Workers are fighting determined battles against the bosses in India, a country with almost one-fourth of the world’s population, more than the Western Hemisphere plus Europe combined. PLP is growing roots and winning workers to our international party, and for communist revolution.
Workers and Students Fight Sexism and Battle Bosses
Worldwide attention focused on the systematic sexist violence against women when a medical student, Jyoti Singh, was raped and murdered on a New Delhi bus in 2012. Thousands of demonstrating workers then broadened the grassroots struggle against sexism throughout India, especially in Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. Recently, tens of thousands of students in Kolkata marched in protest against the corrupt cover-up of a sexual harassment incident, and dozens were arrested in clashes with the police. The main university was disrupted for weeks, with many functions completely shut down.
In the same city, workers producing jute, a rope-like substance made from plants, have fought back particularly hard. The hard labor to make jute might earn from $1.60 to $6.50 per day. This is nothing compared to the amount the bosses make off of this product, and many workers have had their hours cut. In one factory, workers physically attacked a plant manager who cut the workers’ hours and, in the attack, the manager was killed. In a separate attack, workers damaged a plant manager’s home while the manager escaped. These attacks are not isolated examples of workers’ fightback, as thousands of auto, transportation and agricultural workers have staged militant strikes in the north and south of the country.
India has a rich history of class struggle and revolutionary movements, which have been betrayed again and again by political parties claiming to be “communist” while joining with the bosses in helping to exploit the working class. Many working-class people became disillusioned with these parties, especially the mainstream “Communist” Party of India, and simply did not vote, which resulted in the electoral victory of the right-wing capitalist parties over the usual liberal capitalist parties. The bosses’ current right-wing Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has a mass base in the viciously racist and sexist Hindu nationalist movement, the Hindutva, which has many similarities to Hitler’s Nazi Party.
In 2002, Modi was Chief Minister in the state of Gujarat, India’s industrial and commercial heart, Hindutva mobs rioted and murdered over 1,000 Muslims following years of anti-Muslim, nationalist propaganda. During the killings, Modi had requested the police and security forces not to intervene. While Modi is now Prime Minister and openly dedicated to helping giant corporations and banks accumulate more and more wealth, those workers won to Hindutva ideology are being used the same way that Hitler used middle-income types rocked by economic crisis to turn against their working-class brothers and sisters.
Separate Struggles With the Same Goal
The stakes are high in India. The increase in working class fightback in India is extremely positive, and workers around the world can learn from their example and their heroism. But unless workers in India are won to a revolutionary communist party with an international outlook of organizing billions to lead a revolution and destroy capitalism, workers will continue to be divided and suffer grinding poverty and vicious racist and sexist attacks. All these struggles show the courage and determination of many working-class people. But all of these movements also reveal the weaknesses that will destroy these movements as fascist repression intensifies.
All of the struggles are divided with no revolutionary communist party to tie them together and build the type of mass movement that workers need. The women’s movement in Delhi was an important part of the recent struggles against sexism, but is a single-issue movement. Killing an individual boss here and there will not systemically change the lives of jute workers of Kolkata — they need a revolutionary party to destroy the bosses’ entire system of capitalism. That means building unity with the women’s and student movements, which number in the tens of thousands in the same city. It means unity with fellow striking auto workers and agricultural farmers. In the countryside, the government is using the military to push the indigenous Adivasi people off their land to make room for big corporations who want to steal it, and the military has been especially brutal.
The capitalists in India are not fools — they know to maintain their power, regionally and nationally, they need to pit one group against the other. The capitalists have also found ways to effectively use the centuries-old caste system of ranking people by birth — technically banned — even as they pretend to oppose it. These types of racism severely super-exploit and oppress targeted groups like the Adivasi, the Muslims and lower-caste workers. But they also split up and distract the whole working class from a unified fight against our common oppression. This keeps the whole working class down. PLP has always made the struggle against all forms of racism the front edge of our struggle to build a communist movement.
