First Published: Red Papers 5: National Liberation and Proletarian Revolution in the U.S., October 1972.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The importance of working class leadership for Third World liberation struggles, and the potential power of multinational proletarian unity under Third World leadership, are brought out sharply in this article. The Chicano and Latino comrades who wrote it describe how that unity must be built through struggle, and the importance of a multinational communist organization to provide leadership in developing struggle and forging that unity.
In May, 1968, Mao Tsetung made a statement in support of the Afro-American people’s struggle against violent repression. He stressed that in the final analysis, the contradiction between the Black masses and the U.S. ruling class is a class contradiction; that for this reason the Black people’s struggle is bound to merge with the American workers’ movement; and that this will eventually end the criminal rule of U.S. monopoly capitalism.
As Chicano members of the RU, we firmly believe that Mao’s statement also applies to the struggle of Chicano people; that in the final analysis Chicano liberation is an empty phrase unless it means carrying out the struggle to its completion–the smashing of U.S. imperialism by proletarian revolution.
This article is not a substitute for a thorough analysis of the relationship between the Chicano national liberation struggle and proletarian revolution in the U.S. What this article does is to relate briefly some of the practical experiences of some Chicano RU comrades in linking our understanding of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought to the struggles of our people.
First, we will trace how we came to understand, by a process of struggling and then summing up our successes and failures, the need to base ourselves on the Chicano working class.
In early 1970, an all-brown collective was formed within the RU in one locality. The idea of an all-brown collective wasn’t based on any principle of “self-determination” within a communist organization. Within such an organization, which practices democratic centralism, there should be no autonomous sections. This collective had grown out of a fundamentals class on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought that an RU member had started within the community.
When we formed this collective, we understood the need for organizing Chicanos and were enthusiastic about generating struggle against Chicanos’ national oppression. But we had little idea of what section of La Raza we should join and base ourselves on, and how we should go about doing this. The vagueness of direction naturally led us to the youth and students, because it was among the youth that we had friends and acquaintances, and because it appeared they were the most ready to struggle and accept revolutionary ideas.
Because of contacts some young Chicanos had with the local chapter of the Black Panther Party, a chapter of Brown Berets had already been formed. We united with the Brown Berets with the intention of trying to help them develop into a viable mass organization. This did not happen, and eventually the Brown Beret group fell apart due to contradictions among its members. Nevertheless, the group left its mark. At their highest point, the Brown Berets led a school walkout of hundreds of youth to a local Safeway store where they demonstrated in support of the Farmworkers’ strike and smashed scab grapes.
After this, several of the more politically advanced ex-Brown Berets began building a defense campaign around Los Siete de la Raza. Los Siete were a group of Latin-American youths who were framed on a charge of murdering a San Francisco cop. Once again, most of the efforts were directed at youths in the community, but for the first time some of their parents were involved. Films were shown at people’s homes and we held discussions about the role of the courts under capitalism and the importance of building a mass movement to free political prisoners.
As time went on, we became involved in even more extensive youth work, mainly centered around a Chicano center and the struggle to develop it. We worked with quite a number of youths and took many of them to various demonstrations. But for all the sporadic successes, nothing in the way of on-going activity or organization was developed. This was due partly to our own inexperience, but also to the political instability of the youths we worked with. At times they would show tremendous enthusiasm for struggle, but as a group they never showed any consistent dedication to participate in on-going struggle. One minute they would be manning lettuce boycott picket lines, and the next they would lose interest and start feuding among themselves, or dropping pills or chasing down some party.
Summing up the weaknesses of our work, we decided to look for a more stable section of Chicano youth. So we focused on the local junior college. Here the Chicano youth were more concentrated and many held part-time jobs. Our approach was to involve ourselves with the active forces in the Chicano Student Union.
Within Chicano Studies classes, we would try to steer discussions toward a more scientific, materialist understanding of Chicano history and would try to isolate narrow, bourgeois nationalist ideas by putting forward proletarian, internationalist ones. We were hoping to get the Chicano Student Union to branch out and actively take up the struggles in the Chicano community. We believed we could get the less stable but militant sections of the Chicano youth in the community involved once things got rolling.
