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Bolshevik Revolution Centennial Series: Free at Last! The World’s First Workers’ State
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- 29 September 2017 42 hits
This is the first in an extensive series of articles about the Bolshevik Revolution and the triumphs, as well as the defeats, of the world communist movement of the 20th century. We welcome your comments and criticisms.
One hundred years ago, November 7, 1917, marked the beginning of the single most important event of the 20th century, the Bolshevik revolution. Russia’s working class, headed by the revolutionary communists of the Bolshevik Party and its leader, Vladimir Lenin, freed one-sixth of the world’s surface from capitalism.
The world was changed forever. The rulers were now ruled. Exploiters the world over were trembling.
The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (1848) described why workers were oppressed and told them what to do about it. The Manifesto declared that in making a revolution workers “had only their chains to lose.” Seventy years later the Bolshevik Revolution proved that the chains of oppression can be ripped off completely.
The Communist Party was the crucial factor. Its leader, Vladimir Lenin, won it to be totally committed to revolution, not compromise. Under its leadership the workers single-mindedly pursued the goal of state power and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The profit system—the dictatorship of the bosses—was destroyed.
Revolution, Not Reform
Some so-called “leftists” advised against revolution. They claimed that the capitalist system could be reformed so that it could better serve the workers.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks would have none of this. They had confidence in the workers! The communists and workers knew from experience that voting and demonstrations wouldn’t result in a real change of the social order.
The world’s bosses launched a counter-offensive. What was left of the Russian ruling class joined hundreds of thousands of foreign troops from 14 countries, including the United States, that poured into Russia to attempt to “strangle the Bolshevik baby in the cradle” (Winston Churchill).
The fight against this counter-revolution took far longer than the seizure of power. Supported by the vast majority of workers and peasants, the fledgling Red Army triumphed. Foreign soldiers, most of them workers too, did not fight well against them. Workers worldwide rose up to support the first communist workers’ revolution.
In a short time, the U.S. troops refused to fight the Red Army and were sent home. Workers all over the U.S acted in many ways to support the Russian revolution.
Why were the Bolsheviks successful?
1. The Russian bourgeois was very weak and poorly organized. The capitalists had only gained power in February 1917. Russian workers saw no essential differences between the Tsar and the capitalists.
2. The Russian working class had been steeled in revolutionary battle. Insurrections had occurred in 1905 and in February 1917, involving many workers in battle, often under Bolshevik leadership. By November 1917 the Bolsheviks were entrenched in key areas in major cities, particularly in communications, the army, and the navy.
3. The Bolsheviks understood they could turn “imperialist war into civil war.” The Russian bosses’ attention was focused on the European battleground, leaving their internal flank wide open to attack
4. The Bolsheviks had built a worker-peasant alliance, telling the peasants to take all the land from the landowners. This drew all peasants and agricultural workers to revolutionary leadership.
5. Significant portions of the working class and peasantry were won to the key concept of revolutionary violence—without which no revolution can succeed.
6. The Russian working class had the revolutionary leadership of the party of Lenin—the Bolsheviks. They were steeled in battle. They had unbreakable ties to many sections of the working class. They were unswerving in their drive for socialism. They had carried out a protracted political education campaign for nearly 20 years—defeating the misleadership of various pseudo-revolutionary groups.
Achievements
The Soviet system of production was for use, not for profit. In the 1930s, when the entire capitalist world sank into depression, the Soviet Union was building a new society without unemployment and hunger. They created some measure of a decent life for workers in an incredibly short time.
The Soviet Union fought against racism and sexism. The battle against racism was particularly significant. As pro-communist Paul Robeson said about his trips to the Soviet Union, he “felt like a human being for the first time since I grew up.”
In 1941, the bosses again tried to destroy the revolution. Hitler, using all of Europe’s resources and the largest military machine ever assembled, invaded the Soviet Union. Hitler’s prediction of capturing Moscow in six weeks went up in smoke.
All this was accomplished under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. No wonder he is reviled to this day by world capitalism! Now, with the very partial opening of the former Soviet archives and the Trotsky archive, we can see that all the allegations of crimes by Stalin related by pro-capitalist and Trotskyist “historians” are false, without exception.
Lessons to Be Learned
The Bolsheviks were pioneers—the first to try to build socialism and communism. It was inevitable that they would make many mistakes and suffer from many political weaknesses. These ultimately led to the return of capitalism to the USSR.
