Colombia November 4,–Recently Progressive Labor Party (PLP) organized a revolutionary communist political school in Colombia, which some of our friends and Challenge readers attended.  There were good discussions about racist unemployment, sexism, wage slavery, nationalism, and all the horrors of capitalism; and why we need to build a great social base for communism.  
Many participated with spirited political discussions. Several workers and students showed great leadership potential to continue advancing our cadre to a new revolutionary leadership in the construction of the PLP.  
In the workshops, many discussed their understanding about unemployment, its moral impact on working families, and how under capitalism, unemployment is inevitable, its relation to anti-immigrant nationalism and the war against the workers, and the need for working class unity always, but especially during this period of capitalist crisis.
We discussed the construction of a political base in different organizations, analyzing the imperialist contradictions, where the liberal wing pretends to be friendly and a benefactor to the working class. Our conclusion was that we need to struggle to create study groups and to distribute Challenge.
These are the main points of the discussion on “wage slavery”:
Capitalism can’t provide full employment because of its internal contradictions and the benefits it gets from unemployment.
Even though the working class is the majority, it is ruled by a minority. The bourgeois state and its legislative apparatus lies, cheats and steals the value that workers created through their labor in order to stay in power.
Capitalists create an army of unemployed workers and keep them divided by racism, individualism, and nationalism.
We need to fight for communist internationalism by supporting workers struggles all over the world.
We need to build our communist line and PLP among rural and city workers, students, and soldiers. This is because it is the only way we can destroy the bosses’ system of exploitation and wage slavery. The capitalist system cannot fulfill workers’ needs;
 it only brings misery, hunger, police brutality, bad health, and the destruction of nature.

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!

