May Day Sees PL’s Ideas Growing in Spain

SPAIN, May 1st — “I knew the PLP in the United States,” said a Spanish youth when he got a PLP leaflet. He was happy to find out that communist political work is a lot bigger throughout the world than he thought. “Long Live May Day! Long live the working class!,” we chanted today. Here and in all parts of the world, the work of the Progressive Labor Party is clear: spread the true ideas of communism far and wide.

The Workers’ Commissions unions Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) and the General Union of Workers (UGI in Spanish) in Spain organized a May Day march for workers from all over, but in reality workers know that these reformists and revisionists are part of the capitalist system and that the only thing they’re good for is to try to pacify the masses. We won’t rest. We’ll keep working hard to bring the workers the real revolutionary struggle, not like these sellouts.

It was a real celebration. There were workers from all parts of the world, and we passed out many communist leaflets in the march. I believe that with a lot of concentration, our work will grow a lot. We have made ties with workers and have vowed to bring them CHALLENGE and other material to be able to build the fight to destroy this capitalist system that kills the working class and finally to implant the only solution for the international working class: THE COMMUNIST SYSTEM!

‘If communism was good, why was the USSR destroyed?’

SPAIN — In a meeting with friends, we took up very important topics including communism, and the capitalist crisis of overproduction, but especially the fight against revisionism (capitalist ideas disguised as communist ideas). A comrade mentioned that, “In Peru you hear communist ideas a lot in the communities (for example, in the city of Ayacucho).” She mentioned that “in years past the group Sendero Luminoso organized university students and farm workers against the exploiters.” She had been a member of the group.

But the following question arose, “Why, if communism is good, was the USSR destroyed? Is it because people can’t have higher political understanding?” I answered, “At this time, capitalism has many weapons to divide the working class and to push the lie that communism was a disaster, but that’s not true and we communists in the PLP know it. Socialism failed in the USSR, not communism.” I explained that when a group fights for reforms (like Sendero Luminoso, the FMLN, FSLN, and other revisionist groups in Latin America that fight for national liberation and socialism) they’ll never achieve communism because they keep capitalist ideas and practices. So she responded, “but then you want to tell me that in order for there to be communism, we need an armed revolution?” “Exactly,” I said.

In the study of dialectical materialism we know that the way to solve a contradiction is to intensify it. “So that water can become steam, the temperature has to rise high enough to a certain point, at which water is converted into something else –– steam,” I explained to my friends. “It’s the same with the struggle to destroy capitalism in order to build communism.”

I explained that we have to understand the law of the unity and struggle of opposites. I showed them that if we have one pencil, we can break it easily, but that if we put 20 pencils together, it’s much harder to break them. In the same way, we have to build the Party to unite the working class with communist ideas. She said I was right and that we needed to continue the discussion.

Another youth who is influenced by capitalist ideas continued to insist that communism is in the past and was simply a failure. I talked about the many good things that happened in the Soviet Union in education, health care, housing , etc. The workers lived better than they ever did under under capitalism! And they united to defeat Hitler’s fascism.

At the end, my Peruvian friend was very emotional because the discussion cleared up many questions and she wanted to keep talking. The other youth said he didn’t understand how any society could exist without money. I limited my remarks to the fact that a capitalist economy and a communist economy were completely different, opposites, and that to be able to understand this he first had to understand dialectical materialism and put it into practice. All of this was very useful, because we were able to show that we can fight for and build a communist system even though we’re contaminated with all these capitalist ideas.

Now I need more Party material to study and to distribute among friends in this part of the world. Now I see that there are many people interested in the communist ideas of the Progressive Labor Party and, in addition to the interesting articles in CHALLENGE, I need to give them material to use to study dialectical materialism. We must massively spread these ideas to establish a real communist system in which workers hold the reins of society.

Organizing CHALLENGE Clubs in Spain

An Irish youth described a police attack on a PLP meeting as reported in a previous CHALLENGE: “When we were leaving at 6:30 AM and opened the door, cops were there to spray pepper gas in our faces. They tried to force their way in and arrest us but we stopped them. One young woman was in a state of shock; the rest were vomiting due to the gas. When some youths who stayed and then prepared to leave later, they were surprised by the police who yelled at, insulted and ridiculed them for throwing up due to the pepper spray.”

Shortly afterwards I met with the collective and began preparing a leaflet describing the police treatment of youth and the working class worldwide. “This has made us stronger,” declared this Irish youth, emboldening him to confront capitalism’s whole fascist movement.

Now we’re working in some neighborhood social workshops enabling residents to take classes near their homes. The workshops include classes in French, English, Italian and martial arts as well as a project to form a musical band, all to benefit the community. These workshops offer the opportunity to spread the Party’s ideas to more people and put them on the long road to destroy capitalism and establish communist workers’ power.

Many of our friends read CHALLENGE and some share it on the internet. Others ask for copies to place at art displays for passers-by to read. The “Okupa” movement in this city is big. Many youth organize to occupy abandoned sites and create workshops in art, music and other activities the community needs. While these youth feel impelled to do something for society, they lack a political line that explains why we must fight this system. As a communist PLP’er, this motivates me to participate in these groups and advance our ideas on the destruction of capitalism.

The Party is organizing clubs to study CHALLENGE and recruit these youth to PLP. We’re bent on continuing to fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat worldwide.

