MEXICO CITY, August 7 — “We don’t want crumbs, we want the whole cake!” With these words at a communist school attended by nearly 30 workers and their relatives alongside members of Progressive Labor Party, a comrade from Mexico summed up the class struggle at the heart of the PL Summer Project here.

The school covered political economy, the rise of fascism, the line of PL, and the necessity of a single international communist party. It followed a week of activity in an industrial area near Mexico City, an impoverished, drug-infested community of mostly factory workers. As we visited the Party’s base in many houses and several workplaces, and then met with workers in the evening at a comrade’s home, it was obvious how capitalism had failed to meet the community’s most basic needs. Of every ten students who begin primary school, only one will graduate from high school. In many houses, water and electricity are sporadic.  Some neighborhoods have none at all. 

One worker we visited, Roberto, is a brickmaker.  His neighborhood has no paved streets, no school. The bricks he makes go elsewhere; his own home is made of wood, plastic sheets, corrugated metal, and cardboard, with a dirt floor.  For nearly two hours, Roberto talked about all the things his community lacked, from public transportation to sports facilities. He said that the three major parties’ local politicians buy votes with pre-election pizza parties, but deliver nothing of substance to the workers.  Roberto is a regular CHALLENGE reader and agreed to take several papers to distribute.

Jorge is a factory worker — “a true communist,” as a comrade who works with him said after a small but intense struggle at their workplace.  As a young man with no dependents, he volunteered to give up his own job to someone who needed it more.  After the brief struggle, however, both workers kept their jobs. Our discussion with Jorge included his family members, all of them eager to ask questions about PL. We offered our analysis of the perpetual crisis of overproduction in capitalism. The system’s relentless drive for maximum profits explains why skilled Mexican factory workers, once relatively well-paid, are now losing their jobs or getting lower salaries. It also explains why the workers’ children, even those with university degrees, cannot find work, much like their cohorts in the United States, Europe, and worldwide. 

This week of meetings and visits was very productive.  We had inspiring conversations and distributed lots of literature.  With comrades from a number of different countries participating, we showed PL’s international character and built solidarity with our friends.  Despite the pervasive sexism under capitalism, we found that husbands consistently encouraged their wives and children to participate in our discussions. We were also humbled by the generosity and hospitality of these workers with limited means.  In all cases, people agreed to read CHALLENGE and to show it to their friends. 

All workers and members of PL can learn much from our comrades from Mexico. They show how industrial workers — armed with class hatred, communist ideas, and a single international party — represent the only threat to capitalism. They are the future of the working class.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, July 29 — The last day of the PLP Summer Project’s freedom school marked a big advance in organizing around the anti-racist, anti-sexist ideas urgently needed by workers in Haiti. After an inspirational class, much of it student-led, teachers and students broke through the cement-block walls of their tilekol (“little school,” in Kreyol). They marched to the State University Hospital of Haiti, where they showed militant support for workers in the fourth week of a strike for lost wages and decent patient care.

The day capped a week of critical, participatory, political education that involved teams of Haitian and visiting teachers and about 50 eager young people. As opposed to traditional, top-down schooling under capitalism, which imposes conformity with the bosses’ reactionary ideology and out-and-out lies, the tilekol aimed to equip its students to grapple with reality and change the world.

Our school was rooted in the practice of communist educators in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, whose influence later ranged from the Freedom Summer schools in the U.S. civil rights movement to the work of Paulo Freire, the Brazilian writer who called for “transformative education” to liberate workers’ minds. 

Our first attempts to teach were bogged down by the challenge of translation in up to four languages (English, French, Kreyòl, Spanish), and also by traditional lecturing that was too dominated by the teachers. But by the second and third weeks, we gradually shifted to a more participatory style.

Seated on worn public school benches, three or four to a desk, the students became enthusiastically engaged in small-group discussions, writing projects, and video productions. Ignoring the heat, teachers and students together learned songs of struggle.

The students’ evaluations of their tilekol were moving to hear. The key word was “pride” — in their newly-discovered capacity to analyze the horrific situation in Haiti and the wider capitalist world, and to understand how they could organize a movement to defend themselves and their families of workers, unemployed, and homeless residents of tent camps.

The students learned about the history of imperialism in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, how capitalism works, including the labor theory of value. We learned how it uses racism to divide and exploit workers and the need to end sexism and violence against women as well as the differences between charity, aid, and solidarity. We also discovered the role played in Haiti today by the police and the occupying army of MINUSTAH, the United Nations’ “stabilization” mission in Haiti that functions as the brutal arm of imperialism.

