In late 1847, a secret European propaganda society, the Communist League, requested Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to write up a statement of purpose for the organization. In February 1848, the document appeared. It was called the Communist Manifesto (click here for a copy, available in 80 languages).
This work outlines the new world conception, consistent materialism, which also embraces 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.
— V.I. Lenin, Karl Marx (1913)
In time, the Manifesto became the most revered document among revolutionaries everywhere. After 170 years, we in the Progressive Labor Party still take these words seriously:
“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.”
The ruling classes understood the significance of Marxist ideas. We are still grasping its historic importance.
In 1895, Lenin wrote in Frederick Engels:
The services rendered by Marx and Engels to the working class may be expressed in a few words thus: they taught the working class to know itself and be conscious of itself, and they substituted science for dreams.
All those who wish to develop as revolutionaries should understand the Communist Manifesto and look at the similarities and differences between the early communists and the PLP. Its main points are these:
(l) Communists should openly “publish their views (and) their aims’’ to the world. Marx and Engels believed, as do we, that being bold and explicit about communist ideas is the only way to build a movement for communism.
(2) “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’’ It has been the struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed that ultimately leads to the destruction of the oppressors and the progression of history.
(3) However, capitalism has a uniqueness to it not found before: “Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”
(4) Capitalism has another distinct feature: “It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors,’ and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest …for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”
(5) But with this more explicit form of exploitation were planted the “seeds of destruction” of the bourgeoisie—the working class: “In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e. capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modem working class, developed—a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who work only so long as their labor increases capital.”
(6) Finally, the aim of communists—the issue which separates revolutionaries from pretenders—is “overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat”—the dictatorship of the working class.
As it was only the opening gun for a movement in its infancy, the Manifesto had a few major omissions. Marx and Engels more or less knew the sort of world they wanted—a world led by workers—but hadn’t the slightest idea how to achieve it. This knowledge was to come later, helped out by the brave workers of Paris in 1871 who used mass violence to set up the Paris Commune.
Marx and Engels were very vague on the role of ideology or the hold of bourgeois ideas on the working class. We have since learned that the role of communists is to demolish the bosses’ ideas among workers and students and to develop communist ideas in order to create the revolutionary army that will destroy capitalism. To do that, we need one united party all over the world. Join PLP and turn the words of the Communist Manifesto into actuality.

