FAISALABAD, PAKISTAN, November 11 — Workers here are calling for solidarity actions and support for six union leaders who have been sentenced to a total of 490 years in jail. They were arrested in July 2010 during a militant strike of power loom workers, and later charged under anti-terrorist laws. To date 13 union leaders are facing charges of “terrorism.”

The U.S.-backed fascist Pakistani government is increasingly using the threat of “terrorism” to try to silence the working class, hoping to crush the rising workers’ movement. But workers are fighting back, in the factories and fields, in the public and private sector (see CHALLENGE, 9/5).

Power loom workers here struck in 2010 after a break-down in negotiations with the bosses, demanding an increase in the minimum wage already announced in the government’s 2010-2011 budget. When government officials, factory owners, local politicians and the media labeled the strikers “terrorists,” it so angered other workers that they ignored a police ban on public gatherings and joined the picket lines.

Over 100,000 workers marched through the streets here, shutting down Pakistan’s third largest city, despite being fired on by the police and armed thugs hired by the textile bosses.

As we work to build strike actions and the solidarity of other workers, we introduce PLP’s ideas into our struggle. Workers are receptive to our idea that militant reform is not enough, that we cannot eliminate this exploitation without getting rid of all the bosses and their capitalist profit system. We are building an international Party to fight for a communist revolution and a communist society where production will be for the benefit of the working class, not for bosses’ profits.

NEW YORK, November 9 — A deafening roar met the wealthy patrons as they stepped out of their limousines this evening and were escorted by nervous security guards into Sotheby’s, the famed art auction house on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Forty-three art handlers — the workers who protect and transport paintings and sculptures worth millions of dollars each — have been locked out by the company since July. Sotheby’s, which made a profit of $774 million last year and pays its CEO $70,000 a day, is demanding contract concessions from the workers. It wants to replace full-time workers with part-timers, reduce pensions and eliminate seniority in firing.

The workers are refusing to buckle. Tonight was the first evening auction of the season, with impressionist and modern art paintings on sale. About 150 workers and supporters stood behind metal barricades on each side of the entrance, with two giant inflatable rats nearby. Multiracial groups of Teamsters from several locals attended. They blew whistles and loudly chanted, “What’s disgusting? Union busting!”; “We Are the 99%” and “Shame, Shame!” at the rich collectors and dealers who scurried into Sotheby’s lobby.

Truthfully, none of the prosperous collectors seemed at all ashamed, only taken aback that people who work for a living might treat them so rudely and attempt to interfere with their evening of lavish spending. A wealthy collector paid $40.4 million tonight for a landscape painting by Gustav Klimt — more money than all the handlers together will earn in a lifetime! Sotheby’s receives a hefty commission for each artwork sold.

For hours, the workers continued to whistle and chant, while at least 50 security guards and an equal number of NYPD goons prevented the workers from invading the building, confronting the scabs, and stopping the auction. Five workers did get inside, sat down in front of the escalator, and refused to move until they were dragged out and arrested. Some college students came from Occupy Wall Street to support the workers, who are part of the 99%, and to yell at the 1% (more accurately, the one-tenth of one percent) who crossed the picket lines. A class-conscious artist could have vividly captured this stark class divide on canvas.

As the protesters grew hoarse from chanting and angrier and angrier at the rich bastards who the police escorted into Sotheby’s, it struck us that some day there will be no need for art auction houses, because paintings by Van Gogh and Picasso (who, in his earlier years, would have been on the picket line) should be enjoyed by everyone, not stuck on the wall in a private mansion or fancy townhouse. 

We can look forward to the day when we build a museum to hold the artifacts of capitalism, a record of the sweatshops, exploitation, inequality, racism, sexism and imperialist wars of this era. Our grandchildren will walk through the halls of capitalism past and wonder how humans could have lived this way, with so much injustice and misery. But the biggest room in the museum will be the huge Hall of Revolution that portrays how we swept capitalism, Sotheby’s and their wealthy patrons into the dustbin of history.

