LA Summer Project Builds Communist Leadership for Future

Over 100 international workers, soldiers and students participated in our Summer Project here with the goal of strengthening our organizing efforts amongst industrial workers and soldiers. We have distributed over 8,000 CHALLENGES and over 15,000 leaflets in the past three weeks at factories, transit divisions, hospitals, schools and military bases. Our communist message was enthusiastically welcomed and over 50 people gave us their contact information to get involved.

The Project specifically focused on the opportunity that exists to organize workers in the concentration of subcontracted aerospace shops found in southern California. These non-union, mainly immigrant, workers play an important role in war production and for this reason must play an important role in the long-term struggle for workers’ state power. Industrial workers and soldiers are central both to capitalism and to the fight to destroy it and build communism, workers’ rule.

Summer Project volunteers met workers from a garment shop where the Party has maintained ties for many years. We asked about the conditions in the factory. The workers questioned the volunteers about the kinds of class struggle they organized back home in the places where they worked. The workers eagerly provided specific details about conditions in the plant including a recent work stoppage on the factory floor. The years of friendship, and the distribution of CHALLENGE, with these workers laid the basis for this vigorous discussion.

As a result a communist leaflet was produced and passed out at the factory. As the volunteers distributed the literature an angry boss came out to snatch it from us. One taller worker, who just received literature, held his CHALLENGE and leaflet high so his boss could not grab them. This young leader inspired us all to distribute more literature. In learning from the working class we are also having a concrete effect on our class brothers and sisters by influencing the class struggle, on a modest but significant level, with communist politics.

Another key aspect of the Project was to start building the worker-student-soldier alliance. At LA colleges and high schools we passed out a leaflet that linked police brutality to the nature of capitalist exploitation in the factories. At one high school, a parent approached and asked what we were distributing. The comrade gave the parent a leaflet and a CHALLENGE. They discussed the problems of elections, then the police, and how they are systematically used to terrorize black and Latino youth. The parent was enthusiastic about our presence and encouraged us to return. At the same high school, a student who got the paper then asked for five more to distribute to his friends and gave us his contact information.

<h2>Students Discuss Communist Revolution with U.S. Marines</h2>

Our visit to a Marine base in California was preceded by political discussion within the Project about the true nature of the lives of soldiers in the bosses’ military. More experienced comrades shared their experiences in working on military bases in order for the younger comrades to feel confident when distributing CHALLENGE to soldiers and marines. Engaging marines in conversations about the role they can play in turning the guns around on the capitalist system, not workers of other nations, and fighting for working-class power instead of imperialism, was a valuable learning experience.

Project volunteers found that many marines do not agree with the U.S. imperialist agenda in the Middle East. The majority of these young marines come from the working class and joined the Marine Corps because they needed a job. Despite the bosses’ intense ideological effort throughout their military training to win these working-class youth to racist, fascist ideas, many soldiers we met were not only open but eager to discuss communist revolution. Five of them gave us their contact information and want to keep in touch. Many thanked us for being there. One young marine came to have lunch with us. We got a better response to CHALLENGE and to GI Notes than we’ve gotten here before. The response shows that we need to do this much more often.

<h2>Investing in a Communist Future</h2>

Young comrades provided communist leadership in all aspects of this Summer Project. Bridging language barriers, students and workers discussed that students come from the working class and unity between students and workers is important to building the communist movement. A group of new comrades described their participation in a community organization that focuses on education. Collectively we discussed the contradiction between reform and revolution and how they can fight to strengthen the revolutionary communist side of that contradiction in the community organization.

The Summer Project has shown the potential and openness of workers to communist politics in the face of the bosses’ proclaiming it dead. Whether Obama or McCain is elected the intensifying rivalry between imperialists and widening wars means more attacks on workers in the form of an increase of police terror and exploitation at the workplace. These sharpening conditions make workers, students, and soldiers open to talking about alternatives to capitalism. The Project inspired all who participated to return home committed to increase their own organizing of class struggle on the job. Our goal is to turn our Summer Project experiences into a lifetime commitment to serving our class.

May Day: Fight Bosses’ Wars and Racist Terror

Workers of the World, Unite

On this May Day, International Workers’ Day, the international working class is under sharpening fascist attack while the drums of global war beat louder and slaughter millions. World capitalism pushes its economic crisis onto workers’ backs with mass racist unemployment, wage-cuts, soaring food prices and resulting starvation. Yet masses of workers are fighting back, with general strikes and food rebellions from Greece to Egypt to Haiti to Russian Ford and Romanian Renault auto workers to Detroit’s Axle strikers.

