CHICAGO, September 13—A hotel workers’ strike here reached the seven-day mark today, with some 6,000 workers from over 20 major hotels represented in the struggle. Hundreds of these workers are actively participating on at least two dozen pickets.
Their contract with the bosses expired on August 30, and the demands of the strikers include year-round health benefits (workers have been made to go without when many are laid-off during the winter months) and higher wages. Comrades from Progressive Labor Party have joined in the picket, distributed CHALLENGE, supported chants, and talked with strikers.
Considering the make-up of the hotel workers in the industry, the working conditions created by the hotel bosses need to be seen for the sexist and racist attacks that they are. Many of the hotel workers are women and immigrant workers. Many face sexual harassment, assault, and other degrading conditions from their bosses and hotel clients alike. To see these same women workers pouring energy and leadership to the picket line and strike is an inspiring example of fightback against sexist capitalism.
Progressive Labor Party holds tight to the political line that strikes can be powerful schools for communism. When workers shut down the bosses’ industries, and drastically damage their ability to make profits off our labor, the working class learns a profound lesson about our class power and our capacity to create revolutionary change.
What is key to such revolutionary development, however, is revolutionary leadership and a mass international PLP. Our task is to continue to immerse ourselves deep within inspiring working-class struggles, such as this strike, wherever we are. In only this way, we can win more workers to the struggle of overthrowing bosses and capitalism all over the world and creating our own communist society that we collectively organize to meet our needs.

After a few years of relative political tranquility, China is starting to see a new wave of student movement and worker militancy. When several workers got fired and arrested in July as they tried to organize a local union in Jiashi Tech, a listed company based in Shenzhen, Guangdong, activists launched a small protest against the company and the local police.  The tension quickly escalated when the local police again arrested dozens of the protesters and charged several of them with criminal offenses.
The struggle was well publicized and the protest organizers called for support from the leftists and other sympathizers. Soon the protesters in Shenzhen were soon joined by college students from all over the country as well as influential leftist organizations. More than a thousand people signed on a petition to the Ministry of Public Safety, demanding the release of arrested workers. Students and leading leftist scholars also wrote several widely circulated support letters.
The protest was forcefully ended after a month when fully armed police squad stormed into an apartment in Huizhou, Guangdong and arrested more than 50 activists sleeping in the room at around 5 am Aug 24th. At the same time, the police also arrested several activists in Beijing and other cities that might have been involved in the movement. To this moment, it seems that the college students among these activists have been sent back to their home and are under house arrest. After some interrogations and “education”, they are expected to return to college. As for the workers and those who have already graduated from colleges, their statuses are not clear. The impression, however, is that the authority will prosecute many of them with some serious charges.  
Overall this protest has been highly influential in China and has several new features that separate it from previous similar conflicts.
First of all, it was a Maoist-led struggle among the younger workers. China’s socialist legacy is strongest among the older generation workers who had experiences under both socialism and capitalism. Many old workers are Maoists and fight for socialism in their struggles. The young workers who work in those export zones like Shenzhen, however, often lack class consciousness and political experiences. They are used to wildcat strikes instead of a planned political action. This time, the young worker activists were clearly self-trained Marxists and familiar with the language and tactics of Marx, Lenin, and Mao.
Second, there was a deep involvement of students in the struggle. Many students joined in the struggle as mentioned above. They came from different backgrounds: some from rich families and elite colleges and other from working class and without a college degree. Most of them were in their late teens and early twenties and they were radicalized in the last ten years. Over the last decade or so, the Chinese radicals built numerous leftist organizations on campus. These organizations have successfully trained a generation of Maoist activists. The student-worker alliance we saw in this movement was but a natural consequence from the last decade’s radicalization of students.
Last but not least, it has been a coordinated action among the Chinese leftists. China’s contemporary left emerged during the 1990s and many of them were communists from Mao’s era. This generation of “old” left gave rise to the major leftist organizations in China today. Starting from the late 2000s, however, a new generation of leftists started to form. They were mostly young and middle-aged activists who gradually got attracted to Marxism. The recent struggle provided a unique opportunity for several generations of Marxists to meet and work together. These new features have some important implications for the future class struggles. With more radicalized students and young workers, and a coalition between old and young leftists, a more mature revolutionary tide is always in formation. Capitalism, after all, always produces its own grave-diggers. It will only be a matter of time before the class struggles in China will shake the entire bourgeois world.