Today, no country is led by revolutionary communists. But this is a temporary historical setback. We know that “every dark night has its end.” Capitalist exploitation and inhumanity inevitably leads workers to fight back.
Progressive Labor Party is a product both of the old International Communist Movement and of the struggle against its revisionism – capitalist ideas dressed up to sound Marxist. Our movement is daily fighting to learn from the Soviet Union’s great battles and achievements as well as its deadly errors that led to its collapse. Reformism, racism, nationalism and all forms of concessions to capitalism only lead workers to defeat. We are committed to organizing workers, students and soldiers to build a mass worldwide working class Party that will turn this era of imperialist wars into a new, international communist revolution.
Next issue, we will look at the pre-revolutionary period and how the Bolshevik Party was forged in the class struggle.
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Struggle Deportation & Police Killings, Same Fight vs. Capitalist Terror
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- 29 September 2017 28 hits
NEW YORK CITY, September 27—Over forty people attended from the different congregations where Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have a base gathered for a revival. We sang songs that called for justice, including the song, “Go Down Moses,” which a comrade rewrote to reflect our anti-racism politics. Some also sang “Ballad of the Deportees” to help inspire our antiracist struggles against deportations and murder by police.
Mobilize vs. Deportation
One NYC congregation holds New Sanctuary meetings and support a Guatemalan family who found refuge in the Holyrood Episcopal Church in Washington Heights after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) targeted the mother for deportation. As of now, ICE agents (modern minutemen) cannot arrest their targets at churches, schools or hospitals.
At another church, people are mobilizing support for a member who is facing a deportation hearing herself at the end of October. She was brought here legally from the Dominican Republic at the age of seven. She suffered such racist oppression that she fell into substance abuse and was forced into a plea bargain for drug dealing for which she was no way guilty. Subsequently pardoned for this “crime”, she was on the road to naturalization when, late for work, she jumped a subway turnstile. Now ICE is using this minor infraction to try to deport her. This outrage began under Deporter-in-Chief Obama.
The real criminal is the United States government that a) creates atrocious conditions forcing people to flee past these fake borders, b) makes life insufferably racist and sexist once workers reach the U.S., and c) exploit them under the threat of deportation while also using them as a scapegoat and discipline the rest of the working class into submission.
Targets of Police Murder
When the capitalist government isn’t out hunting and capturing our class, they are straight up killing us in our homes. Workers are also sharpening the struggle for justice for Muhammed Bah and Debra Danner, two emotionally disturbed targets of police murder in NYC. The fight against racist police murder is a priority.
Bah was a 28-year-old cab driver from Guinea who was shot by the cops when his mother called 911 for an ambulance. One kkkop straddled Bah who was lying on the floor still breathing and executed him with a final shot to the head. He was murdered in the hands of the capitalist government on September 25, 2012.
For five years an expanding coalition of religious people and community fighters have supported Ms. Bah in her quest for justice. Repeatedly, rebuffed by the Manhattan District Attorney and federal prosecutor, all that remains is a civil lawsuit and the hope that evidence of the crime and cover-up will finally come to light.
Deborah Danner, a 66-year-old woman, is now part of a harrowing group of Black workers whose mental illness prompted fatal police violence, instead of medical services. When her neighbors called 911 saying she was acting erratically. In response, Bronx police sergeant Hugh Barry shot and killed her in her apartment. They did not wait for psychiatrically trained clinicians. They did not first try to de-escalate or calm her down. She was murdered by the state on October 18, 2016.
Both Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill were forced to admit that this was unjustified. “Hugh Barry…was charged with second-degree murder, first- and second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, and was suspended without pay” (NYT, 5/31).
The history of these prosecutions is predictably dismal! Members of the congregation are working to build a citywide struggle to covinct cops and to substitute in trained civilian responders to such crisis events rather than the intimidating killers the bosses have created in their police forces. Communists raised chants like “Trump, O’Neil, DeBlasio, this racist system’s got to go” to show how the whole system is rotten to the core.
Art for Class Struggle
During the revival, there was an interactive skit about police harassment. The audience was invited to offer different solutions to this racist violence. People became more confident about church people’s responsiveness to antiracist, pro-communist politics.