In his racist, divisive State of the Union address, President Donald Trump did his best to scapegoat immigrants for the deepening crisis of U.S. capitalism amid sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry. To convince the U.S. working class to go to war over Middle East oil and other ruling-class interests, the bosses must increase racism against workers in other countries. Just as Hitler blamed the depression in Germany in the 1930s on Jews, Trump is trying to blame violent crime and job loss on immigrants fleeing U.S.-supported terror regimes and the economic instability of capitalism.
But workers cannot be fooled. The international working class has no borders. “Immigrants” are simply super-exploited workers who are forced by the profit system’s failures to move beyond the rulers’ arbitrary boundary lines. In the face of these attacks by Trump and the bosses he serves, we must build a revolutionary communist party to smash all walls and fences that serve the money-sucking capitalists. We must create a new world that honors workers’ labor and serves workers’ needs.
Two Brands of Fascism
U.S. capitalism is in decline relative to China and Russia. In a desperate effort to hold on to their top dog position, the U.S. bosses have plunged into wars from Syria to Afghanistan to Yemen, all in preparation for the broader global conflict to come. But the U.S. rulers are also contending with significant divisions in their own camp. The domestically oriented section of the ruling class is less invested in a prospective war over Middle East oil. It’s promoting a smaller, less expensive, predominantly white military trained as racist killers.
But the dominant finance capital wing understands that it needs a “multicultural” army for the World War III to come. These bosses see immigrants as invaluable cannon fodder, and are willing to hold out the carrot of U.S. citizenship as an incentive to recruit immigrants into their killing machine.  As former President Barack Obama noted, the young immigrants known as Dreamers “start new businesses, staff our labs, serve in our military, and otherwise contribute to the country we love” (cnn.com, 9/5/17).
The upshot of this debate means more fascism, whether it comes with an overtly racist face or a liberal veneer. Trump’s address—offering a “path” to citizenship for 1.8 million “Dreamers” while excluding family members, accelerating deportations, erecting a wall, and demonizing other immigrants as criminals—might have been a clumsy attempt at compromise between the bosses’ warring camps. The incoherence of his immigrations plans, which seem to change by the day, is a symptom of the Klansman in Chief’s volatility and shortsighted outlook. But they also reflect an essential contradiction for the capitalist class. On the one hand, all bosses need to use anti-immigrant racism to divide workers, to push down wages and stave off the mortal threat of a united working class. On the other hand, all bosses need immigrants as a source of cheaper labor. As immigration scholar Mae Ngai noted in the New York Times (1/29):
Migration is propelled by irrepressible human desires for family unification, economic improvement and physical safety….In truth, undocumented migration is not an aberration of “normal” immigration. It is the inevitable result of any general policy of immigration restriction. Restriction creates two streams of immigration, lawful and unlawful. It is a conceit of the sovereign power to think that it can have only legal immigration.
Immigration Reform: Just Another Attack on Workers
Under Trump, the attack on immigrant workers has shifted and intensified.  Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are acting more aggressively—detaining and deporting any undocumented immigrants they find, not just those convicted of committing crimes, as under Obama.  Trump has halted the DACA (Dream Act) program, subjecting to deportation 800,000 undocumented people who entered the U.S. as children.  He has done the same to hundreds of thousands of immigrants from countries that sustained natural disasters (including Haiti and El Salvador) by ending their Temporary Protected Status.  Trump also wants to end the visa lottery program, which grants green cards to 50,000 immigrants a year from countries with low immigration numbers, and to stop immigrants from legally bringing in family members beyond spouses and dependent children.  Trump’s plan for “merit-based” immigration from countries like Norway is a transparent move to fuel anti-immigrant racism by drawing a line between “good” immigrants—white, English-speaking people with college degrees—and everybody else. He aims to divide the working class while encouraging the white-supremacist base that elected him in 2016.
Democrats Cannot Be Trusted
History shows that the working class cannot trust the Democratic Party to defend and protect immigrant workers. In the 1990s, under Democrat Bill Clinton, the U.S. Border Patrol initiated operations called “Gatekeeper” and “Hold the Line,” which concentrated agents and technology to make “a ‘show of force’ to potential illegal border crossers” (cbp.gov) and oversaw the “first major federal move towards constructing a border fence” in Texas, Arizona, and California (cndls.georgetown.edu). The Clinton administration deported a record 12.3 million immigrants and pushed for laws that established “new grounds for deportation, penalties for the crimes of illegal entry and re-entry, mandates for detention of deportable noncitizens, and a framework for cooperative arrangements on immigration enforcement between the federal government and state and local law enforcement agencies” (Migration Policy Institute, 1/26/17).
More recently, Obama deported more than 2 million people and criminalized more immigrants than any president before him. While Trump’s crude appeals to white supremacists are more openly vile, and he has pushed to ban immigrants from mainly Muslim countries, his racist stance on immigration is essentially no different than that of his predecessors, Democrat or Republican (New York Times, 1/29). In fact, Trump deported fewer people in 2017 than Obama did in 2016 (politifact).
Fight Back Against Anti-Immigrant Racism
As communists, we welcome immigrants as fellow workers who have been among the most militant fighters against capitalist brutality and exploitation. Thousands of groups are now fighting Trump’s deportations. Union teachers have formed anti-deportation committees. New York-area lawyers demonstrated to eject ICE agents from the court system. “Sanctuary” movements are protecting immigrants and publicizing their stories. In Norwalk, Connecticut, Nury Chavarria, a mother faced with deportation to Guatemala after 24 years in the U.S., won a stay after several hundred supporters demonstrated on her behalf. An undocumented Boston student, locked in an ICE jail, was granted bail after a “go-fund-me” movement of students at his school raised the bond money. Every day, volunteers leave food and water in the Sonora Desert to save migrants from death from dehydration and heat stroke.
Communist Answer
The Progressive Labor Party calls on all workers to defend our brother and sister immigrants against deportation, and to fight Trump’s racist lies. Smash racist deportations! Let’s train ourselves and our class to fight for a world where of “no more deportees.”

