In the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, major capitalist media outlets immediately blamed the working class, particularly white workers, for Donald Trump’s victory. It is a given in the U.S. that many workers—Black, white, Latin and others—are angry. That white workers are somehow responsible for a Nazi like Trump is ruling class nonsense.
The history of white workers is intimately bound in common struggle with Black and immigrant workers since the U.S. was a British colony. The bosses’ lies represent sharpening capitalist efforts to alienate Black, Latin, Muslim and immigrant workers, those hardest hit by racism, from their white working class sisters and brothers. While the bosses write working-class politics out of history, CHALLENGE strives to preserve and commemorate the long tradition of the all-necessary force of multiracial unity of our class.
The communist Progressive Labor Party fights back against capitalism across the globe for revolution for a communist world, where the international working class runs society. Part of our fight is dispelling the anti-working class lies spun by the bosses about one or another sector of the working class. The capitalists hate and fear communism with good reason—it means an end to their money, their borders, their empires, their racist and sexist ideas, and their class.
Trump: Creature of Capitalism
Donald Trump is rightfully hated by hundreds of millions of workers around the globe, and by masses of workers, Black and white, in the U.S. Donald Trump, however, is no more than a servant of the U.S. capitalist class. The capitalist controlled media, instead of analyzing the class nature of Trump’s presidency, has settled on finger pointing at the white working class.
“Call [the U.S. presidential election] the triumph of angry white men everywhere…The only thing that can be said for certain is that angry white men are now dominant” (Huffington Post, 11/9/16).
Or as former U.S. president Bill Clinton explained, “Trump doesn’t know much. One thing he knows is how to get angry, white men to vote for him” (Politico, 12/19/16).
While Trump’s brand of open racism and sexism represent a lethal danger to the international working class, white workers are not to “blame” for Trump’s election. Capitalism created Trump, or specifically, laid the groundwork for the rise of open racism and sexism he could exploit. Trump is merely the latest in line to serve U.S. imperialism, whose history of creating racism and racist divisions within the working class dates back to the founding of the country.
Racism: Capitalism’s Greatest Weapon and Weakness
“Before Jim Crow, before the invention of the Negro or the white man or the words and concepts to describe them, the [U.S.] Colonial population consisted largely of a great mass of white and black bondsmen, who occupied roughly the same economic category and were treated with equal contempt by the lords of the plantations and legislatures…They conspired together and waged a common struggle against their common enemy -- the big planter apparatus and a social system that legalized terror against black and white bondsmen.”
—“The Road Not Taken” Lerone Bennett
Lubbers, clay-eaters, rubbish—these were the words and raw imagery used to describe the masses of workers, many of them children, arriving from Europe to the British colonies in North America in the 15-1600s. The promotion of America as a land of opportunity was in stark contrast to its reality as a sink hole of oppression for Europe’s displaced labor force, and growing African slave population. However, as Bennett notes above, the “color line” between white and Black took time to create.
The development of capitalism in the U.S. coincided with genocide against the largely defiant indigenous population and laws defining color line among its labor force throughout the 1600s. This hastened after a major rebellion by a wealthy English planter in 1676. Known as Bacon’s Rebellion, over one thousand enslaved Black and indentured white labor (bound by bond contracts to the same bosses) burned Britain’s colonial capital, Jamestown, Virginia, to the ground. The multiracial rebellion took years to defeat, and terrified the local colonial bosses. This led to the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705, the first laws enforcing a legal divide between slaves and indentured servants (see page 4).
Black chattel slavery exploited by the U.S. capitalists enabled the country, over time, to emerge as an industrial power. In the meantime, the working class showed no signs of stopping resistance. What follows are some examples from U.S. history, by no means complete, of how the history of white workers is inseparable from every other sector of the working class.
Racism Hurts All Workers
Immigration to the U.S. continued unabated throughout the 1800s. The southern slave states grew in wealth and power, as did northern industry. The first labor unions, formed in the northeast in the 1790s, struggled to negotiate with employers while in nearby Maryland, Black slaves were driven to exhaustion for the same work with no pay.
