COLOMBIA, Sept 24—After two cops murdered Javier Ordoñez, thousands took to the streets, leading to clashes with the state-sponsored thugs. As crisis in Colombia deepens, the working class needs to reject working within the system and embrace building outside the system: communism.
These demonstrations demand a restructuring of the police, the resignation of the Minister of Defense, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, and the end of political assassinations of social leaders. Demands also include a solution to unemployment, and the annulment of Decree 1174, which is the “most aggressive labor and pension reform in the last 30 years.”
What the spontaneous movement needs is communist leadership to raise the consciousness of workers. Through struggle, our class needs to see how the police are a murderous institution that cannot be reformed. We must understand that it only protects and serves the interests of the ruling class. Only communist revolution can put an end to the present waves of state terrorism against our class and build a new society free from all forms of racist, nationalist, sexist oppression, bosses wars and wage slavery.
Crisis intensifies
This year, we have seen the horrible return of massacres, the racist displacement of communities in fields and cities, the constant threat from paramilitaries, and the increasing murder of social leaders. On top of that, working-class fighters, former FARC guerrillas, peasant, indigenous and Black organizations have experienced this extermination with greater force during the quarantine. Much of this repression is carried out by the military and groups of thugs at the service of the state and local capitalists.
Health, government, and recycling workers and strike committees continue to carry out cacerolazos (demonstrations with the banging of pots and pans) and demonstrations in squares, parks, and public spaces. The protesters call for the dismantling of ESMAD (Colombian anti-riot police), responsible for repression and deaths—like the murder (still unpunished) of Dylan Cruz on November 21, the day of the first national strike. The mass demonstrations are called by community organizations, women’s student organizations and other organizations belonging to the National Unemployment Committee.
The police repression during the demonstrations left at least 14 murdered, more than 250 wounded, and at least 150 shot. The number of live bullet injuries reached 74. Several reports of abuse and rape by the police during the illegal arrests were also recorded. According to the magazine “Noche y Niebla” (Night and Fog), the biggest “human rights” violators in Colombia in 2019 were the paramilitaries and the police. By human rights, they mean violence against the working class.
The repression also had a vigilante character: “sexual abuse, against two detained women, obstruction of information, and even arrests in clandestine centers as evidenced in videos where, in addition, it is proven how the police exchange weapons with thugs in plain clothes, who shoot as a team, and also aim directly at the body of the protesters and beat them while they were defenseless.”
Workers organize against police attacks
Residents of many neighborhoods in the capital and other cities organized to prevent the police from entering their residential complexes, beating, and shooting at people. There are many reports of police infiltration and of having seen plainclothes agents behind the fires of shops and looting. In many videos, the police are seen fleeing attacks from organized neighbors with stones and sticks.
During the protests, more than 30 CAI (Rapid Response Police Centers) were burned or destroyed. Neighbors denounce that these are the “booths” where drugs are traded, and bribes are paid for mafia activities. After the fires, many of these CAIs were transformed into popular libraries and community meeting centers by protesters.
PLP is building a base within the working class as part of our international work. Members of the Party, friends, and readers of our newspaper CHALLENGE are participating in these demonstrations and joining our sisters and brothers who fight for a better society. We discuss and continue to be involved in the class struggle as a way to move forward to communism.

The naked partisan brawl over their hallowed Supreme Court seat is another reflection of the bosses' inability to govern "in the old way"–of their turn toward fascism.  It wasn't so long ago that Ruth Bader Ginsburg and arch-racist "intellectual" Antonin Scalia were besties who went to the opera together. It was like Joe Biden's warm and collaborative relationships with Jim Crow senators James Eastland and Strom Thurmond ("one of my closest friends," Biden once said). Whatever their disagreements, they were on the same team. But given the sharpening contradictions of capitalism, that era is gone.
As the fight among the bosses sharpens, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg exposes some of the problems the Big Fascist bosses are having within their own ranks with selfishness. Ginsburg as a judge willingly defended the racist anti-working-class policies of the Big Fascist liberal bosses, but when push came to shove, she, like many in the capitalist class, put herself above the class needs of the bosses. When then President Barack Obama took her to lunch and hinted that she should resign so he could appoint her successor, she refused. This type of subjectivity is causing problems for the Big Fascists as they struggle to take down Donald Trump and his Small Fascist backers in preparation for war with China.
The Big Fascists bosses are trying to mobilize around the mythology that the Supreme Court has the power/potential to defend the working class against rogue presidents or a right-wing Congress. The Big Fascist bosses want us to believe that it's essential to elect Biden (and Obama and Hillary Clinton before him) to appoint "progressive" justices and in particular to preserve Roe v. Wade.  This big lie that liberal politicians or judges will defend the working class has led to disasters such as Bill Clinton and Biden teaming up to throw millions of Black workers into prison. Where was the Supreme Court then? The Court (like the President and Congress) responds to mass militancy in the streets and mass movements in general. Reforms, however temporary, are driven by class struggle, not a group of nine ruling-class stooges in robes.
