Black History Month is celebrated in February in the U.S. One thing that is always ignored is the influence of the communist movement in the civil rights movement in the U.S. The great William E. B. Dubois was one of the leading fighters against racism in the 20th century. He founded the NAACP a century ago. After 50 years of anti-racist struggle, he joined the Communist Party in 1945, declaring that becoming a communist was “the logic of my life.” That fact will be well-hidden by the hypocritical U.S. rulers as they “celebrate” Black History Month while preparing another racist war for oil in the Middle East. Even more hidden will be the homage DuBois — a true hero, beloved by the working class, black and white — paid to the communist world leader, Joseph Stalin, on the occasion of Stalin’s death in March, 1953, 59 years ago next month.

(From the National Guardian, March 16, 1953):

Josef Stalin was a great man; few other men of the twentieth century approach his stature. He was simple, calm and courageous. He seldom lost his poise; pondered his problems slowly, made his decisions clearly and firmly; never yielded to ostentation nor coyly refrained from holding his rightful place with dignity. He was the son of a serf, but stood calmly before the great without hesitation or nerves. But also — and this was the highest proof of his greatness — he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.

Stalin was not a man of conventional learning; he was much more than that; he was a man who thought deeply, read understandingly and listened to wisdom, no matter whence it came. He was attacked and slandered as few men of power have been; yet he seldom lost his courtesy and balance; nor did he let attack drive him from his convictions or induce him to surrender positions which he knew were correct. As one of the despised minorities of man, he first set Russia on the road to conquer race prejudice and make one nation out of its 140 groups without destroying their individuality.

His judgment of men was profound. He early saw through the flamboyance and exhibitionism of Trotsky, who fooled the world, and especially America. The whole ill-bred and insulting attitude of liberals in the U.S. today began with our naive acceptance of Trotsky’s magnificent lying propaganda, which he carried around the world. Against it, Stalin stood like a rock and moved neither right nor left, as he continued to advance toward a real socialism instead of the sham* Trotsky offered.

Three great decisions faced Stalin in power and he met them magnificently; first, the problem of the peasants, then the West European attack**, and last the Second World War. The poor Russian peasant was the lowest victim of tsarism, capitalism and the Orthodox Church. He surrendered [to] the Little White Father [the Tsar] easily; he turned less readily but perceptibly from his icons; but his kulaks [rich peasants] clung tenaciously to capitalism and were near wrecking the revolution when Stalin risked a second revolution and drove out the rural bloodsuckers.

Then came intervention, the continuing threat of attack by all nations, halted by the Depression, only to be re-opened by Hitlerism. It was Stalin who steered the Soviet Union between Scylla and Charybdis***; Western Europe and the U.S. were willing to betray her to fascism, and then had to beg her aid in the Second World War. A lesser man than Stalin would have demanded vengeance for Munich, but he had the wisdom to ask only justice for his fatherland….The British Empire proposed first to save itself in Africa and southern Europe, while Hitler smashed the Soviets.

The Second Front dawdled, but Stalin pressed unfalteringly ahead. He risked the utter ruin of socialism in order to smash the dictatorship of Hitler and Mussolini. After Stalingrad the Western World did not know whether to weep or applaud. The cost of victory to the Soviet Union was frightful. To this day the outside world has no dream of the hurt, the loss and the sacrifices. For his calm, stern leadership here, if nowhere else, arises the deep worship of Stalin by the people of all the Russias.

