Editorial: U.S., China up the ante in war preparations

The two imperialist superpowers are accelerating toward World War III, with more brazen provocations by the day. Since shooting down an apparent Chinese spy balloon on February 4, the U.S. military has downed three unidentified flying objects over Alaska and Canada that “might turn out to be harmless commercial or research efforts that posed no real threat to the United States” (New York Times, 2/14). The Joe Biden administration blacklisted five Chinese companies accused of links to military surveillance programs—barely a week after the U.S. expanded its footprint on military bases in the Philippines less than 200 miles south of Taiwan.

Click to read more ...

Book Review: ‘Workers deserve a real communist life’

Beautiful Country (2021) by Qian Julie Wang is a memoir of a seven-year-old girl from China growing up with her immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York beginning in 1994. Events described in her book provide an opportunity to reflect on what happened in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in China from 1966 to 1969.

Click to read more ...

Pakistan: workers caught between multiple crises of capitalism

The working class in Pakistan is under attack. Inflation is rising out of control. The May inflation rate was officially over 13 percent and unofficially prices on key staples are rising at five to ten times that rate. Capitalism is utterly failing the working class, the crisis in Pakistan cannot be fixed, more war and fascism are on the horizon and the only way to combat it is by building the fight for communist revolution.We in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are trying to give the working class leadership and courage to fight against all these evils that hold back the struggle for an international communist revolution.

Click to read more ...

U.S. & China will make world war; workers can make revolution

Facing the ‘Thucydides Trap’…the military must step up its efforts.
—Xu Qiliang, Vice-chairman of China’s military

[China] stated that war with the United States is inevitable...When you [U.S.] send an armored brigade combat team anywhere in the world...you have made a strategic decision to fight and win
—Major General Richard Coffman of U.S. military

Imperialist rivals China and the U.S. are caught in the “Thucydides Trap,” an inevitable drive towards war when a rising power threatens to displace the established world power. Driven by their need for maximum profit and world supremacy, the capitalists are on the course toward World War III. 

Click to read more ...

China: pro-worker students arrested—a young Left takes root

Zheng Yongming, a recent university graduate working in Guangzhou, China, wrote an open letter after his arrest in November by Chinese police. He was locked up for organizing a Maoist reading group in a university classroom. Zheng’s letter, which keeps being taken down from various websites by the authorities, only to be reposted, states that “I will always be a son of the workers and peasants.”
He was one of four young people arrested. Hundreds of professors from some of China’s most prestigious colleges signed a letter protesting the arrests, which included graduates of the elite Peking University (Agence Presse-France).

Click to read more ...

How Communists Moved the Masses to Control Floods

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, coverage in the bosses’ media emphasizes the helplessness of humanity in the face of nature’s destructiveness. Under capitalism, we are also constantly bombarded with the idea that people look out for themselves, and can never really work together for a common purpose without a money incentive. 

But workers’ own experiences show that these stories told by mouthpieces for the capitalists are lies. PLP members and friends have volunteered in local relief efforts in the New York/New Jersey area. We have heard about and witnessed both stories of life-saving heroism during the storm and the efforts of thousands of volunteers providing basic necessities to their class brothers and sisters.

 History also shows that workers and peasants in communist-led societies have shown the human desire to work for the collective without material reward in return. The communist-led revolution in China in 1949 brought workers and peasants to power. Production and work was organized based upon national five-year plans.

Click to read more ...