Meeting a real communist from China has given me a chance to deepen my understanding of revolution and counter-revolution. My friend was a factory worker in China during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and, besides his lived experience, he has studied the events in his country that led up to the Cultural Revolution (CR) as well as the restoration of capitalism that happened after the CR ended.
A group of comrades in the U.S. has begun studying Chinese history in the period before the capitalist restoration using some of the insights from our new Chinese friend as well as analyses written by Progressive Labor Party at the time.
Corruption in the CCP
Our friend points out two pivotal developments in China in the mid-1950s, a decade before the Cultural Revolution. The first was the institution of the multi-level pay and perk scale for cadre. Cadre were people responsible for leading the day to day tasks of building the country, such as organizing factory or farming work. Not all cadre were members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) when the party took power in 1949. Many were carried over from the bureaucracy of the old regime. Those cadre who were members of the CCP had lived for years on a supply system that provided very similar levels of essentials (food, clothing, lodging, etc.) to all cadre, regardless of their level of leadership. The old bureaucracy had a graduated wage scale with more responsible individuals paid more.
In 1955 the CCP reorganized the compensation system so that all cadre, party members and others, were placed into some level of the same 30-tier pay scale, according to their level of responsibility. This arrangement provided the material basis for cadre focusing on getting ahead by promotion rather than working collectively to build a revolutionary society. Our friend uses the term “bureaucratic privilege” to describe the system in which cadre’s income and access to better housing, schools, etc. was determined by their rank. Articles in PL Magazine in the 1970s criticized this hierarchical system as part of the trend toward capitalist restoration (“revisionism”).
End of rectification
A second development took place in May of 1957, described as a “flip” from the Rectification Campaign to the Anti-Rightist Campaign. (The Rectification Campaign that began in 1956 is known for its slogan “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend”). Mao stated as late as May 14, 1957, that “Our Party will be destroyed without Rectification.”
But the free criticism by Chinese intellectuals and others of features of life in China, including the leadership of the CCP, reached a high enough level of intensity by that time that the majority of the Politburo decided to change course abruptly. At Politburo meetings on May 14 and 16, the decision was made to stop the Rectification Campaign and launch the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Outspoken critics of the CCP were attacked, at times being removed from their posts and publicly denounced. Thus, people who criticized the CCP’s policies were no longer considered part of “the people” but could be branded “enemies of the people” by the CCP leaders. This was, our friend points out, a serious mistake, confusing criticism of bureaucratic and managerial clumsiness with counter-revolutionary activity.
Individualist ideas overpowered pro-communist ideas
These two policy decisions of the 1950s created an environment in which constructive criticism of people’s incorrect ideas to further the development of socialist society (“attack the disease to save the patient”) was replaced by personal attacks and striving for personal power and influence. Combined with bureaucratic privilege, this further widened the growing chasm between the working class and the CCP leaders. Eventually, this led to an interest group of powerful managers who essentially became a new capitalist class inside the Party.
Our friend said life for workers during the Cultural Revolution was a temporary reversal of this trend. Factory workers or cadre of different levels did not risk their livelihood if they raised criticisms of those above them in management or in Party leadership. Maybe the reason that capitalists hate the Cultural Revolution so much is that they fear the very idea of workers being free to criticize them without being fired.
We feel that we have a lot to learn about this very complicated historical period, but having a friend with the personal experience of being a factory worker during the Cultural Revolution can make this study group richly rewarding.

Comrade Jerry Weinberg, one of the earlier editors of CHALLENGE, died on January 2 at the age of 79 after spending nine months in hospice care. Jerry was known for his withering sarcasm directed against all the agents of the ruling class, many examples of which showed up in the pages of CHALLENGE.
Jerry and his wife Ginger were attracted to Progressive Labor Party(PLP)when its predecessor, the Progressive Labor Movement, broke the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba. They later became active members of PLP. In the late 1960s, Jerry became the CHALLENGE editor and Ginger a columnist.
Jerry would devise headlines and front pages that exposed individual rulers and capitalism in general. One vivid example showed two pictures pasted together of Ted Kennedy seemingly kissing George Wallace, representing the ties that bound the liberal ruling class with racists and fascists like Wallace.
Jerry was not only a lover of jazz — which had its roots among Black workers —  but pointed out the racist politics which enabled white musicians to appropriate this music. Being an atheist, he was particularly sharp on exposing how religion was used by the bosses to maintain their oppression of the working class.
Some years following his editorship of CHALLENGE, Jerry became an accomplished chef in New Jersey and would set up fund-raising dinners to raise money for PLP. Eventually Jerry’s family moved to Burlington, Vermont, where he established the Five Spice Café, which for 25 years became one of the most popular eateries in the city. It was there that his working-class sensitivities evolved into training numbers of youth who worked in his kitchen to themselves become accomplished cooks. (One said that Jerry “deserved a plaque for his peanut sauce alone!”) He was well-known in the area, donating to many worthy causes.
Jerry was a storyteller, a lover of poetry and taught about the necessity of living as if we have the obligation to do right by each other. He is survived by Ginger, their daughter Cheryl, and beloved grandsons Ethan Charles and Zander Reed.
Comrade Jerry’s devotion to communism and the working class will be sorely missed, but the delicious meals he prepared will also be remembered by anyone who savored the food in the Five Spice Café.
(Anyone wishing to tangibly honor Jerry can donate to help get a new wheelchair for Jerry’s hospice roommate Chris at Birchwood Terrace https://tinyurl.com/yagsjxqu) Chris and Jerry looked out for each other while rooming together, and Chris was a friend and guardian to Jerry as his health declined.)