During the course of the year there was struggle and some advanced people came forward. But when issues outside of the immediate situation came up, there was concern but little action. Thus, when struggles concerning local Chicano workers came about, much was said but little was done.
Then something happened that opened our eyes to the need of basing our practical work among the Chicano working class at the point of production. This was the ideological struggle that broke out in the fall of 1970 within the RU.
Third World comrades actively participated in the three months of ideological struggle that took place within the RU. While combating the petit-bourgeois approach to revolution put forward by some people in our organization, we saw the particularly important role Third World RU members had to play in developing our organization’s understanding of the national struggle and its relationship to the overall class struggle. What had been holding us back somewhat was that we had not really grasped the importance of basing our practical work on the Third World working class and of developing the leadership of the working class within national liberation struggles.
We began to understand how important it was to the revolutionary movement to develop practical experience in doing this. So the Third World members collectively recommended that a change be made so that most of our Third World members would organize workers on the job.
Some of the Chicano RU members got jobs at a factory that was well-known throughout the Chicano community: first, as a factory which hired Chicanos, and second, for the treatment of Chicano workers there by the owner and his white management. The national breakdown of workers in this factory is roughly 90% Chicano and Mexican, 8% Portuguese, and only a handful of white and Black workers.
This entire industry, of which the factory is apart, has many Mexican workers. As one owner said, “Mexicans are good metal workers!” The union also has many Mexican members and some trustees. Many shop stewards are Chicano, although there are no Chicano business agents. Most of the plants organized by the union are small (5-100 workers–mostly men), and most of the plants can accurately be called sweatshops. The union does not fight very hard, and most of its members do not relate to it at all.
At the particular factory where we organized, the workers’ situation was very bad. For instance, the work pace was intolerable because the workers had a 90-day probationary period, and because seniority did not count for promotions. As for the probationary period, it used to be shorter, but when federal funds became available for On the Job Training (OJT), the owner negotiated it up to 90 days. That way, he began to hire workers under the OJT program and the federal government paid one third of the “trainees” wages.
Since the OJT contracts only paid for a 90-day “training period,” the owner would lay off the “trainees” near the end of the probationary period, before the man got any union protections. In a couple of years, the company “trained” around 100 men–but you can’t find more than two or three of these workers at the company now.
As for promotions, since they did not go by seniority, the man who worked the hardest got promoted. Besides, the company hired Mexicans who may have had immigration problems, or language difficulties, or who would rather work hard in an industrial job than in the fields. For this reason, the work pace was extremely hard.
With this, there was discrimination. For instance, no matter how hard a Mexican worked, promotions would go to white or Portuguese workers first. Basically, anything the company wanted went down. The union did nothing but come in every three years to negotiate a sell-out contract.
Actually, wages should be much higher than they are now. But the union would let the owner cut starting wages every year to make up for wage increases for the workers with more seniority.
Union power (i.e., the shop steward position and any other positions of union leadership in the plant) was held by a small, sell-out group of older workers, mainly white and Portuguese, but with some Mexicans. These were mainly leadmen and skilled workers with an average of about 10-12 years with the company. They could remember when they worked on the shop floor with the owner when the company was small. They thought the owner was all right: he paid them more money than specified in the contract, kept off their backs, and generally treated them well.
A second group in the plant were Chicanos who had been hired within the last two years as the company “boomed.” These men were mainly young, but they also cliqued around with some middle-aged workers who had low seniority. What they had in common was that they had the lowest paying jobs, suffered the most harassment because they would not work like oxen, and also suffered the most racial discrimination. This group naturally hated the owner and the company.
A third group in the plant were a few men who had around 10-12 years seniority, held some of the better jobs, but never kissed ass. They had always fought for their rights, they had tried to organize to get better contracts, and they looked out for the men with less time in. For instance, they would point out safety hazards to us. They pushed the union to come in and do some things, but the union did not want to because the group of leadmen who controlled the union opposed this group of workers.
The second group of young workers with low seniority did not oppose the third group, but did not unite with them. The RU members based their organizing on the second group, but for mainly subjective reasons. These workers were young, they hated the company, and they were easier to talk to. However, the RU members mistook this militant talk for “class consciousness.” Also, the second group figured incorrectly that the third group was simply agitating for selfish reasons. The RU members saw no need to unite with the third group because they were “organizing” the militant talkers.
