"We put the banner of communism before everyone who fights," said Socialist Workers Party national secretary Jack Barnes at the party's National Committee meeting. "We join in all struggles against the brutalities and injustices of the existing social order. We tell those involved: 'We're communists, and you are a communist too--you just don't know it yet.' And we let them know that only by forging a communist cadre capable of leading tens of millions in revolutionary struggle is it possible to change who is the ruling class and open up the possibility for workers and farmers to fight effectively and win."

This is not a matter of telling those battling for Black equality, women's freedom, against brutal speedup on the job, against assaults on safety and the environment, or to forge an alliance of workers and farmers that "socialism is the only solution," the SWP leader said. "What we offer them is the chance to begin to fight and win through the battle to take political power," he said.

By taking power out of the hands of a tiny group of capitalists and establishing a workers and farmers government, Barnes said, the socialist revolution "opens the door, for the first time in history, for working people to organize the battles to win an end to all the forms of exploitation, oppression, and degradation perpetuated and reproduced by capitalist rule."

Political explosions, such as that in Argentina against the impact of the capitalist collapse there, don't in and of themselves feed into a broader political challenge to the domination and prerogatives of capital.

This pattern will continue--with the imperialists and capitalist rulers in the end always restabilizing their rule and coming out on top--until a communist cadre is forged into a disciplined proletarian revolutionary party that can lead working people and chart a road forward for humanity.

The events in Argentina help us see that there are cores of proletarian fighters everywhere, Barnes said. These workers are engaged in defensive struggles against capital's unrelenting assaults on the rights and conditions of the toilers, while the trade union bureaucracy tries to sit on top of and divert these fights and battles.

But such obstacles don't stop workers and farmers from coming forward who belong in the communist movement. In their great majority today these working people are not part of any current in the workers movement, Barnes said, but of a relatively atomized resistance in city and countryside that is deep and proletarian.  
 
Political space
This resistance is not the product of a generalized new rise of the class struggle, but is bred by capitalism's growing world disorder, he said. The political space for working people to discuss, take action, and organize independently in their own interests is real and growing today.

At the same time, the U.S. ruling class is making it rougher on the edges for fighting workers and farmers. Political firings by the employers, cop harassment of literature tables and protests, actions by the government working with shippers to disrupt the ability of communists to get books around the world and with telephone companies to interfere with phone calls, and other such measures are facts of life for revolutionary workers today.

The employers' offensive is also marked by frame-ups, such as that of five Cuban revolutionaries convicted in federal court in Florida this fall on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage and, in one case, to commit murder. A week before the socialists' meeting began, federal authorities shackled and handcuffed Gerardo Hernández, René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, and Fernando González and sent them to five separate prisons across the United States.

"The purpose of this brutal treatment was to degrade and force them to their knees," Barnes said. "Their treatment is parallel to that being meted out to those kidnapped and taken by U.S. authorities to Washington's naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba. This is imperialist democracy today," he said.

Barnes pointed out that during World War II the U.S. government allowed leaders of the SWP framed-up and imprisoned under the thought-control Smith Act to remain together in the same federal penitentiary, with the exception of Grace Carlson, who was sent to a prison for women. Even under the czar of Russia, or under the totalitarian regime of Joseph Stalin, opponents of the governments were not separated and isolated from each other, as U.S. authorities are doing with the five Cuban revolutionaries.

One meeting participant pointed out that political prisoners were allowed to stay together in jail in Iran under the Khomeini government in the early 1980s.  
 
Proletarianization of the party
As the meetings took place in New York, an international team of communists was in Cuba, working together with communists in that country at the Havana International Book Fair (see articles in the current and February 25 issues of the Militant). Reports on the success of the launchings of three Pathfinder titles and the extent of political discussions at the book fair reinforced the political assessment of the openings for the communist movement in the world today.

Both the SWP leadership meeting and New York membership meeting assessed the steps forward the party and Young Socialists have made in the United States that are leading to possibilities to recruit more workers to the party.

Building on these strengths means a further proletarianization of the party. At the same time, it means taking on the challenge and responsibility of rebuilding the world communist movement. This course is needed in order to recruit, hold, and train new generations of communist workers. It requires a shift in the functioning of the branches of the party, participants in the two meetings concluded.

The work of the YS as part of an international organization has had its biggest impact in New York, said Norton Sandler, organizer of the New York Local Executive Committee, in his report to the city membership meeting.

Over the last year YS members carried out work together with students and young workers in the area to build delegations to a U.S.-Cuba youth gathering in Cuba and the 15th World Festival of Youth and Students in Algiers, Algeria. Public events and campus meetings leading up to and coming out of the two international gatherings became important political events in the city.

Through this work YS members had political discussions with hundreds of young people in the United States and from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean. Young Socialists explained their perspectives of being part of building an international communist movement.

