Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) represents a major step toward war between capitalists in the U.S. and China. With the two imperialist powers locked in an escalating competition for global dominance, the TPP is more than a trade deal that will heighten exploitation and destroy jobs for U.S. workers. It’s a sign that U.S. bosses are preparing to square off against their ascending rival.
The international revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party is fighting to unite workers worldwide to smash imperialism at its source: the capitalist system. We call on all workers to march with us on May Day and fight for our class, not the bosses’ country. Join PLP and the fight to turn imperialist war into class war for communism!
TPP: A Provocation to China
In late March, the liberal Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think tank, bankrolled by ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase, published a special report: “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China.” The bloodthirsty authors Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis previously planned strategy and tactics for the National Security Council during the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their preamble sets a warlike tone:
Washington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power….[I]t must involve crucial changes to the current policy in order to limit the dangers that China’s economic and military expansion pose to U.S. interests in Asia and globally….[P]reserving U.S. primacy in the global system ought to remain the central objective of U.S. grand strategy in the twenty-first century.
According to Blackwill and Tellis, the TPP is an essential step toward squaring off with China. Framed as a regulatory and investment treaty, it projects an anti-China trading and military bloc consisting of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the U.S. and Vietnam, and, prospectively, South Korea and Taiwan.
For the past four decades, U.S. capitalists have raked in trillions by exploiting cheap labor and vast markets in China’s booming economy. While voicing concern over the gradual rise in China’s worldwide might, U.S. rulers have yet to formulate a coherent plan for countering it. Obama followed up his “pivot-to-Asia” policy with a chaotic series of half-measures, among them the stationing of 2,500 Marines in Australia and four Navy ships in Singapore. But the TPP represents an explicit confrontation with China — economically, politically, militarily. If the Exxon/Chase forces — the dominant faction of U.S. capitalism — hold sway, an armed conflict will be closer than ever.
Capitalist ‘Peace’ = Preparation for War
While “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China” is not quite a declaration of war, it points in that direction. Its authors warn, “No nation in Asia, least of all China, will take seriously U.S. military enhancement in Asia unless the United States takes the following vigorous and comprehensive steps”:
A substantial increase in the U.S. military budget and military aid to pro-U.S. regimes in Asia;
Maintenance of the current nuclear weapon balance between the U.S. and China;
An even greater U.S. advantage in long-range stealth unmanned drones and undersea war capability;
More ballistic missiles (fast-traveling weapons that fly out of the atmosphere) to back U.S. allies in the Pacific;
An intensive naval and air presence in the South and East China Seas.
In addition, the U.S. bosses want their junior partners in Japan and Australia to accelerate their remilitarization and military cooperation. In India, the U.S. capitalist butchers hope to use a 1.25-billion-strong working class as cannon fodder in the possible imperialist war with China. To keep India’s bosses in the U.S. imperialist camp, Blackwell and Tells argue that the U.S. should ease restraints on military technology transfer to India, increase military cooperation (especially between the two countries’ navies), and regard India’s nuclear weapons arsenal as an asset.
On behalf of their ruling-class masters, Blackwill and Tellis argue that it’s a mistake to view China as a potential ally or partner. They understand that all alliances among capitalists are temporary, and the current illusion of China-U.S. harmony is no different. The two imperialist powers may seem to be cooperating for the moment, but their interests are rapidly diverging:
That self-defeating preoccupation by the United States based on a long-term goal of U.S.-China strategic partnership...should end. It is unrealistic to imagine that China’s grand strategy toward the United States will...accept American power and influence as linchpins of Asian peace and security. The central question concerning the future of Asia is whether the United States will have...the right grand strategy to deal with China to protect vital U.S. national interests.
Flashpoint for Armed Conflict
The Pacific region represents one of several possible imperialist flashpoints for a massive armed confrontation. Vital U.S. capitalist interests are also at risk in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, among other potential hot spots.
The capitalists’ maneuvers toward broader wars will affect every worker on the planet. In the U.S., Black, Latin, and immigrant workers will be hit the hardest. These workers are already suffering from racist mass incarceration, mass unemployment — and, for Black workers in particular — a recent upswing in murders and assaults by the kkkops.
