BROOKLYN, August 13 — Snippets of conversations in English, Spanish, Hebrew, and Mandarin. Keys tapping away. Pens scribbling furiously. Some arguments and laughter over an article. This is the sound of the Challenge Summer Project. This August, comrades and friends from around the world came to New York City before our Convention to participate in the production, distribution, and strengthening of CHALLENGE, the communist newspaper of PLP.
After kicking the project off with the Hoops for Justice basketball tournament (see CHALLENGE 9/2), 50 people worked together to produce the most collective edition of CHALLENGE to date. We began with a study group on capitalist propaganda versus communist propaganda.
Red vs. Expert
Some people wrote articles while others chose graphics to accompany them. Some crafted snappy headlines, while a large group of people edited the articles to make sure they had a strong political line. Another posted on PLP’s social media sites: twitter, Facebook, and our blog. Still others translated the articles in English and Spanish. Nearly everyone was new to producing CHALLENGE.
The result? A paper for the masses by the masses. This edition of the paper (9/2) reflected the large collective that helped produce it. Many comrades gained an insight into the work that goes into creating it. Some raised concern about the quality of translations and the topics covered in the paper. CHALLENGE is only as good as the collective that produces it, and the only way for it to capture all the fightback stories and ideas of the working class is for a large number of workers and students to contribute.
Many commented that producing CHALLENGE is indeed more challenging than they initially thought and that they understand why writing regularly for CHALLENGE is important. To produce and distribute a paper of even higher quality, we must be part of the process.
Throughout the summer project, we also sold hundreds of CHALLENGEs at rallies throughout Brooklyn. For many, it was their first sale, first time on the bullhorn, first time leading a rally. Overall, we gave out so many CHALLENGEs that we ran out of the latest issue and had to go back three issues! We also got quite a few contacts and collected many donations for CHALLENGE. One of the goals of this CHALLENGE project was to show that anyone can be a communist leader: whether it be in the streets rallying and representing the Party or in front of a computer writing or translating stories of class struggle.
CHALLENGE, for and by the Collective
 Workers must not only learn to fight, but also fight to learn. Many participants discussed the paralysis that comes along with having to write for CHALLENGE, saying that writing articles feels more like filling in a formula. Capitalist culture dictates that writing is an individualist process, meant for academics and ruling-class thinkers. On the contrary, as we learned during this summer project, creativity is a collective process. Our experience in the working class is far more important to CHALLENGE than “technical training.” When writing an article or making a speech, if we must worry, worry about how workers and youth will respond to the communist ideas we express.
As a transition into PLP’s 50th anniversary convention (see page 8), we concluded the Summer Project with a picnic and discussion of the convention workshop materials. Comrades not only struggled with each other over the politics and participation in CHALLENGE, but also built and strengthened ties!
We invite all our readers to write for CHALLENGE, distribute it among friends and co-workers, and use CHALLENGE as a tool for organizing a communist revolution!

On August 23, each year since 2008, the European Union marks the “European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism.” The EU’s rulers want to spread the big lie that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany—Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler, in particular—were equally evil, while the capitalist imperialists stand for all things good.
The world’s capitalist ruling classes all agree that “communism is dead.” Yet each year their slanders of Stalin and the Soviet Union of his day get wilder and more extreme.
Why so much anti-Stalinism and anticommunism? Because communism remains the biggest threat to capitalism. And the period of Stalin’s leadership in the USSR coincided with the era when the world communist movement achieved so much good for the international working class.
The real meaning of this commemoration is that the Soviet workers beat the fascists in World War II despite the capitalists’ collaboration with Hitler.  But you won’t hear that from the world’s capitalist bosses!
History of M-R Pact
On August 23, 1939, Stalin’s Soviet Union signed a non-aggression treaty with Hitler’s Germany. It’s often called the Molotov-Ribbentrop (M-R) Pact, after the Soviet and German foreign ministers of the day. Anticommunists claim the two countries effectively agreed to divide Europe between themselves. This is a lie.
In fact, the treaty’s great significance was in defining Eastern Poland as lying within the “Soviet sphere of influence.” This meant that if the German army beat the Polish Army, it would still have to stay hundreds of miles away from the pre-1939 Soviet border. In addition, Poland would remain in existence, potentially to ally with the USSR against Hitler.
The USSR had been trying to get Poland, Britain and France to agree to declare war on Germany when Hitler attacked Poland. But the British ruling class was willing to let Hitler have Poland if he would continue East and attack the USSR.
