Zheng Yongming, a recent university graduate working in Guangzhou, China, wrote an open letter after his arrest in November by Chinese police. He was locked up for organizing a Maoist reading group in a university classroom. Zheng’s letter, which keeps being taken down from various websites by the authorities, only to be reposted, states that “I will always be a son of the workers and peasants.”
He was one of four young people arrested. Hundreds of professors from some of China’s most prestigious colleges signed a letter protesting the arrests, which included graduates of the elite Peking University (Agence Presse-France).
A budding Left in China
This episode provides a glimpse into the situation facing would-be revolutionaries in China today. Western capitalist media frequently report on the difficulties of Chinese dissidents who want to see Western-style political reforms such as competing political parties or greater press freedom. But increasingly those being suppressed by the Chinese government are neo-Maoists and other anti-capitalists referred to as the “new Left” of China.
The ruling capitalists who call themselves the “Chinese Communist Party” (CPC) have waged a campaign for decades to make people forget the Chinese revolution’s original mission, building a communist country. Today there is nothing “communist” about the CPC except the title, which they own. Since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the government propaganda praising capitalism and re-writing the history of the socialist period, 1949 to 1976, has become more and more direct. People now call those first years after the revolution the “Mao Era.”
The new Left is a mixture of political currents ranging from liberal social democrats to revolutionary-minded Marxist Leninists. Although there is wide agreement among these groups, known mainly through their websites, that China is capitalist, there are lots of opinions about how to achieve a more egalitarian society. Most are talking about socialism and envision it in terms of what China had before the death of Mao. There was at least one example of a group that declared themselves to be a new communist party dedicated to establishing socialism in China. The leading members were all arrested at their founding convention in 2015 (Financial Times, 1/11/2016).
Leftist websites are closely watched by authorities and anything that sounds like a serious challenge to the ruling CPC is taken down immediately by state monitors. In fact, in 2012 most of the leftist websites were banned, but others keep appearing.
One site that was still functioning in the period since the Guangzhou arrests is called Chuǎng (chuangcn.org). Its name is the Chinese character meaning “to break free” made up of elements of a horse breaking through a gate. According to them:

On November 15, 2017, police stormed into a student reading group at the Guangdong University of Technology and seized six young participants. Two of them, Zhang Yunfan and Ye Jianke, were held at the Panyu Detention Center for a month as suspects for the crime of ‘gathering crowds to disrupt social order,’ along with two other young people involved with the reading group who were later seized at their residences: Sun Tingting and Zheng Yongming. After prominent intellectuals circulated a petition for Zhang’s release, all four detainees have been released on bail but are still awaiting trial. Four other young leftists connected to the reading group are on a wanted list and still in hiding (chuangcn.org, accessed 1/29/18).

The Chuǎng  website posted letters the students wrote after their release. One wrote:

I’d rather follow the Mao that led workers and peasants towards self-emancipation, rather than the Mao printed on banknotes. … Officers from Xiaoguwei Police Station said I was the culprit – the ‘mastermind’ behind some sort of conspiracy! And indeed I was – promoting Maoism and working for the sake of the downtrodden were of course what I ‘premeditated,’ or even ‘plotted over an extended period of time.’ I was born to walk this ‘radical’ path, and I’d rather die than repent.

These young Maoists are part of a growing phenomenon in China. Young university graduates who encounter leftist organizations while students often go to work for non-profits, mostly in the “sun belt” in cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen where the largest concentration of sweatshops is found.
Fascist crackdown of worker-student alliance
Study circles in which Marxist ideas are discussed by groups of workers and intellectuals appear to be occurring in many places, although such activity is watched closely by the government. Unified organizations between workers and intellectuals are particularly scrutinized. When people step over the line, like showing the solidarity of workers and students, they can expect to hear from the police and “security”. Idealistic college graduates involved in non-profits and attending book clubs about communist politics worry about when they will be “invited to have tea” with the police chief, the standard method of intimidating organizers. But the arrests in November were a new level of crackdown on the radical left.
Communists outside of China, including members of PLP, are encouraged by the dedication of these young organizers. The response of some Chinese workers to the arrest of these students will be reported in a follow-up article.
Development of a new pro-communist movement in a country that was the world’s leader in revolutionary activity in the recent past must be studied seriously by communists everywhere.

