MEXICO, March 8—One of the main ideological weapons used by the capitalist class to attack and divide the working class is sexism, particularly the oppression of women workers. Capitalism uses racism to divide the working class into supposedly “different” categories of Black, white, Latin and Asian, or amongst indigenous and non-indigenous. In a similar way, sexism divides the working class into groups of men and women, each with supposed inherent differences beyond what the biological sciences can prove. These so-called “differences” usually all end up saying men are superior in some way. Placing a particular emphasis on these differences between women and men workers intentionally hides the psychological, economic, social and even other biological similarities amongst workers.
Another way capitalists try to divide women and men workers politically is through their efforts to commercialize March 8, International Women’s Day, a day of communist struggle against oppression of women in the capitalist system. This day has an aspect of consciousness and organization that all women and men workers have to honor and rescue.  
Capitalism: Division, Oppression and Conquest
The capitalist profit system uses their political weapon of sexism to economically exploit women more intensely than men. According to data from one of the bosses’ main international mouthpieces, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the salary gap between women and men workers in 2014 was 18%, and the employment gap was 35%, both for comparable jobs. Women internationally also disproportionately shoulder the “double burden” of taking care of most of the domestic home labor, are the main caregivers and do most child upbringing, without ever getting paid.
The working class of Mexico is a case study in sexism and why the international working class must smash this entire capitalist system. The Mexican bosses’ government’s National Institute of Statistics calculated that the value of “routine work done in the home” alone was worth more than 20 percent of the entire national economy, or GDP, and 80 percent of this labor is done by women workers. This report acknowledged that domestic labor is more valuable than manufacturing (16.7 percent), commerce (15.5 percent), or education (4.1 percent) (INEGI, 4/7/16).
The main consequence from this sexist exploitation by the capitalists in Mexico can be seen at different levels. The most visible is sexual harassment, found on the streets or buses, work and school. Another way the capitalist culture normalizes both the violence of intensified economic exploitation and physical violence against women is through their media and promotion of pornography, a multibillion dollar world industry worth more than three professional sports leagues in the U.S. (New York Times, 5/20/01). More than 30 percent of women in Mexico have suffered sexual violence at least once, with the actual numbers likely higher because women are terrorized into not reporting attacks.
Less visible but interrelated forms of violence against women workers in Mexico, and the most brutal, are the “femicides.” A pandemic average of six women workers are murdered there each day, with 24 percent of them ever investigated, and 1.6 percent of murderers sentenced (Al Jazeera America, 1/4/15). These femicides are the main cause of death for working class women between the ages of 15-30 (INEGI 2016).  
Bosses Mislead With Liberalism
Sexism is an integral and essential part of the capitalists system. It generates tremendous profits worldwide, and is an ideological political weapon to weaken and divert working class struggle by pitting women and men workers against each other. Even when the capitalists use liberal policies to minimize inequality amongst men and women, they can’t eliminate it, because it goes hand in hand with capitalism. In contrast to Mexico, the capitalists of Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Norway and others gloat about their advances for women.
The liberal capitalist press all over the world has been gushing particularly about Iceland’s new laws mandating equal pay for women, and is held up as proof that capitalism can benefit both workers and bosses. This is false. Capitalism “gave” women workers nothing - with the support of many men workers, women waged strikes and fought for decades for higher pay and recognition of domestic labor in these countries. Even then, women and men workers are still not equal.
Closing gender pay gaps between women and men does not lead to women workers’ power. In between their vocal praise, the bosses’ press admits that “shifts in the political climate” in Iceland can “easily demolish” these gains (Guardian, 10/28/14). In other words, what the capitalists allow one day, they can take away the next.
Furthermore, at the same time that Iceland and other Nordic countries are now “mandating” equal pay, these laws often do not apply to immigrant women escaping imperialist conflict. In Iceland, racist immigration laws went so far as to mandate DNA testing for immigrants to prove “Icelandic” heritage (Iceland Review, 12/21/04).
Working Class Needs Red Women Leadership
Sexism can only be eliminated through a communist revolution, which will not only eliminate exploitation, but also abolish the special oppression of women and the sexist behavior.    
Capitalists promote liberal ideas like feminism to struggle for women’s “rights”, and more “equality” amongst the sexes. These feminist movements have dragged many strong women fighters into liberal and right-wing struggles and even turned them against men workers. The workers need to be united and organized into a revolutionary party for communism so we can fight against the root cause of sexism; capitalism.
