This is part 13 of a series about Black communists in the Spanish Civil War. In the early 1930s the urban bourgeoisie (capitalists) of Spain, supported by most workers and many peasants, overthrew the violent, repressive monarchy to form a republic. In July 1936 the Spanish army, eventually commanded by Francisco Franco, later the fascist dictator, rebelled to reestablish the repressive monarchy. Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini's Italy gave Franco massive military aid.

In 1936 the International Communist Movement, called the Comintern, headquartered in the Soviet Union and led by Joseph Stalin, organized volunteers, mainly workers from more than 60 countries into the International Brigades (IBs) to go to Spain to defend the Republic. Black workers, especially Black communists, emphasized the importance of fighting racism to win anything for the working class. And they brought this antiracist fightback with them when they returned to the United States. They were building a movement they hoped would lead to communist revolution around the world. They succeeded in organizing millions around communist ideas and practices. But the movement believed that uniting with liberal bosses to defend the Republic in Spain would further the fight for communism. This was part of the united front against fascism, which resulted in only fortifying the bosses system and laid the basis for the corruption of the old communist movement.

In the Progressive Labor Party, we are against any unity with capitalists. They all have to go and the working class must rule: that's communism.

If the working class is to seize and hold state power throughout the world, Black workers’ leadership is essential. That is the only way our class can destroy racism, the lifeblood of capitalism. The following is a story of one such leader, Albert Chisholm.

Birth of a life-long communist
Albert Chisholm was born in Spokane, Washington, in 1913 while his father was serving in the U.S. Army. The family later moved to Seattle. He told an interviewer:

Racism makes money. My parents had the attitude of "This is the situation, just do the best you can. Take what they give you, go to church, and so on." But that never rubbed off on me.

In the meantime the Communists were fighting like hell in the unions to permit Black people to join. They fought until I had a chance to join the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union and to get a job.
The communist Party coached me better than my parents did. They were the ones that had an understanding … The Communists told me I couldn't fight the battle alone.

Interviewed late in life, Chisholm had this to say about communism:

When you're a communist, that's the greatest type the human race can have. You think of the best interest of the human race. If you can't do that, you're no Communist. You don't have to have a degree and all that stuff, because your mind is conditioned to want to know what's best for the interest of the human race. You don't give a damn about anything else. That's what makes communism so potent. I joined the Communist Party when I was a kid, when I was on the ship and the Communists were out picketing for better conditions.

And the communists won many “better conditions.” They were involved in achieving Social Security and unemployment benefits during the Great Depression. They fought evictions and put workers back in their homes. But they did not fight for communism where workers run everything. That task is left to us. Join us in the Progressive Labor Party as we fight to get rid of the whole damn capitalist system.

As a teenager Chisholm became one of the first Black members of the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union, thanks largely to the anti-racist struggle led by the Communist Party. He joined the Young Communist League in 1933 and the Communist Party a year later.

Chisholm drew the connection between Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia and his own subsequent participation in the antifascist fight in Spain.

I signed up to go to Spain because in that era, fascism was on the march. Italy attacked the country of Ethiopia ... It was sort of a primitive society, but nevertheless it was something that Black people throughout the world could look up to because it was governed by a Black administration .... I was asked if I would like to go to Spain and fight against fascism. I told them, 'Sure, I'd be glad to go.' I wouldn't be in Ethiopia, but I'd be fighting the Italians in Spain, striking a blow against fascism.

Chisholm left New York in August 1937. In Spain, after a brief training period, he was sent to Belchite to join the Lincoln-Washington Battalion.

When we got to Belchite there was nothing standing except for a bell tower. It was a bloody battle - bodies all over the place. We had to go and help bury the bodies. They were bloated, swelling up. We put them in bags. Anyway, that's where I joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

While in Spain, Chisholm met Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and Ernest Hemingway on their visits to the front.

They all came down to wish us well and gave us encouragement. You bet it helped our morale.

