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 Progressive Labor Party on Race & Racism

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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Friday
Jul132018

With communist influence, DC metro workers disrupt transit & reveal union’s limits

WASHINGTON, DC, JULY 4—Today the DC-area transit workers held an “unathorized” work action to protest management’s racist mistreatment. Hundreds observed a “1:59” action, which means they came to work one hour and 59 minutes late, causing widespread disruption of public transit on the July 4 holiday. Actions like these reveal how power comes from labor. It also reveals the limits of union leadership. Under communist influence and mass organizing, more transit workers can gain confidence to shut this system down.
We need to do more
In addition to the racist background checks, the transit bosses have increased their harassment on the job, including random screenings of workers. We’ve had some rallies and pickets protesting this harassment. But we need to do more. The bosses are demanding more givebacks in the contract negotiations. We need to organize strike committees at every job location. We need to collectively develop our demands. We need to organize for a strike.
Prior to the action, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members of the union (Local 689) discussed this proposed protest with other workers. We found that there was a lot of enthusiasm for finally taking an action against management.
Workers who participated in the action will be charged with a “miss” but not a “failure,” a much more serious violation of company policy. The union president suggested that there may be additional work actions in coming weeks. We can’t rely on that. Let’s organize at every barn, at every work location. Let’s fight against every case of harassment. Let’s get ready to strike by fighting back now.
Debating politics of the work action
There was some legitimate skepticism about the likely effectiveness of the action, since there was no advance planning and no specific demands.
How could you measure gaining “respect” from management? Since more workers with less seniority work on holidays, was there unfair pressure on them to bear the likely reprisals from management?
Most importantly, how will we fight back, should Metro take action against the workers who participated?
Workers can’t rely on union leaders
At the union meeting immediately before the action, a militant member declared that it was good to take work actions that disrupt transit service since that is where our power comes from. But it was also vital to organize to get strike ready and collectively develop specific demands against management.
The union president Jackie L. Jeter is clearly feeling the pressure from a restive membership, gave a flimsy excuse about the absence of demands, indicated that a strike might not be necessary, but that each member should have $20,000 in the bank if there was a strike.
Her rhetoric and bluster was an attempt to hide the fact that she has always dragged her feet in challenging management. And her $20,000 comment showed that she had no idea of how a well-organized strike would proceed and was simply trying to scare people away from becoming strike ready.
The PLP influence in Local 689 continues to grow. We will continue to struggle for ever-sharper class struggle as we also strive to bring additional transit workers into the revolutionary struggle for communism. Workers would be in full power and there would be no such thing as exploitative bosses to deny us respect.

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