Violence has no place in America.
—Kamala Harris, after the latest attempt to assassinate Donald Trump.
“I believe in…ensuring we have the most lethal fighting force in the world.”
—Kamala Harris five days earlier, in her debate with Trump.
A funny thing happened on September 10, when tens of millions of workers watched a spectacle of shameless evasions, racist fabrications, and baldfaced lies. At the TV debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the “lesser evil” never showed up.
On one side, the gutter racist Trump promised mass deportations and gibbered his despicable blood libel about workers from Haiti eating household pets in Ohio. On the other, Harris mourned a failed bill that would have unleashed an additional 1,500 Gestapo agents at the U.S. border with Mexico—“to help those folks who are working there right now…to do their job.” And she repeated her pledge that she “will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”
In short, Harris doubled down on U.S. policies to criminalize desperate migrating workers and to underwrite the Israeli rulers’ genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. As Israel’s President Benjamin Netanyahu keeps carpet-bombing schools and defenseless tent camps, the debate was a reminder that Harris follows in the footsteps of Genocide Joe Biden, Deporter-in-Chief Barack Obama, and mass incarcerator Bill KKKlinton. And that regardless of which side wins in November, it will not stem the rise of fascism in the U.S. or the growing momentum toward World War III. The billionaire bosses who back Harris will ultimately need the discipline of fascism as much as those who back Trump, and Harris has assured them that she’s ready and willing to do whatever it takes. She is the safer choice for finance capital—the Big Fascists, the main wing of U.S. imperialism—in part because she’ll keep funding two bloodbaths in their interests: the Ukraine bosses’ brutal clash with Russian imperialism, and the Zionist rulers’ savage onslaught against workers and children in Palestine.
As rival Chinese and Russian bosses flex their muscles from the South China Sea to Europe, the election is exposing the weakness of the U.S. ruling class—and the hard fact that workers are under attack from both sides. The crisis of capitalism is straining the limits of the bosses’ liberal democracy and the capacity of elections to sort out their differences with a “peaceful” transfer of power. Less than four years after inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Trump has made it clear that he won’t accept a loss this time around —and that he’ll jail any donors, “operatives,” “illegal voters,” lawyers, or election officials who try to “cheat” (Washington Post, 9/8). While the Democrats and their finance capital masters are more tied to liberal democracy, a valuable tool to mislead and pacify the working class, they’re planting their own seeds for a possible election challenge. They’re using their big media bullhorns for tales of Russian interference (New York Times, 9/4), of Trump loyalist “infiltration” of swing state election boards (Rollingstone.com, 8/14), and of Republican efforts to throw hundreds of thousands of potential Democratic voters off the rolls (NYT, 9/15).
In Israel, meanwhile, liberal democracy is struggling to sustain the apartheid oppression of workers in Palestine. Although Netanyahu and his Likud cronies narrowly lost their move to strip Israel’s judges of much of their power, they may not be done trying. The Israeli bosses urgently need more centralized, fascist control to keep their racist “Jewish state” afloat.
With the world’s capitalists both deeply divided and more dangerous than ever, workers must take the class struggle into our own hands. In our reform work, we must make election issues out of the struggle against atrocities in Gaza and the fight against police murders. We must declare our solidarity with migrating workers everywhere. Most of all, we must use these struggles to build Progressive Labor Party and a mass movement to fight for communist revolution—the only lasting solution.
U.S. bosses can’t afford liberal democracy
Liberal democracy has always been a cover for the rulers’ dictatorship. When the ruling class is relatively united, as it was in the U.S. for more than a century after the Civil War, elections gave workers the illusion of choice. Meanwhile, the big bosses backed both sides—heads they won, tails we lost. But over the last thirty years, U.S. imperialism has steadily lost ground to China, now the world’s leading industrial power. With global war on the horizon and their empire at risk, the U.S. bosses’ splits have grown much sharper.