About a year ago, the third group of workers began a petition campaign to get rid of the sell-out shop steward, a Chicano. Three-fourths of the workers signed it, asking for a new election. The group leading the campaign took the petition to a union meeting, and were told that the matter would be taken care of in a couple of days. It didn’t happen that soon. The company began to harass the hell out of the group, demanding more production, and generally trying to intimidate them. They annoyed the men by demanding such things as keeping their heads bowed down at the machines, and by denying them overtime when it was their right to work instead of someone else’s. They blamed everything in the plant on these “troublemakers.”
This group of workers did make trouble. When the union did not have an election, the group went to the international. The international of course, put it back in the hands of the local. The local union officials, as we already said, liked the company and the sell-out shop steward. At union meetings they made sarcastic comments about the group and said that everything was very good at the plant.
Finally, several months after the whole thing started, and because the men kept up the pressure despite the company’s harassment and the union’s attitude, the union officials showed up one afternoon for an election. We were supposed to vote that very day–with no preparation, no meetings to discuss the issues–nothing. The experienced workers saw through this trick and demanded that the vote be put off for three days. Three days later the vote was held. Instead of an election with candidates, however, the union took a vote to see if we wanted an election, despite the fact that three-fourths of the workers had already signed a petition demanding an election.
The union rep passed out ballots saying “YES” and “NO ” What were we voting for? Many workers, especially those who did not understand English, said later they did not know how they voted. The election lost by 8 votes, but it was hard to analyze these results because there was so much confusion. What was lacking was organization and information regarding the issue.
Later that week, another petition was passed around, stating that the signers supported the efforts to improve working conditions. It was mainly a show of confidence for the class conscious older workers who had been leading the struggle. The first day it was passed around, the leader of the petition campaign was fired. At that instant, the two groups–the second and third groups of workers–realized that the firing was a serious attack on everyone. That weekend, a small number of workers from both groups met and planned a strategy to organize the plant and to win the man’s job back. Other Third World members of the RU, not working at the plant, were at this meeting and helped the workers put out a leaflet.
The leaflet asked workers to raise questions as to the firing. Wasn’t the man fired because he was fighting in the interest of all the workers? What was the union doing? Had the union really gone along with the firing, as the company said? Why was the shop steward so quick to go along with the company and fire the man? The leaflet scared the hell out of the company, and it has never been the same since!
The other workers in the plant came up to the RU members and the class conscious workers who had been leading the struggle. They said, let’s go down to the union meeting and raise hell. By this time, the RU members in the plant, along with other Third World members of the organization, were firmly allied with the third group of older workers. The second and third groups united and held a house meeting. Only workers who could be trusted were told. The location was never announced; instead, the workers just followed a lead car. All these precautions were taken and still nearly one third of the plant came. A strategy was developed. Make the company the main target and let the corrupt union officials expose their true colors in the process.
Take the firing to arbitration and the NLRB, but mount so much pressure that we might get it settled before arbitration.
Some of us wrote articles for the local workers’ newspaper. We leafleted, we united, and defended each other. Everyone who was a member of the committee began to look out for his fellow workers. The unity was there-it was easy to see. And at every opportunity we harassed the company. We began to demand grievance forms, raised objections to company and union policies, and we made it clear to the union that we represented a big part of the plant and that we were around to stay.
The man got his job back, and the union gave us the election. We put up a militant, active Chicano worker for shop steward-he won by a landslide. The shop stewards, with the full backing of the workers and the half-hearted efforts of the union, have begun to straighten out some of the day-to-day economic issues. Job openings get posted, the company has been forced to pay back vacations it had stolen from some workers, and the workers no longer have to work at near the pace as before.
But political organizing goes on also. For instance, the local workers’ newspaper is sold heavily at the factory. Some workers have attended forums on socialism in China and on labor history. A sizeable group of workers and their families went to the International Workers Day (May Day) rally this year. And we are presently investigating the ways of linking up the struggles of Chicano workers in this factory to the struggles of Chicano workers in other factories in our area, and to the struggles of other sections of the Chicano people.
