Hollywood films, like all capitalist culture, have two main purposes. First to reinforce ideas that uphold capitalism, but also to provide escape from the oppression and psychological alienation created by capitalism. Despite the sometimes progressive messages films profess, workers must not rely on the cesspool that is Hollywood to provide messages of true liberation. Sinners—directed by Ryan Coogler who also directed Marvel's Black Panther—is no exception.

Sinners is set in 1932 Mississippi, a time when Jim Crow and the Great Depression devastated the South, where Black workers labored in conditions of neo-slavery enforced by Ku Klux Klan (KKK) violence. Those who migrated to northern U.S. cities found that, as Smoke puts it, “Chicago ain’t s%*t but Mississippi with tall buildings instead of plantations.” South and North were conjoined by both economics and culture, for example the Delta Blues, which was created by Black sharecroppers in Mississippi vocalizing their frustrations about their economic conditions.

The plot centers around Smoke and Stack, twins and World War I veterans turned criminals, who return to Mississippi after a stint in Chicago. With the money from robbing Chicago gangsters, they purchase a sawmill and convert it into a jook joint where Black workers can dance and forget for the moment their hard life as sharecroppers. In setting up the roadside club, the twins recruit a few friends and relatives, including their cousin, Sammie, an aspiring blues musician. The music and sexually uninhibited partying at the jook joint draw the attention of Remmick, an Irish vampire who seeks to absorb Sammie’s talents and create a vampire utopia on earth, free from racial division. A night of booze and Blues turns into a night of bloodlust.

No freedom under capitalism

The movie portrays the jook joint as a safe space where Black workers can be free from racist oppression, express themselves through Black culture, and reject the influence of colonialism. This message will resonate with antiracist viewers. Additionally, antisexist viewers are drawn to the women who are complex and layered, not just mere props to advance the actions of the male leads. The film also gestures toward a class analysis of racism, as the head of the KKK turns out to be the richest property owner in town. Despite these presumably progressive elements, contradictions are rife in the film.

Freedom is represented by two paths. One is a nationalist and individualist path. The twins believe that a Black-owned business and wealth will grant them power and respect. Sammie dreams of escaping to Chicago from the plantation and his deeply religious father, who views Blues music as sinful. The other way, presented by Remmick, can be interpreted as communal and collectivist. Despite being the villain, Remmick provides the sharpest criticism of racism when he says, “The world has already left you for dead. They won’t let you build; won’t let you fellowship. 
We will do just that. Together. Forever.” By contrasting “they” with “we,” Remmick shows his understanding of the ruling class’s use of racism to divide workers and prevent Black workers from escaping servitude. But his attempt to turn the jook joint patrons into vampires shows the impossibility—the toxicity—of multiracial unity. This makes the film implicitly anti-communist; those who urge working-class multiracial unity are the real bloodsuckers: the real “sinners.” 

History repeats itself

While Sinners takes place in the U.S. nearly 100 years ago, it is powerfully relevant today. Fascism is accelerating as the U.S. empire fights to keep its spot as a world superpower. The workers in the U.S. are reckoning with the aftermath of the failures of a U.S. liberal democracy, which has led to the current gutter racist Trump administration, which openly seeks to repress dissent and erase the existence of marginalized workers. Workers worldwide are living in horrendous conditions, being targeted with brutal racist attacks and forced migration due to imperialist wars, deportations, and climate disasters caused by capitalist exploitation of the earth. These are increasingly desperate times. The need for multiracial unity throughout the international working class is as urgent now as ever.

Ryan Coogler at least attempts to address and tackle these issues. Seemingly responding to the criticisms of  Black Panther’s promotion of Black capitalism, he highlights the link between religion and colonial oppression in both Mississippi and British-dominated Ireland. By suggesting connections among the Blues, Irish folk music, and hoodoo, he acknowledges that these movements were created by the working class as a form of resistance and empowerment. However, capitalist popular culture will always find a way to co-opt and defang these forms of resistance.

No matter how appealing its diverse cast of characters may be, representation will never take the place of true revolution. Sinners appeals to the palpable rage of antiracists but it ignores that capitalism is the real vampire. As Marx wrote, “Capital is dead labor which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” The arts have long been used as a form of resistance. Workers can still utilize art as a weapon. But more importantly, to gain true freedom, workers must build a mass communist movement and drive a stake right through the heart of the bosses!

