Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me burst upon the public in the midst of national turmoil over racist police terror. It is a central text in the college-wide freshman seminar at Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington, DC. Coates appears regularly on MSNBC television network in connection with the Black Lives Matter movement.
But in the words of the famous dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, “What about the working class?”
All Talk, Missing in Action
The book is written as a letter from Coates to his 15-year-old son, who was both frightened and enraged by the police murders of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Recounting his own struggles on the mean streets of Baltimore and as a student at Howard University and beyond, Coates meditates on what it means to be a Black male in a country founded on racism.
He stresses his own trauma after the 2000 murder of a well-off Howard student peer named Prince Jones. A Black cop named Carlton Jones (no relation) fired 16 shots; eight of them hit Prince Jones, five of them in the back. Any man marked by his “Black body,” Coates concludes, is similarly vulnerable at any time.
To his credit, Coates refuses to endorse the grossly mistaken liberal notion that we are in a “post-racial” society. But in designating racism as a “majoritarian” belief, rather than a capitalist ruling-class ideology, he proposes that racism has taken on a life of its own. Coates’s idealist approach — separating ideas and behaviors from their roots in political economy —makes it impossible for him to correctly analyze the fact that Jones was killed by a Black cop under the control of Black politicians. Or that the politicians are in turn controlled by the capitalist rulers who need racism to terrorize and pacify all workers. And so Prince Jones’s murderer was let off the hook.
The author conveniently neglects to mention the protest movement, in which Progressive Labor Party played an important role, against the racist cop and the system that enabled and protected him. The killing garnered national attention. There were mass demonstrations on the campus and in the broader community, a bus caravan of student protesters to the Fairfax County prosecutor’s office, and finally a march of hundreds of students on the U.S. Justice Department to demand federal intervention (see more next issue).
Coates was absent from those protests. When he treats Jones’s death in his latest book as a turning point in his own awareness of the vulnerability of Black lives, it rings hollow.
Why is Coates’s book being so widely celebrated? First, because it is a timely testament to what it means to be Black in a country built on anti-Black racism. It speaks to readers enraged by the countless police killings of Black women and men. But the real reason Coates is hailed by the capitalist media is because his work breeds cynicism and inaction. He sees no escape from racism in the U.S. and so rejects the possibility of a multiracial, revolutionary strategy to defeat it. He becomes, then, a guiding spirit for the reactionary, nationalist Black Lives Matter movement. He promotes no kind of fightback.
What About the Working Class?
Coates’s main failing is his lack of class analysis. As a result, he cannot explain how or why the capitalist ruling class created racism to divide workers, increase profits, and prevent multiracial fightback. Racism is the foundation of capitalism. Unlike Theodore Allen, whose Invention of the White Race demonstrates the divide-and-conquer origins of the notion of whiteness, Coates fails to show how and why racism has always served the bosses. Communists in Progressive Labor Party need to build a class-conscious movement against racism, one that shows how all members of the working class are hurt by the violence of the capitalist state. We need a communist analysis to understand the material roots of racism in the capitalist profit system. The ruling class created racism, and the working class can abolish it!
THE BRONX — Our Progressive Labor Party collective here is stepping up our anti-racist efforts in the name of the international working class and learning to give better communist leadership in our immigrant rights organization.
One constant topic of discussion is inter-imperialist rivalry and war. We read the CHALLENGE editorials about the fight among imperialists for control of oil and natural gas in the Middle East. We read about the rise of ISIS, and about the war in Syria and the heart-wrenching mass exodus of workers there, hundreds of thousands of whom have already died. Our Party’s goal of communist revolution, however long-range, is more urgent than ever.
The Bronx contains immigrants from throughout the world. In September, we joined with a local immigrant group to protest Donald Trump’s call for an apartheid wall on the border with Mexico and his gutter racism against Latin workers. A PL’er linked Trump’s racist attack to the dispossession of Syrian refugees and the escalating war in the Middle East. We called for welcoming refugees and smashing all borders. At a recent protest, many took up our chant: “Black, Latin, Asian, white, workers of the world unite!”
What we do counts. In her English class, a PL’er talked with her students about the terrorist attacks in France. “We are saddened by the attacks and we condemn them,” she said. “But we are also saddened and angry at the millions of workers’ deaths worldwide from starvation, war and forced migration and the tragic loss of lives in bombings in Syria and Yemen. Capitalism is to blame, and as long as it exists these horrors will continue.”
In a written statement for the immigrant rights group, the teacher expressed support for Muslim students, workers, and families: “We need working-class unity, not racist attacks or bullying of children in schools. We want to welcome Syrian refugees to the U.S.” The Department of Education at our site [UNCLEAR] signed onto the statement and we’ve begun to distribute it to mosques in the area. We’ve been met with gratitude.
