In Bangladesh, some of the most exploited workers in the world are militantly fighting back and are beginning to come together as a class. Since June 13, tens of thousands of garment workers (85% of whom are women) have closed down 700 factories, shut down main roads to Dhaka (the capital), erected barricades and lobbed bricks at the police who have tried to tear gas and beat the workers. Large demonstrations of workers have divided up into smaller groups and visited factories and brought the workers there out into the streets.

Three million textile workers toil for less than $25 a month. They work in 4,500 factories turning out garments for Walmart, Levi Strauss, H&M, Zara and Carrefour, who sell them for many times what the workers are paid. Besides receiving pennies an hour in wages, the workers work long hours, and are often not paid on time.

The workers are demanding that their wages be tripled. The big retailers like Walmart have made a fortune off the low-paid labor of women workers in Asian countries. But workers in Bangladesh, Vietnam (where 10,000 shoe factory workers recently went on strike), China and other Asian countries are demonstrating once again that exploitation engenders class struggle and some day, revolution. 

PARIS, June 29 — The strike is not over for all of the 6,769 undocumented workers who struck here since last October. On June 27, their delegates decided to maintain their action against all bosses who have not yet signed a “promise to employ.” This document (called a Cerfa in French), is required for “legalization.” But many bosses must be forced to sign them. And there are many details to be followed to obtain “legalization.”

All this week, informational meetings are being held by trade (construction, restaurant, cleaning and security, temporary worker, etc.) to explain the June 18 agreement ending the eight-month strike (see CHALLENGE, (7/7). Next week similar meetings will be held for all the strike-support organizations.

The strikers and their supporters are establishing a massive organization to monitor every striker’s application for “legalization.” This includes opening two or three offices in Paris and one in every département where there are strikers; local and Paris copies of individual data sheets, so that snags at the local level can be ironed out at the Immigration Ministry in Paris; and special monitoring of the “legalization” of undocumented workers against whom deportation orders are outstanding. All this must be done during the July-August holiday months.

While the strikers’ applications will be given top priority, other undocumented workers also will be helped to file for “legalization.”

Mass Multi-Racial Action The Key

Amid all these bureaucratic capitalist roadblocks, it should be remembered that it was mass, militant, anti-racist rank-and-file action against the racist French government that brought these immigrant workers whatever advances they’ve made. As the CHALLENGE article stated (7/7), “The very fact that they struck as undocumented workers was itself a huge victory. It shows the international working class that immigrant workers worldwide can make such a fight and should be supported by all workers.

“A crucial factor essential to conducting the strike was the forging of multi-racial unity, notably between workers of African and Chinese origin, which gave the workers the fighting spirit needed for the ‘illegal’ occupations of work sites….

“PLP has consistently pointed out that as long as the bosses can divide workers by defining some as ‘illegal’ because they have crossed capitalist-created borders — and enables the bosses to super-exploit them and use them against native-born workers — it will weaken the entire working class. That’s why PLP says workers should ‘Smash All Borders!’ — which can only be accomplished through a communist revolution that eliminates all bosses and all borders….

“The continued existence of ‘conditions’ still differentiates these immigrants from France’s native-born workers….”

As soon as the bosses think they can get away with it (and they do hold state power), they will try to break the “legalization” agreement. The racist labeling of some workers as “illegal” undermines working-class solidarity. It enables the bosses to super-exploit the world’s 215 million immigrant workers with lower wages, worse conditions and constant job insecurity, under threat of deportation if they fight back.

Like the outcome of many workers’ reform struggles under capitalism, this one is a compromise. However, by turning the continuing struggle into a “school for communism,” workers can go beyond the struggle for “legalization” and take state power for ourselves through communist revolution. 

Three and one-half TRILLION dollars….That is the net worth of the 1,011 billionaires in the world today! The wealth of these 1,011 capitalists is probably enough to feed, house and clothe all the billions who live in poverty. But that’s not the way capitalism works.

These blood-sucking bosses accumulated that wealth on the backs of all those who are ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-clothed. It could take care of all the so-called “deficits” afflicting hundreds of millions of workers today.

