WARSAW, July 23 — Meet Marek. He’s in his late 50s and has been driving a 40-ton semi-trailer truck between Eastern and Western Europe for the past 35 years.
For decades, the two-lane R2 was the only road between Warsaw and the German border. Today, Marek drives the 454-kilometer (280-mile), four-lane divided superhighway, the A2.
“Before 2004 [when Poland joined the European Union (EU)], my work was simpler and better,” says Marek. “I also earned more. Today, there isn’t any border any longer, but wages have fallen. Many drivers get paid by the kilometer. Now, your income often depends on how far you get. And the number and the seriousness of the accidents have gone up.” Some trucks are hurtling along at 140 km/h (88 mph). And “anyone who drives the A2 regularly sees serious accidents again and again,” says Marek. “Braking a 40-ton truck is no easy thing.”
Of course, the cost of training drivers for the new superhighway would have eaten into profits. And as for speeding — well, time is money.
One might think inventing a new machine or building a four-lane divided highway to replace a two-lane road would improve life. But not under capitalism. As Karl Marx commented, “The aim of the capitalistic application of machinery….is a means for producing surplus value.” Profit, plain and simple.
The purpose of the A2 is to intensify the exploitation of low-paid Polish workers. In April, 2013 the average net monthly wage in Poland was $945.
The European Commission’s March 2011 document “Frontier Economics” says, “Good transport connectivity is regarded as key to supporting economic activity and inward investment in the Lodz and Wielkopolska Regions….[which] have attracted significant inward investment from multi-national organizations in the food, distribution, electrical manufacturing and car manufacturing sectors” — Nestle, Unicom, Wrigley, Volkswagen and Skoda.
The A2 itself is a capitalist money-maker. Built as a public-private partnership meant the public sector (the EU and Polish government) took the risk, while private corporations rake in the profits.
The construction companies charged 2.5 billion euros ($3.45 billion) for the final section of the A2, largely coming from the European Investment Bank. The rest came from bank consortiums and private investors, who got a 40-year concession to operate the toll road.
Marek isn’t the only worker whose quality of life has plunged. Today, there’s a fast food restaurant (belonging to a U.S. chain) at practically every A2 rest stop. A retired worker shakes his head: “On the R2, I always stopped at one restaurant called the Las Vegas….There was always something fresh to eat. You don’t get that here.”
At the Las Vegas, Magda, 26, has worked a 12-hour shift at the old R2 for the past two years. “My shift begins at 7:20 a.m…. We clean the rest stop, check the stocks and of course serve the customers. However,…when the A2 opened, the number of customers fell practically overnight.” The boss has laid off one-third of the workers.
On June 4, the A2 was officially named Freedom Highway by Polish president Broneslaw Pomerowski and German president Joachim Gauck. But the freedom is only for the capitalists.
So long as the profit system exists, scientific and technological progress will be used to increase the exploitation of the working class. The only realistic answer is a workers’ revolution to establish communism, when progress will serve to lighten the day’s toil.

