Imperialist conflict explodes in Sudan
France24, 4/23–As gunfire again echoed through Khartoum and fighter jets roared above, foreigners also fled the capital in a long United Nations convoy, while millions of frightened residents hunkered down inside their homes, many running low on water and food. Across the city of five million, army and paramilitary troops have fought ferocious street battles since April 15, leaving behind charred tanks, gutted buildings and shops that have been looted and torched. More than 420 people have been killed and thousands wounded, according to UN figures, amid fears of wider turmoil and a humanitarian disaster in one of the world's poorest nations.
Russia and Ukraine look to Koreas as new sources of weapons
Bloomberg, 4/23–Half a world away from the front line of Russia’s war in Ukraine there’s a stockpile of probably more than a million artillery shells on the Korean peninsula — a hoard that’s drawing attention as South Korea’s leader heads to Washington. President Yoon Suk Yeol has indicated his government may be open to changing its policy about providing lethal aid to Ukraine under certain conditions. That would be welcome news for US President Joe Biden, who has been seeking help from partners to ease Kyiv’s perennial ammunition shortage.
The Kremlin has said that if South Korea supplies arms to Ukraine it would make it a participant in the conflict, with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev suggesting Moscow could respond by selling advanced weaponry to North Korea, according to a Tass report. The Koreas have two of the world’s largest artillery forces, with thousands of big guns pointing at each other across the demilitarized zone that separates them. They have stockpiled hundreds of thousands of shells that include North Korean artillery inter-operable with Soviet-era artillery in Russia, and South Korean 155 mm caliber shells, which are the standard used by the NATO countries supplying Ukraine.
Chinese and Russian bosses look to expand military power
Foreign Affairs, 4/12–But the truly significant developments took place during closed-door, in-person discussions, at which Xi and Putin made a number of important decisions about the future of Chinese-Russian defense cooperation and likely came to terms on arms deals that they may or may not make public. The war in Ukraine and ensuing Western sanctions on Russia are reducing the Kremlin’s options and pushing Russia’s economic and technological dependence on China to unprecedented levels. These changes give China a growing amount of leverage over Russia. At the same time, China’s fraying relationship with the United States makes Moscow an indispensable junior partner to Beijing in pushing back against the United States and its allies. China has no other friend that brings as much to the table.
Workers in United Kingdom spiral deeper into poverty
Der Spiegel, 4/18– As this winter came to an end, more than 7 million people were waiting for a doctor’s appointment, including tens of thousands of people suffering from heart disease and cancer. According to government estimates, some 650,000 legal cases are still waiting to be addressed in a court of law. And those needing a passport or driver’s license must frequently wait for several months…Recently, a number of chains announced that they would be rationing cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers for the foreseeable future…it is impossible to deny the dismal reality of Blackpool…
The life expectancy of male residents is just under five years below the national average, while that for women is almost four years lower. Almost one in five residents suffers from what local doctors call "shit life syndrome," while anti-depressants are prescribed here twice as often as in the rest of the country. "If you are poor, sick, weak or tired, don’t come to Blackpool,"..."Nobody will help you here."
Strike: ‘we don’t need bosses or their system’
Last week I had the honor of participating in the Rutgers strike. It was great that in the very issue of CHALLENGE newspaper that was being passed out during the strike, there was an editorial on the protests in France which made the following point: strikes show us just a glimpse, just a small window into the panoramic potential of workers’ power when we run the world without answering to bosses. This is the point that should have been the mass line that we spread during the strike, but it was not. Instead, we were so upset and worried at the sellout social democrats who were selling us short at the bargaining table, that we focused instead on pushing for the most radical strike possible as the penultimate show of workers’ power.
When I gave my speech, I should have made the point that striking shows us that we don’t need the bosses or their system. Instead, our strike under capitalism gets turned into a tool for bargaining for more power under the bosses’ system. And while it was an empowering week, inspiring even my colleagues next door at Essex County College (ECC) to become more militant, it did not and does not inherently lead to workers’ power.
