A Minimum Program For Social Change And Revolution

Several comrades recently put together a minimum program for social change leading to revolution. What this means is described below.

At the very end of this introduction is a link to the minimum program itself

People who identify with the goals of the minimum program in the short-run or in the long-run are encouraged to be in touch.

This minimum program is not the final word. Other comrades from around the U.S. are also thinking along these lines. The Left is going to have to adopt programs that speak to both winnable goals and carry us forward if we are going to make it through the current crises. Our primary task right now is in defeating the ultra-right in November, allying with others, winning over critical numbers of people to our programs through practical work, and moving from a defensive to an offensive position.

The logic of our position on defeating the ultra-right is given here.

This program owes a great deal to the Movement For Black Lives Platform.

INTRODUCTION      

A minimum program attempts to put forward reforms that can be won now, under capitalism, that will improve our lives, restore and extend democracy, and involve more people in the fight for a socialist future.

First, a minimum program attempts to build unity between socialists, nationally oppressed and working-class people, and non-socialists, on the basis of shared demands that can be won through unity, organizing and mass mobilization. A minimum program appeals to the core forces needed for social change because without the unity of those core forces change is impossible. The core social forces are workers, people of color, women, youth, LGBTQIA+ people, small farmers, middle-class people who are facing dislocation, and people who are politically liberal or centrist and who no longer have a political home. A minimum program provides a basis for discussion and forward movement. A movement for democracy can become a movement for radical democracy. A radical-democratic movement can become a revolutionary movement. A revolutionary movement can become a socialist movement. Socialism brings power to the workers and all of the oppressed.

Second, a minimum program guards against those who think that no reform can ever be radical enough and those who always put radical demands on the back burner. A minimum program does this by connecting demands to one another and building a program from those connections. A minimum program expresses confidence in the core forces. We understand that forward motion depends on theory, struggle, organization and leadership at work among the core forces. When these are weaker, there is little or no forward motion. When these are stronger, people learn and accomplish in a few weeks or months what it might take them years to accomplish otherwise.

Third, a minimum program attempts to describe the demands needed to beat back the corporations and the rich who control the corporations, racism, misogyny, bigotry and all of the prejudices and superstitions that divide the working-class and oppressed peoples. It attempts to build anti-imperialism and anti-monopoly capitalism on an inclusive and democratic basis. It presupposes that a broad and radical-democratic movement can win people over in large numbers and transform our lives. It also presupposes that the capitalists and the state will react harshly and that the only real protection anyone has is with their comrades.

Fourth, a minimum program represents an effort by socialists to break out of isolation, connect with the core forces mentioned above, join them in their struggles, test socialist theories and practice, and build a path to revolutionary-democratic power for oppressed peoples. Leadership and power come through organizing and fighting back against oppression. We are about full participation in working-class and nationally oppressed struggles, learning and sharing responsibilities with our comrades in struggle, taking on responsibilities in these struggles, and building leadership through action and accountability.

Fifth, these reforms build a bridge between the present and the future as more and more working class and oppressed people are drawn into the fight for a better world, and thus learn what democracy looks and feels like. As workers and oppressed people organize for radical social change, campaigns and movements will be sparked, which will necessarily raise the level of political development and self-organization of the working class and its allies. As workers and their allies struggle for their objectives, a sense of the power of a united working class and people becomes evident, and with this power, workers and their allies become increasingly aware of their ability to reconstruct society according to their own precepts and principles. In a word, the working class and its allies learn that we can do anything.

This minimum program owes a great debt to the Movement for Black Lives Platform. We welcome your criticism and support. We look forward to discussing these points with you and joining with you.

https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3Aa86bb8cc-4560-448f-867c-d54604b3a7bf

Vote Democratic not in support of Biden (or another nominee) or against Trump, but in order to help defeat the ultra-right and raise the level of contradiction between a left-center coalition and the far-right

The Left in the United States seems to be forever at a crossroads, and there seems to always be someone present proclaiming that being at a crossroads constitutes a crisis for the Left. These polemics have been with us for at least 75 years. People come to the Left and leave, and times and conditions change, but for some of us only an unreasonable and impoverished sense of crisis remains.

The problems with these formulations seem clearer to me at this moment than they have in the past. We on the Left can be so inward-looking that we speak in languages that those around us often don’t understand and have no reason to concern themselves with. We have an exaggerated sense of our own importance. We adopt a middle-class framework when we fail to understand why everyone doesn’t share our opinions. We assume that all of those who disagree with us have been duped by the media or can’t think logically, and we either don’t struggle with people over ideology or we make conversation a one-way street when we do. There is also a middle-class idea prevalent on the Left that says when we don’t get what we want from an organization or a movement we are free from our obligations to struggle over ideas and free to walk away.

People arriving on the Left now are arriving under different circumstances than people who arrived four or six years ago, and those people arrived under different conditions than people who were radicalized in the Occupy movement or in the 2008 period. Radicalization today might come through the strike wave of the last two years, through the Sanders movement, or through the way that the COVID-19 virus has emerged and is being handled. There are qualitative differences between these people and those who were radicalized under the impact of Black Lives Matter and related movement. These new lefts, working-class lefts, and people of color lefts are also different than the Old Left that is passing on and the radicals who joined the movement in the 1970s and 1980s. We may agree on a few basics or share an instinctive anti-capitalism, but there our commonality and solidarity often stop.

The jail breaks from these problems are found in studying Marxist theory with others, engaging in the hard work of organizing for change, critiquing our actions and views with others, improving our collective practice, and returning again to Marxist theory as a guidepost. The immediate barriers to doing this are that individualism runs deep in the United States and in our movement, that theory and practice look like salad bars to many of us, that the leading Left organization in the U.S. discourages engagement with Marxism, and that we have not found a widely-agree-upon way to combine theory and practice to win people over to revolutionary politics. In fact, we lack agreement on what “revolutionary politics” means and how important it is.

In better times---in a revolutionary moment---we would not have to struggle over the definitions of words. We would have general agreement on what words like “capitalism,” “socialism,” “fascism,” and “solidarity” mean. We would feel committed to struggling with one another as comrades. We would not be in a place where so many of us begin with saying “I believe that…” and then make an essentially moral point based only on our morality and leave it there, not basing our opinions on theory or practice or Marxist science. We would not believe that all ideas have equal weight. We would uphold the principle that ideas are tied to classes and lived experiences. But we are not in a revolutionary moment.

The Sanders movement has been a necessary defensive effort. The movement’s program formed around undoing the damage done by past Republican and Democratic administrations and by the 2007-2008 economic meltdown, and so it has been a patchwork of needed reforms that speak to almost everyone and no one at the same time. It could speak from the standpoint of policy and had a needed flexibility on policy issues. Its collective defense of its populist and social democratic principles and its resiliency have been admirable. The movement’s ability to inspire people and birth its future in young and dynamic representatives to the left of Sanders illustrates how political struggle moves forwards and backwards in stages. The Sanders movement has helped to lay a foundation for on-going organizing and political victories. If the Left does not drop the ball, and if we change course and hold the biggest part of our base and expand that base through alliances, this could be the last election in which we face such limited choices.

On the other hand, the Sanders movement has been a cross-class movement, but it has barely reached the point of being an alliance. It has been over-confident and dogmatic. It did not ally with Warren’s movement or move those forces leftward, ensuring that neither would succeed. It could not hold a coalition of the Democratic Party’s left together.