In September 1939, the Germans whipped the Polish army in a few days. The Polish government fled the country to Rumania. Hitler was ready to allow a pro-Nazi Ukrainian state in the former Eastern Poland. So the Soviets had no choice but to occupy Eastern Poland — a region that wasn’t really “Polish,” since imperialist Poland had seized it from Soviet Russia in 1921.
The M-R Pact helped to save Europe from Hitler’s domination. In October 1941, the German army advanced within sight of Moscow before the Soviet forces stopped them. If they had been able to launch their attack 300 miles closer, the Nazi hordes likely would have taken Moscow. If Hitler had conquered the USSR, he would used its immense resources against England.
Two More Soviet Moves vs. Nazism
The M-R Pact was one of three critical moves by the Stalin-led Soviet government to save the USSR and Europe from Nazism. The other two were the Soviet-Finnish War and the defeat of the “Tukhachevsky Affair.”
1. The Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940. The border of Finland, an ally of Nazi Germany, was very close to the major Soviet industrial city of Leningrad. To create a broader buffer zone, the Stalin government demanded that Finland give up land close to Leningrad in exchange for other Soviet land. (“Since we cannot move Leningrad,” Stalin said, “we must move the border.”) When the Finnish government refused, the Red Army defeated the Finnish army and took that land.
Without this redrawing of the border, Leningrad would have been captured by the Finnish army and allied with Hitler’s forces. Millions more Soviet civilians would have died. The Nazis would have used Leningrad’s manufacturing and port facilities to intensify their attack on the rest of the USSR and on England
2. The defeat of the 1937 military conspiracy, also called the “Tukhachevsky Affair.” Some high-level Red Army commanders were plotting to seize power in the USSR, either by arresting and shooting Stalin and his government or by opening the front to a German and Japanese invasion. These former Tsarist officers were conspiring with anti-communist Leon Trotsky. In May and June of 1937, Soviet police arrested the ringleaders, who were tried, convicted, and shot.
Long Live Communism, Death to Anticommunist Lies
Each of these three events proved decisive in defeating fascism and saving the lives of millions of working people worldwide, and in preserving and strengthening the world communist movement. Which is precisely why the capitalists attack them.
The Soviets of Stalin’s day did marvelous things. They also made errors, some of which led to the return of capitalism to Russia today. We must study and learn from their mistakes, but also from their victories.
All communists and all working people everywhere should defend the M-R Pact, the Soviet-Finnish War, and the defeat of the “Tukhachevsky Affair” conspirators. We should expose the anticommunist lies that are promoted on August 23—and on every other day of the year.

This editorial is adapted from a report of PLP’s Central Committee to our 2015 Convention. Its title derives from a message of encouragement from Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, to William Z. Foster, chairman of the Communist Party USA, in response to Foster’s complaint that U.S. imperialism appeared indestructible.
Capitalism offers the world’s workers nothing but endless horrors. Its “triumph” brings imperialist war; mass racist and sexist poverty and unemployment; racist police terror and border control; fascist  “homeland security”; hunger and malnutrition; ethnic and religious genocide; mind-numbing cultural degradation. This is the nature of the profit system. It cannot change. It will prevail until it is smashed by communist revolution. That is the main task for workers of the world: to destroy the old order and create something new. The challenge was never easy, but today it is harder than ever. Why? Because of the cynicism and passivity resulting from the collapse of the old communist movement.
Nonetheless, we have every reason for revolutionary optimism. Progressive Labor Party’s experience in the mass movement tell us that a growing number of workers, soldiers and students are looking for a way out of capitalism’s house of horrors. Their search for an alternative creates an opportunity to win them to our political ideas. Though there are no quick solutions, what we do now—or what we fail to do—is more important than ever. With the reversals in Russia and China to full-blown capitalism, we have lost the model and inspiration of a center for the world communist movement. The current menu of political “options” consists of one set of billionaires or another, from Democratic Party liberals to Tea Party Republicans to Middle East petro-capitalists to a rogue’s gallery of nationalists in Latin America and Africa. None of these bosses have solutions for us. The only solution—the one way to stop imperialist bloodbaths for all time—remains international communist revolution.
