Los Angeles, October 25 — The big problems facing public education are not necessarily a lack of funds or bad policy, but in fact the system itself which operates on the basis of maximizing profit. That was the message from panelists at a local community college forum titled “Beyond Elections,” attended by close to 150 students. The forum was in the context of the recent push by faculty and teacher unions to pass Proposition 30 which would raise taxes in California to pay for public education.

But the panelists pointed out that the problems originate in the political economy of capitalism; unless public colleges and universities can be turned into profitable enterprises, they will always be depending on a system that prioritizes the building of a racist police state and imperialist war. 

This forum reflects the efforts of a group of college professors and students, disappointed with unions’ lack of fight-back, who have been meeting regularly to figure out how to put forward an anti-capitalist analysis in the struggle over budget cuts. PL members are actively helping organize this group, creating opportunities to discuss moving beyond a reformist outlook and how students and workers can work together to build a revolutionary communist movement. 

The message was clear: elections are not enough; in fact, they are a trap. No matter the promise, they cannot move workers and students beyond capitalism, which is based on the exploitation of the working class. In his concluding remarks the last panelist pointed out that students and faculty need to recognize that workers have tremendous social power and do not need to depend on ruling-class politicians.

PL students and professors will continue to help organize more forums and actions, especially in public universities and community colleges throughout LA and Southern California. Also, they are already connecting these students to the fighting Walmart workers.

A few days after the forum, several students visited a local Walmart where they met the workers who have organized walkouts. In their discussions, they raised the need for building a worker-student alliance on the basis of class-consciousness and the need for a revolutionary communist outlook.

Oakland, October 27 —  A loud and enthusiastic crowd picketed and rallied at Mi Pueblo Market today to popularize a community boycott here in Oakland (see CHALLENGE 10/17).  The most organized and noticeable group were young people in 67 Suenos who took over the parking lot chanting, “If you’re E-Verifying, We Ain’t Buying!”.  (a redo of  E-40’s rap song, “We out here trying to function”). One manager got so frustrated that he threw raw eggs at the crowd!  

PLP members and friends participated. We had signs and leaflets in Spanish and English about uniting the working class across all borders. (see photo). Our leaflet explained that the capitalist class worldwide causes migration around the globe and unemployment as a “labor policy,” as a race to the bottom for cheaper labor and maximization of profits. This hurts every worker, citizen or immigrant. We called to abolish racism, sexism, and nationalism with international working-class unity. When you look around, it’s only communists that say class trumps nationalism in all its forms. 

Here we have a former “illegal” immigrant, Juvenal Chavez, who now owns 21 stores, pays substandard wages and uses Immigration Customs Enforcement to scare workers from fighting back. Nationalism doesn’t get in his way when he screws these workers! At the same time, his stores always have the red, white and green of the Mexican flag all over the place.  “Patron” or “Boss — don’t be fooled — this is CLASS WAR.  Capitalists of every nationality and every country are our enemies!

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, October 20 — With the U.S. presidential elections around the corner, college students here held a study-action group to address some questions our friends may be having, mainly, “Can you vote away the ills of capitalism?”

One young woman voted for Barack Obama in 2008 with great zeal. Today she is a PL’er and believes that “when it comes to war and foreign policy, Republicans and Democrats are the same.” Even so, she fears that Republicans will cut funds for family planning and preventative health services for poor and uninsured workers. Actually, Democrat Clinton made the biggest cuts in welfare.  

In reality, racist unemployment and sexist healthcare cuts are a daily reality for workers under Obama. Nearly one in three teens is unemployed. The expansion of minimum-wage jobs has lowered wages overall. More than $60 million in cuts have been made to Planned Parenthood. Brooklyn’s Downstate Medical Center is being shut down, a huge blow to the borough’s majority black and Latino residents and to the hospital’s mainly female workforce. As the Obama administration has demonstrated, these attacks will continue no matter who is president. 

The State and Class Dictatorship 

The Progressive Labor Party rejects bourgeois democracy, the capitalists’ form of government. As Karl Marx noted, all governments are absolute dictatorships of the class that holds state power. Under bourgeois democracy, the bosses use elections to confuse and distract workers from organizing in their own interests.

Presidential campaigns are one of the rulers’ main tools to hide their brutal control over every aspect of capitalist society, regardless of which party or candidate comes out ahead at the polls. Despite the candidates’ tactical disagreements, a vote for Democrat Barack Obama is essentially no different than a vote for Republican Mitt Romney. Both serve the bosses’ class interests.

In our study group, we considered how elections are both a con game for workers and a method to settle differences for the ruling class. As our friend from Haiti said, “Voting is to keep us in check. They have voting so we don’t revolt.”

Voting is Futile

Nothing frightens capitalists more than workers’ anger. To prevent armed revolt, the bosses channel reform movements into the electoral process, where that anger is neutralized. Whatever gains workers have made are the result of mass organizing against the bosses led by communists, not because of voting. The eight-hour day was enacted after years of strikes in basic industries and the threat of a national railway strike. Communists organized the fight for unemployment insurance and the Flint sit-down strike of 1936-37 which led to the unionization of autoworkers, the basis for decent pay and health care. While reform victories are short-lived, they demonstrate that change — and ultimately communist revolution — can be achieved only through long-term mass struggle. 