With the victory of the Haitian Revolution in 1804, nightmares of Bacon’s Rebellion haunted the rulers of the new United States. Then-president Thomas Jefferson, famed author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, shared the slaveholders’ fears that rebellion could spread via trade with Haiti. As Jefferson blockaded weapons shipments to Haiti, he cracked down on white workers. For the first time, in 1805, unions organized by shoemakers in Philadelphia were indicted as foreign conspiracies against the government, a tactic the bosses learned to love (Labor’s Untold Story, Richard O. Boyer).
By 1846, the New England Workingmen’s Association, organized by women and men mill workers of European descent, resolved: “American slavery must be uprooted before the elevation sought by the laboring classes can be affected” (Boyer). Others sought more radical means, while, in the meantime, hundreds of recorded slave rebellions, large and small, rocked the U.S.
Workers Enlist in Civil War
In 1859, a white abolitionist, John Brown, led a multiracial band of 22 men in an attempt to capture a federal arsenal in Virginia, at Harper’s Ferry. Their failure to end slavery by arming freed slaves and waging guerrilla warfare, however, made John Brown’s raid a rallying cry. During the U.S. Civil War that followed, between 500-750,000 northern industrial workers enlisted in the army. The first company of soldiers mobilized to defend Washington, DC, was an entire union local of textile workers from Massachusetts.
Trade unions enlisted unanimously in this way, many ceasing to exist for the duration of the war. Companies of the workers of the Illinois Miners’ Union and Brooklyn Painters’ Union resolved to smash “the slaveholders’ conspiracy” (Boyer). Masses of Irish, German, Polish and Italian veterans of revolutions in Europe, Jewish workers, English miners and deported trade unionists, and more than 40,000 Canadians, were the among the first regiments to enter the war and scored important victories.
By no means were all white workers committed antiracists. In 1863, the same week the first all-Black regiment of the war, the 54th, saw action alongside white regiments, lynchings and race rioting of the New York Draft Riots occurred. These riots indicate the extent to the danger that all workers, if not organized around class politics and fighting back, can be won to racism.
Hidden History of Multiracial Fightback
There are many more examples of how as the U.S. bosses turned the screws of their terror, intensified segregation and enforcement of race-based laws, Black and white workers resisted., From the multiracial New Orleans General Strike of 1892, to the several decades of armed struggle between workers and the bosses’ militias and police from the 1880s to the 1920s from Virginia to Colorado, white workers have shared writing our class’ history, in blood, alongside Black and immigrant workers.
One especially notable multiracial armed uprising of coal miners in 1921, West Virginia, known as the Battle of Blair Mountain (see box for one of its lasting consequences). It was defeated in what became the U.S. Army’s largest engagement within U.S. borders since the Civil War. During the battle, striking white workers, partly inspired by the Soviet Union, joined with Black and immigrant workers sent to break the strike. They effectively created created a workers’ army 13,000 strong (immortalized in the 1987 pro-worker film Matewan).
The U.S. bosses, determined to crush armed insurrection, deployed planes armed with gas and bombs left over from World War I, some of which were captured by the workers’ army.
Red-Led Workers Fight Like Hell
The rise of the communist movement provided our class with a template for a new world—and nearly one century ago, a revolution in the Russian Empire led by the Bolsheviks (communists) who comprised many languages and ethnic groups seized power over one-sixth of the earth’s surface.
By the 1930s in the U.S., the communist-led mass multiracial organizing of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was openly joining Black and white workers, north and south, side by side into struggle.
Seizing power for communism will mean combating the bosses’ ideas and ultimately the bosses’ state. There is a growing base of racism in the U.S., but this truth is buried under capitalist anti-working class propaganda that paints all white workers with the same brush. Dismissing all white workers as racists deprives all workers of unity with, and learning from, their class sisters and brothers worldwide.
