Canada: strikers welcome red solidarity 

On a recent trip to Prince Edward Island, Canada, I came across a picket line of municipal workers. There are only 35 members in their union. They can boast nearly 100 percent  participation by my count. The strike has lasted so far 43 days. Management of the city of Charlottetown is refusing to negotiate even though the contract improvements they see would cost only $150,000 Canadian dollars.

I spoke to two union brothers extensively. Both spoke of their impressions that the U.S. was sliding into authoritarianism and fascism, and both worried about threats made against Canadian sovereignty.

They were very upset about ICE and the attacks on immigrants here, while confessing that Canada has had a very mixed history of interactions with the First Nations (indigenous people). What they worry about is the level of support Trump appears to have from their perception of the media among people living in the U.S. I pointed out the recent demonstrations in Chicago, D.C. and L.A. and the growing resistance to rising fascism. I described the United Federation of Teachers - Retired Teacher’s chapter Labor Solidarity Committee’s efforts to increase working class solidarity and our working group on rising fascism. They applauded our efforts.

Of course, only a mass movement that liberates the workers from the stranglehold of capitalist relations of production and creates a communist society led by the workers will end our dependence on capital.
*****

Punda Amechoka: Workers in Kenya tired of capitalism

Before the summer of 2024, when Kenyan police’s deadly crackdown on youth protests garnered international media attention, workers here had staged a series of demonstrations to fight against crushing taxes and high inflation. The one I witnessed started on July 7, 2023, and spread across at least twenty counties. Thousands of workers flooded the streets, banging pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils, and chanting “Punda Amechoka,” a Swahili phrase meaning “donkey is tired.” This slogan compares humans to working animals to indicate taxation-induced starvation. 

Kenya ranks 100th out of 127 countries in the 2024 Global Hunger Index with a score of 24.0, implying a serious level of hunger. The cause of hunger is not a shortage on the supply side, but that people can’t afford food. When the price of unga, maize flour for most Kenyans’ daily meal, goes up, the poor do not switch to cake. People cease to buy essentials when purchasing necessities at inflated prices. During the three months I lived in a migrant labor community in Central Kenya, I noticed even the few “fortunate” industrial laborers hired in adjacent factories, skipped meals and cut back on other nutrients.

In Capital, Volume 1, Marx reckons with wage as a fund for individual consumption that provides laborers “the means of subsistence, or the labor-fund, which the worker requires for his own maintenance and reproduction, and which, in all systems of social production, he must himself produce and reproduce.” (Penguin, p.713) This has been translated into the demand for “living wage” in labor struggles. However, for most Africans, wage-labor-based livelihoods no longer have any real prospects for the urban majority, and they are more like a fading dream. 

The staples of life, such as food, water, sanitation, and shelter, are generated from diverse forms of the informal economy. The “rural-urban” migrant laborers I study in my fieldwork take on a range of low-paying, temporary jobs, including work in factories, garages, street vending, domestic service, waste collection, home tailoring, and crafting. “Hustling” has become the vernacular way to describe the ordinary laboring experience, the shared struggles that William Ruto took advantage of in his successful 2022 presidential campaign. The then-presidential candidate leveraged the deep frustrations caused by unemployment and social stagnation, claiming he represented the “hustler” class and framing his campaign as “hustlers vs. dynasties.” 

It was clear which side Ruto stood with almost immediately. He ordered police to fire live ammunition at protesters whose demand was for the government to withdraw tax bills that would directly push up already soaring living costs. In my neighborhood, police drove fully armed vehicles and deployed tear gas to disperse my neighbors. I was rescued by a neighbor who grabbed my arm and pulled me to a labor dorm shelter amidst the chaos. Though on the margin of capitalist labor relations, the Kenyan people are nonetheless at the forefront of capitalist accumulation. Along with Zambia, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Pakistan, Ghana, and other lower-middle-income countries, Kenya teeters on the edge of default on its public debt. In 2023, Kenya spent 59 percent of the nation’s revenue on debt repayment. The rhythm of public debt to repayment significantly affects Kenyan people due to the daunting level of taxes and massive cuts in public services. The pains of price spikes in staple foods, electricity, matatu [minibus] transportation fares, and other essentials dominate daily conversation. Austerity policies, in fact, make every rhythm of time in society and every productive action subject to the central time of sovereign debt repayment.

