WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! SPECIAL ISSUE
Volume 12, Number 4
VOICE OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE USA
April 5, 1982
Celebrate May 1st, International Workers' Day
U.S. Get Out of El Salvador!
Step Up the Fight Against Imperialism!
Union Bosses -- Strikebreakers Against the Workers' Cause
Democratic Party - Reaganites in Disguise
Poland and the World Crisis of Revisionism
We Are But One Column in the World Army of Labor
Socialism Is the Goal of the Workers' Struggle
Elections at the Point of a Bayonet
MAY DAY DEMONSTRATIONS AND MEETINGS
May First is International Working Class Day. On this day, all over the world the working class holds high the red flag of revolution and socialism. This May First finds the American working class and people facing a brutal capitalist offensive. Every day the workers find it harder to make both ends meet, while millions upon millions of unemployed and minimum- wage workers face a daily battle with starvation. With the buffoon Ronald Reagan as their figurehead, the rich exploiters have unleashed a barrage of wage cuts, unemployment and hunger. The exploiters are also organizing a ruthless campaign of racial discrimination and police-state measures. And they are arming to the teeth in a gigantic military buildup while they commit one criminal military adventure after another in El Salvador and around the world. Reaganite reaction is posing a grave challenge to all working people.
Workers, youth, and all progressive men and women! On May First, let us raise high the banner of mass struggle. All out against Reaganite reaction on May First!
Build the Independent Movement of the Working Class!
The savage Reaganite offensive raises once again the question of what is the revolutionary force in the U.S. that can stand up to capitalist reaction. This force is the revolutionary movement centered on the working class. It is only the vigorous development of the independent movement of the working class, independent of the capitalists and their political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, that can provide the strength for a successful struggle against Reaganite reaction.
That is why all eyes turn towards May Day, the international festival of the fighting workers. May First is the day when the workers raise high the banner of struggle against the capitalist slave drivers and the imperialist warmongers. May First is the day that the working class all over the world takes stock of itself, measures its forces and rededicates itself to the task of achieving the socialist revolution and of eliminating exploitation and reaction once and for all.
On this May First, millions of oppressed people are awakening to the need for struggle. They are asking:
How should the Reaganite offensive be fought? The masses see that the Democratic Party, in this election year, is flaunting itself as the alleged "opposition" to Reagan. Vote Democratic, say the sweet-talking liars, and everything will be fine.
Can the people place their faith in the hypocritical liberals of the Democratic Party and their backroom politicking in Congress? Better to fight fire with gasoline! The Democrats have fallen all over themselves in "honeymooning" with Reagan, yet they have the gall to present themselves as the answer to Reaganism. The Democrats have had a majority in the House of Representatives, yet they have fallen all over themselves to vote for Reagan's war budgets, for "supply side" economics, for subsidies for the rich and cutbacks for the poor, and for more prisons and police as the answer to all life's ills. Meanwhile the scab trade union chieftains -- the labor lieutenants of the Democratic Party -- have worked hand in glove with the employers to shove wage cuts down the workers' throats.
The Democratic Party and its flunkeys are nothing but concealed Reaganites. They have nothing to offer the working people except more Reaganite poison with the Democratic Party sugarcoating. Squeezing the working people to the wall is the bipartisan program of the entire capitalist ruling class, of the Democrats as well as the Republicans, of the Kennedyites as well as of the Reaganites.
On May Day the workers reply to the capitalist fakers: No progress without the class struggle! No collaboration with the capitalists and their political stooges. On May Day the workers rise up in their own right. The only real alternative to the Reaganite onslaught is for the working masses to realize their own strength, for the working masses to get organized independently of the capitalists and the class collaborators.
May Day is the day of building the independent movement of the working class. Building this movement cannot be left to spontaneity but requires bold revolutionary work. It requires mass struggle, organization and class consciousness.
Mass Revolutionary Struggle Against Hunger, Fascism and War
It requires hard work to push forward the mass struggle against the Reaganite offensive. But it is the mass struggle which means salvation for the workers. Mass struggle teaches the oppressed confidence in their strength and upsets the plans of the oppressors. Mass struggle is the locomotive of history. Not one serious change can be made without the involvement of the millions upon millions of workers, youth, women, people of the oppressed nationalities, and other progressive people.
Fight against the capitalist program of hunger! "Reaganomics" is the answer of the monopolies to the deepening capitalist economic crisis. It is a callous program of wage cuts and strikebreaking, of massive layoffs and job-eliminating productivity drives. It is a program of fantastic profiteering and fabulous corporate mergers at a time when the poor are being driven to an early grave.
