This celebratory column is in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and the world communist movement of the 20th century. We mainly examine its triumphs. We welcome your comments and criticisms, and encourage all readers to discuss this period of history with their friends, classmates, co-workers, family, and comrades.
This article aims to tell the truth about Trotsky and his movement—a truth denied by all anticommunists as well as by all followers of the Trotsky cult.
Leon Trotsky (b. 1879) became a Marxist revolutionary during his youth; became a leading Bolshevik; and, during the last period of his life, the most influential anticommunist in the world. Today hundreds of Trotskyist groups worldwide continue to promote Trotsky’s brand of anticommunism masquerading as “real” communists.
During the 1905 revolution in Russian Trotsky led the Soviet, or revolutionary council, in St. Petersburg. After a period of exile to Siberia, Trotsky fled abroad. He joined the Menshevik branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and strongly opposed Vladimir Lenin and Lenin’s Bolshevik branch.
In 1917 Trotsky returned to Russia. He joined a faction of Mensheviks who wanted the bourgeois, capitalist revolution that had deposed the Tsar, to continue to a socialist, working-class revolution. Trotsky recognized that only the Bolshevik Party, which he had long opposed, stood for such a revolution, so Trotsky negotiated a deal to join the Bolsheviks along with most of his faction and put Trotsky on the Bolshevik Central Committee.
During the Bolshevik Revolution and the following Civil War, Trotsky was one of the major Bolshevik leaders. He sabotaged the negotiations with the German Army, which led to the Germans occupying much more Russian territory. Trotsky led the military. He and Joseph Stalin clashed over how much to rely on officers from the Tsarist army who had rallied to the Bolsheviks—most of them temporarily. Trotsky favored the former Tsarist officers and Stalin wanted working class communists of the Red Army.
For a time after the war Trotsky remained an important Bolshevik leader. He and his supporters clashed with others in the Bolshevik leadership in the debates over policy during the Party Congresses and Conferences of the 1920s. An opposition formed against the policies advocated by Stalin and others. Trotsky, who was one of the leading oppositionists, promoted his own theory of “permanent revolution.” This concept basically meant that the USSR could only survive as a socialist state if it were helped by socialist regimes in industrialized countries. Otherwise, the revolution in Russia would “degenerate.” Trotsky had no solution for what to do if such revolutions did not take place.
Conspiracy
Even before Lenin died (January, 1924) Trotsky had formed a secret organization that conspired to take power in the USSR if—as Trotsky suspected —he failed to win the Party leadership once Lenin died. In order to work as secret Trotskyist agents inside the Party, Trotsky convinced some of his followers to cut all open ties with him and his supporters.
The Phony “Testament of Lenin”
In 1924, together with Lenin’s widow Nadezhda Krupskaia (who had temporarily joined the opposition) Trotsky forged the documents later called “Lenin’s Testament, “ which called for removing Stalin from his position as First Secretary of the Bolshevik Party. The “Testament” also praised Trotsky, though not too much—that would have been too obvious, since Lenin and Trotsky had been adversaries for a very long time and it had been Lenin who had insisted that Stalin become First Secretary.
In 1926 Trotsky published an article in which he insisted there was no such thing as “Lenin’s Testament.” But in the 1930s, when he was living in exile and leading a major conspiracy against the Stalin leadership, Trotsky “forgot” his denial and even claimed that Lenin had wanted to form a faction with him to get rid of Stalin. This forged “Testament” has been an important weapon of anticommunists and Trotskyists ever since. The evidence that it is a forgery was just discovered in 2003, after the original documents became available.
Trotsky and his public supporters were expelled for factionalism in 1927—they had held a number of counter-demonstrations at the 10th anniversary of the Revolution. Then Trotsky’s followers dishonestly claimed to “retract” their Trotskyist views and promised to follow the Party’s line in the future. They did this in order to continue their secret conspiracy within the Party and to recruit other Party members.
Trotsky’s Secret Conspiracy
Trotsky and his followers formed a secret “bloc” with other anti-Stalin conspiracies – the Rightists (Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky) and others – and plotted the following crimes:
* Terrorism: plans to kill Stalin and the Bolshevik leadership.
* Sabotage against Soviet industry, mining, transportation.
* Plans to sabotage the Red Army in the event of war with any capitalist states.
* Kickbacks from German companies for sweetheart contracts with the Soviet government.
Trotsky conspired with Nazi Germany and militarist Japan—the most powerful and organized anticommunist forces in the world—to support these regimes, if they in turn would put the opposition into power in the USSR, or support them if the opposition managed to get into power by itself. Trotsky also conspired against the Soviet Union with French capitalists and the British Secret Service and British government.
In return, Trotsky promised to undo collective ownership of land and industry and permit foreign private investment. He promised to get rid of the Communist International, headquartered in Moscow, which helped communist parties around the world fight against their own governments and was especially hated by capitalist rulers everywhere.
Trotsky’s Writings
In his writings from exile Trotsky consistently lied about the Soviet Union and about the Stalin leadership. Trotsky had to lie! He was running a serious conspiracy against the Soviet government, and trying to make Stalin and the Bolsheviks look as bad as possible. He gained publicity and support by writing for capitalist magazines and newspapers. These publications were eager to print anything that made the USSR and the worldwide communist movement look “bad.” They paid Trotsky handsomely.
Mainly, Trotsky was lying to his own followers. They chose to believe whatever he said or wrote when he claimed that he, Trotsky, was the “real communist”, the “real successor to Lenin,” and that the Stalin leadership were criminal betrayers of the Revolution. Trotsky’s followers still “believe” him, “have faith” in him, despite mountains of evidence of Trotsky’s lies and collaboration with the Nazis, Japanese, and British and French imperialists.J
(Part Two will continue and conclude our discussion of Trotsky)

