BROOKLYN, November 23 – “How many times have we been here before?” asked the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) singers in a new song they created in the week of the recent election. In the background of the song, a speaker listed countries where workers face growing fascism and ongoing imperialist oppression. At the end of the song, the whole room roared together: “The only solution is communist revolution!”

About 50 PLP members and friends gathered to analyze the impact of the election and growing fascist developments and to grapple with the question, “What is to be done?” Planned mainly by teachers and students, the forum was extremely interactive, leaving some attendees asking for more time to discuss the questions of the day.

Understanding fascism to fight it!

We began with a gallery walk in which small, integrated groups moved about the room, discussing a wide variety of articles, graphics, cartoons and other media depictions of current events and discussing how each item indicated growing fascism. Then the small groups combined to examine the definition of fascism and try to create a bigger picture understanding based on the different examples each group studied. After the gallery walk, a Party speaker called on us to fight back against the crisis facing workers around the world today.

Next steps to fightback

Next we returned to the tables and discussed a series of questions which moved us from analysing how the bosses have convinced workers to vote (and vote for Trump) to looking for examples of workers fighting back in recent times to thinking about what it would look like to fight for communism instead. In every group, people shared their own experiences and those of workers they are talking to. They took calendars of upcoming events and planned how to be more involved in the work of the Party. They took home communist literature, copies of CHALLENGE and PLP buttons. At least one base member told the friend who brought him that he thought he was ready to join the Party. A young comrade involved in the college work gave an inspiring speech that recapped the college conference.

Old and young, new and experienced, our multiracial gathering ended on our feet, singing the Internationale together, looking forward with revolutionary optimism to the challenges ahead.

The following article is a reprint of a leaflet was written by PL’ers in the Mutual Aid and Community Organization Club and was distributed in large numbers at the Immigrant Rights March, which was featured on the front page of CHALLENGE in the 11/27 issue. The leaflet sums up the politics need to build a communist movement to smash this increasingly fascist system and is useful for talking to workers and friends in our organizing work.

The PLP Mutual Aid Club has been actively building solidarity with migrant workers, organizing clothing drives and donation drop-offs in collaboration with community groups at Floyd Bennett Field. This former airplane hangar has been converted into a shelter, but it more closely resembles a concentration camp, where hundreds of migrant workers are subjected to horrific living conditions.
In the face of attacks from liberal fascist NYC Mayor Eric Adams and Donald Trump against migrant workers, our efforts have stood as a beacon of hope and support. Many workers are forced to sleep on cots in freezing tents, exposed to the harsh elements, with little privacy or access to basic resources. 

At a recent clothing drive PL’ers brought donations and friends that lent a helping hand to our migrant siblings Floyd Bennett field. In addition to sharing hot cocoa, coffee on this cold fall day, along with resource flyers, we brought our communist politics and smiles to the faces of dozens of working class migrant families, many fleeing from Haiti, Venezuela, Ecudaor, and many parts of Latin America who gratefully took donations and CHALLENGE. Look out for an article in the future issue of CHALLENGE.

All workers around the world are working harder than ever and are getting less and less of the value of our labor while the ruling classes rake in massive profits. We are robbed of our time and wages. Inflation and state sponsored violence is killing us and forcing us to leave our homes. The situation in the U.S. is getting more dire by the minute. Millions of working people cannot afford to put food on the table or  get medical care. Many more are one paycheck away from being homeless. Capitalism is threatening to turn us all into climate refugees.

When workers are misled by racist rhetoric against our asylum-seeking siblings we forget one important detail: Capitalists (the profit making exploiter class) and their politicians  don't care about any of our lives; we are cheap and disposable to them. Today, it is our migrant, asylum seeking class siblings. Tomorrow, it could be you and your family who are forced to flee the U.S. because of war, climate, or economic crisis. We are one world, one international class. Borders are artificial lines written with the blood of our class.The ruling class uses national borders to control their profits and take ownership of our labor. 

The rulers put up their deadly border walls and guards to keep workers out, but the borders are always porous for weapons, money, and drugs. Imperialist bosses and their militaries know no borders and neither should we. When capitalist disasters or violence strikes it is we who always have each other’s back, not the government or our bosses. We care for and defend our class with mutual aid, antiracist, antisexist fightback, solidarity, and unity. 

