote" for a pay cut or to move a plant across the border, or freedom to decide which brand of fascism will be imposed on us. Capitalist democracy is the rule of the bosses over workers.
The illusions of democracy and union reform politics will draw honest workers into what the bosses labeled World War I: "a war to make the world safe for Democracy." Under any Democrat (or Republican, for that matter), it will become a war to make the world safe for Exxon-Mobil's oil profits. The workers' only real alternative is joining and building a mass PLP to fight for workers' power--communism. This is the main guarantee of workers' victory.
These kinds of struggles and confrontations are constant in the garment industry. On the one hand, the bosses try to squeeze the last penny out of the workers. On the other hand, the workers try to survive and resist the continuous lowering of wages. That's class struggle. A huge number of the more than 100,000 garment workers here earn less than the minimum wage.
Even though the bosses' own law says they must pay the minimum, along with other small improvements, the reality is that these factories are a battleground every day. The extent they cut wages isn't determined by the law or by which politicians are in office but by the workers' strength and unity and their fight to keep food on the table until the next attack. PLP members are aiming to win workers to see that the goal of these struggles is abolition of the system of wage slavery altogether.
The AFL-CIO says it wants to launch an organizing campaign among migrant workers in hotels, restaurants, garment and other industries. Supposedly they'll do this through unions, churches and community organizations. But the essence of the campaign is not to end slave labor conditions, or the fight to end wage slavery itself. The essence is to win immigrant workers to rely on politicians, to vote for the Democrats in 2000, and to send their children into the army to fight and die for the bosses' profits.
The US bosses here, led by the liberal Rockefeller wing, are using latino politicians like Antonio Villaraigosa, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and California Assemblyman Gilbert Cedillo to win latin workers to support the Democrats and their layoffs, police terror, border patrol and imperialist wars. The Democrats are the cutting edge in building fascism, and winning U.S. workers to accept it. All these politicians, along with AFL-CIO head Sweeney, supported the bombing of Kosovo for control of oil and oil pipelines. They all support the continued bombing and sanctions against Iraq, which has resulted in the deaths of over one million people.
Garment workers, and all workers, shouldn't rely on the politicians, whether they are latin, black or white. The latter's job is to defend the interests of the bosses, not the workers. As the bosses prepare to attack us more and to launch more wars, the job of the AFL-CIO leadership is to lead us down the path of fighting for tiny reforms, and blind us to what's happening all around us.
Our strength depends on organizing against every attack--in the factories, schools, churches or mass organizations--in order to expose the capitalist system, to show that it cannot be reformed to meet the needs of the workers. It must be destroyed with communist revolution.
We are fighting to build larger Challenge networks, along with groups inside the factories to organize the workers to confront the bosses. Challenge is our key weapon in exposing the truth behind the illusions built by the liberals. The Democrats and the AFL-CIO leadership want to lead workers into the dead end of supporting capitalism and fascism. PLP is fighting to end exploitation and fascism. We're fighting for a world without racism, wage slavery or borders--a communist world. Join us.
In recent years, thousands of students and other activists have struggled to shut down the SOA. Thousands more have demonstrated at SOA headquarters in Ft. Benning, GA, with many eventually serving prison time.
Currently, some forces within the main liberal, Rockefeller wing of the ruling class (e.g., Congressman Joe Kennedy) are backing the movement to close the SOA to improve the U.S. bosses' image among Latin workers. SOA is not as useful anymore to U.S. imperialism. Students struggling against the SOA must realize that Rockefeller & Co. are the biggest imperialists and fascists of all!
Just before the forum, we passed out PLP leaflets supporting the Univ. Of Mexico student strike to just about everyone. We also distributed Challenges.
During a discussion following an anti-SOA video, we exposed the humanitarian hypocrisy of the army Major narrator for having been part of the U.S. bosses' genocidal war in Vietnam. We explained that U.S. capitalism needs racism and fascist terror in the U.S., Mexico and throughout the world. We concluded by declaring our aim to smash the profit system that needs such horrors and invited the students to join us in fighting for communism.
