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	Workers Vanguard No. 1166	29 November 2019

WV Subscription Drive

Forging Links with Workers, Students

Every year, comrades of the Spartacist League/U.S. and Spartacus Youth Clubs participate in a Workers Vanguard subscription drive, traveling to places where we do not have branches to broaden the reach of our revolutionary Marxist press. WV reports on struggles of the working class and oppressed peoples here and abroad, aiming to paint for our readers a picture of capitalist exploitation and subjugation, and to put forward our internationalist program of workers revolution. While subscribing individuals, union locals and bookstores, we came across those interested in learning more about the struggle for a socialist future.

This year, we returned to Puerto Rico with WV and Espartaco, the paper published by our comrades of the Grupo Espartaquista de México. We sold new subscriptions to students there, building on the previous trips to the beleaguered U.S. colony that had established links to militant teachers and trade unionists. We also distributed suplementos en español de WV, translations of select articles to better intersect Spanish-speaking working people across the U.S., as well as the Puerto Rican people, who over the past century have suffered massive repression in their struggles for independence.

On our joint visit with the GEM to the Texas borderlands, the suplementos served to underscore our support to the fight against the national oppression of the overwhelmingly Mexican population there and for the equality of languages. The residents of the borderlands, part of the vast territory that the U.S. ripped away from Mexico in the 19th century, were for decades subjected to bloody violence and are still blocked from learning to read and write in Spanish. As one comrade observed, “La opresión de la lengua permea en todos los aspectos de la vida cotidiana.” (“The oppression of language permeates all aspects of everyday life.”) We call to make Spanish a recognized standard language in the region. The trip highlight was meeting teachers who have battled to create a dual-language program for math, science and other subjects.

In the middle of the sub drive, nearly 50,000 members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) went on strike against General Motors, shutting down its U.S. plants for 40 days (and 40 nights). We joined picket lines in Michigan, Indiana, Tennessee, Texas and California in solidarity, and discussed our class-struggle perspective with the strikers. Many workers bought introductory subscriptions of six issues. We encourage them to renew their subs for a full year, so that they can keep reading the only newspaper around that is committed to working-class rule!

On the picket lines, workers had a keen sense of the need to stand up for the rights of the most exploited and vulnerable union members, and were centrally fighting to end wage tiers and temporary jobs. Workers in other industries saddled with tiers were eager to read our coverage of the strike after learning what it was all about.

The pro-capitalist UAW bureaucrats angered a lot of auto workers by letting scabs and managers cross picket lines. This undermining of the picket lines is an expression of the labor tops’ view that the union should be a “partner” of the bosses. Despite their betrayals, we defend the UAW officials against the federal criminal probe, which is an attack on the union as a whole.

In many cases, our teams brought the news to the GM picket lines that 50,000 workers, many of them women, had won a hard-fought strike against maquiladora factory owners in Matamoros early this year. We emphasized the need for international working-class solidarity. Notably, our call for a workers party, independent of all capitalist parties, to fight for a workers government grabbed the attention of UAW strikers. Most workers had not considered it possible to have an alternative to the two capitalist parties, with many placing their hopes in Democrats like Bernie Sanders.

We had to combat similar illusions in the Democrats on college campuses. Some students didn’t buy the tired old lie, peddled by the Democratic Socialists of America (itself a part of the Democratic Party), that the capitalist Democrats can be pressured to serve the interests of labor, black people and the oppressed. Still, many of them argued that you have to support the “lesser evil.” We explained that “progressives,” such as Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, simply want to refurbish the image of the party in order to corral disaffected youth and workers back into its fold.

Our front-page article on the U.S.-backed counterrevolutionary protests in Hong Kong was polarizing on the campuses. We have a military side with the Chinese deformed workers state, including the Hong Kong police, against the anti-Communist rabble. This position flows from our defense of the gains of the 1949 Chinese Revolution, which overthrew capitalist property relations in China. The parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy threatens these gains. We call for workers political revolution to oust the bureaucrats and establish a regime based on workers and peasants councils. We say: Expropriate the filthy rich tycoons in Hong Kong!

Over the past year, Chinese students at U.S. universities have been subjected to a witchhunt, and many Chinese-language programs eliminated. On campus sales, we displayed signs in Mandarin demanding, “U.S. Government: Hands Off Chinese Students, Scholars and Scientists!” Chinese students approached our table, often amazed to see American communists defending China. They thanked us and engaged in lively discussions about the anti-China hysteria pushed by Democrats and Republicans alike.

We sold subscriptions in the South to activists who had participated in protests against racist Confederate monuments. Trips to the Virginia Tidewater area and to New Orleans renewed longstanding ties with readers, particularly ILA longshoremen. One selling point was our pamphlet Black History and the Class Struggle, which is included with full WV subscriptions and illustrates our program for black liberation through socialist revolution.

The 2019 sub drive was a success. Congratulations to comrade Jake, who racked up the most points this year, and a special thanks to Tom and Ruth for their invaluable help in the Midwest! We made 143 percent of the national quota, with many subscriptions going to UAW strikers. The recent uptick in class and other social struggles in the U.S. and abroad just may have cleared a few cobwebs, leaving workers and students more open to the possibility of fighting capitalism. We encourage readers to keep in touch, including by writing letters to WV.