The sit-down strike and occupation of the General Motors’(GM) Fisher Body plant No. 1 in Flint, Michigan, for 44 days and nights —  from December 30, 1936 to February 11, 1937 — demonstrated the power of workers in the basic industries, a central outlook of the three-year-old Progressive Labor Movement, that later inspired the Progressive Labor Party.

A sit-down strike occupies the means of production, preventing the bosses’ use of scabs to resume operations and is harder to attack than an outside picket line. Any company frontal assault would endanger millions of dollars’ worth of machinery. While not a revolutionary act,  the Flint sit-down was completely controlled by the rank-and-file, although the press and GM labeled it as “Soviet-style tyranny.” GM CEO Alfred Sloan called it “revolutionary in its dangers and implications,” possibly because communists played a central role in its organization and leadership.

The city of Flint was company-controlled — the mayor, city manager, police chief, and judges were GM stockholders, company officials or both. 

To combat union organizers, GM hired the infamous Pinkertons (a private police force bosses used to infiltrate unions, keep strikers out of plants, recruit goons, and protect scabs).They also had ties to the U.S. Justice Department and Navy Intelligence. It organized the Black Legion, a terrorist group that beat, tarred, feathered and murdered active unionists — all this to protect Flint, the nerve center of GM’s world auto empire.

Three-fourths of GM’s cars were dependent on the chassis produced in Flint. Eighty percent of the city’s population was directly dependent on GM for a living. The workers suffered the most intense speed-up on GM’s assembly lines, often unable to climb the stairs when they got home.

The workers were determined to slow down the line and smash the open shop. During the Great Depression, with millions unemployed, the company used the threat of layoffs to enforce its speed-up. Flint became a driving force to establish an industrial union called the United Auto Workers (UAW) that included thousands of unskilled and skilled workers, a rarity in unions at that time.

What did the strike demonstrate? 

It was against this backdrop that workers  bravely fought for union recognition, a 30-hour work-week, time and one-half for overtime, abolition of piece work and slowing down the line. They organized the most effective strike apparatus ever seen, completely controlled by the rank-and-file. A mass meeting elected a stewards committee and a strike strategy committee of seven, six of whom were communists.

The strike not only demonstrated the ability of workers to halt and seize production. It exhibited many instances of working class leadership militancy through organizing that included:

• The creation of rank-and-file committees that governed food distribution, security, information, sanitation and health, a “kangaroo court,” entertainment, education and athletics.
• Two mass meetings of 1,200 — the supreme body — were held daily. Every worker served six hours duty — on three, off nine in every 24 hours.
• A Special Patrol of 65 workers that formed part of a security committee carried out a 35-minute inspection everyday and every hour, to check on any problems, “rumors,” and disruptions.
• Daily cleanups occurred as dozens of workers moved through the plant in waves, leaving it spic and span.
• Strikers’ children were hoisted through the windows to visit their fathers.
• Labor history and writing classes were organized.
• Charlie Chaplin donated his film “Modern Times” for workers’ viewing.
• A “Living Newspaper” was established for workers to act out the events of the day.
• Women workers and strikers’ wives constituted brigades armed with 2x4 clubs to guard the plant from the outside against police attacks and potential assault by the National Guard.       

‘We have only one life’  

To capture Chevy Plant No. 4 (which assembled 1,000,000 Chevrolets a year), workers planned brilliant military maneuvers, where they feinted attacks on two other Chevy plants (Plants No. 9 and  No. 6), drawing company guards scrambling there, which left Chevy Plant No.4 unprotected and free to capture by strikers. Soon after, the 14,000 workers from the newly seized plant joined the sit-down. After the victorious takeover it was not long before the National Guard surrounded the plants and waged war on workers, attacking them with tear gas. Amid the chaos and blinding clouds of tear gas, one worker, a UAW leader named Joe Sayen, addressed a crowd of equally courageous workers:

“We want the whole world to understand what we are fighting for. We are fighting for freedom and life and liberty...What if we should be defeated? What if we should be killed? We have only one life. That’s all we can lose, and we might as well die like heroes than like slaves.”

