International Working Women’s Day

March 8 is International Working Women’s Day. It’s an international holiday that celebrates women and their revolutionary power, and it has strong roots in the communist movement. International Women’s Day first began in New York as “Women’s Day,” organized by the Socialist Party of America. It was celebrated in 1909 as a commemoration of the 1908 strike of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. In the 1910 meeting of communist and socialist leaders from around the world, known as the Second International, women members pushed to establish an International Women’s Day. By 1911, over a million workers around the world were celebrating it. In 1917, striking women workers commemorating this holiday sparked uprisings that led to the Bolshevik Revolution, and the first workers’ state, the Soviet Union. Anti-sexist struggle makes it a historic day for all workers, both women and men!

Click to read more ...

Capitalist Crisis Intensifies Across Africa

EAST AFRICA, March 8—In Kenya, a doctor’s strike resulted from the government’s failure to implement a deal signed in 2013 which called for a 300 percent salary increase, a lower patient doctor ratio (which is currently 1 doctor to 16,000 people) and improved medical equipment.
The doctors formed a social media hashtag (#lipa kama tenda), which means the state should pay them as much as they pay people who have government tenders (contracts).

Click to read more ...

Hidden Figures Hides Mass Fightback, Embraces Individual Gains

Hidden Figures is being hailed as an anti-racist, anti-sexist film. While it presents some of this, it is inevitably a capitalist movie that does not truly challenge the systemic racism and sexism faced by the main characters or by workers today. Hidden Figures follows the struggles of a group of Black women mathematicians working for NASA during the U.S.’s race to beat the Soviet Union in space travel.
Hidden Figures is mainly a story of celebrating exceptional individuals. This individualism is typical of the ruling class’ culture—a feel-good movie meant to have the working-class feel like things have gotten better. It’s supposed to show that though there was racism in the U.S.’s history, through struggle by carefully selected icons, it’s a better place now. Celebration of mass fightback against systemic racism and sexism is too dangerous because they are crucial to the survival of capitalism! So instead we are given individuals to celebrate, and are convinced that a few people “making it” means racism and sexism are conquerable under this system.

Click to read more ...

LA Communist School: Study & Collectivity Build Morale

Los Angeles, CA—Members of Progressive Labor Party, with our coworkers and friends, spent the weekend at a cadre school with the theme, “It’s Not Just Trump, It’s Capitalism!” (see letters, page 6).
The weekend kicked off with a rich discussion of political economy. We analyzed the inner workings of capitalist exploitation by examining our own current and previous jobs. The diversity of our stories as workers helped us to understand that all workers create surplus value (profits) for the ruling class. We also saw how racism and sexism are used to maximize these profits.
In the afternoon we focused on the Russian Revolution and a time where one-sixth of the world was able to eliminate some of the ills of capitalism. We read essays from Langston Hughes’ book Good Morning Revolution. We learned that when a society is not driven by profit, the need for racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination dissipate. For example, the Soviet Union enforced strict policies and rules that outlawed racism. As a result, within 15 years, threre was significant progress in eliminating racial discrimination against Jewish people and other minority groups.

Click to read more ...

Undocu Students Lead Solidarity Rally

BROOKLYN, NY, February 28—A crowd of over 40 multiracial students, high school teachers, and college professors rallied alongside and in solidarity with immigrant students at the entrance of Kingsborough Community College (KCC). High school student groups, led by undocumented and DACA students (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) organized the rally with their teachers and staff. KCC’s sprawling south Brooklyn campus is also home to Leon M. Goldstein High School, known as LMG.
Students and LMG/ KCC faculty stood on either side of the school’s entrance, where parents line up and drop students off in their cars. LMG students produced a newsletter that was distributed to students and their parents for the rally, which contained anonymously written immigrant student stories, and some facts about the struggles of life in the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant.
PLP salutes the students and faculty of LMG and KCC! In a dark night of intensifying racist and sexist anti-immigrant terror, we aspire to follow the example of these students.
As high school and college students, faculty, and campus workers unite and fight side by side in the growing nationwide “Sanctuary” movement, we must continue to support and organize rallies like these to raise international working class consciousness. Defending and fighting along our immigrant sisters and brothers means joining our local pro-immigrant mass organizations—like churches and other community groups with national affiliations—and sharpening the fightback against racism. The struggle continues!

