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Marx and Du Bois: Abolish racism with the workers’ dictatorship
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- 02 February 2023 655 hits
Lesson #1: Black Workers Were the Greatest Abolitionists of the Civil War
The two books have many points of contact. Capital is the definitive analysis of how capitalism works, the exploitation of workers’ labor-power through the wage-form. It was written before and during the U.S. Civil War, which Marx called “a pro-slavery rebellion,” and published just as Reconstruction began in the U.S.. Marx’s own communist party, the International Workingmen’s Association, got going at the same time as Reconstruction, and corresponded with the new American labor movements, whose tragic flaw of racism was highlighted by Du Bois. A fierce abolitionist, Marx refers often to American slavery in Capital, including the famous passage “Labor in a white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in a black skin” (p.414). Chapter 10, “The Working Day,” with its horrific picture of mid-century factory work in England, often compares forms of workers’ enslavement in the factory or on the plantation (pp. 345, 377-8, 398, 414-5).
For his part, Du Bois wrote his history of Reconstruction in the Depression 1930s, when communist thinking was at its most influential in the U.S., and he was reading Capital as he wrote. Black Reconstruction is considered his most Marxist work. Several times, for example, he calls for an international “dictatorship of the proletariat,” most resoundingly at the end of Chapter XIV, “Counter-Revolution of Property.” Here in the depths of the Depression he sees the surge of Black revolt in Reconstruction pointing ahead to a global workers’ rebellion:
The exploiting group of New World masters…fought for trade and markets and materials and slaves all over the world until at last in 1914 the world flamed in war…. And the rebuilding, whether it comes now or a century later, will and must go back to the basic principles of Reconstruction in the United States during 1867-1876—Land, Light and Leading for slaves black, brown, yellow and white, under a dictatorship of the proletariat (p. 762). Marx and Du Bois both understood that workers necessarily had to take state power by force, to abolish capitalist property, and to keep power in their hands to suppress the inevitable counter-revolution. Their radical understanding of workers’ power came from their belief that it is workers’ labor, “simple average labor,” which creates the world, and with capitalists out of the way it is simple average labor which will rebuild it.
LESSON #2: ORDINARY, ANTIRACIST WORKERS CAN AND MUST RULE THE WORLD
What was this core idea of Marx that so galvanized Du Bois, “equal or abstract human labor”?
Early in Chapter 1 Marx writes:
"Tailoring and weaving, although they are qualitatively different productive activities, are both a productive expenditure of human brains, muscles, nerves, hands, etc., and in this sense both human labor….More complex labor counts only as intensified or rather multiplied simple labor…all labor is an expenditure of human labor-power, in the physiological sense, and it is in this quality of being equal, or abstract, human labor that it forms the value of commodities (pp. 135-7)."
The political consequence of seeing labor this way, in both Marx and Du Bois, is to affirm the right and duty of ordinary workers to rule the world. That was the lesson Marx drew from labor in the capitalist system and Du Bois from the Black revolt against American slavery. Du Bois describes in Chapter IV how Black workers withdrew their labor from the slave regime by escape, sabotage, and armed struggle in the Union Army. He saw that massive upheaval by enslaved workers as a kind of “General Strike” of Black labor to abolish slavery. It was racist ideas, plain and simple, that prevented white workers from joining in the radical aim of “abolition democracy.” While the 1880s multiracial class struggle led by the Knights of Labor showed the power of workers from Louisiana to Chicago when they organized as a class, internal weaknesses in these groups and the labor movement overall left white workers—then and now-- handicapped in seeing fellow-proletarians in the enslaved or freed Black worker. Yet for Du Bois the defeat of Reconstruction merely invites us to re-see ourselves, and rebuild , as one.
Lesson #3: No Good Bosses in a Racist System
Just as the so-called abolitionist Northern capitalists, whose military presided over the entire process of Reconstruction, ultimately prevented that legal abolition from going further towards workers’ power, so too do the liberal fascist bosses of today stand to implement the most imperialistic, war-mongering, and anti-immigrant policies of the working class in the US. Whether it is was the Obama-led oversight of crackdowns on antiracist protestors from Ferguson to Baltimore or the current Biden-led oversight of anti-immigrant concentration camps across the Mexican border, history shows that capitalism always makes good on its commitment to racism, and that the best ideas of Marx and DuBois remain more valid today as ever. Join us!
W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction & Other Writings, Library of America edition, 2021.
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I (trans. Ben Fowkes), Penguin Classics edition, 1990.
