Imperialist war drums are beating loudly in the Pacific as the U.S. and China vie to control resources, markets, and geopolitical leverage. At the center of this grab bag is Taiwan, the island republic claimed by China-- and viewed by the U.S. as a strategic counterpoint to China’s rising power. In advance of Taiwan’s January 13 elections, the two superpowers are competing for regional supremacy as they move toward World War III. Their maneuvers lay bare their bloodthirsty drive for profit and also expose the lethal dangers of nationalism.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) stands firm that working people have no nations—and no side in the capitalist bosses’ dogfight. The bosses cloak their insatiable greed in nationalist rhetoric and calls for a false unity with “their” workers. But all alliances with capitalists offer workers only misery and death.

The working class can turn inter-imperialist war into class war, a revolutionary war for communism. We can connect our communist politics to every struggle we’re immersed in, from the fightback against racist cop terror to strikes and struggles for decent healthcare. We can call out nationalist misleaders who distract the working class and divert their anti-imperialist anger. It’s up to the workers of the world to reject all criminal bosses and respond with international working-class unity and communist revolution.

Imperialists at sea
The South China Sea, a major shipping route and fishing ground, is a linchpin in the global battle for supremacy between China and the U.S.—and a flashpoint for inter-imperialist war. More than 21 percent of the world’s trade, amounting to trillions of dollars, passed through it in 2016 (CNBC, 11/17). China and the U.S. are Taiwan’s two biggest trading partners. The Taiwan Strait, the main shipping route for "goods from Asian factory hubs to markets in Europe, the U.S. and all points in between” (bloomberg.com, 8/2), anchors global supply chains.

Perhaps most important, Taiwan produces over 60 percent of the world’s semiconductors and over 90 percent of the advanced microchips that power everything from mobile phones and artificial intelligence technology to weapons of mass murder (The Economist, 3/26). China’s threat to take over Taiwan and its claim to nearly all of the South China Sea prompted U.S. rulers to bar Taiwan companies from selling their most powerful chips to China (NBC News, 6/29).

Fighting a rising global power
A decaying, divided, and desperate U.S ruling class is straining to contend with China, an economic giant that now sees itself as a global power and is acting as such. “Long reluctant to inject itself into conflicts far from its shores, Beijing is showing a new assertiveness as Xi Jinping begins his third term as the country’s head of state, positioning China to draw like-minded countries to its side and to have a greater say on global matters” (Wall Street Journal, 3/22). China’s willingness to wade into international matters sends a message to traditional U.S. allies that the old world order, dominated by the U.S. and its NATO allies since World War II, is a thing of the past.

In planning their takeover of Taiwan, China’s bosses have studied the Russian playbook. They have repeatedly warned the U.S. to steer clear of Taiwan. After former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the contested island last year, China defiantly conducted live military exercises in the area. While the U.S rulers want to avoid a military conflict with China until they are ready (Foreign Affairs, 8/23), make no mistake: War is coming. In a system based on theft from workers and the violent elimination of all competition, the imperialist bosses will ultimately have no other choice.

The dangers of nationalism
The poison of nationalism is an essential tool for the capitalists to win workers to fight in this impending war. China is fiercely promoting its nationalist “One China'' rhetoric (The Diplomat, 8/16). Taiwan and U.S. bosses use similarly divisive tactics. With the upcoming election around the corner, Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party has deployed former ambassador Hsaio Bi-khim to the U.S. to fan the flames of nationalist identity politics. Hsiao’s popularity with younger voters reflects a surge in Taiwanese identity across the island and diaspora. By contrast, the main opposition party, Kuomintang, which favors close ties with China, has chosen a hardline anti-U.S. media personality, Jaw Shaw-kong, as its vice-presidential candidate “to appeal to the party’s traditional base of mainland-descended voters.”

Whether pro-China or pro-U.S., no brand of nationalism serves Taiwan’s working class, which suffers from the diseases of capitalism: unemployment, inflation, stagnant wages, and housing shortages (The Diplomat, 5/15). Racism, a natural byproduct of nationalism, prevails as well. The country’s prosperity has been built on apartheid and the racist treatment of 700,000 migrant workers from Southeast Asia. They labor in unsafe factories and are exploited by third-party labor brokers (thediplomat.com, 10/10/19). Whether peddled by bosses in Taiwan or China, Gaza or Israel, Ukraine or Russia, all nationalism represents a counter-revolutionary attack on the working class.

Dark night shall have its end!
The Chinese bosses long ago reversed the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the historic uprising for communism, and plunged the world into a dark night from which we still struggle to emerge. But Progressive Labor Party declares that dark night shall have its end! Workers around the world are already showing it is possible to reject imperialist war and identity-based divisions. Anti-Zionist Jews in Israel and around the world have bravely called for an end to the genocidal war in Gaza. International protests against Israel’s vicious ethnic cleansing have been filled with workers of all stripes.

