Railfans meet the red line
I’ve been organizing in the New York City transit section for a few years now. It hasn’t been the easiest fight to wage at times. And self critically, I’ve found myself battling internalized anti communism on the job after hearing plenty of racist, sexist drivel from colleagues. It’s not always as simple as calling these things out and thinking workers will magically understand these contradictions (If it were, we could just say, “Join PLP” and get the whole working class on board like nothing).
But recently, I’ve had some breakthroughs and an even bigger realization. My co-worker, who also operates subway trains in the city, came to a base building event/celebration a few weeks back. I regularly give him CHALLENGE, and we discuss local and world events. He also came to our May Day march last year.
Another colleague, a local bus operator, has expressed interest in attending study groups. He gets CHALLENGE as well. What made these shifts possible is the friendship all three of us have forged through our collective love of trains and buses.
While we meet regularly to talk about the newest trains in the system or the latest bus depot assignments, it’s an opportunity as well to bring up the subway fare and why it’s racist against Black and Latin workers. While we “railfan” R211 or R68 subway cars, it’s a chance to bring up why the MTA has to pay billions to Wall Street bosses in debt service, and the working class has to foot that bill with worse service. Our regular trips on each other’s trains are an opening to mention the fightback some of our other colleagues are waging against management in their respective sections.
It may be an unorthodox way to build a base...but on this road to destroying capitalism, a few twists and turns are expected. I talk regularly with other transit workers who enjoy trains, and I’m looking into maybe giving them the paper as well. I still need to gain more confidence in expressing my politics at the right time with them. However, this train route might be what I need!
More reports to come.
*****
Bosses’ flags are workers’ graves
Back in 2014, two news stories starkly showed the peril workers face if they buy into nationalism of any kind (New York Times, 5/16/2014). Nationalism, patriotism, is a boss’s lie. I thought of this again today, as Donald Trump threatens to send U.S. worker-soldiers into Venezuela. Here are the stories.
In eastern Ukraine, steelworkers and miners in the companies owned by the billionaire Rinat Akhmetov downed tools and, led by their managers, occupied their city Mariupol as militias against the pro-Russian secessionists. Akhmetov said secession would bring sanctions and destroy his businesses and the workers’ jobs. He was probably right, so the unity of Ukraine became his slogan as he turned the workers into his private soldiers to enforce Ukrainian nationalism. Forget that he might go tomorrow in the opposite direction. “If you want to keep your jobs, fight for me,” is always the boss’s song.
What these workers did was follow their boss down the path of nationalism, which delivered them into the bosses’ hands. The bad thing was not just because they became cops and soldiers in Akhmetov’s private army. Worse, it set them up for war with other Ukrainian and Russian workers in their own city and the whole Eurasian region. It delivered them into the hands of rival imperialists, allied with local capitalists. They were used as cannon fodder against other workers flying different bosses’ flags. Every flag save the red one is a boss’s flag. Patriotism is a boss’s lie.
The other story was from Vietnam, where anti-Chinese nationalism turned violently racist. “One Chinese laborer said angry Vietnamese workers had stomped on his hands, crushing them. Another said his son had been struck in the head with a metal rod by a Vietnamese mob that had sought out Chinese for beatings. At least one Chinese worker died” (NYT, 5/16/14). This was a tragedy for our class.
Both Vietnamese and Chinese workers are exploited by bosses of many nationalities, and nationalist strife between them only serves the exploiters on both sides. It is class suicide for workers to turn on one another like this, to define one another as “foreign,” to kill one another for a boss’s lie.
Two generations earlier both Vietnamese and Chinese workers fought for communism together. What a falling off from the line of the Vietnamese communist poet To Huu: “For the Party’s long life/together we march/with the same heart.” Now it’s the task of communists to revive proletarian revolutionary internationalism. We know it will need the same heroism that To Huu’s nephew Little Huom displayed, dying in battle “in a jet of blood”: “His cap askew/ he whistled away/ like a warbler/ on a garden path.”
