New York City, May 18–Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades joined 300 workers and students in a powerful march sponsored by Make the Road NY in Bushwick, Brooklyn. We were protesting against high rents, displacement and evictions in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Comrades connected with many friends in the march and on the streets. The demand of the organization and politicians who spoke was that the state legislature pass “Good Cause” legislation. “Good Cause,” if passed, would supposedly mean that landlords across New York state with buildings with less than six apartments can’t evict or raise rents dramatically without good cause.
                
Migrants not our enemies
As we marched, comrades chanted with the marchers and distributed 150 CHALLENGE papers about May Day around the world and 200 PLP leaflets  demanding low rent housing for all homeless people in shelters and arriving migrants. New York City is now housing new migrants in the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, paying the hotel owners $200 a night per room! The liberal bosses and their lackey politicians in NYC are deviously using these migrants to divide the working class and to distract us from the real enemies (the capitalists). The same way racism affects the entire working class, so does unemployment, which the bosses use in order to bring down wages for the entire working class, including for white workers. We can’t let the bosses divide us and that’s why all workers need to unite, Black, Latin, Asian and white. The bosses want to use migrants as  scapegoats and want to blame them for their problems, but we need to direct our anger against the capitalist bosses.

Reform is never enough
Marchers enthusiastically took CHALLENGE and our leaflets which stated, “Workers need power, not crumbs! A worldwide system that won’t provide jobs, housing and healthcare for the working class doesn’t deserve to exist. The working class needs to destroy capitalism with revolution. We need a system that will collectively and globally eliminate exploitation, war, racism and sexism. We need communism, community in its essence.”
                                                    
The contradiction between reform and revolution was on display. While desperate, angry workers support reform, they know from experience that even if “Good Cause” is passed by the state government, it will largely be ignored by the landlords without long, drawn out cases in landlord court.

“Why are so many politicians speaking?” asked a participant.

“To direct and control the workers’ movement,” answered a comrade.

“Why can’t they pass a law forcing the landlords to open up empty buildings and apartments the landlords are holding?” a friend asked.

“Landlords are part of the capitalist ruling class and dominate all aspects of our lives,” the comrade answered. Some workers say the fight for reforms is a step toward revolution. That’s an illusion. There is no peaceful transition from reform to revolution. PLP’s role is to participate in the reform fight while sharpening the revolutionary side of the contradiction. It’s happening now!

Washington, DC, May 6-8–PLers met with antiracist fighters from across the U.S. at The University of California Washington Center for a 3-day abolitionist conference. Conference organizers brought together theorists, students and organizers working to abolish police, prisons, ICE, racist child “protective” services, and other institutional structures that capitalism has built to attack and repress the working class.

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members led a panel on abolishing capitalism, the undergirding of all repressive institutions of the capitalist state. We do not just want to abolish or outlaw capitalism, we want the system fully smashed and guaranteed to never be introduced back into existence. In order to crush capitalism and its state, we need many of these serious organizers in attendance to join a revolutionary fighting party, the PLP, in order for it to grow and lead class struggle against the ruling class. This strategy is really the only way to achieve the abolitionist goals they so fervently desire.

To abolish cops, we must abolish capitalism
Participants in the conference were extremely open to a revolutionary perspective. Many already had this idea, but were not sure how to develop it further. Even two of the keynote speakers agreed, when questioned from the audience by a PLP member, that a revolutionary party was needed to achieve abolitionist goals. You just cannot abolish capitalist institutions without abolishing capitalism!

PLP maintained a literature table throughout the conference. In addition to CHALLENGE, the table featured flyers and information about many of the mass organizations in which PLP is active. The fight for justice for William Green and other Black workers murdered by the police and numerous public health struggles were featured.

Over 40 participants received CHALLENGE from the table and from other comrades throughout the conference and many connections were made. Many of these fighters are already engaged in various forms of class struggle.We will continue to make ongoing connections with these fighters, and try to win them to our radical abolitionist vision of society– a communist world rid of the capitalist ruler’s racist and sexist kkkops, kkkourts, and prisons.