Today we have two vicious factions of racist murderers competing for power in the U.S. The Small Fascists, fronted by Trump, are focused on their profits in the U.S. and have no appetite for more taxes. The Big Fascists, who control the Democratic Party, are backed by the multinational banks and oil companies; they need a massive military to help them dominate world markets and call the shots on trade. Both sides are viciously anti-working class. Both use racism to divide us. And both will stop at nothing—including nuclear war--to keep their side on top.
In this fast-deteriorating situation, liberal democracy is a luxury the bosses—including the finance capital bosses—may soon be unable to afford. They can’t allow the working class to decide which faction will consolidate control, or where and when the U.S. is going to war. The stakes are too high. The electoral system simply does not work for the bosses when they’re in a crisis of this magnitude.
Don’t vote—revolt!
The working class is facing a critical choice, but it’s not between Democrats and Republicans. It’s between the bosses’ blueprint for war and fascism and our fight for liberation through communist revolution. The working class can’t be liberated by elections because our power lies outside the electoral system. We give up that power when we fall into the trap of choosing one rising fascist or another. In this case, we know them by what they’ve already done. We’ve witnessed Trump’s embrace of open nazis. We’ve seen Top Cop Harris eagerly help fill the jails with Black workers while protecting crooked prosecutors. We should have no illusions that she’d be any better as president than Biden or Trump.
When do workers win? When we march in the streets. When we fight back against racism. When we unite against whichever mass murderer winds up in the White House. It’s in the class struggle where we are strongest and the bosses are weakest.
So far, the most significant moments of this election campaign have come when small groups of protestors bravely stood up to Harris in Detroit and Las Vegas to demand that she end her complicity with genocide. The victory is in the fight. When the working class fights back, it gains the confidence to smash the bosses and their nightmare system. When the working class fights back, it opens the door to building a movement to ditch the rotten profit system once and for all--with communist revolution.
CHICAGO, September 11—In yet another example of the anti-working-class nature of the bosses’ state, the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to approve the permit today for the massive rock concert Riot Fest to return to Douglass Park this month. Riot Fest is a for-profit event that has raked in handsome profits for years by exploiting public parks that supposedly exist for working-class recreation.
Given Douglass Park’s location in between Black and Latin neighborhoods, cutting off access to much-needed green spaces and sports programs is a despicable racist attack. Local residents and organizers have long suffered and documented the damage done to the park as tens of thousands of concert goers trample through during the three-day fest. Two nearby hospitals serving lower-income workers are confronted with loud music and snarled traffic despite being designated as official “quiet zones.”
During the public comment period of the board meeting, several workers spoke out against Riot Fest, including a member of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP). It’s inspiring to see grassroots organizing efforts continue to oppose racist Riot Fest. However, we can never expect the government bodies under capitalism to fundamentally serve our interests. They will always exist to enforce the will of the bosses and their profit system, from the U.S. presidency all the way down to local park district boards.
To experience a government and society that is truly reflective of the needs of the international working class, we need a society that is RUN by the international working class. We need to reject all these gross opportunistic politicians in favor of mass working-class power, won by international communist revolution and PLP!
Liberal bosses lay out the welcome mat for exploiters
For those of us living near Douglass Park who have been involved in the efforts to get Riot Fest out, we were beyond excited to hear in June that the concert organizers had decided to relocate the fest to a stadium in the southwest suburbs. The owner of Riot Fest went on record painting themselves as the victim, calling out the park district board and saying they were left with “no choice” but to leave (Block Club Chicago, 6/12).
Unsurprisingly however, Riot Fest still had some friends in high places who were willing to mend the fence, not least so-called progressive Mayor Brandon Johnson who held meetings with the concert founder (CBS News, 8/14). So hardly two months after celebrating what we thought was a decent reform win for workers in the area, we learned that Riot Fest was again coming to Douglass Park, “back by popular demand.”