The Left bears some responsibility for the Sanders movement’s naivete. This naivete and the Left’s internal weaknesses work together to prevent us from acknowledging our weaknesses and errors. This allows the Sanders movement and the Left to blame Americans and Trump for our failures and to excuse ourselves from self-criticism. This inability to do self-criticism and change course means that our errors will not be corrected. We allowed the Sanders movement to substitute for a mature Left and speak to the American people in our name instead of doing the hard work ourselves. Large numbers of people have moved in our direction, but the Left cannot win a national campaign under current conditions.

The Sanders movement is not what a strategic and tactical offensive from the Left should look like. Neither was Occupy, or the recent strike wave, or the Warren campaign. These are all notable and necessary political formations, but they are not strategic and tactical offensives by the Left. The question is not about the “purity” of these formations. Rather, the point revolves around the related questions of whether or not a strategic and tactical offensive from the Left is possible at this stage and what the relationships should be between the Left, the social movements, and the political center. Now the question is how the Left should relate to the Biden campaign and the political center and how we can defeat Trump.

In a Left-led campaign we would be able to distinguish between stages of struggle and think in terms of strategic leadership. We would have agreement and clarity around objectives and distinguish between our primary and reserve forces. These forces would be mobilized to unite large numbers of people and exploit our opposition’s vulnerabilities. In a struggle for democracy this would mean building a majority. In a more revolutionary moment, a majority might not be as decisive. Having a party of our own and rooting our party among the masses of working-class and specially exploited and oppressed peoples, with a tested political line and leadership structures, would be more decisive.

Political alignment would be very different than it is now. We would know what is important to the masses of working-class and oppressed peoples and what they’re taking action on. National campaigns would not depend on six or eight great senators and articulating needed reform and make-up packages. Something like a broad united front would exist at the grassroots, and it would be led by women, people of color, the working-class and all of the core forces needed for social change. Those core forces might or might not remain in the Democratic Party under those conditions. We would have many candidates and many electoral successes, all backed up by street heat.

But we live within the working-class that exists, not the one that we want to exist. The new left, and particularly the youth and many of those most attached to the Sanders and Warren campaigns, are struggling with this. It’s difficult to acknowledge that our views are not widely shared or have not been well-communicated. It’s also difficult to dig in and summon the patience to be critical and self-critical in a Marxist framework and to go about the work of organizing and thinking 10 years ahead. I doubt that many of those who have come to us through the Sanders movement will make this leap now. They may find a place in a cause-of-the-month DSA that is preoccupied with processes and policies and never gets down to Marxism or they may withdraw from politics entirely. It is unlikely, though not impossible, that DSA will be fully transformed and will educate them in socialist basics. This is an all-around loss because we all have much to learn from one another and DSA has its moments in the sun.

Let’s step back and consider the following:

1.       The core forces needed for social change remain largely within the Democratic Party.

2.       The Left needs these core forces, and should be about the work of giving them the space to look leftwards.

3.       The core forces have divided their votes between Sanders, Warren, and Biden. They constitute an important bloc in the rank-and-file of the political center. Those who live in the Black Belt and Solid South made a necessary political calculation to vote as they did. That calculation and their votes must be respected.

4.       To remain aloof from the core forces, to view involvement with working-class and oppressed peoples as optional in any way, and to assume that Left or progressive politics constitutes an entitlement to leadership among them is to abandon radical politics.

5.       Abstaining from voting with the core forces and struggling with them and learning from them breaks faith with the core forces. Breaking faith is a final and decisive act. No one can abstain from working with the core forces, or working against their interests, and expect to be welcomed in later and taken seriously.

6.       Our American history has evolved under the special conditions of the color and class lines being determinative factors. The struggles waged by people of color and working-class people have moved the center to the left, or have created openings for this to happen. Lincoln was forced to adopt an abolitionist program because of slave revolts. Roosevelt was forced to open the New Deal by working-class upsurges.

7.       The Democratic Party exists as a cross-class alliance of various contradictory social forces. In this sense it is not a bourgeois party, and it seems unlikely that can be transformed into a labor or social democratic party. We cannot say that the parties or the candidates are the same.

8.       Americans have not undertaken the great fights for social change when things are at their worst. Rather, our struggles gain support when social conditions begin to shift for the better and when advancement is blocked or progress is slowed. The labor movement of the 1930s did not make its greatest advances in the depths of the Depression but when bad conditions eased somewhat. The modern civil rights movement took on a mass character when social advancements were made possible and were promised but were not equally distributed in the post-World War Two economic boom. The Left would have been frozen out of these movements had we not abandoned our dogmatism and sectarianism.

9.       The “Bernie or Bust” and anti-Biden rhetoric from some people on the Left shows a lack of flexibility and a distance from the working-class and oppressed peoples. It also reflects the opportunism of social democrats and anarchists. This finds its main expression in DSA. This lack of flexibility doesn’t work for Sanders, since he has rejected a “Bernie or bust” position. It does not help move Biden or any other potential nominee to the left. And since it finds its primary expression in DSA, with its social democratic and anarchist biases, the “Bernie or Bust” and anti-Biden rhetoric complicates building a revolutionary political party in the future.

10.   The Henry Wallace 1948 Presidential campaign was a desperate but noble attempt to hold on to the Left of the New Deal coalition under Roosevelt and mobilize for jobs, equality, peace, and democracy. That effort had internal weaknesses and was crushed by the onset of the Cold War, but sections of the Wallace movement held the line and influenced the New Left years later. The Humphrey and McCarthy campaigns were insurance policies against a resurgence of the left-of-center and people-of-color coalition that had moved the Wallace campaign. Jesse Jackson’s 1988 Presidential campaign carried some of the heritage of the Wallace campaign with it. Jackson was to the left of where Sanders is today and did relatively well. The Sanders campaign has proceeded as if it is the first of its kind, and people entering the socialist movement today lack a needed sense of history and development.

11.   If we fully participated in the Democratic Party on the basis of being the forces needed to carry out the most progressive aspects of their program where it intersects with ours, and if we used this as a means of learning and teaching and as a platform to advocate for a more aggressive political push by the Democrats, we would stand a better chance of winning great numbers of the core forces to our side and changing the debate within the Democratic Party. We need the will to earn leadership and respect by doing the hard work in principled ways. This is not about reforming or transforming the Democratic Party, which might be a by-product of our work if it occurred, but of making socialism and socialist practice accessible to people at the grassroots. It would be better to attempt this and to change course later if it did not work or to be expelled by a Democratic establishment then it would be to reject attempting this.

 Consider the following practical-philosophical points:

1.       The most advanced or radical ideas are not those that we come up with in our heads. Rather, the most advanced and radical ideas are those that we can rally most of the core forces around.

2.       The most “revolutionary” ideas are not always the most radical. A “revolutionary” position may feel good, but it has to meet the tests of resonating with the core forces and fitting into the ebb and flow of organizing and struggle.

3.       It is struggle that resolves differences. Investigate and study, act, evaluate, and act again in order to arrive at a correct position. Sterile debates set us back.

4.       There are correct and incorrect ideas. We discover what is correct and incorrect by acting with others.

5.       No tactic is wrong in itself, but strategies and tactics must correspond to stages or moments in real time. Abstaining from voting or from allying with the political center might make sense when we have tens of millions of people with us. Who needs an alliance with the center or participation in elections when we can wage mass strikes and civil disobedience to win radical demands? But abstaining from voting now breaks faith with the core forces and isolates us.

