Winter Soldier Portrays Pentagon As Victim, Not War-making Villain

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the sequel to 2011’s The First Avenger, set records for an April movie opening, bringing in close to $100 million. The movie is a two-hour long special effects blow-out, which Hollywood expects to bring in massive revenue.
Trading on the recent trend of comic-book movies that take their source material seriously, The Winter Soldier dabbles in some current themes that might surprise those skeptical of Hollywood blockbusters.

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How Enemies of Communism Destroyed the GPCR and Workers’ Lives

Progressive Labor Party was established in 1965, just one year before the start of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Our Chinese comrades influenced our political line and inspired our work. They showed us the critical importance of breaking with revisionism — the fake-leftist ideology, put forward by “capitalist roaders,” that actually serves the bosses. They demonstrated the power of the collective. They taught us the importance of leadership from the masses, and the need to rely on workers over elite experts and technocrats. The Chinese comrades’ experience also underlined the danger of keeping remnants of capitalism — like money and wages — in a worker-run state, and how these elements pave the road to revisionism and the return of full-blown capitalism.
The first three parts of this first-person account told the story of a Chinese village factory and its workers—how their lives were changed by the Cultural Revolution and changed again by the CR’s reversal. Part Four illustrates the widening inequalities as Chinese society has continued to deteriorate since the Cultural Revolution was defeated.

Guan Dunxiao, another who bought a share of the village factory, became the most successful entrepreneur in our county. In 1987, he paid close to one million yuan in taxes. As the county’s biggest taxpayer, he was invited to join the Communist Party and became deputy chairman of the county’s political consultation conference. Most of the workers from the original factory left him.

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From Ukraine to Iraq...Imperialists Plot for War

Millions of workers worldwide celebrated May Day 2014, the international working-class holiday rooted in the earliest fights for communism more than a century ago. The Progressive Labor Party is carrying forward this tradition in more than twenty countries on five continents. Despite the bosses’ efforts to bury this tradition in a wave of nationalism and imperialism, millions of 2014 May Day marchers advanced their anti-capitalist demands. They showed the potential of the working class to organize for communist revolution.
War Is ‘Good’ — For the Bosses
Meanwhile, the bosses are urgently proclaiming that war is good. On April 25, the ultra-imperialist Washington Post printed an op-ed piece headlined, “In the Long Run, Wars Make Us

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Cuomo-de Blasio Racist Transit Contract Taking Workers for A Ride

NEW YORK CITY, May 5 — Workers here are under attack. Masses of city employees are slaving away under expired union contracts. The principle of “No contract, No work” — meaning if workers hadn’t won their demands when their contract expired, they would strike — now seems like ancient history. Gone is the militant, communist leadership that once steered NYC unions towards challenging capitalists’ constant drive to maximize profits off our backs. Instead we have union mis-leaders telling workers for years to hold on for a new, “better” mayor. Recent events have shown that putting faith in union hacks and politicians will get us nowhere!

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Reject Racist Anti-student Contract

NEW YORK CITY, May 5  — The UCLA Civil Rights Project just named New York as the state with the most segregated school system in the U.S., with New York City leading the way.
Racist disparities between students of the same age show us each day how unequal our society is. An Annenberg Foundation report of September 2012 found that in black and Latino neighborhoods only 10% of students graduate “college ready.”

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May Day: Haiti

HAITI, May 1 — On May Day, comrades joined the May Day march with more than 1,000 participants: workers, teachers and students. We distributed hundreds of flyers and led chants.
The march started at the SONAPI (free trade zone industrial park) and wound its way to the Champs de Mars, a large public park in front of the National Palace where tens of thousands of workers lived in tents for more than two years after the 2010 earthquake.
The police attacked the march and one marcher was punched in the eye and two students were arrested. One, a close friend, was beaten in the police precinct. In response, students at the Faculté d’Ethnologie organized a two-day strike on campus demanding their release; there were also several days of street demonstrations, which were attacked by the cops.
Other comrades participated in a speak-out of garment workers, a way to share the daily misery experienced by workers and to press for their demands for an increase in the minimum wage.
In the countryside, a comrade organized a meeting on May Day with 20 farm workers, led by one who is close to Our party. Later in the town’s public square, we showed a documentary film with more than 500 people. There was a lively discussion afterwards, in which communist ideas and our Party was discussed. In another town, a comrade organized a May Day rally and is engaged with other residents of the area in a struggle to take over for public use certain infrastructures left by an NGO.

May Day: Washington, DC

WASHINGTON, DC, May 1 — Today 150 marchers gathered at Malcolm X Park to celebrate May Day and reaffirm their determination to fight back on all fronts against racism and capitalism.  
One speaker, formerly imprisoned, described the racist horror of mass incarceration and how background checks, even after someone’s release, makes it impossible to find a job and support yourself.  A Metro bus driver called on workers to unite against racism and sexism everywhere as part of the revolutionary struggle, and noted a small victory against racist background checks at Metro.

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May Day: Newark

Newark, NJ May 1— On this May Day, more workers worldwide are fighting the capitalists’ mass layoffs, cutbacks due to government austerity, and police terror. PLP’s idea that nothing short of communist revolution can ever change the fundamental reality of capitalist exploitation, racism and sexism needs to emerge from these struggles. Some workers here are beginning to examine this idea. Their actions reflect a break from the idea that the bosses’ election circus can help our class.

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May Day: Brooklyn

BROOKLYN, April 26 — Another May Day, another opportunity to fight for revolution! After a year of explosive struggles, from Latin America to East Africa, as well as local fightbacks against General David Petraeus and the racist DC Metro, it becomes easy to get lost in reform. Distributing thousands of flyers and CHALLENGEs, and a special edition of Le Défi in French and Kreole, urging people to fight back against this or that person, or change this or that policy, May Day reminds us what we are here to do: overthrow capitalism! May Day commemorates the actions of valiant workers in the Paris Commune 1871, Chicago 1886, Russia 1917, China 1949. It commemorates the struggle against capitalism, against racism and sexism; the struggle for communism. May Day reminds us that we come from a long history of struggle, and that we must struggle to win!

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May Day: Tel-Aviv

Tel-Aviv, May 1 — Hundreds of workers and activists marched in central Tel-Aviv with red flags and banners, some decorated with the hammer and sickle, the traditional communist symbol of industrial and farm workers’ unity. We, the PL’ers in Israel-Palestine, all came to this march, with our red shirts, as well as the local leaflet “Why Communism?”
While the May Day march was organized by the thoroughly pseudo-leftist “Communist” Party of Israel, as well as the usual liberals, many radicalized and militant youth and workers came as well. One demonstrator, who was dressed in a WWII-era Red Army uniform, upon seeing our leaflet told us that he supports the way of Stalin and Mao! Another young worker from the “C”P Youth, told us he stands against the CP leadership and supports what was written in our leaflet.
The main call of the march was for a 30 ILS ($8.5) hourly minimum wage, instead of the current 25 ILS ($7), which is now the main campaign of the reformists. This is an important struggle, as one cannot make a living out of a minimum wage even when working full-time. But we must ask — would asking for a few more crumbs off the bosses’ table change the essential nature of the working class’s exploitation by the tycoons?
What we need to fight for is not a few more scraps of bread, but the whole bakery. This is why we openly call for communist revolution.