On February 9, when North and South Korea march side by side at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, the two countries’ symbolic unity will signify the erosion of U.S. imperialist dominance on the Korean Peninsula. The capitalist rulers of the U.S. are increasingly desperate to hold onto their deteriorating global top-dog status, a crisis complicated by an unreliable President Donald Trump and the bosses’ own disarray. With China growing in economic and military might, longtime U.S. allies like South Korea and Japan are now hedging their bets and looking to fend for themselves.
As the U.S. bosses debate how best to prepare for the next Korean War, the Progressive Labor Party and the international working class must organize to bury these war-makers once and for all.
All events point to war
As the United States and China beat the drums of war and prepare for an inevitable global conflict, the 680-mile-long Korean Peninsula may be at the center of it. A historic buffer and invasion route in East Asia, the peninsula lies at the intersection of imperialist interests for the U.S., China, Russia, and regional power Japan.
War Secretary James Mattis has announced that U.S. war strategy will be shifting its primary focus from “counter-terrorism” to “great power competition” with China and Russia. In his rollout of Trump’s National Defense Strategy, he said, “‘[O]ur competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare—air, land, sea, space and cyberspace—and it is continuing to erode’” (Bloomberg, 1/19). While the U.S. rulers are soberly admitting their decline as the dominant world power, they won’t accept second-tier status without a fight. At the moment, all events point to war:
More than 1,000 reserve U.S. soldiers will rehearse quick-reaction mobilizations and air-assault exercises in February. The U.S. is also sending Special Operations forces to South Korea and deploying additional bombers, including B-2s, to Guam. Gen. Tony Thomas, commander of the Special Operations Command based in Tampa, Florida, said troops now occupying Iraq and Syria “might have to shift to the Korea theater from the Middle East in May or June, if tensions escalate on the peninsula” (New York Times, 1/14). Meanwhile, plans to modernize and maintain “the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years will cost more than $1.2 trillion” (NYT, 1/13).
China is ramping up security along its border with North Korea, deploying more soldiers and radiation detectors. “China must be ready for a war on the Korean peninsula, with the risk of conflict higher than ever before, Chinese government advisers and a retired senior military officer warned on Saturday. ‘Conditions on the peninsula now make for the biggest risk of a war in decades,’ said Renmin University international relations professor Shi Yinhong, who also advises the State Council, China’s cabinet” (South China Morning Post, 12/18/17).
Japan, in concert with the U.S., is making plans for the evacuation of 60,000 Japanese citizens and 200,000 U.S. nationals in South Korea in the event of a crisis (The Daily Yomiuri, 1/16).
Trump’s version of the Nuclear Posture Review, begun under then-Imperialist-in-Chief Barack Obama, expands the range of pretexts for a future nuclear attack. This normalization of nuclear warfare, including responses to cyber-attacks, exposes the bosses’ utter disregard for the world’s working class. A single modern nuclear warhead, far more lethal than the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on civilian populations in Japan in 1945, could murder millions and damage the working class for generations. The U.S. is the first imperialist to develop nuclear weapons and the only imperialist to have used them in war.
Ready or not
As the top think tank for U.S. finance capital has warned, any U.S. nuclear attack on North Korea will ignite “a full-blown war on the Korean Peninsula that would endanger millions of lives and ultimately diminish U.S. power and influence in the Asia-Pacific” (Foreign Affairs, 1/9). The bosses’ long-range thinkers recognize that a new war with North Korea “would likely be more devastating than any conflict the United States has experienced since World War II, if ever.” Yet given the peninsula’s strategic importance, the U.S. rulers may have no choice.
As of today, the bosses are unprepared to win such a war. It would require a U.S. patriotic revival and a military draft to generate masses of committed ground troops. The capitalists’ internal instability and the deep divisions among ruling-class factions (see page 7) limits their maneuverability. Moreover, as Foreign Affairs warns, even a “limited” nuclear first strike would entail huge political risks for the U.S.:
If Washington initiates a conflict and Pyongyang escalates, Seoul and Tokyo may consider significantly curtailing (or even ending) their alliances with the United States, ejecting U.S. armed forces from their territory, and developing their own nuclear weapons. This would effectively end U.S. geopolitical dominance in the Asia-Pacific, creating a region riven with division and instability, with diminished U.S. power and influence and China poised to fill the void (1/9).