The world is witnessing yet again a brutal and murderous act of aggression by Israel’s Zionist government against the Palestinian people in Gaza. In the mobilized media of Israel and the pro-Zionist press abroad it’s presented as an operation driven by “The concern for peace and the well-being of the population in South Israel.” But is it really?
After the first Zionist expansion, beyond the borders of the partition plan (November 1947), which included the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians and the destruction of 540 Palestinian villages, known as the Nakba, the Zionist leadership of the newly born state of Israel embarked on a project which they termed as “development settlements.” They built Jewish-only settlements such as Shderot, Netivot, Kiryat Gat, Kiryat Malachy and Yerucham along the borders with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The main aim was to erect a human shield (cannon fodder) which would protect Israel from an invasion by a “foreign” army.
In the early 1950s, Israel’s ruling class used the wave of Jewish immigration from Iraq, Yemen and the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) to populate these settlements. Additionally, wealthy Jews — local and foreign, with the aid and funding of the Israeli government — built factories in these settlements, using the local population as cheap labor, thus extracting huge profits. These profit-thirsty tycoons were presented to the public as “[p]hilanthropists who supply jobs to the people in the development settlements.” As world capitalism progressed and reached the level of globalization, profits declined and the “philanthropists” closed the factories, leaving behind huge unemployment. They then moved the factories to the Far East — India, China and Taiwan where labor costs are the cheapest.
There’s no doubt that the inhabitants of these “development settlements” are not responsible for the present grave situation (mass unemployment and daily rocket attacks). They themselves, like the people of Gaza, are direct victims and paying the price for Zionist aggression and expansion.
Ever since the creation of Israel, all Israeli Zionist governments, “left” and right, followed the policy of conquest of Palestinian lands and expulsion of Palestinians (the indigenous population) to make the entire territory a Jewish state. This principle was set by Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, who used the term “The right time” — sitting on the fence, strengthening the IDF (Israeli armed forces), waiting for the right time, using a provocation to strike at the Palestinians, expand and at the same time get the world’s imperialist powers to support the acts of aggression.
This method of expansion was first used in the 1956 Suez operation during which Israel collaborated with the British and French colonialists to conquer all of Sinai while the colonialists occupied the strategic Suez Canal. Unfortunately for the Zionists, they did not consider the interests of the then rising U.S. imperialism. They put their money on the decaying British and French colonialists. Thus the Zionist ruling class was forced to give up the gains of this futile campaign due to massive U.S. pressure.
The Zionists had to wait 11 years before once again applying “the right-time” method. In 1967, Egypt, led by the nationalist Gamal Abdul Nasser, held military drills, moving troops into the Sinai. Israel used the opportunity to attack on three fronts, demolishing the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in six days. In the process they conquered all of Historic Palestine, including Gaza from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan (Judea and Sumaria in Zionist terminology) and the Golan Heights from Syria.
In 1982, the Israeli ruling class repeated “the right-time” method, using an assassination attempt on the Israeli ambassador to the UK in London, and invaded Lebanon, reaching and occupying Beirut. Israel, led by fascist Prime Minister Begin and fascist Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon, tried to install a “friendly” collaborating government in Lebanon headed by the pro-imperialist Bashir Jumail. Once again they gambled on the wrong horse. The murder of Jumail two days into office plus Israel’s part in the massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, led to Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 1983 due to pressure applied by the imperialist powers.
The current Operation “Protective Edge” is the latest act of aggression where “the right-time” policy is being used (see front page). The Israeli Zionist ruling class could not “swallow” the Palestinian unity government that included Hamas. To Jerusalem’s dismay, this government was recognized and endorsed by the European Union. U.S. imperialism, stuck in the Iraq-Afghanistan quagmire, received it with silence.
From day one, the kidnapping of the three young settlers gave the Zionists the opportunity to act against Hamas. The Israeli government declared Hamas to be responsible for the kidnapping, before it had any evidence as to who the kidnappers were or to the whereabouts of the victims. It has continued this rhetoric while police officials admit Hamas was not involved.
Thus they created an atmosphere that would justify attacks on Hamas activists in the West Bank, completely unrelated to the kidnapping itself. Israeli rulers also arrested 53 ex-Hamas prisoners released in the Shalit deal (in which Israel released Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the freeing of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas in 2011). In so doing, it violated the deal.
Consequently, the Palestinians in the West Bank organized mass demonstrations which escalated into a revenge kidnapping when young Jewish settlers set afire a 15-year-old Palestinian boy. As a token of solidarity, Palestinian organizations in Gaza, not associated with Hamas, started firing rockets on Israeli “development settlements” such as Shderot. Hamas did not want this escalation and tried to stop it. When they failed, they were forced into firing rockets in order to save face among the Palestinians as the leading organization of the struggle against Israeli occupation and siege.
For the bloodthirsty Zionist government in Jerusalem, this was “the right time” for another onslaught on the Palestinian people. The IDF air force conducted close to 2,000 missions over the 360-square kilometers of Gaza, killing over 1,300 Palestinians (and counting), including hundreds of children, demolishing nearly 1,000 houses and forcing over 100,000 people to evacuate their homes mainly, in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza strip. Meanwhile, the Israelis had two civilian victims.
The present racist Zionist leadership is worried about the demographic balance in Historic Palestine.  Racist Benjamin Netanyahu & Co. do not want to see a Palestinian state based on the “two-state solution.” They foil every attempt in this direction through what is termed “The Peace Process.” Yet meanwhile they don’t want one state (a Jewish state) where 50% of the population is Arab (the present demographic situation in Historic Palestine). So they do their best to “dilute” the Palestinian population.
The Zionists know they cannot use direct expulsion (“transfer”) as they did in 1948, a step that may lead to the isolation of Israel internationally. So they use other means: massive bombardment, siege and blockade of the densely populated Gaza strip (1.8 million people in 360-square kilometers, 5,000 people per 1 square kilometer), trying to impel Palestinians to “desert” and later claim “they left of their own free will,” the claim they used after expelling 750,000 in 1947-48. Israel’s message to the Palestinians: “If you stay here we will make your life miserable and if necessary we will kill you.”
Like every regime with fascist characteristics, the Israeli bosses do not have a long-term strategy. Until 1987, Israel faced conventional armies of corrupt capitalist regimes in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Since then (the first Intifada), Israel is facing popular Palestinian resistance forces and cannot defeat them. In operation “Protective Edge” despite the massive strikes on Gaza, the Palestinians still fire around 60 home-made amateur rockets into Israel every day .
Without revolutionary communist leadership, Hebrew and Arab workers are the main victims of the murderous Zionist bosses’ aggression and the adventurous acts of the corrupt Hamas leadership.
The “one-state” vs. “two-state” dispute is a phony capitalist concoction. The working class needs only one state — a workers’ state. Arab and Hebrew workers should build their revolutionary internationalist communist party — the Progressive Labor Party —  which will provide the leadership in the struggle to smash the capitalist Zionist government and the reactionary Arab regimes in the region, destroy capitalism and establish a communist society which will create a bright future for all workers in the region, one with no exploitation and imperialist wars.