Then came the problem of Peace. Hard as this was to Europe and America, it was far harder to Stalin and the Soviets. The conventional rulers of the world hated and feared them and would have been only too willing to see the utter failure of this attempt at socialism. At the same time the fear of Japan and Asia was also real. Diplomacy therefore took hold and Stalin was picked as the victim. He was called in conference with British Imperialism represented by its trained and well-fed aristocracy; and with the vast wealth and potential power of America represented by its most liberal leader in half a century.****

Here Stalin showed his real greatness. He neither cringed nor strutted. He never presumed, he never surrendered....He asked neither adulation nor vengeance. He was reasonable and conciliatory. But on what he deemed essential, he was inflexible. He was willing to resurrect the League of Nations, which had insulted the Soviets. He was willing to fight Japan, even though Japan was then no menace to the Soviet Union, and might be death to the British Empire and to American trade. But on two points Stalin was adamant: Clemenceau’s “Cordon Sanitaire”***** must be returned to the Soviets, whence it had been stolen as a threat. The Balkans were not to be left helpless before Western exploitation for the benefit of land monopoly….

Such was the man who lies dead, still the butt of noisy jackals and the ill-bred men of some parts of the distempered West. In life he suffered under continuous and studied insult; he was forced to make bitter decisions on his own lone responsibility. His reward comes as the common man stands in solemn acclaim.

W.E.B. Dubois, March 16, 1953

*capitalist alliance

**Seventeen nations, including the U.S. invaded the Soviet Union, attempting to crush socialism. 

***From Greek mythology, caught between two monsters.”

**** Yalta conference with Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, February 1945

*****Stalin insisted that the Balkans and Eastern Europe not be an imperialist launching pad for the West to invade the Soviet Union once again.

May Day organizes for revolution to destroy capitalism. This commemorates a massive strike wave in the U.S. and the particular battle in Chicago’s Haymarket Square in 1886. The leaders of this movement demanded an 8-hour day but also advocated the “abolition of the wage system.”

Then and now the capitalists feared this revolutionary side to May Day. In 1848, Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, “A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.” By 1886, the rulers of Chicago saw this specter. “The newspapers and industrialists were increasingly declaring that May 1, 1886 was in reality the date for a Communist working-class insurrection modeled on the Paris Commune. According to Melville E. Stone, head of the Chicago Daily News…a ‘repetition of the Paris Communal riots was freely predicted’ for May 1, 1886” (P. 90, Labor’s Untold Story, by Boyer and Morais).

Strike Wave Beats Up Scabs

In December 1886, San Francisco transit workers joined this strike wave. They were working up to 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. They wanted a 3-hour daily reduction in hours and a daily pay increase from $2.25 to $2.50. “Strike-breakers were hired, and there was a great deal of violence. Cars were damaged, strike-breakers were beaten, and one person was killed.” Newspapers blamed eight instances of the use of dynamite on the striking workers. No doubt feeling threatened by the union and the worldwide strength and militancy of May Day, the Governor signed a bill in March 1887 “limiting gripmen, drivers, and conductors to a 12-hour day.” (“Transit In San Francisco,” published by SF MUNI R.R. Communications Department.)

By the 1920’s the now pro-capitalist AFL union leadership, fearing the growth of communist ideas in the working class, reversed its support for May Day and the latter’s openly declared communist ideas. Since then the AFL has collaborated with the U.S. government to subvert May Day and the revolutionary trend of workers here and abroad. At the 1928 AFL Convention, the Executive Council supported a Congressional resolution to make May 1 Child Health day. “May 1 will no longer be known as either strike day or communist labor day.”

During the peak of the communist organizing of the CIO unions, May Day was celebrated in the U.S. But business unionism and anti-communism soon triumphed after World War II, with organized labor only recognizing Labor Day in September.

From the Haymarket battle in 1886, revolutionary workers spread May Day around the globe. But history is written by the conquerors. Many workers born here know nothing of the contribution the U.S. working class made to the development of this revolutionary holiday. May 1st is the official Labor Day in most countries, but the leadership of these marches demands only reforms, and stresses the common goals of labor and capital.

PLP Reclaims May Day

However, after the U.S. “communist” party abandoned May Day in the 1950s, PLP resurrected it in 1971 and has organized communist marches and celebrations for the last four decades. We proudly raised the red flag among the workers in cities across the U.S. 