Workers Need a Revolutionary Party to Go All the Way
The masses of workers fighting back have been breaking away from the fake “communists” and other capitalist parties with their false promises about reforming capitalism. Capitalism is the reason for these nightmares in the first place — centuries of imperialism and vicious racism gave way to national independence and instead of British capitalists, workers are oppressed by Indian capitalists.
PLP’s strategy of building an international party has had greater appeal to many workers and students as nationalist movements have become the new oppressors. In the past, the communist movement tried to compromise with nationalism. It believed that nationalism was a necessary aspect of the struggle against imperialism. History has proven what PLP pointed out almost fifty years ago — that nationalism leads potentially communist movements right back to capitalism. In India, and throughout South and Central Asia, PLP is systematically expanding its influence among industrial workers, students, and grassroots organizations, fighting for workers to understand that the working class in the whole region has the same destiny as their sisters and brothers all over the world, and need one party to destroy imperialism at its core: capitalism.
NEW YORK CITY, February 5 – “Millionaire Wall Street lawyers on MFY’s [Mobilization for Youth] board…believe that only wealthy people deserve highly trained, experienced legal professionals and attorneys. We reject that vision. We are fighting for our clients!” That was the message from one paralegal as more than 200 workers and professionals braved frigid temperatures to picket MFY Legal Services. The 56 striking attorneys, paralegals, and secretaries from this office are represented by the Legal Services Staff Association (LSSA)/UAW Local 2320.
Funding for legal services for the poor, which includes housing and family court, bankruptcy, benefits for the elderly and many other issues, has been cut steadily since the 1990s. Federal support has decreased over 60 percent since the 1980s. Most contact with clients is now by phone as demand for assistance has surged while resources have declined.
MFY is attacking the pay and benefits of the workers, but the cuts are really aimed at the poor and low-wage mostly Black, Latin and immigrant clients we serve. MFY’s staff and caseload have more than doubled in recent years, but its administrative support staff, all Black and brown women, has only grown from three to four people. They are demanding family leave, reduced workloads and pay-equity for the lowest-paid workers. They are also fighting to keep experienced staff while recruiting new Black, Latin and immigrant staff that more reflects those we serve.
Ultimately, we have to replace the racist profit system with communist revolution. Workers won’t need legal help to survive. There would no such thing as a poor worker. A good life for all workers will be the goal of society. From fighting for our clients to affirmative action in hiring to pay-equity for the lowest paid workers, this is a strike against racism with the potential to be a school for communism.
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Transit Workers Stop — Antiracist Movement Grows
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- 12 February 2015 152 hits
CHICAGO, IL January 13 — “We have changed the climate of oppression!” These were the words uttered by a member of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 308, a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) train worker, as more than 300 workers showed up to stop the sellout leadership from stealing another election.
It was our biggest union meeting in over 30 years, as we made phone calls, struggled with our co-workers, used social media and organized car pools to pack the union hall. It was the work of a very loose coalition of CTA workers that includes both train and bus workers that began meeting in 2011, fighting for one local union and one contract.
It could also be a sign that months of mass marches and rallies over the racist murders of Mike Brown and Eric Garner have had an effect on the mood of the workers.
Sellout President Robert Kelly was trying to call a new election after having been soundly defeated. In 2012, he conspired with CTA bosses and Chicago bankers to negotiate the worst contract we have ever had. It created 700 new low-paid Customer Service Assistant (CSA) positions, who do the same work as the Customer Service Representatives (CSR). CSAs make $12.40/hr with no guarantee of a 40-hour/week while the 300 CSR’s make $30.00/hr. It also included Accelerated Discipline, which has been responsible for 300 workers being fired.
During the campaign, there was a lot of discussion and debate about whether the mostly Black and Latin workers and riders were facing racist attacks. Inspired by the mass anti-racist demonstrations, some of us wanted to make this an anti-racist campaign, linked to the issue of police terror, the rise of fascism and the threat of war. Others felt that being “too political” would hurt our chances of “winning,” even though they agreed that these are racist attacks! This raises the question: “What is winning?”
