Coming out of our recent national convention, I'd like to emphasize some of the main tasks before our party in the coming period. My focus in these comments is the Party in the framework of the main class and democratic struggles. These were highlighted and discussed at the convention.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Newly elected CPUSA national Chair John Bachtell, center, with retiring Chair Sam Webb, retiring Executive Vice Chair Jarvis Tyner and delegates. At right is the representative from the Vietnamese Communist Party.    Ben Sears/PA

Labor - the key link that moves the chain

Today it is both more necessary and possible for the party and its members to be involved in the labor movement.

Necessary because the labor movement - while the country's biggest, strongest, best organized progressive force - is far too small for the challenges confronting our nation's working class and people.

Possible because - unlike the dogged anti-communism of yesteryears conditioned by the Cold War and McCarthyism - experience of recent years has shown today the doors are open for honest fighters with positive energy and progressive ideas, including members of our party.

To buttress my arguments I'd like to briefly draw on highlights of last year's AFL-CIO convention, which I had the privilege of attending. The AFL-CIO convention projected an agenda and a vision aimed to transform the labor movement, its partners and allies into a formidable 21^st century people's force for economic justice and democracy. Participating were delegations of the overwhelming majority of our country's unions as well as representatives of progressive community-based groups and the nation's main social movements, including civil rights, immigrant, women and youth.

The labor federation's convention:

• Mapped out a modern-day agenda (akin to the wall-to-wall organizing of the 1930s CIO) when it took steps to promote the organization of all workers whether covered by collective bargaining agreements or not, whether protected by labor and social laws or not.
• Committed to more energetically champion the fight for equality of people of color, immigrants, women, youth, LGBTQ and other specially oppressed peoples.
• Took steps to more closely collaborate with community-based groups and progressive social movements.
• Recognized the strategic importance and the Herculean effort it will take to defeat the rightwing Republican cabal in the 2014 and 2016 elections.
• Signaled new levels of political independence.
• Highlighted far-reaching initiatives of recent years to strengthen international labor cooperation, including mergers.

 

With candor, leaders and rank and filers recognized as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka put it, "We have to change the way we're doing business in a significant way to get out of the crisis we find ourselves in," adding, "But, this crisis also offers us ample and tremendous opportunity."

Perhaps the word "crisis" is too strong but otherwise this could be said about  progressive people's organizations generally, including our party.

Emerging from our party's recent convention, we must move to assist labor's transformation with laser beam focus. That means working in and with the labor movement to fulfill the AFL-CIO convention's ambitious but necessary agenda and vision.

It means winning progressive social movements' more fully to labor's cause.

It means winning the left and, above all, our own present and future members to this singular mission.

A much larger, stronger, labor movement united around a progressive agenda and vision, rooted in the workplaces and communities, intricately inter-twined with the nation's core social movements is what the AFL-CIO convention set out to accomplish. This is the kind of transformative movement necessary to challenge in a fundamental way corporate power and move the class and democratic struggle to higher stages.

It won't be easy, won't happen overnight and the road ahead will be treacherous. Needless to say transnational finance capital, particularly the far right wing, is leaving no stone unturned in its zeal to destroy labor and the other progressive social movements.

And in the house of labor itself much hard work remains to be done because on the ground the process of fulfilling labor's main goals as outlined by the labor federation's convention is uneven and, at times, can be bumpy and challenging.

All the more reasons why it's necessary for us to give it focused and persistent attention.

We can be of valuable assistance because we tend to bring to the table:

• Dedication and honesty.
• The dialectical method of analysis.
• Assessments based, not on wishful thinking, but on reality.
• Understanding of phenomena within the framework of the current economic and political stage of capitalism's developmental decay.
• An appreciation of the contending class and social forces at any particular stage of the class and democratic struggle and sober estimate of their balance of forces.
• A strategy for the immediate, intermediate and longer range history-making stages of social development as well as in the process of current struggles.
• Flexible tactics aimed to satisfy strategic aims.
• The connection between partial and fundamental reforms and socialist transformation.
• An understanding of the pivotal role of the working class, particularly its organized sector, around which the core progressive people's forces and their mass organizations gravitate, that is people of color, women and youth.

 

I say "we tend to bring to the table" because these are qualities acquired through study, practical experience and the collective process. This speaks to the great need for continual education for our new and long-time members. At the same time, we must be modest enough to recognize that others steeped in these struggles, not in the party, bring many of these qualities to the table accounting for the rise of the progressive trends of which we are presently a small but significant integral component.