The current war in Yemen has created one of the worst capitalist crises the world has seen.  Since 2015, Saudi Arabia has been bombing and blockading Yemen into collapse and misery, using billions of dollars of U.S.-supplied weaponry. The U.S. military is also refueling Saudi bombers in flight, to complete their deadly missions.
According to the UN, in this country of 27 million people, more than 10,000 have been killed, more than 2 million have been displaced, about 7 million are on the brink of starvation and 14 million lack access to clean drinking water and sanitation.  
Over half a million people are infected with cholera, the largest outbreak in the world in 50 years, and 2,000 have died. Malnutrition has increased the threat of the disease, while massive bombings have targeted water and sanitation facilities, bridges, factories and hospitals. Over 30,000 health workers and many civil servants haven’t been paid for over a year.
Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, borders Saudi Arabia and the Bab-el-Mandeb—the two-mile strait between Yemen and Africa through which millions of gallons of oil pass each day. In addition, Yemen could have undeveloped oil reserves, perhaps greater than Saudi Arabia.
The Yemeni Houthis of the North, seized power. They are supported by Iran. Saudi Arabia is attempting to prevent the spread of Iran’s influence in the region, especially on its border.  This war between two regional powers is a reflection of the decline of U.S. imperialism and the growing instability that has engulfed the Middle East, which has the potential for leading to another world war.
You could say, that war has already begun. If you pull the camera back for a larger view of the Middle East and Horn of Africa, you see the U.S., Russian and Chinese imperialists jockeying for power and position in the midst of growing war and a string of failed states. The net effect has been the worst refugee crisis since World War II, 65.6 million people, many from these countries.
Syria: More than 400,000 dead in a 6-year civil war, 11.3 million displaced. Recently, as many as 200 Russian soldiers were killed by U.S. forces, the first direct military contact between the two imperialists since the Vietnam War. All of the major imperialist and regional players are colliding here. The U.S. wants to transport oil from Qatar to Europe. Russia and Assad want to build a pipeline from Iran instead. Syria has been destroyed in the process. China is also increasing its involvement on the side of Assad, providing training to the Syrian military, opposing UN sanctions, and increasing investments in the country.
Iraq: As many as one million civilians have died since the U.S. invasion in 2003 to try to keep control of the world’s third largest supply of oil.
Afghanistan: 27,000 civilians dead, 1.3 million displaced. While not rich in oil, it is a prime pipeline route between the oil and gas rich Central Asian republics and Turkey, Europe, and Asia. After the U.S. invasion, Afghanistan was also found to have deposits of rare minerals necessary for cyber technology. Since the U.S. decreased the number of troops here, China has added troops and increased financing.
Somalia: Civil war, famine, a cholera epidemic and a tsunami have killed or displaced at least 3.5 million Somalis. Somalia also lies along the sea lanes that transport oil and may itself contain huge oil and natural gas deposits.
Sudan/South Sudan: 490,000 displaced; murder, sexual violence and repression are rampant. In the Sudanese civil war, China is supplying arms to the government in order to secure joint exploration and pipeline projects.
Libya: Another failed state, in chaos since Qaddafi was toppled by a NATO- led invasion in 2011.  Once the ninth-largest oil producer in the world, exporting mainly to Europe. Russia is now looking to re-open oilfields, build a base on the Mediterranean, or become an international mediator (Foreign Policy 9/14/17).
Gaza: Israel, armed with nuclear weapons and the world’s largest recipient of U.S. military aid, is allowed to continue its 50-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza with mass terror. More than 3,500 Palestinians were killed in the last two sieges out of a population of 1.5 million. Currently this “outdoor prison” has become unlivable, with only two-four hours of electricity a day and 90 percent of its water undrinkable. Health services are broken down due to infrastructure damage and lack of supplies, over 700 schools are inoperable, and waterborne diseases are increasing due to lack of sewage treatment plants.
China, the world’s fastest-growing economy, is the number one gas and oil importer from Iran while also selling arms for oil to Saudi Arabia. China is also building oil and gas pipelines from Russia (Foreign Policy, 1/26).
The U.S., in a permanent state of war since 2001, has been either directly at war or arming and supporting regional and local players in all of these conflicts. Like a wounded beast, U.S. imperialism grows more desperate and more dangerous, transcending party politics. Trump’s anti-Muslim travel ban, in effect until the case is heard by the Supreme Court, has left Muslim families torn apart by the collapse of the region, with thousands stranded in refugee camps, unable to proceed to the U.S.  This anti-Muslim racism is vital to winning the population and soldiers to sacrifice for this new permanent state of war, while Muslims are targeted for government surveillance and victimized by hate crimes.
It wasn’t so long ago that the capitalists were celebrating the end of communism and the victory of the free market. These are the fruits of their catastrophic victory. Sooner rather than later, we will all be living in Yemen. The slow but steady rebuilding of the international communist Progressive Labor Party is the long-term solution. The building of international solidarity now can ultimately turn the next world war into the last.

