Why does Progressive Labor Party fight for communism? Because capitalism doesn’t work for our class. It doesn’t work when racist kkkops murder hundreds of black and Latino youth in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City. It doesn’t work when U.S. drones kill over a thousand civilians in Pakistan. It doesn’t work when the capitalists’ austerity in Europe throws millions of workers onto the streets. It doesn’t work when Obama deports 1.6 million immigrant workers. It doesn’t work when mainly women workers in Bangladesh are burned alive in textile factories with locked exit doors. It doesn’t work when schools and hospitals all over the country are shut down. It doesn’t work when hundreds of thousands of families near Mexico City are threatened with being flooded out of their homes because of the government’s hydro project. And it doesn’t work when the South African government massacres striking miners.
Truth is, capitalism has never worked for the working class. It is a system built on robbing, lynching, and terrorizing us. It breeds divisive racist and sexist ideologies that prevent us from seeing each other as part of one struggle, one class, one fight. The bosses engage in cutthroat competition on a world scale, leading to wars — wars paid in workers’ blood.
If blood must be shed, let it be the bosses’. Workers, students, and soldiers — turn the guns around.
We have a vision for communism, a system where there is no exploitation, no wages, no racism, no sexism, and no borders. What we would have is a society run by workers, where each person works according to their commitment, and each receives according to their need. Communism is an egalitarian society.
How can such a world be possible? We need revolution! It can only be won by organizing to overthrow these bosses and their state under the revolutionary force of a mass party of millions, PLP. Together, we can conquer the world. Every action we take counts in building for revolution. 
So, join Progressive Labor Party as we march in Mexico, Pakistan, Palestine, Haiti, United States, El Salvador, Colombia, and more! From the beginning, May Day stood for working-class internationalism. Workers have been fighting against exploitation since capitalism’s birth. Let us honor our class, from the 1886 Chicago General Strike from which May Day was born, to the first successful workers’ state in the Soviet Union, to the great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, to each and every one of our current battles.
Workers, we have a world to win. Together, we can create a system that works and rules society for us who do all the work and produce everything of value. Join us this May Day!

As their competition for global supremacy intensifies, Chinese and U.S. bosses are scrambling for allies in a conflict that looks more likely by the day. Speaking in Moscow on March 23, China’s new president, Xi Jinping, “made a case…for closer economic and foreign policy cooperation with Russia” (New York Times, 3/24/13). Xi argued that China and Russia have “converging goals, including an expansion of the oil and gas trade, as they pursue dreams of ‘national revival’ and seek to offset the influence of the developed West.”
A China-Russia axis could be a mortal challenge to U.S. economic power and political influence. China has a huge and rising economy and more people of military age than the total U.S. population. Russia has vast energy supplies and the world’s second biggest nuclear arsenal, most of it aimed at the U.S. Well aware of this threat, U.S. rulers have unveiled their own long-term coalition schemes. In February, Chuck Hagel, Barack Obama’s new defense secretary and the outgoing head of the Atlantic Council think tank, called for military links with potential anti-China allies: India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Turkey.
Oil Dollars and Workers’ Death
Strategic considerations are guiding the resurgence of U.S. oil interests. The biggest bosses are now pushing for intensive drilling and exploration, both within the U.S. and in other areas under the rulers’ control (see below). While this expansion serves the bosses’ class interests as they prepare for imperialist war, it promises only devastation for the working class, from Baghdad and Kabul and Islamabad to New York and Los Angeles and Chicago. The carnage will be heaviest in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, where workers have long suffered racist super-exploitation by the imperialist powers.
Setting the rosters for a possible World War III underlies a number of seemingly unrelated developments. The financial crisis in Cyprus, which holds newfound gas reserves, has as much to do with war planning and energy imperialism as it does with rotten banks.
In talks last week in Moscow over a possible loan to Cyprus, Russia made clear that it expected a piece of the gas pie for its own companies....In Russia’s view, Cyprus, which already has two British military bases,...would also be an ideal place to set up a small naval installation should the Kremlin lose access to Tartus, a Syrian port that risks being swamped by that nation’s civil war (NYT, 3/24/13).
It’s important to note that Russia has shipped arms through Tartus to the pro-Chinese, pro-Iranian Syrian dictatorship.
