HAITI, September 10—Revolutionary struggles worldwide are encountering major challenges, specifically the illusions and false promises made by bourgeois politicians. In Haiti, in every election, activists who call themselves “left” or “revolutionary” and sometimes even “communist,” in fact have joined the ranks of these phony misleaders.
In the last century, the U.S. bosses’ occupation of Haiti brought mass racist terror to workers here. Per Herbert Seligman, writing for The Nation in 1920, said, “Military camps have been built throughout the island. The property of natives has been taken for military use. Haitians carrying a gun were for a time shot at sight. Many Haitians not carrying guns were also shot at sight.” Not only does Haiti’s extreme poverty stem from this occupation, but sexism also pervades working-class lives. A report from the Office of Internal Oversight Services found that U.N. “peacekeepers” have been sexually abusing young women and minors for years!
Politicians Penetrate Revolutionary Struggle
Today, local politicians try co-opting left-leaning workers still not won to communist struggle. This often leads the masses to become cynical and lose confidence in the words and actions of genuine revolutionary leaders. In turn, the bourgeois politicians use the leaders to gain the trust of the masses and maintain power.
The communist PLP fights this trend and combats these revisionist (phony leftist) and reactionary practices. PLP fights for an international communist party to take power by revolution, not by compromise and alliances (for crumbs) with the bosses’ puppets.
Election and Individualist Illusions
In the 2015 parliamentary elections, one of our comrades fell victim to bourgeois politicians. He believed he could co-opt the electoral process to help fellow workers and strengthen the class struggle. He tried convincing the Party his individualism was best. But he knows very well that PLP never collaborates with the bosses in any way, shape or form! Power is not a cake to divvy up! Rather, our aim is to organize the working class by working within mass organizations, putting forward our mass line of struggle against racism and sexism, exposing capitalism and imperialism, engaging in actions and ideological struggle, and finally winning workers and students to our revolutionary communist line, to smash capitalism by establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Lessons from the International Working Class
All the PLP comrades in Haiti were united in saying a clear NO to this comrade’s proposal. However, we will continue discussing places, such as Venezuela, Bolivia and others, where the so-called “left” took power through elections, and failed — nor did they aim — to transform the bosses’ electoral power into communist revolutionary power. By studying the lessons from the international working class, we can see that nothing short of a revolution will gain power for our class. Our Party is a revolutionary communist organization and will not make concessions to the bosses. We will fight to win the hearts and minds of workers, to get them en masse to join and lead our Party and win them to communist revolution. We know that the bosses’ elections are a farce, a game of compromise to trap the masses into supporting the bourgeois state.
Short-lived Campaign, Long Live PLP
Our Party has not followed this comrade’s wrong line. Now he seems to understand he was deceived by those who sought him out: the same bourgeois party that endorsed him for the elections financed his opponent’s campaign! He even says he understands the bold and criminal game bourgeois politicians play. Unfortunately he advocated for small advantages, which are not —  and won’t be — easily satisfied, since the bosses will not readily allow a new head at the table without such a head being shaped in their own image. By staying true to our principles and refusing to follow the former comrade, the Party emerged the winner and strengthened our line.
Build the Party
Following this logic, our PLP’ers have some influence among revolutionary-leaning comrades in a student organization, in part by putting them on guard to avoid falling into the same trap as our former comrade.  One of the presidential candidates in next October’s election has just written a letter trying to woo this student organization — one founded by several PLP members — asking it to discuss the country’s situation in the pre-election period. Obviously he wants to make promises and offer immediate benefits for the organization’s support. But this is just another illusion!
Again, PLP members have adopted a position consistent with our ideas and have won the student organization to it: no meeting and/or alliance with bourgeois politicians, no matter what their promises. We have seen that history records that alliances between left-wing parties and the bourgeois state and its politicians in the elections has only reinforced the capitalist state. PLP built its base among the masses — university and high school students, rural workers, teachers and the unemployed — over the course of several years, fighting side by side in the streets and engaging in ideological struggle.
Ultimately communism will be victorious, if we fight for our revolutionary line, if we are present giving leadership in the mobilizations against the evils of capitalism. We create confidence among the masses and build our base in the working class, building our international revolutionary Party little by little.
No compromise with bourgeois politicians and their state. Long live revolution and the PLP!