Progressive Labor Party has been supporting Mutual Aid efforts in Floyd Bennett Field called Welcome Migrants. These are the seeds we need to build a better world—a communist world where workers own and control all the fruits of our labor and can solve the world’s problems without money or racist and sexist bosses. In a communist world workers will be free to move and receive the benefits of society from each according to need. Together, we could smash these lethal borders once and for all. Join us! 

It’s not just Klansman Trump or Holocaust Harris, it’s capitalism

Trump winning the presidency is a scary thing —for his divisive gutter racism and attacks on women’s health, for his threat to deport millions of migrating workers and the list goes on. His motto is drill baby, drill and get the migrants out of here so “America is Great Again.” He plans to force Medicaid recipients, many disabled, to work or die. Even so, Kamala Harris' presidency would have been a greater danger to our class. She has shown her true colors in her unwavering support for fascist Israel and the bloodbath in Ukraine, in her embrace of concentration camps at the Mexican border, in her stated pride that the U.S. is producing more oil and gas than ever before. She is ready and willing to sign on the dotted line for World War III.

Don’t mourn Trump, fight back and defend each other

For the millions of workers duped into voting for Harris or Trump, millions more rejected an unhinged racist, open fascist and a covert genocidal fascist Harris. We don’t deny another Trump presidency is depressing, but we are more powerful when we unite and fight back against our common enemy. We must raise the consciousness of those who voted for Harris, and of those who will soon regret voting for Trump, and rebuild the only movement proven to stop the advance fascism— the revolutionary communist movement— and break the chains that bind us once and for all. Join Progressive Labor Party!

The following speech was delivered by a young comrade in the college work at a forum themed new president, same capitalism what is to be done held in Brooklyn NYC.

I'm a student and PL’er here to give a report on the college conference 

We started off with a report from a comrade who works in transit. Despite the struggles, he's been making massive efforts in spreading our politics and organizing other workers in the MTA. But why should students care? Students and young people are typically first on the frontlines of struggle and of war. We're the most active and we have the most potential, but we can't have a revolution by ourselves. The student struggle must be based on class struggle. As we've seen, when not anchored in the revolutionary class struggle, the movement becomes lost and aimless.

Therefore the only way forward is for a student worker alliance and to unite our struggles.

We then had a morning and afternoon discussion. In the morning discussion, we read and discussed a challenge article that showed the continued necessity of fighting for multiracial working class unity, for building a base, and building the party. We then shared our own experiences and lessons we've learned from each of our campuses.

In the afternoon, we discussed how the bosses have been clamping down and enforcing increasingly fascistic practices as a direct result of the student protests. As you may or may not know, many of our college's are directly tied to the imperialist war machine, whether it be to develop weapons and technology for companies like Lockheed Martin or to recruit them to the army. 

We say to see through their lies and to recognize the power we have. To not join the bosses in their genocidal war against our fellow working class brothers and sisters, but to fight to overthrow the system. For communism.

A lot of people feel like all hope is lost, with all the various shit that's happened recently. But our work does not change. Our goal is still to overthrow capitalism. I think the future is bright. I think that not just change, but a better world is possible. And everything we do gives me hope, a glimpse into a better future.

This is the  part of an extensive series about the Bolshevik Revolution, published in 2017 in its centenniel, and the trumphs, as  well as the defeats, of the world communist movement of the 20th century. We welcome your comments and criticisms, and encourage all readers to discuss this period of history with their friends, classmates, co-workers, family, and comrades.

In the pamphlet, The Epic of the Black Sea Revolt (1932), the French Communist André Marty reveals that the “war to end all wars” did not cease after 1917. (André Marty was one of the leaders of the revolt of the French sailors in 1919 and was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Pardoned in 1923, he became a member of the Communist International, and at his suggestion the Soviet Union supported the Spanish Republic against the fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War 1936-9.)

Capitalist nations around the world and white armies continued to besiege the U.S.S.R.  The revolts of French sailors represented one aspect of an immense world-wide movement against the aspirations of many imperialist countries.

