Who will run New York City over the next four years? Behind Door Number One: Disgraced ex-governor Andrew Cuomo, the serial sexual abuser who killed thousands of nursing home residents in the early Covid outbreak and then distorted the data to cover it up. Door Number Two: Curtis Sliwa, the kkkop-loving Republican clown show. And Door Number Three: Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, who has inspired tens of thousands of volunteers with a platform of rent freezes, universal child care, and free bus rides. 

Mamdani is favored to win the November 4 mayoral election, though Cuomo’s coarse appeals to anti-Muslim gutter racism—and huge contributions from developers and landlords—have closed the gap. But regardless of who comes out on top, one thing is sure: It won’t be good for the working class. 

Amid a worldwide capitalist crisis, this election matters. It determines who will manage the country’s largest city and the financial capital of the U.S. bloc. With China, Russia, and the U.S. on a collision course for inter-imperialist war, the capitalist rulers have no choice but to move toward fascism. Liberal democracy—with its mythical “free and fair” elections, “freedom” of speech, and an “impartial” justice system—can no longer prop up their failing empire. To stay afloat as conditions for workers keep getting worse, the bosses need hyper-militarized fascism to squash rebellion. 

They need openly racist fascism to divide our class and scapegoat groups of workers, be they Black or Brown migrants in the U.S. and Europe, or Muslims in India, or Uyghurs in China or Palestinians in Israel. Perhaps most of all, they need fascism to build rabid nationalism for the bloody global conflict to come.

Mamdani is the Democratic Party’s latest great reformist hope, a misleader and fake leftist who is all the more dangerous for his surface charm and pie-in-the-sky promises. But even if he were totally sincere in his stated concern for workers and their families, Mamdani cannot solve the contradictions of capitalism. 

In a system drowning in debt and designed to protect the interests of billionaires, Mamdani’s job—if elected—will be to placate workers with a few crumbs of reform and buy a bit more time for the bosses’ dying liberal democracy. Behind his slogans and smiles, he will be an agent of finance capital, of the imperialist main-wing bosses who finance and control the Democratic Party. He is running for an office that is hard-wired for working-class oppression, not working-class power.

We must be clear: There are no good politicians. Liberation cannot come out of a mayor’s office.   There are only two paths: to preserve capitalism or to smash it. There is no in-between. Mamdani’s clear commitment is to preserve it.

While communists have always worked in reform fights to advance the class struggle and build our movement, we understand that reforms under capitalism are limited and short-lived. Communism doesn’t mean “progressive” policies. It means transformation: the destruction of the bosses’ state, the abolition of private property and wages. It means tearing down the material basis for racism, sexism, and all inequality, and creating a society run by and for the working class. Join Progressive Labor Party in building a communist system. 

Scrambling to the right

The following are some of Mamdani’s stance and direct quotes. It’s a low bar—the working class deserves better.

On NYPD & ICE

• June 2020: “We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer, and a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #defundtheNYPD.”
• October 15: “I apologize because of the fact that…these men and women who serve in the NYPD, they put their lives on the line every single day” (Fox News, 10/15). 
• Mamdani will retain NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch, under whom NYPD protected ICE from protestors on Canal Street. 
  When asked which Democratic leader would you want to be like, Mamdani said Michell Wu. That’s the same Wu who invoked anti-anarchist act against workers in Boston (NY Times, 10/10).

On Genocide

• June 29: Refuses to condemn the slogan “globalize the Intifada,” an expression of struggle against Israel-made genocide (Politico, 6/29). 
• July 16: “I will discourage the phrase” (CNN).

On capitalist inequality

• “I don’t think that we should have billionaires…we need equality across…And I look forward to work with everyone, including billionaires to make a city that is fairer for all of them” (NBC News, 6/29). 
• Tax the billionaires by an additional two percent
• Freeze the rent on rent-stabilized apartments. 

Of course, we must continue to fight for better living and working conditions. But, the more we accept survival as a victory, the more this profit system wins. 

Follow the money

Mamdani is at least partly financed by the very interests he claims to oppose. An advisory group of investors—including JPMorgan Chase, other Wall Street insiders, and grotesquely wealthy tech capitalists—was formed to “guide” Mamdani’s campaign and “shape policy” (Fortune, 9/23). 

They don’t seem too concerned about Mamdani’s plan to pay for his promises by taxing the rich; they know the tax would need to be okayed by the state government in Albany, where Governor Kathy Hochul has made clear that it’s a nonstarter. 