Chicago, February 2—More than 70 anti-racist students and community members converged on the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in opposition to the school’s speaking invitation to white supremacist Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist.
Progressive Labor Party comrades were there to point out Bannon’s role in the context of rising fascism, and to offer revolutionary communist struggle as the only way to crush the capitalist system that creates racist scum like Bannon and his old boss.
Attack All Fascists, Head On
On the steps of the business school, leaders of various organizations emphasized that efforts against racism and sexism needed to go beyond the immediate struggle against Bannon. Speakers addressed the University of Chicago’s racist history of displacing surrounding residents through gentrification (see box).
PLP members held signs reading “Make Racists Afraid Again” and “No Free Speech for Racists” and joined in chants of “Say it loud, say it clear, fascists/Nazis are not welcome here.” About a dozen participants took CHALLENGE and the majority welcomed our presence in the march and rally.
One comrade approached a dozen fascists who were being protected by a line of kkkops across the street from the protest. This comrade went against the grain and sharply attacked their racism head-on. Our Party confronts racists because ignoring them will not aid us in our fight against the capitalist bosses’ increasing fascism. In fact, the liberal response of ignoring racist, fascist hate speech, in the name of some ludicrous “moral high ground,” has only led to more university appearances by gutter racist speakers nationwide, along with a sharp spike in violent crimes against Black, Arab, Latin, and Asian workers.
Capitalist ”Free Speech” Benefits Only the Bosses
University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer claims the institution stands for free speech for all. But when a group tried to deliver a petition to him opposing Bannon’s invitation, Zimmer showed a lot less interest in engaging with the petitioners than he had with Professor Luigi Zingales, the fascist collaborator who initiated the invitation. The racist capitalists back free speech only when it pits working-class people against one another and reinforces the rulers’ political agenda of dividing and exploiting the entire working class. Communists, on the other hand, value only speech that has scientific and objective merit, and is used to support the interests of the international working class.
Sharpening Future Struggle
After a brief march that included taking over an intersection, the group met at a local church to strategize plans for the next action. PLP comrades called for encircling and confronting racist counter-protesters at any future action. We also proposed that the march continue to take place in low-income, working-class Black neighborhoods on the periphery of this elite university, rather than downtown. A comrade joined other attendees in pointing out the importance of focusing the protests on the Black and Latin working class, as these workers are the primary targets of the racist and sexist attacks that are provoked by fascist mouthpieces like Bannon. Although the anti-racist struggle needs to be able to engage workers in downtown Chicago as well, it was telling that some liberal organizers placed a higher priority on bringing the struggle to this wealthier area.
Going further, a veteran comrade stressed the potential worldwide effectiveness of stopping Bannon here. The comrade cited a 1985 PLP action at Northwestern University, where comrades threw red paint on Adolfo Calero, the murderous Nicaraguan Contra leader. This comrade also pointed out the inverse relationship between the strength of the anti-fascist movement and the eventual strength of the fascist state. As we prepare for revolution, we are saving the lives of millions of workers. What you do counts!
We also said the problem was much broader than Bannon or Trump, and that racist oppression worsens under liberals like Barack Obama. We must fight the entire capitalist system.
The Party will continue working with these students as we broaden our appeal to workers citywide to fight fascists like Bannon and the capitalist class that protects him.  Stay tuned!

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The Racist and Imperialist History of the University of Chicago

In 1857, the University’s founding endowment was donated by a notoriously cruel slave owner named Stephen A. Douglas. The ten acres of land from Douglas were drenched in the blood of Black slaves from Africa.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the University funded racially restrictive covenants which prevented  property sales to Black buyers. The Chicago Defender reported that “many of the real estate owners in that area refer to restrictive covenants as ‘the University of Chicago Agreement to get rid of Negroes.’”
The University was home to arch-imperialist economist Milton Friedman, whose deadly policies of neoliberal capitalism were taught to a generation of Chilean ruling-class agents. “The Chicago Boys,” as they were known, piloted Friedman’s policies during the fascist rule of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), when countless working-class lives were destroyed through political repression or widespread privatization of the economy (Nation, 9/21/16).
UC’s siege of gentrification and displacement remains relentless to this day—most recently in Woodlawn, a working-class Black neighborhood just south of the University. Breaking an understanding that it would not build south of 61st Street, the University is expanding by building a new charter school and the Obama Presidential Center, among other projects.
After 25 years of protests demanding a trauma center to serve the South Side, the University is finally opening a trauma center at the medical school. For years, many workers have died needlessly from this blatantly racist disregard for their lives (The Chicago Maroon, 9/15/17).

WASHINGTON, DC, January 23—For two hours a multiracial group of 50 Metro transit workers and supporters, including members of Progressive Labor Party, held a picket line in front of Northern Bus Garage in Washington, DC.   With chants of “Workers united will never be defeated!” and “If we don’t get it, Shut It Down!,” Amalgamated Transit Union 689 workers upped the ante in their contract struggle. Capitalism leaves workers no choice but to strike, even to keep gains that we had already won in the past, let alone to win new improvements. Only a communist system run by the working class would remove that necessity by ridding the world of bosses who profit from our labor.
The workers of the Metro Transit system have been without a union contract for over 18 months. Management wants to impose a three-year wage freeze, increase our contribution to our health insurance, and eliminate Metro’s contribution to pensions for new employees. They hope to get away with this outrage by relying on racism directed against the largely Black workforce. But many white workers are also affected, and multiracial unity can defeat this attempt.
The Washington regional transit system serves DC, Maryland, and Virginia and needs a major overhaul. Years of deferred maintenance have caused breakdowns, deadly derailments, and smoke incidents. The local governments refuse to tax the businesses that rely on transportation of their employees to pay for this maintenance, and instead cut workers’ wages and raise fares to make the working class pay.
The action at Northern Garage is the first in a series of coming actions to prepare the members to fight back. The traitorous union leadership has assured management that this action would not lead to a strike. But the picketing rank-and-file workers sent the opposite message, which is taking hold throughout the system.
Following the action, the workers debated whether to rely on local politicians to protect our interests (always a losing proposition) or to rely on ourselves, on other workers, and the riding public by organizing militant actions. PL’ers plan to increase the distribution of CHALLENGE among these groups to build the PLP at Metro and throughout the area. This will help answer this question in favor of a grassroots fightback and direct action. These are the building blocks of a revolutionary change to abolish capitalism and put the working class in the driver’s seat of a worldwide communist system.