We did make progress. More workers were introduced to CHALLENGE, and a small network helped to distribute anti-racist material. That is winning. We were able to address racist police terror, as one worker was fired from the CTA based on the racist lies of the Chicago Police Department (CPD), and another’s father was killed by CPD (see past issues of CHALLENGE). That kind of struggle, too, is winning.
Ken Franklin was elected President, and while a good guy, he wanted to keep politics out of the campaign in order to “win.” He will be receiving “Congratulations” from his International President, the Mayor, and the head of the CTA, all the people he will have to oppose if he is to make a difference. His Executive Board and International are already telling him that you have to know how to “play ball.”
For us, we have to consolidate our base of CHALLENGE readers and anti-racist fighters to eventually be able to lead strikes against mass racist firings due to Accelerated Discipline. The next time CPD murders a Black youth, to shut down the transit system and lead tens of thousands of workers and youth to police headquarters or City Hall. And most of all, we want to develop a mass base for communist revolution. Winning CTA workers to build and participate on May Day will be a test of our success.
In his State of the Union address, Barack Obama called for “middle-class economics” — a brand of capitalism where workers would keep a bigger piece of the pie. But Obama’s latest promise is so much pie in the sky. A system based on the exploitation of the working class — and enforced by capitalists’ state power — can never serve workers’ needs. The two classes are diametrically opposed. “Middle-class economics” reflects an embattled, crisis-ridden U.S. ruling class that is running scared — scared of what could become a communist working-class revolution.
The day after Obama’s speech, in an opinion piece headlined, “Can Capitalists Save Capitalism?” the New York Times referenced a May 2014 conference in London. The Conference topic was “inclusive capitalism,” a concept put forward in 2002 by academics at the University of Michigan and Cornell. In a widely cited article, “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,” they pointed to the potential profit that could be generated by “the fourth tier,” the world’s poorest four billion people.
Addressing the London conference was Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, which impoverishes workers worldwide on behalf of U.S. bankers. Despite the reversals of the revolutions in the Soviet Union and China, communism remains the main threat to capitalist rulers around the world. Lagarde echoed Marx’s warning that capitalism, as she paraphrased, “carried the seeds of its own destruction, the accumulation of capital in the hands of a few, mostly focused on the accumulation of profits….”
Speaking for her fellow bosses, Lagarde voiced concern about “high unemployment, rising social tensions, and growing political disillusion — all of this happening in the wake of the Great Recession. One of the main casualties has been trust — in leaders, in institutions, in the free market system itself.” She pointed to a recent poll showing that fewer than one in five people believed that “governments or business leaders would tell the truth on an important issue.”
The contradiction of capitalism is that it is ultimately undermined by the inequality that creates profit, the system’s lifeblood. As Lagarde acknowledged, “The 85 richest people in the world, who could fit into a single London double-decker [bus], control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population — that is 3.5 billion people….This is a wakeup call.”
Rulers’ Worry: Marx Was Right
As Progressive Labor Party has pointed out, only the destruction of the capitalist profit system — and its bosses, wars, racism and sexism, exploitation and permanent mass unemployment — can solve our class’s problems. Only a communist society, led by the working class and its revolutionary party, can end the rulers’ atrocities.
Obama’s capitalist benefactors cooked up his phony “redistribution” scheme in their think tanks. Knowing full well that a Republican-dominated Congress would block them, Obama proposed tax hikes on big banks and the rich to pay for tax credits and free community college for working families. But the Democrats and Republicans are two wings of the same racist, anti-worker organization. While they may differ on tactics and occasionally on strategy, their goal is always the same: to squeeze maximum profits out of the working class.
Like all capitalist politicians, Obama has no intention of helping our class. His job is to dupe more workers into voting and accepting tightened government control. U.S. rulers, top dogs since World War II, face intensifying challenges from their imperialist rivals — China, Russia, Japan, and the European Union. Global conflict is edging closer by the day. The U.S. imperialists desperately need to convince U.S. workers that they have a stake in fighting — and dying — for the profit system.
At the London conference, Lagarde endorsed “inclusive capitalism” as “the response to Marx’s dire prediction,” and the key “to capitalism’s survival and regeneration.” By critiquing income inequality, liberal capitalists hope to mislead workers and quell the recent wave of rebellions from Mexico to Turkey to Gaza to Ferguson, Missouri.