Speaking within the organization, another PL’er said: “We condemn the terrorist attacks in France and mourn the deaths of victims who are members of the working class, like us. All victims of war need to unite against the wars in the Middle East, which are a product of imperialist rivalry for oil.”
The members agreed, and the PL’er succeeded in getting the organization to sponsor a community forum. The forum will reflect the organization’s support for the Democratic Party and its push to get out the vote in the 2016 presidential election. But PL’ers will also have an opportunity to win workers to our communist analysis. Within this reform work, we are bringing our communist politics of no borders and working-class fightback.
Self-critically, our PLP collective needs to sharpen our analysis of the link between racist police murders of young Black and Latin men to the world situation and anti-Muslim racism. And we will. Workers are open, if still cautious. We will distribute CHALLENGE and recruit people to our study groups and Party. Never underestimate the power of communist ideas!
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Bosses Use Mass Shooting for Imperialism, Fascism
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- 12 December 2015 615 hits
In a period of escalating inter-imperialist competition, the capitalist ruling class will seize on every opportunity to use racism to divide workers—and to enlist them into the next big war.
The latest tragedy came on Dec. 2, when 14 workers were killed and 21 injured in San Bernadino, California. The two shooters, whose motives remain unclear, had apparently proclaimed allegiance to the Islamic State, or ISIS. The U.S. bosses quickly used their government and media to sensationalize the crime and whip up anti-Muslim racism. Beyond trivializing the deaths, the rulers are exploiting workers’ fears to gain support for more fascist police repression against Muslim, Black, and immigrant workers—and for the inevitable, global military conflict to defend U.S. imperialism and its declining empire.
Terrorism and Religion: Twin Dangers to the Working Class
Terrorist violence is a political tactic to strike fear and panic. The biggest death toll—by far—comes from state terror waged by the U.S. and its powerful allies or imperialist rivals, from drone strikes and bombing campaigns to racist police murders. Smaller regional imperialists like ISIS, skimming Middle East oil profits under the veil of religion, are just following the big bosses’ lead.
But regardless of where it stems from, terrorist violence is always anti-working class. The communist antidote and alternative is mass, revolutionary, working-class violence to seize power from the capitalist class and build an egalitarian, internationalist world. The Progressive Labor Party is organizing a movement to create such a world—a society run by workers to serve workers’ needs, a society without profit or wage slavery or any form of exploitation.
The bosses’ media pushes the racist idea that Muslims are inherently dangerous to their fellow workers. In fact, all religious movements are dangerous to workers. All of them divert workers’ natural anti-capitalist anger into the false and divisive unity of nations or religious creeds. Whether Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim, from Pope Francis to the Ayatollah Khamenei, the cynical leaders of these movements work hand-in-hand with mass-murdering capitalist rulers to preserve the profit system.
Workers respond to aspects of religion that speak to their deepest aspirations—their need for hope and comfort inside the brutal nightmare of capitalism, their desire to alleviate others’ suffering, their vision for a society where all are truly equal. But no mythical supreme being can make those aspirations a reality. Only the international working class can create an egalitarian world. That is our fight to win, in the here and now, alongside our class sisters and brothers.
Religious Appearance, Capitalist Essence
The ISIS bosses consists mainly of former higher-ups in Saddam Hussein’s old regime, striving to regain and expand control over the oil wealth of the Middle East. These moguls twisted the California killers—among many other confused workers—with phony, pious propaganda. Quoted in the industry journal OilPrice.com (11/29/15), Texas-based Robert Bensh, “managing director at Pelicourt, a Western-owned oil and gas company navigating tricky conflict zones,” noted how religious faith is manipulated to serve profit:
Every modern day conflict—even if not immediately evident—has at its heart control over resources from oil and gas to water. Religion is but a symptom; a tool used to consolidate opinions, cement power and lure in new recruits.... ISIS is trying to build a nation here—a fully functional state with its own oil and gas resources.
High Stakes = Boots on the Ground
The rise of ISIS is a direct challenge to U.S., British, and French control over Iraqi oilfields—control won at a cost of millions of working-class lives over decades of bombings, occupation, and U.S.-sponsored genocide. For these partners in crime, the solution is a wider war that an ISIS attack on U.S. soil could mobilize. On Dec. 2, hours before the San Bernardino shootings, Congress heard prophetic testimony from Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the policy think tank funded by ExxonMobil and the dominant, finance capital wing of the U.S. ruling class:
The existence of the Islamic State is a clear and pressing danger to the security of the United States and that of our allies. This threat must be confronted and destroyed before ISIS operatives attack us right here in Washington and in other American cities.