They learned about The Communist Manifesto and the Paris Commune, and how those 19th-century words and deeds were relevant to their own experience.

Throughout the freedom school’s final session, the classroom echoed with the students’ dramatic production of the day before. It was inspired by a recent incident where MINUSTAH troops had chased student protestors with tear gas into their tent camp and ultimately killed a child there. As the tilekol’s students staged their theater in the Summer Project health clinic’s open-air waiting room, every seat was filled, and a dozen people watched through windows and the doorway.

In the spirit of the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, we then took the school into the streets, as we had in a previous visit to the hospital workers’ union hall (CHALLENGE, Aug. 17). We surged outside for the six-block walk to the hospital, where striking workers were waiting to start a courtyard press conference.  The strikers’ leaders lined up some of our visiting teachers for speeches of solidarity, translated into French.  That was good, and seen on national TV, in contrast to the mostly negative media coverage of the strike. 

But then things really took off, as we began chanting in English, “Same Enemy, Same Fight: Workers of the World Unite!”  We’d also learned it in Kreyòl, so one of us stammered out, “Menm lennmi, menm lit; travayè nan lemond fè nou youn!”  The crowd took it, workers and tilekòl students alike, belting it out as one. Someone began singing the satirical “Poukisa?”, asking why the bourgeoisie’s dogs ate better than they did, and the students ran with it. The workers joined in, elderly women strikers smiling into our students’ eyes as they sang together. 

Then came the dancing march, as they do it in South America and Africa.  By the time it ended, we had circled the hospital grounds three times, singing all the way, and the hospital’s police unit had called in UDMO, the regime’s paramilitary thugs.  Students responded without fear, changing their anti-MINUSTAH song to: “Why is UDMO killing us? We can’t go on this way.” We found ourselves marching ten blocks to picket the Ministry of Health, with the local press trailing. The reporters carefully edited out the inspiring scenes on the march, but they couldn’t erase the working-class unity and communist spirit of the day.

The students were indeed proud of all this — and also sad, as one 14-year-old said, that there would be no tilekòl for her on Monday morning. But the freedom school is not ending, after all. Local and international organizers of the Summer Project made a plan to continue tilekòl into August and beyond. Local teacher teams will keep it going, along with guest lecturers from strikes, tent camps, unions, and community-based organizations.  Every one of our students signed up! 

On this wave of hope, as we prepared to return, we knew that we had started something important, with comrades together from Haiti,  the U.S., and Mexico.  Where would it end?  One student, a young Seventh Day Adventist, told us that he’d heard a lot of bad things about communism, but that communism would be better than what they have in Haiti today. We teachers had learned a huge lesson from our freedom school students and from the hospital strikers. What Freire called “transformation” — our ability to change the world — lies in our own hands, united in struggle.J

 (In later issues: more comments from participants in the Haiti freedom school and clinic.)

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL, August 12 — Fifteen students and workers organized the first ever PLP Summer Project in Palestine/Israel. Throughout the project we met with students and workers who were fighting house demolitions (see CHALLENGE, 8/17/11); daycare workers fighting sexist exploitation (see CHALLENGE, 11/3/10); and participated in rallies and demonstrations protesting declining living standards of Jewish and Arab workers and students. We received a friendly reception when we distributed PLP literature in Hebrew and Arabic.

The Project not only inspired many of us to continue to fight for one international party but also validated our line: racism hurts all workers. Capitalists can divide workers politically as well as maximize profits by exploiting some sections of the working class and super-exploiting others. Here the Israeli ruling class exploits Jewish workers while super-exploiting Arab workers.

Destroy Arab Workers’ Homes and Then Charge Them for the Demolition!

The government confiscates Israeli citizens’ lands, justifying this by claiming that the Arab residents created extensions to the houses “without the proper permits,” making them “unsafe.” Israeli cops then evict the people and demolish their houses. And then they often charge the former residents for the demolition of their own homes!

This has occurred all over Palestine/Israel, from Jaffa to Lod to the West Bank. According to the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions, since 1967 the Israeli government has demolished nearly 25,000 homes in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, besides thousands of other homes in other areas.

Those able to resist demolition are forced to live in miserable conditions, without access to basic food, running water and jobs. In areas where Arabs live near Jewish settlers, the Israeli government is constructing walls to separate the Arab workers from the town centers. Arab workers can only get food and go to work by traveling through a tunnel underground. If there is no Israeli soldier present to unlock the tunnel’s gate, the Arab workers must wait until one gets there (if at all) or else they can’t get to work.

