Last month Russian President Vladimir Putin played host to more than 40 African heads of state. The summit solidified Russia’s growing presence and stronghold over the region, filling a vacuum left by a retreating U.S.
Just as the U.S. withdrawal from Syria left an opening for Russian troops to assert their military foothold, this week taking control of a former U.S. airbase in northern Syria (CBS News, 11/17), openings in Africa have provided in-roads for Russia’s growing global power.
As splits in the U.S. ruling class and the domestic wing’s control of the White House continue to give way to Fortress America policies, Russia has set its sights on the African diamond trade, seizing opportunities to flex economically, militarily, and most recently through cyber warfare. This growing instability and modern-day arms race is a flashing alarm that world war is looming.
The path to political gain is paved In natural resources
Madagascar, seemingly insignificant to Russia, was a hot bed for Russian meddling during the island’s 2018 presidential elections via time, support, money, and cyber influence.
Prior to the election a Russian company acquired a major stake in a government-run operation that mines chromium, a mineral valued for its use in stainless steel (New York Times, 11/19) explaining Russia’s new-found interest in the region. Chromium, is a relatively rare yet coveted mineral, with South Africa claiming up to 70 percent of the earth’s reserves (Engineer Live, 6/18). Madagascar has one of the world’s largest reserves of ilmenite (titanium ore), as well as important reserves of coal, iron, cobalt, copper and nickel.
Mica, another profitable mineral found in Madagascar, is currently being mined by “children as young as four years old performing long hours of labor-intensive work in often dangerous conditions to collect a mineral whose price will be inflated nearly 500 times by the time it leaves Madagascar’s shores” (NBC News, 11/19).
Imperialist gains over
workers lives
Madagascar’s working class faces unacceptable living conditions, unemployment, inadequate health care, poor access to food and economic resources, and severe power and water outages that have led to wide-spread riots and civil conflict since 1947 (Washington Post, 7/19).
The village of Andranondambo, known for its sapphire and mica deposits, is home to some of the most exploited members of our working class. NBC News calls the region “a 19th century slave trading center, where 75 percent of the population now lives on less than $1.90 a day” (NBC News, 11/19).
As in all capitalist countries, the state continues to hold power yet no responsibility for the living conditions of its workers. The sham of elections continues to play a central role in maintaining control of profits never seen by workers and Russia, keen to benefit from Madagascar’s rich physical land, saw an opportunity to gain political influence. Financially, Russia is still no match for China and the U.S., who both have billions of economic investments in the continent (NYT, 11/19), moving Russia to rely on back-room tactics.
Russian influence in Madagascar began in early 2017, ahead of the 2018 elections. The operation was directed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman and close adviser to Putin. Prigozhin was indicted in the U.S. last year, after being accused of information warfare and disrupting the 2016 election (NYT, 9/19).
Until Russia can surpass its global rivals financially, it has found a way to flex its power in the form of providing fringe political leaders an edge through meddling tactics, learned from the U.S.
A member of Prigozhin’s team wrote in an email: “’Russia should influence elections around the world, the same way the United States influences elections. Sooner or later Russia will return to global politics as a global player and the American establishment will just have to accept that”(NYT, 11/19).
Russia’s collusion efforts in Madagascar, unlike their U.S. meddling, is not about upending a global rival, but rather about profit (NYT 11/19). After a number of shifts in candidate support, Russia retained their ultimate goal: control over the chromium operation in Madagascar. Russia now maintains “a staff of 30 in the country, including engineers and geologists and the contract gives them a 70 percent stake in the venture” (NYT 11/19).
Under capitalism world leaders and super powers will always have their eyes on profit. Global watchdogs, election meddlers -- whatever they may be called, are tools of state power to control means of production and rob workers of their power. The only solution for the international working class to control and use the world’s resources sustainably for our own benefit is to destroy capitalism-imperialism by means of a mass PLP. Workers in Madagascar and everywhere: build the communist Red Army and organize for revolution!

The liberal fascist Peronist Party regained power in the October 27 Argentinean elections, as workers once again had to choose between two anti-working-class options. In this case, “center-left” president-elect Alberto Fernandez beat the free-market incumbent, Mauricio Macri. Fernandez made vague nationalist promises to reform his way out of a worsening recession and out-of-control inflation. It’s just the latest capitalist crisis in Argentina. Regardless of which political party happens to be in power, one thing is sure: the working class gets screwed.
