HAITI, July 2—Since January 2023, the two-year “Humanitarian Parole” program has offered Haitians, Venezuelans, Cubans and Salvadorans the possibility of entering the U.S. without going through the traditional “illegal” channels. This program, which in reality aims to reduce the number of migrants crossing the U.S. borders, has been praised by many Haitian workers and others who only dream of fleeing a country plagued by gang terror, economic misery, and political instability. Even children only talk about traveling. But the reality is that U.S. imperialism prefers to camouflage the problems that we are facing more than to really come to our rescue. In the capitalist world, solidarity is not an option: the big fish have no mercy for the little ones—the countries of the global north have no compassion for the countries of the global south. Their only aim is to squeeze profits off the cheap labor of migrants.
“I can't wait, I can't wait any longer for my approval to come,” admits a young graduate in legal sciences who is doing his second year of internship as a lawyer. He draws up a list of others like himself who have sponsors in the U.S. and have already applied to the program. He adds that many of these applicants, who have been waiting six months in limbo, are in danger of developing mental disorders from the stress, in particular depression. They are living on the edge, fearful of the insecurity created by the gangs and the rampant inflation that increasingly impoverishes them and their families. And there are others who can not find sponsors because the conditions set by Biden & Co. are very difficult for sponsoring friends and family members.
Those who do manage to leave come from all sections of society: workers (employed and unemployed), professionals, public and private executives, teachers and students. “Our country is pushing us out; we are not needed here,” said one person interviewed for this article. “It’s like we are in a pressure cooker, and the chief chef has opened the valve to let some steam out. This won’t solve the problems that the Haitian masses are facing because of the profit system.”
This is the march to Canaan, the Promised Land. Some people say it is a forced exodus even believing that the U.S. has hidden interests. Many know that what waits for them on the other side is not the gold in the streets but rather more racism, unemployment or low-wage jobs, underserved schools and hospitals, crowded and overpriced housing. So many deplore the program, but the contradiction is that it is hard to resist the urge to take advantage of it. They hope they will be able to fade into the population after the two-year “parole” ends.
U.S. Imperialists Can’t Find Other Countries to Intervene/Invade Haiti
For several months now, the “international community,” that is the imperialists and their local lackeys, have been dithering on finding a solution to the crisis in Haiti. None of the countries in the region is willing to give in to U.S. demands to field an invasionary force to restore some semblance of stability. The U.S. bosses’ decline in influence in the region is evident. Even Canada, a long-time imperialist player in Haiti, is hedging; the best they could come up with is setting up an office in the neighboring Dominican Republic to monitor the situation. The Dominican government rejected that idea, and both countries issued a toothless statement regarding their commitment to stability in Haiti.
The politicians in the Haitian bourgeoisie continue to act as if they are wearing blinders. Most working class people understand that these politicians are not their friends but are looking out for their own personal interests, looking for any opportunity for some sort of power grab. The local bourgeoisie crawls on hands and knees, in search of favor from the imperialist powers and multinational organizations.
The only solution is to stand up and fight back
You can feel the level of insecurity and fear in the masses. So when a Progressive Labor Party comrade says that she is not going to look for a sponsor to leave, that she is willing to “fight back against the capitalist system that has created this mess,” she is often met with skepticism. But using patience and all the tools of historical and dialectical materialism that she has learned in PLP cadre schools and study groups, she can say that the workers of Haiti have fought for their liberation in the past and will do so again. Capitalism and imperialism have built-in contradictions that make life a misery for one, very large class of human beings who produce all value in society. That we have not just a few Polish soldiers (who deserted Napoleon’s army during the Haitian Revolution and fought on the side of the enslaved workers), but will fight for the solidarity and unity of the entire international working class. We will build a new revolutionary communist movement that fights resolutely in the interests of our class.
This young comrade can make the difference in our ability to organize workers for communism and an egalitarian society! We have taken modest steps, engaging with our local populations in fighting against “food insecurity”—hunger through collective kitchens; organizing to provide masks and public sanitation kiosks against the Covid-19 pandemic; working together with our neighbors to rebuild homes and infrastructure after the 2021 earthquake in our area. These are all struggles that our Party initiated along with our friends to combat the local bosses who neglect the needs of workers and line their own pockets with ‘international aid.”