CHALLENGE response:
The PLP hails these bold developments in China. Young workers fighting back while uniting with older revolutionaries, and young students joining them in solidarity are great steps in the rebuilding of the communist movement in China and globally. Such a movement will ultimately crush “red” capitalists in China, who seized power after the defeat of the Shanghai Commune in 1968, took China off the road to communism, and systematically restored vast inequalities and deep class divisions throughout China. Learning the lessons from that defeat is critical. These lessons include winning the masses to a communist vision, constructing a mass communist party despite the capitalists’ repressive apparatus, abolishing material incentives and the wage system, overcoming ethnic divisions, and refusing to compromise with capitalist roaders. We hope that many of these rising revolutionaries described in the Report from China join the PLP to spread these lessons globally!

ISTANBUL, Turkey September 19 –“In the last couple of days, two of our friends fell from the roof. One of them is in surgery right now. Our working conditions are horrible!” That’s how one worker described the strike of 2,000 workers at Istanbul’s third airport. The strike began on September 14, after two shuttle buses crashed, injuring 17 workers.
Turkey is a key player in the rival U.S. and Russian imperialist ambitions in the Middle East. As this imperialist rivalry sharpens, workers in Turkey are being squeezed and exploited harder and harder.The striking workers are demanding greater workplace safety, fair and timely payment, and clean living conditions. While the striking workers are not, in this moment, calling for communist revolution, Turkey’s bosses clearly recognize the danger of a rebellious and militant working class.
Police arrest 600 workers
Days into the strike, Turkey’s bosses responded by sending their police to raid the workers’ barracks in the middle of the night to look for the strike leaders. They fired tear gas and arrested about 600 people. Today, a judge ordered 28 workers and union activists held in jail on multiple criminal charges. The bosses are calling the strikers “terrorists” and are trying to hire strike-breakers to replace those who have been detained.
One newly hired worker said, "They told me that the protestors were provocateurs, traitors and terrorists. The person on the phone told me that people like me deserve to work at the airport and make a living…I've been unemployed for eight months." Workers’ conditions at the airport work site are murderous. According to Ahval News, 400 workers have been killed as the bosses rush the 30,000 total workers there to open the airport by October 29, Turkey's Republic Day. Turkey’s bosses screw workers, play both imperialist sides The new airport will be the largest in Europe and a showcase for Turkey’s president Erdoğan. Turkey’s bosses are cracking down on the working class as they flirt with the two big rival U.S. and Russian imperialist bosses competing for control over the Middle East.
On the one hand, Turkey is a member of the U.S. imperialist NATO alliance, is a key base for U.S. air strikes into Syria, and has sent ground troops to attack Kurdish forces fighting there. On the other hand, Turkey’s recent agreement to purchase Russia’s advanced S-400 ground-to-air missile defense system is not only a breach of U.S. imperialism’s sanctions against Russia, but a potential security threat. As Turkey’s military also possesses the U.S.’ new F-35 stealth fighter, the U.S. fears that mixing the Russian air defense system with the U.S. jets could expose the vulnerabilities of the F-35.
This fear recently prompted U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Wess Mitchell to warn Turkey’s bosses that relations could be damaged “in a way that would be very difficult to repair” should they complete the S-400 deal  (The Defense Post, 6/27/18).
Sharpening imperialism, growing fascism
After a failed coup attempt in 2016, President Erdoğan issued to a State of Emergency, sending hundreds of workers, soldiers, journalists and activists to jail. Since then there has been a dramatic rise in workplace injuries and deaths, and an increase in child labor. Workers’ protests are often met with police violence.The airport is being built by a consortium of Turkish companies with close links to the government and contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
 However, many sub-contractors have gone bankrupt as a result of the ongoing economic crisis and the Turkish lira dropping by 40 percent, leaving many workers unpaid or not paid on time. A typical day for the workers means having to wait for hours in the rain for shuttle buses to take them to and from the worksite. Meanwhile, their dormitories are full of bedbugs and fleas. “Those working for the main contractors are being paid, but most of those working for sub-contractors cannot get their salaries,” one worker said. “[They] call this a world project, but then fail to feed the workers [while] earning millions of dollars.” Another worker said that workers for sub-contractors are not allowed to eat at the on-site cafeterias. “[We] are not even allowed to go to the toilet. We do not have refrigerators. We are taking showers by using the water coming from ponds near the constructions site.”
