NEW YORK CITY, February 17—Retired workers celebrated Black History Month by studying the Haitian Revolution and its influence of slave revolts in the U.S.
The group of multiracial retirees are part of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 371. Twenty-five retirees braved the inclement weather to listen to a former hospital worker about working-class heroism to not only overthrow slavery but also to fight for the complete liberation from the yoke of colonialism and imperialism. A lively question-and-answer period followed the presentation.
Masses Make History, Not One Leader
While many of us can name leaders, we don’t know the many of as many 400,000 slaves in Haiti who fought and died for freedom. We were all aware of Toussaint Louverture, who led an army of masses of slaves in a successful revolt against French slavemasters from 1791-1794. But, it was the masses who made history, not the few leaders whose names have come down to us.
In 1794, because of the fight launched in Haiti, slavery had been abolished in all of the French colonies. When Napoleon’s army invaded Haiti in 1802, it re-established slavery in all its colonies. Slavery was abolished in Haiti in 1804. But in the other French islands, slavery didn’t end until 1848. The French bosses forced Haiti to pay crippling reparations for the loss of property—people and plantations—in return for recognition, 20 years after liberation. And the Haitian bourgeoisie forced the peasants, through taxation, to bear the cost of paying those $40 million, in today’s U.S. currency. It was a warning for those who dared to fight back. The U.S. didn’t recognize Haitian independence until 1861 in the midst of the Civil War and didn’t abolish slavery in within its own borders until 1865.
Haitian Revolution Prompts U.S. Slave Revolt
We discussed the influence the Haiti Revolution and fight against colonialism had throughout the slaveholding world. It is important to understand how events that occur far away impact events locally. The slaveowners certainly understood that and trembled at the thought of slave uprisings.
In the U.S., one of the most famous was in Charleston, South Carolina in 1822, led by Denmark Vesey. News of the successful slave revolt in Haiti was widespread in the area after French planters fled Haiti with their slaves to the U.S. South. In fact, the plan of Vesey’s rebels was to sail to Haiti after freeing themselves.
John Brown, the well-known abolitionist, was also influenced by the Haitian Revolution. The group Brown assembled chose to attack the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, West Viriginia in part because it was located in a valley. They knew that Haitian rebels went into the mountains to regroup after their attacks on slave plantations. Brown consoled himself when he was arrested by reading the biography of Toussaint Louverture.
History Informs Today’s Politics
Some of the comments made by the audience were interesting as well. One retiree noted that to fight against slavery was a human trait, and that slaves even rebelled against the “good slavemasters.” Someone else explained that there is no such thing as a “good” slaveowner.
One retiree stated that union members should support the Democratic Party to fight the good fight.
However, the speaker clearly noted that the only way to end any and all of the misery that capitalism creates is to unite and fight back in the heroic manner of the revolutionaries in Haiti. We must go all the way and get rid of this system once and for all. No capitalist party can eradicate racism; only an internaitonal communist party like Progressive Labor Party can—with the leadership of millions.
While Black History Month is a token time for the bosses to recognize Black workers’ contribution to capitalism, the working-class should celebrate and study antiracist working-class history and the role of Black workers all year long. Let’s take inspiration from the history of class struggle and resolve to fight against racism all year long!
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Communist School Cultivates Next Generation of Anti-Racist Leaders
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- 26 February 2016 70 hits
New Jersey, February 7—A Progressive Labor Party leadership school helped over 50 workers and students to become more committed, anti-racist fighters. Over two days of sharp and principled struggle, comrades and friends learned about the roots of racism in the New World.
The leadership school was a valuable experience of collectivity. It was mainly led by young women. For three days, we cooked, cleaned, played, taught, and learned together. The experience was shared by Black, Latin, Asian and white workers and students, ranging in age from 9 to 70 (see letters). There was sharp struggle, and not all of our disagreements were resolved. But we all vowed to keep talking and fighting together. On Sunday, four people joined the Party—the most powerful way to combat racism.
We discussed the invention of “race” as a ruling-class tool to divide workers and make super-profits from the enslavement of Black people. We also analyzed the dangerous dead end of identity politics, which further divides workers and deflects working-class anger into capitalist-led, reformist organizations. Most important, we clarified the necessity of a multiracial fight for communism, the only way we can smash capitalism and its racist atrocities.
After welcoming people to the campsite Friday night, including a number of workers and students who were new to the Party’s ideas, we kicked off the leadership school Saturday morning by reading a section of Lerone Bennett’s The Road Not Taken. Bennett showed how the rulers of the American colonies systematically created laws in the 17th century to control and separate the people they aimed to exploit: white, Black, and Native American. The colonial bosses laws outlawed intermarriage among these groups and differentiated between white indentured servants (who could buy their liberty in some places) and Black slaves (who were chattel property forever). These laws represented the roots of modern U.S. racism.
On Saturday afternoon, we discussed “Dear White America,” by George Yancy, a Black writer whose research has been underwritten by The New York Times, the capitalists’ most important mouthpiece. As a defender of white privilege theory, Yancy makes the fatal error of blaming all white people in equal measure for the racist society we live in. He makes no distinction between the capitalist bosses (of all “races”) who hold state power and the workers who are exploited and oppressed by them (see next issue for a larger discussion about racism vs. white privilege theory).