COLOMBIA—A PLP international school was held in Bogota recently; participants included comrades, sympathizers, friends of PL and CHALLENGE readers from the U.S. and Colombia. Comrades from the Central Committee gave an important and motivating report showing how PLP is present with our newspaper CHALLENGE in revolutionary struggles worldwide: Haiti, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Algeria and Mexico among 27 countries internationally.
What stood out clearly is that the Party’s ideas are solid and dialectical. We all agreed that the principle contradiction in the world now is inter-imperialist rivalry and that workers should not support any gang of rulers. Nationalism, revisionism (phony leftism), and reformist ideas are a danger for the working class since they divide and pacify us with their aim to try to “improve” capitalism and its social inequities—an impossible task.
We also agreed with the report and situational analysis by the Colombian comrades, which cited the current capitalist crisis as creating a rise in fascism, racism, war, the super-exploitation of labor and the plunder of the world’s natural resources, leaving workers in misery and desolation. We also analyzed the state of the international proletariat, pointing out that we should continue advancing our work and the study of our communist ideas.
One disagreement arose when a friend defended socialism as a necessary step toward communism. This led to a small debate that clarified the Party’s line on why we fight directly for communism, an aim that has always been the historical goal of the working class. We must also note the important political advances made by the young workers who analyzed the current situation, spoke about their own political activity, and contributed by translating into Spanish the reports given by our North American comrades.
We finished by evaluating the school with our Party comrades, which inspired us to continue working and fighting for communism. We all have the task of building our Party and developing new clubs and study groups. We all must write for CHALLENGE and distribute more copies among our friends and family members to expand our social base with communist ideas.
A comradely hug from our friends and readers. Many thanks and hope for success in the important job of informing the working class.

ALBANY, NY, September 21—Today, about 100 members and supporters of the United Auto Workers (UAW) blocked traffic outside the Federal Building to support the 359 UAW members locked out by Honeywell since May 9. Honeywell is a major war contractor which manufactures brakes for military and commercial aircraft at two plants. UAW Local 9 in South Bend, Indiana, has 317 workers. UAW Local 1508 here in Green Island, New York, has 42 members and services the South Bend plant. Building solidarity with these workers is a key task for the communist Progressive Labor Party.
Honeywell is a crucial part of U.S. imperialism’s industrial complex. PLP fights for better working conditions for the Honeywell workers, while organizing for communist revolution to smash the capitalist system that exploits them as they build the weapons for future imperialist wars.
Today, scabs from the notorious union-busting Strom Engineering are running both the Green Island and South Bend plants. The Green Island plant is working two 12-hour shifts, sometimes six days a week! After picketing the plant early this morning, the workers joined the rally at the Federal Building, demanding — while the lockout continues — that the Obama Administration reverse its decision to extend an $18.3 million contract. From the Federal Building, workers took to the streets and blocked traffic for about 45 minutes before marching to the State Capitol building.
Honeywell: War-maker, Strikebreaker
Honeywell is a company known to most U.S. workers for its thermostat temperature-control devices found in many buildings. Most workers may not know that in addition to thermostats and brake parts for aircraft, Honeywell also manufactures missiles and drones, and is part of a consortium that assembles the nuclear bombs in U.S. imperialism’s arsenal.
Its role as war-maker dovetails with its actions as a strikebreaker. Despite more than $4 billion in government contracts last year, Honeywell locked out the workers after they rejected a contract that would double healthcare premiums for a family of four, and add a $1,400 deductible. After these premiums would be deducted from their paychecks, some workers would be taking home less than $15 an hour.
Honeywell also wants to unilaterally increase healthcare costs in each year of the contract, outsource work to non-union sites and eliminate job classifications and end pensions.  Clearly, this “offer” was intended to force the workers out and break the union.
Honeywell CEO Dave Cote, who has a personal retirement package worth $800,000/month, is no stranger to the Obama Administration. He served on the Deficit Commission and in 2010, he flew on Air Force One on an official trip to India, while 250 Honeywell uranium workers, members of the United Steelworkers, were locked out in Metropolis, Illinois.
This is the fourth time Honeywell has locked out its workers since 2010 — the uranium workers that year and again in 2014, and 840 workers, members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM), in Kansas City in 2011. In 2010, Honeywell threatened to use federal troops to break a Steelworkers strike in Florida.
Fight UAW Mis-leadership, Build Solidarity!
PLP supports the rank-and-file workers fighting for their jobs. Rather than using this action to mobilize thousands of workers to surround the plant and stop the scabs, the UAW mis-leadership used it as a platform for a dozen politicians and labor officials to blow hot air at the workers. After four months, the President of the New York State AFL-CIO told the workers, “You are not alone. The 2.2 million members of the AFL-CIO are with you.” Yet he was there by himself! And any talk of mass militant action at the plant, against the scabs, is countered by, “We can’t do anything that will bring an injunction against the local.” But with the plant still working around the clock making profits, what more harm could an injunction do?
The UAW misleaders are also trying to build patriotism to mislead this struggle, saying, “Our military deserves better than scab parts in their fighter jets.” The fighter jets Honeywell is building, along with the nuclear bombs, will be used to slaughter our working-class sisters and brothers internationally. They’re part of the U.S. bosses’ arsenal to remain the top-dog imperialist power versus their growing Russian and Chinese imperialist rivals.
PLP salutes the fight of the Honeywell workers against the war-making, profiteering Honeywell bosses and their servants in the UAW mis-leadership. As the Honeywell workers’ Black and white sisters and brothers in Charlotte, North Carolina, fight back against racist police terror and workers in India fight in the tens of millions for better working conditions, we glimpse the potential for international working-class unity. Our class deserves communism, where factories like Green Island and South Bend assemble machines to build a communist world run by our class, instead of weapons for World War III.
That is PLP’s fight—to organize the working class to smash all borders and this racist, imperialist system whose most recent genocide has cost millions of Arab workers their lives and displaced millions more, turning the Middle East into a killing field. PLP builds the international solidarity of all workers, from Green Island to Syria. Smash war-maker, strikebreaker Honeywell and its imperialist government! Fight for communism!

