WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
SPECIAL ISSUE
Volume 13, Number 3
VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA
April 15, 1993
May 1 International Workers' Day
Fight Unemployment, Organize the Class Struggle!
Democrats and Republicans - parties of unemployment, nuclear weapons and racism
No to the CIA invasion of Nicaragua!
U.S. imperialism, get out of El Salvador!
Solidarity with the Salvadorian people's liberation struggle!
Karl Marx, Fighter for the Working Class!
All Out Against Reagan!
May 1st is International Working Class Day. This is the day. This is the day when the workers proclaim their determination to fight the rotten capitalist injustice. This is the day when all over the globe workers take to the streets to declare their aim of building the new socialist society. This is the day to celebrate the past victories of the working class, the day to prepare for future combat.
This year May Day finds the workers arrayed in important battles against the capitalist exploiters. Across Europe the masses are marching against the imperialists' deployment of nuclear weapons. In El Salvador the working people are advancing their liberation struggle against the U.S.-backed fascist junta. On the occupied West Bank the Palestinian youth continue the titanic struggle for their homeland. And in country after country the workers are standing up to the capitalist austerity measures and imperialist warmongering.
In the U.S. too, workers are stirring. There are marches against unemployment, protests against the KKK, resistance to the racist police terror, and demonstrations against U.S. imperialist aggression in El Salvador and Nicaragua. In the past few months the workers have come out in city after city to greet Reagan with jeers and catcalls and to demand relief from the crushing economic crisis. These actions are only an initial flurry, but they indicate the storms that lie ahead.
May 1st is a day to draw together all these threads of discontent, to rally under the red flag of class struggle. Workers, and all who are oppressed and downtrodden, let us make May 1st a day of protest against the capitalist offensive of the Reagan government.
Go All Out Against Reagan
The economic depression has laid bare the complete insanity of the capitalist system. The workers on the job face overtime and overwork while millions walk the streets unemployed. Oil and gas glut the market while homes go unheated because workers can't pay their bills. Huge surpluses of food rot in the warehouses while people go hungry. At the supermarkets the prices remain high while the small farmers are ruined en masse by the low prices of raw agricultural goods. Tens of millions suffer want and impoverishment, not because of some universal famine, but because too much has been produced. And these crying contradictions are not an accident. No! They are the inevitable result of the capitalist system of production for profit. They are the inescapable outcome of the contradiction between modern, large-scale socialized production and the archaic, outdated system of private appropriation by a handful of moneybags.
But what is Reagan except the barefaced champion of this capitalist disaster! Reagan is not opposed to unemployment. Rather he welcomes it as a useful club to batter down the wages of those who are still working. Reagan is not against the deterioration of the schools. No, he'd just as soon the workers were kept ignorant. He simply uses the crumbling public schools as an excuse to fund the private segregationist academies, to eliminate busing and unleash the fevers of racism. Reagan knows that discontent is spreading among the working masses. But will he admit the bankruptcy of Reaganomics? Not on your life. Reagan's only answer to discontent is mass firings and the policeman's billy club.
Not only at home, but around the globe Reaganism is the iron heel backing up the American corporations and the native exploiters who are gorging themselves off the sweat and blood of those who toil. Reaganism means Green Berets in El Salvador and CIA intrigues in Nicaragua. It means cruise missiles in Europe and U.S. marines supporting the Israeli Zionist aggressors in the Middle East. Reaganism is the bloody claws of imperialism stretching across the world to plunder the oppressed and to crush their revolts.
Against Reaganism and capitalism stands the resistance of the workers of the world. May 1st is the day of the international working class; a day of strikes and demonstrations; a day of struggle against the capitalist billionaires. To link arms with our class brothers in foreign lands, the American workers too must raise their voice in protest. On May 1st let us Go All Out Against Reagan!
Build the Independent Movement of the Working Class
Reagan represents the class offensive of the capitalists. To fight Reagan the workers too must organize themselves as a class. They must take their stand independent of and opposed to all the capitalist parties, against the Democratic Party liberals as well as against the Reaganite Republicans.
