ICE abducts, union stalls, workers organize

It is important that we sharpen and push the political work in our unions. Last November, education workers in the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) introduced a resolution encouraging chapters in schools across NYC to create immigrant defense committees. It took three months and the help of Progressive Labor Party comrades for UFT leadership to even include the resolution as a discussion item in their agendas. Another four months passed before the UFT leadership put it to a vote, and it finally passed in June, right before most of us had summer break. This was after ICE had already kidnapped Bronx high school student Dylan Lopez Contreras and Queens high school student Derlis Toaquiza. There was no official notice from the union about either of these abductions. Meanwhile, the UFT was blowing up my phone with reminders to vote in the primary election in June and general election in November. The unions serve as yet another tool to funnel workers into dead-end electoralism instead of seeing ourselves and our class as the answer for the end to fascist attacks against our students.

Many comrades have refused to wait around for union leadership and have already been building anti-ICE collectives for some time. Self-critically, I have been a little more slow-moving, but momentum has been picking up! I used the resolution as an opportunity to build on anti-deportation work from last year, when some coworkers and I organized Know-Your-Rights training for each grade. I handed out copies of the resolution at the first chapter meeting of this school year and invited anyone who wanted to join to do so. Since then, we have had around four or five meetings with around eight members, and more are interested in joining! We have a lot of ideas and are currently working on making a bulletin board to communicate to students who are on the committee, share legal resources, and help build an antiracist school culture. In the committee, we have also had discussions about the racist legacy of the Democrats, the genocide in Gaza, anti-Haitian racism in the Dominican Republic, and Zohran Mamdani. Several of the coworkers involved have received CHALLENGE, three recently marched with the PLP contingent at an anti-ICE protest, and one has attended PLP study groups. The fight continues!
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Communist response: turn ‘personal’ crisis into collective care

Recently, our Party club has been helping a base member navigate a difficult domestic situation. This worker and their three children have been living under constant stress from the abuse of another family member who is seeking to evict them from their home. But we’re committed to not let that happen.

To help support them, we’ve helped our base member contact lawyers who are knowledgeable and willing to take on her case. We’ve initiated some fundraising efforts to help raise money to retain the lawyer, which rarely comes cheap. We’ve accompanied them to the court hearings to make sure they feel supported in that intimidating atmosphere. And we’ve made house visits to help prepare dinner, play games with the children, and try to help them take their minds off the situation for a while.

Admittedly, these aren’t the flashiest actions but are nevertheless crucial to the movement and type of world that we want to build. As communists, we push to understand and explain how the countless daily attacks confronting the working class are rooted in a class society that lives off exploitation, while dehumanizing workers and treating us all as expendable. None of this abuse, whether it comes from an intimate partner or the bosses, can be fully understood without considering how capitalism functions.

To this end, the personal is political, and vice versa. These smaller actions are connected to the class struggle, and we seek to model how the working class in a communist society would handle problems differently. There are no actions we can take that are too small to win ourselves and others into the lifelong fight for a communist world. 
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Enough! March vs. State violence

In the October 29th issue of CHALLENGE, we shared the news of the disappearance of Abril, a worker beloved in her community of Álvaro Obregon, Michoacán. Her car was burned. The evidence suggests kidnap and sexism. There was a sit-in in the capital. Now, the violence in the community has increased to a new level. The municipal president of the community of Uruapan (very close to Álvaro) was shot to death. He was an independent candidate (previously MORENA the new reformist and capitalist party) and he demanded more resources from the national government for local security many times. President Claudia Scheinbaum, MORENA, and the national government were ineffective. They provided few resources for the search for Abril in spite of making propaganda that they care about disappearances and femicides. Scheinbaum is a capitalist first, and gender doesn’t matter. They live to protect the profits;. They cannot mobilize the masses as a class to fight sexism. This would be a profound threat to the profit system. We cannot depend on the capitalist state to defend workers like Abril. They don’t even protect officials. It is the same bosses and their profits that are the root of the violence, and the state protects them. It is protection from the power of the workers.

