China: ‘Red Capitalists’ Erasing Revolutionary History

Western guidebooks and the slickest of upscale marketing do their best to erode the history of communist-led revolution in China. The plain two-story building, where the Communist Party of China (CPC) was founded, is totally out of place, surrounded by upscale shops and overpriced restaurants catering to the international tourist trade.

Today, the little historic site, being a tiny island of workers’ history, has a quiet power. Yet it is in a rising sea of Chinese yuppie culture, next to giant photos of sexist models wearing the latest fashions from Paris and New York. The morning I went to Xingye Road there was a steady stream of visitors, including 20 young men in China Air Force uniforms. I also saw small groups of older men and women with weathered, solemn faces and callused hands and a group of younger adults who stood in front of the large hammer and sickle display and repeated some sort of oath with their hands over their hearts.

China’s Bosses Steal Fruits of Revolution’s Advances

Chinese capitalism is everywhere I visited in the huge country. But the historical facts persist. The option to become the dominant capitalist economic power in Asia, and soon in the world, was only available to the current Chinese ruling class because communists of Mao’s generation ended a 2,000-year-old a system of exploitation. Pre-Revolution, 95% of the Chinese people were poor, ignorant and powerless. In the years after the 1949 socialist revolution the working people built a new country with schools, hospitals, factories and farms that existed to serve the people. Over the first 25 years of the People’s Republic there was the greatest increase in literacy and life expectancy ever recorded in a large impoverished country.

How was it possible for the “red capitalists” of the CPC — still calling themselves communists — to become fabulously rich by the restoration of a capitalist market system in the 1980s?  They simply took advantage of the foundation of economic infrastructure and human power (a generation of workers raised with access to food, health services and education) to start making profit. They used, and still use, the prestige of the CPC to maintain their rule.

The “Communist” Party’s prestige comes from their former revolutionary leadership that ended semi-feudal exploitation and drove out the occupying forces of Japan and the Western imperial powers in 1949. They took advantage of their positions in the CPC and made themselves CEOs. In the process many Chinese have experienced the rising level of material possessions associated with rapid industrialization, but hundreds of millions are being brutally exploited in sweatshops and have no voice in the current China. “Serve the People,” the slogan of the1950s and 1960s is dead. “To Get Rich is Glorious” is the new order.

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Italy’s Communist Party From Brave Anti-Fascists to Electoral Swamp

In early 2011, Antonio Gramsci Jr., the grandson of a founder of the Italian Communist Party, gave a concert of Renaissance music in Rome on the last day of an impressive exhibition, “Avanti popolo: Il PCI nella storia d’Italia,” commemorating the history of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), founded in 1921.

Twenty years ago, in 1991, the Italian CP was disbanded after seventy years of struggle. ¹ At that time it was the largest “communist” party in Western Europe, and the second largest party in the Italian parliament, winning approximately 30% of the votes. CHALLENGE articles often state that communist revolution, not reform, is the only road to working-class victory over capitalism. Looking at the history of the Italian CP helps us to see why.

Shortly after its founding, the Party and workers of Italy faced a dangerous enemy, as Mussolini’s Fascists marched on Rome in 1922. The king appointed Mussolini to be his prime minister and soon after Gramsci and other founders were in prison. Gramsci never left prison, where he died in1937, leaving behind his famous Prison Notebooks. Nonetheless, during World War II, communists and other anti-fascist forces fought bravely. After the liberation of Italy Mussolini was captured as he tried to escape and his body, along with 14 other fascist leaders, was hung upside down from lampposts in Milan’s central square.

Despite this apparent victory, Palmiro Togliatti, the new leader of the Italian Communist Party, returned from the USSR to find a country occupied by the British and American armies and devastated by Allied bombings, civil war and severe food shortages. At this critical juncture, Togliatti and the Italian communists made a grave mistake by accepting the logic of the Popular Front, an alliance of anti-fascist forces, including communists, anarchists, socialists and the liberal bourgeoisie. They began supporting “democratic” reform measures and abandoned the philosophy of armed struggle to bring about communism.

