Whether in Russia, China or the U.S., the capitalist bosses use the media to oppress, mislead, and manipulate the working class. In wartime, in particular, the media’s job is to sell the bosses’ lies and hide the ugly truth about imperialism. The historic task for Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and the international working class is to turn inter-imperialist war into communist revolution for workers’ power. Workers have the capacity to do just that, but only if we reject the bosses’ fictions and are clear headed about what is really happening in the world.
In vilifying Putin and beating the drum for the victims of Russia’s invasion, the U.S. media isn’t helping the working class in Ukraine or anywhere else. In fact, it is just the opposite. Although the U.S. bosses are saying—for now—they want to prevent World War III, their goal is to build mass support for wider warfare to protect their profits against their imperialist rivals. While they may seem to have less formal control over television or newspapers or social media than in Russia or China, the liberal big fascists who own and run the mass media (with the exception of Fox) share the same class interests as ExxonMobil or JPMorgan Chase. Their phony claim of “objectivity”—an impossibility in class society—makes U.S. media more deceptive and even more dangerous. When push comes to shove—in Kuwait in 1991, in Iraq in 2003, in Ukraine in 2022—they guarantee that their “news” coverage serves the interests of finance capital.
Let’s look at three big lies the U.S. bosses’ media are spreading in their efforts to mobilize our class to die in their next global conflict.
Lie #1: The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a war crime and moral atrocity, far worse than the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan or the U.S.-backed devastation of Yemen.
The U.S. ruling class media is working overtime to convince workers that nothing compares to the atrocities perpetrated by Russia on Ukraine. Images of maimed and murdered workers and children are heartrending. But coming from the U.S. bosses, who are guilty of the slaughter of millions upon millions, this is racist hypocrisy of the first order.
The U.S. bombed civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq for decades. According to the Lancet, the top British medical journal, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq killed more than 600,000 people (10/11/06). After a United Nations official estimated that half a million young children in Iraq were killed by UN/U.S. sanctions, Madeleine (Died Too Late) Albright, a leading architect of U.S. imperialism, infamously defended this atrocity by calling it “…a very hard choice, but …the price is worth it.” What Albright left unstated were the stakes for the liberal fascist bosses: U.S. power in the Middle East and control over the region’s oil.
Today, as the media bombards us with blood-soaked images from Europe, a mostly overlooked war is raging on the Arabian Peninsula. Armed by the U.S., a Saudi-led coalition has killed over 375,000 people in Yemen (Al Jazeera, 2/9). The horrendous racism of U.S. news coverage couldn’t be more blatant. While workers are conditioned to identify with fair-skinned people in Ukraine, Muslim workers are either ignored or even blamed for their plight. The coverage of Ukraine is preparing us to die for U.S. imperialism.
Lie #2: The war in Ukraine proves that Putin is a madman who will stop at nothing.
Over and again, the U.S. media are screaming that Putin is an unhinged megalomaniac. But in reality, in the context of imperialist competition, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is completely logical. The Russian, U.S., and Chinese bosses are fighting to redivide the world’s resources and markets. After the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, the U.S. bosses expanded NATO while denying Putin's request to join it—all to keep their military advantage. Now, with U.S. imperialism on the downslide after defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan, Russia is trying to claw back some of its old sphere of influence. Beyond Ukraine’s strategic location between Russia and Germany, the country is a critical source of wheat, natural gas, and metals like lithium, an essential element of electric car batteries.
Imperialists are driven to war not by psychosis, but by the drive for profit. By painting Putin as a madman who may soon turn to “weapons of mass destruction,” the U.S. bosses are laying the basis for their own use of nuclear weapons. Representing the only country in history to drop atomic bombs on a civilian population, President Joe Biden confirmed that the U.S. would not rule out a first-strike nuclear attack (dailymail.com, 3/26). If the U.S. bosses are losing a conventional war with Russia or China, and they consider the stakes high enough, they won’t hesitate to press the nuclear button.
Lie #3: The fight to defend Ukraine is a noble war for democracy and Ukrainian national sovereignty.
The U.S. ruling class media has worked hard to build support for Ukrainian nationalism, which has been riddled with open fascism and anti-Jewish racism since the 1940s (huffpost.com, 12/25/14). The whole concept of nation states serves only the rulers who created them to define and protect their wealth. Nations are a disaster for the working class. They lead workers to identify with “their” bosses and to shed the blood of their class sisters and brothers in other countries. Our class has no side in an inter-imperialist war.
