The premise of the Netflix original series Stranger Things began simply enough: a boy goes missing near a top-secret government laboratory. An adventure ensues as the teenage protaganists go on the hunt for answers, witnessing strange things along the way: supernatural forces, a top secret government experiment, and a girl with telekinetic powers.
The latest season is a celebration of retro consumerism and anti-communism. The storyline, set in the 1980s American Midwest, tells the tale that the greatest evil the working class has to face during an era of Reagonomics, Cold War imperialism, and rampant racism are Soviet Russians. Yet CHALLENGE recognizes that this storyline is a distorted version of history, far from the truth.
This current period, where U.S. imperialism is in decline and world war with China and Russia looms, a nostalgic look when the U.S. Empire still ranked supreme is helpful to the ruling class. The liberal ruling-class media loves to use anti-communism as a tool to build U.S. nationalism and anti-Russian ideas that can be used for war.
The Russian villain trope
Today’s public anti-Russian paranoia since the 2016 presidential election prepares society for a real conflict between these two imperialist powers. Seen through this lens, a show like Stranger Things is part of that war effort. The show is set at a time when anti-Soviet propaganda was as American as apple pie, a campaign spearheaded by the Democratic Party and its liberal media outlets. This  season mimics the anti-communist hysteria of the ‘80s, as seen in movies like Red Dawn (1984). The main difference between then and now is the relative decline of U.S. power.
The new season begins with capitalist USSR hitman Grigori and a room full of scientists, one that goes unnamed and another named Alexei, who goes on to become a class traitor and is seen peering into a glass with a machine behind it. Three men have been electrocuted by the Russians’ inadequate technology. The head scientist utters in Russian, “Comrade General, we are close. You can see our progress. We just need more ti—” his statement is cut off by Grigori who proceeds to lift the pitiful scientist by his neck and choke him.
The Russian men are downright evil towards the workers. That is NOT how communists roll. To top it off, the choice of using communist lingo among villains mocks the history. While the Soviet Union had already reversed into capitalism, it’s convenient for the capitalist media to build U.S. patriotism through anti-communist packaging.
The camera pans from the lab to the mountains of what’s assumed to be Russia. The head general and Grigori walk towards their private helicopter above a snowy, gray castle mounted with a waving communist flag. THIS is the headquarters of evil—far from the American suburbs filled with green pastures and segregated pools.  
A dangerous nostalgia for 1980s America
Stranger Things reflects a time when racist free-market economics was at its peak: “A free-market economic system can be both impossibly damaging to small businesses (see: the new arrival of the Starcourt Mall in Hawkins) and a preferable alternative to the authoritarian communism of America’s 1980s enemies” (The Atlantic, 7/4). This damage is evidenced by signs around town that read “Save Downtown, no to Mall.” One character, pitches a story about the displacement of small stores to the executives of their local newspaper but the all-male newsroom mocks her.
Beneath the center of impulse shopping, over-consuming and wage slavery the scene poses a greater threat—the Russian conspiracy. The danger of this message is that it misleads people to believe that Russia is exclusively linked with communism, and communism with terrorism.
Class betrayals
Another layer of this anti-communism is exhibited through Murray the Russian translator and Alexei. The journalist and the translator take Alexei hostage. These two become the best of friends as Alexei transforms and sells his loyalty to the Americans through 7/11 slushees, carnival games, and fast food. The joys of American consumerism can turn a cold-hearted Russian soft and move him in the “RIGHT” direction.
Erica, 10-year-old sister to protagonist Lucas doesn’t need to be turned since she already values U.S. capitalism. When characters ask Erica to spy on the Russians by climbing through an air duct, she mentions what she loves most about America—the free market system and makes her own demands for a lifetime supply of “U.S.S. butterscotch” ice cream. The only Black girl in the season is inexplicably pro-capitalist and anti-communist. Funny how the most exploited and oppressed under capitalism—Black woman workers—are portrayed as the biggest supporters of their own demise.
Who’s the monster?
The illusion of a nostalgic 1980s U.S. that Stranger Things sells must be broken. Without a proper criticism within the story, Stranger Things amounts to a cultural celebration of the U.S. as the ultimate anti-communist settlement and furthers that sentiment with its capitalistic pursuits.
Weeks after the series premiere, Baskin Robbins released a Stranger Things ice cream flavor campaign for the U.S.S. Butterscotch. How do we go from aliens and nostalgia-based fiction to capitalistic promotion? Let the ruling class tell it and the ‘threat’ is always external, never the system itself but in this case, it’s the Soviet Union, an otherworldly evil.