This is nothing new. Capitalists have always blamed the working class for the problems created by capitalism. Black workers, especially Black women, have particularly been singled out worldwide for capitalism’s worst racist and sexist devastation.
The ruling class of the U.S. is the world’s top global imperialist power. Its trillions of dollars worth of investments straddle the globe from the Middle East, to sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America.
PLP carries on this legacy of multiracial unity. With the sharpening attacks on the international working class and growing threat of all out inter-imperialist wars looming, our understanding of history is more important than ever as workers from every part of the working class seek out answers that only a new international communist movement can provide.
How The U.S. Created Race & Racism to Divide the Working Class
“Fork by fork, step by step, option by option, America or, to be more precise, the men who spoke in the name of America decided that it was going to be a white place defined negatively by the bodies and the blood of the reds and the blacks. And that decision, which was made in the 1660s and elaborated over a two-hundred-year period, foreclosed certain possibilities in America—perhaps forever—and set off depth charges that are still echoing and re-echoing in the commonwealth. What makes this all the more mournful is that it didn’t have to happen that way. There was another road -- but that road wasn’t taken. In the beginning, as we have seen, there was no race problem in America. The race problem in America was a deliberate invention of men who systematically separated blacks and whites in order to make money.”
—”The Road Not Taken,” Lerone Bennett (1970)
The Body of Liberties, 1641: Massachusetts becomes the first colony to legalize slavery. This is done through the passage of the Body of Liberties. Under section 91 the article clearly sanctioned slavery - and creates three categories of workers: Native Americans (Reds), white people under the system of indenture, and Blacks.
Salem Massachusetts, 1645: Emanuel Downing writes to his brother-in-law about a scheme to trade captured Native Americans for Africans, claiming that the Puritans can maintain “20 Moors cheaper than one English servant.”
The Body of Liberties, 1662: The Bodies of Liberties was amended to include the enslavement of a slave woman’s offspring to be a legal slave. This guaranteed that offspring of all slaves were considered as the same legal status as their mother, a slave.
The Royal African Company, 1672: The British Parliament charted the Royal African Company (RAC). This company would have a monopoly on the slave trade between Africa and America. All slaves were to be brought to America only through this company.
Bacon’s Rebellion, 1676: Stricter slave codes emerged in Virginia after Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, when wealthy planters decided to abolish indentured servitude and establish permanent slavery for Africans, fearing that class conflict would undermine their tobacco plantation holdings. Also in 1676, a law was enacted that prohibited free blacks from having white servants.
Virginia General Assembly, 1691: Any white person married to a “black or mulatto” was banished and a systematic plan was established to capture “outlying slaves.”
The Negro Act, 1740: The comprehensive Negro Act of 1740 passed in South Carolina made it illegal for slaves to move abroad, assemble in groups, raise food, earn money, and learn to write English. Additionally, owners were permitted to kill rebellious slaves if necessary.
The Naturalization Act of 1790: Alternately known as the Nationality Act, this act restricted citizenship to “any alien, being a free white person” who had been in the U.S. for two years. In effect, it left out indentured servants, slaves, and most women.
The Indian Removal Act, 1830: Signed into law by Andrew Jackson, The Removal Act paved the way for the forced expulsion of tens of thousands of American Indians from their traditional homelands to the West, an event widely known as the “Trail of Tears,” a forced resettlement of the native population.
The Foreign Miners Tax, 1850: The California legislature passes the Foreign Miners Tax, which requires Chinese and Latin American gold miners to pay a special tax on their holdings, a tax not required of European American miners.
The Fugitive Slave Act, 1850: Passed by Congress in 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law enlisting the assistance of other whites. The act also made it possible for a black person to be captured as a slave solely on the sworn statement of a white person with no right to challenge the claim in court.
