“We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by labor in this country, a move which will lead—who knows where!'' editorialized Anna Louise Strong on February 4, 1917, the eve of the Seattle general strike.
These words were as much a reflection of her own enthusiasm and confusion as they were an analysis of the brave but naive Seattle working class. She found her way 15  months later to revolutionary Russia. Anna Louise Strong’s autobiography I Change Worlds (1937) is the chronicle of this journey to communism.
Drawn to the Soviet Union like so many progressives of her generation, her first assignment was famine relief on the Russian river Volga. Fresh from the Seattle general strike, Anna Louise thought she was hot stuff until she met the young Russian communist Sonia. Sonia was donating her month's vacation to help the relief efforts. Drought, civil war and imperialist invasion had left the area devastated. The world capitalists hoped to starve the new socialist state into submission with an embargo.
“It is utterly impossible,” lamented Strong upon seeing the starving thousands.
“There is nothing impossible” responded Sonia in clear firm tones.
“But millions will die!” said Anna Louise.
“Millions have already died” answered Sonia, with the steady hand of communist determination.
The NEP and U.S. aid
The New Economic Policy (NEP), instituted a year later, allowed some capitalist exploitation. In return, the U.S. sent a little food to the famine areas. Strong’s misgivings about the U.S. relief and the NEP were reflected in her reports about Puriayeff, chairman of relief in a small village near Samara. Puriayeff, near starvation because he refused to eat more than the famine-stricken villagers he organized, had to meet with a U.S. representative from Washington. Strong reported:
Full-fed and aggressively content, he (the American relief man) sat in the best rooms Samara afforded, consuming a copious meal of borsch, chicken and wine. On the floor beside him were great baskets of hams, canned goods, wines and stronger drinks with foreign labels.
Puriayeff looked not at the food; he looked at the man’s uniform - an officer’s uniform of fine cloth with shining buttons and epaulets, well brushed as if for a parade ... He had seen such uniforms before ... He had seen them on the Tsar’s officers and on the officers of the intervention. He had overthrown the men who wore them.
Then Puriayeff looked down at the hampers of food and wine; in his eyes was not the look of hunger, but of worried contempt. Was the old world he had helped overthrow coming back to rule the Volga?
The NEP ended in the late 20s. Under Joseph Stalin the Soviet five-year plans replaced NEP. The U.S. relief bureaucrats were sent packing, but not before they were caught smuggling thousands of dollars’ worth of Tsarist jewels, now the property of the Russian working class, out of the country. Pravda (the daily newspaper of the then Communist Party of the Soviet Union) publicized the scandal to Strong’s immense satisfaction.
Strong met many workers ready to work themselves to death (in fact a small number did) to build socialism during the first five-year plan. The Molvitino peasants stand out as an example. Molvitino was a small, back-water village, 50  miles from the railroad. Under the Tsar, it was plagued by pestilence and superstition. The Molvitinians, determined to become 20th  century socialists, sent a delegation to the regional center for the Party’s agricultural meeting. Sleepless, this delegation hiked and hitched, bluffed and bullied their way on horse carts, “commandeered” trucks and freight trains throughout the night to make the meeting on time at noon the next day. At the meeting they debated and decided, then fought their way home to carry out the Party’s line on agricultural production. We could learn a lot from these “backward peasants.”
Anna Louise Strong also met with Joseph Stalin to solve problems in her newspaper, The Moscow News. She described the comrades present: one was witty; the other was handsome; some were just trying to cover their asses. Stalin, the chairperson of the  Communist Party of Russia, was the least imposing. Hours later, she realized that Stalin had guided the collective to find its own will with his constant probing and questions. He was the best communist of his time, she concluded.
The “comrade-creators,” Strong’s affectionate name for Party members, shook the foundations of her liberal progressive illusions. She saw that the Roosevelt New Deal in the U.S. was “making the poor support the starving to save the rich.” She also saw how Germany could fall to fascism. “The pacifists had talked and talked and never acted. They had explained all their strengths and weaknesses, yet remained passive — just worried the capitalists into action.”
Strong’s ideas on love matured
“... I chose my husband, not from any of those emotional flurries which American romanticists call love but from a need far deeper - the deep, instinctive need of my own future. American youth, which wastes so much of life in bewildering emotion, needs to be told what I took years to know. To fall in love is very easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be. This I have found and hold.
What is this thing, I thought, that I call ‘truth and frankness,’ when in Washington they tell you personal details while in Moscow they discuss a nation’s plan.” — Her very idea of truth had changed.
She was becoming a communist; she saw the value of communist theory. It had taken her 14  years of experience of revolution in three countries (Russia, China and Mexico) to know that the California co-op movement was getting nowhere. The  communists in the United States knew it just from California and a book by Marx; she observed. She saw the value of a party and party discipline. Joining the party was “not to be chosen but to choose with others'. Freedom and comradeship can always grow wider. Increasing organization does not squeeze out freedom, but multiplies its vast variety of choices.”
