The economic and political crisis is rapidly intensifying in the resource-rich nation of Venezuela. As workers starve or die for lack of basic medical care, battle lines have been drawn between blocs of rival imperialists. The possibilities range from a CIA-inspired coup, to an all-out proxy war to a U.S. military intervention.  
On January 23, Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader and head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, declared himself interim president in open defiance of last spring’s contested national elections. His move was supported by the U.S. bosses and their allies in Latin America and Europe. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro shot back with a demand that all U.S. diplomats leave the country within 72 hours. Maduro has the backing of U.S. rivals Russia, China, and Iran.
It is the international working class that stands to suffer most from the capitalists’ power struggles. As workers, we have nothing to gain from either the imperialist bosses and puppets like Guaidó, or fake-left bosses like Maduro and his phony “socialist” predecessor, Hugo Chavez. Our path to liberation lies in building a mass Progressive Labor Party and international Red Army, to crush the profit-hungry capitalists with communist revolution!
U.S. imperialists eye an opportunity
With the rise of Guaidó and mass opposition to the corrupt and disastrous Maduro regime, the U.S. capitalist class sees a golden opportunity to take control of Venezuela’s vast natural resource wealth. The country’s Orinoco Belt region is home to the world’s largest proven oil reserves, with estimates of close to 300 billion barrels (Telesur, 1/28).
Petroleum is the lifeblood of industrial capitalism. Control over the flow of oil and gas is essential for global imperialist domination. Since Guaidó’s announcement, U.S. President Donald Trump, along with National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have thrown their weight behind Guaidó. They’re trying to use the crisis to tip the country in favor of U.S. imperialism.
To that end, the U.S. offered $20 million in “humanitarian” aid—a drop in the bucket in a country where people lost an average of 25 pounds of body weight in the space of a year  and nearly 90 percent live in poverty (borgenproject.org). The Trump administration also imposed new sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, with the intention of funneling billions of dollars in oil revenue away from the Maduro government (Washington Post, 1/28). If these measures prove inadequate in forcing regime change, Bolton has echoed Trump’s stance that “all options are on the table,” including U.S. troop deployment (The Telegraph, 1/29).
The call to oust Maduro is a bipartisan affair, a rare moment of unity for the divided U.S. ruling class. Democrats have upped the ante by pushing bills through Congress to undermine Maduro’s rule (CBS News, 1/31). But the fact that Maduro is still hanging on to power—at least as CHALLENGE goes to press—exposes the accelerating decline of U.S. imperialism.
Chinese, Russian imperialists won’t be easily uprooted
The significance of the U.S. rulers’ push for regime change has not been lost on their two imperialist arch-rivals, China and Russia, who have long targeted Venezuela to expand their influence in Latin America. Both countries are formally objecting to U.S. sanctions. It is important to note, however, that the well-being of workers in Venezuela doesn’t factor into these complaints.
The Russian bosses recently have enlarged their footprint in Venezuela. Over the last few years, they have lent the Maduro government $17 billion, and the two nations held joint military drills as recently as December 2018 (msn.com, 1/26). In response to the 2014 U.S. destabilization of Ukraine, a nation on their own border, Russian imperialists are digging in to keep Venezuela as their military beachhead in Latin America, historically the U.S. imperialists’ backyard.
Between 2007 and 2014, China supplied $63 billion in loans to Venezuela, or 53 percent of all Chinese loans to Latin America for that period. To ensure repayment from the cash-strapped country, the Chinese bosses insisted on being reimbursed with oil (Foreign Policy, 6/6/17). They understand that a pro-U.S. Guaidó regime could disrupt both their oil supply and their strategic regional influence. To defend their stake, they have increased arms sales to Maduro to help his military and police death squads crack down on internal dissent (Al Jazeera, 1/30). At the same time, China’s Foreign Ministry issued a public statement that notably refused to take sides. If Maduro goes under, China would need “to cultivate a relationship with [Guaidó] that preserves its economic interests” (New York Times, 2/4).There is no loyalty among capitalist thieves. Even so, the clash of interests of the three top imperialist powers could set off a bloody proxy war that would threaten millions of working-class lives.
Compromises with capitalism always fail the working class
For workers, everyday life is a crisis in Venezuela. An estimated 2 million people have fled the country since 2015, nearly 5,000 per day (The Guardian, 10/1/18). Millions more are facing acute shortages of medicine and food, skyrocketing inflation rates, and a brutal crackdown on protests.