As President Joe Biden and the bosses’ media try to rally workers around a war for “democracy” versus “autocracy,” they don’t mention how the U.S. has subverted and overthrown democratically elected governments whenever its imperialist interests are threatened--in Guatemala, Chile, Honduras, Iran, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, just for starters. Then there’s Ukraine itself, where the current crop of bosses inherited power after President Viktor Yanukovych leaned too hard toward Russia and was kicked out in a coup the media now calls “The Revolution of Dignity.” The U.S. invested more than $5 billion to destabilize the Yanukovych government and pave the way for regime change (Counterpunch, 4/14/15).
Liberal democracy or Putin-style “autocracy” is a distinction without a difference. They both represent a dictatorship of the capitalist bosses. And they both lead to fascism and war. The ruling class will say and do anything to preserve their power. We must expose the truth and build the fight for communist revolution. Under communism, the media would serve the interests of the class that creates all value—the working class. Join us!
- Information
MAY DAY IS COMING! Celebrate the international working class
- Information
- 02 April 2022 340 hits
Voices from May Day
*
On May Day, we smash borders
Comrades, workers all over the world are all experiencing similar difficulties. But, in Haiti as elsewhere, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) must continue to organize workers, students and soldiers with a view to building a true international mass Party, capable of leading the class-struggle that will destroy capitalism and put an end to all its inequalities. We will build a society that serves the interests of the working class. – A communist worker in Haiti (2021)
We organize and lead the struggle to defend our class brothers and sisters, to try to build up our ranks with our literature and win workers to our revolutionary message. We fight to make our presence known in political, worker and student meetings. Dark night will have its end, with a new and glorious communist dawn. – a communist in Colombia (2019)
*
On May Day, generations of communists march towards the future
The victory of communism means working collectively to build a worker-run society; smashing the oppression of women, sexism; abolishing racism and the concepts of “race” and gender.” The victory of communism means no more police murders that rob us of Breonna Taylors, George Floyds, Adam Toledos, or Ma’Khia Bryant. That is our victory. Today's victory is joining the class struggle against capitalism, fighting for the international working class and joining the Progressive Labor Party. (2021)
I am a high school student and I stand in solidarity with the international working class to eradicate this capitalist system, and eventually, fight for worldwide communism. Capitalism is a system that gets working class people killed. We are killed from hunger. We are killed by homelessness. We are killed by bombs, drones, and bullets. We are killed by overdose or suicide. I have been forced to grow up in a system that was not created for me. Millions of my peers are the future and it is our responsibility to fight for a communist world now because our future is on the line. (2019)
*
Red Greetings! I participated in my first May Day 73 years ago. Our Party, having overcome any and all conditions in organizing for our international working-class holiday, I find that today’s march contains probably the biggest hurdle we’ve yet encountered in battling the virus of capitalism. It’s great to realize that our Progressive Labor Party has won so many young people to fight for communism. Truly, you are the future. On May Day, I celebrated my 90th birthday yesterday and our celebration is the happiest present I could receive! HAPPY MAY DAY, comrades, and continue building our multiracial revolutionary communist Party. (2020)
*
On May Day, we celebrate class struggle
May Day is the celebration of class. Today, we bridge our demands together to fight for communism, a world where exploitation of workers by bosses is banned and racism and sexism is outlawed. The coronavirus is an opportunity for bosses to increase their power but also for workers to fight back and build a world worthy of us.