It is our job to make that point as often as possible: the bosses need us; we don’t need them. So this is the point I will be continuing to push in my own union, New Jersey Education Association, and with my honest and hard working co-workers. In fact, many ECC full-time faculty teach at Rutgers part time just to make up the difference in our ridiculously low salaries, so we were in fact involved in the strike directly via some of our faculty members. Yes, we salute our fearless and militant colleagues at Rutgers!
We draw inspiration from you and learn the lessons of the victories from that strike–such as folks agreeing to come to May Day–as well as the pitfalls–such as thinking the most militant strike is the goal of our time and energy. Above all, we are inspired that the strike helps us see the necessity for building Progressive Labor Party and sharpening our fight for a world run by our class–a communist world!
*****
Rutgers strike gave us a chance to talk
The struggle at Rutgers is an important event for the working class to be part of. It gives us the opportunity to talk to our coworkers, friends, and students about the importance of class struggle.
As a high school teacher I discuss the role of unions and strikes in class, but it is actions like this that make it real for high school students. Some of my fellow coworkers joined me at the strike. They began to raise questions of fighting back and organizing within our own union. This led to a larger discussion with a coworker of the limitations of strikes - and more importantly - the dangers of focusing too much on individuals like Rutgers President Holloway while ignoring the larger capitalist system. This was somebody who has been reading the paper for over a year, but it was still hard for him to conceptualize how you build a revolutionary movement while still fighting for reforms. We discussed it more when we went back to school this past week.
Thank you to the Rutgers strikers for creating this opportunity to raise our line of reform and revolution in a period of relatively low class struggle in Newark.
*****
Teacher speaks out vs ‘profit nest’
Schools in Montgomery County need more funding to serve our students. As a teacher in the county, I spoke at a County Council hearing about raising taxes to do this. After hearing dozens of testimonies about student needs, I decided to change my 3-minute testimony from appealing to the Council and instead blasted them for listening to real estate developers who opposed the tax.
I remembered what a Progressive Labor Party comrade had suggested a few years ago: “You’re talking to the crowd of working class peers and comrades, not the politicians.”
The audience did include many teachers, bus drivers, education support staff, mechanics, public nurses, students and parents. As I spoke to the council, I turned and faced my real brothers and sisters. I asked them if their wages met the median wage in the county.
“No way!” rang out from the crowd!
I pointed out that the county council salaries go way over the median threshold and that there are five billionaires and 2,500 millionaires in the U.S. who could easily fund the needed budget. The County has 21 large real estate and/or construction companies. Are their interests really with keeping taxes low for the immigrant pursuing the “American dream” or the young couple buying their first house? Not at all. They just want to feather their own profit nests!
Here’s a thought: tax the rich to pay for our basic educational needs in the name of antiracist, equitable action and fund our schools.
I have no illusions that the bosses will “take the losses” on their own, but militant struggle to force such changes has a chance!
*****
CHALLENGE: It’s always a win when we can expose the bosses’ profit motive! But, the main-wing U.S. bosses do want their class to “take the losses” to some extent. In addition to exposing the rulers’ limits of reform, it is important to show workers that reforms of “shared sacrifice” and “tax the rich” are all part of the bosses’ fascist war preparations.
NEWARK, NJ, April 12—For the first time in its 250-year history, a coalition of Rutgers workers— 9,000 graduate workers, adjuncts, and part-time lecturers (PTL)— called a strike on what would have been communist Paul Robeson’s 125th birthday.
On day one of the strike, members of the Progressive Labor Party were out in full force distributing CHALLENGE newspapers as picketers rallied and gave passionate speeches at the Newark campus. Together, workers and students shut down the $5 billion/year university across several campuses!
As the contradictions of capitalism bring the bosses’ global system closer to World War III, such strikes and other forms of class struggle will intensify. Strikes have the potential to be schools for communism, and leading the struggles with revolutionary ideas builds the confidence of workers in choosing our class over the bosses’ system forever.
