Utter chaos, destruction and brutality have followed the October 7 Hamas incursion into Israel that murdered 1,300 and wounded 3,000. The relentless response by the unity government of Israel, led by the butchers Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his liberal counterpart Benny Gantz (Reuters 10/12) has to date has murdered over 4,000 people including more than 1,000 children, wounded over 10,000, and leveled hospitals, schools, and homes in Gaza (UN 10/17). The war reflects and foreshadows the collapse of U.S. imperialism and the callous deathtrap that imperialist rivalry and nationalism hold for the workers of the world. This capitalist genocide will grow to even greater proportions in the coming days, as the bodies of hundreds murdered at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City are counted and the bombings continue and likely ground invasion begins.

Capitalist Genocide
The deaths of workers in Gaza are not collateral damage. They are the inevitable result of indiscriminate bombing of workers trapped in a densely packed city carried out by the Israeli military (Al Jazeera 10/18). The criminal war minister of defense of Israel Yoav Gallant, ordered the complete siege of Gaza, referring to workers there as “human animals” and promising, “There will be no light, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” (Times of Israel 10/9/2023).

The fascist cliques that rule Gaza and Israel are state terrorist murderers sacrificing the lives of workers to carve out their positions and profits in a volatile and shifting world order. Workers and soldiers on both sides —and everywhere—must break down nationalist, religious and ethnic divisions, to fight together to crush a capitalist system that so completely fails the workers of the world.

This war in Gaza also creates greater instability and the risk of an escalation that, together with other conflicts like the one in Ukraine, paves the way for the outbreak of a Third World War. Capitalism only offers war and death to workers. The working class must destroy it with communist revolution.

From top dog to dogfight
This current war between Israel and Hamas is the continuation of the fight for dominance of the Middle East and its oil as the hegemony of the U.S. empire continues to decline.

The same U.S. ruling class who refused to bomb transport lines to Nazi concentration camps and turned away Jewish survivors of the Nazis, supported the creation of a “Jewish state” and the displacement of millions of workers from Palestine in exchange for a Cold War ally against Soviet influence in the Middle East and support in the fight to control the production and flow of the region’s oil. This nationalist bribe, sold to workers as a solution to centuries of anti-Jewish racism is leading to the mass slaughter of workers in Gaza and now Israel.

Nationalism and alliances with bosses anywhere are deadly for workers
Over the decades, the bosses in Israel in exchange for vast sums of money and weapons from the U.S., have provided crucial support for U.S. interests. The Israeli bosses helped secure the Suez Canal in the 70’s. They funneled weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras in the 80’s (NY Times 7/21/83) and provide crucial geopolitical and intelligence support to the U.S. bosses’ control of Mideast oil. Meanwhile, the U.S. bosses support the Israeli bosses’ apartheid laws and help to negotiate “peace” treaties with neighboring countries that continually condemned workers in the West Bank to live under a contiguous state of attack from Israeli nationalists and the IDF, and workers in Gaza to live in what is largely recognized as an open-air prison.

But, recently, the U.S-Israeli partnership and dominance have begun to unravel. Netanyahu refused to support sanctions against Russia after Russia invaded Ukraine. Earlier this year, China brokered a restoring of relations between Saudi-Arabia and Iran that undercut decades of the U.S. bosses strategy of playing them against each other (CNBC 3/15).

United States weakness
This week the U.S. has mobilized two aircraft carriers to the area, anticipating a further escalation of the conflict and hoping to discourage its global imperialist rivals such as China and Russia as well as local nationalists such as Iran from providing support to Hamas.

Even as the world is witnessing genocide in Gaza, Biden can only react by giving his unconditional support to the butcher Netanyahu, who half of the population in Israel rejects but who, by murdering workers in Gaza, will try to gain support in a divided Israeli society.

The decline of U.S. imperialism around the globe is creating an increasingly volatile situation. The U.S. is being challenged by rivals big and small. The increasingly desperate U.S. bosses will not go down without a fight. Their growing desperation is adding fuel to the fires.

Israel created Hamas
Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2007. It was founded as a nationalist organization in 1988 at the onset of the first uprising against the Israeli occupation. But its roots date to the late 1960’s and 70’s when the Israeli bosses were grasping for an alternative to Yassir Arafat’s Fatah organization. When an adherent of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheik Ahmed Yassin formed the Islamist group Mujama al-Islamiya in 1979 Israel recognized it as an official organization. According to Ishaan Tharoor, “Yassin's Mujama would become Hamas, which, it can be argued, was Israel's Taliban: an Islamist group whose antecedents had been laid down by the West in a battle against a [Russian backed] enemy” (Washington Post 7/30/2014). Israel encouraged the rivalry between Fatah and Hamas even looking the other way as Hamas amassed weapons.

Hamas does not represent the resistance of workers in Gaza against the oppression of the Israeli state any more than Fatah did. Hamas, with the tacit support of the Israeli government, has always been primarily interested in seizing control of Gaza from Fatah and securing its own control of the territory (WSJ 1/24/2009).