If Reagan is the naked sword of the monopolies, then the Democratic Party is their hidden shield. The Democrats, and the union bureaucrats who back them, proclaim themselves to be the saviors of "labor and the minorities." But if on festive occasions, at trade union conventions or election day, they speak of the workers' interests, on every other day they declare their loyalty to the Wall Street financiers. If, in their home states, they say a word or two against Reagan, back at the Capitol they are the stalwarts of "bipartisan cooperation" with the Reaganites.
For two years we witnessed the Democrats' disgusting "honeymoon" with Reagan. And today, although they have begun to whisper against Reagan, they do so not to defend the workers but in the name of joint action with the Republicans. They "fought" Reagan on Social Security and accomplished a "bipartisan" cut in the retirees' benefits. They "fought" Reagan on military spending and managed a "bipartisan" war budget that will reach a staggering record of $1,600 billion over the next five years. They branded Reagan for giving tax cuts to the rich, but ended up themselves advocating that it would be better to eliminate the progressive income tax altogether in favor of the so-called "flat-rate" tax.
As long ago as 1892, Frederick Engels, the close comrade-in-arms of Karl Marx, pointed out that in the U.S. "almost each particular section of the possessing class has its representatives in each of the two big parties to a very large degree." What has changed today is only that monopoly capital has become more firmly entrenched. The Democrats like the Republicans are but the political organization of the capitalist offensive against the workers.
To fight Reagan the workers must free themselves from the shackles of the Democrats and step forward in their own right. On May 1st, let us redouble our efforts to forge the independent class movement of the workers.
Uphold the Red Banner of Karl Marx
This year is the centenary of Karl Marx, the 100th year since his death. Marx was one of the greatest leaders of the international working class, the champion of the class struggle, the founder of scientific socialism. Through his brilliant analysis of history and economics Marx proved the inevitability of the socialist revolution of the workers and he showed them how to organize themselves independently to prepare for just such a struggle. On May 1st it is important to learn from Marx's teachings to advance the working class movement today.
At present a most pressing task is to strengthen the strikes, the demonstrations and mass protests of the workers. Whether it is the question of the fight against wage cuts and unemployment, against police repression and racism, or against imperialist war preparations, the interests of the workers can only be defended through the mass struggle. Marx always greeted the actions of the workers' movement with the greatest enthusiasm. He emphasized that these skirmishes are essential to defend the workers from the attacks of the moneybags. And furthermore, Marx showed that out of the scattered fights grows a mighty movement of the class, a movement through which all the necessary conditions are prepared for the decisive battle to overthrow capitalism.
Today too the workers must heighten their class consciousness. It is essential to spread revolutionary literature among the masses, to distribute leaflets and papers that tell the truth about the situation facing the workers, that show them their true allies and that exposes their false friends. Marx emphasized this necessity to educate the workers in their own class interests. He pointed out that "Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced in its organization to undertake a decisive campaign against the collective power, i.e., the political power, of the ruling classes, it must at any rate be trained for this by continual agitation against, and a hostile attitude toward, the policies of the ruling class. Otherwise it remains a plaything in their hands....'' Either train the workers in the spirit of the class struggle against the capitalists or be a plaything in the exploiters' hands, this is a lesson we must learn today.
But for the class consciousness of the workers to become a mighty political force, they must be organized. Individually the workers are only so many wage slaves. But combined together through organization the working class becomes invincible. Marx argued that the workers already have "one element of success...numbers; but numbers only weigh in the balance, if united by combination and led by knowledge." Today we must forge revolutionary groups in the factories, mines and mills, in the workers' communities and among the youth in the schools. We must turn the bonds of solidarity into the powerful links of organization.
The highest form of the class organization of the workers is the genuine communist party. From his Manifesto of the Communist Party to the end of his life, Marx devoted all his efforts to helping the consolidation of proletarian parties in all countries. The Marxist-Leninist Party is the genuine communist party in the U.S. All class conscious workers should rally to the Party's banner, join its organizations and work to imbue the masses with the spirit of the Party's policy.
Building the independent movement of the working class requires bold revolutionary work to advance the mass struggle, to heighten class consciousness, and build strong class organizations. On this May 1st, let us uphold the red banner of Marx by redoubling our efforts to build the independent workers' movement. Let us spread the truth of Marxism to the broadest sections of the working masses.
Go all out against Reagan!
Organize the class struggle!
Uphold the red banner of Karl Marx!
[Photo.]
