CHICAGO, March 9 – A multiracial crowd of dozens of students and workers rallied and marched across the campus of the University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC) to protest the administration’s decision to allow fascist scum Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk space to spread their brand of gutter racism and sexism. Members of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and our friends joined the action to support the fight and spread communist revolution as the only alternative to fascism, capitalism’s response to a crisis in their system.

Owens and Kirk are right wing organizers and talk show hosts. They travel across the U.S. promoting open sexism, mainly against trans workers. They serve the domestic U.S. capitalists who are mainly represented by the Republican Party. But these are the Small Fascists (see Glossary, page 6).

Although the threat presented by these open fascists is very real for our class, PLP holds that they do not represent the primary danger for workers – the finance capital, liberal bosses within President Joe Biden’s camp do. These are the Big Fascists, the finance capitalists who want to maintain their worldwide empire. They want a united working class brainwashed by patriotism and willing to fight and die in a world war to defend these capitalist’s profits.

So while we directly confront these gutter racists head on, we need to fight even harder against the multicultural, liberal Big Fascist bosses that seek to disarm our class through shallow identity politics as they build the path to all-class unity and imperialist war.

Fascism is at its core not just about “wicked people” but rather the desperate strategies employed by all capitalist bosses to save their profit system in crisis. We need to build our international Party to overthrow the capitalist system that ultimately gives rise to fascism and war–no matter the appearance or the promises of the bosses at the top

Fight gutter fascists head on
The anti-fascist, antisexist students and workers first gathered at the quad area to assemble before marching a short distance across campus to the forum site. Those of us in PLP and our friends came equipped with signs, a flyer about growing fascism, and copies of CHALLENGE in order to sharpen the militancy of the protest.

At first, the leaders of the march and their marshals directed the protestors to an open site on the other side of the street from the forum. But after a short while enough participants pushed to be closer to where the gutter fascists were entering. Once there, we were able to confront the open fascists more directly.

Organizers from different student groups led chants and gave speeches that shared their “disappointment” that the university had permitted the forum. All in all, a naïve tone dominated the politics of the event, as if we could ever trust the university bosses (or any boss) to really be on the side of the students or workers.

Thankfully, a more militant Black student took the megaphone and called for more open confrontation with the fascist goons. He recalled recent experiences that he had getting arrested while protesting against the racist Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) in more remote areas of the state. Other speakers followed, highlighting the connections to March 2016 when a multiracial crowd of hundreds of protestors were able to shut down a Donald Trump rally (see CHALLENGE, 3/25/16).

Self-critically, our contingent of PLP members and friends could have been bolder in giving leadership to this event. Even though the protestors moved across the street to be closer, there was still a good fifty yards separating us from the entrance where the pro-fascists were entering. The working class can’t be satisfied with taking the “moral high ground” against the fascist foot soldiers of the capitalist class – we need to organize to attack them head on! As such, we need to be much less timid in sharpening the struggle in these settings.

Capitalist bosses, big and small, attack workers
The recent rise of fascist hate speech is nothing new under capitalism. As the profit system barrels through crisis after crisis en route to world war, we can expect to see more scum like Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk getting platforms to scapegoat sections of the working class for the failures of capitalism.

At present, LGBTQ+ workers are a principal target for the domestically-oriented Small Fascist wing of the U.S. ruling class that Kirk and Owens belong to. These Small Fascists pin practically everything wrong with capitalist society on LGBTQ+ workers, maliciously smearing them. In doing so, they are directly responsible for obscene rates of violence committed against LGBTQ+ workers and youth, particularly Black and Latin workers who are transgender. We need to fight side by side as a united class against the attempts by the bosses to divide and attack us.

However, to side with the “lesser evil” liberal bosses in this battle is the kiss of death. The still-dominant Big Fascist bosses like those in charge of Chicago and UIC pay lip service to “diversity” and other high-minded concepts while still opening the door for gutter racists in their own backyard. They lie to our face and stab us in the back, all the while promoting a “friendlier” multiracial capitalism.