For years Hamas has been reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes on food (The Guardian 2010) and clothes (The New Arab 7/20/22) from the starving workers of Gaza to fill the pockets of its leadership and maintain it’s network of supporters.

While the working class on both sides of the Gaza war are trapped in the ambition of the nationalist group Hamas and Israel's murderous ruling class, for workers around the world there is no good choice under this deadly system.

The only way out is communist revolution
For the workers there is only one way out, to demolish capitalism and its rhetoric of nations, religions, races and borders, and build the communist state to guarantee us health and housing, together as a single international working class.

Capitalism creates religious and racial differences to undermine the revolutionary potential of global working-class unity. Thousands of workers inside and outside these countries will be dragged to support one of the fascist nationalist sides led by Israel or Hamas, both oppressors and enemies of the working class. Both must be swept away through a communist revolution.

From the ruins of Gaza and all the places devastated by capitalist war, the revolutionary consciousness of the international working class must be reborn. Let the imperialists start their wars, the workers will finish them with communist revolution.

Chinese bosses begin rehabilitation of Syrian bosses
Reuters, 9/21–Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, his first visit to China since 2004 and his latest bid to end more than a decade of diplomatic isolation under Western sanctions. Being seen with China's president at a regional gathering should add further legitimacy to Assad's campaign to return to the world stage. Syria joined China's Belt and Road Initiative in 2022 and was welcomed back into the Arab League in May. "In his third term, Xi Jinping is seeking to openly challenge the United States, so I don't think it's a surprise that he is willing to go against international norms and host a leader like Assad," said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore…Alongside the U.S., Syria faces sanctions from Australia, Canada and European states, but bids to impose multilateral sanctions have not secured the support of the U.N. Security Council, where China and Russia both have a veto. China has used its veto at least eight times on U.N. motions condemning Assad's government…Syria, a small oil producer, holds strategic significance for China. It lies between Iraq, a major oil supplier to China, and Turkey, the terminus of economic corridors stretching across Asia into Europe. Syria also borders Jordan and Lebanon.

Russia selling wheat directly to Egypt, bypassing market
Bloomberg, 9/26–Egypt is in talks to buy 1 million tons of Russian wheat through a government-to-government deal, people familiar with the matter said. The talks have taken place for delivery this season, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the information isn’t public. Egypt is one of the world’s top wheat importers and its purchases are closely tracked as a global benchmark…Russia has had two bumper harvests in a row, reinforcing its position as the biggest wheat shipper. Still, some recent sales of Russian wheat to Egypt have been complicated by efforts to enforce an unofficial price floor for the country’s supplies.

Yelling fire in a crowded congress
BBC, 9/30–An investigation has been launched after a congressman in the US House of Representatives triggered a fire alarm as his party was trying to delay a crucial budget vote on Saturday. Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat, says it was an accident. But his opponents have accused him of trying to disrupt the vote designed to avoid a US federal government shutdown. The alarm prompted an hour-long evacuation…The alarm went off as Democrats were attempting to delay the vote as they sought more time to read the bill and decide whether to support it…" Today, as I was rushing to make a vote, I came to a door that is usually open for votes but today would not open. I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door," Mr Bowman said in a statement. He added that he was not "in any way, trying to delay any vote". "It was the exact opposite - I was trying urgently to get to a vote, which I ultimately did and joined my colleagues in a bipartisan effort to keep our government open."

U.N. decision to send troops to Haiti pending
France24, 10/2–The UN Security Council will decide on Monday whether to endorse an international force to back Haiti's police…Kenya announced in late July that it was ready to take on the lead-nation role and deploy a 1,000-strong force to the impoverished Caribbean country. The United States, which has expressed willingness to provide logistical support but no boots on the ground, indicated last month that several other countries were prepared to contribute to a multinational security force. Those countries include Jamaica, the Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda. China, which holds a Security Council veto, has previously expressed skepticism about an international security mission. It has instead emphasized a need to crack down on the arms flow from Florida.

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in Haiti organized a cadre school in September for 26 participants, members and friends, workers, and teachers, but mostly students from working class backgrounds. Study is an important aspect of understanding how the capitalist system works and why it cannot be reformed and must be replaced by a revolutionary communist egalitarian society.

Our goal is that study will be incorporated into class struggle on campus and beyond, and our Party will grow into a force to be reckoned with in Haiti and beyond.

In Haitian Creole, we say "Tout moun se moun" meaning that workers need a system where they will be treated as human beings--the human race. That phrase is often included in the following excerpted letters (see all letters at www.plp.org)
*

In the cadre school, we studied several texts over the course of three days: The Principles of Communism by Marx and Engels, Jailbreak and Build a Base in the Working Class by Progressive Labor Party, among others. We learned about what communism is and what capitalism is. We also learned how each system is organized, and about the position of each person in that system. We learned about how to build solidarity among our class.

The capitalist system is concerned primarily with making and keeping profit—making money. It doesn’t concern itself at all with seeing working class people as human beings—as long as workers can reproduce themselves in order to go to work another day to make more profits for the bosses, then the capitalists are satisfied.