As communists, from study and from our practical experience, we have come to see very clearly the importance of making the Chicano workers the main base of the Chicano movement. Chicano workers have a very high national consciousness, and because they face discrimination on the job, they are strongly anti-company. Also, as workers at the point of production, they are very conscious of exploitation. At the first organizing meeting to get the fired Chicano his job back, one older worker, from Mexico, stood up and said: “The problem we’re facing at the plant comes from one thing–the system of exploitation. And we must destroy that system!”
This shows the real revolutionary potential of Mexican and Mexican-American (Chicano) workers. For instance, we are seeing the immigration service used much more now against Mexican national workers. This is due to the current economic crisis. Workers at the plant can see the role of the state in suppressing the movement of La Raza by immigration harassment. They can also understand it is imperialism that drives Mexicans from their homes to seek jobs here. And the workers at the plant also see the war in Vietnam as a war of exploitation.
The workers at this plant stand ready to support anything that moves La Raza forward; they stand ready to support other workers in their struggles. As communists7 and as Chicanos, we must get more and more into the organizing of the Chicano working class. La Raza movement as a whole must be led by the working class. Chicano workers will play a leading role in the revolutionary movement, and, as communists, we must bring Marxism-Leninism Mao Tsetung Thought to La Raza workers.
This is what we saw more clearly through the work at that sweatshop with the Chicano and Mexican workers. With the better understanding of the class question and how it fits into La Raza movement, we moved some Chicano comrades into a large warehouse, where there were some Chicano and Black workers, but most of the workers were white. We also had white comrades working in that warehouse.
Many grievances were building up in this warehouse. Our comrades, Chicano and white, spent a lot of time agitating around these grievances. The workers moved suddenly and spontaneously, with a wildcat strike, first at this warehouse, and then at another warehouse, organized by the same large union.
The first wildcat occurred in a complex that employed about 1,000 workers. In the particular section where the wildcat began, there were about 400 workers. A total of 600 workers participated in the strike as other sections of the complex shut down and joined in. The vast majority of the workers were white. As usual, racial discrimination kept the number of Third World workers down in comparison to the whites. Most Black workers had less than 4 years seniority, some as much as 8. Chicano workers did a little better, with some having as much as 10 years seniority.
Trouble had been brewing for months before the wildcat. The company was stalling on and refusing to accept grievances that were piling up against it. Every week brought new “house rules” from the company, regimenting and controlling further the life of the-workers. Warning letters were handed out at the slightest infraction.
The company was able to speed-up and keep the workers divided against themselves by the age-old trick of pitting employed against unemployed. Men from the hiring hall were being used on an average of 60 men each day to fill in for absent, regularly employed workers. These casual workers had no protection under the union contract, were never permanently hired, and under the slightest pretense could be blacklisted. Thus, where the quota for a regularly employed worker was 800-900 pieces a day, the casual worker was forced to produce 1200-1300 pieces. By various means, the company would pressure the regularly employed workers to meet the high output of the casual worker.
One week before the wildcat, two things happened that outraged the Third World workers and some of the more active, class-conscious white workers. One incident involved blatant racism by a company supervisor. This supervisor told a group of Chicano workers that he wanted to see them ”work hard and sweat like a nigger.” Standing nearby and overhearing him were several Black workers.
Caught red-handed, the company offered a letter of apology to be posted on the shop bulletin board. In the letter the racist supervisor said he used the word “’nigger’ as a figure of speech and meant no derogatory meaning.” Of course, the Black workers were not satisfied with this meaningless apology and began to agitate for the supervisor’s firing or transfer.
The second incident was the firing of an older Black worker in another section of the complex. Very few workers (even among the Blacks) in the section where the wildcat started knew this older Black worker personally. News about the firing reached us by word of mouth. He was fired for supposedly stealing a bunch of bananas. Several company guards had followed him to his car at quitting time, roughed him up and searched his car, then dragged him back and chained him to the company fence. Company supervisors intimidated the worker with threats of criminal charges into signing a confession. Having forced him to sign the confession, the company refused to go through any grievance procedures, claiming the matter was settled.
