Raise hell with radios!
I recently discovered a WBAI radio talk show in New York city called A New Day airing at 7 am when many workers commute to jobs with their cell phones. I was able to get on the air a few times already and got to mention our www.plp.org website.
Recently I got on the air about the Bronx Hunts Point Teamsters strike that was attacked by police. I said:
 Police are the corporate dictatorship’s first budget priority because they break strikes and demonstrations that threaten their bosses’ profits. I was with transit workers who shut the city down for eleven days in 1964 and we won because as the bosses said, ‘You’ve got a gun to our heads’. Workers need to understand their power when united. Teamsters feed the city, they need to organize with transit, hospital, sanitation, service and delivery workers, and the public to build a working-class party to run society.
I think some of our Party members with important struggle experience could get on these many talk shows and bring our Party to workers.
*****
Collectivity versus individualism
The February 3 issue of CHALLENGE had an excellent back page article comparing capitalist individualism/freedom with communist collectivity. But what is this individual freedom and how is it tied so closely to capitalism?
Let’s look at the question of vaccines. Do we all have the individual freedom to choose to get vaccinated? No. Not only is there not enough of a supply but also the distribution has been badly handled by a government mostly interested in protecting big business and their profits. But there could be a much greater supply. Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca are “free” to compete to enter the vaccine market with inferior 70 percent effective vaccines. But for the last two months, they could have already been producing the 95 percent effective vaccines that are already approved.
And facilities in India and South Africa could be producing generic versions of those vaccines. But capitalist production for profit won’t allow production for human needs. For the last two months, workers around the world could have been cooperating on how to get everyone vaccinated much sooner rather than later. Instead, capitalist ideology teaches us to “jump the line” or just use bribery as many rich people are doing. And to justify this individualistic, selfish behavior, we are told it’s human nature.
The CHALLENGE article gives some examples of communist collectivity from China and Russia when they were socialist societies led by communists. Some remnants of that collectivity remain today. But there are numerous examples today of working-class collectivity all around the world. Like most things, collectivity is a class issue.
Capitalists compete and exploit their workers. So they promote individualism and selfishness. Workers fight back and have to stick together just to make any little headway against capitalist exploitation. That’s working-class collectivity.
We see it today with the massive antiracist protests against police murders and with essential workers in hospitals going the extra mile caring for their patients. We see it in the massive recent strikes in India. We see it during wars, disasters, and economic crashes all caused by capitalism. Workers going out of their way to help other workers. We need to develop this working-class collectivity into communist collectivity so we can organize a revolutionary movement to get rid of capitalism once and for all. Join the Progressive Labor Party!
*****
Why call them Big Fascists
Here’s a letter about a discussion our area had about why we call the dominant capitalist wing “the Big Fascists.” I think one of the reasons is because they are the ones who will lead the workers in the U.S. into the next world war.
I wanted to add that the Big Fascists are slicker. The Small Fascists are the open KKK members, Nazis, and Proud Boys. They are very open about their racism which keeps them a little smaller in numbers and more fringe-like.
However, the Big Fascists have their culture and media to build a larger fascist movement. They can get many good people to “fight for freedom,” “fight for democracy,” or “fight for the best government there has ever been.”
Like former U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s famous quote, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!” It is fascist. Getting lots of workers to think that they are fighting for what is good and merciful when it is really for the power and profits of the capitalist class.
*****
Substitute teacher’s take on capitalist negligence  
I am a substitute teacher in Indianapolis who has worked a total of one month and three days this entire school year due to schools being reopened late due to coronavirus infections and then reclosed again in early November after only being opened previously for a month.
The first school I was assigned to, I regularly worked at before the pandemic. The first day back, it was dangerous. In the Kindergarten class, I had worn masks that were too big, they did not know how to socially distance, the desk partitions were cheap foam, and the children had no understanding of why keeping their masks on was important. The school bosses were not fully prepared. I made up my mind to not take any assignments with K through second grades.
