No kings, no bosses’ system

Dear CHALLENGE : In Raleigh, North Carolina, approximately 5,000 workers and students had a multiracial anti Trump  protest in conjunction  with national protests. There were people on both sides of Raleigh’s Highway 1. The sentiments  were antiracist  and people had signs calling Trump a fascist. The workers know what fascism is, and that’s  good. There were also U.S. and Mexican flags there, which was the downside. The international working class owes no  allegiance to U.S., nor Mexican bosses! As the PLP  gets larger, and more well known, nationalism can eventually  be challenged more sharply. On the  good side, 20 CHALLENGE papers were distributed.  The Party has much work to do. We must take advantage  of protests to get our communist line out because at some point, protesting will be illegal as fascism consolidates in America. It’s not just Trump, it’s the whole damn system,  capitalism,  which must be destroyed!
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Antiracists call out shipments for genocide

You’ve all seen those huge barges with shipping containers, many bearing the name Maersk, one of the world’s largest shipping companies. They transport a huge proportion of the weapons the U.S. sends to Israel, including all the wings for the F-35 fighter jets since 2022. On June 11, Jewish Voice for Peace and some members of the Palestinian Youth Movement occupied the lobby of their NYC office with a demonstration of about 200 people during the lunch hour. 

There were large banners condemning Maersk, t-shirts saying End the Siege and Stop Starving Gaza, and constant chants about genocide and Maersk’s crimes. About half the participants were arrested, while the other half took to the street outside and chanted for another hour. It was a militant and very well-planned action. What was lacking was a tie in with deportations, attacks on universities and science, and racist cutbacks in the U.S. - an understanding that capitalism is the problem that causes all these manifestations of fascism.
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Workers connect Bukele regime to Amerikkka

On Saturday, June 7, members of Progressive Labor Party attended a film screening on the fascist Bukele regime in El Salvador and its effects on working class families. The event was held at the Rutgers Labor Education Center and was sponsored by organizations fighting for immigrant justice such as Cosecha and Resistencia en Accion. Attendees ranged from workers passionate and ready to fight collectively to end the capitalist imperialist system to workers grieving their loved ones detained by ICE. It was heartbreaking to see workers both in El Salvador and the United States grieve over the violent breakup of their families and wonder aloud how their detained loved ones were being treated. Simultaneously, we witnessed workers’ inspirational desire from both countries to stand in solidarity with one another and fight back!

One worker brilliantly pointed out the limits of relying on the Amerikkkan judicial system for immigrant justice, calling for attendees to look to the power of the international working class as the way to solve the capitalist crisis of racist immigrant detainment; our battleground is not the Amerikkkan courtroom, but rather everywhere that capitalism exists. 
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DNA is not destiny

Dear CHALLENGE,

The May 9th issue contained a very good article on the racist killing of two high school students  on the streets of Brooklyn. The reports of students organizing and fighting back against the racist conditions in their neighborhood were truly inspiring. The reality of violence being endemic to capitalism was reinforced with the statement “Capitalism’s very DNA is the violent exploitation and oppression of the working class…” 
The idea that DNA, the molecule that carries genetic information, is somehow more essential and influential than environmental factors is a capitalist idea that seeks to blame individuals (and their genes) for all of the ills of our society. The underlying message behind this idea is that trying to get rid of capitalism is a waste of time, because all of these things are “natural” or “part of our DNA.” But this is not how biology works. Yes, DNA is important, but not more so than the environment that an organism experiences. Violent exploitation and oppression are indeed endemic to capitalism; it cannot exist without them. We can make this point without referencing DNA and its supposed centrality.
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Massacre at noon: nationalism kills revolution

I watched a movie about an event that is little known in the U.S. The movie was Massacre At Noon. Made in former Yugoslavia  in 1975, its plot is about Serbian communist partisans fighting the Nazi occupation army (Wehrmacht). In October, 1941, the German SS had over 100 Serbian workers and communist guerrillas executed in reprisals for the death of German soldiers. There are political lessons  to be learned from this movie. Marshal Tito was overall leader of the communist partisans, but they had a United Front with bourgeois groups like royalists forces that represented monarchy (Chetniks). Progressive Labor Party (PLP)  learned from working class struggles that in armed struggle, you don’t  make temporary unity with bosses. 

Nationalism means making concessions that end up being anti-working class. In the movie, the communists instead of singing the International, sing a nationalist song. Also, the Chetniks ended up selling  out communists to German fascists. While the communist partisans eventually defeated the Nazis, the issue of nationalism  was not fully resolved as a political contradiction. Eventually, Yugoslavian state capitalism  gave way to the breakup of Yugoslavia, and unleashed nationalism led to the Serbo-Croatian War. PLP rejects all nationalism, as it holds back communist  revolution. The only solution  is communist revolution and workers internationalism for a world without nations and borders.
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