Here’s the real deal—the U.S. ruling class is a disaster of their own making. The Democratic Party is in disarray with a creaky leadership, limited options, and internal disagreements on how to best prepare for war. By contrast to the loot-and-plunder Trump forces, the main-wing bosses know the U.S. needs to make a show of reining in inequality, at least a little bit. They know they need to tax the rich—not for child care, but to fund their military and the infrastructure and industry they need to support it. They can use Mamdani as a tool to begin to discipline their own ranks. And if the winner turns out to be Cuomo, who’s been endorsed by main-wing stalwart Michael Bloomberg and has pledged to hire 5,000 more cops, the bosses will surely be able to work him, too. 

Social democracy=social fascism

The capitalist bosses have long experience in absorbing radical movements and rendering them toothless. The modern Democratic Socialists of America was founded in 1982 by Michael Harrington, who twenty years earlier had tried to inject his bitter anti-communism into Students for a Democratic Society. Harrington’s lifelong mission was to funnel working-class anger and fightback into electoral politics and the Democratic Party, where it could be controlled and pacified. He followed in the class-traitorous footsteps of the Social Democrats who ruled Germany in the early 20th century. In 1919, they sent militias to crush the Spartacist Revolt and murder over 1,000 communists, including Rosa Luxemburg. When push came to shove, they sided with capital over labor.

Mamdani follows in that same shameful lineage. Like Ras Baraka in Newark, Karen Bass in Los Angeles, Michelle Wu in Boston, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Congress, Mamdani will disarm workers into believing capitalism can serve the interests of the working class. By borrowing socialist language while preparing to knuckle under to Wall Street, he will help keep workers trapped in a cycle of false hope and betrayal. 

Reject the illusion, build the revolution

While Mamdani’s campaign is a dead end, but the workers who support him ARE part of the solution. An internationally united working class is the only hope we have to build a communist movement. 

So, who is fit to rule the world? The millions of workers on the streets could be the seeds of a powerful mass movement. They are militant, courageous, antiracist, and implicitly class-conscious. But a lasting movement to confront the bosses, even on a reform level, needs to be more than against Trump (No Kings). It needs to be for something. That’s why PLP’s task of building for communism is so critical in this moment. Join us now on this long road to revolution!

Chicago                                                 

CHICAGO, October 18—A contingent of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and an equal number of friends marched today with 275,000 fellow workers angry with the rise of fascism in the United States. This march was part of the national “No Kings” Day organized and sponsored by the Democratic Party. The national “No Kings” mobilizations represent a massive effort by the liberal Big Fascist section of the U.S. ruling class to win the working class to build more U.S.  patriotism. As such, there was a huge increase in the number of U.S. flags at this rally, and an effort to dampen the growing anger, militancy, and hatred workers around the country are expressing toward the destructive crises of capitalism.

The “No Kings” movement is an attempt to win our class to nationalism, patriotism, and back into the Big Fascist camp. We exposed these contradictions by calling for the destruction of all borders so racist forces like ICE can’t exist. We called for multiracial internationalism to connect the struggles in Gaza to the struggles in Sudan and elsewhere around the world. We called for wokers power to show that we don’t need the bosses’ political parties (Democrats or Republicans) to “save” us. One friend said, “Y’all are the only ones who call out racism.” Another friend said, “Y’all are the only ones who talk about workers actually running things.” Our friends who marched with us are clearly seeing the differences between PLP and the other groups at these rallies.

We were able to rapidly distribute 1000 leaflets, hundreds of copies of CHALLENGE, and get numerous contacts of workers who want to learn more about the Party and how to build a society where no human being is illegal, a society based on working-class need and equality – communism. 

We need communist leadership and worker power, not liberal racists

For the past month Chicago has been under siege by the ICE Gestapo and other fascist federal troops, but many of the workers who have been leading the valiant battles against these fascists weren’t a part of the carnival-like “No Kings” parade. The rally and march were visibly lacking the very sections of the working class who are being targeted and leading the resistance to brutal attacks. 

The Democratic Party is aimlessly trying to position itself as the alternative to Donald Trump’s brand of fascism, but Black and Latin workers in Chicago have lived under the Democrats’ brand of fascism our entire lives, including poverty wages, homelessness, and racist police terror. The Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson and Governor of Illinois,  JB Pritzker, have publicly talked tough against Trump and the raids, while deploying their own police departments to protect ICE agents as they kidnap and terrorize our class siblings. 

When Governor Pritzker marched past our contingent, a comrade quickly made a speech exposing his hypocrisy and collusion with the growing fascist movement. Unfortunately, a sizable number of workers at the ‘No Kings’ rallies didn’t yet see the Democrats for the wolves that they are and tried to shut our comrade down, but some workers, particularly younger workers, cheered on the speaker. 

