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OUR FIGHT

 

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fights to destroy capitalism and the dictatorship of the capitalist class. We organize workers, soldiers and youth into a revolutionary movement for communism.

Only the dictatorship of the working class — communism — can provide a lasting solution to the disaster that is today’s world for billions of people. This cannot be done through electoral politics, but requires a revolutionary movement and a mass Red Army led by PLP.

Worldwide capitalism, in its relentless drive for profit, inevitably leads to war, fascism, poverty, disease, starvation and environmental destruction. The capitalist class, through its state power — governments, armies, police, schools and culture —  maintains a dictatorship over the world’s workers. The capitalist dictatorship supports, and is supported by, the anti-working-class ideologies of racism, sexism, nationalism, individualism and religion.

While the bosses and their mouthpieces claim “communism is dead,” capitalism is the real failure for billions worldwide. Capitalism returned to Russia and China because socialism retained many aspects of the profit system, like wages and privileges. Russia and China did not establish communism.

Communism means working collectively to build a worker-run society. We will abolish work for wages, money and profits. Everyone will share in society’s benefits and burdens. 

Communism means abolishing racism and the concept of “race.” Capitalism uses racism to super-exploit black, Latino, Asian and indigenous workers, and to divide the entire working class.

Communism means abolishing the special oppression of women — sexism — and divisive gender roles created by the class society.

Communism means abolishing nations and nationalism. One international working class, one world, one Party.

Communism means that the minds of millions of workers must become free from religion’s false promises, unscientific thinking and poisonous ideology. Communism will triumph when the masses of workers can use the science of dialectical materialism to understand, analyze and change the world to meet their needs and aspirations.

  Communism means the Party leads every aspect of society. For this to work, millions of workers — eventually everyone — must become communist organizers. Join Us!

 

 

 

 

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Thursday
Sep082011

Workers, Students Invade LA Supermarket to Back Potential Strikers

EAST LOS ANGELES, September 2 — Recently a group of workers and students marched through a supermarket here to support workers fighting company demands to pay for healthcare costs by cutting wages. Nearly 90% of workers voting rejected the latest contract offered by three supermarkets: Ralphs (Kroger), Albertsons (SuperValu) and Vons (Safeway). For the second time in the last six months, workers authorized the union, the United Food Service Workers (UFCW), to strike.

Over the last six weeks, PLP members, working with friends who participate in Community Education for Social Action (CESA) have “adopted” a supermarket here. They’ve built relationships with workers and members of the surrounding community, including students from the nearby Cal State Los Angeles University and East LA community college. We’re aiming to build revolutionary class-consciousness among workers and community residents, as well as among students participating in these actions.

Last Friday, a delegation of 20 students, workers, and community residents entered the store with picket signs and chants, calling for an end to spending on imperialist war instead of on healthcare and jobs, and encouraging worker-student solidarity in the struggle against the supermarkets.

We wanted to disrupt the store’s regular operation, to call customers’ attention to the supermarket workers’ struggle and to show how we’re organizing support for their fight. Delegates brought signed petitions from the Cal State LA campus and CESA to present to the store manager.

The delegation had marched halfway through the store when the manager asked us to stop chanting and leave the store or he’d call the cops. A group leader accused the supermarkets of exploiting their workers and asked the manager what he was doing to stop it. He said we should do what the union leaders did a few weeks ago: contact our local council member and organize a “peaceful” press conference for the media.

During this confrontation, store workers thanked us for our support, giving signs of approval. The delegation finished marching across the store and continued to distribute flyers outside.

Twice authorizing a strike, the workers have sent a clear message that they’re ready to act. However, the UFCW’s leadership has offered no real plan on confronting the supermarkets, only agreeing to once again “sit down with a federal mediator to continue negotiations.”

Amid the current crisis of world capitalism, U.S. bosses are attempting to “resolve” it by attacking the working class with continued mass racist unemployment and wage cuts. The UFCW leadership’s business-as-usual attitude has proven disastrous for workers (see Verizon strike, CHALLENGE, 9/7), yet another example of union leaders’ complicity with the U.S. ruling class.

The rulers’ racism is evident in the fact that large numbers of supermarket workers are exploited immigrants. Furthermore, the attack on the workers’ healthcare is part of a broad ruling-class assault on healthcare workers (see Peninsula Hospital, page 3; Chicago’s Cook County hospital system, this page).

Prior to our march through the store, we had visited it several times, making contacts with workers who now recognize and welcome us. They tell us the union leadership fails to keep them informed. In fact, a few times they have asked if we knew the status of union-company negotiations.

We’ve also had a positive response from neighborhood customers. A retired meatpacking worker said he was glad to see us because he remembers when he had dealt with his company’s attacks. He learned then the importance of building working-class solidarity in these struggles.

In addition to these actions, we’ve tried to combine theory and practice by organizing a study group on communist political economy (see article this page) and a forum on the global crisis of capitalism. We invited some of the workers we met who showed interest in participating to attend this forum.

We plan to return to this store, even if a strike does not occur, as well as organize walks in the surrounding community to talk with residents about this struggle. PLP will continue to organize regular forums and study groups. Our goal is to win supermarket workers to participate, developing deeper conversations on the nature of capitalism and the need for revolutionary communism.

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