Public debt, therefore, conjures into being a national economy to which supposedly all Kenyans have obligations. As Marx notes, “the public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of primitive accumulation.” (Capital Volume 1, Penguin, p.919) The real “hustlers” have given William Ruto a nickname that he truly earns, “Zakayo,” which is Swahili for Zacchaeus, the biblical figure notorious for being a greedy tax collector. 
What options do ordinary Kenyans have left but to fight back? Contrary to the linear assumption of historical progress, people’s experiences with capitalism are nonlinear, as Black Africans who have rarely experienced Fordism (except for some rare cases in South Africa) but now find themselves fighting against full-blown financial capitalism. Kenya not only shows how public debt can cause violence in daily life, but also how people are forced to turn to loans just to get by. With the ubiquity of mobile phones even in Africa, digital loans – financed by the global surplus capital – are an irresistible allure for borrowing to put food on the table. 

“Punda Amechoka”, the slogan “donkey is tired”, from this angle, I interpret as people are tired of being enslaved by public and private debts. 
*****

To fight climate change, drown capitalism

The continuing failure of the international ruling class to respond in the interests of workers to rapidly changing conditions of the planet due to climate change is no secret. Lately the capitalist owned media has been paying less and less attention to the root causes of the problem.

Some of that can be traced to the enormous profits being made by the oil industry and the continued use of technology to extract oil from older oil fields in the United States. These technological changes have helped make the U.S.  one of the leading oil producers again after undergoing shrinkage 15 years ago before the extensive use of hydro fraction (fracking).

The capitalist-owned news outlets know which side their bread is buttered on. They report individual catastrophes from time to time with virtually no connection between the dots. When you connect the dots of the individual disasters, it paints a picture of profits before people.

Communists know that science and politics must lead the response. The science of climate change is fairly well understood. Symptoms of climate change reported in the international press regularly through articles about raging floods killing thousands of people in Pakistan, India or China are just snapshots of the coming crisis. Just since June over 400 people have died in Pakistan from flooding caused by the increased intensity of monsoon rains. Flooding as glaciers in the Himalayas melt overrun flood plains in which greedy construction companies build housing.
New Scientist magazine states “Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen an extra 15 parts per million since 1960 due to the declining ability of the land and sea to soak up excess CO2.” 

Deforestation, drought, and warming seas reduce the ability of the land and water to absorb the CO2 that is driving increasing global temperatures. Future articles will provide insights into the need for better climate modeling and planning. A key to a communist working-class run society envisioned by the international Progressive Labor Party is scientific planning and thorough discussion throughout society. Capitalism alienates (separates) the working classes from planning.  In a capitalist society, what drives our scientific research is money and the interests of capitalists to reap ever higher profits. The government (state) is controlled essentially by the rich and wealthy. They will never voluntarily give up their money, profits or power. We want to change that. Help build the egalitarian world that is possible. Help build the revolutionary communist PLP. Join us now while there is time.
*****

Reject individual terror, build with masses instead

The assassination of the fascist Charlie Kirk is a reactionary act. It’s not just Kirk! It’s the whole damn capitalist system!  The only way forward away from the Republican Party’s (Trump) creeping fascism is through organizing workers and others to overthrow capitalism.

Here is what Vladimir Lenin wrote about “terror” -- political assassination -- in 1894:

“The Narodnaya Volya was headed by an Executive Committee ... [names omitted] The immediate object of the Narodnaya Volya was the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy, while their programme provided for the organisation of a “permanent popular representative body” elected on the basis of universal suffrage, the proclamation of democratic liberties, the land to be given to the people; and the elaboration of measures for factories to pass into the hands of the workers. 

The Narodovoltsi were unable, however, to find the road to the masses of the people and took to political conspiracy and individual terror. The terroristic struggle of the Narodovoltsi was not supported by a mass revolutionary movement, and enabled the government to crush the organisation by resorting to fierce persecution, death sentences and provocation.

