As Emmanuel Macron, the president of France and a shameless stooge for finance capital, tries to ram through a plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, millions of workers are waging the largest mass fightback in that country in more than fifty years. Enraged by former investment banker Macron’s anti-worker reforms, garbage collectors, utility workers, train conductors, and museum workers have walked off their jobs in droves.
Worldwide capitalism--and the charade of liberal democracy that gloves its iron fist—is in crisis. As the global economy plunges into recession and inter-imperialist rivalries intensify, the ruling class has no choice but to claw back wages and benefits from workers—and to use state terror and their mad dog racist kkkops against the inevitable rebellions. Wherever we see workers willing to withhold their labor and militantly reject the rulers’ agenda for fascism and war, it’s a good sign for our class.  It points to our potential to build an international communist Progressive Labor Party, and to a future without bosses or exploitation.
Capitalist bosses protect banks, not workers
“The social state and the social safety net is disappearing,” said Francoise, a social worker (The Guardian, 03/23). Three months shy of retiring at 63, she has joined the fightback in Paris. Workers and students are taking to the streets to light garbage on fire and damage bus stops, newspaper kiosks, and traffic lights. They firebombed Macron’s favorite restaurant and stormed the Paris office of BlackRock, the multinational investment giant (Washington Post, 4/6).
For now, France’s trade unions are vowing to stay on strike until Macron withdraws the retirement reform (AP, 4/10). But we know how sell-out union leaders use working-class anger to get a few crumbs of temporary concessions from the bosses—and then to pacify their members and get them off the streets. In 2017, a number of French unions backed Macron for his first term as president, despite his pro-business platform, when he faced off against open racist Marine Le Pen (New York Times, 5/1/17). Many leading French liberals did the same. Liberals are the main danger! The only long-term win for workers is the revolutionary fight for a communist world run by and for the international working class. While this process will be violent, it must be led with discipline and strategy. Smashing property isn’t enough. Workers need to drive out the bosses and smash the whole capitalist system.
French rulers mobilizing for war
For the French bosses to get a seat at the table with the top imperialist powers, they must ramp up their attacks on workers. Even as Macron pushes to cut French workers’ pensions, France is increasing its military budget by more than one third by 2030, to 400 billion euros. As Macron told the French military, “We must be ready for more brutal and numerous wars” (Wall Street Journal, 1/20). In line with Macron’s pension reform, France plans to increase the age limit for army reservists to 70 and in some cases to 72 (msn.com, 4/4).
Amid the sharpening rivalry between the U.S. and China, France cannot be taken for granted. On a recent visit to China to meet with President Xi Jinping and seal a $15 billion trade deal, Macron made clear that the French ruling class won’t be in lockstep with the U.S. bosses. As the New York Times noted, Macron “staked out an independent European position, and both leaders repeatedly lauded a ‘multipolar world,’ thinly disguised code for one that is not American dominated” (4/8). History shows us that any alliance between bosses is temporary, and that they won’t hesitate to attack one another to protect their profits.
At his inauguration last June, Macron called for a “war economy” (Le Monde, 6/14/22). The bosses are telling us loud and clear that they are preparing for world war. It’s the job of the working class, with communist leadership, to turn inter-imperialist war into worldwide communist revolution.
Lesser evils rob workers of revolutionary power
Workers in France have a long history of mass militant fightback. In 1789, the French Revolution overthrew the parasitic monarchy and inspired rebellions against slavery in Haiti and other French colonies in the Caribbean and Africa. In 1871, the Paris Commune marked the first attempt by workers to put communist ideas into practice and provided lessons to future communists on how to win. In the 20th century, French communists and anti-fascists fought vigorously and contributed mightily to the defeat of the Nazis.
During World War Two, the French Communist Party (PCF) adopted the “Popular Front” line of the international communist movement. By calling for collaboration with “good capitalists” in the U.S., Britain, and France, this robbed the international working class of its revolutionary potential. Our class has suffered from “lesser evil” politics ever since. In 1968, when students and workers in France waged a violent struggle against the capitalist state, culminating in a wildcat general strike of 11 million workers, the PCF betrayed them. Just last year, these fake leftists showed their true colors when they backed the finance capitalist Macron for his second-term run-off against Le Pen.
Voting for liberal or fake-left misleaders--whether Macron in France, Biden in the U.S., AMLO in Mexico, Petro in Colombia, or Lula in Brazil--is a deadly trap. Our class deserves a world where older workers are treated with respect and gratitude for their decades of contributions to society. We deserve a world where imperialist war is ancient history, and where workers' needs come first. In short, we deserve a communist world. Let’s fight for it!

