Communist revolution: the antidote to capitalist crisis

WASHINGTON DC, October 28—“I don’t know what I’ve been told, pharma’s pockets lined with gold!” Lies and tricks will not divide, humanity standing side by side”; “14 billion doses NOW”; “No more pharma greed, global vaccines are what we need” and “Break the patents!” These chants rang out as 100 people marched to the Executive Office Building near the White House to demand the liberal Joe Biden administration end the pharmaceutical industry’s control of vaccine patents.

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Battle of Leningrad Communist-led workers’ ‘Impossible’ Victory Defeats Nazis

Anti-communist writers depict the resistance to the Nazi siege of Leningrad during World War II as simply an example of workers’ fortitude and courage in the face of extreme suffering and adversity. They say virtually nothing about the role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

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Strikers hungry for change, fed class consciousness

A few months ago, a community organization to which I belong to, along with other PL’ers, participated in a hunger strike, which lasted over 20 days. The struggle for social services for undocumented workers brought people closer to Progressive Labor Party and built class-consciousness.
One PL’er said these struggles were too pacifist. After discussing it, we decided that we would participate in order to stand shoulder to shoulder with our class. By struggling with our friends, we raise consciousness our class’ consciousness and learn how to fight back against the capitalist system.  

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Little red school: new members sign up for communism 101

NEW YORK CITY, November 1—“I’m moving at a snail’s pace, but I’m getting stronger.” That’s how one comrade spoke for all of us as our Progressive Labor Party (PLP) club launched our new members’ class. Over the past 18 months, our club has recruited three new members, Black, Latin, and white, women and men, older and younger.

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Letters of Nov 17

Laying the tracks for class struggle

I have been involved with a group of bus and rail transit workers for over a year. I am retired but part of this group of organizers. We have had rallies, demonstrations, virtual and now in-person meetings, confronted sellout union leadership, fliers, and participated in a YouTube radio show (twice) that has a growing following. Union members have led and organized these struggles!

At our most recent in-person meeting, we

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Cure for chronic capitalism: communism!

The popular book Inflamed (2021), by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, is both enlightening and enraging. While they expose the environment as a culprit for most diseases, their solution is backwards—as in go back to a pre-capitalist society. Marya and Patel suffer from anti-communism. 

Inflamed has several themes. One is that inflammation is behind most disease processes in all parts of our bodies, an idea more accepted by conventional medicine. The authors carry the idea farther, showing how the environment, both physical and social, is deeply entwined with inflammation. The second main theme is that modern medicine has detached bodily systems from each other and the body from the world it inhabits just as modern humans have fallen out of harmony with themselves and the world around them. They argue many indigenous cultures  are better synchronized with their environment. 

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The Taiwan Debacle: U.S. and China hurtling toward war

Less than two months after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the latest in a string of U.S. military defeats since the Vietnam War, tensions with imperialist arch-rival China may be simmering to a boil. Over five days in October, China conducted 150 warplane sorties near Taiwan’s coast in the South China Sea, “an alarming escalation that coincided with China’s National Day celebrations” (msn.com, 10/13). For the finance capital main wing of the U.S. ruling class, military conflict with China appears to be just a matter of time—and the time may be sooner than later.

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Howard U students rebel against rotten racist campus

WASHINGTON, DC, October 14—Hundreds of Black students converged today on Howard University’s Blackburn Center, a main university building, to support the occupiers inside who are refusing to leave. At this proud Historically Black College/University (HBCU), with a predominantly Black and woman student body, racism and sexism are alive and well. Students are fed up with lousy housing conditions at both new dormitories and old ones. Mold is growing in the dorm rooms and water has been cut off for days at a time. Electricity and Wi-Fi have failed many times, making it impossible to attend classes online or do research and homework—even the library has been shut down! These conditions reveal that racism and sexism are the mainstays of a capitalist system that is destroying the lives of workers and students all over the world, even in spaces that liberal fascists deem “free of racism.” Identity politics will not save the working class, to end racism,  the whole damn capitalist system has got to go.

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SMASH ALL BORDERS! Build communist culture!

CHICAGO, October 9—On a sunny fall morning, among the Saturday bustle in a south side neighborhood, communists from the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) proudly chanted “No Borders! No Nations! No Racist Deportations!” Our purpose today was a multiracial rally in solidarity with workers from Haiti and all over the world who are facing horrifically racist deportations and violence across the bosses’ artificial national borders.
PL’ers distributed hundreds of copies of CHALLENGE newspaper to workers passing by on foot and stopped in their vehicles. We spoke to many workers from Haiti who expressed support for  our actions of communist solidarity. We took over four corners of a busy intersection and were joined by a spirited Black worker who took the bullhorn to speak and stop traffic.

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Only communism can crush kkkops

LOS ANGELES, October 19— A recent organizing retreat with a mass group against police brutality we’re in created an opportunity to struggle and unite with our friends to move the fight against police brutality forward by leading with communist ideas.

"I honestly have learned a lot from PLP and agree with PLP that no matter what bill, president, defunding etc you have, as long as capitalism exists there will always be racism, poverty etc. PLP is definitely going deep to the root of the cause…CAPITALISM!” This response exemplified the sentiments of our base among families impacted by police brutality in the Los Angeles area when asked what they thought about the retreat. For all the strengths of the group, those families closest to the Party immediately recognized the limitations of the reform movement. 

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