The bosses arrogantly assume that the working class will continue to spill its blood indefinitely for their imperialist holocausts. They are wrong. The international working class, led by PLP, will be their undoing. Our Party is growing as it unites workers under the red flag.
May Day means that ALL workers stand together as a single class and fight for their class interests. This May Day, PLP will march in 27 countries. We are calling on all workers to join us in building a mass movement of millions for communist revolution!
BOX:
Obama Seeks to Secure U.S. Backyard
U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent trip to Latin America represents another step in the bid to out-do U.S. imperialist rivals, China and Russia. Obama seemed to be right at home, shouting colloquial greetings at a cheering crowd in Jamaica and touting the economic and diplomatic possibilities that would result from renewed relations with Latin America at the summit in Panama. For Obama and the capitalists he serves, the trip was crucial in securing relations in a region where rivals China and Russia are gaining influence. Chinese banks’ investments, for example, in Latin America increased by 71 percent last year (CNN, 03/04/15) and Russia has outlined plans to build military bases in Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela (CSIS, 03/24/15). Obama and his capitalist bosses thus have many reasons to be worried about Russia’s and China’s activities in their “backyard.”
Workers should be leery however at Obama’s attempt to attract support. The U.S., after all, has never acted in the favor of workers in Latin America. Countries like Jamaica are in utter debt because of the U.S. policies. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the imperialist bank led by the U.S. and other world powers, imposes harsh austerity measures on Jamaica in order to collect an insurmountable debt that continues to stifle its fragile economy. Workers have no stake in this fight between imperialist rivals.
April 17 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Progressive Labor Party. From a meeting of barely two dozen members of the old U.S. communist movement, PLP has grown into an international Party now organizing in 27 countries.
Over our first half-century, PLP has propelled the march to communism — first by leading anti-racist, working-class struggle, and through that struggle advancing communist ideas. This two-pronged strategy — practice and theory — is the basis for winning masses of workers to fight for communism.
Why communism? In our vision, the working class will determine the future of society. It will destroy the capitalist world and its brutal exploitation. It will smash a system that drives us into constant unemployment and poverty. It will stop the racism and sexism that drags down all workers. It will smash the racist cops who break our strikes and kill our Black, Latin, Asian and immigrant sisters and brothers. And it will put an end to the imperialist wars that send our youth to kill their class brothers and sisters worldwide, all for the bosses’ profits.
A Communist World
Here is our vision for a communist world:
A society run by workers and for workers. After all, the working class produces everything of value and should rightfully receive the benefits of our labor. Collectively, we can determine how to share what we produce, according to need.
Abolition of the exploitative wage system and the money that runs it. We have no need for the parasitic bosses who steal most of the value of our labor through wage slavery.
Multi-racial unity with women and men workers and an end to the racism and sexism that divides the working class. Racism and sexism is rooted in capitalism; the bosses rely on it to steal trillions in super-profits worldwide.
Elimination of all borders, artificial lines drawn by the bosses to make even more profits from workers they call “foreigners.” Nationalism is an anti-worker ideology that enables the imperialist rulers to exploit natural resources and cheap labor. It also enables them to make war on other workers. Communists are internationalists because the working class is one international class, with a common class interest, under one red flag.
This is the world PLP has fought for from the start. We will continue to fight until our class prevails. We invite all workers to join this struggle — for ourselves, and for our children and grandchildren.
Struggle and Theory
From our earliest beginnings in the 1960s, PLP has fought tooth and nail against attacks by the ruling class. We have organized and supported Ford workers and striking teachers in Mexico; wildcatting miners in Hazard, Kentucky; longshore workers in New York City; jute workers in India; miners in Britain; garment workers in Los Angeles; bank workers in Colombia; transit workers in Washington, DC; Chrysler sit-down strikers at Detroit’s Mack Avenue plant; farm workers in California, and bakery workers at Stella D’Oro in the Bronx. We have stood with evicted workers in Palestine-Israel, earthquake victims in Pakistan, and hurricane victims in Haiti, New Orleans, and New York City. We have led anti-imperialist struggles against the UN in Haiti. This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Anti-racism is a hallmark of PLP. We backed Black workers and youth in the 1964 Harlem Rebellion, and fought off racist school segregationists in Boston in 1975. In 1976, we integrated Chicago’s Marquette Park. Throughout our existence, we have led more than a hundred thousand protesters against the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis across the United States. We have mobilized against racist killer cops from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles, to Chicago, to Ferguson, Missouri.