Under liberal fascist former mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and current mayor Andre Dickens, Atlanta began plans to build Cop City. This $90 million training center would include a shooting range and model neighborhood to stage raids on 85 acres of forest adjacent to historically Black communities (CNN, 9/24/22?). Workers are fighting back with street protests and erecting their own camps in the threatened forest.
On January 18, Tortuguita, a widely loved environmental organizer, in a raid on the encampments was killed (PBS, 1/29). The police killing prompted several nights of protests in downtown Atlanta and worldwide as workers questioned the police account of the murder. More than a dozen protestors have been charged with domestic terrorism. This chilling new trend is popular with liberal fascist politicians to squash worker fightback.
Now, the workers’ anger confirms a) the shallowness of identity politics as a tool to divide us, and b) reforms don’t work.
Instead, workers need to join PLP. Smashing the racist, fascist police terror that robbed Tyre’s life is a pillar of our Party’s work.
A Black cop is still a kkkop
The protest was led by the liberal reformers in the city of Newark and had more local government officials than workers present. This can only be explained by the historical contradiction of this period–where identities are primary to the capitalist ruling class to divide and exploit workers and squash rebellion more intensely. Tyre Nichols, Carl Dorsey, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán or Tortuguita, and Keenan Anderson are victims of the liberal fascist state ruled by Black and Latin politicians and cops.
“See, us Black people are suffering everywhere,” one woman said. Monique Rodwell, mother of the Rodwell-Spivey brothers, assaulted by police in 2020 and friends of PLP replied, “it’s not just Black people; it’s poor people.” Another educator with us noted, “the protests stopped once Biden got in office. He’s the same one that introduced the 1994 Crime Bill.” This is someone that has been in our base for years and a former student of a comrade in Newark.
We were not strong enough in numbers to provide leadership at this rally but we do plan to organize a worker-led response to the murder of Tyre and the rise of liberal fascism in the near future. When liberal fascists are forced to face the rage of the working class and manage to get away, we as communists cannot stop organizing. For every Tyre there are masses of workers killed by racist police terror around the world that don’t make the headlines. Fighting for Alex Flores, for Shantel Davis, Raymond Chaluisant we didn’t stop. And we won’t stop until masses of workers around the world see that police brutality is as vital to capitalism, as communist revolution is to workers!
Liberal fascism unleashes killer kkkop gangs
In the aftermath of the George Floyd worldwide movement led by Black workers, liberal fascist mayors and politicians misled workers with the most revolutionary potential, funneling our class’ rage into the ballot box, while also unleashing a viscious wave of racist police terror.
Black mayors from Atlanta, Washington, DC, and Newark painted Black Lives Matter slogans on the same streets where they send their killer kkkop special units to spill workers’ blood. These units–from the Jump Out Boys in Newark that killed Carl Dorsey and threatened the Rodwell Spivey family to the Executioners in Los Angeles to the Memphis Scorpion Unit that killed Tyre Nichols – are essentially a kkkop murder inc., a persistent nationwide element using corruption and intimidation tactics to cement their control over the Black and Latin working class communities they cannot profit without.
Like Newark, Memphis is a model for Big fascists to pour in their finance capital. For Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase, extracting superprofits from the guaranteed racist super-exploitation and super-neglect of a majority Black and Latin workforce is a winning formula! These parasites are the largest beneficiaries of extra payments, commonly known as a “Black Tax,” placed on such municipalities forced to take loans to close gaps in budgets unmet by taxing such low wages (Bloomberg, 09/29/22). Tennessee, the state where Memphis is located, is on par with the lowest minimum wage across the U.S. $7.25.
The answer of fascist U.S. President Jim Crow Joe Biden has been to betray workers by riding the wave of workers’ anger into office. Once elected, Biden assured finance capitalists that there would be no effort to defund the police (itself a liberal reform) under his administration.
Today, U.S. police forces represent the third largest military expenditure globally; as former New York City mayor Bloomberg called it, the NYPD is one of the world’s largest armies. Expect the Biden administration to opportunistically milk the Nichols tragedy to stoke their political momentum for the 2024 election. As we go to press, Kamala Harris–a former prosecutor who sent hundreds of workers to prison– hopes we will forget that when announcing that she will attend Tyre’s funeral.