DEDHAM, October 25—A hundred-year-old law makes teachers’ strikes illegal in Massachusetts. But Dedham teachers voted to strike anyway—248 to two. It’s this kind of courage that the working class needs to challenge anti-worker laws and put workers on a fight-back footing.
Although reformist, strikes show the potential of working-class unity and strength. When education workers fight for better working conditions, they are in practice also fighting for better learning conditions for students.
Teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions
Dedham teachers struck for a strong anti-sexual harassment policy in the contract; for a better healthcare package; for wage increases to make up for the $4,000 per year healthcare deductible imposed in the previous contract; and for a system-wide policy to help students learn by cutting classroom cellphone use.
The teachers were also fed up with the arrogant disrespect from the administration.
Just as West Virginia teachers illegally struck last year, education workers must strike over what they and their students need, legal or not.  Capitalist laws are written to keep workers down.
 We communists in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are fighting for workers’ rule: a world free from exploitation and oppression. That means revolution and  for that we need to break the bosses’ laws.
Hundreds supported the strikers
Hundreds of union members from across the state, and many parents and students, attended a big support rally on October 26. PLP members walked the picket lines, and, in a small victory, met an educator who may work with us.
Not all issues were covered by the strike. Paraprofessionals and substitutes are poorly paid. And although paras and subs are on strike, they were not even able to vote to strike (they have a separate union).
The union must fight harder for the lowest-paid school workers including substitutes.  Higher substitute pay would mean Dedham could hire enough subs, so teachers wouldn’t have to cover classes for absent teachers.
A tentative agreement was drawn up after one day of striking, and the members were sent back to work before the proposed four year contract was ratified. The 10-15 percent raise over four years won’t even cover the ­­healthcare deductible. Such is the nature of union misleadership. They accept minor reforms and then funnel the rank-and-file back into the classroom.
Chicago teachers, who just ended an 11-day strike, have shown that fighting for students, demanding nurses and social workers in every school, fighting for services for immigrant and homeless students, is the way to win.
 Parent-student-teacher unity is the key to fighting for decent schools! But in the capitalist system, reform victories can always be taken away. Winning means building the communist movement and the organization that embodies it, the PLP.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria dramatically sharpens the split within the U.S. ruling class. It’s a big win for the Little Fascists, the domestic-leaning, isolationist wing of the U.S. ruling class, and a huge loss for the Big Fascists, the main-wing finance capitalists who have led U.S. imperialism since the end of World War II. It drastically weakens the U.S. position in the Middle East and has opened the door for Russia to take over—at least for now—as the region’s alpha dog enforcer.
Workers cannot be fooled into supporting either section of the blood-soaked capitalist class. Far from the end to “endless wars” promised by Trump, the intensifying inter-imperialist competition between the U.S. and Russia and China will inevitably lead to full-blown fascism and the next world war, one that will slaughter hundreds of millions of workers. Only communist revolution can overthrow and dismantle the lethal capitalist system.
U.S. pulls back, Russia steps up
In December 2018, when Trump first announced a troop withdrawal from Syria, he was sabotaged by John Bolton, his national security advisor, and the old-school interventionists in the Republican Party. Trump’s main wing secretary of defense, James Mattis, resigned over the decision, saying it would play into the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS), the small-time capitalists who’d threatened U.S. oil interests.
But the Little Fascists behind Trump, including the Koch family, persisted. They  have now pulled off a major foreign policy coup, enraging the main wing and further eroding the old liberal world order based on U.S. military dominance. As U.S. troops pulled out of northeastern Syria, they left a vacuum that Turkey and Russia were eager to fill (NYT, 10/15). Turkey invaded Syria and began bombarding and slaughtering civilians along the Syrian-Turkish border. Russian and Syrian troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad moved to occupy much of the territory formerly held by U.S.-backed Kurdish nationalist rebels.  The Kurdish bosses, who’d partnered with the U.S. in fighting ISIS, were forced to make a quick deal with the butcher Assad to contain the Turkish Army and rogue Syrian militias.
On October 22, two weeks after the U.S. withdrawal, Russian President Vladimir Putin sat down Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to dictate a power-sharing arrangement with Assad—and make clear who was in charge. “Russia agreed to help Turkey create a ‘safe zone’ in northeastern Syria that is free of Kurdish fighters that Ankara views as a terrorist threat” (Wall Street Journal, 10/22). Beyond setting the stage for a racist ethnic cleansing, the land grab confirms Russia’s new status “as the dominant force in Syria and a major power broker in the broader Middle East …. at the expense of the United States” (NYT, 10/22).
The next oil war?
Meanwhile, Russia’s imperialist bosses are also using the U.S. retreat to strengthen their ties with the biggest oil producers. On October 14, Putin met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to explore “more promising opportunities in the two countries in all fields, including cooperation in energy and investment in the infrastructure” (gulfnews.com, 10/15). In a statement that sent shivers through the boardrooms of ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates, declared: “I think of Russia as my second home. We are connected by a deep strategic relationship” (NYT, 10/15).
Both Russia and U.S. arch-enemy Iran have trained and armed troops in Syria for years. With the U.S. bowing out, they are ready to cash in on their investment. Russia originally intervened to help Assad in 2015, four years into Syria’s bloody civil war. To keep workers submissive, Russia’s bombing campaign has deliberately maximized civilian casualties. Hundreds of bombs were dropped on hospitals “to crush the last pockets of resistance” to Assad (NYT 10/13). One unanticipated consequence of these atrocities may be to push Syrian rebels into the waiting arms of ISIS, still a factor in the area.
Now that they have taken charge, Russia’s capitalist rulers will be tested. Whether they can keep the Syrian, Turkish, and Kurdish bosses in check—while preventing an ISIS revival—remains to be seen. But the nightmare for the liberal Big Fascists is that Russia is now shaping events in the geopolitically crucial Middle East. The main wing bosses can’t accept this realignment without a fight. They’ll need to push back militarily in the region—which adds to their urgency in removing Trump by the 2020 elections, if not sooner.
Fortress America vs. liberal world order
Foreign Affairs, the journal of the liberal rulers’ top foreign policy think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, has relentlessly attacked Trump’s Middle East policy. In a recent article headlined “Disaster in the Desert,” Martin Indyk rips the Trump team’s plan to offload responsibility for containing Iran and policing the volatile region onto U.S. allies Israel and Saudi Arabia (Nov.-Dec. 2019).
Back in 2016, the libertarian Charles Koch Institute warned against the U.S. arming the anti-Assad Syrian rebels: “[T]o ensure [that] decisions truly serve our vital strategic interests, U.S. leaders should consider the difficulties of training unaccountable rebel forces and pursuing... regime change in the Middle East. These decisions can carry high fiscal costs for the United States….”
Trump is cynically harnessing the anti-war sentiments of tens of millions and twisting them to enlist support for the domestic wing’s Fortress America strategy. Little Fascists like the Kochs have no problem with the U.S. sending drones to bomb civilians—mass murder on the cheap. But they don’t want to pay the tax bill for an overseas land war to protect the Big Fascists’ investments. They’re willing to take a back seat and hope the Russian bosses get bogged down in the Syria quagmire.
Imperialist war vs. communist revolution
In response to Trump’s abandonment of the Kurdish rebels who helped the U.S. stop ISIS in northern Syria, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bipartisan measure condemning Turkey’s attack. Republicans in the U.S. Senate, on the other hand, are holding their cards close. Even as the Democrats move forward with impeachment, Trump’s base is holding firm. If the Republicans think they can keep their Senate majority in 2020 behind Trump, they’ll continue to back him. If they see Trump going down and threatening to take them with him, they may join the move to dump him. While the split between the Big Fascists and Little Fascists is primary, the opportunism of the bosses’ stooge politicians cannot be overestimated.
The world is swimming in volatility, from the looming Trump impeachment fight to mass rebellions in Lebanon and Chile to refugee crises in Syria and Central America. Workers have nothing to gain by allying with some “lesser evil” set of capitalist rulers. As the bosses prepare for their world war, the international working class must prepare to destroy the capitalist system. Only communism can wipe out the scourge of imperialism and create a world where wars for profit will become a distant memory.

*****

Syria provides a textbook example of what befalls the working class when inter-imperialist rivalry is combined with local thievery. An estimated 400,000 workers have been slaughtered and more than half the population turned into refugees, with five million forced to flee the country. Under Barack Obama, the U.S. imperialists fomented the “Arab Spring” and turned a 2011 rebellion against the brutal al-Assad regime into a bloodbath. To counter regional thugs in northern Syria like ISIS, the U.S. state terrorists armed their own thugs, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). Turkey organized a competing anti-Assad militia. Iran dispatched thousands of troops to Syria to support Assad.
In 2014, as ISIS overran large sections of Eastern Syria and Northern Iraq, the Obama administration launched a bombing campaign to beat back the smaller terrorists. The following year, Obama sent troops into Syria. After Russia intervened in 2015 to prop up Assad and his Iranian backers, who were at that point losing the war, ISIS and most of the other rebel forces were crushed. But the YPG, later dubbed the “Syrian Democratic Forces,” survived with U.S. protection to claim and control the northeastern quarter of Syria. With the Trump withdrawal, the YPG’s future is in doubt. The same can be said of millions of Kurdish civilians, who historically have been the victims of racist violence in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey.