HAITI, October 5–The bosses’ press covers up the horrible conditions that workers from Haiti face. The living conditions of the oppressed masses are hellish. Misery is reaching its peak. According to the CNSA (National Council for Food Security), more than six million workers in Haiti are food insecure—the bourgeoisie’s “cleaned-up” term for starving. This figure doesn't even tell the whole story. There are those whose tables and stomachs are full to overflowing—this is after all, a capitalist system built on massive inequality. In an effort to make even higher profits, the bosses in the oil sector and their lackeys in the government, relying on the gangs that they have set loose on the population, have created a scarcity of fuel to justify the price increase. This has led to a shortage in pumps across the country and a vicious increase in the price of basic necessities. (see letters on page 6 about a recent cadre training school in Haiti)
Communist leadership is needed
But the rest of the story is what really counts. Tens of thousands of workers and students take to the streets, angry and ready to fight back. At present, they are still being played like puppets by the so-called opposition politicians, but that will change with steadfast organizing by the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). The objective conditions are ripening for revolution—a government that cannot govern, a working class that doesn't want to live in the same old way. What is missing is a revolutionary communist party with deep ties among the masses and in mass organizations. A party that is challenging the capitalist/imperialist system and winning our class and its allies to overthrow the current reality and build an egalitarian society that fights in the interest of the majority.
We are convinced that the anger of the working class cannot be dissipated, despite all the violence that the capitalist system engenders. Feeding a family has become a painful exercise for families as inflation becomes insupportable and the exchange rate continues to climb. Crime is raging with murders, kidnappings, robberies and rapes. For more than three weeks, there has been no transport as the hospitals (where they exist at all) no longer function for lack of fuel. Telecommunications are affected as well.
Communication is almost impossible, even as radio and television stations are forced to shutter their doors or reduce their operating hours. The banks—the foundation of the capitalist system—are closed and the transfer offices can no longer function, resulting in virtually no money in circulation.
Imperialism starves workers
Despite this untenable situation, the Core Group (the imperialists: U.S., France, Canada, European Union) and their local lackeys in the OAS as well as the IMF and the World Bank, all the managers of neoliberal financial capitalism, continue to tolerate and encourage Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s policies. The IMF had already pushed Haiti into a familiar situation by forcing former Pres. Jovenel Moïse to end government subsidies of petroleum products.
Workers and students, fed up with their daily conditions, have blocked the streets in various neighborhoods, attacked politicians, and broken into and liberated goods from some businesses that have exploited them.
Haitian workers need communist revolution
While these actions are called by various elements in the “opportunist opposition,” in a good number of cases, particularly in the provincial areas, it is groups of workers and students, trade unions or social organizations that organize them. This is the case in a city where the PLP is very active. Party members provide militant leadership and contribute to the organization of all mobilizations.
The only solution to free our class from this misery is to build the PLP as a large and strong party, giving leadership to and taking leadership from the masses. Our task today is to politicize our class, workers and students, and engage them in the factories and rural areas, on campus and in the classroom. We must take the uprising in the streets back to the job and the campus, raise class awareness to understand the roots of our misery —capitalism/imperialism— and then take this increased awareness back into the streets, the job and the campus, bringing the class struggle to a higher level.
This is how we will recruit to the PLP and build the revolutionary response of our class throughout the world—the communist revolution for an egalitarian society, without money, without racism/sexism and without imperialist wars. We launched the challenge with our cadre school this past summer (see letters on page 6). We will continue this battle until victory is ours! We will build another world. Our class and our Party is the future.