Declaring “victory” against ISIS, U.S. President Donald Trump recently and suddenly announced the withdrawal of all 2,200 U.S. troops from Syria and half of the 14,000 in Afghanistan. In reality, U.S. imperialism is losing ground to Russian imperialism in Syria, and also opening the door to regional enemy Iran and its client Shiite militias there (foreignaffairs.com, 1/8). Pronounced splits among the U.S. bosses are sharpening as their empire crumbles.
Meanwhile, the outraged opposition to Trump’s planned pullout among fake leftist and liberal Democratic Party politicians has exposed them as dedicated servants of finance capital, the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, which is led by the likes of ExxonMobil, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup.
This main capitalist wing’s commitment to perpetual—and genocidal—war in the Middle East and South Asia is strategically opposed by a more domestically oriented, “Fortress America” wing, led by the Koch, Mercer, and Adelson families. The main wing, with trillions of dollars and an empire at stake in the oil and gas fields of the Middle East, favors keeping a small military presence there while regrouping the U.S. military for the bigger war looming with China and Russia. The domestic wing would prefer to disinvest in land forces and rely on mass-murdering airstrikes to defend their narrower sphere of interest.
Finance capital still has the upper hand. Nearly three weeks after Trump’s “astonishing reversal of U.S. policy” (foreignaffairs.com, 1/8), John Bolton, the national security advisor, effectively overruled his boss by “laying out conditions for a pullout that could leave American forces there for months or even years” (New York Times, 1/6). Bolton got his start in the 1980s with the U.S. Agency for International Development, an acknowledged CIA front (NYT, 4/15/14). Though he has ties to right-wingers in the domestic wing, and like Trump distrusts Europe and multilateral alliances, he was a prominent interventionist in the two main-wing Bush administrations.
The international revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party is the only party that represents the interests of the international working class. PLP is the workers’ only hope to smash this rotten, criminal, capitalist system. As long as the profit system exists, oil will be indispensable to imperialist warfare. Oil will continue to make the Middle East a killing field. From the 12 million refugees driven from their homes in Syria, to the slaughterhouse of Yemen, where the U.S. has helped the Saudi royal thugs starve nearly a hundred thousand children to death (NYT, 11/21/18), the necessity of building this movement is more urgent than ever.
Middle East, South Asia still crucial to U.S. imperialists
Since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, U.S.-instigated wars have killed over a million people (NYT, 4/13/2018). This doesn’t include previous U.S. conflicts in the region, or the 500,000 children in Iraq murdered by Democrat Bill Clinton’s genocidal sanctions and bombings in the 1990s.
By 2008, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan became bloody stalemates, the economic crisis in the U.S. constrained U.S. imperialism. The Russian bosses’ expanded naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean, anchored by their base at the Syrian port of  Tartus, prompted the U.S. under Democrat Barack Obama to ramp up covert funding of “pro-democracy” groups. In 2011, when the U.S. capitalist-financed Arab Spring led to mass demonstrations, the U.S. was ready to exploit the unrest. CIA-connected members of Syria’s military formed the so-called Free Syrian Army (International Business Times, 6/26/15).
Obama ordered the CIA directly into Syria in 2013, supported by U.S. bombs. Russian proxies Iran and Hezbollah entered in 2015, backed by Russian bombs (Al Jazeera, 4/14/18). Both imperialist powers have backed proxy wars for profit under the guise of “fighting terrorism” and ISIS. Yet as brutal and backwards as the ISIS terrorists are, they can’t hold a candle to the big terrorists U.S. and Russian imperialists.
Trump announced U.S. troop withdrawal would hand Russia’s rulers a big victory. Whether Trump follows through or not, it’s certain the U.S. bosses will continue slaughtering workers to maintain some level of control over the region’s vast oil fields and strategic location.
Fake left hypocrisy
The main-wing capitalists’ mouthpiece, the New York Times, has provided daily roll calls of outraged Democrats slamming Trump’s push to withdraw. Its editorial board has repeatedly voiced concern for “protecting the nation,” slamming Trump for “ceding a strategically vital country to Iran and Russia” and “a gift to Vladimir Putin” (NYT, 12/19/18 and 12/27/18).
The Democrats are at present the main wing’s most reliable servants and defenders of U.S. imperialism. From 2016 to 2018, as the minority party in the House of Representatives, they voted two-to-one to give the military even more money than Trump requested (Forbes, 6/20/18). Echoing the U.S. rulers’ talking points, the Democrats’ self-styled “resistance heroine,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, attacked Trump’s withdrawal as “premature” and promised Congressional review of the decision “to ensure that the president’s decisions advance our national security interests” (Independent, 12/20/18).