From campus picket to transit strike: workers bring solidarity 

Fresh from picketing the City University of New York Central Office to denounce the Chancellor for sending a phalanx of NYPD cops to brutally attack and arrest students at Brooklyn College who were calling for CUNY to divest from Israeli securities, several members of my faculty union walked downtown to join striking New Jersey Transit engineers.

Hundreds of motor engineers had shut down the third-largest commuter rail network in the U.S. The striking workers, members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, had been working without a contract since 2019 and were demanding wage increases that would provide them the same pay as engineers who work for nearby railroads: Amtrak, the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North. Currently, NJ Transit engineers earn $10 less an hour than the other engineers.

The workers were grateful for our solidarity and words of encouragement. They explained how NJ Transit tried to recruit strikebreakers from the other railroads, but workers refused to be scabs. They were also furious with Governor Philip Murphy, who called the strike “a slap in the face of every commuter and worker who relies on NJ Transit,” trying to divide working class commuters from the striking workers.

This is typical of Democratic Party officials, who are no friends of the working class. Governor Murphy worked for the investment firm Goldman Sachs for 23 years, where he held a variety of executive positions and came away with $60 million in personal wealth. One of Murphy’s positions was President of Goldman Sachs (Asia), headquartered in Hong Kong, which profited from an investment in Yue Yuen Industrial, a Taiwan-based shoemaker notorious for abusing its Chinese factory workers, with wage theft and unsafe working conditions.

The day began with workers in my union walking a picket line in support of students arrested for demonstrating solidarity with victims of a U.S./Israel-imposed genocide, which Biden and the Democrats in Congress enabled. It ended with showing solidarity with striking workers up against a Democratic Party ruling class governor.
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Govt cuts services—only workers’ power can save us

As part of the federal government cuts and Trump’s desire to eliminate community organizations, many of them have been affected and find themselves in a very difficult situation. They have had to make staff cuts due to budgetary constraints, ending programs such as English classes, closing committees and legal services, among others.  The community organization where our club does Progressive Labor Party (PLP) work has a multi-million dollar deficit, and a few days ago they sent layoff letters to a large group of workers, while others had their hours reduced. So, a few days ago, these unionized workers held two protests in front of the offices. The situation for these laid-off workers is very difficult; many of them are currently on the unemployment line, and others will join in the coming days. The first action wasn’t very large, but I had the opportunity to participate in it to support them, shouting slogans alongside them. The second one was larger and  demanded no to layoffs and that the organization seek other alternatives, among other demands. 

I had the opportunity to distribute CHALLENGE, and at that moment, I reaffirmed my conviction that if the working class were in power, living in a communist society, these things wouldn’t happen. I made this comment to a friend who was at the protest and who reads our newspaper, and he agreed with me.
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Border ads Outrage over racist border patrol recruitment ads

Riding WMATA (metro) to work in the Washington, D.C. area, I’ve been horrified to see ICE / Customs & Border Patrol (CBP) recruitment posters posted at multiple locations in the stations and trains!!  Progressive Labor Party has now taken up the struggle to have WMATA remove these ads by leafleting at protests and raising the issue in our local organizations. We have reached out to the transit union, ATU 689, to demand management remove these ads. This will be an ongoing campaign through the end of June. WMATA has chosen this time to run these ads because many tourists will be in town and so workers from all over the U.S. will be exposed to them.

ICE / CBP has arrested over a thousand of our neighbors around the country in the past several months, mostly with a complete lack of due process, often using plain clothes agents in unmarked vehicles, and including violently abducting ,kidnapping, and disappearing people, engaging in all kinds of deceptions, bashing in car windshields and dragging people out through the broken glass, etc.

ICE / CBP’s actions are flagrant violations of every type of law.  And WMATA, in posting these recruitment posters, is an accomplice to the abductions, disappearances, and gross violations of human and legal rights. The rulers and their friends at WMATA promote immigrants as scapegoats for crime, drugs, and unemployment as they do with Black workers. Most importantly, they divide and distract U.S.-born workers from fighting the bosses. Capitalists make large profits from paying immigrants less; this practice also drives down wages for everyone. Now, Florida, incredibly, wants to bring back child labor!

