U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria dramatically sharpens the split within the U.S. ruling class. It’s a big win for the Little Fascists, the domestic-leaning, isolationist wing of the U.S. ruling class, and a huge loss for the Big Fascists, the main-wing finance capitalists who have led U.S. imperialism since the end of World War II. It drastically weakens the U.S. position in the Middle East and has opened the door for Russia to take over—at least for now—as the region’s alpha dog enforcer.
Workers cannot be fooled into supporting either section of the blood-soaked capitalist class. Far from the end to “endless wars” promised by Trump, the intensifying inter-imperialist competition between the U.S. and Russia and China will inevitably lead to full-blown fascism and the next world war, one that will slaughter hundreds of millions of workers. Only communist revolution can overthrow and dismantle the lethal capitalist system.
U.S. pulls back, Russia steps up
In December 2018, when Trump first announced a troop withdrawal from Syria, he was sabotaged by John Bolton, his national security advisor, and the old-school interventionists in the Republican Party. Trump’s main wing secretary of defense, James Mattis, resigned over the decision, saying it would play into the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS), the small-time capitalists who’d threatened U.S. oil interests.
But the Little Fascists behind Trump, including the Koch family, persisted. They  have now pulled off a major foreign policy coup, enraging the main wing and further eroding the old liberal world order based on U.S. military dominance. As U.S. troops pulled out of northeastern Syria, they left a vacuum that Turkey and Russia were eager to fill (NYT, 10/15). Turkey invaded Syria and began bombarding and slaughtering civilians along the Syrian-Turkish border. Russian and Syrian troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad moved to occupy much of the territory formerly held by U.S.-backed Kurdish nationalist rebels.  The Kurdish bosses, who’d partnered with the U.S. in fighting ISIS, were forced to make a quick deal with the butcher Assad to contain the Turkish Army and rogue Syrian militias.
On October 22, two weeks after the U.S. withdrawal, Russian President Vladimir Putin sat down Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to dictate a power-sharing arrangement with Assad—and make clear who was in charge. “Russia agreed to help Turkey create a ‘safe zone’ in northeastern Syria that is free of Kurdish fighters that Ankara views as a terrorist threat” (Wall Street Journal, 10/22). Beyond setting the stage for a racist ethnic cleansing, the land grab confirms Russia’s new status “as the dominant force in Syria and a major power broker in the broader Middle East …. at the expense of the United States” (NYT, 10/22).
The next oil war?
Meanwhile, Russia’s imperialist bosses are also using the U.S. retreat to strengthen their ties with the biggest oil producers. On October 14, Putin met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to explore “more promising opportunities in the two countries in all fields, including cooperation in energy and investment in the infrastructure” (gulfnews.com, 10/15). In a statement that sent shivers through the boardrooms of ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates, declared: “I think of Russia as my second home. We are connected by a deep strategic relationship” (NYT, 10/15).
Both Russia and U.S. arch-enemy Iran have trained and armed troops in Syria for years. With the U.S. bowing out, they are ready to cash in on their investment. Russia originally intervened to help Assad in 2015, four years into Syria’s bloody civil war. To keep workers submissive, Russia’s bombing campaign has deliberately maximized civilian casualties. Hundreds of bombs were dropped on hospitals “to crush the last pockets of resistance” to Assad (NYT 10/13). One unanticipated consequence of these atrocities may be to push Syrian rebels into the waiting arms of ISIS, still a factor in the area.
Now that they have taken charge, Russia’s capitalist rulers will be tested. Whether they can keep the Syrian, Turkish, and Kurdish bosses in check—while preventing an ISIS revival—remains to be seen. But the nightmare for the liberal Big Fascists is that Russia is now shaping events in the geopolitically crucial Middle East. The main wing bosses can’t accept this realignment without a fight. They’ll need to push back militarily in the region—which adds to their urgency in removing Trump by the 2020 elections, if not sooner.
Fortress America vs. liberal world order
Foreign Affairs, the journal of the liberal rulers’ top foreign policy think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, has relentlessly attacked Trump’s Middle East policy. In a recent article headlined “Disaster in the Desert,” Martin Indyk rips the Trump team’s plan to offload responsibility for containing Iran and policing the volatile region onto U.S. allies Israel and Saudi Arabia (Nov.-Dec. 2019).