Early this month, workers all over Mexico marched for:  a

1. the assassination of Uruapan Michoacán Municipal President Carlos Manzo
2.  the lemon farmer from Apasingan Michoacán Bernardo Bravo 
3. Homero Gomez Gonzalez guardian of the butterfly monarch sanctuary 🦋 in Uruapan Michoacán. 
4.  Abril
5.  the 43 Students of Ayotzinapa Normal.
6. all the disappearances in General. 
7.  all the mothers searching.
8.  the youth.
9.  the women. 
10. the Children.
10. the murders.
11. The extorted. 
12. education.
13. medical care.
14. Above all for a free México that is already tired of all the impunity.

To say enough! We are tired of this rotten government. We combine various social issues in our demands because they are all related to violence, which originates in the same capitalist system. We also remember that the working class has to seize state power. No government serving the capitalist class can protect the lives of the masses. 
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‘Nuremberg’ exposes U.S. fascism’

The movie Nuremberg with Rami Malek was based on historical events concerning Nazi fascist Herman Goring, one of the architects of WWII and the Holocaust. U.S. Army military psychiatrist, Dr. Douglas Kelley, was assigned to interview Goring in preparation for the Nuremberg Trial. The events up to and during the trial exposed the internal political contradictions of capitalism and imperialism. Dr.Kelley said to Goring “There are rules in war about bombing factories and civilians, but you just can’t slaughter an entire race in death camps!” (But it’s ‘ok’ to do it with military  bombers?) Goring counter argued “And you Americans dropped an atom bomb on a Japanese city vaporizing people!” The then communist led USSR under Stalin’s leadership had a policy  of not bombing enemy civilians  because it was considered anti-working class. When Goring  was put on trial, on the witness stand, he said nationalist  garbage was no ‘different’ than Trump’s  ‘Make America Great Again’  trash. Toward the end of the movie, Dr.Kelley tried to warn America that what Hitler and Nazis did could happen in the U.S., and on that note, he was right! As long as capitalism exists, when it’s in crisis, the bosses will turn to strong arm fascism to attack workers, like America’s gestapo, ICE. Only a  communist revolution, to destroy global capitalism by workers led by the Progressive Labor Party (LP), can eliminate fascist terror.
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Capitalist condemns young workers turning to communism

NY Times, 11/12–...In the wake of the financial crisis and Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party and Thomas Piketty, it seemed the country was preoccupied with the matter of the haves and the have-nots…The simplest conventional measure of inequality, called the Gini index, is higher today than at any point in modern American history except for a peak in 2018-19 …As the great American anti-egalitarian Peter Thiel put it last week, reflecting on the election results, “If you proletarianize the young people, you shouldn’t be surprised if they eventually become communist.” 

Border Patrol expands surveillance of U.S. driver

AP, 11/20–The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious…The Border Patrol’s predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement…Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries, the Border Patrol’s surveillance system stretches into the country’s interior and monitors ordinary Americans’ daily actions…

ICE detainees turning up dead

Newsweek, 11/18–A Chinese immigrant was found dead in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, with his hands and feet tied behind him, an attorney has alleged. Chaofeng Ge died four days after entering ICE custody in Pennsylvania …he was found by agents with “a cloth ligature around his neck”...As detention numbers have spiked within ICE facilities under the Trump administration, deaths have also begun to rise. At least 15 immigrants died within ICE facilities, or while under their care, under this administration, compared to 12 for the entire fiscal year 2024…

Hungary and U.S. ok Nazis and chase antifascists

The Intercept, 11/15–Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government launched a continentwide manhunt when a group of European antifascists attacked a neo-Nazi rally three years ago. Orbán, though, showed no such appetite for cracking down on the annual fascist rally, which this February drew attendees sporting SS patches, swastikas, and the “Totenkopf” death’s head symbol — all under the watchful eye of Hungarian police. The aggressive response to antifascist activists, compared to the kid-gloves treatment of neo-Nazi demonstrators, has roiled European politics for years…Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined the fray, inserting the U.S. into the debate by declaring the antifascist group that attacked the 2023 rally a terrorist organization.