Contrary to a popular legend, the “Black Sea Revolt” was not confined to mutinies of the crews on the French warships sent to the Black Sea in 1919. These included rebellions of the French troops stationed in the Southern Ukraine and the Crimea, as well as mutinies of French sailors on ships outside the Black Sea and in French ports.

To every soldier, the armistice of November, 1918, had meant that at last the imperialist war was over! But towards the end of I918, the Allied troops, by virtue of a special clause in the Armistice of November 11, had virtually replaced the German occupation troops in the Ukraine and in the Crimea. On December 18, 1918, the 156th Division dispatched from Salonika disembarked at Odessa. French soldiers there were engaged in severe fighting at the side of Russian White officers against Ukrainian soldiers. The shooting and the cannonade were distinctly heard on board the warships lying in the roadstead ready for battle. The continual skirmishes that followed the landing, and then the departure for a new front opened the eyes of the soldiers, “In France the war has ended, but here we are starting it all over again against a people’s republic!”

At the same time news filtered through to the soldiers and sailors about the powerful rebellions in France from men who had been on leave, from letters and from the new recruits about the workers’ problems there: unemployment and high cost of living, a rising wave of strikes for bread and progress, demonstrations against French PM Clemenceau’s military dictatorship and against the military intervention in Russia.
The French soldiers and sailors saw before them the very soldiers of the Bolshevik Revolution, whose inspiring revolution was rousing the masses of the people in France.

Russian and French Soldiers Unite

On their front, the Russian soldiers were committed to the practice of convincing enemy troops that they had become counter-revolutionaries. They concentrated their efforts on the most decisive factor, the French Army and Navy.  These soldiers and sailors learned from the Bolshevik pamphlets—published in French—a remarkable knowledge of the everyday needs and demands of the French on the ships and in their trenches.  
The men came to realize that the Bolsheviks were actually defending their interests. The Bolsheviks explained what the October Socialist Revolution was, what it stood for, and what it meant for the workers of the whole world.  Soon, French soldiers in Odessa protested vehemently when Russian workers were being led to prison.

The occupied zone extended from Tiraspol, in the Ukraine, and skirted the entire coast of the Black Sea. Protests began with the soldiers refusing to march.  On January 30, a battalion of the 58th Infantry was marched with the object of seizing Tiraspol. The 58th abandoned the battle and turned protests into action by taking the artillery with them and cutting its telephone communications.

On April 5, Odessa was evacuated. Whole units left the city singing the lnternationale. It became necessary to send the entire French army it back to France.

Marty was arrested on April 16 at Galatz (Rumania), together with three other sailors who had worked out a plan for seizing the ship.  That plan was sabotaged later.

Soldiers, Sailors Rebel

A revolt broke out on board the dreadnought  (type of battleship) France. The next day, the crews of the sister ships, the France and the Jean-Bart—the latter the flagship of the Admiral—gathered on deck singing the Internationale, and hoisted the red flag on the bowsprit. Almost at the moment when the red flag was hoisted on the main mast of the France, the troops which had been landed from the ships left the forts and made their way to the shore. When they arrived at the quay, the sailors singing “Down with the tyrants and the war!” flung their ammunition boxes into the sea. In the days that followed they forced the squadron to depart from Sevastopol.

Demonstrations of sailors and soldiers took place in the city of Toulon. The crew of the dreadnought Provence, the flagship of the First Admiral, refused to set sail for the Black Sea. The demands were: “Liberation of all the mutineers of the Black Sea, cessation, of the war of intervention in Russia, immediate demobilization.” The government could not stem this fast movement except by a mass demobilization, by hastening to disarm many warships, and by recalling from Russia all the ships and the forces of intervention.

One fact is beyond dispute. As a result of the Black Sea Revolt, French imperialism was compelled to relinquish its stranglehold on the October Revolution. Then the masses of sailors, soldiers and workers rose in France—not only against the criminal designs of the French imperialists, but also against the official Social-Democratic leaders who had prostituted themselves to the bourgeoisie since 1914: the “ Right” Socialists, the “ Centre “, and the  “Lefts” of the type of Paul Faure, as well as the trade union traitors.

For the international working class the Black Sea Revolt remains an example of what can be done by the power of the working class to demolish an imperialist state machine.