THE BRONX, December 2 — Students worldwide are raging at the exploitation and racist oppression of capitalism. From South Africa — where tens of thousands demanded and won a cancellation of fee increases — to the University of Missouri — where the president was forced to resign after repeatedly ignoring racist attacks on campus — students are rising up. While these actions should rightly be championed for challenging the ruling class’s racism, we must also be aware that militant reform movements will neither end capitalism nor fundamentally change its racist foundations. Only a mass revolutionary party--Progressive Labor Party—can accomplish that. Still, reform actions can be a training ground for communist revolution.
Student fightback on a smaller scale recently played out at a community college. Thirty-five students and professors, including members of Progressive Labor Party, demonstrated against a planned tuition hike throughout the City University of New York. The CUNY bosses’ plan, coming on the heels of five straight years of tuition increases, is clearly racist, as the CUNY system serves primarily Black, Latin, Asian, and immigrant students.
The demonstration was bold as we marched through campus and into the cafeteria. For many, it was their first protest, yet they loudly chanted and held up signs as other students and faculty looked on. Many observers gave thumbs-up in approval and nodded their heads, boosting our confidence to fight back. The protest showed that people are open not only to fightback, but to being trained in class struggle with communists.
Model of Student-Worker Alliance
Students also attacked injustices to the CUNY faculty, who have worked five years without a contract. “The professors have waited long enough!” they chanted. This reflected an understanding that students and faculty and staff are all on the same side, and that the same factors driving up tuition are also driving down wages. Students spoke about having adjunct instructors who need to rush off to teach at another school immediately after class. Many adjuncts live in poverty or are on government assistance. As the faculty fights for a new contract, it is vital to build a student-worker alliance, and to demand that any raise for workers not be funded by a student tuition hike.
Cutbacks for War
After we marched to picket at the college’s front gate, PL’ers injected a communist perspective. One comrade exposed the root cause of the cutbacks attacking the working class worldwide: inter-imperialist rivalry. The U.S. ruling class is raising tuition and cutting financial aid because they need to funnel money to their military war machine to prop up their failing empire. As China and Russia increasingly challenge the U.S. worldwide, as in Syria, we can expect even more racist cutbacks.
The battle against ISIS, a group formed out of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq that the U.S. ousted in 2003, reflects the increasingly dire situation facing U.S. imperialism. The money U.S. bosses need to wage this fight is being stolen from our class in the form of racist and sexist cutbacks in healthcare, childcare, education, housing, jobs and social services. In their attempt to pacify and neutralize the working class, the capitalist rulers are trying to exploit workers’ fears to build all-class unity for an escalated war in the Middle East.
Calling Out the Prez
Finally, we marched to the administration building. Our volume forced the college president to emerge from his office. Campus cops came running down as well, exposing their fear of student-professor power. He offered the usual platitudes about taking our message to the CUNY chancellor and “being on our side.”
One student called out the president’s bluff and took out his cellphone, demanding that Marti call the Chancellor then and there. Of course, that didn’t happen. Under capitalism, at all levels, it’s the job of politicians and administrators to pacify workers and students. While some students seemed to take Marti by his words, there were many looks of healthy skepticism. Most people knew the president’s promise wasn’t worth a damn.
This growing skepticism is an opportunity for PLP to raise our ideas, above all the need for communist revolution and the making of a new society. Over recent years, the fighting spirit of the working class may have burned more dimly than in the past. But the fire is far from extinguished! From South Africa to the Bronx, students and workers are rising up in ways large and small. Their fighting spirit, combined with PLP’s communist politics, will pave the way to a future without bosses, racism, capitalist exploitation or imperialist wars.