I spent a week in Seattle participating in the Progressive Labor Party’s (PL) summer project, organizing among Boeing workers. PL is a revolutionary communist party. There are members around the U.S. and the world. They reject the notion that governmental reforms can successfully solve modern society’s problems, which are entrenched in the capitalist system. In other words, you can’t make a system which depends on the majority of the population having nothing and a tiny majority having everything, “nicer” or humane. Certainly not in a lasting way. (A slaughterhouse can’t be made “nicer” or humane, either, adds this vegan.) To reach a point where communist revolution is possible, by which they mean complete abolition of production-for-profit and labor-for-wages, PL works to develop solidarity across the working class, from students to workers to soldiers, regardless of sex, age, race, nationality, etc. — regardless of all the arbitrary boundaries that keep us apart. For a PL’er, there are really only two kinds of humans: those who work, and those who exploit those who work. This is the only crucial, significant distinction.
I came to learn of PL through podcasting: Bob & Jenna of Vegan Freak Radio are friends of Dan & Jenna of Abolition Radio (if you are vegan, female, and on a podcast, chances are your name is Jenna). Then I met one local PL’er at an anti-war march in March of ‘09, and took part in PL’s May Day celebration in Brooklyn some weeks later. Since then I’ve kept in touch with the local PL members (joining PL as a member is an official act), through whom I learned about the summer project in Seattle and decided to go. So I spent the week living in the home of some Seattle PL members (one of whom currently works for Boeing as a machinist), along with several other project participants, learning more about communism, PL, and how it all operates. Here I’ll post a day-by-day recap, so you can relive the week with me.
Introduction
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4 Day 5 Day 6
Day 7
3 Comments
July 13, 2009 at 10:31 am
[...] several other project participants, learning more about communism, PL, and how it all operates. Here I’ll post a day-by-day recap, so you can relive the week with [...]
July 15, 2009 at 11:26 am
{{For a PL’er, there are really only two kinds of humans: those who work, and those who exploit those who work. This is the only crucial, significant distinction.}} — Is this an adequate enough anthropology upon which to found a comprehensive political theory and praxis?
July 24, 2009 at 3:50 am
I’m undecided. But perhaps I am also simplifying too much for rhetorical effect. There are certainly humans that this breakdown doesn’t adequately account for, but that PL does. Young children, very elderly, disabled people, etc., perhaps do not or cannot work, and yet they are part of “the working class” for PL’s purposes and PL supports their interests along with the interest of workers in general. Then there may be those who work but who do harm others — one PL member I know made the comment, “there are things you don’t have to be a communist to know are wrong,” referring to spousal abuse. But in the wide frame, the argument is that more particular social ills (child neglect, domestic violence, violent crime, etc.) are rooted in economic causes. Thus a radical change in economic system will also bring about radical change in every other facet of human life. The trouble is those few — very few — people who control social wealth now and whose interests are best served by maintaining the status quo. This does strike me as a plausible and comprehensive basis for theory and action, not least because it has quite accurately predicted and explained what we can see happening in the world today.