Since capitalism manufactures profit wars where young people are ordered to kill and die to defend the bosses, the Progressive Labor Party’s job is to respond to this horror by winning workers to end capitalist war through communist revolution. Our aim is to win workers to fight the bosses, rather than fight one another. To do this we must lead class struggle and fight back against capitalist ideas within the bosses’ armed forces.
From the Vietnam War to the present, PLP members have been in the bosses’ military and among many struggles we helped win the freedom of a Black anti-war soldier falsely accused of killing two officers in Vietnam. Later we organized support for marines in Camp Pendleton who broke up a Ku Klux Klan meeting.
Uncertain of the potential outcomes, young communists deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and fought cynicism by acting with communist convictions. We won enlisted troops to act against the actions of a racist officer. We aided a wounded Iraqi army soldier that other medics refused to treat. We spoke up when officers belittled and racially harassed the lower enlisted. We expressed our opposition to occupation to close friends while on missions intended to maintain the occupation. We shared Challenge and resisted the U.S. military’s racism against workers abroad.
All these actions impacted working class troops in positive ways. For some, communism became a good thing instead of a bad one. Others became open to the idea of a revolutionary movement. A handful of working-class troops took leadership from our party instead of the command, even if it was only for a few short moments. At least one comrade chose not to use deadly force when the command encouraged it. Workers are the ones who suffer when the bosses send us to war. The only way to make a communist difference on the battlefield is to bring our ideas with us.
Fighting the bosses’ ideas inside the bosses military isn’t easy, though it isn’t necessarily easy anywhere given how hard the bosses fight to keep control of capitalism. We’ve made mistakes of all kinds. But we are always learning and the experiences we’ve gained by fighting against capitalist ideas inside the military has helped keep our Party on the road to communist revolution.