Letters of February 13

Mass Struggle in India Shows PLP Need to Intensify Anti-Sexist Fight
The millions of women and men in India who are waging a mass struggle against rape are taking a courageous stand against one of the most brutal aspects of capitalism. When they took to the streets protesting the gang rape and torture of a female college student, they were attacked and arrested by the corrupt cops and politicians who back sexist violence every day. The protesters kept up the struggle, though, even spreading it to other countries, in the face of deep-seated racist and religious support for long-standing sexist practices. They deserve our support.
But they didn’t get it in the last issue of CHALLENGE, where the struggle was placed on the back page with just a photo, a short caption, and a call for them to join PLP. Such offhand treatment of a mass struggle against sexism is the opposite of what’s called for — it’s not they who should join us, but we who should join them, and call for supporting their struggle wherever we’re organizing. They’re in the forefront here, taking a stand against deeply entrenched attacks on women, that goes beyond rape to include female infanticide, child marriage, forced sex trafficking, and grinding exploitation of women workers.
We need to bring a class analysis to this struggle, since capitalism is the root cause of sexist violence, and reserves the worst for female workers. But when women — and men — are facing water cannons demanding an end to sexist attacks, it’s dismissive to see it simply as a call to build our organization. It would have been far more constructive to give this struggle deeper coverage and say we fight for a society where that kind of brutality is wiped out, and we stand with the anti-sexist fighters in their struggle. That the article on the mass anti-rape struggle didn’t do so shows that as an organization we need to sharpen the fight against sexism, and the place to start is by giving our support to the women and men attacking sexist brutality in India and around the world.
Communist Organizing Against Sexist Violence

Editor’s Note: We do need a class analysis of India’s anti-sexist struggle. Such an analysis would include that sexism cannot be defeated under capitalism. Calling on workers to join PLP is understanding that the working class needs a Party to lead such a war, and today that party is PLP. The responsibility of waging an anti-sexist struggle and writing about it in CHALLENGE is on all members. We should lead solidarity demonstrations on the job and the campuses in each city. Onwards, comrades. 

Lincoln: History Taught from the Top Down
The following review of the film Lincoln was produced by the New York City PLP Culture Committee for discussion and response within the Party:
Almost 700,000 people were killed during the Civil War, the bloodiest war in the U.S. And before 1861 the issue of slavery was debated and fought for over 250 years — not only with words — in courtrooms and state houses, the Underground Railroad, in 400 slave rebellions, Bleeding Kansas and in the attack on Harper’s Ferry led by John Brown, which sparked the Civil War.
Lincoln builds the story that the slaves were ultimately freed by a group of white politicians bribing a few lame duck Democrats in Congress. It’s a gripping movie, well acted and engrossing, but in the end it only reinforces the idea that history is really made from the top down. The movie sends a seemingly inspired but ultimately cynical and passive message. It’s the opposite of what’s needed to encourage fighting racism and the excesses of capitalism.
The movie deals with Lincoln’s efforts to pass the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, banning slavery. As the movie portrays it, Lincoln thought it essential to pass the amendment before the end of the war, since he felt the Emancipation Proclamation wouldn’t have any legal standing after the war. As a film, it’s almost like watching a thriller, hanging on each scene to see who will get on board, who will sell out, how they’ll vote. Through a lot of persuasion, arguing, back-room deals and bribes (you mean politicians can actually be bought?), he and his agents muster just enough votes to get the Amendment passed.
But what it doesn’t say is as important as what it does. The movie inspires more talk about Lincoln’s personality than the fight against slavery. There are some gripping scenes that graphically show the brutality of the war, but they punctuate a film that’s mostly dialogue. The deals and diplomacy might have taken place. But what really ended slavery was the bloody defeat of the Confederate army, due in no small measure to the almost 200,000 black soldiers who enlisted, and to the growing hatred of slavery and slave-owners during the war (not that racism didn’t persist). The movie’s back-handed racism and elitism ignores the real mass struggle.
For a film that deals with freeing black slaves the movie is dominated by white characters. There are sympathetic, articulate and principled black characters in the movie. One black corporal even argues with Lincoln about unfair treatment of black soldiers in the Union army. But they’re bit parts, and are one-dimensionally portrayed. Historians Eric Foner and Kate Masur have criticized the movie for the lack of more developed black characters, for omitting key fighters like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, and for pushing the idea that the defeat of slavery took place by white men making deals in back rooms. (Harriet Tubman participated in planning the Harper’s Ferry Raid and recruiting people for it, but illness prevented her from getting there.)
But of course this is how we’re taught history; that Lincoln freed the slaves. Missing are the decades of struggle by the abolitionists, Underground Railroad, slave revolts, and the war itself. So-called “serious” Hollywood “historical” movies like Lincoln, Amistad, Schindler’s List, The Help, Platoon, Mississippi Burning, Glory, The Patriot, Dances with Wolves, all serve a purpose — so people come out of the theater recognizing past oppression, but feeling the system isn’t as bad as it used to be, and can be reformed for the better.
This film is being pushed hard by Hollywood, playing in 1,200 theaters, grossing over $140 million, sure to win several Oscars and to be shown in schoolrooms for years to come. But the film wouldn’t have been made, much less pushed, if it didn’t have a message for what’s going on today. They want to win people to the ideas that nothing can get done without cynical compromise; that this is what it takes to reform capitalism; and that our job is just to vote for people who can get the job done, so “cut Obama some slack; this is what he has to deal with.”
It’s useful to see this movie in order to discuss it with our friends. It isn’t often a Hollywood film enables discussion about struggle, history and racism. But let’s not get sucked in. History taught from the ground up, not the top down, would have a very different portrayal of the abolition of slavery.
Cultural Committee