We tried to bounce back even with short notice to mobilize speakers and a press conference for today’s park board meeting, but the approval already appeared to be a done deal. Opportunistic Alderwoman Monique Scott organized her own crew of vocal pro-Riot Fest supporters, who all praised the alleged economic growth and shamelessly kept referring to the concert organizers as “family.” Although she claims that she’s standing up for the Black workers and youth in her neighborhood, by fully embracing profit-hungry developers she’s leading the efforts to push through racist gentrification and displacement on the west side of the city.
Even though the approval for Riot Fest was essentially a done deal, the PLP member spoke in their statement about the workers near Douglass Park not giving up:
I believe in working-class power over those who would exploit public space and other people for their own gain, and again, I believe that we will win. The demands for transparency from Mayor Johnson and this board are clear from hundreds of supporters who want Riot Fest out, and who are ready to fight for a more equitable city. We await your reply. And we’re not going anywhere.
Keep fighting Riot Fest and racist capitalism
Facing another year of Riot Fest, the workers near Douglass Park are not giving up. We’re going to continue our efforts of documenting the damage done to the park, registering complaints, and building relationships with our neighbors and co-workers. As PLP members connected to this fight, we need to expose the contradictions of the system and the pitfalls of relying on any bosses to solve the problems that our class faces.
Although a worker-run society may seem far off, the seeds of a world beyond capitalism are already taking root. Through collective action we are reminded that it’s the masses that make history, and not relying on politicians and voting which just pulls the wool over our eyes. To fight against Riot Fest is to fight against racist capitalism!
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Colombia: Fighting racism is key to smashing capitalism
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- 20 September 2024 597 hits
This article is a reprint of a presentation a comrade in Colombia made at a red virtual school alongside comrades in Mexico.
Racism historically developed from colonialism and the emergence and development of capitalism. In Europe, this "development" that allowed the "primitive accumulation of capital" was based on the exploitation of the slave labor of Africans, Asians, indigenous peoples and other "colored peoples," justifying this method with the theory of superior and inferior races. In North America, it emerged in the form of a multiracial labor force with perks for whites and genocide for indigenous people. This is how anti-Black racism emerged, which today divides workers throughout the world and is the basis of capitalist superprofits and the absolute superexploitation of Black communities.
The Europeans brought indigenous people from the Americas to be displayed as "animals" in captivity, reinforcing the ideal of an inferior race to justify genocide in the Americas. Already in the industrial era, capitalists used children in factories, demonstrating the classist and merciless character that currently prevails in all areas of the planet where workers and the oppressed make up a large percentage of soldiers in the bosses' armed forces, which they are forced to enlist in due to the lack of employment opportunities. For this reason, these workers are the key to the success of the revolution in all countries where racism lies as a source of power and profit for the bosses. It is also their Achilles' heel, since every super-exploited worker is a potential revolutionary leader for the working class. Every unemployed youth mistreated by police brutality is a potential recruit for the class war for workers' power. This is the educational work that Progressive Labor Party organizers must carry out daily together with our readers, friends and family in building a base for revolution.
Racism, along with sexism and nationalism, is used to divide our class, creating armies as cannon fodder for their imperialist genocides and impoverishing the workers of countries with low levels of economic development, such as Ecuador, Peru, Haiti, Bolivia, Colombia, etc., where 90 percent of the inhabitants are Afro and indigenous, 85 percent are in poverty, and 42 percent in absolute misery.
Historically, these workers have led hundreds of militant class struggles such as strikes, occupations, labor actions, and dozens of rebellions, uprisings, stoppages and social uprisings. The capitalists use force and deceit to pacify the workers, whether by lying about the war against poverty, with miserable subsidies or terrible jobs as janitors, messengers, builders, artisanal miners, etc. Capitalists and the media make workers believe that they can gain more influence by electing mobster politicians, corrupt police officers or Black mayors.
Today, capitalism allocates very few resources and many lies to appease the anger of workers with minimal reforms, such as those currently being debated in the Colombian parliament, while unemployment for Black women has increased twice as much as that of whites, while all salaries have decreased.
