BALTIMORE, MD, October 16 — In the largest turnout of teachers in memory for a contract ratification vote, Baltimore teachers voted 1,540 to 1,107, on Wednesday and Thursday last week, to reject the proposed union contract.

These teachers in Baltimore handed a small but significant defeat to the education plans of the ruling class, which includes Obama and his secretary. of Education Duncan, the national leadership of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the leadership of the Baltimore Teachers’ Union, Alonso (CEO of public schools in Baltimore), the local school board and the main Baltimore newspaper, The Sun. They had all hailed the proposed contract as a ground-breaking, progressive step forward.

On the morning before the main voting, a comrade was able to get an article published in The Sun. That Op-Ed piece criticized the anti-working class aspects of the contract. In particular, the contract includes a merit pay system which pits teachers against each other, encouraging them not to work collectively since only a small percentage can receive the rewards built into the contract.

The contract includes provisions which would lead to larger class sizes and a greater focus on test scores, which harm students’ ability to learn. The article also pointed out that the new contract gives principals a lot of power to fire teachers, reduces the union’s ability to protect teachers and, most importantly, helps the ruling class control what ideas are taught in the schools. The article seems to have played a helpful role — along with lots of other grassroots opposition — in contributing to a widespread understanding of the contract’s true nature.

But editors at The Sun newspaper decided to cut out nearly all of the main political points concerning ramifications of a national curriculum from the original Op-Ed piece. Here is some of that section:

Two wars are currently raging because of this, and more war is on the horizon, including the threat of a world war. . .ExxonMobil, along with the other major oil and gas giants — and the big banks who provide them with financing — are key players, behind the scenes, in running the United States. The continued and expanding profits of these institutions require war. They need millions of young people who are willing to fight and die for them. To accomplish this, the ruling class needs public schools to teach a particular set of beliefs and “facts.”

The new high-stakes tests are likely to require — for students to score well — that particular answers favorable to the world-view of ExxonMobil be given. And any teacher whose students haven’t been duly habituated to giving those responses will be evaluated poorly, and denied raises, because his or her students didn’t make the appropriate “progress.” This sort of scenario is where Obama’s Race-to-the-Top is headed. And this is another reason why we should not support the proposed contract which is inextricably tied up with Race-to-the-Top.

However, a significant portion of the opposition to the contract was based not on this political disagreement or even on reformist disagreements with the substance of the contract, but on the fact that it is quite vague, leaving many new details to be worked out by new union/management committees, after its adoption. The CEO, school board, and local union leaders are now taking advantage of this, planning a second vote soon, with few if any changes to the proposed contract. Instead, they are focusing on efforts to just “clarify” the proposed contract to teachers. 

About a dozen AFT staffers were brought to Baltimore for several weeks, traveling from school to school to help sell the contract. In opposition to both versions, activist teachers have organized meetings, distributed flyers, hosted a city-wide spaghetti dinner and created a button: “DEFEND STUDENTS — VOTE NO.”

During this and future struggles, PLP members need to do much better at distributing CHALLENGE as widely as possible. And a strong effort must also be made to expand the opposition movement within the union so that it’s truly inclusive. In the past, teacher groups that have politically challenged the union leadership here have been predominately white. In a city where the vast majority of students and teachers are black, this must change!

The bosses use racism in the schools to divide teachers, parents and students. Communists reject the racist ideas built into capitalism, so teachers must build multi-racial unity as we fight to make the world better for our students, the future workers of the world. No matter what the outcome of the second vote on November 17th, the victory for the Party and the working class will be that multi-racial unity. 

LOS ANGELES, CA, November 6 — Our PLP college club hosted a movie night to watch the film “A Grain of Sand.” This film documents the struggle that began in the late 1970s of high school teachers in Mexico around public education. Over twenty students from various campuses in Southern California attended the event and discussed the significance of local and international fights against budget cuts to public education. Through this discussion we reached a better understanding of how these cuts reflect the crisis of U.S. capitalism, and how neo-liberal policies aiming to privatize education in Latin America are really just a form of imperialism.

