EAST AFRICA—Throughout cities and rural areas, PLP members united 650 teachers, students, parents, and workers to celebrate May Day in solidarity with working people around the world.
At these events, we discussed the fascist government crackdowns and the attacks on students’ education and teachers’ working conditions. We also discussed the need for communism and how it was different from the socialism of the 20th century.
University students in one meeting reported feeling deeply satisfied, saying it was the first time they had ever participated in this type of “strong discussion.” They were inspired that the college students and everyday workers were meeting together to discuss these issues on an equal basis.
 The fascist conditions throughout the region require our members to organize with skill and cunning and to have profound confidence in our base of friends.
A big red salute to our courageous and resourceful comrades in East Africa for confronting the fascist onslaught and bringing this historical holiday and its vision of workers’ power to our class.

HAITI—While a small number of organizations and unions are aware of what May Day, International Workers Day means, a larger number buy into the bourgeois propaganda of the “festival of work and agriculture.” Thus, in order to build for revolution, we must still fight to build working class-consciousness. That’s the job of our Party, the Progressive Labor Party.
This May Day, PLP continued to draw lessons and build class consciousness based on the history of struggles that workers and students have been involved in, starting with the history of May Day. It was interesting for some, disappointing for others. But it was enriching for our Party, given the contradictions that emerged.
Rural workers, young and old, and members of women’s organizations joined us in solidarity. We had planned with our comrades to present a history of workers’ struggles in order to reinforce the idea of working-class unity in changing, in fact, transforming society.
We also wanted an opportunity to think about the situations that workers face today, especially here in Haiti. There has been a wave of arbitrary firings, repression and sexism in various work sites,. This is combined with below-poverty rate salaries, an ever growing rate of unemployment, and forced migration to countries like Brazil and Chili, where there is a need for low-wage workers.
Unfortunately, despite our efforts, some people were still blinded by the bosses’ lies, and fell into the trap of believing May Day to be a festival. Some participated in the bosses’ celebration of Haitian cooking—mainly for the rich and powerful locals and imperialist bloodsuckers in the capital.
The bosses’ festival provoked a discussion among our friends and comrades about what is the underlying politics of workers’ struggles. It was communist leader Vladimir Lenin who said that there is no revolutionary struggle without revolutionary consciousness. And for us, that means that revolutionary consciousness must be built in our struggles, in the contradictions that we face, and through criticism and self-criticism. Our Party in Haiti is growing in quality with each experience we gain in struggle.
On the other hand, in the evening we met for a dinner-debate with some of our friends, some of whom work in the public sector. We reviewed the experience of the day and evaluated it together. This allowed us to see that, despite the seeming strength of bosses, the workers we are beginning to understand the fight that we need to wage in the coming period.
One person expressed it in these terms: “Finally, I understand what we need to fight for and I agree with you in favor of revolution.”
This evening was an opportunity for our comrades to see how we have begun to inspire confidence in the masses, although we still have a long way to go in order for more workers to understand our line and lead the fight for communist revolution.
PLP is building revolutionary class consciousness wherever we are. We fight to annihilate capitalism in all its forms. Join us to build a new world without exploitation, racism, sexism, and slavery.

Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in Trier, Germany. Marx, together with his lifelong comrade and friend Friedrich Engels, invented the scientific doctrine of working-class revolution. We call this doctrine “Marxism.”
From German philosophy, and especially from the philosophy of Hegel, Marx developed dialectical and historical materialism—the science of change in all aspects of life.
Surplus value
From English political economy, the most advanced of its day, Marx and Engels took the Labor Theory of Value and developed from it the doctrine of surplus value, “the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production” (Engels):
The worker spends one part of the day covering the cost of maintaining himself and his family (wages), while the other part of the day he works without remuneration, creating for the capitalist surplus-value, the source of profit, the source of the wealth of the capitalist class.
The doctrine of surplus-value is the corner-stone of Marx’s economic theory. (Lenin)
Marx developed this scientific theory in his famous work Capital: Critique of Political Economy (also known by its German title Das Kapital), and in shorter, more accessible works such as Wages, Price and Profit.
Class struggle
From French socialist theory, the most advanced and revolutionary of its day since it developed out of the study of the great French Revolution of the 18th century, Marx developed the doctrine of class struggle.
Just as Darwin discovered the law of
development or organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of
human history. (Engels)
All societies, past and present, have developed because of the struggle between the exploiting classes—slaveowners, feudal lorders, bourgeois landowners, capitalists—and the exploited classes: slaves, serfs, and the working class. In every age, class struggle is the force that moves forward scientific, social, political, and intellectual development.
