CHINA, April 6—Friends of Progressive Labor Party recently had a study group with industrial workers here. We discussed the editorial “Mapping Imperialist War” from CHALLENGE (March 9) and the article about fighting fascism in India.
We especially appreciated two of the main points in the articles. First, it is absolutely correct to consider the conflict between China and U.S. as imperialist rivalry. As we are hit with one global capitalist crisis after crisis, the world is headed towards war. The deceptive propaganda in China makes concerted effort to conceal the deterioration of the world economy. Economic gimmicks like the negative interest rate cannot solve the basic economic problems. The increasing military expenditure around world boosts the danger of military conflict worldwide.
Second, China military, known as the People’s Liberation Army is no longer the workers’ force.  The PLA was originally known as the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, or simply the Red Army. The composition of this army—the world’s largest—is still workers. The change of pro-workers to capitalist regime in China has made PLA the bosses’ army. It is essential to teach soldiers the class war, as they have a critical role in the future imperialist wars.
Obey No Borders
Our study group members also had some doubts about the strategy of PLP. We believe it is rather difficult to get an international alliance of workers nowadays. We agree that workers have no side in the imperialist wars. But the main task for the workers in the wars is to resist their bosses in their country and weaken their forces. This supports the liberty of other countries. World revolution can hardly be accomplished just by the unity of workers all over the world. The major revolutionary work for workers is within their countries. It is hard to unite workers of different countries within an international organization, because the international organization rarely has the ability and the influence in every country to lead the worldwide revolution.
PLP agrees that it is hard to build an international party and inevitably the effort will result in uneven development. It may even lead to contradictions between comrades working and struggling in different settings. The working class must view itself as one international force—without capitalist-created borders. The bosses don’t limit themselves to exploiting “their own” workers. Why should the working class in one region limit itself to liberating only “their own”? PLP believes giving in to nationalism, which maintain separation of workers, is dangerous and a failed strategy. Nationalism is a bourgeois ideology. Compromising with nationalism was a serious error committed by revolutionaries in the 20th century and should not be repeated in the 21st century. We have a whole wide world to win.

TEL-AVIV, April 4—It is now well known that the fascist junta who took over Argentina between 1976 and 1982 has committed crimes against humanity, including kidnapping and torturing working-class activists and murdering at least 30,000 in the name of US imperialism. It is also well-known that the Argentine regime of the day was viciously anti-Semitic and specifically singled out Jewish activists for torture and murder—3,000 of those murdered were Jewish, ten times greater than their proportion in the general Argentine population at that time.
But who was a staunch ally of U.S.-backed Nazi Argentina? None other than the Zionist state of Israel. There is clear evidence that many of the junta’s crimes were committed using Israeli weapons, and that the Israeli regime maintained friendly relations with the fascist generals who ruled Argentina. But when Jewish Argentinians wanted to flee persecution and potential murder to Israel, the Israeli embassy turned them down as they were “too leftist” for it—proof of the myth that Zionist politicians care about Jewish workers. This is the true nature of Zionist Israel: a state that serves Israeli capitalism and U.S. imperialism, not Jewish workers. Israeli capitalists and their lackey politicians will do whatever necessary to maintain power and profits. In 1950, as Zionists were spreading anti-Arab racism and ethnically cleansing thousands of Palestinians, they were also terrorizing Iraqi Jews by spreading anti-Semitism and planting bombs in an effort to increase Jewish immigration to Israel.
Today, Israel is harboring a war criminal wanted by the Argentinian government and the Interpol for crimes against humanity: Teodoro Anibal Gauto. He is wanted for $500,000. He was a torturer and murderer at the “La Cacha,” death camp in Argentina. Many of his fellow soldiers were sentenced last October to long prison sentences—15 of them for life imprisonment—for crimes committed there. But Gauto used the fact that his wife was Jewish to flee to Israel in 2003 and live under an assumed identity. Israeli authorities have known of his true identity for at least a year, but steadfastly refuse to expel him to Argentina.
