This August 21 is the 235th anniversary of the start of Haitian revolution. The following is an excerpt from a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) magazine article titled “The History of Haiti,” published in 2014.

The history of Haiti provides lessons for all working people. Haiti was born of slave rebellion, and its history makes clear that slavery and racism were essential elements in the very foundation of capitalism. The working class in Haiti has also endured some of the most vicious exploitation by imperialism, both direct and indirect. Yet since Haitian workers rose up to abolish slavery in the 1790s, they have fought back with militancy — pushing for reform after reform in the effort to free themselves from exploitation. Time and again, however, these reforms have failed.

The political and economic conditions facing Haitian workers have continued to deteriorate. Gangs, weapons imported from the U.S., and assassinations have devastated the well-being of the Haitian working class. The racist attack on Haitian workers’ Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the U.S. has brought further uncertainty and pain.

This history illustrates the most important lesson for all workers: that only communism can end exploitation and put the international working class in control of all of society. It serves as a reminder that while Black workers around the world remain the most brutally exploited section of our class, the fight against racism can never be separated from the fight against capitalism and imperialism. Only a communist revolution can end this system of exploitation for good. From Haiti to the U.S., Black workers’ leadership is a crucial revolutionary force for our liberation.
This is Part I of a communist History of the Haitian Revolution. Please find Part two in the next issue of CHALLENGE.

Hispaniola and the birth of capitalism

Haiti is located on the island of Hispaniola, the island that Christopher Columbus first landed upon and claimed for Spain in 1492. Some three million Taino people lived there at that time, but within a decade disease and brutal slavery, all part of a deliberate genocide on the part of mainly Spanish Europeans, had wiped out the entire population. By 1625 the Spanish were more focused on their conquests of Mexico and Peru. French pirates took control of the western part of the island. In the eighteenth-century, this area, which the French called Saint-Domingue, became the world’s richest sugar colony, the crown jewel of the French Empire, all built on the labor of slaves imported from Africa.

By the 1790s, some 30,000 French and 20,000 mixed-race free people supervised 500,000 enslaved workers in Saint-Domingue. The death rate was so high that new Africans were constantly being imported. In fact, the majority of slaves in Saint-Domingue had been born in Africa, many in the Kongo region. There were also 5,000 or more “maroons,” former slaves living in liberated zones in the mountains and waging frequent warfare against the slave masters to maintain their independence.

Saint Domingue and other Caribbean colonies were a locus of what Marx called “primitive accumulation”—a process that included the theft of land from the population of the Americas, the enclosures that forced English workers off the commons, as well as the violent expropriation of the bodies and labor of people from Africa. 

The profits extracted from the super-exploitation of enslaved sugar workers and the trade networks that sugar production spawned (including the slave trade itself) produced vast wealth for both French merchant capitalists and British industrial capitalists. This “fearful and painful expropriation of the mass of people”—including the enslaved workers of Saint-Domingue—funded the development of manufacturing and the markets necessary for sustained industrial production and capitalist development.

The sugar plantations also provided a model of new forms of work. In fact, the enslaved workers of Saint-Domingue were among the most industrialized workers in the eighteenth-century world. They built sophisticated irrigation works, operated massive mills, and manufactured barrels and metal goods, as well as cultivating food crops for themselves and sugar for their owners. This production regime required both an elaborate division of labor and extensive organization and coordination among the work force.

The fight to destroy slavery

While school books point to the rhetoric of the American and French revolutions as inspiring struggles for freedom, the most profound fight of the 18th century came from the enslaved workers of Saint-Domingue. As the newly independent United States expanded slavery, the working class of Saint-Domingue rose up to take its freedom. In 1804, Haiti became the second independent republic in the western hemisphere, and the only country to be established as a result of a slave rebellion.

The movement that abolished slavery and led to the independence of Haiti began during the French Revolution. The French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution against the limits imposed by historic feudal privileges. The merchant capitalists of Bordeaux and Nantes, who organized the French slave trade and whose wealth was tied to Saint-Domingue, were among those most active in the initial phases of the Revolution. The bourgeoisie raised the banner of equality, which to them meant more power in the government and more power to shape trade in their favor.