Liberals and Trump united on desiring war

Foreign Affairs, 11/20–...CBS’s 60 Minutes asked U.S. President Donald Trump about his policy on Venezuela and his thoughts about that country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro. “Are Maduro’s days as president numbered?”...“I would say yeah,” Trump replied. “I think so, yeah”...The use of American military force to overthrow Maduro would not be without risk. It could fail to end the Maduro regime and could incite demonstrations against the United States. But regime change would not require any ground deployments of U.S. forces except, at most, Special Forces raids against regime figures who have already been indicted for narcoterrorism by U.S. law enforcement. The potential gain for the United States from the collapse of the Maduro regime far outweighs the risk…

Despite German workers’ disgust, bosses restart weapons shipments to Israel

Al Jazeera, 11/24– Amnesty International has decried the German government’s decision to lift a partial arms embargo on Israel, calling the move “reckless” and “unlawful”. Germany responded to mounting domestic pressure in August to ban nearly all arms sales to Israel. That came as Israeli forces moved ahead with a controversial ground operation in Gaza City…Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International…said “now is absolutely not the time to ease this pressure”. “Germany’s decision to lift its partial suspension of weapons shipments to Israel is reckless, unlawful and sends entirely the wrong message to Israel: that it can continue committing genocide, war crimes, and apartheid against Palestinians…”

The full pamphlet is available via the link at the bottom!

For two years, the genocidal destruction of Gaza by the U.S. and Israeli bosses has horrified workers around the world. The Zionist regime used bombing of homes and infrastructure, mass starvation and disease to kill and displace as many Gazans as possible. According to Nature more than 84,000 workers in Palestine had been killed in Gaza by January 2025,¹ and the medical journal Lancet estimated the real number of deaths to be at least 186,000 as of July, 2024, or 3-15 times the official number.²

The “peace” deal unfolding as we write this in October, 2025 will subject Gazans to ongoing occupation and subjugation as the Israelis, the US and local Arab regimes unite to continue the exploitation of Palestinians and resources. Nor is there any guarantee that this ceasefire will hold. Israel agreed to such a proposal in early 2025, but on March 17 launched brutal airstrikes that claimed the lives of over 400 Gazans, the majority of whom were women and children. In the West Bank (WB), Israel has killed about 1000 Palestinians as of July, displaced nearly 40,000, has arrested over 14,000, and is expanding settlements as part of a planned annexation of the entire area.^3,4 Beyond Gaza, Israel’s top fascist, Benjamin Netanyahu, unilaterally ordered assassinations, exploded booby-trapped pagers in open markets in Lebanon, and carpet bombed Iran, Lebanon and Syria.

Across the globe, masses of workers have increasingly cried out in solidarity with their sisters and brothers in Gaza. In demonstrations large and small, chants and signs condemned Israel and its U.S. backers, who have supplied tens of billions of dollars in every variety of weapon and war machine to fuel this imperialist massacre. Even many international agencies, Israeli humanitarian organizations, and European governments labeled the Zionist slaughter a genocide. When the Israeli regime bombed Doha, Qatar last month, even Arab regimes that have allowed the Zionists to kill Palestinian workers with impunity, began to object. Now they will cooperate with Israeli and US rulers to “peacefully” dominate Palestinians. The unwavering support that they, like Biden and Harris, provided to Israel will indict them in the history books as collaborators in mass murder. Under the open fascism of Trump, genocide is now openly supported by the U.S.

Netanyahu – and the rest of the world – knows that Israel is key to U.S. foreign policy and U.S. imperialism. By controlling the Middle East and its vast fossil fuel resources and trade routes, the U.S. controls the global oil trade underpinning the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. But where a U.S./Israeli alliance used to project strength and power, it is quickly isolating the U.S in world opinion and threatening to pull the U.S. military into the quagmire of war. Donald Trump and his fascist cabinet are continuing the longstanding U.S. imperialist tradition of enabling Israel’s so-called ‘right to defend itself.’ Just weeks ago, Trump greenlit this latest genocidal attack by approving billions more in military aid, which now totals over $20 billion since 2023,⁵ as Israel is still not deviating from its goal of taking over all of the occupied territories.