NEW YORK CITY, January 3— A Progressive Labor Party (PLP) club rang in 2019 with a forum in New York City to raise awareness about the plight, of our longsuffering sisters and brothers fleeing Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and who are now desperately seeking refuge at the Tijuana-U.S. border.
After an intense week of preparation, 35 workers attended. PLP panelists sharply contrasted the horrors refugee workers experience under capitalism, with that of a liberated worker-run society devoid of economic and physical violence, and artificial borders.
The discussions and experiences that we shared inspired workers to become more deeply involved in struggle to help our fellow migrant workers. The forum began with a panel talk that gave a historical and political overview of the current crisis. In his introduction, the PL’er spoke about how U.S. imperialism destroys the countries of Latin America socially and economically through U.S. interventions militarily and politically in these countries and also about how workers there led the resistance against the criminal U.S imperialism.
This panel was followed by a talk from a member of a community organization who was in Mexico with a group of volunteers. She spoke about her experiences with workers in the caravan, who she built relationships with, and she shared some of their stories. These stories gripped the audience and brought many of us to tears as she laid bare the harrowing conditions these families are experiencing. Many,she explained, are going hungry without food, clothing, or shelter, and many others suffer illnesses due to lack of medical attention and unhealthy conditions.
Nevertheless she counter-posed these with stories about the solidarity, and selflessness that workers from Mexico and the U.S are showing these families in their darkest hours. They lend a hand by donating food, supplies, and their time in order make worker’s lives more bearable. These examples are bright spots of hope that remind us that only our class is truly capable of protecting, and caring for others in times of need.
Another young woman in the panel, working with the sanctuary movement, also told us about the work they are doing to help the members of the caravan in different ways, from fundraising to volunteering in order to meet worker needs. Finally a young worker concluded the panel by sharing her inspiring work in the sanctuary movement. She and her mother created a group to help immigrants who face deportations, which presently boasts 670 members.
After the presentation we opened up the panel for discussion and Q&A, and we had the opportunity to express some ideas and at the end we also had the pleasure of distributing CHALLENGEs. By the end of the discussion, we came to the general consensus that the workers were fleeing from violence, the corruption of governments, poverty, hunger, misery, lack of work, lack of opportunities and repression, and that the bosses—not workers—profit from borders. More importantly, we discussed ways to help our brothers and sisters who are already on the border, and several proposals were made. In the future we agreed to:
 Elaborate and present workshops in all the committees of the community organization about the caravan.
 Prepare a list of volunteers to go to the border in support of the migrants.
Collect funds and supplies to help the members of the caravan and deliver it to the Sanctuary Movement.
Carry out protests or action plans of the committee within the organization.
Work with a PLP member who works at CUNY (who during the forum also participated and gave a speech about his anti-racist work at his campus).
Finally, we concluded with a fundraiser. We gave the funds to the Sanctuary Movement to contribute to the organizing efforts at the border. Perhaps the most valuable gain from this event was that it demonstrated the willingness of the workers to challenge the system and to fight for the things we really care about.
Although we are working inside a reformist organization run by the liberal rulers, this was a small victory for the members of PLP and our friends. We know that with this, we need to continue on the path of larger struggles for communist revolution and workers’ power.

Haiti, January 1—It is a tradition to eat pumpkin soup (“bwe soup joumou” in Creole) every January 1. This soup, sometimes called “Independence Soup,” is a symbol of liberty for the Haitian masses because prior to January 1, 1804, enslaved people were forbidden to have soup. It has also become an occasion to show solidarity: you get up at four o’clock in the morning to prepare the pumpkin soup in the largest pot you can find. It is shared with all your family, neighbors and friends, who come by to have soup and share the news of the day.
But for a long time now, because of the impoverishment of the working class and the strengthening of the capitalist ideology of individualism, some families, especially the most vulnerable, can’t afford the ingredients for the soup. Little by little, the feeling of liberty and solidarity that the practice represents is being lost.
It is in this context, that for the last three years, every January 1,Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has organized a “solidarity soup” in a small provincial town. Party members and friends raise money and families guarantee the cooking. When the soup is done and piping hot, we distribute the soup in our working class neighborhoods and on the public square, using the occasion to talk about what is really going on in Haiti and in the world, from a communist point of view. Hundreds of people share the soup—turning the social inequality created by the capitalist system on its head, if only for a little while, allowing our friends and neighbors to savor their traditional soup in dignity and respect.
More and more, the workers of this town understand the importance of class solidarity, which is essential for the struggle of workers against the class of exploiters, both domestic and international, which threaten their daily existence. In essence, there is no victory without unity and the communist concepts of sharing and collectivity among the oppressed workers of the world. We are all living the same reality, in differing degrees: if we want to win the class struggle we must unite, as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels remind us in The Communist Manifesto. There is no better way for our class to win than to build solidarity in all aspects of life.
In Haiti, 2018 was a year of intense mass struggle against a viciously corrupt system. While many politicians and bankers and bosses are complicit in the theft of funds in the PetroCaribe affair, they are all guilty because they all defend the interests of their class against the working class. Workers have no friends in this den of thieves. But the struggle was mostly spontaneous, with workers, students and youth pouring out into the streets by the thousands over and over to demand an end to capitalist corruption. Many were killed and injured by cops and their death squad agents. But it will take more than spontaneity to defeat the capitalist system, and that is what PLP in Haiti and around the world is organizing to do. Let 2019 be the beginning of the end of the dark night of global capitalism. Let us, the international working class, commit to becoming united into a single fist, to arming both ideologically and militarily, to carrying the red flag of communist revolution, to fighting for an egalitarian world, under the leadership of the PLP. Then we will truly be able to savor our pumpkin soup, knowing that we have changed the world.