Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and friends in Chicago participated in the Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago on Labor Day weekend. This event was being held in the context of words like socialism and communism being weaponized against liberals as epithets. The multiracial attendees came from several places in the U.S. and outside the country. We attended the event to introduce our line to the many people who came to the conference who were open to our revolutionary politics of creating a communist, not socialist world. We were able to engage in many productive discussions and obtained contact information from a few dozen people.
Despite the many talks at the conference, the main issue of how to get rid of capitalism was not addressed. We attempted to propose a session that presented how to do this, but it was unsurprisingly rejected by the leadership of the conference. Just the title of the conference, “Socialism,” helps understand why: they do not have a coherent plan to create a worker-run society without money, communism.
There was a general agreement that capitalism is failing, but a clear path to getting rid of this rotten racist system was not present. The implied answer from the liberal and revisionist conference organizers was to put our faith in Bernie Sanders or similar frauds. Speaking of revisionists, our table was ironically positioned by conference organizers right next to that of the CPUSA (Communist Party USA). In talking with them, it became clear that changing capitalism, from their standpoint, required reliance on electoral politics. They had dozens of books about socialism or communism and other literature at their table but did not have a realistic understanding of what is needed to get rid of capitalism.
Still, the attendance of a few thousand people indicates that workers are looking for alternatives to this murderous profit system. We in PLP are pushing to cut through all the noise to unapologetically offer our mass international Party and violent revolution as the path forward for our class.