A PLP’er Immigrant in Spain

Growing PLP Club in Spain Links Study and Action

SPAIN — “I didn’t know that an international party existed that was so concerned about the workers of the entire world,” said a friend, a student from France, when I showed her CHALLENGE-DESAFIO at a meeting of a club formed in one of the largest cities here. Our club began with a Turkish worker and myself, an immigrant worker from El Salvador. Now we’re more than ten workers of different nationalities. We’ve joined marches organized by the transit unions and other mass reform groups fighting for better transit city-wide.

We met to review international events. It became complicated because two workers from Ireland didn’t understand much Spanish, but a youth from Venezuela translated our discussion on dialectical materialism. One was very excited because he hadn’t understood before why — if the communist line was correct — the old Soviet Union failed. Then he read a CHALLENGE explaining some of the errors committed then. We all concluded that in order to establish a system in which we’re all equal, instead of fighting for socialism as a stage between capitalism and communism, we must fight directly for communism.

Our French friend was quite taken with the recent workers’ and youth mass protests back home. Then when we read CHALLENGE, she saw the title headline saying when workers unite, we can stop the whole capitalist machinery. She took several copies to continue sharing communist ideas with her fellow students in France.

We met a week later in an area “occupied” by squatters to celebrate a member’s birthday, which led to turning a bad thing into a good thing. While discussing the racist police repression here against immigrants and social groups in general, the cops knocked at the door. Someone had called them to report a group of “disorderly” squatters in the neighborhood.

The good thing: we organized everything in a way that seemed natural. Two people left to talk to the cops. One stayed to guard the doors to bar their entrance, and another pair organized the rest to make a plan. The police said we couldn’t meet here, to go elsewhere. So one group left for the park and the others (immigrants without “proper” papers) stayed. Then we got the police to leave.

Afterwards, we all returned and initiated a sharper discussion. We said we need to print more leaflets and try to organize struggles with revolutionary, not reform goals.

These friends of the Party are now excited because they understand communist ideas more clearly, including the significance of union struggles for reforms and the real struggle that all workers must carry out worldwide, the fight for a communist system, organized by the only international communist party, PLP. We must fight to build more CHALLENGE readers’ clubs everywhere.

An internationalist communist worker

Why the Spanish King Doesn’t Tell Neo-Nazi Goons to Shut Up

MADRID, Spain, Nov. 11—Neo-Nazis stabbed to death a young anti-fascist in a subway here during a day of protests against racists in the working class neighborhood of Usera. The fascists were rallying against immigrants. The cops protected the fascists and attacked the anti-racists. Racism against immigrants is on the rise in Spain and all over Europe. Neo-Nazi punks are just the goons of mainstream racist politicians blaming immigrant workers for the problems caused by capitalism.

This latest fascist attack took place the same day King Juan Carlos Borbón told Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez to shut up at the “Iberoamerican summit” in Chile. He was mad because Chávez was attacking Aznar, the former Prime Minister of Spain, as a fascist (Aznar was one of Bush’s loyal lapdogs in Europe, sending Spanish army troops to Iraq as part of the “Coalition of the Willing.”) Apparently, Chávez remarks touched a never in the King, who was groomed and appointed to his royal throne by Generalissimo Franco. The King has never told the neo-Nazi goons, like those who killed the young anti-fascist in a Madrid subway, to shut up.

But what really worries the royal highness is that nationalist leaders like Chávez threaten the many billions Spanish-owned companies now invest in Latin America. It is being called the “Reconquista” (Spanish imperialism reconquering Latin America). Spanish companies and banks like energy giants Repsol, Telefónica communications, BBVA, Santander Banks, etc. have now become the biggest European investors in Latin America, and the second largest after the U.S. It is a very profitable market for Spanish imperialist companies. But nationalists like Chávez, Evo Morales of Bolivia, President Correa of Ecuador now threaten these investments making better deals with China, Russia and even India.

That was what really ticked off the King.

Racist Attack in Spain Hallmark of Capitalism

The recent kick in the face and groping of a young Ecuadorean immigrant by a racist thug on a commuter train here revealed the extent of racism in Spain. This racist attack became worldwide news because it was filmed by a train’s videocamera. The young girl (a minor) was so traumatized and fearful that she refused to leave her house and denounce the attack until it became public. But the young punk is out on bail and now claims he was “drunk” and “doesn’t remember a thing.”

Such attacks are not isolated. They occur daily throughout Spain. Local authorities and politicians in some areas openly support these racist gangs. But the biggest racist attack immigrant workers suffer is the super-exploitation of their labor, with miserable wages and in many cases semi-slave-like working conditions.

The union hacks and the official “left” refuse to fight racism but openly collaborate with the bosses’ attacks on the entire working class — selling out strikes and militant actions by rank-and-file workers. This has prevented some young workers from seeing that unity with all workers — not joining racist neo-Nazi gangs — is the only way out of the alienation and misery of capitalism.

Leaders of immigrant workers’ organizations are also partly to blame. They prefer to separate themselves from all workers in Spain in order to get some public crumbs (grants, etc.) from the authorities.
The fragmentation of the working class here is a big problem — strengthened by the division of workers into different regional areas (Basques, Catalonians, Galicians, etc.). The racist and national oppression under capitalism can only be fought with the multi-racial and multi-national unity of Spain’s entire working class. This unity is now more crucial than ever since the subprime and other crises hitting world capitalism (real estate speculation was huge here, as in the U.S., the UK, Ireland, etc.) are causing Spain’s economy to reel.

Racism is a universal aspect of capitalism, from Jena, Louisiana, to Barcelona. We must fight it with an internationalist ideology and anti-racist unity of the working class. That has been the politics PLP and CHALLENGE have fought for since its beginning.