Letters of January 10

Greetings from Comrade Camacho
On the day of the centennial celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution in Brooklyn (see page 4), coincidentally, I received a package from our comrade Epifanio Camacho giving revolutionary greetings. He was a leader in the National Farm Workers Association. He led struggles that led up to the famous farm-worker strikes in the 1960s and 1970s and his subsequent expulsion from the UFW by Cesar Chavez for organizing farm workers for something much more profound and important than reforms. In the mid 1970s, Camacho joined the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and has helped organize many workers into the ranks of international communism through his efforts as a party organizer.
Today, reading what he sent, I was struck by the parallel lessons we have learned from farmworkers here as well as by the valiant comrades in the Soviet Union. If it were not for the Soviets leading our path, we might as well be fighting for socialism today—stopping short at a better wage system.
Farmworkers here have shown us courageous struggles and the necessity to go beyond reforms, uniting immigrant workers and citizen workers to smash borders. Camacho’s politics were beyond that of the more publicized “leader” Cesar Chavez of the NFWA. Long before joining the union, Camacho fought the rose-production bosses against their thieving practices. For example, the bosses promised a bonus of $2 per thousand rose grafts IF the grafts proved 90 percent successful the following year! Though the plants survived, year after year, the bosses never followed through. Camacho led this fight alongside a handful of workers. For his efforts Camacho was blacklisted not only from rose fields, but all agricultural bosses’ crops. In the spring of 1965, he had to steal food from the fields at night so that he and his wife and their two daughters could eat. For more on the life struggles of Epifanio Camacho, read Autobiography of a Communist: Communists are Made, not Born. Available at www.plp.org.
Later, hundreds followed his leadership in a strike demanding a contract for the NFWA giving wage increases. He had confidence that the skilled grafting workers would never scab, but Chavez cut the strike short to three days. Chavez also betrayed the fight by settling for a promise of higher wages without a contract.
Camacho was undiscouraged. He wasn’t even disappointed that the blacklist against him in the roses remained in effect. He told his friends, “be prepared because strikes are contagious.”
There were more than 63 “labor disputes” in California in 1965. Despite these hard-fought efforts, official wages during these years rose from an average of $1.33 an hour to only $1.50! We are encouraged by the history of workers here who have fought for unions. But we will never forget the need to point the way from a slave wage system to communism.
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The Story of the Chicken
While building the party there are steps or events we leave out or don’t realize are part of base building process. We don’t noticed our communist morals playing a role in our everyday life. Is it base building or is it your working-class morals that are at play on any given day? I would like to think they are one and the same.
We develop theories on how to win people in our base to fight the good fight and not just reform. Yes, CHALLENGE is a good base building tool but what practice leads up to introducing a person to CHALLENGE? I would would say it’s chicken! Yes chicken is what leads to CHALLENGE being introduced to another person. Please let me explain.
It’s past the hundred-year anniversary of the great October Revolution. The Bolshevik comrades that led the way didn’t do it by publishing a newspaper. Their newspaper might have been the twitter of their time, but neither waving the paper nor tweeting will lead to revolution. The pre-twitter comrades got their hands dirty, as should we. They broke bread with the same workers they wanted to win over. They shared dinner, difficult working conditions, stories, and traditions with their base.
They didn’t lead how the rich lead. They were not standing on the hilltops winning people over. They were in the trenches. We need to be in the trenches. We need this, and everything else we write and say, to be discussed in the trenches.
I’m not just talking about the trenches of some war the bosses make us fight for their profit. The trenches are the streets, your job, your school, your hospital, your fightback, and everywhere else you have been building a base.
In the trenches of my current transit job, the rules (traditions with a more aggressive approach) are you buy chicken under three occasions: if you’re new to the location; if you break a jerry (sledgehammer); and if your work anniversary comes up.
Now I could have just said no. However, what would that do for me? It’s the workers’ tradition. Am I not a worker? Do I not want to build with my fellow co-workers?
I saw first hand how they talked about the one worker who didn’t buy chicken. That worker was not “in.” In order to build with my co-workers; I needed to be in. They needed to know that I could come through for them. I bought that chicken and some sides. Did it improve my base? Will this lead to the CHALLENGEs for everyone? Only time will tell but workers gave me an opportunity to relate. If I can relate then maybe so can my fightback. Let’s build this movement but let’s not downplay the small things that can lead to workers relying on each other and future victories.
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Oakland Celebrates Bolshevik Centennial
Some comments from participants at the celebration of the hundred-year anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Oakland:
After learning about the Republican tax bill passed in the dead of night, it felt like good medicine to dine and discuss fight back with a hall full of people dedicated to a better society. Shout out to a disabled comrade as they played your track, “I’m a worker” in which you spit hot fire for disability justice!
After a great discussion against racism, sexism and fascism, we listened to Public Enemy’s Fight the Power. It seemed appropriate after the short film, “Fight like Ferguson.”
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At the time when capitalism is robbing the poor to give to the rich, it is beautiful and hopeful to see more and new faces, especially young people recognizing the need for communism to destroy capitalism. The PLP celebration of 100 years of the Bolshevik Revolution was a gain and I hope to see the party growing to achieve our goal, smash capitalism.
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Thanks for including us. It was a great program. I think the idea of discussing how workers can run the economy and guide the society towards a common goal of taking care of all, uplifting those oppressed, and preserving the ecology should be a topic of further discussion in future meeting, in my opinion.
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The Progressive Labor Party’s celebration was a wonderful and educational event. We examined the past and the present history of class struggle through a diverse set of lenses. We shared these stories through pictures, songs, and speeches. I learned a lot that night and had a fantastic time!
*****
Welcome to Therapy: Fighting Mass & Individual Cynicism
Capitalist blues. The daily terror campaign from that orange Hair Führer. Lack of confidence combined with deep cynicism. Whatever you call it, we live in profoundly subjective times.
One answer the bosses provide, a Kool-Aid I drink, is therapy. I’ve been going to a nice liberal shrink for longer than I’m going to admit and still manage to be miserable. Capitalism is a cesspool of hypocrisy, lies, and dispossession. The system chips away at our class and individual ability to make change and own our destinies. So, we develop maladaptive behaviors to stay sane, some more than others (like me). But no one is truly sane in an inhumane and insane system. (Under communism will we begin to fathom what we are capable of doing, thinking, and creating.) In reaction, we choose the comfort of individualism, which proves to be just a Band-Aid anyway.
Therapists are not your friends. They will be useful ruling-class tools under growing fascism. Therapy sells you the dream that happiness is an inside job. Isolate yourself in the Redwoods or Green Mountains to find inner peace. (Yea, that doesn’t sound lonely at all.) Self-actualization, they call it. Understand your deepest darkest parts, and stay confused of the dark times around you.
Therapists will openly admit their concern is your health—not your friends’, co-workers’, or wife’s. And they definitely don’t care about the health of the class struggle. Stressed? Don’t go to so many protests; take a bubble bath instead. Do you, boo. Unable to commit to a relationship? It’s your mother’s fault.
Joy is a collective job. It lives with the working class. Growing through sh*t is part of the capitalist package—some more than others because of racism and sexism. The system isn’t just about wage slavery. Marx and Engels had a name for it: alienation (it covered both the economic and political condition. Yea, your subjectivity is a political thing.)
So what does this mean in a time when our class is beaten down? To be honest, I don’t have the answers. That’s why I read CHALLENGE. But I do know my attitude and mood have a relationship with my involvement in the class struggle.
The kind of confidence we need as a class happens in a process where we fight together and stretch outside the borders of what the ruling class finds manageable. If we fight the false comforts, and confront our shortcomings in an honest, collective way, we stand a chance to be useful to our class, our kids, and ourselves. We got to weather this unstable climate.
Communists are not immune from this toxic system. We can’t let the bosses win by becoming toxic ourselves. “The revolutionary must destroy the rut or the rut will destroy the revolutionary.”
Open yourself up to those around you. A shrink is a poor substitute for the real therapy of class struggle. There is no glorious short cut; it’s an ordinary and protracted process. We can choose comfort. Or we can have struggle, connection, and a little bit of courage to put our ideas and our flawed selves out there. We can get cozy with a beer and a binge on Stranger Things. Or we can learn to face discomfort, change ourselves, and contribute to a fighting atmosphere in this turbulent climate.
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