With our responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, communists and friends of the Party are already showing how a communist world where we rely on each other instead of bosses could be possible. Haiti. Mexico. Colombia. Chicago. Los Angeles. East Africa. All over the world, we are finding innovative ways to safeguard the health and fighting spirit of our class.(2020)
*
On May Day we strive to become communists
To be a communist means to step up in defense of the working class, now in crisis, and forever in struggle. The opportunities to serve our class will continue even after Covid-19. It is only by the international working class uniting to fight back against this racist, sexist system. (2020)
*
PLP gave me a whole new perspective for understanding the world, and the way capitalism is constantly contorting, shape-shifting and creating new ways to distort our reality and create unnatural divisions amongst workers. Best of all, the most exciting part of being a communist is the way it makes me feel more alive as opposed to just living or existing. Looking back, I always felt like communism was natural to me. (2019)
*
I decided to commit to communism and join the Progressive Labor Party because it was the right thing to do—the progressive thing to do for my family, friends, community, and the earth. These are loose stats, but it feels as though one out of two people I talk to are workers who are tired of working, exhausted by capitalism, not having insurance, and drinking Robitussin and other homemade remedies for their colds and ailments because they can’t afford to go pay for prescribed medicine. I’m done with being super-exploited as a Black, queer woman and disgusted with U.S. imperialism and the effects that war and greed has on the Earth’s land and atmosphere…
I joined because I’m fed up with reformism and respectability politics and shaming the poor, working class on whether they vote or not. I’m tired of police brutality and innocent people dying in prisons… The Progressive Labor Party is passionate and direct about what our struggles are and what we need to do to win and defeat capitalism. (2019)
*
March 15, NEWARK, NJ - “No good mayors in a racist system,” shouted members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) alongside the family and friends of Justin Rodwell as we rallied for over an hour outside of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) at Newark Mayor Ras Baraka's annual State of the City.' This multiracial group of roughly two dozen people of all ages gathered in front of a line of snickering policemen to bravely demand the prison release of Justin, a young Black man whose family local cops targeted in June 2021. PLP and the Rodwell-Spivey Defense Committee (RSDC) refuse to abandon the “Free Justin Now” campaign, using this crisis to expose the danger that supposed cultural symbol Baraka represents for workers of color as the city ramps up for local elections. Workers in cities from Los Angeles to Guangzhou, Johannesburg to Chicago, and Newark are experiencing the intensification of capitalist displacement and gentrification which always requires government-backed force, the latter manifesting in police repression and harassment in the Rodwell-Spivey case. . As ruling class tensions all over the world increase the drive toward world war, political managers of capitalism like Baraka invariably utilize fascist measures for maintaining control over our class, and PLP is committed now more than ever to condemning capitalist politicians of every stripe and party.
As Justin remains in jail without bail for nine months now, PLP and the RSDC have continued actively demanding that all charges be dropped and harassment against his family end. To add insult to injury, the very morning of the State of the City address, a Newark cop shot a 15-year old (PATCH, 3/15), providing yet another example to the hundreds of patrons who attended the annual propaganda ploy that the failures of liberal politicians are more relevant than ever. CHALLENGE was disseminated to workers in the area and Rodwell-Spivey family members who were at the protest showcased on Instagram LIVE what militant workers’ power looks like while the Baraka administration displayed a sham video in the NJPAC theater touting “progress” around crime and police relations.
Custodians of capitalism
Racist bail laws, useless body cameras, cynical social work partnerships, and ineffective civilian review boards are all that Newark’s “progressive” administration can point toward, reminiscent of past and current efforts of the notorious NYPD under Democratic leadership of first DeBlasio and now Adams. The Baraka administration boasted that “the City of Newark reallocated five percent of the police department’s budget to be able to develop violence prevention programs,” yet that funding hardly materialized where working-class people live. Instead, it goes toward lining the pockets of cynical consultants or advancing programs that force the homeless away from new high-end housing developments in Newark’s downtown financial center. Baraka, like former NYC Mayor DeBlasio, introduced 10 social workers to partner with Newark police in response to intercommunal violence (PATCH, 6/21). Now under the current NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, social workers are pairing with the police to harass homeless people and clear out their encampments in fast-gentrifying sections of the city.
While Baraka’s goons gloat about creating the first Civilian Complaint Review Board in NJ, PLP and the Rodwell-Spivey Defense Committee are speaking out on the failures of other police reforms that were created under their liberal administration. Justin Rodwell scored a low-risk point number on a scale that’s supposed to determine the risk of releasing someone from jail in lieu of gutter racist bail systems. Still Justin’s judge ‘went against his better judgment’ and left him in a jail cell. In 2014, the Newark Police Department signed a consent decree to train officers to behave better and wear body cameras, yet a Black worker, Carl Dorsey was killed by Newark kkkops in 2020.
“You want to act like nothing’s going on in Newark? We’re suffering!” Monique Rodwell shouted to Baraka outside of the NJPAC doors. As she shouted, workers in Ukraine were under armed attack from capitalist war efforts between the Russian, U.S., NATO member imperialists. Under capitalism, workers are facing militarized terror all over. Not to mention global displacement that is fueled by competitive commodification of land and profits. When workers can’t afford to keep up with the cost of living, we are forced to work ourselves to death or be left for dead in the streets. Under communist leadership, quality housing and neighborhoods won’t be driven by profit and will be obtainable by the same people who help maintain it–the WORKERS.
