NEW YORK CITY, April 11 —  Twenty-five Columbia University students met up with fighters from Harlem’S St. Mary’s Church to picket the University’s fake employment office near 125 St. Loud chants rang out and speeches were made by students and community residents. Then we marched to the church a few blocks away and ate a delicious supper. More discussion ensued, and students were transfixed by a superstorm Sandy survivor who, a year and a half later, is still living in a shelter, without adequate financial support. Capitalism and its racist state apparatus can and will never serve the needs of workers!
Columbia’s 17-acre expansion into Manhattanville, the western edge of Harlem, is well underway but will not be completed until 2030. It is making unemployment and affordable housing shortages worse. Columbia itself estimates that 3,300 Harlem residents will be displaced by gentrification in the area surrounding the expansion. They talk about building affordable housing, but “affordable” is based on median income in the whole metropolitan area and has nothing to do with local incomes.
Columbia says 6,900 new jobs will be created, but only 1,500 of those will not require an advanced degree. No sign of apprenticeship programs promised in the Community Benefits Agreement has been seen. As of 2009, Columbia had only 213 employees who lived above 125th St. or in public housing. The so-called “employment” office on Broadway south of 125th St. has not actually offered jobs or job training to local residents.
Manhattanville is a primarily poor black and Latino community, with youth unemployment about 50 percent, rising rents, and poor schools and health care. Columbia’s disregard for the people of this neighborhood is blatantly racist. It is totally in line with Columbia’s mission of training the ruling class of tomorrow and inculcating today’s students with the certainty of their superiority. In 1968, a mass movement of students and local residents defeated Columbia’s plan to build a gym in a park in Harlem, to the exclusion of local residents.
For the past year students have been researching the history of Columbia’s treachery in the neighborhood. They have held two well-attended campus forums about gentrification, in which community groups also participated. Now they are deciding how to proceed on a campaign of action and education next school year, along with their new community allies.
Other student groups, involved in campus-worker solidarity, climate change, and against Columbia’s investment in prison corporations, to name a few, are also participating. The upsurge in campus activism makes it possible to once again build a worker-student-community alliance and engage in anti-racist struggle against this elitist, monolithic university.
More students are also reading Challenge. Several are coming to May Day; many are open to considering how capitalism exploits and abuses all workers, from white collar to blue, and how an alliance between them is necessary to fight for change, from reforms to the ultimate overthrow of capitalism.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, April 14 — The human tragedy of the global economic crisis continues to smash workers’ daily lives here, but PLP communists and the working masses are building strength by resisting the regime’s moves towards more fascist social control, with the open agreement of the U.S. Embassy. We need revolutionary imagination to arrive at the only worthwhile response: overthrow capitalism and take power for the workers.
Meanwhile, endemic joblessness is killing slowly while cholera kills quickly; homelessness, malnutrition, lack of clean water, health care, electricity, transport, education, and drought continue to worsen.
Fascism intensifies inside the gangster government, installing ex-military figures like Himler Rébu in ministerial posts. There are increasing crackdowns on the media and the right to demonstrate in the streets and outlawing any sort of legal opposition. This includes several assassinations of Pres. Martelly opponents: the murder of two prominent human rights workers, and the killing of Fitzgerald, a leader of the reform party Lavalas.
Police gunfire wounded three students inside the Faculty of Ethnology (a long-time center of student resistance), during mass protests against the arrest of the opposition lawyer André Michel. The government has threatened media like Radio Kiskeya and Radio Zénith if they criticize those in power.
Elsewhere, gangs violently harass street merchants and market women (those getting by without wages for work). Landlords’ vigilantes attack peasants in many areas. And the youth are the favorite targets of the gangster rulers.
Parliamentary ‘National Dialogue’ Supplements Fascist Crackdown
Martelly is trying to co-opt any opposition in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies with a “National Dialogue” of all political parties. One result is the newly voted anti-terrorism law, which defines any protester in the streets as a terrorist, justifying mass arrests and heavy sentences in case of a mass uprising. This law shows how capitalist-elected parliaments participate fully in developing fascism (like the U.S. Congress and Homeland Security).