This May Day we must stand as one class, with one interest: to destroy the capitalist murderers with communist revolution and build a communist world based on production to fulfill the needs of our class. On this May Day, international workers’ solidarity must meet the bosses’ assault head-on, especially as they use the attacks on the world’s 200 million immigrants to attack ALL workers.

Capitalism has spawned this migration across all borders. We say smash all boss-created borders. We are one class, internationally.

Capitalism created the working class, a class with nothing but its labor power to sell in order to survive. Early on, the capitalists moved millions of Africans as slaves from that continent to wherever they could produce the most profit. With capitalism’s global expansion, immigration is now a worldwide phenomenon.

Capitalism’s unrelenting drive for maximum profits uproots hundreds of millions of workers, forcing them into the squalor of sprawling mega slums, from Brazil to Nigeria to China, where 80 million Chinese-born migrant workers are branded as illegal. Many die crossing deserts and oceans from Africa to Latin America trying to reach jobs in the U.S. and Europe, as well as from starvation, malnutrition and curable diseases. Ten thousand died trying to cross into Spain from Africa in the last five years.

Those migrating to the more industrialized countries are not only super-exploited but are used as scapegoats, blamed for capitalism-created problems, and paid slave wages to lower the wages of all workers.

In the past, immigrant workers were on the front lines of class struggle. With global capitalism, the bosses — by forcing this mass migration — have internationalized the working class even more, providing the opportunity for a communist-led working class to forge the unity necessary for communist revolution. Immigrant workers are now positioned geographically and socially to help lead this fight worldwide.

Their role will become even more crucial as the imperialists’ rivalry for world domination intensifies, particularly in the U.S., a declining power fighting desperately to hold its position as top imperialist while it gears up for wider Middle Eastern wars and eventually world war versus the rising powers in China, Russia and the European Union.

The U.S. rulers’ fight over immigration reform concerns the tactics and strategies on how and when to wage these wars. One sector thinks these wars can be waged cheaply with a small, technologically superior military. These bosses opposing immigration reform just want to terrorize immigrant workers with deportations to continue super-exploiting them.

The liberal imperialist sector, however, needs an immigration reform that builds patriotism among immigrants through a 12-year-long path to citizenship. This is in exchange for recruiting millions of soldiers as cannon fodder in their imperialist wars and to maintain a workforce of millions of super-exploited workers for their war industries.

That’s why their liberal politicians attack Homeland Security’s “scattershot workplace raids” as bad economic policy. And their newspapers like the LA Times and NY Times criticize Congress and the Bush administration for endangering the ability of the bosses to achieve these aims.

These liberal rulers also use their state power to rein in their opponents like California’s Orange County Sheriff Carona — indicted for some of his many crimes in the county where the racist Minutemen were born — and Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County, Arizona, who terrorizes day laborers.

But the vitriolic anti-immigrant stance of their opponents also serves the liberal bosses, creating the terror and despair that drives immigrant workers into the arms of their liberal politicians — and their leaders in the pro-immigrant organizations, churches, unions and community groups — with their pacifism and dead-end electoral politics. The main organizing slogan of the pro-immigrant organizations is, “Today we march, tomorrow we vote!”

Their leaflet announcing the Los Angeles May 1st March praises the bosses’ immigration reform and DREAM Act, aimed at forcing undocumented youth into the military under the farce of “helping them go to college,” which they can’t afford. This “Green Card army” will eventually become the army of all, via the draft or some militaristic “national service” scheme. The slave-like conditions and low wages of indentured immigrant workers will be extended to all workers.

With Democrats Obama and Clinton, and Republican McCain, supporting their comprehensive immigration reform bill and the DREAM Act, the liberal bosses will win no matter who becomes president. But their needs are forcing them to bring together two of the most oppressed, potentially militant and rebellious sectors of the working class: black workers and youth, crucial in industry and the military — possessing a rich history of fighting the U.S. bosses’ racism — and immigrant workers with a long history of fighting U.S. imperialism.