Progressive Labor Party marched on May Day here in the city of Cambridge, where Sayed Faisal, a young Bangladeshi man was murdered by the police on January 4th.  Sayed was having a mental illness episode, and his neighbor called the cops for help. Instead of helping, they shot him five times in the chest. Then, distorting the facts, the Cambridge PD claimed he was a threat to the community because he was carrying a knife, even though it was clear he was using the knife to harm himself. Furthermore, the city has put the killer cop on paid administrative leave and is refusing to release his name.  That, plus the exceedingly long criminal investigation, stinks of a cover-up. This is yet another lethal example of how trigger-happy cops handle workers or students with mental health issues. The cops shoot first, blame the victim, and receive all the protection from the city government; meanwhile another member of the working class is murdered, and his family and community are traumatized.

We assembled at a nearby plaza, where college students and workers warmly received our militant speeches, flyers and CHALLENGEs. Some folks joined us as we marched, 30 plus strong, to Cambridge City Hall. There, we formed a picket line and heard more militant speeches from our comrades and friends condemning Cambridge’s liberal politicians for the role they play in pacifying and disarming the working class.They throw a protective shield around the cops and the whole fascist injustice system while they spread illusions that capitalism can be reformed.

Racist police murder is one example of how capitalism destroys the lives of working people here and around the world. As U.S. capitalists give tanks to Ukraine and prepare for wider war to defend their declining profit empire, they cut mental health and housing services at home. That is why the ruling class will need more fascism and police terror at home to quash working class anger.

Our chants of, “Racist cops, you can’t hide we charge you with genocide” resonated with the workers and students on the street. We held our red flags high, and our banner called for smashing capitalism, racism, and borders with communist revolution. To achieve a just and healthy society, we need to destroy capitalism and build the egalitarian communist world that May Day represents. Because we held our event locally, rather than join the larger march in Brooklyn, we organized with increased vigor and now have more potential for growth than we’ve had in the past several years. Our future is bright if we fight for it! Join us!

The following piece has been updated from its original publication in volume 48 no.25 dated December 21, 2016.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) was an historic uprising of the working class led by the most advanced communist ideas at the time. It was the first time the working class attempted to take state power back from a former communist party that had returned to capitalism.

The leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Mao Tse Tung (now Mao Zedong), initially encouraged the Cultural Revolution to get rid of a few people in the leadership of the Party. But some workers in the Cultural Revolution recognized that the official Communist Party was already in the hands of a capitalist ruling class at the time the GPCR began. They argued that the vast majority (90 percent) of the leading cadres were part of that oppressor class, that the People’s Liberation Army (or PLA, the military) was its tool to smash the real Left and maintain power. They said that the new “red” bourgeoisie had emerged during the 17 years from 1949-66 from the ranks of the revolutionaries themselves and, therefore, that the GPCR was not, as Mao said, a struggle to consolidate proletarian rule, but the first revolution in history to attempt to take power back from the fake “communists,” known as revisionists. This analysis led the left workers and students leading the Cultural Revolution to carry out the following political campaigns.

1) They demanded the ouster of the chief representative of China’s “red” capitalists, Chou En-Lai, along with the high-ranking economic and administrative ministers he was sheltering.

2) They demanded that the GPCR be carried into the Army Officer Corps, which they saw as a part of the new ruling class. They engaged in arms seizures from the PLA, raiding depots and arms trains, on the principle that a revolution to overthrow the bourgeoisie had to be an armed struggle of the masses.

3) They opposed China’s foreign policies of alliance with capitalist countries. To carry this through they seized foreign ships in the harbors, burned the British consulate in August of 1967, launched a liberation struggle in Hong Kong, seized Soviet arms going to Vietnam over China’s railroad lines and opposed China’s nuclear development program.

4) They began to discuss and implement the formation of a new communist party, given their assumption that the CPC had become the party of the bourgeois apparatus that was restoring capitalism under the ideological cover of a fake brand of communism.
The left forces presented a view of what was going on in the GPCR which was contradictory to the official views of the CPC under Mao, who claimed “95 percent of the cadres are good” vs. the left-wing forces in the GPCR who said “90 percent of the political cadres must step aside.”

