LETTERS of June 22

CHALLENGE: A Cure for Passivity

PLP Literature and CHALLENGE changed my life. It helped me recover from passivity. Now, I feel like I am doing real work for the revolution. I am proud of being a PL’er. Its Marxist outlook helped me understand the state of the world. Its analysis about the old communist movement helped me to understand the dialectics of the movement all over the world.

I enjoy using CHALLENGE to learn about the international class struggle. A recent article about the May Day celebration in Pakistan inspired me. Now, I am thinking of translating “Why Communism” into a leaflet and distribute it among the masses, for it is very much necessary for the working class in Bangladesh to know about communism.

The working class here never knew real communism because the phony communists promote a “Democratic Revolution” stage. They are not waging class struggle. Instead, they unite with the national bourgeoisie. These revisionists are doing the same thing as trade unionists of the CPM (a corporation) do in India: keep good relations with the ruling class.

PLP literature made it clear that we should be fighting towards a communist revolution. Only through class struggle can we build a mass PLP and have an armed revolution by millions of workers all over the world. “One Class, One world and One party” line is very much understandable in this world of universal capitalism. Love live PLP with a Red Salute!

Comrade in Bangladesh

No Compromise on Sexism

The June 8th editorial that very informatively showed the real motives behind the U.S. prosecution of Straus-Kahn (the sexist pig that headed the IMF) should have concentrated also on the hypocrisy of U.S. rulers with regard to violence against women.  From Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and all around the world, U.S. capitalists finance and enable regimes that punish and jail working women who struggle for even the most minimal rights.

Violence, rape and sexual slavery are the life experience of hundreds of millions of women worldwide under capitalism.  The profit drive turns women’s bodies into commodities to be bought and sold, or to be used in degrading culture, pornography and provocative advertising.  Capitalists use this terror and sexist portrayals of women to enforce and justify paying even less than the usual wage slavery levels to women workers, a super-exploitation similar to how racism oppresses black and immigrant workers.  Working women are further exploited as “unpaid labor” for their socially necessary work in raising the next generation of workers.

From its beginning, PLP has made the struggle against sexism a major priority.  From the Figure Flattery garment factory in the 1960s to the recent struggle at Stella Dora (where men and women workers struck against a sexist attack to lower the wages of the women workers), PLP has supported the struggles of women. It has worked to build the unity between men and women workers based on anti-sexist struggle that will be necessary to smash capitalist rule.

The PLP position that communism requires the abolition of wages would remove the material economic basis for sexist discrimination that results in lower-paid and unpaid labor. We must struggle with all workers, regardless of sex, to share in the necessary work. PLP has long struggled to put women in the leadership of the Party and class struggle; the PLP chairperson for years has been a woman, and women lead many areas of Party work. The Party understands that their experience of super-exploitation will make women especially dedicated and disciplined leaders in the life-long struggle for communism.

We make no compromise with sexism ever and our articles should reflect our hatred of the bosses’ violence and sexist degradation of women workers worldwide.

A Comrade

Unity at Haiti Fundraiser

Singers all gathered on the stage in front of 140 people. They started to sing “Haiti Cherie” – first in Kreyol, and then in English. The audience joined the singing, in Kreyol and in English. The audience swayed as they sang. It had been an incredible evening, one that required a tremendous amount of work, but it was worth every second of time. A lot of money was collected for the good works the Haitian group performs in their hometowns and villages in Haiti.

We have been working with this group in our church for a little over a year. When the earthquake happened, we were asked to find a grass roots Haitian organization that we could form a friendship with. We jointly organized a forum on the current state of affairs in Haiti last fall, and attended a number of fundraisers that workers from Haiti arranged. Both the church group and the Haitian group met together on many occasions to set up this evening of dinner and entertainment in order to solidify a growing relationship.

At the beginning of the evening people tended to sit at tables with their own friends. The keynote speaker of the evening stood up and called upon audience to participate by moving to tables where there were people they did not know.  The tables had multi-racial and a multi-ethnic makeup.  People soon got over their awkwardness. Many conversations started and former strangers got to know each other as they ate and drank together.

The entertainers for the evening ran a gamut of songs from romance to struggle, from talk of home to talk of a better future for all workers. People spoke of the need for unity and demonstrated it in their friendship. Many joined in with some of the songs. The best show of unity during the evening was the clean-up which involved 40 people from all different backgrounds working side-by-side.

The room had a complicated and involved setup, and there was an enormous amount of equipment, tables, food, etc. that had to be organized.  The entire clean-up took about 15 minutes because everyone spontaneously worked in unison, helping each other. A five-person detail was supposed to have put things away. Instead everyone helped. It was amazing and a wonderful show of unity.

Quite a few people who were in the room read CHALLENGE and some feel a commitment to a more struggle-oriented future. But here we were all together as brothers and sisters, and the embracing at the end and the singing of “Haiti Cherie” sealed the evening with harmony. Two communities brought together which would not under normal circumstances have had any contact with each other. We were brought together by the hard work and determination of a number of individuals in both groups. The future is bright because the present is full of purpose.

International comrade