Revisionism, the Movement’s Achilles’ Heel
The Achilles’ heel of the old communist movement was revisionism, capitalist ideas masquerading as leftist ideology within the ranks of the working class. While we must fight for reforms within the class struggle to communist ideas, reformism is a deadly ideology. It makes reforms the end rather than a means to build the revolutionary movement.
Our Party was born in the fight against these anti-communist tendencies, and has continuously fought to deepen the struggle. In the early 1980s, with the document Road to Revolution IV, PLP concluded that seizing power—and then keeping it to build an international communist workers’ dictatorship—hinged on bringing communist consciousness to hundreds of millions of workers organized into one revolutionary party. RR IV called for the elimination of money. The capitalist wage system would be replaced by communist distribution: from each according to commitment, to each according to need, with no special privileges for Party members. These theoretical advances were vital contributions to the arsenal of revolutionary communism.
We have a long way to go to build a new communist movement as a beacon of hope for billions of workers. We need to struggle very hard to make limited progress. Each advance, from the sale of one more CHALLENGE to the recruitment of one more worker, helps us move to a higher level of struggle.
Reviving Class Struggle in a Difficult Period
The biggest error our Party made after Road to Revolution IV was to underestimate the significance of the old movement’s collapse. Its defeat has devastated class struggle throughout the world. Where so-called activist movements still exist, they are dominated by agents of the ruling class.
Class collaborators preside over labor unions’ dwindling memberships. The U.S. bosses keep pushing FBI informer Al Sharpton as the pacifying misleader of the movement against racist murders by cops. Billionaire imperialist George Soros marshals pro-capitalist reformers worldwide for “human rights.” (His foundation trained the organizers of the Arab Spring and the current leadership of Black Lives Matter.) Barack Obama, who has droned to death more innocents than the number killed on 9/11 and deported more workers than all other presidents combined, successfully posed as an anti-racist champion in his eulogy for murdered church members in Charleston, South Carolina.
For the mass movement to break from capitalism and advance toward communist revolution, it must first break from these misleaders and their oppressive ideology.
There Are No Lesser Evils
Worldwide, inter-imperialist rivalry, the main source of international conflict today, has sharpened to the detriment of U.S. rulers.  Russia has annexed Crimea and invaded Georgia and Ukraine. China brandishes its growing military might in East Asia and the South China Sea. After a small success in Kosovo, U.S. imperialists have struck out in Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq.
But the U.S. bosses’ losses are not workers’ gains. Without exception, the main opposition to U.S. imperialism is reactionary and nationalist in character. A case in point is the U.S. rulers’ bungled invasion of Iraq. There is no “good” side here, only a choice among thieves and murderers. There is some support for ISIS among oppressed people around the world, but as CHALLENGE has pointed out, the group’s main funding comes from the same non-royal wing of Saudi bosses that bankrolled Osama bin Laden. They want to oust ExxonMobil and capture Saudi and Iraqi oil profits for themselves.  
From the Masses, to the Masses
A Party immersed in the working class will destroy imperialism and the old capitalist order. Relying on workers will make us immeasurably stronger. It will sustain us through hard times and secure the Party against fascist terror. Wherever we fight to sharpen the class struggle, we get a strong response.
In our participation in the recent wave of demonstrations against racist police terror, we showed how a small but disciplined and organized group can influence the masses. The slogans of PLP became mass slogans; the boldness of PLP pushed the limits in a range of actions.
We can do even more.  Through the actions in Ferguson, Missouri, and subsequent demonstrations around the world, our younger comrades learned—and older comrades were reminded—that we must respond with boldness and enthusiasm to the class struggle. Whenever we put the needs of our class first, we win more workers to the revolutionary communist PLP.
The Future Is Bright
Our responsibility is immense. As the current wave of anti-immigrant racism illustrates, the political line of the working class will derive from one of two sources: capitalists or communists. The liberal capitalist line points to the Koch brothers as the enemy and offers the likes of arch-imperialist Hillary Clinton as an alternative. The communist line takes a class position on internationalism and imperialist war, and calls for revolution. There is a life-and-death difference between these two positions.
The mass international protests in 2003 against the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the mass anti-racist marches of 2014 and 2015 show the potential for a mass working-class movement. As U.S. rulers plunge into broader global conflicts, turmoil and mass protest are sure to follow—and on a scale we have not seen in close to half a century.
As Marx wrote, every problem creates the elements of its solution. The profit system’s contradictions are universal and absolute. No amount of fascist repression or imperialist war can erase the historic need of the international working class to make communist revolution.