During the first day of the Ebro Offensive, Chisholm and fellow volunteer, Sam Zakman, took shelter in the hills during an air attack on the bridgehead. Both men were picked up as stragglers by a Spanish unit and spent the rest of the campaign attached to it.

About the defeat of the Spanish Republic by the Fascists, Chisholm said:

Our main problem was not having enough ammunition. The Soviet Union sent us as many men as they could to train us. They sent us their planes, with the star on the tail; they were damn good planes. They sent us their artillery, machine guns, and rifles …

Chisholm returned to the U.S. on December 20, 1938. After a brief rest, he returned to sea. During World War II, he served in the Merchant Marine and made numerous dangerous runs. On one trip to Murmansk, his ship was torpedoed and sunk in the North Sea.

Today profiteering wars cover the world and an imperialist World War III is ever closer. Join us in turning the guns on the bosses and turning the imperialist war into a class war for workers power–communism.
During the 1960s Chisholm’s ship docked in Vietnam, where he contacted the Vietnamese communists – “Viet Cong” -- who were fighting the United States imperialist army.

When we sailed to Vietnam … I was able to get into the Viet Cong restaurants. They would send someone down with a motorcycle to the docks at night to get me, and we'd go all over the city. They're wonderful people. They didn't want capitalism; they wanted socialism.

Chisholm continued this work until 1971, when his union membership was revoked because he was a communist. He died in Seattle on March 25, 1998. We can learn a great deal from his example in our daily struggles against capitalism and imperialism, and we can also learn about his limits. While Chisholm was a brave soldier and leader for the working-class internationally he, along with communists of his time, stopped short of making the bosses’ reforms more class conscious. Now more than ever workers need to go beyond, taking these lessons from each antiracist, internationalist, class consciousness fightback and build on them a foundation for communist revolution.

Sources: Collum and Berch, eds, African-Americans in the Spanish Civil War; ALBA-VALB volunteer database.

Joining Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is voluntary. There aren’t applications, tests, interviews or mandatory dues, all of which the capitalists use to intimidate and control the working class and its allies. Workers’ experience leads  the way to understand how capitalism works and destroys our class. We come to believe in communism, place our confidence completely in the working class and in PLP and learn how members and friends can contribute to the class struggle. In this process it’s important to listen to workers' experiences, questions and doubts and conduct sharp, but comradely struggles. After reading the article in CHALLENGE  titled, “Capitalism kills, workers have no nations,” we began the following conversation:

Our conversation with Questions (Q) and Responses (R)

Q: Do you agree with the title of the article?  

R: Yes, workers don’t need nations and borders. The capitalists use these things to get cheap labor and to control the working class.  

Q: Why can’t we trust the Democratic Party politicians?

R: The politicians are the same with their false promises and useless reforms. I’m so angry about their abuse at the border, the separation of children from their families. These children are damaged and the press doesn’t explain how bad it is.             

R: [Joe] Biden said it was the smugglers fault that so many people died in the back of that truck. Yes, the smugglers knew what they were doing.
                                                             
R: Yes, but the capitalists blame anyone but themselves. Murder by small capitalists like the smugglers is connected to the goals of big capitalists and can’t compare to genocidal profit wars between imperialists, the U.S., China and Russia, that slaughter millions of workers and their families every year.

Q: Why do so many immigrants risk everything to cross the U.S./Mexico border?

R: I agree with the article. We are forced to flee our homes, because of poverty, homelessness, no jobs, racist repression and terror, war. Yes, but we make a choice to migrate for money, good jobs and a better life. If I had known what I know now about living in the U.S., I would have stayed in my “country.” We shouldn’t blame ourselves for migrating. We come not by choice but from necessity.

R: The capitalists’ plan is to spread the illusion that if we migrate we will get ahead. Not true. What the capitalists want is to fill jobs with cheap labor. They are selective. When they need technology experts, doctors, researchers, etc. or people from countries they want to control, like Venezuelans, they put out the welcome mat. Without class conscious fightback, the international working class are slaves to the bosses’ wishes.       