By contrast, Adolph Reed, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, points out that liberal identity politics can only redistribute the stolen wealth of capitalism. The ultimate goal of the leaders of groups like Black Lives Matter is to share in these capitalist spoils. The ultimate goal of the revolutionary communist PLP is to smash the capitalist system and create an egalitarian society without money or privilege of any kind.
Nearly a century ago, the working class of the Russian Empire stormed the palaces of their capitalist Russian bosses. The world changed forever. Led by the Bolsheviks, their revolutionary communist party, peasants and industrial workers turned the imperialist World War I into revolutionary war. They established the world’s first workers’ state over one-sixth of the globe.
Daring to struggle and daring to win, those communists led the first attempt by our class to wipe capitalism off the earth.
It’s cleanup time again. Each day, the world’s rulers intensify their racist and sexist oppression of the international working class. Each day, they move closer to the next world war.
Workers are increasingly fed up with deteriorating conditions and they are looking for solutions. Some are choosing the gutter racism of the right: Donald Trump swept the New Hampshire primary and fascist parties are on the rise in Europe. Some are choosing the fake left: socialist candidates are finding widespread support from Spain to the U.S. to Greece.
None of these options have anything to offer the working class. All they will do is win another generation of workers away from revolution and towards reform. The Progressive Labor Party is an international revolutionary communist organization fighting and build a mass party of millions in 27 countries to smash global capitalism.
Afghanistan: U.S. Bosses Can’t Stop Killing
U.S. imperialists are steadily losing ground to their Russian and Chinese rivals. Represented by liberal mouthpiece Barack Obama, the U.S. bosses signed a nuclear deal with Iran—not for peace, but to buy time to rebuild their war machine. To hold on to their embattled empire, the capitalists know they’ll need more viciously racist budget cuts—plus a military draft that will likely include the compulsory registration of women (New York Times, 2/2/16). To protect their profits, the rulers are ready and willing to spend millions of workers’ lives.
In Afghanistan, where the U.S. has been at war since 2001, the bosses’ bloody grasp is slippery at best:
Top U.S. military commanders… are now quietly talking about an American commitment that could keep thousands of troops in the country for decades (Washington Post, 1/26/16).
A follow-up (2/6/16) elaborated:
Senior Pentagon officials are now examining a range of steps…in what is expected to be a bloody 2016….Obama has already abandoned plans to end the military presence entirely by the time he leaves office…
Elections: Imperialist Tool
Whoever wins the next U.S. presidential election will be commander-in-chief of the occupation in Afghanistan—and nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries. In other words, the winner will be at the service of finance capital. As Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin pointed out in 1916, capitalism inevitably leads to imperialism—the exploitation of labor, resources, and markets outside a nation’s boundaries.
Lenin showed how the big banks, like today’s Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, are directly tied to institutions like ExxonMobil. Finance capital depends on capitalist government’s capacity to control oil, minerals and workers in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Southern and Southeast Asia.
Sanders’ Blood-Soaked Liberalism
U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has seized the attention of masses of students and young workers and increasing numbers of Black workers. Hillary Clinton, the imperialist bosses’ candidate of choice, barely beat Sanders in the Iowa causes before getting trounced by the self-proclaimed “socialist” in the February 9 New Hampshire primary. Sanders’ talking points never vary; he denounces rising inequality and vows, if elected, to “break up” the biggest U.S. banks.
As it turns out, this position has been endorsed by many arch-capitalists. As the billionaire-owned Forbes noted (January 17): “Regulators and the stock market aren’t waiting for the election of President Sanders…Big banks would be more valuable if they were broken up into pieces rather than keeping them intact.”
By tightening financial regulations and disciplining the banks, the leading bosses would tighten their hold on the financial system. The dominant capitalist wing, aligned with ExxonMobil, could then channel profits into rebuilding a weakened U.S. military. For finance capital, the top priority is to occupy the Middle East and Central Asia and consolidate control over cheaply extracted oil.
As a congressman and U.S. senator, Bernie Sanders voted “yes” on the invasion of Afghanistan, for “regime change” in Libya, for the U.S.-led NATO devastation of Yugoslavia, and—after one initial “no” vote—for the ongoing war and occupation of Iraq. Appearing on “Face the Nation,” Sanders said he was “impressed by the quality” of assassin-in-chief Obama’s foreign policy. As Counterpunch observed:
Imperialism is like a tank parked in your living room, too big to ignore…[F]oreign policy cannot be separated from domestic policy. They are two sides of the same coin that directly affect each other. ….Supporting Bernie Sanders means ignoring — or minimizing — his imperialism…. (1/5/16).
Revolution and Reform
For the moment, there is no place in the world where workers hold state power. In general, the mass movements addressing racism, sexism and imperialism are misled by liberal capitalist stooges, from Bernie Sanders to the fake-left Pakistan People’s Party.