Buying more time
In the January/Februrary issue of Foreign Affairs, Oriana Skylar Mastro points out that neither the U.S. nor China is ready for “a full-blown war” against the other. In the event that hostilities were to break out on the peninsula, she speculates on the possibility of a short-term, shared occupation of North Korea, with the U.S. ceding control over nuclear missile sites within 60 miles of the Chinese border. Mastro underlines how much the Chinese military has evolved over the last 20 years, thanks to modernization and structural reform: “Washington must recognize that China will intervene extensively and military…Beijing would…ensure its interest [was] taken into account during and after the war.”
For the U.S. ruling class, the Korean Peninsula is only one significant area of interest out of many. As Foreign Affairs points out, “More than anything, U.S. policymakers must shift their mindset to view China’s involvement as an opportunity instead of a constraint…With North Korea out of the way, the United States would have more resources at its disposal to address other threats”—involving Middle East oil, for example.
But given the dog-eat-dog nature of imperialism, in which competition is primary, any temporary cooperation with China would be a delaying tactic, at best. At the end, it would only pave the way for larger wars.
World War is looming
A lack of nationalist unity and fervor in the working class is the biggest obstacle to the U.S. bosses’ war plans. We cannot predict the timing or scope of the next war in the Korean Peninsula. But it is clear that world war with China is looming. The bosses’ open debate on “best practices” for war reveals their blatant disregard for working-class lives. Workers must refuse to sacrifice ourselves for wars for profit.
The working class remains a wild card, a factor none of the imperialists are adequately taking into account. World Wars I and II birthed revolutions in Russia and China, respectively. Against this period of weak class struggle, we must build an international, communist mass movement and a Progressive Labor Party capable of seizing state power when the time comes. Today we warn of coming war and fascism; tomorrow we turn the guns around!
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Chicago Women's March: Only communism can eradicate sexism
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- 26 January 2018 66 hits
CHICAGO, January 21—For the second annual Women’s March, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) again rallied with workers from the region against the sexism perpetuated by the U.S. ruling class. Hundreds of thousands of anti-sexists showed up today to voice their anger against the sexist ideology, violence, and oppression.
Despite many of the marchers’ anger towards Trump and the system, the overall tone of the march was reformist and passive in nature. More voting was the call many marchers were yelling. Also, the overall the majority white crowd is reflective of the racism and sexism of the Democrats that organized it.
These wealthy liberal capitalists and their politicians have historically exploited and left out Black, Latin, Arab, Asian, and indigenous women workers from their “movement,” co-opting many genuine working-class struggles against sexism for their own imperialist and profit-based ends.
Our small but mighty contingent of comrades provoked a different conversation, one that encouraged anti-sexists to “march away from the polls.” We distributed hundreds of CHALLENGEs and close to 1,000 fliers, calling out the entire capitalist system and to the need to completely overthrow it. A comrade got on the bullhorn and gave a revolutionary speech calling out the threat liberals pose to women because they offer them the same future that conservatives do: lower wages, sexual violence, and poor access to resources.
Workers were very receptive to our message, taking CHALLENGE and giving their contact information. This was a good indicator that people are looking for other alternatives, not just ballot boxes and “feel-good” slogans.
Phony solutions to a deadly problem
The recent anti-sexist movements in Hollywood and corporate U.S. have inspired many to speak out and take action against sexist oppression, violence, and inequality. But if the end result is just to get someone like Oprah Winfrey to run for president, the first Black woman billionaire—who made money off of an unequal and sexist media industry to begin with— then the efforts of many courageous anti-sexists will be largely wasted. Rich women, Black or otherwise, are no friends of working-class women and men.
To advance a truly anti-sexist mass movement, we need to go beyond liberalism, feminism, and identity politics as usual. Pushing for more women executives and politicians won’t liberate women. We need to stand shoulder to shoulder in struggle with billions of workers from all over the world to understand capitalism’s role in spreading sexism, and build for communist revolution as the true source of justice and liberation for our class.