Let us make this May First a day of militant struggle against the capitalist slave drivers. Defend the livelihood of the working people! No to the wage-cutting concessions! Livelihood for the unemployed! Tax the exploiters, not the working masses! Make the rich bear the burden of the capitalist crisis!
Fight against the capitalist program of rabid reaction and racism! Hand in hand with their use of "Reaganomics" to make the working people pay for the crisis, the monopoly capitalist dictators are unleashing brutal political reaction to clamp down on the popular opposition. They are beefing up the prisons, spy agencies and racist gangs, and rewriting the criminal codes to outlaw demonstrations, organizations and all resistance. The Reaganite klansmen without robes are stepping up racial and national discrimination, attacking the immigrants, and fostering the shooting down of blacks on the street.
Let us make this May First a day of militant struggle against the racists and reactionaries. Wage active resistance to racist attacks! No to the persecution of the immigrants! Fight the Reaganite police-state measures!
To preserve the profits of the multinational corporations, the Reaganite regime is arming to the teeth for aggression and war. The Reaganite imperialists are pouring hundred of billions into MX missiles, Trident submarines, binary nerve gas, and other criminal devices of mass murder. These fiends are talking about a "limited nuclear war" and a "winnable nuclear war." They are coolly calculating the incineration of hundreds of millions of people for the sake of maintaining their imperialist spheres of influence, for the sake of fighting for world domination, for the sake of bringing the glories of "Reaganomics" to the whole world. They are swinging the big stick everywhere -- trampling the insurgent people of El Salvador, threatening the heroic people of Nicaragua, and preparing one military adventure after another.
Let us make this May First a day of militant struggle against U.S. imperialist aggression and war preparations. U.S. imperialism, get out of El Salvador! U.S. imperialism, hands off Nicaragua! No to the reintroduction of the draft! No to the military buildup! No to imperialist warmongering! Fight against U.S. imperialism and all its bloodstained crimes!
Build Solid Bonds of Class Solidarity
The development of the mass struggle requires the building up of solid organization. By himself, the individual worker is nothing. United with his comrades through organization, the worker is part of an invincible force.
This May Day finds the workers faced with a barrage of lies from the revisionist and trotskyite liquidators, who liquidate the traditions from the 60's and 70's of striving to develop revolutionary organization. These liquidators want the workers to renounce the path of building their own independent class organizations and, instead, to rely on the corrupt trade union bureaucracy, on the Democratic Party, and on the "liberal" exploiters. By building solid organization, the workers and activists give a fitting rebuff to the liquidators and all other flunkeys of the Democratic Party and march forward along the path of class struggle.
On this May Day, let us resolve to join closer together in bonds of class solidarity and solid organization. Build revolutionary groups in the factories, communities and schools. Rally around the Marxist-Leninist Party, for the proletarian political party is the highest form of working class organization -- it is the indispensable guiding center for the revolution.
For the Revolutionary Truth
And building the independent movement of the working class requires class consciousness. As Lenin teaches: "...unless the masses are politically conscious there can be no change for the better." (Works, Vol. 18, p. 127) Revolutionary literature is needed that tells the truth about the situation facing the working people, that tells them who their true allies are and who their false friends are, that charts forward the path for the mass struggle. The popularization and study of Marxism-Leninism, the science of the revolution, occupies a place of special importance, for it is the only true guide to the class struggle.
The perspective of the socialist revolution, of overthrowing capitalism and building a new society, strengthens and invigorates the movement. It shows the correct orientation for the mass movement. And the knowledge that there is indeed an alternative to the present capitalist hell, that the working people can build a happy life, free from exploitation, free from racist and nazi gangs, without tyrants and chauvinists, lends tremendous inspiration to the working class. It stiffens the fighting spirit of the masses tenfold and inspires heroism and self-sacrifice.
On May First, the class conscious workers the world over turn their eyes to socialist Albania, the only genuine socialist country in the world today. They look to Albania because there the working class is building the new socialist society, a society where there are no rich or poor, no economic crisis or unemployment, no racists or warmongers. They look to Albania because it is carrying the torch which was lit by the Soviet Union of the days of Lenin and Stalin, before the dark, fascist counter-revolution carried out by Khrushchov and Brezhnev turned the USSR into the capitalist superpower it is today.
Let us make this May First a day of dedication to the revolutionary truth. Read, study and circulate revolutionary literature! Study the scientific ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin! Support socialist Albania and condemn the revisionist class traitors in Moscow and Peking!
Workers of All Countries, Unite!