For her part Ginsburg was an eager stooge of the bosses racist system. She consistently carried out her job to enshrine and protect racist policies. In her decision in Sherrill v. Oneida, she ruled against indigenous people with “the language in that opinion…considered some of the more overtly racist language in its challenge and skepticism of tribal interests” (Marshall Project, 9/23/20). In United States v. Sineneng-Smith, Ginsburg argued for prosecution of advocates for migrant workers who “encouraged” those workers to enter the country. She supported the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Trump administration's policy of speeding deportation of asylum-seekers (Politico, 9/20) This is on top of her rulings in support of prosecutors and searches by police officers (Ohio State Law Journal, Vol. 70:4).
Ginsburg was a "federalist," which is short-hand for the racist "states' rights" movement that goes back to slavery days. Her racism sometimes slipped through her "progressive" façade. Most famously she was particularly tone deaf when she called Colin Kaepernick’s protests “stupid and dumb.” (She was later forced to apologize for this). She also had the worst record of any current justice in hiring Black law clerks, a coveted pathway to becoming a judge, having only one in her 27 years in the Supreme Court.  As devoted as Ginsburg was to defending a racist system, she exemplified the contradictions within the ruling class’ politicians, and in this case a judge, who demanded seemingly unlimited fame or money or both in reward for their service. Her individualism and refusal to retire when Obama was President is another example of the lack of discipline within the capitalist class.
Just a quick look at the ages of the leading politicians says a lot about the rulers failure to create space for younger leadership. Trump 74, Biden 77, Mitch McConnell 78, Nancy Pelosi 80. It raises a question as to whether Biden will, should he win, be willing to step down after one term or insist on running again at the age of 81. But it’s not just the age issue for the bosses. While the working class has been bearing the brunt of the capitalist crisis in lowered life expectancy, increased poverty and miserable health care, the bosses servants in Washington are demanding and receiving more and more for their loyalty.
As the political class makes demands, the culture of self-servingness dominates. Bill Clinton was caught sleeping with an intern, yet to this day he is defended by his fellow Democrats. Then, after leaving the White House, the Clintons raked in millions through donations from bosses from other countries to their foundation as well as big bucks for speaking on Wall Street. The Obamas have taken in over $60 million in television and book deals since leaving the White House. The Biden and Trump families have gorged themselves at the trough of capitalists from around the globe by selling their connections. In a period where the ruling class is preparing a fascist crackdown to prepare for war, the gross selfishness of their front people is becoming untenable for them.

One rallying cry for the liberal ruling class is that the November U.S. elections are about saving “American democracy” (See editorial, page 2) As the communist revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin pointed out, there is no such thing as “pure” democracy (see Lenin’s Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky). In class society, every so-called democracy is actually a dictatorship by whatever class holds state power.  Ancient Greece, often cited as the birthplace of democracy, disenfranchised all women and the people who actually kept their society going—the enslaved workers. In the 18th century, the U.S. “Founding Fathers,” many of whom owed their fortunes to large plantations under slavery, had a similar rulebook: “[T]he colonial electorate consisted of only 10 percent to 20 percent of the total population” (crf-usa.org).
Every revolutionary period, whether from slavery to feudalism or feudalism to capitalism, represented a change in the nature of “democracy.” In the U.S. today, the democracy among the bosses is also a dictatorship over the working class. As a result, voting cannot address the fundamental contradiction of capitalism: the conflict between those who own the means of production (the bosses) and those who create everything of value (the workers).
Internationally, the working class struggles for basic necessities while the capitalists fight to accumulate more wealth. War and climate change have made millions of workers refugees. Hunger is widespread and growing. As we’ve seen in recent months, decent health care is restricted to those who can afford it; those without jobs or insurance may be left to die at home.
Only through class struggle can workers exercise our power. But even after we win hard-fought reforms, the bosses will eventually take any gains back. For real democracy, workers must fight for communism and the dictatorship of the working class. Only then will the working class have the final say in how we run our factories, schools, farms, and communities.

The basic issue in philosophy is the struggle between materialism and idealism. In philosophy, materialism means that material reality - the stars and planets, the atoms and molecules, heat and light - existed before thought. Idealism is the opposite.
Idealists believe that thought—in the form of God, order,  spirit, destiny, fate, karma, or human consciousness—came first. Materialists believe that thought reflects matter. Idealists believe that matter reflects thought. Communists are materialists.
As pushers of idealism, the capitalists are similar to earlier ruling classes. The enslavers of ancient times and the feudal lords of the Middle Ages used religious ideas to keep the enslaved and serfs from rebelling. For example, they said the pharaoh, emperor, or king was God, or at least a direct representative of God on earth, and therefore had to be obeyed. Lesser ruling-class figures were indirect representatives of this divine power.