The experiment with a fake-socialist welfare state in Venezuela, piloted first by Hugo Chavez, was doomed to fail workers from the start. Chavez bankrolled a considerable expansion of the social safety net by exploiting the country’s massive oil wealth while also skimming off billions for his “Bolivarian” bosses. But shortly after his death in 2013, as the price of oil plummeted, the safety net was ripped to shreds. What remains is an intensely nationalist and impoverished military state under the murderous rule of Maduro and his drug-trafficking cronies (New York Times, 7/15/18).
Workers never held state power in Venezuela. They never controlled the means of production. A mass communist party must destroy the profit system through armed revolution, and build an egalitarian society based on production for workers’ needs. We can never make that happen by electing fake-leftist misleaders beholden to capitalist interests, in Venezuela or the U.S. or anywhere else.
A communist world to win
PLP calls on the international working class to undertake our own path to power. We call on workers to reject stooges like Guaidó and Maduro and their imperialist masters, and to fight instead for communist revolution. As contradictions between the bosses heat up and erupt in open conflict, the need for a mass international PLP and Red Army becomes all the more essential. It is the only road out of this capitalist hell.
Workers of the world, unite! We have a world to win, and nothing to lose but our chains.

NEW YORK CITY, January 21—“Whose streets? Our streets! Whose city? Our city!” On Martin Luther King Day, these fierce chants set the icy streets ablaze as a multiracial and multi-generational battalion of nearly three hundred workers marching against working-class displacement. This rally exposed that under capitalism, housing is a commodity, not a basic necessity.
The march was a result of the anger of workers across the city, and the tireless anti-displacement organizing the Coalition to Protect Chinatown, and the City Wide Alliance against Displacement. Workers poured in from Staten Island to Philly to protest the city’s racist capitulating to real estate developers—pricing out mainly Black and Latin workers from their homes. A contingent from the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined the march, and was inspired by the militant show of multiracial unity, and working-class women leadership. In spite of this being on record as one of the coldest days in January, the working class in NYC was unstoppable on this day.
Capitalism puts profits over workers’ needs
Since his 2013 election, liberal de Blasio has bent over backwards for developers—the same ones who funded his 2017 reelection campaign—granting them sweetheart tax abatements to build giant skyscrapers. In turn, they’re supposed to must set aside some units as “affordable” housing.
The reality is that when the bosses determine what is affordable, these apartments aren’t actually affordable for many working-class people. Under capitalism, housing isn’t a human right. Rather, it’s a commodity, one the ruling class has a tight grip on, and heavily regulates, choosing profit over workers’ lives. We see this playing out in NYCHA  (New York City Housing Authority) with residents living in deplorable conditions such as decrepit apartments, toxic lead in their water, no heat. Similarly, there are more homeless youth in the city than people living in Albany (NY Times 10/18).
A mayor for the bosses
Yet our “progressive” mayor has time to offer Amazon a $3 billion tax break to expand its global empire by building their headquarters in Long Island City, another clear testament to the fact that de Blasio is merely a servant to ruling class interests Some progressive! Workers know better, as reflected in one sign with a photo of de Blasio and Trump side by side boldly reading “De Blasio and Trump two sides of the same coin.” Those contradictions quelled up the anger in our bodies, warming us as we headed downtown. Truly, this system has nothing for us to look forward to, except to smash it!
City Planning Commission; stooges for the bosses
In December, the City Planning Commission approved four luxury towers for the Lower East Side area, which initially triggered the march. The commission ignored standing zoning laws forbidding such developments in the area—ones that will interfere with local privacy, sunlight, and traffic. Not so coincidentally, many CPC members receive money from real estate interests, just like their ringleader. Members at the mass organization are realizing how spineless and sniveling these politicians and planners are, and that they only see the dollar signs.
One Latin worker mentioned how we were standing directly under the Extell tower, another ugly glass box, with a “poor door”(a seperate entrance for low-income workers). She laid out clearly another key demand: “No towers! No compromise!” She emphasized that de Blasio and Trump are two sides of the same capitalist coin by saying that while Trump wants to build a wall to keep workers from Latin America out, de Blasio wants to build towers to force workers out of their homes and neighborhood. The young comrade went on to chant this slogan that while Immigration and Customs Enforcement deports workers, de Blasio displaces workers in this so called “sanctuary city.”