By avoiding more overt fascist ideology, they can package a more insidious version of pro-capitalist nationalism that is necessary to win our class – including many LGBTQ+ workers -- to future bloodbaths against imperialist rivals like China and Russia. There is no “lesser-evil” – the whole system has got to go!

Communist revolution is the only solution
To accomplish a communist revolution to get rid of capitalism, we need the mass international PLP and our own Red Army. The fascists -- Big and Small -- already have a wide head start on organizing and arming themselves. But they are no match for a united working class armed with communist politics and leadership! Join PLP and fight back today!

Communist politics best self-care
Coming to the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) [over the past three months] was a new type of experience that I hadn’t had before, really.  Since I was young, I had been relatively politically involved, but primarily focused on women’s and LGBTQ issues; mostly I was involved in online debate.  Several times my mom brought me to political events, though there was not really historical discussion at these events (marches, getting people to vote in local elections, etc.)

I was pretty surprised when I came to the PLP meeting.  My first and most preeminent observation was that the meeting was set up almost like a classroom and almost like a group therapy meeting.  That structure was definitely reflected in the dynamic and in my experience; the goal was to educate people on history but PLP inadvertently (or not) created a space that allowed people to let out their feelings and analysis of the world and our system.  The way that it imitated professional group therapy can definitely be connected to a topic we dealt with in one of my classes - that resistance itself can be a form of self-care.  

I decided to come with a friend the first time for a few reasons - 1) I spend the majority of my time with this friend, 2) it was the closest thing to coming alone and 3) coming with this person provided me with more expansive analysis after the meeting ended.  Only after the first meeting did I decide to bring more friends.  I was hesitant to bring one friend, but did so.  

The discussions were interesting because they were composed of people who were educated and familiar with the content and people who came because they were curious.  I think that I was better equipped to respond to that same curiosity back at school.

In all honesty I don’t really know what is next.  I guess I could continue to just try to discuss the world and educate those around me but that also does not feel effective or impactful.  I’ll be coming back to the PLP meetings and continuing to try to self educate and share my findings, but I struggle to construct a plan that is satisfactory. 

Editorial note: A plan to get to know the family and recruit this student to PLP is in place.

*****
Talking about a (communist) revolution
“Based on what you are saying, reform can have the opposite effect. It could keep people away from revolutionary ideas.” “Exactly.”

My response of “exactly” ended a two hour lunch conversation with friends and leaders of one of the strongest more militant reform unions in Chicago. All of them are committed, and tireless fighters against racism, and committed to fighting injustice, and fighting for equality for their members. The lunch I discovered is a customary send off for those workers who retire from the union.

We started lunch talking about the contentious Chicago mayoral election taking place between the two runoff candidates: Brandon Johnson (Black) a County Commissioner, former middle school teacher, and former union leader that has been endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union.  Johnson is running against Paul Vallas (white), former Chief Operating Officer at Chicago Public Schools, proponent of charters, vouchers, and balancing education budgets off the backs of teachers’ pensions. The Fraternal Order of Police has endorsed Vallas.

My friend said that the spirit of racism will always be here in reference to the election and the unions’ effort to build a union that fights for the “common good” and that history is cyclical racism. I immediately responded to both her statements and said that racism is rooted in the economic system of capitalism and it’s far from a spirit or a belief. It has a material base in capitalism and that history is not cyclical because there are times in history where race did not exist.  

Well, my friend immediately disagreed with me and I was totally taken back when two other friends said that they agreed with me. W-H-A-T! That had never openly happened before in department meetings. I acknowledged that my experience working in this union was both rewarding and inspiring.

However, if we don’t take advantage of the opportunities of pointing out the limits and the contradictions of fighting for reforms our class will get cynical and be won over to bad ideas.  My friend said to the whole table after packing up and paying the bill, “We should have more discussions like this.”

The conversation helped me realize that we must have these conversations with everyone. Going into the lunch I was feeling one-sided about my friends/leaders in terms of them even wanting to talk about revolution and reform. I also was not clear if they would be the liberals that would lead us into fascism. As I left the restaurant, I was humbled by the contradictions and the period that we are in as we build for communist revolution. I’m more confident in the Party’s line and confident that our class will win.