The Italian CP became the largest “communist” party in Western Europe and the second largest party in Italy. Ironically, the larger the party became, the less communist it became. In practice, Italian Communists practiced reformism in the parliament but hypocritically preached revolution at party rallies. ²

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China, U.S. Imperialists On Collision Course

The U.S. is in decline relative to China, the primary emerging imperialist rival. The U.S. ruling class is faced with massive unemployment, a continuing financial mess, a thinly spread and poorly functioning military, and an inability to enforce discipline within their own class. At the same, China displays an increasingly aggressive imperialism, challenging U.S. hegemony. Bosses are rarely hesitant to sacrifice the lives of workers in order to claim their piece of the capitalist pie, and so, as China’s rulers demand a reordering of the world with them on top, imperialist war could lie in the future. Workers of the world have nothing to win from backing one group of capitalists over the other. Transforming this potential future imperialist war into communist revolution is the long-term outlook of PLP.

Industry is the centerpiece of capitalist economy. Industrial workers produce real value, and unlike the financial manipulations that are increasingly at the center of the U.S. economy, China’s industrial might has skyrocketed. The economic crisis has certainly hit China and just as in the U.S., the Chinese bosses are making the working class pay. The net income of 400 million people has stagnated in the last decade and poverty levels have increased. But in the absence of a REAL communist party (unlike the profit-driven fake Chinese Communist Party) aimed at destroying capitalism, the bosses will salvage their system, and it appears that China might be on top of the pile when the dust clears.

Chinese Dominance Grows In Key Industries

Chinese oil companies have exerted their influence across the globe. The China National Petroleum Corporation has contracts in 29 countries around the world, including Iraq, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Burma.

Or consider steel. There is a dispute about how much steel China produced in 2010. The official figure — likely an underestimate — is 627 million tons, 44% of the world output and 50% more than Europe, the U.S., Japan and Russia COMBINED. Even if the lower official numbers are correct, the growth in China’s steel output from 2007 to 2010 exceeded the total U.S. steel output in 2010: China’s output in those three years grew by 131 million tons, whereas U.S. output in 2010 was 81 million tons.

In the auto industry the situation is similar. In 2010, the U.S. produced 7.8 million cars while China made 18.3 million, double the number in 2008 and nine times the number it produced in 2000. Again, the growth in auto production outstrips U.S. production. From 2000 to 2010 China’s auto industry output grew by 16.2 million cars. The U.S. produced 7.8 million cars in 2010. However, a goodly portion of the profits from China’s production goes to international auto companies like Ford, GM, and Nissan.

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Fighting Wall Street is Good Capitalism Must Be Destroyed

NEW YORK CITY, October 26 — Occupied Wall Street (OWS) has spread to more than 20 U.S. cities, from Philadelphia and Dallas to Seattle and Los Angeles. It adds a significant marker to the growing list of places where the working class is fighting back against the horrors of capitalism. In an era commonly defined by the lack of militant class struggle, recent events in the U.S., Greece, Egypt, Spain, England, Syria, Israel/Palestine and Pakistan are to be celebrated.

But as we celebrate we should be clear: The ideas behind these struggles are overwhelmingly reformist. Most of the participants are fighting to maintain capitalism in one form or another, with disastrous results for the workers in these places. (See page 7 for an update on the situation in Egypt and how the promise of the uprising there has turned into a nightmare for workers.) Without communist ideas in the lead, the battles, won or lost, will pave the road back to capitalist oppression.

The ruling class continues to provide opportunities for us to bring communist ideas to the forefront. In New York, the ruling class pulled back the mask of “democracy” yesterday when more than 700 OWS protestors were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. After having been lured onto the bridge by the cops, the protestors were surrounded with netting and taken away on city buses, over the protests of union drivers.

More than two weeks in, OWS has survived nearly a thousand arrests. It has captured the imagination of both workers and students. Watching more than a hundred transit workers march into Zuccotti Park near Wall Street was inspiring. The action exposed the systemic inequality of capitalism.