Communism is a system where we see that production is organized for the good of the working class, so that workers can live like human beings. Each member of our class will have the right to an education that serves our class, and will have the right to free and decent health care that meets our needs.

This is the kind of world that I would like to live in, for myself, my family, my town and my class. In order to achieve the goal of communism, we need to build an organization capable of leading the fight, which unites all members of the working class, from Haiti to everywhere else in the world.
*

I was happy to participate in the cadre school where we learned a lot of thing. I learned about how the capitalist system wants me to think only about myself—that success in life means becoming part of the capitalist machine, rather than what’s good for the vast majority of society.

We looked at the world situation, for example, the war going on in Ukraine, and discussed how that war is part of the rivalry of the big capitalist countries to gain a bigger control of the world and its profits. I think we have to destroy that kind of a system, and that we need a communist revolution to do that, and a communist party to lead us. Then we can establish a communist society…to share in building that society and reaping its benefits equally, according to need. A world without racist discrimination.

But in order to arrive at that goal, we have to do the work in a way that builds the collective consciousness of workers and students, rather than the individualist consciousness that capitalism fosters. I believe that this cadre school helps us move forward in the correct direction….We here can be an example to show how to do this…
*

Ayibobo—greetings comrades. The cadre school helped us understand more about the functioning of the capitalist system.

The capitalist system is one in which we are forced to live under [unfavorable] conditions…exploitation in the factories and the fields; unemployment; racism; inferior houses, education and healthcare.

And now there are gangs that control Haiti and make daily life even more miserable for us. We shouldn’t have to live in such misery and fear every day! It’s a good thing that workers living in some neighborhoods controlled by the gangs have been fighting back. We need more of that!

But we also need to understand that the gangs are only a symptom of a decaying capitalist system and the way to get rid of the gangs is to get rid of the capitalist bosses who profit from them, once and for all.
*

What I learned from the cadre school is that everyone should be able to live like a member of the human race—decently, without racism, poverty, and the misery this system creates. In a different—communist—society we won’t look at and put a value on people based on their appearance. If we understand the importance of building solidarity within our class—both here in Haiti and elsewhere around the world, that will help us in the fight against the capitalist system.

In the capitalist system, the bourgeoisie appropriates all wealth from the labor of the working class; this is basically unfair, because if you create something, why should someone who did nothing profit from it?

For over 60 years, members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have marched, rallied, walked picket lines, and donated food and money to striking industrial workers to help intensify the class struggle. This year marks a huge number of striking workers across the country. PLP believes that strikes can be schools for communism and can build antiracist class consciousness. Strikes often reveal the true colors of union bosses like Sean O’Brien (President of the Teamsters) and liberal politicians like Joe Biden who claim to be on the side of the working class but really serve the bosses’ interests.

In August, 340,000 UPS workers were ready to strike. O’Brien set up “practice” picket line schools across the country. He spouted fiery words to encourage UPS workers to strike. But days before the strike was to happen, he announced a tentative contract with UPS claiming it was the best contract in UPS history. This announcement dashed the hopes of many UPS workers and other workers wanting to pressure the bosses to give up some of their profits.

What the workers told us
PL’ers spoke to many UPS workers on practice picket lines and elsewhere. They told us that there had been two contracts to vote on: a Master and a Supplemental that varied by geographical region. For example, Virginia and Maryland fall under the Atlantic region. Not all supplementals contained the same provisions. The Western and Central have big bumps in pensions as opposed to the Atlantic. The New England supplemental gave part-timers a way to become full time—by working at least 30 days for eight hours during a 60 day period. Local 705 in the Chicago area had negotiated a provision that for every four new full time jobs, three will go to a part timer and one to  a full timer. This could be a real game changer.

The Atlantic supplement does not have that provision. Angry workers questioned union leaders during meetings as to why such a fractured negotiation had happened. Some part-timers have worked there for 24 years!

Part-timers bear the worst schedules with no regular hours. They may be on the schedule to work from 4pm to 8pm, but have to call in every day to see if they have to come in earlier, say 10:30 am or noon. If part-timers have a child or an elderly family member to care for, their partner, spouse or significant other takes most of the responsibility for care taking, doctor appointments and sick days.

There are “full-time combo” jobs that in theory they can apply for, but even with twenty-four years seniority, they cannot jump over a full-time person with a year’s seniority for the position.
The standard lunch hour has been reduced from an hour to thirty minutes. A worker needs to request an hour lunch break two days in advance!

At one UPS distribution station in Virginia, the union leaders recommended that the rank and file vote Yes on the Master and No the supplemental. Many workers voted No on both agreements, but nationally the contract was approved.

What is to be done?
PL’ers will continue to help UPS workers understand the nature of capitalism. Bosses will always place profits ahead of workers’ needs. Union bosses and liberal politicians get perks under capitalism and do not want to change the system. Voting for politicians is a dead end. Reading CHALLENGE, discussing these ideas with their coworkers and joining Progressive Labor Party to fight for communism is the best way forward on the road to workers’ power!