Healthcare profits keep rolling along as patients die
New York Times, 9/24–Norman Otey was rushed by ambulance to Richmond Community Hospital. The 63-year-old was doubled over in pain and babbling incoherently. Blood tests suggested septic shock, a grave emergency that required the resources and expertise of an intensive care unit…But Richmond Community, a struggling hospital in a predominantly Black neighborhood, had closed its I.C.U. in 2017…It took several hours for Mr. Otey to be transported to another hospital, according to his sister, Linda Jones-Smith. He deteriorated on the way there, and later died of sepsis.

Ringed by public housing projects, Richmond Community consists of little more than a strapped emergency room and a psychiatric ward. Yet the hollowed-out hospital — owned by Bon Secours Mercy Health, one of the largest nonprofit health care chains in the country — has the highest profit margins of any hospital in Virginia.

The secret to its success lies with a federal program that allows clinics in impoverished neighborhoods to buy prescription drugs at steep discounts, charge insurers full price and pocket the difference. More than half of all hospitals in the United States are set up as nonprofits, a designation that allows them to make money but avoid paying taxes…Bon Secours …made nearly $1 billion in profit last year at its 50 hospitals in the United States and Ireland and was sitting on more than $9 billion in cash reserves.

Plans for escalating war on the European front
The Economist, 9/29–Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has repeatedly warned that he could resort to nuclear weapons.

On September 21 he said he would use “all weapons systems available” to defend the “territorial integrity” of Russia. In response Jake Sullivan, the U.S.  national security adviser, sternly warned Russia of “catastrophic consequences” if it used nuclear weapons.One option would be to pile more economic pressure on Russia, perhaps through secondary sanctions on those buying its oil and gas, with the hope of turning Mr Putin into even more of an international pariah. Another option would be for the West to help Ukraine fight in a nuclear battlefield, by providing advice, protective gear and decontamination equipment. It could also supply more advanced arms. At the other end of the scale, America, Britain or France could respond with a limited nuclear strike of their own.

The middle way…is the likeliest…deploying NATO troops to Ukraine, or carrying out direct strikes on Russian targets. The U.S. could…destroy the ports, air bases, or mobile missile launchers used in any Russian nuclear attack.

Ben Hodges, a retired general who once commanded American. ground forces in Europe, suggests sinking Russia’s Black Sea fleet, or destroying its bases in Crimea.

Farmers in Pakistan crushed by flooding and by capitalism
New York Times, 10/1–The young woman waded into the waist-deep flood water that covered her farmland, scouring shriveled stalks of cotton for the few surviving white blooms. But the farmworker — Barmeena, just 14 — had no choice. “It was our only source of livelihood…She is one of the millions of farmworkers whose fields were submerged by the record-shattering floods that have swept across Pakistan. In the hardest-hit regions, where the floods drowned entire villages, the authorities have warned that the floodwater may not fully recede for months.Still, wherever the water has receded even a bit, farm laborers are scrambling to salvage whatever they can from the battered remains of their cotton and rice harvests. It is desperate work. Many already owe hundreds or thousands of dollars to the landlords whose fields they cultivate each year, as part of a system that has long governed much of rural Pakistan.

But now, their summer harvests are in ruins. Unless the water recedes, they will not be able to plant the wheat they harvest each spring. Even if they can, the land is certain to produce less after being damaged by the floodwaters, from a cataclysmic combination of heavy glacier melt and record monsoon rains, which scientists say were both intensified by climate change.

“Our life goes like that — sinking into debt, not earning the money to pay it back, and then we do it again,” said Mairaj Meghwar, 40, a farmer who lives in the village of Lal Muhammad in Sindh Province, the region that sustained the most flood damage... “We are slaves, that is clear,” he said.

‘It enriched my ideas’
During the cadre school, I was able to learn many things that will not only help me grow as a person but will be useful to me as a fighter for my class, the working class. I learned about understanding people better without underestimating them—having confidence in our class. The training taught me some of the differences between communism and capitalism. I understand better how capitalism functions--through corruption, abusing people's trust and individualism. And I understand better about how communism will function—aiding each other to overcome problems, showing solidarity, and such.

I also learned some history of previous revolutions and how to evaluate why they failed, and what lessons we can learn from those failures, and what good things they accomplished (even if they didn't last as long as we would like).

I also learned about the difference between reforming a society—which means just to make some surface changes—and revolutionizing society—which means changing it from the root, turning it upside down, in the interests of our class. What was most important to me is that the cadre school enriched my thoughts and ideas about just about everything.
*
‘Found myself inside  a communist world’
To be honest, what I learned from the cadre school is more words like materialism, idealism, reform and revolution. And thanks to these words, I found myself more inside a communist world. What struck me the most was the awareness and solidarity that each person in a communist world has that has become more human, compared to capitalist society. Under communism, we would abolish private property and claim not only liberty but also the right of each member of society to fulfill himself or herself by serving that society. When I try to understand these two different ways of living, I see that a communist society, where we cooperate instead of compete with one another, makes us more social and more sensitive to anyone.