The conflict of 1914 was the “seminal catastrophe” of the twentieth century. There is no reason to suppose the [China]-American conflict of a decade hence would not be the seminal catastrophe of the twenty-first.
— The National Interest, 9/7/16.

China’s recent imperialist expansion clashes head-on with the need of U.S. capitalism to maintain its top-dog status, signaling another step toward world war. Despite July’s ruling against them by the international Permanent Court of Arbitration, the Chinese imperialists continue to sail their ships through the Scarborough Shoal (Washington Post, 9/7). According to the Philippines military, these ships were capable of dredging sand—in other words, building more islands. The Shoal is part of a “strategic triangle” near the Philippines “that would allow Beijing to control the South China Sea” (qz.com, 9/11).
The international working class is caught squarely in the middle of this dogfight. Workers are the ones who fight and die in imperialist wars; the bosses will spare no worker in their quest for domination of profit, labor, and resources. Regardless of which capitalist power winds up on top, workers will suffer mass casualties, racist and sexist exploitation, and extreme state terror. The Progressive Labor Party fights for communism, a system that will smash racism, sexism, and imperialist war for all time.
Primer for War
The shift of global power now underway—the relative decline of the U.S. empire, and the surge of China—is a primer for war. Prior to World War I, the Ottoman and Russian empires were falling, and the U.S. was early in its rise. By the end of World War II, U.S. imperialism had established worldwide dominance. But that was then. Today the U.S. faces challenges on many fronts: Russia, ISIS, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and China. This editorial will focus on the clash with China and analyze The National Interest article published two days after the G20 summit conference in Hangzhou, China: “Why America and China Today Are Like Pre-World War I Europe.”
The bosses are now openly admitting what PLP has asserted for years. Disputes over the South China Sea, more assertive regional powers like Japan and the Philippines, the creation of the U.S.-dominated Trans-Pacific Partnership, and China’s One Belt, One Road initiative are moving the world toward a broad global conflict. While these developments are fluid and could go in many directions, ruling-class academic Jared McKinney lays out a blow-by-blow scenario for the next world war:

The creation of new flashpoints in the East and South China Seas is the first stage. This has already happened.

The South China Sea is essential to China’s bid to establish itself as the new top-dog imperialist. China’s economy depends on foreign trade, 90 percent of which travels by sea, which puts the rising superpower in a vulnerable position. In 2013, 82 percent of China’s crude oil imports passed through the Strait of Malacca, a maritime choke point controlled by the United States (Stratfor, 6/24/2015). When China builds islands with military capabilities and flouts international maritime law, it is pushing back aggressively against U.S. imperialism. As all imperialists understand, those who control the movement of oil control the world.
The increased number of Chinese boats in the Scarborough Shoal, a “precursor to possible building of structures on the shoal,” is just the latest example of capitalist China’s ambitions (Reuters, 9/8). In response, the U.S. and its ally, Japan, are increasing their military resources in the South China Sea by arming patrol ships and surveillance aircraft, and by training military forces in Malaysia and the Philippines (Stratfor, 9/7).
It’s only a matter of time until the U.S. sends more troops to these regions. “By positioning sufficient troops forward, including ground forces in Japan and the Philippines, the U.S. could…offset China’s military buildup” (Foreign Affairs, September/October).

Strengthened anti-China groups (both military and economic) are the second stage; this is currently under way.

In addition to challenging the seas, China is making what may be the biggest economic development plan in history, “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR). Funded by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), China’s rival to the U.S.-backed World Bank, this is a plan to develop markets and infrastructure in over 60 countries across Asia, Africa, and Europe. OBOR is luring a number of national bosses traditionally allied with the U.S., from Saudi Arabia (the largest source of U.S. oil profits) to Djibouti (home to a U.S. military base) to Turkey, the no longer reliable corridor from Europe to the Middle East.
 The strategy behind the Belt and Road Initiative is to diversify transit lines, thereby mitigating China’s vulnerability to external economic disruption and reinvigorating China’s slowing economy (Stratfor, 6/24/15).
U.S. bosses have responded by locking down their allies and creating their own economic alliance, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), though it has yet to be passed by Congress. The TPP is a trade agreement among twelve countries in North America, South America, Asia, and Oceania, similar to the Clinton administration’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

An intensified arms race with China and simultaneous constructed crises, typically over “alliance credibility,” are the third stage.