But again, these bosses’ drive for maximum profits — the cornerstone of the capitalist system — is what puts tens of millions out of work, cuts budgets for schools, forecloses houses, all growing out of the nature of the profit system. When every president, finance minister, governor and mayor says “we” have to “share the sacrifice” of the crisis of capitalism, they represent the interests of these rapacious billionaires. And in cases of politicians like NYC’s billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg, they are one and the same person, cutting budgets for schools, mass transit and all social services.

A recent Forbes Magazine reports all these gory details: the average net worth of these 1,011 is $3.5 billion (multiplying those two figures produces the above $3.5 trillion). The richest is Mexico’s Carlos Slim, with $53.5 billion, slightly ahead of Bill Gates. The U.S. has 403 on that list; China has 64; Russia has 62.

A system that produces such exploitation of the world’s working class is begging to be destroyed, to be replaced by a system — communism — where our class which produces all that wealth will share it according to need.

The “Black Jacobins,” published in 1989, has the complete title “Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution.” But the author, C.L.R. James, points out Toussaint’s (known leader of the Haitian Revolution) grave political weaknesses. He proves that other less-known leaders and the masses themselves were the true movers of Haiti’s revolution against France and for freedom from slavery. This book is an important account of a massive fight against imperialism.

San Domingo was the richest colony in the world. French, British and Spanish conflicts made governing unstable, as did warring factions of white aristocracy, plantation owners and merchants. All agreed, however, on the need for racist oppression. Weekly food rations for slaves would last three days for healthy persons, and they were often whipped to death. Many French workers, so moved by sufferings of slaves, stopped drinking coffee, thinking of it as drenched in blood and sweat.

Slaves Burned Plantations

The ideas of the bourgeois French Revolution influenced the Haitian Revolution. If all men were created equal, then slaves should be included in that too. This encouraged slaves to set fire to plantations. Toussaint, then a coachman, protected his owner’s lands, however, for an entire month.  Finally he began to train other slaves to be soldiers. He also wanted to make a deal, agreeing to reduce the number of slaves freed from 400 to 60. His tendency to give allegiance to French “civilization” and to rely on the “expertise” of white owners would continue to be major weaknesses.

Victor Hugues, of black and white descent (at the time called by the racist name “Mulatto”), commanded slaves to chase out the British. Toussaint’s army gained power over Spanish territory. The Spanish governor handed over the colony to Toussaint in 1800; Toussaint’s first decrees to reduce taxes on property and lower duty on articles of trade, benefited mainly the wealthy.  His constitution continued slave trade!  While he declared that blacks would be free on landing, he returned them to white-dominated plantations.  General Moise disagreed that blacks should still work for whites, and Toussaint executed him. General Dessalines warned, “France will try to make you slaves again.”

Even when Bonaparte (leader of France after the French Revolution) left France with 20,000 troops, Toussaint could not believe France was determined to reinstitute slavery. Bonaparte had convinced his troops they were fighting for the “revolution” against Toussaint, telling them he was a traitor, selling out to the British.

Slaves Fought Bonaparte

 While French troops were increased to 60,000, disease and guerrilla warfare began to tip the balance in favor of the slaves. The slaves fought, hurling enormous stones down from the mountains, blocking paths, and digging pits covered with branches so that horsemen perished.

In retaliation, the French drowned hundreds of people in the Bay of LeCap, burned alive and tortured blacks. Toussaint then tried to make peace. Instead, he was arrested.  Far from being intimidated by these events, Haitian slaves met increasing terror with courage and firmness.

“Mulattos” and slaves under Dessalines and Capois Death took the offensive, attacked ships, hid their boats on shores, disappeared down rivers and reappeared at sea. Lemmonier-Delafosse (a believer in slavery) documented, “What men these blacks are! I have seen a solid column, torn by grape-shot from four pieces of cannon, advance without making a retrograde step, singing; this song was worth all our republican songs.”  That was the November 1803 march on Le Cap. On December 31 the final declaration of Independence was read. This struggle led to the first victory against slavery. The slaves’ courage and confidence in the working class is a lesson we should all learn from. J