Back in 2016, the libertarian Charles Koch Institute warned against the U.S. arming the anti-Assad Syrian rebels: “[T]o ensure [that] decisions truly serve our vital strategic interests, U.S. leaders should consider the difficulties of training unaccountable rebel forces and pursuing... regime change in the Middle East. These decisions can carry high fiscal costs for the United States….”
Trump is cynically harnessing the anti-war sentiments of tens of millions and twisting them to enlist support for the domestic wing’s Fortress America strategy. Little Fascists like the Kochs have no problem with the U.S. sending drones to bomb civilians—mass murder on the cheap. But they don’t want to pay the tax bill for an overseas land war to protect the Big Fascists’ investments. They’re willing to take a back seat and hope the Russian bosses get bogged down in the Syria quagmire.
Imperialist war vs. communist revolution
In response to Trump’s abandonment of the Kurdish rebels who helped the U.S. stop ISIS in northern Syria, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bipartisan measure condemning Turkey’s attack. Republicans in the U.S. Senate, on the other hand, are holding their cards close. Even as the Democrats move forward with impeachment, Trump’s base is holding firm. If the Republicans think they can keep their Senate majority in 2020 behind Trump, they’ll continue to back him. If they see Trump going down and threatening to take them with him, they may join the move to dump him. While the split between the Big Fascists and Little Fascists is primary, the opportunism of the bosses’ stooge politicians cannot be overestimated.
The world is swimming in volatility, from the looming Trump impeachment fight to mass rebellions in Lebanon and Chile to refugee crises in Syria and Central America. Workers have nothing to gain by allying with some “lesser evil” set of capitalist rulers. As the bosses prepare for their world war, the international working class must prepare to destroy the capitalist system. Only communism can wipe out the scourge of imperialism and create a world where wars for profit will become a distant memory.

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Syria provides a textbook example of what befalls the working class when inter-imperialist rivalry is combined with local thievery. An estimated 400,000 workers have been slaughtered and more than half the population turned into refugees, with five million forced to flee the country. Under Barack Obama, the U.S. imperialists fomented the “Arab Spring” and turned a 2011 rebellion against the brutal al-Assad regime into a bloodbath. To counter regional thugs in northern Syria like ISIS, the U.S. state terrorists armed their own thugs, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). Turkey organized a competing anti-Assad militia. Iran dispatched thousands of troops to Syria to support Assad.
In 2014, as ISIS overran large sections of Eastern Syria and Northern Iraq, the Obama administration launched a bombing campaign to beat back the smaller terrorists. The following year, Obama sent troops into Syria. After Russia intervened in 2015 to prop up Assad and his Iranian backers, who were at that point losing the war, ISIS and most of the other rebel forces were crushed. But the YPG, later dubbed the “Syrian Democratic Forces,” survived with U.S. protection to claim and control the northeastern quarter of Syria. With the Trump withdrawal, the YPG’s future is in doubt. The same can be said of millions of Kurdish civilians, who historically have been the victims of racist violence in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey.

The Trump withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria is ratcheting up the fight between the Big Fascist and Small Fascist U.S. ruling class factions. The Big Fascist liberal bosses’ move to impeach and discipline Trump and his ilk is continuing to expose the weaknesses in the institutions of the capitalist state. Trump is being further unmasked as a self-serving opportunist who has cut a deal to serve his Small Fascist masters, as well as himself. Segregationist architect of mass incarceration Joe Biden is also being exposed as being personally corrupt, as his son Hunter has been given free rein to cash in on the family name.
The in-fighting is lifting the curtain from the bosses’ institutions. Both sides are laying bare the cynical blackmailing and leveraging that goes on behind the scenes every day. No U.S. president going forward will be able to lead unencumbered by skepticism about personal corruption and being owned by one set of bosses or the other. As the house of the U.S. ruling class is being engulfed in escalating battles between fascist factions, our class’ way forward is to advance in the face of fear and reject whatever bribes or false hopes are offered by either section of these murderers. We must fight for communist revolution and workers’ power.