6.       To say that Biden or some other Democratic nominee is unelectable is to say that there are inevitabilities, which is to deny the power of the people and the ebb and flow of struggle. It is the people who make history, not defeatists. We mobilized millions to defeat fascism in Europe, over 100,000 people participated in the Long March in China, we mobilized to beat Jim Crow segregation in the US, we overthrew apartheid, and we beat American imperialism in Cuba and Vietnam. Our history is that of being told that the prisons will outlast us—and then we tear the prisons down. We can stop fascism in the U.S.

7.       Political alliances are a necessary foundation for political strategies and tactics.

8.       A movement for democracy can become a movement for radical democracy. A radical-democratic movement can become a revolutionary movement. A revolutionary movement can become a socialist movement. Socialism brings power to the workers and all of the oppressed. There are necessary stages to development, and occasional leaps, that call forth different alliances, but alliances are needed at each stage.

9.       Alliances are a matter for the present, not the future. We are in a defensive stage and engaged in a struggle for democracy. Under these conditions our main task is to unite the many against the few, build capacity to fight and win within that cross-class and all-people’s alliance, stop the Republicans, involve or win over tens of millions of people, and build a path to democratic power. That will move us from being on the defense to going on the offense.

10.   In doing so we must be honest about our politics and state our disagreements with others, but this must be done in constructive ways. This implies that we have a political line and are grounded in that line and that we are rejecting whatever seeks to substitute for a political line.

11.   We are not anarchists. We support the conquest of state power by the working-class and oppressed peoples, the creation of the democratic means to carry out planning and distribution of value and wealth, self-determination for oppressed peoples, and the eventual use of legal coercive means against the exploiters.

Some on the Left talk about “class struggle elections” and a “rank-and-file strategy” as if the center of political gravity is with the Left, as if the class struggle is on the offensive now, as if the Left is leading the class struggle and doesn’t need allies, and as if union leaders form the main barrier against class struggles. This is self-isolation, an add-on to the “Bernie or Bust” tendency. DSA and others who roll with this are painting themselves into a corner at a time when there is a breeze---not a wind, but a breeze---in our sails. Let’s instead talk about “class struggle elections” and a “rank-and-file strategy” in terms of the labor movement leading a coalition with a “bargaining for the common good” platform; mass union organizing; the need to build worker leadership in the joint struggle against the Republicans, monopoly capital, and COVID-19; or in winning survival space and gains in the Solid or Black Belt South, among indigenous peoples, and in immigrant communities.

 In line with this, I am recommending

1.       That the Left devote our collective energies where they exist to the study of Marxism.

2.       That we actively engage in debates and in political alliances with the center and that we leverage our positive relations with the center to win a more progressive Democratic Party platform and move forward more progressive candidates.

3.       That we act within social movements on the basis of where the most progressive aspects of the Democratic platform and our program intersects.

4.       That we push for a debt jubilee, jobs or income now, a Green New Deal, and a full minimum program for social change based on the programs of the Movement for Black Lives, the Sanders campaign, and the labor movement.

5.       That we commit to voting for Democratic Party nominees now.

6.       That we support using the Democratic Party convention as a primary means of making the case against Trump to the American people.

7.       That we vote Democratic not in support of Biden (or another nominee) or against Trump, but in order to help defeat the ultra-right and raise the level of contradiction between a left-center coalition and the far-right.

8.       That we prepare ourselves to either provide an opening for a Democratic president and the center to move leftwards if they win or to wage the most militant workplace and community struggles possible in coalition with the core forces if the Democrats lose.

9.       That we endorse a revolutionary path and, in that context, work for Democratic candidates without endorsing them.

A Response to the Biden Campaign Proposals on Health Care and Student Debt

The following was submitted by a comrade:

“Sorry Joe, it Just Doesn’t Cut It”

So, here’s the scenario, at least in my head. Joe Biden is in negotiations with The Left; it’s like bargaining a labor contract. The Democrats and Joe Biden want “Unity” across the Democratic Party as it faces Trump in the November election.

The Left is interested in moving its agenda forward.

On April 9, in that quest for Unity, the Joe Biden campaign offered two policy initiatives meant to placate and get the Left on board with the Biden campaign. The two policies are student debt relief and healthcare/health insurance.

Back to the contract bargaining scenario that’s in my head. The Biden campaign gave us two proposals on April 9. Because the scenario is in my head, I get to be the Left’s spokesperson. What do we say in response to the April 9 proposals?

In my head, the response goes like this:

Me: “Let me respond to your proposals of the other day. First, I want to say we appreciate your efforts and movement in the direction of accommodating the policy concerns of The Left. We know you want to get us on board, and we know you’re trying to figure a way to adjust your positions in the interests of the working class, oppressed people, rural workers and immigrants. However, in response to your proposals of April 9 – sorry, Joe -- but the proposals just don’t cut it, and I’ll tell you why:

First: Student debt. What’s wrong with you guys? So, poor kids who have incurred debt at a private college or university don’t get debt relief help? Why? Do you feel a need to punish poor and working class students who took out loans to go to a private university? Or, are you trying to punish private universities and colleges by holding their students hostage?

Two: Why are graduate students not covered by your student debt policy? Graduate students have personal student debt that’s in the six figures range. Graduated graduate students are also academics. Yet these academics are faced with years of bouncing across the country from low paid one-year contract to another low paid one- year contract, just like the Middle Ages! Is this how we want to further higher education? By systematically immiserating those who are the backbone of higher education in the USA?

Three: Joe, your proposal on student debt offers no structural changes to higher education. We bail out some students now? Start the student debt crisis over again with a new generation?

Four: If you really want The Left on board, stop your damned means testing. When you means test, there are always winners and losers. Some poor working class kid who made a big mistake and went to a private college, what are you going to say to them? “Sorry kid, you’ll have to pay the full $70K in student debt because you went to a private college”? 

This is what happens when you means test. You divide winners and losers based on a shallow ideology of who “deserves”, who doesn’t, and all the arbitrary and bureaucratic divisions you put in place to enforce the separation of the “deserving”, from those who were on the losing side of the political deal, those dumb, poor, pampered working class kids who went to a private college.

You can do a lot better!

On to healthcare:

Me: So, Joe, your proposal to drop Medicare eligibility to age 60? You know, if you can find a way to include the first 60 years of life too? Then we’d be talking!! Which leads us to the public option…

We’re not impressed with a public option. Why? Because a public option is just another insurance plan out there. Just like Obama Care, there will be co-pays and deductibles up the wazoo, and there will be monthly premiums. In the spirit of Obama Care too, you will be offering higher quality healthcare plans, with lower deductibles and co-pays to those who can afford the high premium, and those who are working class with low incomes, who are stuck with “silver” and “bronze” plans, who face deductibles of $1500 and $6000 respectively. Congrats here! Because you’ve actually built a health insurance program which economically punishes working class people when they seek healthcare!

If you want to push the public option, and want us on the Left to buy-in, you’re off to a bad start. Here’s a hint -- the devil is always in the details!

If you want to get the Left even talking to you on healthcare, you better put a public option out there that starts at 100% subsidized premiums for the lower 90% of the population.