Fight fascism with communism
Under capitalism, there can be no justice for workers against racist killer kkkops. Their job is to serve and protect the ruling class, especially the Big Fascists–the liberal politicians and finance capitalists. For decades, these Big Fascists have wielded the lethal power of the police with near impunity to clear cities of Black and Latin workers for gentrification. At the same time, these liberal fascists push reforms to keep workers invested in the system–from voting to hiring more Black and Latin cops. Tyre Nichols brutal slaying shows that neither works. Only with organized worker fightback with international communist leadership like PLP will we finally realize communism and smash racist police terror once and for all.
On the same day that the first Black woman police chief, Cerelyn Davis, fired the five Memphis cops, the Newark police force under Black Mayor Ras Baraka’s leadership walked away scott-free for murdering another Black worker, Carl Dorsey, in 2020. Politicians at the rally praised Davis, the murderer-in-chief, for swiftly penalizing the cops that killed Tyre. When agents of the capitalist state are disciplined, our class must beware that this is not a victory but a sign of developing fascism.
However, locking a few cops up will never smash racist police terror. Only when workers recognize capitalism as the sham it is and commit to building an internationalist, communist, worker-led state will racism, sexism, and exploitation be eradicated from the face of the earth.
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Editorial: Peru’s crisis, a flashpoint of imperialist rivalry
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- 02 February 2023 508 hits
With capitalism in a worldwide crisis, inter-imperialist rivalry on the rise, and the bosses’ liberal democracies under siege, Peru is in bloody turmoil. Competing ruling-class factions are pushing our class to fight and die for their profits. Following the ouster of fake-left misleader President Pedro Castillo in December, mass demonstrations have erupted against his unpopular successor, Dina Boluarte. Workers have barricaded roads, blocked airports, and even forced the shutdown of the historic Inca site of Machu Picchu (Washington Post, 1/26). More than 50 workers, many of them Indigenous workers who’ve been targeted for racist oppression since the Spanish conquest of Peru in the 16th century, have been killed in clashes with the cops.
Militant, antiracist fightback against capitalist exploitation is always welcome. But when protests are channeled into support for one rotten, corrupt politician or another, they only strengthen the bosses’ hand. Our struggle must be aimed at the very core of the racist, sexist profit system. Capitalism must be smashed, root and branch. Without revolutionary communist politics and leadership, mass movements wind up funneled into dead-end reforms. Workers are left with crumbs—and even those crumbs will be taken away with the bosses’ next crisis.
The international Progressive Labor Party is fighting to build a mass revolutionary movement to destroy the capitalist profit system and create an antiracist, egalitarian world. We invite workers across South America and worldwide to join the Party for true working-class liberation.
All politicians serve the capitalist state
Peru is simmering for rebellion. Rich in natural resources, the country is one of the world’s top exporters of gold and copper (Ernst and Young, 2/21/22). It is also marked by staggering racist inequality, with one of three workers living in poverty (Foreign Policy, 1/25). With a healthcare infrastructure in a state of collapse, Peru has the world’s highest Covid-19 mortality rate (Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center). Indigenous workers in remote rural areas suffer from intense discrimination and high unemployment (Lima Easy, 5/6/21).
To win election as president in July 2021, Castillo, an Indigenous former schoolteacher, campaigned as a political “outsider” who promised sweeping reforms. He followed the playbook of other “pink tide” misleaders, from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil. Once elected Castillo railed against U.S. imperialist policies, promised a new constitution, agrarian land reforms, and wealth redistribution to the working class from levying heavy taxes on imperialist mining companies.
After Castillo was impeached and jailed on charges of rebellion and conspiracy, his number-two, Boluarte, seized the reins. She quickly changed sides to ally with Peru’s right-wing bosses. Her new best friend is one-time rival Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, the CIA-backed butcher whose regime killed thousands of civilians in the 1990s in its “dirty war” against the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement guerilla groups (Silvio Rendon, Research & Politics, January-March 2019.) Castillo and Boluarte prove once again that “lesser evil” capitalist stooges have nothing to offer the working class.
Rival imperialists scrap over spoils, workers pay the price
The extreme instability in Peru reflects sharpening, worldwide inter-imperialist competition. Like most of Latin America, the country has been pillaged by U.S. imperialists for more than 200 years. It recently served as the seat of the so-called “Lima Group,” a U.S.-led coalition that tried and failed to topple the government of oil-rich Venezuela (Pressenza, 9/13/21).