PLP has learned both from the triumphs of the communist movement in the USSR and China, and from their failure to fight directly for communism. We too advocate “Abolish the Wage System” as part of changing the relationship of workers and work in a new communist society.

The abolition of money, of production for sale or profit and of the wage system is absolutely necessary to establish communism. When, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the international working class wins and holds control over all economic, political and cultural institutions of society, it will unleash a creative power that will propel the human race to its highest accomplishments in all fields of endeavor. Only a mass revolutionary communist party advocating and leading such a struggle can achieve this. Only such a party can defeat the fascism that capitalism will use to oppose it.

Long live the 1st of May, the revolutionary international working-class holiday! Fight for communism!

In many ways, U.S. imperialism is already at war with Iran.  Assassinations and cyber-attacks by the U.S. lapdog Israel, sabotage and incursions, sanctions that can be more devastating than physical attacks — all of this has been going on for years.  

The debate in the U.S. ruling class is not whether, but how to step up this war.  There are three main camps, both in Washington and in Tel Aviv:

Assassination, a Weapon of Choice?

1. Step up the clandestine war.  Meir Dagan, the former head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, says there is no need to bomb Iran. What he’s really saying is: We spies can solve the problem by assassinating Iranian scientists and messing up Iran’s computers.  This camp calculates that massive bombing risks provoking a nationalist “rally-around-the-flag” response, along with international sympathy for Iran.  So clandestine war is the first choice.  But the issue is: Will that slow down Iran enough?  Iran’s fascist regime has been working on a bomb for 23 years, and they still are not there.  But they are getting closer.

2. Work to overthrow the clerical fascists.  This camp argues that Iran’s nuclear issue is only one of many threats from that country.  Iran has also sponsored Hezbollah, which has built an impressive missile arsenal to threaten Israel. It has also been active in Iraq, encouraging those who would pull down the democratic façade the U.S. created and replace it with a new dictatorship like Saddam Hussein’s — except this time run by a different faction of the Iraqi ruling class (the Shia instead of the Sunni).  So this camp advocates regime change, which means overthrowing the Islamic Republic.  

Iranian workers, professionals, and many capitalists hate the Islamic Republic, a backward, religious, fascist regime.  Ordinary Iranians want to join the world. They want to use the internet, hold hands in public, watch Western TV and movies, and wear reasonable clothes in place of the chador. As a result, some U.S. and Israeli bosses support regime change.  They calculate that the Iranian people may rise up to overthrow the detested Islamic clerics, an uprising that could happen as quickly and unexpectedly as the recent regime change in Libya and Egypt. Unfortunately, the result will probably follow those two countries’ as well. Another faction of capitalists will take over from the Islamist fascists.

3. Bomb Iran. This is a risky step.  It could backfire on U.S. imperialism or bring great rewards.  The Saudis and other Gulf monarchies are urging the U.S. to act, but they would be the first to criticize if the action failed to go well.  The Iranian ruling class makes all kinds of threats about what they would do if attacked, but they have a long track record of not responding if their only options are poor ones.  An attack on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, for example, would anger oil-importing countries like China that would otherwise sit on the sidelines.  

The most likely scenario is the first one, with U.S. imperialism stepping up the pressure and the Iranian fascists escalating their response.  That is a recipe for starting a bigger war. Iran’s ruling class appears to have convinced itself that the United States is a paper tiger that talks tough but does nothing — a dangerous illusion.  

Three Imperialist Wars Too Many?

In recent years, U.S. rulers have ignored provocations from Iran because they’ve been tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington did not want to take on another imperialist war while it was losing two others.  Now that the U.S. military has mostly exited Iraq, there may be less patience with Iran.  Standing up to Iran is one issue that unites the often bitterly divided U.S. ruling class. The Senate approved a recent law increasing sanctions on Iran by a vote of 100 to zero. In short, 2012 may be the year for a dramatic escalation of the ongoing U.S.-Iran war.  Israel may attack.  A broader war may be brewing.  