As China advances to realize its global ambitions, it must build a military to protect Chinese capitalists’ investments. China’s military is still weak, as compared to the U.S., but it is strengthening quickly. China just launched the world’s first quantum satellite, which can easily detect stealth planes and is highly resistant to jamming. They are also close to finishing the first Chinese-made aircraft carrier, a big step in extending their military reach.

Peaceful resolution of a few crises is the fourth stage. It’s here that…the statesmen insist on ‘firmly’ defending ‘present-day interests,’ having no fear of the specter of war.

U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden writes, “The next administration will have to steer a relationship with China that encompasses both breakthrough cooperation and, potentially, intensified competition” (Foreign Affairs, September/October). It’s no coincidence that China, Australia and the U.S. recently staged their third annual joint military survival training exercise “to build cooperation and trust”—just one week before Russia and China were to conduct an eight-day naval drill in the South China Sea (People’s Daily, 9/11). Temporary cooperation, a sign of weakness for a constrained U.S., will inevitably give way to wider conflict.

U.S. Says: Mobilize for War, Draft

In light of the upcoming election of the next chief servant of arch-U.S. imperialists, Foreign Affairs (the magazine of the Council on Foreign Relations, the leading think tank for the main finance wing of U.S. capitalism) dedicates its entire September/October issue to future war strategy. What the U.S. self-admittedly needs but lacks are class unity and ground forces. As conflict with China intensifies, the U.S. ruling class is insecure about many things, among them a disjointed Congress and a “broken military system.”
Co-writing with one of the bosses’ favorite strategists, Michael O’Hanlon, disgraced former general and war criminal David Petraeus (Afghanistan, Iraq) calls the U.S. armed forces “the best military in the world today, by far,” but cautions that it must be ready to handle multiple battles simultaneously. These ruling-class insiders criticize Barack Obama’s plan to cut back the active-duty Army:
Washington might declare its lack of interest in large-scale land operations and stabilization [occupation] missions, but history suggests that eventually it would find itself engaging in them nevertheless…The current and future army must be ready to handle a wide range of possible challenges.
They go on to call the current military budget of $600 billion a “bargain,” and advise against further cuts. If the U.S. is to check China’s imperialist ambitions, the bosses will need more than a TPP. They will need a willing army.  
Making a Draft Palatable
As reflected in Foreign Affairs, the U.S. ruling class is now openly calling for a draft:

“The only way to create a military reserve that looks like the United States [demographically] is to empower the state to require involuntary service. The trick is to make the empowerment politically palatable.” The bosses know they need a military that is “equitable and inclusive: no exemptions for the well-to-do.”  

While racism and divisions within the working class prop up the capitalists’ profit system, these divisions also limit their maneuverability. The bosses lament their lack of an essential aspect of fascism: all-class unity. Presenting a “people’s army,” as the CFR calls it, is contingent upon building a patriotic “America First” mindset. This has been a big struggle for the rulers, as the massive unpopularity of both Democratic and Republican politicians attests.
Who will pay for these coming oil wars? The working class. The main causes of U.S. financial woes “are the government’s rapidly increasing debt and the expanding cost of entitlement programs…It is on the domestic front where the tough choices will have to be made in order to defend the nation’s security and economic well-being.”
Only through fascist control on the domestic front can the imperialists gain an edge on the war front. To mobilize for war, the bosses need intensified nationalism and patriotism to pacify the working class into accepting lower wages and benefits and massive state terror. Tax dollars will be funneled into the buckling U.S. infrastructure. Last year, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave U.S. infrastructure a grade of D+. It estimates an investment of $3.6 trillion will be needed by 2020 if the U.S. economy expects “to be the most competitive in the world” (Wired, 1/23/15).
Turn Imperialist War Into Class War
To paraphrase Marx, every problem contains the elements of its own solution. World War I gave rise to the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union, the first workers’ state. World War II gave rise to the Chinese Revolution. The march towards World War III will give rise to the conditions for a worldwide communist revolution. Everywhere in the world—including China and the U.S.—the international working class is fighting back.
Fighting back counts. September 9 marked the 45-year anniversary of the Attica prison rebellion in upstate New York, when 1,300 prisoners revolted against brutal, racist conditions. For four days, before liberal Governor Nelson Rockefeller launched his massacre, they were in charge. This example of Black working-class-led rebellion lives on as a terrible reminder for the bosses—and as an inspiration for our class.