The Donald Trump  wing of U.S. capitalist fascism is busy attacking a whole range of universities, firing, disciplining and silencing faculty who oppose the Israeli/U.S. genocide in Gaza (American Association of University Professors, 11/25).  Trump’s targets range from the presidents of big private colleges like Penn and Harvard, through tenured professors at major public colleges like California and Texas, to unprotected adjunct lecturers at mass-education universities, like the “Fired Four” at Brooklyn College (CHALLENGE, 10/29)). Protesting students, of course, have been attacked much harder, with arrests, beatings, jail and deportation.

Professors are fighting back through mass organizations like the AFT or NEA unions, the AAUP (Association of American University Professors), and CAHE (Coalition for Action in Higher Education). CAHE organized a national day of action last April 17 which held events that day on 200 campuses (LA Daily Post, 4/17). Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades in these organizations, which now have a growing record of fightback, are urging their members to go all the way to fight for communism.

Communism organizes knowledge for the working  class

Communist teaching and learning have been organized--and will be again--with mass worker participation and decision-making, to create science, art, history, music, literature, and philosophy by and for the entire working class, internationally. It is a long way from the current racist, capitalist, imperialist university to a university “of the whole people” across the globe! Maybe it would look nothing like the current socially isolated campuses, but be more integrated into workers’ lives both at work and at home, in a process of continuous teaching and learning for everyone. It would also allow and find the time for many to dig deeper into the full-time specialized training a workers’ world would need. Opportunities for all workers to deepen their special knowledge and ability to contribute at a higher level would be wide open and encouraged by the Party (Paul Gomberg’s concept of “contributive justice” as a corrective to the bosses’ racism, sexism, and contempt for the working class).

Communism promotes critical thinking by and for every worker

It is important for a communist party to bring the idea of fighting for communism to professors fighting back now against rising fascism. Fascism has always gone after critical thinking and anyone who practices it seriously. Liberalism is for it, but in a limited way. Communism is for a thorough, universal, collective deepening of critical thought, a high level of literacy, and a grasp of scientific knowledge throughout the entire working class, part of workers taking power, part of workers being in charge at last, part of enriching workers’ minds and unchaining their full creativity.

Liberal professors see these attacks as “discriminating against dissent” and undermining academic freedom to teach and learn, and have brought strong legal cases against the Trump regime, some of which might succeed. But capitalist liberalism is a dead end, the good-cop twin of bad-cop fascism.  While PLP unites with our liberal co-workers in this struggle, we insist on pointing out that it’s not just Trump, it’s capitalism. And we are seeing that many of our friends agree--even if they don’t yet see communism as the alternative.

Billionaires out of our classrooms!

The liberals are targeting billionaires like Marc Rowan, sun-god CEO of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, who wrote the Trump “compact,” a deal university administrators are supposed to sign with Trump to support his agenda. Rowan’s office building in Manhattan was blasted by an AAUP/CAHE/campus union rally on November 7. Penn’s Wharton Business School then announced Rowan would be replaced as board chair next year. No great victory perhaps--maybe Rowan just wanted to go lie in the sun?--but bosses do feel it when you bring a big loud picket line outside their window. It helps to feel a little of the power we will  have when we unite as the whole working class. PLP professors are doing our best to urge this growing mass movement in the direction of a mass communist party. It can happen here!

From New York City and Colombia to Burkina Faso and Palestine, nationalists claiming to challenge U.S. imperialism are once again having their moment in the sun—just as the U.S. renews threats to overthrow the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela (see editorial on page 2). U.S. imperialism, shaken by the rise of rival Russian and Chinese imperialism, is lashing out like a wounded animal. And yet everything these nationalists present as “new” for the working class is just the same old capitalism dressed up in modern clothes. In the 21st century, no one sold that package with more charisma than Maduro’s mentor, Hugo Chávez.

Today’s Latin American “Pink Tide” invokes the imagery of the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the 1970 election of Salvador Allende in Chile. But beneath their red banners, most of these projects have been rooted in the same 19th-century bourgeois liberal romanticism of José Martí and Simón Bolívar—and in the tradition of populist, developmentalist rulers like Juan Perón in Argentina and Rómulo Betancourt in Venezuela. All insisted they were on the side of the poor; all defended national forms of capitalism. None represented workers’ power.

