Suffering from the worst shortages of gas and fuel, food, and medicine not seen since independence in 1948, workers and students in Sri Lanka rebelled. Many hundreds of thousands joined a protest movement demanding the ouster of the ruling Rajapaksa family. When president Gotabaya Rajapaksa refused to resign, protesters stormed the Presidential palace, occupying the extravagant grounds and chasing him out of the country. Workers even took a swim in the presidential pool.
The new president is now-former prime minister Ranil Wickremesing, whose official residence was burned down after over 100,000 protesters surrounded the mansion (CNN, 7/13). Working class rebellion is a good thing.
This system is getting worse each day. Fighting back is the only way to change it. Long-term victory means going beyond rebellion or demands for different capitalists to be put in power.  It requires us to organize to build a communist movement with the outlook of putting the working class in power.
Workers bear the burden of the bosses’crisis
The capitalist crisis in Sri Lanka is a warning sign for the rest of South Asia; The Maldives, Bangladesh, and Pakistan’s economies are on the brink.  This crisis is exposing the weakness that was hiding under the surface of the world’s capitalist economies.
Capitalism has never worked. Even though the capitalists considered Sri Lanka a success story, the working class here has lived in poverty even before the current crisis. In 2020 the per capita income was about $1300/year (ceicdata.com).
The crisis was caused by three main factors. The Sri Lankan bosses have relied on massive borrowing from the big imperialists and used the money they made from tourism to pay off what they owed. The combination of terrorist attacks and the pandemic gutted the tourist industry around the globe and Sri Lanka lost its main source of profits (Washington Post, 7/9).
The second factor was the ravenous profit motive of the Sri Lankan ruling class, dominated by the Rajapaksa family. Just before the pandemic hit, Sri Lanka’s short-sighted bosses gave themselves a massive tax cut that increased their profits at the expense of the working class (Washington Post, 7/9).
The third factor is the overall crisis of capitalism that is affecting the working class in every country. The combination of the pandemic and now the U.S.-led sanctions against Russia have set off inflation in the country currently at over 50 percent. On top of that it’s nearly impossible to get fuel for cars or cooking and electricity has been severely cut (Reuters, 7/7). The World Food Program reported that 86% of families were either skipping meals, eating less or buying worse foods (NPR, 7/20).
Sri Lanka’s importance in inter-imperialist rivalry
The island country is at an important location in the Indian Ocean and equidistant in the east-west maritime corridor; it’s at the crossroads of busy shipping routes. Since Sri Lanka’s initiation into China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, it has entangled itself in the regional and global rivalry between Japan, India, the U.S. and China.
In 2017, China took over the strategic port Hambantota in India’s backyard (CNBC, 12/13/17). India, the regional imperialist, needs Sri Lanka in its sphere of influence, which is aligned with the U.S.-led liberal order post World War II.
However, China has been expanding its imperialist tentacles via “debt traps” and infrastructure investments. Not only did Sri Lanka built its minimally-used Rajapaksa International Airport from China’s loans and started the The Port City project in Colombo, the two countries also share a military relationship. “China’s influence…has grown exponentially in the last 15 years as President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother Mahinda…became a dominant force in Sri Lankan politics” (Voa News, 6/10).
So why is China not committing to approve new loans to Sri Lanka right now as the small country is asking for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund? Well, “China appears to be shifting its strategic focus toward Southeast Asia and Africa” (Voa News, 6/10).
All capitalists, big and small, function under the rule of competition. Sri Lanka’s economic crisis is an opportunity for India to regain some influence. India provided around $3.5 billion as credit, and shipped fuel, food, and fertilizers recently. “After the initial credit line…both countries in January agreed to jointly operate 61 giant oil tanks…For over 30 years, India has been trying to access the British-era facility which will enable it to store strategic oil reserves” (BBC, 7/19).
At the moment, it seems that the ruling Rajapaksa family is aligned closer to China, and the U.S. news coverage of the rebellion has been largely positive. The movement has drawn countless protesters to the capital of Colombo to demand larger reforms. The dangers of this movement include what the working class of Sri Lanka is intimately familiar with: nationalism and identity politics. While it’s unclear which faction of bosses are backing the movement, one thing is certain: short of an international communist revolution that rejects all the bosses—local, regional, and global—the working class in Sri Lanka will become a pawn in the bosses’ games as they prepare for larger conflict.