Racism Essential to Capitalism’s Existence
Racist exploitation is the cornerstone of capitalism. The U.S. bosses reap more than $600 billion annually in super-profits from the gap in family income between white workers and Black or Latin workers. The profit system is the source of racist cop terror and the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. It is the root of segregated housing and schools and of third-rate health care. It’s the foundation for the racist, criminal injustice system, where 70 percent of the 2.2 million prisoners in U.S. prisons and jails are Black or Latin.
When white workers are won to accept these racist attacks, it weakens the fightback of the entire working class. As a result, the capitalists are freer to maintain their profits with mass layoffs during recessions and depressions — and to drag down white workers’ wages and conditions, as well.
Racist inequalities are pervasive in capitalism. Witness the corporate movement to low-wage countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa, where two billion workers try to survive on $2 a day. Or the racist anti-immigrant attacks in the European Union, where “foreign” workers are widely blamed for rising unemployment.
In their efforts to buy working-class loyalty, U.S. rulers could afford jobs programs and improvements in workers’ standard of living during and immediately after World War II. But the current generation of U.S. bosses, beset on many fronts, cannot. The 1950’s American Dream — a good union job, a cheap home mortgage, college for the kids, a decent pension — was a reality for some workers of that era, most of them white. In 2015, it is a stinking lie.
Bosses’ Big Concern: Workers’ Revolution
On January 15, the Inclusive Prosperity Commission weighed in on the current crisis of world capitalism. The report’s authors were ex-U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and British Labor Party hack Ed Balls. Published by the Center for American Progress, the study was solely funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. In effect, it rated working-class revolution as more dangerous than the menaces posed by China, Russia, ISIS or al Qaeda:
The primary challenge democracies face is neither military nor philosophical. Rather, for the first time since the Great Depression, many industrial democracies are failing to raise living standards and provide opportunities for social mobility to a large share of their people….This is an economic problem that threatens to become a problem for the political systems of these nations — and for the idea of democracy itself.
The “economic problem” for these “democracies” (the term the bosses use for their electoral dictatorships) is capitalism, the profit system itself. The capitalists control state power — the apparatus of government, the military, courts, cops, and media — and use it to protect their profits. While the capitalists may temporarily improve workers’ pay and conditions, their system requires the absolute exploitation of our class. Any scraps they throw at us are taken back in their next economic crisis.
The Center for American Progress squarely represents the capitalist class. It was founded by John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s chief of staff during the bloody bombing of Bosnia and now top campaign advisor to war-maker Hillary Clinton. Its number two is Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s mass-murdering Secretary of State. When asked in 2001 about the deaths of half a million Iraqi children by U.S. sanctions that withheld food and medicine, Albright told CBS TV, “We think the price is worth it.”
Join and Build PLP
PLP’s goal is to destroy these butchers and smash the system behind them. With workers’ trust in the capitalist government and system on the wane, it is time to sharpen struggles in all our organizations and lead workers against this failing society. We have a tremendous opportunity to win masses to join and build the Progressive Labor Party and a communist future.
New York City, January 19 — PLP and friends upped the ante against racist cops and slumlords under the leadership of Black, Latin, and Asian women this Martin Luther King (MLK) weekend. Over 1,000 CHALLENGEs were distributed. This weekend was yet another demonstration that workers will fight back under communist leadership. The ability for the international working class to abolish capitalism hinges on making anti-racism and anti-sexism central to our fight. With PLP, such a world is possible.
Church Avenue: Trail of KKKillings
We kicked off the weekend with a long march against racist cops down Brooklyn’s Church Avenue in the bone-chilling cold. The rally began at the site of murder of Kimani Gray, a 16-year-old Black teen killed by racist cops Mourad Mourad and Jovaniel Cordova in March, 2013. Over 50 workers and students shut down the street. Many, some pushing their children in strollers, joined the march.