All the bosses’ media headlines, plus U.S. president Donald Trump’s claims, report the “lowest unemployment in 17 years,” at 4.1 percent in February. But, as the Shadowstats analysis firm proves, this is “nonsense reporting of the first order.”
The actual unemployment figure, counting ALL the jobless, is 21.8 percent. And even that number does not include:

• Young unemployed workers who, unable to find a job, join the military;
• Workers on welfare who want and need a job but are limited by a lack of daycare for their children;
• Millions of incarcerated workers and youth who once released from prison are out of the jobless count until they find employment;
• Millions of high school and college graduates seeking their first jobs and not counted as unemployed.

So even that more truthful 21.8 percent figure may easily be closer to 30 percent, a far cry from the rulers’ 4.1 percent.
Two factors mainly account for the huge undercount of unemployment. The government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes two jobless figures, U3 and U6. The U3, which grabs all the headlines, says it’s 4.1 percent. It counts those working part-time as “employed” even though they want full-time jobs but can’t find them. This only includes workers as unemployed who’ve been looking for work in the last four weeks. All others are not part of the 4.1 figure.
The BLS’s U6 count, which the media never headlines, actually rose to 8.2 percent and includes short-time “discouraged” workers out of work for the last six months but who stopped looking because there were no jobs to be had. All others, many who’ve been jobless for more than a year, are effectively eliminated from the unemployment figures and are defined by the BLS as “out of the labor force.” In January that number exceeded five million. And this movement of discouraged workers “out of the labor force” is accelerating.
Shadowstats points out another way that the 4.1 percent figure is “seriously flawed,” a game played by the BLS. The latter says that 313,000 jobs were added in February. But the BLS assumes that there was a net-positive addition from jobs created by new companies emerging in the economy, compared to jobs lost from companies going out of business (especially affected by hurricanes, floods and other disasters). But the BLS makes a “guesstimate” that the latter group’s payrolls are still the same, part of the “employed” workforce because many company closings are never reported. Thus the new-company jobs are part of an overstatement of any employment, which Shadowstats reports “easily exceeds 200,000 a month.” So much for the 313,000 figure.
Accompanying the jobless sham figures spread by the media is another one: “wages are rising.” But real average weekly earnings have declined for three quarters in a row, and, adjusted for inflation, are still BELOW the levels of the 1970s. On top of this is the fact that the BLS never accounts for all the wages LOST by millions of workers during the long period of unemployment in the recent Great Recession. Most workers will never recover those losses, even if wages were to rise slightly.
Racist unemployment
The bosses’ economists declare that a 5 percent unemployment rate means “full employment.” But obviously the working class is suffering vast unemployment. The latter is especially true for Black workers whose joblessness because of racist discrimination is at least double that of white workers and has been for centuries. The bosses reap billions in profits from this racism since they hold Black workers as a threat to white workers’ fear of losing their jobs, not to mention the lower wages paid to Black workers. Similar exploitation is true for Latin and millions of immigrant workers. All this divides and weakens the working class overall in its ability to unite to battle the bosses for all workers’ class demands.
The only time there has been official full employment in the U.S. was during World War II when 14 million workers joined or were drafted into the armed forces, ending the unemployment of the Great Depression. As the Progressive Labor Party maintains, the only solution to unemployment is to fight for communist revolution to rid the world of capitalism whose profits need an army of the unemployed to survive.