PLP has stood in the forefront of opposition to the bosses’ wars. In the 1960s, we were the first to organize mass demonstrations for the U.S. to “Get Out of Vietnam!” We formed the Worker-Student Alliance in the anti-war Students for A Democratic Society. PLP broke the U.S. travel ban to Cuba and undermined the rulers’ House Un-American Activities Committee to the point of collapse. More recently, working both within the military and on the streets, we exposed the U.S. rulers’ invasions of Iraq as a murderous oil grab.
None of these developments came out of thin air. They grew out of our Party’s analysis of past class struggles and the achievements of millions of workers. PLP studied the strengths and weaknesses of the communist movement led by — among many others — Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. In 1917, this movement created a revolution in Russia; In 1949, a revolution in China. It defeated the Nazis in Europe and the fascists in Japan in World War II. It reached its highest point in China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which attempted to push back a growing elitism in the party leadership and put the masses in charge of society.
PLP is the only group to point out what went wrong in the Soviet Union and China. We are the only organization to analyze how socialism in those countries led back to the unvarnished profit system, where all workers are now mired.
A communist society will have no bosses or profits. It will be led by the working class through its Progressive Labor Party.
Marxism: An Evolving Idea
The history of the Progressive Labor Party began in 1962. A small group of communists left the Communist Party USA and organized the Progressive Labor Movement (PLM). They rejected the CPUSA’s capitulation to capitalism and its abandonment of the open advocacy of communist revolution. The old communist movement proposed that the bosses would peacefully relinquish control of society and allow what the CP called “socialism” to be “voted into existence.” The communists who formed PLM refused to mislead workers and broke away from the old guard.
In the course of PLP’s history, we have rejected some traditional Marxist concepts and advanced a number of new ones, all based on our practice and our examination of world events and the decay of the old communist movement. These new principles are expressed in a series of documents, including Road to Revolution I, II, III and IV; Revolution Not Reform; and “Dark Night Shall Have Its End.” (These are all available on plp.org or in pamphlet form.)
Above all, Progressive Labor Party stands for the principle that the working class must fight directly for communism rather than moving first through a transitional phase of socialism. We reject this two-stage theory because events have shown that socialism inevitably leads back to full-blown capitalism. In both Russia and China, socialism preserved capitalist features such as money and the wage system, leading to inequalities that divided the working class. In both of these countries, the communist party became a new ruling class where privileges were attained through party membership. We believe the working class can and will be won before the revolution to fight directly for communism — to abolish the wage system, the cult of the individual and other capitalist relics.
Core Principles
PLP’s main principles are:
Internationalism, under the slogan “Smash All Borders,” where workers’ class unity is represented by a single mass, international Party;
The fight against racism, a strategic necessity in the struggle to overthrow capitalism;
The fight against the special oppression of women — sexism — another critical component in uniting the working class, a prerequisite for revolution;
A concentration among industrial workers, who produce the capitalists’ profits and the weapons for the bosses’ imperialist wars;
Workers’ power through armed struggle, since the rulers constantly use their armed state power to violently suppress the working class.
Throughout its existence, PLP has fought for these principles in unceasing class struggle. We have learned that building the Party is the first order of business for communists. Capitalism cannot be reformed. Whatever gains workers make in reform struggles are limited and temporary; sooner or later, the bosses always use their state power to take them back. Communists strive to turn reform struggles into schools for communism, into vehicles for building the Party. Winning workers to PLP is the one and only victory the ruling class can never take back. We therefore urge all workers and youth to join us now for the next half-century in this historic task: to organize a communist revolution.
May Day is the international holiday celebrated by tens of millions of workers worldwide. It was born out of — and honors — the Chicago workers’ historic struggle for the eight-hour day on May 1, 1886. This launched general strike that spread to 350,000 workers across the country. It’s a day when workers around the globe march for their common demands, signifying international working-class solidarity.