To join the protest, call WMATA at 202-637-1328, write csvc@wmata.com, or check the website https://wmata.custhelp.com/app/home/.
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Capitalism, a house of horrors

Capitalism is in crisis the world over, and the most powerful ruling classes – mainly from the U.S. and China - are galloping into another world war. Capitalism has an increasingly insatiable need for growing larger profits to remain competitive. In the U.S., the bosses’ falling profits require them to fix this with increasing levels of attacks and exploitation of the workers. I find this reminiscent of the musical “Little Shop of Horrors,” written in the 1960s as a metaphor for capitalism and imperialism. There, the demands of the cannibalistic plant Audrey II to “feed me” more and more human flesh to continue to live, leave behind the byproduct of capitalism…Human carnage. 

To continue, the bosses must fan the flames of racism, nationalism and sexism to divide the working class. We learn these deadly ideas from childhood. But by reading CHALLENGE we learn why these divisive ideas NEVER benefit the working class. No matter what OUR origins are, workers of the world have a proud history of fighting back under the banner that “WE have nothing to lose but our physical and ideological chains.” FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM. If you didn’t march with us on May Day this year, come next year. Meanwhile, join Progressive Labor Party to eventually smash this vicious system.
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Chinese capitalism and overproduction

Recently, the U.S. and China decided to put a 90-day freeze on the high tariffs each had imposed on each other’s exports. The Trump administration was worried that its tariffs would cause a recession, and was also concerned when China threatened to cut off the U.S. from exports of rare earth minerals (used to make computers, smartphones, cars and by the military — for precision-guided missiles, tanks, aircraft, fighter jets, satellites). China — heavily reliant on exports —was nervous it would lose the U.S. market, which accounts for 15 percent of China’s exports.

This deal does not solve the problem of overproduction faced by Chinese capitalism.

China’s economy rests largely on the export of commodities produced by 211 million workers in 6 million factories, both large and small. Domestic consumption is stunted for a variety of reasons:

1. China has a meager social safety net. Pensions and unemployment insurance are low, so Chinese workers feel compelled to save a large fraction of their pay for retirement or if they’re laid off. This depresses consumer spending.

2. Because banks pay low interest on savings accounts and the stock market is risky, workers in recent decades have been buying apartments as an investment, an investment they were sure would appreciate in value. Construction boomed and cities raised money by selling land to developers. This created a housing bubble, which a few years ago burst and apartment prices plummeted, erasing much of the savings of workers, who now spend even less on domestic consumption.

With fewer buildings being built, the construction industry has been hit hard and construction workers have lost jobs. Cities have less tax money and have had to cut services.

The Chinese government has responded to the crisis of housing overproduction by spending more than a trillion dollars to build more factories and equip them with the latest in robots and automation. But that creates more commodities that need to be sold and with diminished domestic demand, those goods need to be exported. In 2024, exports grew by 5.9 percent while imports grew by only 1.1 percent. 
Despite China’s claim to be socialist, it’s actually a capitalist system with heavy state intervention. But capitalism — even with government intervention — cannot prevent capitalist crises of overproduction and stagnating growth.
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97 Percent of the world lives under tyranny, according to a non-profit

Al Jazeera, 6/2–Just 40 countries representing 3.5 percent of the world’s population respect all civil liberties, a new study has found, warning that “democracy and human rights are under attack worldwide in a way we have not seen for decades.” The Atlas of Civil Society report published by the German relief organisation Brot fur die Welt (Bread for the World) on Monday said only 284 million people living in “open” countries – including Austria, Estonia, the Scandinavian countries, New Zealand and Jamaica – enjoy protection of unrestricted civil rights and liberties.

“I’m preparing you” says U.S. general to politicians about war

Reuters, 5/14–Earlier this month, U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Doug Wickert summoned nearby civic leaders to Edwards Air Force Base in California to warn them that if China attacks Taiwan in the coming years, they should be prepared for their immediate region to suffer potentially massive disruption from the very start. In a remarkable briefing shared by the base on social media and promoted in a press release, Wickert…outlined China’s rapid military growth and preparations to fight a major war…”If this war happens, it’s going to happen here,” Wickert told them…”It’s going to come to us. That is why we are having this conversation.