After 1881, the Narodnaya Volya fell to pieces. Repeated attempts to revive it during the 1880s ended in failure -- for example, the terrorist group organised in 1886, headed by A. I. Ulyanov [V. I. Lenin’s brother] and P. Y. Shevyryov shared these traditions. After an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Alexander III, the group was exposed, and its active members executed.”
*****

University officials giving names of dissenters to federal fascists

SFGate, 9/12–Officials at UC Berkeley have sent over a hundred names of students and staff to federal officials, who are looking into allegations of antisemitism as part of an ongoing federal investigation. The names of 160 students, faculty and staff were sent to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights after the office demanded documents related to complaints of antisemitism and discrimination at the university. “The UC systemwide Office of the General Counsel (OGC), in compliance with its legal obligations to cooperate with the agency, directed UC Berkeley to provide those documents to the federal agency”...

Israeli military continues bombardment of Palestinian homes

Al Jazeera, 9/14–Israeli forces have intensified their bombardment of Gaza City, leveling three residential blocks and killing at least 53 Palestinians, including 35 in Gaza City, as families continue to flee under the threat of new forced evacuation orders. The Israeli army marked the al-Kawthar tower in Gaza’s southern Remal neighbourhood as a target before destroying the building on Sunday with a series of missile strikes less than two hours later…“It was another sleepless night for those in Gaza City, with the sounds of drones, the constant hum of machines of war, and the explosive remotely detonated robots across the city”...

U.S. bosses crack down of workers critical of Kirk

France24, 9/14–For some Americans on the far right, Charlie Kirk died a “martyr” and any criticism of the hugely popular conservative activist must be punished…Middle Tennessee State University’s president announced…an employee’s firing for a “callous” comment about Kirk…Some Kirk supporters have turned into online sleuths, searching out accounts that praised or celebrated Kirk’s murder…These efforts have targeted teachers, firefighters and even military personnel, some of whom have lost their jobs. MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd lost his job shortly after on-air comments about Kirk, one of the first of many figures to experience similar fallout. Office Depot said Friday that it fired a worker at a Michigan store who was seen on video refusing to print flyers for a Kirk vigil…

Small fascists expanding influence in news outlets

The Guardian, 9/14–The US right has appeared to increase its influence on mainstream media in America in recent weeks, especially in television news which has been a major target of the Donald Trump administration. CBS News…installed a Trump ally as its ombudsman, weeks after the family of Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest men, and a friend of the US president, sealed control over Paramount, the owner of CBS. Now Paramount is reportedly looking to buy Warner Bros Discovery, the media behemoth behind CNN, which would potentially bring the influential news network under the roof of an increasingly Trump-friendly conglomerate. At CBS News, parent company Paramount placed Kenneth Weinstein, the former head of the conservative Hudson Institute thinktank, to oversee public complaints. 

U.S. borrowing leading to another bubble

Foreign Affairs, September/October–For much of the past quarter century, the rest of the world has looked in wonder at the United States’ ability to borrow its way out of trouble…bond markets have become far less submissive, and long-term interest rates have risen sharply on ten- and 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds… As of May 2025, all the major credit-rating agencies had downgraded U.S. debt, and there is a growing perception among banks and foreign governments that hold trillions of dollars in U.S. debt that the country’s fiscal policy may be going off the rails.

IDF snipers used to target civilians

Der Spiegel, 9/10–”Sergeant D.”...is a sniper in the Israeli army…suspected of having committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip…One accusation that has been made repeatedly is that the army has been intentionally killing civilians. Numerous reports and anonymous statements from soldiers seem to indicate that such accusations are rooted in fact…Videos, photos and digital analyses in addition to interviews with dozens of experts, former soldiers and international law experts indicate that members of the unit have likely shot unarmed people to death and thus may have committed war crimes. 

U.S. Donald Trump’s military assault on Washington, D.C., marks a massive escalation of state terror against Black workers and a clear sign of rapidly rising fascism on the road to world war. U.S. capitalism is in crisis. The capitalist rulers need to terrorize workers who could revolt—and especially Black workers, the revolutionary vanguard of the international working class. 

