Reformism A Trap to Maintain Bosses’ Power

MEXICO — In recent years, many very militant movements have arisen, producing problems for the ruling class. These include the mass struggle of APPO and teachers in Oaxaca; the miners in Pasta de Conchos in the state of Coahuila; the peasants in San Salvador Atenco in the State of Mexico; as well as the very militant movements of the Ford workers, and the recent struggle among the taxi drivers who put the transportation bosses in check (including the local government).

All this demonstrates the immense potential of the working class. However, it also shows a lack of sufficient organization and above all the understanding that to truly liberate ourselves from the bosses’ yoke, we will have to struggle for a real communist revolution.

In these struggles we’ve fought for crumbs, even though workers made the whole cake. No sooner do we win small wage increases (reforms), they take them away by raising prices on basic products, speed-up, layoffs and even jailings and death. We need to take the means of production away from the bosses. We don’t need them because we’re the ones who produce everything. Yet the bosses live like kings without working.

If we fight under the bosses’ laws, we’ve already lost, since capitalism’s laws are designed to protect the interests of capital. When someone goes against the bosses’ interests, we’re repressed by the bosses’ police and sentenced in the bosses’ courts, accused of “terrorism,” drug trafficking or whatever other crime they can invent.

Government branches that supposedly “defend” workers’ interests — the Department of Labor, the Congress of Labor, human rights groups, etc. — are regulated by the capitalists’ government. We workers will always lose under the bosses’ laws; all our efforts get turned around.

Given the treadmill of reform, the working class needs to build a long-term struggle — participating in reform struggles but understanding that workers need to be politicized and consciously see the nature of the reform struggle, to understand how capitalism functions. We must primarily recognize that racism, nationalism, sexism and religion are ideological tools manufactured and used by the ruling class to keep dividing our class and subject us to the bosses’ interests.

Even if momentarily we win some crumbs from the bosses, as the taxi drivers here who formed a cooperative, sooner or later the bosses and their government will end up controlling the movement through their laws, or corrupting the leadership as has been the case in other movements.

It’s not that we distrust these workers, but it’s our obligation as a Party to warn about how
capitalism functions. Such analyses can prevent the capitalist system from co-opting us, from allying ourselves with one or another branch of the ruling class, which doesn’t help our class in any way.

As we participate in these class struggles, we workers must make our main priority building the Progressive Labor Party, with mass CHALLENGE networks, so that we can continue giving leadership to the international working class. Our goal is building a communist society that liberates us forever from all the misery of capitalism.

Workers in Honduras, El Salvador Unite vs. Coup Bosses’ Attacks

EL SALVADOR, September 13 — Recently at a meeting of teachers from El Salvador and Honduras, the latter (a member of the federation of Honduran workers) thanked the Salvadoran workers for their working-class solidarity in the face of the current crisis besetting workers in Honduras following the coup that ousted Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya is a millionaire member of the Honduran bourgeoisie who opposed trade deals with the U.S. and its allies, instead veering towards the Russian and Chinese imperialists through Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

The teacher from Honduras told of the temporary reforms financed by Chavez (to expand his influence in the region), enabling Zelaya to raise teachers’ wages to $1,000 a month (as compared to $500 a month for a teacher in El Salvador); afternoon snacks at schools; free uniforms and notebooks, among other measures. This has put Zelaya in conflict with sections of the Honduran ruling class, who were angered by Honduras joining ALBA (Chavez’s trade alliance) and Petrocaribe (Chavez’s oil alliance).

In Honduras they barely had time to cry for Roger Vallejo Soriano, a 38-year-old teacher shot in the head last July 30th during a demonstration protesting the coup, when another teacher, Martin Florencio Rivera, 37, was stabbed 25 times and killed after having participated in a wake for Soriano. All this is part of the brutal repression carried out by the security forces of the government of Roberto Michelleti.

Soriano was a victim of the on-going attacks by the police and the army, along with rapes of women. The teacher who spoke at the meeting was sprayed with cancer-causing chemicals when she participated in the marches.