After the communist-led defeat of fascism in World War II, the world’s colonial empires began to crumble. Millions of workers across Africa and Asia—often inspired by the Soviet Union and revolutionary China—rose up against centuries of European domination. But because the international communist movement failed to push these struggles toward genuine revolution (a process PLP analyzes in Road to Revolution III), post-colonial capitalism filled the vacuum. Wrapped in militant language, this new school of “developmentalism” disguised itself as socialism while keeping capitalist property relations intact.

Jawaharlal Nehru’s India became the model. Under the banner of “socialism,” Nehru promoted Import-Substitution Industrialization (ISI), using high tariffs and state planning to strengthen domestic capitalism and reduce dependency on imported goods. Limited welfare reforms lifted living conditions for millions who had suffered under British rule. But capitalism with welfare is still capitalism. That is why national liberation leaders across Africa, Asia, and Latin America—from the Non-Aligned Movement to later Pink Tide governments—won support from domestic capitalists and, eventually, became pawns in imperialist rivalries. In every case, without an international communist movement leading the working class, these projects were misled, co-opted, or crushed.

21st Century Socialism: Big Promises, Big Betrayal

For generations, Venezuela’s land and wealth were concentrated in the hands of families rooted in the old post-independence oligarchy. With some of the world’s largest oil reserves and rich agricultural potential, Venezuela was always a battleground between factions tied to U.S. interests and those seeking a more independent national path. By the 1980s, IMF-backed austerity set the country on fire.
Then came 1989: the Caracazo. A spontaneous uprising against fare hikes and budget cuts was met with police and military massacres that killed hundreds—possibly thousands—of workers. The Caracazo shattered the legitimacy of pro-U.S. political parties and became the gravitational center of all modern Venezuelan politics.

In 1992, a failed military coup led by Lt. Col. Hugo Chávez and fellow officers captured the imagination of millions. After prison, Chávez won the presidency in 1998, promising a “Bolivarian Revolution” funded by oil wealth and supported by alliances with Russia, China, and others. Ultimately, Chávez’s legacy was built on the illusion that a “multipolar world” could let Venezuela’s “21st Century Socialism” survive by maneuvering rival imperialisms against each other.

Mass mobilizations defeated the U.S.-backed coup attempt in 2002, and the simultaneous rise of allies in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Brazil accelerated the Pink Tide. Millions gained access to subsidized food, healthcare, electrification, and clean water. Internationally, Chávez’s fiery anti-imperialist speeches electrified youth disgusted by the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. For many, Venezuela looked like a genuine alternative.
But—as everywhere else—the content of this “socialism” left capitalism intact. Venezuela remained dependent on oil exports. When global prices crashed in the 2010s, the government could no longer finance its reforms. After Chávez’s death, Maduro inherited a collapsing economy, deepening shortages, and intensifying U.S. sanctions. His efforts to salvage the Bolivarian project have withered, leaving Venezuelan workers exposed once again to imperialist competition—with the threat of war growing by the day.

Progressive Labor Party’s task is to expose the false promises of nationalists and liberal reformers—from NYC’s Mamdani to Maduro to Colombia’s Petro—and fight for the only force capable of ending imperialism once and for all: communism.

CHICAGO, November 15 – Long live the October Revolution! Over 30 members and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) gathered in a local fieldhouse for our annual celebration of the working class seizing state power under communist leadership in 1917. Participants were treated to an afternoon filled with inspiring history, motivating speeches, collectivity and revolutionary joy.

This year’s celebration emphasized the pro-worker things that we stand for, including internationalism, social equality, and the working class cooperating to build and run society in radically better ways. The working class running society with these egalitarian politics is the only way to defeat capitalism and its rampant racism, sexism, and nationalism.

In the current climate, in the thick of capitalist decay and misery all around us, the fact that the communist Bolsheviks succeeded in leading millions of workers, youth, soldiers, and sailors to overthrow the capitalist bosses fills us with revolutionary optimism. It’s their revolutionary legacy – their incredible gains as well their many errors – that our Party strives to study, celebrate, and build upon as we grow our mass PLP to one day take power from the bosses again.

The working class transforms society

A comrade emcee kicked off the program with a brief background of the monumental October Revolution. For the first time in history, the working class overthrew the ruling class and set about building a society without exploitation of the many by the few. The newly formed Soviet Union covered approximately one-sixth of the Earth’s surface and helped inspire more revolutionary movements all over the world, including in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

The program then shifted to a more interactive segment, where we split up into smaller groups to visit three different stations, each with a posterboard presentation that covered what the working class was able to accomplish after gaining state power.

