The anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution is soon approaching, and it’s time to debunk some anti-communist myths, again. The U.S. ruling class reviles Joseph Stalin, one of the first communist leaders of the Soviet Union (USSR), and so they lie about him.  But they lie about so many things, why would they tell the truth about Stalin. Yet the capitalist slander campaign against Stalin led many authors, university researchers and even ordinary people to dislike Stalin. Why so much capitalist hatred against Joseph Stalin?
 First, some facts. After the Russian Revolution, 12 European countries (including the U. S. and Japan) invaded the Soviet Union to kill this new socialist society in its cradle. They were defeated. Instead Stalin led the socialist Soviet Union from being “the poor man of Europe” to a world power that challenged the worldwide empire of the capitalist United States.
Under Stalin’s leadership, the Soviet Union became powerful enough to defeat Hitler’s Nazis in World War II. Of the 250 Nazi divisions that fought in World War II, 200 of them fought to conquer the Soviet Union...and were defeated. Eighty five percent of German casualties were at the hands of the USSR. It was only after the Soviets began pushing the Nazis back, that the Allies invaded Normandy. The Soviet people and their Red Army suffered huge casualties (20 million dead) and destruction, but it was they that defeated the Nazis.
 The Soviet leaders educated all citizens, including college and trade schools. They provided universal health care and employment. Workers had four weeks of paid vacation and received a pension at age 60, women at age 55. They had paid maternity leave and free childcare and they eliminated the centuries-old famines that had racked the Ukraine.
Some charge that Stalin was a dictator, yet he struggled mightily for a new constitution with secret elections so that the entrenched bureaucracy would be challenged. Local Party Secretaries defeated him in this effort.
It is helpful to see the sources of the criticisms of Stalin. The sources of the forced starvation stories in the Ukraine are anti-communist, pro-Nazi sympathizers who left the Ukraine and headed to the Western countries.
 In 1956 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin and his achievements in a secret speech. Khrushchev wanted to take the USSR in a more capitalist direction. Professor Grover Furr documents that of the 61 charges Khrushchev levels against Stalin, 60 can be proven to be false. Needless to say that speech is the source of many of the attacks on Stalin.
 Another source of attacks was the writing and organizing of Leon Trotsky. He was a charismatic individual with the emphasis on individual. Trotsky belonged to a different party than Stalin and Lenin. He joined the Bolsheviks when the Russian Revolution was imminent. When Lenin died, Trotsky thought that he should be the next leader. He organized for his ideas. They were publicized widely in the Party, but when it came to a vote, his position lost 724,000 to 4,000. The Bolsheviks and Lenin chose Stalin.
However, he continued to organize against Stalin and the Bolshevik leadership and was finally kicked out of the Party. He secretly continued his anti-Stalin organizing and propaganda. He appealed, not to the workers, but to the capitalists all over the world for support. Capitalists loved his stories because it gave them more ammunition against Stalin. But Furr speaks and reads Russian and English and has had access to Trotsky’s archives as well as the archives of the former Soviet Union. He has written and self-published several books on the period. For those who want to learn what really took place under Stalin’s leadership, please go to his website:https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/
The fact is that college professors who try to write a balanced or a favorable view of Stalin are ostracized by the system. They can’t get published. Those that promote anti-Stalinism get published, paid and praised.
The reason the capitalists hate Stalin is because he helped lead a revolution that threw them out of power. The capitalists who exploit workers, who bring death and destruction, who promote racism and sexism, hate Stalin. They benefit from our ignorance that it is possible to have a system where the capitalists do not exist. But a better world is possible. It’s communism where the workers of the world rule and the capitalists are in the trash heap of history.

Propaganda is power in the hands of workers
Two of us here in Massachusetts distributed CHALLENGE at a Haitian-church-sponsored protest against Biden's cruel and vicious deportations of workers from Haiti. About 150 workers from Haiti and others heard church leaders speak. The thrust of the speeches was that "Though these terrible things are happening, God will help us get through these troubled times."
 Signs said "No Deportations", "Stop Discrimination", and "Due Process for All Refugees."
One speaker attacked the racism of the deportations of Haitian workers in the U.S..She said that refugees from Afghanistan to the U.S. are helped to resettle, while  refugees from Haiti are deported, where kidnapping, gang violence, poverty, and hunger are everywhere, and where some deportees haven't lived for over 10 years.
While Black churches have been a base of support for the Democratic party of capitalism, Biden's racist deportations have spurred many protests.
Religion can't save us from capitalism. But a number of people in this religious crowd took CHALLENGE when we told them that the paper calls for overthrowing the system of capitalism, racism, deportations, and war.
 We also reconnected with some old friends of the Progressive Labor Party.