The banner of equality was then taken up by Saint-Domingue’s gens de couleur, the mixed-race free people. Many of the gens de couleur were French-educated property owners, often slave-owners, who operated coffee plantations in the southern and western parts of the colony. They demanded the same rights of French citizenship that were given to other property owners, including the right to vote. These demands were initially rejected by the large white sugar planters and their allies, who saw racial divisions as key to maintaining slavery. Leaders of the gens de couleur argued that class unity (of all slave-owners) was more important than race in maintaining slavery and pointed to their role in the militias that enforced slavery.

Haitian workers choose action over debate to achieve freedom

As this debate raged, enslaved workers organized to claim their own freedom. The slave insurrection began in mid-August 1791, when 200 slave-delegates from plantations throughout the northern sugar region of Saint-Domingue met at what their owners thought was a “dinner.” Many of these delegates were slaves who worked as slave drivers, overseers, and skilled artisans on the plantations, and as such had been granted the privilege of travel to such events. This group planned for an uprising to begin later that week when owners would be in the regional capital of Cap Français (now Cap Haitian) for a political meeting.

In the third week of August, slaves rose up, killing their white owners and mill supervisors, burning sugar mills and cane fields, smashing manufacturing equipment—that is destroying all the tools of exploitation. Only their own homes and garden plots were spared. The insurrection involved men and women, African-born and creole, overseers and field workers, slaves from sugar plantations and from upland coffee plantations.

Within eight days, 184 plantations had been destroyed. By late September, 200 sugar plantations and 1200 coffee plantations had been sacked, and at least 20,000 (by some estimates 80,000) were in the insurgent camps. By 1793, insurgents had networks of communication throughout Saint-Domingue and the rest of the Caribbean.

In 1791, the demand to end of slavery was expressed in a variety of political forms. Some thought that the king of France had extended protections against the most brutal practices of the planters, and thus expressed loyalty to the king. Some used religious ceremonies to protect their rebellion, an aspect of the insurgency that became a major part of Haitian national mythology. Many—and sometimes the same people—adopted the rhetoric of the French Revolution with its call for universal rights. But the main source of success was the early organizing and the careful planning of groups of slaves from different regions, and the discipline these industrialized agricultural workers displayed as a military force during the ensuing twelve years of armed struggle.

Boston students and workers were excited to join our New York and New Jersey comrades in Newark and Brooklyn for the Summer Project 2026! Three party members, two young study group members, and a friend of the Party came. We also brought young children and a LOT of spirit!
Having childcare was critical to our involvement. We were blown away by how well-organized it was, and we can’t emphasize enough how amazing it was to see other warm, loving adults take turns entertaining, feeding, listening to, and teaching our children. Parents of the world, we need communism!

First impressions

For most of us, this was the first time interacting with the Progressive Labor Party outside of the Boston area. We were impressed and inspired to see so many young workers leading the Project, including LGBTQ, Black and brown workers. They led the way in well-organized and well-executed political activity, political struggle, and political education. A key takeaway for us was the importance of building the next generation of young party leaders. 

One friend talked about how she loved making banners for the car caravan that ended up at Delaney Hall Detention Center and canvassing in some local housing complexes. Some of our comrades live in these complexes and are building a tenant’s union and promoting the Party at the same time. We were all impressed with the overwhelmingly positive response from the tenants, most of whom took CHALLENGE, and shared their concerns and contact information. 

Lessons from the summer project

We   learned     valuable   tools   from the many purposeful activities, such as practicing making impromptu speeches at rallies (“Speech in a Pocket”) based on a wide range of scenarios, such as place, level of security, attendance, and political situation. We plan to bring this back to improve the way we sell CHALLENGE in Boston.

One of the highlights for all of us was driving through Newark, NJ in cars decked out with signs saying, “Workers of the World Unite!” and “smash ICE”. Our caravan drove slowly through neighborhoods filled with workers who heard us chant over the bullhorn: “ICE, the courts, the Ku Klux Klan, all are part of the bosses plan!” It was inspiring and validating to see how receptive workers on the street were to our message. Workers took CHALLENGES from us through our car windows and one of our study group participants boldly hopped out of her car at stoplights to give CHALLENGES to workers at bus stops.

