The bourgeoisie of all countries … covers its predatory aims with “national” ideology, [which] inevitably creates … revolutionary sentiments in the masses. Our duty is to help make these sentiments conscious.
--Vladimir Lenin, “Turn Imperialist War Into Civil War” (1915)

Russia’s massing of troops on the border of U.S.-backed Ukraine is one more step toward World War III. Notwithstanding the Joe Biden-Vladimir Putin video conference “in an effort to defuse a growing military crisis” (New York Times, 12/7), the U.S. and Russia are on a collision course. Politicians represent the capitalist ruling class interests behind them, the biggest banks and corporations. Since there are limited markets to control and limited resources and workers to exploit, the U.S. and Russian capitalist gangs are locked in a constant, deadly competition.
The U.S. has called the shots for the old liberal world order for the last 75 years. But with a rising China and a resurgent Russia, and U.S. rulers weakened by a deep split in their own ranks, their days of supremacy may be numbered. As in the run-up to World War I, the decay of an established order creates extreme volatility. Finance capital, the U.S. bosses’ dominant wing, has less and less control over world events. A seemingly minor confrontation could spark a bloody big-power conflict and a nuclear war.
Only a communist revolution can end these devastating imperialist rivalries by smashing nationalism and replacing it with working-class internationalism. Only a communist society, where money and profit are abolished and production is geared to workers’ needs, can serve the interests of our class.
Russia strikes back
Russia’s massing of 120,000 troops on the Ukraine border may be a warning to stop the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization from bringing Ukraine and Georgia into its military alliance. Russia is also responding to “plans by some NATO members to set up military training centers in Ukraine” (AP, 11/24) and reported U.S. military drills just 12 miles from Russia’s border (The Sun, 11/26). Ukraine is a critical export corridor into Europe for oil and gas, the main source of wealth for Russian capitalists.
After the collapse of the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s, U.S. rulers settled on a policy of “containment” to encircle Russia and prevent its re-emergence as a global superpower. The U.S. pushed NATO to absorb former Warsaw Pact (World War II Soviet-led, anti NATO alliance) states like Poland and Hungary, and, in 2004, the former Soviet Republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Strategically located Ukraine is a lynchpin of this U.S. strategy.
But in the name of profit, Russian imperialist rulers have struck back. Along with a series of military incursions—from Georgia and Syria to the seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014—Russia has aggressively courted U.S. rivals like Iran and Venezuela. It has engineered the massive Nord Stream 2 pipeline to export its oil and gas to Europe via the Baltic Sea, bypassing Ukraine—so much for containment! U.S. bosses have continued to back Ukraine’s nationalist ruling class, sending $2.5 billion in military assistance since 2014, a time when Ukraine’s government was stocked with ministers from the openly Nazi Svoboda Party (Reuters, 3/18/14). Along with a dozen other NATO countries, the U.S. has significant numbers of military advisers in Ukraine.
As Russia continues to threaten an invasion, the limited U.S. response—possible economic sanctions—exposes its ever-weakening position. In their imperialist proxy war, the bosses killed tens of thousands of lives in Eastern Ukraine with Russian-backed separatists. As the conflict in this region expands, it’s the working class that will be fighting and dying for the bosses’ profits.
Nationalism: dead end for workers
 After the great communist revolutions in Russia and China, workers were freed from capitalist exploitation on one-third of the globe. At one time, the old communist movement vigorously promoted proletarian internationalism. But because of concessions to rotten capitalist ideas like higher wages for “experts” and an emphasis on production over politics, the international working class was left wide open to nationalist ideology. Nationalism is an essential tool for rulers to convince workers to be slaughtered in imperialist wars for “their country.” The world’s bosses, a tiny minority of the population, must rely on the working class to win their battles for them. Following the example of Russian soldiers in World War I, internationalist class consciousness can lead working-class soldiers and sailors to turn their guns around—and fire on the ruling-class warmakers!    
