Capitalism Creates the Refugee Catastrophe

The capitalists constantly create the conditions that brutalize the working class and then consistently blame the victims for the very same conditions that capitalism creates. The bosses’ media is blaring about the “migrant crisis” that is affecting Europe now. This is the height of hypocrisy. How many migrants would there be if the US and its allies had not bombed the snot out of Iraq, overthrown Gadhafi in Libya, armed and funded fascists in Syria to fight the fascist regime, or facilitated the war in Yemen? This crisis is primarily the consequences of the inter-imperialist rivalry that has been ongoing since “the end of history” and the rise of a new American century after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Libya has two governments that are both squabbling over billions of dollars in international funds while religious death cult fascists brutalize the working class, with their rage primarily falling upon women and gays. As gay men are thrown off of buildings and young teenage and younger girls are sold into sex slavery or given as prizes to fascist death cultists, the US drops bombs on more and more cities. Turkey has begun a bombing campaign against the only force that was actually stopping the death cultists because they considered them a useful enemy.

A drowned 3 year old boy on a beach has clarified the cost that the working class has been paying for the imperialist’s wars. It is a rich man’s war for oil routes, but it is being paid for with the blood of workers in Syria and Iraq. The false consciousness of religion is being used to create the quasi-national identities that are now dissolving the borders of the post-WWI Sykes-Picot agreement. Workers desperate for a better world or just sick of the degeneration of capitalism’s decay, are now being led to die in a death cult that wants to impose a brutal feudalistic social structure on the whole world.

Russia continues to play chess as the US plays checkers. They have now upped the ante by playing a card from the US’s deck of bringing in more weapons in troops “to fight terrorism.” This causes quite the conundrum for the US and its allies as Russia has more of a legal right to be in Syria than they do since Assad’s brutal regime is technically the legitimate government. Russia is also pointing out the obvious fact that Syria’s army is the only force on the ground actually fighting the Saudi and Turkey backed death cults of al-Qaeda as well ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria). This gigantic cluster fuck of death is the choice that capitalism gives to the working class: the brutal fascists of Assad and Hezbollah or the brutal fascists in the death cults of al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al Nusrah et al and ISIS.

So, what does the working class do – stay and die or flee? If they flee, then they are a catastrophe for the European leaders who want to fling bombs and now worry about the consequences. If they stay, then they are being constantly attacked by one side or the other. The hypocritical racists in Hungary and elsewhere point out that the influx of refugees to their respective nations might change their culture since they are a “Christian Nation”.   The irony that they are turning their back on Christian charity is lost on them. Religion is an effective tool for the ruling class as it consistently gets good people to do horrible things to other people in the name of some deity. Communism will eventually flush religion down the toilet of history.

Workers in the Levant and North Africa need to build the PLP there so that we can have real choice, not between thugs, butchers, dictators, death cults, or the lies of democracy. Watching the re-alignment that is now occurring as Egypt is rebuilding ties with Syria’s embattled Russian aligned regime in order to get help to battle ISIS in the Sinai and Islamic unrest has spread to Tajikistan, Greece may move closer to the Russian sphere of influence, and Turkey is impaled on the horns of a dilemma clearly illustrates the need for communist revolution to ensure that the capitalists are unable to keep brutalizing the working class. What is Israel going to do if they can’t wantonly bomb Syria at their leisure due to Russian interceptors? Russia will not surrender a valuable pipeline transit point that their base at Tartus protects.

Each intensification of the conflict in the Levant keeps sending more and more workers running. Each worker that flees Assad’s barrel bombs, Islamic State’s chemical warfare or brutality, or US bombs is now considered part of a crisis. Each time that national identity is intoned to protect a population in one geographic location from those fleeing another location due to war, famine, or any other violence that can be directly attributed to imperialism, the working class is further divided. Our enemy is not the families fleeing imperialism’s murderous geopolitical machinations; it is the capitalist class. We need to destroy them and all of their borders with communist revolution.

PLP Wraps Up Convention

“When you see a Palestinian Arab and Jewish worker standing side by side while saying that they need to build the Party, the bosses better be scared.” This sentiment from a PLer who spent over 40 years fighting for communism was repeated and illustrated time and time again. Comrades from India and Pakistan, Africa and the Middle East, and North and South America defied the ruler’s artificial borders and got together to celebrate the 50 year anniversary of The Progressive Labor Party’s  inexorable struggle for communism.

