CHICAGO, July 25 – On July 24th, the Chicago City Council and newly-elected “progressive” Mayor Lori Lightfoot unanimously passed a law called the “fair workweek” ordinance. It’s already being widely celebrated by many liberal labor groups as a significant reform victory. Similar workers’ schedule reforms are currently in place in other major U.S. cities like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle.
But as the history of class struggle shows, we cannot reform our way to workers’ power. Like the national Fight for $15 campaign, the capitalist bosses and their misleaders running the unions will always manipulate any reform victory to ultimately serve their interests. We need the worker-run society of communism to guarantee safety, security, and egalitarian working conditions for our class, not another compromise with the bosses.
No fairness for workers
under capitalism
The city’s Fair Workweek Ordinance was first proposed around two years ago, as a means to address the unpredictable and unstable job schedules that many service and retail workers face. Many of the workers filling these mostly part-time positions are Black, Latin, and immigrant women workers, so the fact that they have to face such difficulties is another reflection of the racist and sexist nature of capitalism.
The most updated form of the ordinance that passed the city council, mandates that employers provide at least ten days advance notice of employees work schedules, instead of the one or two day notice that a lot of employers now give. It also mandates compensation for workers sent home from work on short notice. The different capitalist industries expected to comply include hotels, day laborers, healthcare facilities, and larger restaurants (chicagofairworkweek.com).
The ordinance was allowed to pass because the retail and service bosses were successful in pressuring the politicians to shape it more and more in their own favor. The final version of the bill excludes any worker making more than $50,000 per year, which intentionally leaves out many nurses and other healthcare professionals who still have their shifts cancelled at the last minute. Also, those workers who are employed at smaller businesses and non-profit organizations, not covered by the ordinance, will still face instability in wages and schedules.
But these shortcomings didn’t stop the union misleaders from SEIU and other organizations from singing their praises for the ordinance. They paraded different workers to the city council meetings to provide testimony, but after the bosses were able to chop the ordinance up in their favor, the bosses and politicians alike had very little reason to object to workers speaking out within their “democratic” rights.
This reform, much like the Fight for $15 campaign, is useful for the unions and the liberal bosses to sell the illusion of progress to the working class. They intentionally use terms like a “fair” workweek or wages even though there can be no equality or fairness between bosses and workers under capitalism. As the communist Karl Marx detailed over 150 years ago, the profit system is based off of the bosses extracting surplus value from the exploitation of our labor. If they paid us for the value of what we actually produce, the system would implode.
The only solution is
communist revolution
This is not to say that as workers and communists we should not be participating in reform movements large and small. We must, as these are the struggles where we learn to organize and understand our power as a united working class, and steel ourselves collectively in a period of growing fascism and inter-imperialist rivalry. But it is essential that we are clear among ourselves as workers that these reforms will never resolve the fundamental contradiction between the international working class and the capitalist bosses.
In order to resolve that contradiction – and all the racism, sexism, nationalism, misery, and inequality that comes with it – we need the mass international Progressive Labor Party openly advocating and organizing for a communist revolution that wrenches state power from the bosses and builds a collective egalitarian society based on our needs. When this revolutionary goal is widely grasped and embraced by the masses, capitalism’s days are numbered!
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India annexes Kashmir, spreads volatility in the region
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- 09 August 2019 67 hits
In 1947 a large section of Kashmir became part of India. It was granted semi-autonomous status by Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. This ended on August 5, 2019 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi deployed 38,000 paramilitary forces to Kashmir, suspended all internet and cell phone communication there, banned public gatherings, placed two chief ministers of Kashmir under house arrest and revoked the special autonomous status of Kashmir.
As rivalries between these regional powers sharpen, the rulers are resorting to more and more openly nationalistic fascism. Whether it’s the Hindu nationalism of Modi, or the white nationalism of Trump, or the nationalism of the local Kashmiri capitalists, workers have no stake in supporting any bosses.