We were also really impressed with our young NY/NJ comrades leading us through a study group on Dialectical Materialism. They made the content easily accessible.

One Boston comrade noted how impressed he was by the work of a New Jersey comrade who was building the Party in a rural conservative area where Trump signs line the road.

We left NY looking forward to participating in and bringing our friends to Summer Project 2027!

The following are quotes from individual participants: 

I learned so much! One meaningful discussion I had with other participants was how it felt hard at times to be in community with others for such long periods of time. We talked about how capitalism makes us individualistic and isolated and how Summer Projects strengthen the muscle of working collectively, a crucial skill for communists.
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I learned a new way to think about voting during our study group on the PLP vs DSA’s political lines. An experienced comrade commented on how voting trains us to look “up” to the capitalist system for help instead of looking to fellow workers. For workers to unite we need to train ourselves to look to each other for our solutions, not to the system that creates the problems.
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I learned that reform and revolution aren’t mutually exclusive. While revolution needs to be the primary focus, we should fight for reforms along the way. Involving ourselves in reform struggles gives us the opportunity to grow our party, as we will be interacting with people who believe in collective action and who have identified a contradiction of capitalism—although they might not understand it in that way. Therefore, it’s important for us to be in those spaces so we can underscore the connection between capitalism and their reform struggle.
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I would say that the entire experience was very positive for me. I was forced to get out of my comfort zone and work with new people for an important cause. The women I stayed with in NJ and NY were very kind and welcoming.
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“Not only did I learn a lot, but I benefitted tremendously from the camaraderie: the shared meals, solving problems collectively, the exceptional childcare, and the ability to make myself at home in the homes of my comrades. I am proud to be a part of the Progressive Labor Party. Thank you to my NJ and NYC comrades for all of your hard work and leadership!”

Hyattsville, Maryland July 31—Today an angry group of 55 students, residents and neighbors rallied again at the METRO 1 building on Belcrest Road to demand NO ICE EXPANSION HERE! This was larger than previous rallies at this site since Prince George’s County had just issued an occupancy permit to ICE to expand into the building’s 3rd floor. This county action is an attack on this multiracial town center that houses social service programs including SNAP as well as part of the Prince George’s Community College. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) friends and members helped lead the rally with chants in English and Spanish and spoke to demonstrators about imperialism, racism, the ongoing struggle against ICE, and the need for communist revolution to defeat fascism. We gave out fliers from Hyattsville Resistance and Greenbelt Resistance Network to let people know how to protest directly to the county government, and distributed CHALLENGE to protestors and onlookers. One main reason so many people came out is that a friend of PLP went to another pro-immigrant rally on Wednesday and told them that ICE had received the permit. Normally these activists protest along a major road instead of coming to the protest in front of ICE offices. Hopefully they will continue to join our Friday rallies/direct actions.

Josh Bernstein is the owner of METRO 1 and has been a major player in real estate for decades in the DC area after inheriting a real estate company from his father. It is not surprising that he leased space for ICE in his building to make money. But Bernstein has a reputation of philanthropy including support for immigrants, sitting on the board of the Meyer Foundation that funds the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. His cover is now blown – he’s a collaborator with fascist ICE! 

Beware the press and politicians!

Telemundo and NBC covered this rally, thrusting microphones in people’s faces and diluting the militancy of the rally at times. NBC’s coverage minimized the ICE presence in the building by saying “this is not going to be a detention center, just lawyers’ offices,” missing the key point that the expansion of ICE infrastructure in Hyattsville will lead to more deportations and intimidation. We should realize that our neighbors may well be detained here as ICE aggression expands. 

Politicians continue to lurk in these anti-ICE events without making an effort to actually stop ICE in the neighborhood. Once again, Glenn and Jolene Ivey came by to appear concerned. Glenn Ivey is notorious for receiving AIPAC funding and supporting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, while Jolene Ivey sits on the County Council. Glenn Ivey had also been at a vigil on the previous weekend for Joan and Lorenzo, the most recent residents murdered by ICE. The performative appearances and crocodile tears shed by these politicians only divert us from realizing that we can only rely on ourselves, the working class, to confront fascism, and not be distracted by politicians’ empty promises. 