As the global capitalist crisis infects more and more economies, there is only war and fascism headed for our class. Caught in the imperialist crosshairs, Sri Lanka aims to play both sides in an increasingly volatile world order where the working class will pay the ultimate price. While Sri Lankan bosses have tried to “remain neutral” on the war in Europe, this will be harder to do as imperialist contradictions sharpen. The country’s desperation for supplies has pushed it to buy oil from Russia. “There is an advantage…if we could buy [discounted] oil directly from [Russia],” said Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera (AP, 6/27). This is an illustration of the deterioration of the U.S.-led liberal order (see editorial, page 2). Let’s be clear: there is no loyalty among thieves, which is what bosses of all stripes are.
The heroism of the working class is inspiring
The protest movement includes students and workers, including some from less-oppressed sectors of our class. The storming of the presidential palace was inspiring and a lesson that the working class has the potential to not only beat the bosses, but also run a communist world. To achieve something beyond a new set of bosses replacing the old ones requires a movement that is looking to get rid of an entire system. The only way workers in Sri Lanka can escape this imperialist death sentence is to go beyond reformist militancy and fight for communist revolution.

NEWARK, NJ, July 15—The Marxist Literary Group (MLG) is a group of progressive academics who have met annually for half a century; Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades have been regular participants. A hundred members attended this year’s week-long conference, whose theme was “Transition.” As the rulers who run the imperialist world-system gear up for World War III and unleash their guided missiles on the working class, the Party went in with a much stronger political presence than in the past. We distributed dozens of copies of CHALLENGE and spoke openly about the need for a party to make revolution for a communist world.
Attacking the Big Fascists
Front and center in all our presentations was the connection between liberalism and fascism. A multiracial group of Newark, NJ-based PL’ers involved in combating racist police terror presented a film titled Copaganda.
“I’m really nervous!” said the student comrade who was speaking about the role of liberal Big Fascist Mayor, Ras Baraka in enforcing violent police repression in Black neighborhoods. The Big Fascists are represented by the multinational banks and energy companies that control the Democratic Party.
“Hey, you’re fine!” “You’re doing great!” enthusiastically shouted the audience. For many in attendance, this session was the high point of the entire conference.
In the same panel, another comrade presented a documentary film about the politics and economics of Caribbean tourism. Focusing on the history of the walls set up in Aruba to separate visitors from workers, her talk redirected the whole question of building walls away from anti-Trumpism—an easy target—and located its grounding in the “big money” imperatives of colonialism and imperialism.
In a panel on “The Dialectics of Transition,” a comrade argued that the similarity between liberalism and fascism is primary over their difference. What makes fascism and liberalism more similar than different is their political relationship with capitalism itself. Liberal democracy, which has within it the roots of fascism, is a way the bosses cement their class rule.
PLP brings communist politics
 Another panelist examined the failed historical transition during the Reconstruction era in the U.S. toward what W.E.B. Du Bois called “abolition democracy.” After the Civil War, both northern capitalists and southern plantation owners commonly feared above all else the specter of a racially unified movement of farmers and workers.
A comrade who has written extensively about the USSR shared his most recent research about the relationship between Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Unless the prevailing falsehoods surrounding scholarship on Soviet history are refuted, and people understand both the actual achievements and the shortcomings of Soviet socialist construction, the revolutionary “transition” from capitalism to communism will be significantly blocked.
Finally, PLP comrades and friends led a reading group that examined Marxist analyses of the grounding of fascism in capitalism and imperialism. One speaker focused on the mid-1930s debate within the communist movement between the call for social revolution issued by R. Palme Dutt and the advocacy of a popular front by Georgi Dimitrov. History shows that the united front resulted in only fortifying the bosses’ system and laid the basis for the corruption of the old communist movement.
Another speaker discussed the Caribbean communist poet Aimé Césaire’s dissection of European fascism as a direct result of colonial brutality.
A third speaker examined the writings of the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, who ironically observed that democracy “organized fascism when it felt it could no longer resist the pressure of the working class” and no longer hide behind their pretense of  democracy.
Gramsci concluded that when the mask of democracy falls off, the ruler’s naked brutality is exposed, and the bosses use violence and repression to crush the working class in order to regain control of their system.
Be a communist, not just a Marxist
Many intellectuals who attend the MLG conferences describe themselves as Marxists, but not as communists. This needs to change. The Party builds a base with these graduate students and professors to help them unify theory and practice. We urge them to align themselves with the actual struggles of the working class and join our revolutionary Party. The working class, guided by international antiracist solidarity, is the leading force for revolutionary change. While intellectuals may display many of the weaknesses of bourgeois socialization, historically more than a few have been valuable revolutionary fighters for the working class: Karl Marx, Lenin, Mao Zedong, Claudia Jones—thinkers and fighters all.
Besides, many of the younger members of the MLG are themselves at best precarious workers, facing a jobless future in a university in decline in this perhaps “terminal” crisis of capital. Many professors and graduate students see themselves as workers and are active in their campus unions.