Kashmir, a cog in the
inter-imperialist war machine
Kashmir is divided among India, Pakistan and China, where these regional powers meet in the Himalayan Mountains. India controls the largest portion of land, followed by Pakistan, with China having the smallest section. China snatched about 9200 square miles from India in a 1962 war. Another 2000 square miles were given to China by Pakistan. Kashmir is militarily important to all three of these nuclear powers. Economically China and Pakistan are cooperating on China’s One Belt, One Road infrastructure project and China has investments in Pakistan’s mineral resources.
Pakistan and India have already fought three major wars since 1947 and a smaller war in 1999. An insurgencey is still going on in Kashmir, as well as a huge presence of Indian and Pakistani forces. Every day dozens of innocent workers living on the both sides of border are killed by cross border firing. Every day 1.5 billion people are being threatened by nuclear war. The working class has gained nothing from these bosses’ wars. The only war that will benefit us is when workers of all nations unite to get rid of capitalism and all the bosses.
Internationalism,
fascism’s achilles heel
Prime Minister Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party came to power on a super nationalist, pro-Hindu, anti-Muslim program. Now he’s continuing to consolidate his power, appealing to his nationalist base and outflanking his rivals. We call that fascism. He needs fascist rule not just to grab tiny Kashmir, but also to confront China, a rising world imperialist power right on India’s border. Meanwhile very little help is coming from the United States, a declining imperialist power with an unpredictable and unreliable president.
So Article 370, granting Kashmir special autonomy is gone. Article 35A may also be gone. It restricted non-Kashmiris from buying land in the state. Indians might be allowed to migrate to Kashmir and alter its demographics.
Bosses want to spread nationalism, fundamentalism and racism in the region to spread hatred and chaos. This is helpful for them to exploit the working class more vigoriously. These bosses need to avoid class struggle, thus they are dividing the working class by nation, religon, race and sect. Many workers understand the tricks of these capitalist bosses. As we lead struggles against these bosses, we are trying to educate the masses of workers that we need to establish a communist international movement to get rid of these boses once and for all. Join the international, communist Progressive Labor Party.
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Retirees support immigrant workers, fight nationalism
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- 09 August 2019 70 hits
Washington, DC, 7/23 - Worker’s struggles have no borders! That was the sentiment that led members of NYC’s District Council 37 Retirees’ Association (including a Progressive Labor Party member) to bring a strong resolution of support for immigrants facing “racist, cruel and uncaring” policies to the nationwide retiree council of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). The world’s capitalists are ramping up racism and nationalism in preparation for more and bigger wars. Workers all around the world must sharpen our efforts to smash all borders with multiracial unity as we build a revolutionary movement for communism.
At the retiree association meeting, our more immediate and limited goal was to encourage each of the council’s participants to “join efforts, with others in the labor movement as well as with community and religious partners, in support of immigrant rights.”
We pointed out in our motion that immigrants around the world are forced to migrate “due to a combination of political and religious persecution, government repression and narco terrorist gangs and the lack of jobs and economic opportunity…” We also argued that these problems were based on the history of colonialism and imperialism around the world. That’s why, as we fight to support our immigrant sisters and brothers, we must build the understanding that the entire worldwide imperialist system has to go.
Prior toa the vote most of the voting representatives were spoken to and were supportive of our intent. The motion passed overwhelmingly, reflecting the disgust felt by most at the treatment of immigrants and their children at the southern U.S. border.
Our actions in Washington grew out of the “Lights for Liberty” rallies held on July 12th. In NYC, there was, at best, modest participation from organized labor.
This raised the issue of trying to bring support for immigrants into our unions. The following week, at a small gathering of retirees of one city union, an immigrant from El Salvador was invited to explain this issue. He told of his forced migration to the U.S. He had been on a death list in the late 1970s. His story personalized the general story of the dangerous but necessary trip many are taking today.
He galvanized the resolve of several retirees who would be attending the retiree council to take action there. Prior to going to Washington for the AFSCME retiree council meeting, a member of PLP joined with other retirees to craft a resolution to present there. We understood that a resolution wouldn’t by itself change much. Nor would AFSCME likely act on the resolution. We felt that local union chapters, however, could cite this resolution in calling together union and community coalitions.