On April 6th, 4,000 unemployed steel workers confronted Reagan in Pittsburgh. The anger of the workers shook the Reagan entourage and reportedly gave the Secretary of Labor a good scare. This is a sign of things to come. It is a sign of the sharp political crisis which the army of 15 million jobless is creating for the capitalist rulers. And it is a sign of the storm of class struggle building up among the workers.
A "Recovery" of Lies
Today Reagan talks "recovery." But for the workers this is a recovery of lies. The Washington bureaucrats claim that unemployment receded last month by three-tenths of a percentage point. But their same figures show that no one was called back and that layoffs continue at record levels. In fact last month's statistical decline was due entirely to a drop in the size of the active work force as another 300,000 workers gave up looking in despair.
There is no letup from the depression. Every day and every month the crisis of unemployment grows deeper. Unemployment benefits expire and bills go unpaid as hunger and misery tighten their grip on the jobless.
Unemployment and Capitalist Profit
This hunger and misery is a big weight on the shoulders of all the workers, employed and unemployed. For the capitalists, however, it means big profits. As Karl Marx pointed out, the half-starved army of unemployed is a weapon in the hands of the employers for squeezing more exploitation out of the workers still on the job. In turn this produces yet more victims for the ever-expanding ranks of the unemployed.
It is no accident that along with the pink slips come the demands for wage cuts, work rule changes and other concessions. The bosses' message is clear: either work harder and faster for less or get in line with thousands of others in the hope of landing a job at minimum (starvation) wages. The auto and steel companies make no secret of their desire to use the big layoffs in these industries to cut wages and benefits in half while permanently cutting back work forces by the same amount through speedup and automation.
The Democrats and Republicans -- Parties of Unemployment and Hunger
The Reaganites are simply sneering at the plight of the unemployed. And the liberal-labor fakers of the Democratic Party, the self-styled champions of the workers and the poor, are doing the same thing. Together the Democrats and Republicans back the capitalists' concessions drive. Together they have rubber-stamped the Reagan budgets, robbing tens of billions from the poor and jobless and forking out even more tens of billions to the millionaires and arms merchants. Together they have produced the new bipartisan "jobs bill" which is nothing but an insult to the unemployed -- a boondoggle for the capitalists which will not amount to a drop in the ocean of jobless.
Together the Democrats and Republicans are tied firmly to the Reaganite bandwagon of unemployment and hunger. This is because they are all tied with thousands of threads to the Wall Street bankers and monopoly corporations. Any real steps to relieve the jobless crisis would cut into capitalist profit. And a capitalist politician is not about to bite the hand that feeds him.
This doesn't mean that they are not "concerned." They are plenty concerned about saving their own political skins. They are concerned that unemployment is bringing the workers into the streets. It is blowing up the lies of all the capitalist fakers. It is radicalizing millions as the workers are feeling on their backs that the capitalist system does not work and cannot even feed its own wage slaves.
Employed and Unemployed, Organize the Class Struggle!
Nothing can be expected from the profit- hungry capitalists but more unemployment and more soup lines. They will show no mercy. Unemployment is not a problem of charity. It is a problem of the merciless class war between the haves and the have-nots. In this war the have-nots, employed and unemployed workers, have only one weapon of self-defense -- the weapon of class struggle.
The employers and the AFL-CIO chieftains want to steal both the shirt off the workers' backs and their jobs with their lies about concessions preventing layoffs.
Getting down on your knees to give up concessions has not and will never touch the heartstrings of the capitalist moneygrubbers. It has not and will never compel them to open their purse strings and provide jobs. The opposite is true. Giving way to concessions only whets the corporate appetite for more takeaways, for more overwork and for more layoffs and shutdowns.
To defend the workers' jobs and livelihood the concessions drive must be met head on. The workers must resist it with all their might through strikes, protests and other actions of the rank and file. An important part of this fight is resistance to the work rule changes, speedup, plant closings and other job-cutting measures.
The fight for the demands of the unemployed is another important battle for the working class. The capitalists and their government must be made to provide jobs or livelihood for the unemployed workers. The class interests of all the workers are firmly bound up with their 15 million comrades who have been tossed into the street. There is a growing wave of protests of the unemployed demanding unemployment insurance and other relief and condemning the Reaganite crimes against the jobless. The revolt of the unemployed is a powerful source of strength for the working class movement.