In response to a PLP comrade’s question about the lessons drawn from this brutality, workers from Honduras replied: “We definitely must organize much better against the attacks of the system; we’re certain that the international bosses, including those in El Salvador, were involved in this coup.”

Said a PLP comrade, “If the bosses are organized, why can’t the international working class be organized for our own interests.”

This story reminded us of the massacres teachers in El Salvadoran suffered in the 1970’s and 1980’s. A PL teacher who participated in these struggles and saw the army and police kill many teachers in front of their students related his experiences in the teachers’ resistance in El Salvador and invited the teachers from Honduras to organize with PLP internationally to resist the bosses’ attacks.

The teachers and the international working class must see that the return of Manuel Zelaya, another capitalist exploiter, or any other capitalist president, will not end our problems. Those who exploit and kill the workers continue in power. There’s no reason to keep electing them.

The working class must fight for power by building its international party to organize for communist revolution, not continue supporting the murderous, rotten capitalist system. We must spread our networks of our revolutionary communist newspaper CHALLENGE internationally, to organize at work, school and in the fields to fight for a just system, communism. That’s how we can avenge the deaths of our class brothers and sisters.

Paraguay: Lugo Talks ‘Left’ but Intensifies Capitalist Exploitation

PARAGUAY — One year after taking power, “Leftist” President Fernando Lugo’s promises have proven to be empty. Liberation can only come when the latifundistas (large agricultural capitalists) are expropriated, imperialists are expelled, industrial capitalists overthrown, and workers seize power through revolution with communist goals of equality and collectivity.

Since he led no revolution and workers did not take power, Lugo, like all capitalist politicians, maneuvers among the U.S. and European imperialists, the Bolivarian Bloc, and the Brazilian ruling class to try to cut deals for the Paraguayan capitalists and landowners.  These deals have all deepened the exploitation and oppression of workers in Paraguay.

He has made health care free in public health centers, begun to develop limited social programs for children, and attempted to cut a better deal with Brazil over the price it pays for energy from the jointly-operated Itaipu Hydroelectric plant. But these reforms pale next to the severe exploitation workers face in Paraguay.

Soy, Sesame and Capitalist Poison

Paraguay is the 6th largest producer of soy in the world.  The players in the sesame and soy game in Paraguay are the small rural farmers, Paraguayan and Brazilian Agribusiness, large landowners (Latifundistas — 2% of the population owns 70% of the land!), and major U.S. companies including Monsanto, Cargill and Syngeta.

The agrochemical and biotech companies are helping the latifundistas force peasants off their land by legal tricks and poisoning crops. How? The majority of the soy produced in Paraguay is based on Monsanto Corporation’s transgenic seeds that are genetically modified for resistance to the herbicide glyphosate. Massive spraying of glyphosate kills everything else, including small farmers’ crops. Lugo’s solution? Ban such spraying 100 yards from waterways, wetlands, roads and populated areas. But this barely touches the problem of the small farmers, and may even be reversed given the power of the latifundistas and their imperialist allies. In 2008, the soy production rate was twice what it was in 1998. The major effect of the soy planting is that it has effectively displaced thousands of rural farmers who plant subsistence crops. Activists have begun to occupy big farms and have mobilized in the streets of Asuncion to fight against the expansion of soybean plantations.

Corruption, Courts, Cops

The Paraguayan Supreme Court judges were appointed over decades by the Colorado party (the fascist party that had historic ties to Hitler) and is both corrupt and powerful. The judges refuse justice to workers. For instance, they have been deaf to the appeals and demonstrations of workers seeking justice in the Ycua Bolanos case. This involved a fire at a supermarket whose owners (Coloradoans) ordered their security guards to lock the doors, killing over 350 people.  President Lugo has opposed the appointment of another Coloradoan, Lovera Canete, to the court, but has declared he will not veto the right-wing Senate’s appointment of him.

Even more shocking, however, to Lugo supporters, has been Lugo’s decision to allow fascist Sabino Augusto Montanaro to re-enter Paraguay. Montanaro fled when the Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship fell in 1989 because he feared retribution due to the torture and murders he ordered of Political Military Organization (OPM) fighters, Paraguayan Communist Party members, and their allies. In fact, Montanaro was directly responsible for the assassination of the guerilla column Mcal Lopez.  Lugo puts out the welcome mat for this fascist trash? Not the mark of a friend of the working class!