French bosses face angry workers as they dismantle capitalist welfare system
BBC, 3/22–More than a million people took to the streets across France on Thursday, with 119,000 in Paris, according to figures from the interior ministry. Police fired tear gas at protesters in the capital and 80 people were arrested across the country. The demonstrations were sparked by legislation raising the retirement age by two years to 64.

"I oppose this reform and I really oppose the fact that democracy no longer means anything,"...The unrest also disrupted train travel, oil refineries and saw teachers and workers at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport walk out of work.

In the northern city of Rouen a young woman was seen lying on the ground after sustaining a serious injury to her hand. Witnesses said she lost her thumb after she was hit by a so-called "flash-ball" grenade fired by police to disperse demonstrators. There were other clashes in the western cities of Nantes, Rennes and Lorient.

Hunger rises in U.S. as bosses shift to war production
Urban Institute, 3/21–With significant food price inflation in 2022 and the expiration of COVID-19 pandemic aid, food hardship has increased for many households across the country. In this brief, we examine trends in food insecurity and receipt of charitable food using data from the Urban Institute’s Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey (WBNS), a nationally representative survey of more than 7,500 adults ages 18 to 64.

Between December 2021 and December 2022, the share of adults reporting food insecurity in the last year increased from 20 percent to 24.6 percent. The rate of food insecurity in 2022 was not statistically different from the rate in the year just before the pandemic (23.4 percent in 2019).

Hispanic/Latinx and Black adults were consistently at greater risk of food insecurity than white adults between 2019 and 2022, reflecting longstanding disparities in opportunities and access to resources.

NYPD pigs feast on City budget
Gothamist, 3/20–The NYPD’s ballooning overtime budget faced scrutiny from City Council members on Monday…Overtime expenditures were $2.2 billion last fiscal year, 93% higher than budgeted…last month, halfway through the current fiscal year, the NYPD had already exceeded its budgeted allotment for the year, spending $472 million on overtime for uniformed officers.

[City Comptroller Brad] Lander’s office found that NYPD annual overtime totals have skyrocketed $700 million over the last decade. One large chunk of overtime through the last three years went to what the NYPD categorizes as “anti-police protests” — $225 million in all..

The NYPD’s $5.44 billion allotment in the proposed budget for fiscal year 2024 stands in sharp contrast to the flat funding proposed for the city’s public defenders, who also testified at Monday’s budget hearing. The defense attorneys say salaries are so low that attorneys are quitting, even as there are 450 pending homicide cases that their lawyers are handling.

U.S. struggles to maintain territory in Middle East
Al Jazeera, 3/27– The governments of Iran and Syria have condemned the United States for attacks on Syrian soil that reportedly killed 19 people, which Washington said it carried out following a drone attack on US forces. Both the Iranian and Syrian foreign ministries late on Saturday slammed the US air attacks that targeted the strategic region of Deir ez-Zor bordering Iraq.

In a statement, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said the “terrorist” attacks by the US hit civilian targets and constituted a violation of international law and Syrian sovereignty. “The US claims that it is present in Syria to fight Daesh [ISIL] that itself had a major role in creating is just an excuse to continue its occupation and loot Syria’s national wealth, including its energy resources and wheat,” he said.

The latest confrontation with the US comes as Tehran works to re-establish formal diplomatic ties with regional rival Saudi Arabia and potentially other Arab states. Syria will reportedly restore its relations with the kingdom after Tehran and Riyadh review an agreement reached earlier this month with Chinese mediation.