The three themes at each of the stations were confidence in the working class, collectivity, and material gains in workers’ lives by focusing on revolutionary gains in education, industry, and women’s health. PLP members at each station gave brief explanations of how these different fields were organized to serve the working class. Participants showed enthusiasm for these ideas and commented on what they would want in a communist society, including quality healthcare for all and better food in schools.

In the education section, it was highlighted that schooling was completely free to all students and encouraged them to think critically and to act collectively in figuring out solutions to problems, as opposed to the individualist and elitist approaches preferred in capitalist society.
The women’s health section emphasized how the Soviet Union was the first state to legalize abortion back in 1920, which ended up saving hundreds of thousands of women’s lives. Also shared was how childcare was collectivized, so women workers could more freely participate in social, political, and economic functions of the new workers’ state.

The presentation on industry showed how the Soviet Union was able to transform itself from a mainly agrarian society into a highly industrialized power in a short period through collective planning and action. Workers in industrial settings wielded more authority than ever in deciding how production would be organized. Beyond just raising the material wellbeing of workers across the board, communist methods were key in building the discipline and military output necessary to defeat the fascist Nazis in World War II.

Revolutionary speeches

After the presentations, it was time for the keynote speech. A comrade detailed her path of being won to join the Party through relationships she built with comrades over years. She encouraged everyone present to join the Party too, because like the Bolsheviks, we don’t stand a chance to defeat capitalism without having that mass organized force:

“We know that workers are the only ones who can save the working class and there needs to be much more organization. The Bolsheviks had to organize before the revolution – the revolution didn’t just happen out of nowhere. We need to do the same and we need people to join the Party to build a mass movement so that workers can again take state power.”

Following this comrade’s speech, we had two PLP members fresh off their experience describe their fightback with dozens of other health workers against the liberal fascists at the American Public Health Association conference and their defense of the Zionist genocide in Gaza (see CHALLENGE, 11/26). Another comrade spoke of her efforts organizing across the city with other workers to resist the fascist kidnapping of immigrant workers by the ICE Gestapo, a struggle that she referred to as the Civil Rights Movement of the present day, encouraging everyone to get involved.

We then capped the celebration off by singing the Internationale, the communist anthem that helps bind all our struggles together across the planet. Capitalism is an international parasite, so our struggles to defeat it must be international too!

Standing on the shoulders of giants

As communists, we know that history and culture are weapons in service of the working masses to understand and shape society in the interests of the working class. We stand on the shoulders of giants to glimpse the bright communist future that is ours to win! Let’s fight like the Bolsheviks and make revolution come all the sooner.

Brooklyn, October 19—About fifty comrades and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) gathered to celebrate the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and the accomplishments of the revolutionary giants whose shoulders we stand on. We started out by working collaboratively on art work intended to create designs for a new t-shirt. After a shared meal, we moved the tables to the sides of the room so that we could sit in circles to discuss a variety of questions related to what life might be like after a communist revolution based on reforms actually achieved in the Soviet Union, China and Cuba after their revolutions.

What would a world run by workers look like?

The topics engaged us with ideas about healthcare, education, work conditions, and collective living. Armed with markers, the groups annotated the questions with their ideas about what a communist world would look like. We rotated the questions, so that each group was able to discuss a variety of questions. For instance, some groups explored what would happen if apartment buildings or neighborhoods shared collective kitchens, resulting in less of a burden on each individual family, stronger community ties, less food waste, and more diversity in cuisine. We speculated on how much our society would improve if health care were separated from the profit system so that doctors could concentrate on patient well-being and research that would most benefit humanity rather than drug companies. 

Everyone has a role in building the Party 

A rousing speech encouraged us to follow the examples of the revolutionaries who have gone before us. We each received a check-list of contributions we could make in the coming weeks, from giving a CHALLENGE to a friend to joining the Party. After singing the Internationale in Spanish and English, we mingled with new and old friends, chatting about the questions which had been posted on the walls and admiring each other’s art projects. The group of young and older people who had planned the art activity made a commitment to meet regularly to plan more collective projects. Friends attending their first Party event came away with a new understanding of our revolutionary optimism. Experienced comrades left energized by the enthusiasm of new members who helped lead the event. In a climate of deep fear and pessimism, PLP is still fighting for a better future for the whole working class by crushing capitalism once and for all.