In their struggle, the American working class and people are not alone. We are but one column in the world army of labor. In every corner of the globe the people are rising in struggle, in strikes, demonstrations, and armed revolts against the same enemies that the American people face. They are looking expectantly to the American working class and progressive people to strike a blow against the U.S. imperialist world policeman from the inside. Let us not disappoint them. Let us build the independent movement of the working class and create the conditions for the socialist revolution that will make the overbloated billionaires and bloodstained imperialists into a bad memory.
On this May First, let us raise high the red banner of proletarian internationalism. Down with U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism, and all the oppressors, exploiters and reactionaries the world over! Workers of All Countries, Unite!
[Graphic.]
A powerful movement is developing throughout the country against aggression and militarism. Reagan's intervention in El Salvador has been met with wave upon wave of protest demanding U.S. Get Out El Salvador! Once again, on March 27, tens of thousands took to the streets in Washington, D.C., Seattle, Oakland, Dallas, Chicago and elsewhere to denounce Washington's support for the bloodstained military regime in El Salvador.
The actions against U.S. aggression in Central America have come in the wake of big demonstrations and protests in recent years against the draft, the U.S. nuclear program and other war preparations. Widespread outrage has built up among the American people against the Pentagon's massive military buildup.
How should the stepped-up militarism and aggressive adventures in the making be fought? The Marxist-Leninist Party of the USA holds that opposition to imperialism must be placed in the center of the fight. The intervention in El Salvador, the re-institution of draft registration, the continuous buildup of new and more fiendish weapons, the speculations about a "winnable nuclear war," etc., are not simply the unwise or unfortunate policy of this or that individual politician, but the outcome of a whole economic and political system, the system of imperialism.
Look at Washington's aggression in Central America. It shows once again that the U.S. has not changed one bit since the days it ravaged Viet Nam. It remains a monstrous imperialist superpower. Thus, when Reagan and Haig, the other politicians and generals, and the media czars speak of Central America, they speak of it in naked imperialist terms, as U.S. property, as its "backyard," its "vital interests," its "strategic interests," and so forth.
Indeed there is no region in the world where the U.S. government doesn't claim to have "vital interests." Thus, it has ringed the world with military bases, naval flotillas and troops, and made aggressive pacts with many countries. And what are the "vital interests" of U.S. imperialism? They are nothing but the exploitation and plunder of the labor and resources of other countries for the sake of the super-profits of the oil monopolies, the other multinational corporations and the Wall Street banks. It is to keep these profits rolling in that Washington props up bloodstained despots the world over, uses the CIA to make and break governments at will, and commits military aggression.
U.S. aggression is aimed at defending its vast empire from being overthrown by the revolutionary struggles of the workers and oppressed peoples. As well, it is intended for competing with its imperialist rivals, especially the equally aggressive Soviet social-imperialists. This is a fight over which of the imperialist gangsters will get the lion's share of the loot robbed from the world's peoples.
Imperialist aggression and war go hand in hand with starvation and fascism at home for the working masses. This is because imperialism is an all-encompassing system, it is monopoly capitalism. Thus here in the U.S. Reagan heads up the vicious offensive of the rich exploiters against the livelihood of the workers and poor, and the government strengthens its machinery of repression against the growing resistance of the people. Indeed, so long as the monopoly capitalists rule, there will be hunger and reaction at home, just as there will be aggression abroad.
While Reagan and the Republicans are today the standard-bearers of U.S. imperialism, it must not be forgotten that the Democratic Party too is an imperialist party. The Democrats ran the aggressive war in Viet Nam in the 1960's, and today the Democrats support Reagan's policies in Central America, on the war budget, and all down the line.
Workers, youth, women and oppressed nationalities! Forward in the struggle against imperialism! Fight each and every act of U.S. aggression and war-making. Organize against both the Republican and Democratic Parties! Raise high the banner of struggle against imperialism in all the demonstrations and protests against U.S. intervention in El Salvador, against the nuclear weapons, and all the crimes of militarism.
Bring the working and oppressed people into the mass struggle! It is the working masses, the oppressed, that are the powerful force that can stand up to imperialism. The vigorous development of the anti-imperialist struggle is part of the preparations for the socialist revolution which will demolish U.S. imperialism and put a final end to its aggressive wars and plunder of other peoples. □
[Photo: Tens of thousands march in Washington, D.C., March 27. ]
May Day is the fighting day of celebration of the workers the world over. Its origins go back to the general strike here in the U.S. for the eight-hour day in 1886. Three years later, it was adopted as international workers' day at a congress of the international workers' movement. But the trade union officialdom who claim to be the representatives of labor in the U.S. have long been fiercely opposed to May Day. What then should we make of their claim to speak on behalf of the workers?