With hundreds and hundreds of the working class gathered to teach ourselves how to fight back and to discuss our line as illustrated in “Dark Night Shall Have Its End”, the renewing joy of working class solidarity was the vibe of the day. As our Party continues to grow in country after country, continent after continent, and defy border after border, we know that another world is in birth.

The Party’s organizing in the teeth of fascism in Ferguson was directly compared to organizing in a factory in China. The PLers from China pointed out that the corrupt government controls the unions and organizations that are supposed to help the workers. He went on to say that there are no organizations in China that are on the side of the working class except for PLP. As the PLer from China was discussing how the unions sell out the workers, a PLer from the U.S. pointed out that the unions in the U.S. were also on the side of the bosses and anti-working class. This reaffirmed our line that the we the working class have the same enemy and the same fight.

PLP’s line on the necessity of armed revolution; the need to fight sexism; the struggle against nationalism and racism; the need to build the Party; and the historically unprecedented change to a collective leadership and away from a single chairman was reaffirmed to thunderous applause.

PLP was born in the struggle against revisionism and for communism in a time when it looked like revolution was on the horizon. That horizon is much further away than we thought. What other group born during that era is still around, still growing, still fighting back, and, more importantly, led and organized by a new young generation of leaders steeled in the struggle against capitalism? The simple answer is none. The reason is the principled struggle against revisionism in order to stay firmly rooted on the road to revolution.

Women Continue To Feel the Brunt of Fascism

As the world’s working class continues to feel the brunt of living in the new dark ages if late capitalism, the special oppression of women intensifies. The bombs falling in Gaza do not discriminate. The hundreds of dead children attest to that. The Islamic State just made female genital mutilation (FGM also called female circumcision) mandatory in the territory that they conquered. Obama is getting ready to send back thousands to potential sex work and violence directly or indirectly financially benefiting US capitalism. It is getting more and more clear every day that a mass communist movement led by PLP is needed.

An international communist movement of millions organized and led by the Progressive Labor Party would have seized state power in one area of the world. Like the communist lead USSR’s example in Spain, we would organize hundreds of thousands of volunteers to engage in armed struggle internationally. We would build and organize to build ties with the working class in dangerous areas like Islamic State. We would make sure that those fascists got exactly what they deserved.

Instead, the US may use this latest information to create a basis for their humanitarian imperialist intervention. Islamic State and the sectarian war now raging in Iraq would never have happened without the US invasion of Iraq and destabilization of and support for the jihadist saturated rebels struggling against the butcher Assad. In fact, the US may not even want to challenge Islamic State too much since they are also the enemies of its enemies: Iran’s puppet Iraq’s Prime Minister Malaki, Iran, and Iran’s other proxy, the butcher Assad. The US may be using the threat of and extreme violence of Islamic State as leverage against Malaki and Assad. If Islamic State takes Baghdad and begins to seriously threaten Saudi Arabia, then the US might intervene immediately, but, right now, it is only the working class, primarily women, suffering under extreme violence. Either way, PLP would not play politics, but, instead, organize to smash the special oppression of women and the religious ideology that fuels it by replacing it with a dialectical materialist outlook that shows a future where the needs of all are met by all and the working class will be the human race.

In Gaza, instead of Hamas’ rotten Islamist ideology whose logical outcome is seen in organizations such as Islamic State, we would fight sexism and seek to unify the working class against all of the bosses’ rotten ideology. The role of nationalism is that it attacks both the Palestinian and Israeli workers who don’t see each other as human, but as Israelis or Palestinians. Both of these nationalist ideologies blur the class nature of the conflict and makes the working class think they have more in common with their respective ruling classes than with their fellow workers. Netanyahu has no problem sending working class youth to murder other workers in Gaza from the safety of his post. Hamas has no problem burying their tunnels under homes of workers that will be targeted by the IDF. Again, PLP in Israel organizes against both Palestinian and Israeli nationalism. We do not support national liberation, oppressed nationalism, or lesser evils like Hamas. We know the answer to the national question: death for workers and reversal of all gains after the struggle for national liberation and the consolidation of power by the local bourgeoisie.