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LA Housekeepers Link their Anti-Sexist Fight to Election
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- 14 January 2017 178 hits
LOS ANGELES—The housekeepers have been organizing in secret for months. At the beginning of November they made their antisexist fight public. Just days after the presidential election of Donald Trump, they won a vote in favor of unionization, 27-15. There are many more battles to come. Most important is the lifetime struggle for a better world; a world totally run by workers, not profiteering capitalists. Let’s turn every worker’s struggle into a step towards communism.
As reported previously in CHALLENGE, these sexist bosses at an upscale hotel near our church have been violating labor laws for a long time. The 50 housekeepers, mainly Latin women, had to work through breaks and lunch to finish the rooms (many with balconies) that they were required to clean each day. In fact, they often had to work beyond the end of their shift with no pay.
They have been working harder than ever, especially after the hotel owners hired union-busters. They used “captive-audience meetings,” where workers were told reasons they shouldn’t unionize. These union-busters tried to terrorize and intimidate the workers for wanting better working conditions. Seven workers were told to attend one of these captive-audience meetings; instead twenty workers and neighborhood supporters showed up and disrupted management’s plans. Later the bosses decided to trap the housekeepers by meeting with them one on one as they cleaned rooms.
During their celebration rally at City Hall before a Planning Commission meeting, the housekeepers thanked supporters and said that the community has always been supportive and they couldn’t have done it without them. In reality it’s the workers that inspired the resident activists, union leaders and others that had come out in support of their brave actions. They had support from other hotel workers as well, who had also gone through labor disputes in the past. One of the workers from another hotel said that the neighborhood residents give massive support to the workers and just wished more workers at the surrounding hotels were as bold and showed this kind of solidarity.
Instead of feeling powerless after Trump’s election, one of the workers said, “With Trump being elected president, we felt we urgently needed to become a union to stand up for immigrant workers under attack.”
Another said, “Actions are more powerful than words.”
We can learn from the solidarity and bold actions of these hotel workers when we fight racism and sexism. We all must be organized and become engaged in class struggles, such as this one or against racist police violence that has been an ongoing struggle throughout the globe. We, as workers, need to support one another. In order to defeat sexism, racism and all the ills of capitalism, we must move our friends, family, church members, co-workers, and students to support these fightbacks because the bosses aren’t going to give up that easily. We must prepare ourselves for larger fights to come, as the housekeepers fight for their contract and other workers in the hotel fight to join the union as well. But we must never forget that “It’s the whole damn system.” The bosses will do everything in their power to continue to exploit workers in order to increase their profits. We must do everything in our power to build anti-racist, anti-sexist, working-class unity. Join the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party and organize for a better world. Power to the workers!
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Women’s March: To Defeat Sexism, Fight for Communism
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- 14 January 2017 160 hits
The Million Women March, which was initially organized by all white women, on January 21 aims to respond to president Donald Trump’s sexism. (The first Million Woman March was in 1997 in Philadelphia, organized by Black women, and around feminist Black nationalist politics).
The fight against the rising tide of fascism must go beyond marching in Washington for a day. Join with Progressive Labor Party to build a movement to fight for communism and get rid of capitalism at the root of this sexist, racist system.
As attacks on the working class worldwide worsen, we must take the energy we see in the many, many people who want to do something, and fight back. We must be in our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces and take on the unequal schools, the racism of the police and the sexist exploitation of women workers.
Trump’s election is a symptom of a system that is failing on a massive scale. The racism and sexism that Trump has heralded on his way to the White House is not new. The deportations, racist murders by killer cops, attacks on women workers, segregation across neighborhoods and schools and an onslaught on our wages have been carried out by both political parties at the behest of the biggest capitalists regardless of who was in the White House.
All of the reasons we hate Trump, the racism and sexism are inseparable from capitalism. Those rotten ideas are deeply rooted in the bosses dividing the working class to keep people oppressed.
Clinton would’ve been
Sexist-in-Chief
Many lament the “loss” of a woman president, falsely calling it a set back from women. Hillary Clinton, along with her husband Bill, has over two decades of experience in fronting for the capitalist bosses’ war on the international working class for two decades.