The movie night resulted from our participation in the student coalitions that have been protesting fee hikes and cuts to state universities and community colleges in Southern California. This year many students have begun to question more deeply the nature of the cuts and whether it is enough to attack the university administration or state politicians for mismanaging the budget. We’ve struggled to connect the cuts to the global crisis of capitalism, pointing to the student and worker fight in Europe around austerity measures.

Adding to this international perspective, we’ve also pointed out the expanded spending on imperialist war in Afghanistan. Providing this international perspective has enabled us to explain the systemic nature of the budget cuts and to argue for the need to build working-class consciousness and unity. By looking at historical struggles such as the one portrayed in “A Grain of Sand,” we’ve also been better able to point out the limits of reform struggle and the need to fight for a revolutionary communist movement.

There was much disagreement on what lessons to draw from historical examples such as the Mexican teachers’ struggle against budget cuts, but many agreed it’s necessary to continue these discussions to better understand how capitalism works and to build a movement to destroy it. Most importantly, through these types of events we’ve slowly but steadily built a stronger communist presence within the student movement against the budget cuts to public education in Southern California.

At the end of the night, students from UCLA asked to borrow the film so that they can show it on their campus. We are now working with those students to organize a film showing. In this manner, we’re struggling to popularize the Party’s revolutionary communist politics within the struggle against cuts to schools and universities in the region.

Ninety years ago, November 7, 1917, marked the beginning of the single most important event of the 20th century, the Bolshevik revolution, which directly inspired the Chinese revolution and anti-imperialist struggles around the world from Vietnam to Africa to Latin America.

Russia’s working class, headed by the revolutionary communists of the Bolshevik Party and its leader, Vladimir Lenin, freed one-sixth of the world’s surface from capitalism. They proved once and for all that it was possible to strive for a world without exploitation, where those who produce all value, the working class, can enjoy the fruits of their labor and not have it stolen by a few parasitical bosses and their lackeys.

The Russian revolution was the first serious attempt by workers and peasants to seize, hold and consolidate state power. Even though capitalism has returned to the former Soviet Union, workers will not forget that the Soviet working class defeated capitalism in 1917; smashed the imperialist armies of 17 countries (including Japan, the U.S., Britain, France, among others) which invaded Russia in 1918 to try to crush the revolution; freed the masses, especially women, from the yoke of capitalist, feudal and religious oppression; and then in 1945 defeated the mightiest and most barbaric army the capitalists had ever organized: the Nazi Wehrmacht.

The revolution frightened the world’s bosses, who immediately sent armies from 17 countries to try — in Churchill’s words — to “strangle it in the cradle.” From 1918 to 1923, millions of workers led by the Red Army defeated the imperialists’ counter-revolution. Nearly five million died in that battle, many of whom were the most committed workers the revolution had produced. Lenin himself died because of injuries inflicted by a hired killer.

The masses showed great courage and determination to defend and build their revolution, under the leadership of their revolutionary party. They proved that the revolutionary violence on the part of the working class and peasantry were vital to the seizure of state power.

Achievements of the Revolution

The Bolshevik Revolution brought Russia to heights of productive development that capitalism, given a similar time period and circumstances, could never have dreamed of. Bringing the working class to power, the Revolution coordinated their social-economic efforts for the production and exchange of the necessities, the comforts and even some luxuries of life, making them available to all. The Soviet system of production was for use, not for profit. This can only be accomplished by abolishing capitalist profits and the private ownership of property, with its exploitation, poverty, unemployment, racism, fascism and imperialist wars.

In the 1930s, when the entire capitalist world sank into depression, and tens of millions worldwide were left jobless and starving (much like today), the Soviet Union was forging ahead building a new society without unemployment and hunger. They created some measure of a decent life for workers in an incredibly short time, transforming a 90% illiteracy rate into one in which nearly everyone was literate.

