New York City, June 26—There is an opportunity for growing class consciousness in the fight against anti-gay and anti-trans sexism. The Pride events this year had slogans against “Rainbow Capitalism.” We need to take it one more step further. Yes, the Republican Party is racist and sexist, but it’s the Democratic Party that's doubled down on winning LGBTQ+ workers to support its imperialist agenda through promises of legislation.
Unless we get rid of this capitalist profit system, built off of exploitation and division, no worker can achieve liberation. Only by building an international communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) dedicated to fighting for armed revolution, can we make working-class liberation a reality!
For the third year in a row, thousands of people here took to the streets with the Queer Liberation March, many in opposition of the larger Pride Parade’s embrace of corporations, politicians, and racist and sexist police. PLP members joined other workers and students to support this struggle and share our communist ideas.
We distributed over 100 leaflets and dozens of CHALLENGEs. PLP members led chants that called on all workers to “flush the system down the drain!” and spell out the racist nature of the police. In school-based Gender and Sexuality Alliances (GSAs) where we have provided leadership, we worked to ensure that such spaces are not simply supportive of students but also critical of the capitalist system that is racist and sexist to the core.
The fight in this movement is the same as all others—reject identity politics, expose the liberal racists and their imperialist agenda, and recruit fighters to the international battle for communist revolution via PLP.
Fighting racism and sexism in the movement is key
The LGBTQ+ movement is infested with racism and anti-worker ideology. However, the roots of Pride originate in rebellion against the cops. The cops who murder Black and Latin workers are the same cops that terrorize gay and trans workers. Black and Latin transgender workers still face more police harassment, terror and incarceration than other LGBTQ+ workers. Blood remains on the hands of the state for the death of Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco who died while in custody at Rikers Island as corrections officers stood by laughing.
In 1969, rebellions erupted against the police who raided the Stone wall Inn Bar and terrorized the Black and Latin transgender, gay, and lesbian patrons. This was the origin of June Pride actions. Stonewall came at a time when a huge part of the population was already out protesting and challenging capitalism. However, with the fall of the old communist movement, there was a political vacuum, which identity politics filled. Out came single-issue, identity-based organizations. We fought in the streets, challenged the cops, but the emphasis on how capitalism oppresses all workers was all gone.
That explains how today’s Pride events have become a capitalist celebration that disregards the fact that exploitation is the foundation of this profit system. All Pride events, including the Brooklyn Liberation Action for Trans Youth, which drew over a thousand protesters, play into the pockets of the liberal bosses. Actions divorced from the class struggle do not challenge capitalism; it negotiates with capitalism.
Under capitalism, the mode of production is based on the exploitative relationship of wage labor. As more people were able to live outside of a reproductive family unit, the possibilities of constructing a life, an identity, a community outside of traditional gender roles and straight sexualities grew. Today, capitalism has accommodated elements of gay, queer, and trans existence. But for any member of the working class to live full free lives, we need to abolish this dictatorship based on exploitation and profit.
Liberals = still main danger
As conservative politicians openly attack
LGBTQ+, Black, and immigrant workers, liberal politicians claim they support equality—equal
oppression, that is. Rainbow capitalism is not only about corporations profiting off LGBTQ+ workers; it is also in effect when opportunist politicians use language of “inclusivity” and “representation” to drum up support for imperialist wars and pro-boss laws (like zoning for luxury condos that helps drive homelessness).
Transgender pilots dropping bombs on workers in Iraq is not liberation!
Openly gay or lesbian politicians—like Democrat Mayor Lori Lightfoot in Chicago—protecting the police while attacking teachers and students is not liberation!
It is just more
 capitalist exploitation.
PLP fights for communism, a system designed to meet the needs of all workers based upon equality. The fight against racism and sexism, which includes anti-LGBTQ+ oppression, must be at the center of building a communist world. We have a long way to go in overcoming identity politics, nationalism and pro-democracy ideology. The bosses’ ideas are rampant in many Pride activities, all of which keep the working class more divided.
To smash capitalism we need a communist movement that unites workers across
socially-constructed lines of race, gender, and
sexuality. Only a movement that unites all sections of the working-class—under the leadership of those workers most familiar with the rotten nature of the system—can succeed. Read CHALLENGE and join PLP!

*****

BOX

Dividing and super-exploiting the working class
Capitalists and their politicians maximize profits and maintain their power by dividing and super-exploiting workers. Bosses want workers to blame each other for a system that has never met the needs of our class. The failures of the system are especially true for groups of workers the system super-exploits. Bosses pay less to Black, Latin, immigrant, women, gay, transgender, and other groups of workers that are terrorized by the system. Whether the agents of terror are racist cops, ICE officers, or bigoted workers convinced to turn on their class siblings, the capitalists at the top maintain control.
A 2013–15 National Health Interview Survey found that gay male workers earn 10 percent less than their heterosexual counterpart. In more than half the U.S., LGBTQ+ workers can be openly fired because of their sexuality or gender identity. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey reported, that trans people are twice as likely to be unemployed due to discrimination. It’s estimated that about seven percent of youth in the United States are LGBTQ+, while 40 percent of youth experiencing homelessness are LGBTQ+.
LGBTQ+ workers also face attacks in the realm of healthcare. In an online survey, 65 percent of doctors heard negative comments from peers targeting LGBTQ+ patients, while 35 percent witnessed discrimination toward individuals in the workplace. The rate of HIV/AIDS has recently reached staggering numbers, especially in some sections of the LGBTQ+ community. One in two Black gay men or transwomen will contract HIV in their lifetime. This is due to a sexist and racist healthcare system.