China and Russia, the biggest capitalist rivals of the U.S., are moving in to make missile and technology deals with Iran and to challenge the dominance of the U.S. dollar.⁶ They are building ever larger ties with Saudi Arabia for oil in exchange for billions of dollars in weapons and technology.⁷ Capitalism is based on competition over which bosses can best exploit the working class and reap the biggest profits. All capitalists, large and small, must expand to become the top dog, or die. Against a global backdrop of inter-imperialist rivalry, shifting power dynamics among the U.S, China and Russia, along with sharpening regional instability, this powder keg threatens to explode into World War III.

Whenever and however World War III begins, capitalist bosses, large and small, will call on workers to line up behind one national flag or another to kill and be killed in battles to determine which of them will control the world’s lands and resources. In many of the demonstrations against the U.S-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, people wave Palestinian flags and chant for a free Palestine. But there can be no freedom for workers in Palestine or any place in the world under capitalism. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with workers’ fightbacks against genocide and fascism, but we must struggle to make it a fight against imperialism and capitalism.

We abhor all misleaders who divert workers’ fury into nationalist fervor and use it as cover for their own brand of capitalism. All nations today are run by capitalists, and a fatal mistake of the old communist movement was caving in to nationalism, uniting with “lesser evil” capitalists and abandoning revolution for workers’ power in favor of capitalism run by local bosses. The leaders of Hamas and Fatah, who do not have state power, also divert workers’ fury into nationalist fervor, and use it as cover for their own brand of capitalism.

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) rejects the division and pillage of the world and the working class for the wealth and profit of the capitalist class. The International working class has no nation! Like the communists in Russia during World War I (WWI) and the communists in China during the 1940s, the working class of the world today can and must turn imperialist war into communist revolution. Although it is imperative to examine why those revolutions devolved back to capitalism, we must learn from mistakes of the past and strive to build a communist world led by and for the workers of the world.

In this pamphlet, we will examine how capitalist/imperialist competition led to the creation of Israel, why the alliance between the U.S. bosses and Israel highlights the growing weakness of U.S. imperialism, and how nationalism has continuously proved deadly for the working class.

Imperialist Competition Created Israel

For several hundred years before WWI, present day Palestine and many other Middle Eastern countries were part of the Turkish Ottoman empire. When oil, first discovered in the region in the early 1900s, became the world’s major industrial and military fuel, capitalists in Europe and the U.S. took increasing interest in control of the area and its vast resources. During WWI, the most powerful Western imperialist, Great Britain, encouraged nationalism among various Arab groups previously exploited by the Ottoman empire and enlisted them to fight with Britain against Turkey and Germany. In exchange, Great Britain held out the promise of a Pan-Arab independent state after the war.

At the same time as they were promising a state to the Arabs, the British promised a national home in Palestine to the Zionists in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Under the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), they also promised to divide Arab lands amongst their WWI allies. Post war, the British kept only the last two promises. Support for a pan-Arab country was quickly replaced by the creation of smaller colonies: Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, Egypt, and Kuwait, all controlled by Britain, and Syria and Lebanon, controlled by France.

Before Palestine became a British Mandate, it was occupied by diverse groups of Jews and Arabs, many of whom were farmers and herders. Some of the Jews living in Palestine, about 5% of the total population, had emigrated from Russia and Europe to escape the brutal anti-Jewish racism of tsarist pogroms and intense marginalization of Jewish workers throughout Europe. Some were inspired by a nascent Zionist movement. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, capitalists encouraged nationalism to solidify the development of nation-states and colonial and imperialist control of resources around the world. Within this context, the Zionist movement grew.