I Change Worlds is much more than the story of a remarkable journalist’s travels from the U.S. to Russia. Anna Louise Strong also changed sides on the barricades. She chose the working class and communism. Her autobiography is useful for those of us who also desire to change worlds.J
For a digital copy of this book, click here or go to https://tinyurl.com/ichangeworlds

In July of 1877, workers in the United States, led by railroad strikers in Pittsburgh, showed the power of a militant, armed working class. That year, the U.S. was shaken by massive rebellions sparked when the railroad bosses cut the rail workers’ wages by 10 percent for the fourth time since 1873. The Panic of 1873 had started a depression that was devastating workers all across the country. That’s capitalism at work. It’s a constant stream of depressions, recessions, wars, climate disasters, and now a worldwide pandemic. Truly we have to get rid of this system that only benefits the capitalists.
With the fourth cut in their wages, workers in major rail centers in 16 of the then 38 states went on strike, first in West Virginia, then spreading through the country like wildfire. In Pittsburgh, the fightback took a new turn. The workers took up arms against the bosses’ troops. The local militia refused to fire upon the workers and even the local cops refused. Many other workers joined the striking and protesting railroad workers. Men from the local militia and even some cops joined the protests.
When the workers in Pittsburgh first struck, they took possession of all the main rail switches leading in and out of Pittsburgh. Rail traffic, except for passenger and mail service, was shut tight. When the Pennsylvania Railroad bosses realized that the Pittsburgh police could not do anything to stop this, and that the militia would not do anything, they decided to bring in “crack” troops from Philadelphia, at the other end of the state of Pennsylvania.
The troops from Philadelphia came to Pittsburgh and within a matter of hours they shot down 20 workers, some at the 28th Street crossing, where thousands of men, women, and children were gathered.
With this, the anger of the working class increased. Thousands of workers from all major industries in the city joined the rail workers and together they formed an army of 4,000 armed workers. This army included white workers, Black workers, and workers from dozens of countries. They were young and old, men and women. They trapped the Philadelphia troops in the locomotive roundhouse and held them there all night. Then by setting the building on fire, they smoked them out and ran them 20 miles out of the city.
For four days afterwards, the working class fought the bosses, controlling many parts of the city. They took over the telegraph station and ran passenger and mail trains. They destroyed over 100 locomotives, about 50 passenger cars and over 1,200 freight cars. They ransacked gun shops and a gun factory for weapons. Eventually, the U.S. government sent over 10,000 state and federal troops to regain control of the city.
This strike and insurrection led to more militant strikes that won some reforms for workers. In particular, by the end of the 19th century many workers had won the eight hour day, instead of working 10 to 12 hours six days a week. Yet here we are in 2021 and many workers are again working long hours for little pay. And racism, sexism, wars for profit, gross inequality and now a worldwide pandemic ravage the world. We have to keep fighting.
In Progressive Labor Party (PLP), we say that what the working class needs to rid ourselves of this bosses’ system is revolution. The PLP marched in Pittsburgh on July 23, 1977, the 100th anniversary of the Pittsburgh Commune. We did so not only to commemorate that valiant struggle, but to tell the workers of Pittsburgh that what they did in 1877 must be done again and again and again, until the bosses and their system of death is destroyed, and a system of communism is built.
Next time, we must not stop at taking a few of the bosses’ cities, but we must fight to smash their whole damn system and establish communism—a society run by and for the working class.J
Sources:Challenge-Desafio, May 19, 1977, p. 5; Walter Linder, “The National Railroad Strikes of 1877,’ 3 parts. SOC Newsletter; PLP, The Pittsburgh Insurrection and Railroad Strike of 1877, June 1977. This booklet has a bibliography of 17 entries.

July 13, 2021 was the 10th anniversary of the death of Milt Rosen, founding chairperson of Progressive Labor Party (PLP or PL). He served our organization and the working class in that capacity until 1995. The following is excerpted from the obituary that appeared in CHALLENGE August 3, 2011.

Sparked by Milt early on, PL exposed both counter-revolutionary revisionism and “revolutionary” nationalism as death traps of worker-boss unity. It indicted the state capitalists of the Soviet Union as far back as 1966, and then broke with the ones ruling the People’s Republic of China. Those failed revolutions led PL to advance beyond Marx’s two-stage theory that socialism was a first step toward communism; history had shown that socialism inevitably led back to the exploitation of capitalism. And unlike any other group on the landscape, the Party emphasized the importance of the fight against racism as a basic communist principle, not a mere tactic.
Milt’s first brush with the enormous power of communist ideas came as a 17-year-old soldier (he had lied about his age) in Italy in World War II.