Organize vs. Fascism & Liberal Misleadership

WORCESTER, March 1—The intensity of working class opposition to Trump’s fascism and for an egalitarian society has surprised the bosses. They are now scrambling to mislead the anti-fascist movement, which the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and its friends in the Massachusetts Human Rights Committee (MHRC) participate in and sometimes lead.
On January 21, PLP and MHRC held a rally in Worcester in solidarity with the Women’s March in other cities around the country. The fascist bosses stayed away and the liberal bosses made their way to the huge Boston rally.

Click to read more ...

Imperialist Tensions Grow—World War Inevitable

In his first few weeks in office, imperialist-in-chief Donald Trump has shown his willingness to serve the U.S. ruling class’s murderous war machine. From putting Iran “on notice” to openly threatening to block China’s expansion into the South China Sea, Trump is desperate to project the appearance of strength in an ever-weakening U.S. empire. He has escalated Barack Obama’s murderous war in Yemen (see page 2) while continuing to amass troops on Russia’s doorstep, inching the world closer to World War III.
The U.S. ruling class and its massive military, once the world’s leading superpower, now operate in a world where the Russian and Chinese imperialists are challenging U.S. bosses for control over resources and profits. All three imperialist powers understand that Eurasia—the gigantic landmass composed of Europe and Asia—is the key to global supremacy. To control it, they are willing to slaughter the world’s working class.
Russia’s bosses continue to test their U.S. rivals on multiple fronts. In the space of one week in February, Russia secretly deployed an intermediate-range cruise missile in violation of a Cold War-era nuclear forces treaty; stationed a spy ship 30 miles off the coast of Connecticut; and sent four aircraft to buzz a U.S. destroyer in the Black Sea. In the face of disarray in the Trump administration, and the steady weakening of the U.S. empire, the Russian bosses are growing bolder by the day.

Click to read more ...

Black and Red: The Untold History

Black and Red: Untold History of Black Communists

 History has segregated the fight against racism and the fight for an egalitarian system, communism. In reality, the two were connected like flesh and bone. Many Black fighters were dedicated communists and pro-communists of their time. Below are quotes from a few of the antiracist Marxist women and men who fought in the interest of the working class.

Lucy Parsons (1853—1942)
Labor Organizer, Communist
Texas

"So many able writers have shown that the unjust institutions which work so much misery and suffering to the masses have their root in governments, and owe their whole existence to the power derived from government we cannot help but believe that were every law, every title deed, every court, and every police officer or soldier abolished tomorrow with one sweep, we would be better off than now."

Chicago Police Department description of Lucy Parsons: "More dangerous than a thousand rioters..."

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868—1963)
Journalist, Educator, Communist

Click to read more ...

Boston PL’ers Sow Communist Consciousness in Budding Fightback

BOSTON, Feb 12—From the inauguration to the Muslim Ban, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and friends here have been exposing fascism as an outgrowth of a capitalist system in crisis. The working class is searching for an explanation and ways to fight back.
Inauguration: Day One of Lifelong Fightback
Just hours after the Inauguration 175,000 people came to Boston from the whole New England area—New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and from south Connecticut and Rhode Island—to stand strong against Trump’s racism and sexism. For many it was the first time they had ever demonstrated. There was a fighting spirit in the air. Many shared the sentiment that we can’t continue to conduct business as usual. People understand that there is a crisis in the system and hundreds of people listened to Progressive Labor Party’s bullhorn rally and came up to take pictures of the banner “It’s not just Trump, it’s capitalism.”
PLP talked to people about the need to abolish capitalism because the democrats are not “our friends” either. Multiple times, PL’ers heard, “I agree with you.”

Click to read more ...

Chicago Transit Workers Push for Strike

CHICAGO, IL—“As long as we have each other, we are not alone…When my inside begins to question if this is good or bad, right or wrong, and how the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) and Mayor’s Office will respond, I am made stronger when I envision the City in grid-lock because not one bus or train is moving. If I have that vision, I know the powers that be also share the same vision.”  As more than 300 members of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 308 voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike vote, this train operator and many other workers understand that the whole damn capitalist system has to go and the working class has the power to make that happen!

Click to read more ...