The effect on the working class

The workers’ fightback proved too costly for the bosses. After a decisive battle, GM–fearing destruction of its machinery– surrendered, especially when 40,000 workers from four nearby states marched into Flint and surrounded the struck plants, ready to defend the sit-downs. This inspiring feat, which was once deemed “impossible” by the leader of GM’s security thugs (a Hitler-sympathizer), shook the bosses and their goons to the core.

Despite the bosses’ railings and weak attempts to undermine worker’s power, the workers won union recognition for the CIO’s United Auto Workers, for the 40-hour work week (which led to weekends off for tens of millions of U.S. workers), overtime pay, and a slowing-down of the assembly-line speed-up. In its wake, the strike had an electrifying effect on the working class. In less than two weeks, 30,000 workers staged sit-in’s in a variety of industries. U.S. Steel, the world’s largest steelmaker, and General Electric saw the handwriting on the wall and signed up with CIO unions — without a strike. Women in the million-dollar Woolworth chain were sitting in. Within the next four years, five million industrial workers had joined the CIO. Industrial unions were born.

The role of communists

Communists in the Communist Party U.S.A. (CP) played a fundamental role. As historians noted, “Had it not been for the Communists, there is serious doubt that the forces of industrial unionism would have lived through this period.” However, the CP failed to link this huge reform struggle to the need to win workers to the real solution: revolution. It did not expose the relationship of state power to the ruling class and fostered illusions about government being some “neutral” institution in the battle between classes. It did not explain the class nature of the law. The CP essentially backed Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election, even though it ran its own candidate.

Trade unions are a defensive weapon for workers. Historically, any reforms workers win are eventually taken away by the rulers’ state power and government control. Capitalism is a worldwide phenomenon. Reform victories like these are undercut by capitalists moving their plants to low-wage areas. Today, GM produces more cars in China than in the U.S., not to mention the U.S. auto industry’s presence in South Africa, Vietnam and Eastern Europe.

The only answer to this contradiction is overthrowing capitalism — along with its government — a profit system which always exploits workers wherever it can, pitting one group against another. As one striker remarked as he left the Flint plant,“the first victory is ours. But the war is not over.”

Railfans meet the red line

I’ve been organizing in the New York City transit section for a few years now. It hasn’t been the easiest fight to wage at times. And self critically, I’ve found myself battling internalized anti communism on the job after hearing plenty of racist, sexist drivel from colleagues. It’s not always as simple as calling these things out and thinking workers will magically understand these contradictions (If it were, we could just say, “Join PLP” and get the whole working class on board like nothing).

But recently, I’ve had some breakthroughs and an even bigger realization. My co-worker, who also operates subway trains in the city, came to a base building event/celebration a few weeks back. I regularly give him CHALLENGE, and we discuss local and world events. He also came to our May Day march last year.

Another colleague, a local bus operator, has expressed interest in attending study groups. He gets CHALLENGE as well. What made these shifts possible is the friendship all three of us have forged through our collective love of trains and buses. 

While we meet regularly to talk about the newest trains in the system or the latest bus depot assignments, it’s an opportunity as well to bring up the subway fare and why it’s racist against Black and Latin workers. While we “railfan” R211 or R68 subway cars, it’s a chance to bring up why the MTA has to pay billions to Wall Street bosses in debt service, and the working class has to foot that bill with worse service. Our regular trips on each other’s trains are an opening to mention the fightback some of our other colleagues are waging against management in their respective sections.

It may be an unorthodox way to build a base...but on this road to destroying capitalism, a few twists and turns are expected. I talk regularly with other transit workers who enjoy trains, and I’m looking into maybe giving them the paper as well. I still need to gain more confidence in expressing my politics at the right time with them. However, this train route might be what I need! 

More reports to come.
*****

Bosses’ flags are workers’ graves

Back in 2014, two news stories starkly showed the peril workers face if they buy into nationalism of any kind (New York Times, 5/16/2014). Nationalism, patriotism, is a boss’s lie. I thought of this again today, as Donald Trump threatens to send U.S. worker-soldiers into Venezuela. Here are the stories.