Party branches across the country have registered progress in establishing fractions of socialist workers that carry out communist work on the job in the garment, auto, meatpacking, and coal mining industries. They have taken strides in establishing branches in workers districts and getting to know layers of working people through regular street tables, Militant Labor Forums, and communist election campaigns.

This course of action in response to resistance by workers and farmers around the world to the imperialist assault on working people has made the YS and party more attractive to proletarian fighters who are involved in and connected to a range of social struggles. Socialist workers and youth are more a part of the life and conditions of a large section of the working class most affected by the employer and government attacks, including among immigrant workers.

At the same time, both in the United States and in Communist Leagues around the world there has been a lag in the ability of the parties to deepen their proletarian character by recruiting and training workers who are interested in the movement. What steps to take to meet these opportunities was the focus of the meetings.  
 
Weekly work of the party
At the New York membership meeting, to which members of the National Committee were invited as observers, Sandler reported on the rich opportunities with a number of workers from Africa, Mexico, and the Caribbean who have found themselves in the United States and who are looking for revolutionary organizations to join to advance the battle against imperialism.

Both the Young Socialists in New York and the local membership meeting approved a proposal to fuse the forces of the SWP and YS in the city in order to turn toward the openings to deepen the proletarian character and composition of the communist movement and to increase its disciplined functioning and integration with workers resisting the onslaught of capitalism.

YS-age members in New York remain members of the international Young Socialists, which has chapters and individual members in a number of other cities in the United States and elsewhere. They will participate in national and international YS gatherings, and in its activities here and around the world. And the YS National Executive Committee will continue directing the work of the organization.

Sandler pointed to a number of concrete ways to advance along the political course presented in the opening report to the city meeting, and to the party leadership meeting earlier in the day.

One is through the party's participation in social protest actions, such as rallies against police brutality and in defense of immigrant rights. Party members join in these actions, set up literature tables, sell the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial, and find individuals who are looking for fundamental political answers and can be won to a proletarian party.

Another is to advance the work of the fractions of socialist workers in the garment and meatpacking industries and unions. They become part of the life and struggles not only among workers on the job, but of the connections of these workers to "simmering social struggles breaking out today."

A third is by restarting and organizing every member into weekly shift-change sales at garment and meatpacking plant gates in and around the city to reinforce the political work of the fractions, build the influence of communism among that section of the working class, and get to know a broader layer of workers who can be brought around party activities.

Building the weekly Militant Labor Forum as the most important meeting of the week, where workers can get together to discuss key questions and developments in world politics, is essential to carrying out this proletarian course, Sandler said.

The fourth is setting up street-corner tables of revolutionary literature and organizing other ways to get out the socialist press and Pathfinder books in the workers districts where the branches are located.  
 
Proletarian, international, and political
In his summary report to the SWP leadership meeting late in the day Sunday, Barnes pointed out that the concrete step of fusing the communist movement's forces in New York City was completed with the actions by the city membership meeting earlier that day.

The task in New York City now, he said, is the same concretely facing every branch of the SWP and other communist organizations: to become more proletarian in composition, activity, and norms of functioning, as well as more international in their reach.

That requires branches that put politics at the center of their meetings each week and that discuss ways to integrate their activity more and more deeply into that of the working class and the social struggles working people are part of. No militant worker who joins a communist organization will stay very long in a party that operates any other way.

Adding to points made by Sandler at the city meeting, Barnes pointed to other useful ways party branches can meet and work with people new to the communist movement that will help bring them closer to joining.

These include building support for the fight against the political firing of socialist worker Michael Italie by Goodwill Industries in Miami. Explaining the case and winning support from co-workers and those involved in strikes, union organizing drives, and social protest actions is one powerful way to reach out to proletarian fighters.

Another way, Barnes said, is participation in the struggle to expose the frame-up of the five Cuban revolutionaries. This involves using the Militant and other information on the case, building meetings to win backing for these fighters, and explaining the stakes involved in the U.S. government's assault to co-workers and other unionists.

This kind of weekly rhythm of rounded communist work will not only lead the party and young socialists to meet and collaborate with other proletarian fighters, but provide the basis for the political integration of workers who join the party.

Sandler said that an education in Marxism and the history of the Socialist Workers Party is also essential for workers who decide to join the movement. Each branch in New York can begin now to organize new members classes and the party's candidate for membership program to facilitate workers being able to learn about the party, go through a systematic education program on the history and program of the communist movement, and get a grounding in the organizational norms and principles of a revolutionary workers party, he said.

This course is part and parcel of advancing the building of a new international of the communist movement, Sandler said. It is the course to advance common work with communists and revolutionary-minded workers and youth elsewhere in the Americas and the world over.