Workers ready to fight, bosses & their misleaders cower
Workers’ rage and lack of confidence in liberal misleadership and electoral politics is key to producing and maintaining strikes in an environment of growing fascism and war. Thousands of ordinary workers at Rutgers University chose the power of our class over the deadly defeatism of the liberal union bosses and the empty promises of NJ Governor Phil Murphy to fight for our needs. Getting closer to the strike launch, union misleaders tried to fool workers that it was in our best interest to believe that the threat of a strike is more powerful than its actual realization. Their lack of confidence in the working class, opportunism and pacifism - which no union boss or elected official can avoid - had them trying to convince rank and file members that they weren’t “ready” to fight for each other. These misleaders were very wrong. When members were told that Murphy was requesting the union give him a short period of time to resolve the differences between Rutgers bosses and workers to avoid the strike, workers responded with a roaring no! PLP members worked with their union siblings to ensure the membership was ready, and that workers’ need for a strike won over liberal misleaders' doubt and fear.
Cutbacks, low wages part of war prep
As the inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S., Russia, and China reaches new heights, the bosses are hoarding resources and superexploiting workers in preparation for recruiting us into their mounting wars. Universities play a complex role in this preparation. While their workers and facilities absorb the cutbacks that go hand-in-hand with resource hoarding, universities are also key sites for recruiting and training students to become a pacified workforce and the liberal misleaders of tomorrow.
The bosses need masses of people won to liberal ideas in college to reproduce the nationalism and helplessness that supports conditions of war. At Rutgers, diversity projects like the Honors Living and Learning College train students to believe in their individual exceptionalism, convincing them that a few Black students getting elite career opportunities will help liberate the entire Black working class. In the program, students get a minor in Social Justice, but only very few have participated in the strike effort, while even more have spent their time creating a Black Professionals Network. But no amount of politicians of color can change the material conditions for the international working class; only communist revolution led by PLP will smash capitalism’s racist exploitation once and for all.
Bosses like Phil Murphy, Ras Baraka and Jonathan Holloway will show their true colors as liberal supporters of finance capital as they try to crush worker’s unions in the coming days or betray workers in years to come when they run for greater seats of power. Governor Murphy, a former hedge fund executive at Goldman Sachs— the second largest investment bank in the world— will demand sacrifice from workers and will use increasingly fascist tactics to end the strike. Rutgers president Holloway will do whatever his real bosses–finance capital–dictate to keep pumping out obedient workers, generate profit for the state and pay Rutgers’ external debt, which totals more than $250 million, including about $140 million to construct athletic facilities (USA Today 1/19/2022).
As the Rutgers strike continues, it will be imperative for workers and students to use it as a school for communism. Only on the picket lines will they learn the important lessons for liberation, and the tools to refuse the bosses’ austerity without being won to liberal ideas that lead to imperialist war. With multiracial unity and an international Progressive Labor Party on the front lines, the Rutgers strike will help teach us all to have confidence in each other, and to embrace communism as our class’s only way to win the world.
**Future issues of CHALLENGE will contain further analysis and reports of our involvement in this strike.**
The history of the communist movement is fighting for the working class. The communist movement was born out of the struggle for a better world. It was born out of the fight by the working class to resist their exploitation and demand equality. As the communist movement grew the capitalist ruling class quickly realized the existential threat posed by a conscious working class.
As long as the working class has fought for a better world the ruling class has attacked the movement. It’s hard to be attacked. The bosses attack us to scare us and our class and stop us from fighting back. Their goal is to demoralize the working class so it doesn’t see its own power as a class to get rid of capitalism.
We have learned that the best way to respond to attacks by the bosses is to fight back. In Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) history there have been many struggles, many attacks, often firings and sometimes harsher consequences. All these battles are part of the struggle for the working class to gain confidence in itself, to see its power and learn that we don’t need the bosses or capitalism.
