Letters of October 5

‘Uncle Joe will save us...’

This past week my students and I discussed the importance of the Soviet Union in World War II and to the world’s working class. I explained that workers in the U.S. demanded Milt Rosen support for the Soviet Union as they struggled to fight German fascism. As we were talking, I remembered a speech given by PLP’s late chairperson Milt Rosen and told them that U.S. soldiers in World War II used to say “Uncle Joe will save us yet.” I explained that these workers didn’t think that Stalin personally would save them, but that it was meant to convey the idea that the politics of the Soviet people were being put in action to stamp out the threat fascism posed to the entire world.

We never had the opportunity to meet the first chair of our Party, but we are saddened by our collective loss. But more than sad, we are grateful for the work he and many others undertook to advance communist struggle. The Party has changed our lives and given them new meaning along with new struggles and challenges.

Today we are working to put into action the politics which are based on the political struggles of our founders. We honor Milt, and in doing so we honor the struggle of workers everywhere. “Uncle Milt will save us yet” conveys our revolutionary optimism for the power and strength of our communist movement and the international working class. Long live the PLP! Fight for communism!

Seattle Comrades

Sexism Hurts Entire Working Class

On August 13, ten PL’ers and friends took part in the Washington, D.C. SlutWalk to raise anti-sexist politics. SlutWalk is an international anti-rape movement that began after a Toronto cop told women that, if they don’t want to be raped, they should not dress like “sluts.” At SlutWalk marches and rallies, women and men wearing everything from lingerie to jeans to burkas, make it clear that rape is an act of violence and dominance, not a reaction to someone’s idea of inappropriate clothing. 

At this event, survivors told their personal stories, and others spoke about a global “rape culture.”  PLP created a flyer explaining that rape and all forms of sexism hurt the entire working class. Sexism exists because of the historical development of class society. Capitalism exploits and super-exploits women as wage workers and unpaid household workers, while keeping the entire working class divided against itself. We found other participants were very receptive to the flyer, and members of our group were excited to hand it out. 

Several people who are involved with the anti-sexist and anti-racist struggle for Latina housekeepers at the University of Maryland attended. This enabled us to see this struggle as part of a broader movement.  We made good contacts and strengthened our own commitment to talking about sexism with our friends.  One has joined a PL study group, and another asked to receive information about it.  This turned out to be a great opportunity to talk to workers we wouldn’t ordinarily reach, and to clarify my own thinking about sexism.

D.C. fighter

Chile : Reformers Set Bosses’ Trap

The fight for access to capitalist education in Chile is a reformist one. Even though the politicians (listed below) have tried to hide their support of the bosses system. They have not been able to hide their reformist claws. This is a fight to reform the access and administration of the education system. The reformers have been erroneously using irresponsible forms of fighting like hunger strikes. The capitalist education and its reforms will never  be able to satisfy the workers’ needs.

The majority of the young leaders in the education movement belong to some of the political parties in the system (Socialist party, Party for Democracy, Christian Democrat Party, Chilean Communist Party [PC], etc.) and, evidently, they obey its respective political lines. No doubt about it! These parties form center-left coalitions, abandon Marxist politics, and run on a nationalist line of compromising within capitalism.

--- Though the PC calls itself communist, it has always been revisionist (uses bosses’ politics) and played its cards to its own political benefit.

The reformists and revisionists control the official “opposition” politics in Chile, and its evident fundamental aim is to recover the power that they lost by the fascist regime of Pinochet’s dictatorship.

In Chile, the parties continue supporting wrong strategies similar to the ones that helped to generate the disaster of Pinochet’s military coup of 1973, which ended Allende’s revisionist rule. Nationalism, not class, continues to play a fundamental role, and the erroneous reformist leadership frequently generates ambiguous situations for the workers.

Under capitalism, the education system is designed to keep the system running in the interest of the bosses. So, compromise between bosses and workers will not be able to change really anything. The real fight must be to transform the economy to satisfy the workers’ needs. The change must be TOTAL, not partial.

The only real solution is the communist revolution and only PLP fights for this change.

A friend