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Eric Garner was murdered by the racist NYPD last Thursday. Choked to death by killer cop Daniel Pantaleo. Already, despite the assertions of Mayor DeBlasio that he was deeply disturbed by the video of the racist attack on an unarmed Black man, DeBlasio’s medical examiner(ME) is already leaking info to the NY Post trying to take the heat off the cops.

Any honest person who sees the video knows that Eric Garner’s murder was another continuation of the long line of people killed by the police for being Black or Latin.

When DeBlasio ran for Mayor he tried to get working class people out to vote for him by saying he was going to do something about there being two New Yorks, one for the rich and one for the poor. Well we see what he’s doing: first he hired Bill Bratton as Police Commissioner, the same Bill Bratton whose “Broken Windows” plan was nothing more than increasing police harassment and arrests of people in working class neighborhoods for any excuse possible.

Now DeBlasio’s ME office is trying to figure out how to get these racist murderers from the 120^th Precinct off the hook. As if a man dying while being brutally strangled is anything but murder.

Pantaleo and the other racists from the 120^th came out there looking to hurt someone. They were called because of a fight on the street, and when they didn’t get to hurt those guys, they went after Eric who had done the right thing by trying to break up the fight.

Yes, Pantaleo and the other cops who jumped on and then stood around while Eric garner died must be indicted and convicted of murder. However, if this was just an isolated incident, you could say that would be enough, but we all know it’s not. This is the NYPD doing their job.

DeBlasio and the ME and the Staten Island DA are all hesitant to go after the cops because they know the cops were doing what they’ve been conditioned to do, attack and terrorize Black and Latino workers in this city. That is a big part of how the wealthy, the capitalists that run New York, and this whole country stay in power and they are who these cops serve and protect.

Pantaleo must be brought to justice, but we will never be free of this racist police terror until we are free of the capitalist system. Freedom from police terror will only come from the working class taking power from the capitalists with communist revolution.      