Communist politics best self-care
Coming to the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) [over the past three months] was a new type of experience that I hadn’t had before, really.  Since I was young, I had been relatively politically involved, but primarily focused on women’s and LGBTQ issues; mostly I was involved in online debate.  Several times my mom brought me to political events, though there was not really historical discussion at these events (marches, getting people to vote in local elections, etc.)

I was pretty surprised when I came to the PLP meeting.  My first and most preeminent observation was that the meeting was set up almost like a classroom and almost like a group therapy meeting.  That structure was definitely reflected in the dynamic and in my experience; the goal was to educate people on history but PLP inadvertently (or not) created a space that allowed people to let out their feelings and analysis of the world and our system.  The way that it imitated professional group therapy can definitely be connected to a topic we dealt with in one of my classes - that resistance itself can be a form of self-care.  

I decided to come with a friend the first time for a few reasons - 1) I spend the majority of my time with this friend, 2) it was the closest thing to coming alone and 3) coming with this person provided me with more expansive analysis after the meeting ended.  Only after the first meeting did I decide to bring more friends.  I was hesitant to bring one friend, but did so.  

The discussions were interesting because they were composed of people who were educated and familiar with the content and people who came because they were curious.  I think that I was better equipped to respond to that same curiosity back at school.

In all honesty I don’t really know what is next.  I guess I could continue to just try to discuss the world and educate those around me but that also does not feel effective or impactful.  I’ll be coming back to the PLP meetings and continuing to try to self educate and share my findings, but I struggle to construct a plan that is satisfactory. 

Editorial note: A plan to get to know the family and recruit this student to PLP is in place.

*****
Talking about a (communist) revolution
“Based on what you are saying, reform can have the opposite effect. It could keep people away from revolutionary ideas.” “Exactly.”

My response of “exactly” ended a two hour lunch conversation with friends and leaders of one of the strongest more militant reform unions in Chicago. All of them are committed, and tireless fighters against racism, and committed to fighting injustice, and fighting for equality for their members. The lunch I discovered is a customary send off for those workers who retire from the union.

We started lunch talking about the contentious Chicago mayoral election taking place between the two runoff candidates: Brandon Johnson (Black) a County Commissioner, former middle school teacher, and former union leader that has been endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union.  Johnson is running against Paul Vallas (white), former Chief Operating Officer at Chicago Public Schools, proponent of charters, vouchers, and balancing education budgets off the backs of teachers’ pensions. The Fraternal Order of Police has endorsed Vallas.

My friend said that the spirit of racism will always be here in reference to the election and the unions’ effort to build a union that fights for the “common good” and that history is cyclical racism. I immediately responded to both her statements and said that racism is rooted in the economic system of capitalism and it’s far from a spirit or a belief. It has a material base in capitalism and that history is not cyclical because there are times in history where race did not exist.  

Well, my friend immediately disagreed with me and I was totally taken back when two other friends said that they agreed with me. W-H-A-T! That had never openly happened before in department meetings. I acknowledged that my experience working in this union was both rewarding and inspiring.

However, if we don’t take advantage of the opportunities of pointing out the limits and the contradictions of fighting for reforms our class will get cynical and be won over to bad ideas.  My friend said to the whole table after packing up and paying the bill, “We should have more discussions like this.”

The conversation helped me realize that we must have these conversations with everyone. Going into the lunch I was feeling one-sided about my friends/leaders in terms of them even wanting to talk about revolution and reform. I also was not clear if they would be the liberals that would lead us into fascism. As I left the restaurant, I was humbled by the contradictions and the period that we are in as we build for communist revolution. I’m more confident in the Party’s line and confident that our class will win.

*****
Capitalism = bosses' dictatorship
Most people I speak to believe the government is a democracy where capitalists and workers decide issues, but capitalism has always been a dictatorship of the capitalist class. Some examples include, the majority of the French National Assembly just voted to defeat an anti-worker raise of the retirement age only to have their votes ignored by the capitalist rulers.

The U.S. railroad capitalists ignored government regulations on safety and maintenance that have greatly increased the number of train wrecks and have subjected communities to poisonous air and water pollution in Ohio and elsewhere.