The Black workers saw in the treatment of this older Black worker the common practice of fascist police oppression in the Black communities, as well as the common class oppression of workers in general. Advanced white workers saw this also. But the majority of white workers only saw this incident as an example of class oppression, as just another example of the company treating a worker unjustly.
It was not until the firing of a Chicano shop steward for refusing to follow a direct order, one week after these other two events, that the vast majority of white workers saw these attacks as racist attacks upon the Third World workers as well as attacks upon all workers. This Chicano shop steward was the most militant and most respected of all the stewards in the plant. Besides participating and taking the lead in national struggles of Chicano and Black workers in the plant, he also was the main leader of the day-to-day economic struggles of all the workers. The company had tried to fire him three times within the last year because of his activities. The day after his firing, 400 Black, Chicano and white workers walked off their jobs. The next day, another 200 walked off and shut down another section.
Analyzing dialectically the run of events in the plant, we saw how the sharpening of the national struggle led to a higher level of unity of the class struggle. Some time before the wildcat, RU members had been trying to develop a campaign against speedups in the plant. But the employed workers remained divided against the “unemployed” casual workers. By actively supporting the national struggle within the plant, the RU members were able to develop a higher level of unity around the question of the casual workers. When the wildcatting workers wrote up their list of demands to the company, besides the demands for the rehiring of the Chicano shop steward and the older Black worker, and for the firing of the racist supervisor, they also included the demand against the special harassment and abuse of the casual workers, and other economic demands.
This first wildcat lasted three days, with eventually all demands being met by the company. The rehiring of the Chicano shop steward was not done immediately, but the workers went back to work on the understanding that the question would go to immediate arbitration. The Chicano shop steward was rehired within a few weeks, but only because the workers did not let the struggle die after they went back to work. By slowing down and sabotaging production, they “convinced” the company that the arbitration board should rule in favor of the shop steward.
During the wildcat, the workers’ demands got toned down somewhat, primarily because of a Chicano business agent who saw the high level of workers’ militancy and unity as a threat, not only to the company but to the union officials’ positions of authority. By sounding militant, he tried to usurp the leadership of the wildcat, and by having his lackeys spread rumors which caused some dissension, he was able to end the wildcat before it spread further into other sections of the complex.
In the second wildcat, the workers, having seen through the role of the Chicano business agent, kept the leadership in their own hands. They did not return to work until all of their demands were immediately and thoroughly met.
The background of the second wildcat was similar to the first. A Black shop steward had taken the lead in the struggle against the company and had become known as the most militant spokesman of the class interest of all the workers. When the company fired him, the workers went on strike to regain him his job. Events developed like this:
Grievances on safety conditions had been piling up and the company was ignoring them. The business agent had not even shown up in 3 months. The Black shop steward called a meeting of all workers to be held in front of the company gate before swing shift. He had notified the business agent and the secretary-treasurer of this meeting and was told they would attend. When it became apparent that they were not coming, he led the workers back into the shop. Two days later he called for the same type of meeting. Again, the union officials did not show up.
At starting time, the company told the steward to tell the workers to go to work. The steward told the workers this but added that he, for one, intended to wait outside the plant for the union officials even if it took all night. The company fired him on the spot. When the company then told the workers to go to work, it was met with a “Hell, No!”, they were staying out until the union officials came, and until the shop steward was rehired.
Advanced white workers began agitating around the fact that only 3 Black and 2 Chicano workers were presently employed by the company, and that, in fact, the company was just as racist as the company where the first wildcat occurred; particularly around questions of discrimination in hiring and promotion to skilled jobs. When the workers returned to work a week later, the company had to agree to the demand of ending its racist practices, as well as the demand for rehiring the shop steward. A committee of Third World workers was to meet regularly with the company to make sure these demands were met.
What was the role of RU members, white and Chicano, in these wildcats, and what are the main things we learned?
Before the first wildcat, we did a lot of agitating, talking about getting together to fight the grievances that were piling up. Once the wildcat broke out, we spent a lot of time talking to the workers, pointing out to the white workers the national discrimination involved, and working with the Chicano workers to combat the Chicano business agent, who was trying to break up the wildcat. And we kept the heat on the other union officials who came around after the wildcat started, trying to talk the guys into going back to work before we won our demands.