We asked our friends who have mobilized for Shantel Davis, the 23-year-old black woman executed in June by a Brooklyn kkkop, if we could vote away racist police shootings. They unanimously replied that we could not. They understand that capitalism rules through state-sanctioned, systematic violence to suppress and intimidate workers. 

The bosses run our schools, hospitals, and workplaces to squeeze out maximum profit while indoctrinating workers with capitalist ideology. Under their dictatorship, the capitalists own everything — including their puppet politicians, rigged court system, and racist and murderous cops. As the competition between national groups of capitalists sharpens, the bosses need more intensive and massive terror — fascism — to fight broader wars for even more profit.

Elections are like being asked, “Would you prefer to be decapitated or shot in the head?” Communists refuse to choose which politician will be in charge of the next round of layoffs, cuts, wars, and police violence. Our goal is a society where working people run everything for the working class.

Under communism, everyone will be entrusted with the power and responsibility to think, speak out, and act in their class interest. Goods will be produced and distributed according to need. In contrast to bosses’ democracy, communist government demands full and open discussion and criticism. Once a decision is made, collective struggle will put it into practice. 

What To Do?

Some of our friends think capitalism can never end: “It’s been around so long. Change is difficult.” Indeed, change is difficult. But mountains turn into soil, your childhood enemy comes to be your best friend, and passive workers become fierce revolutionaries. The question now is how.

The Progressive Labor Party says communist revolution is truly the only solution, and what’s rotten must be destroyed at the root. For that we need millions of workers to unite under the banner of the communist PLP. Every time a worker joins PL, a cop trembles in fear and a capitalist is that much closer to a bullet to the head. Yes, revolution will be violent. What did our friends think of that? They agreed to another study group for further discussion!

PART I

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, October 17 — If “a strike is a school of revolution,” as Lenin said, then this October 25-26 in Haiti a national school of revolution may be on the class schedule. The teachers’ union UNNOH (a union of the graduates of several Haitian teachers’ colleges) is not a revolutionary organization. But, like the Chicago Teachers Union which just carried out a successful teachers’ strike in Chicago, UNNOH’s strike-call and nine strike demands have many progressive features which can drive our class, the working class forward. All workers internationally should support this strike.  

Four demands refer to teachers’ own needs — back pay, a minimum living wage of $1,185/month, credentials giving job security, and a say in social insurance policies.  These improvements lifting teachers above abject poverty and insecurity will also benefit their students because teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions.

But the imperialists have absolutely no interest in, and no intention of, granting such massive reforms (the wage demand is for a 70% hike.) Poverty is their racist plan for the schools of Haiti and all who teach and study in them.  

In addition to these just demands, UNNOH is issuing its strike call to the entire teaching body. It appeals to students, parents, college students and teachers, other workers in education and other industries to support the strike. Its call for international solidarity, with all the strike demands, is posted in English at www.psc-cuny.org/unnoh and asks for letters of support. 

Progressive teachers in UNNOH know that the unity and numbers of the whole working class are a source of the strength they need way beyond their own numbers. That’s why UNNOH is a key part of the federation of left-leaning unions, the CTSP (Confederation of Workers in the Public and Private Sectors), who came to march with UNNOH, students, and other teachers’ unions in Port-au-Prince in a stirring 1000-strong demonstration on October 5, World Teachers’ Day.

The union of part-time college professors, STAIA, also stands with UNNOH in this strike. Such class unity — against the bosses’ preaching of everyone for themselves — is hard to create, to mobilize, and to sustain, and that too is part of learning in a school of revolution. 

Other strike demands are clearly mainly for their students and for the whole working class. These include a hike in the education budget to 30% of the national budget (for K-12) and 4% (for public colleges, who now struggle along on 0.55%), which clearly benefits all students and their parents; a free, quality, public school system; cafeterias in all schools and colleges guaranteeing one hot meal a day to all students, teachers, and school workers; and a program to end the cholera epidemic, starting with vaccination of all school and college students. 

These class demands are the foundation for advancing the struggle beyond trade unionism to a mass fight for communism. As capitalist ideology has preached to them all their lives, many UNNOH teachers right now are more focused on their own salary and security than on a universal public education system or ending cholera, let alone revolution.  Everything in a struggle that advances class consciousness and class unity will move our whole class one step further up the road to revolution. (See adjoining article)

“In this bitter struggle national and international solidarity is essential,” says the UNNOH call. They have worked since last November to create a national network of union branches, each attempting to integrate teachers with other workers, in all ten departments (regions) of the country. Out of those trips they have built a national leadership body of fifty members.

In the mass demonstrations of September 10 and October 5, following mass meetings of the teachers, there were hundreds of teachers marching on the same day in each of eight towns on September 10 and in twelve on October 5, and these numbers doubled between September and October.  

The strike call is therefore not for a “Hollywood strike” or fake strike, but built on a solid foundation of organizing. It will be combined with mass action in the streets in the militant Haitian tradition. It is also a test of the teachers’ organization and strength.

PLP salutes these teachers who know that “power concedes nothing without a struggle.” They are fed up with inaction in the face of a cynical government and a fascist regime imposed by the imperialist troops in the U.N. MINUSTAH force and are standing up to fight.

Win, lose, or draw in this strike, may they learn the lessons of revolutionaries before them (starting with the bold fighters who ended slavery in Haiti), and come out of this important and risky moment stronger for the battles ahead.  We stand alongside them and will learn along with them.