I regard the collective as the supremely important form of educational work.
-Anton Semyonovich Makarenko
A pandemic rages. There is no cure. Countless are infected; hundreds of thousands have died. The U.S. accounts for only four percent of the world population but over 25 percent of Covid-19 cases. Clearly the capitalists don’t care about us; their only goal is profit. So, we are being shoved into factories, offices, and stores to die for their profit system. To complete the misery, capital demands that children be returned to schools without guaranteeing safety. Such is the logical conclusion to the capitalist educational system.
But there is an alternative to the absolute failure of this miserable racist, sexist, anti-working-class capitalist system and its so-called “education”. And that is communist solidarity: production for need, mutual respect, and education for collective and individual development. A communist revolution is needed to transform society. Two great working-class revolutions have occurred within the last 100 years. The Bolshevik Revolution (1917) and the Chinese Revolution (1949). While both have been tragically reversed due to the seeds of capitalist practices, their early practices have yielded valuable lessons to be applied before and after our next successful revolution.
What can we learn from these revolutions now, especially in education? A good starting point is to examine some of the dramatic changes made in every sphere of life after The Russian Revolution.
From 1914 to 1921 Russia, an already impoverished country ruled by a vicious ruling class, was devastated financially and militarily first by its involvement in World War I and then by a civil war created by the U.S., English, French and Polish imperialists. Eighty percent of its industry and transportation system was destroyed and agriculture and food distribution almost ceased. The new Soviet state faced immense problems of hunger, disease, and homelessness. These are the leftovers of the old capitalist society that was dealt with.
All children have role to play in leadership
Yet, despite the vast problems, many in the Soviet Union were eager to create a new society, a new humankind, a new collective spirit and an entirely new type of education. Among them was an educator, Anton Makarenko.
Born into a working class family in 1888, Makarenko became a teacher when he was 17 years old. Already convinced of the need for revolution he began his career in the midst of the first (1905) revolution organizing meeting places for revolutionary workers. Makarenko continued teaching and supporting revolutionary activity. By 1920 he had successfully taught hundreds and supervised thousands of students. In addition, he had begun to formulate a new educational system based upon the Marxist classics, Lenin’s leadership and the Red Army’s experiences.
In 1920 he was asked by the Educational Commissariat to organize the Poltava Colony for Young Offenders. Due to the destruction caused by WWI and the capitalist Civil War, tens of thousands of starving, orphaned children roamed the countryside and the cities in search of food and shelter. Many turned to crime to survive. They were thoroughly demoralized, angry, and divided by ethnic hatreds.
Makarenko began with six adolescents who had a criminal history, a windowless, doorless, broken down building, some poor farmland, no tools, no books, little food, and two teachers. The goal: to create the foundation of a communist educational collective. Completely uninterested in their past records, believing no one is born with “good” or ‘bad” genetic characteristics Makarenko had a positive and optimistic outlook about each child’s development. He found that all children, including those with profound psychological problems, had a role to play in leadership.
This was a time when the U.S. led a Jim Crow segregated education system, spewed racist pseudo-scientific ideas, and promoted
individualism.
Utmost demand & utmost respect
The first months were rough. Untrusting, the children felt that this was just another prison. It took months before Makarenko gained their respect by forcefully demanding that they cut the firewood for the whole colony not just for themselves. It was a beginning. Based on his years of teaching and revolutionary activity Makarenko came to see that one must “place the utmost demands on a person and treat him with the utmost respect” in order to succeed.
He rejected physical punishment, which was a common measure in that period. Makarenko realized that just as the working class and peasantry had overcome great social and personal problems to win a revolution, all children would, given respect and collectivity, become productive comrades.
What the capitalist countries promote only in theory was already done in practice in the Soviet Union: emphasis on treating children with respect, providing a collective for children to learn, importance of adult models, learning as a social process, uniting manual and mental work as one, and more.
Amidst their poverty (and with some help from the central organizations), the children began to learn to raise their own food, repair their clothes, fix their dwelling and cobble together tools.
However, the main tasks Makarenko set before them was to collectively plan their communal needs. Many of the children were functionally illiterate. Yet despite their resistance to being in school, the demand was they learn the trades that kept the commune in repair. They began to work in teams gradually learning to think in wider collective needs not merely individualist needs. The children loved all this freedom and self-respect.