Still, we must keep two things in mind. First, within the antagonistic struggle against capitalism, the communist alternative will stand out and provide a space for us to build the Party and the communist world we envision. Second, we need to immerse ourselves with the masses and inject communist and revolutionary ideas inside reform struggles. PL’ers everywhere should seize this moment.

Police Action Backfires

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Rulers Need GI Boots on Oil Fields Obama’s Drones Will Spark Wider Wars

As they celebrated last week’s drone strike that killed al Qaeda big shot Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, Obama & Co. continued to lie about the dangers workers face from this escalating campaign. U.S. bosses claim that “surgical” drone strikes, using unpiloted aircraft, avoid civilians. They say that drones offer a low-cost, politically low-risk means of prosecuting their “war on terror” without engaging U.S. troops. Finally, White House hypocrites preach that they apply the strictest “moral” and “legal” standards in deploying the drones.

But history tells us that wars cannot be won by remote control. The drones represent an early stage of a bloody, high-risk strategy that could soon have “allied” U.S. and Pakistani armies shooting at each other. They cannot possibly replace the ground troops the U.S. bosses will need in their war to control the areas with huge reserves of oil and natural gas and the pipelines that transport them. (It’s for this reason that the U.S. “withdrawal” from Iraq moves at a snail’s pace; there are 30 U.S. bases that need to be secured there.)

Moreover, the drones won’t help the hundreds of thousands of workers in Pakistan on strike against poverty pay, unpaid wages and brutal working conditions (see CHALLENGE, 10/5). They won’t benefit those who suffer from the capitalists’ austerity policies across Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe. And they certainly won’t relieve the racist unemployment, home foreclosures and worsening healthcare faced by tens of millions of U.S. workers. The trillions spent on war only exacerbate these problems for workers everywhere.

In fact, the Pentagon uses drones both to pinpoint high-level targets and to spread terror through indiscriminate slaughter. John Brennan, Obama’s top advisor on terrorism, finds his boss’s robot assassins faultless: “There hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency [and] precision…that we’ve been able to develop” (Los Angeles Times, 6/29/11).

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Professors Back United, Multi-Racial Boathouse Strikers

NEW YORK CITY, Sept 10 — “The PSC is here to say, we support you all the way!” These words echoed across the eastern edge of Central Park when a group of professors from the professional Staff Congress (PSC), a union of CUNY professors and staff came to support them. They have an increasing history of supporting striking workers all over the region. They proclaimed their solidarity with the strikers of the Loeb Boathouse Restaurant. The workers walked off the job more than a month ago because managers were sexually harassing women workers, stealing their tips and, most recently, firing 30 workers as retribution for attempts at unionization.

The supporters were there to show that the divisions — by job title, by country of birth, by “race,” by gender, etc. — that capitalism imposes on us can be smashed. Tearing down these divisions is an essential prerequisite for the working class to take power from the bosses and so every opportunity to chip away at the barriers should be seized. We saw a small glimpse of the future, when workers will be united under communist leadership to destroy capitalism and its ideas.

Capitalism teaches us that mental and manual labor are different and that this division makes solidarity between workers impossible. This is capitalist nonsense and the presence of professors in support of waiters and dishwashers proves it! No matter the nature of the work, capitalism exploits it for profit.

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Israel: Rail Strikers Fight for Jobs, Defy ‘Illegal’ Label

TEL AVIV, September 25 — The Israel Railways union went on a partial strike in response to the management’s plan to privatize rolling stock maintenance to an outside company. While the management pretends that this outsourcing will not harm the current workers’ jobs, in reality this will open the way for a wider privatization of rail services under the Israeli regime, causing job loss and pay cuts. The rail workers are fighting for their jobs, as well for the job conditions and pay of future workers hired by Israel Railways.

The Israeli “labor” court has decreed the strike “illegal” on the management’s request, but the workers are fighting on despite the anti-worker decree. On September 25th, the workers shut down the opening of a new rail line in Rishon Le’Zion, defying the court’s order and showing management that they will not give up their jobs to make profits for whatever sub-contractor the management will choose to privatize transit services.

This struggle receives very negative coverage in the Israeli media, with the rail workers shown as “criminals” and “terrorists” because they dared to strike and disrupt train traffic for a few days in defense of their jobs.