"Whose neck shall I stand on to make me feel superior, and what will I have out of it? I don't want anything lower than I am. I am low enough already. I want to rise and to push everything up with me as I go."

These are the words of Rosaura Quintero, a working-class woman, zinc miner’s wife and one of the central characters in Herbert Bieberman’s film Salt of the Earth (1954).  Based on a true story the film, which captures the valiant struggle of zinc miners on strike and the leadership of their wives, contains powerful lessons about the power of anti-sexist and anti-racist class fightback against the exploitive mining industry. However, few know the dramatic struggle that was waged to make the movie and to show it to broader audiences. That relatively unknown struggle is also the subject of  Biberman’s book Salt of the Earth: The Story of a Film.
The book reveals that Salt of the Earth, finished in 1953,was made by film workers who were blacklisted during the McCarthy era witch hunt due to their pro-communist politics or affiliations. The Hollywood film industry, not content with driving these workers out of jobs, did everything it could to stop Salt of the Earth. Despite the film’s radical working-class politics and the film maker’s ties to communism, both works conceal the most important lesson for the working class: workers need communism in order to rise above the misery of capitalism as Rosaura’s quote poignantly illuminates.
The story of getting this film made is ably told by Herbert Biberman, one of the Hollywood Ten sentenced to jail for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Hollywood began by refusing to give Biberman's Independent Productions Corporation (IPC) a union crew. This was done through Roy Brewer, International Representative of the stage workers union (IATSE). Brewer built his entire  career as a professional anticommunist in the labor movement (the Wikipedia article on him makes this crystal clear).
When IPC got a union crew anyway, Hollywood got Congressman Donald Jackson to denounce the filmmaking, starting an intense campaign to stop it. The lab that had developed the film refused to finish the job. In addition, armed vigilantes made their appearance, as Biberman describes:
From the other side of the ranch house a shot was fired. But it was not our guard; it was too far away. We waited. Another shot was heard coming from what seemed to be our side of the gully.
Besides describing the courageous struggle of individual miners and filmmakers at the height of McCarthyism, this book also shows how the rotten politics, infected with reformism and landslides back into capitalism, of the old Communist Party led  to the sellout of our  class struggle.
For example, the only thing Biberman and the leaders of the miners union could think to do was  call in the state police and dissolve in slobbering praise to the independent businessman who stand up to monopoly capitalism, like this:

America's chances for a democratic future were indeed good. America possessed one very meaningful attribute. It was so diverse in the composition of its human inhabitants . . . It also possessed businessmen who believed business was a way of making a living and not a cider-press to squeeze sovereignty out of a people. And it had a few businessmen who were so independently individualist that you attempted to organize them into a conspiracy at the peril of your life.

The main weakness of Salt of the Earth, both the movie and its accompanying book, is that it purposely omits the  communist message that workers will lose anything they win unless they fight for and win communism. Reformist politics will never free the working class.
Although the book is riddled with rotten politics it does not negate its good points. In addition to the inspiring struggle just to make the film, the book also explains  how the film was made, and this is perhaps the most important thing the modern communist moveщment can learn from it
The script for the movie was written by Michael Wilson, a blacklisted screenwriter. Wilson read the script to the miners, whose lives were laterportrayed in the film, and they made changes in it to make it true to themselves. For example:

Then he discussed another scene in the treatment. Just before the strike began Ramon, with part of his last pay check, knowing it was to be the last in quite a while, bought a bottle of whiskey. The men had no time to comment on the scene before the women objected. 'Our husbands are not drunkards,' they said. 'That goes out too,' said Mike. 'You see,' he said to us, ‘these are perfectly legitimate dramatic scenes and illustrations. In [a] script in which you are after a drama for its own sake, they'd be perfectly able. But we're dealing with something else.’

The miners were also given authority over the shooting of the film. What evolved was а film collective, made of professional Hollywood filmmakers and zinc miners. The collective was made up of Black, Latin, Native American and white workers. Biberman acknowledges the leadership given bу the mostly non-white miners. Speaking of Mrs. Molano, who plays Mrs. Salazar in the film, he writes:

One day, when I was rather beaten with problems, she came to me and said, “When you feel discouraged in your life afterwards, you come to us. We will always give you courage. Because we always have our backs against the walls, we have never а way to go but forward. We cannot afford to be downhearted. You will finish the picture.