Times cry out for struggle and organization. The combined resistance of the employed and unemployed can and must beat back the Reaganite offensive. In the heat of struggle the workers become schooled in the art of class war. Class consciousness and organization are galvanized. And the independent movement of the working class is built up into a powerful force.
Today's resistance to the capitalist offensive will provide the training grounds for mustering the working class army of the socialist revolution of the future. Only such a revolution can finally liberate the working class from the cursed plagues of exploitation and unemployment.
[Photo: On March 15, over 2,000 angry workers from dozens of high-unemployment areas demonstrated in Washington D.C. against Reagan's economic program of mass unemployment and hunger.]
Today the question before the working masses is how to fight Reaganite reaction. Before the workers can even catch their breath, they are besieged by the Democratic Party politicians. Don't go out on the streets and demonstrate, they say, just sit back and vote Democratic. Don't go on strike, just trust to the Democratic Party jobs bills. Don't look to Marxism. Oh no, no, no. Why, the Democratic Party has everything well in hand.
But who are the Democrats? They are a party devoted to the profits of the rich monopolists, just as are the Republicans. They have voted again and again to uphold the Reaganite program of making the working people pay for the depression.
Consider the Reaganite cuts in social programs. Each and every cut has been passed and rubber-stamped by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. When Reagan asks for a $50 billion cut, the Democrats say -- oh no, we must be fair to the poor, we must all sacrifice equally -- and they proceed to vote a $49.5 billion cut. The Democrats have not even proposed restoring the Reaganite cuts in social programs, although the mass unemployment means that a huge increase in funding would be required just to keep the programs at the miserable level they were several years ago.
Consider, in particular, the Social Security bill. All the Reaganites had to do to cut Social Security was to implement the proposals made by the special commission appointed by former President Carter. From the conservatives to such liberal "crusaders for the aged" as Democratic Representative Claude Pepper, the Democrats have merrily joined in slashing Social Security benefits.
Consider the Reaganite program of a "winnable" nuclear war. The ruthless imperialist Reagan is building a bigger and yet bigger war machine. The American military, already overbloated and swaggering in its arrogance before Reagan, is embarking on an unprecedented expansion program. And what do the Democrats do? While chattering about a "nuclear freeze" to fool the masses, they pass one unprecedented war budget after another. After all, the Reagan plans are only a continuation of the record-making Carter budgets that started the current round of frenzied militarism. The Democrats only quibble with Reagan over the details of how to increase the military budget. At their last national party conference in June of 1982, they stressed that they are for a huge arms buildup and only oppose Reagan's "spasms of spending without plan or purpose" in favor of a "steady, sustainable" arms buildup, year in and year out. Even the most "left" of the Democrats in Congress don't think of questioning the aim of U.S. imperialist world hegemony, but only debate the most economical methods of mass slaughter and suppressing revolutions. No wonder that this year the congressional Democrats continued their tradition of demanding even more money for Israeli aggression in the Middle East than the Republicans thought necessary.
The Democrats differ from Reagan no more than the Republican congressmen themselves differ from him. Whether it is on the jobs bills or the military budget or what not, the Democrats do their best to attach themselves to some faction of the Republicans. This is only possible because they share the common objectives with the Republicans of safeguarding capitalist profits, strengthening the U.S. jackboot around the world, and fostering racist and reactionary movements. These two big capitalist parties are both parties of unemployment, nuclear weapons and racism.
Indeed, while clowning in front of the working people as alleged opponents of Reagan- ism, the Democrats are careful to repeatedly assure the capitalists that this is all just a big sham and they really support the basic Reaganite program. Take such an "anti-Reagan" hero as Tip O'Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House, who is put forward by the bourgeois political commentators and newsmen as the most stubborn liberal of the old school. After the 1982 congressional elections this Democratic Party warrior hastened to stress that the Democratic gains in the House of Representatives wouldn't threaten bipartisan cooperation with Reagan. On the day after the election, he emphasized that: "We [the congressional Democrats] will extend to him [Reagan] the hand of cooperation in the best interests of America." After all, he explained, "We don't want anyone to eat crow, the country's in too tough a shape for things of that nature." (CBS News, November 3,1982)
But, as the growing hunger and impoverishment in the country show, either Reagan will eat crow or the working people will. All across the U.S., the workers, unemployed, oppressed nationalities and others fervently want Reagan and the capitalists to eat crow, while Tip O'Neill wants to extend the hand of cooperation with this racist, reactionary and crusader against the poor.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties are capitalist parties. They have simply been assigned different roles by their billionaire masters. The Republicans are the open party of monopoly capital, racism and reaction, while the role of the Democrats is to dress up the Republican measures as "pro-labor" and "pro-minorities" in order to fool the working people.