Most of the members in this small, multiracial congregation support the fightback. Although many are reluctant to become actively involved themselves. It is an ongoing struggle with friends about the critical need to expand the fightback for survival itself. The overriding goal is to crush this racist-sexist-imperialist ruling class, and replace it with egalitarian workers’ control worldwide.
Communists in the congregation said the Christians’ first community in Jerusalem was based on communist principles: “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claims that any of their possessions was their own but they shared everything they had... there were no needy persons among them” (Acts 4:31ff). Inspiring!
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Mexico Earthquakes Destruction Uncovers Workers’ Solidarity & Govt’s Atrocity
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- 29 September 2017 33 hits
The earthquake on September 19 killed at least 333 people in Central Mexico, injured thousands of others, and displaced thousands more. Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed or damaged so severely as to be uninhabitable. Mexico City has been devastated, but the states of Morelos and Puebla were particularly hit. Overnight, cities have become ruins.
In wake of this catastrophe, workers look to themselves to rescue and provide basic resources. Much like the 1985 earthquake exactly 32 years ago, the capitalist government exposed themselves to be the opportunist profit-driven leeches they are.
Relying on the Working Class
The working class mobilized moments after the earthquake. Some hurled donations of food and water, shovels, and ready to dig people out of the rubble. The Guardian reports:
By the following day, ordinary Mexicans had created a vast recovery operation to fill every imaginable gap in the official response. Donation sites were set up to receive, organise and deliver essential supplies of food, water, medicines, bedding, clothes and tools to rescue sites and shelters. In many cases, search and rescue operations continued throughout the night thanks to lamps, batteries and petrol donated by members of the public.
The huge army of volunteers established spontaneous networks, using cars, trucks, motorcycles and bikes to access even the most isolated zones not yet reached by authorities. Engineers, doctors, vets, therapists, couriers and cooks contributed specialist skills and equipment. Taco vendors donated food to rescuers (9/23).
It is in time of crisis we see the naked face of the two opposing classes under capitalism. For the working class, our instinct and interest lies in collectivity and laboring to meet the needs of those around us, as evident in the aftermath of the earthquake. This working-class leadership is the kernel of a dictatorship of the proletariat.
This collectivity flies in the face of one of the ruling-class biggest lies: selfishness of human nature. “Bosses believe human instinct is capitalistic, that every one is born selfish, and that nature determines wealth and poverty. The bosses pretend “human nature” can’t change. They really mean that workers will endure capitalism forever. These ideas are false and vile” (Road to Revolution IV, PLP’s Communist Manifesto).
Workers with class-consciousness who soar against the bosses’ divisions of racism and sexism make the bosses tremble in fear. For the ruling class, their instinct is to exploit, compete, and make money. This essence of inequality has been systemized and guaranteed by what is the capitalist government.
Workers See Through the Capitalist State
The illusion of democracy has a weaker hold on the working class in Mexico. It is election season and many know politicians are looking at this mass suffering as an opportunity to advance their careers.
When President Enrique Peña Nieto toured a damaged town in his home state, students booed him. Much of the disaster response was concentrated in rich areas. “Other grievances with local officials predate the earthquake—the rutted road into town, poor water service and too many unkept campaign promises—but the earthquake brought such frustrations to a head” (The Guardian, 9/27).
President Neito promised funds for rebuilding but history shows government aid is usually diverted to groups in bed with the politicians and their capitalist parties, as was the case after the twin hurricanes in Mexico’s Pacific and Gulf Coasts in 2013.
“ ‘They are withholding the food and donations, hoarding them, so they can get a picture of themselves giving out food,’ Rosalino López, 36, a taxi driver said. ‘Promoting their image, that’s all they want and care about’” (The Guardian, 9/27)
Some victims were directed to show their voter-registration ID in exchange for supplies.
Many remember the 1985 earthquake when thousands died and the rest were left to fend for themselves.
Anger surged against the military. “‘The army has a history of imposing brutal triage rules for natural disasters which dates back to the 1985 earthquake,’ said public policy analyst Rodolfo Soriano Nuñez” (The Guardian, 9/21). The distrust is rightly due. In some neighborhoods, armed forces have taken over the rescue operations initiated by civilians and razed buildings that still have people trapped inside.
Part of the government’s worry is how this working-class solidarity can turn into working-class resistance against the government. The bosses are right to be scared.