The damage to the rulers’ image caused by impeachment speaks to the desperation of the Big Fascist liberal bosses to regain control of the presidency. Over the last 70 years, tremendous power has been concentrated in the White House. The Trump presidency has amounted to a sustained assault on the institutions—the CIA, NATO, the UN—holding up a U.S.-imperialist-led world order that has been in place since the end of World War II. Over that entire period, the power concentrated in the White House has only grown, making it the grand prize of U.S. ruling class power. The U.S. ruling class has become the most powerful and deadly in history in the ecosystem of these institutions.  
This situation served the big fascists well when they had more complete control of the system. More recently, the big fascist liberal bosses saw a stronger president as a way to control the small fascist domestic bosses. A move in that direction, buried in the Hart-Rudman report (2001), was a proposal to undercut the power of the House of Representatives, where the Small Fascists had won control of many districts, with the formation of a national steering committee made up of the president and the leadership of the House and Senate.
As the Small Fascists gained strength and took control of the Senate, the Big Fascists saw the presidency as their line in the sand. In 2016, in anticipation of Hillary Clinton getting elected, the major liberal academic expert on the U.S. presidency, University of Chicago’s William Howell, called for more power to the office: “Yes [the president should have more power]…because …Congress channels short term local interests” (U of Chicago Big Brains podcast, ep. 27).
Now, with the Small Fascists in control of the White House, Howell, and the rest of the Big Fascists who back him, have changed their tune, saying:
“There are some powers that the president…has…that should be curtailed…The president’s ability to politicize the Justice Department is deeply problematic. The president’s pardon power is deeply problematic, and the president’s unilateral powers are a mixed bag” (U of Chicago Big Brains podcast, ep. 27).
Liberal patriotism is a cover for growing fascism
The Big Fascist liberal bosses know they may be biting off their nose to spite their face by tearing down the institution. “Democrats may regret…wounding the presidency when Mr. Trump’s successors grapple with the rise of China as a global power, Russia’s revanchism [Ed.–retaliation to regain lost territory], Iran’s quest for regional hegemony and North Korea’s nuclear proliferation” (NY Times, 9/24).
If the Big Fascists can regain the White House, they may try to remake the institution. Don’t be surprised if they move towards the Hart-Rudman proposed gang of fascists-at-the-top model or some other revamping to cement their hold on power.
The inability of the Big Fascist liberal bosses to be assured control of the White House and the delegitimizing of the presidency is a major setback for this fascist faction. Historically, the U.S. bosses have relied on the president to be the face of the ruling class in sending the working class to kill and die for the bosses’ interests. More and bigger wars are on the horizon as the bosses in China and Russia press U.S. imperialism around the globe. An illegitimate president poses huge political problems for the bosses.
To rebuild confidence in their decrepit capitalist system, the Big Fascists are trying to use the liberal movements they lead to incite the fascist slogan: “country first.” But falling for their promise of unity across class lines with the Big Fascist liberals will be devastating for the working class around the world. Our slogan must now and forever be: “power to the working class, fight for communism.”

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Big Fascists in Action – U.S. Immigration Policy

Big Fascists are the liberal/imperialist/finance capital wing of the U.S. ruling class. Their plan is to usher in a broader and more devastating multicultural fascism, to discipline their enemies in the ruling class, and attack the working class in preparation for wider wars against their imperialist rivals.  
Immigration is just one window into how dangerous the Big Fascists are. When a fascistic surveillance machinery system called SBI (Secure Border Initiative) was deployed in the Tuscon, Arizona area from 2006 to 2011, migrants were funneled into steep desert terrain that made the area southwest of Tuscon a ‘land of open graves’ with over 1,200 working class migrants perishing over the period SBINet was in place (thehill.com, 2/11/19). Today’s Democrats, while posing as pro-immigrant in contrast to Trump’s border wall, have supported proposals for a similar ‘smart-border’ wall that will “combine remote sensors, integrated fixed towers, drones and other intelligence assets” and “create a technological barrier too high to climb over, too wide to go around and too deep to burrow under,” in the words of Rep. James Clyburn, the #3 Democrat.