In that event, our communist position is: to hell with both of you.  We have no sympathy for either U.S. imperialism or for the clerical fascists in Iran. The only victory for the working class would be for us to use the war to win broad masses of workers for  communist revolution, in Iran, the United States and the world.

 Over several years, myself and other PLP members have been organizing among local transit workers to fight the transit bosses and build PLP. One particular transit worker, Jessica, has become closer to the Party.

Now, after nearly two years of shared discussions and actions, Jessica said she sees the need for a serious long-term, radical, transit rank-and-file study/action group.

Jessica and I attempted to organize a job action group. But when our campaign began this past summer, Jessica threw her energy into an Occupy anti-budget-cut campout led by liberal community groups and phony “leftists.” She thought the campout would “wake up” the whole city. The month-long campout got little media coverage past day one and none of it made front-page or top-of-the-hour coverage. Slowly the campout died out and the city passed the budget cuts.

Throughout all this Jessica stopped organizing for our rank-and-file job action group. Advancing little on my own, I stopped too. Many workers said verbally they would support job actions but in practice most were very cynical about organizing collectively to pull off slowdowns.

I had thought there was enough support for job actions to form a group in which I could spread CHALLENGE and raise the Party. Slowly I realized that a PLP comrade’s advice had been right all along:  communist ideas would help build a base for collective job actions and strikes, not the other way around.

When the Occupy movement grew, the Party decided I should spend more time there, where I ran into Jessica. To the surprise of both of us, Occupy did wake up many people, or at least opened them to discuss revolutionary ideas.  But Jessica also noticed that the media and ruling class supported OWS much more than the summer anti-budget-cut campout. The cops harassed and fined the month-long pre-OWS occupation repeatedly but with little mainstream media coverage. Somehow OWS, which initially was not much bigger than the budget-cut campout, was a front-page top-of-the-news-hour story.

A Democratic Tea Party?

I shared the Party’s analysis with Jessica, that U.S. Democrats wanted OWS to be a Democratic tea party. She agreed and said she was waiting for Obama to jump out from behind a curtain and tell Occupiers, “Gotcha!” We agreed that OWS was an important opportunity to raise militant ideas. She and I have met George, a fellow transit worker, at Occupy. But we both felt that without revolutionaries getting involved, OWS would lead to Obama’s re-election campaign or cynicism.

The Party decided we should pursue a transit study group more seriously. A comrade, Mikey, recently started working in transit. Two old friends of the Party have also recently contacted us and said they want to attend Party meetings about transit.

Mikey, Jessica and I formed a study group in late December. We noted how important correct ideas were. The last transit strike led many transit workers to cynical and reactionary ideas, not to revolutionary or even militant ones. We also discussed the basis of the study group: revolutionary communist ideas or just militant trade unionism?

Jessica agreed revolutionary ideas were important but feared driving people away. She thought the group would be too small if communism was all we talked about. I argued that it was important not to hide communist ideas and that, no matter how hard it was to challenge anti-communism among our co-workers, there’s no other way communists can build a communist movement. If we pretended we were only about militant trade unionism, workers would smell BS because the union hacks have all spit out the same militant trade union lines and then sell out.

‘Be Real About Revolution’

Jessica was still concerned how we would approach communism and the Party. But she agreed it was important to be real with people about studying revolutionary communist ideas. Otherwise other fellow transit worker activists would be driven away by the same hollow trade union rhetoric that the hacks spew.

We decided that for now we would begin the study group with non-Party readings that would enable us to raise communist ideas. Most importantly we each discussed who we would invite to the next study group, making sure to cast a wide net. In January our transit contract expired, although the union “leaders” agreed to continue negotiations. We will have the second meeting of a PLP transit study/action group. Hopefully, and with effort, it will be bigger than the first. The struggle continues.