In Colombia and around the world, Black workers are the key to the class struggle, but if we are not with them to win them over to communism, their anger will turn into fascism/liberalism or they will be meekly led to the ballot boxes. We have to raise communist consciousness in factories, universities, communities and barracks. We cannot win over the most advanced workers without being involved in their struggles. If we do not fight racism, the working class fights with its hands tied behind its back.
The revolutionary struggle needs a united working class. This is why communists see anti-racist unity as the key to the fight against the bosses who are the creators and benefit from wage slavery. This must be a massive and violent struggle since segregation is a violent attack against the entire working class. Blacks, Latins, mestizos, Asians, whites and indigenous people must unite massively to attack racism as the enemy of the entire proletariat, since we have the same chains of slavery and many sufferings due to capitalist oppression. We must unite as a revolutionary class under the political line of the PLP to destroy the current warlike, mafia-like and fascist system.
A recent trip to Perú has resulted in the distribution of upwards of 20 copies of Challenge and multiple wide-ranging discussions about the state of the world, capitalism, and the possibility of a communist future. I found many workers here open to discussing how capitalism has failed them, and worked to lend a more global perspective to what here often seems like simply a dead-end world without hope.
Rekindling an old friendship has resulted in the possibility of a new Challenge network, and discussions with family and neighbors about the genocide in Gaza has opened channels of communication about the causes of these wars, corruption, racist exploitation, and how communism could actually solve these problems.
In honor of the first days of school, I was honored to participate in a fundraiser for a “Tent School” in Gaza (Carpa Escolar), organized by an Afro-Peruvian Jazz Sextet. A Peruvian Palestinian historian gave a very informative talk about the history of Palestine and current situation. In addition to a live audience, there were upwards of 150 people from all over the world tuning in virtually, and together we raised $5000, which is enough to keep this tent school running (including at least a meal a day) for a month, which of course demonstrates our monumental task ahead. In addition to distributing some newspapers at the event, in the Q&A I was able to bring international greetings and raise sharper issues of imperialism, capitalism, and class struggle (including comparisons with Dominican Republic/Haiti) and uniting the generations to learn from history to change this whole damned system.
Here there is surprising knowledge and interest in the US election, which I used as a jumping-off point to show that the true lever of change and promise exists outside the electoral system, in the (international) class struggle. For most workers I talked to, this is a breath of fresh air!
I also participated—too briefly!—in a demonstration condemning ex-president Alberto Fujimori, who died at the end of my trip. Workers gathered in Plaza San Martin in the center of Lima to denounce his racist, genocidal regime that was responsible for tens of thousands of workers’ deaths and an anti-communist killing spree in the 1990s. In spite of his murderous rule and long imprisonment for crimes against humanity, his funeral was still celebrated as a major event by sections of the ruling class. Even some workers lament how “the economy was better” when he was president because life has devolved here over the years (Perú had the highest per capita Covid death rate in the world).
Like the US, Perú has its own history of communism and anti-communism that we must study to understand how we can build our international movement here, like all over the world. But this trip is yet another reminder that the revolution and the fight for communism is worldwide.
One self-criticism: next trip, bring more newspapers! (I ran out.)
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John Brown & Harriet Tubman: Hidden history of multiracial unity
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- 20 September 2024 805 hits
The following is a reprint of an article originally published.It can be used in history and other humanities classes. This model of multiracial unity is a good foundation to set the tone for the school year.
This coming October 17 marks the 165th anniversary of the raid on Harpers Ferry. It was a revolutionary revolt showing the need for militant, antiracist, multiracial, revolutionary struggle! The fight against racist terror continues with the rebellions sparked by police murders this summer.
As workers recognize the power of unity, the cops crack down harder on protests.