In Line with Imperialist Backer
Why have Israel–Argentina relations soured in recent years? Though the Israeli bosses refuse to disclose the reason for their refusal to send him back, a red eye on the news can find clues. These diplomatic squabbles over extradition mask the truth: imperialist competition between Israel’s backer, the U.S., and Argentina’s ally, China. China has dramatically increased investment in and trade with Latin America in recent years (see editorial, page 2). Moreover, Argentina renewed relations with Iran in 2013, one of China’s large sources of energy and a major enemy of the U.S. and Israel. These moves all threaten U.S.’s position as the main world imperial power and Israel’s regional dominance.
The Argentinian community in Israel is now demanding Gauto’s extradition and exposing Israel’s complicity in the junta’s war crimes. The state claiming to stand for the right of “all Jews” is an accomplice to anti-Semitic pogroms and neo-Nazi murder of workers.
As members of Progressive Labor Party, it is our job to show workers both in Israel and around the world that no capitalist country is true to its claim of supporting Jewish, Arab, Argentine, Chinese, Iranian, U.S., or any other kind of worker. The bottom line is maintaining profits through any means necessary. We cannot protect ourselves by just prosecuting war criminals or supporting nationalist politics. We must smash all borders and create a communist world.

The following is an excerpt from the Keynote speech given at the college conference by a young woman leader (see article, front page).
What are we learning in school today? I see a lot of beautiful and diverse faces, and I know I’ll get a million different answers. For today, let us take stock of what the bosses really want us to learn.
We’re learning about the artifice of race, class, gender, religion, and national borders that divide the international working class. We’re learning that we must climb this elusive social ladder to separate ourselves from the working class. We’re learning that the role of the university is to accept the inevitability of war, and to remain loyal to a system that murders, deports, and exploits our working brothers and sisters abroad, and to accept the fascist conditions at home.
We’re taught that the quickest way out of the hood or to stay out of trouble is to join the military, so the bosses lure us into their death traps with their ROTC [The Reserve Officers’ Training Corps]. We’re learning that being Black, white, gay, straight, lesbian, trans, male, female is primary over working-class unity—they got us hooked into identity politics, or shall I say the latest opiate of the masses.
We’re being taught that we’re criminals by the bosses who’ve turned our schools into juvenile corrections facilities. Last year, Khalif Browder, a student from my campus committed suicide. He was jailed for two years on Rikers Island [New York City’s main prison complex] WITHOUT BEING CHARGED WITH A CRIME, just because he couldn’t afford bail. He was physically beaten and psychologically tortured when he was put in solitary confinement. Ironically CUNY [public university system] invests in the prison industrial complex. For students outside these U.S. borders, our classrooms may be miles apart but the lessons remain the same.
From Haiti, Quebec, to the U.S to Europe, and South Africa, vicious cuts on education have become a worldwide pandemic.
In Quebec University, tuition has more than tripled. In South Africa the tuition hikes are a reminder that the apartheid isn’t over.
Students learn that professors are underpaid and disposable. At CUNY, racist and sexist tuition hikes, budget cuts, are the order of the day. These rapacious attacks are not coincidental: they’re happening against the backdrop of escalating imperialist wars.
But there is one lesson that you won’t learn— that these cuts are the bosses’ way of preparing for the next world war. They won’t teach us the rival arch-capitalists in the U.S., Russia, the E.U, and China vie for who will hold the title of the next world super power; they spend trillions on nuclear weapons, arming “rebels”, and installing brutal fascist regimes to gear up for their carnage campaigns. The working class people are their sacrificial lambs.
The bosses have you believe that their invasion of the Middle East is necessary to spread “democracy”, and rescue women from the oppressive forces, but they won’t teach you that their brutal tactics actually hurt women the most.
When it comes to the refugee crisis, our schools won’t teach you the truth: that ever since capitalists started dividing up the world and drawing borders, there have been refugees.
The U.S. was founded on the creation of millions of indigenous refugees. Today, we’ll remind ourselves that 750,000 Palestinians were made refugees overnight in 1948 and are still kept off their ancestral lands.
13.5 million Syrian workers are in need of humanitarian assistance as the result of a fight between U.S. and Russian imperialists, not just Bashar al-Assad. And 15 million Africans, from places like Somalia, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, have been made refugees by the centuries of imperialist fighting over resources.
We’re learning there is no phonier lesson in human responsibility than the boss’s claptrap about climate change. They say we must recycle, go green, or go vegan. Meanwhile, the capitalist bosses’ corporations are free to ravage the planet as they please. Not surprisingly the imperialist war machine is one of the world’s worst polluters.