Workers must strengthen the state of the working class on May Day
The most effective weapon that PLP has to terminate liberal misleaders selling our class out is to strengthen our credibility, friendships, and struggles with workers around issues like police terror and housing. We don’t just fight to “win” the case by having the charges dropped against Justin; PLP fights to deepen ties with the Rodwell-Spivey family around the need to overthrow this system for good, demonstrating to our class what real workers’ power means.
Self critically, we have to extend our comradery to countless City workers under the Baraka administration who need our analysis and commitment because they, too, suffer tremendously from poor working conditions and political corruption. May Day is PLP’s annual “state of the working class” celebration, a reminder to ourselves and fellow workers that the only way to correct the errors of capitalist misleaders is for our party to grow worldwide. We need workers inside of City Hall and in the streets of Newark to come with us to Brooklyn so that we can show the world what a ‘State of the Communists’ will look like on April 30th for May Day. From every corner of the world, join us!
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the formation of a Ukrainian nation, Ukraine has been a battleground in the rivalry between the U.S. and Russian imperialists. And Ukrainian nationalists have tried to win the workers of Ukraine to support one or the other of these imperialist powers. Now workers are killing each other as imperialist powers and Ukrainian capitalists fight over Ukraine’s riches.
Under Viktor Yushchenko, president of Ukraine from 2005 to 2010 and a leader of the pro U.S. so-called Orange Revolution, fascist lies began to be accepted as the official truth, taught in Ukrainian schools and promoted by Ukrainian academics, all meant to promote Ukrainian nationalism and anti-communism.
Historic lies as a means to rationalize war, violence against our class, or as a way to build trust in the “State” are not unique to Ukraine or Russia. It is a practice we see imposed by international ruling classes from the U.S. to China and yes, today in Ukraine (see Editorial, page 2).
Below, CHALLENGE debunks some of the lies about Ukraine spread by Ukrainian nationalists and fascists. We say SMASH ALL BORDERS, and fight only for an international communist revolution led by the working class.
The 1930’s famine: a “Holodomor” lie
There never was any “Holodomor” or deliberate starvation of workers from Ukraine by the Soviet Union. It’s a lie disseminated by Ukrainian nationalists and fascists, with no historical evidence. The “Holodomor” is a politically motivated myth. It originated with Ukrainians living outside Ukraine, led by veterans of Ukrainian pro Nazi forces.
While the famine of 1932-33 took a terrible toll, it was only one of a long series. Russia and Ukraine had experienced famines every two to four years for a millennium — yes, for a thousand years—and devastating famines every decade or so. As the Soviet leadership, Joseph Stalin included, realized the extent of this famine, they sent millions of tons of food and grain aid to Ukraine. They also sent tractors and organizers to collectivize agriculture. The result was a good harvest in 1933, which ended the famines once and for all.
The collectivization of agriculture reorganized farming on a large-scale with increasing mechanization. Collectivization was the greatest humanitarian triumph of the 20th century. It ended the famines that had devastated Ukraine and Russia for a thousand years! (There was one more famine in the Soviet Union, in 1946-47. It was caused by the devastation of World War II and the worst drought in centuries. It affected all of Europe and much of Asia. England also had to institute bread rationings.
Nazi collaborators not“freedom fighters”
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) were trained by Germany’s Nazis. They were not “freedom fighters” as today’s Ukrainian fascists would have us believe. During World War II they entered the Soviet Union with Adolph Hitler’s troops and participated in mass murders of Jewish, Polish, and communist workers. As many as 100,000 civilians from Poland were slaughtered in 1943-44.
Stepan Bandera led the more hard-core fascist wing of the OUN. In 1941, the Banderist leadership declared an “independent” Ukraine state, in reality a satellite of Nazi Germany. UPA was formed in part from the 14th Waffen-SS Division (storm troopers), an all-western Ukrainian Nazi SS division.
Both the lies about the famine and about Ukraine’s “freedom fighters” have a Nazi origin. And both are taught as “truth” in today’s Ukraine!
Euromaidan: U.S promoted coup
In 2010 the Russian imperialists made a comeback as their stooge, Victor Yanukovich, was elected president. Yanukovich was just as corrupt and anti-working class as the previous pro U.S. president. He was deposed by the U.S.-supported Euromaidan coup in 2014.