In eastern Ukraine, steelworkers and miners in the companies owned by the billionaire Rinat Akhmetov downed tools and, led by their managers, occupied their city Mariupol as militias against the pro-Russian secessionists.  Akhmetov said secession would bring sanctions and destroy his businesses and the workers’ jobs.  He was probably right, so the unity of Ukraine became his slogan as he turned the workers into his private soldiers to enforce Ukrainian nationalism.  Forget that he might go tomorrow in the opposite direction. “If you want to keep your jobs, fight for me,” is always the boss’s song. 

What these workers did was follow their boss down the path of nationalism, which delivered them into the bosses’ hands.  The bad thing was not just because they became cops and soldiers in Akhmetov’s private army.  Worse, it set them up for war with other Ukrainian and Russian workers in their own city and the whole Eurasian region.  It delivered them into the hands of rival imperialists, allied with local capitalists. They were used as cannon fodder against other workers flying different bosses’ flags. Every flag save the red one is a boss’s flag. Patriotism is a boss’s lie.

The other story was from Vietnam, where anti-Chinese nationalism turned violently racist.  “One Chinese laborer said angry Vietnamese workers had stomped on his hands, crushing them.  Another said his son had been struck in the head with a metal rod by a Vietnamese mob that had sought out Chinese for beatings. At least one Chinese worker died” (NYT, 5/16/14). This was a tragedy for our class.  

Both Vietnamese and Chinese workers are exploited by bosses of many nationalities, and nationalist strife between them only serves the exploiters on both sides.  It is class suicide for workers to turn on one another like this, to define one another as “foreign,” to kill one another for a boss’s lie.

Two generations earlier both Vietnamese and Chinese workers fought for communism together.  What a falling off from the line of the Vietnamese communist poet To Huu: “For the Party’s long life/together we march/with the same heart.”  Now it’s the task of communists to revive proletarian revolutionary internationalism. We know it will need the same heroism that To Huu’s nephew Little Huom displayed, dying in battle “in a jet of blood”: “His cap askew/ he whistled away/ like a warbler/ on a garden path.” 

Even the most tragic moment has its beauty, because Huom’s red song goes on like the species-life of humanity itself.  That is why he fought, and the Vietnamese women To Huu called heroes “who don’t need a beard to be heroes,” and why we fight on in his name, for a communist future in every land.
*****

New empire rises, same misery for workers everywhere

Over a century ago, in his poem “Always the same”, Langston Hughes showed that imperialism is the same everywhere for the working class (See below). To attack another ruling class, a ruling class must first attack its own workers even harder. This is the stage of capitalism called fascism. Each ruling class enforces fascism at home to maximize production and prepare for the redivision of the global order. Imperialism happens when bosses, having already divided the world, fight to reshape it. Trade wars eventually turn into shooting wars.

The classic model of imperialism extracts resources from poor countries to fuel production in industrial centers. For decades, the U.S. seemed to control the world through oil. Now China controls the production of rare earth elements (REEs), essential for modern tech. REEs aren’t rare, but refining them requires advanced industrial capacity. The U.S. failed to build that base, leaving China dominant. Even if the U.S. acquires raw materials from Nigeria, Greenland, Brazil, Madagascar, or Canada, it cannot match China’s processing power.

Today’s tech—clouds, AI, cell phones, data centers—is built on this exploitation. Workers die in open-air mines, labor under brutal factory conditions, and are paid in local currency while serving global capital. In China, nets are installed outside factories to prevent suicides. The tech billionaires funding Trump and other politicians rely entirely on this labor. The system is the same as ever—until workers organize to end it.

To wage wars for resources, bosses need soldiers and workers loyal to nationalism, racism, and sexism. Many believe elections can bring socialism, defeat fascism, or replace one capitalist party with a better one. All these illusions protect capitalism. Socialism under capitalism cannot lead to communism, as it preserves the inequalities of the system. The Progressive Labor Party fights to unite workers across Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas against imperialist wars abroad and fascism at home. The only solution is communist revolution.