The smaller domestic capitalists, those fronted by Trump, plan to use the D.C. occupation as a model for targeting Black, immigrant, and antiracist workers nationwide. For the moment, Trump’s power grabs have given his gutter racist faction the upper hand over the liberal racist Democrats, who represent the big multinational capitalists of finance capital. But make no mistake: The emerging U.S. federal police force—a hallmark of fascism, as evidenced by the Nazi regime in Germany—is a bipartisan creation, decades in the making. 

No matter which brand of fascism wins out, the only force on Earth that can smash it is the organized power of a communist-led, multiracial working class. As the illusions of liberal democracy and the brute reality of capitalism get more exposed by the day, smoldering embers of resistance will flare all the more brightly. It is the task of the international Progressive Labor Party to fan those flames into worldwide revolution. 

Fascism: capitalism in crisis

Behind Trump’s racist theatrics about rescuing D.C. from “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor,” his latest move toward full-blown fascism is rooted in the crises and contradictions of capitalism itself. As U.S. imperialism declines and lashes out like a wounded animal, it faces growing political isolation, most notably over the Zionist genocide in Gaza. In Ukraine, yet another defeat for the U.S. bosses seems written on the wall. 

As unemployment and inflation rise, and divisions within the U.S. ruling class sharpen, rival imperialists in Russia and China are emboldened. For the U.S. capitalists, fascism is their desperate, last-ditch attempt to resolve their crisis and stave off their fall.

D.C. occupation: trial run for fascism

The thousands of National Guard troops now patrolling Washington are an advance guard to prepare the ruling class and condition the working class for fascism. The howls about “crime” in the capitalist media are so many racist dog whistles, as old as slavery. In fact, D.C. crime is at a 30-year low (U.S. Department of Justice, 1/3). Trump declared a state of emergency in the city after a former staffer with DOGE, Elon Musk’s digital shock troops, was allegedly assaulted by two unarmed 15-year-olds on August 3. From there, events moved fast.

After federalizing D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department and deploying National Guard soldiers from six states, the Trump administration dropped any pretense of fighting crime and launched an indiscriminate dragnet. Black workers and youth were subjected to a wave of racist stop-and-frisks, already standard practice for DC’s kkkops (dcnewsnow.com, 9/16/24). Black workers were targeted as they sat on their stoops (The Independent, 8/13), while immigrant delivery workers were singled out for arrest by the ICE Gestapo (NBC News, 8/19). 

The D.C. cops’ racist terror campaign has focused on the city’s southeastern, Black-majority wards, where stops occur on average every ten minutes (ACLU DC, 2/4). In a city where Black and white workers are roughly equal in population, police stop white workers just 13 percent of the time. It’s no coincidence that the recent invasion followed the mass firing of Black federal workers (see box). Racist policing and racist unemployment are two big parts of the bosses’ plan to marginalize, dehumanize, and scapegoat Black workers for the failings of the profit system.

Trump’s trial run for fascism isn’t limited to the U.S. capital. In June, he mobilized 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to back up ICE’s immigration raids and squash mass fightback. Now he’s planning to go national. Last week, he ordered the Pentagon to form a military “rapid reaction force” to counter protests while threatening Chicago and New York with federal occupations of their own (ABC News, 8/25).

The fascist state the liberals built

Not long after Trump unleashed his occupation, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Black Democrat, praised the president for deploying the National Guard (Washington Post, 8/28). More than Trump, it’s the liberal misleaders who deserve credit for racist police terror nationwide. 

Liberal Democrats laid the foundation for the state terror apparatus that Trump’s faction has built upon. Under Jim Crow Joe Biden, the number of racist police murders broke records each year. Before becoming president, Biden spent decades in the U.S. Senate building racist hysteria over “predators on our streets.” He also led the charge to pass President Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill. Coming on the heels of Clinton’s slashing of 250,000 federal jobs and closing record amounts of federal housing, the law pumped out billions of dollars to hire 100,000 new local cops. It established mandatory minimum sentencing that mainly targeted Black workers. It decimated a generation of Black families with mass incarceration.  

Two decades later, Barack Obama did more than anyone else to militarize the cops. In 2011 alone, $500 million in military weapons and assault gear were funneled to local police departments (wired.com, 6/26/12). Obama exploited a 9/11-era law for the indefinite military detention of suspected “terrorists” without charge (ACLU, 12/31/11). In short, much of the fascist infrastructure that Trump’s using today was built in plain sight by the Democrats.