But over the last decade, China has replaced the U.S. as Peru’s top trading partner. Chinese bosses have poured billions into the country as they build ports and mines, including deals to connect Peru to its massive Belt and Road infrastructure project (Jones Day, January 2020). Far from bringing new prosperity to the region, this infusion of Chinese capital has only perpetuated worker exploitation in Peru. In 2022, workers repeatedly blocked roads leading to the Las Bambas copper mine after the Chinese firm MMG refused to share revenues with working-class communities (Reuters, 2/16/22). Perhaps not coincidentally, the incarcerated Castillo had moved Peru closer to the Chinese bosses and away from the U.S.
While we have no way to know when rising tensions between U.S. and Chinese imperialists will spill into open conflict, it’s clear that the two imperialist powers are heading toward World War III. When proxy conflicts inevitably expand into a global conflagration, the international working class will pay the highest price.
We can and will run society as a united working-class
As capitalist politicians show their callous contempt for the lives of those who vote them into office, other workers are rallying to support protestors who risk their lives in the streets. From Ferguson and Memphis to Gaza, Tehran, and Lima, workers and students have opened their homes and donated food and medical aid. Amid a crisis created by the violence and corruption and greed of the imperialist bosses, workers continue to show the courage and ability to fight for their class. The historic task before Progressive Labor Party is to transform these isolated reform battles into a worldwide fight for communism. Only the dictatorship of the proletariat can permanently end the bloody nightmare of capitalist rule. Join us!
KKKops doing what they’re hired to do: attack workers
The Guardian, 1/6 –U.S. law enforcement killed at least 1,176 people in 2022, making it the deadliest year on record for police violence...Police across the country killed an average of more than three people a day, or nearly 100 people every month last year according to Mapping Police Violence. The racial disparities have also persisted: Black people were 24% of those killed last year, while making up only 13% of the population. From 2013 to 2022, Black residents were three times more likely to be killed by U.S. police than white people. The inequality is particularly severe in some cities, including Minneapolis where police have killed Black residents at a rate 28 times higher than white residents, and Chicago, where the rate was 25 times higher.
Capitalist healthcare = exploiting workers
Medscape, 1/10–Most of the 30 volunteers who work at the 130-bed, for-profit East Cooper Medical Center spend their days assisting surgical patients — the scope of their duties extending far beyond those of candy stripers, baby cuddlers, and gift shop clerks. In fact, one-third of the volunteers at the Tenet Healthcare-owned hospital are retired nurses who check people in for surgery or escort patients to a preoperative room, said Jan Ledbetter, president of the hospital’s nonprofit Volunteer Services Organization...“They’re kept extremely busy,” Ledbetter said. “We need to have four of those volunteers a day.”
The U.S. health system benefits from potentially more than $5 billion in free volunteer labor annually, a KHN analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Independent Sector found. Yet some labor experts argue that using hospital volunteers, particularly at for-profit institutions, provides an opportunity for facilities to run afoul of federal rules, create exploitative arrangements, and deprive employees of paid work amid a larger fight for fair wages. “The rules are pretty clear, and yet it happens all the time,” said Marcia McCormick, a lawyer who co-directs the Wefel Center for Employment Law at Saint Louis University.
Imperialists fight over Taiwan
CNN, 1/9–A Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2026 would result in thousands of casualties among Chinese, United States, Taiwanese and Japanese forces, and it would be unlikely to result in a victory for Beijing, according to a prominent independent Washington think tank, which conducted war game simulations of a possible conflict that is preoccupying military and political leaders in Asia and Washington. A war over Taiwan could leave a victorious U.S. military in as crippled a state as the Chinese forces it defeated. At the end of the conflict, at least two U.S. aircraft carriers would lie at the bottom of the Pacific and China’s modern navy, which is the largest in the world, would be in “shambles.”
“The United States and Japan lose dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of service members. Such losses would damage the U.S. global position for many years…China also suffers heavily. Its navy is in shambles, the core of its amphibious forces is broken, and tens of thousands of soldiers are prisoners of war,” it said.
Egyptian workers cut back on meat, medicine and clothing to meet IMF demands
Wall Street Journal, 1/12–Egypt plans to cut spending after the International Monetary Fund extended hundreds of millions of dollars in an economic bailout package, as the country struggles to pay off debts accumulated from a decades long building boom. It will need to sell off $2 billion in public sector assets and borrow more than $1 billion each from the World Bank and China Development Bank to help close the gap, according to the IMF.
Across the country, families have been cutting back on meat, medicine and clothing. Bread, rice and cooking oil have been among the items missing from store shelves, after demand for cheap items soared. Authorities have been reluctant to announce any formal cutbacks to a food subsidy program that helps tens of millions of Egyptians access cheap rice, oil and sugar, although the government has become more stringent on who can receive ration cards.
