It was out of my Jim Crow experiences as a young Negro woman, experiences likewise born of working-class poverty that led me to join the Young Communist League and to choose the philosophy of my life, the science of Marxism-Leninism—that philosophy that not only rejects racist ideas, but is the antithesis of them. - Claudia Jones
One of the biggest lies the capitalists have ever tried to teach generations of working class people is that Black workers did not play a critical role in communist history. This is because the bosses will ALWAYS try to perpetuate the idea that workers should remain divided by race. However, we know in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) that multiracial unity has ALWAYS been the most effective way for workers to overcome the effects of racial exploitation and oppression. Claudia Jones, a Black female leading member of the Communist Party for decades, represents the heroic efforts in fighting racism and sexism from the 1930s to 1960s, just as her politics also point toward the weaknesses embedded in the strategy of international communism many years ago. The main weakness in the old communist movement that is evident through looking at Claudia Jones is that they did not understand the need for one international party LED by women and Black and Latin workers to unite and fight directly to overthrow capitalism and establish a workers’ state.
Formation as a communist
Like thousands of other workers in the early 1900s, Jones and her family emigrated to New York City from Trinidad in the Caribbean. Jones was an avid student and started writing early on. She had dreams of college, but as a daughter of a garment worker who died too young, she started working herself at a young age. The revolutionary vision and struggle of the communist movement appealed to her, and in 1936 she joined the Young Communist League and became active in the movement to defend the Scottsboro 9, a group of Black teenagers, who were falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama.
A multi-racial, communist-led movement, turned the “Scottsboro Boys” into an international cause of millions of workers all over the world to win their freedom. But just as the communist movement was at its sharpest point of winning workers around the world to workers’ revolution, they began to retreat politically into a “popular front against fascism” and Claudia Jones became part of that larger retreat.
Leadership in the Communist Party USA & fascist McCarthyism
In 1937, Jones joined the editorial staff of the communist Daily Worker, rising by 1938 to become editor of the Weekly Review. After WWII, Jones became executive secretary of the Women’s National Commission, secretary for the Women’s Commission of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). In 1953, she took over the editorship of Negro Affairs, a CPUSA journal. However, if antiracism and internationalism had been the central premise of the CP’s strategy, they would not have had the need for a separate journal to address “Negro Affairs,” because all affairs of the working class are touched by racist capitalism and superexploitation.
Despite the shortcomings of the party’s line, Jones organized women workers and gave leadership within the Communist Party USA on the ways superexploitation of women could become central to the party’s theoretical development. She is perhaps best known for her seminal essay appearing in Political Affairs, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” in which she took to task liberals, progressives and her own party for not sufficiently recognizing the super-exploitation of Black women under capitalism and their leadership in working class struggles, writing:
The bourgeoisie is fearful of the militancy of the Negro woman, and for good reason. The capitalists know, far better than many progressives seem to know, that once Negro women begin to take action, the militancy of the whole Negro people, and thus of the anti-imperialist coalition, is greatly enhanced….Viewed in this light, it is not accidental that the American bourgeoisie has intensified its oppression, not only of the Negro people in general, but of Negro women in particular. Nothing so exposes the drive to fascization in the nation as the callous attitude which the bourgeoisie displays and cultivates toward Negro women.
In 1948, Jones, along with several other leaders of the Communist Party USA, was charged for conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. Over the next seven years, the federal government convicted, imprisoned in Ellis Island and ultimately deported Jones—but not without an international movement launched to free her and thousands of other communist and progressive working class organizers imprisoned during the fascism of the McCarthy period.
Fighting British racism & imperialism
Following WWII, Caribbean immigration to the United Kingdom increased and Black and Asian immigrant workers faced brutal racism upon arrival. Signs reading “No Irish, No Coloured, No Dogs” littered the streets of London businesses and apartment buildings for rent. Attacks on Black youth by white mobs and police officers were common. Working in London in the 1950’s and 60’s, Jones, a lifelong communist and self-described Marxist-Leninist, tirelessly organized several antiracist, anti-imperialist campaigns.
Realizing the importance of celebrating working class culture, Jones founded the West Indian Gazette, a popular newspaper that built a base among Caribbean diaspora workers in Britain and back home, with a circulation of 15,000. In 1958, following the killings of Black youths and riots instigated by racist white mobs in the Notting Hill neighborhood of London, Jones and others organized a carnival in response to the violence as a means of unifying the Black Caribbean community.