Nowhere did the moderators contest what we said, let alone attack us. However, we failed to directly challenge the virulent anti-communism of the anti-SOA video which said the SOA was "necessary" and "good" in the fight against communism but that with the Cold War over, it is wrong to continue supporting it. We also could have better planned our presence in order to meet more students. Despite these problems, our action was primarily a success, both for what we did and for convincing one BU PLP student to stay involved with the student group sponsoring the forum.
At a campus rally here last Wednesday, students voiced their outrage at Badillo. One gave a very passionate speech about the need to stand up and fight against racists like Badillo. But her solution was to vote. She blamed other students for allowing Badillo's appointment because they didn't vote for someone else--a very dangerous idea. This student has enormous anger towards this system's inequality and racism, but she blames members of her own class for these problems.
During the rally, a PLP'er described the long history of how such racists in the education system advance racist, anti-working class lies to win students to fascist ideology. In 1994, Rutgers Univ. President Francis Lawrence said black students do poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests "because of their genetic inferiority." In recent years, professors such as Gail Wasserman of Columbia University and Jeffrey Halperin of Queens College have attempted to "prove" that Latino and black children are "genetically violent."
We must stop viewing these elected officials as individuals, but rather look at the system that hires them. Universities and colleges mirror the class structure and ideas of capitalism. For the bosses to continue their rule they need to divide the working class, the better to rule us. Badillo's remarks will build racism among Latin groups as well as other workers and youth in NYC; that's exactly what the bosses ordered to maintain power.
Believing racist lies or that voting will make the system better are deadly for our class. A real education and a world free of racism can only be achieved by fighting for a Communist Revolution. The struggle at Queens College continues!
The Network's main mission is to build support for the Rockefeller wing of US imperialism among groups backing the Zapatistas and independent unionizing.
The Network also held a joint conference with a group demanding debt-cancellation for poor countries, scheduled this weekend because it coincided with a meeting of ministers from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Afterward, we attended a rally and march to the Mexican consulate, the IMF and the World Bank. Then Clinton agreed to cancel the debt--which wasn't going to be paid anyway--from 36 poor countries.
One of the main conference exhibits were some military traps dug up near the village of Amador Hernandez, Chiapas, where the Mexican military was turned back, for now, by Zapatistas supporters and UNAM strikers (see Challenge, 10/6). During the conference, the Mexican government released a statement denying the traps existed.
We heard an eloquent report on the UNAM strike by a young woman striker. She presented a history of the university and its struggles. Then she outlined the steps leading to the current strike. She criticized the neo-liberialism of the IMF and the PRI (Mexico's ruling party). She blamed the current tuition attack squarely on the IMF and the World Bank. We commended the speaker and the strikers for their courage and fight but simultaneously tried to present a clearer picture of how capitalism and imperialism was behind the Network's goals.
We described the worldwide crisis of capitalism which is fueling the US- dominated IMF actions to reduce social services and privatize state industries and institutions, squeezing workers harder and guaranteeing the bankers' imperialist profits. We reiterated that as long as capitalism, liberal or neo-liberal, exists, we will suffer fascism and war.
After the student meeting, we talked with this striker. Besides condemning the PRI, she also criticized the PRD for working within the system. She, like many of her fellow students, has been mobilized by a section of the Mexican bosses fighting for a bigger piece of the profit pie. Sparked by mass struggle, they're asking more questions about the system. Our party must be there to answer them with a communist analysis.
The student striker invited us to Mexico to meet with her and her friends to continue our support, enabling us to learn from each others' experiences. At our literature table and at the student meeting, we made dozens of contacts and had long discussions about communism and revolution, continuing at later social gatherings. These contacts also came from the debt-cancellation group, including some African and Asian countries.The main lesson we learned was: put our ideas forward to the masses and they will respond. Fight for communism!
In the mid 1960s, forces in China realized the revolution was in danger of turning capitalist. They launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) against what were called the capitalist roaders in the Party (led by President Liu Shaoqi and his ally, Deng Xiaoping). Millions of workers and youth fought against those who wanted to turn back the revolution. Young Red Guards led massive militant struggles to keep China Red. These young communist fighters inspired workers and youth all over the world with their struggle for a society free of capitalism, including us in the Progressive Labor Party. Millions worldwide joined the fight against "revisionism" (fake leftists like Krushchev and Brezhnev in Russia, Shaoqi-Xiaoping in China).
