The struggle at CUNY: revolution or reform?

The following article is for the PLP college forum, CUNY Needs Communism on January 16, from 12:00 - 2:00 PM. Contact your local PLP member.

The City University of New York (CUNY) students and staff are all in the cross hairs of the racist profit system. The Covid-19 pandemic and the massive uprising against racist police murders have exposed the vicious inequality of capitalism. For workers, capitalist education has always meant some training to keep the profits flowing for their bosses and a lot of brainwashing to convince workers to believe in the system. With the system in crisis, the rulers in disarray, and imperialist China challenging the U.S. bosses, public “education” like CUNY has become just a holding pen for working class youth. Very soon we will be cannon fodder in the next imperialist world war.
●Our 300,000 CUNY students are overwhelmingly Black, Latin and Asian and 53 percent have to work. We are healthcare, food delivery and essential workers. Many have lost our jobs and family members.
●Thousands of CUNY staff have also lost jobs; hundreds have lost health insurance!
●The CUNY bosses have cut class sections and increased class sizes.
●Democratic Governor Cuomo is withholding 20 percent of CUNY’s state funding, while 118 New York State billionaires have increased their wealth by over $77 billion!
This is the racist destruction that politicians like Trump and Cuomo have inflicted on us! But that’s the capitalist system that will always put profit over workers’ needs. That’s why we need communism where multiracial workers, students and soldiers, across all borders, unite in building an egalitarian society whose sole purpose is to meet the needs of the international working class. That is what the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is fighting for.
Capitalists use CUNY to serve their needs
CUNY serves the interests of the ruling class, who own the wealth and control the government. They promote the idea that if you don’t go to college or don’t graduate it’s your fault. They control CUNY through the Board of Trustees, who appoint the college presidents and Chancellor. These racist, ruling class agents enjoy high six-figure salaries and 5-figure housing allowances, while adjunct professors and students face hunger and eviction. They want us to be conscientious, loyal workers now, and conscientious, loyal soldiers soon. That’s their plan for higher education! Every struggle at CUNY clashes repeatedly with this racist ruling class.
PLP’s plan is that students learn how to fight for a communist, egalitarian world; skills developed by organizing anti-racist struggles on campus for things like free tuition and improved services. The rulers don’t want workers and students to think beyond this system where a small class of billionaires runs society for their own benefit. But we fight racism with our eyes on the prize of a communist world run by and for the working class.
The summer of mass uprising against racism: On to revolution!
Over the summer many CUNY students and workers joined the mass uprising against racist police terror. The bosses need the police to terrorize us into accepting a future of racism, poverty and war.  Many of us also protested against the CUNY cutbacks. Meanwhile health care workers demonstrated for personal protective equipment and against hospital closings. Transit workers, teachers and students fought for safe working and learning conditions. Many antiracists called for defunding the police. All of these antiracist organizers and fighters should be running the world. We need to get rid of the billionaires that run the world now. Join us in the fight for communism, a world run by and for the working class.
Build a base for antiracist fightback at CUNY
Comrades at CUNY have been active in the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union, waging many struggles and protests for improved conditions for students and faculty. We have organized against racist police brutality and ROTC and CIA programs that bolster U.S. occupations abroad and prepare for war with China. Through the PSC International Committee, we organized international solidarity with workers and students in Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Haiti, India and South Africa.
Members of PLP are working in the PSC Delegate Assembly, and campus chapters and committees. We are also in the more radical Rank and File Action and CUNY Struggle.
We work with the University Student Senate and radical student groups like Free CUNY. We are working to build a mass movement to fight racist attacks on public higher education.
We realize that we are up against the entire capitalist system, and need to take down their cops, courts and politicians with a massive multiracial working-class uprising. We fight for that vision of workers’ power, to overthrow the bosses who control every aspect of social life, including colleges.
Fight for reforms, promote revolution
As long as the bosses hold state power, any concessions we win are temporary. The strategy of reforming the racist profit system, of making it serve our needs, is like running on a treadmill: we fight, the bosses take back, on and on.
The victory of Open Admissions won by Black and Latin students in the 1960s has long since been replaced by a system of ever-rising tuition, and many students who never graduate.  
The 1960s also saw struggles against racism and sexism in college curriculums. But as long as the capitalists control CUNY, they force the curriculums to serve their ideology. Recently they are promoting divisive identity politics, certainly not militant, multiracial, working class unity.
CUNY adjuncts recently won pay raises and three-year assignments. They are already facing layoffs and “postponed” pay raises.
We are still on that reform treadmill, suffering with racist, sexist curriculums, slashed budgets, rising tuition, students without support, and underpaid adjuncts. We keep fighting. But as we fight for jobs, healthcare, housing, food, education, and against police terror, our main goal is building the movement for communist revolution.
Join PLP! Fight against racist CUNY cutbacks! Fight for communism!
Communist revolution means the seizure of state power by the working class through mass, armed struggle. Communism means abolishing social classes, wages, profit and private ownership. It means outlawing racism, nationalism, sexism and borders. It means the destruction of the capitalist class and their whole way of running the world. It means a communist system of production, based solely on meeting the needs of the international working class.
Communist ways of thinking and ways of relating to one another will be developed among millions of workers, soldiers and youth on the road to revolution. Whatever victories we might win by protesting or even going on strike, the growth of the revolutionary movement and a mass PLP would be the lasting victory. Communist rethinking of education is one very exciting aspect of building a communist world! This is very different from how to win open admissions, free tuition, or even full financial support for every student. The question for revolutionaries is not what we want from a capitalist state founded on sexism and racism, but what we want education to be in a revolutionary communist society, where workers, through their party, hold state power and the power of the imagination.