The same racism that allows bombs to fall in Gaza and for Obama to deport millions is the same that allows the racist pigs in the NYPD to murder black workers. The same sexism that allows for pornography to be a multi-billion dollar a year industry, countries to function as locations for sex tourism, and for women to be raped in India with impunity is, in content and essence, the same special oppression of women that Islamic State uses to justify their brutal mutilation of female genitalia. Only a communist revolution led by PLP for the total transformation of the economic base and cultural superstructure can end these rotten ideologies once and for all.

The Working Class in Egypt Rises Up!

The Progressive Labor Party applauds the workers in Egypt who are rising up again by the millions to overthrow the Islamist government that is now in power.  Though it is inspiring to see millions of people in the streets and battling against the forces of religious superstition dominating a state, they are not fighting for an ultimate solution to the economic issues that they are complaining about.  Only a Communist society organized to meet the needs of the working class can meet the demands of the millions of workers that have taken to the streets.  They are protesting on the anniversary of the last wave of protests just two short years ago.  We were right then and we will be right now – without a Communist Party dedicated to seizing state power and extending the demands of the working class in order to transform society into a Communist economic system, there can be no revolution.

 

Though it is inspiring seeing the wave of religious fundamentalism getting beaten back by the masses and Muslim Brotherhood offices get firebombed, attacked, and the rabid sexists being put on the defensive, it isn’t enough to end all forms of false consciousness.  The liberalism and the phony left in Egypt are descendants of Nasser and many of them see the army as a neutral tool or, even worse, as the defender of the secular state.  The army in Egypt, like all the bosses’ armies, is a tool of class domination to be used against the working class in order to maintain the rule of the few over the great masses of workers.

 

The campaign is called “Tamarod” which is Arabic for “Rebellion”.  It is a rebellion against the rule of Mursi and his feudal aspirations for Islamist rule as a well as a venting of frustrations against the desperate economic situation that many of the workers in Egypt are finding themselves.   This desperate economic situation is rooted in capitalism and the worldwide inter-imperialist rivalry as the world’s super-capitalists are fighting tooth and nail to re-divide the world’s wealth, resources, and human capital (hyper-exploitable workers in places like Bangladesh and Indonesia).  The reform movement’s leaders have asked all groups to leave their flags and slogans at home and only march under Egyptian flags.  This is a wash of nationalism that is hobbling any potential threat to the capitalist class’ rule.

 

The fact is that the dictatorship of capital is not being threatened.  The last Arab Spring knocked off a dictator, Mubarak, and put in a dictatorship that ruled from behind the scenes like a parallel to Oz’s Wizard.  Now, the army has declared its intent to rule and has served Mursi notice that he needs to step down.  The capitalist backers of Mursi are not willing to go gently into that dark night. 

 

There is also a danger to women in the protests, as there seem to be packs of men who are attacking female protesters.  There are many men in the crowd who have organized themselves as a security against these attacks.  It is important that sexist attacks like these are smashed with the full might of the working class.  It is bad enough that the protests are already saturated with nationalism and reformist politics, but to be divided by sexist violence against women protesters is something that must never be tolerated. 

PLP stands in solidarity with those who are protesting in the streets of Egypt while also criticizing their reformist essence.  We know that the state must be smashed and a new society built on Communist principles in order for a true change to take hold.  The workers in Egypt desire Communism, even if they are not fully conscious of it yet; as the PLP grows and the capitalist crisis deepens, more of them will eventually see the need for Communist revolution. 

Uprisings in Turkey, Cambodia, Germany, and South Africa

Uprisings in Turkey, Cambodia, Germany, and South Africa

Workers in Cambodia, Turkey, Germany, and South Africa are rising up in rebellion against imperialism’s economic crisis. Thousands of striking workers in Cambodia confronted scabs, soldiers, pigs, and the organized force of the state as they wielded sticks and stones to smash the Nike factory that exploits them. The protesters in Turkey are fighting against the reactionary Islamist tinged government that is meddling in their private lives by now making public displays of affection illegal. The Blockupy movement continues to rage against the ECB and either the pigs or the Yellow Union’s thugs in South Africa murdered another miner.

The rise in protests around the world should inspire workers to know that they can fight back. These struggles are challenging the state, but they are not a challenge for state power.