This connects to today’s present news as the ruling class, liberal politicians, and businesses are described as necessary evils while the real evil that’s promoted are the communists, and immigrants, here to only inflict violence against patriotic Americans and their values. Like most anti-communist propaganda, the evils that they attribute to communism are already alive inside capitalism. What Stranger Things is projecting as  the Soviet nightmare, is simply a reflection of the U.S.’s own capitalist culture.
Stranger Things started off as a show about monsters, but fails to call the real one out. As you watch the show, be critical of this propaganda and push back for the whole international working class.

Quito, Ecuador, October 9–Workers’ anger and frustration exploded in Ecuador, paralyzing the country from Quito, the capital city, to the Pacific coast, storming and occupying the parliment  building and sending President Lenin Moreno into hiding. These protests come after Moreno unveiled plans to impose austerity measures that threaten to plunge workers further into the abyss of poverty and capitalist exploitation. These massive protests across Ecuador demonstrate what the bosses fear most: workers, when organized and angry, have the power to bring the capitalist system to a screeching halt. However, absent communist politics and leadership, which Progressive Labor Party (PLP) strives to bring to these and all workers’ struggles around the world, workers will be trapped in a revolving door of dead-end reforms that bring with them more economic crises and swindles from liberal politicians.
Workers halt business as usual
The unpopular measure, a $4.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which many refer to as “el Paquetazo” or “Big Package,” includes a demand to end fuel subsidies. Gas prices have already soared to US$2.39 per liter from US$1.85, with diesel prices seeing a whopping 123 percent increase. The measures would also bring additional attacks on workers ranging from one days’ work without pay for all public employees, to staggering price increases for basic necessities such as food and clothing (Reuters 10/4).
The agreement sparked protests, which began with strikes from transportation workers. The protests spread like wildfire across the country, mobilizing thousands of indigenous groups and students and bringing business as usual to a standstill.
Workers violently clashed with cops, set tires and state property ablaze, staged work stoppages and suspended schools and municipal services. Workers are calling for a resumption of the subsidies and the end of the Moreno government. The police, whose job is to protect the bosses and their system, responded by attacking protestors, resulting in 477 arrests and one death (Telesur, 10/6).
Splits in Ecuador’s ruling class
The developments reflect the splits within Ecuador’s ruling class. When Rafael Correa, the previous president, came to power, he was able to pacify workers with limited reforms funded by oil revenue. Like the situation in Venezuela, when oil prices crashed in 2008, the illusions that the fake leftists like Correa and Chavez had built a workers’ paradise came crashing down – with help from U.S. foreign policy which sought to remove them. Unlike Maduro, who followed Chavez and moved to tie Venezuela’s economy closer to Chinese imperialists, Moreno’s response to the crisis has been to move closer to the U.S. This past May, he signed onto the Pacific Alliance, which Correa refused to join, locking arms with other faithful U.S. allies such as Colombia, Peru, and Mexico (Reuters 5/19). Meanwhile Maduro and Correa are calling for Moreno’s ouster.
Reject Ecuadorian Nationalism
Ultimately Ecuador’s ruling class is one of many pawns in the arena of inter-imperialist rivalry between U.S. and China, both of whom sought to buy allegiance from disparate sections of the Ecuadorean ruling class (and ruling classes throughout Latin America) through investments. Between 2005 and 2013, China accounted for 57 percent of all foreign investment in Ecuador (NYT, 7/15). As we have seen in neighboring Venezuela and in countries worldwide, choosing sides in the battle between rival capitalists, be they small-time local bosses or imperialist powers, is a deadly mistake for workers. Neither Moreno nor Correa, Maduro nor Guaidó (the U.S. puppet in Venezuela) represent a real, lasting solution for workers.
Turn reform into revolution
We salute these workers who bravely challenge the exploitation and oppression that capitalism has wrought upon them. Their militancy
and willingness to battle against the police and army is an inspiration to workers everywhere. Yet, these battles are for reforms—to return the country to a Correa-style social democracy. But we must realize that the shaky ground on which these reforms are built. When the economy crashes, as it always does under capitalism, the reforms vanish. We have seen it over and over again.
PLP seeks to take the fighting spirit so valiantly on display in Ecuador (and among auto workers in the U.S., and youth against climate change, and more), and combine it with communist politics and leadership. This is the key to the liberation of the workers of the world. Join us!

On September 14, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned Abqaiq and Khurais oil processing plants were attacked by drone and missile strikes of unconfirmed origin, disrupting five percent of global oil production and pushing rival imperialists closer to World War III. The latest conflict in the Middle East demonstrates the deteriorating influence of a fractured U.S. ruling class. It also reminds us how the fight over resources among the world’s competing capitalists leads to mass murder and displacement of workers.