The day after Defense Secretary Ashton Carter notified Congress that 200 Special Operations forces would be sent to spearhead the fight against ISIS, Boot called for many more boots, U.S. and allied, on Iraqi ground:
I believe we will need a force of 20,000 to 30,000 … including a substantial Special Operations task force…to galvanize and support a Sunni uprising in Iraq and Syria. If we make such a commitment, allies such as France, Britain, and Egypt are likely to step forward as well.
U.S. v. Russia…
In another Dec. 2 development, U.S.-dominated NATO extended a formal invitation for membership to Montenegro, historically a Russian satellite in the Balkans—a once and future flashpoint for U.S.-Russia conflict. Representing ExxonMobil’s interests, Boot seemed to be inviting an open conflict with Russia, despite U.S. bosses’ lack of readiness [see box]. Here is how the CFR analyst assessed a likely U.S. escalation:
Against these benefits must be weighed the potential risk of confrontation with Russia, whose air force is already bombing U.S.-supported rebels in Syria. This is a very real concern… Make it clear to Russia that…its forces will challenge ours at their own peril....The Turkish shoot-down of a Russian jet has exposed Putin’s bluster and is likely to make him think twice about confronting NATO forces in Syria.
In its “ISIS War Games III” report (12/3/15), the Atlantic Council, another policy-formulation group backed by the biggest Exxon-tied U.S. financiers and industrialists, goes one step further:
Should ...the transnational threat of ISIS reach alarming levels, the United States might be left with the least desirable of all options: military occupation akin to the U.S. presence in Iraq from 2003 to 2011.
…And Bringing the War Home
In response to San Bernadino, Barack Obama issued an appeal to intensify the enlistment of Muslim community “leaders” into networks of informers—a modern take on Hitler’s Judenrat, the Jewish Council leaders enlisted by the Nazis to organize the deportation of European Jews to the death camps. The ruling-class Times (12/6/15) approved: “[T]he authorities may have to rely more on encouraging Americans to watch one another and report suspicions. Federal and local governments already have programs urging friends, families and neighbors to identify people targeted for [ISIS] recruitment.”
Turn Imperialist War Into Revolutionary War!
As German poet and communist Bertolt Brecht wrote: “General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: he can think.” The capitalist bosses, driven by their competition for maximum profit, will never stop plotting for war to redivide the world’s resources. But their grand plans will go nowhere unless they win the international working class to fight willingly for imperialism—or, at the very least, to be terrorized into submission and obedience.
The revolutionary communist PLP is building an international movement in 28 countries—and counting—to smash the entire capitalist system. The bosses may start their next global showdown, but organized communists can finish it—by organizing fightbacks against racism and imperialism, and winning millions of workers to join the fight for a world without capitalism. We need all workers to stand and become leaders in this struggle. Join us!
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To help ready the U.S. for a broader conflict with rival Russian or Chinese imperialists, Barack Obama has successfully pushed the U.S. Defense Department to open all military combat jobs to women—and may soon force somen to register for the draft. The rulers’ leading mouthpiece, the New York Times, cloaked this move toward global war as a victory for egalitarianism, one that will both “make the military stronger and… narrow America’s gender equality gap” (12/6/15). As to “whether women should now be required to register in the Selective Service System,” the Times answered its own question: “It could be done easily.”
Our party stands for the absolute equality of all workers. But doubling the number of those eligible to kill and die for the bosses’ profits is no triumph for working-class women and men. . All military recruits, men and women both, must be organized to turn the guns around—and turn imperialist war into communist revolution!
SAN FRANCISCO, December 2 — “They executed my child…25 bullets in my baby”…He “was was supposed to start UPS today. He got his uniform,” …Gwen Woods described the police murder of her son Mario Woods and that his future on a real job was snuffed out. A Bayview resident said that the video is hard to watch: “He got shot like he was at a firing squad. Deplorable.”
Videos went viral of five racists San Francisco police surrounding and assassinating Mario Woods, 26, on Thursday December 2. The bosses’ usual claim: “He refused to drop a knife and tried to walk away.” The videos show him stunned with beanbags and staggering against a wall, followed by a volley of gunshots.
By the next night, over 300 angry people assembled around Mario’s memorial for a Vigil , March and Community meeting at a Local Church on 3rd St in the historically Black Bayview District of SF. PLP joined a large multi-racial crowd, Black, Latin White and Asian, reflecting the common working-class anger. Speakers and posters referred to other racist police murders. People welcomed each other. Some Black residents of the Bayview District saying “We are so glad you’re here” to those who appeared to be from other neighborhoods. “Mario Woods RIP” was all over the walls and street.