The leadership of the Zionist movement came from the petit bourgeoisie (small bosses) and the educated elite. The British bosses supported the Zionist leaders’ call for mass emigration of Jews to Palestine because they believed that a large group of middle-class Europeans could provide military and political support against the demands of Arab nationalism. The Zionists, too, favored the immigration of more well-off Jews over Jewish workers to populate their future state of Israel. One example of a Zionist ploy to favor wealthy Jews in Hungary in 1944 was a bargain with the Nazis to select which richer Jews would be allowed to escape to Palestine. Thousands of Jewish workers were then sent to the gas chambers, having been told the lie that the trains were headed to a fictitious resettlement camp.⁸

The Israeli state was created by the United Nations in 1948, following massive Jewish immigration in response to Nazism. The U.S. and Britain would allow only a trickle of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust to enter their own countries before, during, and after World War II, so many thousands were forced to go to Palestine even though they would have preferred to go west. With Israeli statehood granted, the Zionists were anxious to build their population and an army to defend the new country. They not only welcomed more Holocaust refugees than the U.S. but also encouraged immigration of Jews from other Middle Eastern and North African countries.⁹

When statehood was granted, the Jews were given 55 percent of the land, including the best water supplies, although they owned only six percent of the land at the time and comprised 30 percent of the population. The Arabs objected to the unfairness of this plan, as did the Zionist leadership, who wanted all of Palestine. The Zionist rulers began a long-planned program of terrorization and forced displacement of 700,000-900,000 Palestinians, six out of seven Arabs who then lived in what is now Israel. This process was facilitated by a secret deal with Jordan, the only well-armed Arab state, which was rewarded with Jordanian control of the West Bank. Many of the refugees were forced into what are now the West Bank and Gaza, while others fled to neighboring countries. To Palestinians this ethnic cleansing is known as the Nakba, or catastrophe.

Today, Zionist rulers and their followers continue to use the trauma of the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews as justification for their genocidal, apartheid system. Instead of viewing the Holocaust as one of the worst examples of how a capitalist ruling class used racism to explain away capitalism’s flaws to maintain power, they call it the worst example of the anti-Semitism that is supposedly embedded in all non-Jews. Instead of comparing the Nazi Holocaust to the deportation and mass killing of 12 million Africans as slaves or the murder of 1.5 million Armenians by Turks, or other historical examples, they portray the Holocaust as an event apart, which can only be solved by Jews establishing a state where they have absolute power. To the religious, Zionists preach that God gave Israel to the Jews thousands of years ago, that Jews are God’s chosen people. From an early age, they indoctrinate Israeli children with hatred of Arabs and glorification of the Israeli military, in which all must serve.¹⁰

In Palestine, before the mass Jewish immigration of the early 1900s, the Jewish population lived peacefully with their Arab neighbors even as anti-Jewish pogroms raged in Europe. But even the earliest Zionists knew that the indigenous population would have to be removed to create a Jewish state. Despite recruiting immigrants to Palestine in the late 1800s by claiming it was empty, Zionism’s founder Theodor Herzl declared the need to be rid of Palestinians, be it by extermination or displacement.¹¹ This sentiment was echoed by the first Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion – “I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it” – and all ruling politicians since.¹² It is clear that Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the increased violence in the West Bank is an attempt to finally make this wish come true.

U.S. Cold War Foreign Policy

At the close of WWII, the U.S. organized its foreign policy around the economic advantages of rebuilding Europe, securing control of Middle Eastern oil, and the strategic need to contain the spread of Soviet influence. From the 1930s onward, U.S. oil companies took control in Saudi Arabia. Post-war, the U.S. engineered coups in Iran and Iraq and made deals with nationalist leaders in Egypt and Syria. In all of these countries U.S. efforts were helped by local nationalists, who sided with the U.S. against the British, hoping the U.S. would be a kinder partner.

Balancing its interests in oil and in the containment of Soviet influence, the U.S. under Truman quickly offered formal recognition of Israel, but not military support. Israel, at first, was careful not to openly favor either the Soviet Union or the U.S., and Truman was careful not to offend the Arab countries as many, including Egypt, accepted military aid from the Soviet Union. Maintaining positive relationships with Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations was crucial to U.S. economic interests.