Many U.S. banks ignored liquidity obligations and used low government interest rates, meant to create jobs, to provide loans to capitalists who used the money to buy back their own stocks to raise their profits and CEO’s salaries. The result so far has been worldwide bank failures and a possible recession requiring bailouts by taxpayers while the bankers retain their wealth.

The U.S. has been involved in endless wars but I can’t remember the government asking workers to vote for those wars. The wars in Korea and Vietnam that I remember offered only jail time for war resisters.

Capitalist dictatorships have been a disaster for billions of workers worldwide and now threaten a nuclear war from which the world may not recover unless workers, soldiers and youth join PLP and the revolutionary movement for communism. Read CHALLENGE.

*****
To expose bosses: keep writing simple
The article “Fight Imperialist Warmongers” in the March 15 issue of CHALLENGE, reporting on a Libertarian Party led rally at the DC Lincoln Memorial had some good points.  However, the sentences were convoluted and probably not intelligible to the regular worker.  I almost thought that it was attacking the left, but after reading it twice, I realized that it was referring to the “left and right-wing media,” which is offered as a ruling class alternative to the true left, which is Progressive Labor Party.  Simplification is the solution to most problems in all, and  especially expository writing.

April 17 marked the 58th  anniversary of the founding of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). From a meeting of barely two dozen members of the old U.S. communist movement, PLP has grown into an international party now organizing in five continents. Even as our class faces a dark night and growing inter imperialist-rivalry and fascism (see editorial, page 2) we continue our fightback because this is just the beginning of a worthy struggle towards an international communist revolution.

Over our first half-century, PLP has propelled the march to communism—first by leading antiracist, working-class struggle, and then through that struggle advancing communist ideas. This two-pronged strategy—practice and theory—is the basis for winning masses of workers to fight for communism.

Why communism? In our vision, the working class will determine society’s future. It will destroy the capitalist world and its brutal exploitation. It will smash a system that drives us into constant unemployment and poverty. It will stop the racism that drags down all workers. It will terminate the racist cops who break our strikes and kill workers, especially our Black, Latin, Asian and immigrant sisters and brothers. And it will end for all time the imperialist wars that send our youth to kill their class brothers and sisters worldwide, all for the bosses’ profits.

A Communist World
Here is our vision for a communist world (also see May Day speech, page 1):

A society run by workers and for workers. After all, the working class produces everything of value and should rightfully receive the benefits of our labor. Collectively, we can determine how to share what we produce, according to need.

Abolition of the exploitative wage system and the money that runs it. We have no need for the parasitic bosses who steal most of the value of our labor through wage slavery.

Multiracial unity and death to the racism that divides the working class. Racism is rooted in capitalism; the bosses rely on it to steal trillions in super-profits worldwide. Fighting racism is part of the lifeblood of PLP.

The destruction of sexism and the systemic exploitation, oppression, and cultural degradation of women workers. Sexism is a pillar of class society, and capitalism has only further this lethal weapon against our class. Women and men must unite to smash sexist ideas and practices. PLP emphasizes working-class women’s leadership in making revolution, particularly Black women’s leadership.

Eliminating all borders, artificial lines the bosses draw to make even more profits from workers they call “foreigners.” Nationalism is an anti-worker ideology that enables the imperialist rulers to exploit natural resources and cheap labor. Communists are internationalists because the working class is one international class, with a common class interest, under one red flag.

This is the world the PLP has fought for from the start. We will continue to fight until our class prevails. We invite all workers to join this struggle—for ourselves, and for our children and grandchildren.

Struggle and Theory
 From our earliest beginnings in the 1960s, PLP has fought tooth and nail against attacks by the ruling class. We have organized and supported Ford workers and striking teachers in Mexico; wildcatting miners in Hazard, Kentucky; longshore workers in New York City; jute (fiber) workers in India; miners in Britain; garment workers in Los Angeles; bank workers in Colombia; transit workers in Washington, DC; Chrysler sit-down strikers at Detroit’s Mack Avenue plant; farm workers in California, and bakery workers at Stella D’Oro in the Bronx. We have stood with evicted workers in Palestine-Israel, earthquake victims in Pakistan, and hurricane victims in Haiti and New Orleans.