Since the end of the Cold War and the dismantling of the Soviet Union, the threat of an imperialist alliance between Russia and China has petrified the U.S. ruling class. The U.S. bosses would be left at a huge numerical disadvantage in troops, tanks, and warships, as well as in nuclear weapons (Sun, 11/26). Over the last decade, China’s capitalist rulers have seen growing U.S.-Russia tensions as an opportunity to forge closer ties to Russia’s bosses. Joint air and naval exercises last month, including “bomber flights into Japanese and South Korean air defense zones,” led to “a new pact to further deepen defense ties” (Al Jazeera, 11/25). Russia is the number-two exporter of oil to China, after Saudi Arabia, while China has been a lead investor in Russian natural gas projects in Siberia (Al Jazeera, 11/25).
 U.S. ”democracy” flimflam
On December 9, Biden hosted a virtual “Summit for Democracy” to try to rally its allies against the so-called “autocracies” (or dictatorships) in Russia and China. In reality, all capitalist “democracies” are dictatorships of the capitalist bosses that will fight each other to the end for maximum profit. As the Council of Foreign Relations, the bosses’ top research and strategy institute, recently acknowledged, capitalist ruling classes “have little choice but to compete for power in what is at root a zero-sum game” (Foreign Affairs, November-December 2021).
If the past is any guide, the U.S. ruling class will deploy a media frenzy of nationalism and patriotism (and likely a 9/11-type provocation) to win workers to fight and die for JPMorgan Chase and ExxonMobil’s profits. But the U.S. bosses have an uphill battle to achieve their vision of all-class unity. The vicious split between the liberal racist Democratic bosses and the gutter racist Republicans has divided workers as well. Without a unified, multiracial armed forces and mass acceptance of a military draft, the U.S. rulers will be hard-pressed to prevail over the more disciplined rulers in Russia and China.
Communist revolution is the only solution!
 The implosion of the Soviet Union and China’s return to capitalism are both direct results of the poison of nationalism. Only with internationalism--the end of all borders, patriotism, racism, and sexism--can workers truly be freed. Progressive Labor Party needs to fight harder and more creatively to win masses of workers to our ideas on inter-imperialist rivalry and the inevitability of war under capitalism--in mass organizations, at our workplaces, with our neighbors, and especially in the military. As the ruling class prepares for World War III, we must organize to turn their imperialist wars into wars of communist liberation from capitalist savagery. Join us!

 Hundreds of members of the graduate and undergraduate Student Workers of Columbia-UAW Local 2110 (STC-UAW) blared their chants as both retired professors and members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined the picket line along with many other supporters protesting Columbia University. Protesters are pushing back against this institution of “higher” education’s racist, profit-driven core. Despite its endowment of $14.4 billion, Columbia claims it can’t afford to pay super-exploited student workers a living wage nor provide them with expanded health care coverage and greater protections against harassment and discrimination. Scenes of the protest at Columbia illustrate the power of militant students and workers to force bosses not only to grant the short-term demands of this strike but also how to build a communist system run by workers without bosses.
“Up, up, up with the workers! Down, down, down with bosses!”
The notion that some students, mainly working class Black and Latin students, must work to earn their education while others are handed it for free is a racist practice implemented at colleges and universities across the county. It’s time to smash this capitalist system and the education system that upholds it. Capitalist schools are designed to protect the structures in place that allow inequality to thrive. Under communism, education will be available to all at no cost and will be rooted in thought, collectivity, and ensuring all members of our class are taught skills and ideology that serve the greater good, not a profit system.
This struggle has revealed once again how fearful bosses become when workers realize their true power at Columbia University and beyond. PLP distributed about 30 copies of CHALLENGE, and some picketers nodded their head when we said that the conflict at Columbia needs to become part of a larger collective campaign, like the struggles at CUNY (City University of New York) and many other campuses and workplaces all over the country.