In addition to the story of the struggle to make the film, the book also includes the screenplay, and stills from the movie.
When read with a critical eye—with a willingness to learn from an important struggle by communists of the past, to learn from their mistakes but also from their courage, antiracism, and perseverance—it is an inspiring story.
Herbert Biberman. “Salt of the Earth”, The Story of a Film. Illustrated edition. Harbor Electronic Publishing, 2003 (originally Beacon Press)

As CHALLENGE goes to press on July 7, President Jovenel Moïse of Haïti was assassinated. At this time very little is known about the killers or why they took that action. The rumor mill has postulated that it was the U.S. DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) that carried out the killing, with armed agents speaking English and Spanish demanding that Moïse go into exile and when he refused, opened fire. Or maybe it was paid mercenaries by the opposition politicians. What we do think is that this seems to be a dogfight between the pro-government ins and the outs who want their share of the capitalist pie. No good will come of the situation for the workers and students of Haïti, as armed thugs in and out of uniform control the streets and the country remains under martial law. As the New York Times put it, “…the police and security members can enter homes, control traffic and take special security measures and all general measures that permit the arrest of the assassins…It also forbids meetings meant to excite or prepare for disorder.”
Moïse was supported fully by the OAS (Organization of American States) and the U.S. imperialists. We also know that Moïse was almost universally hated by the Haïtian masses, who had risen up in the tens of thousands against his regime many times, charging corruption in the PetroCaribe scandal, attempts to rewrite the Constitution to officially cancel the Senate (one of the two houses of Parliament), and to absolve the President of any crimes that may be committed in office, etc. Moïse has also overseen rampant gang violence that is terrorizing the working class and others, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic (there are no vaccines in Haïti and people are sick and dying mostly at home because there is virtually no medical care available).
What we do know is that only last week, well-known anti-Moïse Haitian journalist Diego Charles and activist Antoinette Duclaire joined a long list of people who were assassinated for their political views. And finally, what we do know with any certainty is that only by building the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party(PLP)  can this life that capitalism/imperialism has wrought in Haïti ever be changed. Our Party is struggling with friends and supporters to join us. Now is the time to stand up.

New Jersey, July 6–What’s in a name?” asks Juliet in Shakespeare’s famous play Romeo and Juliet.  Well, actually, quite a lot. What you call something has a lot to do with how you think about it.
Some words, like racist or sexist slurs, do not encourage thought but simply harden the dehumanizing psychological categories that enable the bosses to divide and rule. Other words we use, though, can open up new ways of thinking about the world—or, conversely, set limits to our understanding. While a phrase like “great power conflict” obscures the causes of wars, for instance, the word “imperialism” encourages us to analyze the root economic causes of the violence causing mass impoverishment, uprooting, starvation, and murder.
Especially when millions of people, many of them young, are becoming fighters in movements for “social justice,” the vocabulary communists bring to the struggle can play a crucial role in challenging the popular liberal beliefs—vigorously promoted by the main wing of the U.S. ruling class–that often end up tying people to the capitalist system that in many ways they oppose.
Members and friends of Progressive Labor Party, who are active with the Radical Caucus (RC) of the Modern Language Association (MLA), initiated what we’re calling the “Keywords Project.”  Our goal is to analyze the potentialities and limitations embedded in terms that are significantly influencing the theory and practice of the emerging generation of worker and student organizers.  (This discussion focuses only on words in English; clearly other languages pose issues that are both overlapping and distinct.)
A few of the many terms we are investigating are: “abolition”; “intersectionality”; “racial capitalism”; “white supremacy”; “privilege”—and “social justice” itself. While these and comparable terms are often treated as simply referring to what we all know, actually they contain many ambiguities and unstated premises. Their meanings are not transparent and self-evident.
Some currently popular terms, like “abolition,” convey a militant call for change. But…abolish what? Can the system of racist mass incarceration be demolished, for instance, without the corresponding overthrow of the capitalist state? Other terms, like “white supremacy,” target inequality.  But this term also implies that whiteness is the source of oppression, and that all white people are oppressors: the foundations of racialized hierarchies in capital’s drive to exploit and divide the working class are obscured.  
And can “social justice” be anything but a pipedream so long as a small number of the super-rich control governments and economies around the world?
The “Keywords Project” has been conducting a series of reading groups and is aiming at a mini-conference on September 11, as well as a session at the MLA Convention in January 2022. The goal of the project is not to separate language from action, but—through a series of “reports from the field”—to integrate theory with practice.
 The RC also plans a series of workshops aimed at training graduate students—currently engaged in a new wave of class-conscious protests—to organize unions and other forms of anti-capitalist activity. The struggle over words is not “academic”; it is vitally important to the shaping and guiding of the class struggle.J
If you are a reader of CHALLENGE who would like to participate in any of the reading/discussion groups organized by the “Keywords Project”, you are encouraged to get in touch with us by writing to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..