Behind the scenes in Iraq, meanwhile, ExxonMobil is playing a pair of anti-China hands. U.S. imperialism’s flagship company hired Condoleezza Rice and other war criminals to force Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki to reconsider his threat to transfer Exxon’s stake in Iraq’s biggest oilfield to a Chinese firm. And in northern Iraq, in the rebellious Kurdistan province, Exxon is supplying fuel to Turkey, another prospective Grand War Alliance member:
“Exxon [is] now the largest landholder...after the regional government....The acreage build-up comes as Kurdistan is looking at building oil and gas pipelines straight to Turkey” (Toronto Financial Post, 3/22/13). Secretary of State John Kerry no doubt touched on both issues during his “surprise” March 23 Baghdad visit, which was ostensibly meant to check Iraq’s growing coziness with Iran.
U.S. capitalists need to control Middle East resources — and the naval supply routes that govern access to them — to stay a step ahead in their deadly rivalry with other imperialist powers. Washington has sufficient energy supplies outside the region to meet its own needs. But to dominate the world, U.S. rulers must freeze out enemies like China. They cannot protect their empire without controlling the Middle East and its rich reserves of gas and oil.
U.S. Energy Boom Sharpens Imperialist Dogfight
The shale oil and gas boom within the U.S. takes on ominous overtones when viewed through this lens. In gas, U.S. bosses are developing unprecedented export capacity to combat Russia, China and Iran — economically today, militarily tomorrow. On March 19, the Brookings Institute’s Charles Ebinger testified before Congress that U.S. gas production helps “loosen the stranglehold of Gazprom, Russia’s state gas company, on our east and west European allies.”
In addition, Ebinger sees gas exports as a big boost for the U.S. in a possible Middle East conflagration, where “a blockade or military intervention in the Strait of Hormuz or a direct attack on Qatar’s liquefaction facilities by Iran would inflict chaos on world energy markets.... Additional volumes of LNG [Liquified Natural Gas] on the world market will benefit all consumers.”
U.S. oil’s resurgence is flowing from smaller domestic oil bosses who once demanded an end to “dependence on foreign oil.” Domestic sources were long ignored by larger companies like Exxon, which were accustomed to peacetime access to cheap and adequate sources around the world.  But as U.S. exploration and production fell off, the prospect of global war and shipping route shutoffs made the biggest U.S. capitalists vulnerable. So, they are beefing up their drilling and refining within the U.S.
Warren Buffett’s BNSF railroad and Union Tank Car company now transport half a million barrels of North Dakota Bakken crude a day. The arch-imperialist Carlyle Group bought an old Sunoco refinery in Philadelphia, once supplied by Middle East sources, and re-fired it with Pennsylvanian shale oil. Carlyle shares directors with Exxon. Its founder, David Rubenstein, is co-chairman of the finance-capital-driven Council on Foreign Relations. George H.W. Bush cashed Carlyle checks after committing genocide in the service of Exxon in Iraq.
Turn Oil Wars into Class War
As it heads inevitably toward war, inter-imperialist rivalry spells death for millions of workers around the world. Our goal must be to turn the bosses’ wars into class war for communism. That means sharpening the class struggle wherever we are building ties: in the shops and unions, the schools and campuses, the churches and neighborhoods, and especially in the military.
These struggles are erupting in the score of countries where the Progressive Labor Party is active. The world capitalist economic crisis falls mainly on the backs of the working class. But it also provides the basis to recruit masses of workers and youth to become organizers for a communist revolution. Only communism can bury all bosses and their exploitative, racist, sexist profit system. Join us this May Day!

BROOKLYN, NY, March 25 — The fight-back against the racist police murder of 16-year-old Kimani “Kiki” Gray sharpened the class struggle here in East Flatbush. Young neighborhood students and workers led a militant anti-racist rebellion on March 11, two nights after Kiki’s murder. The youth returned every night for nearly two weeks, joined by protestors to confront the police that occupied seemingly every inch of the neighborhood 24/7 out of fear of another uprising.

The rebellion helped popularize proof that the police are lying about Kiki pointing a gun at them. Witnesses say Kiki tried to walk away from police — who never identified themselves — and begged for his life as he was gunned down. An autopsy revealed that seven out of eleven bullets hit Kiki, three in his back. The officers involved have a history of falsifying evidence. The facts exposing the cops as liars are all similar to nearly every case of police murder, but without the rebellion that followed Kiki’s death, the truth would not have been exposed as it has been.

Youth Defy Media Lies
Politicians, preachers, cops and the media all labeled the militant youth everything but what they were. They were rebels that led a small, brief but powerful uprising, not looters, rioters, misguided or committed gangsters. On the whole the youth targeted the racist bosses and their goons.
Young men and women defied police by taking the streets, overturning trashcans, and surrounding two cops. The youth targeted a local Rite Aid convenience store whose manager constantly followed black and immigrant youth while shopping. Not a dime was stolen out of the registers. Dozens of local barbershops, beauty salons and restaurants were untouched.