The American "labor leaders,'' such as Lane Kirkland of the AFL-CIO, Doug Fraser of the United Auto Workers, Roy Williams of the Teamsters and so forth, speak in the name of labor only because they control the trade union bureaucracies. But they are far, far removed from defending the class interests of the tens of millions of exploited workers. Indeed, they are notorious for their fat salaries and for being thoroughly corrupt. The labor bureaucrats invariably follow an anti-worker and pro-capitalist policy. And today, they are flaunting their loyalty to the billionaires more avidly than ever.
May Day is a day to raise high the banner of class struggle. But the trade union bosses are opposed tooth and nail to the struggle the workers against the exploiters. In opposition to fighting for the interests of the workers, the labor traitors have raised the cry of "ending the adversary relationship" between labor and capital.
Today the capitalists have launched a vicious offensive to ruin the livelihood of the workers. They are imposing big wage cuts, laying off hundreds of thousands, and turning the work places into hellholes of speedup and overwork. This is the real essence of the capitalists' "reindustrialization'' drive.
But are the labor bureaucrats fighting these attacks? Absolutely not! In fact, they are at the forefront of the capitalists' take- back offensive, slashing away at the gains made by the workers through the struggles of the past. In many cases, they have even reopened the old contracts in their eagerness to cut wages and hand over huge concessions to the monopolies. This concessions fever has gone so far that at this moment Doug Fraser and the UAW chieftains are busy trying to fork over $3 billion in concessions to GM, the world's richest manufacturing company!
Still, even alongside such rank betrayal, the labor bureaucrats shout a lot about being defenders of the workers' interests. But this is mere posturing. Take a look at their stand towards the recent air traffic controllers' strike. While the AFL-CIO chieftains muttered honeyed words of official "support," they did everything to sell them out. They did not hide the fact that they were displeased with the strike and refused to take any effective action in sympathy with the- controllers. Thus at the October, 1981 AFL- CIO Convention, they even overwhelmingly voted down a proposal for a day of solidarity with the controllers' strike.
May Day is also a day celebrate solidarity with the workers all over the world in the common fight against imperialism and all the exploiters. But the U.S. labor traitors take the side of U.S. imperialism instead.
The American trade union bosses are notorious for being the most warmongering and superpower chauvinist champions of U.S. imperialism. Today the AFL-CIO big-wigs support Reagan's military intervention in Central America. In El Salvador and throughout Latin America, the AFL-CIO works directly with the CIA through such fronts as the American Institute for Free Labor Development. They defend the exploitation of the Latin American people by the multinational corporations and actively work to crush the popular revolutionary struggles.
Indeed, the AFL-CIO bureaucrats are champions of each and every warmongering policy of the U.S. government. They work with the government in all the chauvinist hysteria campaigns, such as that which was directed against the Iranian revolution. They support draft registration and call for restoring the draft. And they hail Reagan's gargantuan military buildup.
Clearly all down the line, the trade union bosses arc on the side of the capitalist exploiters against the workers. Building the independent movement of the working class requires a fight against both the capitalists and the labor misleaders.
Whether they fight the labor bureaucrats or not is a test showing which political forces really stand for the workers' cause. The Marxist-Leninists and class conscious workers stand for struggle against the capitalists and their labor lieutenants. But the flunkeys of the Democratic Party, including the social-democrats and phony "Marxist" revisionist liquidators, are opposed to the workers' struggle. They base themselves not on the masses of downtrodden workers, but on the sold out labor hacks.
Workers! On this May First. let us raise high the banner of struggle against the capitalist offensive of hunger, fascism and war! Build the independent movement of the working class! Get organized in the factories against both the exploiters and the labor traitors!
These days the Democratic Party is quite a strange spectacle. On the one hand, it remains locked in a loving embrace with the Reagan White House, refusing to let go ever since the "honeymoon" it declared on Reagan's inauguration. And on the other hand, it is ridiculously trying to strike a pose as the alleged "opposition" to the hated Reaganite offensive. The 1982 mid-term elections are coming up, and the slimy Democratic Party politicians want to subvert the growing mass actions against the Reaganite attacks and hitch the popular opposition to their own political ambitions.
These Democratic Party hucksters are hoping that people will already have forgotten that Reagan's reactionary policies were taken over whole hog from the Democrat Carter. They want people to believe in the honeyed words of "compassion" oozing from their lips, rather than to look at what these Democratic Party swindlers actually stand for. For example, just look at the stands of the multimillionaire Ted Kennedy, the typical liberal-labor hack of the Democratic Party and the darling of the sellout union bureaucrats and the social-democrats.
Where does Kennedy stand on the basic fronts of the Reaganite offensive? He stands with Reagan down the line! Last year Kennedy voted in favor of Reagan's war budget without batting an eye. This year Kennedy's main difference with Reagan's new budget is that Kennedy favors more taxes on the working people.