The Way Forward

Workers in Paraguay have a long way to go in the class struggle. Lugo misleads workers into the arms of latifundistas, capitalists, and imperialists, weakening the resistance to exploitation in the same way that Obama’s popularity is misleading many workers into supporting imperialist war in Afghanistan.

Instead of supporting these phony leftists and building false hopes that sooner or later demoralize our class, we must build a revolutionary communist movement for change based on workers’ power, rather than on wishful thinking that a charismatic leader will deliver when the state apparatus is firmly in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Joining with PLP members around the world would be an important step in this process in Paraguay. J

The Face of Poverty

• 2,156,312 Paraguayan workers (36%) live in poverty, of which 1,172,274 (19%) are living in extreme poverty.  Four out of every 10 Paraguayans are poor.

• 40% of the poor receive 11% of the total resources produced in the country while 41% of the resources are concentrated among the 10% richest.

• 15 of every 100 Paraguayans survive on less then 1 U.S. Dollar a day and 30 out of 100 survive on 2$ a day.

• 78% of Paraguayans have no type of health care — 4,741,046 people

• Unemployment affects 8.7% of the population

• Underemployment affects 26.5% of the population — more than 760,000 people receive minimum wage.

• 133,000 women are illiterate and 15% are from the countryside.

Imperialists’ Battle over Honduras Kills Workers

TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS, August 10 — At this writing, the struggle of the Honduran people against the military coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya is in its 43rd day. There have been uninterrupted occupations of bridges, highways and buildings, work stoppages and massive mobilizations. On August 7, marches began from the country’s interior, slated to converge in Tegucigalpa and the country’s second largest city on August 12. This massive show of force is in support of highway blockages and a scheduled general strike that could paralyze the country and bring to a head the struggle to reinstate Zelaya.

Beatings, arrests, woundings and killings have occurred. Nevertheless, this great capacity for struggle and sacrifice by the country’s oppressed masses will in no way advance their real class interests. The only possible liberation for the Honduran working class lies in an armed insurrection that fights for communism. But without a revolutionary communist party to lead them, the workers in Honduras and throughout the world will be pawns in the hands of the imperialists’ rivalry for maximum profits and world domination.

Presently, Honduras is in the eye of the storm of this rivalry for the control of Latin America. Zelaya’s mortal sin against U.S. imperialism was getting too close to Hugo Chavez and his Cuba-Bolivia-Nicaragua populist bloc. This bloc — together with the rising regional power of Brazil and its MERCOSUR bloc, plus the European, Russian and Chinese imperialists — is challenging the almost two-century-old U.S. hegemony of the continent.

Zelaya and the Honduran capitalists who back him — like the South American capitalists led by Chavez and Brazil — are striving for a bigger share of what’s produced from their workers’ exploitation by allying with the U.S. bosses’ rivals. These rivals, on their part, need to pry this region from the U.S. imperialists’ grip as each tries to enlarge their control of the world’s resources and profits.

Zelaya and his backers, just like U.S. rulers and their lackeys, claim they are “fighting for democracy.” But this is just a scheme to win workers and others to fight for their capitalists’ interests. “Democracy,” whether imposed with bayonets or legalized by elections, is the capitalists’ dictatorship over our class.

Our liberation lies in forging a communist revolution to impose our working-class dictatorship to smash all the world’s capitalists and guarantee they never rise again. From this we will build a communist society that will eliminate the wage system, money and all capitalist evils. We will produce to satisfy the needs of our class internationally, not to make a handful of parasites richer.

Honduras reveals a weakness of U.S. imperialism. Gone are the days when the U.S. can impose their will unilaterally in Latin America. Whatever the outcome of the Honduran crisis, the struggle for the control of the region will intensify.