Real-ID is another example of the Big Fascism of the liberal, finance capital-led wing of the U.S. ruling class. Liberal-led mass organizations have pushed hard for undocumented workers to have government-issued ID in sanctuary cities. In 12 states and Washington, D.C., the undocumented have been granted driver’s licenses. Now it turns out that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is using this documentation to gather intelligence for raids in Washington State (NYT, 10/3/19). Soon everyone who wants to fly on a plane must have some sort of nationally-approved ‘Real-ID.’ As well-meaning workers in the mass movement fought for the ‘right’ of ‘ID for all,’ the Big Fascists are lining up all of society for a government-issued standard form of identification that denotes one’s immigration status.
Trump has built a mass racist anti-immigrant movement. To call it “small fascist” does not diminish its danger to our class. Meanwhile, the Big Fascists are mobilizing the anti-racist, pro-worker aspirations of the anti-Trump forces into a movement that will attack workers with even more dangerous assaults than Trump has yet been able to muster. Workers are being given two options, both fascist. PLP’s job is to offer a third—communist revolution.

CHICAGO, October 23—The Chicago Public School education workers, numbering 30,000, are on strike against racist learning conditions affecting over 300,000 students, the majority of which are Black and Latin. A multiracial and inter-generational mix of education workers and supporters held daily pickets, rallies, marches, and teach-ins. This shows the potential of working-class unity and strength in one of the most segregated cities in the U.S.
We are learning to fight against capitalist racist schools and fighting to learn how only a communist education can provide a quality education for students. This bold antiracist fight is in constant risk of being sold out. Like all reforms, the struggle is compromised when the working class trusts bosses and union misleaders who ultimately serve the system.
Class struggle in session
Education workers launched the strike on October 17. Teachers remixed popular songs like Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts” to fit the contract fight. At one school, teachers did a flash mob to block traffic. Facebook has been overflowing videos from pickets showcasing working-class creativity. Still, others led marches through neighborhoods to spread class consciousness. Workers from other unions and community organizations joined the actions and added their own character to the pickets.
Student-parent-worker unity
The strike galvanized young teachers and inspired veteran and retired educators to continue fighting. At a solidarity rally, a young Progressive Labor Party (PLP) teacher blasted the racist attacks in education on Black students and educators through defunding and continued school closings.  
There has been immense support from students, parents and other workers in the city. The bosses tried to drive a wedge between teachers and parents, but failed. Students and parents have been on the picket-line unapologetically standing with teachers. At the schools where PL’ers have been organizing, we helped with door-knocking and community outreach. It was essential for the strike to continue building mass support among education workers, parents, and students.
Communists from the international Progressive Labor Party (PLP) brought solidarity to strikers. Strikes can be schools for communism and demonstrate the potential power of the working class. We are actively working within the strike, seeking to push the limits beyond the reform goals. We fight for the line that a worthy education for the masses is a pipe dream under this racist profit system.
Smash racism and limits of union reformism
At its heart, the strike is an antiracist movement against despicable racist conditions that  are the norm within schools under capitalism. A racist law passed in 1995 severely limited what teachers in Chicago could strike over.
But, as a result of fightback (against police terror, deportations, and gentrification), the struggle to improve conditions in the schools has expanded beyond just economic demands. The demands reflect the idea that the teacher’s working conditions are students’ learning conditions—staffing of social workers and nurses, smaller class sizes, a path to affordable stable homes for thousands of students, and more.
The liberal trap
No matter how well-intended these demands, the bosses will not protect working-class students. Democrats and Republicans have both waged war on undocumented students and workers through mass detention and deportations. And with Chicago’s move to become a “global city” (read: resegregation and gentrification), more displacement of Black and Latin workers is sure to follow (The Atlantic, 3/28/18).
The contract must be understood within this context: the liberal mayor Lori Lightfoot is already celebrating $250 million dollars of “transformative change” that will be coming to exploited communities on the South and West sides (Chicago Sun Times, 10/22).