The U.S. once ruled the world through the petrodollar. Now China challenges that domination through control of REE production. Inter-imperialist rivalry has entered a new phase. The October 2025 ASEAN Summit mirrors the 1884 Berlin Conference, when European powers divided Africa. This time, national ruling classes sold out their own workers for a share of the global pie.

Trump’s attendance at the October summit signaled how seriously the U.S. views this redivision. Earlier, in July, Marco Rubio met Russian officials in Asia, highlighting U.S. weakness. Tariffs on China have mostly hurt U.S. workers, not Chinese bosses. Chinese control of REEs and advanced production exposes U.S. impotence. Trump has even tried to block advanced microchips for military hardware—but the reality is clear: U.S. imperialism is no longer unchallenged.
*****

Always the same
By Langston Hughes

It is the same everywhere for me:
On the docks at Sierre Leonne,
In the cotton fields of Alabama,
In the diamond mines of Kimberley,
On the coffee hills of Haiti,
The banana lands of Central America,
The streets of Harlem,
And the cities of Morocco and Tripoli. 
Black:
Exploited, beaten and robbed,
Shot and killed.
Blood running into 
Dollars
Pounds
Francs
Pesetas
Lire 
For the wealth of the exploiters-
Blood that never comes back to me again.
Better that my blood
Runs into the deep channels of Revolution,
Runs into the strong hands of Revolution,
Stains all flags red,
Drives me away from 
Sierre Leone
Kimberley
Alabama
Haiti
Central America
Harlem
Morocco
Tripoli 
And all the black lands everywhere.
The force that kills,
The power that robs,
And the greed that does not care. 
Better that my blood makes one with the blood
Of all the struggling workers in the world-
Till every land is free of
Dollar robbers
Pound robbers
Franc robbers
Peseta robbers
Lire robbers
Life robbers- 
Until the Red Armies of the International Proletariat
Their faces, black, white, olive, yellow, brown,
Unite to raise the blood-red flag that
Never will come down! 

Baristas continue strike against Starbucks bosses

The Gazette, 12/6–About 30 community members, labor leaders and university students gathered outside the Starbucks on South Clinton Street on Saturday to back striking baristas demanding that the coffee chain negotiate a first union contract — more than two and a half years after Iowa City workers voted unanimously to unionize…workers are committed to holding the line until Starbucks agrees to a fair first contract, citing the need for higher take-home pay, adequate staffing, and a resolution to unfair labor practice charges tied to alleged union-busting.

Airport workers strike against greedy store owners

Las Vegas Sun, 12/3–Police arrested roughly two dozen Culinary Union Local 226 members Wednesday night after they blocked traffic…near Harry Reid International Airport…The arrests follow a strike authorization weeks earlier by roughly 400 airport workers  at 10 companies with lapsed union contracts. The employers operate 21 airport shops, from national chains to local shops like Bagelmania and Village Pub. “These employers want to try to jam a second-class contract down these workers’ throats, and they’ve been very patient for four years,”...“They’re just not going to wait any longer.”

UK prospects for college grads hit new low

Yahoofinance, 12/3–…for many Gen Z graduates in the United Kingdom…the financial value of a degree has been quietly eroding…graduate pay premium over minimum-wage salaries has been cut in half since 2007. Once adjusted for inflation, the average salary for working-age graduates is now 30% lower than it was a decade and a half ago…today’s Gen Z grads are earning significantly less than millennials did at the same stage of life…roughly 1.5 million students take out loans each year, graduating with an average debt of £53,000 (about $71,000)...even securing a job has become harder…Employers now receive a record 140 applications on average for each graduate job.

Butcher Netanyahu lobbies for his future as he oversees murder of children

Al Jazeera, 12/4–Israel hasn’t talked about the “war” in Gaza for many weeks…more than 350 Palestinians, including more than 130 children, have been killed during this so-called “ceasefire”...Palestinians die because that is what Palestinians are there to do…Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pardon request, however, is another ball of wax…There has only been one pardon given before conviction…in the history of Israel. It was granted to Shin Bet personnel who, in 1984, stormed a bus hijacked by Palestinians and beat two of the hijackers to death…He is asking the president…to stop the trial in the interest of “national unity” and the “stupendous developments” expected…in the Middle East. 

