On October 4th, some comrades of mine, as well as some friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), went to Jersey City for a rally and march against the genocide in Gaza. We struggled with each other to remember the importance of getting communist politics out to workers who are standing against attacks on the working class internationally. We distributed close to 100 CHALLENGEs, practiced injecting communist chants that sharpened the politics of the protest, and brought our base closer to the Party.
That PLP and all of its members need to be out in the streets bringing our line to workers is ESPECIALLY true when workers are being led astray by misleaders trafficking in reformism and nationalism. If reformism and nationalism are the only thing workers are exposed to, we cannot be surprised when that is what workers come to believe in. We must be there to explain why the answer isn’t “vote for Mikie Sherrill” or “Free Palestine”, but instead for workers to fight for communism.
And yet so many of us get so timid when the time comes to actually do so. We hesitate to hand out CHALLENGEs, and if we do so we try to avoid ‘stepping on anyone’s toes’. We can hear the anticommunism in our own heads. “How can you say that Palestinians don’t need their own state?” “Now is not the time to be talking about revolution.” Even though we KNOW such ideas bring the working class right back to capitalism, right back to more wars, more racist and nationalist divisions, and more powerlessness. Workers in Palestine do not need their own capitalist state or a ‘ceasefire’ that will not last brokered by the same bosses who started the war. They need communism. Undocumented workers do not need a politician who offers anti-ICE rhetoric. They need communism. The entire working class has no use for nationalism or reformism. They need communism. They need PLP and its line.
That is why we struggled with each other to distribute CHALLENGEs even while organizers of the event were making speeches about the slaughter in Palestine. That is why when event organizers were shouting chants to free Palestine, we used our megaphone to add chants of “Arab, Jewish, Black and white, workers of the world unite!” When workers were asked to scan QR codes linked to the campaign websites of Democrats, we spoke to workers about intensifying imperialist rivalry and fascism, and the need for communist revolution.
Feelings of timidity like this are linked to our own anticommunist ideas, and we all have them. We must work together with our comrades to fight back against those anti-worker ideas, both in ourselves and in others. That is how we will win a communist revolution that will truly end these wars and benefit workers all over the world.