If actions like ours were replicated in other mass organizations, then demonstrations like those on July 12th would take on a different character. We could raise the ideas of smashing all borders, of fighting racism with multiracial unity, and of building a revolutionary movement for an egalitarian communist world. Today, facing a “dark night” of limited class struggle, a lot of work must be done to win workers to these communist politics of the Progressive Labor Party.
El Paso Dayton. Gilroy. Add these cities to the growing list of mass shootings that have occurred in the U.S. in 2019 alone. Of the 968 victims, 196 people have died. The shooting in El Paso, Texas on August 3 was among the deadliest attacks in the U.S. motivated by gutter racism. It happened as the greatest terrorist of all, U.S. imperialism, is declining around the world and is rotting internally. The answer is multiracial working-class unity and comradeship as we fight against racism and sexism now and for an egalitarian, communist world in the future.
While the “threat of the great replacement,” or the idea that white people will be replaced by Black, Latin or Asian people was cited by the shooter in El Paso, the actions of these “domestic terrorists,” are motivated by racist and/or sexist hatred which is connected to a deeper and often overlooked trend of social and economic alienation. The U.S. working class is disaffected, isolated and living in a constant state of uncertainty and fear—fear of losing their jobs, healthcare, homes and more. Youth are mired in hopelessness, increasingly turning to suicide and/or drugs. Some horrifically turn to mass killing sprees as a way of achieving some form of notoriety. Capitalism and imperialism breed and profit from a culture of drugs and violence.
Racism and violence at the U.S.-Mexico border are nothing new. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, politicians, big businesses and the Texas Rangers often depicted Mexicans and indigenous peoples as criminals to justify the theft of land and resources. At the present, the brutality of racism is intensified, with President Donald Trump calling Mexicans drug dealers, criminals, and rapists. He has appealed to his base to “build a wall” to keep immigrants out of the U.S. His administration has locked up and detained thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers from Latin America, separating families and denying their rights to claim asylum—a legacy continued from former Democratic president Barack Obama.
Capitalism begets violence
Mass shooting trends clearly indicate the intensification of racism, a result of the toxicity that capitalism breeds. Politicians are spinning their wheels, saying these mass shootings are mental health issues, or are the result of violent video games. They squawk about gun control and make calls for universal background checks.
However, the real culprit is the capitalist profit system and its rotten culture of individualism, racism and sexism. In a period of escalating inter-imperialist competition and declining U.S. global dominance, capitalists are seizing every opportunity to use tragedies such as mass shootings for their own purposes. There is an increase of police force presence. Fascism is increasing with calls for more vigilance and surveillance to create and encourage a culture of paranoia and distrust among workers. These deadly mass shootings have only exacerbated fears and anxiety that capitalists have always used to divide workers against each other, especially the fear of being replaced by some other “race.”
Opportunity for bosses to build fascism
Politicians and the bosses’ media use psychology to explain what’s behind U.S.’s “domestic terror problem.” They would rather have people believe that these “lone wolves” are isolated individuals who act on extreme beliefs independently.
Instead, these shootings are an opportunity to build all-class unity. The liberal wing of the U.S. ruling class would love to use these shootings as a way to build allegiance to the system. In the name of safety, the working class will face greater surveillance and repression. Due to racism, this will disproportionately affect Muslim, Black, and immigrant workers. The lesson here is that capitalism begets violence. Capitalists cannot keep the workers “safe.” Only the working class can provide that.
Meanwhile, the U.S. rulers are preparing for the inevitable global land war to defend their dying empire. They need masses of workers ready to fight against China and Russia, thinking they are defending some non-existent democracy and the “American Dream.” This imperialist wing of the U.S. ruling class wants workers to have guns only to kill workers in other nations as they defend the bosses’ worldwide empire.
While this single incident may be the deadliest mass shooting in “modern” U.S. history, it pales in comparison to the mostly Black, indigenous and Latin workers murdered by the police every year in the U.S. It pales in comparison to the number of killings that are a result of U.S. military operations around the world in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. A system that engenders violence cannot be part of the solution.