The main way the Democrats get their "pro-labor" credentials is by supporting the labor bureaucrats. But who are the labor hacks? They are the soldout heads of unions who have worked hand in hand with the bosses to shove concessions and wage cuts and layoffs down the throats of the workers. While the labor bureaucrats make salaries as big as those of the corporate executives and their mouths water for seats on the boards of directors and on government commissions, they tell the rank and file that their meager hourly wages are more than enough and why not give back a few dollars per hour to the capitalists?
Thus the leaders of the United Auto Workers rammed down huge concessions on the rank and file in order to buy Doug Fraser a seat on the board of directors at Chrysler -- and meanwhile the jobs in the factories were cut right and left. Thus the leaders of the United Steel Workers confer lovingly with the steel billionaires while refusing to let the rank-and-file steel workers even vote on the sellout concession deals.
The workers, if they want to fight Reagan- ism in deeds and not just in flowery rhetoric, must also fight the concealed Reaganites, the Democrats and their strikebreaking labor bureaucrat friends. This situation is not a new one. Karl Marx, working in the British working class movement, was faced with a similar situation. He stressed that the workers must not rely on the "liberal" capitalist party, but must build their own proletarian party. He showed that the workers must fight the labor bureaucrats and aristocrats who had seized control of the trade unions and oust them by organizing the majority of the workers.
This is the lesson that we must follow today. The only thing that the capitalists fear is the growth of the independent movement of the working class. We must fight against both the two big capitalist parties. We must fight the labor bosses, strikebreakers in the pay of the capitalists. The working class, freeing itself from the constraints of the capitalist politicians and the class collaborationist trade union hacks, will rise up and smash the chains that bind it.
Last month, 2,000 counter-revolutionaries launched a large-scale invasion of Nicaragua from Honduras. This came on the heels of many smaller raids launched into Nicaragua over the last year. These terrorist gangs have been organized by the CIA and are led by former officers of the deposed tyrant Somoza's National Guard. They seek to topple the Sandinista government and replace it with a Somoza-style U.S.-backed fascist dictatorship. But the Nicaraguan people are once again giving a firm rebuff to the CIA campaign.
Workers and progressive people of the U.S.! On this First of May, let us again raise the call to defend the Nicaraguan people against U.S. imperialism! It is our "own" government which is out to strangle Nicaragua. This is one more example of U.S. imperialism carrying out its bloodstained policy of making and breaking governments in Latin America, as it did in Guatemala in 1954, Dominican Republic in 1965, Chile in 1973, and so forth.
Last year Reagan gave the CIA $19.5 million to arm and train the Somozista counterrevolutionaries. The Pentagon has provided massive aid to the reactionary Honduran regime which shelters and works hand in hand with the Somozistas. As well, U.S. imperialism has imposed great economic pressure against Nicaragua and helped in many ways to bolster the reactionary forces inside. All these facts are well known to everyone. Indeed, even as the current invasion got underway, the Reagan administration all but openly acknowledged its responsibility by taking the stance of refusing to confirm or deny its involvement.
Washington's attempt to strangle Nicaragua is a terrible crime. It is a brutal assault on the right of this small and poor nation to self-determination. In 1979, the oppressed masses of Nicaragua crowned decades of hard struggle with an armed uprising which smashed the rule of the Somoza dynasty. The Somozas were put in power over 50 years ago by the bayonets of U.S. Marines. Their brutal tyranny against the people was backed to the very end by U.S. imperialism. Thus the Nicaraguan revolution struck a sharp blow at U.S. imperialist interests in that country. It was also a big inspiration to the struggle of the toiling masses throughout Central America who suffer under the boot heels of U.S.-backed tyrants. The U.S. government has refused to accept the verdict of the people on the Somoza dictatorship and therefore seeks to turn back the clock of history.