PLP argues that all sectors of the working class must reject liberalism as a way to save workers from the increasingly destructive effects—political, economic, environmental—of capitalist decay. In essence, liberal democracy turns into fascism as the imperialists of the world prepare for world war (see editorial, page 2).
We must fight against developing fascism with a revolutionary communist movement.

 This is part 10 of a series about Black communists in the Spanish Civil War. In the early 1930s the urban bourgeoisie (capitalists) of Spain, supported by most workers and many peasants, overthrew the violent, repressive monarchy to form a republic. In July 1936 the Spanish army, eventually commanded by Francisco Franco, later the fascist dictator, rebelled to reestablish the repressive monarchy. Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini's Italy gave Franco massive military aid.
In 1936 the International Communist Movement, called the Comintern, headquartered in the Soviet Union and led by Joseph Stalin, organized volunteers, mainly workers from more than 60 countries into the International Brigades (IBs) to go to Spain to defend the Republic. Black workers, especially Black communists, emphasized the importance of fighting racism to win anything for the working class. And they brought this antiracist fightback with them when they returned to the United States. They were building a movement they hoped would lead to communist revolution around the world. They succeeded in organizing millions around communist ideas and practices. But the movement believed that uniting with liberal bosses to defend the Republic in Spain would further the fight for communism. This was part of the united front against fascism, which resulted in only fortifying the bosses’ system and laid the basis for the corruption of the old communist movement.
In the Progressive Labor Party, we are against any unity with capitalists. They all have to go and the working class must rule: that's communism.
If the working class is to seize and hold state power throughout the world, Black workers’ leadership is essential. That is the only way our class can destroy racism, the lifeblood of capitalism. The following is a story of one such leader, Crawford Morgan.

Crawford Morgan was born in 1910 in Rockingham, North Carolina. After high school, he became an apprentice printer. He moved first to Norfolk Virginia, then to New York City. During the Depression, he became involved in organizations of the unemployed in New York City and was arrested in a demonstration at the Home Relief Bureau.
Morgan joined the Young Communist League (YCL) in 1932. The YCL was the vibrant youth wing of the Communist Party, which he joined four years later. Despite anticommunist lies in the bosses’ media, communism was held in high regard among masses of Black working women, men, and youth.
From ‘runner’ to driver
 Morgan sailed for Spain in March, 1937. He was assigned to the infantry attached to the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion (mainly Canadian, but also U.S. volunteers). He was later transferred to the Lincoln-Washington Battalion, serving at brigade headquarters as a communications “runner,” radio communication being insecure.
In August 1937, on the Aragon front, Morgan received a leg wound storming the town of Quinto. After recovery, he returned to his unit. But complications from his leg wound led to his becoming a truck driver in the Transport Unit for the remainder of the war.
In World War II, Morgan served in all-Black units in the segregated U.S. Army from 1942 until 1946, including two years in Europe. After the war, he again worked as a truck driver, then as an offset printer.
Defends his role as a communist
In September 1954, Morgan testified on behalf of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (VALB) in hearings before the red-baiting (i.e. anticommunist) Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB) of the U.S. Department of Justice. The committee was seeking to declare the VALB a “subversive organization” – the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was led by communists and at least 80 percent of the Brigade were Communist Party members.
Asked why he had fought as a communist in Spain, Morgan had answered:
Being a Negro, and all of the stuff that I have had to take in this country, I had a pretty good idea of what fascism was. I got a chance there [in Spain] to fight it with bullets and I went there and fought it with bullets. If I get a chance to fight it with bullets again, I will fight it with bullets again.
While the U.S. ruling class government exposed itself as the custodians of brutal racist injustice, Morgan publicly displayed his confidence in his role as a communist. He has also used this as a space to denounce the capitalist system (see below).
Morgan died in 1976. In that year an article in The Volunteer, the journal of the VALB, wrote:
He served with discipline, dignity and courage. He was liked. He was respected. He was
 a comrade whose qualities were deep and pervasive … A demonstration of this was given by him as witness for VALB in the prosecution before the late Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB) 1954.
[Called as a defense witness, Morgan] was one of the most effective witnesses of that long era of the “Un-American” Inquisition…
… under cross-examination [he] remained what he was and what he said flowed directly and lucidly from his life's experiences related simply and without sentimentality. This was anything but easy, especially for a Black man and in the supercharged political lynch-atmosphere of the era. The prosecuting attorneys were young, bright, alert, and prepared ... [he] met and speared their well-planned attacks so cleanly that they hung limp.
 ... [He] was cross-examined on arrests and/or convictions in California. His narration of what it meant to be unemployed, penniless and young in the Great Depression unrolled with such classic and telling simplicity that it became a veritable “J’accuse,” the condemnation of his condemners and all they represented.