Public protests and conversations with our friends and neighbors about ICE expansion have led them to challenge the city mayor, the chief of police, and officials working with immigrants in the city. The local bosses are feeling the heat from our protests and widespread anger against ICE. They were forced to  issue a statement to justify approving the permit for ICE expansion by claiming, like NBC news, that ICE will only house lawyers in the building. And what will these legal beagle ICE agents do? Try to deport our neighbors! No thank you! ICE out, root and branch!

Fighting racism

Racism is central to the fascist trend in the U.S. as demonstrated by ICE murders of Black, Latin, and white workers. Haitian workers, predominantly Black, have lost Temporary Protected Status (TPS), are losing jobs and face immediate deportation. Meanwhile, Trump appeals to his base to build a white country with white immigrants from South Africa and Scandinavia. Black workers and women have been the main victims of government layoffs, but racism and fascism hurt all workers. Workers of all races in agriculture and construction, nursing and nursing homes, transportation and education are under attack. Most importantly, racism keeps us from the multiracial unity of the working class needed to destroy the capitalist system and replace it with communism and workers’ power.

We invite you to join the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). From a meeting of barely two dozen members of the old U.S. communist movement in 1964, PLP has grown into an international party now organizing in five continents. Even as our class faces a dark night and growing inter-imperialist rivalry and fascism, we continue our fightback because this is just the beginning of a worthy struggle towards an international communist revolution.

Over its first first years, PLP has propelled the march to communism—first by leading antiracist, working-class struggle, and then through that struggle advancing communist ideas. This two-pronged strategy—practice and theory—is the basis for winning masses of workers to fight for communism.

Why communism? In our vision, the working class will determine society’s future. It will destroy the capitalist world and its brutal exploitation. It will smash a system that drives us into constant unemployment and poverty. It will stop the racism and sexism that drags down all workers. It will terminate the racist cops who break our strikes and kill workers, especially our Black, Latin, Asian and immigrant sisters and brothers. And it will end for all time the imperialist wars that send our youth to kill their class brothers and sisters worldwide, all for the bosses’ profits.

A communist world

Here is our vision for a communist world:

A society run by workers and for workers. After all, the working class produces everything of value and should rightfully receive the benefits of our labor. Collectively, we can determine how to share what we produce, according to need.

Abolition of the exploitative wage system and the money that runs it. We have no need for the parasitic bosses who steal most of the value of our labor through wage slavery.

Multiracial unity and death to the racism that divides the working class. Racism is rooted in capitalism; the bosses rely on it to steal trillions in super-profits worldwide. Fighting racism is part of the lifeblood of PLP.

The destruction of sexism and the systemic exploitation, oppression, and cultural degradation of women workers. Sexism is a pillar of class society, and capitalism has only furthered this lethal weapon against our class. Women and men must unite to smash sexist ideas and practices. 

PLP emphasizes working-class women’s leadership in making revolution, particularly Black women’s leadership.

Eliminating all borders, artificial lines the bosses draw to make even more profits from workers they call “foreigners.” Nationalism is an anti-worker ideology that enables the imperialist rulers to exploit natural resources and cheap labor. Communists are internationalists because the working class is one international class, with a common class interest, under one red flag.

This is the world the PLP has fought for from the start. We will continue to fight until our class prevails. We invite all workers to join this struggle—for ourselves, our children and grandchildren, and all the world’s children.

Struggle and theory

From its earliest beginnings in the 1960s, PLP has fought tooth and nail against attacks by the ruling class. We have organized and supported Ford workers and striking teachers in Mexico; wildcatting miners in Hazard, Kentucky; longshore workers in New York City; jute (fiber) workers in India; miners in Britain; garment workers in Los Angeles; bank workers in Colombia; transit workers in Washington, DC; Chrysler sit-down strikers at Detroit’s Mack Avenue plant; farm workers in California, and bakery workers at Stella D’Oro in the Bronx. We have stood with evicted workers in Palestine-Israel, earthquake victims in Pakistan, and hurricane victims in Haiti and New Orleans.