Violent revolution; the dictatorship of the proletariat
Marx understood that the struggle of the working class against capitalist exploitation must lead to violent revolution and the forceful overthrow of the capitalist system. In a letter to Joseph Weidemeyer, written in 1852, Marx wrote:
the class struggle leads necessarily to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat; this dictatorship is but the transition to the abolition of all classes and to the creation of a society of free and equal.
Vladimir Lenin, the great Russian revolutionary theorist and political leader and also the greatest student of Marxism, summed up Marxism this way:
The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression.
Marx the revolutionary
Marx was not only a brilliant thinker and theorist. He combined his theoretical work with ground-breaking revolutionary activity.
In 1847 Marx and Engels joined The Communist League, a secret revolutionary society, for which they wrote the famous “Communist Manifesto” (February, 1848). About the Manifesto, Lenin wrote:
This work outlines a new world-conception, consistent with materialism, which also embrace the realm of social life; dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development; the theory of the class struggle and of the world-historic revolutionary role of the proletariat—the creator of a new, communist society.
The Communist League (1847-1852) was the predecessor of the International Working Men’s Association (The First International). Some of its members later played a leading role in the First International.
In 1864 (September 28) the International Working Men’s Association—the celebrated First International—was founded in London. Marx was the heart and soul of this organization, and author of its first Address and of a host of resolutions, declaration and manifestoes. (Lenin)
The Civil War in France
In 1871 the working class of Paris rebelled against their government and held the city from March 18 until May 28. During this time the city was governed by the Paris Commune, a radical socialist and revolutionary government. In response to the bloody suppression of the Commune by the French Army Marx wrote The Civil War in France. In this work Marx drew the following lessons from this, the first great proletarian revolution in history:
The need to smash (as opposed to taking over or “appropriating”) bourgeois state power and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The need for equality—particularly economic equality—between revolutionary cadre, state functionaries, and the masses of workers.
Immediate recall of leadership by the masses if leaders fail to carry out the desires and aspirations of the working class.
The abolition of a bourgeois-type standing army and the distribution of arms to the masses of people.
Engels wrote:
… Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival.
And, consequently, Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time … And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow workers …
PLP fights to carry on Marx’s Legacy
The Progressive Labor Party has studied the history of the communist movement in the light of its successes and errors and of our own. We continue to strongly support Marx’s central theories and respect him as the greatest revolutionary theorist in history. We proudly call ourselves “Marxists.”
Through the lessons of history, we disagree with a few tactics that Marx proposed. We understand that a standing army will be needed by any revolutionary communist society in order to fight off, and carry the battle to, the forces of capitalism and imperialism that will inevitably try to destroy any communist revolution. The Paris Commune was defeated largely because it had no army, and waited passively until the French Army attacked it. This was a fatal error.
We also reject the notion, put forth by Marx in his “Critique of the Gotha Program,” that inequality – Marx calls it “bourgeois right” – must be preserved during the first, or lower, stage of communism. Preserving inequality has been the excuse for Soviet misleaders like Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev, and Chinese sellouts like Deng Xiaoping, to turn socialist states back to exploitative capitalism.
Standing on the shoulders on giants
Marx was the great philosopher—economist, theorist, thinker, and revolutionary activist—of the modern movement for an egalitarian society run by and for the producers of all value—the working class.
We commemorate him best when we try to follow in his footsteps and build the movement that he began—a movement for justice and equality for all working people.
We have a long way to go. But we have great predecessors, great ancestors, in this movement. Marx is one of the great giants. PLP and the communist movement is standing on his shoulders .
It is fitting that we remember him every day, and especially this month, the two hundredth anniversary of his birth.

It doesn’t matter if they shoot me or not. Death or life—it’s the same thing.
—Saber al-Gerim, 22, protester at Gaza border, New York Times, April 30.

For the two million working-class people in the occupied Gaza Strip, the world’s largest concentration camp, life is indeed the same as death. Since the latest Palestinian rebellion began on March 30, the apartheid state of Israel has murdered at least 45 people and wounded over five thousand more. A United States in decline can no longer control Israel, its regional watchdog. Amid intensifying inter-imperialist competition with Russia and China, the resulting turbulence in the Middle East is further destabilizing the old U.S.-dominated liberal world order.