Meanwhile Kennedy continues to lobby for wage-price controls, his prescribed cure- all for every economic ailment. Just like he helped Nixon do a decade ago, Kennedy is offering Reagan his services to help saddle the workers with wage-price controls, to bring down the full force of the government to break the workers' strikes and hold down wages while prices soar out of sight.
This prince of liberals is also a leading architect of new police-state measures against the people. In alliance with arch-reactionaries like Strom Thurmond, Kennedy was a co-author and prime mover of the fascist rewriting of the federal criminal code (the infamous "grandson" of Nixon's fascist S-l bill). Today Kennedy's proposed criminal code reform is also supported by Reagan as a major piece of police-state legislation which will bring sweeping changes in federal law in order to more readily suppress organizations, break militant strikes, crack down on anti-draft and anti-war protests, and so on.
Kennedy is an ardent advocate of beefing up the police apparatus of repression and terror and goes so far as to criticize the Reaganites for being half-hearted in their reactionary "law and order" campaign. Outdoing Reagan's "lock 'em up and throw away the key" demagogy, Kennedy calls for "the administration to put its money where its rhetoric is," and provide more funding for more police and more concentration camps called prisons. (See Washington Post, September 20,1981)
Kennedy has also been a key sponsor of racist bills, like the Kennedy-Rodino Bill, calling for mass arrests and deportations and vicious persecution of the immigrant workers. And last month Kennedy came out as a principal supporter of the ludicrous. Moral Majority-type "teenage chastity bill" being pushed by Senator Jeremiah Denton, ultra-Reaganite Republican from Alabama.
Mr. Kennedy is nothing but a Reaganite through and through. The only difference is that Kennedy and his fellow Democrats wear a liberal disguise and pose as the champions of "labor and the minorities." Remove their disguise and the Democrats stand naked as the twin of the Republicans, as the twin party of the monopoly capitalist offensive of hunger, fascism, and war. The fight against Reaganite reaction demands that the Democratic Party liars must be branded for what they are.
Today the revisionist system in Poland is falling apart at the seams. The Polish economy is a total mess. Production has fallen dramatically, prices have risen sky-high, everything is in short supply, and no one knows when there will be an improvement. The political system is not only reactionary and oppressive, but it has fallen apart too. The ruling party is utterly discredited in everyone's eyes, and the generals make the law. The worthless official trade unions, instruments of revisionist oppression, have been abandoned by everyone, while the new "Solidarity" trade union is led by corrupt elements who want to sell Poland to the U.S.-led Western imperialists.
The capitalist press in the U.S. is ecstatic. Every day they tell the masses that, see, socialism doesn't work. At the same time, the capitalist press also nervously chews its nails: will Poland default and bankrupt the Western banks that have put their usurers' claws into Poland with their loans of billions of dollars? The Western bankers zealously urge on the Polish generals to tighten up the screws on the Polish workers and pay back the debts, with interest.
But what type of "socialism" is it that lives by the leave of the Western bankers? What is going on in Poland is a crisis all right, but it is not a crisis of socialism, but of revisionism. In Albania, which follows the Marxist-Leninist teachings, socialism is flourishing. There is no crisis, but steady progress instead. So the question arises: what caused the fiasco in Poland?
What happened is that Poland left the path of socialism in the mid-1950's and embarked on revisionist-style capitalism. Yes, Poland did embark on the road to socialism after the Nazis were defeated in World War II. In those tumultuous postwar years, in the face of the incredible devastation of Poland caused by the Nazi occupation -- including the mass murder by the bestial Nazis of millions of class conscious workers, Jews, intellectuals and Poles in general -- the Polish people wiped off the blood and began to triumphantly march forward, overcoming every hurdle in their way.
The turning point came when Khrushchov seized power in the Soviet Union and liquidated the legacy of Lenin and Stalin. The Khrushchovite revisionists seized power in Poland as well. Khrushchov and Brezhnev and the current Polish leaders have made no bones about the fact that they changed course. From the mid-50's on they shouted to the whole world that they were throwing out "Stalinism" and introducing a new, moderate socialism that would please everyone, capitalist and worker alike, a socialism free from the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat. In fact, Khrushchov and his successors and imitators restored capitalism in their countries.
Hence what has happened since the mid- 1950's has been a test of revisionism, a test of what happens when one turns one's back on the scientific teachings of Lenin and Stalin. And the answer has been unmistakable. Up to the mid-1950's, the Soviet Union, Poland and other then-socialist countries marched forward despite tremendous obstacles. But later, after the revisionist takeover, under far more favorable economic conditions, these countries went into crisis. Revisionism could not stand the test of life.