In this article we’ll look at two places where teachers and students were fighting back under the leadership of PLP, the teacher’s union in Oaxaca and Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn.
Fighting back in Oaxaca
This May Day will mark 43 years of intense struggle by teachers in Oaxaca. PLP has been active in this struggle for all those years, fighting for the needs of students and parents to get a decent education and to build a communist movement that fights for a world where all students are educated. In response there have been intense attacks by the bosses against the teachers, in the 1980’s, and around 2000, 2006, 2013 and 2015. Some of these attacks have been very severe including dismissals, imprisonments and even murders.
In each of these periods we’ve responded by going on strike, setting up barricades and building alliances with other groups of workers. There are 80,000 teachers in Oaxaca. During some of the struggles we’ve mobilized as many as 60,000 people, including workers from other sectors. One of our strongest responses was in 2002 when after a very militant fightback we brought about 1000 people to march on May Day under PLP’s leadership.
PLP has spread our line among the masses. Many people in Oaxaca know CHALLENGE. In the teachers union leaders' assemblies we have promoted the class struggle, we have distributed flyers denouncing the policies of the government and we have attacked imperialism. As a Party we have built an alternative leadership to the bosses. Our advances are still small and slow and attacks continue. We have led very militant fights against reformist ideology, though political progress is still slow in this area.
Throughout these years of struggle we’ve always tried to build a base for communist ideas and now many people know the Party. We’ve lost members because the bosses have cut the number of teachers and others have retired, but we are still fighting. We have made progress in building a new younger leadership for our work in the union which bodes well for the future. We also know that while building a base for communism we’ve also fought off even more dismissals and jailings which has helped preserve and grow our base and keeps us in the fight.
Teachers, students and parents fight back in Brooklyn
Our teachers’ collective at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn came under attack by the administration after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in August of 2005. PLP organized people to go to New Orleans and help Black workers there who had been left to fend for themselves by the bosses’ system.
A racist, careerist Assistant Principal hated that communists were organizing people to go to New Orleans and building PLP while helping Black workers abandoned by the ruling class after the hurricane. He reported us for taking students on an “unauthorized trip” even though students had permission slips from their parents.
One parent wrote a glowing letter supporting our efforts. “As a parent…I give my full support to this hard working team… I wish to commend the teachers, parents and students for their commitment to their goals and holding strong to their beliefs…” The lesson here is to be bold. Working class students and parents will support you.
Another attack occurred in the fall of 2010 when teachers and students fought racism together. As a student was entering school through security and the metal detectors a copy of CHALLENGE was found in the student’s possession. The administrator wanted to know how and where the student got the paper- and learned that students and teachers had been to a rally in D.C. against racism with PLP members.
This racist principal had been after the PL’ers for years. As the principal was harassing both students and parents trying to get information about the trip, we organized a walkout and rally outside the school with hundreds of students. All the parents said that their young people had their complete permission and some brought them to the busses early in the morning. Now 18 years later we are still in touch with some of the parents, and students who went with us to New Orleans and also those that protested in D.C. Some are leaders of the Party today. We got Unsatisfactory ratings for that school year and they were well earned! But all of us who were involved in these struggles emerged stronger with more confidence in the working class and our ideas.
Fight to Win
These days the working class is often on the defensive more than going on the offensive against the bosses. When the demonstrations against racism, against the bosses’ imperialist wars and for workers power and communist revolution are relatively small it can be difficult when the bosses attack but the lesson is the same.
The small battles will lead to bigger ones and the small victories of the communist movement growing out of the struggle are where the big victory of communist revolution is born. Whether it is a big struggle or small, our class can only win when we fight.
When the bosses attack, we have to fight back. That is what communists do.
‘When bosses cut back, we say fight back!’
