A few weeks ago organizers for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) which is attempting to organize the plant learned of the situation. As a result, Donna McDonald, the president of UFCW Local 271, filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. An inspection was done, and the water was ordered restored. Words fail me in the face of such greed and inhumanity. (And I believe you have reported on this company before.) If you can find the company's website, if they have one, and the CEO's e-mail address would you please pass them on to me? I'd like to spread them around.

John Blasingame
Local 1140 Labors International Union
 
 
Disagrees on CPUSA assessment
As a member of the CPUSA and delegate from the Western Pennsylvania District to our recent convention, I have some serious issues with the article by Greg McCartan, "Communist Party USA is dropping pretense of Leninism" in the July 16 issue.

"Bill of Rights socialism"--a system that is more democratic than that which was laid out by Lenin--is sure to have a better chance at winning over Americans. This issue was discussed in many circles before and at the convention, though no vote was taken whether to adopt it as a policy. True, to a theoretical Marxist-Leninist, this system may not seem to be ideal. However, our number of active members, while increasing rapidly, does not seem to be exploding, and though we do not publicly disclose those numbers, I'm sure your readers know that something must be changed for us to become a viable "vanguard of the proletariat."

I am definitely more hard-line in some of my interpretations of Marxism-Leninism than many of my comrades, but to say that we need to directly impose every theory written in What Is To Be Done? or any other work by the geniuses of our movement reflect pure dogmatism. Lenin's own works were essentially an adaptation of Marxism that better fit his country, and these works were quite opposite those of Marx in many instances. His assertion that socialism could rise out of a peasant-based society on the fringe of capitalism hit at the very heart of Marxism, which said it would be a revolution led by the urban workers in a country at the center of capitalism.

Also, while we see the continued pauperization of the worker as Marx predicted, we have also seen a huge middle class emerge as various jobs and roles in our economy come about that Marx could never have imagined. Marx's assertions on the role of machines in Capital were dubious enough in its original form. Surely, computers have a major impact on our economy, and his mechanization theories cannot be applied to them.

McCartan proclaims that "several recent articles by CP leaders continue the party's...political support to bourgeois forces in the women's rights struggle." The Party cannot make significant advances in its struggles under the current capitalist system without forming coalitions with groups with whom we have severe underlying ideological differences. Furthermore, McCartan follows with the dangerous assertion that "class collaboration" and the proletarian struggle are mutually exclusive. Does he want a party only of proletarians, working only for the benefit of proletarians, or a Party that of all the people, working for the benefit of all of humanity?

Stephen Pack
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of interest to working people.

Please keep your letters brief. Where necessary they will be abridged. Please indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home