Later, a young Asian worker delivered a rousing speech about the lawsuit the community filed to stop the illegal towers, and how it would serve as the ultimate push for the Chinatown Working Group Plan (CWG). The CWG plan, once dismissed by the mayor as too ambitious, was a plan created by workers in the Lower East Side and Chinatown that would create protections against rezoning, and would allow working people in their community to control what gets built, and for whom.
De Blasio, kkkops try to shut us down
Days before the march, the City tried shutting us down by saying we could only use the sidewalk because we would be blocking bus lanes. That only increased our determination. De Blasio’s goons in blue, the NYPD, were out in aggressive full force, trying to intimidate us and saying being off the street is for our safety. These kkkops pretend they care for our well being, yet they’re going into our neighborhoods, murdering Black youth with impunity. They threatened to arrest some of us for inciting a riot, yet the only ones being violent were the cops. We eventually outflanked them and briefly took the streets to spread our message! Police are an essential part of the city’s displacement agenda. While de Blasio passes policy, his thugs are out here enforcing it.
One year anniversary of Bowery’ tenants struggle
The march came around a year to the day that the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development unjustly evicted over 70 Asian tenants at 80-85 Bowery, all because their slumlord needed to make repairs he’d lagged on for years. It was a blatant effort to transform their homes into luxury condos. The Coalition united with these workers against the racist slumlord and the City, beating both back with mass actions and class struggle, until they were able to return to their homes last August. It is clear these efforts to displace us are connected. And they won’t stop until we end them permanently. Though a reform struggle, it enables us workers to push back against the ruling class, showing us what we are capable of accomplishing, sharpening us to become vehicles for class struggle. We have a lot more work to do, and a world to win! Our working class brothers and sisters leading the way towards communist revolution.

NEWARK, NJ January 29—With three days of rallies on the steps of City Hall organized by the War Against Poverty Coalition (WAPC), the fight-back against mass homelessness in Newark has picked up!. These rallies demanded an end to homelessness, gentrification and racist unemployment. They came on the brink of an arctic blast of cold air and on the anniversary of the death of Carolyn Perry, a disabled Black worker who froze to death four years ago in a tent city in Newark. Even as we fight to save lives in the middle of this deep freeze, we must remember that capitalism has its fingerprints all over the crime scene surrounding our brothers and sisters who have died as the direct result of racism and poverty.  
The capitalist system we live under dictates that the very things that people need to survive--food, housing, heat, hot water, etc.—must be sold as a commodity, so that some boss makes a profit. This forces unemployed and low-wage employed workers who cannot afford living space to double up in apartments, live in shelters, camp out in tents, or sleep in bus and train stations, even while billionaires live in huge mansions. Only a communist revolution would change that dynamic. Our revolution would ensure that everything produced by the working class, including all decent housing, would be taken over and distributed according to need.
Newark “redevelopment”—no renaissance for workers
As in many industrial centers in the Northeast and Midwest, Newark became a predominantly Black and Latin city in the 1960s as more and more bosses closed or moved their factories and shops down south or to other countries. Residents were left with the social consequences of mass racist unemployment--poverty, drug use, mental health problems, crime, etc. In the 1980s, under the guise of a “renaissance” for city residents, the biggest corporations, led by Prudential Insurance Company, devised a plan to slowly gentrify Newark’s Downtown District. With the help of local and state politicians, who approved massive tax abatements and tax credits to spur “redevelopment,” Prudential’s plans have largely been implemented. Rents in the areas in and around Downtown have soared. This has, of course, resulted in more and more mainly Black and Latin workers being put out on the streets.
Politicians’ failures trigger fightback
“Rising rents, tax abatements; we won’t accept our displacement.” With these words, the WAPC rallies linked the gentrification of Downtown Newark to the increasing homelessness on its main streets and at Penn Station, the local bus and train terminal. City-funded shelters simply can’t accommodate hundreds who are in need. One WAPC brother went to Penn Station during early morning hours and took pictures of scores of homeless workers sleeping on the floor of the station behind bright red barricades put up by transit cops, in stairwells or on passenger benches. WAPC enlarged the pictures and taped them on poster-board. WAPC held up these and other signs as residents passed by City Hall.