Starvation in Gaza increases under Israeli boots

Der Spiegel, 5/28–Ruqqia rarely cries. Usually she just lies there quietly and sleeps. When her mother drips milk into her mouth with a syringe, the little girl hardly even opens her eyes. Ruqqia weighs 2,900 grams and is 53 centimeters long, the size of a newborn. But she is seven months old. “She couldn’t move for the first 12 weeks,” says Randa Al Dohdar, 29. “The doctor told me that she might die at any moment”...Suzan Maroof, a malnourishment specialist who is also providing treatment to Ruqqia, says that 200 children come to the clinic each day…If Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip continues, up to 71,000 girls and boys could be acutely malnourished over the next 11 months…

Potential for larger war between India and Pakistan rises

Foreign Affairs, 5/23-–Nearly two weeks after India and Pakistan reached an uneasy cease-fire, neither New Delhi nor Islamabad agree on what happened preceding it…further salvos…led to the downing of Indian fighter jets and Pakistani jets...Drones and missiles whizzed across the border in both directions…Unlike India’s limited punitive strikes in the past, this offensive pressed deeper into Pakistani territory. India’s Operation Sindoor ranged far beyond Pakistani-administered Kashmir into Punjab, Pakistan’s heartland, eventually hitting not just the facilities of militant groups but also military targets, including air bases.

U.S. whipping allies into war shape

Defense News, 6/2–The United States is urging Australia to raise defense spending to 3.5% of GDP, almost a third above the target Canberra has set even for the early 2030s, the Pentagon said Sunday. “...[Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth conveyed that Australia should increase its defense spending to 3.5 percent of its GDP as soon as possible”...Hegseth said the military threat posed by China “could be imminent” and called on U.S. allies in the region to drastically increase defense spending…During his speech, Hegseth pointed to NATO countries’ recent push to reach defense budgets closer to 5% of GDP — a share the Pentagon’s head of policy has repeatedly said should be the standard for U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific.

Most guns in Haiti come from the U.S. 

Americas Quarterly, 5/12–The continued influx of illegal firearms and ammunition, predominantly from the U.S., is a key driver of violence. Despite efforts to slow arms trafficking and seize weapons, including in ports in Miami, Santo Domingo, and Port-au-Prince, it continues virtually unabated. In March, Dominican authorities intercepted a shipment from Florida containing 23 high-caliber rifles, an Uzi submachine-gun, and 36,000 rounds of ammunition, all concealed in textile cargo…A UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) analysis confirms that approximately 70% of weapons recovered in Haitian operations originate from U.S.-licensed dealers…

A report from Pakistan is the basis for the following editorial.

While the drone war between nuclear powers India and Pakistan is on pause for the moment, the cease-fire hangs by a thread. Kashmir is a pawn in a game of war for the capitalist rulers–for the declining U.S. superpower, rival imperialist China, and regional double-dealers in India and Pakistan. Workers are trapped in the crossfire. If there is one lesson from history for the working class, it’s that regional wars will lead to bigger wars. Only a mass movement led by the international communist Progressive Labor Party can turn these wars for land, oil, and profit into a class war for communist revolution. 

On May 7, everything in South Asia exploded—again! Kashmir is one of the most hotly disputed border areas in the world, with India, Pakistan, and China all ruling parts of it. In the India-controlled part, an armed Pakistan-based nationalist group, The Resistance Front, killed 26 civilians. In response, India launched “Operation Sindoor” with missiles that killed at least 31 and injured 57 (BBC, 5/9). Pakistan hit back with artillery, killing at least 16 more. For four days, bombs and shells ripped through homes and neighborhoods. By May 10, U.S. KKKiller-in-Chief Donald Trump claimed that he’d brokered “peace” on the subcontinent. 

The butchery in Kashmir is the result of religious poison, nationalist deception, capitalist exploitation, and imperialist domination. It’s a bosses’ war fought with workers’ blood. The Progressive Labor Party calls on the international working class to reject lethal ruling-class lies and unite to overthrow the capitalist system that thrives on such carnage.

Kashmir: different rulers, same playbook

For centuries, the masses in Kashmir have faced relentless oppression. Empires, kings, and modern states have battled for control, leaving ordinary people chained to division and exploitation. 

