The September 30 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood marks a decisive moment in the capitalist rulers’ ongoing war against the working class. The pre-dawn fascist assault on an apartment building was executed with helicopters circling above and troops in full military gear. Children and adults were zip-tied in cruel display, with at least 37 arrested (ABC7, 10/1).

The militarized repression was clearly meant to terrorize Black and Brown workers and families already under siege from the poverty and displacement rooted in the profit system. The message was clear: As the international crisis of capitalism deepens, the bosses have less incentive to offer the carrot of reform to our class. Instead, they are leaning heavily on the stick of state terror.

Four days later, workers and youth across the city bravely answered this assault. They rammed ICE vehicles to block raids on the Southwest Side. For days they battled tear gas, arrests, and rubber bullets outside a detention center in the nearby suburb of Broadview (Block Club Chicago, 9/28). These acts of worker defiance show a growing understanding that the struggle against rising fascism will require far greater commitment from the international working class.

Workers’ boldness in this moment—facing off against tanks, helicopters, and masked ICE marauders—reveals the potential of our class. Each confrontation builds collective consciousness, sharpening our understanding that capitalism itself is at the root of exploitation, racism, and war. What’s needed now is organization: the unity of militant workers under a revolutionary banner. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) stands as the disciplined force to transform spontaneous fightback into a conscious movement for liberation: communism. Only by destroying the old capitalist world—its police and prisons and brutal law of maximum profit—can we build a new society based on equality, working-class power, and working-class rule.

U.S. bosses scrap and scramble to save their empire

The intensifying violence against immigrant workers and antiracists can best be understood in the context of the split within the U.S. ruling class on how to manage their fading empire. The dominant industrial power for much of the 20th century, the U.S. is now faltering in the face of increased competition and production from China (CEPR, 1/17/24).  The U.S. capitalist bosses are relying on speculative financial schemes as they attack unions and freeze workers’ wages.

As their profits are squeezed,  the capitalists have sharp disagreements over how many crumbs should go to an increasingly impoverished working class. The current federal government shutdown is a case in point. The rulers’ faction fronted by President Donald Trump has broken with the liberal bosses, who want to preserve a minimal level of health coverage and other social benefits to stave off unrest and rebellion. What’s more, MAGA’s anti-DEI crusade is undermining the liberals’ long-range plan to recruit the larger multiracial military they need to fight in the next global inter-imperialist war (CNN, 3/27).

The chaos in Washington reflects the broader instability of the capitalist system. Sooner than later, as they’re forced to move toward open fascism and world war, the U.S. ruling class will need to discipline itself through jailings and political violence. The coming show trials of James Comey and Letitia James are just a taste of what’s in store. In their desperate efforts to save their empire, one faction or the other will need to consolidate control as it prepares to confront their imperialist rivals.

While we can’t predict how the U.S. bosses’ infighting will play out, we know that the growing volatility of their system presents great dangers—and great opportunities—for a unified, multiracial, communist-led working class. 

Expose the liberal fascists

For capitalists everywhere, a steady supply of vulnerable, super-exploitable immigrant labor provides untold billions in profits. The Trump-led faction’s racist hate speech notwithstanding, their businesses—from hotels and construction sites to the picking fields—would be devastated if this flow of cheap labor were shut off. Trump acknowledged as much when he temporarily backed off from attacking agricultural workers this summer (NPR, 6/16).

But for workers to count on the liberal bosses for protection from the ICE Gestapo would be a deadly error.  Liberal fascists Barack Obama and Joe Biden exposed their loyalty to U.S. imperialism by arresting and deporting millions of workers (Yahoo, 5/8). Their feeble efforts at immigration reform, such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), were conceived to build patriotism and funnel young workers into dead-end jobs and the military.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire Democrat with designs on the White House, is posing as the worker-friendly opposition to Trump’s threats to deploy the National Guard against anti-ICE protestors in Chicago. Meanwhile, state troopers under Pritzker’s command provide cover for ICE vehicles and arrest workers outside the Broadview detention center (Chicago Sun-Times, 10/8).

