MADISON COUNTY, KY, April 22 - Today members of the Progressive Labor Party joined the Madison County Tenants Union to rally for the repeal of HB5, Kentucky’s new “Safer Kentucky” Act that makes us all unsafe! The law criminalizes homeless workers by making it illegal to camp on public property. It will increase incarceration and prison labor which only benefits the bosses. It also authorizes violent attacks by business and property owners on people camping on their property, and gives the green light to vigilantes to use “deadly physical force” against anyone who they think is trying to “dispossess” them of their property. These are all classic ways for the bosses to build a fascist movement.

We marched to the office of the Republican state senators behind this law, chanting and singing our union songs. Their response? They locked the door on us! We continued with speeches and testimonials outside, and shoved our scroll of over a thousand signatures in between the locked doors. This rally shook up the political bosses and was featured on the bosses’ news media. We were able to spend some time strengthening our ties with other tenant union members. We shared a CHALLENGE newspaper with them, leading to discussions about the need to overthrow this entire fascist capitalist system!

Going beyond tenant organizing

And to overthrow capitalism we have to go beyond fighting the local racists in Kentucky. We have to organize against Genocide Joe Biden who is continuing Trump’s racist attacks on migrants, escalating his predecessor Obama’s racist attacks on migrants. We have to become part of a worldwide movement against imperialism and the looming world war. The bosses want to blame migrants for problems created by capitalism. And they also want workers to kill each other in wars that can only benefit these profiteering capitalists. Let’s join the worldwide fight for a world run by the world’s workers. That’s communism.  Join the Progressive Labor Party

Teachers are able to learn who their students are and plan lessons based on those needs. This planning is a creative endeavor, so, though it ultimately maintains capitalism, many teachers do get a sense of fulfillment as they use their labor to create. This  illustrates what  Karl Marx outlined in his book Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts: that there is a human connection between our labor and the products we create. Now teachers are facing the disconnection from the means of production, that is producing our own texts, questions and lessons. Instead of the creative joy that comes from knowing and learning from our students in order to create their learning experiences, we are being given a front row seat into the alienation the working class deals with every day. The NYC Department of Education (DOE) has unveiled a plan to force all NYC teachers to use curriculum that the DOE directly produces, beginning in math and english.  

Teaching students loyalty to bosses

Communists know that the purpose for education under capitalism is to prepare the working class for the needs of the ruling class bosses. The bosses need compliant workers to be willingly exploited, as they steal our labor. So, though teachers are being removed from the production process of teaching, it will be the students who will directly face this ruling class attack. They will have prefabricated lessons designed by corporations and teachers who are compliant to the racist, sexist ideologies the bosses want to teach. Whereas, communist teachers have used the classroom to interrupt the bosses’ ideological production, interjecting communist ideas, and building the Progressive Labor Party that will one day bury capitalism once and for all. 

PLP has focused on the military, industrial work, and schools as our method of building the communist revolution that will transform our world.  The bosses see the working class turning against Israel’s genocide in Palestine and our refusal to join their military as World War III with their capitalist rivals looms. They need to build a much larger army than they have. This comes as they attempt to discipline the smaller capitalists represented by the gutter racist and sexist MAGAs. They also need an industrial base for war, to rebuild a failing infrastructure.

Teachers need to unite

In a NYC high school, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) union has been saying that there is no curriculum mandate while the administration has been making plans to implement it. Following a pattern of how they would close larger schools, they wanted to grant the teachers in the building the illusion of choice by saying that they could pick from a set of vendors each with a different curriculum. Much of the curriculum mandated by the administration contains books that drill anti-communist and  anti-working class ideas. One book that is taught at many public schools is Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, a vehemently anti-communist book. Out of the entire library of Black Literature, why that book?

This is a theme of these curriculums; they teach and control the narrative that the bosses need the workers to believe as reality.  
Being the bosses they are, the DOE informed the teachers that they had subsidized only one of the curricula, basically making the decision for them. The teachers in the English Department want to resist this existential attack on their careers. PLP keeps pointing out that this attack is indicative of growing fascism as the bosses directly move to take control of the means of ideological production. 