Back on top, for the moment, is Vice President-elect and former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the Peronists’ star populist stooge. She will take office facing 11 cases of alleged bribery, embezzlement, and money laundering. In one case, her former chauffeur testified that he stashed 40 bags of money “in the mausoleum of Mrs. Kirchner’s late husband and predecessor, Nestor, who died in 2010” (Telegraph, 10/27).
From the U.S. to China, from Ecuador to Honduras to Haiti to Iraq, the bosses are mounting “anti-corruption” campaigns to discipline their ranks and contain workers’ anger. But since capitalist relations are rooted in individualism, it’s impossible for the ruling class to completely stamp out self-interest. Moreover, capitalism is based on the theft of the value of workers’ labor. It’s inherently corrupt from the jump! Cristina Fernandez steals—whether legally or illegally under the bosses’ laws—because that is what capitalists do. As one disillusioned former Macri voter told the New York Times, “I know they are all thieves, and I’m fed up of standing by while they all steal from me” (10/27).
Only a communist revolution can put an end to the bosses’ criminality. Only communism can create a society run by and for workers—without money or exploitation, racism or sexism, imperialist rivalries or imperialist war. Only communism can point the way forward for the international working class.
The Pink Tide of poverty
In 2003, on the heels of an economic collapse triggered by the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund, Nestor Kirchner came into power. He rode the Latin American “Pink Tide,” the same capitalist reform movement that elevated Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Argentina’s “left-wing” Peronists were elected after pledging to boost social spending and to end the austerity packages tied to massive loans from the IMF. Kristina Fernandez de Kirchner succeeded her husband as president in 2007 and was re-elected four years later.
For a time, conditions for workers in Argentina improved. Millions benefited from a new universal welfare program. More money was spent on pensions and unemployment benefits. Meanwhile, the Kirchners clamped down on the country’s “traditional powers,” including landowners and mainstream media, while subjugating judges and legislators. They subjugated the country’s judges and legislators while tightening the state’s control over industry—all hallmarks of rising fascism (Stratfor, 4/9/13). Meanwhile, their administrations took bribes for favors from industrialists like Paolo Rocca, “head of the conglomerate Techint Group and one of Argentina’s richest men” (New York Times, 8/25/18).
In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, the Kirchners’ protectionist, high-tariff policies no longer worked so well. As soy and beef prices plunged, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner cut back government spending and social services, which triggered mass layoffs. By 2015, her last year in office, “inflation levels were so high that Kirchner’s government had altered official statistics” and “roughly a third of the population lived in poverty” (New Yorker, 8/28).
In the profit-driven chaos of capitalism, any gains made by workers are invariably limited and short-lived.
Fake-left frying pan, imperialist fire
Once the Kirchners’ economic “miracle” lost its sizzle, the pro-market Macri campaigned on a “zero poverty” pledge and won office in 2015. He proposed widespread privatization and went all-in for foreign investment, heavy debt, and ultimately a $57 billion bailout from the IMF, the largest loan in that bloodsucking organization’s 73-year history (Telegraph, 10/27).
Macri had wide support among business owners and big farmers, two sectors that have made China the country’s second largest trade partner, surpassing the U.S. “Chinese investments in Argentina have multiplied in … mining, oil and gas, hydropower, nuclear energy, solar energy, biodiesel, transportation, telecommunications and electronics” (Argentine Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship, 2017). Most recently, amidst the U.S.–China trade war, the two countries struck major commodity export deals, a loud warning to the U.S. of China’s growing influence in Latin America (Reuters 9/10).
As favored bosses flourished, workers in Argentina found the new Macri reforms an even bigger disaster than the old Kirchner regime. When foreign investors failed to arrive, and the U.S. Federal Reserve hiked its interest rates, the peso lost more than half its value. The country’s poverty rate is up to 35 percent, and 52 percent for children under 15 (Buenos Aires Times, 9/30). Without the Kirchners’ lavish state subsidies, utility prices have gone through the roof. In September, thousands of protestors occupied downtown Buenos Aires to protest a food emergency. While Argentina is classed as “upper-middle-income” by the World Bank, it also ranks high for inequality, “slightly worse than the United States” (BA Times, 1/28/18).
As the Nazi-loving Juan Peron [see box], the notorious founder of Peronism, once said: “It is not that we were good, but those who came after us were so bad that they made us look good” (New Yorker, 8/28).
Latin America: hotspot for insurrection
Through much of Latin America, workers are taking to the streets in violent protest against decades of austerity, U.S. imperialism, and strangulation by the IMF. Massive demonstrations have broken out in Chile and Ecuador. A strike wave has erupted amid a challenged election in Bolivia. In Ecuador, protests against an end to fuel subsidies grew so intense that President Lenin Moreno fled Quito, the capital, and moved his government to the calmer city of Guayaquil.