It wasn’t until Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion succeeded in weakening pro-Soviet support within Israel and expressed support for the U.S. during the Korean War that Israel signaled its willingness to serve as a U.S. defender against Soviet influence in the region. Still, the U.S. was reluctant to abandon any Arab states to full Soviet influence and withheld military aid from Israel.^12a

Ultimately, the U.S. could no longer support Egyptian President Nasser’s Pan-Arab movement, and the U.S. fully committed to Israel. In 1967 Israel launched a victorious war, with U.S. support, to defeat the Pan-Arab movement. Egypt was driven out of Gaza, Jordan was driven out of the West Bank and Jerusalem, Syria out of the Golan Heights, and the longest military occupation of modern history began.

By 1969, the last British troops had left the Middle East, the U.S. became the greatest supporter of Israel, and by 1980 U.S. aid to Israel had become greater than that to the rest of the world combined. As Nixon’s Secretary of State Alexander Haig said: “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.”¹³ In 1980, President Carter declared in his State of the Union address that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests, defined as the free flow of oil in the Persian Gulf Region, a policy that came to be known as the Carter Doctrine.

After WWII, Israel was part of a triple base of support for the U.S. in the Middle East, which also included Saudi Arabia and Iran. In 1953, the U.S. directed a coup in Iran to replace the elected leftist government and place the Shah in power, but he was overthrown by an Islamic movement in 1979. Saudi Arabia has lately been waffling in its loyalties between the West and China. They recently signed a pact with Iran at China’s behest and have, as of yet, refused to sign the U.S. sponsored Abraham Accords with Israel. Saudia Arabia and Israel were close to signing this “normalization” deal in 2023, but the Hamas October 7th attack and Israel’s subsequent genocidal scorched-earth military campaign in Gaza may have foiled any future peace between the two rivals.¹⁴

In 1993, Israel agreed to deal with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the political leaders of Palestinians, and an accord was signed in Oslo. A new “independent” Palestinian Authority (PA), under control of the local branch of the PLO, Fatah, was established to administer the West Bank, but Israel maintained complete or partial control of over 80% of the territory. Although the PA became responsible for services like health and education, two thirds of their revenue and all the movement of goods and people would be controlled by Israel, which persists today. The PA also cooperated with Israel on security, mostly to control anti-Zionist uprisings. The West Bank now contains nearly 700 internal and border checkpoints, through which Palestinians require a permit to cross and are subject to long waits and searches. Israel also built many Jewish settlements in the West Bank, that have now grown to over 600,000 inhabitants. Recently the Israeli government has expressed its intention to annex the entire West Bank and is planning settlements to cut off Palestinians from the capital, Jerusalem.¹⁵

As the crisis of capitalism leads to sharper splits among the bosses, the working class is going hungry. The 42 million workers and children in the U.S. who rely on the federal Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (also known as food stamps) are collateral damage of this conflict. Malnourished children are the pawns in the capitalist rulers’ vicious combat for supremacy. The government shutdown that began October 1 is just the latest battleground in the war between the  Donald Trump-fronted, Fortress America Small Fascists and the Democrat-fronted, finance capital Big Fascists. On November 1, Trump doubled down and refused to fund SNAP benefits for the people most impoverished by capitalism.

While it appears that the shutdown is ending and recipients will eventually get their paltry assistance, the threat to SNAP shows once again that capitalism is unable to provide for even the most basic needs of the working class.

The U.S. bosses’ cruel attack reflects their desperation amid rising inter-imperialist rivalry and a worldwide crisis of the capitalist system. While Trump is the face of the cuts, the Democrats have also done their share to starve the working class.

Capitalism can’t feed workers

As the bosses’ battle descends into fascism, food is getting ever harder to come by. Trump’s racist cruelty aside, this is not a new phenomenon. 

