MEXICO, May 22 —The labor and educational reforms, approved at the beginning of President Peña Nieto’s sixth term, legalized layoffs, wage cuts, the elimination of pensions and social security. Just like that, in one single stroke, and with the backing of state violence, the capitalists destroy our lives to solve their crisis.
The recently approved telecommunications reform and the upcoming energy reform concentrate even more wealth in the hands of the mostly Mexican and U.S. billionaires.
All these changes only benefit the capitalist class, further reduce the cost of labor, and help turn education into another business. These events demonstrate that capitalist laws serve the class in power against the oppressed and exploited class.
One Class, One Party
To eliminate the root cause of all exploitation and oppression, we workers need to take power into our own hands and organize the whole society under the principle of “from each according to their commitment and to each according to their needs.”
We need a society of social equality, communism. To achieve it we organize ourselves as a party, PLP. Our Party will unite the working class from around the world. We do not participate in elections because the bosses will never concede power peacefully. Organized into a revolutionary party, millions of workers, students, unemployed and soldiers could wrest the power from our exploiters through an armed insurrection.
War on the Horizon
To survive the current crisis of their system, the bosses attack the living conditions of the working class.
Competition between an important sector of the Mexican ruling class allied with the U.S., against the Chinese bosses, has led to cuts in wages and services of workers in Mexico, as well as to an increase in the length and intensity of the work-day.
Recent changes legalized these working conditions. The attack against workers has benefited a group of bosses in Mexico who in the last decade have regained market shares in the U.S. But the worst is yet to come. The rivalry between the U.S. and China for control of global resources, markets and cheap labor is getting sharper every day. It will probably be resolved through a worldwide war. The bosses will try to use workers as cannon fodder to fight in their war.
Workers in Mexico cannot remain distant from the confrontation; Mexico shares a border with the U.S. and is one of its most important suppliers of oil, labor, food, and other resources. Thousands of migrant workers, lured by the promise of getting U.S. citizenship, will be forced to fight. We must organize and unite across borders to confront imperialist war with revolutionary class war.
We have the opportunity to turn the guns around against the bosses instead of using them against our class brothers. That’s the importance of an international party and this is the meaning of May Day: we must realize our power as the working class who produces all the wealth in the world. The history of May Day and the revolutions of the 20th century demonstrate the potential of our class to fight for a communist world. Workers of the world, unite!
Nationalism, A Deadly Trap
The last decade has seen the largest mining of oil and minerals than any other period in history. In addition, the price of oil, gold and silver has been rising. These sales have produced billions in profits.
During the same period poverty has increased and working conditions have worsened, while the wealth and the number of billionaires has increased. This demonstrates the falsehood that oil in the hands of the state benefits all Mexicans.
As long as there is capitalism it doesn’t matter which bosses’ hands hold the oil or electricity. Nationalism will only benefit those Mexican bosses who want to own PEMEX (state-controlled oil company) or CFE (Federal Electricity commission). But it won’t help the working class. Only in a society governed by the workers, will wealth be used for the benefit of those who produce it.
To take control of the energy wealth, the bosses will use state violence, fascism, which along with racism, nationalism and sexism, are capitalism’s ideological weapons to divide and weaken workers’ struggles. Historically, it’s been shown that only communism can defeat fascism. Join us!
A weekend before May Day, members and friends of PLP in Mexico organized three meetings to discuss its historical and international significance. We also presented the flyer we planned to distribute at the march and briefly discussed the current situation in Mexico, in relation to the reforms pushed by the new government. (See Mexico article above)
The achievements at these dinners — which we planned since the beginning of the year — were few, but important. Four friends of the Party, all CHALLENGE readers, participated in the first one; two friends and a youth who joined during our last Summer Project participated in the second, and during the third we were joined by a comrades’ family and by two CHALLENGE reader friends.
They all expressed their commitment to participate in the May Day march, since we’d be the only contingent that’s an international organization promoting the overthrow of capitalism and replacing it with the dictatorship of the working class.
In the three meetings we highlighted the imperialist struggles between China and the U.S., which will probably lead to a confrontation between these bosses and their respective allies.