Capitalism = Sexism
The basis for sexism is class society. Although sexist inequality preceded capitalism by many centuries, it is the global capitalist economic and political system that is responsible for breeding the sexist divisions and wholesale violence against women that we see today. In the U.S. alone, we see that sexist wage differentials against women persist, with Latin women receiving 58 cents on the dollar for white men performing the same work, with Black women at 65 cents for every dollar, and white women at 82 cents for every dollar (Pew Research 7/1/16).
In order to continue paying women less, the capitalist bosses need to constantly push all kinds of sexist ideology and attacks. Women are objectified and degraded in advertisements and “entertainment” media, preteen girls are kidnapped and sold into sex slavery, and people of non-conforming gender identities are vilified and murdered at obscene rates. Women and men are taught to consider each other as rivals and inherently different, with millions of men buying into the false and destructive lie that sexist social relations are for their benefit. All these toxic dehumanizing divisions and more effectively prop up the capitalist system by weakening workers’ collective efforts to unite and fight back.
Communist revolution will crush sexism
For generations, communists and countless working-class leaders using history, theory, and practice have known that none of these sexist divisions are “natural” or “inevitable.” Far beyond just fighting for economic justice, these revolutionaries understood that the most direct and permanent path to political and social equality for all working people has been women and men rejecting sexist divisions and organizing against their common exploiters in the fight for a classless society of communism.
PLP fights to carry on this revolutionary communist tradition. We are organizing women and men workers into a mass international movement and a Red Army to destroy sexism, racism, and inequality at their root: the capitalist system. Don’t vote, revolt! Join PLP!
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NYC Women's March: Feminism will not defeat sexism
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- 26 January 2018 61 hits
NEW YORK CITY, January 21—At the second annual Women’s March, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) marched to demonstrate our determination to see sexism defeated once and for all. Yet capitalism needs sexism like we need air to breathe.
The mass bravery of the #MeToo trend points the way forward. But powerful elements of the U.S. ruling class are engaged in a comprehensive effort to re-direct the anger of this moment into the waiting arms of the Democratic Party.
The same capitalist class that has mounted attacks on women of breathtaking scope and violence now wants to own/control the movement against “systemic” sexism.
Many signs pointed to voting and the 2018 election as the next step in the anti-sexist upsurge. Our leaflet with the headline “It’s not just Trump, It’s Capitalism” was met with an enthusiastic reception from many, and a handful of PL’ers were even able to turn that slogan into a chant that was taken up by marchers nearby as we made our way through midtown Manhattan.
As the march turned the corner from 59 Street to Sixth Avenue and passed the Trump International Hotel, liberal chants, “No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here” resounded; our slogan “stop racist deportations, working people have no nation” did not strike as much of a chord with the mainly white middle-class elements that formed the bulk of the participants. Anger is high but consciousness is relatively low.
In other portions of the demonstration where more Black, Latin, and Asian and youth formed the body of the crowd, when the crowd chanted “Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go,” we chanted “Capitalism has got to go” and people switched and joined us.
As we chanted, people grabbed up leaflets and challenges from us. Hundreds of papers and over 1,500 leaflets were distributed. We made short speeches and some people thanked us for calling out more than just Trump as the problem.
Liberalism: the main danger
The Trump agenda—from the tax bill to the proposed attacks on Medicare/Medicaid, a re-imposition of a global gag rule on abortion and more—is a huge attack on working-class women. Yet we delude ourselves in believing that power in the hands of Democrats means progress.
Capitalists and their media don’t care for women workers. The bosses see women workers as instruments of production of future workers, or as objects. The capitalist media empires rake in staggering profits from sexist marketing and pornography, while their friends in the informal capitalist economy traffic women into slavery.
Women and girls comprise the majority of refugees forced across racist capitalist borders from Central America to East and Central Africa, and the Middle East to the Bay of Bengal. Tens of million of our working class sisters are herded into refugee camps and subject to extreme poverty, abuse, exploitation and trafficking by the forces of imperialism that remain the same from Obama to Trump.
We cannot cheer the fact that record breaking numbers of women ran for public office under Democratic banners in 2017, a trend looking to continue into 2018. Supplying racist and sexist U.S. capitalism with more women and nonwhite politicians to front for rising war and fascism is the core mission of the Democratic Party.