PLP must sharpen the struggle to turn struggles against imperialist war into struggles for communist revolution. Amid the growing danger posed by rival gangs of capitalist bosses, we must maintain our unwavering trust in and dedication to the international working class. Our goal is to end this criminal system and build a communist world run by and for workers. Join us!

BRONX, NY, November 18- Amidst hundreds of other anti-genocide protests across the nation and the world during the past several weeks, 150 protesters rallied outside of a Starbucks in the Bronx and later took over the streets to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and expose U.S. Representative Adriano Espaillat’s snake-like support for U.S. funding of Israel’s genocide. Millions of workers are exposing the role of these murderous politicians in Israel’s fascist slaughter. Although the main demand of the march was a ceasefire, our signs said ceasefire is “not enough!” “Smashing the Israeli state” is “not enough!” Workers need to smash capitalism and its racist borders worldwide! Many workers voiced agreement with the need to go further than reform demands. When one worker read the headline of the 11/29 CHALLENGE “From the rivers to the seas, communism will set us free!” she said, “NOW we are talking!!”

The rally and march were organized by a local multiracial pro-Palestine group that is only a little over a month old. Comrades in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are taking leadership in the struggle, and friends of the Party have become energized and feel compelled to get more involved. Among other chants, we chanted, “Not another nickel, not another dime! No more money for Israel’s crimes!” We handed out more than  75 papers and made several contacts. Immediately after the march, we held a packed study group with several base members, including a comrade’s former student and the college-aged son of a longtime friend of the Party who wanted to join the struggle. During the study group, we read the latest CHALLENGE editorial and discussed the meanings of words such as Zionism, capitalism, imperialism, fascism, and communism, and we made plans for future study.

This working-class neighborhood, with many Latin and Arab workers, came out in support of our rally and march. People were beeping their horns, raising their fists, and cheering our cause. One driver opened his window to yell, “Stop the genocide!” Workers are seeing through the bosses’ lies about this war and siding with the working class in Palestine. We in PLP are not surprised: in fact, we put our confidence in the development and strength of workers and youth in these neighborhoods, part of the international working class that will one day seize power from the capitalist bosses.

No justice in a capitalist system
In solidarity with workers in Palestine, many workers in the United States are boycotting Starbucks and other companies that support Israeli apartheid and genocide. The lists of company after company circulating on social media serve as indictments of U.S. capitalism and evidence that the very rotten core of this profit system is genocidal. Even if one genocidal company were to go bankrupt, the bloody wheels of imperialist war would continue to turn. The whole damn system has got to go!

Identity politics is a dead-end
In an attempt to build nationalism for a multicultural United States, while distracting workers from the fundamentally racist fabric of capitalism, the liberal fascists have succeeded in convincing many workers to vote for a multiracial array of misleaders who are very quickly exposing themselves to be managers of genocide. Adriano Espaillat, who is praised for being the first Dominican and formerly undocumented immigrant to serve in the U.S. Congress, is using the phony language of “friendship and love” to push multicultural nationalism for both Israel and the United States and justify Israel’s incessant bombing of workers and children in Gaza. On October 31, he spoke at a fascist Israel solidarity event at Yeshiva University, where the Israeli-flag-waving audience responded to his introduction with a standing ovation. At this same event, which a pro-Israel news outlet celebrated as “a visible demonstration of the bedrock connection between the Latino and Jewish communities in Washington Heights,” participants sang both the Israeli and American national anthems. Not a single word was spoken about thousands of Palestinian women and children murdered by Israeli bombs, exposing a hallmark of fascism: racist disregard for workers’ lives.

Workers must reject electoral politics
Espaillat is far from alone in this multiracial contingent of bloodthirsty misleaders. In the Bronx, for example, U.S. Representative Richie Torres, the first gay Afro-Latin in Congress, received almost $300,000 from pro-Israel PACs in 2022 alone. As election season approaches, there is no doubt that the U.S. ruling class will use all tools available in an attempt to funnel the working class’ righteous rage at genocide into campaigning that we vote for the “lesser of two evils.” Just as Jim Crow Joe Biden and Kkkamala Harris misused the passion and energy of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 to garner support for their racist administration, they will try to do the same again. We must not let them! While the liberal fascists work overtime to convince workers in the United States to side with the Israeli ruling class, the truth is that workers in New York City have way more in common with workers in Palestine than with any capitalist ruler. No politician, from president to council member, will provide the answer to genocide. Don’t vote, revolt! We need an international communist movement led by millions of workers to smash all borders and end racist genocide once and for all. Join the Progressive Labor Party and fight with us for communism.