Even the most tragic moment has its beauty, because Huom’s red song goes on like the species-life of humanity itself. That is why he fought, and the Vietnamese women To Huu called heroes “who don’t need a beard to be heroes,” and why we fight on in his name, for a communist future in every land.
*****
New empire rises, same misery for workers everywhere
Over a century ago, in his poem “Always the same”, Langston Hughes showed that imperialism is the same everywhere for the working class (See below). To attack another ruling class, a ruling class must first attack its own workers even harder. This is the stage of capitalism called fascism. Each ruling class enforces fascism at home to maximize production and prepare for the redivision of the global order. Imperialism happens when bosses, having already divided the world, fight to reshape it. Trade wars eventually turn into shooting wars.
The classic model of imperialism extracts resources from poor countries to fuel production in industrial centers. For decades, the U.S. seemed to control the world through oil. Now China controls the production of rare earth elements (REEs), essential for modern tech. REEs aren’t rare, but refining them requires advanced industrial capacity. The U.S. failed to build that base, leaving China dominant. Even if the U.S. acquires raw materials from Nigeria, Greenland, Brazil, Madagascar, or Canada, it cannot match China’s processing power.
Today’s tech—clouds, AI, cell phones, data centers—is built on this exploitation. Workers die in open-air mines, labor under brutal factory conditions, and are paid in local currency while serving global capital. In China, nets are installed outside factories to prevent suicides. The tech billionaires funding Trump and other politicians rely entirely on this labor. The system is the same as ever—until workers organize to end it.
To wage wars for resources, bosses need soldiers and workers loyal to nationalism, racism, and sexism. Many believe elections can bring socialism, defeat fascism, or replace one capitalist party with a better one. All these illusions protect capitalism. Socialism under capitalism cannot lead to communism, as it preserves the inequalities of the system. The Progressive Labor Party fights to unite workers across Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas against imperialist wars abroad and fascism at home. The only solution is communist revolution.
The U.S. once ruled the world through the petrodollar. Now China challenges that domination through control of REE production. Inter-imperialist rivalry has entered a new phase. The October 2025 ASEAN Summit mirrors the 1884 Berlin Conference, when European powers divided Africa. This time, national ruling classes sold out their own workers for a share of the global pie.
Trump’s attendance at the October summit signaled how seriously the U.S. views this redivision. Earlier, in July, Marco Rubio met Russian officials in Asia, highlighting U.S. weakness. Tariffs on China have mostly hurt U.S. workers, not Chinese bosses. Chinese control of REEs and advanced production exposes U.S. impotence. Trump has even tried to block advanced microchips for military hardware—but the reality is clear: U.S. imperialism is no longer unchallenged.
*****
Always the same
By Langston Hughes
It is the same everywhere for me:
On the docks at Sierre Leonne,
In the cotton fields of Alabama,
In the diamond mines of Kimberley,
On the coffee hills of Haiti,
The banana lands of Central America,
The streets of Harlem,
And the cities of Morocco and Tripoli.
Black:
Exploited, beaten and robbed,
Shot and killed.
Blood running into
Dollars
Pounds
Francs
Pesetas
Lire
For the wealth of the exploiters-
Blood that never comes back to me again.
Better that my blood
Runs into the deep channels of Revolution,
Runs into the strong hands of Revolution,
Stains all flags red,
Drives me away from
Sierre Leone
Kimberley
Alabama
Haiti
Central America
Harlem
Morocco
Tripoli
And all the black lands everywhere.
The force that kills,
The power that robs,
And the greed that does not care.
Better that my blood makes one with the blood
Of all the struggling workers in the world-
Till every land is free of
Dollar robbers
Pound robbers
Franc robbers
Peseta robbers
Lire robbers
Life robbers-
Until the Red Armies of the International Proletariat
Their faces, black, white, olive, yellow, brown,
Unite to raise the blood-red flag that
Never will come down!