Lavalas, the semi-banned party of the celebrity populist Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was about to join this Dialogue but pulled out before signing. Jean-Charles Moïse, an Aristide rival inside Lavalas and leader of its fake left wing, was expelled from Lavalas for disobeying the party directive not to demonstrate outside the U.S. Embassy. Thus Lavalas too participates in the advance of fascism.
‘Enrichissez-Vous!’
Drugs, Arms Good for Business
Governing is good business for those who accumulate wealth directly from their government posts. Politicians seize land for urban renewal or reconstruction while themselves being part-owners of the finance or construction companies who get the government contracts. One farcical example: the electricity promised for workers’ districts yielded only a few solar-powered street-lights, illuminating the rutted streets while the houses themselves remained in darkness. The Prime Minister holds shares in the electric company selling such “services” to the state.
In the South, several land parcels which are used as small airports by drug-traffickers as transshipment points between South America and the U.S., have been seized by the State, only so the politicians themselves can benefit more directly from the drug trade. And the Prime Minister has been implicated in the illegal arms traffic entering Haiti from Israeli manufacturers, often destined for use by politicians at election time to intimidate their rivals’ voters.
The Communist Imagination
The step-up of fascist violence makes fightback more difficult. Public demonstrations have slowed since the big December garment-workers’ protests for unionization — tough when rebel workers are so easy to fire.
PLP is always among the masses at these events, determinedly fighting for our communist outlook. Whether youth study groups, literacy classes using communist ideas as texts, a community organizing group, private meetings with workers and professionals (mostly unemployed or unpaid for work performed), or just sitting under a tree in the public park, comrades in Haiti are pursuing our vision. We will overturn this profit-driven heartless world.
International Dimension
With sharpening imperialist conflicts among Russian, U.S. and Chinese bosses, communists are examining Haiti’s position relative to these great powers. Extreme joblessness turns Haiti into a “reserve army of the unemployed,” available to supply low-wage workers, and thus lower all workers’ wages throughout the region. Thousands of Haiti’s workers get easy entry into Brazil, for example, for poorly paid construction work, and the bosses of both countries profit.
Brazil, the region’s rising “sub-imperialist” with an ambivalent relation to the U.S., is the largest supplier of troops for the UN’s military here, where they perfect their dirty techniques of repression for use at home (e.g., in “cleaning up” working-class slums for the World Cup and Olympic games).
Another “sub-imperialist” is Venezuela, which gives cheap oil to Haiti. Henrique Capriles, the Venezuelan millionaire prominent in the opposition to the Chavista regime, is also donating “gifts” such as soccer stadiums to Haiti.
Given Haiti’s relationships to inter-imperialist rivalry, if war erupts, misery and fascism in Haiti will only intensify, especially if the U.S. needs Haiti in an inter-imperialist war, as they did against Germany in World War I when the Marines invaded Haiti and occupied it until 1934. Would Haiti be caught between the U.S. on the one hand and Brazil and Venezuela on the other?
But we are clear here that workers must not take a side in this fight between exploiters, but unite for revolution under the red flag of the international PLP.

Part I of this first-hand account of China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR, 1966-1976) covered the origins of a village metal shop that made products to improve conditions for fishermen, tractor drivers, and textile workers. It also opened the story of an industrial breakthrough by a collective led by a worker with little formal education.
This memoir shows the need for further advances in the international revolutionary movement. Wages and profits must be eliminated, along with the special oppression of women. Above all, we must create a worker-run society based on one unwavering principle: From each according to commitment, to each according to need.
The defeat of the GPCR and the reversal of the Chinese revolution signaled the end of the old communist movement. These setbacks plunged the international working class into the Dark Night we have struggled through for more than two generations.
But Dark Night will have its end. World War I gave rise to the Bolshevik Revolution. World War II gave birth to the Chinese Revolution. The Progressive Labor Party, organizing across all borders, plans to make the next imperialist war the last one, with worldwide communist revolution.

In the summer of 1973, shortly after graduating from high school, I was one of fourteen young people hired temporarily for the contract for the two huge ventilation blowers. Based on Wang Xuejin’s innovative idea, our first job was to make an underground blacksmith furnace. Then we made a frame to hold a big ring of thick sheet metal, with a horizontal bar over the top. By pushing the bar, we could turn the ring around.