As the class struggle sharpens, the liberals will be exposed as the class enemies they are. But it’s not enough to reject the liberal racists’ misleadership. Progressive Labor Party must advance  working-class consciousness and militant fightback on the road to  communist revolution.

Fascism means: we got to fight back!

For all the dangers of full-blown fascism, it’s important to understand that it stems from the capitalists’ weakness. The bosses abandon liberal democracy—and the democratic “freedoms” designed to pacify the working class—only when it can no longer keep them afloat.  That’s when they’re compelled to turn to open, ruthless terror. Our task is to study the essence of fascism, past and present,  to better equip ourselves to destroy the capitalist system that spawns it.

The lessons of history are clear. Fascism can be smashed by the organized power of the international working class under communist leadership. From the heroic anti-fascist fighters who crushed Mussolini’s forces in Italy to the Soviet workers and soldiers who broke the back of the Nazi war machine at Stalingrad, communists have been at the forefront of humanity’s struggle against capitalist terror.

Today’s international mass uprisings against racism and genocide offer the potential for millions of workers to unite our struggles into a revolutionary communist movement that strikes at the very heart of the capitalist system. PLP is the multiracial force that can achieve the monumental task of building an egalitarian society out of the ashes of the old. We have a world to win, and nothing to lose but our chains!

Chicago, October 4—Our Progressive Labor Party (PLP) collective here organized a “Smash All Borders” rally in a working-class neighborhood on the southwest side of the city, an area facing intensified immigration raids. We got out hundreds of copies of CHALLENGE with some friends of the Party joining us. 

A newer member and their partner designed signs for passing traffic that read “Honk if you hate racism” and “Honk if you hate ICE,” both of which were hits. Other comrades gave fiery antiracist speeches in both Spanish and English on the bullhorn. Shortly after our rally ended, we got a message from a rapid response group we’re active in to go a few blocks west to another neighborhood where ICE had shot a woman worker in her car for trying to block them from carrying out their abductions of workers.

Workers showed up en masse to the intersection, creating a stand-off while hurling insults at the racist ICE thugs. Seeing that their situation was compromised, ICE was forced to fire off tear canisters to clear an escape route (Block Club Chicago, 10/5). Along with dozens of other workers we were forced to retreat at the time, but it was inspiring to witness the dedication and fightback of our class in action.

Fascists attack but workers strike back

Since Klansman-in-Chief Donald Trump’s declaration of war and terror on immigrant workers in major urban “sanctuary” cities, Chicago has not gone unscathed. However, “Midway Blitz,” the fascist operation Trump and company are carrying out here has been met with the same fightback, resistance and courage from the working class seen in other major targeted cities.

The Gestapo-like attacks are coming from nearly all sides, including ICE, FBI, DHS, local police and state troopers, and the more recent attempt to deploy the National Guard. The Trump administration has enlisted several forces of the capitalist state to attack and terrorize the working class. 

The liberal bosses running Illinois and Chicago, far from providing any real leadership to fight back, are showing their ineffective and complicit character when it comes to capitalism needing to divide and attack the working class for profit. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed a toothless bill recently, establishing “ICE-free zones” in the city, a performance theater that has done nothing to stop their fascist rampage (Office of The Mayor, 10/6).

Masked ICE nazis have kidnapped people off the streets all over the city and suburbs - documented and undocumented workers alike,  taking them to Broadview, a suburb right outside of Chicago. Broadview was initially set up as a processing center for those abducted. Now it has become a detention center with horrible conditions.

Protesters have shown up here daily, only to be tear-gassed and shot with pepper bullets. Dozens of protesters have been arrested with a range of charges that include aggravated battery on a police officer to mob action. At one of the protests, the fascist Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, paraded out of the Broadview facility with ICE agents in a military tank with guns pointed at protesters while drones hovered overhead. 

The Party has attended these protests and gotten CHALLENGE out to protesters that are open to our ideas. We have invited some to our PLP study group and will continue to do so. We  also hope  to work with some of these younger protesters who want training on building a base and how to escalate tactics in a collective and disciplined way in these chaotic situations. 