But the Red Guards' main error was to rely on Mao and the so-called Gang of Four (led by Chiang Ching, Mao's wife). While they seemed to agree with the Red Guard, in fact they fought against the most left elements of the Red Guards.
As PLP pointed out in Road to Revolution III (1971): "...Mao called for a non-violent revolution, although he accurately described the GPCR as a class struggle for state power. But Marxists-Leninists, including the left of the GPCR, know that there is no such thing as a non-violent revolution. The class struggle for state power has never been peaceful; it was not peaceful during the GPCR; and it will never be peaceful. The turning point in the GPCR came once the People's Liberation Army had been granted immunity from the revolutionary struggle. Backed by the prestige of Mao's vast authority and the power of the PLA, the opportunists were able to impose the old revisionist methods in China."
Once the Red Guards were defeated, it was just a matter of time before the capitalist roaders were to get away with the counter-revolution. When Mao died in 1976, they turned against their former allies in the Gang of Four and returned Deng Xiaoping to power. Deng began dismantling the commune system and opened the doors for imperialist investment (and the super-exploitation of Chinese workers).
The roots of this counter-revolution goes back to 1949 when the Communists took power under the idea of "New Democracy." This basically meant the communists would help the national bourgeosie to develop. A recent article in Current History (Sept. 1999) puts it very clearly:
"From the perspectives of the present, it would be reasonable to conclude that the Chinese Communist revolution was essentially a bourgeois revolution that laid the foundation for the growth of a dynamic capitalist system. Such a conclusion would be disappointing to those who believed, or at least hoped, that the revolution would fulfill its socialist promises."
We in PLP have learned a lot from the mistakes made by the communists in China. We not only rejected the line of New Democracy, but now realize that socialism contains too many remnants of capitalism (like a wage system). Historically, the communist movement young; it's been around for barely a century. Capitalism has existed for 500 years. Workers and their allies internationally will learn the lesson that the only way to free ourselves of this living hell of wars, fascist terror, mass unemployment, etc. is by fighting for nothing less than communism.
Joerg Haider, the Führer of the Liberal Party, is an open fascist. He combines populism (presenting himself as a friend of the workers) with xenophobia (vicious attacks against immigrants). Haider has praised Hitler's "jobs-for-Germans" policies and called the Waffen SS murderers "men of great character who we must pay homage to."
Haider is such a neo-Nazi that Yedio Ajronot, an Israeli newspaper, put it this way: "One of every four Austrians voted for a neo-Nazi...[Austria] has no memory" of its Nazi past.
In the U.S., Patrick Buchanan, whose views mirrors Haider, is causing stir with his new book, A Republic, Not an Empire. He says the U.S. should have stayed out of World War II since Hitler was not a threat to it. Buchanan, like Haider, represents capitalist interests having tactical differences with the main section of the ruling class.
Just as Haider is an enemy of the Austian Social-Democrats, the leading ruling bosses' party there since World War II, Buchanan is supported by capitalist forces (like the racist textile billionaire Milliken) opposed to the Rockefeller/Exxon-led Eastern Establishment. As a matter of fact, Buchanan's isolationist position about WWII in reality reflects his opposition (along with those capitalists who support him) to the Eastern Establishment-controlled foreign policy. The latter is based on imperialist war to protect Exxon & Co.'s profits and control of oil in the Middle East and elsewhere.
We in PLP say that, in spite of their tactical differences, all rulers are enemies of the working class. They will all use fascism and war to defend their interests. And workers all over the world will pay with our blood. Workers must finish what the communist-led Red Army started during World War II: crush the Nazis and the entire capitalist system, turning the guns around and fighting for workers' power: communism.
On Saturday Oct. 3, the Chicago PLP youth were a force to be reckoned with. On the downtown Circle campus of the Univ. of Illinois, there was a first annual event called YC (Youth Summit) 99, and PL was in the house, calling students and workers to the Challenge tables. At the YC there were workshops on topics ranging from Police Brutality to Economics of Criminalization. PL came ready for battle, armed with hundreds of Challenges, and Road To Revolution IV pamphlets. We set up the tables and went into the opening meeting.