Over many years hundreds of children passed through the renamed “Gorky Colony.” With more teachers and agronomists, engineers and the USSR’s growing prosperity, the colony combined five hours of productive agricultural and industrial work and four hours political and conventional instruction. The intellectual labor and manual labor were united. Even within the first three years, the collective students were encouraged to become a partially self-governing commune. After seven years, Makarenko was asked to duplicate the success by founding a new collective of orphaned children, which became the Dzerzhinsky Commune.
‘The Road to Life’
Makarenko wrote many books and articles about education which outlined his conclusions distilled from years of experience while educating thousands of children. One of his outstanding works, The Road to Life, is a record of the transformative experience of the Gorky Colony. It is a book to inspire all those teachers (and in fact everyone) who yearn for a free, respectful, socially conscious life: a communist life.
Worcester, MA, August 25—Earlier this month our Progressive Labor Party (PLP) contingent in Worcester joined forces with members from Racism Free Worcester Public Schools, Defund Worcester Police, and Showing Up For Racial Justice to rally for working class students and demand that police be removed from the school system. An integrated and multi-racial group of nearly 75 workers took turns making speeches and leading chants in an effort to advance the battle against systemic racism during the event, which was called by the Massachusetts Human Rights Commission.
The small but mighty demonstration was held in Lincoln Square near the local police station. As leaders from different organizations took turns at the mic, PLP members made our line clear when we demanded this racist capitalist system be shut down.
Our members explained the school-to-jail pipeline and showed the crowd that allowing kkkops in our schools is hurting working class students. We explained that defunding the police isn’t enough, we need to first kick them out of schools and furthermore fight for a world where racist murderers aren’t handed guns and get out of jail free cards.
We also took the opportunity to explain the importance of multi-racial unity and fightback. An integrated, international working class is necessary to end capitalism.
As speeches wrapped up, we then led about 50 people from the original gathering across the street to the entrance of the police station. We led chants ranging from “Black Lives Matter” to “George Floyd” to chants that put the entire system and its lackeys on trial: “Nazi cops, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”
We later learned that the local police union equated us to terrorists and made demands that one of our comrades be fired from his current volunteer job. Albeit brief, our militant and organized moment of fightback was met with more pushback from the bosses than the rest of the reform demonstration.
These kkkops know that the bosses’ capitalist system is currently protecting them and they know that when PLP comrades chant “SHUT THIS RACIST SYSTEM DOWN!” we’re not calling for reforms, or reduced funding; we are calling for a workers’ revolution, and nothing scares them more.
As U.S. and Chinese bosses shut down each other’s consulates and jockey to create the first Covid-19 vaccine, the rivalry between the two capitalist superpowers is quickly accelerating toward armed conflict. The world is changing before our eyes. As U.S. rulers expose their disunity and decay in their chaotic response to Covid-19, Chinese rulers are growing bolder by the day—politically, economically, militarily. As modern history shows, a dramatic power shift among the biggest imperialists can be settled only by global war. It’s as inevitable—and unstoppable—as an earthquake.
For the international working class, it is more urgent than ever to organize and fight back against all bosses. Workers have no stake in supporting either side of this power struggle. Led by Progressive Labor Party (PLP), we must turn the guns around. We must transform the capitalist parasites’ imperialist wars into a class war for communist revolution!
On July 21, the Chinese consulate in Houston was closed by the U.S. and accused of medical and scientific espionage. In retaliation, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) shut down the U.S. embassy in Chengdu. These events followed a series of “conflicts over trade, technology, Hong Kong, spying accusations and complaints of abuses against Chinese Muslims” (Time, 7/25). They point to the end of an era of U.S.-China capitalist cooperation and engagement—and a new period of openly adversarial competition.
The global pandemic, on track to kill millions of workers for the sake of capitalist profits, both raises the stakes and makes war more imminent. Whoever develops the first coronavirus vaccine can use it—or withhold it—to wield enormous geopolitical power (Washington Post, 3/19). At an April World Health Organization conference calling for worldwide cooperation for vaccine development and distribution, both the U.S. and China refused to sign on (Pharmaphorum, 4/27). Under communism—a system built around workers’ needs, not profit and competition—all medical advances would benefit the entire working class.
