Letters of February 15

King Birthday: Media Hides How Racist Capitalism Maintains Slavery

On January 16, the U.S. government and media celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., and some months ago dedicated a new statue honoring him in Washington, D.C. All of the bosses’ media find something in King to praise. Even most right-wingers laud his non-violence, which was more a service to the capitalist ruling class than to the working class.

Some judged King a danger to the current power structure and assassinated him in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was supporting a workers’ struggle there for the right to organize unions and against racism as he saw it. But imagine if he had pointed out that no worker — black, white, Latino and anywhere worldwide — would be free of exploitation by the bosses, as long as capitalism exists. Then the media and the bosses would refer to him as an enemy of “freedom and democracy.”

Confining his approach to workers’ rights under capitalism, the ruling class viewed him as an ally. Though far from his intent, King’s limited outlook made him, in fact, a misleader of the working class, which needs desperately to overthrow capitalist rule with a communist-led revolution. Nothing else will ever succeed in eliminating racism.

The more liberal columnists claim “we have come a long way” since the days of segregation, lynchings and Jim Crow laws, but admit there’s still a long way to go. They imply there’s been a one-way direction in the history of racism, namely improvement.

This view completely ignores the changed forms racism has taken in the U.S. over the centuries since the first slaves were stolen from their homes in Africa. While the Civil War ended chattel slavery, it was replaced by its modern form — wage slavery.

A more accurate view is one of class struggle — a tug of war in which various forms of racism strengthen and weaken, as a result of extreme, and usually violent, working-class struggle against it, generally led by black workers.

“The New Jim Crow” (2010), a book by a black lawyer, Michelle Alexander, describes the huge upsurge in imprisonment of black workers that destroys lives of entire families. This upsurge has been part of a plan by all administrations since Nixon’s in the 1970s — including Obama’s — called “The War on Drugs”; more accurately it’s a war on black workers. Rather than having come “a long way” from Jim Crow laws, she recognizes that these laws are still present, and have merely changed form. 

Segregation in housing has changed little, and in some areas, due to a modest rise in the black professional class who can afford suburban housing. Ratios of black income to white income have fluctuated slightly but are still miserably low (around 60%), and ratios of black to white wealth (accumulations of income from year to year) are even lower (about 5% of white wealth several years ago).

Racism in hiring and layoffs is still the rule, despite laws that paper it over, a permanent feature due to the central role that racism plays in capitalist profits and maintenance of class power. For a detailed pamphlet see www.plp.org — “Smash Racism: A Fighter’s Manual.”

The forms of racism and its intensity may change from time to time as a result of class struggle, but only communism will end it. Only communism can eliminate the capitalist class, whose very existence depends vitally on racism for super profits and to keep the working class divided and too weak to overthrow capitalism. Leaders like King only serve to prolong our exploitation, even if it’s unintentional.

Saguaro Rojo

Diego Rivera Art Captures Revolutionary Class Struggle

The communist Diego Rivera was an influential and iconic artist who was also a great hero to the international working class. As part of an exhibition, his art has returned to New York City within the midst of an upsurge in working-class resistance to bourgeois rule. A poster of a Rivera mural, replete with red flags, striking workers, charging soldiers, and a mother holding an infant while pushing a soldier’s saber bearing arm away from killing her, is all over NYC subway stations. Ironically, the Metropolitan Transit Authority and museum bosses who put the posters up are helping more and more of the working class to see communist art. It is also telling that grafiti hasn’t marked up the posters of Rivera’s mural.

Man’s Crossroads was another mural that was too radically communist for Rockefeller because it positively depicted Lenin and a workers’ state. It was chipped off of the wall it was painted on before it could be completed. Today, humanity’s crossroads still lies between another barbaric,  imperialist war to enrich the bosses and the truly civilizing force of communism. It is an important understanding for the international working class to have. Diego Rivera’s art continues to be timeless because it captured the essence of revolutionary class struggle, and scientific communism versus barbaric capitalism.  

It is quite ironic that with the upsurge in class struggle, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) would choose to display Rivera. The capitalists are showing his art off as a trophy much like the Caesars would show off defeated kings. They want us workers to believe that the communist movement is dead irrelevant history. MoMA did intersperse some anti-Stalinism into the exhibit, but there was no way that they could hide the open adoration of Lenin that Rivera showed in his murals.

PL teachers should organize trips to see these murals and discuss them with our students. We should also discuss them with our friends. Rivera’s communist politics are a rich part of working-class history.

Red art admirer

OWS’ers Admire CHALLENGE, Hit Obama, Bush and Bloomberg

A member of a study group and I had long exchanges with four or five people at Zuccotti Park while getting out 500 papers.   Almost everyone, from tourists to people dressed in business attire, took the paper after only reading the headline (“Bosses Aim to Pacify Occupy Wall Street”), thoughtfully nodding.

  One young lady from Cuba, who said she’d been here since age 7, told us right away that she knew all about Marxism and that her parents had left Cuba without a backward glance because her father had been very outspoken against Castro. Her parents had warned her not to come to the park because it was full of terrorists.  She saw that they were not.   

 Another man was sweeping debris with his own broom and dustpan.  He looked to be of retirement age and told me he’d been a seaman and then a restaurant worker and came there every day for five to six hours to clean up. He said the only terrorists were Bush and Bloomberg.  The people the U.S. honored as heroes were hired killers, he said, and these people in the park were the real heroes.  He had trusted Obama but was now 100% disappointed and would tell him what he thought but couldn’t afford to discuss this over dinner with Obama at $10-20,000 in the same company that Bush had kept.

He was from Greece and said ancient Greece had called itself a democracy but had slaves; I said U.S. capitalism had the same kind of democracy and had been founded on slavery.  He went on to talk about when Greece had a man in the leadership who called himself a communist but only dictated orders.  I said how the communism we would fight for had to be understood by millions of people through struggle and discussion. 

  One of our last conversations was with a student who had been raised in Youngstown, Ohio.  He had just the night before told his friends that he felt he might have to give his life to fight for a better future for his children.  He did not believe in voting since politicians could be bought.  We met because he asked for a second paper and took ten more after our talk.  We will keep in touch.

Two visitors