As the global crisis of capitalism drives the imperialist bosses toward fascism and world war, May Day reminds us of the power workers hold when we unite under the red banner of communist solidarity. On this holiday for the international working class, as Progressive Labor Party mobilizes on five continents , the old U.S.-led world order is collapsing in real time. The struggle for communism has never been more urgent. Communist revolution is the only solution to capitalist exploitation, to poverty and starvation and needless disease—to all the ills of this brutal, rotting profit system.
Despite the turmoil and state terror now facing our class, the revolutionary essence of May Day is a beacon for a working-class future free of racism, sexism, and the rulers’ national borders. This egalitarian world can only be created by masses of workers led by PLP. As the imperialists prepare for their next global bloodbath, let us prepare for communist-led class war that ends their rule forever.
Trade wars lead to shooting wars
In a likely futile move to regain U.S. industrial supremacy, Klansman-in-Chief Donald Trump has escalated a trade war with China by imposing stiff tariffs on U.S. imports. These taxes could spark a deeper recession or depression and devastate the livelihoods of untold millions worldwide. They may also trigger higher inflation, crushing the standard of living for a working class still hurt by the pandemic.
The workers who will suffer most have lived under the boot of imperialism and the liberal bosses’ “free trade” policies for decades. Garment workers in Southeast Asia, toiling for U.S. corporations for dollars a day, will face heightened exploitation and unemployment as the capitalists’ interlocked global economy sinks into chaos (CNBC, 4/8).
Trump’s reckless actions, from the tariffs to wholesale deregulation to wrecking-ball layoffs of federal workers, are meant to serve a group of domestically oriented capitalists within a sharply split U.S. ruling class. They’re also a desperate attempt by U.S. imperialism—once the unquestioned top dog—to reshuffle the deck after years of losing ground to a rising China. The Chinese capitalists are retaliating with their own tariffs and are leveraging their near-monopoly on rare earth minerals, crucial for EVs, fighter jets, and military drones (Christian Science Monitor, 4/18). Despite vague talk of negotiations and de-escalation, the grow-or-die logic of capitalism demands a shooting war as the inevitable outcome.
Bosses unified on racist attacks
The global migrant catastrophe is the product of a sick system that cannot exist without nationalism, racism, and extreme inequality. From Syria to Congo to Sudan to Venezuela, the capitalists’ infighting is making life so unbearable that workers are forced to flee to survive. But their “havens” are Europe and the United States, hotbeds of rising fascism where the bosses use anti-immigrant terror to undercut their rivals and intimidate the working class. Under capitalism, there is no safe place to live or hide.
While the U.S. rulers—Republicans and Democrats alike—are setting the bar for racist scapegoating, it’s a global pathology. Whether it’s Trump buddy Narendra Modi cheering on the lynching of Muslim workers in India, or Israel’s merciless ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, the bosses are dealing with their latest crisis with even more repression. They can no longer afford the myth of the “rule of law” or their phony constitutional freedoms. They’re slipping the velvet glove of liberal democracy off their fascist iron fist.
Some are suing the Trump administration for its ruthless treatment of migrant workers. After witnessing the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil for the crime of protesting genocide, or Kilmar Abrego Garcia for a trumped-up gang tie, they’re hoping the bosses’ courts will step in and protect them.
But that’s a dangerous illusion.
The only way to combat fascism is to build a mass movement for communism. We know from hard experience that the courts and liberal bosses won’t stop fascism. Sooner than later, they’ll embrace it in a last-ditch effort to preserve their rotting system. In 1994, Bill Clinton signed the crime bill that decimated a generation of Black workers with mass incarceration. In 2011, Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act, “codifying indefinite military detention without charge or trial into law for the first time in American history” (ACLU.org). In 2024, Joe Biden broke Trump’s record for deportations (bbc.com, 12/20/24). Counting on “lesser-evil” bosses—including fake leftists like Colombia’s Gustavo Petro or Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum—is a death trap! We must rely instead on the most powerful force of the past, present and future: the international working class.
Liberals are the main danger
The liberal politicians who serve finance capital, the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, will try to use Trump’s vile racist attacks to push workers to vote Democrat in the 2026 midterm elections. These passionate defenders of “free speech” are the same stooges who helped to squash the campus encampments last spring while baby-killer Biden bankrolled Israel’s genocide in Gaza. But not everyone is fooled. The recent anti-Trump rallies by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been disrupted by workers who support our class sisters and brothers in Palestine—and who understand that these reformist phonies are loyal first and last to U.S. imperialism.
Both factions of U.S. rulers agree on backing the Zionist butchers and using racism to exploit and divide workers. Where they disagree is how to prop up their stumbling empire. Trump fronts for the Fortress America wing that’s most focused on domestic profits and control of the Western hemisphere—hence Trump’s threats to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal. They have less interest in being taxed for the soft imperialism of USAID or the military alliance of NATO—or a war in Ukraine.
Finance capital, led by the biggest U.S. banks and multinational oil companies, needs to keep control over Middle East oil and sustain NATO for a likely land war against China. Trump’s camp of rabid dogs is vicious and dangerous, no question. But the liberal bosses are the more expert mass murderers of our class. They’ve shown it through decades of ruthless slaughter, from Vietnam to Iraq to Somalia. They’re also far more skilled in misleading honest anti-racists, the people we need in our movement.
Millions of workers—from the U.S. and Mexico to Europe and the Northern Mariana Islands—are joining anti-Trump demonstrations. Resistance to rising fascism is essential. But if it leads workers back into the liberal bosses’ clutches, it will be a severe setback for the liberation of our class.
Rather than head to the ballot box, workers everywhere must build the fighting PLP.
We need the communist PLP!
The goal of our movement is to destroy the profit system, root and branch—to smash capitalism for all time. The international PLP is organizing for a communist world, where working people collectively run society based on need, where racism and sexism are outlawed. Our main weapon against the bosses is multiracial working-class unity.
Join our Party in raising class consciousness and antiracist ideas in our workplaces and schools and in the streets. Learn with us about the great communist revolutions of the past—and help us write the next chapter of working-class history. Death to the bosses! Power to the working class! March with us on May Day and together let’s build the communist future our class deserves.