Neither the racist mayor Lightfoot nor the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) leadership will ensure antiracist learning conditions for students. Such is the nature of capitalist institutions. Rather, the union leadership will accept some minor reforms, then funnel the rank-and-file back into the classroom. The union bosses will continue to lead workers into the camp of the pro-capitalist liberal misleaders like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Jesse Jackson.
Nothing fair under capitalism
The rallies call for a “fair contract,” but nothing is fair under capitalism. The term “fair contract” hides the inherent exploitation and predatory nature of capitalism. By definition, workers cannot keep the true value of their labour. Without wage theft, there is no profit for the bosses. This profit system is the foundation of education for our working-class children.
Yet the struggle for a new union contract is pushed by the union misleadership as the pinnacle of fightback. Never mind that bosses will violate any contract when it suits them, because they hold state power (and use the police, media, courts, and military to exert that power).
If the contract is violated, what is the union misleadership to do? Push past the limits the bosses have set or push workers into legal arbitration? They will assure us our issues will be addressed in the next fight. Workers are then disarmed of their potential militancy and the capitalist reform treadmill goes on.
Fight to learn, learn to fight
History shows advances in education for the masses was made in revolutionary periods with communists and workers in charge. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet Union transformed a largely illiterate agrarian society to an advanced industrialized nation within the span of a generation. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, the world witnessed the largest literacy campaign in human history. Millions of young students travelled from the cities to the countryside to break down barriers between manual and mental labor.
It’s this revolutionary legacy that the communist PLP seeks to learn from and build upon. Workers, students, parents—join our international fight. Fight to learn, learn to fight!

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MARYLAND—Ten cops from three jurisdictions surrounded and murdered Leonard Shand, a 49-year old Black worker on September 26.  Despite years of struggle against racist police terror (which led to two separate Department of Justice civil rights consent decrees directed at the police department), the County continues to be another glaring racist failure of capitalism.
While the Black and white liberal misleaders tried to whitewash the racist actions of the police, members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) called for these killer cops to be convicted for murder. Antiracists at the meeting agreed with this idea.
What does justice for Leonard look like? It looks like revolution, because a vicious system of racist repression won’t stop until the working class makes a revolution to abolish this capitalist system. Police in a capitalist society have a job to do: protect the bosses’ private property and power by terrorizing and dividing the working class through daily racist intimidation and violence. Leonard Shand is the latest target of this state terror. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is similarly used as an intimidating force against immigrant workers. PLP will continue to be in the forefront of every battle against brutality and intimidation by the police and ICE, while always pointing to the need for multi-racial, anti-racist, communist revolution to end such oppression permanently.
Vigil, conviction, and revolution
Forty protesters and family held a vigil where the kkkops gunned down Leonard Shand. The police murder and the whitewash was already underway: the police department that committed the crime will be in charge of conducting an investigation.PLP distributed CHALLENGE and the flyer condemning the racist murder. We also made connections with protesters, thus expanding the base for revolution against the racist capitalist system.The next steps in this fight are to intensify the campaign to convict these cops for murder and recruit more fighters into the struggle for communist revolution.
City’s hypocrisy reveals the failure of identity politics
The police are continuing an intense public relations campaign to protect the killer cops. Henry Stawinski, Prince George’s County Police Chief, publicly complimented the officers for their “wisdom” and “correct procedure.” Hyattsville Mayor Candace B. Hollingsworth and Police Chief Amal Awad—both Black, women, and pro-capitalist misleaders—tried to create a false narrative that the police acted appropriately at the community meeting, justifying the cops’ murderous actions.
This exposes the failure of identity politics. One might be hesitant to criticize these liberal misleaders because they are Black women. But the mayor and chief’s justification of this racist murder prove that multiracial capitalist apologists are still capitalists. The working class needs Black women leaders for communist revolution, not capitalism. Many appreciated the PLP flyer that verbally confronted the mayor and police chief over their efforts to whitewash the cops’ actions.
A second vigil and rally will be held on October 25, and the movement to demand justice in this case will continue. As our comrades in Baltimore declare at the West Wednesday rallies, “We won’t stop, can’t stop, until killer cops are in cell blocks!” And that day will arrive when the working class seizes power and abolishes the reign of capitalism.