The aggression against Nicaragua is the bipartisan policy of both the Republican and Democratic Parties. The Democrats have consistently supported Reagan's huge military budgets, his aid requests for dictators abroad, his appropriations for the CIA, etc.
However, today certain Democrats in Congress are wringing their hands that Reagan is allegedly violating the will of Congress on Nicaragua. Specifically they point to the Boland Amendment. This was passed last December and advertised by the liberals as an act that would supposedly stop CIA "covert actions" against Nicaragua. But this was simply another fraud from the Congressional talk shop. The Boland Amendment only says that no money should be spent for the specific purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government. But since Reagan has all along used the most baldfaced lies to deny that this is his intention, the Boland Amendment does absolutely nothing against the CIA activities aimed at Nicaragua.
Clearly a serious struggle against U.S. imperialism's anti-Nicaragua campaign cannot be based on the lies of the capitalist parties. A real fight calls for demonstrations and other actions by the masses. It requires building up the independent movement of the working class.
Workers and progressive people! On this May Day, let us raise our voices in defense of the Nicaraguan people's right to self-determination! Let the demand "Hands Off Nicaragua!" ring out from the May Day demonstrations and activities. The Nicaraguan people must be allowed to settle their own destiny, free from outside threats. Support the just struggle of the Nicaraguan people against U.S. imperialism and its Somozista hirelings!
[Photo: In Nicaragua, volunteers have rallied in their thousands to resist the invasion by the CIA-organized mercenaries and Somozistas.]
Workers and all progressive people! War dog Reagan is out for more blood in El Salvador! A few weeks ago he asked for increasing military aid to the bloody regime of the generals from $26 million to $110 million for this year. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has ready its contingency plans to increase the number of U.S. troops in that country under the guise that they are "trainers." The logic of U.S. policy in Central America today, as the experience of Viet Nam shows, is for ever-wider escalation of direct American intervention.
On International Workers' Day, let us raise our voices in strong protest. No! to a Viet Nam-style war of aggression in Central America! The U.S. imperialists should get out of El Salvador, lock, stock and barrel! Our solidarity is with the workers and peasants of El Salvador who are fighting valiantly for their liberation.
Reagan is stepping up U.S. intervention because his friends, the generals and rich oligarchy of El Salvador, are taking a bad beating on the battlefield. The U.S.-backed puppet army is being hit on every side by a powerful offensive of the rebel forces. Large parts of the country are in the hands of the insurgents. Here for the first time, the masses are experiencing democratic rule, a start at education, medical services, etc. The guerrillas have also shown their ability to strike "secure" targets. They recently captured the city of Berlin and held it for two days, and they carried out a two-week siege of Suchitoto only 25 miles from the capital.
Meanwhile the U.S puppet troops are getting more and more demoralized. In their frenzy, they are doing what they know best -- massacres of the civilian population. The army is cracking both at the base and at the top. While ordinary soldiers desert in their hundreds, the top officers are involved in fierce infighting. The honchos of the puppet government are also at one another's throats.
Reagan hopes to save this tottering regime by pouring in more U.S. weapons and troops. But in Congress there are certain whimpers of dissent. Liberal Democrats and Republicans swear they are all for crushing the liberation fighters, but they think that military aid must be linked up with some sort of gesture for a "political solution."
Behind the cries of the liberals for a "political solution" is their fear that guns alone won't do the job. What's needed is a one-two punch of weapons plus cunning negotiations for a "political solution." This is painted up as a humane and peaceful solution. But what it really means is to draw the liberation forces into talks which would take away their fighting initiative, then move in to disarm them physically and set them up for a massacre.
But this is a dead-end trap for the people. The struggle in El Salvador is a fight of the toiling masses against the ruthless exploitation by the handful of rich landowners and capitalists. It is a fight against the plunder of the country by the U.S. multinationals. In this conflict, in which the U.S.-backed oligarchy has carried out one horrible massacre after another, there is simply no room for pipe dreams of peaceful reconciliation. That road has long been closed by the rivers of blood that have been shed by the poor. Only the victory of the revolution -- the overthrow of the rich oligarchy and their fascist regime -- can bring about a just solution in El Salvador.