Serfs were told that life on earth might be hell, but disobedience to these God-chosen rulers was a sin that would lead not only to immediate punishment, but to eternal hell. Passive obedience, on the other hand, would be rewarded after death by an eternal afterlife in heaven.
Idealism can't stop rebellion
Religious forms of idealism still influence many people, because they offer security and care, even if imaginary, to those who suffer from the real insecurity and harshness of capitalism. And they offer rationalizations to those who fear fighting back.
However, in an age before the development of science, when superstition was virtually universal because it appeared to be the only way to explain nature, religious idealism was an even more powerful weapon against the masses. Despite this indoctrination, people fought back, at times even inventing other “Gods” to justify their actions.
During antiquity and the Middle Ages there were thousands of rebellions by slaves and serfs, such as the revolt led by Spartacus in ancient Rome, and the Peasant Wars in Germany during the 16th Century. These revolts were put down by the organized violence of the state, often only after prolonged armed struggle, and often followed by mass executions of the rebels and anyone suspected of supporting them.
The crime? Astronomy. The penalty? Death
Even people not directly involved in class struggle were attacked. The Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was imprisoned for seven years, before being excommunicated and burned at the stake by the Catholic church.
What crimes required Bruno's execution? He ridiculed the “mysteries and miracles” described in the Bible, claiming they were impossible. He put forward the astronomy developed by Copernicus, who said the earth and the other visible planets revolved around the sun, and that the stars could be other suns, with other planets revolving around them.
Galileo, who also put forward and further developed Copernican astronomy, publicly retracted his views in 1633, under the threat of torture by the Church. But Galileo knew that the Church and the rulers were wrong. As he was led from the court that convicted him, he is rumored to have said: “Well, it [the earth] moves, anyhow.”
In the beginning are the facts
To the feudal lords and the Church, what was most frightening about Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo was their materialist approach. These early scientists all believed in God-they even dedicated their work to God. But they based their conclusions about nature on investigating material reality. Their “final authority” was nature.
But the feudal lords and the Church based their authority on the words in the Bible and in the writings of Aristotle. If Aristotle and, especially, the Bible could be proven wrong about nature by investigating facts, who knew where this could lead?  Would they go on to deny the existence of heaven and hell, and of the soul. Then what would keep people from rebelling?
The capitalists also fight against materialism. But where there is likeness there is also difference. The capitalist class had to use some materialist ideas to overthrow the authority of feudalism. For example, they had to oppose ''the divine right of kings.”
They also had to take a materialist approach to develop the science necessary for capitalist production. Aristotle and the Bible did not provide guidance for inventing steam engines or dynamite. Because capitalism is competitive, there is constant pressure to take a materialist approach in order to come up with techniques that will revolutionize production and produce more profits. Failure to do so often means defeat by other  capitalists.
Capitalists want science AND superstition
Once materialism was stalking the land in the form of physics, chemistry, geology, biology and engineering, what was to prevent the working class from using the same scientific approach to analyze and change human society? Science is a more powerful tool than superstition.
The capitalists panicked. They denied that the scientific method could be applied to history or society. The theories of Marx, Engels, and other advocates of dialectical materialism were attacked in articles and books by bought-and-paid-for professors all over Europe and America.
Marx and Engels were expelled from Germany, France, and Belgium. They lived in exile in England. Many of their comrades were jailed or killed.
In 1871, the working class of Paris dared to put some of the ideas of communism into practice. They established the first dictatorship of the proletariat- the Paris Commune.
The workers of Paris were furious with the Catholic priests for their service to the old regime, the bourgeois dictatorship headed by the “Emperor” Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. They removed the religious symbols from the churches, which they converted to meeting places for clubs of revolutionary workers. They took education out of the hands of the Church, where it had been placed by the old government, and put it in the hands of the Commune. Materialism, not idealism, was to be the basis of education. Ideas were to be questioned, not taken on faith.
Bosses build a  monument to their own fear
The Commune lasted only seven weeks. The revolution had taken place during the Franco-Prussian War. It was destroyed by a temporary alliance between the invading Prussian (German) army and the defeated army of the French bourgeoisie. The German rulers were afraid that revolutionary ideas would spread to Germany! So they rearmed their defeated enemies so that they could crush the revolutionary workers of Paris.
When the French capitalists recaptured Montmartre, one of the centers of communist strength, their troops rounded up and shot up to 50,000 men, women, and children. Their blood flowed down the sewers to the river Seine, which ran pink for days. Then, on the same hill where the Communards had kept their artillery, the Catholic Church built a white stone chapel called “the sepulcher of the expiation of the sins of the Paris Commune.” Known as Sacre-Coeur, it still stands today, a monument to the fear and hatred of the bosses toward workers who dared to overthrow the idealist lies of religion and apply science to society.
The battle between idealism and materialism is not an academic affair, but a vital part of the class struggle between workers and bosses for control of the world.