Another comrade led a chant saying, “If we don’t get it, shut it down” and a worker responded, “Why would we want that? They already shut the government down!” Our comrade responded, “The bosses have shut the government down on their terms to hurt our class. They shut down jobs, hospitals, food, and schools to hurt us. What we are talking about is shutting down the stuff the bosses care about (profits) so that we can make sure our class gets the food, education, and health care WE deserve!” The crowd erupted and we all started chanting, “IF WE DON’T GET IT, SHUT IT DOWN!”

Not just “No Kings,” no capitalists at all!
While the overall politics of the No Kings marches are weak, their massive turnouts show that workers are disgusted by the profit system’s slide into wider fascism. It’s on us in PLP to unite with millions of other workers in the context of class struggle. Through fighting back together, we can win our class to the truth that the chaos we’re witnessing is not just limited to Trump and his goons but is a result of capitalism’s unstable nature and need for racism, exploitation and war.

Not just “No Kings” but no capitalists! The system can’t be reformed to meet the needs of billions of working-class people on the planet! Join the PLP and help build for communist revolution and a world where workers run society for our collective needs.

NEW JERSEY

Newark, October 18th—Antiracist working class fighters showed out at the ‘No Kings’ rallies, ready to stand against fascism (see glossary on page 8) under U.S. President Donald Trump’s MAGA regime. Members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) prepared to take the demand to ‘Dump Trump’ a step further by calling for workers to dump capitalism altogether. Our Party utilized a banner that displayed the words ‘TWO HEADS OF THE SAME FASCIST MONSTER”with drawings of liberal fascists, representing Columbia University, the United Nations, the AFL-CIO Union on the left and far-right nationalists like ICE, IOF, Proud Boys, and Trump on the right. The bottom of the banner read, ‘WORKERS WILL WIN THE WORLD.’ We see the millions of workers who are fed up with racist deportations, the high cost of living, and genocidal wars, with a potential to do far greater than rallying against one capitalist ruler. An organized working class has the potential to stop all these capitalist rulers and run the world. 

With this confidence, our NJ section of PLP decided to split up between three areas of New Jersey—Trenton, where a friend in the organization leading “No Kings,” 50501 invited PLers to speak, Newark, our organizing base for 40 years, and Maplewood, where brave fighters actively protest the genocide in Gaza. We used CHALLENGE newspapers as a tool to spread communist ideas, selling more than 200 copies. Even as crowds of people waved the American flag and sang the racist nation’s anthem, workers looked our way to learn more about communism.

Dare to struggle, dare to win

PL’ers have consistently attended protests and deportations at Delaney Hall, the  ICE Detention Center in Newark, and continued the fightback with collective study groups in the park. One friend who has both actively marched and studied with us shared after one study group the idea for PLP to speak at the “No Kings” rally in Trenton. Following his leadership allowed several Party members to give both direct and more subtle speeches about the need for a working-class communist movement and to tell hundreds of workers, directly, not to pin their hopes for defeating global war and fascism on voting for the Democrats. 

One 20-year-old trans person took the mic and said, “I’m not the problem; I’m being made to feel terrified for just existing. I need a country to feel protected in.” We responded within our speeches that politicians can’t save us when we’re facing an avalanche of crises. Politicians representing the ‘Democratic Party’ will swing towards fascism, or extreme repression against workers, if it means saving the rotten capitalist structure. The current NJ Democratic Party nominee, Mikie Sherrill, was boosted by the main speakers, while workers on the side shared that they had visited her office for two years, pleading that she close detention centers and stop supporting Israel’s bombing of Gaza. Despite promises to not support any more detention centers, Sherrill swiftly signed off on them anyway. Voting for Democrats and reforms may gain us the potential of legislation in support of abortion, public schools and gender affirming healthcare, but the trade off will still be more pillaging of the international working class.

Misleaders will get workers killed

History teaches us that while some material gains are made, the capitalist class will swiftly take them away to maintain their profits. To expose these lies we cannot let our work stop at protests. We need to build friendships with the working class, think through these ideas together, and struggle with one another to demand more. Looking for solutions on the ballot is the wrong place to look, and we need to be building something else with one another. We need to reach out to friends who are feeling conflicted and provide political direction on how to not only survive but how to win something long term for the workers. PLP offers concrete direction and greater engagement beyond just voting.