Along with the long list of young Black men murdered by police in the Bay Area, the racist police have killed 2 Latin young men from immigrant families in the last year. White & Asian youth are not subject to police terror at such a high rate but also come under the gun. The assassinations of Mario Woods, Alex Nieto, Amilcar Perez Lopez, and Kenneth Harding were addressed at the rally.
PLP talked with people and distributed around 200 flyers and CHALLENGEs. Like our leaflet, we asked the question “Why with all this fightback has there been no fundamental change in Police Conduct? The murders, arrests, searches and judicial abuses continue.” And not to mention mass incarceration! We explained that the police are doing exactly what they are supposed to do — serve the ruling class by terrorizing Black and Latin workers, dividing the working class and keeping all workers in line through fear. We made some friends and plan to bring our flyer back to areas where we have political activity.
Same Fight All Over
Family members, friends, Bayview residents, members of neighborhood Churches and Black Lives Matter spoke about Mario and the history of police murder/harassment up and down 3rd St. Again, folks from outside the neighborhood were welcomed.
A PL’er spoke to bring solidarity greetings from Chicago. “The struggle there brought masses of working people and youth took over the streets in reaction to Laquan McDonald s assassination and cover up. It’s the same fight all over.” (see page 3). He said that removing the SF Police Chief Greg Suhr or forcing out the Chief of Chicago Police won’t make things fundamentally different. It will be new faces, new tactics but the same old racist terror. He urged people to make the long hard struggle to get rid of the capitalist system as part of our fight to end its racist economics, ideas and culture. “We need an alternative to this system that profits from racism and division. PLP organizes to replace capitalism with its opposite, a communist system: A system of equality, dignity and shared responsibility for all our needs; a system that produces everything for the needs of the whole global working class.” He got applause and was able to get more contacts from some of the organizers and some people in the school system.
CHICAGO, November 27 — “Your power is in the streets, not looking around in stores! Take the streets!” A member of the Progressive Labor Party said this in response to a Black nationalist mis-leader during a march on a popular U.S. shopping day called “Black Friday.”A multiracial group of Progressive Labor Party members and friends attended the march on Michigan Avenue to protest the racist murder of Laquan McDonald by the Chicago kkkops. This area is where many expensive stores and shopsare, and was called by phony mis-leader Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/ PUSH Coalition, and others. The Black nationalist mis-leaders wanted to lead the antiracist workers into the stores, “just look” around, and not buy anything.
The PL’ers marching have a better strategy than the dead-ends pushed by fakers like Jackson. These misleaders want to channel workers’ anger into walking around “just looking” inside ritzy stores in rich neighborhoods. These stores are too expensive for workers to shop in, and are done to make a publicity stunt to the capitalist media. PLP fights to unite our class, Asian, Latin, Black and White, to fight back!
Black Nationalism vs. Antiracism
PLP came to the march as a multiracial group, despite the efforts of local Black nationalist misleaders to exclude us because they wanted a “Black Space for Black Rage”. PLP opposes identity politics, like nationalism, and neither believes in nor fights for separate “spaces” for different workers with white skin or Black skin.
PL’ers spoke with marchers and contrasted our strategy with the nationalists. The intensity of rebellions led by the Black working class in places like Ferguson and Baltimore are testament to the intense oppression of Black workers in the U.S., especially women. Black leadership is key to building a mass multiracial communist movement to smash capitalism with armed revolution. Black nationalism offers no solutions to capitalism or the racism, sexism and imperialism it feeds on. Black nationalism merely changes the skin color of the capitalist oppressors, leaving Black workers exploited by someone who looks like them with the claim that it’s “progress”.
Black Workers Key To Revolution
One of the misleaders who spoke at the march showed their true colors and said we have to vote for Hillary, “so this will not happen again.” A PL member countered with a speech making the connections that ultimately it was capitalism that killed Laquan. Since Hillary Clinton is one of the biggest imperialists in the world, workers have no interest in her or any candidate the capitalists run for election.
As long as the capitalist system remains, the international working class will never be free of racist police terror, rampant unemployment, or the imperialist wars spawned by capitalism’s relentless drive for profit. Black workers, especially Black women, are hit the hardest under capitalism day in and day out. PLP emphasizes Black and women leadership and is organizing a mass working class movement because it will take the whole, united, multiracial working class to fight back together. Together, the working class can build our own mass leaders and smash this racist capitalist system and its genocidal cops with communist revolution. We have a world to win. Join us!