Claudia Jones died in December 1964, her health gutted by the years of political persecution and incarceration in the U.S. Her legacy was immediately felt by working class communities around the world and condolences poured in, from W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson and Amy Ashwood Garvey to Mao Zedong, whom Jones had met on a delegation to China. Claudia Jones remains an example of how the leadership of Black workers, especially Black women, is key to the future of building a communist society. Paul Robeson expressed his admiration for Jones thusly:
“It was a great privilege to have known Claudia Jones. She was a vigorous and courageous leader of the Communist Party of the United States, and was very active in the work for the unity of white and coloured peoples and for dignity and equality, especially for the Negro people and for women.” It is fitting that Jones is buried next to Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery in London. Following her deportation, Jones wrote:
I was deported from the USA because as a Negro woman communist of West Indian descent, I was a thorn in their side in my opposition to Jim Crow racist discrimination against 16 million Negro Americans in the United States, in my work for redress of these grievances, for unity of Negro and white workers, for women’s rights...
As communists we should all be that thorn in the side of capitalism—so sharp as to make it bleed.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, February 14—This past Valentine’s Day, a multiracial group of 60 tenants, antiracists, and members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) disrupted the capitalists’ love affair with their latest profit schemes by invading a dinner at the Keystone Social House. The Keystone is a fancy restaurant in a building owned by Mosser Capital, a racist, profiteering real estate developer.
The protesters occupied the restaurant for about 20 minutes, chanting, “Housing is a human right!” and “Have a Heart – Stop the Rent Increases!” It is true that in a communist society, housing is a working-class necessity that would be under the leadership and power of workers. But under capitalism that’s not true and not possible. Capitalism is a cutthroat, competitive system where profits rule. Capitalism has no heart.
But workers have a heart and a bold fighting spirit. They then occupied the Mosser hotel lobby to demand the owner agree to a meeting with the tenants. The hotel staff agreed to fax the demand letter. PLP members distributed 150 leaflets, several copies of CHALLENGE, and made some contacts. As the fight against Mosser Capital continues, we need to build a longterm, revolutionary movement for communism, a society with housing for all.
Racist land speculator
Mosser was founded in San Francisco in 1955 investing in “rent stabilized multi-unit buildings in high-demand emerging markets that have a high potential for rent growth,” but has quickly expanded to Oakland and Los Angeles since establishing Mosser Capital in 2012. Neveo Mosser, who is chair of the California Apartment Association got himself appointed to the San Francisco Rent Stabilization Board to protect his investments. That’s how capitalism works. The capitalist, in this case real estate tycoon Mosser, either controls the politicians or gets himself a position of political power, or both. He can then make the laws and regulations so that they benefit his business.
In the last three years, Mosser Capital has purchased over 20 multi-unit buildings in Oakland with over 600 units. All are rent-controlled. But, of course, Mosser is taking advantage of a “loophole” in the law by making “major improvements” to justify exemptions from rent control. One tenant said Mosser paved over a backyard garden and demanded tenants pay for it even though tenants liked the garden. Mosser says they can raise the rent annually by 10 percent until the “improvements” are paid off.
Real estate giants like Mosser, Wedgewood, and Blackstone spent $100 million to defeat statewide rent control Prop 10 in 2018. One feature of Prop 10 was “vacancy control” which would have extended rent control to units once they were vacated by tenants. Besides controlling politicians directly with “donations” and payoffs, capitalists also spend millions to control what laws are passed. Now they can harass tenants to move with their phony “major improvements” scam in the hope they can hike rents even faster.
Capitalist reforms are inadequate
The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) is organizing working-class tenants to take “direct actions” like this against Mosser, the Moms4Housing occupation of a vacant home in West Oakland (see CHALLENGE, 2/5/2020), and a four-month rent strike in a 14-unit building in East Oakland. Several of the Moms and the striking tenants came to the Mosser demonstration.
While PLP is encouraged by the increasing fightback by growing numbers of workers, we must focus on developing ties and communist consciousness among them. We have started two study groups where we discuss both the racist inequality in homelessness, and the difference between the capitalist commodity (exchange value) approach to housing and the communist (use value) approach of providing housing for needs of the working class.
Relying on electoral and legislative approaches to tenants’ rights like Prop 10 ignores the obvious dictatorship that capitalists have controlling the government and the media. Further, relying on liberal charities like the community land trusts, while able to help a few lucky working class families, gives the illusion that capitalism can solve the problems of all workers.