There is a long road before we reach our goal and there is a lot to be done. This is the only Party that fights for collective work and the destruction of the profit system that creates inequality the world over. PLP is the only Party that struggles against nationalism and sexism, and the only one that holds that the working class should direct all aspects of society.
Each week, without exception, our PLP club meets as an active study group. We’ve already discussed the political economy documents and the majority of 2011 Challenge editorials. A new member has transcribed “Towards a New Communist Movement.” We’ve also discussed “Reform and Revolution.”
Our objective is not only to understand and discuss the Party’s ideas, but also to revise and re-edit documents to put forward revolutionary ideas clearly, in writing as well as in conversation.
We recently showed “Road to Revolution IV” (our Party’s ideas) to a militant fighter focused on reformist and pro-socialist ideals and projects. He said he wasn’t convinced we should reject the socialist and reformist ideas and instead fight for communism and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
PLP aims to destroy the entire capitalist system, that much was made clear. It’s not important how intellectually equipped our opponents may be. There is no argument that can trump our Party’s politics.
We invited a worker and his family to join PLP and attend a May Day forum. In a later conversation, this worker discussed his ideas and feelings about the labor situation. Most workers are influenced by wrong ideas against their class. But through our interactions at the forum and our May Day dinner, he has expressed interest in getting involved and studying our ideas to get to know PLP better.
Red Youth
MARIKANA, SOUTH AFRICA, May 17 — A new strike wave is sweeping this country’s minefields as thousands at the Lonmin mine here wildcatted on May 14, reacting to the murder of one of their union organizers and to looming job cuts. Lonmin is the world’s third largest producer of platinum and was the site of last August’s police massacre of 34 striking miners. The strikers have vowed to stop all scabs and have blocked highways, while marching to the area of last year’s atrocity.
This month is the region’s “strike season” when tens of thousands of workers pour into the streets demanding wage increases. The bosses and the government — dominated by the African National Congress (ANC) — fear the strike wave may reach the vineyards around Capetown and the auto industry in Durban.
Meanwhile, a wildcat looms at Anglo-American Platinum — the world’s top platinum producer — which announced a layoff of 6,000.
None of the essential demands and grievances stemming from last year’s strikes have been met. “It [our wage] is too little for us for the kind of work we do,” said miner Ayanda Ndabent. “I plant dynamite…inside the mines. We can die any time,” he continued. “We know the company makes a lot of money from the work we do.”
The black capitalists who took power from the former apartheid rulers and promised “liberation” of the masses have joined with the apartheid-era bosses who still control large sections of the country’s industries. They mirror the oppression of the racist apartheid system which was enforced by the kind of police massacres that occurred here last year. Unemployment is even higher than it was previously and workers still suffer the housing squalor that existed then.
This is the capitalism which the Mandela-led ANC maintained and used to cut out a slice of the profit pie for a small black ruling class. Liberation for the masses can only come from the overthrow of capitalism and creation of a worker-run communist society in which the miners and the entire working class will reap the fruits of their labors.
‘The only struggles you don’t win are the ones you don’t wage…’
AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, FRANCE, May 17 — The four-month strike of Peugeot workers against one of the richest and most powerful bosses in France ended today, unable to prevent the planned closing of the plant here, 
scheduled for 2014. The strikers received $1.1 million in donations, indicating enormous popular support, but were weakened by the fact that they could not widen the walkout to the rest of the company’s factories nor to the country’s auto industry. The strike cost Peugeot a production loss of 40,000 cars.
The workers condemned the active complicity of the Socialist Party government. They fought the latter’s attempt to throw a monkey wrench into the strike, hauling militant workers into police stations. A local strike leader declared, “We have been treated like delinquents whereas our struggle is…against unemployment and for jobs.”
The workers did win payment for unemployed days, holidays and a bonus equivalent to a month’s wages. Those choosing to leave prior to May 31 will receive 19,700 euros ($25,400) and strikers will get 60,000 euros ($77,400) severance pay. All other workers will receive 40,000 euros ($51,600). They also forced the company to re-hire the four fired strikers, canceling any criminal charges.
A local strike leader said, “We didn’t have the strength necessary to bring Peugeot to its knees, but we thwarted them for four months and we are finishing still standing, our heads high. The only struggles you don’t win are the ones you don’t wage…”