The next assignment  I had was long-term teaching Spanish in another elementary school. This school was a mini superspreader, as some students and staff contracted Covid-19. Every day for a month, I was taking a chance on my life as I have preexisting asthma. The school's leadership was anti-working-class and was sloppy on Covid-19 protocols such as on social distancing with staff and students. The principal was a joke. I was damn lucky I did not contract Covid-19. Meanwhile,  two teachers in metro school districts died from Covid-19.
Shortly before my last day, the school board announced schools would shut back down due to Covid-19 levels being too high.
Covid is a virus of capitalism. Under communism, schools would not be opened during a pandemic, as alternative learning methods will be used. It’s social murder to send teachers, support staff, and students to die in these schools.
HHHHH
CHALLENGE response:  We can all agree that the bosses’ schools are unsafe. School reopening is a lose-lose dilemma for our class. Remote learning treats students’ minds as expendable while in-person learning treats students’ safety as expendable. Either way, there is no regard for health, mental, or physical. Is the choice to stop working in those schools pro-worker? It might be helpful to think about essential workers and how it represents an impossible choice for them, too. The working class has never had it easy.
There is no returning to safe schools under capitalism. Young children, especially Black and Latin, are highly vulnerable to the bosses’ attacks. The students’ minds and health, where you choose to decline assignments, are not disposable. More than learning, schools provide health services, lunch, physical therapy, counseling, and other related services. Calling to keep schools closed “until they are safe” without recognizing this reality, and without genuine planning for student needs, undermines the cause of building working-class solidarity. As communists and members of the working class, we must be a part of the struggle. One step is to ask comrades and your co-workers how they are fighting for students during this capitalist crisis.

The insurrection in the U.S. Capitol was no one-off. It marked an explosion of the divisions in the U.S. ruling class that have simmered to a boil—and that point to even bloodier battles in the years to come. As U.S. imperialism spirals into decline and rival imperialists in China are poised to become the world’s top-dog capitalist superpower, the U.S. bosses are falling out like the thieves they are. A subordinate but rising faction, the “America First” wing fronted by Donald Trump, is challenging the liberal finance capitalists who have ruled the globe since World War II.
This split can’t be reconciled by a “democratic” election, the charade the bosses use to perpetuate their capitalist dictatorship. It won’t be healed by Trump’s leaving office in disgrace, or by the inauguration of liberal viper Joe Biden in the armed camp known as Washington, D.C. One side—most likely the finance capital liberals, who still have the upper hand—must smash the other.
In a time of fear, volatility, and a murderously mishandled pandemic, it’s important to remember that the international working class has no dog in this fight. Both wings of the ruling class stand for fascism (see glossary, page 6). Both spell misery and death for the working class. Trump’s Small Fascists are a nest of gutter racists and white nationalists funded by right-wing billionaires who make most of their money within the U.S. The liberal Big Fascists build their mountains of profits from genocidal wars, ruthless international exploitation, and vicious racist inequality.
Pushed to the edge, the finance capital liberals are building fascism with a multiracial cover, a few crumbs for the working class, and the rhetoric of fake compassion. After disciplining their own class, they’ll demand “sacrifice” for their system and enlist workers to die in their next world war. Make no mistake, the Big Fascists are no lesser evil. As they grow more desperate, they will stop at nothing.
We live in a period with only two roads. One is imperialist war and full-blown fascism. The other is communist revolution. The task of Progressive Labor Party is to build a revolutionary communist movement to smash capitalism once and for all.
Small Fascists make inroads
Contrary to the myth of a grass-roots movement of alienated white workers, the Small Fascists are orchestrated and financed by the likes of the super-rich Koch and Mercer and DeVos families. A new group with deep pockets, the anti-tax and anti-regulation Club for Growth, “has emerged as one of the biggest backers of the Republican lawmakers who sought to overturn the U.S. election results” (The Guardian, 1/16). Assured of this financial support, 147 Republican members of Congress spit in the finance capital’s face and challenged Biden’s election the day after the Capitol attack. Nearly two hundred of them voted against impeaching Trump for inciting it.  