Recently, Wedgewood Properties, which initially agreed to sell “Moms’ House” to the land trust, now wants the new “appraised value” of $650K which is $150K more than the $500K Wedgewood paid for it last July. The capitalists fiddle while the Moms and their families struggle to be safe and secure in their homes. Fight for communism!
NEWARK, NJ, March 3—After months of working-class struggle for clean water, the City will provide residents with replacements to lead service lines. The water fight is an important lesson in understanding the difference between reform and revolution. As members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) continue to organize workers and youth, it is evident that revolutionary organizing is needed more than ever.
The outcomes of this Newark water fight illustrate how the main wing bosses are willing to give workers a limited reform in order to stifle class consciousness. This fight has also reaffirmed the need for communists to be integrated in mass work. PLP continues to try to win workers and students to attend study groups, distribute CHALLENGE to their friends, and put build collectives of fightback for communism.
Small gain for workers = longterm victory for bosses
After months of working-class fightback, the bosses approved a loan to allow Newark to replace all of the lead service lines (the main contributor of lead in the water) at no cost to residents. Normally it could cost residents up to $10,000 to get these replaced.
This news was met with fanfare: many saw the loan as a victory and let the City bosses and politicians look like heroes. Only under capitalism would we celebrate something that should be an absolute and inviolable necessity of living—clean pipes and clean water.
Gain pacifies fight
There is no doubt that workers’ fightback made this reform possible.
In the long run though, the bosses have the most to gain. First, this money is coming from a loan from the county government. This means that the City of Newark will have to repay the debt of $120 million. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka claims the City will use its revenue from its contracts with Port Authority to pay the debt service (Wall Street Journal, 10/1/19).
When the bosses give with one hand, they take away with the other. The question is what resources were those funds from Port Authority going towards before this debt service decision? Those funds could have gone to other services that the residents are in dire need of. Once again the billionaires walk away without having to pay while the workers are left holding the bag.
Under capitalism, workers are forced to choose between impossible decisions—clean water or medical services, education or rent. Assuming the bosses will follow through, what will workers have less of in exchange of these new service lines?
Furthermore, the announcement of the lead service line replacement has won many fighters to abandon the struggle for clean water. If one section of the working class succumbs to the sentiment that “we got ours,” the entire working class continues to suffer. So, what about Flint? What about the thousands of U.S. areas still afflicted with lead poisoning that’s worse than Flint? What about Mexico? The Congo? Pakistan? The working class needs an international communist Progressive Labor Party. to be able to solve the problems capitalism created.
At a period of low class struggle, workers can become cynically content with small gains. In this period, the liberal fascist wing of the bosses can afford to give in to some reforms that workers fought for. The question is why. In giving a limited reform, the bosses are able to clamp down on fightback, pacify workers, and buy allegiance to their imperialist system.
Militancy doesn’t equal revolution
The fight is never over. A recent EPA study showed that a fourth of the City filters tested were improperly installed and exposed workers to lead (EPA.GOV, 11/22/19). Many workers demanded that the City hire residents to go door to door to help install these filters. The city claimed that it was too expensive. However, they would rather spend over $1 million hiring lawyers and the same public relations firm that was in Flint, Michigan. While there are still fighters going to city hall meetings, there has been little organizing to fight these ideas.
Some sections of the working class continue to fight for larger ideas such as taxing the rich to pay for these reforms. There are also organizations that connect the water struggle to the ICE attack on migrant workers. All of these issues could be used to illustrate the necessity for workers to unite against the bosses, but these are not substitutes for communist ideas.
Organizing workers to fight for communism means that we must be in the struggle and show how a world run by the working class is possible and viable. We don’t have a blueprint but we do have history and our politics to give other workers a glimpse of what communism can be like. If the communists during the Chinese Revolution were able to eliminate foot binding, illiteracy, prostitution, and syphilis, surely the working class can figure out how to provide clean safe water to its members. A glimpse of the potential of working-class unity can be realized at PLP’s May Day on May 2.
Communist experience & May Day
PLP gained experience and potential in working in mass organizations to coordinate and get out communist politics. We gained confidence and experience working in the mass movements. It also helped train and consolidate younger members.
PLP continues to distribute and discuss CHALLENGE with friends in this struggle. Friends have our communist holiday May Day to look forward to. Newark comrades have been holding study groups on the Communist Manifesto, Vladimir Lenin’s Imperialism, and a Marxist analysis of culture. We will carry on the fight. We don’t know when the struggle will sharpen again; when it does, PLP will be there.