Pro-Wall Street Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat in Congress, has never seen a war she didn’t like. She has supported every U.S. military action since her election in 1987, and secretly supported torture after September 11, 2001 (NYT, 5/14/09; CNN, 11/25/09).
Meanwhile, the silence has been deafening from the newly-elected “democratic socialist” members of Congress, like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. All three kissed the ring of arch-imperialist Pelosi, voting for her return as House Speaker.
Many workers are hoping for working class leadership to emerge from some of these newly elected politicians. But betting on any of these misleaders as a “lesser evil” than the gutter racist, sexist Trump would be a lethal mistake.
U.S. imperialism needs more fascism
As erratic and undisciplined as Trump is, he has successfully consolidated a white supremacist base around the domestic capitalist wing. When his surprise withdrawal announcement was followed by more high-profile resignations, including that of main-wing stalwart Jim Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, it signaled that the fighting between these two factions is intensifying on the road to fascism.
For workers in the U.S., fascism will mean even lower living standards and heightened racist, sexist, and nationalist attacks to pay for World War III. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, the main wing’s most prominent think tank, predicted that the next major U.S. war would begin in Iran: “Syria could see increased fighting…[possibly] Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey….Things, when they happen in the Middle East, have a way of spreading around the world” (MSNBC, 12/27/18).
Smash imperialism with communism
As the world’s bosses plot for war to protect their treasure, PLP offers another solution to the international working class: communism. Workers, students and soldiers around the world have no interest in choosing one set of capitalist misleaders and terrorists over another.
We have every interest in building an international Red Army of millions to smash this racist, genocidal profit system and the racist borders the imperialists draw to keep us divided. Capitalism can offer only the miseries of fascism and imperialist war for our class. Communism means abolishing capitalism. With nothing to lose, and a whole world to gain: Will you join us?

LOS ANGELES, January 9—Thousands of education workers are preparing for a strike! Progressive Labor Party is preparing to bring communist solidarity to the picket lines. These strikes can be schools for class-conscious ideas and practices.As CHALLENGE goes to press, the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union has postponed the strike from tomorrow to Monday because of “uncertainty over whether a judge could order the union to wait” (Los Angeles Times, 1/9). The union was hoping for a negotiated settlement, making the legal jockeying and courtroom glitches irrelevant.   
 While the union, courts, and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) battles out its paperwork, it’s in every worker’s interest to go on strike! The workers want higher pay, smaller class sizes, and more nurses, counselors, and librarians to create fully staffed schools (LA Times, 1/9). They also want more of a say in how charter schools share campuses, a demand the UTLA has abandoned.
To prepare, 50,000 teachers, school workers, students, parents and community groups marched “to defend public education” in mid December. The march came after 18 months of failed contract negotiations for the teachers of LAUSD, the second largest school district in the country. Teachers are fed up with the working conditions they are facing and students are fed up with their learning conditions: overcrowded class sizes, lack of resources, unnecessary testing, public funds being siphoned into private charter companies, and low pay. Many believe a strike is imminent.
Student-worker unity
One student spoke, “Let me start by saying how angry I am with Superintendent Beutner. He hasn’t done anything to reduce our overcrowded class sizes…He hasn’t done anything to end the racist random search policy of taking me and my friends out of class to search us every day. Just to be clear, he takes kids out of class starting in the 6th grade to search them for weapons…  He doesn’t have any of our interests at heart…If you all have to go on strike for these issues, students will be with you!”When the students are on the side of workers, that level of unity cannot be underestimated.
Superintendent  Beutner, a classic capitalist criminal. The Superintendent of LAUSD, Austin Beutner, is certainly a politician with ties to the charter school companies. He’s been a donor to local charter schools and has touted their successes (LA Times 10/18/18). He’s recently hired private consultants with shady backgrounds, such as the lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs, which represented former Trump adviser (and convicted felon) Paul Manafort, helped Flint, Michigan spin its poisoned water crisis, and advised Walmart on anti-union campaigns (Reclaim Our Schools, LA 11/18/18).
Billionaire charter-school advocate Eli Broad was once a business associate of Austin Beutner and contributed $3 million dollars to LAUSD as a “vote of confidence” in him when he was hired. Their connection includes Broad’s failed attempt to take over both the LA Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2016, after which Beutner was let go as publisher and CEO of both newspapers (San Diego Reader, 2/16/18).