We stopped traffic in all directions with a picket on E. 38th and Church, where 23-year-old Black woman Shantel Davis was killed by the racist black detective Phillip Atkins in June, 2012. Though all these cops have a history of racist assaults and the city was forced to pay out millions to victims of previous attacks, NYPD awarded some of these cops for “heroism.”
The march ended with a rally on E. 18th and Church, where we regularly protest for Kyam Livingston, a 37-year-old Black woman worker. Kyam was killed in by the cops who deliberately refused to give her medical attention at Brooklyn Central Booking in July, 2013. Three powerful women took the mike; all three were brought into the struggle by the murderous NYPD. It is no accident that Black women, who are ruthlessly exploited by the bosses’ state, are leading the fight against the racist cops and courts.
Reds, Not Experts
Saturday’s mini-communist school was led by fresh recruits from PLP’s Ferguson project. Three Black and Asian women introduced the recently published Fight Racism pamphlet and facilitated discussion. In one group, participants talked about how to live an antiracist life while living under racism. Capitalism has divided our class so much that we must make a conscious effort to foster multiracial relationships in our lives. Another group pointed out that racism is an international fight and that abolishing borders is crucial to abolishing racism.
Why is it significant that this school was led not by the veteran white comrades, but by the handful of Black and Asian women who recently joined the fight for communism? PLP doesn’t believe in experts! For a communist revolution to succeed, masses of workers must learn and fight for our ideas. Under capitalism — where women workers are silenced, objectified, battered, abused, raped, and exploited — it is no small victory that our fight for workers’ power is led by Black, Latin, and Asian women. We train those most oppressed to be in leadership, for it is their class experience that will advance the revolution.
Turn Up the Heat on Slumlord
One Black woman, a youth worker who recently joined PLP, and her family have been suffering under their racist and sexist slumlord, Fred Basal, who refused to provide heat during winter. This forced the family to boil water to keep warm. One pot accidently fell on two children. They got second-degree burns. Basal not only refused to help with the medical bills and provide heat, he also pushed for rent!
This is no isolated incident. During the coldest months of 2013 and 2014, New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) received over 200,000 heat and hot water complaints. And so, this Saturday, a PLP contingent went to Basal’s office in Jamaica, Queens to turn up the heat against this racist and sexist slumlord. We chanted, “Fred Basal, Just Face it! You’re a Slumlord and a Racist/Sexist!”
The youth worker is the main breadwinner of over seven people in her home. This system gets away with oppressing Black women and their families through poverty wages, slum housing, abusive healthcare, and the systemic terrorization of our kids in the schools and on the streets. Under capitalism, Black mothers don’t have “the right to raise their children in a healthy environment.” Our working-class kids are dispensable for the bosses. Only a communist system will allow Black workers, women workers, and youth to live to their full potential. The basis of racism and sexism — exploitation and profit — will be smashed.
Small But Strong
A multiracial crowd of over 400 gathered at the “Dream4Justice” march in Harlem on MLK Monday. Local black politicians like Jumaane Williams preached from the podium about upholding the traditions of peaceful protesting. These misleaders have nothing to offer us but rotten ideas like voting for our next capitalist dictator. The ruling class will only fund politicians, organizations, and ideas that will sustain capitalism.
Liberal imperialist George Soros, funder of movements like Occupy and the Color Revolutions worldwide, granted $33 million to organizations such as the Hands Up Coalition and other Black Lives Matter organizations. In the crowd, a small but strong group of PL’ers held a banner for communist revolution — the solution that needs millions of workers and youth, not politicians and grants. We attracted many who took up literature and followed our chants.
In particular, a group of high school students from the Bronx gathered around us. They loved the chant “Racist Cops You Can’t Hide — We Charge You with Genocide!” For many, it was their first time at a march or on a bullhorn; they were inspired by the young PL’ers who encouraged the students to chant. It is under communist leadership that we see the potential for our Black, Latin, and immigrant youth unfold.
Ready for May Day!
This weekend also included initiating the May Day organizing committee. May Day is a celebration of the international working class, the day we look back on our year of organizing, and look forward to what more must be done. Come celebrate May Day, a communist holiday, with the international communist Progressive Labor Party on May 2!