The January 6 siege revealed the Small Fascist infiltration of the U.S. military and police forces around the country. Local police chiefs are turning their own people into the FBI (Washington Post, 1/16). Fearful of rogue elements in their ranks, the military was forced to conduct fresh background checks on National Guard troops sent to D.C. to safeguard the inauguration (defenseone.com 1/16).
Big Fascists are the main danger
For the first time, as the Small Fascist loyalists tried to disrupt the presidential election and kidnap and assassinate the opposition leadership, the U.S. ruling class was unable to impose a peaceful transition of power. Exposed and humiliated, the Big Fascist finance capitalists are struggling to regain control. Dozens of companies, including Marriott International, Dow, Airbnb, and Morgan Stanley, declared an end to donations to any member of Congress who voted to block Biden’s victory (New York Times, 1/11). Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, a shameless opportunist who walked in lock step with Trump for the last four years, is now blaming the ex-president for the Capitol attack and suggesting he might support an impeachment conviction.
History shows that in periods of crisis, capitalists need to build fascism to survive. Since the pro-war liberals are best positioned to win the battle within the U.S. ruling class, they pose the greatest danger. The Big Fascists’ response to 9/11, beyond the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, was to pass the Patriot Act. It created massive surveillance and a militarized police state that continues to terrorize mainly Black, Latin, and Muslim workers (Inthesetimes, 6/17/2020). Flash forward to Jim Crow Joe Biden and “Top Cop” Kamala Harris and their plan to unveil a domestic terrorism bill. While their immediate target may be the Small Fascist militias, the main wing bosses will ultimately use it against Black working-class leaders and antiracists.
To preserve their hold on power, the Big Fascists’ strategy is to build a multiracial fascist movement. As Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, the leading Big Fascist think tank, recently wrote: [I]f America’s differences are not to be the country’s undoing, more young Americans must meet and work together with those of other classes, colors, religions, and backgrounds' (foreignaffairs.com, 1/11).
Haass’s solution? A new system of voluntary national service—a first step toward a compulsory draft for the coming war with China.
Drive toward war accelerates
Over the long term, the intensifying U.S. civil war can only benefit the Chinese ruling class, which looks increasingly stable and strong by comparison. As the world’s regional bosses are forced to choose sides, many of them—especially in Africa, the fastest-growing economy in the world—are looking more and more toward China.
“Signs of this are already evident in...the European Union’s investment treaty with China [and] the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade bloc in Asia” (foreignaffairs.com, 1/12). As the U.S. finance capitalists see their empire imploding, they have a powerful incentive to go to war before it’s too late.
The future can be shaped by our class
With the rulers sharpening their long knives against one another, there’s one big unanswered question: How will workers respond to the movement toward war and fascism? The greatest danger for our class is that a large section of workers will be terrorized into running into the arms of the Big Fascists. But we cannot forget that Biden, Pelosi, and the rest are the same racists who generated the 1994 mass incarceration crime bill (authored by Biden himself), mass impoverishment welfare reform, and countless coups and wars that have slaughtered millions of workers around the world.
We call on workers to reject the liberal bosses and their sham democracy with the same force that they reject open fascists like Trump. The solution to smashing the fascist menace is communism, a state run by and for workers. As a class and as a communist party, we must build a revolutionary movement to destroy capitalism once and for all. Join Progressive Labor Party!

CHICAGO, January 20—“FREE THEM ALL! DROP THE CHARGES!” This was the main rallying cry heard in front of the Leighton Criminal Courthouse as over a dozen antiracist fighters braved freezing temperatures outside. Today marked the date of a court hearing for an antiracist fighter who was among the thousands attacked and charged by the racist capitalist state for their participation in a militant rebellion last year.