Only by building an international revolutionary communist party, the Progressive Labor Party, can workers transform the next, inevitable, inter-imperialist war into the final class war against all bosses. Second to the labor power of the international working class, oil may be the rulers’ most lucrative commodity. Under the profit system, competing capitalist super-powers have repeatedly clashed over control of oil profits in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the capitalist bosses in Iran, under the banner of the poisonous ideologies of religion and nationalism, are struggling to regain control over their own oil production.
Under communism, we will write a different story. The leadership of the international working class will determine the development of energy resources, based on workers’ needs and the protection of the planet for future generations.
A changing world order
Since 2015, the criminal state terrorists of Saudi Arabia have been fighting the Iran-backed nationalist Houthi rebels in Yemen, a brutal conflict that has slaughtered an estimated 100,000 people, mostly civilians, through targeted airstrikes and epidemic famine and cholera (theguardian.com, 6/20). While the Houthis immediately took credit for the attacks, both the U.S. and Saudi bosses blamed Iran. In any case, the incident emboldens U.S. rivals and creates doubt among its allies. It reflects the U.S. bosses’ loss of influence in the region.
The old liberal world order, dominated by the U.S. ruling class since World War II, is under siege. The two closest U.S. allies in continental Europe are hedging their bets. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, citing the atrocities in Yemen, is refusing to lift an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia (Bloomberg, 9/17). French President Emmanuel Macron, in defiance of U.S. sanctions, has proposed a $15 billion line of credit to Iran (New York Times, 9/5). Both Germany and France have opted to remain in the nuclear deal brokered by ex-U.S. President Barack Obama—and which President Donald Trump withdrew from last year.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin followed up on missile system sales to Iran and Turkey by offering a similar deal to Saudi Arabia (Reuters, 9/16). In June, Putin declared that Iran would not be alone if attacked. The Russian bosses are clearly willing to play both sides and ready to capitalize on U.S. weakness.
Divided U.S. empire in decline
The seeming confusion among the U.S. bosses is a result of competing factions within the ruling class. The main-wing finance capitalists, representing the big banks and multinational oil companies, are committed to maintaining U.S. control over the oil-rich Middle East—with ground troops, if necessary, as well as multilateral alliances with the rulers’ historic allies. At the same time, the main-wing bosses realize they’re not nearly prepared for an all-out war with China or Russia. First they’ll need to force unity and discipline upon their own class; hence the looming impeachment of Trump. Then they’ll need to build a mass patriotic, multiracial, fascist movement within the working class.
Gen. Joseph Dunford, an Obama appointee and outgoing chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently warned that a sustained conflict in the Middle East would require the U.S. to divert more forces to the region from the Pacific theater, where it’s seeking to contain an ascending and expansionist China in the South China Sea and East China Sea. The main-wing bosses may need to keep their powder dry for a future conflict against their main rival for world dominance.
Meanwhile, the smaller domestic oil bosses, led by the Koch family and fronted by Trump and his Fortress America foreign policy, want to outsource the military policing of the Middle East to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They’re against paying heavy taxes for a future ground war—or even maintaining multilateral alliances like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). They’d prefer to rely instead on the U.S. nuclear threat and Air Force and Navy to protect their profits.
Despite some “locked and loaded” bluster early on, Trump was careful to downplay the prospect of war with Iran and indicated the U.S. would continue to rely on escalating economic sanctions. Four days before the attacks, Trump fired John Bolton, the “hard-power” national security advisor who’d pushed for military intervention against the Iranian regime. On September 20, Trump announced the deployment to the Persian Gulf of a token few hundred additional soldiers, on top of the 2,000 troops sent since June, along with air and missile defense equipment—a move that Defense Secretary Mark Esper characterized as “defensive” (npr.org, 9/20).
Imperialist war vs. communist revolution
Capitalist dictatorship—what the bosses call “liberal democracy”—means that millions of workers will continue to be killed or made into refugees by one crisis after the next. More than 70 million workers are currently displaced (UNHCR, 6/19). Three million have been forced to flee their homes in Yemen alone. This is the “collateral damage” of inter-imperialist rivalry. It’s one of many reasons the profit system must be smashed.
Inter-imperialist war represents the highest level of competition among bosses. It also spells fascist terror for workers. The last two world wars exposed the capitalists’ willingness to murder tens of millions of workers in their ruthless struggles over profit. But those wars also triggered two monumental communist revolutions, in the Soviet Union and then in China—the first times in history when the working class seized state power.
