Letters of May 9

PLP Strikes Back Against Sexism 

“STRIKE!” shouted a male comrade of PLP.  “Against Sexism!” replied the crowd of women, men, young, not-so-young, comrades, and others meeting the Party for the first time at a cultural event organized by PL’ers and friends. The poetry, songs, and stories of struggle clearly centered our Party’s fight against the special oppression of women as a key element of anti-sexist action.  Sexism, like racism, uses artificial social identities and roles to divide the working class. PLP specifically targeted the attacks capitalism unleashes on women and celebrated their heroic struggles.

The Culture Committee struggled and planned collectively in a multi-generational setting to create this event. In a process that focused on each PL’er on the committee struggling against their own individualism and emphasizing the collective, the communist essence of the struggle against sexism was clarified. Once this happened, culture became a weapon as each part of the program emphasized utilizing friends of PL participating in songs and developing the leadership of female comrades.

Reading the poetry of Tillie Olsen and a letter from Anna Louise Strong alongside a letter from a veteran comrade discussing her growth as a revolutionary communist illustrated the consistent role women have played in the international communist movement. A poem about the day-to-day struggle of being a woman subjugated by the daily insults meted out by capitalism particularly resonated with one young female HS student who deals with sexist degradation on a regular basis.

The role of culture as a weapon against capitalist ideological structures is being developed by PLP. As we continue to advance our understanding of communism and our practice at creating communist culture, we will create more events to help bring more people around our Party.  People who wouldnít ordinarily come to political rallies or discussion groups came to the cultural event and saw our ideas in practice. The whole event ended with an invitation to join the Party and for everyone present to march on May Day.  

Cultural Commitee

Hunger Games Going On Now

 The Hunger Games is a battle to the death, consisting of 24 teenagers fighting each other for survival (see past three issues of CHALLENGE). A N.Y. Daily News reviewer thought the Hunger Games portrayed a future capitalist dictatorship that forces children to kill each other. I think that future is happening now.The greatest form of violence today is capitalist genocide against billions of workers from hunger and poverty.

The gladiatorial Hunger Games are used as a metaphor for the life-and-death games that poor people must play every day under capitalism in order to survive. The mass appeal of Hunger Games is no media fad but is a reflection of workers’ long hatred of the capitalist 1 percent’s monopoly of desperately needed resources that the 99 percent created but have no access to. The Hunger Games are also symbolic of the daily struggle of millions of high school teenagers for survival in the capitalists’ world of racism, unemployment and wars.

While a few reviews of Hunger Games can make some of the above points, none will mention communism, a system that outlaws hunger, poverty, racism, sexism, unemployment and profit wars. As the Hunger Games trilogy unfolds, pushed by the bosses’ media, we will see communist revolutionaries vilified as fascists who want to destroy individualism. But PL’ers struggling for collectivism within the working class can point out that fascism is a form of capitalism and that only PLP’s revolutionary communist party can end the bosses’ fascist tyranny of the working class.

A Comrade

Diego Rivera’s Art Is A Weapon for Workers

Diego Rivera’s Murals for MOMA is an exhibit of Diego Rivera’s works produced for New York City’s  Museum of Modern Art in 1931-32. It is a great opportunity to see how a mass communist movement can inspire great art. The exhibit includes eight murals by Rivera that honor the working class, depict the righteous anger of the exploited, working class heroism and offers a limited exposé of capitalism.  Additionally the exhibit contains two series of small color sketches by Rivera. One series depicts construction workers building New York’s skyscrapers. They are beautiful and like several of the murals in the exhibit portray an inspirational view of the working class.

The most impressive, and moving, part of the exhibit is a series of sketches by Rivera made when he visited the Soviet Union for the 10th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The small pictures portray a single day’s events starting at the home of a Russian family and moving into the streets and onto a massive communist march. 

While the murals on display are beautiful and outshine in both content and form most of what passes for art these days, the exhibit is limited in a couple of areas. One is that the exhibit cannot possibly include Rivera’s greatest works painted on the walls of Mexico’s National Palace in Mexico City. 

Secondly, while the strengths and weaknesses of Rivera’s politics can be seen through his work, from the moving Russian series to an almost Christ-like portrayal of Zapata, the exhibit only skims the background on what Rivera thought. There is no mention of the political debates Rivera engaged in with Picasso over the nature of art, or his self-criticism of his bourgeois tendencies when he asked to rejoin the Communist Party.

The exhibit provides some limited information on Rockefeller asking Rivera to paint a major mural for Rockefeller Center and then later ordering it destroyed because Rivera refused to take out a painting of Lenin. But this part of the exhibit disingenuously presents Rivera as opportunistically soliciting the patronage of MoMA and the commission to do the mural, while portraying Rockefeller as being “reasonable” in trying to work with him.

In fact the exact opposite was true.Rockefeller was actively seeking to both co-opt and undermine the socialist realist art inspired by the mass communist movement of the times. Rivera was sought out in the hopes of buying off a major figure of the movement at the same time that Rockefeller, through MoMA, was trying to build up abstract painters to take class content out of art. The destruction of the Rockefeller Center murals was a political setback for the bosses, driven by Rivera’s refusal to play ball.

Even with its weaknesses, the exhibit is worth seeing. While the limited background material presented didn’t stop exhibit visitors from debating and discussing the political nature of the art, a little research on Rivera and his politics beforehand will make the visit all the more interesting and satisfying.

Red Art Buff

Garment Fire, Murder in the Mines: Same Enemy, Same Fight

I attended the commemoration of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire disaster on March 23rd, as I have for a number of years. One hundred forty-six workers, mainly young Jewish and Italian immigrant women, were killed 101 years ago in a fire caused by their bosses’ greed. After the fire, hundreds of thousands of outraged workers marched or lined the streets of their funeral procession. 

Fire safety, child labor and workplace safety laws were enacted in response to this anger. Union contracts were signed at many garment factories. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union grew in its aftermath. Although the factory bosses were brought to trial, they were found not guilty of all charges. In fact, they netted a substantial profit from their fire insurance claim. 

The annual commemoration has a pro-immigrant, anti-sweatshop feel to it. This year, however, there was an ironic twist to the event. The Amalgamated Bank, begun by the garment union as a “workers’ bank,” which is a major sponsor of this event, now has a major shareholder named Wilbur Ross. This murderous thug was the owner of the Sago Mine in West Virginia where long-standing serious safety violations caused the deaths of twelve coal miners in 2006. While Ross profited from conditions in his coal mine, he was never criminally charged for the deaths  the safety violations caused.

The union movement claims that reform of capitalism are the best aims workers should have. The continued deaths caused by sweatshop conditions in the U.S. and around the world prove their claims are a lie. Similarly, many working-class people put their money and trust in the Amalgamated Bank. Occupy Wall Street called on people to move their bank deposits out of the big commercial banks and into “good” banks like the Amalgamated. Unions likewise deposit their vast sums into the “labor bank.” The relationship of Amalgamated and Wilbur Ross is a stark example of the bankruptcy of the ideas that the unions honestly fight in workers’ interests and that some capitalists can be good. 

Building the revolutionary Progressive Labor Party is the way to avenge these and many other deaths caused by capitalism!

Red Retiree