Today the Polish revisionists are collapsing. And not just them, but all the revisionists, are worrying over how they are going to pay off their debts to the Western banks. They are scurrying around hat in hand trying to find "hard currency" to pay off their debts. The Soviet Union itself faces inflation, industrial stagnation, agricultural fiasco, alcoholism, and all the vices of capitalism. China too faces unemployment, inflation and stagnation. The Yugoslav revisionists -- who were the first to renounce socialism as early as the late 1940's -- have gone to the extent of publicly embracing Reaganomics. In a recent visit to Washington, Zvone Dragan, the vice-president of the Yugoslav Federal Executive Council, described himself as a "qualified supply-sider." He described how Yugoslavia was "pursuing a restrictive credit policy to restrain domestic demand, which was too high..." and boasted how the workers' wages were cut so that exports to satisfy the Western bankers could be increased. Dragan freely admitted what this meant: "Last year there was a drop of 4.7% in real terms in salaries and wages. In the past two years the decline has been 12%. We have 800,000 unemployed, about 12% of the work force." (New York Times, February 23, 1982, p. 30)
How disgusting. The revisionists are nothing but disguised capitalists. There is not a shred of socialism in the Soviet Union, or its satellites, or in China or Yugoslavia. Today, the only genuine socialist country in the world is Albania.
And what is the situation in Albania? Despite decades of being blockaded by the U.S. imperialists and the Soviet revisionists, despite starting from the most backward economy in Europe, Albania flourishes and marches forward. In Albania, which adheres to the Leninist-Stalinist laws of socialism, there is no crisis. Instead, the Albanian people are day by day growing more cultured, more militant, more prosperous.
The example of Poland, therefore, teaches us a valuable lesson: revisionism is doomed to failure. It is Marxism-Leninism, the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, that lights the way forward out of the capitalist hell. It is the class struggle, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the Leninist-Stalinist teachings that are all-powerful -- abandonment of them leads to the fiasco of capitalist- revisionist Poland.
Poland shows the crisis of revisionism. But all around the world the working class marches irresistibly forward. It is throwing aside the revisionist renegades like so many old rags. It will do this in Poland too. Just as the Polish workers broke the revisionist trade unions with a single powerful blow, so too they will establish their own revolutionary party, throw aside the sellout Lech Walesas, and make a new socialist revolution. On May Day, it is a time to denounce the revisionist class traitors and uphold the path of true socialism, the path of Marxism-Leninism.
The workers' struggle against the bourgeoisie and for socialism is. by its very nature. international. Our struggle here is inseparable from the struggle of the workers and the downtrodden the world over for liberation and socialism. To keep the workers enslaved the capitalists' do everything in their power to weaken the international solidarity of the working class.
With Reagan at the head. U.S. imperialism is w aging a concerted campaign of jingo-ist chauvinism and rabid hatred towards other peoples. Waving the big stick, the Reagan regime boasts of its arrogant trampling on the rights of the oppressed peoples of Central America, the Middle East. etc. And the Reaganites glory in their flag-waving appeal to prepare for a thermonuclear slaughter of the workers of other lands in order to preserve the honor and profits of the U.S. imperialist corporations.
The AFL-C'IO bosses and other traitors to the working class are part of this same patriotic crusade. They want to hitch the workers to the war machine of the U.S. moneybags in their rivalry with the rich rulers of the Soviet Union. They lecture the workers that their enemy is the Japanese, or anyone else, but not their "own" American-made, domestic exploiters. Their demand is that the workers pledge allegiance to the capitalist lords of industry and submit to w age cuts and job-eliminating productivity drives in the name of fighting the Japanese.
But on May Day the workers raise high their fighting slogan WORKERS OF COUNTRIES, UNITE! -- the fitting reply to all this chauvinist poison. This slogan brings to the fore the internationalist solidarity of the toiling people on all continents fighting shoulder to shoulder against a common enemy and for a common revolutionary cause.
The First of May is a day of solidarity of the international workers' movement in its struggle against the world bourgeoisie. Throughout the capitalist-revisionist world, from Portugal and Belgium, to Argentina, India, and South Africa, the working masses arc mounting powerful strikes and protests in defense of their rights and livelihood. And the working people of Europe and Japan have been pouring into the streets in protest of the threat of war which the U.S. imperialists, the Soviet social-imperialists. and the * other imperialist powers are hanging over the heads of the people.