The Chicano business agent, once he saw the wildcat was getting “out of hand,” went around to a lot of the Chicano workers and told them that the Black workers would sell them out. The re-hiring of the older Black worker was one of the first demands we won, before the Chicano shop steward was re-hired. So the business agent told the Chicano workers, now that they got what they wanted the Black workers won’t stay out for you. But the Black workers made it clear they wouldn’t go back until everybody was ready to go back, and until we got some satisfaction on the case of the Chicano shop steward.
To fight the line that this business agent was putting out, the Chicano comrades, together with some advanced Chicano workers, went down to the plant early during the wildcat, when a lot of the Chicano workers were just getting there. We talked to them–often in Spanish because many of them spoke Spanish better than English–and we showed them what the business agent was trying to do; break up our unity, and turn the Chicanos against the Blacks. The Chicano workers saw this, and they didn’t fall for the business agent’s trick. So when we did go back we went together and strong, and the Chicano shop steward did get rehired.
In the second wildcat, we didn’t have any comrades actually working at that plant, but our comrades from the first plant went over to the second during that wildcat, before and after work, to talk to the workers there about our experiences and what we had learned in our wildcat. Several of the advanced workers–white and Third World–from the first wildcat went with us and played a very active role in supporting the second wildcat.
In summing up the lessons of these wildcats, we saw again the importance of Chicano and Third World workers taking the lead in the Third World movements, and also in the struggles of all the workers. We also learned something about Third World workers’ attitudes toward unions. In the warehouse wildcats, as in the sweatshop factory struggles, the workers clearly saw the company as the main enemy. They took on the union officials whenever they got in the way of fighting the company, and they fought to make the union really fight for them and be a militant organization of the workers. But they did not want to destroy the union, or stay out of its business, especially not when they were going up against the company.
They acted together and, once they felt their own strength, they forced the union officials to go along or get out of the way. They didn’t wait for the union’s okay, but they didn’t attack the union as a whole, either. Especially in the wildcats, the workers had a lot of pride in being in their union–it was looked at as a “tough” union, and this gave them a feeling that they could take on the company. Their experience in being in a union–even one they know is pretty corrupt–made it easier for them to get organized and deal with the company. This was one lesson.
A more important lesson was the way workers, in particular white workers, see the question of “Third World leadership.” The workers in both wildcat strikes, with white workers being the great majority, followed the leadership of the Chicano and Black workers, because the white workers could see that the Blacks and Chicanos, in fighting against discrimination and on economic issues, were leading a fight for all the workers. On the other hand, the fact that Black and Chicano workers face national oppression on the job, and in the community, means that their struggle and their consciousness is higher, so they are in the best position to lead fights for all the workers. This is the way “Third World leadership” comes about in the working class. During the first wildcat, one white worker told some of his friends who didn’t work at the plant and who asked him what was going on: “There are a lot of grievances, but the main thing is the goddamn racism of the company!”
At the same time, from our talks with the white workers, it is clear that they don’t yet understand the struggle in the Black and Chicano communities and they don’t see this yet as a fight for all workers. That understanding for white workers will come through more struggles against discrimination and for economic demands, led by Third World workers. It is our job as communists to help the white workers learn through their experience in fighting against discrimination–as a fight for all workers–on the job, that’ this is just a part of the larger national struggles, in the community as well, that are also in the interests of all workers.
Finally, through these wildcat struggles we came to understand better the importance of multinational communist organization. Because we had both Chicano and white comrades in the plant where the first wildcat occurred, we could have a “division of labor” where the Chicano comrades spent most of their time with the Chicanos, and also the Black workers, and the white comrades spent most of their time with the white workers. But this “division of labor” really helped us to unite all the workers.
Also, being in the same communist organization, our brown and white comrades could meet together and plan how to help build the wildcat, based on a common political line and strategy. We learned in a living way that a multinational communist organization can build the unity of the multinational working class and move the struggle forward toward proletarian revolution and liberation for Chicanos, Blacks, and all workers.