As Lenin pointed out, imperialist war is how imperialist powers redivide their control over the globe. But one thing they can’t control is when the shooting breaks out. World War I was not planned. Against a backdrop of competition between Britain and Germany, along with political volatility in the Balkans, a Serbian nationalist lit the fuse by assassinating the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire. No one can be certain what will trigger the next world war between China and the U.S. The flashpoints are many: Hong Kong, Taiwan, the South China Sea, cyberspace, and a sharpening trade war, as well as the pandemic. But no matter how it unfolds, the working class will be expected to fight and die to resolve the bosses’ conflicts.
Imploding U.S. imperialism must resort to war
As its global dominance wanes, the U.S. capitalist ruling class is increasingly desperate to hold on to power and profits. Their disastrous mishandling of Covid-19 is an international humiliation. Their economy is in shambles. They’ve been unwilling to sacrifice short-term profits or discipline the likes of Facebook for the imperialist needs of their class. As a result, the U.S. bosses are at a major disadvantage next to China’s extreme discipline, centralized economy, and more full-blown fascism (see back page). The most dangerous superpower is a declining superpower. “The once unthinkable outcome—actual armed conflict between the United States and China—now appears possible for the first time since the end of the Korean War. In other words, we are confronting the prospect of not just a new Cold War, but a hot one as well” (Foreign Affairs, 8/3).
While deranged Donald Trump keeps making things worse by denying the healthcare crisis and pushing for a reckless reopening, the finance capital main wing laid the foundations for where we are today. Democratic Party liberals like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo led the charge to close hundreds of unprofitable hospitals; ex-president Barack Obama slashed billions from Medicaid and Medicare. Besides leading to thousands of preventable deaths, these anti-worker attacks have laid bare the racist inequalities of the profit system.
Rising Chinese imperialism preparing for war
U.S. decline has opened the door for China to escalate its imperialist aggressions: “In the months since the pandemic first engulfed the world, China’s government has engaged in an unprecedented diplomatic offensive on virtually every foreign policy front” (Foreign Affairs, 7/15). President Xi Jinping’s budding alliance with Iran, a proposed $400 billion economic and security deal, would defy U.S. sanctions and threaten “U.S. security and energy interests in the Middle East and Eurasia” (forbes.com, 7/17).
Proposed port facilities in Iran would give China a strategic advantage over a critical passageway for much of the world’s oil. After a recent military exercise involving China, Iran, and Russia, Iran’s Navy commander, Hossein Khanzadi, declared that “the era of American invasions in the region is over” (New York Times, 7/11).
China has ramped up their activity in the South China Sea, home to a third of the world’s shipping, food supply for millions, and large reserves of oil and gas. In “recent months…China has sharply escalated its coercive activities…. [T]he Department of Defense voiced concern about the Chinese Navy’s decision to seal off an area around the Paracel Islands to conduct naval exercises” (New York Times, 7/27). The U.S. responded by stepping up its own naval exercises in the contested waters. The close proximity of rival ships increases the odds of military confrontation, a combustibile scenario that could spark a wider war.
China is also expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal, with the U.S. expected to respond in kind: “Increased U.S. nuclear force requirements to ensure credible deterrence against China would affect the United States-Russia strategic nuclear balance and threaten to undermine the prospects for further negotiated reductions...China’s nuclear expansion and its refusal to engage in meaningful dialogue will affect stability on multiple levels” (New York Times, 7/29).
Though Beijing’s bosses still use the word “Communist” in their ruling party’s name, the country long ago degenerated into state-run capitalism—a devastating loss for the working class of China and the world. The CCP’s concentration camps for Uighur Muslim workers and their surveillance and repression of protestors mirrors the U.S. rulers’ fascist internment of migrant workers and brutal attacks on anti-racist demonstrators. Workers have no stake in supporting either imperialist power.
We have a world to win
As their contradictions near a breaking point, imperialist war is the only solution for the world’s capitalist rulers. For the international working class, communism is the only solution to end our conflict with the ruling class—to smash the capitalism that bleeds us dry, once and for all. The first two World Wars were followed by the two great communist-led revolutions, in Russia and then in China. But this didn’t happen spontaneously. Decades of struggle and organizing built a fighting working class that could defeat the bosses’ armies. With the international communist leadership of PLP, the workers of the world can turn imperialist war into class war—“the final conflict.” Whenever we fight back against racist and sexist attacks and the rulers’ criminal exploitation, we take important steps toward that day. Whenever we expose the bosses’ nationalism as a murderous tool of our oppressors, we help workers build the international class unity that is more powerful than any imperialist army. Fight for communism! Join Progressive Labor Party!
