Vladimir Lenin once said “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen.” As 2024 comes to a close we can safely say that we are living in a time where decades are happening.
The human race and the world have lived under capitalism, where bosses control all resources and use them for profit instead of humankind, for about 300 years now. History shows us that capitalism inevitably has periods of utter chaos caused by the bosses’ insatiable desire for profit. In the last century this has meant multiple World Wars. The period of United States domination is coming to a close and China and its allies are looking increasingly ready to challenge for this spot as top dog in yet another global massacre,world war. Regardless of which set of bosses wins in such a conflict, workers will die in the millions (or even billions!) and end up in the same state of exploitation as before.
That is unless we, the working class, have a fighting communist party with billions of workers capable of turning the guns of war away from workers and towards our capitalist rulers. We can then put control of the world in the hands of the working class once and for all.
2024 has been a year of building Progressive Labor Party to be that party. PLP members have been leading and standing alongside workers fighting back against attacks on our class, whether declining conditions, increasing racism or rising fascism. And we have done this while putting communist politics first, raising class consciousness, and increasing Party membership while also expanding our base.
Inter-imperialist rivalry
Every day this year has seen the United States-NATO alliance and its proxies become more entangled with their rivals China and Russia, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the United States imperialists are not in control.
2024 has seen the unceasing genocide of workers in Gaza by the U.S. attack dog, Israel. Israel’s ruling class is foaming at the mouth with nationalism, racism, and visions of imperial plunder. The United States needs Israel to project its own power in the Middle East but seems to have lost control over its ally who increasingly isolates itself worldwide, while also threatening to pull countries like Iran and Lebanon into a conflict the U.S. is not prepared for. This as Syria is once again in civil war and the U. S. does not even appear to have a role, as admitted by elected capitalist stooge Donald Trump.
In Europe the war between Russia and Ukraine continues with U.S. rival Russia slowly gaining ground (BBC, 12/6), with over 200,000 deaths and several times that amount wounded. The domestically focused small fascists (see Glossary, page 6) like Trump do not even want to continue arming Ukraine, but the big fascist imperialists, still fronted by Joe Biden, do not want to lose their international influence. They are desperately sending aid to Ukraine as fast as possible and gave Ukraine approval to use longer range U.S.-supplied missiles inside Russia. The United States’s ruling class is not even united as they lose ground in multiple continents.
Armed conflict runs riot all over Africa. Haiti has been virtually left to gang rule. Workers in South America deal with murderous drug gangs and the fascist states vying against them for power. Rulers world wide struggle to choose between what side to choose in the developing world war.
A year of building the Party
As the world situation deteriorates Progressive Labor Party believes that no set of bosses: not the U.S. bosses, not the Chinese bosses, not the Israeli bosses or Hamas, not the Republicans or the Democrats, are any kind of solution for the working class. Every day we must be organizing with workers out in the streets, at our jobs and in mass organizations to build working class fightback and build this Party! 2024 has been a year of doing just that.
PLP stood with workers and students all over the United States and protested the genocide in Gaza. PL’ers led marches, distributed thousands of CHALLENGES, and held teach-ins and cadre schools. We fought back when teachers who taught students about the genocide were fired. When workers and students held encampments in universities across the country, PL’ers were there. We fought alongside workers but also made the point that workers cannot allow themselves to be won toward nationalism of any stripe as world war approaches.
Party organizers and friends helped lead and were present for the strike wave that occurred all over the United States and the world. While we have consistently been involved in labor struggles such as those of transit workers in DC, PLP organizers and friends must struggle to further enmesh ourselves in these struggles and push for a communist understanding of labor fightback, along with calling for better wages or benefits for workers.
We have fought back against the bosses’ infectious racism. From supporting Kingsborough Community College (KCC) students organizing against anti-Arab racism, to demonstrating in Springfield against anti-Haitian racist propaganda, to standing with tenants fighting racist landlords in Lennox, California, the Party has consistently prioritized the fight against racism. Whether it’s marking 555 days of fightback for justice for Tyrone West, or keeping the memory of Alex Flores, Shantel Davis, and too many others alive, our dedication remains strong in the protracted struggle to build a classless, antiracist, and antisexist society under the communist banner of the PLP.
The election of Donald Trump shows that gutter racism remains one of the bosses’ most effective tools and only a communist party committed to the fight will be able to defeat racism.
Two standout moments this year were of course when we stood side by side with PL’ers, friends of the Party and workers at May Day and when the Party went to Chicago to join in the protests against the Democratic National Convention. While these demonstrations and large gatherings of friends and comrades help reinvigorate us we must also remind ourselves throughout the year that we should always be pushing to bring more workers to May Day to show them that workers can be won over to communism. We must always be showing workers that voting for any politician is a vote for our own oppressors.
A step toward fascism
Fascism is the unconcealed use of state power by the capitalist state and its allies to attack workers and their movements. Bosses use fascism when their “democratic” system doesn’t get them what they want. While the election of Donald Trump will likely usher in new fascist policies such as using the military to detain and deport millions of immigrant workers, fascism was already on the rise regardless before he was elected. With inter-imperialist rivalry heating up the U.S. bosses know that China and its allies have a clear advantage in that they have a more disciplined and obedient working class and a united ruling class. The U.S. bosses will continue to ramp up fascist policies as their sham democracy fails to preserve their empire.
In 2024 we saw the bosses use the police to tear down the encampments of workers protesting genocide, quietly set up “cop cities” across the country, murder workers like Murod Kurdi, Jean Carlos Martinez Rivero, Win Rozario, Sonya Massey, and Samuel Sharpe, and are threatening to cut funding (taken from workers pockets!) to healthcare and education. It is important to remember that these are conditions that workers around the world, and many in the United States, are already exposed to on a daily basis because fascism is baked into capitalism. Fascism will only increase as World War III approaches, climate catastrophe heats up, and other capitalist-created crises emerge.
2025: Year of the working class
We must dedicate ourselves more than ever to building the Party and adapting to new fascist conditions in the new year. If we are going to be victorious when the bosses try to send hundreds of millions of workers to their deaths during a new world war and climate disasters, we must expose the capitalist snakes for who they are and mobilize workers into fighting for their own class. Here’s to 2025, a year of the working class! Join PLP!