A video attached to an email that was sent to the English teachers by the corporation behind the chosen curriculum excitedly touted that teachers wouldn’t even have to grade anymore as now AI would do the grading! How great for the bosses as students would use AI to answer AI generated questions on a worksheet that AI would ultimately grade. What role would the teacher as producer have in this scenario apart from being a facilitator of the bosses’ designs? Communists know the answer is that the bosses would get exactly what they want and that students will suffer the most.  

Racism and sexism will intensify as the most exploited working class neighborhoods will get the least help because the teachers they get will be using subject matter not designed for them but for what the bosses need them to be. As the bosses push for online learning so they can shove 60 or more students into a classroom, the cutting edge of racism will be disproportionately felt by Black and Latin students.  As direct attacks on them were thwarted by the mass working class struggle that coalesced into the Black Lives Matter movement, the bosses will directly use their system to maintain the racist inequity necessary for them to maximize surplus value for the profit they need to maintain their superiority over their imperialist rivals and, eventually, fund their wars.  

Reform vs. Revolution

At this moment, the administration is saying that they will allow English teachers to teach anything they want for a single six week marking period.  This crumb of reform will easily be taken away as they entrench their curriculum.  It will be only a matter of time before the bosses create the facilitators of their ideology that they require for capitalism to remain unthreatened.  

The little bit of human connection through labor that teachers get and are now losing would be far greater once we are all building a communist world. It will be when students are the focus of teaching because the whole of society will see them as  producers, and their learning will be utilized to build a world where their needs would be met. Despite not being on the verge of communist revolution, the teachers in the building do want to fight back and are organizing meetings to discuss how. PLP is focused on building these meetings, facilitating this fight back, and making sure that it won’t be easy for the bosses to attack the working class. 

The continually shifting relationship of the Italian government to the U.S. and China testifies to the growing instability of global capitalism. As secondary powers from Africa to Latin America to the Middle East to Europe jockey for dominance amidst sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry, more wars are coming, including world war. And as the capitalists compete for profits, the working class will lose.

In 2016 Italy was the first G-7 country to plan to join the Chinese BRI (Belt and Road Initiative). This infrastructure proposal was meant to turn the Adriatic port of Trieste into a key point of entry of Chinese goods into Europe, as well as converting Genoa, Palermo, and Venice into enlarged trading hubs (see map). Bristling at being dominated by German and French capitalists, Italian capitalists were slipping away from the European Union (EU), seeking greater independent leverage.

Italy caught between competing imperialist powers

For the Chinese imperialists, breaking into the Italian market would gain them a political and financial beachhead in Europe.  It would also foster divisions in the EU, expand Chinese capital into more developed markets and weaken the hold of U.S. imperialism over the NATO-affiliated nations.  

The plan did not work out. Between 2019 and 2023, Italian exports to China increased only from 13B to 16.4B euros. Yet Chinese exports to Italy ballooned from 31.7B euros to 57.5B euros. Only the port of Trieste was developed.  The invasion of Ukraine by Russia—China’s close ally— has, at least temporarily, driven several of the EU nations toward rearmament and supporting Ukraine (Diplomat, September 21, 2023 and November 23, 2023). 

The 2022 election of neo fascist Giorgia Meloni as Prime Minister drove the final nail into the coffin of the BRI in Italy. Meloni opportunistically proclaimed herself a committed friend of the U.S., European unity, and support for Ukraine.

But nothing remains stable as imperialist powers compete.  Many nations in the EU rely heavily upon Russian gas for energy and—even without joining the BRI—engage in extensive trade with China, which is Germany’s second-biggest trading partner.  The Meloni government continues to encourage extensive links between Italian and Chinese firms. After publicly snubbing China in 2023, Meloni is currently undertaking a “charm offensive” as Chinese President Xi Jinping was reportedly planning a visit to Europe in May 2024 (Bloomberg, April 10).
Capitalist opportunism and competition know no borders. The BRI “silk road” now has competition from the “cotton road” of the newly created India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). Italy may join (Diplomat, September 21, 2023).  China and India are in tense competition.  If Italy joins IMEC after abandoning the BRI, this decision would mirror the sharpening rivalries among imperialist and would-be imperialist powers. (Independent, January 12).