CHICAGO HEIGHTS, IL—Cops are a weapon of the capitalist bosses, using deadly force to control and discipline the working class. It is this standard operation of terror that murdered 24-year-old Black home health aide worker Darius Washington on the night of July 18. During this time of widespread rebellions against capitalist racism, Darius’ family and friends are demanding answers and fighting back.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) knows there is no justice for our class under this murderous system. Workers must fight back whenever and wherever we can, and our only freedom lies in a communist-led revolution and the overthrow of capitalism!
KKKops terrorizing Black workers is the norm
Darius was killed as he reportedly ran from cops raiding a gathering of people. The details remain unclear, but the cops shot Darius at least 14 times. These attacks are a popular tactic with kkkops in Black, Latin, and working-class white neighborhoods. Often, they purposefully torment workers while also directly taking part in and profiting from the drug and crime trades themselves.
Workers in this area of the Chicago suburbs have long been familiar with the constant threat of capitalism and all the corruptions that come with it. In the village of Ford Heights, the local cop force had to be taken over by the Cook County Sheriff’s Department in 2008 because of widespread corruption and abuse. In Chicago Heights in 2013, Black worker Rodell Sanders was released from prison after 19 years and exonerated of all charges. He sued the police for framing him for murder and won a settlement of the case three years later (Chicago Tribune, 9/28/16). Too many who come in contact with cops don’t live to be proven innocent or even to be charged.
After Darius’ family was notified by cops that he was shot in the raid, they could get no further information about his condition. Running poseful brick walls when contacting the police and the hospital where he was taken, Darius’ brother checked the morgue. That is when he found him.
Whose streets? Our streets!
Friends and family took to the streets the next night. Young workers, soon joined by an inter-generational group of people from the community, blocked traffic at a busy intersection. Their goals were to bring attention to the killing of their friend, to demand answers from police, and to show their frustration with long-standing abuse and neglect.
Led by a comrade who worked in the area, PLP joined protesters in the streets that night. We talked to people in the crowd, bringing solidarity to workers. We said that the only way to stop the racist attacks we face is to fight back and smash this system. They talked to us about how burying loved ones was too common, but they still knew how this was an unnatural reality forced on them.
The following day, PLP joined a large showing of Darius’s community for a celebration of his life. We got to know more workers from the area, and encouraged people to talk about their lives under the system, and how they were feeling in the moment. People spoke of knowing that life didn’t have to be this way and knowing that capitalist forces, cops and politicians made violence an everyday reality. They talked about the need to deal with those realities and the desire to change their conditions.
Under capitalism, workers are presented with many ways to unhealthily numb ourselves from the pain caused by the system. It is no wonder that some take these temporary escapes from the real agony of our day-to-day lives. Our message is that committing to tearing down these ruling-class walls with worker unity and solidarity leads us to a more permanent end to this suffering. We fight to destroy this worldwide imperialist system and to bring about a communist reality from which we will no longer need an opiate.
From tragedy to responsibility for our class
None of us are immune from the abuses of this hellish, for-profit system. It is a long-term and worthwhile struggle to build relationships with fellow workers, and together learn to undo the damage of capitalism. We are in this fight against the dictatorship of capitalism together and for the long haul.
We also fight the ruling class and their cop-thugs for the devastation they cause. PLP will be present for these worker-led rebellions, fight side-by-side with people and build genuine relationships. This is the only way to grow the Party for communism and build support for the revolutionary struggles ahead. Attacks from the ruling class must steel our resolve to crush the bosses entirely. Join the PLP and fight to win!
The increasing threat of war between the U.S. and Chinese bosses is putting tremendous pressure on the U.S. ruling class to move rapidly towards fascism in the U.S (see Editorial, page 2). The use of federal police to attack protesters in Portland has brought the rise of fascism to the fore. Many people are hoping that electing presidential candidate Joe Biden and putting the liberal politicians at the helm of the Democratic Party back in control of the White House will stave off fascism. But the liberal bosses backing the Democrats are the biggest and most desperate section of a divided U.S. ruling class and will, themselves, move towards fascism as they become more desperate in the face of an increasingly volatile world situation. Electing Biden or the Democrats will not spare the working class. The only path forward as capitalism sinks deeper into crisis is the fight for communist revolution.