There were 500 students and workers present. Unfortunately the "piece-of-the-capitalist-pie" nationalist members of the Nation of Islam smeared the lecture halls with their presence, spreading their racists lies and deception to the working class. But the true force of communism proved to be stronger than any of the bosses' little pawns.
All the workshops were in question and answer form, and that's all PL needed to slam the door of reform closed. The Police Brutality workshop was filled with students and workers looking for ways to stop all the racist murders and beatings that the police inflict on the working class daily. The chairperson wanted us to remember the badge numbers of crooked cops, join CAPS (Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy) and take time to learn our "constitutional rights." Students in the audience quickly shot down those worn-out ideas. We knew the students didn't like them--many fell asleep or walked out.
We in PL had been silent much too long; it was time to put the bosses' reformist friends in check! Students suddenly woke up to listen to words of revolution. There were standing ovations every time PL members spoke. The students and workers finally heard the truth. Many knew that only revolution was the key. One student stood up and said, "Reform is for the birds, we need revolution!"
Throughout the day workers stopped to talk with us. Many engaged in political debates on capitalism vs. communism. Today was not just a win for the Party; it was a win for the workers.
Red Alert 99
This is an "apb" [all points bulletin] to all members/friends of PLP from the youth section in Brooklyn. Our high school history courses will follow this basic outline in the coming months:
Global History III: October: French Revolution/rise of capitalism; November: nineteenth century/development of imperialism; December: Turn of the century/1905 revolution in Russia.
U.S. History I: October: American Revolution/slavery; November: Early nineteenth century America/genocide of Indians and slavery; December: Growth of the industrial North.
Any articles which will help us raise communist ideas in class will be greatly appreciated. Please stay tuned to the letters page as some of the finer points raised in class may need to be fleshed out. Many thanks.
Red Youth in Brooklyn
"It's not fascist, it's capitalist. Capitalism is responsible." I attend Cal State University of Los Angeles and the above quote was from a student involved in a discussion among six students during a class break. I was wearing an anti-prison labor button and was asked what it meant.
"Prison labor is one of the fastest growing industries in the U.S. and is providing a major profit motive to jail more and more working class people as a captive slave-labor workforce. It's just like the fascist program Hitler had."
That was when my classmate--a year-long reader of Challenge--made the remark quoted above. All six of us discussed what fascism is, if in fact we live in a fascist country and the severity of police killings and brutality.
The conversation quickly became heated as we talked about the recent high level of publicity given to the LAPD cover-ups, murders and torture. Students shared personal experiences they had with police brutality, which added to our collective understanding that the police serve a clear role under capitalism: "protecting and serving" the system.
In fact, one of the students, who also teaches in LA, linked the rise of prison labor, Workfare and police terror to the capitalist system. He received Challenge enthusiastically.
The conversation then touched on the role of the state, why nationalism is poison for the working class and the important role students can play in fighting capitalism's attacks. This discussion made me more confident that students are open to communist ideas and the ultimate aim of revolution. I just need to be bolder in advancing these ideas. My limited practice has proven that on college campuses students are seeking analyses of the world situation and are open to an international movement that is fighting for the interests of the working class.
Seven Challenges were distributed in class. I look forward to deepening my political ties with my classmates. We can make this class and our school a battleground to win students to the urgent need to fight capitalism.
LA Comrade
The recent revelations that, in the 1950s, the U.S. army carried out a massacre of 200-300 Korean civilians during the Korean War were reported by the capitalist media as a "horrible aberration." During a discussion with a fellow student on my college campus we found ourselves talking about how this massacre is more likely one of thousands committed by U.S. imperialism. In fact, these military "mistakes" are actually the natural conduct of armies towards workers who suffer from wars for profit.