Concentration on low wage workers

On the one hand, there has been an unprecedented level of globalization of productive forces facilitated by huge strides in new labor saving technologies, the effect of which has been to cut down workforces drastically and destroy relatively decent paying union jobs in the nation's industrial core.

My estimate is that this phenomenon tends to transform the strategic importance of the industrial sector from a national to an international one because it compels it to organize globally in order to make economic and political gains. Transportation and communication acquire new global strategic significance with just-in-time and other technical advances.

At the same time, the astronomical growth of the financial sector accompanied by the explosion in credit, mortgage-based and other financial schemes fueling consumerism has given rise to a huge growth in the traditionally low paying retail and service sectors. Meanwhile, the big-time rise of big-box, fast food and other retail and service low-paying non-union jobs successfully compete with and supplant previously unionized jobs.

In arguing for turning our attention to assisting labor in the organization of low-paying retail and service economic sectors, comrade Sam Webb does a very convincing job of arguing that there is more than one way to view the strategic power of the working class.

I just wanted to add or underline a couple of things.

The militant struggles to redress grievances and unionize workers in fast food, big box, and other retail and service sectors are giving new energy and hope to the labor movement and to workers in our country generally. The expectation is that the progressive trends in labor will increasingly help infuse these workers with a certain level of class-consciousness and appreciation for the broad democratic struggles.

As an integral component of this progressive trend, our party and members must make assisting labor and this sector of the class the bull's eye of our work.

--The workers in these industries represent a huge section of the working class.

--They are multi-racial and multi-national in their composition.

--At the same time, their numbers are overwhelmingly workers of color, immigrants, women and youth and they reflect the rapidly changing nation's demographics.

--They are well rooted in the lives of the communities where they live, including the churches and social clubs.

--Some bring experience from struggle on other fronts and, among the immigrants, from their nations of origin.

This section of the class potentially constitutes a formidable force for developing the transformative movement necessary to radically advance the cause of all workers and the broad democratic struggles. To grow the party among these workers will allow us to sink deep roots among the people as the party's composition comes to mirror that of the nation. It will sharpen our sensibilities to the needs and aspirations of the people and help us fine-tune together with the workers and their unions the strategy and tactics necessary. As the party grows in influence and numbers among these workers it will be in a better position to assist the labor movement and the core social forces.

 

Equality vs. Racism and gender discrimination

For those of us old enough to have witnessed the encrusted racism and male-supremacy of the predominantly white male top labor leadership through the post-WW II Cold War and MacCarthy era, it was refreshing to witness the great strides made on these fronts by last year's AFL-CIO convention. Given the persistent ideological influence of racist and male supremacist notions among sections of the population, it was heartening to see a multiracial group of delegates of both genders - including top AFL-CIO officers - speak thoughtfully and forcefully on behalf of resolutions condemning both forms of discrimination. In an impassioned presentation, the President of the National Organization of Women Terry O'Neill linked the relentless assault on women's economic security with the attack on women's reproductive rights.

As Sam Webb so incisively exposed, today many of the old ideological racist justifications re-appear in their old raw forms and in new sinister forms under the guise of a "post racial color-blind" era. Yes, racism, xenophobia and sexism definitely is the product of the far right with the rise of the Reagan administration in the1980s.

But, it is more.

Old ideological justifications re-appear in new form to prop up a modern-day racism stitched into the economic and political fabric of 21^st Century U.S. capitalism itself. On these fronts, we are poised to make our contributions beginning with the struggle to organize low-wage workers who in their large majority are people of color, women and youth, a formidable potential force for economic, social justice and equality. But, they cannot do it alone. It takes the solidarity of other sectors of the class and other social forces and movements.

Furthermore, we know that unity without the support and participation of a solid majority of white workers on the anti-racist front is shallow unity because victories will tend to be harder to come by and less durable. The same can be said about winning a majority of male workers to the struggle against male supremacy.

We also know that, as we fight for the whole class and people around common issues, we have to find the ways to struggle for the particular needs of the specially oppressed. And that applies with equal force to the LGBTQ community and other discriminated sections of the people.

 

Climate change: Urgent necessity for an all people's front

This too is an area that requires our party and members' involvement with most urgent laser beam focus. I of course agree when comrades point out that Climate Change is the product of capitalism and the class propelling the system. The real solution lies in a sustainable socialist society. We should definitely bring this into the discourse, but it is far from enough! The speed and intensity with which climate change is overtaking the planet gathers momentum with each passing day and has already surpassed the worst predictions of scientists about the speed with which it is moving.