As the history of Argentina shows, liberal bosses are the main danger. Capitalist reforms are deceptions that pave the way for fascism. The next global war is coming—and with it, sharper attacks on our class. As communists, we must support rebelling workers around the world. Most important of all, we must destroy capitalism with communist revolution, organized and led by the Progressive Labor Party. Join us!

*****

Founding fascist father
As Eva Peron became a media darling and self-styled champion of the impoverished working class, her husband, Juan Peron, helped many Nazis fleeing Europe after World War II to find a safe haven in Argentina. Among them were mass- murdering fiends like Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele. Peron also offered a haven for German profits that were generated by the Nazi war machine (NYT, 4/4/2005).
Though Argentina was technically neutral when World War II broke out, there was broad support for the Axis powers—in part due to the country’s large Italian and German communities, in part to a tradition of sanctioned anti-Jewish racism. Argentina refused Jewish immigration during the pre-war Nazi pogroms. Peron remained loyal to the defeated Third Reich throughout his presidency (1946-55 and 1973-74). He vehemently attacked the Nuremberg Trials, which held former high-ranking Nazis accountable for war crimes. He also worked with the Catholic Church to gain amnesty for refugee Nazis who’d settled in Argentina.

BROOKLYN, November 1— Over 1,000 protestors, including members and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP), illegally took to the streets of Brooklyn to fight the racist New York Police Department’s terrorism directed at Black youth in the subways. After marching in the streets for more than an hour, the protestors did a mass fare evasion action and took over one of the  busiest subway stations in Brooklyn while chanting “How do you spell racist? N-Y-P-D” and “No NYPD in the MTA!”
Cops protect profit
It’s inspiring to see workers and students break the bosses’ laws and attack racism with militant, multiracial unity. But it’s not enough to get the kkkops out of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). Police everywhere protect the bosses and their capitalist system, and racism is its backbone. Wherever fighting against police terror, we must also organize for communist revolution.
Liberal Governor Andrew Cuomo recently announced the hiring of 500 more cops to terrorize workers, particularly Black and Latin youth, for evading the $2.75 subway and bus fare. The MTA has plastered stations with messages that pit workers against one another and spread the lie that less fare evasion means better service.
While the MTA claims it will lose $260 million from fare evasion this year (CBS, 6/18), it plans to lay off 2,700 MTA workers (Daily News, 7/17) while splurging an additional $663 million on policing in the next decade (City and State NY, 10/28).
Capitalism criminalizes youth
The MTA spends $9 million every single day to pay back debt to Wall Street, some of which dates back a century or more (ny.curbed.com, 10/2018).  As shown by the recent installment of cameras in front of every turnstile in one Manhattan station, it is evident that the MTA cares about terrorizing workers more than providing quality transportation.
In late October, kkkops punched two Black teenagers during an altercation on a subway platform (The Hill, 11/1). In a separate incident, a teenager hopped the turnstile and was held at gunpoint by around a dozen kkkops who stormed his train car (The Huffington Post, 11/1). These incidents, along with the police murder of three Bronx residents earlier this month, sparked the uprising in Brooklyn.
The largely young and multiracial crowd chanted and gave speeches before taking the streets. Once in the streets, the march broke into a run at times, preventing the police from infiltrating the crowd. Bus drivers and motorists cheered us on. One worker carried a projector and projected phrases like “NYPD hands off our kids. Being broke is not a crime,” and “NYPD out of subway” in gigantic letters onto buildings. Calls to ban the police from the subways and the chant that “we keep us safe”contain seeds of communist ideas: workers do not need the bosses or police. We can organize a communist society that serves the needs of the working class and ends racism once and for all. This mass outpouring of rage demonstrated that years of liberal rule under Mayor Bill de Blasio have not extinguished the will of workers and students to resist racist police attacks.  
Liberal misleaders are trash
Despite these militant qualities, the march’s leadership displayed dead-end politics, including instructions to segregate the crowd, breaking its multiracial character. White marchers were asked to form a perimeter around the sides and rear of the march, allowing Black, Latin and Asian workers to lead. Our multiracial PLP group stuck together, rejecting the illusion that “whiteness” will protect us from a police attack. While a few white marchers tried to implement such folly, most marchers remained united. Young PLP members led our section of the crowd in chants like “NYPD, KKK, how many kids have you killed today?” and “If we don’t get it, shut it down!! Shut this racist system down.”  