For nearly an hour, we led chants, gave short speeches, and picketed in front of the stairs leading into the bosses’ racist criminal injustice center. Members of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) helped lead chants, held up anti-capitalist banners, and shared copies of CHALLENGE newspaper. Many drivers and workers passing by honked their horns or raised their fists in support.
Our rally today took on an even wider significance given that it was the inauguration of the latest fascist-in-chief, U.S. President Joe Biden. Those of us in PLP made it clear that no matter who holds the reins of power in the capitalist system, the attacks on our class are bound to continue. In the wake of the Donald Trump-led Small Fascist wing of the U.S. ruling class storming the Capitol building, the splits among the bosses and the racist contradictions of the system have been made even more apparent.
PLP has been honored to fight alongside our class within these worker and student-led struggles. The solidarity and collectivity shown in these fights, no matter the size, is what gives our class the confidence and training that we need to ultimately run an egalitarian communist world in the masses’ collective interest.
The struggle expands
The newly created Chicago Activist Defense Committee (CADC) organized the action today. What originally started as an initiative to support Black artist/worker Jeremey “Mohawk” Johnson (see previous CHALLENGEs) after his arrest by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) during an anti-racist demonstration last August has grown into a wider network to support all those attacked by the capitalist state, citywide.
Adding more fuel to our fire is the clear racist double standard that was on display during the Capitol building siege on January 6th (see editorial on page 2). A mob of mainly white racists quickly overrun scant security forces and were allowed free reign to livestream their mayhem. To date, approximately 100 of those who participated have been arrested and face charges, compared to at least 3000 who were arrested in Chicago alone for fighting back against the racist murder of George Floyd.
As one CADC member put it, “A Black woman was shot to death for driving too close to the White House and our protests are met with extreme violence just for standing in the street and speaking out.” Racist terror and exploitation are ingrained in this capitalist system!
Fight for a system that serves workers
One PL’er concluded, “We fight today to get our comrades freed and their charges dropped, but we must have no illusions that this capitalist legal system exists to serve us.” We must continue fighting and winning others to defend and protect ourselves not only in the present, but also to build the mass PLP which represents the only force that can free us from the racist and sexist misery of capitalism. Let’s keep fighting!

Workers pay the heaviest of prices for buying into capitalist ideas, which in every country capitalism tries convincing us are universal truths— in the U.S., schools and movies alike saturate us with ideas like “individual freedom.” But when evaluating the toll of COVID-19, the cost of these ideas is measured in the hundreds of thousands of workers dead and the millions of workers’ lives uprooted and shattered in the U.S. alone: in the belly of the beast of history’s richest and most powerful imperialist power.
And the very first mechanism by which capitalism guaranteed the lethality of the COVID-19 was the infection of the working class with capitalist ideas, starting with individualism.
To be sure, the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party recommends the COVID-19 vaccine, universal mask wearing, physical distancing, and self-isolation when necessary – to protect ourselves and everyone around us. These are common sense mandates. In many countries workers willingly obey these public health mandates and lockdown orders for that reason.
Yet the U.S. leads in the share of people who defy such public health measures. Many refuse to accept these mandates because they regard them as infringements on “individual freedom,” even though this individualism directly harms others. Misled by politicians like Trump and Christian fascist preachers who promote superstition over science, around more than 25 percent of all U.S. workers —rising to 33 percent of Black and 34 percent of Latin workers— believe the pandemic is “probably or definitely” a hoax (Pew Research, 7/24/20), dismissing the one-third of one million deaths and counting. Far too many of our working class sisters and brothers are incapable of distinguishing truth from falsehood.
Mimicking Trump’s irresponsibility, many state governors and politicians aligned with the Small Fascist, domestic-oriented “Fortress America” capitalist wing tell people to do what they want. Many small-time capitalists are on the brink of failure, squeezed by monopolies like Amazon on one hand and falling profits on the other.