Many of us have also joined rapid response groups in our communities which are limited to the politics of people “knowing their rights.” Our participation in these groups is to struggle with our friends and coworkers that we have no rights that the capitalist class must honor under fascism. We must make the connections that the ruling class are in an economic crisis, and  are preparing for war, and that is what is happening in these cities in real time. War is being waged on the working class, and there is no time to waste to build our own fighting force: a Red Army to achieve international communist revolution. 

Communism is the change workers need

Exactly a week after the struggle on October 4th, two PLP members went to the apartment complex where ICE conducted a raid with storm troopers and Blackhawk helicopters in the middle of the night.  Black and Latin workers and their families were dragged out of their homes (see editorial on page 2). We went door to door in the building that looked like a war zone. We were able to find workers in the building and in the community that were interested in reading CHALLENGE after what they experienced. 

One worker explained to us: “A reporter just wanted to interview me. I told her I don’t need to be interviewed. We need a change and if you can’t do that I don’t want to be interviewed.” We made contacts and will be going back to offer workers that change. A communist society is the change we all desire, and a communist revolution is the only way we will fight fascism and win.

One hundred and eight years ago, November 7, 1917, marked the beginning of the single most important event of the 20th century, the Bolshevik Revolution, which directly inspired the Chinese Revolution and anti-imperialist struggles around the world from Vietnam to Africa to Latin America.
Russia’s working class, headed by the revolutionary communists of the Bolshevik Party and its leader, Vladimir Lenin, freed one-sixth of the world’s surface from capitalism. They proved once and for all that it was possible to strive for a world without exploitation, where those who produce all value, the working class, can enjoy the fruits of their labor and not have it stolen by a few parasitical bosses and their lackeys.

The Bolshevik revolution was the first serious attempt by workers and peasants to seize, hold, and consolidate state power. Even though capitalism has returned to the former Soviet Union, workers will not forget that the Soviet working class defeated capitalism in 1917. They smashed the imperialist armies of 17 countries (including Japan, the U.S., Britain, France, among others) which invaded Russia in 1918 to try to crush the revolution. They freed the masses, especially women, from the yoke of capitalist, feudal and religious oppression. Then in 1945 the Soviet Red Army defeated the mightiest and most barbaric army the capitalists had ever organized: the Nazi Wehrmacht.

The revolution frightened the world’s bosses 

That’s why they immediately sent armies from 17 countries to try—in Churchill’s words—to “strangle it in the cradle.” From 1918 to 1923, millions of workers led by the Red Army defeated the imperialists’ counter-revolution. Nearly five million died in that battle, many of whom were the most committed workers the revolution had produced. Lenin himself died because of injuries inflicted by a hired killer.

The masses showed great courage and determination to defend and build their revolution under the leadership of their revolutionary party. They proved that revolutionary violence on the part of the working class and peasantry was vital to the seizure of state power.

Achievements of the Revolution

The Bolshevik Revolution brought Russia to heights of productive development that capitalism, given a similar time period and circumstances, could never have dreamed of. Bringing the working class to power, the Revolution coordinated their social-economic efforts for the production and exchange of the necessities, the comforts and even some luxuries of life, making them available to all. The Soviet system of production was for use, not for profit. This can only be accomplished by abolishing capitalist profits and the private ownership of property, with its exploitation, poverty, unemployment, racism, fascism and imperialist wars.

In the 1930s, when the entire capitalist world sank into depression, and tens of millions worldwide were left jobless and starving (much like today), the Soviet Union was forging ahead building a new society without unemployment. They created some measure of a decent life for workers in an incredibly short time, transforming a 90 percent illiteracy rate into one in which nearly everyone was literate.

Around 1938, without any official declaration, the Soviet Union had achieved the era of free bread. One could enter a cafeteria, order little or nothing, and receive all the bread one wanted. You needed, you received. Even during a drive for heavy industry, living standards rose strikingly when the rest of the world was mired in the Great Depression.

The Soviet Union not only freed workers but also fought against racism and sexism. The battle against racism was particularly significant. As communist Paul Robeson said about his trips to the Soviet Union, he “felt like a human being for the first time since I grew up. Here I am not a Negro but a human being. Before I came I could hardly believe that such a thing could be…. Here, for the first time in my life, I walk in full human dignity.”