Some who join the Communist Leagues and Socialist Workers Party will return to their countries of origin, armed with the experience, knowledge, and possibilities to collaborate in building revolutionary workers parties around the globe, he said. As during the Communist International in the 1920s, revolutionary fighters from other countries will meet and join the party and return better able to build a communist organization where they are from.  
 
International perspectives
Leaders of Communist Leagues and the international Young Socialists in Canada, Haiti, Iceland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom participated in the meetings and explained the variety of ways in which each is carrying out a proletarianization of the movement; there is no formula. This participation in the discussion was an essential contribution to the political concreteness of the New York meeting.

Over the past several months leaders of the SWP and YS in the United States have collaborated closely with Communist Leagues and YS members abroad to work through how, in each of the countries, the communist movement can better orient and organize themselves to meet, collaborate with, and recruit proletarian fighters.

In Iceland this has taken the form of members of the international Young Socialists in that country joining forces with longtime communist workers there to build a Communist League. Hilde Andra explained that members of the organization have begun building fractions in the fish processing industry and are looking to expand their numbers in the aluminum industry as well.

Tom Harris reported that in the United Kingdom, communist workers and YS members have both taken the step of setting up an organizing committee in Scotland--expanding from a single base in London--and beginning to build fractions in the garment and meatpacking industries. They are learning about entire sections of the working class they had little or no contact with beforehand, he said. In the process, they are meeting workers and youth attracted to the YS and Communist League.

Lars Jansson, a member of the Communist League in Sweden, explained that the YS and the league decided to fuse their forces into a common organization, establish a branch organizing committee in Gothenburg, and to get jobs in meatpacking and garment or textile.

These steps, he said, have "transformed the atmosphere and character of the party, as well as how we act. Younger members haven't been part of the social movements. We want to be communists and build the communist movement.

"That is why we need to work with generations who have more experience. We are working jobs we didn't know existed before and can see right before our eyes how the 'Swedish model' is changing."

Andre Roux, a member of the Communist League and Young Socialists from Montreal, said four workers had joined there recently. He stressed the importance of the league and the YS collaborating together to recruit more workers and integrate them into the movement.

A leader of the Young Socialists from Haiti described how he and others in the country set out to find communist organizations they could collaborate with and share experiences with in building a proletarian party. Several of them first met members of the Young Socialists at a conference in Cuba a couple of years ago, then again at the youth festival in Algiers this summer. They purchased Pathfinder titles and issues of New International in Algeria and formed a YS group upon their return. They are building toward the launching of a communist organization later this year and encouraged participation from abroad.

In these and other cases, the collaboration by party members and members of the international Young Socialists is deepening the involvement of the communist movement in struggles by workers and farmers, as well as youth attracted to these fights, both in those countries and worldwide.  
 
Post-9/11 shift by U.S. rulers
In his report to the National Committee meeting, Barnes presented a number of elements of the evolution of world politics that underpin and justify these moves by communists.

The January 22 State of the Union address by U.S. president George Bush marked a definitive shift away from the political axis of the U.S. rulers' actions since September 11. Gone were demands for revenge or justice, or tracking down those responsible for the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. The momentum from the September 11 events, and the U.S. rulers' ability to use them to rationalize wars abroad and assaults on workers' rights at home, have been spent.

Leading up to and during the brutal war against the people of Afghanistan, the SWP said that in order for Washington to build a war fervor and parlay the assault into further imperialist attacks against working people, they needed a lot of blood of American GIs to be spilled.

The U.S. rulers toppled the government in Afghanistan without that happening. Lacking a bloody flag to wave, they are now trying to build a case for new military aggression by asserting the right of Washington to stop governments that don't simply bend to its will from defending themselves against the U.S. war machine--including by producing and deploying what U.S. officials describe as weapons of mass destruction.

Washington is the only government ever to use nuclear weapons in a war and against a civilian population, and can blow up the world many times over. But revolutionists must say more than that, Barnes said. Communist workers defend the right of north Korea, Iraq, Iran, and other countries targeted by imperialism to build and deploy whatever weapons they deem necessary to stay imperialism's hand.

The Bush administration is carrying on a fight in the U.S. ruling class to head toward a renewed attempt to topple the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. As that course unfolds, the most immediate practical effect is Washington's deeper convergence with Israel's war against the Palestinian people.

Washington has placed the Lebanese-based Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad on its terrorist list, even though both are fighting the Israeli government and have no record of actions against the United States. And Vice President Richard Cheney spoke out forcefully this week against the support Iraq and Iran have given the two organizations, as well as the Palestine Liberation Front, objectively backing the Israeli regime's pretexts for its military actions.

The model for U.S. imperialism in planning its attacks on Iraq may well become the airstrikes by the Israeli regime in 1980 against a nuclear power plant the government of Iraq had begun to build.