We here in the U.S., who live in the belly of the beast, have a common interest with the Salvadorian people in the fight against U.S. imperialism. It is the same system which oppresses the people there that spells hunger, racism and militarism for the workers here. Therefore, today, as the Salvadorian people step up their armed struggle, it is our responsibility to strengthen the solidarity struggle in the U.S. Now is the time to build up the mass protest against Reagan's intervention. This is not a battle to put a new coat of paint on the fascist regime through some farce of a "political solution" but a battle to help our fellow working people in El Salvador win their freedom. The movement in the U.S. should rally to the fighting slogans of: U.S. imperialism, get out of El Salvador! Victory to the liberation struggle!
[Photo: Salvadorian liberation fighters celebrate their triumph over the forces of the U.S.-backed fascist regime in the town of San Francisco Javier, January 26.]
All over the world, class conscious workers are observing the Marx centenary. Marx died 100 years ago, on March 14, 1883. Yet to this day his teachings live on as the red banner for the struggle against exploitation and oppression.
This is because Karl Marx was the founder of communism. It was Karl Marx and his lifelong friend and collaborator Frederick Engels who raised the banner that the working class was the revolutionary force that could transform the world. Before Marx and Engels, the working class had been regarded only as a suffering mass, worthy of pity. Before Marx and Engels, socialists appealed to the rich and powerful to give up their evil habits and help the workers out of the goodness of their hearts. Marx and Engels taught the working class to stand up in its own right. Marx and Engels put socialism on the scientific basis of the class struggle of the workers and all the oppressed against the rich and powerful. This scientific socialism is known as Marxism or communism.
Marx and Engels began the famous Communist Manifesto by pointing out that "A specter is haunting Europe." This was the specter of the revolutionary struggle of the working class, the specter of communism. And ever since, the capitalists and bloated moneybags have tried in frenzy to exorcise this specter. Again and again they slander Marx and Engels in their newspapers, from their pulpits and in the schools. They "refute" and "demolish" and "destroy" communism over and over. They blacklist militant workers, imprison activists, and shoot down the insurgents by the hundreds of thousands. Yet still the specter haunts Europe, and it has spread around the world, bringing hope to the downtrodden and fear to their oppressors.
Let the bourgeoisie fume. Let the criminal Reagan declare war on Marxism-Leninism for the one-millionth time. The fact remains that whenever workers become truly revolutionary and class conscious, they turn eagerly to Marxism in order to learn how to fight the capitalist parasites, the racist gangsters and all reactionaries.
Marxism Guides the Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class
Today the workers are facing a ruthless capitalist offensive. They must fight against rampant unemployment, against wage cuts and speedups, and against the deterioration of schools, health care, pensions and all social benefits. Marxism explains the cause for all these catastrophes. Marx showed that it is the capitalist system, the system of the private ownership by a few robber barons of the factories, mines and mills built up by the working millions, that causes all this misery.
Today the factories use the most up-to- date means of production, and new electronic and technological marvels are invented one after another. But far from making life easier, all these innovations only cause more and more unemployment and hardship. This is because all these marvels are used to increase the profits of a handful of overbloated slugs who have the arrogance to claim that they "own" the country, lock, stock and barrel. The truth about capitalism, expounded by Marx in his famous work Capital, is verified by the hell that is capitalist America today.
But Marx also taught that the most important thing was not just to understand the world, but to change it. Marx showed that the workers can only improve their conditions by the class struggle. We must link arms, organize ourselves, and fight for our class interests. And Marx showed how to extend this fight step by step right up to the socialist revolution that will eliminate exploitation once and for all.
Part of the capitalist offensive is the stepped-up preparations for aggressive war by the Reagan administration. The capitalists don't shrink from instigating reactionary wars and mass slaughter in order to plunder other countries and to set the working people against each other. Marx showed that the workers must not join with their "own" bourgeoisie to fight the workers of other lands, but must unite with workers of all countries in the fight against their common class enemy. When Marx took part in the German democratic revolution of 1848, he demanded that the nations oppressed by Germany should be freed. He lived for decades in Britain, and there he championed the cause of the Irish workers and peasants for freedom from the brutal British rule. He showed that only if the British workers supported the cause of Irish freedom could they free themselves. He crusaded against British colonial atrocities in India, China, and around the world. No nation can be free that oppresses another nation -- this is a fundamental principle of Marxist communism.