Second, don’t even think about putting co-pays and deductibles in your public option. Every co-pay and deductible is an obstacle in the way of actually receiving healthcare!…. Medicare for All would be so much cost-effective, efficient, and user friendly! But if you insist on subsidizing the health insurance corporations……

Joe, you know, the biggest problem is we just don’t see things the way you do. We have funny ideas, like “An injury to One is an Injury to All”. We know that nobody is better off unless all people are better off. You guys on the other hand through peoples’ lives around like they’re gambling chips. Everything is about the deal; who will be short changed so that others can get a better deal? Sorry, but we don’t think the way.

To sum things up, Joe, your proposals of April 9 just don’t cut it! If you want “enthusiasm” for your campaign, from the Left, you’ll have to do miles and miles better then your proposals of April 9.” 

Out of My Head and Back to Reality

In reality, I have a pretty low bar with this Presidential election. I will vote for Joe whether he becomes more Left friendly or not. My vote for Joe is based on one important criteria; Donald Trump is a Fascist and Joe Biden is not. For me it’s that simple!

I’m also a responsible socialist (at least I’d like to think so). Therefore, I think I have a duty to talk to the rest of my comrades, friends, co-workers and family about being responsible and voting for Biden.

My Biden rap is already worked out, it goes like this: “You will get nothing by voting for Joe Biden, but you will have stopped Fascism in the USA!” Adding a little substance here, a Biden win means that Latinx DREAMERS will get to stay in the US, that voter suppression of oppressed people will be significantly slowed down, we’ll be able to stop gender-based concentration camps of the US-Mexican border, and the Constitution and a republic will be maintained.

I think it’s an honest rap and accurately reflects what’s at stake. But it’s not an inspiring rap.

Many people on the Left will decide to be “responsible” and vote for Biden in order to stop Fascism. On the other hand, many on the Left will see voting for Biden as a surrender of their principles, and among some, there’s a search for serious vengeance.

Anger from the Left, especially youth, are the wages Biden and the Democratic Establishment have earned in their all-out war against the Bernie Sanders’ campaign and every proposal it made. These voters and activists will have a real hard time forgiving Joe Biden and the DNC.

So, what can I say? If Biden and the Democratic establishment want even a sliver of “enthusiasm” from the Left, they’re going to have to do a whole lot better!

Understanding Hong Kong

Imagine that Japan occupied San Francisco in the 1880s, forcing the US government to sign a 100 year 'lease' for the territory. Imagine that the Japanese abolished all democratic rights in the city, and ruled through a colonial government appointed directly by Tokyo. Non-Japanese residents of San Francisco became second class citizens and are forced to live in overcrowded slums to make room for upscale Japanese businesses; these businesses display notices saying "No Whites or dogs". The Japanese colonial administration imposes Japanese culture, language, and economic institutions by fiat. Anything non-Japanese is deemed inferior, and Japanese chauvinism is reflected at every level of society, including education.

After a century of occupation, the Japanese finally agree to return San Francisco to the United States. However, they stipulate that the colonial administration must remain intact; there will be no elections, the economy will continue to be dominated by Japanese businesses, and colonial-era Japanese laws and values will remain in place. This compromise is called 'one country, two systems'.

After a few years, San Francisco begins to lag behind the rest of the US economically, causing discontent among the working population who continue to labor under colonial conditions despite the end of formal Japanese rule. Pro-Japanese demonstrators demand that the Emperor 'free' them from the US; they wave the Japanese colonial flag, and fly to Tokyo to meet with representatives of the Japanese government. The Japanese media paints the demonstrators as 'pro-democracy', ignoring their government's obvious role in the unrest; the US government is, meanwhile, denounced as 'oppressive' for attempting to exercise sovereignty over its territory.

On Socialist Work and Working Class Trump Voters, Briefly

We hear a great deal of late about the so-called 'Trumpenleft' or 'Red-Brown alliance'. The terms were first coined by writers at Counterpunch, and refer to a segment of the left that is allegedly supportive of, or at least sympathetic to, Donald Trump. Tellingly, the label is typically flung at anyone who is deemed too critical of the Democratic Party, not critical enough of Trump, or who points out that Trump's populist-sounding campaign rhetoric resonated with certain segments of the working class- particularly when juxtaposed with Hillary Clinton's snide elitism. Polling data is marshaled by the anti-Trumpenleftists that supposedly shows that Trump voters are irredeemably racist and sexist and therefore not worth engaging with; furthermore, they are predominantly well-off members of the petty bourgeoisie. Leaving aside the many issues with over reliance on polling data, anyone who has done a shred of real-world socialist political work should know two very important facts: that the views of working class people, especially white working class people, are often contradictory, and that socialist work is by its nature transformative in a way that ordinary bourgeois politics is not.

A complex history of settler-colonialism, racism, class struggle, regional economic differences, and national-cultural chauvinism (both as recipient and victim), and oppression fueled apathy has left white workers with a hodgepodge of political views, some of which border on the absurd. We find anti-Arab racism and militarism coexisting with anti-war sentiments; 'social libertarians' who support social programs but oppose state regulation of industry; anti-tax/anti-corporate combinations (ironically, this is very close to a recognition of the class nature of the state). The lesson we ought to draw from this is that we must never 'write off' any section of the working class, no matter how backward or contradictory their views. The very contradictions we observe in workers' politics are indicative of how little value the bourgeoisie places on their support, not even bothering to propagandize to them properly (in contrast to careful cultivation of the petty bourgeois worldview). We should not join the bourgeoisie in its malign neglect, but do precisely the opposite: respectfully engage and educate wherever and whenever we can.

For the purposes of liberals and social democrats, who are primarily concerned with electioneering (i.e., marketing) on behalf of this or that candidate, broad demographic categories are useful. We see arguments put forward that the number of working class Trump voters who 'matter' amounts to less than two percent of the population, and so they may be safely ignored. From a marketing perspective, this may be true. However, in terms of the number of working people who are socialists with some grasp of socialist theory, this is a huge number. More to the point, the needs of our political work, particularly when we are politically weak as we are now, is by nature more focused, more concerned with ideological struggle, and directed toward building durable organizations with theoretically literate and highly motivated members. This is why we must make lived experience the guiding principle of our day to day political work and eschew shallow pollsterism.

The question of the law of value

The following short essay represents a comrade's contribution to discussions we are having about value, abstract labor, and basic Marxist economics. Does this seem complicated or over your head? It isn't! Start with Rius' Marx For Beginners, as we're doing, and think through your own work experience with others.)

A central problem of socialist development is the question of the law of value. Stalin famously argued in his last work, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR that commodity production and the law of value continue to operate under socialism and that this is "not a bad thing", that it leads enterprises to become more efficient, managers to be more cost conscious, and generally improves the performance of the socialist economy. In taking this position, Stalin argued against those in the Communist Party of the Soviet Uunion who believed that the development of the socialist economy could be accomplished by decree alone, that prices could be set without regard to the cost of production, and generally that Marx's correct observation that economic law is social in character meant that therefore economic law must not exist at all.

In the context of the struggle against bureaucratic revisionism in USSR of the 1950s, a struggle that was subsequently lost to Khrushchev, Stalin was no doubt correct. However, the history of the application of the law of value in the USSR can only lead us to conclude that it led to the development of a nascent capitalist class that eventually grew to the point that it could abolish socialism. This was not merely a 'managerial' or 'technocratic' class as some idealist critics would have it, nor simply a clique of corrupt 'Khrushchevite revisionists' or second economy bandits (though no doubt these existed), but a class with real, material interests whose chief concern was the efficient operation of the law of value and the profitability of its enterprises; its origin lay in the very foundation of the postwar Soviet economy.