Heroic fight against the Nazis

In 1941, the bosses again tried to destroy the revolution. Hitler, using all of Europe’s resources and the largest military machine ever assembled, invaded the Soviet Union with four million troops. They discovered the Soviets were no pushover as occurred in Western Europe. Hitler’s prediction — endorsed by western military “experts” — of capturing Moscow in six weeks went up in smoke.

Nazi troops found total destruction and desolation in every captured city or town — the “scorched earth” policy. Soviet defenders destroyed everything that the Nazi’s might use. The communists then organized armed resistance behind enemy lines: the Partisans.

Over 6,000 factories were dismantled and moved east of the Ural Mountains, re-assembled to produce weapons again, a feat requiring total unity and support of Soviet workers, unmatched by any country, before or since. Soviet soldiers and workers fought for Stalingrad block-by-block, house-by-house and room-by-room to halt the “unbeatable” Nazi invaders. Workers in arms factories produced weapons 24 hours a day for the Red Army, working 12-hour shifts. When Nazi troops captured factories, heroic Soviet workers and soldiers would re-take them.

The entire German Sixth Army and 24 of Hitler’s generals were surrounded and killed or captured in the battle of Stalingrad. Never again would the Nazis mount a successful offensive against the Red Army. Stalingrad was truly the turning point of the Second World War. Not until the Nazis were on the run following their defeats at Stalingrad and in the Battle of the Kursk — the biggest armored battle in world history, involving millions of soldiers and 6,000 tanks — did the U.S.-U.K. forces invade Western Europe. It was the communist-led Soviet Union that smashed the Nazis, the largest and most powerful army ever mounted by a capitalist power.

All this was accomplished under the leadership of Josef Stalin. No wonder he is reviled to this day by world capitalism.

Lessons to be learned

Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks suffered from political weaknesses, which led to the return of capitalism to the USSR. From the beginning they believed that to achieve communism, first socialism had to be established, a belief Karl Marx had advanced. We have learned from that experience that socialism retained capitalism’s wage system and therefore failed to wipe out many aspects of the profit system. Socialism put forward material incentives to the working class rather than political ones as the way to win workers to communism. We must win over masses of workers to abolish capitalism’s wage system and its division of labor and fight directly for communism.

Today, no country is led by communists, but this is a temporary historical setback. While this long and volatile era of widening imperialist wars and fascist attacks on the working class is upon us, every dark night has its end.

The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is a product of both the old International Communist Movement and the struggle against its weaknesses. Pseudo-leftist groups have not learned history’s lessons and continue to fight for nationalist “sharing of power” with capitalists, a la Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, not for the working-class seizure of power and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Our movement is daily fighting to learn from the Soviet Union’s great battles and achievements as well as its deadly errors that led to its collapse, mainly that reformism, racism, nationalism and all forms of concessions to capitalism only lead workers to defeat. Give the ruling class an inch and they’ll grab a mile.

We honor the bold fight by the workers of the Bolshevik Revolution against capitalism and for a working-class communist world. Today, we must organize workers, students and soldiers to build a mass worldwide working class party that will turn this era of imperialist wars into a new, international communist revolution.

New York, October 4—The streets of Northern Manhattan were resounding today with the militant bilingual chants of multiracial, multigenerational workers’ unity, as several hundred marchers took to the streets to denounce ICE raids and deportations, racist federal budget cuts, and to unite this largely immigrant-Dominican neighborhood as one working class.  Multiple chant leaders, led by the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), brought forth chants to unite and inspire not only the marchers, but the many hundreds of people who lined the streets to listen to us and cheer us on:

“Racism means, WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK! Deportations mean, WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK! Fascism means, WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK! To unite the Heights, WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK!”

PLP chants unify and empower workers

The march itself was a beacon of potential for local workers. By responding to the needs of the moment, we were able to deftly move back and forth from Spanish to English to involve the entire march in action from start to finish, continually reminding workers that we are part of a larger, international struggle. “The fight of the workers, it has no racist borders!”