The Prime Minister, Erdogan, in Turkey is a self-righteous twit who made the absurd statement that anybody who drinks alcohol is an alcoholic.   Like all religious ideologues that are saturated with superstitious ideology, Erdogan is hopelessly disconnected from material reality and thinks the absurd is real.   Communist Dialectical Materialism is the antidote to all forms of religious ideology as religion is little more than organized ignorance in the interests of the ruling class.  We must keep in mind though, that the extreme gutter sexism an Islamic fundamentalist society is trying to creep into place will not be defeated by the everyday liberal sexism under the bourgeoisie.

You know things are getting bad in Turkey when Syria is saying that it’s a dangerous place…

Progressive Labor Party salutes the Brave workers and students who are standing up to the state apparatus in Turkey and helping to topple The Islamic ruling class’ ruling party, the AK Party or AKP.  The fact that demonstrations are raging in over 40 cities in Turkey as a response to the brutal crackdown by the police is truly inspiring. 

PLP stands applauds the rebels who have challenged the building of a barracks and a mosque in a Taksim Square as a symbolic gesture against a place where protests have historically gathered.  PLP applauds the workers who are striking against the state in solidarity with the protesters.  PLP knows that the workers and students rebelling against the state need Communist Revolution.  Friends in the Middle East and Turkey should take full advantage of the situation to build PLP.       

Capitalism is worried about its own future

There have been several articles within the bosses’ intellectual rags over the past few weeks showing concern for capitalism. This concern continues with FA’s current issue discussing capitalism’s growing inequality.

Inequality is indeed increasing almost everywhere in the postindustrial capitalist world. But despite what many on the left think, this is not the result of politics, nor is politics likely to reverse it, for the problem is more deeply rooted and intractable than generally recognized. Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and expanding equality of opportunity only increases it — because some individuals and communities are simply better able than others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that capitalism affords. Despite what many on the right think, however, this is a problem for everybody, not just those who are doing poorly or those who are ideologically committed to egalitarianism — because if left unaddressed, rising inequality and economic insecurity can erode social order and generate a populist backlash against the capitalist system at large.

It is telling that the US ruling class fears for their system even though there is no Communist Party led working class ready to challenge them for state power. The bosses fear the fact that the growing inequality that benefits their class will create the animosity in the working class that will eventually lead to uprisings and their demise. They have a good reason to fear, because it is only the lack of a mass international communist movement that is keeping them in power.

The bosses will do their best to infiltrate and divide the Communist movement that they know will oppose them. They will use lies like calling us racist for opposing Black Nationalism or sexist for rejecting identity politics and feminism. They are desperate and will push any lie they can as a mass disinformation campaign to discredit their enemy — the Communist Progressive Labor Party!

Only a communist party with the correct line, immersed in the masses, dedicated to building Communism before, during, and after the revolution, and organizing for the armed struggle can challenge the capitalists for state power and the world.

It wasn’t long ago, historically speaking, that Red led armies defeated the most powerful armies the capitalist class could muster, that guerilla fighters led by moral incentives, not material incentives, challenges and defeated “invincible” armies in South America and Asia. PLP is building a brand new international Communist movement. The bosses know that our movement is their doom.

The PLP will continue to struggle to smash sexism and racism, to bury capitalism, and to sweep systemic inequality into the dustbin of history once and for all. We will make sure that they continue to fear a communist revolution, because they are right to fear us. We are their doom.

Capitalism is so broken it can’t be fixed

Capitalism is so broken it can’t be fixed is the headline from The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch.  The bosses’ pundit Paul B. Farrell, no friend of Communism, is pointing out that nothing that the bosses are currently trying to do can solve the broken system of capitalism.  He even points out that the inter-imperialist rivalry that PLP has correctly pointed out as the primary contradiction determining world events is an important determinant.  He points out that what Marx called the tendency for the capitalists to hoard their capital as they search for maximum profitability is also a major facet of broken capitalism.  The capitalists hoard their “capital” that  “sits unused on the balance sheets of corporations, and languishes inert in private equity funds.”’ because they use it to speculate, generating Abstract and Fictitious Capital to generate their profit returns as opposed to investing it in infrastructure and other elements of Concrete Capital that are actually needed to support their place as the world’s hegemon.  In other words, the US bourgeoisie use their money to make money not the roads, rails, and factories that are needed to make actual products and preserve their level of production.  This tendency of capital is mitigated by attacking the working class to extract more profit and, as Lenin pointed out in Imperialism, exporting capital to other undeveloped areas of the globe in order to produce at the highest profit possible.  The problem of exporting capital is that other capitalists in other countries want to do this as well.