*****
Capitalism = bosses' dictatorship
Most people I speak to believe the government is a democracy where capitalists and workers decide issues, but capitalism has always been a dictatorship of the capitalist class. Some examples include, the majority of the French National Assembly just voted to defeat an anti-worker raise of the retirement age only to have their votes ignored by the capitalist rulers.

The U.S. railroad capitalists ignored government regulations on safety and maintenance that have greatly increased the number of train wrecks and have subjected communities to poisonous air and water pollution in Ohio and elsewhere.

Many U.S. banks ignored liquidity obligations and used low government interest rates, meant to create jobs, to provide loans to capitalists who used the money to buy back their own stocks to raise their profits and CEO’s salaries. The result so far has been worldwide bank failures and a possible recession requiring bailouts by taxpayers while the bankers retain their wealth.

The U.S. has been involved in endless wars but I can’t remember the government asking workers to vote for those wars. The wars in Korea and Vietnam that I remember offered only jail time for war resisters.

Capitalist dictatorships have been a disaster for billions of workers worldwide and now threaten a nuclear war from which the world may not recover unless workers, soldiers and youth join PLP and the revolutionary movement for communism. Read CHALLENGE.

*****
To expose bosses: keep writing simple
The article “Fight Imperialist Warmongers” in the March 15 issue of CHALLENGE, reporting on a Libertarian Party led rally at the DC Lincoln Memorial had some good points.  However, the sentences were convoluted and probably not intelligible to the regular worker.  I almost thought that it was attacking the left, but after reading it twice, I realized that it was referring to the “left and right-wing media,” which is offered as a ruling class alternative to the true left, which is Progressive Labor Party.  Simplification is the solution to most problems in all, and  especially expository writing.

French bosses face angry workers as they dismantle capitalist welfare system
BBC, 3/22–More than a million people took to the streets across France on Thursday, with 119,000 in Paris, according to figures from the interior ministry. Police fired tear gas at protesters in the capital and 80 people were arrested across the country. The demonstrations were sparked by legislation raising the retirement age by two years to 64.

"I oppose this reform and I really oppose the fact that democracy no longer means anything,"...The unrest also disrupted train travel, oil refineries and saw teachers and workers at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport walk out of work.

In the northern city of Rouen a young woman was seen lying on the ground after sustaining a serious injury to her hand. Witnesses said she lost her thumb after she was hit by a so-called "flash-ball" grenade fired by police to disperse demonstrators. There were other clashes in the western cities of Nantes, Rennes and Lorient.

Hunger rises in U.S. as bosses shift to war production
Urban Institute, 3/21–With significant food price inflation in 2022 and the expiration of COVID-19 pandemic aid, food hardship has increased for many households across the country. In this brief, we examine trends in food insecurity and receipt of charitable food using data from the Urban Institute’s Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey (WBNS), a nationally representative survey of more than 7,500 adults ages 18 to 64.

Between December 2021 and December 2022, the share of adults reporting food insecurity in the last year increased from 20 percent to 24.6 percent. The rate of food insecurity in 2022 was not statistically different from the rate in the year just before the pandemic (23.4 percent in 2019).

Hispanic/Latinx and Black adults were consistently at greater risk of food insecurity than white adults between 2019 and 2022, reflecting longstanding disparities in opportunities and access to resources.

NYPD pigs feast on City budget
Gothamist, 3/20–The NYPD’s ballooning overtime budget faced scrutiny from City Council members on Monday…Overtime expenditures were $2.2 billion last fiscal year, 93% higher than budgeted…last month, halfway through the current fiscal year, the NYPD had already exceeded its budgeted allotment for the year, spending $472 million on overtime for uniformed officers.

[City Comptroller Brad] Lander’s office found that NYPD annual overtime totals have skyrocketed $700 million over the last decade. One large chunk of overtime through the last three years went to what the NYPD categorizes as “anti-police protests” — $225 million in all..