She was an especially vocal advocate for the sexist, racist welfare reform that threw millions of people—disproportionately Black mothers and children—into extreme poverty. Hillary Clinton also backed the 1994 crime bill, including the “three strikes” rule, that paved the way for mass racist incarceration and expanded the prison industrial complex for privatized slave labor.
Through sanctions and indiscriminate bombings of Iraq, the Clintons slaughtered 500,000 Iraqi children.
As U.S. senator, Hillary Clinton enthusiastically backed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to shore up U.S. control over Middle Eastern oil, killing hundreds of thousands more civilians in the process. As Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, she took a lead role in engineering attacks on civilians in Libya and the coup in Honduras that helped make it the murder capital of the world. Afterward, she was leading the charge for a more aggressive U.S. intervention in Syria, a conflict that has murdered hundreds of thousands and left millions displaced.
By no means would a woman presidency been a victory for the working class. Clinton’s history has proven her dedication to attacking working-class women and their families worldwide. Fighting sexism can only come from a united multiracial effort by working-class women and men. No allegiance to any section of the ruling class, regardless of their race or gender. These are pro-capitalist ideas, and have no place in a fight for an egalitarian communist world.
Democrats on Code Blue
The Democratic Party is hoping that the Women’s March will resuscitate their party, but building up the Democrats will only keep us on the same path we’ve been on: more racism, more sexism and more wars for oil and power. Even as so many are marching for justice and against racism and sexism, the bosses want to use our energy and fighting spirit in their depraved wars for profit. The New York Times, a big Trump opponent and supporter of the Democratic Party just called for a military draft (1/7), cynically using the guise of “service” as a pretext to send women and men across the globe to kill our working class sisters and brothers who live in other countries.
We will be able to free ourselves from the capitalists when we realize that we don’t need them to run society. The battles against the attacks on the working class are both about fighting for our survival and learning to free ourselves. Join us, the Progressive Labor Party, in the fight to build a society based on the needs of the masses of the world, and not of exploitation.
WORCESTER, MA—After fascist Donald Trump was elected president, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined with others to rally against racism and oppression. PLP passed out flyers calling for communism as the solution to the racist, impoverishing, and fascist profit system. People were eager to read CHALLENGE, some for the first time.
Five hundred people rallied and marched in the streets of Worcester. Previously in 2015, the City government had maliciously prosecuted Black Lives Matter protesters for blocking the streets of Worcester. This time, faced with many more anti-fascist protesters, the City backed down and there were no arrests.
We followed our actions in the streets with a showing of the anti racist documentary “Profiled” at a youth group. We discussed how capitalism is the root cause of racism, profiling, and improverishment. It’s great to protest against Trump, but we should all commit to a lifetime of struggle for a better world. That’s communism where racism and sexism are illegal and the working class runs all aspects of society.
Fighting Local Racists’s Petition
PLP and other groups were right back in the streets protesting a meeting of racists called by a long time racist, fascist and a Trump supporter. This man tried to build a fascist movement by petitioning the City Council to create a list of immigrants who had criminal records. Under pressure by antiracists and the threat of more demonstrations, the City backed down from considering the petition.
Preparing for more fascist oppression, PLP and others organized a multiracial group based on the principles of mass actions against fascism. There are some groups that are mistakenly organizing only along racial lines. This divides the working class and weakens our ability to fight back. Some do not see the necessity of mass, militant action. They want to appeal to liberal politicians with peaceful appeals such as voting or petitioning. That’s not enough. Eventually the whole capitalist system has to go, so we have to learn how to fight back militantly now.
We are building a strong base to oppose hate crimes, racist deportations, and any Muslim registry. This foundation must be the core for a society based on communist relations.
On January 21, the Progressive Labor Party, the Massachusetts Human Rights Committee, and others will rally against the inauguration of Trump in Washington, DC. The PLP in this area will also rally. We shall march in the streets and advance humankind closer to a better world. Fight for communism.