With PLP building international unity and a base for rebellion and revolutionary communism among industrial workers, soldiers, and students —  black, Latino, white, Asian and Arab, immigrant and citizen, men and women — we can fight the bosses’ racism, nationalism and patriotism, and unite the world’s workers to destroy the scourge of capitalism forever.

The fire of May Day burns brightly in a vibrant and growing internationalist PLP! Workers of the World Unite! Fight to end racism and wars for profit. Smash all bosses’ borders! Spread CHALLENGE, the internationalist, revolutionary communist newspaper! Fight for communism! Join us!

Building for May Day Young and Old, Across All Borders

NEW JERSEY

We had a very international May Day dinner in New Jersey to raise funds for the Party’s big events to celebrate this working-class holiday. Twenty-six of us came — some immigrants from 11 different countries:  Jamaica, Peru, Italy, Hungary, Ecuador, the Philippines, Macedonia, Guatemala, Israel, Korea, Honduras and from Africa. There was fabulous Ethiopian and Guatemalan cooking, black-eyed pea fritters, with desserts of apple pie and brownies.
We heard stories of immigration, of untold expense and deadly injuries. Many undocumented immigrant pay smugglers (coyotes) $7,000 to $10,000 to come from Central America. There is no guarantee the immigrant will arrive safely to his/her destination and many have died either abandoned by the smugglers, crossing the desert, the river, or even asphyxiated piled up in cargo train cars, trucks, etc.

The Río Grande is cold and deep.  Many don’t survive the swim.  One man loaded his three children into an inflatable raft and swam with one arm, pushing the raft with the other.  Another woman spent one night with two other adults in the trunk of a car, almost dying of dehydration and suffocation.  Each had a story of having to leave individuals in the desert who could not walk or be carried.  Two people related how Mexican workers often carried other people, children or adults, to the border who would never have survived the journey without their help.

The message was stated throughout that an international Party, the PLP, is essential to get rid of borders forever.  With each horrific tale, it became more obvious that borders mean only separation of families, lowering wages, starvation and death for working people.  The clear communist solution has to include doing away with wage slavery, profits and the entire capitalist class of parasites who suck the blood from workers trapped by borders.  The working-class immigrants have already demonstrated the fortitude and courage necessary to win! J
NJ Red

NEW YORK CITY

A collective of young and veteran members of Progressive Labor Party is coordinating efforts for a large gathering to celebrate May Day in New York City. We’re developing both the program and our organizing around a central theme of increasing class struggle to build the Party.
Our program features young comrades, helping to develop their leadership abilities, which is already reflected in the struggle they’ve spearheaded against NYC’s Department of Education. (See CHALLENGE, 04/09/08.) The excitement generated around this struggle has increased CHALLENGE distribution and produced potential new recruits to PLP. The energy of students and teachers and their understanding of the class struggle sharpened during this fight, which should help make our celebration an exciting one.
We will also acknowledge the contributions of long-standing members as we build for the future. A veteran of many on-the-job struggles will stress the importance of communist organizing at the workplace, linking his experiences with a call for participation in a Summer Project at some of PLP’s industrial concentrations.
Finally, we plan to ask the audience four questions about communism that our friends frequently ask. We hope the May Day celebrators will participate via their answers.

May Day marks a review of the strength of our communist organizing. The efforts of comrades, young and old, will ensure it will be inspiring and successful.
NYC May Day Collective

Spain: PL’ers Defend Immigrant, Organize for May Day

SPAIN — We are celebrating May Day, the international working-class holiday, including distributing a leaflet outside Metro (subway) stations in a major city here. This occurs amid growing attacks by the regular and immigration cops.
A friend from Brazil was arrested at his job just for the “crime” of being an undocumented immigrant. From the U.S. to Spain, capitalism, to survive, needs repression and racism against workers by forcing immigrant workers to work for less and produce super-profits for the bosses.
A group of us went to the police station to support our fellow worker. He was lucky not to be beaten by the cops. We celebrated a small victory because he wasn’t deported, just given a letter of expulsion.
Communist ideas are being spread among workers in this and other struggles. Our May Day leaflet will bring these ideas to other workers who don’t know about PLP. Anarchist ideas are widespread here and there’s a fear about communism because anti-communist ideas are rampant. But now PLP’ers are working in many areas of the world with the aim of winning workers to understand what’s best for our class: communism. Long live May Day and the workers of the world! J
(For El Salvador PLP May Day Call, See PLP website –– www.plp.org)

USSR, The First Workers’ State — How It Was Won, and Lost

When the Russian Revolution, and the Civil War that followed it, ended in 1921, the new workers’ state was in a state of exhaustion: largely destroyed, several million of its citizens killed, with a raging famine. Millions of homeless people wandered the land, and starvation was rampant. The worldwide typhus epidemic of 1919 had killed tens of thousands.

Seven years of war and invasion by Imperial Germany, then Poland, and all the Allied countries, including the U,S., Britain, France, and Japan, had created a culture of violence. Crime — robbery, murder, gangs — was everywhere. Armed bands from Poland raided border areas, robbed, raped, and killed, then fled back across the border. Industry and agriculture were almost at a standstill.

The Bolsheviks’ task was to build socialism/communism with the traumatized people in this devastated country. They had no blueprint, for it had never been done. No communist theorist — neither Marx and Engels, nor Lenin, nor any other — had ever thought the first workers’ state would look anything like this.

In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks debated the best course of action to build the new society. All socialists/communists believed that communism could only come in as an industrialized country. The party leadership knew that the advanced capitalist countries would attack the USSR as soon as possible. Their position — that the USSR could and must quickly industrialize by itself — won over the vast majority of rank-and-file Bolsheviks.1

Led by Stalin the mainly working-class Bolshevik Party took the country on to a great “leap into the unknown.” By the mid-30s, collectivization was almost complete, and the USSR was becoming a major industrial power. Nothing like this had ever been accomplished before in world history!

During the 1930s Oppositionist leaders conspired to overthrow Stalin and the Party leadership. Some also conspired with German and Japanese fascists. The leadership found out about these plots and tried and executed the guilty. But two successive heads of the political police were involved in these plots too. The second, Nikolai Ezhov, had his men arrest, torture, and murder hundreds of thousands of innocent Soviet citizens and Party members to cover up his own plot, and to sow dissatisfaction. This too was eventually uncovered, but not until huge damage had been done.2

Workers’ power was thought guaranteed as long as the communist party was in charge. In fact, capitalist ideas and practices turned the Bolshevik Party into its opposite. At Stalin’s death in March 1953 the communist movement appeared stronger than ever. Yet within three years the new head of the USSR, Nikita Khrushchev, had pushed the country towards capitalism, while attacking Stalin as a monstrous murderer and egomaniac. How could this happen?

All other socialists and communists along with the Soviet leadership believed there had to be an intermediate stage called “socialism” between capitalism and real communism. It would preserve many capitalist features: wage inequalities, inequalities between countryside and city; between workers and managers, the uneducated and the educated, nationalisms of various kinds, and so on. In industry, science, technology, art and literature, it meant preserving many capitalist ways of doing things, though with pro-worker reforms.

No human undertaking can ever be free of error, and the Bolsheviks made lots of mistakes. The basic reason is: They were the first! Never before had a communist movement seized and held power, then tried to build socialism/communism in any country, much less one that was unindustrialized to begin with and, moreover, hugely destroyed by World War, a Civil War, foreign invasion, epidemic and famine.

The Bolsheviks then led the Soviet Union to victory in World War II. After losing over 20 million lives and the destruction of the country’s infrastructure in the war, the USSR rebuilt in record time. The socialist USSR built nuclear weapons through the political commitment of its scientists.

The history of the USSR is an invaluable “textbook” for all workers! We must study the Soviet experience (and that of the other great 20th century communist revolution, the Chinese) to learn essential lessons about what Lenin, Stalin and the Bolsheviks did right, and what they did wrong, so we can do it right next time and win a communist world!

Stalin and the cult

A related error was the “cult of the great man,” usually called “cult of personality.” As the 1930s progressed both supporters and secret opponents of the Soviet government took every chance to praise Stalin to the skies as basically infallible. Supporters did this because of the undeniable and immense successes of collectivization and industrialization. Opponents did it to cloak their own conspiracies.

Privately as well as publicly Stalin always disapproved of this “cult.” But he did not succeed in stopping it. The “cult” made it possible for those who had been won over to the essentially capitalist line evolving within Soviet “socialism” to hide their real disagreements with the goal of communism -— a goal Stalin himself never stopped aiming for.

The “cult” also created an atmosphere of blind obedience within devoted communists and working people. If the “great man” has all the answers, why think for yourself? PLP has firmly rejected any “cults” of leaders or anybody else.

Footnotes:

1 The plan was:
• Collectivize agriculture, so the collective farms could give up all their surplus to fund the industrialization drive;
• Build whole cities of industry over night, making the huge investments of industrializing a gigantic country within a few years instead of the decades it had taken the capitalist countries;
• Mechanize the new collective farms with tractors and farm equipment, making them even more productive;
• Build a large modern army with advanced weapons, able to defeat the armies of the capitalist countries that he knew would attack, probably soon;
• delay the attack as long as possible through diplomacy, trying to play off the capitalist countries against one another.
2 For one version of these events see Grover Furr, “Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform (two parts) at http://clogic.eserver.org/2005/2005.html

Rout Marine Recruiters, Defend ‘Jena 6,’ Ally with Workers

Our college, which sits amid the remains of a major industrial center, where the wreckage of factories and railroads resembles a carpet-bombed city, has become a battleground for the political commitment of the students. Our main struggles involve the ‘Jena 6’ and Marine recruiters.

Campus mass organizations include an anti-war group and some “multi-cultural” clubs. We’ve aimed to raise political consciousness among students and campus workers by linking the racist attacks in New Orleans, Jena, Iraq and on immigrant workers to this college’s segregation and union-busting against immigrants here.

I distribute over 20 CHALLENGES, mostly to friends. I also slip papers under the doors where the immigrant workers who clean our dorms store their cleaning supplies.

Recently I saw several Marine recruiters distributing brochures. I made some calls and within 20 minutes we had an angry, multi-racial group of about 12 students ready for action, including some Middle Eastern students and CHALLENGE readers who knew me as a PL’er. Everyone else knew and respected me as a communist.

When we discussed the situation, I advocated a confrontational approach, explaining how these Nazis materially aid the mass slaughter in Iraq, and how they use racism/nationalism to divide workers instead of directing them against the real enemy, the profit system. Everyone agreed. We planned to form a disciplined row of people directly in front of the recruiters, with some of us ripping up their literature and verbally shouting them away. As we approached them, the Marines took off! We think a right-winger who had overheard us warned them. Everyone was fired up; spirits were high. One young woman yelled, “we’re finally doing something!”

The Marines book their space on campus carefully, so we’ve organized a rapid response plan to demonstrate when they return. We discovered an administrator is working with them. Since some fraternities host a “support-our-troops” week, we’re working out a little special something for that as well.

In another big struggle, one anti-war organization agreed to hold a series of events to protest the ‘Jena 6’ sentencing. I was asked to write a leaflet for that day. I suggested it be written collectively, but people said they had too much homework, so I revised the PL leaflet and made sure people distributing it were comfortable with it. Over 400 leaflets were gone in 90 minutes; the response was overwhelming! Many students asked for more for their friends, and some offered to help distribute even more elsewhere on campus.

That night two campus liberals sent me angry e-mails decrying the leaflet, arguing it was so inflammatory, no one would read it (contrary to our experiences that day). People sent e-mails with the standard anti-communist accusations, questioning who was “pulling the strings” behind our anti-war group, and demanding an apology for advocating “violence.”
One of the group’s liberals, a virulent anti-communist and self-described “democratic socialist,” visited me in my dorm, very disturbed by the leaflet. He said he represented “concerned friends” who wanted to know how I came to write the ‘Jena 6’ leaflet. He didn’t know about PLP.

Then a friend of mine who occasionally reads the paper walked in, unaware of what was happening, picked up a random DESAFIO, and jokingly exclaimed, “Why is there communist propaganda everywhere!?” The liberal grabbed it, glared at me, threw it down and left. (He didn’t understand much since he couldn’t speak Spanish.)

Until then I had no idea what was becoming of the several issues of DESAFIO I had been slipping into the campus workers’ cleaning closets. Now I was excited to know the workers had been reading them. When I figured out the workers’ schedule and met them, they told me they liked the paper, especially the articles about Latin America, and were open to meeting again.

Despite expecting an attack I was still dumbfounded at how quickly things were developing. That so-called socialist’s visit was a big surprise. I became defensive, which only invited even more attack. My friends, regular CHALLENGE readers, chided me for shrinking back and keeping my mouth shut. They argued, “Why aren’t you exposing these people for what they are? They’re just avoiding the issue and everyone knows it!” I realized they were right so we prepared for a confrontation at the next meeting.