We’re being lead astray by the bosses who play us into believing that education is a right, but the global attacks on students say otherwise. But today, you’ll learn that while that geographical distance, borders, languages, culture, and race may separate us, we must recognize that our struggle is one, and that we must fight back. Fortunately, today we’ll learn the bosses’ racist borders and the refugees that they create have an expiration date.
What are we learning about elections? I know that’s a really popular subject that many of us students worry about these days.
We are taught that the presidential election is the most important decision facing U.S. workers in decades, that we have a real choice here: the fascist Trump or the socialist Bernie. Today we’ll learn that choosing sides in a capitalist election is a death trap for workers. Bernie, Hillary, Donald, Ted, it doesn’t matter. Whoever is president will become the commander in chief of the largest imperialist army in the world, aiming to maintain its global power, no matter how many workers and students have died for their oil wars.
The best we can do, we’re told, is to work within the system to make small changes. But today we’re going to hear about militant fightbacks going on worldwide!
We have been taught the university is a world of ideas, that the world will become a better place through education. But a look at history will illuminate the truth: the way the world will become a better place is through struggle, fightback, building a worker-student unity, and planting the seeds of communist revolution in everything we do. In 1970s and 80s, PLP led the movement to kick racist theoreticians off campus. During the Vietnam War, masses of college students participated in strikes, sit-ins, and mobilizations against imperialism.
1999 was the year of the longest student strike in Mexican history at the Mexican National Autonomous University. They united workers and peasants against the privatization of electricity. Student strikes against austerity, increasing tuition, and budget cuts raged over London, Quebec, Chile, and South Africa the last few years. In South Africa, the slogan “fees must fall” swept the country. From University of Missouri to Yale, campus protests against racism have made headlines.
In the spirit of fightback, let us go to school today. Not to learn lies about our working-class brothers and sisters around the world; not to be fooled into thinking that elections are the path to liberation for workers.
No. Let us go to school today to learn about the origins of racism and nationalism. We’ll learn today about how our predecessors in the communist movement fought and won advances for the working class. Most importantly, today we’ll learn how we can fight against racism, sexism, nationalism and individualism, and we’ll learn why communism is the only force truly capable of eradicating these social diseases created by capitalism. For a new world, for communism, we must fight back.

As the Russian capitalists scale back their recent bombing campaign in Syria, they’re calling it a “withdrawal.” But the international working class should make no mistake: The Russian bosses are leveraging their military might to consolidate and expand their influence in the oil-rich Middle East. They will use their strengthened position to extort more favorable terms in the upcoming “peace” talks that could wind up partitioning Syria.
Sooner than later, the Russian rulers’ maneuvering will translate into a more intense conflict with the U.S. bosses, whose empire also relies on controlling Middle Eastern oil. In the current period, capitalists around the world are intensifying racism, sexism, nationalism and fascism in attempts to coerce workers to kill and be killed in the bosses’ wars.
The international working class must reject all of these toxic ideologies. Workers can be liberated only by their own class—and by building a mass revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party. Capitalist bosses will never “withdraw” their violent dictatorship over the working class. That’s why PLP fights back against the entire capitalist system.
Our Party is building toward armed revolution in every country to smash racism, sexism, national borders and imperialism. From Anaheim to Ankara, every anti-immigrant rally is an opportunity to build international solidarity. From Pakistan to Palestine, every racist, sexist budget attack is an opportunity to fight back. These are the sparks of communist revolution. Our organizing will fan the flames.
Syria: Russia’s Imperialist Key
The Syrian port city of Tartus is Russia’s only access point to the Mediterranean Sea. Without Tartus, Russian warships would need to pass through the narrow Bosporus Strait—controlled by the U.S. bosses’ powerful regional ally, Turkey—to return to their Black Sea bases. The Russian bosses can’t afford to lose this port to U.S.-backed Syrian “rebels,” a big factor in their support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. At the same time, they’ve suggested that they’d accept Assad’s removal if their interests were guaranteed (Reuters, 12/18/15).