Antiracism is a hallmark of PLP.  We backed Black workers and youth in the 1964 Harlem Rebellion, and fought off racist school segregationists in Boston in 1975. In 1976 we integrated Chicago’s Marquette Park while smashing the Nazi headquarters there, and have led more than a hundred thousand protesters against the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis across the United States. We have mobilized against racist killer cops from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles, to Chicago, to Ferguson, Missouri.

PLP has led fierce fightbacks opposing the  bosses’ wars. In the 1960s, we were the first to organize mass demonstrations for the U.S. to “Get Out of Vietnam!” We formed the Worker-Student Alliance in the anti-war Students for a Democratic Society. PLP broke the U.S. travel ban to Cuba and undermined the rulers’ House Un-American Activities Committee to the point of collapse. More recently, working both within the military and on the streets, we exposed the U.S. rulers’ invasions of Iraq as a murderous oil grab.

None of these developments came out of thin air. They grew out of our Party’s analysis of past class struggles and the achievements of millions of workers. PLP studied the strengths and weaknesses of the communist movement led by—among many others—Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. In 1917, this movement created a revolution in Russia; in 1949, a revolution in China. It defeated the Nazis in Europe and fascists in Japan in World War II. It reached its highest point in China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which attempted to push back a growing elitism in the Communist Party leadership and put the masses in charge of society.

PLP is the only group on the left to point out what went wrong in the Soviet Union and China. We are the only organization to analyze how socialism in those countries led back to the unvarnished profit system, where all workers are now mired.

A communist society will have no bosses or profits. It will be led by the working class through its Progressive Labor Party.

Marxism: An evolving idea

The history of the Progressive Labor Party began in 1962. A small group of communists left the Communist Party USA and organized the Progressive Labor Movement. They rejected the CPUSA’s capitulation to capitalism and its abandonment of the open advocacy of communist revolution. The old communist movement proposed that the bosses would peacefully relinquish control of society and allow what the CPUSA called “socialism” to be “voted into existence.” The communists who formed PLM refused to mislead workers and broke away from the old guard.

In the course of PLP’s history, we have rejected some traditional Marxist concepts and advanced a number of new ones, all based on our practice and our examination of world events and the decay of the old communist movement. These new principles are expressed in a series of documents, including Road to Revolution I, II, III and IV; Revolution Not Reform; and “Dark Night Shall Have Its End.” (These are all available on PL’s website or in pamphlet form.)

Above all, Progressive Labor Party stands for the principle that the working class must fight directly for communism rather than moving first through a transitional phase of socialism. We reject this two-stage theory, a central premise of classical Marxism, because events have shown that socialism inevitably leads back to full-blown capitalism. In both Russia and China, socialism preserved capitalist features like money and the wage system, leading to inequalities that divided the working class. In both of these countries, the communist party became a new ruling class where privileges were attained through party membership. We believe the working class can be won before the revolution to fight directly for communism—to abolish the wage system, the cult of the individual and other capitalist relics.

Core principles

PLP’s main principles are:

Internationalism, under the slogan “Smash All Borders,” where workers’ class unity is represented by a single mass, international Party;

The fight against racism, a strategic necessity in the struggle to overthrow capitalism;     

The fight against the special oppression of women, another critical component in uniting the working class, a prerequisite for revolution;

A concentration among industrial workers, who produce the capitalists’ profits and the weapons for the bosses’ imperialist wars; Workers’ power through armed struggle, since the rulers will use their armed state power to violently suppress the working class.

Organizing to destroy class society

Throughout its existence, PLP has fought for these principles in unceasing class struggle. We have learned that building the Party is the first order of business for communists. Capitalism cannot be reformed. Whatever gains workers make in reform struggles are limited and temporary; sooner or later, the bosses always use their state power to take them back. Communists strive to turn reform struggles into schools for communism and building the Party. Winning workers to join PLP is the one and only victory the ruling class can never take back. We therefore urge all workers and youth to join us in the next half-century in this historic task: to organize a communist revolution.