One of the political parties involved was the outright fascist Svoboda, a neo-Nazi outfit that received over two million votes in the previous parliamentary elections. This group toppled the Lenin statue in Kyev, replacing it with the black-and-red Nazi occupation flag from World War II.
Svoboda and the paramilitary neo-Nazi Right Sector are the political descendants of western Ukraine leaders who sided with the Nazis during World War II. Svoboda has organized large celebrations in memory of World War II Nazi collaborators and the Nazi Waffen SS (storm troopers). Svoboda and Right Sector were unreservedly backed by the EU and U.S. imperialists.
Neo-Nazi“volunteer” battalions of the Ukrainian Army
After the Euromaidan coup, the Russian imperialists struck back. In February-March of 2014 Russian forces took over Crimea from Ukraine. The Ukrainian government was alarmed and with U.S. aid started upgrading its military. Neo-Nazis took advantage.
The neo-Nazi Azov Battalion was started in 2014 as a volunteer unit of the Ukrainian National Guard. It received funding from the interior ministry, but was also funded by Igor Kolomoisky, an energy billionaire (oligarch) and ex-governor of the Dnipropetrovska region in eastern Ukraine. Kolomoisky also funded the neo-Nazi leaning battalions Aidar, Dnipro 1, Dnipro 2, and Donbas. Meanwhile the U.S. Army was training these neo-Nazi battalions (Aljazeera, 3/1).
There were over 30 nationalist battalions, all funded by private investors. Amnesty reported such loose regulation on these groups that its "members... act with virtually no oversight or control" (News Week, 9/9/14).
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: Neo-Nazi collaborator
Zelensky was elected to fight corruption in Ukraine, make peace with Russia and far down the list was improving conditions for the impoverished working class of Ukraine. Instead he has attacked his political enemies, installed his friends and associates in positions of political and economic power and strengthened neo-Nazi groups such as the Azov battalion. He has done nothing for the working class and his popularity had sunk to about 20 percent before the war with Russia began.
Zelensky was corrupt from the start, depending heavily on the backing of Ihor Kolomoisky, the same billionaire who funded the neo-Nazi Azov and Aidar battalions. He had the backing of Kolomoisky’s media empire that had produced his comedy show. He appointed various Kolomoisky associates as his advisors and to key positions in his government. Those officials who threatened Kolomoisky’s interests were fired (Atlantic Council, 7/10/21). He also amassed a small fortune which he hid in “a sprawling network of offshore companies'' (The Guardian,10/3/21).
Meanwhile the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion flourishes under Zelensky. But Azov is much more than a volunteer battalion. It has its own political party; two publishing houses; summer camps for children; and a vigilante force known as the National Militia, which patrols the streets of Ukrainian cities alongside the police. It also has a military wing with at least two training bases and a vast arsenal of weapons; drones, armored vehicles and artillery pieces. It has also become a military training center for neo-Nazis from all over the world, training up to 17,000 racists from some 50 countries. Cossack House is their recruitment center in Kiev, on loan from the Ukraine Defense Ministry (Time, 1/7/21).
Nationalism, and its twin fascism, mean misery and death for workers. Let’s turn the guns on the imperialist powers and their capitalist stooges. Fight for communism.
- Information
Class consciousness on the production line—Shut down Amazon! Build up workers’ power!
- Information
- 02 April 2022 373 hits
Queens and Staten Island, NYC — At two different Amazon locations in New York City (NYC) Black and white workers staged walkouts in solidarity with each other and with fellow workers internationally. The same day, Amazon workers also walked out in Maryland and marched in New Jersey. The class-consciousness that these workers understand exemplifies that under capitalism, control of the means of production = power. So when the working class stops churning the gears, the bosses’ profit machine slows down!
“When we stop production, only then, is when they listen to us.”
“What we did today falls under the same legacy of workers fighting for their power.”
Workers from the Woodside facility walked out to support the workers who walked out at the Long Island City warehouse, chanting,” workers united will never be defeated!” Home-made picket signs read, “We Make Amazon's Profit,” and “This Ain't Just Amazon, This is Capital!”
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) salutes the Amazon workers’ struggle and invites them to join our Party. The rulers are moving closer to yet another imperialist world war and global fascism. Only a mass revolutionary communist movement can lead the working class from this dark night. Our task is to bring the fight against imperialist war and racist police terror to workers on the job, to the shop floor in factories, hospitals, and fields.