The prosecutors spun out that [he] was fervently opposed to fascism and sought to extract the implication that in taking up arms against fascism he had thus acted against the interests of the U.S. His answer was that, on the contrary, the defense of Republican Spain was the defense of the American people.
It became clearer and clearer that the prosecutors were becoming less and less inclined to tangle further with him. In the end, they were glad just to be rid of him. He was too much the exemplary 'premature anti-fascist' for them. He vindicated the Abraham Lincoln Battalion.
Later on in the early 1970s, Morgan worked with the VALB's Historical Commission to gather information on other Black volunteers.
Crawford Morgan was one of many Black workers who joined the Communist Party to fight against racism and for communism. He took the lead in fighting against fascism in Spain and for internationalism. Today, as then, Black workers’ leadership  is key to the fight against racism and for communist revolution.

Sources: The Volunteer, December 1976; Joseph Brandt, Black Americans in the Spanish Civil War Against Fascism; Cullum & Berch, African-Americans in the Spanish Civil War; The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.

That white workers are hurt by racism is a key principle of communist analysis. The standard liberal rant is that white people—regardless of class—all benefit from “white supremacy.” The only basis for white people to engage in antiracist fightback is thus missionary sympathy or guilt; they can be at best “allies” in struggles in which, so to speak, they have “no skin in the game.” The reality is much different.
The truth is that all members of the working class worldwide are hurt by the racist super-exploitation and division of Black and nonwhite workers. While workers with darker skin experience greater levels of poverty and state-sponsored violence, many working-class people designated as “white” suffer from low wages, lousy housing, inadequate medical care, unemployment, and hunger. To the extent that racial divisions depress wages for all workers—and keep workers of all skin colors and nationalities from uniting in their shared class interest—the bosses laugh all the way to the bank.
Legacy of multiracial unity
But such divisions have also been fought and overcome. In the U.S., there is a rich legacy of white-authored proletarian literature that attests to an often obscured history of militant multiracial unity. The novels of Myra Page—The Gathering Storm (1932), Daughter of the Hills (1950)—feature white and Black organizers among sharecroppers and miners. Her 1935 novel Moscow Yankee—set among unemployed U.S. auto workers finding employment in the early 1930s USSR—features antiracist class consciousness as a key measure of whether or not white workers embrace Soviet-era socialism. That a Black expatriate worker takes the lead in saving a tractor factory from anticommunist sabotage testifies to the integral connection between multiracial unity and communist internationalism.
Especially significant is a cluster of novels–all authored by white working class women–focused on the 1929 textile workers strike in Gastonia, North Carolina: Mary Heaton Vorse’s Strike! (1929); Grace Lumpkin’s To Make My Bread (1932) and A Sign for Cain (1935); Fielding Burke’s Call Home the Heart (1932) and A Stone Came Rolling (1935). While ultimately brutally crushed by the arm of the state, the strike taught many lessons: about the key role of women in the class struggle, about the need for multiracial solidarity.
Fictionalized versions of Ella Mae Wiggins—an inspiring singer-songwriter-strike leader who was murdered by bosses’ vigilantes—are featured in several novels. According to Vera Buch, a communist organizer, Wiggins was singled out because of her commitment to racial equality (Kristina Horton, Martyr of Loray Mill: Ella May and the 1929 Textile Workers’ Strike in Gastonia, North Carolina, McFarland, 2015). In To Make My Bread, Wiggins
is featured as Bonnie McClure, a mountain woman turned millworker  whose close friendship with a Black co-worker sets a model for other white workers at first hesitant to abandon their racist socialization. In  A Sign for Cain, multiracial relationships are solidified, conjoining the struggles of sharecroppers and millworkers facing intensified state violence in the face of labor militancy.
By no means is multiracial solidarity always portrayed in utopian terms in this body of literature. In Call Home the Heart, Burke honestly confronts the intense emotional battle experienced internally by her white protagonist upon being embraced by a Black woman whose husband has just been saved from lynching.
Although the 1935 sequel shows that the two women have become good friends, their bond is clearly the personal fruit of the broader class struggle.
Now as then, it is those inhabiting the “big houses” (and big banks!) who profit from racist division—whether their representatives are the bigger-danger flash liberal smiles and preach “inclusion” (for war) or are the smaller fascist Proud Boy muscle shirts and preach “replacement theory.
It is no accident that almost all the writers associated with the proletarian literary movement of the 1930s and 1940s were communist or pro-communist. Members and friends of Progressive Labor Party—as well as the multiracial crowds of millions who are standing up against racism—have a red legacy of which we are justly proud. The working class fighters are all comrades—not allies—in the struggle for a better antiracist world.