Biden kept “baby-killers" propaganda in speech
Al Jazeera, 11/27–US President Joe Biden reportedly rejected the advice of staff to refrain from repeating unverified reports that Hamas had beheaded babies during its attack on Israel on October 7. Some White House advisors appealed to the president to “cut a line about Hamas beheading babies because those reports were unverified,” according to a report by The Washington Post. An Israeli news outlet made the original claim, which was picked up by media outlets across the globe. However, no such beheadings have been verified by any Israeli or international source. Not long after Biden’s speech, the White House said in a statement that it had not confirmed the veracity of the reports.

Times economists fret that workers are pessimistic about the economy
New York Times, 11/23–Americans seem very grumpy about the economy lately, despite what looks like some pretty good news…To an economist, inflation is the change in prices…But to most people, inflation is high prices. So they look at high prices in the supermarket (for example)  and say, “That’s inflation!”...Another thing bugging people is housing. Home prices and mortgage rates are up, and affordability is way down. Rents are also up. This is no problem if you already own it, but it’s awful if you’re a young person trying to buy your first place. That’s why you see TikTok talking about a Silent Depression; that might also explain why 93 percent of people 18 to 29 in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll said the economy was poor or only fair…In an NBC News poll released last weekend, only 19 percent of respondents said that they were confident the next generation would have better lives than their own generation. NBC said it was the smallest share of optimists dating back to the question’s introduction in 1990…That kind of pessimism might be easier to understand if the economy were in the tank.

Zapatistas dissolve autonomous municipalities
AP, 11/6–The Zapatista indigenous rebel movement in southern Mexico said in a statement posted Monday it is dissolving the “autonomous municipalities” it declared in the years following the group’s 1994 armed uprising…“In upcoming statements, we will describe the reasons and the processes involved in taking this decision,” the statement said. “We will also begin explaining what the new structure of Zapatista autonomy will look like, and how it was arrived at.”...Anthropologist Gaspar Morquecho, who has studied the movement for decades, said the Zapatistas — known as the EZLN, after their initials in Spanish — have become increasingly isolated, leading many young people to move out of the townships in search of work or more formal education opportunities…Chiapas has seen the rise of migrant smuggling, drug cultivation and trafficking, and bloody turf battles between the Sinaloa and Jalisco drug cartels...The Mexican government has sent thousands of soldiers and quasi-military National Guard troopers to Chiapas…“The only reason they are here is to stem migration. That is the order they got from the U.S. government,” the statement read.

Arms race expands throughout Asia
NikkeiAsia, 11/28–By the 2030s, the Indo-Pacific region will be filled with thousands of new missiles as the U.S., China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and Taiwan race to expand their arsenals, Ankit Panda, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace senior fellow, said Monday. The danger, Panda told Nikkei Asia, is the "intersection between advanced conventional missile systems and the risk of nuclear war." The greatest fear is that countries such as China and North Korea may be more likely to resort to nuclear use if these conventional missiles are perceived to target their national leadership, he said. Since arms control talks are unlikely in the current geopolitical context, one idea is for the U.S. and its allies to publicly "forswear any preemptive" attacks on national leaders, he proposed in a recent Carnegie report, "Indo-Pacific Missile Arsenals -- Avoiding Spirals and Mitigating Escalation Risks."

No shackling of patients
November 14 was a busy day for U.S. PLP members and friends at the American Public Health Association (APHA) meetings in Atlanta, Georgia. We joined protests against Cop City in Atlanta and Israel’s genocide of Palestinians abroad. We were also instrumental in getting a policy passed by the APHA against shackling prisoners in health care settings (like handcuffing them to the metal rails on a hospital bed).

We worked for over a year with friends and PLP members to craft this resolution, just as we have done before on successful resolutions against police brutality and for prison abolition. This strong anti-racist policy statement gives us a new tool to demand humane treatment of prisoners at our local institutions. Two of us engaged in this policy work also hit the streets as a security team at the Cop City rally, openly advocating against capitalism and for communism. These actions opened the door to deeper political conversations at a later social event. A fellow rally security member was excited to meet a communist and to learn more about the PLP.

Handing out our newsletter, APHA Challenge, at sessions where we presented or spoke from the floor was another way we got into good conversations, including one with an interested activist who remembered us from our campaign last year around global vaccination access.

While PLP has provided consistent leadership in struggles at APHA for decades, today’s multiple crises for the global working class mean that the party group in the APHA must grow as class struggle intensifies!
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We will remember Claude
We live in a world where it’s “normal” to commit genocide, but it’s “unreasonable” to remember the dead.
In one New York City high school, on what would’ve been his 18th birthday, students wanted to memorialize Claude.* After what happened in March, in fear of retaliation, students wanted permission before putting up a memorial again.

Claude was a son, brother, friend, thinker, creator, student—and a victim. He was doubly targeted by the capitalist violence in the street and the racist education system in the schools. Following his killing, students had fought to memorialize Claude. In response, the administration had taken down the memorial not once, but twice! And each time, we rebuilt it bigger. (See CHALLENGE 4/12 and 4/26 for the full backstory.)  