- Information
Communist roots ground International Working Women’s Day in class struggle
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- 07 March 2020 76 hits
In the liberal mainstream world, International Women’s Day is hailed as a day for all women to celebrate women’s innate strength, nurturing ability, power to sway legislators, give birth, and challenge sexism by moving into positions of power in the capitalist system.
All these sexist lies conceal the key contributions of militant, communist, working class, women leaders who understood that you can only fight sexism with a multiracial, multi-generational, and most of all, a working-class movement.
In 2019, the average woman still makes 79 cents for every dollar men make (Payscale.com). The number is even lower for Black, Latin, and indigenous women, who make 26 percent less than white men workers.
Furthermore, we reject the ideology that bosses like Hilary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Kamala Harris help women workers. These ruling-class women perpetuate sexist divisions in our class.
The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) celebrates the history of working-class women—who often put their life on the line—in the fight towards a communist future without sexism, racism, and exploitation.
This month we revisit a few stories, emphasizing that sexism doesn’t just hurt women workers, but the whole working class. The only solution to sexism is nothing short of communist revolution.
Inspired by May Day
Inspired by a May Day demonstration, Clara Zetkin began to lay the groundwork in 1889 to establish International Women’s Day as a communist holiday for working class women (JSTOR, 2019). In 1910 at the Second Women’s Conference of the Second International, she proposed the following resolution, “In agreement with the class-conscious, political and trade union organizations of the proletariat...the socialist women of all countries will hold each year a Women’s Day...” Zetkin went on to become a communist leader in Germany.
Smashing racism at the border
One of those women was a Mexican labor organizer and anti-racist activist, Emma Tenayuca. Born in San Antonio, Texas in 1916, Emma was arrested after joining her first picket line against Finck Cigar Company at age 16 (La Aztlan, 2000). Her political ideology was shaped by two major historical events—The Great Depression during the 1930s and The Mexican Repatriation, a mass deportation of Mexican and Mexican American workers from 1929-1936. As a young person she visited La Plaza del Zacate where socialist and communist working class leaders gave speeches on the plight of the working class and discussions would take place on how to organize.
Emma began organizing workers and by 1934, at age 18, had already helped form the Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. She was arrested as a leader of the 1938 Texas Pecan Shellers Strike. She also organized unemployed workers with Mrs. W.H. Ernst, another radical leader of the Finck cigar strike to form the Workers Alliance. She continually protested over the abuse suffered by Mexican migrants at the hands of U.S. Border Patrol agents. In 1937, Emma joined the American Communist Party.
Organizing against big tobacco
In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, thousands of Black women went on strike against exploitation by the Big Tobacco company R.J. Reynolds (RJR) and formed the labor union, Local 22. RJR ruled over schools, hospitals, parks and many of the available jobs. 16,000 of those workers were women and more than 80 percent were Black. However, higher-paying jobs were not available for Black workers and women were paid even less (Winston-Salem Monthly, 2018).
Women worked in sweltering rooms thick with tobacco dust. One woman, a widow and mother of five, was too ill to work, but was told by the foreman “if she didn’t catch up, there was the door” (Our State, 9/18). The women met at lunchtime and organized a plan to stop working immediately after lunch. They recruited men in the adjacent casing room to join them.
Velma Hopkins helped mobilize 10,000 workers into the streets of Winston-Salem. Local 22 was integrated and led primarily by Black women. Before Local 22 faced set-backs from red-baiting and the power of RJRs anti-unionism, it gained national attention for its vision of an equal society. Women workers like Velma Hopkins, Theodosia Simpson, Viola Brown, Moranda Smith and Christine Gardner were active Communist Party members.
Soviet women pilots help defeat the Nazis
With working-class women on the forefront, the Red Army battled and smashed the fascist Nazi army. In World War II, women served in the Soviet Air Force. Dubbed the “night witches” by the Germans, they took off at three-minute intervals, sometimes 10 times a night. They flew more than 30,000 combat sorties in conditions unimaginable today, They slept two-three hours near their planes in freezing temperatures. “The control stick was heavy to move, and our arms and legs were so short ...”
Nineteen-year-old Lieutenant Yekaterina Musatova-Fedotova, recalled, “The navigators helped us by pushing on our backs as we pushed on the stick to get the tail up for take off.” (NYT, 12/4/1994)
Fifteen women pilots died at Stalingrad, “We hated the German fascists so much that we would have even flown a broom to be able to fire at them.”