I would like to thank the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) for inviting me to this cadre school and I hope to attend more and become more active in the struggle for the liberation of the working class.
*
‘As we grow, our movement will grow too’
The PLP cadre school taught me a lot of things. I learned what a communist revolution is, how a communist revolution can happen, and how it differs from other so-called revolutions. The school taught me what the capitalist system is and how it functions by exploitation and racism. I learned to view my position in the world according to my class. And finally, it taught me to respect those who fight for the working class, to love and share equally according to need. That's why I think it's really important to have cadre schools, so we can deepen our understanding of how the society functions, and what we need to know and do to change it. As we grow in our experiences, our movement will grow too.
*
‘I liked the communist goal of abolishing private property’
The cadre school was a very special experience for me. I learned a lot about historical materialism, communism and revolution. During the debates, I learned how to understand the world from a materialist point of view, rather than the idealism that we learn in schools and in church. I especially liked our discussions about the communist goal of abolishing private property and replacing it with collective property, so that the collective—the vast majority—takes over from the individual and makes decisions based on the needs and interests of the majority. I've seen in my life how private property gives all rights and control to a few to run roughshod over the majority, and the vast majority—who work for and create the wealth of the owners of private property—have little or nothing to feed, clothe, shelter and educate themselves and their families. That kind of system has got to go!
*****

See article in this issue: "Haiti: revolutionary spirit sprouting"

Covid-19: capitalist genocide continues
On Sunday, September 18, President Biden declared that the pandemic has ended, and the U.S. can now return to “normal.”  Yet, The People’s CDC reports that over 98 percent of the U.S. population live in areas with high rates of transmission (pcdc.org, 9/19). The Lancet, the British medical journal, confirmed that the world’s response to Covid-19 is “a massive global failure” (Washington Post, 9/18).

Is Covid-19 over? If you are one of the 400-500 people in the U.S. who die each day, or the one person in five living with long Covid, or a person living in a previously-colonized country where only seven percent are fully vaccinated, or one of millions with chronic disease or advanced age, Covid is not over.

Returning to “normal” is as appealing as Trump’s “make America great again.” Normal is billions without healthcare, paid sick leave, housing, a job, food, safety, racial and gender justice, energy, clean air, education, social connections, and other critical components for a good life. While all workers experience these problems, Black, Latin, and indigenous workers around the world suffer in disproportionate numbers. We are all connected. The denial of vaccines to poor people endangers their lives as well as ours as variants develop and travel across borders.

We can prevent future diseases by stopping climate change, deforestation, and dangerous farming practices. We can mitigate Covid-19 with masking, ventilation, free universal vaccination and health care, free test kits, medications like Paxlovid, and accommodations for people with disabilities.

This will take a concerted fight to prioritize health and create a better normal around the globe. And that will take a communist society organized by the working class with no profiteering.
******
Red seniors are living libraries of antiracist history
Feeling a bit down during the long dark night period of Covid-19, capitalist climate destruction, war, racist, sexist violence and, because of a comrade’s suggestion, I am writing about positive developments at my New York City senior center. Because of Covid and fear, our center lost most seniors that formed regular discussions where I got to discuss communist ideas and showed CHALLENGE to some.

I recently got the program director to provide a weekly discussion table (with masks and cookies) which produced eight seniors who discussed homeless people in the neighborhood and Mayor Adams. The second meeting included two Black seniors and the discussion was racist shootings.

One Black senior said he was a supporter of Malcolm X and his anti-white Muslim group because they were the only Black workers that were fighting back. Another Black maintenance worker said he attended many Malcolm X rallies and Martin Luther King rallies. I got to say I was a member of a transit worker mostly Black rank and file group that joined the Harlem Unemployment Center’s picket lines to support the hiring of Black workers on all white construction jobs in Harlem. The Unemployment Center was across the street from where Malcolm held his rallies. Our transit group went over to hear Malcolm who on seeing me, the only white, said “take that honky around the corner and break his fxxking head.”

So luckily my transit buddies convinced the crowd that I wasn’t a cop and I survived. I told my senior group that after Malcolm went to Mecca and talked with many white Muslims he realized that racism was a capitalist invention used to pit workers against each other to protect the bosses’ profits. We had a lively discussion and the program director said later that she didn’t realize that seniors had such a rich history and that they were, “living libraries.”

I got a lift from the discussion and I hope the struggle continues.
*****

The nine-mile line to mourn Queen Elizabeth II, the monstrous figurehead for degenerate Nazi-loving billionaires and callous capitalist bosses, reminds us that the working class still struggles through a dark night of false unity with the ruling class. Through Elizabeth’s seventy years as the royal family’s number-one parasite, British imperialism exploited, enslaved, tortured, and slaughtered countless workers across the globe (see box on the British atrocities on page 6). The Queen “spent a lifetime smiling and waving at cheering native people around the world, a sort of living ghost of a system of rapacious and bloodthirsty extraction” (New York Times, 9/11). As the monarchy looted an estimated $28 billion from the international working class, more than 20 percent of the British population sank into poverty (House of Commons Library, April 2022).