 Meanwhile, the bosses of the institution, scared of the political significance of this struggle, resorted to the same-old fear tactics to protect their financial interests, such as preserving President Lee Bollinger’s salary, apparently having earned $4.5 million in 2018 (Chronicle of Higher Education, 8/31/21).  Administrators’ goals of suppressing rebellion backfired when, after threatening by email to fire strikers who did not return to work by December 10, student workers responded with outrage rather than fear (NYT, 12/3/21).
 At the height of the protest, a 10-foot banner reading “Fair Contract Now” set the backdrop for hundreds of protestors blocking campus entrances and preventing students from attending class, joined by NYU, Fordham and CUNY faculty union members, and members of Teamsters Local 804.  Buses and trucks blew horns in support.
Class struggle is necessary, but workers need communism!
We need to find ways to make these short-term limited struggles part of a larger battle to dismantle a racist capitalist system. When we fight and win limited reforms for better pay, health care, reduced tuition, or classes that teach our real history, we should use them as resources for the larger fight to overthrow capitalism altogether.  We need revolutionary thinking for a new world and need to recruit militant Black, Latin, Asian, immigrant, and white working-class students and their teachers into expanding these reform struggles into a revolutionary movement and an education for communist liberation. Columbia student strikers are already helping provide this important education.
For example, when about 500 protesters demonstrated on October 28 and then disrupted President Bollinger's "Freedom of Speech and Press" classroom chanting: "Bollinger in your ivory tower, we'll fight you with union power."
The Columbia student workers’ unionization drive and strike are part of a seesaw wave of actions by graduate students that has been sweeping the country since 2000 when the National Labor Relations Board first ruled that graduate students at NYU could unionize – only to reverse that decision in 2004. When this decision got reversed again in 2016, it opened the door for Columbia student workers to unionize with SWC-UAW Local 2110, and to include undergraduate as well as graduate student workers, an egalitarian step that counters the divisive tendency to separate workers into different categories.
Graduate student organizing drives and strikes have taken place at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Harvard, University of Michigan, Rutgers University, and many other campuses. The UAW (United Auto Workers) has helped lead these campus struggles, but its total reliance on Democratic Party politicians and labor board decisions is a huge weakness because without shutting down the whole campus, Columbia strikers have a limited capacity to challenge the University which has already dragged out the contract struggle for two years.  
These student strikes – like the growing wave of strikes in industry, of coal miners in Alabama, and workers at Nabisco, Frito-Lay, Kellogg as well as near strikes in the television industry, healthcare, and other areas – all are in response to the growing economic crisis of capitalism, which has seen workers’ wages go down while CEO salaries and corporate profits soar. The root of the problem is not the Columbia budget but capitalism itself. It should be our goal to be part of these struggles with the goal of building personal ties and turning limited union struggles into a larger revolutionary communist movement.

WASHINGTON DC, November 20 – 50 people including members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) marched in front of DC’s Black, liberal Mayor Muriel Bowser’s home today to protest Bowser ending the DC eviction moratorium. The moratorium, put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic, prevented landlords from evicting tenants, a protection of basic human needs that is only necessary under a capitalist society that prioritizes profit and rent over safety.
The federal eviction moratorium was struck down by the Supreme Court on August 27 and the local DC one ended on July 25. The ending of the moratorium put workers in DC who are behind on their rent payments into crisis as landlords are now able to evict them. The number of people who can’t pay rent has skyrocketed as the  Covid-19 pandemic continues to rage and expose capitalism in crisis. The DC housing fund for tenant relief ran out so quickly that the “Stay DC” application for rental relief closed on October 27 even as workers continue to lose their jobs and struggle to make rent (Washington Post, 10/14).
Having a place to live is a necessity, but like all the other needs of the working class, for the capitalists, housing is only about making profits. As long as we live under capitalism our needs will never be met. Under capitalism housing, healthcare, food, everything our class needs are only vehicles for profit. No money, no home is capitalism’s mantra. Our needs will be met when we run society for the working class. Only communism, where resources are provided to each according to need, can do that.