The NYPD’s $5.44 billion allotment in the proposed budget for fiscal year 2024 stands in sharp contrast to the flat funding proposed for the city’s public defenders, who also testified at Monday’s budget hearing. The defense attorneys say salaries are so low that attorneys are quitting, even as there are 450 pending homicide cases that their lawyers are handling.

U.S. struggles to maintain territory in Middle East
Al Jazeera, 3/27– The governments of Iran and Syria have condemned the United States for attacks on Syrian soil that reportedly killed 19 people, which Washington said it carried out following a drone attack on US forces. Both the Iranian and Syrian foreign ministries late on Saturday slammed the US air attacks that targeted the strategic region of Deir ez-Zor bordering Iraq.

In a statement, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said the “terrorist” attacks by the US hit civilian targets and constituted a violation of international law and Syrian sovereignty. “The US claims that it is present in Syria to fight Daesh [ISIL] that itself had a major role in creating is just an excuse to continue its occupation and loot Syria’s national wealth, including its energy resources and wheat,” he said.

The latest confrontation with the US comes as Tehran works to re-establish formal diplomatic ties with regional rival Saudi Arabia and potentially other Arab states. Syria will reportedly restore its relations with the kingdom after Tehran and Riyadh review an agreement reached earlier this month with Chinese mediation.

April 17 marked the 58th  anniversary of the founding of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). From a meeting of barely two dozen members of the old U.S. communist movement, PLP has grown into an international party now organizing in five continents. Even as our class faces a dark night and growing inter imperialist-rivalry and fascism (see editorial, page 2) we continue our fightback because this is just the beginning of a worthy struggle towards an international communist revolution.

Over our first half-century, PLP has propelled the march to communism—first by leading antiracist, working-class struggle, and then through that struggle advancing communist ideas. This two-pronged strategy—practice and theory—is the basis for winning masses of workers to fight for communism.

Why communism? In our vision, the working class will determine society’s future. It will destroy the capitalist world and its brutal exploitation. It will smash a system that drives us into constant unemployment and poverty. It will stop the racism that drags down all workers. It will terminate the racist cops who break our strikes and kill workers, especially our Black, Latin, Asian and immigrant sisters and brothers. And it will end for all time the imperialist wars that send our youth to kill their class brothers and sisters worldwide, all for the bosses’ profits.

A Communist World
Here is our vision for a communist world (also see May Day speech, page 1):

A society run by workers and for workers. After all, the working class produces everything of value and should rightfully receive the benefits of our labor. Collectively, we can determine how to share what we produce, according to need.

Abolition of the exploitative wage system and the money that runs it. We have no need for the parasitic bosses who steal most of the value of our labor through wage slavery.

Multiracial unity and death to the racism that divides the working class. Racism is rooted in capitalism; the bosses rely on it to steal trillions in super-profits worldwide. Fighting racism is part of the lifeblood of PLP.

The destruction of sexism and the systemic exploitation, oppression, and cultural degradation of women workers. Sexism is a pillar of class society, and capitalism has only further this lethal weapon against our class. Women and men must unite to smash sexist ideas and practices. PLP emphasizes working-class women’s leadership in making revolution, particularly Black women’s leadership.

Eliminating all borders, artificial lines the bosses draw to make even more profits from workers they call “foreigners.” Nationalism is an anti-worker ideology that enables the imperialist rulers to exploit natural resources and cheap labor. Communists are internationalists because the working class is one international class, with a common class interest, under one red flag.

This is the world the PLP has fought for from the start. We will continue to fight until our class prevails. We invite all workers to join this struggle—for ourselves, and for our children and grandchildren.

Struggle and Theory
 From our earliest beginnings in the 1960s, PLP has fought tooth and nail against attacks by the ruling class. We have organized and supported Ford workers and striking teachers in Mexico; wildcatting miners in Hazard, Kentucky; longshore workers in New York City; jute (fiber) workers in India; miners in Britain; garment workers in Los Angeles; bank workers in Colombia; transit workers in Washington, DC; Chrysler sit-down strikers at Detroit’s Mack Avenue plant; farm workers in California, and bakery workers at Stella D’Oro in the Bronx. We have stood with evicted workers in Palestine-Israel, earthquake victims in Pakistan, and hurricane victims in Haiti and New Orleans.