We can do better and we can do more. There are many more like her who would like to maintain their conviction and their composure in such troubling social, economic and political situations. In the current chaos, the ideological foresight of the members of the PLP is revolutionary. Raising class consciousness through struggle and political education is a necessity for the growth of our Party. This will be our goal this summer in our cadre school.
Long live our struggle, long live PLP. Onwards to the final victory!
The Progressive Labor Party in Haiti takes this opportunity to greet our comrades on the occasion of the PLP convention this month. We would like to be there with you, discussing the way we can build our Party into a fighting force for communist revolution, and building the PLP’s influence in the working class and among students and soldiers around the world. However, the phony borders erected by the capitalists around the world have prevented us from sending representatives to our Party’s gathering. We know that one day, those borders will be smashed, and workers will be able to move freely around the world, based on the needs of our class and our Party.
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Editorial...Russia: bosses’ internal weakness drives fascism
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- 06 July 2023 256 hits
The short-lived mutiny of a Russian mercenary highlights the growing volatility and sharpening threat of fascism and world war as rival imperialists compete for global supremacy. On June 23, Yevgeny Prigozhin and his state-funded Wagner Group rebelled against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military leadership, seizing the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and advancing within 120 miles of Moscow. While many details are still unknown, Prigozhin’s plan clearly backfired. With no backing from within the government or military, or mass support from soldiers or workers, the rebellion ended in failure within 24 hours.
Even so, the instability shown by Prigozhin’s mutiny is driven by the same crisis of capitalism that’s pushing the gangster imperialists ruling the U.S., Russia. and China toward World War III. As competition among rival imperialists intensifies, so does their desperation. Fights within the ruling class are escalating, as we see in the clash in the U.S. that is playing out in the Supreme Court and the 2024 presidential race. None of these capitalists will hesitate to sacrifice millions of workers in the coming world war.
The only way out of this imperialist hellscape is for workers to turn the guns around against all of these bosses, join the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party, and turn imperialist war into communist revolution!
Capitalist instability leads to world war
Just as in the U.S. and every other capitalist country, there are splits within the Russian ruling class. Billionaire Yevgeny Prigozhin heads the Wagner Group, a private military contractor that Putin was glad to use for nearly a decade to project Russian imperialism throughout the world. Wagner has been most active in Syria, Mozambique, Libya, Central African Republic, and Mali. In 2014, following the U.S.-backed “Euromaidan” coup in Ukraine, Wagner was instrumental in the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Since war broke out in Ukraine in 2022, Wagner forces have been a major part of the Russian offensive.
The limits of the unity between Prigozhin and Putin were exposed during the recent bloody siege of Bakhmut, which was led by Wagner forces. For months, Prigozhin had openly criticized Russian preparation and execution of the war. With no honor among capitalist thieves, Putin replied by letting Wagner lead the attack on Bakhmut — but withheld supplies, dooming the mercenaries to tremendous losses (Seymour Hersh, 6/29).
Capitalism is based on competition, first and last. This reality rots all the way into the bones of every part of every capitalist state, without exception. Prigozhin personifies Vladimir Lenin’s analysis of the basic instability of imperialism over 100 years ago. The deepening political and economic chaos of capitalism, as Lenin noted, is reflected everywhere in the capitalist class. Until the working class overthrows the capitalist bosses with communist revolution, world wars are inevitable.
Nationalism = loyalty to imperialism
Like all imperialist warmongers, Russia is using unrelenting nationalist propaganda to win political support from workers for the war. Nationalism is the poisonous idea of unity between workers and bosses in a given nation. But the Russian bosses’ reliance on Prigozhin, like the U.S. bosses’ reliance on Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq, reflects weakness. In both cases, the rulers need to rely on soldiers-for-hire instead of politically committed fighters. To correct this weakness, Russian and U.S. bosses are constantly lying through their teeth with cynical propaganda to build nationalism and win workers to support their empires.