Chips factories in Arizona reflect fears of U.S. bosses

New York Times, 12/4–The computer chip factories rising from an empty expanse of the Sonoran Desert test the concept of immensity…It represents an investment of $165 billion, making it one of the most expensive undertakings on earth…Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, the global leader in the industry, has marshaled the investment, the people and the know-how to turn these plans into reality…The presence of TSMC in Phoenix reflects a reassessment of geopolitical risks. No one at its headquarters in Taiwan stared at the globe and concluded that Phoenix was the most suitable place to make chips…TSMC’s customers have grown worried about its dependence on factories in Taiwan, a self-governing island claimed by China. What if Beijing unleashes its military to seize control, disrupting the supply of chips? 

Analyst for bosses frets about the future

Foreign Affairs, 12/2–The world has changed more in the past four years than in the previous 30…Russia bombards Ukraine, the Middle East seethes, and wars rage in Africa…the globe did not unite in embracing democracy and market capitalism…We live in a new world of disorder…Great-power competition is back, as the rivalry between China and the United States sets the frame of geopolitics…Emerging middle powers, including Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey, have become game-changers. Together, they have the economic means and geopolitical heft to tilt the global order toward stability or greater turmoil…The next five to ten years will likely determine the world order for decades to come.

Hoping to strike a blow at their Chinese competition, the U.S. capitalists have trained their sights on the China-leaning Venezuelan bosses. As the latest crisis of capitalism drives the rulers toward open fascism and world war, workers around the globe are faced with a choice: Do we get fooled by nationalism into fighting for one gang of thieves and parasites or another, or do we fight for communism, for a world run by and for the international working class? 

Donald Trump, the top U.S. warmonger, has confirmed that he’s authorized covert operations inside Venezuela, in defiance of international law (New York Times, 11/18).  The U.S. has deployed its largest and most deadly aircraft carrier to the Caribbean (NYT, 11/17), with artillery, missiles, and attack drones aimed at Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. Trump’s savage “Department of War” has already blown up 22 small fishing boats and murdered all on board. In line with the needs of the billionaires behind him, Trump is shifting the U.S. war machine from the Middle East to Latin America. It marks the biggest U.S. military buildup in Latin America since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and a turning point in the coming global conflict. 

Venezuela is the next battlefield in two growing conflicts, one between the U.S. bosses’ two factions and the other between the two top imperialist powers. the U.S. and China. The working class has no dog in this fight. Whoever ends up on top will kill millions of workers to consolidate power and keep their profits flowing. The only option for the working class is to turn the guns around and fight for an egalitarian world without racism, sexism, money, or bosses: for communism.

Venezuela, playground for imperialist killers

The big power competition in Latin America between China and the U.S. is heating up. As the imperialists seek to outmaneuver each other for raw materials, labor, and markets, the capitalist bosses of smaller countries are selling their people off to the highest bidder and skimming big rewards for themselves in return. 

In Mexico, for example, President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government is distancing the country from China by proposing tariffs of up to 50 percent on Chinese cars and auto parts, steel, textiles, and pharmaceuticals (Americas Quarterly, 10/14). 

By contrast, Brazil’s capitalist bosses have refused to capitulate to U.S. demands and are risking huge tariffs by jailing a Trump favorite, the former Brazilian president and anti-immigrant racist Jair Bolsonaro. Meanwhile, Brazilolsonaro’s President Lula da Silva is selling off the country to China. China has bought up $7 billion in Brazilian assets in the first half of 2025 alone (Ion Analytics, 8/4). 

Venezuela may be the largest prize of all, as it boasts the world’s largest proven oil reserves. The U.S. bosses have watched China become the largest importer of Venezuelan oil and Russia a major Venezuelan trading partner, including billions of dollars in arms sales over the past two decades (CNN 11/13). 