Airport shut down has potential worldwide impact Turkey’s bosses play their deadly games playing the U.S. and Russian imperialist sides off of each other, while workers in Turkey are in the cross hairs of growing war in the Middle East, economic crises, and the sharpening divide between US and Russian imperialism that will lead to even wider imperialist wars and racist and sexist attacks.Meanwhile, these airport workers are daring to shut down production at a major imperialist crossroads- giving this strike an international impact, whether the workers realize it or not. A strike movement here could confound the Turkish, U.S. and Russian bosses’ regional power ambitions in the Middle East. That potential gives this strike an anti-imperialist aspect that ALL workers have a stake in supporting!Ultimately, what the striking workers are up against is this entire capitalist system and its imperialist rivalries- rivalries that cannot ever meet theirs or any workers’ needs. Ultimately, only communist revolution can resolve these sharpening imperialist wars in favor of the airport workers, and the entire international working class.
The Progressive Labor Party fights for an international anti-imperialist communist movement for all workers around the world. We call on all workers to support the Istanbul construction workers strike, and to build the movement to end imperialism and wage slavery!

The main wing of the U.S. ruling class is on the offensive to contain President Donald Trump’s threat to the liberal world order—the military, political, and economic system that sustained the U.S. bosses’ dominance—and profits—since World War II. Whether or not Trump winds up getting impeached or indicted, the chaos surrounding the White House is a stark sign of the decline of the U.S. empire.
On August 21, special counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller won convictions on eight counts of financial fraud against Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman. Minutes earlier, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, pleaded guilty to bank and tax fraud and directly implicated Trump in a campaign finance violation. On September 5, the New York Times, the main wing’s leading mouthpiece, published an Op-Ed piece by an anonymous “senior official in the Trump administration.”
 The author acknowledged that main-wing operatives in and around the White House “are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of [Trump’s] agenda and his worst inclinations….to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.”
In particular, the Op-Ed cited the president’s “preference” for Russian President Vladimir Putin, a main-wing imperialist arch-rival, and for North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, a leaning that could imperil the U.S. military presence in South Korea and its ability to deter or attack China.
On September 7, ex-President Barack Obama broke with tradition and openly savaged his predecessor’s “threat to our democracy”—in other words, capitalist dictatorship. On September 11, Simon & Schuster published Bob Woodward’s Fear, which depicts “a dysfunctional White House where some of Trump’s own aides think he is a danger to national security” (cnn.com, 9/12). Woodward is the Washington Post editor who once helped bring down Richard Nixon, another president who proved too unreliable for the main wing. Fear sold 750,000 copies in one day and immediately became one of Amazon’s top-five sellers for 2018, along with other Trump takedowns by Michael Wolff and former FBI director James Comey.
Rulers’ split is getting bloodier
Accelerated by the global erosion of their political and economic influence, the split within the U.S. capitalist class is growing clearer and sharper by the day. Finance capital, represented by the Democratic Party and traditional Republicans (see box), needs to rein in Trump and his racist base to protect institutions like NATO and prepare for World War III with inter-imperialist rivals China and Russia. These Big Fascists are pulling out the knives against domestically oriented capitalists like the Koch brothers and the Mercer family. For their part, the Little Fascists are advancing their isolationist, “Fortress America” agenda through the erratic Trump, his “anti-globalist” policy-makers like Steven Miller (and formerly Steve Bannon), and media outlets like Rupert Murdoch’s Fox empire and Breitbart News.
The recent weeks’ events show that the main wing rulers (Big Fascists), however weakened, still hold the upper hand. But regardless of how the bosses’ infighting plays out, the international working class will be assaulted by rising fascism, murderous racism, economic crisis, and a looming global conflict that could kill untold millions. Only a mass communist, anti-racist movement, led by Progressive Labor Party(PLP), can defend our class against the growingly desperate bosses. Only a communist revolution can smash the capitalists’ state-terror apparatus and put an end to imperialist war.
Fall of the American Century
As Obama noted in his speech at the University of Illinois, Trump “is a symptom, not the cause” of the U.S. capitalists’ disarray. In 2016, when this unstable con man exploited gutter racism and weak opposition all the way to the White House, it revealed that the main wing was losing its grip—both on its own capitalist class and on the loyalties of workers.