Advances against sexism
The women’s movement in the U.S. struggled for seventy years before the ruling class granted women the right to vote in 1920.
In the Soviet Union women won this right three weeks after the seizure of power in 1917. In then-revolutionary China, communists banished foot-binding forever. Prostitution was abolished in Cuba after the 1959 revolution.
The list of massive advances for women goes on. Even the women’s strike of March 2017 took place on International Women’s Day, a communist-inspired holiday.
As capitalism has returned to Russia and China, sex trafficking and oppression of women have returned. Women have paid perhaps the highest price for the reversal of communist revolutions.
Feminism will not defeat sexism
Learning from the errors of the old movement and rebuilding the movement for communism is priority number one for the Progressive Labor Party.
Feminism aims to bring about a capitalism that “works” for women, too. It relies on the fatal strategy of “all-class unity:” erasing the difference between the experiences and interests of working class women and ruling class women.
The special oppression of Black women is a matter of cardinal importance, and the heightened dangers of capitalism across the board for Black women, from adverse health outcomes to racist police murder, cry out for abolition of this entire social order, not the minor rearrangements of oppressive relations that feminism entails.
Feminism, in tagging men as the source of sexism and not capitalism, serves to further divide the working class. In demanding “equality” within a system built on exploitation and war, feminism leaves us advocating for arch-imperialist demands such as putting women in combat in imperialist wars.
Oppurtunity for fightback
The #MeToo struggle is an opportunity for communists to raise anti-sexist fightback at their place of work, and dig deep with their friends about the roots of sexism. Until the international working class—multiracial, multi-gender, multigenerational—abolishes capitalism, no one is liberated. Build a communist movement with Progressive Labor Party.
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Student solidarity vs. raids advances fight for internationalism
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- 26 January 2018 62 hits
BROOKLYN, January 12—As mass struggle against Trump’s racist and fascist words and policies grows, learning to go beyond the limits the ruling class and its minions would like to contain, is the number one job for all workers and students who want to defeat racism and fascism once and for all.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is proud to have played a role in a small but potent action launched in response to Trump’s latest anti-immigrant attack: the mass deportation of Latin and Haitian workers as well as raids on 7-Eleven (chain of convenience shops) stores aimed at terrorizing undocumented workers across the country.
Phony sanctuary in schools
Meanwhile the City’s schools chancellor Carmen Fariña has issued toothless guidelines pretending to make schools a “sanctuary” for undocumented students. Her proclamation is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents may not enter a school without visiting the principal’s office first. Pervasive racist, anti-student, CYA (“cover-your-ass”) and “me-first” ideology shapes decision-making in the schools. Few principals will offer resistance in such a circumstance.
Students and teachers worked to take the fight further in a busy week last month at a Queens high school. Over a thousand signatures were added to an online petition urging ICE to cease deportation proceedings against the parent of a member of our student body. After over a thousand signatures had been added then the school administration took up a petition urging the student body to add more. Then Nazi Trump made his infamous remark calling black nations “shithole countries.” Righteous working-class anger was in the air.
Liberal school misleaders are quick to push empty talk while undermining militant action. But when a call was made for a demonstration, this same administration was quick to throw cold water on the event, as vague threats of “consequences” for students who decide to demonstrate were spread across social media and group chats. In defiance to this intimidation campaign, several students showed up at a nearby 7-Eleven for a solidarity visit that turned into a vigorous picket line.
Young women lead picket
A multiracial group of a 6 high school students, almost all young women (and led by these young women) were joined by a group of teachers. Fighters from a local church, immigrants rights group, faculty from a nearby college and active retirees from a local trade union also joined the rally.
In total, there were 24 people at its height, which may be small, but “we weren’t all”! Especially considering the last minute nature of the demonstration.
We formed a picket circle in front of the 7-Eleven and chanted loudly. Many passersby stopped to watch, raise their fists, and cheer us on. Some chanted with us.
One chant was “Stop racist deportations! Working people have no nation!” Another was “Donald Trump, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!”
And yet another popular one was a call and response that had a really great cadence to it: “Deportations mean? WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK! Sexism means? WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK! Imperialist wars mean? WE GOT TO FIGHT BACK!”
High school students came up with their own chant: “Deportations hurt relations!”