When PLP chanted, “Don’t vote! Revolt!” some marchers joined us, but a large portion was reluctant. Instead, many protestors shouted “One solution! Revolution!” That’s what Bernie Sanders says. But his revolution involves voting and that’s far from revolutionary.Leaders of the march come from neighborhood mass organizations that will be the foot soldiers for mayoral candidates against de Blasio’s record of racist gentrification.
No election will change the reality of debt service, where the MTA funnels billions from the working class directly into the coffers of finance capital. Those who led today’s march allow militant youth to hold up signs saying “revolution” as long as the movement funnels back to the ballot box on election day.  To paraphrase Malcolm X, you don’t have a revolution by begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it.
Instead of voting let’s fight back through our mass organizations: on CUNY campuses, in our unions, and  in our churches against liberal Governor Cuomo and the MTA bosses racist attacks on workers and youth in the city. PL’ers will continue to raise the communist flag, and politicize  workers and students vis-a-vis lousy service, fare hikes, and the racist fare beating campaigns that criminalizes mainly Black and Latin working class youth.
Cannot vote in justice
Workers cannot vote our way to justice. We need a communist revolution. The working class built every inch of the subway; it should be ours. Through communist revolution, we can take it back and build a world run by the international working class: a world without police, without racism, and without profit. Join us.

October 4 marked the 83rd anniversary of a great battle against fascism — the “Battle of Cable Street” in London’s East End. In 1936, under communist leadership, British and immigrant workers broke the ranks of the cops, who protected the fascists, and smashed the fascist attempt to march and freely organize in working-class districts.
The constant communist-led, anti-fascist organizing over many years led to the understanding and empowerment of the working class. This battle also shows that the working class should never give in to nationalist leaders. Both Jewish and Irish community and religious leaders tried to convince the masses not to fight the fascists, fearful of “causing more problems.”
For 300 years, the East End of London had been the home of poor working class immigrants. In 1936 the area’s population was largely Polish and Russian Jewish, Irish Catholics and non-immigrant English workers.
In the midst of a severe depression, Sir Oswald Moseley’s Blackshirts movement (BUF, British Union of Fascists) was growing among the unemployed, white-collar workers and small businessmen. Moseley sent committed fascists into the East End to beat up and terrorize Jewish, made scapegoats for the economic crisis. On the streets, fascists would scream “kill the k….”
Ruling class funds the fascists
Many of Britain’s upper and ruling class funded the BUF. Some of Britain’s big newspapers, such as the Daily Mail, Evening News and Sunday Dispatch, promoted  the BUF. The recently crowned King Edward VIII had wealthy fascist friends in Britain, France and Germany. The police often turned a blind eye to the fascists’ beatings of Jewish workers.
Moseley decided to show his strength by marching 10,000 uniformed Blackshirts and thousands of supporters directly through the Jewish/Irish neighborhood. The police commissioner Sir Philip Game ordered his cops to support the march.
On October 4, 10,000 cops were assigned to protect Mosley’s fascists. The official Jewish “leadership” advised Jewish workers to stay indoors and not show aggressiveness towards the cops.
But up to 500,000 people from the East End and other parts of London came out to stop the fascist march. Communists and trade unionists, many themselves Jewish, led the attack on the fascists in the streets. At Cable Street, the police, armed with nightsticks, attacked, while mounted police charged the crowd. Horses stumbled because children were hurling marbles under their hoofs and bursting bags of pepper under their noses. Women threw the contents of chamber pots from windows.
The fascists screamed derogatory names for Jewish workers. But the people chanted, “They will not pass!”
Jewish, Irish dockers unite
The masses erected barricades. A truck was turned on its side to block the street; old mattresses, bricks and pushcarts were thrown on top. An Irish anti-fascist bus driver drove his double-decker bus across the road, forming a barricade between the police and the anti-fascists.
The army of fascists demanded the police escort them through the masses of workers. At Cable Street, the massive wall of workers held their ground and only backed off to pick up bricks or bottles to throw at the cops and fascists.
The fascists were under a constant hail of bricks, bottles and stones. Despite arresting over 100 anti-fascist fighters, still the police could not move the masses as they held the cops in a vise grip.
Eventually, the Police Commissioner canceled the BUF’s march. But now the police had to save them from being killed by the crowd. They attempted to escape. But the anti-fascists, waiting for them, shouted, “Get them!” and crashed through the police lines. They then chased the fascists out of London’s East End.
For days, people celebrated throughout London. The fascists continued to try to organize, but it was clear that workers wouldn’t be easily won to fascism.
Dare to struggle — Dare to win!