But even though many in our class seem enthralled by the royal family’s wretched excess and lavish pageantry, including the $9 million it took to put Elizabeth in a box, a reckoning is coming. As of September 1, a week before the Queen’s death, more than 150,000 workers—including postal and telecom workers, trash collectors, and lawyers—were on strike to protest stagnant salaries shredded by double-digit inflation. Despite no support from the so-called Labour Party, 45,000 transportation workers walked off their jobs, paralyzing train, subway, and bus lines across the country for days. Teachers, nurses, and doctors will soon have strike votes of their own, and the country’s two largest trade unions are pushing for coordinated strikes in “one of the most significant waves of industrial unrest the United Kingdom has seen since the ‘winter of discontent’ in the late 1970s” (cnn.com, 9/1). Workers will always fight back!

As escalating inter-imperialist rivalry leads to world war, the murderous essence of the British monarchy and all the global ruling classes will be exposed. When that day comes, what Progressive Labor Party does to organize workers now will make all the difference. It will determine whether the millions shedding tears for the dead Queen will continue on into the furnaces of fascism and imperialist war or whether they’ll join PLP and our Red Army in the fight for a classless society—for communism.

Inequality: as capitalist as queen and country
Following World War II, Britain, like much of Europe, installed a social safety net to counter workers’ gains under socialism in the Soviet Union. But with each passing decade, as the British Empire waned and expired, the rulers no longer had imperialist super-profits to prop up their failing profit system at home. Wages, services, and living standards were cut to the bone.

In recent years, untold thousands in Britain have died from neglect by a financially gutted National Health Service (independent.co.uk, 1/28/17).

Nearly one in five children live in households where people go hungry regularly(borgenproject.org). Super-exploited immigrants have suffered the most from these racist attacks. Amid this misery, the Queen sat placidly on her throne with her heap of stolen jewels, gently spewing the big lie that the British Crown actually cared about its loyal subjects. In real life, Elizabeth cared only about her horses, her plump rat dogs, her Nazi sympathizer husband, her appalling children (including rapist Prince Andrew and famously racist and corrupt Prince Charles, finally promoted to King), and the finance capitalists who run the country as a very junior partner to U.S. imperialism.

Gross inequalities are part and parcel of capitalism, a system where humanity takes a back seat to the drive for maximum profit. In 2020, a girl born in “the most deprived areas” of England could expect to have only 52 healthy years—as compared to 71 years in “the least deprived areas” (theguardian.com, 4/25). That Queen Elizabeth stayed hale and hearty into her mid-90s is no cause for celebration. It’s the story of a vampire whose wealth and privileges were sucked from the blood and toil of the working class.

The only good royal is a dead royal
Not everyone was fooled by “likely the most famous person on the planet” (Vanity Fair, 9/8). In the days after Charles grabbed the crown and scepter, some workers faced arrest for holding signs declaring “Not My King,” reminiscent of the “Not My President” protests by anti-Trump workers in the U.S. The problem with reformist opposition is that it accepts the dead-end political superstructures of capitalism, whether electoral “democracy” or a “constitutional” monarchy. In either case, it keeps workers tied to lesser-evil bosses and straitjacketed by the profit system.

Many Black workers and immigrants from one-time British colonies used social media to critique the bloody, racist history of British colonialism. While this was better than mourning a dead figurehead, national liberation politics doesn’t aim to smash class society; it wants workers to be ruled by bosses who look like them. This class-collaborationist thinking feeds the deadly trap of nationalism. It ultimately serves the dominant liberal rulers in enlisting working-class support for World War III.

Workers’ fightback is the future
Whether the bosses use monarchs or presidents or generals to control and pacify the working class, we have no decent future under capitalism. Whatever reform crumbs they give us will be clawed back in the inevitable next crisis of a chaotic system. In the muck and mire of this political cesspool, it is the Party’s job to challenge dead-end ideas that can lead only to fascism and global war.

The workers in the Soviet Union and China got a small taste of what is possible in a society built by and for workers. Basic needs for all—food, housing, health care, literacy—were foremost. Racism and sexism were attacked as rotten ideas that divide the working class. While these socialist societies wound up reverting to capitalism, they pointed the way to what a communist world could be. For our Party, the first step is to continue to immerse ourselves in working class struggles, where we can smash the all-class unity the bosses are so desperate to build. PLP has a different vision. We see a future where workers will turn the guns around and end capitalism for all time with communist revolution. Join us!J

In 1933, the British royal family showed its true colors with a Nazi salute. From left: Queen Elizabeth’s mother, the wife of soon-to-be-King George VI; eight-year-old Princess Elizabeth, the  future Queen; Princess Margaret, her younger sister; and Prince Edward of York, better known as the Duke of Windsor, who had a mutual admiration society with Adolph Hitler. The Sun, July 18, 2015