 Numerous residents expressed their support for the cause. Several WAPC members were activated through the struggle to make all 3 rallies happen. Several other workers signed up to join the fight against homelessness and racist gentrification.
Within WAPC, there are still many illusions about relying on politicians to change things, and about reform plans promising “affordable housing for all.” Capitalism can never provide housing based upon need for more than a tiny section of the working class. Competition for available housing underlies the profit plans of developers, investors and bankers. PLP members will continue to work in WAPC to bring our ideas to this battle for our class brothers and sisters.

BROOKLYN, NY, January 23— After months of asking, prodding, and at last threatening disciplinary action, the City University of New York’s (CUNY) interrogation squad finally got an anti-racist professor into a room to grill him!
As CHALLENGE has been reporting since last spring, a multiracial group of students,and staff  at Kingsborough Community College (KCC) produced and began distributing leaflets calling for the termination of a racist administrator, Michael Goldstein. Members of the communist Progressive Labor Party struggled over and received a positive response to the militant anti-racist position of “no free speech for racists!”
Led by mostly immigrant women students, along with Black and white students, workers and faculty, the struggle quickly grew to dozens of students. These students reached hundreds more, distributing over 1,500 leaflets and hundreds of CHALLENGE newspapers calling for racist Goldstein’s termination.
Instead of investigating racist Goldstein, CUNY’s Public Safety bosses decided to try intimidating faculty they suspect took part in the campaign. The cops sent these faculty certified letters requesting them to appear so they could “fish” for information. Following the bad advice of their union representatives, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), several professors appeared. The cops used campus video surveillance to identify an antiracist professor they were certain was involved, and compelled him to appear.
Turning danger into opportunity
This professor rejected the passive, legalistic, strategy counseled by the PSC. Instead, bold and militant plans were made to continue organizing mass struggle, defend both the leaflet and the campaign against Goldstein, defy the interrogators, and challenge them to investigate the racists.
This struggle provided many opportunities for PLers to expose the racist, pro-capitalist class nature of both KCC and of CUNY in our student PLP study groups. We also made a plan to collaborate on a new leaflet, and distribute it on the day of the interrogation.
At the interrogation, the professor came with an anti-racist faculty member as a witness, instead of a PSC representative. “What caused you to attack [Goldstein] with these leaflets?” the investigators asked. The professor answered simply: “Racists should not be working at our school.” He explained that while he was not involved in the leaflet’s production, he supports this struggle, and will always support exposing racists.
Students: potential revolutionary force
The interrogators brought up the notion of “free speech”and a “free and fair exchange of ideas.” A small group of so-called progressive or left faculty at the school argue in favor of this view as well. Students, workers and many faculty, however, generally agree with us. No free speech for racists!
How can a classroom of immigrant and Black students be fair and equitable if faculty or administrators feel free to express racist ideas against these students? A few of these fake leftist professors also have the racist view that when students fight back, they don’t understand what they are doing. They are being used. But students understand racism better than many professors because it directly affects their lives.
Yet in practice, these same liberal faculty often fail to follow their own cherished idealism. After students and staff attacked racist Goldstein for his hateful views against immigrant, Muslim, Black, Latin, and LGBT workers, the anti-racist faculty were criticized by some of these liberal faculty. Some even asked this anti-racist professor to step down from a union leadership position. As it turned out, some other faculty were inspired by this anti racist struggle. Because of these anti-racists, the effort failed.
There is irony in this experience. Liberal “left” faculty, in their actions, supported the rights of the racist to express his views, but then worked to limit anti-racist views.  A couple of “leaders of the left” on campus even asked the antiracist faculty to turn themselves in to the police. The students were outraged when they found out this had been said by the same faculty who claim to support them.
In the PLP study groups, we discuss how liberal ideas often end up attacking militant anti-racism. These events underline the importance of expanding our CHALLENGE networks even further beyond the mass of students and staff who read it regularly,and struggling to continue expanding revolutionary communist ideas.
Gear up for spring and May Day!
A dozen students and faculty waited an hour and a half to hear a report from the interrogation. Our spirits were high and our determination to continue the fight against racism was strengthened. Being attacked for fighting racism is a good thing. With every step we’ve taken, our sisters and brothers have responded with friendship and comradeship. We’re gaining the confidence that many workers and students support this fight, and some are joining us. This coming spring semester we’re enlisting every one of our new comrades and friends to continue our mass anti-racist struggle, and build for May Day