The First of May is also a day of solidarity with the oppressed peoples. They are fighting for liberation from the imperialist yoke and capitalist and landlord slavery. The workers and peasants of Central America are standing up arms in hand against the fascist dictatorships and their U.S. imperialist sponsors. The people of Afghanistan arc waging a bitter war against the Russian social-imperialist invaders. The Palestinian people and the black people of South Africa are persisting in heroic struggles against the U.S.-backed racist and fascist regimes of zionist Israel and apartheid South Africa.
In every corner of the globe the Marxist-Leninists. the revolutionaries, the workers, the peasants, and all the oppressed are rising in struggle against the old world of capitalism. imperialism, social-imperialism, and tyranny. They are fighting for freedom, liberation and a new and better world. They arc fighting for a socialist future, a future which is already being built in socialist Albania, the only land of genuine socialism in the world today. The struggle of the American working masses is one column in this international army of labor and socialism.
Workers of All Countries, Unite!
[Photo: The vigorous strike movement of the Portuguese workers throughout the last year culminated in a huge nationwide general strike on February 12 against austerity measures and proposed repressive constitutional changes by the government. The Communist Party of Portugal (Reconstructed), the Marxist- Leninist vanguard of the workers, was very active in organizing this strike. Above, one of many demonstrations organized on March 6 to continue to press the workers' demands.]
From the cradle to the grave the working people are fed a steady diet of propaganda that capitalism is the best possible system. Praise of its "wonders" are sung in every key, while the very idea of replacing capitalism with a more just and rational system, with socialism, is furiously cursed and damned as conspiracy against everything held sacred by mankind. But these capitalist lies are being torn to shreds by everyday events which are laying bare that it is the profit system which is the greatest foe of the working and oppressed people. Only socialism represents mankind's future.
The deepening of the economic crisis is opening the eyes of millions to the cruel insanity of capitalism. The workers face slave- driving productivity campaigns, overwork, and overtime -- while 11 million workers are walking the street without a job. There is a crisis of overproduction, with cars, steel, and other goods rusting in stockpiles for lack of a buyer -- while high prices and interest rates are putting the necessities of life out of the reach of the masses! The corporate billionaires are being showered with tax breaks -- while the working people are being ravaged by wage cuts, high taxes and cutbacks in social services.
To enforce this robbery, Reaganite reaction has been unleashed to clamp down on the people. And it is rapidly expanding the highly profitable business of war production, raising the hideous specter of a nuclear slaughter for imperialist conquest.
Such are the "wonders" that capitalism has brought the working people. These things are not defects which can be "straightened out" of an otherwise O.K. system. Rather they spring from the very kernel of the system of profit. These things are inherent to a system where the capitalist lords of finance and industry reign supreme, where the factories, railroads, etc., are concentrated in the hands of the monopoly corporations, bankers, and speculators. They are inseparable from a system where everything is subordinated to one goal: the securing of the maximum capitalist profit.
The Working Class -- The Gravedigger of Capitalism and Builder of Socialism
This man-eating system has also created its own gravedigger -- the working class. Tens of millions of workers have been brought together, sharing a common fate as the wage slaves of the capitalist owners. Ground down by exploitation, for the time being, the workers are at the bottom in the struggle between labor and capital. But armed with organization and consciousness, the workers are in a position to weld themselves into an unconquerable revolutionary movement. Through struggle the working class has the ability to constitute itself as the invincible force of the socialist revolution.
The proletarian socialist revolution will smash the oppressive state machine of the capitalist minority and replace it with the state power of the working class majority, the dictatorship of the proletariat. It will expropriate the means of production, the factories, mines, and other property in the hands of the corporations, banks, and other capitalists and turn them into the socialist property of the working people. It will abolish capitalist exploitation, where the sweat and toil of the many provides profits for the few. And it will reorganize production to satisfy the material and cultural needs of the men and women of labor instead of the idle whims of the idle parasites.
The place of the working class in world history is at once the gravedigger of rotting capitalism and the builder of the new socialist society. Conscious workers all over the world are fighting on the barricades of the class struggle with the ideal of socialism burning in their chests. This ideal was a reality in the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin before the tragic capitalist-revisionist counter-revolution following Stalin's death. And it is an ideal which continues to be translated into reality in socialist Albania.
The Albanian Workers Are Showing With Their Deeds the Superiority of Socialism
Nothing refutes the lies of the apologists of capitalism better than the example of living socialism. Today that example is to be found in Albania, the only genuinely socialist country in the present-day world. The Albanian working class and people are showing with their deeds the superiority of socialism.
In Albania exploitation of man by man has been wiped out. There are no rich or poor. In fact, by law the wage differential between the highest paid official and the average laborer is no more than two to one, something unheard of and impossible in any capitalist or revisionist country.