Other than the PW, which has been doing a commendable job on the subject, our work on this front needs to be radically ramped up, not tomorrow but yesterday!

It is necessary that our party and members in their respective areas find the points of entry into the movements leading this struggle.

At the same time, wherever we find ourselves in the arena of struggle, the challenge is to move to action the groups and people around us and plug them into the existing environmental initiatives. It could be the newly organized local chapter of 350.org, the movement to stop fracking in the region, the campaign to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, or the divestment initiatives emanating from the universities. In the course of our involvement, we will gain the respect and confidence of environmental activists allowing us to potentially play a bigger role in helping broaden and deepen this movement.

What do I mean?

The need for all-around unity requires an emergency response.

As I see it, unity includes:

• Within the environmental movement.
• Within the house of labor.
• Between labor and the environmental movement.
• The environmental movement and the grassroots in the communities, including popular institutions like the churches, synagogues, mosques and their congregations, and more.
• Unity with people's of color and their communities.

 

Noted environmental correspondent Mark Hertsgaard told an overwhelmingly white crowd of environmental activists at a recent conference I attended that studies reveal that concern over climate change is greater among people of color - namely Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Latinos and African Americans - than among whites. He reminded us that the nation is going the way of California where people of color now constitute well over half the population. He challenged us to reach out to these communities, many of which suffer from higher than normal incidences of cancer, asthma and other illnesses due to their proximity to toxic dumps and emissions. He invited the crowd to give more attention to other particular issues of deep concern to people of color as a way of bridging the relationship and broadening the environmental movement.

Coming from a white person, his appeal makes a strong case for the role that white people can and must play in the fight for equality and unity. He made these observations while recognizing the outstanding role that many white people, especially youth, are playing in the environmental movement.

Also to be recognized is the invaluable role Native American peoples are now and have all along been playing as front line fighters for Nature of which we are all part.

Labor's agenda intersects with that of the environmental movement. While significant unity has developed between sections of labor and the environmentalist movement, most notably in the Blue-Green Alliance, there is a need to forge much broader unity. The environmental movement, joining with labor and a broad people's alliance, must energetically advocate for a program that guarantees the livelihood of workers whose jobs would be threatened by any transition from fossil fuels, as in the case of coal miners and workers at coal operated energy plants.

Dave Campbell, secretary treasurer the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) Local 675, at the same conference argued for the creation of a "just transition" super fund guaranteeing the income of workers laid off as a result of conversion to renewable energy sources for a period of say two years. There is precedent for this approach as in the case of laid off members of the United Auto Workers union who would receive a guaranteed income and benefits while waiting to be transitioned to a new plant or out on furlough. Meanwhile, laid off workers transitioning from fossil fuel industries receiving an income could be trained for new jobs.

Given the current national balance of forces, these demands probably qualify as more advanced demands not immediately realizable but nevertheless important to float publicly through legislation and local ordinances, even if at this point as general policy statements. The point is to put this out widely into the public discourse and to link it to the proposition that transitioning to sustainable sources of energy combined with conservation measures, such as retrofitting buildings to save energy, would create far more jobs than from fossil fuel industries. Thus, we need to ramp up street and legislative heat on Republican Climate Change deniers and liars peddling the notion that transition to clean energy is a job killer.

Turning the energy sector into public utilities is another reform to be floated. Nothing new here either. That's already taking place in a number of municipalities, as with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest municipal water and power utility in the nation. This may be an idea whose time has not yet come at the national level given the present balance of forces, but it is one that could be pursued widely at the municipal level. Could it be pursued at the state and regional level in places like California with relatively strong public pro-environmental sentiment and movements, a Democratic control state government with a significant progressive group of legislators, and the resources to carry it out?

The Party's environmental working committee is providing important leadership on this issue. It will take collaboration with party commissions, other party members and friends to fully flesh out these ideas. The moment calls for the most complete popular unity imaginable. At the same time, it calls for taking advantage of whatever openings - big or small - appear among sections of the ruling class aimed to arrest the out-of-control pace of Climate Change and to mitigate its impact.

A number of steps of the Obama administration are a case in point and merit broad, energetic popular support, while the movement continues to press the administration to stop the Keystone XL pipeline.

One last thought and an important one. In the context of Climate Change as in other critical challenges, the 2014 and 2016 elections could well be decisive one way or the other for the people and Nature. All the more reason we must throw everything and the kitchen sink into them.