As communists in PLP, our historical task is to build on the foundation of those great class wars. Our role is to prepare workers throughout the world to break with nationalism and the bosses’ lethal ideas. Our job is to organize a mass, international movement of millions and build for communist revolution. Join us!

BOLINGBROOK, IL, September 21—“You’re not just fighting for you, you’re fighting for us! For everybody!”
This statement of solidarity was made by a Chrysler autoworker who had traveled hours to support a picket of General Motors (GM) workers outside a company parts distribution plant in Bolingbrook, Illinois. More working-class support is essential as the autoworkers boldly continue their strike against the racist and sexist capitalist bosses, which began on September 15 and includes up to 50,000 workers.
Comrades from Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in the Chicago area traveled to the Bolingbrook plant to show solidarity and to spread revolutionary communist politics. We put forth the line that  as workers we shouldn’t have to beg for crumbs from the bosses. Nor put our confidence in capitalist liberal politicians and union sellouts to save us. It’s the capitalist profit system that’s the problem, and communist revolution and international workers’ power is the solution!
Opportunistic politicians
Current Democratic Party candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are speaking out about the GM strike on their campaign trail to “court labour” and “in hopes of holding onto their support — and winning over those who flipped for President Trump in 2016” (NY Times, 9/22). While some workers have illusions about president Donald Trump’s support for autoworkers, they shouldn’t be fooled by the liberal politicians either.
At the heart of their reform, as represented by Warren and Sanders, is a desire to win workers to the long-term needs of a U.S. empire in decline, in the face of threats of rival imperialists China and Russia.
Workers report on horrid conditions
On the day of the strike a multiracial group of comrades arrived late in the morning to the picket, and were warmly received by 10 workers who were holding down the line. They gladly shared their experiences as working people with PLP.
The workers explained that the Bolingbrook plant is in fact a parts distribution center, which receives, packs, and ships replacement parts used in GM vehicles. There are roughly 80 workers, but most are under a “temporary” status, meaning that they don’t receive the same pay or benefits that more permanent workers receive. This divisive two-tier wage system is a major source of profits for the bosses, and is a main point of struggle that led up to the current strike.
The workers also shared horror stories of the work conditions inside this plant and others where they had worked. The work was described as very repetitive and physically demanding.
Multiracial solidarity
As one Black woman worker explained, “We’re working like slaves. People run around in there like chickens with their heads cut off.”
Another white worker stated, “I have two fake hips and carpal tunnel. I hope to make it to retirement in four years.”
This white worker actually did not work at the Bolingbrook plant, but came from another auto plant that was represented by the same United Automobile Workers (UAW) union. He understood the importance of workers showing solidarity, as he and his family had been forced to relocate to the Midwest after the bosses closed down the plant where he was employed in New York. Multiple workers in fact travelled from different plants and unions to support the picket on this day.
PL’ers and workers had conversations about the traps that the capitalist bosses use to divide the working class, including race, nationality, sex, and job status. The international working class is the force that creates all value. We are capable of organizing our class to meet our own collective needs. Everyone on the picket line took a copy of CHALLENGE.
Liberals mislead
Some workers were blatant about voicing their dissatisfaction with the UAW, and for good reason. The union leadership is notoriously corrupt, with a number of officials being caught accepting bribes from the auto bosses in 2017. Both current UAW president Gary Jones as well as former president Dennis Williams have both had their home raided by authorities looking for evidence (Detroit Free Press, 9/18).
Let’s consider the role of the union during the government bailout of GM, after the company filed for bankruptcy in 2009 following the financial crash. In exchange for some $50 billion in taxpayer money, the liberal U.S. President Barack Obama and his administration got the union to forfeit the right to strike through 2015, and give up automatic pay raises (Politifact, 9/6/12). Obama bailed out the bosses and hurt the workers. These concessions set the stage for the weakened position that auto workers find themselves today.
Fight like Flint, fight for communism
Undoubtedly the most successful autoworkers’ struggle in the U.S. was the 1936-7 sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan. During that struggle, thousands of workers, under the leadership of communists organizing within the UAW, occupied the factory and fought off the bosses for 44 straight days to win their demands (see CHALLENGE, 12/22/18). Autoworkers, fighters, and PL members should study the Flint strike to draw important lessons from it.
The biggest lesson here is this—to guarantee a decent life for our class, we can’t limit ourselves to shutting the system down for a day, a week, or even a year. We also can’t sell ourselves short by just accepting what crumbs the liberal politicians give in order to use us for their wars.
We need to do away with capitalism entirely, along with all its unemployment, racism, sexism, deportations, and war. PLP is that revolutionary force that unites workers’ struggles all over the world into a mass movement for communism! Join us!