Especially galling are Putin’s references to the communist-led Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany as he claims to be “de-nazifying” Ukraine. Yes, the Ukrainian army integrated neo-Nazi militias—the Azov, Aidar, and Sich battalions—into their National Guard, which then received training from the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade (see CHALLENGE, 7/15/15). But the murderous hypocrite Putin had no problem with the fact that the Wagner Group, now officially integrated into the Russian army, openly recruited white supremacist militias like the Russian Imperial Movement and Russian National Unity (Guardian, 3/20/22). Workers have no good choices between the nazis of Russia and the nazis of Ukraine! We say smash them all!
Fascism: a violent shift out of weakness
Internal divisions and threats from rival imperialists are destabilizing Russia, China, and the U.S. As the inter-imperialist rivalry propels the world toward a potentially nuclear weapon-fueled World War III, capitalists in Russia, China and the U.S. are compelled to impose order and discipline on their own class and also upon the working class. This is the essence of fascism: the stripping away of the mask of liberal democracy to expose the bloodthirsty, nationalist, racist, sexist forces that lie at the heart of capitalism.
By contrast to the division and disunity among capitalists in the U.S., the dominant Russian bosses’ ability to discipline their ruling class opposition is far more developed. After the Soviet Union imploded in 1991 and the Russian rulers lost rich territories such as Ukraine, they responded by hollowing out their pretense of liberal democracy and resorted to more open fascism to claw back their diminished empire. For years, Putin has exiled, jailed or murdered political opponents like Alexei Navalny, while hammering workers with racism and drowning them in blood to reassert Russian control over Chechnya and Georgia. Progressive Labor Party believes that the liberal Big Fascists of U.S. finance capital—fronted by politicians in the Democratic Party—represent the greatest danger to our class. Despite their weaknesses and internal divisions, this set of bosses is best equipped to impose the discipline on other capitalists that we see today in Russia and China.
Fight for your class, not your country! Join PLP!
As CHALLENGE goes to press, youth, and workers across France are in armed rebellion against a racist police murder, showing the international working class the way. If workers around the world are organized to fight with the bravery and militancy of our class brothers and sisters in France, under the communist leadership of PLP, we will dump every Prigozhin and Putin, every Biden and Trump, into the dustbin of history. We will liberate the international working class by creating a society led by and for workers. By organizing solidarity with the rebellion in France within our unions, classrooms, and mass organizations, we’ll advance the internationalism we need to smash all imperialist bosses. Only by building a mass PLP and fighting for communist revolution can the working class smash racism, sexism, nationalism, and imperialism once and for all! Join us!
We invite you to participate in Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) international convention on July 14 to July 16. From a meeting of barely two dozen members of the old U.S. communist movement in 1964, 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, we continue our fightback because this is just the beginning of a worthy struggle towards an international communist revolution.
Over its first first years, 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:
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 furthered 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, our children and grandchildren, and all the world’s children.
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.
Organizing in the military
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.
If you would like to attend the convention, contact your local PL’er or email
A PLP member attended a Town Hall podcast which included Michael Brown’s father from Ferguson and Oscar Grant’s father from Oakland and others from Wisconsin, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland. These directly impacted families decried Al Sharpton and Ben Crump as ambulance chasers just trying to exploit the families to get more media attention. Nikki pointed out that leaders of groups including the NAACP were similarly a problem.
She said that she wanted to be in touch with local fighters, not just the paid staff of large organizations who limit their engagement due to political connections or their non-profit status.
While community support sometimes flags, Nikki and PLP members said that one solution is to rely on the impacted families and boots-on-the-ground community outreach. On the other hand, Angelo Pinto, an attorney from New York City at the podcast, pushed the failing idea that impacted family members should try to get elected to leadership positions in groups like the NAACP and run for elected political office.
The struggle for justice and communism continues
PLP members struggle with friends in the mass organization over our strategies for struggle and our vision of a better, communist, world. Nikki is also asking questions, joining meetings, and reading CHALLENGE.
As individuals and families directly impacted by all forms of injustice become more involved in our activities, we hope to bring them closer to the PLP so they become leaders in the revolutionary struggle for communism that will eliminate racist government-sponsored terrorism.