Fascism is the future of U.S. capitalism
Fascism arises as the crisis between the imperialists is driving the capitalists to prepare for war by forcing discipline onto their own ranks and the working class. The Big Fascist U.S. bosses are no longer the dominant power they have been and can no longer rule in the old way. The Big Fascists are the main wing of the ruling class centered within finance capital. They include big banks like JP Morgan Chase and major industries like Exxon Mobil with massive international interests. They are being challenged around the globe and losing.
To try to hold onto their position, the bosses use fascism to try to gain control of internal struggle between factions of the ruling class, to discipline members of their own class, and force the working class to accept and unite with the bosses around economic and political preparations for war. Under these pressures the capitalist class resorts to the tools of fascism, mainly crushing dissent within their own ranks and among the working class to achieve their needs, while still trying to ensure some degree of popular support from workers to fight and die in massive imperialist war.
The Big Fascists are likely to crush the Small Fascists
The Small Fascists, represented by the Koch, De Vos and Mercer families among others, acquired their wealth through domestically centered industries including domestic energy interests in oil and natural gas. They’re style of fascism relies on a predominantly white racist base and is less concerned with the anger and division it generates with masses of workers. Their approach is to rely on a smaller, whiter military while defending a shrinking empire. They rely on old style KKK racism to build a movement to overthrow the Big Fascists. Trump and his Small Fascist backers are and will brutally attack the working class should they stay in control of the White House, but they are most likely going to lose to the Big bosses who are building their own kind of fascism.
The Big Fascists are trying to create conditions that will allow them to build a large multi-racial military that will fight and die in a war with China and/or other big imperialists. The Big Fascist liberals are willing to crush dissent among the working class. From the day of George Floyd’s murder in May the mass uprising of multi-racial protesters was met by overwhelming police assault under the direction of liberal mayors from Minneapolis to Atlanta to Chicago, New York and Portland. These liberals pay minor lip service to police reforms, while backing the cops who attack protesters. But they also realize that they need Black and Latin workers to go along with a military draft and accept large numbers of casualties without rebelling.
The Big Fascists are having enormous trouble disciplining members within their own wing of capitalists to build that kind of fascist society. Many of the capitalists are absorbed in accumulating personal wealth and not in the broader needs of the ruling class. To get ready for war the Big Fascists need to make major societal changes. They have to get the healthcare industry to give up much of its profits to get better at keeping the working class minimally healthy. The real estate bosses must try to limit their greed and undo some of the racist segregation in neighborhoods and schools that drive up property values.
Likewise, the Tech industry must go along with the war needs of the Big Fascists to control the internet and stop taking money from the Small Fascists and the Chinese and Russian bosses. Once the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 election, they launched an offensive to reign in these undisciplined capitalists. The four tech giants Jeff Bezos of Amazon, the richest man in the world worth $181 billion, Tim Cook of Apple, worth $625 million, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook worth $86 billion and Sundar Pichai of Google worth $1.2 billion appeared at a House hearing (NYT 7/31). They were being investigated under anti-trust laws as monopolies that could be broken into smaller companies but the real goal is to bring them into the Big Fascists’ control.
Big Fascists are the greater danger
The Big Fascists understand that they need to win the widest possible base of support within the working class. The creation of an enormous military requires the participation of Black, Latin and Immigrant as well as white men and women workers. Currently over 60 percent of the military is white and at higher ranks the number increases to 80 percent (CFR, 7/13). Extensively integrating the military is a strategic necessity of the Big Fascists in order to win popular support for war.
Hence we see the recent move by the Department of Defense, in direct opposition to Donald Trump and the Little Fascists, to ban the Confederate flag from all military bases; the decision to rename all military bases currently named after Confederate generals with names of loyal generals; and the apology by Commander of the Joints Chief of Staff General Mark Milley and Department of Defense head Mark Esper for their part in the call up of military forces to Washington, DC in June (WP, 6/11). Their message is clear – the U.S. military will not be used to advance the cause of the Small Fascists as they have larger needs for the blood and toil of our class.
The bosses build for war, we must build for communist revolution
Capitalism in crisis is trying to scare and coerce our class to fight for one side or the other. The only way we can fight for our interests as the working class is by building an international, revolutionary, communist movement to overthrow capitalism and build a society that serves the needs of the workers of the world. Progressive Labor Party is building that movement.