Humanity had its biggest advances in its struggle against sexism, when the workers took political power and applied antisexist politics in the Soviet Union and China.  In the period of 1926 to 1961, in the Soviet Union, women’s salary increased 10 times, while the number of women engineers went from 600 to 379,000 from 1917 to 1961. There were similar advances in health and political representation. The law established gender equality - and workers defended these gains with their workers’ dictatorship. PLP has analyzed these victories elsewhere - as well as their weaknesses. Even with these advances the old communist movement did not eliminate sexism. It did however show the way forward to change the system dominated by a capitalist minority, and advance toward a society run by the working majority,  communism.

President Donald Trump’s racist immigration policy escalates a venerable ruling-class tradition of scapegoating and terrorizing immigrant workers. In addition to officially banning workers and refugees from six majority Muslim countries, the Trump administration has promised to increase deportations and detention of undocumented workers—an ambitious goal, given that Barack Obama’s administrations formally removed a record 3.1 million immigrants (Migration Policy Institute, 1/26).
The Department of Homeland Security is expected to double the number of people held in immigration concentration camps, to 80,000 a day. The asylum division of DHS has reported locating 20,000 beds for indefinite detention for asylum-seekers, a 500 percent increase over current capacity (MSNBC, 3/3). Meanwhile, 30,000 Haitian migrants are stranded at the U.S.-Mexico border, waiting to cross (UPI, 2/28).
The Clintons’ Terror Campaign
U.S. bosses have banned and persecuted migrants since the 1790s, when the rulers feared French immigrants influenced by the French Revolution. But today’s racist anti-immigrant hysteria descends from legislation created by the Bill Clinton administration in 1996. As Clinton starved thousands of children and tore citizen families apart through mass incarceration, he also expanded the grounds for jailing and deporting immigrant families (including permanent residents) for minor, nonviolent convictions. The law also made it much more difficult to gain asylum (Salon, 4/27/16). Beginning with the Clinton era, every president deported explosively more than his predecessor.
Smash racist deportations! Black immigrants are deported at five times their number in the undocumented population, and they are twice as likely to be detained for a criminal conviction (Time, 9/30/15).  This is the legacy Trump is advancing.
Ruling-Class Terrorists Divided
The U.S. rulers are divided over the best way to discipline their own class and the working class in a society headed inevitably toward a broader global war. Trump’s intensified anti-immigrant rhetoric has served to divide the working class and distract many workers from the capitalists’ wholesale thievery and exploitation.
But as Trump funds an expansion of the fascist Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) apparatus, the administration’s anti-immigrant racism poses a conflict for the U.S. war machine. To defeat their Russian and Chinese imperialist rivals (see Egypt editorial), the rulers needed a committed, patriotic military. When Trump initially ordered a blanket ban on refugees from seven largely Muslim countries, 100 former government officials signed a letter opposing it. Among the signers were Madeleine Albright and Susan Rice, both of whom played significant roles in murdering masses of workers in the Middle East during the Clinton and Barack Obama administrations. The finance capital wing of the ruling class is signaling the unreliable Trump to curb his blatant racism that hurts U.S. chances at building a reliable army.
Fight the Fear
Immigrant workers have a long history of fightback. The only response to Trump’s massive racist attack must be to organize. The only safety for undocumented workers can come from a united working class fighting the capitalist state. Many of the greatest leaders in the historical communist movement in the U.S. were immigrants, including Louis C. Fraina, Claudia Jones, Otto Huiswoud, and Claude McKay. The Progressive Labor Party will carry on the practice of fighting in the interest of the international working class. While competition and division are inherent to capitalists, the world’s working class is naturally collective. Forward to a world without borders!

After a three-year hiatus, the U.S. ruling class is pointing to resume a major military exercise with Egypt. Under the threat of growing industrial and military cooperation between Egypt and imperialist rivals Russia and China, the U.S. bosses are seeking a stronger alliance with the regional power to prop up their increasingly tenuous stronghold in the Middle East.
Bridging the Middle East and Africa, linking the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, Egypt is central to geopolitics in the region. Its Suez Canal and Sumed pipeline are strategic routes for the Persian Gulf and for natural gas shipments to Europe and North America. In 2013, 3.2 million barrels of oil a day passed through the Canal (Business Insider, 4/1/2015). “With its strategic situation, its cultural influence and a population double that of any other Arab country, Egypt has for three decades now been the linchpin of a precarious but enduring regional Pax Americana” (The Economist, 12/15/10).
Egypt is currently the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Israel (NPR 2/22). But like many junior partners in today’s sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry, the local ruling class seems to be up for grabs. Egypt and Russia have a “burgeoning military relationship” (Washington Times, 12/1/16), and the two nations recently signed off on a package of 17 intergovernmental agreements (Sputnik International, 3/5/17). Meanwhile, a Chinese company is investing $20 billion to fund the development of a new Egyptian capital 28 miles east of Cairo (CNN.com, 10/10/16).