 

The ruling class has to protect their economic investment, and they use the working class to fight their wars.  The workers who have been part of the economic draft to become US soldiers are now having Moral Injuries that tear their psyches apart.  They have nightmares and have trouble living with themselves because of the atrocities that they do for the sake of profit based on the timeworn lies of god and country. “ A moral injury tortures the conscience; symptoms include deep shame, guilt and rage. It’s not a medical problem, and it’s unclear how to treat it, says retired Col. Elspeth Ritchie, former psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general.”

Ritchie’s comments echo the torturers in Franz Fanon’s Wretched Of The Earth who felt uncomfortable psychological trauma from brutalizing the guerillas and didn’t want to stop torturing and killing, but wanted their psyches to be healed nonetheless.  The way to treat these nightmares is to stop these imperialist oil and resource wars and begin a rectification campaign where the US imperialists and the soldiers who killed on their behalf apologize and rebuild.  This will never ever happen under capitalism.  Only a Communist revolution can begin the healing process and rectification necessary for those who are guilty of the most brutal crimes against humanity in the name of profit can heal themselves. 

 

So while the working class soldiers live with guilt, the professional mercenary scum in Blackwater get all of their charges completely dropped.  Poof.  Vanished. It cost them a few million, made some rich people a bit richer, and reaffirmed that the US needs their thugs to kill kill kill!  The war on the black and Hispanic working class under the veneer of the war on drugs continues unabated with felonies handed out like party favors, yet when the thugs who murder and kill for the bosses get tried in their courts, the capitalists use their courts to preserve their power.

 

Meanwhile, in the Syrian arena, the Free Syrian Army, stooges of US Imperialism, have begun to bomb Hezbollah, stooges of Russian and Chinese imperialism and Iranian hegemony, in Beirut and Lebanon. The escalation of this war threatens the stability of the whole Levant, yet the US looks on with delight as they can get profitable pipelines and check their rivals.  The “Arab Spring” has turned into the Winter of Jihadism and reaction as Islamic Parties and other reactionary groups have filled the power vacuum that deposing dictators creates.  Without a Communist Party ready to seize state power and begin the revolutionary transformation of society under the dictatorship of the working class, there can be no fundamental systemic change.  Capitalism is fundamentally broken when it comes to meeting the needs of the working class.  It needs to go. 

 

The working class is trapped in the prison of false consciousness.  For example, thousands of workers in Bangladesh are fighting for false consciousness as they attack the police and rally in defense of Islam.  They are angry at “atheist blogs”.  This reactionary rally is a tragedy for the working class as religion is a weapon that the ruling class uses to divide the working class and get us to pay attention to the next world instead of this one.  The working class is divided by race, class, gender, and cultural structures such as religion – Christian vs Jew, Sunni vs Shiite, Muslim vs Hindu, etc.  The list goes on and on and on.  Communism is needed to wash away all of the social constructs that act as the bars in the prison of false consciousness that we live in.  The friends of PLP in Bangladesh will continue to struggle against the violent reactionaries and continue to organize for a revolution that will end the ability for religious leaders to command thousands of workers to kill. 

 

The fact that Capitalism is broken is inaccurate though.  Capitalism is working fine.  It is making the wealthy wealthier, concentrating power in fewer and fewer hands, facilitating the growth of fascism as the bosses need to prevent their power from flowing out of their hands and into the hands of their rivals.  Capitalism works for the capitalists.  They can maintain their state power through any natural or economic disaster.  Capitalism is a resilient system with only one fatal weakness – Communist revolution.  A Communist Party of millions, armed with Red ideas, Dialectics, and the determination to wipe capitalism off of the world once and for all is the only that thing that will break capitalism.  Capitalism will not end because of some massive crisis.  No, only we, the working class under the leadership of PLP, can end it.      

 

 

 

 

 

Communism is needed to Smash the Sexist Assaults on Women in India and all over the World

All of the people that are outraged that the woman that was gang raped, tossed off of the bus, and then left for dead, has died need to join PLP in order to destroy sexism and the brutality that it engenders once and for all.  The last blog written condemned the Communist movement in India for not going far enough and channeling the rage of the working class into narrow reformist avenues of discontent instead of the road of revolution.  Exactly what would a revolutionary Communist Party, like PLP, have done had they had the mass base of the CPI and the rest of the Red Indian alphabet soup Communist left?