Shall we, then, simply stop there and declare that true socialism must abolish the law of value instantly and completely? By no menas. We must instead, as any competent scientist might, go back to first principles and reexamine the law of value and its potential application under socialism.

The law of value states that the value of a commodity is twofold, containing both a use value and an exchange value. Use value, based on specific labor, determines a commodity's usefulness in itself; exchange value determines its value relative to other commodities. The magnitude of the exchange value is dependent upon the average, or abstract, socially necessary labor time needed to produce that particular commodity. Note that value is distinct from price.

Particularly under monopoly conditions, capitalists seek always to get 'something for nothing', to 'cheat' the system of exchange so to speak and thereby receive a greater sum of value than they give in their transactions. In doing so, they do not create value from thin air; they extract it from the other party in the transaction. Modern bourgeois economics attempt to cover this up by conflating price with value: Pubilius Syrus' old saw, "everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it", is elevated to divine writ in the annals of marginal utility theory (the subjective theory of value which states that the purchaser determines a commodity’s value via the ‘margin of utility’ gained by purchasing it).

At any given moment, there exists some number n of like commodities c that will satisfy the need for their particular use values. This is the demand. However, capitalism obscures the actual demand as the production of these commodities is determined not by the use value, but the exchange value; commodities under capitalism do not have value in themselves but only insofar as they can be exchanged for other commodities. Thus, the capitalists' natural response to the inevitable fall in price as demand is met is to produce more while selling for less, and when these measures fail, to cut staff, raise quotas, and resort to all the various tricks and gyrations that the bourgeoisie uses in its vain attempts to preserve the exchange value of its products. The use value of these products is immaterial in all this. Under capitalism, use value is subordinated to exchange value.

Under socialism, on the other hand, commodities ought to have value in themselves; they should exist primarily as use values. In other words, rather than abolishing the law of value, its application under socialism should be inverted: exchange value should be subordinate to use value. This means that all exchange must be conducted on the basis of value for value, never value for value+ or value for nothing (as we see in the markets for real estate and certain digital goods, for instance). The goal of production, meanwhile, must be to maximize the number of use values produced per unit of average labor time, allowing exchange value per commodity to fall and thus indicate a potential need to reallocate or restructure the means of production. This does not preclude the existence of market mechanisms per se, though the operation of these would be along lines very different from markets under capitalism.

ABCs of Socialism, Part 2: Getting There from Here

For those who may have missed it, Part 1 is here.

Now that we understand, in very general terms, what socialism is, the most obvious question is how to get there. How do we set ourselves free?

It may be tempting to prescribe simple answers to this question: “Build an independent labor party!” “Organize inside the Democratic Party!” “Support labor unions!” are commonly heard slogans. The reality is that taking and holding power to affect major changes in the way economic life is organized, what socialists call the relations of production, is not so easy. Although these slogans may have their uses, they are not enough by themselves. The changes needed to establish worker sovereignty and bring about socialism are of a vast scope, requiring the organization of millions of people with focus and discipline while also maintaining flexibility and accountability via democratic principles, what socialists call democratic centralism. The old political parties, the Democratic Party, the various labor parties, etc., are not up to the task. Building socialism requires a party of a new type, a cadre party.

A cadre party is not like the parties we are used to in the US, which are almost exclusively voluntary, oligarchic organizations. Cadre parties are made up of the most dedicated and knowledgeable socialists, those that recognize the level of discipline and ‘blood, sweat, and tears’ needed to build a new society. It is not something you could fill out an online form to join! Cadre parties are not organized this way out of some misplaced sense of elitism, but from the enormity of the task they undertake.

By design, cadre parties are relatively small. Historically, some have had founding congresses of fewer than twenty people. However, successful cadre parties form deep connections with other organizations that can offer mutual support and a mass base, such as labor unions. A properly operating cadre party is focused and disciplined, while also being flexible, democratic, and above all connected to its base, the working class. It takes a great deal of knowledge and skill to strike the right balance between discipline and flexibility; too much discipline, and the party risks becoming ultra-left and isolated from the working class; too much flexibility, and the party loses focus on its final goal of winning worker sovereignty and socialism, becoming politically opportunist. Needless to say, the right mix depends on the overall political situation a cadre party is operating under, sometimes called the historical conditions or balance of forces. These can change, sometimes quickly. Successful cadres (the organizational units that make up a cadre party) must learn to anticipate and adapt to these changes and adjust their work accordingly.

How does a cadre party undertake its work? What kinds of political tasks does it focus on? The answer to these questions depends on the aforementioned historical conditions. Generally speaking, party work is divided into two components: strategy and tactics.

Strategy refers to the overall plan, in broad terms, a party adopts in order to achieve socialism. Usually this involves building up popular support for socialism and encouraging workers to adopt socialist thinking, or ideology; that is, the set of ideas on which we build our understanding of the world.

Tactics are the particular means used to achieve strategic goals. For example, a solid strategic goal for a socialist cadre party in the US would be to extend Constitutional rights into the workplace. To achieve that goal, the party might promote this idea among workers belonging to a labor union deemed potentially receptive to it, trying to get the union to adopt the struggle for Constitutional rights officially. Success means not only the full realization of Constitutional rights, but also a change in workers’ thinking, from ‘worker=servant’ to ‘worker=citizen’. Put another way, a quantitative change, the extension of existing Constitutional rights into the workplace, leads to a qualitative change in the relations of production.

Quantitative and qualitative changes lie at the heart of socialist thinking. Together, they form a mechanism called the dialectic, which governs how changes occur in society and the wider world. The simplest example of a dialectical process is a phase change in matter: add enough heat to water (quantitative change), and eventually the water will turn to steam (qualitative change). In society, the abolition of slavery in the US is another example of a dialectical process: Wage labor grew in quantity to challenge slave labor, leading to a contradiction between the interests of industrial capitalists (the beneficiaries of the wage labor system) and slaveholders. This contradiction was resolved in the Civil War, which meant the end of the slave system and the extension of industrial capitalism to the entire United States. One set of relations of production was replaced by another.

Why does understanding dialectics matter? Because socialists approach political problems the same way engineers approach physical ones; socialists apply known principles to understand the problem and craft a solution in a scientific way, then evaluate the real-world outcomes of the solution and adjust it as needed. It is this method which makes socialism, or, more precisely, scientific socialism, a new type of political thinking. Rather than base its political actions on vague appeals to an undefined and subjective ‘rightness’, scientific socialism interacts with the political world systematically to achieve defined goals.

Spain has a "Socialist" Prime Minister---The Left Responds

Socialist Party politician Pedro Sánchez has been sworn in as the country's new prime minister by King Felipe after the ousting of conservative Mariano Rajoy. The Socialist (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, or PSOE) advance came as Sánchez won the support of six other parties to remove Rajoy in the wake of a corruption scandal. Sanchez has said that he plans to serve the remaining two years of the parlimentary term, an optimistic forecast or plan. The Socialists will have to lean left and cooperate with Basque parties if they are going to hold a government together; the reactionary Popular Party (PP), which is Rajoy's main base, holds 134 seats in Parliament as a majority party, while the Socialists have 84 seats and are the largest opposition party in Parliament. The Socialist's parliamentary strength is bookended between right-wing parties and holding a government together under these conditions is not the same as making progress.