In one of its first mass activities, PLM (Progressive Labor Movement - precursor to PLP) stood behind 500 wildcatting, armed coal miners in Hazard, Kentucky, who were locked in an all-out war with the coal barons to win decent conditions and wages.
On May 2, 1964, under PLM’s leadership, the first major demonstrations against the Vietnam War were staged in cities around the country.
Following the massive Washington anti-war rally in the spring of 1965, Milt saw that Students for A Democratic Society (SDS) had grown into the center of radical student politics. From 1966 to 1968, PL would do its largest-scale political organizing among students.
After stepping down as Party chair and before becoming too ill to function, Milt continued to make vital contributions to PL and the international movement. Among his most significant lessons was the need to understand the character of our historical period. Shortly after the events of 9/11, he spoke of how he’d underestimated the impact of the old communist movement’s demise, and how far it has set back the class struggle. This failing, he pointed out, could lead to one of two devastating errors: false optimism or despair over the formidable difficulties in building a mass communist party. Milt’s self-criticism reminded us that the old movement’s defeat may have left us in a “dark night,” but the working class has lived and fought through dark nights before.
While the end of the old movement was the worst setback we’ve ever suffered, it isn’t the end of history. It’s not the end of class struggle. Our Party exists all over the world, and small though it may be, it is growing. With words and by example, Milt taught the vital importance of a long-term outlook. More clearly than most, he knew there were no shortcuts to revolution. He embraced it as the commitment of a lifetime.
 More than anything, he taught us never to give up.

Sandy was a winner
I was saddened to read about the death of comrade Sandy Spiers. Unfortunately I didn't manage to contribute to the recent Zoom memorial in her honor. I first met Sandy when she lived in Minneapolis where she joined Progressive Labor Party and I was helping to organize for the Party in the Midwest some 40 odd years ago. It was mid-winter and Sandy took me out to the university campus to sell CHALLENGE.
Being a Brooklynite, I was not exactly used to sub-zero temperature but Sandy told me it was standard operating procedure for the Minneapolis comrades. She instructed me how to snip off three of the ends of our gloves to be able to grasp the paper and still keep the rest of our hands "warm" as we hawked CHALLENGE.
Sandy was a winner! A truly inspiring comrade, fighting for communism.
*****
Radio red tackles state capitalists and “communists”
On a radio talk show with guest speakers talking about the protests in Cuba and Haiti I expressed a view that the latest capitalist crisis was behind the numerous worker revolts worldwide. I also said the so-called “communist” countries like Cuba which spends billions on luxury tourist hotels while workers suffer lack of housing, apartheid vaccines and poverty and China which has the most billionaires and unreported worker rebellions are not unlike Haiti where workers are unemployed and starving because of capitalism. I concluded that workers need a real communist revolution to end capitalist inequality, poverty, racism, sexism and endless wars.
Then one of the speakers referred to me saying, “Comrade Joe should realize that criticizing the Cuban government lumps him with U.S. imperialists who are trying to destroy the Cuban revolution.” That same speaker’s counter-revolutionary criticism could be brought against comrades who criticize the Palestine Liberation Organization as really supporters of Israel in Palestine or brought against criticizing the billionaire class in “communist” China. All of these criticisms are part of historic capitalist attacks on real communists who first opposed capitalist wage differentials and privileges in the Soviet Union which eventually destroyed their attempt to end the capitalist profit system.
Comrades need to continue to expose phony socialist state capitalists and “communists” who put profits before people's lives. Workers must educate and advocate for real communism that can destroy capitalism’s profit horrors.
*****
Response: excellent, but don’t use “riot”
The two articles on the Newark Summer Project in CHALLENGE (7/21 and 8/4) were excellent,  especially the second article on pages 1 and 8 of CHALLENGE of 8/4) . On page 8 of the 2nd article under the subhead “Criticism as Opportunity for Progress,” the article points to several aspects of the Summer Project that need improvement.  This is excellent!
This is how we will prevent ourselves and our Party from becoming the "loyal opposition" as opposed to the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) that we have been since 1965.  Our newer members are the ones who will carry on the struggle in the near and distant future.  It is crucial that our newer comrades understand the difficulties that they will face AND that the only way to NOT fall prey to capitalist ideas and practices is through criticism and self-criticism ALONG WITH revolutionary practice with our co-workers and our base.
One small point:  In the first article there is a quote from a speaker who said that the: "Main legacy of the civil rights movement and those riots ... " [emphasis added]  The Black rebellions during the1960s were rebellions,  NOT riots.  It is important to explain to workers the significance of the difference.  In fact,  the Progressive Labor Movement  in 1964 [which became the PLP] was the ONLY organization using the word rebellion to describe these fightbacks.