DETROIT, June 22 — The U.S. Social Forum (USSF) attracted about 15,000 activists of all backgrounds to Detroit, a city where the capitalist economic crisis has left the majority black population devastated by racist unemployment, lack of health care and poverty. The Forum’s theme, “Another world is possible, another U.S. is necessary” expressed the hopes, dreams and passions of the thousands that attended. However, after all the rhetoric of revolution, U.S. imperialism, and capitalism, the Forum failed to offer the only real solution of how to achieve this other world, by organizing for communist revolution to abolish the profit system.
There was no real struggle over ideas. Electoral politics, passing legislation, and developing “progressive”caucuses in the unions was still the order of the day. In a workshop on the rebuilding of Haiti, the panel proposed that the fight all progressive groups should support is the return of Aristede back into power. There was also a contingent of students from Puerto Rico who led a workshop on their successful worker-student alliance to stop tuition hikes at the State Colleges. Their solution is to annex Puerto Rico from the colonial claws of the United States and institute self-rule, to have Puerto Rican bosses rather than U.S. bosses.
Capitalism’s world economic crisis has fueled the anger and the urgency that many expressed in the youth, education and healthcare workshops. Progressive Labor Party comrades and friends focused on these workshops, bringing up the devastation racist unemployment has on our class. Our intention was to get the USSF to propose a march in Washington, D.C. against racist unemployment in October. Limited by our size and our involvement in the mass organization, we were not able to do that.
However, when we were able to participate in workshops where we knew people involved in areas where we were from, we succeeded in making new contacts, deepened ties with people that we knew, and got our literature into the hands of thousands who had never before read “Road to Revolution IV” and CHALLENGE.
Our participation in mass organizations is, and has been, the key to how we should be organizing workers, students and soldiers to the movement for communist revolution and against the racist system we live in. Building an egalitarian society based on from each according to commitment, to each according to need is powerful.
We are united as a CLASS, not as nations, countries, “races,” or ethnicities. We can build a better world where money and profit will not exist. A communist world is possible and it is still the only solution to imperialist war, fascism and inequality. Join PLP and build the fight for communist equality!