The southern enslaving class was terrified by the Harpers Ferry raiders’ militant, multiracial unity, a real-life rebuke of their racist stereotyping. One of the raiders’ five Black freedom fighters, Osborne Anderson, described the atmosphere before-hand:
“I have been permitted to realize to its furthest, fullest extent, the moral, mental, physical, social harmony of an Anti-Slavery family, carrying out to the letter the principle of the Anti-slavery cause. In John Brown’s house, and in John Brown’s presence, men from widely different parts of the continent met and united into one company, wherein no hateful prejudice dared intrude its ugly self — no ghost of a distinction found space to enter.”
From childhood, Brown vowed to fight slavery
This trust among white and Black fighters did not happen overnight. John Brown’s father was a conductor on the Underground Railroad in Ohio. At 12, Brown met a fugitive enslaved boy and saw the suffering slavery had inflicted on him, influencing Brown forever. He believed Black and white workers were completely equal. He put this knowledge into action daily.
As an adult, Brown moved his family to a farm in North Elba, N.Y. near a Black community of former enslaved workers. Black sisters and brothers were regularly invited to the house for dinner with Brown’s family. He addressed them as “Mr.” or “Mrs.,” sharply contrasting with the era’s racist mores (true even among many slavery opponents).
Preparing for the raid, Brown turned to both Black and white abolitionists. In April 1858, while gathering money, arms and volunteers in Canada, he visited Harriet Tubman. She was well-known to the Black fugitive slave community there, having personally guided many to freedom. Tubman supported his plans, urging him to set July 4, 1858, for the raid and promising to bring volunteers. They agreed to communicate through their mutual friend Frederick Douglass, reaching out to Black abolitionists and former enslaved workers.
Tubman single-handedly freed 300 enslaved workers
Tubman’s own experiences made her and Brown allies. Born around 1820 to enslaved parents on a Maryland plantation, Tubman performed house and field work, was subjected to physical abuse and tearfully saw many of her nine siblings sold away from the family. In her teens, Tubman suffered a broken skull from brutal plantation life. Her “owner” tried selling her as “damaged goods.” Instead she fled, walking for several weeks, mostly at night, the 90 miles to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. She returned shortly afterwards, guiding her family out of slavery to Canada. And that was just the beginning.
Over the following 11 years, with a bounty on her head, Tubman made approximately 13 trips south and guided an estimated 300 enslaved workers to freedom in Canada. This resolute, daring revolutionary declared, “I never ran my train off the tracks and I never lost a passenger.”Tubman warmly endorsed Brown’s armed struggles in Kansas against the pro-slavery gangs. Brown, in turn, knew Tubman’s courage, militancy, and knowledge of the land and Underground Railroad network, and felt Tubman would be invaluable in executing their plans to free the enslaved by any means necessary. He always addressed her as “General Tubman.” Both believed in direct action and armed violence to end slavery.
Tubman became ill and could not bring her forces to Harpers Ferry, but her work inspired the rest of the raiders. Tubman’s example, like that of Osborne Anderson and the other Black raiders, discredited the image of Black people as passive victims, terrifying the southern enslavers and politicians, and inspired the abolitionist movement.
Black rebels petrified slave-owners
To those today who say workers won’t fight oppression, the stubborn facts of history show struggle is universal. The slave-owners, although talking of “docile” Black workers, knew this well. They were petrified of potential Black rebels and of “outside agitators.” They patrolled all night with dogs and guns to intimidate their enslaved workers and to keep Yankees and abolitionist literature away from them.
Today the “outside agitators” are Progressive Labor Party (PLP) communists, fighting to abolish racist capitalism. The bosses assure us that the impoverished working class is too ground down, too alienated to fight back collectively, saying workers hate communism. Yet they organize cops, plant security, the Minutemen, Black nationalists and sellout union “leaders” to try to keep communists out, and instantly fire them when they’re discovered in a factory. Why are they afraid if the working class is supposed to be so passive?