Opposite the furnace, Wang made a huge cast-iron mold with just the right curve. After heating part of the ring, we turned the horizontal bar to move the metal plate being shaped back and forth to the mold. Two workers struck the heated metal with large wooden hammers. Then we repeated the process. Along with Wang and two other senior technicians, the young temporary workers worked in three shifts, around the clock. We were able to complete the two horn-shaped parts in a matter of weeks.
When the technicians from Qingdao came back to gauge our progress, they were shocked to see what we had accomplished. They said that Wang’s idea was brilliant and Wang was a genius.
For two months the seventeen of us worked continuously on the two blowers, and eventually finished them ahead of schedule. Working with Wang and others, I learned a lot in that time. Upon finishing the job, I joined the other temporary workers to return to work in the fields. But one month later, I was rehired as a permanent worker. The factory leaders wanted me to learn how to operate one of the new lathes the factory had assembled.
The usual training time for a lathe operator was three months. But after one week, I was able to run it on my own. My teacher, Guan Xuming, the leader of the lathe unit, was pleased with my progress and commended me to Zhao Licheng, the village party leader in charge of industrial operations.
I was on the job for two months when one of my coworkers collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. Zhao Youshou was in his forties, and the doctors determined that he needed a blood transfusion for an operation on his stomach. It was a busy time, and most people in the village were out harvesting the fall crops and planting the winter wheat.
I went to the hospital with twenty others to donate blood. As it turned out, I was the only one with a matching blood type for Zhao. The doctor took 750 cc’s of blood from me for the operation — I felt dizzy, and my friends had to wheel me home. But I was very happy that Zhao’s life was saved.
A Factory Education
I stayed home for one week. When I returned to work, I was transferred from the lathe to assembling the transmission boxes for the fishing boats. I had a lot to learn. The most essential parts were various gears. To resist wearing, the surface of the gears needed to be as hard as possible, but not to the point they would break too easily. I checked out several books from the local library about gear manufacture in other countries, including the U.S., Germany, and Japan. I experimented with different heating methods and coolants, tested the results, and after discussions with many colleagues settled upon the best methods for making the gears.
In my first month on the job, we made seven transmission boxes. In the second month, the five of us made 14 units; in the third month, 21 units; in the fourth month, 28 — one unit a day. The entire factory watched our progress with excitement. We tested the units in the yard day and night before delivering them to the government. The job was on my mind all the time. I even found a solution to one technical problem while I was dreaming!
Our team earned a lot of profit for the factory that year; we created value calculated at 13 cents per work point. Each worker in our village made 1.3 yuan a day, comparable to the earnings of urban industrial workers. We also got grain, vegetables, fruits, and cooking oils from the collective at a much lower price. Everybody in the village was happy.
Each year the village chose model workers, including one person designated as standard-bearer. Wang Xuejin was one of those who’d previously received this special honor. This year I was chosen.
It was also the time to elect the next year’s factory leadership team. I was only 19 years old, but the village Party committee asked me to be a candidate for factory manager. I was elected. The former manager, Guan Dunyan, was transferred to lead a group of welders in assembling overhead steel cranes in Qingdao.
A Step Toward Collectivity
My new position was challenging, but the Party committee and many workers in the factory encouraged and helped me. My job was made easier by the factory’s distribution system. Manager or not, everybody working in the factory earned a set amount of work points. It was a time rate — men generally got ten points a day, women eight points a day, children five points. Individuals’ daily point rates could be adjusted at the annual team meetings, but never more than plus or minus 20 percent of the basic rate.
A productive year in the factory would raise the value of our work points and be reflected in the end-of-year distribution. Everybody worked to advance the collective benefit rather than individual interests.
As the manager of a factory with 173 workers, I went to work earlier than everybody else and usually came back home later. I had to make sure all the equipment was functioning in the factory and that every worker was assigned the right job and had the appropriate tools. Whenever there was a problem in any unit, the leaders came to me.