Amazon, with millions of workers around the world and a significant number of super exploited Black workers in their ranks, have the potential to bring Bezos, number two on the list of richest bosses in the world, and his blood sucking to a grinding halt.
Thus, Amazon is fertile ground for the kind of class conscious fightback that could be transformed into revolutionary movement for communism to liberate our class, humanity, and planet from this capitalist inferno.
Battle lines clear for Amazon workers
In 2020, there were 950,000 Amazon warehouse workers in the U.S.: 61 percent (579,500) were Black and Latin and 31 percent (294,500) were women. As the U.S. has shifted from a mainly industrial to a mainly service economy, Amazon represents the old auto and steel industries combined. This is the greatest concentration of young Black, Latin and women workers, and they are everywhere.
Work shifts can last up to 11 hours with only one 45-minute break and two 15-minute breaks. The workers are demanding a $3/hr. raise, longer breaks and respectful treatment from the bosses. The work is hard, the hours are long, and the battle lines are clear. About 40 workers, mostly in their early 20s, Black, Latin and white, women and men, turned in petitions with demands for better working conditions, but the bosses didn't want to accept them or respond to their demands.
The company’s higher ups called in extra managers to try to intimidate the workers out of taking any action. It was very exciting to see the second group of workers walk out, saying that only because they knew they had each other’s back were they able to stand against their supervisor. You could feel the closeness of their relationships.
Red ideas spreading among Black, Latin workers
Workers complained that now that the holiday rush is over, Amazon is trying to get rid of as many workers as they can to make even more profit. Two workers are doing the work that six workers had been doing. A Latin worker said that Amazon has had him on unpaid ”vacation“ since the beginning of the year, trying to fire him or force him to quit because he injured his back after more than two years of heavy lifting and long hours.
A young Black worker in the walkout said that she originally did not want to work at Amazon. She said that she has no time for anything else besides work and that the paycheck isn’t enough to live on. She was hired with the understanding that she would be paid $18.50/hr but is only getting $16.
But she said that meeting “revolutionary-minded” coworkers and organizing against the boss has changed her life and made the entire experience worthwhile. This is what the Party means when we say build a base! Develop relationships with fellow class sisters and brothers in a way that teaches us to struggle with one another and fight the bosses, side-by-side with one another!
Workers, PL’ers rally for Amazon unionization
Meanwhile a few days later in Staten Island, the Amazon Labor Union organized a rally to support the vote for unionization at Amazon. While the ALU (Amazon Labor Union) let all the politicians speak before the workers, PL’ers and friends spoke with several workers and shared copies of CHALLENGE.
One worker at the rally said, “I’ve been working at Amazon for a year. It is not like the average job. Amazon is modern day slavery in America. Everything consists of multi-tasking to get the right items together. When you work inside Amazon, your rights don’t exist. There is no leaving your station to use the restroom, to go get a drink of water or even to shift your legs. The managers and supervisors constantly tell you your time is too much and how much time you wasted.”
Another speaker talked about a worker who wanted to leave because his wife was having a baby, and was told that he must complete his shift or he would be fired. He ended up quitting. In their campaign against the union, Amazon is trying to scare workers about job security, but with a 150 percent turnover of the workforce every year, workers already have no job security at Amazon.
Smash liberal politicians, union misleaders
The limits of union struggles were exemplified by the ALU, which only fights for economic gains and doesn’t seek to unite all workers for workers’ power. This was exemplified by the Teamsters union's lackluster efforts to mobilize more than just a handful of their workers to the rally. A United Parcel Service worker we spoke to expressed resentment towards his union saying it was weakening and failing to organize Amazon.
If union leadership represented the interests of the working class, they would be trying to organize all workers to fight like hell. While unions are important places for workers to organize class struggle and fight back, unions won’t solve workers’ problems, because whatever gains we make are only temporary under capitalism.
PLP fights alongside Amazon workers to win the right to organize so that they have some form of protection from their greedy bosses. But we need a lot more than a raise.
We need a new communist world with no Bezos’, no profits, no racism and no imperialist wars. The only real protection for workers is to seize state power with armed communist revolution. Amazon workers in the U.S. and around the world can help make this next war the last! We invite them all to march with PLP on May Day and make that world a reality.