DC politicians serve the developers
Federal funds are not expected to be distributed for tenant relief until March 2022, so the most vulnerable of us are in danger of being evicted at any moment. To add insult to injury, Mayor Bowser just launched her yearly “Home for the Holidays” campaign, which seeks to find homes for homeless individuals, while at the same time doing nothing to stop the current wave of evictions. She is just throwing scraps to DC residents to maintain good PR, exposing her racist hypocrisy.
The rally was lively with chants, pro-tenant-themed carols, and speeches. The rally demanded that Mayor Bowser fund temporary rental relief programs such as Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) and reinstate the local eviction moratorium. The very idea of guaranteed housing for the DC working class terrifies Bowser and the bosses because that would eat into the profits made by her allies among developers and landlords. Capitalism requires maximum profits, so such goals are “off the table” for the bosses. Black and Latin workers especially are facing evictions and Bowser’s actions will sharpen this racist attack on our class. By sharing CHALLENGE and having conversations with other protesters, PL’ers brought the message that full, decent housing for the working class can only be achieved through a communist revolution in which workers themselves guarantee that basic needs like housing are available to all.
Fighting against evictions and fighting for communism
At the event, community leaders and members discussed how horribly the DC bosses treat the working class. One speaker, who is currently homeless, observed that DC was already terrible at housing individuals before the pandemic. In fact, he said that when he submitted his application for DC housing assistance in 2007, he wasn’t contacted by officials until 2019. Eight months later, he was told that he didn’t actually qualify.
Another speaker, who came in solidarity, lamented that rent-control doesn’t exist for seniors and that she sees numerous people—mainly Black, Latin and Asian—in the tent cities popping up around DC. She rightly observed that this is only happening because of capitalism.
Capitalist society, led by the profit-motive, cruelly leaves the elderly and the poor to fend for themselves for shelter each night, even though there are more than 15 million vacant homes across the U.S. (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Q3 2021). This serves several purposes: 1) it keeps housing prices higher when housing isn’t distributed based on need and 2) it keeps wages lower when workers are scared they could become homeless.
While the rally primarily sought reforms to make our current society more livable, the only way to permanently end homelessness is to smash capitalism with a communist revolution.
A workers’ state, led by an international, worker-led communist Party would guarantee housing to all workers. Shelter would be distributed based on need rather than based on whatever enriches the bosses the most. Join the PLP and help us work towards this future!

QUEENS, December 11 — More than 700 students, faculty, and staff at the City University of New York (CUNY) marched from LaGuardia Community College to the CUNY School of Law today in protest against racist budget cuts, tuition increases, and chronic underfunding. The march was called by the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), union misleaders whose reformist action is stopping short at demands for a “New Deal for CUNY.”  Tensions within the march were palpable as misleaders fought for liberal reforms, while many students and marchers, including members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP), chanted loudly for militancy and an overthrow of an education system that continues to put the needs of its working class students last.
Yes, we must join our class brothers and sisters in the streets and fight for these small demands, but we must also never lose sight that ultimately racist capitalism can never be reformed. Only communism can give us the education system the international working class deserves.
PSC’s “New Deal” lists free tuition; increased faculty-to-student ratios; and more funding for student mental health counselors and academic advisors, as some of its demands. While there is nothing inherently wrong with each of these requests, PLP remains clear that these asks will never truly be provided at a university that is run for and by capitalist bosses.
Members and friends of the revolutionary communist PLP sharpened the struggle at the march, highlighting the “New Deal’s” contradictions by distributing leaflets, copies of CHALLENGE, and connecting with coworkers to expose the toxic liberalism of the PSC misleaders and Democratic Party.
Liberals’ ”New Deal”= same old racist sham
The PSC misleadership put on a lukewarm show of performative rebellion with tired speeches alongside a rogues’ gallery of politicians. Among the fake-leftist guest speakers were New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, two Black Democratic misleaders that have been put into power to dampen the revolutionary spirit of young Black and Latin workers.