Honduras shows that U.S. rulers can only use the military option to regain absolute control of the hemisphere. It also shows that the workers’ only option is to organize for a communist revolution. Zelaya, a capitalist whose family murdered many leftist organizers during the 1980s, will never help workers build such a movement. And any so-called working-class leader who supports him or fights for “democracy” is either knowingly or unknowingly a traitor to our class. Joining and building the internationalist Progressive Labor Party and the fight for communism are the only paths to working-class liberation.

Peru’s Indigenous Indians: Armed Fight Challenges U.S. Imperialism’s Power Grab

LIMA, PERU, June 8 — Massive armed protests by thousands of Indigenous Indians have rocked this country. The fight is over government decrees doling out vast tracts of the farmers’ communal forest lands to corporations for oil and gas drilling, logging, mining, control of water resources and large-scale agriculture. The robbery is being carried out under government decrees directly linked to a Peru-U.S. trade pact that “would bring Peru’s rules for investment in jungle areas into line with the trade agreement.” (NY Times, 6/12) The decrees would enable these capitalists to seize 72% of the country’s rain forest for exploitation of natural resources that threatens the survival of the Indigenous peoples.

But the people are not taking this corporate grab lying down. After sporadically blocking roads, waterways, state-owned oil pipelines and airports since April 9, violent clashes erupted on June 5. Government troops opened fire on unarmed protesters from helicopter gunships, tanks and the tops of buildings killing them while they slept alongside a road. Over 250 protestors were slain, “disappeared,” burned and/or thrown in rivers. Hundreds more were wounded in the massacre. The protesters say there is a cover-up: “The government is trying to clean the blood off its hands by hiding the truth,” declared Andrés Huaynacari Etsam, an Awajun student who said five relatives were killed and three are missing. (NYT, 6/12)

Insurgents Turn the Guns Around

A thousand Indians then killed 25 cops and abducted 38 as hostages. In one battle the insurgents wrestled guns away from the cops. Two hundred Mahiguenga Indians occupied an oil pipeline valve station in the Southeast, where the rebellion had spread from the North. Although the Army re-took it, the Indians said they would try again.

A general strike on June 11 brought thousands out into the streets in Iquitos, the largest Peruvian city in the Amazon, and spread to cities as far away as the capital and Arequipa on the Pacific coast.

The militant struggle forced Peru’s Congress to temporarily suspend the decrees, Said 24-year-old Wagner Musoline Acho, “The government made…[a] condescending depiction of us as gangs of savages in the forest…. They think we can be tricked by a maneuver like suspending a couple of decrees for a few weeks and then reintroducing them, and they are wrong.” (NYT, 6/12)

President Alan Garcia has declared a “state of emergency” and imposed a curfew, but that has only escalated the rebellion which has spread to the strategic South. Garcia has ordered the arrest of one of the leaders, Alberto Pizango, on “sedition” charges and has suspended the constitution in four provinces. The protestors have charged the government with violating both the country’s constitution as well as international law for failing to obtain the Indigenous peoples’ consent before any of their land and resources can be given away.

The Peruvian Jungle Interethnic Development Association which has organized the protests represents over 300,000 people from dozens of Indigenous groups. Their leaders have charged the government with genocide for the killings of their people. Daniel Marzano, an Asháninka leader from Atalaya Province, declared: “We want an immediate halt to every project that was conceived without consulting those of us who live in the forest.” (NY Times, 6/6) They vow that their protests will continue until their demands are met. They have derailed a plan by Brazilian-controlled Electrobras to erect five hydroelectric plants on the Indigenous people’s lands at a cost of $10 billion.

A Duke University scientists’ study reported that, “At least 58 of the 64 areas secured by multi-national companies for oil exploration overlay lands titled to indigenous peoples.” (NYT, 6/5) Contracts for oil and gas exploration cover 72% of Peru’s rain forest.