The working class must run the world— that’s communism!

Whichever ruling classes win this dangerous imperialist competition, the working classes of the world will pay the price. In China, the Gini inequality index is one of the highest in the world. Workers are exploited, strikes abound, tens of millions of youth are unemployed, and migrant laborers within China are super-exploited (China Labour Bulletin, January 31). Workers must move beyond strikes to run all of society. That’s communism.

In Italy, the public healthcare system is being brutally dismantled, with doctors entering the private sector or leaving the country. Education is cut, while teachers are paid poverty-level wages and young people cannot afford to get married and start families. Chinese laborers in factories touting “Made in Italy” earn 20 euros for a boutique “Italian” handbag selling for 350 euros.  Meanwhile, desperate migrants from countries devastated by climate change and violent imperialist profiteering die by the thousands every year trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea—all as Meloni’s racist regime nods in approval. Under communism there would be no borders, no migrants and no racist regimes whether in Italy or China.

Imperialists eventually resolve their contradictions through war. Regional and local wars are raging everywhere. World war is coming. Communists everywhere need to join with the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in organizing workers to fight their bosses. Turn imperialist war into class war for communism, where the working class runs the world.

After 30 days of lip service from the Rutgers University-Newark administration and their refusal to remove ROTC from campus, as one of the encampment leaders demanded, Progressive Labor party members pushed the limits with a rally on Memorial Day at the nearest recruitment center–the National Guard Armory. Although this action was announced spontaneously, the night before Memorial Day, hundreds were bombed and burned by Israel at a safe house in Rafah. The urgency to have a demonstration, especially on one of capitalism’s most hypocritical holidays to honor veterans they sacrificed to prop up their imperialist system, proved even more of an opportunity to emphasize why we need communism. 

While we called for students and workers to join us at the armory, other Rutgers students called for people to rally in NYC at a bigger march led by nationalist misleaders who previously put students in the line of fire with police. Another element amidst these decisions was a forecast of thunderstorms approaching. Most PL’ers and friends were hesitant to continue with the rally because of the forecast but followed the lead of an adamant comrade who had heard other PL’ers confirm that we would go out rain or shine. Of course, we didn’t want to risk anyone’s life to go out and rally during a thunderstorm, but only light rain fell during the whole period of thunder. In planning this rally, we agreed to watch the weather and cancel if it didn’t look right. Although we canceled officially and publicly to our friends at Rutgers, most of the PLP and a few friends still showed up. As a light sprinkle of rain fell, one comrade suggested that we lead a CHALLENGE sale at the nearby stores while we were there.

Three of us walked into a braiding shop and spoke to a Black woman worker blow drying a little girl’s hair in preparation for her appointment. Our friend started by sharing that we’re here to talk about issues stemming from the system. The woman coldly replied, “What issues are those?” Undeterred, we shared with her that we originally came out to make the connections between the student-worker encampments at Rutgers, pushing the institution to divest from the war in Israel to the neighborhood recruitment of students in Newark by protesting outside of the armory across the street. She mentioned that the youth just need more to do. Then she went on to share that although she doesn’t completely agree with Biden, she thinks not voting for Biden would be like voting still, or in other words, still making a choice. I shared with her that we do have other ways to have our voices heard; like protesting at the Democratic National Convention in August and building for communism long term. 

She went on to share that she used to be in cosmetology school under former liberal Mayor-now NJ Senator, Cory Booker, and once she got close to completing the program, the funding and program were cut with short notice. As we spoke more with her, she shared that she lives in an apartment building, “the Spires,” formally known as Garden Spires, with a long tenant organizing history. From this conversation, we exchanged contact information and invited her to a study group, to which she responded that she likes to stay up on what’s going on. As we were leaving, we even overheard her telling her aunt about speaking to people trying to do good in the community. From this experience on, we agreed that we would be ready to go out like we do on May Day, rain or shine. As we often boldly chant in Spanish, Ni con lluvia, ni con balas! Nor rain nor bullets will stop us. Power to the working class.