click to viewSUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN, August 26 — “Tianjin means we got to fight back!” As we responded to the industrial explosion that has killed 158 people in China, hundreds of workers in this mainly Chinese and Latin neighborhood took our leaflets in Chinese and English. Many Latin workers took CHALLENGE in Spanish. Dozens stopped to observe our multiracial group of women and men chanting, “When the working class is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!”
This was Progressive Labor Party’s second rally in the neighborhood this week. Workers attentively listened to our speeches in Chinese and English calling for solidarity with protestors in China in the wake of the Tianjin massacre. We connected hazardous working conditions in China to those in the United States. In this neighborhood, one of three people live below the poverty line. Whether they are in Ferguson, Brooklyn, or Tianjin, workers have everything to gain by uniting to smash capitalism.
Murder, Not Accident
On August 12, two dangerous and toxic chemical warehouses owned by Rui Hai Logistics exploded near the port city of Tianjin. The death toll is still rising. It left thousands more injured, homeless, exposed to future health problems, or missing. The explosion also damaged 17,000 homes. Since then, in Shandong, a Runxing Chemical Technology Co. factory has also exploded.
The capitalist media has called the explosion in Tianjin a number of things: tragedy, industrial accident, disaster. But the working class can see Tianjin for what it is: capitalist murder. The government, businesses, and environmental academics all knew about the dangers of this chemical industry as early as 2008! But the lives of workers are expendable under capitalism, and their deaths a calculated risk the bosses gladly take in this “thriving economic development zone” (New York Times, 8/31). The port in Tianjin is the fourth largest in the world, with nearly 500 million tons of cargo passing through it each year. It connects 500 other ports in 180 countries.
Surely a port that reports over $104 million (USD) in annual profits—and a Chinese government that invests $145 billion in its military—could have a few dollars left over for safety measures for workers? No, not under capitalism, where workers are treated as commodities and used to churn profit. Tianjin and Shandon are but two of the latest atrocities of a system that is based on the exploitation of workers. We need a world based on our needs and run by workers, not bosses and their drive for profit.
No Good Bosses
While the western capitalist media like the British Broadcasting Corporation and the New York Times are quick to blast imperialist rival China for putting “profits over people,” they don’t dare point fingers at their own rulers’ murderous exploitation. What was their bosses’ response? John Deere and Toyota are closing their factories near Tianjin. (Read: Unemployment and poverty for workers.)  Other companies like Wal-Mart are “monitoring the situation” in their facilities in Tianjin.
The international working class must respond to these explosions. We must shut the bosses’ profit system down. Whether in Mexico or the U.S., in Nepal or Syria, workers know too well the devastation this profit system wreaks on their lives: racism, sexism, unemployment, deportation, deadly infrastructure, murders by the state, inter-imperialist war. That’s why today we chanted, “Asian, Latin, Black, and white, workers of the world unite!”
We Can Make a Better World
Workers once ruled China and developed a system that valued the health and safety of working women and men. The Chinese Revolution and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution raised the living standards of the masses, from mass literacy to mass health care and education. In the span of ten years, workers doubled their life expectancy and cut the infant mortality rate in half! The gains communists made with women workers were commendable. The sexist practices of arranged marriage, foot binding, illiteracy, prostitution, and female infanticide were eradicated. This was possible only under a worker-run society. While the Chinese Revolution fought for socialism, Progressive Labor Party has learned from the old movement and fights directly for communism.
With the return of full-fledged capitalism, workers in China and worldwide are suffering under horrendous economic and political burdens. In China alone, nearly 70,000 people died while working with toxic chemicals last year (truth-out.org). What does the working class have to look forward to? More capitalist mass murders and an eventual world war among rivals like China, the U.S., and Russia.
The working class has no stake in Chinese or U.S. bosses. Join PLP to create a different future for our class. Let’s build a worldwide communist movement where the health and lives of workers is the order of the day. We can make a better world!