Liberal forces in Europe have been quick to support Sánchez, arguing that the Socialists can provide stability and manage the economy in much the same way that the current Portugese government is doing. These liberal forces also want a counterweight to the right-wing parties trying to form a government in Italy and evidently stumbling as they do so, causing some economic and political upsets. There is also a feeling that a united European response to Trump and to his trade and military threats is needed. The Socialists are unlikely to live up to these liberal goals, but continued governing by the right-wing in untenable and the liberals are seeking to contain class and national struggles.   

Sánchez has so far not disappointed his liberal backers. The Socialists have apparently accepted the present state budget without much dissent and have sent calming signals to the European Union. This is an interim government, but one capable of making changes if the Socialists break with their past and lean left and do the right thing in relation to Catalonia and to the Basque struggle for independence. One Basque politician put it well when he said to the Socialists that “Your government will be very complicated, weak and difficult.”

Sánchez did shake things up when he took the oath to protect Spain's constitution without a bible or crucifix. This was a first in Spain's history.

Some socialists in the U.S. will celebrate the Socialist advance in Spain and not look deeper. We want to urge our comrades to study the situation in Spain carefully and not not jump on the liberal bandwagon. To that end we are offering the following statement from the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) regarding the current situation there. The tone and content of the PCE's statement provides us with some guidelines on unity against the far-right which we would be wise to adopt in the U.S.

On the election of Pedro Sanchez as Prime Minister of Spain

The PCE has supported the vote of no confidence that has expelled the PP from the government of Spain after 7 years of budget cuts and corruption and has elected the PSOE's secretary general, Pedro Sánchez, as Prime Minister. We have done it for reasons that we think, are shared and understood by the majority of Spanish society: the need to expel the party of corruption and looting from the government.

The vote of no confidence has ended the situation we tried to avoid after the last general elections, working then to constitute a government of progress that prevented the PP to continue ruling Spain and ensure respect for democracy. Then it was not possible then, and Spain has paid a very high price: the increase in neoliberal measures that have worsened the living conditions of workers, a territorial crisis out of control and the backward step in fundamental freedoms and the increase in repression. We salute that now we have the opportunity to reverse the tragic consequences of the PP government, although Spain has lost two years ruled by the most corrupt party in Europe.

In the years of government of the PP corruption has been usual and structural - Gürtel, Punica, Barcenas, etc -, the looting of public funds to finance the party and to profit of its leaders, the manipulation of judges and prosecutors - to protect themselves and try to guarantee the impunity of the corrupt - and the manipulation of the public media to cover and distract attention, fortunately without fully achieving it.

It was necessary to expel the PP for all these corruptions and we have obtained them thanks to the work of denunciation and investigation of journalists, peoples’ prosecution, of many prosecutors and judges, of Police and Civil Guard officers. Thanks to his work, the truth is known, and we move forward so that justice is made for the crimes committed by the political elites of the country, causing damages that are now essential to repair.

The PP had to be expelled for its economic policies of budget cuts and dismantling of the Welfare State with tragic consequences for the working class and for its cuts and constant attack on democratic freedoms.

We have achieved it those who fill the streets and squares to fight against cutbacks in public services and labour and social rights, against precariousness and corruption, against sexist violence, in defence of public pensions, against evictions and for the right to the housing, who said "no" to this government on the streets, showing that society had said: enough is enough. Today we have achieved a victory, we must celebrate it.

We have succeeded thanks to the 67 seats of Unidos Podemos, largely the result of all these popular struggles, as are also the municipalities taken from the bipartisanship, the new institutions created from popular mobilization and since the confluence.

The deputies of Unidos Podemos have been key to the success of the vote of no confidence and are the guarantee that the new government undertakes the tasks that make it possible to call general elections in a climate of democratic normality.

We believe that the essential tasks that the new government must address are:

- Close this stage of corruption: end corrupt practices from the public powers, guarantee the conditions and means for justice to act impartially and guarantee that there is no impunity for crimes of corruption.

- Regenerate justice and guarantee the full enjoyment of civil and political rights. End limitations on freedom of expression and demonstration and ensure the impartiality of public media.

- Repeal PP reactionary measures such as the labour reform, the education reform, the pension reform and the gag law, guarantee access to housing and modify the mortgage legislation and implement emergency measures against unemployment and exploitation and increasing precariousness to recover part of the rights taken.

- Normalize the situation in Catalonia by initiating a broad dialogue to reach political agreements that reconstruct the coexistence in which we will defend a model of republican and federal state.

This government can be worth to repair what was destroyed by the PP. But we do not believe that a PSOE government is in any position to implement the new policies of change to build a fairer society, neither for its limited parliamentary support nor for its political program. It is a provisional government, perhaps useful to address the most urgent tasks that we have pointed out, but which can hardly address the great transformations that our country needs in the political, economic and social fields. Our support for PM Sánchez will depend on the adoption by his Government of the urgent measures we have outlined to regenerate the democracy and to improve substantially the living conditions of our people.

Pedro Sanchez must not forget, he is PM two years after the general elections, for his mistake in trusting Ciudadanos, a party that considers "terrible" to expel the corrupt government. "Terrible" comes from terror and it seems that Albert Rivera lets out through his mouth, unconsciously, the terror that democracy causes to the bankers and rich of our country, whom he represents so well; the terror of losing the status that these have fabricated him; the terror to follow the path that Rajoy has already taken. The fear over which fascism grows, which also develops from the ignorance promoted by the media behind which the bankers and employers hide.

Fear, in fact, is changing sides and with his words, Rivera shows fear of those "Spaniards" of whom he speaks so much. Citizens are afraid because they know that their Falangist and patriarchal speech, xenophobic and exclusive, their unconditional support for the most corrupt party in Europe, the PP, is becoming clearer. It is becoming clear that Ciudadanos is the same as the People’s Party, with a greater dose of opportunism if possible, a danger for Spain.

Likewise, we note that while the majority of the Spanish people celebrate the expulsion of the PP or in any case, accept it as a democratic act, the media, behind which the banks hide, speak of "chaos" and "catastrophe”. Others who are afraid of "the Spanish and the Spanish". In this new situation, we reaffirm ourselves in the need to strengthen the popular unity and the confluence of the forces of the left, to strengthen the organization people’s and of the working class to continue in the struggle, as the only guarantee to achieve the changes we aspire, that should open the constituent process towards the Third Republic of the workers of all the Peoples of Spain. Our imminent challenge will be the upcoming municipal and regional elections and especially the upcoming legislative elections that the PCE understands should be held as soon as possible, once decontaminated institutions of the immense damage caused by the Popular Party.

Today we celebrate having expelled the PP with the struggle and with the votes.

Left unity in the 2018 elections---Participate on May 23

The Communist Party (CPUSA) is collaborating with several left groups and progressive activists to promote unity and coalition building in the electoral arena. The Left Inside/Outside Project began shortly after the 2016 elections in response to some on the left who sat out the elections or encouraged building a 3rd party at the time.

The groups agree that defeating the extreme right domination of government and the courts is a strategic imperative and building electoral coalitions with every force possible including with the Democratic Party is key.

The next collaboration is an online webinar Wed. May 23 featuring a panel of representatives from the CPUSA, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Freedom Road Socialists Organization (FRSO), Left Roots, and others followed by small group discussion.

Rossana Cambron, chair of the Membership Engagement and Organizing Committee will represent the CPUSA.

This event is aimed at encouraging participation and interaction of members of all the groups. The CPUSA urges its members and supporters to participate.