The finance capitalists’ decline was driven by two catastrophic failures. First, after spending $5.7 trillion on war in Iraq, the second-leading source of cheap petroleum, U.S. imperialism finds itself in a weaker position in the Middle East than before. Iraq’s oil supplies remain insecure. European allies are turning to meet their energy needs from Russia, which is also calling the shots in war-devastated Syria.Second, the financial crisis of 2008 was spurred by short-term greed and a general lack of discipline in main-wing financial powers like Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs. Obama’s subsequent bailout of banks and other financial institutions cost $17 trillion.. By 2014, according to the International Monetary Fund(IMF), China had surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest economy (bbc.com, 12/16/14). By 2050, the U.S. economy is projected to rank third, behind both China and India (fortune.com, 2/9/17).
It’s not Trump—it’s fascism
Trump himself is a minor historical figure. He will likely be neutralized by the upcoming midterm elections and most  likely forced out, one way or another, by 2021.
But the Trump phenomenon is highly significant as a marker of rising fascism worldwide. It reflects the advanced decay of the post-World War II order and the glaring inability of the profit system to meet workers’ most basic needs. The extreme instability of capitalism worldwide has generated massive unemployment and wage stagnation, the erosion of the European safety net, an epidemic of opioid addiction and suicide, and a more than 68 million refugees, internally displaced people, and asylum-seekers (www.unhcr.org).
To divert workers’ anger from the capitalist rulers’ failures, the bosses are blaming the most vulnerable victims—with a vengeance. Hence the monsoon of anti-immigrant racism, a basic building block of electoral success for Trump and his European counterparts. Open fascists have taken power in Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. They represent significant opposition forces in Germany, France, Britain, and Greece. In the September 9 parliamentary elections in Sweden, until recently romanticized by the bosses’ media as a bastion of enlightened “social democracy,” the fascist Sweden Democrats polled a record 18 percent (rt.com, 9/9). The liberal world order is in retreat. Internationally, the bosses’ current crisis presents PLP with a significant opportunity. By strengthening our anti-nationalist, anti-racist fightback, by uniting with immigrant workers wherever we are active, we can both grow as a revolutionary organization and lay bare the insoluble contradictions of capitalism.
Liberals are the main danger
As the U.S. approaches its midterm elections this November, the Big Fascists are positioning themselves as defenders of “democracy”—a gross distortion of their true history as racist mass murderers. The bosses are hoping to counter workers’ cynicism—and the alienation of Black, Latin, and younger workers, in particular—with fake “socialists” like New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, militant-sounding liberal misleaders like Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts, and the Black gubernatorial candidates in Georgia and Florida. All of these Democratic Party politicians depend on and defend the capitalist system. When push comes to shove, they will betray the working class on the road to fascism and genocide.The over-the-top celebration of war criminal John McCain (see page 4), whom Ocasio-Cortez lauded for his “human decency,” was designed to rally both workers and capitalists around the embattled liberal world order. Obama’s headlining appearance at the dead senator’s funeral, side-by-side with George W. Bush, reflected a concerted, bipartisan effort to revive the main wing.  Leaders and stooges of finance capital are pointing the way to a more lethal form of fascism than Trump and his cronies could even imagine.
But working-class fightback is alive and well. Workers and students in many cities are standing up to attacks on immigrants by both ICE and Trump’s gutter-racist base. These struggles are opportunities for working-class consciousness to take root. With PLP involvement and leadership, the working class will take the only alternative to fascism, big and small—the path to communism revolution.

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Who’s in the main wing?

The main wing of the U.S. ruling class represents the interests of finance capital. It includes the largest banks and financial institutions, like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, as well ExxonMobil and other multinational corporations. Together they established the post-World War II imperialist liberal world order, in which the U.S. dominates the world economy by controlling Middle East oil and guaranteeing that the U.S. dollar remains the worldwide reserve currency. They created and control institutions such the World Bank, NAFTA, the IMF, and other international economic institutions. They created NATO and other military and political alliances. Over the last 60 years, these international agreements and institutions have brought these capitalists billions of dollars in profit—all paid for with the blood and misery of tens of millions of workers exploited across the globe.