New York, March 14—Tens of thousands of students walked out across the United States in a nationwide call for gun control after 17 students and staff members were killed last month in yet another mass school shooting, this time in Parkland, Florida. We salute these students’ courage in confronting the capitalist bosses’ utter disregard for the lives of young working-class people.
It’s essential to recognize, however, that the latest anti-gun campaign is being orchestrated by liberals in the ruling class. Extreme alienation and anti-worker violence are integral features of the bosses’ profit system. Only a communist revolution can put a stop to them.
The liberals’ job is  to channel workers’ natural horror at mass shootings into an embrace of the Democratic Party. That’s the same Democratic Party that has been led by some of the biggest mass murderers in modern times, from Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama.  
Liberal bosses try to manage student anger
In New York City, the racist, anti-student teachers union and the racist, anti-student schools chancellor collaborated seamlessly in an attempt to control the walkouts.  But youth anger is substantial and hard to contain—and the ruling class fears that anger, especially among Black and Latin students. Coming out of months and years of political education and base-building, a number of young people in New York in and around Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were able to take their protest beyond the stage-managed and censored limits imposed by local education bosses.
Public schools are an important part of the rulers’ state apparatus. They are designed to repress students’ anger at capitalism, and to build patriotism to induce young workers to kill their class sisters and brothers in the next global conflict. At the March 14 walkouts, however, limits were pushed.
Pushing the limits
At one school, students refused to follow the directions set by the administration, which treated the protest like a fire drill. Instead, the students marched to Brooklyn Borough Hall to join hundreds of other protestors.
They held signs that read “NRA=KKK” and “SOS: End Gun Violence in Schools, Overseas & on Streets,” pointing to the racist, imperialist nature of the whole capitalist system.  
At another school where recent protests have been harshly criticized, with participants threatened for engaging in silent sit-ins and wearing political stickers, students secretly organized a walkout of hundreds. The administration, who presumed that the student body would have no interest in it, was shocked. The racist idea that Black and Latin students don’t care about societal issues—or are being “manipulated” by adults to act because they can’t possibly think for themselves—must always be exposed and confronted.
At yet another school, so many students walked out that they filled multiple streets. These students coordinated with those from other schools in the same school building to organize the walkout in spite of the Department of Education’s continued attempts to divide them.
A single spark
The following day, 30 students organized a protest at an AT&T store across the street after discovering that a racist worker there had videotaped the previous day’s walkout while calling the protestors “monkeys.” These students quickly responded by putting out a leaflet and calling on AT&T to fire this racist. After parents joined their protest in outraged calls to local elected officials and AT&T bigwigs, the worker was indeed fired.  
As a revolutionary communist party, PLP is tasked with joining the top-down reform “movements” the ruling class seeks to launch and control, and then to lead workers and youth to break out of the box of dead-end electoral “solutions” presented by capitalist misleaders.  Modest but significant progress along these lines is being achieved among anti-sexist workers and youth activated in the #MeToo movement.
The Saturday after the March 14 walkouts, more than 50 New York-area members and friends of PLP attended a vigorous conference on capitalist education that brought together parents, youth, and educators.  (See next issue for details.)
Another national walkout has been planned for Saturday, March 24. PLP will continue to fight alongside students, workers, and parents and infuse communist politics in the struggle.
In 1930, when the communist movement in China appeared to some to be too small to make a difference, the communist revolutionary Mao Tse-Tung referred to a traditional Chinese saying:  “A single spark can start a prairie fire.” This week, we saw a few sparks fly.

This celebratory column is in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and the world communist movement of the 20th century. We mainly examine its triumphs. We welcome your comments and criticisms, and encourage all readers to discuss this period of history with their friends, classmates, co-workers, family, and comrades.