There the liberals realized approval of the leaflet was very high. Except for a handful of meager comments, they received no support. Most people were thankful for the leaflet and wanted to know when we were planning something big. My initial reaction was to retreat but I was defended, and told to go on the offensive, both by CHALLENGE readers and non-readers. I learned about reliance on one’s base. I had lacked confidence in what I was doing; this struggle really changed my perspective.

As a result, many more people are friendly to the Party. Some are in a newly-formed study group. We’ll continue linking the Marine recruiters and the ‘Jena 6’ struggles to the racist segregation on campus and probe the connections between our school’s advanced research labs and U.S. imperialism. We’ve raised a campus worker-student alliance.
As we build CHALLENGE-DESAFIO networks out of these struggles, we’ll be on the road to eventually crushing these racist, sexist, warmongering parasites for good.

Bolshevik Revolution:Workers Took Power; Can Do It Again

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.

‘Reforms’ Prepare China’s Rulers for Showdown with U.S. Bosses

The “Communist” Party of China’s (CCP) 17th Congress on October 15 was scheduled to discuss its program for the next generation of leaders as put forward by Hu Jintao, CCP General Secretary and the country’s President and commander-in-chief. The Congress is occurring during China’s emergence as a more powerful imperialist country challenging the U.S., Japan and India. The Congress will concretize a “new stage” of China’s reforms, which — according to Hu Jintao — will generate a new model of “harmonious” and “scientific” development.

Jintao, in control since the 2002 Congress, will remain in power for a second and final term. His second in command, Wen Jiabao, will also retain his post. But a shake-up looms in the Politburo’s Permanent Committee, with Jintao possibly reducing the top leadership group from nine to five. Even Jintao is trying to avoid a bitter power struggle with those in other top leadership factions. The NY Times (9/14) quotes China expert Bo Zhiyue of St. John Fisher College: “I think he knows that real power lies in his position….He also knows how to balance different groups.” Jintao is bringing to the top leadership Li Keqiang, Party chief in the Northern province of Liaoning, who might succeed Jintao after 2012 when he steps down. (Secretary-Generals can only serve two terms.)

In a June 25 speech at a Party Central School, Jintao outlined the second important aspect of the Congress. He stated that China is in a “new phase” of its reform process, having great strategic opportunities while confronting many internal and external challenges. China’s “reforms” began with Zhu Enlai following defeat of the Cultural Revolution, helped by the Gang of Four, which later paid for its opportunism. Deng Xiaoping, considered a capitalist roader by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, accelerated the capitalist reforms in 1978 after Mao died and the Gang of Four was crushed.

U.S. imperialists were delighted with these “reforms,” seeing China not only for its investment potential but also as a counterweight to the former Soviet Union. In a way, China was the great savior of world capitalism. However, China’s new bosses would not be content to forever play second fiddle to U.S. or Japanese imperialists. China is now a more powerful imperialist country, with much money to invest in Asia, Africa, Latin America and even in the U.S. and European Union. It’s also developing its own military power, including a “blue water” navy to challenge U.S. naval power in Asia and eventually beyond. It’s also becoming a major player in space technology, just behind the U.S. and Russia.

Domestically, China is moving beyond being the “world’s workshop,” whose industries are just mainly used for cheaply-produced consumer goods for the world’s major imperialist corporations. The Congress will discuss “scientific development” to turn Chinese industry into leaders in the hi-tech, heavy industry (auto, steel, etc.) and military fields.

The Congress will also try to deal more with localized corruption, which alienates many workers and peasants — one of the main causes of protests and struggles by workers all over China. Already thousands of corrupt local leaders have been jailed. Of course, corruption and China’s gross inequality won’t be solved by capitalist reforms.

Finally, China’s main challenges include Taiwan and the need for secure oil supplies, not controlled by Exxon-Mobil, BP, et al. This will intensify inter-imperialist rivalry and will eventually impel direct military confrontation with the U.S., Japan or India.

The “C”PC doesn’t represent the class interests of China’s workers and peasants, but rather of the capitalist class enemy. There are now thousands of those enemies, bosses who are members of the Party. China’s workers need another revolution, not more reforms, but this time to eliminate all forms of capitalism.