WASHINGTON, November 12 — PL’ers held an Anti-Capitalism Teach-in at Occupy DC in order to sharpen the debate around the movement’s political analysis and strategies for change. Three long-term occupiers had attended a PLP study-action group and encouraged us to do this. Almost all of the fifty occupiers and friends at this event had previously received CHALLENGE.

Presenters stated that capitalism is based on exploitation and racism. They explained how its internal contradictions, due to the impoverishment of the workers by the ruthless drive for profit by the bosses, creates periodic depressions. They also argued that the state (the government) is a tool of the capitalist system. It must be smashed, not reformed.

Smash the State

Capitalism must be replaced, they continued, with a communist system where the international working class collectively runs society, planning production based on workers’ needs and liberating the creativity of the billions of wage slaves on the planet.  Presenters noted that communists work strategically in all kinds of mass organizations to bring these ideas to broad groups of people, but that special emphasis is put on industrial workers, like the transit workers in DC. The temporary shutdown of the Port of Oakland, for example, could not have happened without the longshore workers.

There are lots of different views among the occupiers, which came out in the discussion following the presentations. Some argued that campaign reform, especially a constitutional amendment to bar corporate contributions to campaigns, would let the elected representations genuinely represent the people. PL’ers responded that the state is part of the capitalist system and controlled by the bosses, and that no reform could change that fact.

Others argued that withdrawing from the capitalist economy by setting up alternative communities, like the occupy sites, was a sound strategy to create a new society.  PL’ers countered that until we gain state power, it’s better to organize on the job to confront the bosses at the point of production.

These debates went on for some time, and will certainly continue at Occupy DC. The validity of our analysis and politics is already gaining traction among some occupiers, and could be demonstrated in the coming period as the crisis of capitalism deepens and the repression and racism by the state intensifies.

BALTIMORE, November 14 — A Progressive Labor Party tent is now part of Occupy Baltimore at McKeldin Square.  On our second night there, a red flag was mounted high on a light pole near PL’s tent.  Some of the occupiers, who have stayed at the square overnight for many weeks, inquired about the flag’s meaning.  PL members replied that it stands for communism.  They explained that red is the communist color, in honor of the thousands whose blood was spilled when the Paris Commune — the first time workers took power, in 1871 — was attacked and defeated by capitalists. 

The PL’ers pointed out that these Communards took bold steps toward equality. They made a rule, for example, that leaders could have no more resources than ordinary workers, and that leaders could be immediately recalled if they failed to serve the working class.  At the end of this conversation, the folks who asked about the red flag were respectful and pleased. They saw the flag as a worthy addition to the occupation.

‘When We Fought the Nazis, You Had Our Back!’

Earlier on, PL members had given three revolutionary communist speeches at various occupation events.  After one of those speeches, a listener approached a Party comrade, gave him a big hug, and said, “You may not remember, but ten years ago when we fought the Nazis, you had our back!”

One issue of CHALLENGE has been widely distributed at the occupation.  With our tent, and more ongoing PL participation within the movement, CHALLENGE will certainly be read by many at McKeldin Square. To up the ante, the Baltimore PL club recently made plans to organize a Party-led, communist study group session at the occupation.  Young comrades have taken the responsibility to make this happen.  Our planned topic will be how to defeat the 1%.  In other words, PL members will be winning workers and youth closer to the understanding that violent revolution is necessary, and that the communist PLP must be built to provide leadership in that struggle.

One of the occupiers, who has been sleeping at the square since the beginning, volunteered to help Party members put up the red flag.  This friendly neighbor said he had no problem putting up a communist flag because our perspective, he said, is the most conservative point of view among Occupy Baltimore activists. 

In reality, the opposite is true.  Fighting for communism is actually the most revolutionary, winning strategy.  This conversation served as a reminder that the death of the old communist movement has left many workers, students, and soldiers discouraged.  They think communism can’t work.  But PL has looked carefully at the strengths and mistakes of the old communist movement.  We have learned much from the heroic experience of those who came before us.  Without question, the working class and its revolutionary Party will sooner or later smash capitalism and build a truly egalitarian world!