The rebels broke capitalist laws which protect mass murderers that are responsible for millions of deaths from racist profit wars, global drug cartels, mass poverty and unemployment. These gangsters in suits walk free, run businesses, command armies and hold government power. The ruling class paints entire black, Latino and immigrant working-class neighborhoods as criminals. But in reality, it  is bosses who are the enemies, closing hospitals and killing patients, as well as workers and children in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.
Only a revolutionary communist society where the working class has power can rid the world of racist killer kkkops. The capitalist courts encourage and tolerate cops who murder black, Latino and immigrant workers. Meanwhile, five million black and Latino workers and youth are forced into the criminal injustice system, either imprisoned, on probation or on parole. Seventy percent of the 2.4 million in U.S. prisons are black and Latino. And if cops do get punished it’s a slap on the wrist. NYPD Detective Phillip Atkins who in June murdered Shantel Davis, a young unarmed black woman killed a short walk away from where Kiki was killed, was supposedly suspended. But Atkin’s wife, a community affairs cop, told a classroom of students that Atkins was never even on desk duty.
Killer KKKops Have Racist Record
As it turns out, Atkins and the cops Mourad and Cardova who killed Kiki are members of the same death squad. Mourad and Cordova have a long history of vicious racist assults. The city has been forced to pay out $215,000 to victims of five previous attacks.
Our class will need to break many more bosses’ laws to smash the bosses’ state and take power for the workers. A communist society based on workers’ needs, not bosses’ profits, can enable everyone in society to make positive contributions. Our neighborhoods need a fighting PLP to grow into a mass party that can win youth away from gangs.
After the East Flatbush rebellion, misleaders came out every night to pacify the neighborhoods’s anger and call for police “reform.” One night Jumaane Williams, a local city councilman, and a host of preachers and self-appointed community advocates tried to lead marchers into a church to talk instead of to the 67th precinct to protest. PLP and Shantel Committee members blasted Pastor Verald Mathews for kicking the Shantel Committee out of that very church because he couldn’t make money off of the struggle. The youth marched to the precinct instead.
After the March 11 rebellion, cops flooded the neighborhood 24 hours a day to intimidate workers. The media in demonizing the rebellion took their cue from the cops and politicians to scare away supporters. Councilman Williams told “outsiders” to “stay the HELL out” of the neighborhood and stop “agitating” youth. Actually people came from both inside and outside the neighborhood, and are still coming.
Kiki’s Mother Dimissed Mayor
PL’ers were there the very first night shoulder to shoulder with the youth as we were every night thereafter. We brought out co-workers, friends and students in the ones and twos that decided to take a stand. Our response to the intimidating fascist police occupation of East Flatbush was to fight back, not hide. Kiki’s family supported the demonstrations and personally organized the biggest march of all day before Kiki’s wake that saw over 1,000 gatherers. And his mother dismissed billionaire Mayor Bloomberg’s “offer” of condolence, saying she’s not looking for a photo op.
At one point councilman Williams gave up trying to keep people out and got on the radio to invite the whole city to demonstrate in East Flatbush. Unlike his call for people to stay out, the media did not publicize that invitation.
The recent struggle in Flatbush shows us that everything PLP does to build a revolutionary communist movement counts. PLP’s involvement in the campaign against the June police murder of Shantel Davis, a young unarmed black woman killed a short walk away from where Kiki was killed, directly influenced the young East Flatbush rebels. Most, if not all, of the rebels watched months of weekly protests by the Shantel Committee, PLP and others in front of the 67th precinct. But the passive anger became raw and personal at the first vigil for Kiki when Shantel’s family and Committee members spoke about marching down Church Ave. Memories of years of racist police harassment, racist mis-education in schools and now a second police murder by the same death squad that killed Shantel, exploded.
When the youth marched, they took the same route of the Shantel marches. One of Kiki’s cousins turned out to be a friend and co-worker of a Shantel Committee member. The cousin attended an August BBQ for Shantel. When he decided to take action for Kiki he drew on the Shantel Committee and PLP to help lead the fight-back.
During the night of the biggest demonstration, one of Shantel’s sisters told Kiki’s cousin that fighting back was difficult but that “you have to fight” because that was the only way to make things better. Weeks before the police killed Kiki, PLP and other Shantel Committee members convinced Shantel’s sisters to keep active despite low morale, partly to help lead the struggle when the next police murder occurred in Flatbush.
