Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fights to destroy capitalism and the dictatorship of the capitalist class. We organize workers, soldiers and youth into a revolutionary movement for communism.
Only the dictatorship of the working class — communism — can provide a lasting solution to the disaster that is today’s world for billions of people. This cannot be done through electoral politics, but requires a revolutionary movement and a mass Red Army led by PLP.
Worldwide capitalism, in its relentless drive for profit, inevitably leads to war, fascism, poverty, disease, starvation and environmental destruction. The capitalist class, through its state power — governments, armies, police, schools and culture — maintains a dictatorship over the world’s workers. The capitalist dictatorship supports, and is supported by, the anti-working-class ideologies of racism, sexism, nationalism, individualism and religion.
While the bosses and their mouthpieces claim “communism is dead,” capitalism is the real failure for billions worldwide. Capitalism returned to Russia and China because socialism retained many aspects of the profit system, like wages and privileges. Russia and China did not establish communism.
Communism means working collectively to build a worker-run society. We will abolish work for wages, money and profits. Everyone will share in society’s benefits and burdens.
Communism means abolishing racism and the concept of “race.” Capitalism uses racism to super-exploit black, Latino, Asian and indigenous workers, and to divide the entire working class.
Communism means abolishing the special oppression of women — sexism — and divisive gender roles created by the class society.
Communism means abolishing nations and nationalism. One international working class, one world, one Party.
Communism means that the minds of millions of workers must become free from religion’s false promises, unscientific thinking and poisonous ideology. Communism will triumph when the masses of workers can use the science of dialectical materialism to understand, analyze and change the world to meet their needs and aspirations.
Communism means the Party leads every aspect of society. For this to work, millions of workers — eventually everyone — must become communist organizers. Join Us!
Friday, March 14, 2014 at 6:37AM The only day the world recognizes women is the one to celebrate their “reproductive” role as mother and wife, Mother’s Day. But it was the Soviets, the communist movement, that celebrated women as political beings with revolutionary power. March 8 is International Women’s Day (IWD), the day that communists organized to salute the strength and contributions of women workers.
Friday, March 14, 2014 at 6:36AM When the massive famine of 1932-33 took hold, the Soviet leadership had no choice but to take grain from peasants in the countryside and redistribute it in a more egalitarian manner, as well as to feed the cities and the army. Excesses or cruelty occurring during collectivization resulted from errors in carrying out the plan; unevenness in the abilities of the tens of thousands of activists; the response of the peasants themselves; and attacks from kulak landowners. All were faced with a terrible situation under drastic conditions. Many people would inevitably die of starvation.
Friday, March 14, 2014 at 6:36AM The far right-wing is strong in Ukraine in part because it is backed by the Ukrainian government, which masquerades as “not far right.” Under Viktor Yushchenko, president of Ukraine from 2005 to 2010 and a leader of the so-called Orange Revolution, fascist lies began to be accepted as the official truth, taught in Ukrainian schools and promoted by Ukrainian academics.
The two basic lies involve the “Holodomor” of the 1930s and Ukraine’s “freedom fighters” during World War II.
Friday, March 14, 2014 at 6:32AM Unemployment rate: is it 6.7 percent or 23.2 percent? Obama’s Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) continues to understate the true number of U.S. unemployed workers by a huge margin. And it uses “guesstimates” that distort the true figures even further.
The BLS U.3 statistic — the one getting all the headlines in the bosses’ media — marked the February jobless rate at 6.7 percent. However, its U.6 statistic — generally ignored by the media — shows a rate nearly double at 12.6 percent because it includes what the BLS defines as the “marginally employed”: the short-term unemployed (the “discouraged” workers — those out of work up to one year) and those working part-time because they can’t find non-existent full-time jobs. But that is far from the true picture.
The BLS defines away millions of unemployed “discouraged workers” by no longer counting those out of work more than a year; one could define them as the “disappeared” jobless. There has been a heavy continuing rollover of the regular discouraged workers (less than a year) into the “disappeared” category, the worst since the Great Depression.
Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 11:24PM Ukraine represents but the latest flashpoint in a sharpening great-power conflict that reaches every country on earth. It pits rising China as well as a resurgent Russia against the declining but still predominant U.S. empire. At stake are the planet’s profit sources — workers’ labor, oil and gas — for opposing capitalist blocs in a potential World War III.
Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 11:22PM As CHALLENGE goes to press, the struggle between imperialist factions and their capitalist allies in Ukraine remains in flux. After three months of increasingly militant protests exploded late in February, Viktor Yanukovych, the country’s Russia-leaning President, was ousted from power and driven from the capital city of Kiev. Armed workers seized the president’s opulent palace, a monument to the bosses’ greed. Yanukovych, charged with “mass murder” in connection with the shooting of dozens of protesters, is now camped among his supporter in Eastern Ukraine. The country’s parliament has set a new presidential election for May, and politicians tilting toward the European Union (EU) dominate the field. All of the top candidates are also allied with local fascist forces. (See box.)
Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 11:22PM CHICAGO, IL February 21 — Close to 1,000 transit workers have been fired by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) over the last two years, the vast majority being black workers. Most were members of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 241, on the bus side. Tim Stovall was a member of ATU Local 308, on the train side. In 2010, Tim was falsely arrested for selling marijuana while on the job. The racist police lied and said he had a prior conviction and that he had pled guilty to a felony in the past. Tim filed a grievance and provided documentation to prove that the police were lying. The Grievance Committee voted to take his case to arbitration.
Then Local 308 President Robert Kelly (salary $134,000/year), who was fired for stealing about 20 years ago, convinced the Grievance Committee to change its vote and deny Tim an opportunity to fight for his job. At the membership meeting, Kelly only read the racist police report, and based on that, the membership voted not to arbitrate. The best Robert Kelly could do was to offer Tim a $9/hr. job (barely a third of the regular pay rate) in the 2nd Chance Program for ex-felons, even though Tim was never convicted of a crime (and the program has since been disbanded). Our union leaders belong in jail!
What happened to Tim Stovall is not an isolated incident. We have been under attack from the CTA bosses and their junior partners in the ATU leadership for over a decade. Workers are being fired for one safety violation and accelerated discipline allows the company to treat a minor incident as if it were one in a string of major accidents. These attacks mirror the racist budget slashing of the Cook County Healthcare System and public education. The bankers and real estate developers are making billions while millions are out of work and millions more are under-employed working for poverty wages.
The “war on drugs” has always been a lie, a war on workers and youth that has filled the prisons, disenfranchised millions and forced black and Latino youth into dead-end poverty-wage jobs. We will continue fight to get Tim Stovall’s job back. And while we do, we will build the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party in the bus garages and train yards. A measure of our success will be to have CTA workers march on May Day with PLP!
Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 11:22PM Washington, DC, February 20 — Today Muriel Bowser, a DC city council member and board member of Metro/WMATA (the DC Regional Transit Agency), held a hearing about getting Metro to change its policy on background checks. Thanks to PLP members, friends and many workers, the issue has gotten sharper throughout the city and politicians like Bowser feel they must address it.
Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 11:21PM Los Angeles, February 25 — At a Progressive Labor Party forum attended by about 30 workers and students, the stark statistics of deportation sparked discussion on the role of racism in immigration policy under capitalism. In the U.S., undocumented Latinos are more likely to be deported than undocumented Asian or European immigrants, by a factor of 8-16 to 1, depending on what countries are compared.
Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 11:18PM NASHVILLE, TN, February 20 — Much is being written about the loss suffered by the UAW in the union election at the Volkswagen (VW) assembly plant in Chattanooga, TN. The plant is one of only three non-union VW plants in the world (the other two are in China). This campaign was the key to a strategy of organizing a number of foreign-owned auto plants, including BMW in South Carolina, Mercedes in Vance, Alabama, and Nissan in Canton, MS. (The State of Mississippi passed three anti-union laws just days after the VW vote, targeting the UAW Nissan campaign). The UAW has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), challenging the interference of Tennessee’s top elected officials, but that could linger for years before it is resolved.
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