Today, uniting to fight the mutual class enemy is one of the main ways people of different backgrounds are able to overcome the “natural” segregation capitalist society promotes. Brown and Tubman demonstrated that racist and nationalist ideas cannot be overcome primarily inside one’s head. It requires material change in the way one lives. Among the Black and militant white abolitionists, multiracial unity developed over years of working together, getting to know each other while struggling over their differences.
Today, U.S. capitalism has created its own contradiction. Workers still often live in neighborhoods separated by “race” but many are integrated within their workplaces and schools. The bosses try to divide us there as well, with racist job classifications and different types of bourgeois culture to keep workers apart (e.g., soul “versus” country music). Nevertheless, workers rub shoulders every day. Class-conscious workers in PLP must develop these acquaintances into friendships and unbreakable bonds in struggle.
Class struggle trumps racism
As in Tubman and Brown’s time, racism permeates society. But rebellions and strikes reveal multiracial unity and struggle against the bosses. At the Smithfield Ham Factory in Tarheel, NC, for example, a 15-year unionization fight witnessed intense intimidation from the bosses to scare workers from signing union cards. But by organizing support from grocery workers from far and wide, Smithfield workers felt part of a larger community. When the bosses got immigration agents to raid the plant, targeting Latin workers for deportation, the workers saw through this divisive trick and, in November 2006, 500 marched out in a two-day strike protesting this raid, forcing the company to rehire all the fired immigrant workers!
In 2008 in the Bronx, NY, the Stella D’Oro workers went on strike for 11 months. These immigrant workers from across the world, men and women, overcame differences and stuck together. Not one worker crossed the picket line! PLP had organized friends, comrades, teachers and students onto the picket lines, bringing solidarity and communist leadership. PLP members steadfastly stood in solidarity with the strikers via donations, rallies and marches, and supported their fight against plant closure. The fight against police brutality is a protracted class war still being waged today. It is the same war left unfinished by Tubman and Brown. This summer PLP joined the militant antiracist fightback against the kkkops, who in less than a year’s time, stole the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Jacob Blake, and countless others. The multiracial character of these protests are glimmers of the revolutionary potential of the working class.
John Brown’s raid and Harriet Tubman’s courage in freeing 300 slaves along the Underground Railroad teach us many lessons that hold valuable to antiracists. First, militancy was foremost in their thinking. Tubman declared she would never return to being a slave, that she would rather die fighting. Brown, after fighting in Kansas, realized that only bloodshed could end slavery. Many workers agreed with them, especially after the 1857
Dred Scott decision legalizing slavery nationwide.
The second is that multiracial unity is essential in any fight. Black workers escaping from enslavement received needed help from white abolitionists to reach the North. Thousands of workers, Black and white, helped escaping slaves along their journeys and defended them when attacked by slave-catchers. These workers attended public meetings, donated money, passed word to their friends and helped harbor fugitive slaves.
PLP does similar things today. We discuss political struggles and the vital need for multiracial unity against the racist system with friends, coworkers and neighbors. We urge them to join in militant antiracist demonstrations, build a multiracial base with fellow workers or donate to CHALLENGE. Every time someone we know does one of these simple acts, they’re making a political commitment in the fight against racism, capitalism and imperialism, just as thousands of anti-slavery porters did against slavery — taking small steps to serve and defend those who had escaped slavery as well as those who fought it directly.
Join PLP
We invite all workers, soldiers and students who participate in these struggles to join Progressive Labor Party.
Today’s supporters of antiracist struggle understand — just as did the thousands backing Brown and Tubman 165 years ago — that revolutionaries like the raiders then and PLP now are the honest, reliable leaders in struggle. When direct action is required, they know to whom to turn. CHALLENGE constantly reports workers being won to militancy and multiracial unity in struggles against the racist bosses, hailing those joining our ranks. Step by step, the communist movement will grow and lead the working class to revolution and a new world based on members of our class mutually meeting each other’s needs, without racist bosses and their profit system.