Opportunity for us to build communism
The rulers have no answers for the working class. They are fighting profiteering wars all over the world, and the big imperialist powers are preparing for world war. And it is only the workers that fight and die in these wars and many more in the coming world war, quite possibly with nuclear weapons. So let’s sharpen our struggles against racism and sexism. Let’s promote a better world, run by the working class, for the working class. That’s communism. Let’s plant those revolutionary communist seeds in every struggle that we are in. Join us. Join the international, revolutionary, communist Progressive Labor Party!
The Peterloo Massacre is a snapshot in the history of class struggle around the world that is largely hidden from workers by the rulers. Though this was not a revolutionary struggle but rather one for electoral rights, it does show the determination of workers to fight back against the intolerable conditions that capitalism imposes on our class. And, as always, the lessons learned lead to advances for workers’ struggles.
On Monday, August 16, 1819, a mass demonstration of working women and men and radical reformers in the city of Manchester was attacked by the British Army, leaving 18 dead and 700 wounded (peterloomassacre.org). This brutal and bloody atrocity was soon called “Peterloo” in mockery of the victory over Napoleon Bonaparte’s army at Waterloo in 1815. (The journalist who coined that phrase was sentenced to a year in prison!)
The end of the 20-year long Napoleonic wars caused a depression in the British economy. Manchester was a center of developing capitalist industry, especially in weaving. The powerloom industry was growing, with 20,000 workers, but there were still 40,000 handweavers, working from home. Many thousands of these workers and their families became homeless and starving after the war period. Wages for a 16-hour days had been cut by 50 percent (theguardian.com).One account from a book entitled The Peterloo Massacre by Robert Reid vividly recalls the conditions that triggered the rebellion:
Nothing but ruin and starvation stare one in the face [in the streets of Manchester and the surrounding towns], the state of this district is truly dreadful, and I believe nothing but the greatest exertions can prevent an insurrection [rebellion]
Workers rebel against
bosses crisis
Three years earlier, in November and December, 1816, protest demonstrations at Spa Fields, London had been attacked by the bosses. After that, a few small revolutionary societies, mainly composed of middle-class radicals who supported the now-defeated French Revolution, had conspired to overthrow he British government. Each was infiltrated and betrayed by government spies – the Blanketeers, Manchester, March 1817; the Pentrich Rising (June, 1817); and the Cato Street Conspiracy (1820).
Strikes against the capitalist class had targeted economic issues, such as low wages and lack of food. But Peterloo was different.
Workers go out and
cops target women
Called on a Monday, so that handloom weavers, who didn’t work Mondays because they had already worked throughout the weekend, the Peterloo demonstration was not revolutionary, but a demand for a reform of Parliament—to give more men the vote (women could not vote until the 1920s). Afraid of the might of the organized workers, local politicians demanded that the leaders of the demonstration be arrested. They sent in the army. The Hussars (heavy cavalry) charged the workers on horseback, swinging sabers (heavy swords). Many women were among the demonstrators. Soldiers specifically targeted the women for wanting the same rights as men. They were three times more likely to be killed or wounded than men.
Shelley commemorates peterloo
Percy Bysshe Shelley commemorated Peterloo in his poem, “The Masque of Anarchy,” which includes this stanza:
Karl Marx said that Shelley, who died in 1822, “was a revolutionary through and through and would consistently have stood with the vanguard of socialism.”
Lessons for the working class
Peterloo is recognized as the beginning of mass, organized working-class protest for political and social reform in England. It showed that the working class is capable of organizing for its class interests at many levels, and it showed the intransigence of the ruling class in fighting in its own interests. The experience of Peterloo led to the Chartist Movement (a mass, and often violent, working-class movement for political reform in the first half of the 19th century, which led to the development of the trade unions. (The British imperialists used similar, and even more brutal and bloody tactics to presrve their rule in India in 1919, when they opened fire on a peaceful gathering at Amritsar, killing 400 and injuring 1,000.)
The experiences at Peterloo led to the development of revolutionary communist ideology and the fight to completely overthrow the capitalist system.