While the government hands over billions of dollars worth of resources to these corporations, 40% of the country’s population — half of whom are Indigenous — live in poverty. (NYT, )

Meanwhile, Ollanta Humala, a nationalist and a former lieutenant-colonel in Peru’s army who was defeated in the last presidential election, has sided with the insurgents to prime himself for the 2011 election. President Garcia, who also held the position in the 1980s, is the very butcher who suppressed a prison rebellion in 1980 and murdered over 100 inmates as “suspected guerillas.” (NYT, 6/7)

The rebellion exposes the role of the capitalist state. The constitution is not worth the bosses’ paper it’s printed on. If it endangers the multi-nationals’ aim to exploit the workers’ and farmers’ claim to the country’s rich resources, the rulers’ government simply voids it. And when the exploited classes rebel to assert their rights, that same government comes down with the full weight of its state apparatus, army, air force and police, to crush them.

The rebels must not rely on the bosses’ laws or elections of a nationalist ex-army officer like Humala to protect them. A revolutionary communist leadership is needed to combat these attacks and forge a movement for a communist society with an armed struggle for working-class ownership and distribution of the wealth of resources that are being stolen by Peru’s bosses and their international capitalist backers.

Chavez’s Cops Attack Strikers, Kill 2 Auto Workers

CARACAS, VENEZUELA, February 3 — Chanting “Workers, united, will never be defeated,” and “Punishment for Killer Cops,” over 1,500 workers and community residents marched from the Mitsubishi plant in the city of Barcelona, state of Anzoátegui, to the governor’s house demanding justice for two workers — one from Mitsubishi and the other an auto parts worker — killed by cops on January 29. In that afternoon, a judge came to the Mitsubishi Motors plant to evict the workers who had seized it.

After a January 12 workers’ mass meeting, 863 workers voted to take it over, with only 21 opposed. The workers were demanding permanent jobs for 135 Induservis subcontracted workers, used for maintenance by Mitsubishi.

The state’s pro-Chávez governor, Tarek William Saab, obeyed the company’s demand and sent a judge with cops to evict them. The company also had its supervisory staff “rally” in front of the plant to demand the occupation be ended.

When the workers refused to leave, the cops viciously shot at them, killing two and injuring many others.

This is the second time governor Saab used cops against workers. Before becoming governor, he had made a career of being a “human rights advocate.” Workers should never trust any bourgeois politicians, even if they claim to be pro-worker.

Repression against militant workers is increasing under Chávez’s “Bolivarian Revolution.” On January 22, the National Guard arrested two workers following a protest by 250 workers fired by contractor Costa Norte near Barcelona city.

On December 30, Caracas Metropolitan Police attacked subcontracted workers protesting at the office of the country’s Vice-President, demanding to be rehired by the Sidor steel company. Over 8,000 Sidor workers are still working as subcontractors, even after the government bought a majority share from the Argentine steel company Technit, precisely using the argument that it refused to give all Sidor workers permanent status.

Also in December, two dissident union leaders were killed by hired gunmen in the state of Aragua, provoking a regional general strike on December 2. And the list goes on.

Meanwhile, a February 15 referendum is again confronting Chávez and his Bolivarian bosses, fighting the old pro-U.S. ruling class that has lost most of its political power. The balloting will decide whether Chávez can run for re-election in 2012.

Workers shouldn’t take sides in this dogfight among these capitalist factions. Most hate the old pro-U.S. bosses, remembering how 20 years ago in 1989 Social-Democrat President Carlos Andrés Pérez sent the Army and tanks to crush the mass uprising by workers and shantytown residents of Caracas, rebelling against an IMF-imposed austerity package. Over 1,000 protestors were killed.

The workers’ anger after this massacre gave rise to Chávez. But Chávez’s “Bolivarian nationalism” has revealed its limitations. When oil prices were sky-high, he gave workers some crumbs, but now that the price has tumbled and the world’s capitalist crisis has hit Venezuela like a ton of bricks, Chávez is again trying to make deals with the foreign oil companies he attacked just a year ago.

While posturing as “anti-imperialist,” he’s bargaining with Russian, Chinese, Iranian and European imperialists. He’s now hoping relations with the U.S. will improve, with Obama in power. Just last week, he even signed a trade pact with Colombia’s President Uribe, who he had labeled as a Bush lapdog in Latin America not too long ago.