International Solidarity
When the working class in Mexico organized relief efforts after the earthquakes, they were giving leadership to workers everywhere. We should follow suit. Much of Mexican immigrant families in New York City come from Puebla and surely many have families affected. Some community organizations, that Progressive Labor Party members are part of, are participating in sending supplies to affected areas. It is our responsibility to get out there in the mass organizations—schools, community groups, unions, and hospitals—to organize a solidarity campaign. This includes investigating which members in our organizations are affected, who can link us to fighters in Mexico, and raise money and pro-communist politics about state power.
If the Haiti earthquake of 2010 is any indication, recovery in Mexico means deplorable conditions and stronger military presence. Stand in solidarity with the working class in Mexico. Organize without borders!
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Howard Students Shut Down Former FBI Director Comey
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- 29 September 2017 30 hits
Washington, D.C., September 22—The Howard University bosses felt pain from their ill-advised decision to invite former FBI Director James Comey to be the featured speaker at the University’s opening Convocation. Over 20 students organized as “HU Resist” inflicted that pain. They marched into the auditorium just before Comey was to speak singing the old protest song, “We Shall Not Be moved.”
The protesters then chanted, “Get out James Comey! You’re not our homie!” and “No justice, no peace, no f***ing police!” They read a list of Black members of the working class killed by the police.
Comey tried to speak but could not be heard over the chanting and finally sat down. The protesters marched out to join a bigger rally outside the auditorium. They rallied on the Yard (the main campus), growing in numbers.
The…students issued a statement saying Comey “represents an institution diametrically opposed to the interests of black people domestically and abroad. While his tenure at the FBI has finished, his impact on our community remains.”
In particular, they faulted him with propagating what some officials have called “the Ferguson effect” — a theory that the rise in violent crime is due to police being fearful of facing public criticism for being too violent, and therefore avoiding confrontations with criminals (Washington Post, 9/22).
The Ferguson effect is racist, unproven, and coined by the recently retired chief of the St. Louis police department, Doyle Sam Dotson III. This racist theory was used by Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago, Chuck Rosenberg, director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and of course James Comey. The Ferguson effect more reflects the trepidation of kkkops following the Ferguson rebellion. That’s a good thing. It shows how threatened the rulers feel of the possibility of class-conscious Black workers armed in rebellion. That idea that this resulted in an increase of violent crimes is how the rulers’ way to warrant an increase of police in the neighborhoods, part fascism, and all racism. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) stands in solidarity with Howard students for calling out the system’s racism.
The students then marched to the administration building to confront the President Wayne A.I. Frederick. Cowering in his office, he ordered the building locked down, and finally re-opened it two hours later after the rally ended.
HU Resist first stepped into the spotlight last semester as they protested the secret, on-campus meeting of President Frederick with the racist billionaire Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education. Several of the antiracist fighters also traveled to Charlottesville in August to confront the Nazis who rallied there (see CHALLENGE, 9/13).
Fight Elitism, Build Working-Class Consciousness
HU Resist is fighting back against elitism at the University; one HU Resist member declared, “Howard is doing exactly what it was designed to do: to be an institution for the future of the black elite.” HU Resist wants to demolish this type of culture and replace it with one of responsibility and empathy with the surrounding community. Unifying with working class communities throughout the Washington area is a great idea as the next step in the struggle.
The PLP calls on HU Resist to link up with the Washington area transit workers, who have their own militant history and are under sharp attack from management bosses. The future of a worker-student alliance against racism and capitalism is bright. Such an alliance can intensify the class struggle in all its dimensions and move our struggle closer to revolution and victory!
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Who Is Comey?
James B. Comey is best known for his October Surprise, an October 28 letter to Congress, essentially reopening a closed investigation of Clinton and her aids, which allegedly damaged Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency (CHALLENGE, 1/11).
But, Comey’s entire career has been a part of the (in)justice system of the United States that is responsible both for mass incarceration and vicious imperialism abroad. He is part and parcel of the ruling class’s ongoing attack on the global working class, including racist and international aggression and torture—par for the course for capitalism.
As Deputy Attorney General in 2005, he signed a memo in 2005 approving 13 forms of CIA torture during interrogation including waterboarding, wall slams, sexual humiliation, confinement in small boxes, subjection to extreme temperatures and stress positions, extreme sleep deprivation, and other forms of torture.