Antiracism is a hallmark of PLP. We backed Black workers and youth in the 1964 Harlem Rebellion, and fought off racist school segregationists in Boston in 1975. In 1976 we integrated Chicago’s Marquette Park while smashing the Nazi headquarters there, and have led more than a hundred thousand protesters against the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis across the United States. We have mobilized against racist killer cops from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles, to Chicago, to Ferguson, Missouri.

PLP has led fierce fightbacks opposing the  bosses’ wars. In the 1960s, we were the first to organize mass demonstrations for the U.S. to “Get Out of Vietnam!” We formed the Worker-Student Alliance in the anti-war Students for A Democratic Society. PLP broke the U.S. travel ban to Cuba and undermined the rulers’ House Un-American Activities Committee to the point of collapse. More recently, working both within the military and on the streets, we exposed the U.S. rulers’ invasions of Iraq as a murderous oil grab.

None of these developments came out of thin air. They grew out of our Party’s analysis of past class struggles and the achievements of millions of workers. PLP studied the strengths and weaknesses of the communist movement led by—among many others—Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. In 1917, this movement created a revolution in Russia; in 1949, a revolution in China. It defeated the Nazis in Europe and fascists in Japan in World War II. It reached its highest point in China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which attempted to push back a growing elitism in the Communist Party leadership and put the masses in charge of society.

PLP is the only group on the left to point out what went wrong in the Soviet Union and China. We are the only organization to analyze how socialism in those countries led back to the unvarnished profit system, where all workers are now mired.

A communist society will have no bosses or profits. It will be led by the working class through its Progressive Labor Party.

Marxism: An Evolving Idea
The history of the Progressive Labor Party began in 1962. A small group of communists left the Communist Party USA and organized the Progressive Labor Movement. They rejected the CPUSA’s capitulation to capitalism and its abandonment of the open advocacy of communist revolution. The old communist movement proposed that the bosses would peacefully relinquish control of society and allow what the CPUSA called “socialism” to be “voted into existence.” The communists who formed PLM refused to mislead workers and broke away from the old guard.

In the course of PLP’s history, we have rejected some traditional Marxist concepts and advanced a number of new ones, all based on our practice and our examination of world events and the decay of the old communist movement. These new principles are expressed in a series of documents, including Road to Revolution I, II, III and IV; Revolution Not Reform; and “Dark Night Shall Have Its End.” (These are all available on PL’s website or in pamphlet form.)

Above all, Progressive Labor Party stands for the principle that the working class must fight directly for communism rather than moving first through a transitional phase of socialism. We reject this two-stage theory, a central premise of classical Marxism, because events have shown that socialism inevitably leads back to full-blown capitalism. In both Russia and China, socialism preserved capitalist features like money and the wage system, leading to inequalities that divided the working class. In both of these countries, the communist party became a new ruling class where privileges were attained through party membership. We believe the working class can be won before the revolution to fight directly for communism—to abolish the wage system, the cult of the individual and other capitalist relics.

Core Principles
PLP’s main principles are:

• Internationalism, under the slogan “Smash All Borders,” where workers’ class unity is represented by a single mass, international Party;
• The fight against racism, a strategic necessity in the struggle to overthrow capitalism;      
• The fight against the special oppression of women, another critical component in uniting the working class, a prerequisite for revolution;
• A concentration among industrial workers, who produce the capitalists’ profits and the weapons for the bosses’ imperialist wars;
• Workers’ power through armed struggle, since the rulers will use their armed state power to violently suppress the working class.

Throughout its existence, PLP has fought for these principles in unceasing class struggle. We have learned that building the Party is the first order of business for communists. Capitalism cannot be reformed. Whatever gains workers make in reform struggles are limited and temporary; sooner or later, the bosses always use their state power to take them back. Communists strive to turn reform struggles into schools for communism and building the Party. Winning workers to PLP is the one and only victory the ruling class can never take back. We therefore urge all workers and youth to join us in the next half-century in this historic task: to organize a communist revolution.