First Published: The Worker, for Hawaii, Vol. 1, No. 1, October 1975.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
The Worker for the Hawaii area is one of many such newspapers for various regions and areas around the country. It is a working class newspaper. It exists to advance the struggle of the working class against the monopoly capitalist ruling class –the cause in this country of all exploitation and oppression, the cause of all the hardships that the working class must face every day.
The working class carries on its struggle in thousands of large and small battles daily–against murderous speed-up and harassment, against layoffs, against discrimination, against attacks on our standard of living, against the ruling class’ drive toward another war to protect and increase their sacred profits.
The Worker unites with the working class in every such battle in the class war and will be a weapon in these struggles–helping to build them, link them and spread their lessons, helping to further develop the growing strength and unity of our class.
Such battles throw a sharp light on what is happening in this country, on what is facing workers, our families, our whole class. More and more workers are questioning the whole setup, the whole capitalist system, and seeing more clearly that we have a common enemy–the rich ruling class of bloodsuckers who live off the wealth we produce.
The Worker, like the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, whose political line and programme it puts forward, stands for building this overall struggle of the working class and for its great historic goal–the destruction of capitalist rule and the establishment of socialism, the rule of the working class. Articles in The Worker will focus on these battles of the class, and the paper will also analyze every social movement of the American people against the evils of the monopoly capitalist system. Art, poetry and all forms of working class culture will also be used, because they, too, are powerful weapons in the hands of the class in its revolutionary struggle.
The Worker for the Hawaii area and each of the other Workers around the country grew for the most part out of local workers’ papers with a variety of names. Many workers here in the islands are familiar with the newspaper Hoe Hana. Over the last 2 and a half years, it has played an important role in building local struggles of the working class, as well as helping to lay the basis for beginning The Worker.
These papers were begun by revolutionaries and communists who developed and grew in number during the late 1960s and early ’70s. They joined in the rising tide of working class struggle, bringing revolutionary ideas and learning from the working class more about the true nature of the struggle.
This all took place at first on a relatively local and isolated level, and the papers reflected this. But as the young communist forces developed stronger ties with the working class, the papers became important factors in the growing struggle in their localities, taking up strike’s, wildcats, organizing drives and on the job struggles; rent strikes and fights against cutbacks; campaigns against police repression and deportations; and many others.
As the revolutionaries and communists began to develop closer contact and nation-wide organization, the local workers’ papers were better able to take up broad issues affecting the whole working class. The papers, for example, were important in building the nation-wide campaign of support that helped win victory for the striking Farah workers in the Southwest. They fought consistently to end U.S. aggression in Indochina. Last month, they took up the miners’ wildcat when it broke out, spreading the word on the walkout’s importance and collecting money for the miners’ relief fund.
Now the formation of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) has been made possible by the struggle of the working class and the experience gained in that struggle in recent years, and this great step forward for the working class will bring about further advances in what were once local workers’ papers. All these papers now share the name The Worker, and all are guided by the stand and viewpoint, the line and programme, of the RCP, the Party of the working class.
The guiding role of the Party links the papers together nationally, so every month each Worker will run centrally distributed articles on important struggles in other areas of the country and key issues facing our entire class.
At the same time, The Worker for the Hawaii area and each of the other Workers will continue to be produced locally and will continue to focus on the key local struggles of the class. This way each of the papers can best serve to expose the daily attacks and help fuel the daily resistance that occur in every workplace, in every city. These battles are very important and must be built in every area and linked together as part of the overall class struggle.
The Worker is a tool to build the struggle of the working class and a weapon to strike at our enemies. Like any tool, it exists to be used, so The Worker will be out there–in the shops, on the picket lines, everywhere the Party and other workers can bring it to fan the flames. And the more it is taken up and used, the more powerful a tool it will be for advancing the struggle.