As FBI Director, he justified mass incarceration in a speech given in 2015. He also doubled the reward to $2 million for the capture of Black nationalist Assata Shakur, who has political asylum in Cuba. He led the charge to get Apple Inc. to install a “back door” for U.S. surveillance agencies to use, declaring at a cybersecurity conference in 2016, “There is no such thing as absolute privacy in America; there is no place outside of judicial reach.” (CNN 3/9/16).
He left the Department of (in)Justice in 2005 to work as general counsel for Lockheed Martin, the largest defense contractor in the U.S. and a key part of the US imperialist infrastructure. Five years later, he joined senior management person at Bridgewater Associates, a major investment firm, and then in 2013 joined the board of HSBC Holding, a major finance company that was in big legal trouble over money laundering for drug dealers and alleged terrorists.
“Comey led FBI surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists and leaders while directing the agency. Comey is set to lead a lecture series at Howard University this year” (BET, 9/23).
Like the City University of New York students did to war criminal David Petraeus in 2013, the Howard students have an opportunity to make Comey’s visit a memorable one.
Why at Howard?
Why, did Howard University invite him to launch this academic year at Convocation? Probably to demonstrate HU’s commitment to the existing capitalist order including some of its most heinous aspects. But here is what racist university President Frederick wrote to the campus community prior to the event:
“I am pleased to welcome Mr. James Comey to deliver the 150th Opening Convocation address... He will enlighten us and share with us his experiences and his expertise. Formerly the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), appointed by President Barack Obama, Mr. Comey is a man steeped in his ethics.”
If Comey is “steeped in his ethics”, we are facing a poisonous cup of tea.
It’s barely three years since racist killer cop Darren Wilson murdered teenager Mike Brown in cold blood, in the streets of Ferguson. Now workers in the St. Louis area, and all over the world, have witnessed kkkop Jason Stockley get acquitted for the racist murder of 24-year-old unarmed Black father Anthony Lamar Smith. The international communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP)stands in working-class solidarity with the anti-racist fighters of St Louis, with the revolutionary message that justice for victims of fascist police terror will only be gained by smashing this racist and sexist capitalist system worldwide.
The Working Class Will Always Fight Back
Prior to announcing the verdict on September 15, that cleared Stockley for the 2011 murder of Anthony Lamar Smith, the bosses were already preparing for a working-class rebellion. They built barricades around the courthouse and increased their police presence. They were determined not to let workers take the offensive as they had before in cities like Ferguson, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, and Minneapolis. The sight of mass multi-racial fightback terrifies the bosses everywhere, and rightfully so. Revolutionary working class unity threatens their very own parasitic existence.
But despite the bosses’ efforts, workers throughout the area have risen in rebellion to honor of their murdered working-class brother. Since Stockley’s acquittal, anti-racist fighters have taken to the streets day and night to condemn and fight back against this racist profit system. At least 100 fighters have been arrested so far, as the bosses’ attack dogs brutalize them with military-grade weapons, tear gas, and pepper spray.
Regardless of the violence that they face, workers in St. Louis continue fighting back, being a beacon of anti-racism for workers everywhere. They provide a glimpse of the potential for revolutionary change possible only when the working masses organize long-term in their class interests to fight for and build a better world.
Destroy Bosses’ Government – Fight For Working Class Power
Make no mistake: the institutions of the police and the courts exist, and have always existed, to protect and enforce the rights of private property of the capitalist class and their ability to continue making profit through the division, terrorization, and exploitation of the working-class. ‘Reform’ makes the kkkops and courts look nicer, but they continue to serve their capitalist masters. A world without racism and sexism means communism, when workers run all aspects of society.
The bosses’ need for increasing police state fascism in the streets is connected to their need to boost their military budget for their imperialist oil wars worldwide. The countless attacks on workers, from deportations to racist police murder, from sex trafficking to mass incarceration, all need to be recognized as problems of capitalism and destroyed through communist revolution.
Organizing the international working class into a mass Progressive Labor Party of millions remains the only way to permanently abolish the cops, courts, jails, or any other oppressive state institution. Only by organizing our class to destroy inequality, racism, and sexism at their capitalist root can we ever hope to achieve justice for Anthony Lamar Smith and countless others. Only by establishing a worker-run egalitarian communist society in which we make all decisions based on our needs not on making profits, can we ever expect racist police murders to be a nightmare of the past. Join the Progressive Labor Party and build this fight now.