When I met with the principal this week to submit the students’ request, she eventually said yes.  I quickly informed the students of the small win. I also asked staff to join me in wearing Black in memory of Claude.
Twelve hours later, before the school day, I received an email revoking permission to post the memorial.
When I arrived at school, I saw many workers in Black. Students and I began our morning with a circle in the hallway in front of the memorial. One student led us through a speech and ten seconds of silence. We then wrote messages on the poster.

After morning check-in, I was told by the administration to take down the memorial.

I replied, “No, I’m not doing that. I won’t be the one to remove it.”

She did a double take and said, “Okay, I’ll take it down myself. I’m not scared.”

The simple act of remembering a Black working-class student is defiance in this Black-run school. The fact that a memory of a child’s killing is so threatening exposes the racist anti-student nature of schools under bloody capitalism. One purpose of capitalist education is to recreate all the inequalities that make this profit system run. Capitalism’s schools censor and repress anti-working-class ideas. Bringing attention to Claude shatters the image of this “good school.” His memorial is a reminder that this whole system is disproportionately rigged against Black, Brown, and immigrant students. Such a system doesn’t deserve to exist.

Well, the principal finally backed down for now: “I don’t want to fight…we’ll keep it.”
Taking small risks like these helps build working-class confidence for the bigger battles ahead. Our next battle is fighting anti-Muslim racism (more next time).

Throughout the day, students from all grades signed the poster. Hundreds were careful to not let it wrinkle as they passed through the hallway. For now, the memorial is up.

Our principal was trying to bury Claude’s memory like how Israel buried 14,000 of our working-class siblings.
Students and education workers here have yet to see it, but the very group of people who kill kids overseas are the same people who kill kids in the streets.  

Be it Brooklyn or Gaza, this profit system tries to bury us, but the working class remembers. We will remember Claude. We will remember the genocide. In their memory, we will fight for the kind of world they deserve.

*The pseudonym Claude is inspired by the communist fighter and writer, Claude Mckay.
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Canada: worker organizer solidarity with our class in Gaza
A Progressive Labor Party (PLP) member organized a solidarity event with workers in Palestine in his rural Maritime-Canadian community. The event was part of a national day of action demanding that the Canadian government support an immediate ceasefire in Israel-Palestine and call for an end to the blockade of Gaza.

More than 250 workers and their families showed up, a substantial turnout in a town of 5000. The highlight was a “complicity tour” that involved marching to various sites in town at which designated speakers critically connected the location to Canadian support for the ongoing genocide. The stops included the local university, where the speaker called out the administration’s cowardly unwillingness to condemn Israeli state violence and made the case for the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement. Then it was on to Scotiabank, whose logo blazes the same shade as the blood of Palestinian children, with the institution’s massive investments in Elbit Systems, an Israeli death merchant.

The gap between a ceasefire demand and PLP’s call to turn the guns around appears wide indeed, but by working in a reform-oriented organization Party members will continue striving to keep the revolutionary horizon in view, testing our line among an expanding coalition of community members.
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Response to Gaza genocide: teacher stops business as usual
As the bombs were falling on our working-class brothers and sisters in the Levant (Gaza and surrounding area), the New York City Department of Education dropped a bomb on NYC teachers. The Chancellor put out an email saying that teachers could be fired for anything they post on social media. This is a clear escalation, and an example of liberal fascism increasing,  due to the need for the ruling class to silence any criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Not a word of criticism was broached by the Teachers’ Union thus their silence is complicity. Upon seeing the letter, my club of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) teachers began formulating a plan to respond. One teacher shared a template that some teachers were using to write a letter to the teachers union’s president. We then decided that the club would take this course of action.

In addition, I decided that I wouldn’t be teaching my usual classes and would, instead, have a class discussion on Israel/Palestine. I was able to have a sharp conversation in the classroom and had several students — including some Muslim students — thank me. This also opened up the ability to have conversations with teachers, in which  I consistently brought up the Party’s analysis thatU.S. support of Israel’s genocide is all part of inter-imperialist rivalry.

While sitting in the teacher’s center during my off period, I quickly wrote a letter and asked for input from a young Latin teacher with whom I’d had a few political conversations. She was happy to help, and shared that not only was the Israeli genocide fueled by the Leviathan Oil fields off of the coast of Gaza, but that there were plans to create a canal that would rival Egypt’s Suez Canal and be totally under the control of the U.S. and Israel.

I then sent the letter to our entire staff. Several teachers thanked me, especially one teacher with a Muslim name who said he was afraid of speaking out due to racism. Many good conversations with students and teachers and much base-building occurred by following and carrying out the plans that my club had made. Of course, as part of our plan, we decided to share our experiences with CHALLENGE to help the Party grow and learn.