During the decade of the Cultural Revolution, there were more than ten thousand high school graduates in the commune who were eligible to take the college entrance examination. When the news reached my village that I had passed, many of my friends were excited for me. In fact, I was torn.
Fu Xisan, an old colleague of mine from the factory advised me not to go. It was more exciting to be a factory manager than a teacher, he said. He added that his third daughter, who’d worked with me on the transmission boxes, was in love with me. I’d been secretly admiring her as well. If I stayed in the village, Fu said, he would allow his daughter to marry me. But if I went to college, everything was off.
On March 8, 1978, I left the village to study English at Qufu Teachers College.

In Part III, the author returns to his village and sees the dramatic repercussions of the reversal of the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution.

PARIS, April 18 — France is a country in which the Socialist government is playing its classic pro-boss role by helping them run roughshod over the working class. The Socialists are shackled to the capitalist class and its requirements. The finance capitalists want French president François Hollande to use ex-president Sarkozy’s shock-and-awe tactics to reinforce French capitalism against its imperialist rivals.
This includes by-passing Parliament with executive orders to slash pensions, government-financed health care, and welfare, as well as eliminating job protection for government workers and what remains of the 35-hour work-week.
The new french Prime Minister Manuel Valls kowtowed to the bosses, with his austerity plan: By 2017, the Socialists intend to slash 50 billion euros (69 billion USD$) from the government budget, including 21 billion euros from social security (10 billion from health care and 11 billion from welfare).
Retirement pensions, family allowances and housing benefits will all be cut in real terms, with no cost-of-living increase until October 2015, at least. Retirees will lose over 3 billion euros (4.1 billion USD$). Wages for five million government workers — without a pay increase since 2010 — will be slashed in real terms by continuing the wage freeze.
Meanwhile, unemployment, including part-timers who want to work full time, rose to 5,611,700 people — France has one-sixth the population of the U.S. — or 19.8 percent. Joblessness continues to climb, despite François Hollande’s iron-clad promise that he would “reverse the unemployment curve by the end of 2013.” Inevitably, there will be more savage attacks on the working class to meet the capitalists’ target of reducing the government budget deficit by 3 percent of Gross Domestic Product.
Seven rival trade union confederations have called for a day of protest on May 15. The “elastic” call preserves a façade of unity by allowing each organization to decide whether to strike, hold a work stoppage or just hold a rally. The wimpy demands and action program made it possible for even the most reactionary union confederations to support this “protest.”
While workers see their wages, pensions and health care cut, the Socialists are giving the capitalists 42 billion euros (58 billion USD$) a year in presents — 30 billion euros in lower employer social security contributions under the “responsibility pact” and 12 billion euros in lower corporate taxes.
Imperial Tobacco is laying off nearly one-third of its 1,150 workers in France. “Once again, the fat cats win out; we’re fed up,” said Christelle Notebaert, who works at the Carquefou factory. “We’re just numbers, we get no consideration…” Union steward Michel Laboureur said, “Over five years, they paid out 2.6 billion euros [3.6 billion USD$] to…shareholders. You can believe me, this factory is profitable.”
Imperial Tobacco plans to hire 130 workers in Poland, where it is shifting part of the Seita factory production (a subsidiary of Imperial Tobacco.) In 2011, the average gross wage in Poland was barely one-fourth of that in France.
Pascal Lamy, former World Trade Organization chief, revealed the bosses’ plan on unemployment: “It is necessary to introduce more flexibility [i.e., make it easier to lay off workers], and jobs that are not necessarily paid at the minimum wage.” In other words, the French bosses want to introduce German-style “mini-jobs,” which have created a pool of four million precariously underpaid workers for the German bosses to exploit.
The fascist National Front (FN) is saying it would pull France out of the European Union, which they blame for the disastrous austerity policies. “We call for a radical change in economic policy by ending the euro…and true economic patriotism,” the FN proclaimed on Feb. 28, with an eye to winning workers’ votes in the May 24 European Union parliamentary elections.
But the problem is not the bosses’ European Union — it is the bosses themselves. The only solution is for workers to build a revolutionary communist party and eliminate the bosses through communist revolution, and create a society run by and for workers.