Working-class outrage is mounting as the cops murder more and more Black workers. But U.S. rulers and their figureheads — from Barack Obama to Al Sharpton — are frantically trying to divert this anger away from its just target: the profit system. While racist violence hits Black workers hardest, it harms our entire class. State-sanctioned terror has propped up capitalism since the days of the slave trade. The super-exploitation of non-white workers nets the bosses super-profits (see box) and enables them to lower wages and living standards for all.
A recent editorial in the New York Times, the rulers’ leading mouthpiece, warned of the threat posed by the latest wave of anti-cop protests: “It shows once again that distrust of law enforcement presents a grave danger to the civic fabric of the United States” (11/25/14). Black rebels in Ferguson and all the Fergusons to come can give leadership to workers throughout the U.S., including the two million troops in the U.S. military. They can also inspire workers to resist racism and imperialism worldwide.  
The only future capitalism holds for the working class, and especially for Black youth, is imperialist war, unemployment, poverty, sexism and racist killings. Capitalists use the anti-scientific concept of “racial differences” to divide us and weaken our potential for fighting back. Only communism offers a solution to the hell of the profit system. Only a communist society can serve the needs of our class by eliminating the bosses who exploit us and reap profits from our labor. That communist-led workers’ society is what Progressive Labor Party is fighting for.
In the wake of the police executions of Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, the remedies pushed by the capitalist media and public officials ring hollow. Class enemies like Obama and long-time FBI informant Sharpton are calling for federal investigations. Yet the U.S. Justice Department invoked by these stooges is just one more part of the bosses’ state apparatus.
Sharpton and his liberal cronies want a “national conversation” between the police and working-class communities. But our class has nothing to discuss with these criminal oppressors; our class interests can be served only by eliminating them.
Police Role: Protect Bosses’ Profits
The police can never be reformed, despite the promises of liberal New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and his handpicked police commissioner, William Bratton. Whether Black, Latin, Asian or white, cops perform an essential job for the capitalists. They enforce the bosses’ profit system by breaking strikes and putting down workers’ rebellions. Wielding street-level terror as their chief weapon, the police are an integral part of the rulers’ state power.
Bratton’s racist “broken windows” policy — the dubious theory that cracking down on trivial infractions reduces major crime — has led to hundreds of thousands of arrests and jailings of working people, disproportionately Black and Latin. Meanwhile, a renewed emphasis on “community policing” induces workers to become neighborhood snitches. Both policies contribute to the bosses’ sharpening attacks on our class.
Cops are the front lines for racist mass incarceration — a campaign that began in the 1980s, when the capitalists could no longer buy workers’ passivity with the hope of a factory job. As imperialist competition has intensified, U.S. rulers now have more than seven million workers in prison, on probation or on parole (pewtrusts.org). There are more than twice as many Black men now trapped in the criminal justice system as there were male slaves in the U.S. in 1850 (Providence Journal PolitiFact.com, 12/7/14). Virtually every criminal case begins with the cops, who clearly target Black workers. “Young black males…were at a far greater risk — 21 times greater — of being shot dead than young white men” (New York Times, 11/28/14).
The mindset of an individual cop is irrelevant; the class role they serve is. Therefore, Bratton’s planned three-day police “retraining” cannot change the racism displayed by killer cop Daniel Pantaleo. He ignored Garner’s repeated cries of “I can’t breathe.” Nor will it alter the racism of cop Peter Liang. “While Akai Gurley was dying in a darkened stairwell at a Brooklyn housing development, the cop who fired the fatal bullet was texting his union representative .... instead of calling for help” (New York Daily News, 12/5/14).
This is standard cop procedure in a period of capitalism in crisis. Since 1999, an era of dramatically falling crime throughout the U.S., “justifiable homicides” by police have steadily climbed. In 1991, there were 1.92 of these killings by cops for every 10,000 violent crimes; by 2011, there were 3.35 (Washington Post, 8/15/14).
‘White Privilege,’ Another Capitalist Myth
Another ruling-class idea, in vogue again in the aftermath of Ferguson, is the misguided notion of “white privilege.” Designed to splinter the working class, it claims that white workers cannot possibly unite with Black workers because their “experience” is so different. In reality, our experiences tie us together; racism against Black workers sets up white workers for attack. A case in point: in the 1980s, after sellout trade union misleaders accepted the layoffs of tens of thousands of Black auto workers, hundreds of thousands of white auto workers were laid off as well. Since then, as the auto bosses continue to tighten the screws to maintain their profits, the pro-boss union leaders have jammed through two-tier wage systems. The result: both white and Black workers are now being hired at half the previously won wage rates. While white workers generally still are paid more than Black workers, income is falling for all workers. Regardless of what deck you’re on, a sinking capitalist ship drowns everyone on board.
Multiracial Unity Socked the Bosses
Though you won’t read about it in the New York Times, there is a long and proud history of multiracial labor unity in the U.S. In the 1930s and 1940s, in basic industries like auto, steel, and electrical, Black and white workers stood as one under communist leadership. Their solidarity and militancy forced the bosses to accept unionization, the 40-hour workweek, regular wage hikes, unemployment insurance and Social Security.
As the streets of Ferguson and New York attest, there is a growing militant, multiracial response to the cops’ atrocities. Pouring out in 170 cities, white and Black workers are uniting around our common class interests each day. Progressive Labor Party is actively participating in this movement, and leading chants and slogans that expose the class nature of racism.
In relying on their cops’ racist butchery to terrorize the working class, the capitalists may have exposed their Achilles’ heel. Their imperialist war machine counts on the loyalty of the most persecuted workers. According to the Pentagon’s latest (2012) demographic report, 22 percent of Army enlisted personnel are “black African-American.” Mass mutinies led by Black soldiers and sailors significantly hindered U.S. rulers’ genocidal efforts in Vietnam. As the bosses gear up for a bigger war in the Middle East, their dilemma is sharper than ever.
Build A Mass PLP
This is a period where communists in the Progressive Labor Party, along with our close friends, must play a leading antiracist role wherever they are active — in shops and unions, in community organizations, in high schools and on college campuses, in churches and in the streets. Through multiracial struggles, workers and youth can and must be won to join and build PLP. Only a mass party can stamp out the profit system’s atrocities and point the working class to communist revolution.