Workers must shed all illusions in any so-called bourgeois “savior” like Chávez. Some militant workers are demanding the government nationalize some imperialist-owned companies, but as Sidor’s case has shown, state capitalism is no solution. The only road which will lead to workers’ liberation is to forge a revolutionary communist leadership and fight for working-class power.

Win Oaxaca APPO Congress Rank & File to Red Ideas

OAXACA, MEXICO, February 10 — In a very violent setting, due to the sharp contradictions among the leaderships of the organizations comprising the APPO (Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca), Section 22 of the SNTE (teachers union) has pushed for the convening of the Third Congress of APPO on February 20-22. The APPO participated in the mass social-political movement of 2006, fighting to oust the fascist Governor of Oaxaca, Ulisis Ruiz Ortiz (URO). The goal is to develop another intense period of actions locally and nationally to confront the privatization, unemployment, repression and poverty enforced by the ruling parties and to insist on the ouster of the murderous governor.

The brutal repression in 2006 unleashed by the criminal Oaxaca Governor in open alliance with Vicente Fox, departing President of Mexico, could not destroy APPO. However, the sharp contradictions within APPO — as revealed in the corrupt actions and betrayals of the opportunists — have divided and challenged APPO, sowing discontent, disappointment and apathy among thousands of the participants.

They and many others had great hope for APPO to bring important changes to society, eliminate injustices and corruption, and above all, to end the capitalist dictatorship, represented by the PRI, the ruling party which oppressed Mexico’s workers for nearly 80 years.

But to destroy these evils, it’s necessary to get rid of capitalism-imperialism with a communist revolution. That requires winning thousands of city and farm workers, teachers, students and soldiers to communist ideas. This means  recruiting millions to the working class’s only communist party, the Progressive Labor Party. To achieve this goal we  must spread communist ideas, including reading and building networks of distribution for our communist newspaper, CHALLENGE.

APPO cannot, nor could it ever, assume this role. APPO grew as a broad spontaneous movement that mobilized thousands, but lacked founding principles, discipline, organization and correct political leadership. Opportunist and revisionist (fake leftist) groups took advantage of the movement to seize the leadership of APPO and use it for their own interests.

Among them, the Popular Revolutionary Front-Union of Workers of Education (FPR-UTE), subsidiary of the misnamed “Communist” Party of Mexico Marxist Leninist, maneuvered ts leader, Zenén Bravo, to become a deputy in the local Congress. Meanwhile, Flavio Sosa, after having been imprisoned, as the most publicized leader has waged a propaganda campaign to become a deputy for the PRD (Party of Revolutionary Democracy), like César Mateos.

We workers must understand that any organization that is not a communist party fighting for communism will  eventually betray our class interests. Good intentions are not enough. Even the giants of the old international communist movement saw the great Russian and Chinese revolutions reversed because they carried too much baggage of capitalism (the wage system, etc.) into their socialist society which they thought they could transform into communism. But the opposite happened. Today Russia and China are capitalist, imperialist vultures fighting with the U.S. and European imperialists for control of the world’s resources, especially oil.

Amid deepening capitalist economic crisis, expanding imperialist wars and the threat of World War III, the honest participants in the APPO Congress should think seriously about waging communist class struggle to confront the enemy and advance as the working class to our necessary goal, building a new communist society. Only then can we destroy capitalism, a chaotic and murderous system that only meets the needs of the rich.

Capitalist elections won’t help workers. Participating in them perpetuates the chains that bind us to capitalism’s evils.  Only communist revolution will end them. That’s why it’s necessary to read and distribute CHALLENGE and join the Progressive Labor Party.

Mexico’s Cabbies Defy Union Goons While Building Co-op and PLP

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO — The fight against the rulers of economic and political power in the transportation industry is heating up. This community has become the center of attention for hundreds of taxi drivers, their friends and families. That’s because a group of taxi drivers, tired of years of abuse, deception and fraud by their union leaders, decided to start a movement against injustice. They began organizing other taxi drivers to leave that institution and set up a Cooperative Society.