It all goes back to the British colonial rulers, who were looting South Asia at the same time they were enslaving people in Africa.  Their global empire was built through violent conquests, brazen land grabs, and ruthless forced labor. After defeating the Sikh Empire, the British bosses found it too expensive and difficult to directly rule mountainous Kashmir. In 1846, they sold it to the Dogra monarchy, the new overseers, who ruled for more than 100 years. 

Meanwhile, workers kept fighting back. In the 1920s and ‘30s, resistance against the Dogra bosses’ brutality picked up. In 1944, a call for a “New Kashmir,” a vision for land and labor reform, was quickly betrayed by nationalist opportunists who sided with the Indian capitalists. It was another case of the futility of reformism and the dangers of class collaboration.

A second world war and the first workers’ state in Russia sent shockwaves throughout global capitalism. Inspired by the Soviet Union, workers all over the world, including South Asia, erupted in anti-colonial movements. In 1947, the British Empire—broke, in crisis, and pressed by workers’ uprisings—scrambled out of town, but not before playing its final divide-and-conquer card. 

Much like the Palestinian Nakba one year later, the British bosses spawned a bloodbath. They hacked new borders in Souith Asia overnight. The 1947 partition between Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan killed as many as three million and displaced 14 million more (National Endowment for the Humanities, summer 2022). The new borders were designed to fragment workers’ anti-imperialist unity.
Since partition, India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir, in 1947-48, 1965, and 1999. Each left the bosses’ conflicts over control and profits unresolved. Each left the masses suffering worse than before. 

Fast forward to 2019: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, a nest of Hindu supremacists, revoked Kashmir’s limited autonomy. Much as fascist Israel continues to displace countless Palestinian families, the Indian rulers keep driving workers and children in Kashmir from their homes, keep looting their land, and keep crushing dissent through occupation, curfews, and terror. It’s always our class that pays the price. 

True liberation does not come through policy tweaks or parliamentary deals. It comes from smashing the capitalist system through communist revolution. Kashmir’s working class has long resisted—against Dogra kings, British imperialists, and now Indian and Pakistani bosses. But their struggles have been co-opted by nationalist and reformist misleaders. There are no good capitalist rulers, no lesser capitalist evils. Only a communist party led by and for the working class can lead us to a decent society that serves workers’ needs.

Graveyard of inter-imperialist rivalry

Rich in resources and crucial for military control of South Asia, Kashmir is trapped at the crossroads of imperialist rivalries. China’s alliance with Pakistan, India’s main regional rival, sharpens these tensions.  

During the Cold War, India leaned toward the Soviet Union, while Pakistan became the U.S. gateway to China, a backchannel to drive a wedge between the two ex-socialist giants. This dangerous chess game came at a horrific cost. In 1971, the U.S. funded Pakistan’s genocidal response to the Bengali independence movement in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. More than 50 years later, imperialist-drawn borders and lethal nationalist ideas still rip workers apart.

Today, U.S. imperialism and Chinese state capitalism both exploit the Kashmir crisis. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a cornerstone of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, cuts through Kashmir.  In response, Trump has sustained the bipartisan U.S. strategy of backing India and its virulent racist prime minister, Narendra Modi, as a counterweight to China.  But India is also a member of BRICS, a China-dominated bloc. The U.S. death machine has no choice but to hedge its bets and arm both sides of the India-Pakistan divide (Foreign Affairs, 5/13). 

This is classic crisis management for a fading U.S. empire. All the while, Kashmir remains a graveyard of nationalist rivalry—and a flashpoint where regional tensions could quickly escalate into all-out war. 

Nationalism kills, long live internationalism

Workers in India, Pakistan, and Kashmir must refuse to fight for any bosses! Nationalist “self-determination” under capitalism is a fraud. Instead, we are building Progressive Labor Party. Only by uniting workers across borders in one revolutionary party can we smash the artificial boundaries invented by imperialism. 

The road to peace and liberation does not run through the rulers’ legislatures, courts, or nationalist armies. It runs through revolutionary organization, proletarian dictatorship, and the abolition of all capitalist states. The choice is clear: communism or capitalist slaughter. We stand with the workers, youth, and soldiers in Kashmir, India, and Pakistan, and everywhere. Smash capitalist borders! Long live international communist revolution under the red banner of PLP!