PLP represents the future. Our opportunities are abundant. By learning to diagnose the disease of reformism more quickly and sharply, we can cure it. Though years of struggle lay ahead, history demands nothing less of us. The working class deserves nothing less.
As we continue to build upon the theory and practice of the communist movement, Progressive Labor Party has the potential to midwife a new humanity into the world. We must stay the course with revolutionary patience and revolutionary urgency. The current period will not last forever; the change may come sooner than we can now foresee.
Dark Night will have its end.

FERGUSON, Missouri, August 11 —  “Racism means? We got to fight back!” came the shout down West Florissant Avenue, as hundreds of Black youth and PL’ers took the streets one year after the murder of Mike Brown by the racist Ferguson Police Department. In defiance of both the Ferguson PD and a thunderstorm, we chanted and stopped traffic.
PLP sent contingents from the South, the Midwest, and Los Angeles to Ferguson to organize around the one-year anniversary of Brown’s murder. Because of PLP’s consistent work in Ferguson over the past year, we have been welcomed by workers there. We received an especially warm response at CHALLENGE sales near the site of Mike Brown’s murder, a segregated Black working-class area. Many residents agreed with our analysis on the need for multiracial unity and workers’ power.
We have developed relationships with Ferguson youth who have organized themselves under the name of Lost Voices. For three nights in a row, PL’ers have joined with them and other young protesters in nightly marches from West Florissant Avenue to the Ferguson Police Department. These energetic marches would start small, with 50 to 60 people and a few cars, and then grow into masses of hundreds that took over the street. When PLP and Lost Voices led chants on the bullhorns, they were picked up by the rest of the marchers. These marches were powerful and loud, with a level of militancy that many people haven’t experienced before – even veteran members of PLP.
Ferguson: School for Communism
Many PL’ers have learned a lot about commitment and perseverance from the young people of Ferguson. Less experienced PL’ers have gotten a crash course in how to protest and fight back in this class struggle against the Ferguson PD and the capitalist state.  The lessons they have learned are invaluable.  
While standing shoulder to shoulder in this struggle, PLP has also struggled politically with our friends in the community to share our vision of the fight for communism. PL’ers held a study group that stressed the need for multiracial unity while discussing the divisive role played by all types of nationalism and the false notion of “white skin privilege.”  Some friends of PLP defended the idea of needing a “Black space,” and a comradely and passionate discussion ensued. PL’ers argued that ideas like “Black spaces” are pushed by the ruling class through organizations like Black Lives Matter, which is funded by the Ford Foundation and billionaire imperialist George Soros.  These backward ideas can only mislead workers into aligning with bosses of like “identity.” Unity with bosses is a death trap that leads workers to fight each other instead of the ruling class. PLP fights for worker unity: Asian, Latin, Black and white.
It is our discipline as a Party that allows us to grow and advance. Discipline means learning to recognize the limits of a situation.  During one march, the numbers of workers and community members dwindled to the point that continuing to hold the street would have unnecessarily risked our comrades and friends. Once the Party leadership determined it was time to leave the street, we made a tactical retreat. One individual who’d joined the march toward the end criticized the Party for leaving when we did.  He was a provocateur who wanted to attack the cops on the spot or provoke the cops into attacking the marchers. PLP believes in organizing a mass party for mass revolutionary violence, not spontaneous anarchy!
The Struggle Sharpens and Continues
Later that day, the police showed up in riot gear, and shots were fired between them and some community members. This gave the cops their opportunity to crack down. Tyrone Harris, who’d just graduated from high school and was a classmate of Michael Brown, was shot by St. Louis County Police. He is currently in a local hospital where his family has been banned from entering.
Our primary focus has been on the youth and community who were most active in the rebellion over the past year. However, this Summer Project has given us a new perspective on organizing and opened new possibilities for struggle. After the police crackdown, we attended a public meeting with progressive local clergy who are organizing their parishioners in direct action against racism in the area. We also are planning a rally and CHALLENGE sale at the hospital where Tyrone Harris is being held. We will reach out to health workers to make the connection between racist police terror and the racist healthcare system.
The fightback in Ferguson is far from over, and PLP’s work here is just getting started! Getting all workers to see that the Ferguson fight is their fight will be another nail in capitalism’s coffin. Multiracial unity of the entire working class is the only way to smash this entire system, and PLP’s Summer Project is bringing that future closer!