From newly expanded bases in both Tartus and Latakia, Russia’s rulers have ensured direct access to the Middle East’s energy resources. They’ve also blocked plans by U.S., Turkish and Qatari capitalists plans to overthrow Assad and build their own pipeline through Syria:
The Russians have placed an impenetrable obstacle to the development of the [U.S.-backed] Qatar gas pipeline. Russia has also placed itself at the nexus point of other new offshore gas discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean, including Israel, Cyprus, and Greece (Oilprice.com, 3/16/16).
Meanwhile, as the Boston Globe (3/16/16) pointed out, the abrupt halt to their heavy bombing of Syria (if only temporarily) helps the Russian bosses on several fronts:
The Russians have a lot at stake in the shattered country. Moscow wants to keep Syria open to Russian goods, particularly arms and machinery, since the Russian economy is so driven by the oil and gas sectors….Putin will now have more time to focus on [the war in Ukraine] as he seeks guarantees that [Ukraine] will not join NATO….In addition, Putin’s decision to cut the campaign short helps to limit the growing anger among [Sunni Muslims] over Russia’s heavy hand in Syria. This, in turn, reduces the terrorist threat to Russia.
U.S.-Russia Rivalry Heating Up
Russia’s troop drawdown marks an growing weakness in the U.S. political, economic, and military position in the Middle East. U.S. bosses were caught off-guard by Russia’s next move, never a good sign. The Economist, the London-based cheerleader for U.S. imperialism, could offer only guesses on Russia’s intentions. The liberal imperialist Guardian Weekly (3/14/16) suggested that Vladimir Putin’s regime had once again out-maneuvered the U.S. and its European allies:
Nobody wanted to deal with Russia after Ukraine, and the goal of the Syria campaign was to force the [W]est to deal with Russia again… [and now they’ve left] with minimal losses…It’s a pretty brilliant tactical move.
Along with an emboldened anti-U.S. Iran, plus a growing Chinese imperialist presence through their “One Belt, One Road” (see CHALLENGE, 3/9/16), Russia’s escalation in Syria is changing the balance of power in the Middle East. Russian and Chinese imperialists, the U.S. bosses’ main rivals, are carefully watching the U.S. 2016 presidential campaign. What they’re seeing can only encourage them: a divided, undisciplined U.S. ruling class, and a cynical, disaffected U.S. working class.
The two presidential candidates drawing the largest crowds of workers—Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders—represent increasingly desperate attempts by mainstream U.S. finance capitalists to keep workers voting instead of rebelling. The bosses are straining to mislead workers with KKK-style racism on the one hand, and bogus calls for economic fairness and equality—an impossibility under the profit system—with the other. The divisiveness and racist violence encouraged by Trump, in particular, has exposed the fractured political loyalties of the U.S. working class. This is a huge potential obstacle for the U.S. ruling class and its plan-of-necessity for a military draft and a broader global war.
Meanwhile, Black workers who led and supported rebellions in Ferguson and Baltimore aren’t rushing in droves to enlist in the U.S. military to fight for U.S. imperialism. The U.S. Army barely met its recruitment goal in 2015 after lagging for most of the year (USA Today, 10/1/15).
Until the main wing of U.S. bosses succeeds in disciplining their own capitalist class, a central ingredient of fascism, they will be hard-pressed to win the working class to sacrifice for U.S. imperialism. Their options in the Middle East will be limited. The Russians’ recent gains in Syria do not bode well for their near-term future:
It may also help better position Russia for whomever succeeds Obama in the White House: an America that perceives itself humiliated in Syria by Russia and its allies’ military prowess is less likely to participate in any reset, and more likely to do the reverse (Huffington Post, 3/17/16).
Crush Capitalism With Communist Revolution
Under capitalism, no matter which camp of bosses is gaining, the working class loses. During the devastating, ongoing, five-year Syrian civil war, essentially a proxy fight between imperialist super-powers, U.S.-provided weapons are being used in terror attacks in the U.S. and worldwide. The conflict has murdered more than one million workers and displaced millions more, with women and children hit hardest. Displaced people have suffered extreme racism and sexism in refugee camps. Those who manage to reach Europe are confronted with violent anti-immigrant racism.
All politicians—including Trump, Sanders, and Hillary Clinton—serve the capitalist class. They are used to try to veil the essential conflict between two mortally opposed forces: the capitalist class and the working class. Either we crush the bosses, or the bosses keep trampling our class. PLP is open to all workers who want to see a mass, fighting communist movement smash this system once and for all. Join us!