Port-au-Prince, Haiti, September 18—As growing demonstrations against the anti-worker national budget entered their third week, class struggle here is intensifying. A general strike was called by transport workers, followed by two more days of demonstrations. From the capital to the provinces, up to 10,000 people have angrily taken to the streets to protest outrageous attacks on the working class, including a flat tax of US$186 for access to public administration services and an annual renter’s tax of six to 10 percent. For example, an individual in a home worth US$3226 would pay US$326/year. The bosses’ budget includes more money for the functioning of Parliament and the executive branch than for education and health.
According to Radio Kiskeya, the strike was 95 percent successful around the capital. It was also widely respected in St-Marc, Petit Goave, Les Cayes, and Hinche, all large population centers. Union leaders are calling this a warning strike. If the government persists in going forward with the budget, more actions are planned.
Encouraged by the showmanship of one senator who tore up the budget on the floor of the Senate, the protests began with hundreds taking to the streets. But while a dogfight has surfaced among politicians in Parliament, it will not put an end to capitalist exploitation. Only conscious class struggle can lead to communist revolution and crush capitalism. Workers are voting with their feet for a mass demonstration to organize even more people against the government. Many called for more than tearing up or burning the budget, but for revolution as the only way to address the needs of the workers and students of Haiti.
The bosses and their police are trying to suppress these demonstrations because they threaten the stability of what is locally called the “restavek” bourgeoisie. (Restaveks are children of the poorest sectors of the working class, bought by the wealthy as domestic slaves). The police have answered the protestors with live bullets and tear gas. Several people have been wounded, and the gas has permeated workers’ homes.
In Port-au-Prince, the demonstrations snaked through the city, into middle-class neighborhoods like Pétionville, home to store owners whose products are often unobtainable by workers, and up to Pélerin, where President Jovenel Moïse lives. The police have been particularly brutal as they protect the private property of the rich.
Students from the State University and others gathered in front of the Faculty of Ethnology at the Universite d’Etat d’Haiti. They raised money to rent a sound system and buy materials for placards. Claiming the street, artists among the militants sang revolutionary songs denouncing the bourgeoisie and the State in an event called “Concert tear up, burn the budget.” The crowd took up the call and added its own verses, such as “Tear up, burn down the Parliament.” After each verse, different people took the microphone to encourage more people to join the fight. A Progressive Labor Party (PLP)  member set the tone by calling for class struggle to fight the bosses to the end: “We will not be asked to pay for what should be our rights. It is necessary to revolt against the bourgeois system, which dreams only of more exploitation of the masses.” Every time a journalist tried to question the PLPer, he replied by shaking his sign: “This budget is a conspiracy of the State and the bourgeoisie against the masses.”
In one provincial town, up to a thousand people—practically the entire population—blocked the streets as they joined the popular movement, responding to the call of PLP to fight back against the bosses.
PLers are intent on giving a different kind of political leadership to these mobilizations. At the end of a Port-au-Prince concert, the crowd took off shouting, “Where are we going? To Parliament to tear up and burn the criminal, anti-people budget.” The PLers called for “anti-capitalist revolution.” Many in the crowd, which grew in strength as it marched through the streets, took up this chant as well. Arriving at Parliament, the group denounced the bourgeois politicians and their capitalist bosses for several hours, threatening to invade and burn down Parliament. The police assigned to protect the government were ineffective at containing this angry group.
The struggle in Haiti must continue on the basis of class struggle, not by favoring political or parliamentary leaders who seek mass support for the rulers’ elections. Taxi drivers, workers, street merchants—the majority of people we met agreed with this fight. Class struggle grows daily in Haiti. The masses increasingly understand their situation and the exploitation they are facing. The working class here is strengthening by the day.
Our Party must step up to lead and expose the misleaders, be they bourgeois shills, reactionary nationalists, or fake leftists who espouse reform and elections over communist revolution. It is our job to win the hearts and minds of workers, students, and soldiers. It is our responsibility to organize them into a fighting force to destroy the capitalist system and all that it stands for: exploitation, racism, sexism, national borders, imperialist war. It is our imperative to build a new society, communism, based on equality, where workers rule in our own interest.

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.

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!

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!