Continuing the tradition of communist women
In PLP, we have women like Clara, Emma, Velma, and Yekaterina continuing the tradition of fightback and building amongst the working class. In New York, the women in the family of Shantel Davis, a young woman murdered by the police, continue to speak out against police brutality and organize with other working families that have been forever changed by the racism of Killer KKKops. Founders of Moms 4 Housing are battling against exploitative tenant laws, racism and sexism in California. Teachers from Chicago have protested on picket lines against racism underlined in school closings and exploitation of teachers in schools. Women are fighting against environmental racism in Newark and building with communities to see past liberal politicians’ false promises. We as a party fight against sexism because it means the super-exploitation of women, and because overall, it divides the working class. No matter the gender, we all must join in on mass fightback and speak out about the communist history of International Working Women and anti-sexism everyday. Join PLP today!
Comrade Joan Heymont died on February 26, surrounded by her family and comrades who had become her family, after a valiant battle against interstitial lung disease. A lifelong communist, Joan was an anchor of the New York City Progressive Labor Party collective and a leader of the Party’s education work around the world.
Joan grew up in Rockaway, Queens, the child of two former Communist Party members. She learned strong working-class values and a fighting spirit from her parents, who helped organize the Rockaway community against displacement of Black communities by the city and support for workers harmed by unsafe working conditions.
An excellent student, Joan entered Stony Brook University early and joined Progressive Labor Party there, having met the Party through the anti-war work of Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s. Joan then spent many years as a hospital laboratory worker, organizing for communism in the unions there.
Communist science teacher
Joan later began to work in the NYC public schools, first as a laboratory specialist, and then as a science teacher. Joan was a dedicated teacher who spent enormous amounts of time thinking about what and how to teach her students, connecting with other teachers to learn from them, and sharing her own ideas and lesson plans at science teacher meetings and online groups. She made the connection between science and politics, knowing that the two are interconnected.
Joan was a leader of the Party’s work in education, helping to lead the struggle for Party teachers to make sure that their pedagogy was as strong as their political agitation and base building. Joan worked to help other communist teachers see that “fighting to learn” and “learning to fight” were equally important, organizing several conferences of Party teachers focused on the connections between our political organizing and planning for our classrooms. She was a mentor to many teachers at the schools she worked at, as well as in the Party.
Union work
Joan represented the Party’s ideas in the teachers union at the local and national levels. She stood on the floor of the UFT Delegates Assembly every month and at NEA and AFT conventions every summer to advocate for working-class politics and struggle. She joined many coalitions and union groups over the years, fighting to move those groups to the left. In every group she participated in, she was respected for her integrity and welcomed as a friend. She was able to build friendly relationships even with those who disagreed with her ideas. Joan didn’t give up on workers; she worked to bring her friends closer to the Party, to win them to communist ideas.
Wherever Joan was, she fought for communism. Wherever the Party was fighting, Joan was there. As much as the workers loved her, the bosses wanted to be rid of her. At Boys and Girls High School, the administration attacked her for organizing students and removed her from her classroom and the school for several months. Joan fought like hell to get back to her work teaching and organizing. She never gave up until she was back in that classroom.
Far beyond the struggles on the job, at the union and in the streets, Joan built a collective life. She and her husband Paul raised four daughters together, trying to develop equality in their home. Many more young people over the years have described Joan as “like a mother” to them - former students, younger comrades, the children of friends. Joan helped raise dozens, there for support and struggle. And anyone Joan knew who had a new baby received a beautiful blanket or sweater, hand knit by her while she led meetings, rode the train or just had 10 minutes to sit still.
Party is red politics and red culture
Joan always said that joining the Party had taught her many things beyond politics and she saw it as her legacy to continue that gift. She remembered older comrades introducing her to cuisines and cultures she had never experienced before and she delighted in doing the same for her students and young comrades. She took joy in sharing a new restaurant, a new recipe, a new neighborhood or museum or city. And Joan made the life of the Party delicious. She loved to cook and bake, both as a scientist looking for the best recipe and a communist recognizing the role of building a collective. Many a potluck, cookout and fundraiser were made successful by Joan’s efforts. As her politics had a strong social aspect, Joan’s social life was political. At her family’s enormous annual Thanksgiving Rehearsal open house, or any other event she hosted, CHALLENGE was offered and communist politics were discussed.
Joan’s comrades, friends and family members all describe her in the same way. She was a steady, tireless and optimistic fighter for the working class. She cared for and educated those around her without letting her ego get in the way of what needed to be done. Joan built networks and collectives in every aspect of her life, and that must now carry her work forward: building collective knowledge and struggle, learning about the world in all its aspects, and fighting the bosses everywhere we can.