But it’s not just Trump – it’s capitalism. Such blatant “me-first” disregard for the well-being of others didn’t begin with Trump or any particular faction of the capitalist class. It flows from the entire history and ideology of capitalism, from its early competitive days to today’s monopoly capitalist stage, imperialism.
Politics are primary
Capitalism consists of a relatively tiny class of capitalists at the top: the owners of production and wealth. These capitalists control the lives of the rest of society beneath them—the working class, in countries the world over—control that they exercise through their state power, represented for them by self-serving politicians. And these politicians are (usually!) protected by the bosses’ police and military.
These politicians are a key part of capitalist state power, along with the entire monopoly-owned mass media and educational institutions, who are all represented on think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations. Capitalist state power is supported by and enhances individualism alongside racism, sexism and nationalism to weaken working class-conscious interests like equality, collectivity, internationalism and solidarity.
Communist collectivity vs capitalist individualism
Communist-led workers in China won a revolution and established socialism in 1949. For the period of time that the heroic struggles of workers in China were led by communists, many millions of workers became conditioned with a collective working class consciousness that opposed capitalist individualism.
These movements ultimately failed and came under the leadership of pro-capitalist, fake communists. The old communist movement, for so many achievements and advances, kept many capitalist ideas. They wrongly believed that the international working class could not be won directly to communism, and PLP has analyzed the lessons of these failures elsewhere.
Even so, remnants of that collectivity and solidarity persist. Russia and China have long ago betrayed revolutionary struggle and become fascist states today. And yet China’s success in containing COVID-19 would’ve been impossible were it not for masses of workers selflessly volunteering.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health conducted a study on the “volunteerism” in China (Miao et al, 8/7/20). As the pandemic rose, 85,699 middle-aged worker volunteers interpreted and carried out public health mandates, as public services facing decades of China’s capitalist cutbacks became overwhelmed. Volunteers formed grassroots networks connecting hard-hit cities like Hangzhou, Wenzhou and Taizhou with smaller cities, towns and villages, from running public services to organizing logistics for food and medicine deliveries, to performing invaluable sanitation duties.
Zero praise is due for the fascist “Communist” Party of China or their response to the pandemic; workers in China organized despite their fascist capitalist government, and the bosses found themselves tailing the masses. Tellingly, the survey found that 85.8 percent of these worker volunteers volunteered “on their own initiative,” whereas 10.8 percent stated they were officially mobilized. Tragically, without a mass revolutionary communist party like PLP, these selfless worker volunteers saved lives, but also strengthened the hand of Chinese imperialism.
These volunteers’ parents and grandparents would remember the 1960s when China was led by real communists. Communists organized and channeled working class consciousness to eradicate the disease schistosomiasis, caused by snail-borne parasites that the Centers for Disease Control lists today as both an indication of extreme poverty, and the deadliest of all tropical diseases. Communists mobilized millions collectively, and is documented in Joshua S. Horn’s must-read book, Away With All Pests.
Forward to communism
“Personal choice” and “individual freedom,” are illusions of capitalist ideology, stand in opposition to working class liberation, and under capitalism lead to death-dealing pandemics for which capitalist ideas also have no solutions. Capitalist individualism only tightens our chains. The international working class’ historic task is therefore smashing capitalism and capitalist ideas through communist revolution and communist ideology.
Communism is a new concept of freedom—mass freedom. Where the condition for the free development of each is the free development of all, empowerment of the majority through abolition of the capitalist state, and organization of a working class dictatorship. This collective rule requires mutual responsibility, based on an objective and scientific appraisal of the needs of the global working class. Such an outcome is only possible through a mass organization of millions into PLP and encouraging the full participation of all workers in deliberating, planning, and implementing ideas.
Under communism, the collective power of the working class can be mobilized to solve any problem history and nature presents, from pandemics to crop failures to climate change. Liberating the creative power of each and every worker through communism and dialectical materialism will ensure the survival and progress of all. Join us and join the fight for freedom: to smash the ideological chains of individualism, racism and sexism with communist revolution.