This article is a reprint of a presentation a comrade in Colombia made at a red virtual school alongside comrades in Mexico.

Racism historically developed from colonialism and the emergence and development of capitalism. In Europe, this "development" that allowed the "primitive accumulation of capital" was based on the exploitation of the slave labor of Africans, Asians, indigenous peoples and other "colored peoples," justifying this method with the theory of superior and inferior races. In North America, it emerged in the form of a multiracial labor force with perks for whites and genocide for indigenous people. This is how anti-Black racism emerged, which today divides workers throughout the world and is the basis of capitalist superprofits and the absolute superexploitation of Black communities.

The Europeans brought indigenous people from the Americas to be displayed as "animals" in captivity, reinforcing the ideal of an inferior race to justify genocide in the Americas. Already in the industrial era, capitalists used children in factories, demonstrating the classist and merciless character that currently prevails in all areas of the planet where workers and the oppressed make up a large percentage of soldiers in the bosses' armed forces, which they are forced to enlist in due to the lack of employment opportunities. For this reason, these workers are the key to the success of the revolution in all countries where racism lies as a source of power and profit for the bosses. It is also their Achilles' heel, since every super-exploited worker is a potential revolutionary leader for the working class. Every unemployed youth mistreated by police brutality is a potential recruit for the class war for workers' power. This is the educational work that Progressive Labor Party organizers must carry out daily together with our readers, friends and family in building a base for revolution.

Racism, along with sexism and nationalism, is used to divide our class, creating armies as cannon fodder for their imperialist genocides and impoverishing the workers of countries with low levels of economic development, such as Ecuador, Peru, Haiti, Bolivia, Colombia, etc., where 90 percent of the inhabitants are Afro and indigenous, 85 percent are in poverty, and 42 percent in absolute misery.

Historically, these workers have led hundreds of militant class struggles such as strikes, occupations, labor actions, and dozens of rebellions, uprisings, stoppages and social uprisings. The capitalists use force and deceit to pacify the workers, whether by lying about the war against poverty, with miserable subsidies or terrible jobs as janitors, messengers, builders, artisanal miners, etc. Capitalists and the media make workers believe that they can gain more influence by electing mobster politicians, corrupt police officers or Black mayors.

Today, capitalism allocates very few resources and many lies to appease the anger of workers with minimal reforms, such as those currently being debated in the Colombian parliament, while unemployment for Black women has increased twice as much as that of whites, while all salaries have decreased.

In Colombia and around the world, Black workers are the key to the class struggle, but if we are not with them to win them over to communism, their anger will turn into fascism/liberalism or they will be meekly led to the ballot boxes. We have to raise communist consciousness in factories, universities, communities and barracks. We cannot win over the most advanced workers without being involved in their struggles. If we do not fight racism, the working class fights with its hands tied behind its back. 

The revolutionary struggle needs a united working class. This is why communists see anti-racist unity as the key to the fight against the bosses who are the creators and benefit from wage slavery. This must be a massive and violent struggle since segregation is a violent attack against the entire working class. Blacks, Latins, mestizos, Asians, whites and indigenous people must unite massively to attack racism as the enemy of the entire proletariat, since we have the same chains of slavery and many sufferings due to capitalist oppression. We must unite as a revolutionary class under the political line of the PLP to destroy the current warlike, mafia-like and fascist system.