Don’t vote, revolt!

While the capitalist class counts on its mad dog cops and fascist terror apparatus, the most powerful force in the world is the international working class. Capitalist crises created the conditions for the two greatest revolutions in history, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the 1949 Chinese Revolution. History shows us that the contradictions of capitalism can be resolved in only one of two ways. One is fascism. The other is communism, a world run by and for the working class.

The bosses live in mortal fear of an organized, united, international, multiracial working class ready to fight for revolution. It’s why they’re sparing no effort or expense to sow racist terror and division. In turn, our resistance cannot be spontaneous or identity-based. Fighting for the liberation of an isolated group of workers here or there will never smash capitalism. Neither will short-term reforms or the latest popular, lying stooge who wants your vote. If ever there was a time to link local struggles with the international movement for communist revolution, that time is now. Join PLP to make the communist world we deserve a reality!

[JC1], “Black Workers: Key to Revolution.” to read visit www.plp.org and find it in our literature section

Racist unemployment 

Over the past four months, the shocking racist termination of over 300,000 Black women from federal jobs, mainly in D.C., has driven Black women’s real unemployment to over ten percent and pushed overall Black real unemployment into double digits (MSNBC, 7/17).  

From the Reconstruction that followed the Civil War to the civil rights era and beyond, the federal government became the largest single source of Black employment. Until recently, it employed more than twenty percent of Black workers, most of them women. Black workers are disproportionately represented in essential federal jobs, including the U.S. postal service, as well as in the military, basic industries and transportation, transit, healthcare, and education. 

Progressive Labor Party holds that Black workers, and especially Black women, are the key to revolution. The workers subjected to the sharpest racist and sexist oppression have the greatest material basis for communist class consciousness. Workers have always fought back against capitalism; Black workers have fought back hardest, with Black women at the forefront. [JC1] Only a united, multiracial working class can smash this genocidal imperialist system and build communism upon its ashes. When we do so, Black workers’ leadership will be instrumental to our victory.

This past spring, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). As we pause the historic 1975 Boston Summer Project—one of the most defining struggles in PLP’s history—we do so to inject an awareness of the broader historical context that shaped and continues to guide our Party. From its beginnings with barely two dozen members of the old U.S. communist movement, PLP has grown into an international organization with active chapters in 27 countries.

The following is a reprint of an article originally published a decade ago to commemorate the Party’s 60th anniversary. Amid devastating racist and sexist attacks on our class—and as a decaying capitalist system slides ever closer to fascism—the Party’s analysis, history, and enduring presence stand as a beacon of light in a dark night and remain more urgent than ever

It all started April 17th 1965...

Over our first half-century, PLP has propelled the march to communism — first by leading anti-racist, working-class struggle, and 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 the future of society. 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 and sexism that drags down all workers. It will smash the racist cops who break our strikes and kill our Black, Latin, Asian and immigrant sisters and brothers. And it will put an end to 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:

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.

Multi-racial unity with women and men workers and an end to the racism and sexism that divides the working class. Racism and sexism is rooted in capitalism; the bosses rely on it to steal trillions in super-profits worldwide.

Elimination of all borders, artificial lines drawn by the bosses to make even more profits from workers they call “foreigners.” Nationalism is an antiworker ideology that enables the imperialist rulers to exploit natural resources and cheap labor. It also enables them to make war on other workers. 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 its 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 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, New Orleans, and New York City. We have led anti-imperialist struggles against the UN in Haiti. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

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. Throughout our existence, we 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 stood in the forefront of opposition to 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 the 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 party leadership and put the masses in charge of society.

PLP is the only group 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 (PLM). 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 CP 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 plp.org 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 because events have shown that socialism inevitably leads back to full-blown capitalism. In both Russia and China, socialism preserved capitalist features such as 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 and will 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 — sexism — 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 constantly 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, into vehicles for building the Party. Winning workers to the PLP is the one and only victory the ruling class can never take back. We therefore urge all workers and youth to join us now for the next half-century in this historic task: to organize a communist revolution.