Main problem: racist learning conditions
The main problem in the schools remains the racist learning conditions of students. Overcrowded classrooms and racist policies have plagued public education for generations. Getting rid of one superintendent, politician or CEO will not change that. Though a strike does not change the nature of capitalism, it builds our working-class muscles to smash this system and build a worker-run society.  
Education under capitalism is determined by the needs of the ruling class. They also train the next generation of workers with a prison-like environment and work-like conditions: long hours, discipline, reprimanding, and a hierarchical structure.Only by changing the system itself can we create proper learning environments that serve the interests of the working class and our children.
Strike for workers’ power
Strikes, however, can teach very useful lessons to our class. Strikes show the bosses and show us the power we have as a united working class. Strikes show us that the bosses need us, but we do not need the bosses. When the teachers of Los Angeles strike, they will join many courageous education workers throughout the country who have done the same in recent years. About five percent of all teachers in K-12 schools in the United States have walked off the job so far in 2018, the most since 1992. The stoppages include walkouts in Washington state, North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Kentucky (Washington Examiner 10/18/18). This is a sign of an upsurge in working class fight back throughout the country, not to mention similar fight backs throughout the world.
Strikes are the first step in the long battle for working class power and a system that truly meets our needs. However, they alone are not enough. We must eventually use the lessons we’ve learned about the strength of a united working class to overthrow this system.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) believes that changing the system from capitalism to communism would give the working class control over their own lives. Under communism, decisions will be made collectively. There will be no bosses, politicians, or competition. There will be no racist or sexist exploitation. Join us on our long road to communism and learn how to make this happen!  Join PLP!

Oakland, CA—At least 75 out of 90 teachers, students, and community members defied both the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and the Oakland Education Association (OEA) union.
Oakland High School workers and students led the charge, demanding high wages, smaller class sizes, and more student services (The Hill, 12/11).
 They are fed up after years of stalled negotiations and shenanigans between OUSD and OEA. They called themselves the “Wildcat Underground,” wildcat being the name of the school mascot.
They held a rally in front of the campus to publicize the demands, and then marched to the school district headquarters in downtown Oakland, chanting loudly along the way. The administrators refused to come out to meet with them, or even make a comment.
After arriving at City Hall, where city leaders, including the liberal mayor Libby Schaaf, who hid in her office—actually closing her blinds—refused to address the fearless crowd. A group of students and staff went in to confront the city officials and were highly disappointed by their empty responses.
Progressive Labor Party salutes this working-class defiance of the bosses’ laws. Education workers must put the needs of working-class students at the forefront of the struggle.
Illegality, for who
Outside, John Sasaki, director of communications for OUSD, awkwardly fielded questions from the crowd. He started by repeating the threat that this was an illegal, non-union sanctioned action and that teachers could be punished and lose a day’s wages. Yes, the teachers’ strike was not organized by the union at all.
Teachers quickly responded that OUSD illegally breaks contracts all the time with oversized class sizes and not enough seats.
Teachers also reminded him that years of lost wages due to increasing cost of living makes one day of threatened punishment seem like nothing. He was ridiculed for being an overpaid goon for the district. Sasaki’s transition from a local Fox affiliated reporter to communications director for a continually exploitative District shows you something about what capitalism rewards; people who tow the bosses’ line over teachers who teach critical thinking and are prepared to disrupt the status quo.
Teaching our students by example
Teachers, students and community members told stories and sang before the whole group joined up again and concluded with a rally in front of the cowardly District office. One teacher spoke about the decision to leave the classroom: Teachers had not “abandoned” their students with this action; they were developing the curriculum that students needed to fight for a better future.
Shut it down
There was another amazing outcome of the wildcat walkout: at least two other high schools, Fremont High (in East Oakland) and Madison Park (6-12th grade) also caught wind and joined the action with Fremont sending at least two thirds of its 60 teachers. The loud chants could be heard as the Fremont High contingent joined us in front of City Hall. Community college teachers, who teach in the High School Programs, also joined. Personal-political connections between teachers at different schools helped make this happen.
Hopefully this unity will inspire community college teachers in the Peralta Federation of Teachers (PFT), especially part-time workers and students.
A multiracial fightback
Progressive Labor Party members who participated, observed that this multiracial, multigenerational, militant group reminded us of PL rallies over the years. It had the same outrage and refusal to be controlled by fear.
The ability to see through liberal politicians’ lies and see that the union was unwilling or unresponsive was the big takeaway. To see rank-and-file workers take control and successfully organize the shutdown of three schools, despite the bosses’ threats, shows a glimpse of what’s possible.
When teachers and students fight for their common needs, we see the small steps that prelude building a more collective world where teaching conditions are students’ learning conditions.