Around 1938, without any official declaration, the USSR had achieved the era of free bread. One could enter a cafeteria, order little or nothing, and receive all the bread one wanted. You needed, you received — at least to that extent. Even during a drive for heavy industry, living standards rose strikingly when the rest of the world was mired in the Great Depression.<

The Soviet Union not only freed workers but also fought against racism and sexism. The battle against racism was particularly significant. As pro-communist Paul Robeson said about his trips to the Soviet Union, he “felt like a human being for the first time since I grew up. Here I am not a Negro but a human being. Before I came I could hardly believe that such a thing could be…. Here, for the first time in my life, I walk in full human dignity.”

Heroic Fight Against the Nazis

In 1941, the bosses again tried to destroy the revolution. Hitler, using all of Europe’s resources and the largest military machine ever assembled, invaded the Soviet Union with four million troops. They discovered the Soviets were no pushover as occurred in Western Europe. Hitler’s prediction — endorsed by western military “experts” — of capturing Moscow in six weeks went up in smoke.

Nazi troops found total destruction and desolation in every captured city or town — the “scorched earth” policy. Soviet defenders burned everything to the ground that they could not take with them and then organized armed resistance behind enemy lines: the Partisans.
Over 6,000 factories were dismantled and moved east of the Ural Mountains, re-assembled to produce weapons again, a feat requiring total unity and support of Soviet workers, unmatched by any country, before or since. Soviet soldiers and workers fought for Stalingrad block-by-block, house-by-house and room-by-room to halt the “unbeatable” Nazi invaders. Workers in arms factories produced weapons 24 hours a day for the Red Army, working 12-hour shifts. When Nazi troops captured factories, heroic Soviet workers and soldiers would re-take them.

The entire German Sixth Army and 24 of Hitler’s generals were surrounded and killed or captured in the battle of Stalingrad. Never again would the Nazis mount a successful offensive against the Red Army. Stalingrad was truly the turning point of the Second World War. Not until the Nazis were on the run following their defeats at Stalingrad and in the Battle of the Kursk — the biggest armored battle in world history, involving millions of soldiers and 6,000 tanks — did the U.S.-U.K. forces invade Western Europe. It was the communist-led Soviet Union that smashed the Nazis, the largest and most powerful army ever mounted by a capitalist power.

All this was accomplished under the leadership of Josef Stalin. No wonder he is reviled to this day by world capitalism.

Lessons to Be Learned

Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks suffered from many political weaknesses which led to the return of capitalism to the USSR. From the beginning they believed that to achieve communism, first socialism had to be established, a belief Karl Marx had advanced. We have learned from that experience that socialism retained capitalism’s wage system and therefore failed to wipe out many aspects of the profit system. Socialism put forward material incentives to the working class rather than political ones as the way to win workers to communism. We must win masses of workers to abolish capitalism’s wage system and its division of labor and fight directly for communism.

Today no country is led by revolutionary communists, but this is a temporary historical setback. While this era of widening imperialist wars, fascist attacks on the working class, mass unemployment, diseases like AIDS killing millions in Africa and other areas, is upon us, every dark night has its end.

PLP is a product of both the old International Communist Movement and the struggle against its revisionism. Pseudo-leftist groups have not learned history’s lessons and continue to fight for nationalist “sharing of power” with capitalists, a la Venezuela’s Chavez, not for the working-class seizure of power and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Our movement is daily fighting to learn from the Soviet Union’s great battles and achievements as well as its deadly errors that led to its collapse, mainly that reformism, racism, nationalism and all forms of concessions to capitalism only lead workers to defeat. Give the ruling class an inch and they’ll grab a mile.

We honor the bold fight by the workers of the Bolshevik Revolution against capitalism and for a working-class communist world. Today, we must organize workers, students and soldiers to build a mass worldwide working class Party that will turn this era of imperialist wars into a new, international communist revolution.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, OCT. 28 — Cholera is making a comeback globally, with 100,000 deaths annually, in African countries, and in Pakistan after the floods. In the living spaces of the “wretched of the earth,” workers die all the time of completely preventable diseases. Under capitalism, workers are used only to provide the cheap supply of raw materials, assembled products, and labor power for the rich.