U.S. bosses fight over where to wage war

The two U.S. bosses’ factions have opposing interests and  clashing strategies for preserving U.S. imperialism. The Trump Small Fascist, Fortress America faction, a coalition of domestically oriented industry, smaller U.S. oil companies, and tech billionaires, is upending the historic strategy of the main wing Big Fascists, the finance capital wing of the U.S. ruling class. Under Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine,” Latin America is now the main focus of U.S. imperialism (NYT, 11/17).

Fronted by Bush, Obama, and Biden, the Big Fascists attempted to wrestle back control of Venezuela from the Chavez-Maduro gang. Under the veil of “promoting democracy,’ they’ve funded failed coup attempts and backed Maduro’s opposition—notably  the pro-U.S. María Corina Machado, who stands for impoverishing workers with “free-market” privatization.  The main wing’s Venezuela strategy enabled them to keep massive troop installations in the Middle East and Asia. But the Small Fascists are opting to pivot to the Caribbean and solidify a U.S. sphere of influence in Latin America. 

Historically, the Big Fascists were the main beneficiaries of the old liberal world order that ran the capitalist globe under U.S. dominance. Over the seventy years that followed World War II, the U.S. fought major wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Each of these  wars involved hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops and killed millions of workers. The Big Fascists’ global ambitions forced them to rely on proxies to project their power and put down rebellions in Latin America, with CIA-led coups, death squads, and vicious military dictatorships. 

Now Trump is reversing that strategy by ceding military control in the oil-rich Middle East to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey—and to give China free rein in Asia.

Imperialism means workers suffer 

As the crisis of capitalism worsens, China and the U.S. have no choice but to move toward fullblown fascism, which means even more misery for workers. In the U.S., the standard of living is already suffering. Even a basic quality of life is now out of reach for 60 percent of workers (CBS, 5/16). At the same time, workers are being assaulted by an invasion of Trump’s ICE and Border Patrol (NYT, 7/12), a federal paramilitary used to terrorize undocumented immigrant and citizen workers alike while silencing dissent (The Intercept, 11/23). 

The working class in Venezuela is under attack as well. In the late 1990’s,  the “Bolivarian Revolution” led by Hugo Chavez gave lip service to workers’ power as it cut corrupt deals with China and a new national bourgeoisie. As a result, Venezuela plunged into an economic and political crisis. Under Chavez and then his handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro, the price of oil plummeted, igniting a humanitarian crisis and mass emigration. Shortages of food and other necessities persist to this day (AP, 9/27). More than 80 percent of workers in Venezuela live in dire poverty, without reliable access to secure housing, medicine, or food (AP, 8/27). The extreme suffering has led roughly eight million Venezuelans—about 20 percent of the population--to flee the country (Americas Quarterly,7/7). Since 2007, China has spent over $60 billion on loans and investments in Venezuela.  Nearly all of it is funneled into oil industry infrastructure (CSIS 4/3), as the Chinese bosses care little about the people living above the reserves. 

When workers run the world, we will put a stop to all of this theft and gross inequality. Production will be guided by the needs of people, not profits. The priority will be housing, food, healthcare, and education for workers and their families. Borders will be smashed. Workers will no longer need to travel thousands of miles for a chance at a stable life. Natural resources will be used for the common good, in balance with the need to limit global warming. Imperialist wars will be a thing of the past. That is the future that awaits us--if we reach out and take it.

Turn bosses’ war into communist revolution

There is no good side in the fight between the bosses. The Trumpers and the main wing are both preparing for inter-imperialist war, with Venezuela one of many potential battlegrounds. But while the rulers’ war is inevitable, the question is what the working class will fight for—and whether they’ll turn the guns around for communist revolution.

This is a time of great danger for the working class. As war spreads around the globe, the bosses will need more and more soldiers to fight for their rotting system. That is their key strategic weakness: They need to arm workers. It’s also a great opportunity for our class. Soldiers turning their guns on the capitalists have changed the course of history. In World War I, Russian soldiers  smashed the Russian ruling class and led the fight for workers’ power. The international working class may soon have another such opportunity. Fight for communism! Join Progressive Labor Party!