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Vaccinate against individualism
It’s the start of the Covid-19 mandate at work, and I hope more transit workers get vaccinated because as of right now, nearly 40 percent of us are unvaccinated. I’m not sure how the bosses are going to handle workers who choose not to comply.
In the transit quarters last month, my vaccine hesitant co-worker tested positive for Covid-19. Many workers, including myself, that he made contact with had to quarantine until they got a negative test result. Everyone came back with a negative result except one worker who was vaccinated.  
I asked my vaccine hesitant coworker, “Has this experience changed your opinion on the vaccine?”
“No,” he responded. “In fact it only solidified my ideas even more. Like why get the vaccine? When our other coworker who was vaccinated got Covid.”
I told him, “it's because he was vaccinated that he had no symptoms and you had severe flu-like symptoms.”
Then he replied, “I don’t argue bro, not even with my wife.”
The conversation may have ended there but at least the Covid scare has encouraged one of my closest coworkers who has been uncertain about the vaccination. After being exposed and learning of our co workers' view on vaccines, he said he “didn’t wanna take any chances.”
Many workers are falling victim to conspiracy theories surrounding the vaccine. I’ve come to realize it’s mostly out of fear. Fear of things changing by getting worse. The worst part is that workers are told that the only change we can get is in a voting booth, which builds more cynicism. This then transitions into inaction, which allows capitalism to continue. Most workers don’t know communism is a choice, too. They don’t know that many workers are striving for it. I hope to continually struggle with my coworker and turn his cynical inaction into action towards a communist future!
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Liberals are still the main danger
Here in Washington, DC on September 18, fascist supporters of the January 6 insurrectionists at the U.S. Capitol tried to rally, calling for the release of the so-called political prisoners from that participated in the storming of the Capitol back in January. Their call fell flat with only a few dozen showing up, as thousands of police from DC, Maryland, and Virginia ringed the newly-fenced Capitol with hundreds of National Guard troops on call. PLP members joined a counter-rally, distributing over 70 CHALLENGEs and making contact with several young people interested in revolution.
Our numbers must grow to form a disciplined revolutionary communist party to better lead the fight against fascism and the entire capitalist system.
Fighting the gutter racists like those who had stormed the Capitol is important, but we should not lose sight of the greater danger posed to our class by the liberal politicians who pretend to be our friends. Already, Biden and his ilk are intensifying imperialist rivalry with China in the South China Seas and the Indo Pacific in general with new military alliances forming with Australia and India, leading towards war to re-divide the world among the rich capitalists. Both Democratic and Republican politicians almost unanimously supported an increased “defense” (read: war) budget and more cops to keep us under control.
Workers of the world have nothing to gain from looming war and everything to lose. These rulers in both imperialist China and imperialist U.S. must be overthrown by a united struggle of workers of the world. This message was endorsed by many of those at the counter rally. The next step must be to grow the Party and sharpen the fight against the finance capitalists who rule (and destroy!) our lives!
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I shared CHALLENGE at immigration march
Several of my comrades and I were happy to join the immigration march in DC on September 21 to help bring the Progressive Labor Party and CHALLENGE to some of the thousands of multiracial marchers. I was personally able to share CHALLENGE with over 50 of them. I’ve been involved locally in fighting to close the concentration-style camps for immigrant workers and tenant housing struggles, and was happy to see many friends from these struggles in the march.
I wore a shirt that had “revolution” in bold white letters on a red background, and this attracted a number of people who wanted to talk more about our Party. Despite the great spirit of the marchers, we really have to be clear that the liberal politicians who claim to be on the side of immigrants are really just repping on behalf of finance capital. So, we need to build a revolutionary party to lead a fight to topple the whole system!
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October 2—Thousands of antisexist workers and youth rallied and marched in dozens of cities across the U.S. today to confront the capitalist bosses’ sexist assault on women’s reproductive health. Millions of workers are rightly outraged at Senate Bill 8 (SB8) passed last month in Texas. This law bans abortions once fetal heart activity can be detected (approximately six weeks in gestation). Backed by isolationist Small Fascist (see Glossary, page 6) bosses like Texas Governor Greg Abbott, similar restrictive laws could soon spread across many southern states.
As was certainly the case today, the struggle for access to abortion gets framed as a tug-of-war between progressive “pro-choice” liberal leaders and reactionary “pro-life” conservatives. However, this framing seeks to conceal past and present racist, obstacles to life-saving health care for working class women and conveniently minimizes the threat posed by the dominant Big Fascist bosses in viciously destroying working-class lives both in the U.S. and around the world.