Egypt’s Sisi: Criminal Thug, U.S. Ruling Class Role Model
The U.S. bosses are still trying to recover from their failed attempt to orchestrate the Arab Spring rebellions into a reliable pro-U.S. government in Egypt. In 2011, Barack Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, helped oust president Egyptian Hosni Mubarak, disrupting a three-decade alliance and paving the way for the 2012 election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi. The Brotherhood was born in Egypt in the 1920s as a conservative transnational movement against the British occupation. It gained popularity by using religion to numb the starving workers of Egypt to the reality of their super-exploitation by capitalism.
In 2013, after the subsequent military coup and crackdown led by mass-murderer Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, the U.S. voiced support for the new regime even as it temporarily suspended arms sales to Egypt:  
A month after the military’s intervention—and in the lead-up to its massacre of Morsi supporters near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque—Secretary of State John Kerry even appeared to endorse the coup, saying that the army was “in effect … restoring democracy” and averting civil war (Atlantic, 8/9/15).
In 2015, Obama resumed the transfer of major weapons systems to Egypt, including F-16 fighter planes. “[G]rowing concern over the threat of militants in Sinai, many of whom have pledged loyalty to the Islamic State, as well as Egypt’s decision to buy weapons from Russia and France, led the Obama administration to reverse course” (New York Times, 2/26).
Sisi, whom Trump has called “a fantastic guy,” is best known for his ruthless anti-working-class campaign of repression, censorship, militarized arrests, and mass disappearances—a strategy that inspires Trump, the new assassin-in-chief. “For Trump as well as other senior Republican politicians, Sisi has become an exemplar of a solid ally, a soldier who is tough on terrorism and vehemently opposed to political Islam” (Washington Post, 9/20/16).
The Trump administration, facing widespread pushback against its racist, anti-Muslim immigration ban, may double down and curry favor with Sisi by designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Trump’s targeting of the Brotherhood is aimed to safeguard U.S. imperialism and its primary source of cheaply extracted oil, Saudi Arabia, where the parasitic royal family fears an Islamist challenge to its absolute authority.

The Bronx—“We cannot be quiet. We must fight fascism!”
These were the inspiring words of a Middle Eastern student at our teach-in at a City University of New York (CUNY) campus in the Bronx. More than 500 students and staff crowded into a big hall to better understand the world and make plans to fight back. We discussed organizing against racism, sexism, deportation, mass incarceration, and the ban on Muslim workers. We also got a glimpse of what an egalitarian society might look like as students from all around the world played key leadership roles in speaking, leading the workshops, and organizing the event. The divisiveness of identity politics took a back seat to building a united fightback led by the working class.
The teach-in was organized by a growing grassroots organization on campus. The keynote speakers were all students from countries on the racist Muslim ban list as well as undocumented students. The spirit of fightback was very evident as each speaker called on the participants to take a stand. “There is no one who can stop us!” was the rallying cry of one of the student speakers.
The workshops and discussion circles promoted the fighting spirit of the 1960s. There were no lectures or power points-just students and staff exchanging ideas and experiences on how to best fight back. A member of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) explained how racism is part of capitalism and that we won’t see its end until we end capitalism. The workshops were lively and engaging, and as each ended, there were resounding chants throughout the entire hall. In the anti-racism workshop, students exchanged anecdotes about how they have stood up to racism and many agreed to join the organization and get more involved.
PLP members and friends have been active in the campus struggles here, from challenging tuition hikes to fighting racist police brutality. We have fought to make each event a call for multi-racial unity and working class solidarity. Rather than see the teach-in as a place for “identity politics” where different groups see themselves as separate constituencies, we have held strong to the line that the Muslim ban, racist police killings, and attacks on immigrants are an attack on all of us. These attacks are systemic and not simply the policies of one President. The Progressive Labor Party’s communist ideas have received a positive response on campus, as Challenge distribution and discussion groups have increased.
This event was a step forward in the fight against racism and fascism, and for a better world. The organizers did not shy away from talking about fighting back. Hundreds showed they are ready to fight and are looking to both give and take political leadership. Despite the bosses’ intimidation and fear tactics, students who are the direct targets of Donald Trump’s racist policies showed courage and determination.
But there is much more to be done. Some high school students took the lead with a militant walkout a few days after the teach-in. On campus we must strengthen the sanctuary movement. A rapid response team can respond to any and all attacks on undocumented brothers and sisters. We rally on International Women’s Day to celebrate their leadership of the entire, united working class.
     As we participate in these struggles, we must train future leaders to fight against the whole capitalist system. Let’s step up our fightback on all our campuses and join the Progressive Labor Party in the fight for a better world!