PL’ers and friends are hard at work within these movements to struggle for communist ideas and win workers to organizing a mass, international, fighting PLP. Even as our class suffers attack after attack, even as we face the worst refugee crisis in history, we have the power to build a new Red Army and seize state power. Learning from both the mistakes and triumphs of the working class in the Soviet Union and China, let us transform the bosses’ imperialist bloodbaths into revolutionary war. Let us smash all racist borders, and take the revolution all the way to communism. Join us—and help lead us!
The bosses are blaming nature (the climate change by El Niño) on the Zika virus epidemic. Zika has become an international working class crisis not by nature, but capitalism. Poverty, inadequate water supplies, viciously racist and sexist health care systems, neighborhoods littered with rubbish, polluting river systems, and more are the real causes. The Zika virus is expected to infect as many as 4 million workers throughout Latin America (see map, page 5). These millions are victims of capitalism’s sexist and racist neglect.
In such a setting, it is virtually impossible to establish a public health infrastructure that might help contain the Zika outbreak. Workers understandably do not trust the governments, and the governments put a low priority on public services.
Bosses’ Main Concern: Dip in Profit
Medical access for pregnant women and babies are the least of the capitalists’ concerns. What they are really worried about are its impact on their businesses.
“Containing and managing an outbreak is expensive, as is dealing with large numbers of dead and infected. This can lead to severe disruptions in trade…And then there is the loss of productivity resulting not only from sickness but those refusing to work and those taking time off to care for the infected” (Stratfor, 2/1).
And so, in the interest of capitalism, Obama will request $1.8 billion in emergency funding to fight Zika in the U.S. and internationally. If Ebola, Cholera, and Hurricane Katrina is any indication, “humanitarian aid” translates to fascist policies, ramping up of the military, and practicing for controlling the working class. Obama has responded to Ebola with increased military presence in West Africa (Washington Post, 10/26/14).
Women Workers Hit the Hardest
The Zika virus is linked to birth defects in babies born to infected mothers. Over 4,000 babies have already been born with microcephaly, a congenital disorder associated with an abnormally small head and impaired brain development.
Even the health ministry in Brazil, where the disease has hit 1.5 million, admits, “most mothers with children with microcephaly have come from poor communities” (The Guardian, 2/6).
The governments of El Salvador, Colombia, Jamaica and Honduras have a solution: abstinence. They are telling women to delay pregnancy until the virus is under control. Working-class women are criminalized for abortions and have little access to contraceptives, not to mention pathetic maternal healthcare.
When the UN’s World Health Organization labeled the Zika outbreak an international health emergency, it was one more reminder that the world’s working class must move swiftly to overthrow the perversity of the capitalist profit system by building a revolutionary Progressive Labor Party for communism. Communism will empower the masses, build social infrastructure to cope with any challenges, and crush the sexist, racist structures that murder and demobilize the working class. With the leadership of Progressive Labor Party, it is time to build on that history and smash capitalism once and for all!
BROOKLYN, January 30—”Workers’ struggles have no borders!”
“Amnesty yes! Deportations no!”
“We are workers, not illegals!”
Chants in Spanish and English rang out today through an immigrant neighborhood. Members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party led a lively, multiracial march against the surge in deportations under Barack Obama’s racist administration. We drew attention from workers and youth, many of whom raised fists and nodded their heads in agreement. Some even joined us for a time.
The march consisted of immigrant and native-born women and men marching shoulder to shoulder. We distributed a thousand bilingual leaflets headlined “Fight Racism—Stop Deportations,” and over 650 CHALLENGEs. Eager to organize with an international communist group like PLP, many workers gave us their contact information.
Obama Targets Women and Children FirstThe U.S. has ratcheted up its sexist, racist terror campaign against mainly Latin women and children. Jeh Johnson, Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security, announced that more than 100,000 families would be deported because asylum-seeking mothers and children are fleeing violence in too large a number. Many of these refugees hail from El Salvador, the murder capital of the world. After 121 were deported earlier this year, causing public outrage, the raids were allegedly halted, but the government could resume them at any time. In his seven years as deporter-in-chief, Obama has kicked out 2.5 million people.
Capitalism continues to cause suffering and death for immigrant workers and families, from refugees fleeing imperialist-backed wars in Syria and Yemen to mass deportations in the U.S. Now the rulers are singling out women and children from Central America, those who fled violence and economic deprivation in 2014. Under the capitalist profit system, racism is always at center stage; anti-Black, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Latin slander and attacks.
Embolden Workers to Fight Back
As our PLP collective continues the slow, sometimes difficult, process of building our Party, it is important to note the pressing needs of the working class and encouraging to see their openness to the Party’s ideas. Workers in this neighborhood face a daily struggle. They work long hours, sometimes two jobs, to pay super-high rents. They live in fear of racist terror from the police, the courts and immigration raids at their homes, shopping areas or job sites.
In such an intimidating, racist climate, workers in the neighborhood were inspired to see a group proudly declare solidarity with undocumented families. The international working class needs to build the communist Progressive Labor Party to lead workers to revolution, smash capitalism, and establish workers’ power and an egalitarian society. Our task is both short- and long-term. It requires both urgency and patience.
Wherever and however we can, our PLP collective is taking our ideas directly to the working class. We are planning more actions like today’s. Small struggles have the potential to grow!