 

Campuses and students

This brings me to a third popular task that intersects with both the environmental and labor fronts. I'd like to advocate for the need to begin to take the first solid steps by the YCL and young student party members to grow the YCL and party among students at the college and university level. Youth work on campuses will not grow in one fell swoop. Pick one, two, three campuses where the possibilities are greatest. It will take time and steady political and ideological development of young members, including a beefed up party educational program.

Just to get an idea of what is possible let's go back in history. College students played key roles in arousing the nation's conscience and constituted front line fighters for peace and justice during the anti-Apartheid movement and before then in the 1960s during the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam war struggles.

We were very much part of those struggles.

When I first came around the party in the 1960s, the Dubois clubs, predecessor to today's YCL, led broadly based successful movements to end discrimination in the San Francisco hotel industry and auto row.

Today, the movement for divestment from fossil fuel companies emanating from university campuses is but one wide-open front of environmental struggle in which young communists could be playing a role. Not to mention the struggles to bring down skyrocketing tuition and school loans as well as to increase funding for education which has resulted in widespread unity on some campuses (between student groups, teaching and technical unions, the community, and public officials) and some modest victories.

The labor movement has also been collaborating with students on campus in solidarity with low-wage workers, as with United Students against Sweatshops.

Overall, labor is currently emphasizing the organization of low-wage workers but some unions are also giving attention to organizing skilled workers most of whom require a college education, i.e. teachers, RNs, doctors, engineers, and high and bio tech workers.

What better way to assist the student, labor and environmental movements than to build YCL clubs on campuses with the party's aid?

What better way to prepare groups of students schooled in struggles for justice, the environment and peace to go into the world once they graduate with the skills necessary to continue that fight in their particular professions and society's general class and democratic struggles?

What better way to assist the working class and people in preparing the conditions for the new socialist society?

 

Can our party's policies, approach and outlook resonate with millions?

Our Party must grow because our nation's people and, at the risk of sounding pretentious, the world's people and Mother Nature herself needs it. Needless to say our country plays a pivotal role on the planet. However, too often people on the Left including some of us tend to emphasize one side of this dynamic: the top dog imperialist dark side. But, there is another side that does not get recognized enough.

What do I mean?

Recently, at our Northern California district convention we had attending a member of the Young Communists of France of African parents, who happened to be visiting one of our young party members. He expressed deep gratitude for the instructive and inspiring role our 1960s Civil Rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have played in influencing the struggles for equality in France and throughout the European Union. This is but one example of what our working class and people have contributed to the class and democratic struggles at the national and international levels. Of course, we could mention May Day and more.

Our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights and subsequent constitutional amendments represent a whole unified body of outstanding creative work - forged through blood, sweat, tears of pain and joy, and intellectual brilliance - since the nation's founding in 1776.

They are the outcome of the clash of contending class and social forces on the economic, political and ideological planes. For their time and, for our time, they represent forward-looking consummation of our nation's rich historical experience.

It is for our 21^st Century era to take to new heights the unfinished tasks of the great democratic and class (at times revolutionary) milestones in our history. That's what we must rescue for the working class and nation from today's ruling class and even more so from its right wing. These historical milestones are the building blocks on which our nation's Bill of Rights Socialist transformation will be consummated and developed. And that's what we must convey to our working class and people in their true historical context.

This is not new to our party. Our comrades through the 1930s, 1940s, the 1960s and beyond celebrated and drew knowledge, experience and inspiration from our people's struggles and progressive movements and leaders from all fields of endeavor - politics, the arts, sports, and more. In many cases our party and comrades played important and, during certain periods, pivotal roles.

Now, one could easily conclude that I am glorifying what has been a complex, contradictory historical process. We must view history - more distant or as it is being shaped today - objectively with all its contradictory twists and turns but from the vantage point of what is going to benefit our nation's and the world's working class, people and Nature. We must look squarely in the eye at misjudgments, errors and excesses, whether committed by us or by others claiming to be forward looking in the historical process, draw lessons and not be afraid to bring them to light.

On a related matter, the terms, symbols, references, images we employ all must correspond to our country's experience and be framed in terms that people can understand and identify with if we aspire to become truly an organization of, for and by our nation's working class and people. This is continually being enriched by new waves of immigrants from all corners of the world, some bringing along their revolutionary traditions and personal experiences that they apply to advance the class and democratic struggles in our country, their new home.

That too is part of our national legacy that we must become better acquainted with and, in collaboration with progressives in all fields of endeavor, bring to light.

In developing our true national identity, our nation's people will more intimately learn to appreciate their sisters and brothers across the globe whose destinies on earth we share.