I showed my friend the genocidal nature of the U.S. military with an excerpt from Michael Parenti's book, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism: "In pursuit of counter-revolution and in the name of freedom, U.S. forces or U.S.-supported surrogate forces slaughtered 2,000,000 North Koreans in a three-year war; 3,000,000 Vietnamese; over 500,000 in aerial wars over Laos and Cambodia; over 1,500,000 million in Angola; over 1,000,000 in Mozambique; over 500,000 in Afghanistan; 500,000 to 1,000,000 in Indonesia; 200,000 in East Timor; 100,000 in Nicaragua (combining the Somoza and Reagan eras); over 100,000 in Guatemala (plus an additional 40,000 "disappeared"); over 700,000 In Iraq (over 600,000 children have died from starvation and disease due to the U.S. sanctions); over 60,000 in El Salvador; 30,000 in the "dirty war" of Argentina (though the government admits to only 9,000); 35,000 in Taiwan, when the Kuomintang military arrived from China; 20,000 in Chile; and many thousands in Haiti, Panama, Grenada, Brazil, South Africa, Western Sahara, Zaire, Turkey, and dozens of other countries, in what amounts to a free-market world holocaust."
It is our brother and sisters around the world who will continue to be slaughtered as long as capitalism exists.
LA Red
The flap in the Republican Party referred to in the last Challenge is not new. Buchanan's pro-Hitler position mirrors the line of the America First movement of the 1930s and 1940s. In this period, Hitler was hailed by some forces in the ruling class, notably Henry Ford and spokesman Charles Lindbergh. However, at that time the main section of the ruling class was anti-German. This was based on the strength and war victories achieved by Nazi Germany (conquering all of Central and Western Europe, except Britain) which made it the main enemy of U.S. imperialism. The Germans threatened to, at least, isolate the U.S., and possibly even conquer the world. This impelled the big U.S. bosses to belatedly unite with their enemy, the Soviet Union. (Politics makes strange bedfellows.) Both countries faced the possibility of being defeated by the German imperialists.
Today, Buchanan represents the Christian Coalition and other religious fascists as well as his principal backers, Milliken and other textile manufacturers. As the Challenge editorial points out, G.W. Bush is trying to straddle both wings of the Republican Party. Bush copped out of the criticism being heaped on Buchanan. However, Bush, like his father, is primarily an instrument of the Eastern Establishment.
Brooklyn Reader
I thought the September 29 editorial was very good.
I think our Party's efforts to analyze the many folds of the intensifying rivalry among the imperialists are extremely important to our movement. While more and more workers die in these wars for profits, the union leaders, revisionists and fake communists mislead workers to side with one group or another of the nationalists and imperialists. PLP's exposure of the real reasons for the bosses' interest in Kosovo, Colombia and East Timor help the Party stand solidly for the real interests of the working class with the call to turn nationalist and imperialist wars into a revolutionary war for communism.
I also like the editorial's appreciation of the difficulties we have in bringing these ideas into the mass movements. It's true that our job is difficult and complicated and we often take unpopular positions. But we can learn how to do it. I think that PLP's current work in the war industries, the University of Mexico strike, and the strikes in Latin America are especially important in advancing our work in these areas.
Personally I think the Party's ideas of base-building are crucial to this development. I find the Party's analytical and ideological work vital and exciting. At the same time I think our political/personal base-building with groups of workers large and small are what allows us to recruit and develop workers as well as sustain ourselves and maintain our own commitment despite difficulties. As we develop our theoretical analyses, we must also deepen our involvement in mass organizations, leading class struggle and integrating our lives with our base.
I think that our Party's continuing struggle against right opportunism will prove very challenging for our organization. But cynicism and passivity can seem like "the easy way out" to avoid dealing with the problems of this struggle if we are isolated from workers. I've had my own ups and downs throughout my years in the Party. Yet, in my experience, for all the highs and lows of the class struggle, the working class truly is like a river "that just keeps flowing." As our Party continues to fight right opportunism, it's more important than ever that we deepen our base-building and leadership of class struggle.
A Philadelphia Comrade
I must disagree with comrade "Philly Red" (in Challenge 10/6) who thought it would be pandering to support a progressive rally that was also supported by the Nation of Islam. I believe communists must try to join in any progressive (pro-worker) rally because we want to win the workers away from the capitalist ideas of racists, nationalists or anti-communists. If PLP cared about a phony "progressive image" such as the socialists mentioned in Philly Red's letter, it could never have taken the many tough, controversial, revolutionary positions in its history that alienated many "progressives" at the time but have since mostly proven to be correct.
A Comrade