Barnes also pointed out that Washington also stands behind the reactionary drive by the capitalist rulers in Venezuela to topple the Hugo Chávez government, opening up the possibility of a civil war there whose outcome cannot be determined beforehand.

As the crisis of capitalism unfolds, Barnes said, the main danger of a world economic catastrophe remains the vulnerability of the banking system, the mounting bubble of debt, and the prospect of a trade war that could unleash retaliatory measures and a sharp dive in world trade.

The bankruptcy of Enron, "one-time" charges being taken by a number of large corporations, and the slide in the stock prices of others are signs that world finance capital is finding out what values and assumptions underlie the credit worthiness of many big corporations and banks.

These factors have political ramifications for the expectations of masses of people, further destabilizing the world capitalist economy. From the mid-1990s into 2000, the middle class expected the stock market balloon to continue. When the psychology of millions shift, reaching into layers of the working class and small farmers as well, a collapse in confidence can have a devastating effect on stock prices, on buying goods on credit, and even whether people put their money in the bank--as was the case in the Great Depression.

In Japan there is the potential for a wave of bank failures, as the load of bad debt climbs amidst continued recession and deflation. The price of gold is climbing, as millions in Japan take their money out of accounts in savings banks, which the government says it soon will no longer stand behind.

The resistance to the inevitable brutalities of capitalism's world disorder will continue, Barnes said. The law of value determined the crisis that led the Argentine government to devalue the peso, he said, but the response of workers and farmers in the country to the capitalist crisis was not settled beforehand. Communists have before them "precious time to transform this resistance" and to build a revolutionary proletarian leadership.

Joel Britton, a party leader from Chicago and a packinghouse worker there, said in the discussion that he spoke at a Militant Labor Forum in Des Moines, Iowa, recently as part of a panel with workers involved in struggles in the meatpacking industry. Among the participants were 10 meat packers involved in a union-organizing drive at several plants in Omaha, Nebraska.

Britton said he opened his remarks at the meeting by reading from a article reporting on a socialist meeting in New York the previous week. "There are proletarian and vanguard leaders in countries all over the world. We need to let them know that they are communists, but they just don't know it yet," the article quoted Barnes as saying. "Only by knowing it, and banding together with others in a proletarian party, can we organize to fight and win."

The response to these remarks from many workers present who are new to the communist movement was positive, he said, and it helped put the discussion at the meeting in a different political framework.

Daniel Reed from Omaha came with a co-worker who is a leader of the struggle to organize meat packers to the Des Moines forum. After hearing the forum speakers and returning to Omaha, this worker told others in the plant that she had a lot of new ideas to discuss with them. Reed also reported that a couple of co-workers have started selling Pathfinder books to other workers.

John Perry, a meat packer in New York, told a story about a co-worker who continually raises that the problem with the attacks on September 11 was that his boss remained unscathed. The fellow worker says he would like to join the Taliban in order to take on the boss and address long-held grievances.

Laura Garza from Boston said she has been struck by the number of workers from Latin America who approach the party's literature tables and pick up titles by Lenin right off the bat. She said the branch there has begun to work with a leader of a struggle by janitors in neighboring Cambridge. The union fighter has been encouraging fellow workers to check out the local Pathfinder bookstore and alerting party members to protests they may have otherwise not known about.

Deborah Liatos, from San Francisco, explained that there have been several protests in that city against the U.S. government's deployment of troops to the Philippines. Filipino groups responded quickly to this move by Washington, and a number of those involved have decided to support the fight by Michael Italie as well. These actions are taking place at the same time the largely immigrant workforce at the San Francisco airport, many of whom are Filipino, have been organizing to condemn the new federal legislation requiring baggage screeners to be U.S. citizens.

An example of the kind of social movements that are developing in areas of the country, Betty Franks, a coal miner in Pennsylvania, pointed to a march being organized by widows of coal miners who contracted black lung. They plan to walk from West Virginia to Washington in April to build support for full funding of the black lung program.  
 
Tasks before every branch
The concrete step decided on by the SWP and YS in New York City is not posed anywhere else in the United States in the foreseeable future, Barnes said in his summary report to the party leadership meeting.

But the strategic course confronting the communist movement in order to meet the opportunities before it is the same.

The party will deepen its work with the Young Socialists around the country to build and recruit to the YS, as worker-bolsheviks advance the construction of a proletarian party more deeply rooted in workers districts, and with trade union fractions in the UFCW, UMWA, and UNITE, that are increasingly alert to becoming part of the social resistance of working people.

Rapidly upgrading work by teams of socialists who sell the revolutionary press and Pathfinder literature at factory gates each week is central to this perspective, Barnes said.

Only by making progress along these lines can the party can win our newest members to becoming communists and continue to attract young people from the shop floor to those we meet on workers district tables or on campus to being interested in learning about what it means to be a communist and to join the Young Socialists and the Socialist Workers Party.  
 
 
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