The gangster bosses, trying to stop workers organizing, sent goons to beat and shoot at these workers in their attempts to intimidate and stop the movement. They are also using the State Secretary of Transportation to crack down on drivers by impounding their cars if they don’t have the required documents, taking away the worker’s job.

These actions by the bosses, far from discouraging the workers, have generated more anger to sustain the movement. The movement has begun to spread to workers in the same company in different areas and a few weeks ago the workers set up their Co-op. This motivates many workers to keep up the struggle.

We know that the cooperative is only a temporary form of winning certain improvements in working conditions. That’s because capitalism continues exploiting and terrorizing the whole working class. We’re in this struggle so that hundreds, thousands and millions of workers will see the need to destroy this rotten capitalist system with a communist revolution.

In this movement the Progressive Labor Party has played an important role. Several workers have joined PLP. There’s a tremendous potential that other workers can join the struggle to free the working class, since CHALLENGE newspaper is well read by many. We’re sure that some day we workers will raise the banner of liberty for all workers. Long live Communism.

CUBA: NO CLEAR LINE TO COMMUNISM BRINGS STATE CAPITALISM

Part I (CHALLENGE, 1/14/09) described the mass strikes and naval uprising that, along with the Castro-Che Guevara-led guerrillas, helped overthrow the Batista dictatorship in Cuba 50 years ago.

The July 26 Revolutionary Movement (J26M), formed to support the guerrilla fight against the Batista regime, included different forces, students as well as businessmen, who just wanted to eliminate Batista without changing much else in Cuban society.

However, the J26M had no base among the unions, which the Popular Socialist Party (PSP) did. The PSP was the old Cuban Communist Party. It had followed the CPUSA, which had been dissolved by Earl Browder during World War II. Browder was later attacked and removed from the leadership. It was then that the Cuban CP, loyal to the CPUSA, changed its name to PSP. The PSP’s policies were always very opportunist, even supporting Batista in the early part of his regime.

The J26M’s urban leadership decided to call for an insurrectional general strike for April 19, 1958, to overthrow Batista. The PSP — while advocating armed struggle in the mountains, opposed it in the cities — was not part of the building for the strike.

While many cities were totally shut down, the strike came up short in Havana. By mid-afternoon it was finished because of its premature call, the sabotage by the PSP and some right-wing J26M leaders and because of repression by the regime. The PSP leadership was hoping the strike’s failure would force the Castro-led movement to include in a post-Batista government followers of former Presidents Grau and Prío Socarras, and hoped the guerrillas would tone down their anti-U.S. stance.

The strike’s failure was a set-back for the mass militant actions in the cities but reinforced the guerrillas’ leading role in the anti-Batista struggle. Batista figured the strike’s failure meant the movement was near collapse, so on May 24 he launched a massive military campaign — with 17 army divisions, planes, tanks, napalm bombs and U.S. advisors — to crush the 300 guerrillas in the mountains.

The Batista offensive lasted only 25 days, suffering heavy losses from guerrilla ambushes and attacks by the peasant population. Within a month, the Army had retreated in disarray from the Sierra Maestra mountains. Troops deserted and refused to fight, marking the end of the Batista regime. In six months, the powerful Batista army totally disintegrated. On Jan. 1, 1959, Batista fled to the Dominican Republic, ruled by fellow dictator Rafael L. Trujillo. A January 1st insurrectionary general strike in Havana — with support of the PSP trade unions — crushed the plan to maintain the old society, just without Batista and without Fidel and the guerrillas in control of the new government. A few days later the triumphant Rebel Army entered Havana, greeted as liberators.

The Movement’s program was basically radical-nationalist, but some forces in the anti-Batista movement just wanted conditions to remain the same. The most pro-U.S. forces in the J26M refused to let the PSP into the new ruling coalition — since Washington feared it despite its opportunist politics because it was pro-Soviet — even though Fidel fought for it. The PSP was only admitted to the coalition’s union section because of its leadership role in the labor movement.

Eventually, the workers and peasants wanted more than just cosmetic changes. They seized factories and sugar mills owned by U.S. multi-nationals and were pushing the revolution to the left. But the PSP began to play a bigger role in the government and basically followed the Soviet pattern. By then, the Krushchev-ruled Soviet Union, the right-wing of the communist movement, was becoming increasingly state capitalist.

