May Day Challenges Mexican Bosses’ Attacks
Thursday, May 23, 2013 at 11:14AM
Contributor

MEXICO, May 22 —The labor and educational reforms, approved at the beginning of President Peña Nieto’s sixth term, legalized layoffs, wage cuts, the elimination of pensions and social security. Just like that, in one single stroke, and with the backing of state violence, the capitalists destroy our lives to solve their crisis.
The recently approved telecommunications reform and the upcoming energy reform concentrate even more wealth in the hands of the mostly Mexican and U.S. billionaires.
All these changes only benefit the capitalist class, further reduce the cost of labor, and help turn education into another business. These events demonstrate that capitalist laws serve the class in power against the oppressed and exploited class.
One Class, One Party
To eliminate the root cause of all exploitation and oppression, we workers need to take power into our own hands and organize the whole society under the principle of “from each according to their commitment and to each according to their needs.”
We need a society of social equality, communism. To achieve it we organize ourselves as a party, PLP. Our Party will unite the working class from around the world. We do not participate in elections because the bosses will never concede power peacefully. Organized into a revolutionary party, millions of workers, students, unemployed and soldiers could wrest the power from our exploiters through an armed insurrection.
War on the Horizon
To survive the current crisis of their system, the bosses attack the living conditions of the working class.
Competition between an important sector of the Mexican ruling class allied with the U.S., against the Chinese bosses, has led to cuts in wages and services of workers in Mexico, as well as to an increase in the length and intensity of the work-day.
Recent changes legalized these working conditions. The attack against workers has benefited a group of bosses in Mexico who in the last decade have regained market shares in the U.S. But the worst is yet to come. The rivalry between the U.S. and China for control of global resources, markets and cheap labor is getting sharper every day. It will probably be resolved through a worldwide war. The bosses will try to use workers as cannon fodder to fight in their war.
Workers in Mexico cannot remain distant from the confrontation; Mexico shares a border with the U.S. and is one of its most important suppliers of oil, labor, food, and other resources. Thousands of migrant workers, lured by the promise of getting U.S. citizenship, will be forced to fight. We must organize and unite across borders to confront imperialist war with revolutionary class war.
We have the opportunity to turn the guns around against the bosses instead of using them against our class brothers. That’s the importance of an international party and this is the meaning of May Day: we must realize our power as the working class who produces all the wealth in the world. The history of May Day and the revolutions of the 20th century demonstrate the potential of our class to fight for a communist world. Workers of the world, unite!
Nationalism, A Deadly Trap
The last decade has seen the largest mining of oil and minerals than any other period in history. In addition, the price of oil, gold and silver has been rising. These sales have produced billions in profits.
During the same period poverty has increased and working conditions have worsened, while the wealth and the number of billionaires has increased. This demonstrates the falsehood that oil in the hands of the state benefits all Mexicans.
As long as there is capitalism it doesn’t matter which bosses’ hands hold the oil or electricity. Nationalism will only benefit those Mexican bosses who want to own PEMEX (state-controlled oil company) or CFE (Federal Electricity commission).  But it won’t help the working class. Only in a society governed by the workers, will wealth be used for the benefit of those who produce it.
To take control of the energy wealth, the bosses will use state violence, fascism, which along with racism, nationalism and sexism, are capitalism’s ideological weapons to divide and weaken workers’ struggles. Historically, it’s been shown that only communism can defeat fascism. Join us!

Article originally appeared on The Revolutionary Communist Progressive Labor Party (http://www.plparchive.org/).
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