In 1884, the AFL passed a resolution to make eight hours “a legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886.” Workers were forced to labor “from sun-up to sundown,” up to 14 hours a day. The Chicago Central Labor Council then called for a general strike on May 1, 1886, to demand the 8-hour day.
On that day, Chicago stood still as “Tens of thousands downed their tools and moved into the streets. No smoke curled from the tall chimneys of the factories and mills,” reported one paper.
On May 3, the cops murdered six strikers at the McCormick Reaper Works. The next day thousands marched in protest into Chicago’s Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown by a police agent. Four workers were killed, seven cops died and 200 workers were wounded in what became known as the Haymarket Massacre.
Nine demonstration leaders were framed for “instigating a riot.” Four were hung. A mass protest movement forced the Governor to free those still alive after the government admitted the frame-up.
The tens of thousands who won the 8-hour day saw it eroded, so another general strike was called for May 1, 1890. At the July 1889 meeting of the International Workers Association, organized and led by Karl Marx, the U.S. delegate reported on the struggle. The Association decided “to organize a great international demonstration, so that...on one appointed day the [world’s] toiling masses shall demand” the 8-hour day. “Since a similar demonstration has already been decided upon by the American Federation of Labor....this day is adopted for the international demonstration.” This kind of international solidarity is vitally needed today.
As it progressed, the international communist movement took up the struggle and organized May 1st celebrations every year. In the U.S., it was championed for many years by the old Communist Party, with 250,000 marching in New York City in the 1940s. But when that party abandoned any communist principles, May Day was resurrected by the Progressive Labor Party in 1971 which advanced more revolutionary ideas. May Day marches have been organized by the PLP for the past 44 years, in many cities — Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Houston, Delano, California and others, as well as PLP contingents in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
In the U.S., bosses try to smear May Day as being “imported from Soviet Russia,” it remains as a significant contribution born in the actions of those Chicago strikers over a century ago. Today we march for the universal demands of all workers, regardless of capitalist-created borders: against imperialist war, against racism and sexism, for unity of immigrant and citizen workers, against wage slavery, against fascist police terror and for the communist solution to all these attacks facing the international working class.
How prophetic were the last words of Haymarket martyr August Spies as the hangman’s noose was tied around his neck and he declared, “There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!”
Newark, NJ, April 15 — Airport workers at the three major New York area airports are beginning to fight back against low wages, meager benefits and unsafe working conditions. They are called “passenger service workers” (PSWs), which include screeners, wheelchair attendants, baggage handlers, skycaps, ticket checkers, cabin cleaners, ramp agents and dispatchers.
Despite union misleadership and attempts to ally the workers with politicians, the workers are in a fighting spirit. About 75 airport workers joined 75 other people at a $15/hr minimum-wage demonstration today. Over 100 workers took copies of CHALLENGE. They chanted loudly as they marched from Newark City Hall to a local McDonald’s restaurant.
Wage Slavery Kills
A Summit on Poverty at a local college here highlighted the dire conditions of these workers, and featured their fighting spirit. Sponsored by SEIU 32B/J, the union organizing the workers, and several community organizations, the presentation started with two short films on organizing efforts in Newark and Philadelphia airports. A rank-and-file worker thanked the union for its organizing campaign, but said that the small wage increase gained by some of the workers (to $10.10/ hr) is nowhere near enough to support a family. She spoke eloquently about how workers must fight back against overwork that she said contributed to the on-the-job death of one of her coworkers.
Another speaker referred to the history of Newark International Airport to illustrate her point that this is a long-term struggle that must continue. Instead of the 3,500 jobs promised by the airline bosses and the Port Authority when the new airport was built in 1969, just 300 jobs materialized. Only a few being positions were filled with Black and Latin workers. Both she and a second speaker connected the current low-wage jobs to the capitalists’ need to exploit all workers, and to super-exploit Black and Latin workers.