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MURRIETA, CA, June 13 — “Stop racist deportations, working people have no nations!” “Las luchas obreras, no tienen fronteras!” Over sixty members and friends of Progressive Labor Party chanted loudly and carried red flags while marching through the heart of Murrieta, California, the site of a local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center.
The situation in Murrieta is a product of U.S imperialism. U.S.-fueled political and economic instability has forced these children from their homes as the wars over oil in the Middle East have produced over 2 million displaced workers. For many, the choice is flee or die. As imperialist oil wars break out across the globe, the number of displaced workers will only grow.
Since October 2013, increasing poverty, drugs, and gang violence have forced more than 57,000 unaccompanied children from Central America to flee north to the United States (see page 2). A large number of these children have been transferred to Murrieta’s detention center, making it a flashpoint for anti-immigrant racism.
Emboldened by Deporter-in-Chief Barack Obama’s racist deportation of over 2 million workers, racists across the U.S. have created a climate of fear by staging counter-protests to disrupt pro-immigrant vigils, launching vile racist taunts, and claiming that the children are carrying diseases into the United States.
We marched though Murrieta to inspire the local residents to stand up and fight racism. While some residents responded with hostility, others supported our boldness. We made new friends while giving out CHALLENGE and leaflets that attacked the racists, which led one person to say, “Thank god! I hate them, too.” Two Home Depot workers shared CHALLENGEs with co-workers in the break room. One worker passing by joined the march! He explained that many of his friends have bought into anti-immigrant racism but that he had not. He was glad to see an organized group offering an alternative.
“The Most Important Thing We Did”
Over the course of three days, PLP members organized for the march while at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention in LA by leafleting delegates and raising the crisis in Murrieta at several forums. As a result of these efforts, seven Chicago teachers marched with us in Murrieta. As the march ended, one of them gave a speech and said, “We stand in solidarity with all children…Coming here was the most important thing we did at this convention.” Another teacher pointed out that the main cause of immigration is imperialism and expressed her solidarity with PLP and immigrant workers everywhere.
Convention delegates passed a special resolution by teachers from Austin, Texas, in favor of granting refugee status to women and unaccompanied children crossing the border. Teachers and students across the United States have another rallying point to bring to their neighborhoods.
Summer Project members held follow-up study groups to analyze the recent history of anti-immigrant racism under the Obama administration, and made concrete proposals to return to our cities to organize more fightback. PLP has a fifty-year history of militant battles against racists, from the KKK to the Minutemen. Our action in Murrieta is a small glimpse of the power of multiracial unity in the fight against fascism. But it is also one more battle in a larger class war as the Party advances the fight for communist revolution.   
Every PL’er and reader of CHALLENGE should discuss how to sharpen the struggle against racism and growing fascism. The solution to end imperialism once and for all is to join PLP, smash anti-immigrant racism, and build for revolution.

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An Anti-Immigrant History

The U.S. capitalist ruling class has a long history of super-exploiting immigrants for cheap labor and then expelling them when it served the bosses’ racist political purposes. For example:
Passed in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited all immigration of Chinese workers. U.S. capitalists originally recruited Chinese immigrants to build the Transcontinental Railroad, where many perished in the harsh conditions and all were exploited to the fullest extent. Upon the railroad’s completion, when the bosses no longer needed Chinese laborers, they used anti-Asian racism to abruptly halt immigration. Coupled with many racist state laws, this legislation led many Chinese workers to return to China because they feared they would be permanently separated from their families, who could not follow them to the U.S.
While not a law, the informal Gentleman’s Agreement of 1907 banned Japanese immigrants after Japan won the Russo-Japanese War, a conflict between two aspiring imperialist countries. At the same time, many states passed segregation laws against the Japanese, promoting racism and further dividing workers.  All of this served to create anti-Japanese sentiment, a reflection of the growing competition between two rising imperialist powers, the United States and Japan.
The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2 percent of the number of people from the country who were in the U.S. in 1890. This law discriminated against southern and eastern Europeans, Jews, Arabs, East Asians, and Indians, since none of these groups were in the U.S. in large numbers prior to the cutoff date. It was no coincidence that the great waves of southern and eastern European immigrants, typically poorer and less educated than northern and western Europeans, began arriving immediately after 1890.
At the advent of the Great Depression in 1929, U.S. bosses were desperate to find scapegoats to divert workers’ anger toward the collapsing capitalist system. In an event known as the Mexican Repatriation, they rounded up and forcibly deported as many as two million workers of Mexican descent without the “right” of due process. Though “repatriation” implies Mexican citizenship, 60 percent of the expelled workers were U.S. citizens. Most of the rest were legal residents. The Immigration and Naturalization Service found it easy to target them because of “the proximity of the Mexican border, the physical distinctiveness of mestizos, and easily identifiable barrios [neighborhoods].”
In the Immigration Act of 1965, a slight modification of the 1924 Act, a Senate report concluded that the national origins quota system “preserve[d] the sociological and cultural balance in the United States.” This was justifiable, according to the report, because northern and western Europeans “had made the greatest contribution to the development of [the] country” and the nation should “admit immigrants considered to be more readily assimilable because of the similarity of their cultural background to those of the principal components of our population.”