R: We need a mass PLP worldwide to completely destroy capitalism.

Q: When the working class wins power, we will destroy borders and nations. We will be one united working class. Under communism workers will be able to move anywhere in the world. For what reasons will we move?

R: It won’t be necessary, because the working class will be building communism where all workers will share what we need and contribute according to commitment, with struggle, of course. For international solidarity, for example, for healthcare or to support revolutionary struggle. To know other places in the world

R: After a communist revolution, PLP and the international working class will be left with a world the imperialists have destroyed by racism, war, and climate disaster. It will be necessary for the Party and the working class to relocate for survival and to meet the necessities of our class.

Q: [Vladimir] Lenin called imperialism the highest stage of capitalism. Why?

R: I agree with the article. When capitalists accumulate so much wealth they move to expand their power beyond their borders. Then the giant imperialists, now the U.S., China and Russia fight each other, over our dead bodies, to eliminate the competition.

R: The problem is that socialism didn’t lead to communism. There’s a lot of confusion and anti-communism.

Q: Why did that happen? All comments, questions and doubts are welcome.

R: Too much external and internal pressure.  Half socialism and half communism didn’t work. The socialist economic and political system has collapsed. I don’t know.

OK. This is an important question. Let’s continue it at our next study group. Now, let’s eat!

Capitalist stooges argue over why there’s no clean water
Bloomberg, 9/2–The water crisis unfolding in Jackson, Mississippi, was decades in the making: the culmination of crumbling infrastructure, systemic racism and more extreme weather. It’s also a stark warning of trouble to come as climate change piles new stress onto the essential services...In addition to warming up the planet by nearly 1.2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times, climate change is making precipitation events more intense, and therefore more likely to overwhelm strained systems. Lower-income and minority communities such as Jackson — which is 82 percent  Black and where a quarter of residents live in poverty — bear the brunt of the impacts. “It’s a consequence of many, many decades of disinvestment in water infrastructure, in general infrastructure in the city of Jackson.”

Pink wave in Latin America requires U.S. imperialists to adapt
Foreign Affairs, 8/31–Over the past five years, left-of-center politicians have won the presidencies in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Their rise prompted talk of a “pink wave” on the continent. That shorthand, however, is too facile: these leaders do not represent so much a wholesale ideological shift as a wave of anti-incumbency and the rejection of the elite Latin American political class…Western governments are struggling to constructively engage these new political actors, who almost uniformly are not members of the elite and were not educated abroad. That means diplomats will need to expand beyond their traditional networks to forge new connections…In order to preserve Western influence and steer the region away from China and Russia, Western diplomats must figure out how to engage this new crop of leaders…Ministries in Canada, the United States, and Europe…will also need to make inroads into nontraditional networks, such as unions, youth movements, informal sector workers’ associations, and indigenous groups.

War in Ukraine requires a grand strategy for U.S. imperialists
Foreign Policy, 2/2–The war also points to some problems for Washington’s strategists…While the collective West has condemned and sanctioned Russia and backed Ukraine, almost the entire global south has refused to choose sides. India is a U.S. partner in the Quad but has neither criticized nor sanctioned Russia—and has increased its imports of Russian oil since the war began. China has neither backed nor condemned the Russian invasion but has supported Russia’s claims that its attack was provoked by threats to its security from NATO. Many other countries in the global south view Russia as a large authoritarian country with which they can do business and accuse the United States of hypocrisy, given Washington’s own past wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan…If preventing the emergence of a rival hegemon in a vital strategic region remains a cardinal principle of U.S. grand strategy, then pivoting to Asia is essential, regardless of what happens in Ukraine.