Some among CUNY’s 525,000 mostly Black and immigrant students and 29,000 PSC members were deceived into supporting these politicians as alternatives to worsening racist and sexist capitalist crises. But beneath the empty speeches the “New Deal” is nothing more than protection for the same racist capitalist system that has spurred us to take these streets in the first place.
Free tuition, the centerpiece of the “New Deal,” might have been a bolder proposal decades ago when tuition was first imposed in 1976. But no matter how many PSC misleaders’ speeches try to spin it, free tuition is an utterly limited demand and does nothing to attack the capitalist cause of racist educational inequality in the first place.
Today, 66 percent of CUNY students already attend tuition-free through financial aid and scholarships but are saddled with expenses that double the cost of tuition or more. It’s these supplemental fees that  hold back and hinder opportunities for Black and immigrant students but fall to the
wayside as liberals congratulate themselves under the guise of charity (Vox, 2/13/20).
In addition to free tuition, university-wide full healthcare, childcare, housing, food stipends, textbooks, transit fares, tutoring, and work-study programs, irrespective of immigration status, should be among the PSC’s MINIMUM demands for students and faculty. These incremental needs, all of which rack up a hefty price tag, aren’t even considered in the proposed and short sighted deal.
 Fake leftist politicians like James and Williams know all this. But the government, courts and kkkops serve the capitalist state, not the working class. Wall Street bankers and lawyers fill CUNY’s Board of Trustees not by accident, but because the role of universities under capitalism is to reproduce and protect this racist system.
Rank-and-file leadership of communists and antiracist fighters in the PSC membership must organize alongside students for strikes against CUNY, racism and imperialism, and turn our campuses into “schools for communism” as the old communist movement did nearly a century ago.
1930s: Red-led students, faculty fought like hell
In the 1930s capitalism was under crisis during the Great Depression, and in the middle of it all the old Communist Party organized industries as well as the Teachers’ Union (TU) and College Teachers’ Union (CTU) in cities like NYC.
Communist-led students and faculty in the TU/CTU fought back and won demands like tenure, higher pay and better classroom conditions. They won by uniting Black and white students and faculty in the classrooms through internationalism and militant antiracism against Jim Crow through campaigns like the Scottsboro Boys. They also organized to expelracists and Nazi sympathizers from campuses.
PLP has analyzed the mistakes of the old movement elsewhere, and as we continue to learn from the revolutionaries before us, PL’ers today fight to revive the rank-and-file militancy of that era in every classroom and union meeting to build a mass Party for communist revolution.
Discontent and dissatisfaction with the PSC misleaders at today’s event was expressed by many colleagues. Our task is transforming those feelings into action to build student-worker- faculty unity through sharpening local campus struggles and continuing to build our growing Party study-action groups.
Bosses’”Deals” are preparation for imperialist war
Even if passed, no bosses’ “New Deal” has ever or will ever save the working class. The U.S. bosses have their sights set only on saving their sagging blood-soaked empire. They want our students and youth to fight and die for it in wider imperialist wars against their working class sisters and brothers in other countries.
Tellingly, the “New Deal for CUNY” apes the bosses’ Great Depression-era New Deal, by liberal Democrat president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR’s New Deal was a racist attack on Black and immigrant workers that did not end the Great Depression — World War II did. Government spending on WWII was 10 times the amount that it spent on the New Deal. The U.S. capitalist class ramped up its war production and set the stage for the decades-long world dominance of U.S. imperialism, while the then-communist led Red Armies in the Soviet Union and China defeated the bulk of the Nazi and Japanese fascists.
With U.S. imperialism now on the decline against rising Chinese and resurgent Russian imperialism, imperialist world war and fascism are once again on the horizon. Only the international working class can smash capitalism once and for all. From NYC to Moscow to Beijing, PLP fights to build a mass Red Army to fight for a new revolutionary communist world, not another capitalist “Deal”! Students, workers and faculty, JOIN PLP!