Fake “communists” spread capitalist lies
To amplify how completely the Chinese bosses have now moved to capitalism, they now tell the same lies about the Cultural Revolution as the U.S. bosses. The distorted historical narrative told by the capitalists who currently rule China, and retold and amplified by capitalists around the world, is that the Cultural Revolution was “10 lost years” in which the Chinese economy was on the brink of collapse.

However, when one of the participants in a San Francisco conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution went to China with a group of Western economists in the midst of the Cultural Revolution in 1972, the iconic liberal mainstream economist John Kenneth Galbraith was in the delegation and reviewed economic data made available by the Chinese leadership and calculated that the GDP was growing at about 9 percent per year, similar to the rate touted as the “Chinese miracle” after the restoration of capitalism after the late 1970s.

The participation of millions of workers and farmers in political meetings did not cause production to stop, or even to slow down. The criticism of factory or farm managers to a previously unheard of degree, and active involvement in “non-productive” activities that amounted to having a say in the running of society, in fact energized the masses of workers and farmers.

The Communists accomplished feats that would be called miracles under capitalism, starting with spreading literacy across a country of a billion people, introducing health care and ending starvation in what had been one of the poorest countries in the world prior to the communist revolution. Their efforts in the GPCR showed the importance of continuing the struggle for workers’ power even after a revolution. But to ultimately succeed in building a communist society we have to look at the errors of the CPC as well. While the left forces in the GPCR did so many great things they ultimately were defeated and capitalism was firmly established in China. It is important for us to try to understand why the GPCR failed.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
Communist movements will inevitably make many mistakes, big and small. The Progressive Labor Party previously believed in fighting for socialism as an intermediary step towards communism. Now, largely from looking at what happened in the former Soviet Union and China, we are fighting for the building of a communist society directly. It is not the only correction we have made or will have to make going forward. For the working class to take and hold power it is essential that the revolutionary communist movement be able to correct ideological errors and bad practice. Criticism and self-criticism of our ideas and activity is the only way we can deal with problems and mistakes that arise. The leadership of the Party especially has to honestly and soberly evaluate their own ideas and practice and be open to criticism from others.

Perhaps the main weakness that led to the defeat of the GPCR was the belief in the cult of the individual surrounding Mao Tse Tung. A big weakness of the old communist movement was that it built up individual leaders as people who could do no wrong. While the Left forces in China recognized that China had moved back to capitalism, they held on to the wrong idea that Mao, the leader of the country, was not a supporter of the backward changes. He was; and ultimately Mao used his influence and his control of the Army to put down the revolution.

Struggle, Fail, Struggle… WIN
The lessons of the GPCR are one of the driving forces in history that has given PLP the confidence that the working class will fight for a communist future. It has also helped us understand the need to continually struggle against the capitalist ideology of individualism in ourselves and in the communist movement. The effort of the working class in the GPCR has been an invaluable contribution to the fight for communism.

Other lessons learned from the GPCR:
Confidence in the working class and the need for a mass communist party: We are building a party that is open to everyone who wants to fight for a communist future for the working class. People can make contributions in many different ways and the more people who participate in building the Party and ultimately running society the better off we will be.

Breakdown of the separation between “experts” and “followers:” In CHALLENGE, we try to explain what is going on in the world as well as have articles on fighting back in the class struggle. We believe that we can only understand the world by trying to change it and knowledge and understanding comes out of putting communist ideas into practice. We call this “better red than expert!”

The struggle for communism will continue for generations. The working class taking state power is only the beginning of the fight to build a communist society.

Commemorating the 57th anniversary of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is an opportunity to struggle with our coworkers and friends to renew our efforts to smash this racist, sexist, imperialist system of capitalism once and for all. Fighting back also means understanding what previous generations in this fight have done – both right and wrong. As the world lurches toward fascism and inter-imperialist war, we have our work cut out for us. We, heirs to the struggle for a communist world, truly honor the heroic masses who fought in the GPCR by organizing on our jobs and in our mass organizations for armed communist revolution. Dare to struggle, dare to win!