We will not be able to prevent the next police murder in East Flatbush. Already the same cops that killed Kiki and Shantel shot a young man in Brownsville, Brooklyn who police claim had a gun. Even rebellions and the civil rights movement that fought Jim Crow segregation left behind capitalism which must maintain racism, both for its superprofits and to divide the working class. PLP should make a fight on every campus and job and in mass organizations to support the rebellion and defend the youth who were arrested. Workers’ power lies in building a revolutionary communist movement to one day smash the cops and the bosses’ whole state apparatus. The time to join is now.

As the May Day organizing heads into its final month, we should take a moment to think about the future. On April 27 in New York City, hundreds and hundreds of workers, students and soldiers will march for communist revolution, workers’ dictatorship and a world free of the profit system’s horrors.
In Chicago and Los Angeles, many will celebrate at dinners around the same theme, as well as marching on May 1 in the Immigrant Rights May Day.
In order to win these goals, our Party must grow until its members number in the millions. To win a communist world, we must become billions. Is this possible, or as some believe, are we merely a bunch of well-motivated people who are spitting into a hurricane?
On the face of it, the bosses would appear all-powerful. The old communist movement, which had once led great revolutions and anti-imperialist struggles throughout the world, died from its own political weaknesses. Capitalists hold power everywhere. U.S. imperialism, which years ago could claim more victims among the world’s workers than even Nazi Germany, still rules the roost. So today, communist revolution would seem to be a noble but unattainable dream.
However, communists have a weapon which teaches us how to look deeper than appearances and see the possibilities that lie beyond the actual. It’s called dialectical materialism. It’s our philosophical tool for understanding everything in the natural world, in society, even in our own minds. Dialectics enables us to see that everything changes, that things turn into their opposite, and that a small Party can grow until it eventually becomes capable of seizing power.
Many people believe social classes have always existed and that the few have always oppressed the many. But the truth is that social classes came into existence only about 15,000 years ago, after human beings had been a biological species for hundreds of thousands of years.
What’s this got to do with May Day? Plenty! Fifteen thousand years may seem like an eternity when compared to an individual life span, but relative to human history, it’s a very short time. The bosses would love us to believe that the present rotten order of things will last forever. They talk endlessly about the “end of history.”
But we see that history’s pages are filled with tales of class struggle, revolution and change. We see the hundreds of years the capitalist class needed in order to make their own revolution, which overthrew feudalism. Feudalism itself had needed centuries of struggle to dump slavery as the dominant form of class society. And almost at the very moment when the capitalists were taking hold of state power barely 200 years ago, working-class revolutionaries were rising up to challenge them.
Eighty-two years after the first capitalist revolution, in France, the Paris Commune of 1871 tried to overthrow it. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was the most profound event of the last millennium. The Chinese Revolution of 1949 and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s again shook the world. These great movements defeated themselves. Our Party is still trying to absorb the lessons of these defeats. But we should learn from the victories as well.
Each of the parties that led these revolutions began as a small, weak organization facing apparently overwhelming odds. Despite their many errors, the great leaders of these movements learned through dialectics how to build the possible from the actual. This lesson is crucial for PLP’s leaders and members to absorb now, as we enter the last few weeks before May Day.
This year’s May Day organizing is characterized by a spurt of Party activity against racist police terror. This is good! It means that we are acting and fighting as well as talking. It gives us an opportunity to expose the liberal rulers’ deadly war schemes as well as to struggle against the more obvious fascist measures. It creates the possibility of bringing more May Day marchers. But each new May Day marcher is also something more than a May Day marcher. Each new May Day marcher is also a potential Party member. And each new Party member is a potential mass leader. Everything we do to ensure a larger, more militant May Day creates the opportunity to build a bigger, more militant Party. A bigger, more militant Party can take bolder, sharper action in the mass movements and win still more members and leaders.
So far, we’ve mentioned dialectics only to show our Party’s potential for growth despite its present apparent weakness. That coin has another side. The rulers appear strong, and we shouldn’t delude ourselves about the enormous advantages they hold over us. But they have many weaknesses as well. They can’t hold power without oppressing us. They can’t rule the world without driving their rivals to unite against them. Capitalism is an unstable system. It will always lead to war. History shows that communist revolutions can seize power in the turmoil of imperialist war. Our Party is on the right side of history. Our class is bound to win.
We need to build the Party, day-by-day, May Day marcher by May Day marcher, Challenge sub by Challenge sub, recruit by recruit, struggle by struggle. Mastering the science of dialectical materialism will enable our class to achieve eventual victory, however long and hard the road ahead may be. Whatever we do now and for the rest of our lives to build the Party can help change the face of the world.