 We watch this with anguish today in the rural, rice-growing Artibonite region of Haiti, where cholera has killed around 300 people to date. The media give medical explanations of the epidemic focused on the contaminated Artibonite River, but never touch on the racism of capitalism which is the real explanation of such recurring, preventable epidemics.

The media blames “underdevelopment,” about which simply, tragically, nothing can be done. Nor can much be done, apparently (“it’s tied up in the Congress,” explained Bill Clinton), about the criminal, total non-delivery of promised U.S. government aid, which might have helped; nor about the thousands of undistributed rehydration kits CNN’s Sanjay Gupta found in a Port-au-Prince warehouse.

The Artibonite River, the largest in the island, is the heart of rich, irrigated  agricultural land long used for rice-growing. When the World Bank program (with Aristide’s agreement) pushed through the import of cheap U.S. rice (subsidized by the Clinton Administration), local production was crippled. On the Aeribonite River, Péligre dam is also the main source of electricity in Haiti.

The dam is now silting up and cutting the energy supply because of deforestation in the mountains. It is part of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic and therefore the site, like all capitalist nation-state borders, of state violence against workers trying to cross in both directions. The border was closed for a day by the Dominican authorities, who subjected Haitians trying to cross, to an absurd ritual hand-washing and other tests. On the Haitian side, MINUSTAH (UN) troops tear-gassed people fleeing the epidemic. Nothing new there: the border river has often flowed with the blood of workers on both banks.

And now it is the source of cholera, as its water poisons those it once nourished. The bacterial illness is transmitted when people drink water that’s been contaminated by the human waste of an infected person.

Haiti is a setup for cholera. The water purification systems are gone, so people go to the river for water. This is also where people dump their waste. The disease produces a toxin in infected individuals, who experience terrible diarrhea that can result in disabling dehydration in just a few hours. Dehydration is a death sentence for people with no access to good medical care. But it is easily treated with rehydration: you give people fluid through an IV and they will do just fine. 

But why is the river so contaminated, causing cholera?  And why is treatment so limited, causing further unnecessary deaths?  The media will tell us how Doctors Without Borders (Spain) staff a clinic in St. Marc and MINUSTAH troops built a new tent clinic next door. Those are very useful in preventing deaths, it’s true. But they won’t say why a system focused on profit never manages anything but makeshift, last-minute medical care instead of planning health care rationally. Forty percent of Haitians don’t have access to clean water, and 80% lack proper sanitation, including toilets and soap.

The truth is that anything other than maximizing profit will always be secondary to capitalist ruling classes, which is why their responses to perfectly predictable disasters of their making are always so cruel and inadequate. That too is a preventable crime, as preventable as cholera. Unfortunately capitalism is not so easily treated. But we workers without borders are working on it.

Many studies are available which point towards a better understanding of such painful events. Eduardo Galeano (The Open Veins of Latin America) takes aim at flawed capitalist explanations of disease when he sarcastically recommends placing signs in the deadly areas of industrial pollution in Latin America: DO NOT BREATHE.

The Guyanese historian Walter Rodney succinctly punctured the racist myth that certain sectors of our class are doomed to underdevelopment in his much-loved book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, which drew on André Gunder Frank’s concept of “the development of underdevelopment.” Mike Davis’s Planet of Slums and Patrick Bond’s Global Apartheid show the consequences of modern imperialism to be nothing less than racism on a world scale.

The rural and urban working class of the Artibonite valley must return to the revolutionary history of their region enshrined in Crête Pierrot, where Dessalines in 1802 led African slave soldiers to crush the French army in the turning-point battle of the revolution. Then workers will give a different explanation of what caused so many deaths in so many generations.