We also made sure to shout out to our local street vendors, who we are involved with in a related struggle against the local KKKops who racially profile and harass them as they try to sell their wares to survive (proving once again, it’s not just Trump, it’s capitalism!).
Over the course of the march, PLP also distributed 600 CHALLENGE newspapers (many before the march even began!) and about 550 PLP leaflets written for the occasion.

More poison from liberal reformism, nationalism, & religion

As reported in previous articles, liberal reformist politics and nationalism continue to poison the workers’ struggle and dull the potential of our recently-formed uptown coalition of Dominican political parties and community organizations that put together this march. Despite weeks of planning and struggle, the speeches at the beginning of the march were all in Spanish, leaving about half of the march in the dark as to our political outlook and plans. And unfortunately, our planned Haitian speaker was unable to attend at the last minute, so even in Spanish, marchers were left with no understanding of the larger forces that are shaping the sharp increase of fascism in the U.S. and worldwide. In addition, coalition organizers added another foe—religion—to further confuse and dampen our struggle. An opening “invocation” appealed to God, “higher powers,” and Jesus to liberate the working class. You could feel these losing strategies suck the power and energy from the crowd. 

Despite these obstacles, the main memory of the march is not the phony speeches before and after, but the powerful collective voice of workers marching uptown united and fighting against ICE raids, deportations, and budget cuts and for multiracial workers’ unity. Today we lived it!

What is winning?

And because of our strategic outlook of immersing ourselves inside multiple uptown mass organizations, PLP is winning! Even as several leading coalition leaders push their brand of nationalism or Democratic Party loyalty, we continue to win workers closer to our revolutionary communist outlook and—we are struggling with them—to join our Party. Because of our base, in coalition meetings leading up to the march, we were able to stave off the most reactionary positions (such as trying to ban support for Haitian workers in their struggle against the Dominican ruling class’s racist assaults in the Dominican Republic, or restricting our fight to only ICE and deportations and ignoring more systemic demands against imperialist war in places like Palestine).

At the march itself, our PLP contingent was once again a magnet for the most militant workers, both younger and older. PLP members also brought out members of our base, who are seeing us in action as not only the most devoted fighters, but the only ones with a revolutionary line that can actually change material conditions for the working class by overthrowing once and for all the capitalist system responsible for causing this gigantic mess the capitalists have made of our world.

At the end of the march, a particularly bitter and cynical speaker once again tried to destroy the powerful unity we had just created. In a long, meandering speech in Spanish (again excluding half the marchers), she criticized the Spanish-speaking marchers for not bringing more people, which is not in and of itself a bad thing, but her tone was condescending and demeaning. Her only words in English addressed the many non-Spanish speakers as foreign-sounding “North Americans,” and said they themselves had to bring more Latin workers because they were the ones affected by President Donald Trump’s attacks, ignoring the many recent attacks that have targeted the entire working class. After a rare and precious victory unifying our entire neighborhood in militant struggle, this divisive message was exactly what we didn’t need. 

Luckily, once again we were able to counter this dead-end nationalist divisiveness by closing the day with the powerful international fight song “Bella Ciao” (currently being sung in Gaza against the Israeli fascists!). Although we sang the Spanish version, we were able to explain its meaning to all and get everyone together to sing along its mighty refrain: “We are fighters, all our lives, and we’ll be fighters—communists—until we die.” There is much struggle ahead, and we are ready for it.

Free Dylan Lopez-Contreras!

At the end of the march, we called on Uptown to join the fight to support freedom for Dylan López-Contreras, a NYC high school student who ICE detained this past spring, and who—as reported last issue—just had his asylum case denied, once again demonstrating that the courts serve the bosses’ capitalist system. 

In what seems like a coordinated series of events, local politicians have held two press conferences in our area, both passive affairs dominated by droning speeches that criticize Donald Trump’s immigration policies, but are mainly designed to steer people into the arms of the Democratic Party, advocating voting as the solution. The Democrats have betrayed workers time and time again because they support the same capitalist system as the Republicans, and—despite their slightly different tactics—exploit immigrant labor just the same as Republicans. 

Once again, PLP was there with our communist paper and our unrelenting message: We don’t need press conferences or capitalist politicians; we need a mass multiracial workers’ movement and revolutionary communist party—PLP!