Antiracism is a hallmark of PLP. We backed Black workers and youth in the 1964 Harlem Rebellion, and fought off racist school segregationists in Boston in 1975. In 1976 we integrated Chicago’s Marquette Park while smashing the Nazi headquarters there, and have led more than a hundred thousand protesters against the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis across the United States. We have mobilized against racist killer cops from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles, to Chicago, to Ferguson, Missouri.

PLP has led fierce fightbacks opposing the  bosses’ wars. In the 1960s, we were the first to organize mass demonstrations for the U.S. to “Get Out of Vietnam!” We formed the Worker-Student Alliance in the anti-war Students for A Democratic Society. PLP broke the U.S. travel ban to Cuba and undermined the rulers’ House Un-American Activities Committee to the point of collapse. More recently, working both within the military and on the streets, we exposed the U.S. rulers’ invasions of Iraq as a murderous oil grab.

None of these developments came out of thin air. They grew out of our Party’s analysis of past class struggles and the achievements of millions of workers. PLP studied the strengths and weaknesses of the communist movement led by—among many others—Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. In 1917, this movement created a revolution in Russia; in 1949, a revolution in China. It defeated the Nazis in Europe and fascists in Japan in World War II. It reached its highest point in China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which attempted to push back a growing elitism in the Communist Party leadership and put the masses in charge of society.

PLP is the only group on the left to point out what went wrong in the Soviet Union and China. We are the only organization to analyze how socialism in those countries led back to the unvarnished profit system, where all workers are now mired.

A communist society will have no bosses or profits. It will be led by the working class through its Progressive Labor Party.

Marxism: An Evolving Idea
The history of the Progressive Labor Party began in 1962. A small group of communists left the Communist Party USA and organized the Progressive Labor Movement. They rejected the CPUSA’s capitulation to capitalism and its abandonment of the open advocacy of communist revolution. The old communist movement proposed that the bosses would peacefully relinquish control of society and allow what the CPUSA called “socialism” to be “voted into existence.” The communists who formed PLM refused to mislead workers and broke away from the old guard.

In the course of PLP’s history, we have rejected some traditional Marxist concepts and advanced a number of new ones, all based on our practice and our examination of world events and the decay of the old communist movement. These new principles are expressed in a series of documents, including Road to Revolution I, II, III and IV; Revolution Not Reform; and “Dark Night Shall Have Its End.” (These are all available on PL’s website or in pamphlet form.)

Above all, Progressive Labor Party stands for the principle that the working class must fight directly for communism rather than moving first through a transitional phase of socialism. We reject this two-stage theory, a central premise of classical Marxism, because events have shown that socialism inevitably leads back to full-blown capitalism. In both Russia and China, socialism preserved capitalist features like money and the wage system, leading to inequalities that divided the working class. In both of these countries, the communist party became a new ruling class where privileges were attained through party membership. We believe the working class can be won before the revolution to fight directly for communism—to abolish the wage system, the cult of the individual and other capitalist relics.

Core Principles
PLP’s main principles are:

• Internationalism, under the slogan “Smash All Borders,” where workers’ class unity is represented by a single mass, international Party;
• The fight against racism, a strategic necessity in the struggle to overthrow capitalism;      
• The fight against the special oppression of women, another critical component in uniting the working class, a prerequisite for revolution;
• A concentration among industrial workers, who produce the capitalists’ profits and the weapons for the bosses’ imperialist wars;
• Workers’ power through armed struggle, since the rulers will use their armed state power to violently suppress the working class.

Throughout its existence, PLP has fought for these principles in unceasing class struggle. We have learned that building the Party is the first order of business for communists. Capitalism cannot be reformed. Whatever gains workers make in reform struggles are limited and temporary; sooner or later, the bosses always use their state power to take them back. Communists strive to turn reform struggles into schools for communism and building the Party. Winning workers to PLP is the one and only victory the ruling class can never take back. We therefore urge all workers and youth to join us in the next half-century in this historic task: to organize a communist revolution.