This is why international solidarity is important. Give these transit workers a hand in face of management plots and court and media onslaught!J

Please sign this petition in support of this strike:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/israrail/

In addition, please send protest letters to the following addresses:

Israel Railways Customer Service, pniyot@rail.co.il or by regular mail to Israel Railways – Customer Service Department, Tel Aviv Station, Savidor Central, POB 18085, Zipcode 61180.

Yisrael Katz, Israeli Minister of Transportation, yiskatz@knesset.gov.il

Unity Rally Hits Racist CUNY Bosses’ 2-Tier System

NEW YORK CITY, September 26 — “Part-time, Full-time Faculty Unite, Same Struggle, Same Fight!” More than 500 City University of New York (CUNY) professors and students picketed outside the Board of Trustees meeting to protest the Board’s racist vote to take away health care for adjuncts (part-time professors) by next year.

CUNY is a working-class university system. Its make-up is mostly Latino, black, and immigrant workers and students. This cutback would affect over 10,200 people across the CUNY system.

The Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the union representing CUNY faculty and staff, called the protest. A delegation of 70 or so workers and students also went inside to present a petition signed by thousands calling on CUNY to provide adequate funding for adjunct professor health insurance.

This large and spirited rally was an inspiring demonstration of unity between full-time and part-time professors, and a growing realization that the two-tier system of labor at CUNY is a threat to all workers. Adjunct health insurance was won in 1986, and like all reforms, it is now being taken back.

The reliance on 11,450 adjunct workers, who now teach more than half the classes, has increased dramatically in recent years. These workers are the lowest-paid with the least job security. They receive an inferior health insurance plan compared to full-time workers. The two-tier system was set up to fail, as only 13% of adjuncts receive health insurance to begin with. The proposed cut will make healthcare even more unattainable.

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Long-term Communist Base-Building Pays Off in Anti-Firing Battle

PHILADELPHIA, October 3 — The continuing fight against cutbacks and firings at a large teaching hospital shows how long-term communist basebuilding can stretch and change the limits in our battles. On the surface, the odds in this fight seem stacked against us. The nurses, largely white, are non-union and handicapped by divisive ideas like elitism and professionalism. The workers in the union, who are largely black, are themselves split into two groups: those who work directly for the hospital and those who work for two notoriously exploitive contractors.  There is also longstanding tension between the nurses and the union members based on racism and nationalism.

But that’s just one side of the equation. On the other side are the many years of communist basebuilding by Progressive Labor Party at the hospital, the countless conversations about the need to overthrow capitalism with communist revolution and the need to join PL. Many, many friendships have been built.

Hundred of Challenge-Desafios have been circulated through networks and hand-to-hand distribution. Home visits and social activities helped non-union nurses and unionized blue-collar workers overcome their divisions with multi-racial unity. Fights big and small, even if they weren’t successful, helped forge significant solidarity.

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Precise Pre-Strike Plan Spread PLP Politics to Grocery Workers

“Wow, you’re here again for us…Now I know for sure that the community is with us if we go on strike!”

This was the response from workers at a local supermarket that we met as part of the Community Education for Social Action (CESA), a community organization working in the greater East L.A. region. Class consciousness — workers supporting and standing with other workers, regardless of their job, “race,” or country of origin — is an absolute necessity for organizing a force for communist revolution. Building this consciousness was our task as we set out to support supermarket workers who were considering a strike in response to an unjust healthcare proposal their bosses were offering.

The plan first began with getting to know the store we “adopted” in East L.A. CESA members, along with students from a nearby State University, selected one day out of the week and the time to go to the store to meet and talk to the workers, develop their contacts, and follow up with them to build a relationship. For an entire month, the group was at the supermarket on Mondays at 5:00 PM, split into groups, and talked to the workers and customers about the unfair contract and opportunity for a strike.

We also discussed how capitalism is based on exploiting workers and how the entire working class is under severe attack in the form of cuts to benefits and wages at work, cuts to education and social programs that provide critical services, and the racist mass unemployment that especially afflicts black and Latino working class communities.

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