Tent City Demonstrations

While Arab workers in Palestine/Israel definitely face the sharpest attacks from the Israeli ruling class, Jewish workers also suffer from these actions. When we arrived for the Summer Project, young professionals and college students had began pitching tents to protest rising rents and growing inequality here. Within two weeks those six tents turned into demonstrations of over 300,000 Jewish and Arab workers protesting the rising cost of living accompanied by stagnant wages and lack of social services.

These demonstrations are attracting Arab and Jewish workers throughout Israel, making them the largest against the Israeli ruling class in recent history. However, there is little criticism by Jewish workers about the apartheid state that the Israeli government has erected.

According to Avi Shauli from Ynet, Israeli rulers have spent over $50 billion to occupy Gaza and the West Bank (exceeding $700 million annually). In fact, they spend twice as much on the Jewish settlement residents as they do on other Jewish workers (NY Times, 8/3/11).

Fight Against Anti-Arab Racism Crucial to Workers’ Power

These struggles show the strength of PLP’s line on fighting racism. We have always advocated that the fight against racism is the key to uniting the working class and taking state power. Once Jewish workers connect their struggles to those of Arabs living in Palestine, it lays the basis for the working class to move forward towards building for communist revolution. However, Zionist ideas as well as Palestinian nationalism continue to divide the workers.

This is where CHALLENGE plays a big role. In the literature we distributed we cited the importance of Jewish and Arab workers uniting to fight for a worker-run communist state, not fighting for a capitalist one- or two-state “solution.”

We know we have a long way to go in building a communist revolution, but this can happen only if we’re involved in the struggles of the working class. Through this we can win workers to unite and fight for communism. The bosses have created the conditions for this fight. It’s up to us to bring all workers this communist analysis and build PLP in Palestine/Israel.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL, August 6 — In a growing resistance to capitalist inequalities, 300,000 workers and students of all religious and ethnic groups held a mass rally against rising prices in central Tel Aviv. This demonstration was the high point, so far, of the “tent movement” that began two weeks earlier, as it went beyond the initial focus on unaffordable housing to more far-reaching demands that challenged the bosses’ dictatorship.

The backdrop for these protests is the rapidly-rising cost of living and rapidly-deteriorating wages in Israel, as the capitalists’ regime, facing crisis after crisis, tries to milk the last ounce of profit out of the working class. Despite a shortage of decent housing, many real estate developers refrain from developing land they’ve purchased to wait for the price to go up and maximize their profits. And, finally, the workers have had enough.

The protestors’ main slogan was “The People Demand Social Justice,” accompanied by “The People Demand a Welfare State.” Many also denounced the current Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his “pig-like capitalism” (as if there could be capitalism which isn’t “pig-like”).

There were, however, far more militant slogans in parts of the rally, especially the bloc of the Power to the Workers union and a group of workers of all ethnic groups from Jaffa. Their predominant slogans were “All power to the workers!”; “A workers’ state – not a slave state!”; “The answer to cutbacks: revolution!”; a nd “The people will overthrow the regime!” While this group’s leadership actually meant “reforms” when it said “revolution,” many of the rank-and-file truly want significant change in Israeli society. Some would like the working class to be in power. All in all, they are very open to new ideas about how and where to lead this fight.

Many of these demonstrators clearly see themselves as part of the working class. For decades, the bosses bribed Israeli workers with a few crumbs from their table and convinced them that they were a “middle class” with different interests than those of blue-collar wage slaves. But as these white-collar workers saw their standard of living decline, they came to understand their exploitation by the tiny capitalist class. Now they see their true place in the class system — under the boot of the bosses and their state.

For the first time in many years, masses of Israeli Arabs and Jews marched together against the capitalist government, refusing to let racism divide them. This unity needs to grow even broader. The way forward is to link rising prices to the bosses’ need to expand fascism in the West Bank and Gaza, where racist Israeli settlements get huge government subsidies.

We in the Progressive Labor Party welcome these militant mass protests by the working class. We believe, however, that a reformed “welfare state” cannot bring true social justice. After all, capitalists are constantly driven to maximize profits, and do so by robbing workers and spilling workers’ blood in wars over resources and markets. Our only solution is a communist revolution by the whole working class, which will smash the bosses’ state apparatus and replace it with a new state for the workers, by the workers and of the workers.