Who pays for all those rich beach homes?
New York Times, 8/8–As sea level rises and storm surges grow more intense, beach towns on every coast of the United States will soon be sacrificing more real estate to Poseidon. A 2018 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that more than 300,000 coastal homes, currently worth well over $100 billion, are at risk of “chronic inundation” by 2045… Some $7 billion worth of beach replenishment programs, most under the auspices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, have added sand and bolstered property values in some of the most exclusive havens in the United States. Federal taxpayers typically pick up two-thirds of the tab…The lords of the beachfront were late to the coastal real estate game. The beach was initially deemed the most useless, undesirable space on the North American continent…The wealthy eventually realized their error. It’s hard to see how, exactly, they will hold on to much of this sea-level paradise in the face of rising waters and carbon-charged superstorms. But it’s not hard to guess who will end up covering their losses.

The following letters are from participants at a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) cadre school in Haiti. (See other letters in this issue)
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The PLP cadre school was designed to strengthen our ideas about communism and the struggle against the capitalist system. Through this weekend school and the topics we debated, I came to understand that world history has always been a “lutte de classe” (class struggle), that no matter what type of person you are, you belong to a class. And that we have to struggle in the interests of our class.

Consequently, I am a future communist whose goal is to unite people from the disadvantaged classes, to help them recognize their class and the roots of the situation they live in, and to join in the struggle to eradicate the corrupt system based on “exploitation of man by man.” We must plan a revolution to change society and replace it with a proletarian dictatorship. In this sense, workers and students will live the life that they have always hoped for and deserve, based on their contributions to the growth and development of a just society.
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I was happy to participate in the workshop with PLP. I liked the way it worked, with sessions that we all prepared for, with some of us leading the discussions, and all of us learning from them. It helped us understand our own reality, especially the debates we had. It helped us understand better the source of the misery that we and our parents live day to day. I thank PLP for this work that will help us move forward, in our understanding and in our struggle.
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The three-day cadre school was a tremendous experience. It allowed us to better understand many things that we sometimes minimize but that play a big role in the decadent situation we are in.

We live under an unequal (and inadequate for most people) system that exploits all the resources, human and otherwise. In the school, we debated many different ideas, leading to an understanding that anything that we want to achieve must be thought out first, and must have a basis in the real world. We understand that the brain is the engine of all thought, but these thoughts are not created automatically; the conditions we live under are responsible for how we think.

We talked about the development of classes, how the first human society was not based on class but on coexistence, learning how to tame nature. There were individual and collective interests, but the individual was not prioritized. That was the primitive form of communism. We discussed what it means to have class struggle, where we fight for the ideas necessary to make our class rule in our own interests. When we don’t fight for our class, if anything is “won” at all, it is merely reforms. And if all we fight for is to reform a corrupt, exploitative system, we still end up with a bourgeoisie exploiting the proletarians. But there are some people who understand this, and say no. I hope to become a committed fighter for the working class and to share what I have learned.
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The PLP cadre school was really important for me, it helped me acquire new knowledge, it helped me understand the functioning of society, and it allowed me to think in a different way. It taught me how to fight to change this system today. The school taught me how to live collectively and how to support others in struggle. I think the school made me a new person with a new outlook on life.
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During the PLP cadre school workshops, we had an opportunity to read and discuss with our colleagues all or parts of Historical Materialism, Road to Revolution III and IV, and Reform and Revolution. The readings allowed us to do a lot of reflection so that we could know how the world functions and why, how it was not always like this, and how it became like this.

It is essential that we know what we need to do and know how to arm ourselves, ideologically and materially. We learned that we need to prepare relentlessly, together, to fight the capitalist system that every day increases the misery of the working masses of people, here in Haiti and around the world, through poverty, racism, sexism, and war.

We spent a memorable weekend together, not only studying, but also sharing food, sports, and discussing many ideas of interest to us. I would like to thank the PLP comrades in Haiti and abroad who contributed their efforts to make this cadre school successful.
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The cadre school session is a space where we learn to debate and to understand/respect everyone’s opinion. It was extremely important for us to participate in this workshop, it taught us to have confidence in ourselves when we read texts that contain new ideas. It taught us how to organize ourselves. I suggest that in the next cadre school, perhaps we can watch a film together and discuss its ideas. Overall it was a good experience.