Sexual predator Larry Nassar abused at least 256 women while he was the medical doctor for USA Gymnastics (USAG) and the Michigan State University Athletic Department. He will spend the rest of his life in prison as Judge Rosemarie Aquilina proclaimed that she was glad to “sign his death warrant.” But it’s not just Nassar and the many other sexual abusers that are being exposed. The whole damn capitalist system has to go!
Sexism inseparable from Olympics
As doctor for USAG, Nassar travelled to many Olympics with the team. The Olympics are capitalism at its’ worst. Money and nationalism rule. Corruption is rampant. At this year’s Winter Olympics much of the Russian team was suspended for doping up their athletes with performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). Nassar did his vile abuse at the Summer Olympics, where often young girls are the stars. But it was not just Nassar. “… In 2004, journalist Scott Reid let us know that gymnasts training for Team USA were subjected to near-starvation diets—900 calories per day to fuel a world-class athlete. The purpose of this was to delay the onset of puberty, when the natural development of a woman’s body makes her less adapted to acrobatic tumbling” (Washington Post, 1/26).
Though some of the brave women that are coming forward and confronting their abusers are famous entertainers or athletes, most are working class women who have had very little recourse in a depraved capitalist world. Sexual predators are all over the world because capitalist culture promotes it. The profit motive is primary and this goes beyond sports. Women are particularly vulnerable because of the imperialist wars around the world as capitalists fight to control valuable resources. They make up a huge proportion of refugees worldwide living in deplorable conditions. According to a United Nations report, during the Clinton administration, U.S. bombing of Iraq killed 500,000 women and children. Women are used as sex slaves and their bodies are mutilated in many parts of the world.
Many of Nassar’s victims and some journalists express sentiments that point to a systematic failure. Charles Pierce says “Burn it all down” (Sports Illustrated, 1/24). Survivor Kyle Stephens despairs that “I have received messages from survivors all over the world detailing their abuse and isolation… When an Instagram message is the only place that victims can speak their truth, we are failing” (Washington Post, 2/16).
Democratic politicians, no ally of workers
Cynically politicians, mainly Democrats, are stepping in to coopt this uprising against sexual abuse into a vote for me movement. New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is calling on the Justice Department to investigate the Olympic Committee. Michigan Democrats are calling on Judge Aquilina to run for the Michigan State Supreme Court. But the Democratic Party has been integral to sexual abuse from President Bill Clinton and his intern to Democratic Party donor Harvey Weinstein. It really is the whole damn system that has to go.
So here we are with another Olympics full of divisive nationalism, poisoned by drugs, awash in corruption, and driven by money, a perversion of sports. Sports should be for everyone to have fun and stay healthy. There was a brief glimpse of this in the early days of the Soviet Union and China after their socialist revolutions. There were sports clubs everywhere, often attached to factories. Workers were given time to exercise during work. That was before the restoration of full-blown capitalism in those countries. Now we are facing the ultimate capitalist depravity, world war. Women standing up to each and every sexual predator is a big plus. Let’s take the struggle one more step to rebuild a communist movement for a decent, egalitarian world. Then we can build healthy relationships between men and women.

In late 1847, a secret European propaganda society, the Communist League, requested Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to write up a statement of purpose for the organization. In February 1848, the document appeared. It was called the Communist Manifesto (click here for a copy, available in 80 languages).
This work outlines the new world conception, consistent materialism, which also embraces the realm of social life, dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development, the theory of the class struggle and of the world-historic revolutionary role of the proletariat—the creator of a new, communist society.
— V.I. Lenin, Karl Marx (1913)
In time, the Manifesto became the most revered document among revolutionaries everywhere. After 170 years, we in the Progressive Labor Party still take these words seriously:
“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.”
The ruling classes understood the significance of Marxist ideas. We are still grasping its historic importance.
In 1895, Lenin wrote in Frederick Engels:
The services rendered by Marx and Engels to the working class may be expressed in a few words thus: they taught the working class to know itself and be conscious of itself, and they substituted science for dreams.
All those who wish to develop as revolutionaries should understand the Communist Manifesto and look at the similarities and differences between the early communists and the PLP. Its main points are these:
(l) Communists should openly “publish their views (and) their aims’’ to the world. Marx and Engels believed, as do we, that being bold and explicit about communist ideas is the only way to build a movement for communism.
(2) “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’’ It has been the struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed that ultimately leads to the destruction of the oppressors and the progression of history.
(3) However, capitalism has a uniqueness to it not found before: “Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”
(4) Capitalism has another distinct feature: “It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors,’ and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest …for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”
(5) But with this more explicit form of exploitation were planted the “seeds of destruction” of the bourgeoisie—the working class: “In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e. capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modem working class, developed—a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who work only so long as their labor increases capital.”
(6) Finally, the aim of communists—the issue which separates revolutionaries from pretenders—is “overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat”—the dictatorship of the working class.
As it was only the opening gun for a movement in its infancy, the Manifesto had a few major omissions. Marx and Engels more or less knew the sort of world they wanted—a world led by workers—but hadn’t the slightest idea how to achieve it. This knowledge was to come later, helped out by the brave workers of Paris in 1871 who used mass violence to set up the Paris Commune.
Marx and Engels were very vague on the role of ideology or the hold of bourgeois ideas on the working class. We have since learned that the role of communists is to demolish the bosses’ ideas among workers and students and to develop communist ideas in order to create the revolutionary army that will destroy capitalism. To do that, we need one united party all over the world. Join PLP and turn the words of the Communist Manifesto into actuality.