As inflation shot up under the Joe Biden administration, lines at food pantries swelled with first-time clients (PBS 7/14/22). Since then, with a steady rise in grocery prices, layoffs in major industries and the federal government, and most recently the shutdown, the food bank system has come under even greater strain. Many organizations can barely find enough donations to feed those in line. Even if SNAP continues as before, hunger in the U.S. will keep increasing.  A system that can’t guarantee the most basic benefits is a system fundamentally failing.

Recipients of SNAP live at or close to the poverty level, with typical income of about $2,700 per month for a three-person household. Black workers are hit particularly hard by hunger under capitalism. One of four SNAP recipients are Black, nearly double the percentage of the Black population in the U.S. But millions of white workers and families also live at a subsistence level, including more than a third of those eligible for SNAP.

The food stamp program was established during the 1930’s, when unemployment was so high that workers couldn’t afford to buy all the food produced on U.S. farms. As millions joined a mass communist movement, the U.S. bosses feared rebellion and revolution. Food stamps were part of a package of government reforms known collectively as the New Deal. From the start, they were a Band-Aid; they were never intended to solve the problem of hunger under capitalism. Nearly a century later, capitalism is doing no better at providing workers with a secure or decent life. Currently, one of every eight people in the U.S. depends on SNAP. The richest nation in the world has a perpetual hunger crisis.

Production for need, not profit

Communism puts the needs of the working class first, with food produced to feed people. But under capitalism, everything—food, shelter, health care—is produced for profit. People get adequately fed only insofar as it benefits the bosses—or if the workers fight for it.

Under capitalism, the working class is expendable. Starvation is just part of the territory.  Sometimes it grows out of the chaos of the bosses’ system, as with the reckless speculation that helped trigger the worldwide depression of the ‘30s. At other times, starvation is used by the capitalists to attack workers by withholding food, as the Israeli bosses have been doing in Gaza. In the Congo, South Sudan, Yemen, Haiti, Syria, Afghanistan, the Sahel, Sudan, Somalia, and Northern Ethiopia, over 125 million people are starving. The number-one cause is conflict between capitalist factions for control (World Food Program 6/25/24).

In the U.S., SNAP benefits keep people barely a step above starvation (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities).  Even these crumbs are under threat as the bosses, focused only on staying in power, are willing to let workers starve to death. As the billionaires rake in record profits on the stock market and billions are spent on wars across the globe, the $6 a day to feed workers and their children is deemed too much. Trump has proposed a requirement that able-bodied adults without children must work at least 80 hours per month to keep their SNAP eligibility. [See CHALLENGE on the One Big Beautiful Bill.] [JC1] Though the overwhelming majority of SNAP participants who can work already do (CBPP[JC2] , April 2025), withholding food to workers left jobless by the crisis of capitalism is a particularly brutal form of capitalist oppression.

The Democrats won’t set you free

Thirty years before Trump, President Bill Clinton led a bipartisan effort to destroy the meager safety net for workers already straining to make ends meet. Clinton was the first to add work requirements for welfare recipients. In language eerily reminiscent of the sign declaring, “Work will set you free” at the entrance to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, pundits call the Clinton-Trump reforms “dignity-enhancing work requirements” (Washington Post, 7/18).

Whether it’s fronted by Republicans or Democrats, capitalism always claws at the dignity and subsistence of the working class. Over the past 30 years, the net worth of the top 1 percent in the U.S. has increased sevenfold, according to NASDAQ (10/25), while the net worth of the bottom 40 percent has gone down! Under the Biden administration, inflation shot up and the number of SNAP recipients increased because so many individuals and families needed them for the first time (PBS 7/14/22).

Workers of the world deserve communism

Under communism, access to food would be a basic human right. But human rights don’t exist under capitalism. The rise of food “insecurity”—a nicer-sounding word than hunger-- in the U.S. is even worse for workers around the world. But the causes are rooted in the same desperate drive for profit. The struggle against capitalism and for communist revolution is literally a life-and-death struggle for the working class. Fight for a world without hunger! Join Progressive Labor Party!