With hundreds of thousands of members in the student unions and trade unions already marching on the center of parliament, we would have struggled to arm them while simultaneously marching directly on the police station where the men who did the raping were being held.  We would have held a public working class tribunal where they would have been tried and punished as the working class saw fit.  We would have not sent condolences on Christmas Day to any pigs who got blasted by the working class, like the CPI had the audacity to do.    The Central Secretariat of the Communist Party of India sends its deep condolences to the family of the police constable, Tomar, who died in hospital after the police clash with protestors. It is an unfortunate incident. While CPI condemns the violence, but feels that the police could have shown more restraint.   We would have pushed the correct understanding that armed struggle is necessary in order to defeat capitalism.  We would have pointed out that this struggle isn’t about showing the poverty of one government or another, but that this is a consequence of the ideology of sexism – an ideology that capitalism needs in order to preserve its stranglehold on the world. 

 A young 19 year old attacked a police officer attempting to arrest him for jumping the turnstile. The young man’s crime of not having enough money to lay the ever increasing fare justified the pig who got a big old case of what’s what when the young man slammed him and started choking him.

 Random acts against the state’s constant dispossession and oppression of the working class will not stop capitalism in and of themselves, but they do inspire the working class to resist the state.

 The bourgeois media is trying to tie this crime into the hate crime of a woman who bought the bosses’ anti-South-East Asian racism hook line and sinker. She said she hated all Muslims and Hindus due to the terrorist attack over ten years ago on September 11, 2001, that the US capitalist class has been using as Reichtag-esque call to arms ever since. 

 A young man hospitalizing a kkkkop who was trying to arrest him for the crime of being poor and working class is not the same as the racist hate crime. This attack will hopefully make more kkkops afraid to harass our youth so that they can continue to perpetuate their New Jim Crow.

 PLP is a revolutionary Communist Party because it does a lot more than just talk a good game.  Whenever there is a way to expand the limits of the struggle past what the limits of what the capitalist state permits, PL does so.  The massive Communist movements in India, like the revisionists all over the world, are betraying the Red Flag and the working class that still holds it high and believes in fighting for an egalitarian society. 

 

The tragedy of the woman dying after being gang raped has been repeated how many times since her attack, as every 22 minutes a woman is raped in India?  The need to struggle against sexism is at the forefront of the revolutionary struggle for Communism. 

The Class Struggle Rages Everywhere

The class struggle rages everywhere, intensifying seemingly every minute.  Students and teachers are joining forces and are on strike in Quebec, while the indignados in Spain, march in the streets.  The hundreds of thousands of Greek workers who are saying no to preserving the profit system at the expense of the social safety nets their blood paid for are saying no through voting lesser evil bosses who wave a red flag of leftism to hide their own particular flavor of sell out.

The world’s workers rage on against the onslaught of growing fascism and imperialist world, yet where is the revolution?  Where are the Communist uprisings in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, or Pakistan?  Where are the Red insurgencies struggling to build an egalitarian vision?  Where is the Communist revolution that will free our class once and for all from the parasitical despots that keep sucking our blood to engorge themselves like the fat insatiable leeches that they are?  The answer is “in gestation”.  The Naxalites, Shining Path, PKK, and any other of the darlings of the Maoist Left will just lead the into a new cell within the prison of capitalism.

The Progressive Labor Party is that revolution in the utero of the class struggle.  We know that class struggle in and of itself will never lead to Communist revolution, as Lenin said, “Without the Party, there can be no revolution”.  We are the best hope of the world.  Without a world based on Communism, the uprisings of last spring will lead into the Emirate being built and cultivated by the US and NATO in Benghazi, a dictatorship without a dictator in Egypt, civil war where Imperialists use Syrian workers to kill Syrian workers based upon the false consciousness of religion.

The contradictions of the class struggle are beginning to intensify.  There has never been a better time to be a Communist than now.  The world’s bosses have proven time and again that they have no answers to the recurring crisis of capitalism, but only Communist revolution can end the cycle once and for all.   Join PLP and help to end racism, sexism, nationalism, and all of the disgusting ideologies that capitalism fosters to preserve itself.