Many learned that despite fearing lack of preparedness, the working class was indeed ready to stand up and flex its collective muscle. Stay tuned.

The Women’s March, happening in a number of cities on January 19, 2019, began in 2017 when Donald Trump became President. It was in large part a response to his sexist behavior toward women, as well as the serious threats to women’s access to abortion. Several million women and men marched in the U.S. and around the world.
 The demands included reproductive rights, criminal justice reform, defense of the environment and supporting the rights of immigrants, Muslims, gay and transgender people, and the disabled. The march was consciously intended to prop up the Democratic Party, and many of its slogans implied that workers would have been better off had Hillary Clinton been elected. None of the leaders and few of the marchers connected the problems of racism and sexism to capitalism.
Electing Democrats, however, does nothing to address the crises of capitalism: economic disarray and inequality, the threat of climate change caused by the profitable burning of fossil fuels, and imperialist wars that threaten to become world wars. Women are often the biggest victims of these depredations, with tens of millions working in low-wage factories from Bangladesh to China to the U.S., and they have terribly suffered from imperialist wars in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and many other countries. Billions of women and men are exploited and oppressed by capitalism, which is why workers of all genders, nations and ethnicities should unite to fight for a society run by and for ourselves – communism. That will require a revolution, and to accomplish that we must stick together and avoid the false promises of liberal reformers, even if well-intentioned.
This year’s March will push the same limited Democratic Party-endorsed set of reforms, and has also been marred by accusations of anti-Semitism against the leaders. Two of the four leaders have had some relationship with Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam(NOI), who has a long history of  perpetuationg racist and anti-Semitic, and anti- gay rhetoric. In February, at the NOI’s annual Saviour’s Day event, Farrakhan falsely accused Jewish people of being “the mother and father of apartheid” and offered his unique conspiracy theory that they had used marijuana to chemically induce homosexuality in Black men.
The NOI leader has repeatedly blamed racist conditions on bad behavior by Black fathers or providers, rather than on the ravages of racism.  This was the theme of his famous Million Man March of 1995. Farrakhan has long been a right-winger, a proponent of Black capitalism and an enemy of Malcolm X, who he said was “worthy of death.” When Malcolm X was assassinated by members of NOI in 1965 when he broke with Elijah Muhammed and began to advocate multi-racial unity, Malcolm’s family accused Farrakhan of ordering the killing.One of the leaders of the Women’s march, Tamika Mallory, is a businesswomen and Democratic Party operative. She is close to NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and is the national director of the National Action Network, led by Hillary Clinton supporter and Democratic Party activist Al Sharpton. Mallory attended the February NOI event and had nothing but praise for Farrakhan.
Facing criticism, Mallory denied she supported anti-Semitism. Another leader of the Women’s march, Linda Sarsour, has often spoken out against anti-Semitism while being an active supporter of Palestinian rights. Sarsour raised money to support the victims of anti-Semitic attacks, especially after the recent massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Most of the people accusing her of anti-Semitism are doing so because Sarsour opposes the brutal apartheid policies of Israel. Rather than being concerned about fighting racism, her detractors defend Israel’s mistreatment and murder of Palestinians. So bitter is this dispute that the Women’s March has been cancelled in Chicago and several other locations, and two competing marches are scheduled in NYC.
Rather than calling for multiracial unity against a racist and sexist system perpetuated by the two big capitalist parties in the U.S., the leaders allow Democratic Party spokespeople a platform (presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren was a featured speaker for two years in a row).  The Guiding Vision statement of the Women’s March calls for some worthwhile reforms:“accountability and justice for police brutality and ending racial profiling, [dismantling] the gender and racial inequities within the criminal justice system,… an economy powered by transparency, accountability, security and equity,… and equal pay for equal work.”
They also called for an end to “aggression caused by the war economy and the concentration of power in the hands of a wealthy elite who use political, social, and economic systems to safeguard and expand their power.”
However, the only means discussed to accomplish these goals are a new Constitutional amendment, adherence to UN Human Rights Declarations and maintaining the right to unionize. Change, presumably, will come by electing Democrats. Such demands are pipedreams under capitalism. While some policies can conceal or shift the racist and sexist effects of capitalism, the system that produces these inequalities goes unchallenged.
Rather than separatist struggles, in which each oppressed group fights for its own rights under capitalism, we need a unified and fighting working class. Despite an apparatus for voting which allows for a periodic (and often manipulated) choice between various members of the ruling class, neither political party offers anything other than minor tinkering with a capitalist system that cares only about profits, and is in deep crisis and threatens to take us all down through war, depression and the destruction of the environment. It has got to go.