Thus Marx showed the path that we must take today. The American working class can only overcome the chains of capitalist slavery at home if it opposes U.S. aggression against the peoples of the world. We must defend the right to self-determination of the Salvadorian and Nicaraguan peoples and enthusiastically support the liberation movement in Central America and all over the world. The working class must be irreconcilably opposed to the entire U.S. imperialist war machine and to all the racist and chauvinist agitation of the bourgeoisie. Proletarian internationalism is the glorious banner of the militant workers.
On this and other questions Marxism remains the guide for all serious action to defend the interests of the working class. This is why the Marxist-Leninist Party has issued the slogan this year "Back to the Classics of Marxism-Leninism!"
Lenin Continued the Work of Marx
The essence of the teachings of Marx' is that the working class can and will build the new, socialist world. After the death of Marx and Engels, Lenin took up the Marxist banner and led the epoch-making October Socialist Revolution of the Bolsheviks in 1917. This great revolution showed that Marxism had advanced to the stage of Marxism-Leninism. Lenin, basing himself on the solid foundation of Marxism, taught the workers many new lessons on building strong proletarian parties and carrying out the revolution. From the October Revolution of 1917 until the mid-1950's, the Soviet Union was the land of socialism and the beloved homeland of the workers of all countries.
Down With the Revisionist Betrayal of Marxism
But the Khrushchovs, Brezhnevs and Andropovs staged a counter-revolution in Russia in the mid-1950's. They betrayed the teachings of Lenin and Stalin and built up a new class of capitalist bureaucrats. They converted Russia into a capitalist superpower, just like the USA. Because they knew that the workers loved Marxism-Leninism dearly, the revisionist dogs did not dare openly denounce it. Instead they "revised" it and tore out its revolutionary heart. Today, only he is a true upholder of Marxism-Leninism who fights against Soviet revisionism and all other revisionisms, such as Chinese Maoism and Yugoslav Titoism.
Socialism Lives on in Red Albania
But neither the fury of the capitalists nor the treacheries of the revisionists could destroy Marxism. The idea of building a new society, without exploitation, is being put into practice in red Albania. Albania is today the only genuine socialist country in the world. Tiny Albania showed the power of Marxism by winning its independence in World War II through a heroic liberation war against the Italian fascists and the Nazi war machine. Since then Albania has lived free from capitalists and feudal landlords, free from debts to the international bankers, free from the imperialist war blocs. As a socialist society, it has neither inflation nor unemployment, neither exploitation nor racial discrimination. While the capitalist and revisionist countries wallow in economic crisis, Albania marches forward.
Marxism lives on as well in the struggle of the class conscious workers and communist activists in the U.S. and around the world. This year, let all militant workers and activists commemorate the Marx centenary by studying the life and work of Karl Marx and the classic writings of Marxism-Leninism. This year, let us rededicate our lives to the struggle against exploitation and tyranny, just as Karl Marx did. This year, let us continue to spread the truth of Marxism among all the workers and oppressed, so that they will cease to simply suffer from the evils of capitalism, but instead will learn how to fight against capitalism.
Glory to the memory of Karl Marx!
Let us fight against the exploiters and oppressors just as Marx did!
Back to the classics of Marxism-Leninism!
[Graphic: Commemorate the Marx centenary (1883-1983)]
NEW YORK CITY
Demonstration Saturday, April 30 1:30 pm Assemble at 191st St. and Broadway
Meeting Saturday, April 30 6:00 pm Thompson Hall, Room 136 Teachers College 120th near Broadway
BUFFALO
DemonstrationFriday, April 29 4:00 pm Assemble at Columbus Park at Porter and Niagara Streets and march downtown
MeetingSaturday, April 30 Time and place to be announced
DETROIT
DemonstrationSaturday, April 23 1:00 pm Assemble at Highland Park Post Office 13215 Woodward Ave.
CHICAGO
DemonstrationSaturday, April 23 11 am Assemble at 91st and Commercial
OAKLAND
MeetingSunday, May 1 3:00 pm
Marxist-Leninist Books and Periodicals 3232 Grove St.
SEATTLE
Meeting
Saturday, April 30 7:00 pm Garden Clubs Hall 233615th S. (Beacon Hill)
Film: Strike! by Eisenstein