Workers are being made to feel more directly responsible for the impact of our decisions during this time, and we are. But whether we vote or not, we need solutions that cannot be cut by the bosses electoral system. Approaching the rallies with deliberate planning and political decisiveness made us bold enough to tell workers to join PLP, to fight alongside other workers for a communist future. Only by being committed and bold can we inspire each other to fight for revolution and run the whole world. As one PLer’s speech reminded us “we workers cannot allow ourselves to be herded like sheep. Don’t fight for politicians or reforms alone, fight for communism. Read CHALLENGE! Join Progressive Labor Party!”

Only two paths are therefore open before present society.
One is the path of fascism.
The other is the path of communism.

-R. Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution (1934)

This story is not pretty. It is shocking and brutal. It is the story of fascism, a monumental attack by the desperate capitalists upon the international working class.

Modern fascism came into its own in 1918, after World War I. In 1945, it absorbed a crushing defeat from workers, many millions of them led by communists. By the end of this first period of modern fascism, the fascist overlords were annihilated.
In Hungary, a virulent form of fascism developed in response to a failed revolution. In 1918, workers took to the streets against the Hapsburg monarchy and the handful of barons that had ruled the country for centuries. Inspired by the magnificent example of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Hungary’s working class turned to communists to lead a revolution. In March 1919, in the capital city of Budapest, a united front of working-class forces, including the untrustworthy social democrats but under the leadership of the Communist Party, seized power and declared a Hungarian Soviet Republic. For five months, these heroic workers fought against the old ruling class, the new capitalists, the petty bourgeoisie, and expeditionary armies from Czechoslovakia, Romania, and France intent on crushing the communists.

For a time, the working class controlled many districts of Hungary. But the powerful forces arrayed against them, a betrayal by the social democrats, and the vacillations of top communist leaders led to the defeat of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In August 1919, the capitalist armies of Romania and France, in league with a Hungarian “National Army” under the right-wing Admiral Miklos Horthy, crushed the Hungarian Soviet Republic in a bloodbath.

Fascism as the  outcome of modern capitalism

In 1933, the Nazis took power in Germany. Within months, the entire nation was under the heel of these fascist cutthroats. Big business reigned supreme, and the largest communist party in the capitalist world was systematically destroyed. The victorious advance of fascism in Italy, Portugal, Hungary, and Japan now reached a climax.

The Communist International, or Comintern, had to ponder the reasons for these defeats. In 1934, R. Palme Dutt, a leading comrade in the Communist Party of Great Britain, published his Fascism and Social Revolution. As a reference point, Progressive Labor Party defines fascism as a period of capitalism in an economic and political crisis that can be resolved only by war. Inter-imperialist rivalry over resources and markets leads to more desperate competition among the bosses of leading national powers. 

As these bosses prepare for larger wars, they can no longer rule within the constraints of liberal democracy, the mythology that masks the reality of the capitalists’ absolute class dictatorship. “Free and fair elections,” “the rule of law,” “due process,” constitutions, independent unions—all must be abandoned or obliterated. The bosses have no choice but to ruthlessly discipline or eliminate opposing factions within their own class. They’re also forced to normalize state terror, and to use more overt, vicious racism—typically culminating in mass murder—to attack and divide the working class. To survive, the fascist bosses must command workers’ loyalty to their nationalist war agenda.

Dutt used dialectical materialism to show that fascism is the natural and logical form of government for declining monopoly capitalism, just as liberalism had been the natural scaffolding for expanding competitive capitalism. The clash of ideas and parties in liberal democracy corresponds to a stage of capitalism marked by technical progress and marketplace competition. The regimented terror and decadence of fascism corresponds to a concentrated monopoly in the marketplace and the anti-scientific depravity of the capitalist class in the 1930s, and increasingly so today. If one accepts Dutt’s premises, a communist party must rule out any strategy based on the defense of liberal democracy.

Dutt began with a description of the crisis of capitalism:

Capital can no longer utilize the full labor power of the productive population. Monopoly capitalism is more and more visibly choking the whole organization of production. “Today they are burning wheat and grain, the means of human life. Tomorrow they will be burning living human bodies,” Dutt wrote prophetically.

Scientific and technical advances are increasingly rejected by the capitalist class. This decadence expresses itself in the growing revolt against science, reason, cultural development, and liberal philosophy, all characteristic of ascendant capitalism. In their place, the capitalists turn to religion, spiritualism, mysticism, anti-scientific illusions, and racism.

Bourgeois parliamentary democracy has outlived its usefulness: “It is clear that liberal democracy has played out its historical role.”