The Progressive Labor Movement, later becoming the Progressive Labor Party, was born in that period, breaking with the CPUSA and its opportunist politics. We were the first one to break the U.S. travel blockade to Cuba and carried out many activities opposing the attacks against the new Cuban government. But as the latter became more and more pro-Soviet, PLP sided with the forces in the international communist movement attacking what became known as “Soviet revisionism.”

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in China was the last mass attempt to reverse the move to the right of that movement. The GPCR was defeated and now China, as well as the former Soviet Union, are completely capitalist.

Fifty years later, the world capitalist crisis is hitting Cuba hard. It is trying to deal with it by forcing workers to sacrifice even more. If the goal was a real communist-type society, that sacrifice would be worthwhile. But it’s basically an attempt to maintain a state-capitalist system. And capitalism by any name means exploiting the working class.

Che Gripping Film But Lacks for Real Revolution

“Che,” now in theaters in the U.S. and worldwides, makes strong points. But, being a commercial movie, it misses the main political reason why Ché’s guerrilla tactics failed:without building a mass-based Marxist-Leninist party, communist revolution will fail.

“Che” is directed by Steven Soderburgh, and is based on the writing of Ernesto Che Guevara, the Argentinean doctor who fought in the guerrilla rebel army against the Batista dictatorship. Shot in documentary style in two parts, this four-and-a-half hour film realistically depicts the military operations of 1956 to 1959 that defeated the Batista army and the 1967 failed guerrilla attempt in Bolivia that led to Che’s murder under orders from the CIA.

The film treats revolution as a serious business, showing armed struggle necessary to end capitalist exploitation. It shows the tough, day-to-day struggle of guerrilla warfare, the rigorous training, the hardships when food is scarce and lives are lost. We see the constant effort needed not to degenerate politically in life-threatening circumstances and experience the exhilaration that comes when, in village after village Cubans join the guerrilla army, providing the support to make the uprising successful.

Guevara is portrayed as a committed revolutionary who gave his life in the service of the working class that inspired him, not as the glamorous “Icon of Revolution and Liberation,” of the face on a million T-shirts. But still Guevara comes across as a central figure in the struggle to overthrow Batista.

Barely acknowledged is the critical role of the Cuban workers, peasants and students who for decades had been organizing against the regime and U.S. imperialism. Its concentration on the military aspect of the struggle against the U.S.-supported Batista regime, with only passing reference to the politics, raises many unanswered and important questions.

The first part, “The Argentinean,” hints at ideological struggle between different factions within the Cuban guerrillas but doesn’t present the ideas fueling their disagreements. Battle scenes are cut with flash-forwards to 1964, with Guevara — now Cuba’s ambassador to the UN — addressing the General Assembly. He attacks U.S. imperialism and its lackeys in Latin America and correctly places the blame for poverty and misery on capitalism. But we don’t learn what kind of society was being built in Cuba or where, for instance, Guevara stands on the great political debate of the day, between the revisionist betrayal of the Soviet Union and the more leftist forces led then by China.

In Part II, “Guerrilla,” Guevara leads a small group of Cubans and Bolivians in an attempt to seize power in Bolivia. The armed struggle fails, largely because the indigenous peasants don’t join the guerrillas and because of the betrayal by the pro-Soviet Bolivian “Communist” Party. “Che” doesn’t discuss how Guevara’s main political idea, the “foco” theory of revolution, contributed to the failure. Abandoning the Marxist idea of building a mass base in the working class, Guevara believed that a small band of insurgents, a “focus group,” could jump-start a revolution by example. Tragically in Bolivia, practice disproved this theory.

“Che” is a gripping and thought-provoking film but lacks the complexity the revolutionary process deserves. In the struggle to change society, the ideological battle to win the masses to communist politics is as important as the military, if not more so. “Che” adds to the knowledge of our past and, with discussion and further reading to fill in the blanks, can strengthen and inspire our fight today. (See the above article and the 1/14/09 issue, for PLP’s analysis