As economic crisis and inter-imperialist rivalry intensify, the capitalist bosses and their politician servants are driven to further attack workers’ standard of living and push a dehumanized fascist culture. Restricting access to basic medical procedures like abortions under the guise of being “pro-life” or denying needed medical care to working class women via a health care system that serves the insurance bosses are just a couple of the many ways the bosses can shore up their profits and attack the working class.
Communists in the international Progressive Labor Party (PLP) seek to win our class to understand the capitalist profit system as fundamentally incompatible with our health and development as working people. Truly equitable access to health care and other essential services will only be won by uniting our class on an international level through a mass PLP to destroy the profit system with communist revolution.
Capitalism profits off sexism
Deadly restrictive laws such as SB8 are only the latest sexist attacks by the capitalists against the working class. From its inception, capitalism has always relied on sexist wage differentials in order to garner billions in profits. While the liberal bosses fawn over a tiny percentage of female executives as proof that capitalism “can work for everyone,” the sexist reality persists of women workers making 84 cents for every dollar their male worker counterparts make (Pew Research, 5/21). Even more insidious is capitalism’s continued disregard for unpaid domestic labor, such as child rearing, which remains primarily shouldered by women workers.
The notion that any worker under capitalism has a significant degree of “autonomy” over their own self gets contradicted by the exploitative nature of capitalism. As workers under the profit system, we have no option but to undersell our labor power to the bosses in exchange for a wage. Women workers, and in particular Black women workers, are attacked the hardest by capitalism. Sexist violence and discrimination affect women workers most acutely. These sexist attacks and divisions are used to weaken our class and can only be overcome by uniting as an entire class against capitalism.
Big Fascist liberals have more blood on their hands
The dozens of reformist mass organizations responsible for today's rallies are by and large in lockstep politically with the finance capital Big Fascist wing of the U.S. ruling class, currently fronted by President Joe Biden. On the heels of the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle and the ruthless anti-Black racism on full display at the U.S.-Mexico border, these Big Fascists desperately need some means to paint themselves as defenders of the working class while attacking their Small Fascist rivals.
But even a casual glance at their “women’s rights” events show how drastically they fall short. By and large, such events are filled with relatively affluent white professionals. Black, Latin, Asian, indigenous, and lower-income white women workers—those most threatened by the implementation of abortion restrictions—are those least represented in the liberal-led arena.
This exclusion points to the racist and class character of abortion and reproductive health access under capitalism. For women bosses and wealthy families, reproductive care has always been relatively easy to obtain. For the working class, Black women in the U.S.—millions of whom live in states or cities headed by liberals—are three to four times more likely to die a maternal-related death compared to white women (Health Affairs, 2/4/19).
The Big Fascists’ dedication to maintaining capitalism above everything else—to the tune of cutting welfare benefits, closing hospitals, and poisoning the air and water—is what condemns millions of workers every year to poor health and premature death. It’s what drives the bosses to deport pregnant women workers from Haiti or Honduras to die in the desert. It’s what drives them to launch drone strikes in Afghanistan or Somalia that massacre children. What was these workers’ “choice” on the matter?
Workers’ power is key
As workers, we must hold no illusions about who is endangering our health, safety, and development. In order to truly guarantee a healthy existence for our class, we need to overthrow capitalism, a political and economic system based on the profits and privileges of a few in favor of a communist system that prioritizes workers’ well being above all else.
After workers took power in the October Revolution, all abortions were made legal in the Soviet Union by 1920. As we build the fight to beat back sexist and racist laws like SB8 we can never lose sight that the most radical social advances occur when working people violently seize state power from the bosses. Join the PLP today and help build this revolutionary struggle.

As the U.S. empire crumbles from both without and within, the main wing imperialists of the U.S. ruling class seem ready to crack down on the America First bosses fronted by Donald Trump. Equating the January 6 Capitol Building insurrection to 9/11, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the insurrection an assault from “within” (Guardian, 9/17), while former President George W. Bush urged Americans to confront “violent extremists at home” (Washington Post, 9/11).
Facing a still out-of-control Covid-19 pandemic, a military debacle in Afghanistan, and a collapsing infrastructure, these Big Fascist finance capitalists are wounded and desperate—which makes them even more dangerous. They’ve been unable to rein in the more openly racist Small Fascists, who have hijacked the Republican Party and the U.S. Supreme Court, and have made serious inroads in the rank-and-file military. They’ve been unwilling to discipline their own ranks of greedy billionaires. These divisions give inter-imperialist rivals China and Russia a huge opening. And with the mainwing U.S. rulers less and less able to govern by the old rules of liberal democracy, they’re moving faster than ever toward fascism and World War III.
As capitalists scramble to protect their profits, the working class is expected to pay the price, swallow the lies, and shed the blood. But Progressive Labor Party has other plans! We call on the international working class to reject the bosses’ call for patriotism—and to counter with communist internationalism. Join us and help eradicate the deadliest virus worldwide—capitalism!
Build Back Better: fraud on the working class
The Big Fascists’ dominance rests on U.S. financial and military power, its strategic control of the Middle East, and the flow of oil to Europe, Asia, and Africa. As they lose ground to China, both economically and militarily, the U.S. bosses need to win the patriotic loyalty of masses of workers to fight and die in the global conflict to come.
Enter Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” bill. With promises to fund greener energy, broadband, highways, housing, and new jobs, the proposal is essentially a bribe to win workers to support the Big Fascists’ agenda. What remains to be seen is whether the Biden-led bosses can summon the unity and discipline needed to pass the bill.
The Small Fascist Republicans have vowed to fight the tax hikes needed to fund Biden’s bill. But the Big Fascists’ main problem is that their own ranks are unwilling to make the needed sacrifices. Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, wants to scale down the package by half—and slow the transition to clean energy. It’s no coincidence that Manchin “has personally grossed more than $4.5 million” from the coal companies he founded in the 1980s (The Intercept, 9/3).
Leading mainstream business groups–the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and the National Association of Manufacturers–have also pushed back against the corporate tax hikes (modest as they would be) that Biden and the main wing need to pay for the bill (Business Insider, 3/31).
This fight exposes the short-term thinking and lack of discipline within the ruling class. But no empire falls without a fight, and the liberal bosses are likely to move to more open fascism sooner than later. They have no choice—they must unify their own class to prepare for war.
War preparation
Biden’s plan also calls for $180 billion in new research and development for emerging technologies for the military. Without stepping up their investments and innovations for mass slaughter, the U.S. risks falling behind China and jeopardizing the bosses’ “future economic competitiveness and … national security” (C4ISRNET, 3/31). In a related development, the U.S. bosses made a deal to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, a clear “effort to reset the naval balance in the Pacific, as China expands its territorial claims and threatens Taiwan” (New York Times, 9/22). More broadly, the strengthening alliance known as “the Quad”—a coalition of the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan—“represents one of the most consequential challenges to Chinese ambitions in the years ahead” (foreignaffairs.com, 8/6).
But despite these attempts to “pivot” to Asia and block China’s dominance in the region, the U.S. ruling class is hobbled by division and disarray—a big factor in the accelerating decline of U.S. imperialism. More and more workers see U.S. society for what it truly is—a rotten stew of police murder, mass unemployment, and racist and sexist inequality. Capitalism will never work for workers. It cannot be fixed. The only alternative is communism, a world run by and for the international working class.
The Covid disaster
Covid-19 has been an utter disaster for the capitalist bosses and Exhibit A for why they are unfit to run society. With the Delta variant on the rampage and the pandemic death toll once again exceeding 2,000 a day, Big Fascist media like the New York Times are blaming Small Fascist Republican governors who have rejected mask mandates and other common-sense public health measures.
But the biggest problem for the finance capitalists is the incompetence and mixed messaging of their own institutions, like the Centers for Disease Control and the Food & Drug Administration, which have caved to political and business interests in “getting America back to work.” Meanwhile, liberal politicians like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio are recklessly pushing millions of students into crowded school buildings, less than fully vaccinated teaching staffs, and vague safety protocols (Chalkbeat 8/21, Pix11 8/19).
Vaccine and mask mandates represent the Big Fascists’ attempt to discipline their class and win workersbut the strategy isn’t working.  Without the staff or facilities for smaller classes, teachers and students know that social distancing rules are a joke. At the same time, many workers have been swayed by anti-science rhetoric as well as rightful mistrust in the government wand are refusing to get vaccinated.
As a result, the pandemic rages on. Millions of workers worldwide have lost their jobs and are facing homelessness, eviction, even starvation. Many lack even basic healthcare or access to testing or vaccines. The global pandemic is not a “natural” disaster. It is proof positive that capitalism must be smashed with communist revolution.
Great danger and opportunity
Under communism, workers would be ensured access to vaccines, treatment, and preventative health that would have contained the pandemic long before it killed millions around the globe. Without the profit motive, scientists would work for the betterment of humanity, rather than depending on corporate funding. Workers would take sick days without fear of losing their jobs or being unable to provide for their families. All workers –and healthcare workers most of all—would have the protective equipment they need to do their jobs safely.
As the capitalist world grows increasingly unstable, the working class is entering a period of great danger and opportunity. The danger is the threat of world war inching closer as the U.S. empire nears the brink of collapse. The opportunity is to smash this racist, sexist system and turn imperialist war into a class war for workers’ power. Capitalism is the true pandemic, and communism is the only cure. Join PLP and place another nail in the bosses’ coffin.