Nakba Day
The Palestinian protests are expected to peak on May 15, Nakba (“Catastrophe”) Day, the 70th anniversary of the creation of the officially racist nation of Israel, when over 700,000 Arab workers and their families were displaced and exiled. The day before, a new U.S. embassy is set to open in the divided city of Jerusalem—a move by Donald Trump to pander to his racist base and underline the fact that the “two-state solution,” conceived to give the Palestinian nationalist bosses an independent state, is dead. The future is a one-state solution, with the Zionist bosses continuing to exploit, oppress, and brutalize an Arab majority from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
As Nakba Day draws near, Iran-aligned Hamas is organizing tens of thousands of protesters to storm the Israeli border. But Hamas, the Islamic nationalists who have administered occupied Gaza since 2007, has nothing to offer workers there except futile terrorism and misguided martyrdom. Given the imbalance of forces—Palestinian rocks against Israeli assault rifles and hand grenades—May 15 looks likely to be a bloodbath.
Meanwhile, the world’s capitalist bosses—including those in the Arab world—have turned their backs on Palestinian workers and their suffering. For the first time, a Saudi boss, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, reportedly backed Israel’s “right” to an apartheid regime (Ma’an News Agency, 5/1). The U.S.-aligned bosses’ silence on the Gaza rebellion reflects their real priority—keeping regional rival Iran in check.
Gaza, a concentration camp
The Middle East is a victim of unvarnished imperialism, with ceaseless competition and wars for resources (oil) and profits (ExxonMobil). The smaller bosses, from Hamas to Al Fatah (the group that runs the West Bank under Israeli rule), protect their petty fiefdoms but do nothing for Palestinian workers. All of these capitalists, big and small, share a total disregard for working-class lives. Gaza contains 1.3 million refugees. Among workers under 30, 65 percent are unemployed. Living conditions are unspeakable:  
“United Nations officials warn that Gaza is nearing total collapse, with medical supplies dwindling, clinics closing and 12-hour power failures threatening hospitals. The water is almost entirely undrinkable, and raw sewage is befouling beaches and fishing grounds. Israeli officials and aid workers are bracing for a cholera outbreak any day” (NYT, 2/11).
The Palestinian workers truly have nothing to lose.
Israel, U.S. watchdog
With the world’s largest reserves of cheaply extractable oil, the Middle East is a powder keg for world war, with U.S.-backed Saudi Arabia and Russia- and China-backed Iran at each other’s throats. Israel enjoys advanced weaponry, military research, and funding in collaboration with the U.S. Why? Because Israel serves to check Russian imperialist aggression.  
While fighting wars against Arab states, the Israeli bosses have also waged a vicious campaign to subjugate the Palestinians. They have brutally suppressed two intifadas (rebellions), built electronic fences, bulldozed Palestinian villages. Their jet fighters bomb the homes of supposed terrorists (children who threw rocks were imprionsed for years)—when they’re not bombing schools and hospitals. Now they are using snipers and hand grenades against unarmed protesters in Gaza. And while conditions in Gaza get ever more desperate, the Israeli government has allocated a billion dollars to build an underground concrete fence to further blockade and isolate the workers there.
Complications for U.S. bosses
Yet as we have seen throughout the world, the working class keeps fighting back—and now the workers of Gaza are leading the way. Against insurmountable odds, they are risking their lives to break out of their prison. They are once again exposing the Israeli rulers as racist war criminals.
The new U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, a former Tea Party congressman, is unmoved by the atrocities committed by the Zionists’ Nazi regime: “We do believe the Israelis have the right to defend themselves, and we’re fully supportive of that” (Wall Street Journal, 4/30). But while Pompeo’s racist analysis reflects the interests of the U.S. profit system, the bosses are divided. The main-wing, finance capitalists would prefer to rule with a cover of liberal “democracy.” As Roger Cohen, an arch-imperialist who represents the stance of these main-wing bosses, wrote in the April 20 New York Times: “As usual Israel overreaches, an eye for an eyelash.”
With a weakened U.S. unable to rein in their vicious dog, a virulent Israel gives Iran and Iran’s Russian backers more runway to build their own axis of power—a scenario that can only hasten World War III.
Workers have no borders
The job of Progressive Labor Party is to lead the workers everywhere to turn imperialist war into a revolutionary war for communism. The working class has no borders. With communist revolution, we will tear down every fence and wall—real and imaginary—that divides us. We are one international Party and one international working class. We have nothing to lose but our chains.