MAY DAY!!! Fight For Communism!

May Day’s Communist Roots Belie Rulers’ Reform Sham

Wednesday, April 25, 2012 at 11:56AM

May Day has always had two sides to it: one that demands reforms, and the revolutionary side that organizes to destroy capitalism. May Day commemorates a massive strike wave in the U.S., and the particular battle in Chicago’s Haymarket Square in 1886. The movement’s leaders demanded an 8-hour day, but also advocated the “abolition of the wage system.” Six of them were hung by the rulers for their allegiance to the working class and defiance of capitalism. Then and now the capitalists feared this revolutionary side to May Day.

In 1848, Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, “A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.” By 1886, the rulers of Chicago saw this specter. “The newspapers and industrialists were increasingly declaring that May 1, 1886 was in reality the date for a Communist working-class insurrection modeled on the Paris Commune. According to Melville E. Stone, Head of the Chicago Daily News…a ‘repetition of the Paris Communal riots was freely predicted’ for May 1, 1886” (Page 90, “Labor’s Untold Story,” Boyer and Morais).

In December 1886, San Francisco transit workers joined this rising strike wave. They demanded a workday reduction from 13-15 hours to 12 hours (then 7 days a week), and for a pay increase from $2.25 to $2.50 a day. “Strike-breakers were hired, and there was a great deal of violence. Cars were damaged, strike-breakers were beaten, and one person was killed.” Newspapers reported eight instances of the use of dynamite by the striking workers. In March 1887, the Governor signed a bill “limiting gripmen, drivers, and conductors to a 12-hour day.” (“Transit In San Francisco” published by SF MUNI RR Communications Department.)

In the 1880’s the early leaders of the American Federation of Labor were somewhat radical — it was actually an AFL delegate’s report to the Marxist-led International Workingmen’s Association that led to the call for the first May Day.

But by the 1920’s the pro-capitalist AFL leadership, fearing the growth of communist ideas in the working class, collaborated with the U.S. government to subvert May Day. At the 1928 AFL Convention, the Executive Council supported a Congressional resolution to make May 1 “Child Health Day.” They said, “May 1 will no longer be known as either strike day or communist labor day.”

The revolutionary side of May Day dominated when the communist movement was strong. During the peak of the communist organizing of the CIO’s industrial unions in the 1930’s and ‘40s, May Day was celebrated in the U.S. As many as 250,000 would march to New York’s Union Square. However, with the advent of the Cold War, and U.S. imperialism’s launching of a worldwide anti-communist offensive, the bosses’ government in Washington helped oust communists from union leadership by making it illegal for them to hold union office. With the triumph of business unionism and anti-communism, organized labor discarded May Day and recognized Labor Day in September.

However, in 1971 PLP resurrected the annual May Day march from its abandonment by the old U.S. Communist Party. PLP has marched in many cities every year since.

From the Haymarket battle in 1886, revolutionary workers spread May Day around the globe. But history is written by the conquerors, and many workers born here know nothing of the contribution that the U.S. working class, with the support of the international working class and communist movement, made to the development of this revolutionary holiday. Today May Day is the official Labor Day in most countries, but the leadership of these marches demand reforms, and stress the “common goals” of labor and capital.

PLP has learned from the triumphs of the communist movement in the USSR and China, and from their failure to fight directly for communism. We advocate “Abolish the Wage System” as part of changing the relationship of workers and work in a new communist society.

The abolition of money, of production for sale and profit and of the wage system is absolutely necessary to establish communism. When the international working class wins and holds control over all economic, political and cultural institutions of society, it will unleash a creative power that will propel the human race to its highest accomplishments in all fields of endeavor. We call this the dictatorship of the proletariat. We need a mass revolutionary communist party to achieve this. The capitalists will use every means — including mass, fascist terror and war — to prevent it.

For the last several years some groups now want to “Reclaim May Day.” They want to reform the “evils” of capitalism, but disconnect May Day from its communist roots. PLP seeks to keep May Day as a revolutionary international working-class holiday; to advance and popularize communist production for need as the future of the human race; to develop a strong and healthy class hatred that will destroy wage slavery and fascism everywhere.

Long live the 1st of May, the revolutionary, international, working class holiday! Fight for communism!

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