That second speaker connected the increasing homelessness in Newark, where there are several tent cities, to the long-term decline in the U.S. of real wages, and of the real minimum wage. For example, the real minimum wage is 20 percent below what it was in 1969; the real minimum wage for skycaps and other positions depending on tips is almost 50 percent below its 1969 value. These pitiful wages mean workers spend a much higher percentage on basic necessities like housing and food. He said that recent studies show that there is an increasing number of employed workers who are homeless. These lower wages increase the value stolen by the capitalists, leading to higher profits for the airline bosses and their sleazy subcontractors.
Union Breeds Illusions
The union’s organizing campaign is based partly on the idea that the airline bosses can be convinced that it is in their interest to raise wages somewhat because there would be less worker turnover, more stable business conditions, and thus more regional growth. This is a deadly illusion. Maximizing profits is required by the laws of capitalist competition. As Karl Marx said, one capitalist kills many. The U.S. airline industry in particular, which now has only four major carriers, has seen decades of cost-cutting in all job classifications, and contracting out of lower-paying positions, creating company war chests that led to three major mergers and now record profits. This consolidation has also been subsidized by the capitalist government. Not including tax-free bonds and other giveaways, after the Sept. 11 attack, the federal government gave or loaned the airlines an additional $15 billion. Little to none of this money has gone into workers’ pockets. Many work for subcontractors who now control positions which were formerly unionized airline jobs. In 2014, the four biggest airlines raked in profits of $8 billion (USA Today, 1/27/15). Meanwhile, according to a 2012 report, the median wage for contracted PSWs is $8/hr, putting a family of four well below the poverty line. Seventeen percent of airport workers rely on Food Stamps to feed their families.
Poverty and racism are the inevitable products of a capitalist system that requires savage competition between the bosses in every industry, and a grinding down of the working class in each industry to the lowest wage possible for survival. But like the rebellion in Ferguson, the struggle of airport workers shows that workers can and will fight back. Only communism will abolish class distinctions and the hunger and homelessness that result from capitalism. Under communism, we will produce according to commitment and share whatever we produce according to need. Communist leadership in the current struggle of airport workers can hasten the day when we consign these horrors of capitalism to the scrap heap of history.
TEXAS, April 17 — In response to Dallas Police Department’s (DPD) racist recruiting efforts on campus, Progressive Labor Party students and neighborhood fighters demonstrated against police murders of mainly Black and Latin workers!
The DPD posted signs attempting to entice 200 students to join their racist police force. On the surface, DPD was looking for students from 18 to 24 years of age with 60-plus hours of college credits. The real reason they were specifically targeting our campus is because it’s an urban community college. In other words, they are trying to recruit working-class Black, Latin, and immigrant students, the very same students targeted by the cops. A comrade went up to one of the recruiters and asked what they were looking for, and the recruiter replied, “People from tougher neighborhoods.”
‘Whole Damn System Racist As Hell!’
In response to this racist outreach, a campus club wrote a leaflet on racist police terror and planned an action. While passing out this flyer, many students agreed that the police should not be on campus. During the demonstration, a large group of cops on bicycles circled us. Several police vans also monitored us. The kkkops eyed us continually throughout the action, trying to intimidate us. This only encouraged us to chant louder and louder! “Killer cops you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide” and “Indict, convict, send those killer cops to jail, the whole damn system is racist as hell!”
Students and fighters from the neighborhood united. We held signs to voice our anger with not only the recent recruitment on campus but also the racist police murders.
The cops’ desperate attempt to recruit our youth and students in the context of the Ferguson rebellion can be seen as a fascist strategy. What better way to discipline Black and Latin youth than to recruit them into the terror machine that is the police? The DPD is the ninth largest department in the U.S. The recruiters boast that they hire 35,000 people from around the U.S. per year from as far away as Kentucky, Arizona and New York. The students’ history of fighting racism on this campus is no secret. Following the Ferguson rebellion, we demonstrated in solidarity with the anti-racist fighters.
This fight at our community college is an important one. Fighting racism strikes at the heart of capitalism. As of today, the police killed 342 people throughout the U.S. this year alone. And they dare recruit Black and Latin youth to their racist terror force. No matter the “race” of a cop, a cop is a cop: enemy of the working class.
These cops plan to come back to our campus to recruit again. We plan to challenge them with further action and our communist politics. We will win more students, professors, and campus workers to our side.