Gesture of solidarity
Workers inside the 7-Eleven received us warmly. While they were not able to come out and join our picket line, as we wrapped up the workers inside offered the student internationalists free sodas, a meaningful gesture of appreciation and solidarity.
Everyone left the rally emboldened and determined to organize more of their friends next time. For many it was their first demonstration. It was moving to see militant young women who are Black, Latin and South Asian taking the lead, with support from veteran working-class fighters from the churches, colleges, retiree groups and community groups, all marching, picketing and chanting side by side.
Communist ideas, in the hands of the masses, can become a material force breaking down the divisions the ruling class seeks to impose on our class, whether they be borders between nations or lines that usually separate younger and older activists. We have a world to win!
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In face of racist intimidation, students fight to learn
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- 26 January 2018 58 hits
BROOKLYN, January 21—With the mounting attacks on Black and Latin working class students in NYC public schools, there’s no telling what will be the spark for students to fight back. For our school, one spark (out of the many over the years) was the removal of a special class. Student protests are inspiring and a great start on the long road to revolution.
Progressive Labor Party fights (PLP) for a communist society from each according to their commitment, to each according to their need, because that is the only way to truly get the schools that our children deserve.
Constant attacks
Working class public schools throughout the country, majority Black, Latin, and immigrant, are under attack from budget cuts. Many schools are forced into overcrowding to gain more funding while secretive admissions processes help maintain racist school segregation, which is growing more severe every day. The partnership between the Department of Education and the NYPD criminalizes our students and helps perpetuate the school to prison pipeline. Metal detectors further criminalize and traumatize our students.
A spark at our school
A very popular special class offering was taken away over a technicality by the liberal, tone-deaf school administration. These hypocritical school bosses say students have a voice, yet over and over again they shut the students’ voices down. Students see through the bosses’ politricks and continue to struggle for the school that they deserve.
Students were immediately upset when they heard that this class would be taken away. Furthering the students’ anger was a right-wing administrative henchman who lied and said that students weren’t bothered by the class cancelation.
Students quickly planned a protest. They left their classes, knocked on the doors of other classes to gather other students, mostly seniors, and chanted down the hallway to the assistant principal’s office before returning to class. The air was electric, and students were already planning their next action.
Students put antiracist solidarity before self
The next day, word spread that the racist henchman was pulling students individually to identify a leader and tamp down fightback. The administration interrogated one senior student for over an hour through his lunch period. She tried to silence him by appealing to Black nationalism, but he did not falter.
Later that day, that student leader was asked to join a meeting with the assistant principal (AP) to discuss his concerns. Word quickly spread, and seniors planned a sit-in outside the AP’s office in solidarity with that student being questioned. As the student walked down the hall to the AP’s office, he was greeted with “We’ve got your back, bro” and “You’re never alone.”
Almost the entire senior class held an hour-long sit-in outside. These seniors knew leaving class put them in danger to not finish projects they needed to graduate, but they also knew that solidarity was more important. The courage and compassion were palpable.
Another student was meeting with the student leader, and was convinced by the AP to go outside and tell the seniors sitting in to disperse. The seniors knew better, and continued their sit-in. The henchman and another bosses’ lackey tried to stop the protest with taunts and insults of “being stupid.”
The students didn’t falter, despite the bosses’ tricks. This student-led protest brought excitement and optimism throughout the entire school and gave others courage to stand up as well. Students who were not part of the protest asked how they could become involved, and the seniors regrouped to figure out their next plan of action.
Students can think & lead for themselves
Many lessons are being learned through this struggle. Students realized that planning and organization are important, as students who were unclear with the messaging were not as disciplined in their protest.
One school worker, a bosses’ lackey who only sometimes questions administration’s actions, blamed antiracist teachers for the protest. We will fight to win her to the anti-racist idea that Black and Latin kids are politically conscious enough to speak up against injustice and organize on their own.
Students aren’t brainwashed into action. The bosses’ system is full of bad ideas, and we as communists must win ourselves and our co-workers away from anti-worker sentiment.
We applaud these students, and are excited to see the next stage of their fightback. This small resistance is a good start, and we are inspired by their boldness. Making revolution means going beyond what the bosses want, and we as communists must try to find struggles and push their limits.