On April 11, although New York City Mayor Adams and his friends, the leaders of the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC), finalized their agreement to privatize retiree health coverage, retired city workers continue to fight back. On March 31st and again on April 11th demonstrations were held in front of City Hall. Hundreds rallied on March 31 and over a thousand rallied today. A loud chorus responded to a speaker's call, “Bosses say cut back, we say fight back”. In the midst of this struggle we are getting out CHALLENGEnewspaper to our friends and inviting them to our Progressive Labor Party study group. We are learning from these older workers that you can’t retire from the class struggle and in turn are teaching them how this racist capitalist system works.
As CHALLENGE has pointed out, the bosses throughout the U.S. are shifting health care costs onto the backs of workers. This is because they are preparing for war with their capitalist rivals in China and Russia and need to build their war chests. Union leaders are playing the role of willing accomplice as they “save” money for the bosses. Older workers face greater hardships when health care is denied, delayed or made too expensive for them to afford.
As this struggle plays out in street demonstrations, court suits, proposed legislation and union meetings, we will have ample opportunity to point out how the capitalist state apparatus and its agents in the mass organizations are used to keep workers, old and young, under the oppressive heel of the ruling class. Our involvement in all aspects of this struggle allows us to build schools for communism among workers fighting back.
*****
‘My first communist dinner’
Growing up here in America, I always thought I knew what communism was and what a communist looked like. Communism was something that was the work of the devil himself and anyone who dared call themselves a communist was a traitor to all that was right and good in the world and that they should be turned into the C.I.A. immediately. I never believed all that of course but I did grow to dislike the movement after learning about men like Joseph Stalin, and Lavrentiy Beria so when it came to meeting my U.S. history teacher I was very surprised to hear that she was a communist.
Here was a woman who fought for what was right and goes out of her way everyday to make sure that every student gets what they need and challenges the authority who neglects and (many times) abuses the students’ rights. This woman led me to the place that I volunteer with now and later led me to my first communist dinner.
I had no expectations going into the dinner. I had met many of the people organizing the event just the day before and they all were incredibly welcoming. Setting up for the dinner was fun as I got to know more of the people I was helping. Once people started to trickle in I got to see the nice community that has been made in that small building in Brooklyn. The hugs were only matched by the smiles people gave one another. I was introduced to many great people who talked with me about college and how they got involved with the movement.
As we ate the amazing food, we heard fantastic speeches from the organizers explaining the importance of the Party. After, came the main event of the night, the auction, in which all proceeds go to preparing for the big event of the year “May Day” or “International Workers Day.”
A massive show of force by workers all over the planet. The auction was filled with an insane amount of content, ranging from a communist history walk tour to posters made by the organizers celebrating community and working together. By the end of the event hundreds of dollars were raised and while I myself am not a communist, I believe that the community work that they are doing is absolutely critical in making sure we have a better tomorrow.
*****
It takes a village to make a banner
The collective process at work produced communist banners today.
We had a victorious banner-making this afternoon where comrades as well as folks not yet in the Party--children as well as someone over 80—traveled miles to participate. The surprising aspect to me was not only the beauty of the many finished products but how the banners were perfected. The main banner, huge at about 4 feet by 10 feet, was sketched in advance by a practiced graphic artist who could not attend. It took a literal army of most of us participants to color in the red silhouetted army of marching workers and the illustrating words. Later, some smaller, poster-board sized creations revealed true communist principles in the making.
During poster making, a worker worked with three children who were arguing over who should color in the words at the top of a poster board. The adult worker simply suggested turning around the poster itself so that no one needed to reach over the others and thus avoided a squabble.
Finally, on this very day in an email there appeared a summary from an article discussing the errors and lessons from the Soviet and Chinese Revolutions. Specifically, the Cultural Revolution brought out how “Struggle over capitalist versus working-class ideas is best when it fuses theory and practice. The theoretical side (the ideas in our banners) is conscious understanding of class relations.
The practical side is how they operate in the village, the work unit, etc. The struggle is not over ideology by itself; it is about how we run things, overall (i.e., how the banners were produced)."