Trade is restricted. Free trade is the lifeblood of ex¬panding capitalism, confident of its strength. Trade restrictions and thinly disguised trade wars are the hallmark of decaying capitalism. Under full-blown fascism, war becomes national policy.
Social democrats and labor misleaders will sell out the working class. Since they oppose the dictatorship of the proletariat, these class traitors inevitably end up in bed with the fascists.

Does this mean that fascism can’t be beaten? On the contrary, says Dutt: “Fascism is not inevitable. Fascism only becomes inevitable if the working class follows the line of reformism, of trust in the capitalist state.’’ In other words, the fight against fascism cannot trust liberal democracy and its anti-worker leadership. To preach confidence in liberal democracy--in legalism or constitutionalism—is to guarantee the victory of fascism.

In 1935, the 7th Congress of the Comintern met to consider the communist response to the fascist offensive. In the Comintern’s main report, Georgi Dimitrov backed away from the sharpest conclusions in Dutt’s book. He ignored the roots of fascism in liberal democracy. He left unmentioned Dutt’s thesis that fascism is the inevitable form of government for modern capitalism.

Dutt had argued for a tactical fight against the fascistization of the liberal regimes, but only toward the primary goal of organizing a communist revolution. Dimitrov made the rescue of liberal democracy primary and revolution secondary. He proposed an anti-fascist united front with the treacherous social democratic leaders, a strategy that would have disastrous consequences.

Kentucky, October 18—Kentucky members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLers) in Richmond and Owensboro attended the national “No Kings” protests going on across the country. Recognizing it as a liberal-led event that only seeks to redirect workers’ energy into supporting the Big Fascists’ faction of capital, we understood that it would be an opportunity to introduce more radical ideas and show that it’s not just President Donald Trump, but the entire capitalist system that is to blame. Workers were receptive to our ideas, and although the march maintained a liberal character, we had an impact and made contacts who we hope will become more interested in the PLP.

Why we need communism

The protest in Richmond was held at the Madison County courthouse. We were the first ones to show up. Before long the crowd grew to cover the entire front of the courthouse. As people showed up, we handed them CHALLENGE and had conversations about our communist politics. Many of the younger folks that showed up were students who already knew us from our organizing activity at the local university. There were also others who were unaware of our presence and expressed interest in coming to our study group. One person came up and asked us “Why communism and not Democratic Socialism?” We explained that the state is built around the interests of the capitalist class, and that we can’t abolish capitalism without also getting rid of their state apparatus which is designed to protect private property and maintain capitalism through both force and reform. Acknowledging this, the question became more about how we can make sure that after a revolution we don’t go back to the same capitalist system, to which we explained the importance of internationalism and spreading the revolution rather than relying on nationalism and only focusing on trying to build a new society within borders imposed by capitalism. They thanked us for our patience in explaining our view points and took a copy of CHALLENGE!

Ramping up our chants!

In order to combat the piss-poor politics of the liberal misleaders, we also started introducing more radical chants that attacked capitalism and racism rather than focusing solely on the current administration. We chanted “ICE out of Kentucky now!” and “Genocide means – We got to fight back!” One comrade also started a chant “Asian, Latin, Black and white–Workers of the world unite!” but was too nervous to continue in a sea of pro-capitalist U.S. flags until suddenly a multi-racial group of younger workers next to us shouted “Keep going! That one was good!” which showed that we shouldn’t immediately expect our message to be rejected. When workers hear our line, they know whose side we’re on.

Liberals expose themselves as class misleaders

In Owensboro, PLers came out to engage with the masses and spread word of our upcoming lunch and learn, as well as hand out issues of CHALLENGE. What we came upon was what hardly anyone would consider a protest. Live music, people dressed up in costumes, and signs saying “Marry me” with a photo of Andy Beshear or Gavin Newsom. The liberal misleaders of Owensboro have for very long  exercised a strangle hold on the local working class and their energy. However, through our engagement with the masses, we found many of them, specifically the younger workers, had grown quite disillusioned with the liberal leadership in town, expressing frustration at how the liberals had lost the local fight to keep the library inclusive, as well as their rolling over to the local fascist organizations who pushed this agenda.

What we learned is that the masses here are receptive to our message when given the opportunity to speak with us. They have been held back by the liberal old guard in town, and by the revisionist socialist organizations that have cropped up recently. We learned that we must continue to struggle against revisionism and neo-liberalism in our movement, and only then will we be able to properly exert our power as a class. No Kings in Owensboro taught us that there are hundreds of younger workers ready to take the fight to the bosses. We just have to take the time to meet them where they are and bring them into the fight through proper education, agitation, and mobilization!