In Albania the working people face a secure future of growing prosperity. It is a country free of economic crisis, and which knows neither unemployment nor inflation. The planned, nonstop development of industry and agriculture goes ahead at rapid rates relying on the working people's self-reliant efforts and without a single dollar of credits from abroad.
In Albania the people receive modern health care, a progressive education, and other social and cultural needs free of charge. At the same time Albania is the only country in the world which places no taxes on its citizens whatsoever.
These are among the tremendous accomplishments of socialism in Albania. Spreading the word about what the Albanian workers have achieved in building socialism helps to build up the confidence in the workers everywhere that there is indeed an alternative to the hell that is capitalism, that there is indeed a better world to fight for. It helps to instill among the masses the burning conviction that socialism is the goal of the workers' struggle.
'Democracy,' Reagan-Style, In El Salvador
On March 28, the U.S.-backed generals in El Salvador held "elections." As expected, the Reagan administration, leaders of the Democratic Party and the capitalist news media are all shouting to the skies that these "elections" have positively proved the Salvadorian government's "democratic" nature and the people's support for it.
But this is merely another -imperialist fairy tale. From beginning to end, these "elections" were a complete farce. They were planned and organized straight out of Washington. The aim of these "elections" was simply to provide the murderous military regime with a "democratic" facelift as a justification for continued U.S. intervention in El Salvador against the people's liberation struggle.
The Reaganites claim these were free and fair elections. But how can this be the case when they were carried out at gunpoint by a ruthless military dictatorship which has murdered over 32,000 people in the last two years alone?
The liberation forces quite justly denounced and refused to take part in this "elections" farce. No opponent of the regime could run in the "elections" without committing suicide, for in El Salvador anyone who speaks out against the regime is automatically put on a. death list by the fascists. In these conditions, only the fascists could run and this was indeed what took place.
The voting, too, took place at the point of the bayonets of the military. By law, all eligible voters had to vote. Not doing so meant risking retaliation from the fascist assassins. And such reprisals were facilitated in several ways. All those who voted had their thumbs marked with indelible ink and had their ID cards stamped. Numbered ballots were used making it easy to identify who had voted for whom, and votes had to be cast in transparent ballot boxes under the watchful eyes of the authorities.
Despite this massive pressure, not all the eligible voters voted. Of the one and a half million who had the ID cards which made them eligible to vote, about a million did so. But a million more people who were of voting age were completely disenfranchised because they do not have ID cards. Thus, less than half the adult population voted. And even among them, about 11% are officially reported to have nullified their ballots or left them blank as a protest. Clearly, such "elections" under the gun do not substantiate the Reaganite claim that the overwhelming majority of the people support the regime.
But even the results of these fraudulent "elections" do not mean anything, for the actual outcome is determined in Washington, not San Salvador. As it turned out, the Christian Democrats, who were Washington's favorite to give a "moderate" mask to the generals, did not win a majority. This poses a problem. At the same time the Reaganites feel a real affinity for the avowed fascist parties which won the majority in the "elections." On April 1, one of Haig's assistants told the Senate that the fascist parties "include very liberal and very moderate people." Washington is interested in a coalition regime -- the fascists, a touch of Christian Democratic seasoning, and the U.S. Embassy. Washington is applying pressure right and left, threatening that if anyone disobeys, the all-important U.S. aid will be cut. Of course, if for some reason the U.S. imperialists are not satisfied they can always order a coup d'etat, just as they did a few weeks ago in Guatemala.
The "elections" farce has changed nothing in El Salvador. It is U.S. imperialism, the Salvadorian oligarchy and the generals who remain the real power in the Salvadorian government. Only the revolutionary struggle carried through to victory can realize the aspirations of the people for democracy and freedom. The American workers and progressive people should give their full support to the valiant liberation struggle of the Salvadorian people.
[Graphic.]
SEATTLE
Meeting
Saturday, May 1 7:00 pm
Garden Clubs' Hall 2336 15th S. (Beacon Hill)
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
Meeting
Saturday, May 1 7:00 pm
Marxist-Leninist Books and Periodicals 3232 Grove St., Oakland
NEW YORK CITY
Demonstration
Sunday, May 2 12 noon Assemble at 191st St. and St Nicholas Avenue
Meeting
Sunday, May 2 3:00 pm Columbia University, Room 214,
Ferris Booth Hall 116th St. and Broadway (IRT#1 to 116th and Broadway)
BOSTON
Meeting
Saturday, May 1 6:00 pm
Place to be announced
CHICAGO
Demonstration
Saturday, May 1 12:30 pm
Assemble at Bessemer Park South Chicago and 91st
Meeting
Saturday, May 1 6:00 pm
Blackstone Hotel
Eisenhower Room Presidential Suite 636 South Michigan