A year that began with a long strike by New York City school bus drivers ended with an even more militant strike by teachers in Mexico, signs that workers around the world are engaging in the kind of class struggle that gives us hope for a future communist revolution. Over the course of the year, workers everywhere showed the power of unity as they fought back against the oppression of capitalism. In Bangladesh, workers once again shut down garment factories to protest starvation wages and deadly working conditions. Students facing violent attacks from their government in Haiti called on embattled New York City university students to stand with them in solidarity, building the international ties we need to destroy the capitalist system.
The system’s deep crisis was apparent in sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry in 2013. The U.S. and China seemed to be fencing with each other in smaller disputes around the world. Tensions between the U.S. and Russia seemed dangerously close to exploding over Syria’s civil war. U.S bosses railed against the dangers posed by North Korea and Iran. Wars continued in the Middle East and Afghanistan as U.S. rulers tried to maintain control over the world’s oil supply.
We must all try to link our struggles with workers suffering capitalist oppression in the Central African Republic, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, and Mali. Students and faculty at City University of New York are showing the way to support our sisters and brothers in Iraq and Afghanistan by exposing U.S. General David Petraeus’ murderous role there on behalf of U.S. imperialism.
Meanwhile, the bosses’ economic crisis showed no sign of abating. Massive unemployment and “austerity measures” plague Europe and Latin America. In the U.S., the city of Detroit declared bankruptcy. The entire U.S. government was shut down over disagreements between segments of the ruling class over how to pay for the wars the rulers need to compete on the world stage.
In every part of the world, the bosses sought to use racism to divide workers and prevent them from uniting against the capitalists’ cuts to services and wages. But the international working class — and the Progressive Labor Party — was having none of this. Workers fought tooth and nail against hospital closings in working-class neighborhoods in Brooklyn, NY. Legal workers in New Jersey protested cuts in food stamps. Health care workers in Los Angeles fought to unionize. Transit workers in the Bay Area went on strike. Workers in Colombia struck against the imperialist demands of U.S. agribusiness. Workers near Mexico City continued an ongoing battle to force the government to provide usable water to their region.
The true criminal nature of the capitalist system was laid bare by outrageous, racist police murders that seemed on the rise everywhere, be it the of black youth in the UK and Italy or of Romanis all across Europe. Workers in Brooklyn openly rebelled after the assassination of tenth grader Kimani Gray in East Flatbush, the same neighborhood where Shantel Davis was murdered last year. Monthly protests mark the death of Kyam Livingston, a 37-year-old mother of two, in Brooklyn’s Central Booking jail. PLP led protests in the DC area after the cops’ racist murder of Miriam Carey, an unarmed black dental hygienist. The fact that the system cannot and will not serve the workers was made brutally apparent when the court systems refused to provide justice for Ramarley Graham and Trayvon Martin. When Zimmerman was found not guilty, Trayvon’s justice came in the form of militant protests around the country. (In an unsurprising epilogue, Trayvon’s killer George Zimmerman was recently arrested for domestic violence.)
Although the rulers want to lull workers into the belief that we can rely on liberal politicians from Barack Obama to incoming New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, communists offer other ideas, making it especially important to use CHALLENGE as an organizing tool. To have the future we want for our children, workers must rely on each other in collective struggle against the bosses. We cannot wait for the capitalists to throw us crumbs of reform they can take back at any moment. We cannot turn aside and ignore their murders of youth in the streets and in their wars for oil. Our New Year’s Resolution must be to fight back against capitalism in all of its manifestations, and to build the revolutionary movement that will some day emancipate the working class.