One hundred years ago The Messenger, a Black U.S. socialist monthly, editorialized:
Soviet government proceeds apace. It bids fair to sweep over the whole world! The sooner the better. On with the dance!
U.S. Socialist labor leader Eugene V. Debs declared:

The common people of Russia came into power, the peasants, the toilers, the soldiers, and they proceeded as best they could to establish a government of the people. It may be that the much-despised Bolsheviks may fail at last, but let me say to you that they have written a chapter of glorious history. It will stand to their eternal credit.

These words are more important today than ever. We hear everywhere that “communism is dead,” and it is true that the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe abandoned the goal of communism and are openly capitalist market economies.
Soviet revolutionaries and the communist movement more broadly made mistakes that led to the restoration of capitalism. Workers everywhere must learn from these mistakes—as well as from the many victories of the Bolshevik revolution and the world communist movement—in order to move forward. In the future, we must build a fully egalitarian society. It is necessary to reorganize society along the communist principle “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” The PLP has come to realize that nationalism, racism, sexism, and acceptance of inequality of any sort are fatal to the working class movement. “On with the dance!”
Communist revolutionaries fight sexism
You can learn a lot about a society by looking at the position of its women. V. I. Lenin, Alexandra Kollontai, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Elena Stasova, and many, many other Soviet leaders had long recognized that the active participation of women, especially working-class women, was absolutely necessary to the success of their movement.
Lenin wrote:

Unless women are brought to take an independent part not only in political life generally, but also in daily and universal public service, it is no use talking about full and stable democracy, let alone socialism.

Kollontai wrote:

Without the participation of women the October Revolution could not have brought the Red Flag to victory.

The Bolsheviks recognized that to win over large numbers of women they would have to do two things: (a) educate them politically in the principles and practical work of communist revolution; and (2) fight for reform demands that would attack the profoundly and viciously sexist social system that ground down women workers (especially among the Asian minorities) even more harshly than their brothers.
They did both. The Bolshevik Party program of 1902 already demanded “full equality for all citizens, irrespective of sex, religion, or race.” And when the government of workers, peasants, and soldiers took power in November, 1917, it quickly moved to make this a reality.
Antisexist accomplishments
Among the accomplishments of the first few years of the Russian Revolution were:

• A large-scale system of crèches (nurseries) and “children’s palaces” was begun to provide for a “social upbringing” for the children and to free women to participate fully in political and factory work;
• Guaranteed maternity leave and special safeguards of working conditions;
• Divorce easily available on demand of either spouse, freeing women from the tyranny of abusive husbands and fathers;
• In January, 1918, in response to demands of women workers and peasants, lying-in hospitals (special hospitals for childbirth) were reorganized to guarantee the best available care for all women, regardless of ability to pay, “thereby ending,” as Kollontai put it, “the inequality between poor and prosperous expectant and nursing mothers”;
• Improved midwifery training and new regulations were implemented to protect women “against a view which saw them as ‘sacrifices to science’ on whom unskilled midwives and young medical students gained practice”;
• Abortion was legalized;
• A mass campaign was organized in 1918 to draw women workers into politics. Three hundred delegates were expected at the first congress of women workers, held in November 1918—but 1,147 came! They formulated a plan to turn “women workers and peasants into conscious and active communists” on a large scale;
• Women were active with the Red Army, often serving at the front. The women workers of Petrograd (later renamed Leningrad) served by the thousands in machine-gun companies, in medical and communications units, and in constructing fortifications.

Soviet women continued to advance throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Increasing numbers of women became scientists, engineers, skilled workers and political leaders. One of the most spectacular accomplishments of workers’ power was the freeing of Central Asian women from the suffocating veils that had for centuries symbolized their virtual enslavement.
Need working women in leadership
But serious mistakes were made too. For one, the communist movement consistently underestimated the importance of a sharp ideological struggle for equality, in this case the fight against sexism within the ranks of the working class. This was a mistake. As late as 1921, only 10 percent of the Party members were women, and women occupied only a tiny minority of leadership positions throughout the socialist period.
And while the Soviet woman was increasingly visible in public life, her “natural obligation” was still said in 1946 to be “that of bringing up her children and mistress of her home.”
Still, the Bolshevik Revolution of November, 1917, was, as Debs put it, “a chapter of glorious history” for women as well as for male workers. “To have failed to see the hope in the Russian Revolution,” wrote The San Francisco Bulletin war correspondent Bessie Beatty a century ago, “is to be as a blind man looking at a sun rise.”
Her words are still true today. The sky may be cloudy, but the struggle for communism continues. And the working class will win!