Here's the official announcement:

The Left Inside/Outside Project invites you to a cross-organizational discussion of left political strategy. This video conference will feature speakers from different organizations in the Left Inside/Outside Project providing their perspective on the key questions facing leftists that are trying to build electoral power alongside social movements, all while navigating the complicated terrain of Democratic party politics. We will also have small group discussions and describe opportunities for collaboration across organizational lines.

Date/Time: May 23rd, at 5 pm Pacific / 8 pm Eastern

Register at bit.ly/leftunity1

In solidarity,

Calvin Cheung-Miaw on behalf of the Left Inside/Outside Project

Here's the document outlining the basic principals of the Left Inside/Outside Project: https://organizingupgrade.com/the-left-we-want/

Comradely,

John Bachtell

Our Internationalism---Post 4 of 4

We conclude this brief series on internationalism with an important ideological piece framing an crucial part of the revolutionary experience in Europe of the past 50 years. Why is this important? I think that the views expressed in this interview help us understand something of the advances and backward steps taken by the left internationally over the past 50 years and help us with criticism and self-criticism which should lead us towards being better internationalists and understanding our struggles in a new and better light. Note the interplay between events in parts of the Third World and in Europe mentioned in the following piece and the helpful attempt to reconcile what appeared as hostile contradictions between socialist countries 40 or 50 years ago. This is taken from the International Communist Press.

The Communist Youth Union of the Czech Republic reviews the ‘Prague Spring’

The Communist Youth of Turkey (TKG) made a special interview with the Communist Youth Union (KSM), the youth wing of the CP of Bohemia and Moravia, on the anniversary of the so-called Prague Spring of May 1968. KSM discussed the experience of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia during the events, the heritage of socialist Czechoslovakia and the revolutionary stance of today’s communist youth.

1) Firstly, how do you consider the socialist experience in your country? What are the ideological gains and political lessons that this history provides you while you carry out your current struggles?
The socialist construction in our country was an important experience for our peoples. For the first time in our country, the working class ruled, the surplus product belonged to those who created it. In the new society, there was a rapid economic development, the rise of collective cultivation in the countryside.

Despite this, the particular character of the epoch, as well as the mistakes of the revolutionary subject contributed to the solutions which were not enough thoroughgoing.

We have to take into consideration the specific situation which was different from that of the Great October Socialist Revolution in 1917. The socialist construction was opened after the peoples’ victory over Nazism and fascism with the greatest contribution and sacrifices of the USSR as the first state of the working class. In the same time, this defeat weakened the domestic bourgeoisie which in its great part collaborated with the Nazi occupation forces. Therefore, despite the national-democratic character of the 1945 revolution, the anti-fascist victory made the development towards the socialist revolution simpler. Particularly, all the parties had the socialism in their program. Also, the level of industrial development and the working class organization (especially in the Czech countries) was relatively advanced. The February victory 1948 remained formally in the parliamentary field – even when there were shifts in the working class and peasant organizations and power. This development left marks in the following development and struggles. One of these marks was the national issue solution. The socialist system states had state-boundaries, basically inherited from the Versailles system which had arisen after the 1st world war and which were also aimed against the spreading of the proletarian revolution in Europe. The socialist transformation also left relics in the form of bourgeois-democratic “Masarykist” views inside of the working class and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. (Masaryk – 1st president of the bourgeois Czechoslovak Republic between 1918-35)

Similar specificities were present also in other new people’s democracies and socialist countries in Europe.

2) 50 years ago, how was the Communist Party's leading role in Socialist Czechoslovakia?

After the counterrevolution in Hungary, the imperialism learned that the direct violent confrontation was not leading to the aimed results and it is necessary to attack the socialism from inside of the ruling Communist Party. Therefore it changed its tactics in the effort to restore capitalism. The reaction recommended the discontented people to become members of the party and official organizations. The membership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) covered the 13% of the whole adult population of Czechoslovakia and many members often did not meet the requirements of the socialist construction. We have to add the loss of alertness after the XX. congress of the CPSU and utopian conceptions about the development towards communism without contradictions and about the end of the class struggle. The declaration of the achievement of socialism in the 1960 constitution under the leadership of the First Secretary of the KSČ and the President of the Republic Antonín Novotný which meant the formal end of the class struggle inside of the socialist republic was one manifestation of these processes.

However, the contradictions and struggles in the society remained. In 1963 the increased 3rdfive-year plan collapsed and the economy had to be directed by short-term plans. Among the reasons of this failures, there were the subjectivist overestimations of possibilities, the escalation of the conflict with imperialism (in the case of the direct military attack of imperialism, the Czechoslovak army was obliged to intercept the first attack – the Red Army was not present in Czechoslovakia). The split between the People’s Republic of China and other socialist countries was also of great importance because the great part of the Czechoslovak industry export intended for China development was not realized. The economic problems sharpened other contradictions demanding solutions.

The unsolved national problems in the issue of Slovakia quickly emerged on the surface. In addition, the rehabilitation processes which happened under the influence of the policy after the XX. congress of CPSU, canceling the judgments from the sharpened struggles of the 1950s, resulted in adoption to the leadership of the KSČ of individuals which started to split from the movement. The petit bourgeois moods increased, the priority was laid to the opinions of the intelligentsia, and the leading role of the working class diminished.

3) Who was Alexander Dubček and what was his political agenda? What is this so-called Prague Spring? What actually happened in 1968?

The unsolved contradictions culminated in the January plenum of the CC of KSČ in 1968, in the removal of Antonín Novotný from the post of the First Secretary. In this plenum, several currents in the party joined. The great role was played by the discontent of the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS - part of KSČ) about the influence in the decision process and the effort of its leaders to federalize Czechoslovakia. From the joining of various interests, the compromise had arisen and as a First Secretary, the weak politician, former leader of KSS Alexander Dubček was elected. With him, the whole group of politicians came to power with the program of the petit bourgeois socialism, which they called “socialism with a human face” or “democratic socialism”. We can highlight market-socialist Ota Šik, who exploited criticisms of real economic problems and pressed for a weakening of the relations inside The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and weakening of the central planning. He strived for a foreign loan not in order to invest in the means of production but in order to buy the consumer goods. Similarly to the epoch of restored capitalism after 1989, there was the tendency of the use of price differences to the exportation of undervalued commodities to the capitalist countries for foreign currencies instead of mutual exchange between socialist countries. The proposition to dissolve the agricultural cooperatives (which did not meet with the expected positive response in the countryside), even to leave the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance appeared. It was dangerous for the socialist system especially in the time of imperialist escalation.

New organizations, e.g. club K231, which associated people imprisoned for a fight against socialist construction, were established. In the leadership of the mentioned club, direct agents of foreign secret services appeared. The unified organization of the youth was broken.

New phenomena were not spontaneous. The right-wing forces in the party and outside of it skillfully used the mass media to manipulate the public opinions. The anti-Sovietism appeared in the official media more and more often. In July 1968, 99 workers of the Prague industrial plant wrote a letter to the Soviet newspaper “Pravda” which expressed their protest against the anti-Sovietism in Czechoslovakia. The communists which did not agree with the development were designated as “conservatives”, against so-called “progressivists”. There was even the plan for the internment of the dissentient communists (under the guise of command against counterrevolution) – which approached to the development in Hungary in 1956.

4) And what about the military intervention of the Warsaw Pact?

Despite the fact, that in the beginning Dubček probably had the support of the Soviet side, during the year 1968, the leadership of other socialist countries apprehensively observed danger of the perturbation of the socialist system and the rise of counterrevolutionary forces. There were several meetings of the allies, where the development was discussed in an open way and Dubček always promised to act accordingly. The last meeting was in August 3rd, 1968 in Bratislava (Slovakia) between the party representatives of Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union, GDR, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Poland – where the parties declared the will to struggle against imperialism and defend socialist achievements together. However, the leadership of the KSČ did not do anything against counterrevolution and reactionary organizations.

In a certain moment, the decision to help the internationalist forces which were afraid of reactionary development in Czechoslovakia was made. 21. August 1968, 5 allies of the Warsaw Treaty entered to the Czechoslovak territory. In contradiction to the often cited version, the soldiers did not violently overthrow the government. Unfortunately, the right-wing in the Presidium of the CC of KSČ, with knowledge of the development in advance, took the initiative and issued a statement which appealed to Czechoslovak people to obstruct the allied force. This statement escalated the situation. The left inside and outside of the party was not well prepared and organized. The opponents of the “Prague spring” were terrorized; they were warned of revenge for alleged collaboration. The mass media operated in a similar way. “Progressivists” met on an illegitimate meeting, which they called an extraordinary congress of KSČ (apart from other things, the relevant representatives from Slovakia were not present).

In the meantime, the Presidium of the KSČ and the president of the Republic Ludvík Svoboda went to Moscow in order to discuss how to settle the situation. There was an agreement made between Soviet and Czechoslovak leadership about a normalization of the situation. The agreement was signed with one exception by all involved, including Alexander Dubček. Nevertheless, after the return, Dubček remained under influence of the right-wing forces and new anti-Soviet and anti-socialist events appeared and were supported.

The western, capitalist institutions exploited the confusion of the first months for the choice for emigration and work of the qualified workers in science and art. The Trotskyist organization Movement of the Revolutionary Youth prepared terrorist attacks. Another peak was the self-burning of the group of manipulated students. The authentic internationalist forces formed slowly, e.g. among the youth – the Leninist Youth League, in culture the Left Front. In the KSČ itself, the pragmatic approach advanced, and Slovak representative Gustav Husák became the leader of the party.

The leaders of the so-called “Prague Spring” did not manage to fully implement their program of the “democratic socialism”. The real content of the program was shown at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s when the great part of them participated in the restoration of capitalism in Czechoslovakia and after the counterrevolution occupied important positions. E.g. Alexander Dubček became the leader of the Federal Parliament.

5) Do you think that there is a correlation between the events of May '68 in other countries and the incidents happened in your country the same year?

As the balance of forces was changing, in the 1960s the new perspectives for the struggles of the socialism against imperialism were surely opened. We can recall the declaration of the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution, the liberation struggle of the Vietnamese people, anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles and revolutions in other countries, the liberation of the African continent. There were also colossal achievements of the socialism in science, in space exploration. There was also the new escalation with Zionism in 1967. However, there were also the mentioned consequences of the XX. congress of the CPSU and the split of the People’s Republic of China from the socialist system. In this situation, the imperialism apparently strived for new ways of confrontation of the world socialism, to which the communist movement adapted poorly. Above all the alliance of the working class on one hand, and the still broad strata of the petit bourgeoisie and the petit bourgeois intelligentsia on the second hand was not renewed. These strata were indeed conscious of the consequences of imperialism. However, their search for independent policy ended often under the capitalist hegemony – which invested heavily in the cultural activities. The upheaval of the protest and anti-imperialist movement in other countries therefore often fell flat, as a part of the ruling class and imperialist strategies.

6) From a Marxist perspective, what is your approach towards youth struggle? What is the role of the youth in a socialist revolution?

We are of the view expressed by Lenin - that there is a necessity of the youth organization - in which the young people learn themselves the collective and organized work, struggles, and which provides alternatives to the capitalist glitz. The communist organization creates new morality which is subsumed under the interests of proletariat and socialism. The past experience of the socialist construction showed the importance of innovative-revolutionary stance, the constant inclusion of workers and students to struggles and construction. Every loss of revolutionary initiative had catastrophic consequences for the working-class power, for the cause of the building of a society without exploitation of man by man - socialism and communism.

For this reason, we build and form our youth organization Communist Youth Union (KSM), the Czech Republic which takes the heritage of the progressive and communist youth in the country. KSM organizes young students, workers and unemployed and contributes to the anti-imperialist and social struggles. We also struggle against the historical revisionism and anticommunism in the Czech Republic with information and education work. KSM in this work faced many times slandering and anticommunist attacks, including attempts to dissolute the organization by the ruling power.

Our Internationalism---Post 3 of 4

Our third post in this series on internationalism also comes from the IndustriALL website and concerns struggles taking place in Mexico. We again refer readers to the Regeneracion website for important news on the political campaigns underway in Mexico and to the website of the Partido Comunista de Mexico. Readers should study news of a recent meeting of Communists in Latin America. We again draw out the point that unions in the U.S. have much to learn about class struggle and international solidarity. The unions mentioned here are limited in their effectiveness by being almost depoliticized and by not being affiliated with the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) or cooperating with the WFTU. Still, the article illustrates that workers can find and build common cause and solidarity through their own experiences and common sense. What is needed to make this more fully effective and meaningful is a strong working-class political consciousness and organization.

A tale of two factories: union representation in Mexico’s tyre industry

14.05.2018

Two factories in San Luis de Potosi, one of Mexico’s main industrial centres, produce tyres for major multinational companies, Continental Tire and Goodyear. Only a few kilometres separate the two plants, but the way they operate couldn’t be further apart. Much of that comes down to a question of union representation.

Currently, workers at Goodyear are ‘represented’ by infamous Senator Tereso Medina, a CTM union leader known for signing ‘protection contracts’ with employers behind workers’ backs.

Says a young operator at the plant, Francisco Javier Cuestas:

We’ve never seen these so-called representatives. They don’t know the first thing about us. Because we have nobody to speak for us, the company gets away with paying very low wages - less than a dollar and a half per hour - for what is very dangerous and difficult work.
Conditions are so bad that the entrance has become a revolving door. Says Pablo Reyes Medina Hernández, who also works at the plant:

It just doesn’t make any sense. The company invests heavily in training, but within weeks new recruits have already quit because the job is so bad. It’s not like Goodyear can’t afford to provide decent wages and conditions. It does elsewhere, so why not here?

After reading a newsapaper article about how independent unions at Audi, Bombardier, Bridgestone, General Tire, Nissan, Volkswagen have come together as part of an IndustriALL-driven initiative to protect workers' rights in the auto sector, the young workers decided it was time for change. When the company refused to listen, they stopped work to demand the right to genuine union representation.

A short distance away, at the Continental Tire plant, things are very different. Says Federico González, general secretary of the independent union at the plant, SNTGTM, an IndustriALL affiliate:

We do the same job, using the same technology. We have a democratic union that engages in negotiation, and as a result, we have much better wages and working conditions, as well as a stable and committed workforce. We all work for world class companies, and there is no reason they should earn so much less than we do. That’s why we’re supporting them in their struggle.

IndustriALL and some of its affiliates with members in Goodyear or its supply chain, including USW in the US and Canada and CNM-CUT in Brazil, as well as other independent unions in Mexico, have written to the company demanding that it respect the fundamental right of its workers to form the union of their own choosing and that it honour its pledge of non retaliation against the striking workers.

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