In 2022, the international working class faced what sometimes seemed like the darkest of nights.
January saw Covid-19 deaths soar above six million worldwide with no signs of slowing. In February, Russia invaded Ukraine in what may turn out to be the spark for World War III. The pink tide of liberalism continued to infect Latin America, with leaders opportunistically working both sides of the imperialist competition, cynically promoting all-class unity, nationalism, and identity politics while simultaneously escalating racist and sexist attacks. The Monkeypox epidemic, once again, magnified the gross inequalities of the racist, sexist capitalist for-profit healthcare system which is a disaster for our entire class, especially Black and women workers. Open racists made regional and national political gains in Italy, France, and the UK. Monstrous imperialist monarch Queen Elizabeth II died amid pomp and mass mourning, despite seventy years of crimes against tens of millions of workers. And murders at the hands of the KKKops plagued our class.
Just as gutter racists in all their disguises seek to exploit and murder us, so do the liberal fascists of finance capital, led by the likes of Jim Crow Joe Biden. We fight to remember that these wolves in sheep’s clothing, with their false promises and manipulation of social issues like increased funding for racist cops, abortion, immigration and mass deportations, and student debt, present the biggest danger.
Yet, through this dark night of capitalist decay and low class unity, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and fellow workers continued to FIGHT BACK.
A new generation of communist leadership
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) kicked off the year with an Alabama Winter Project, in which an integrated group of workers and students supported the ongoing Warrior Met Miners’ Strike. Hundreds of multiracial miners and the Women’s Auxiliary were open to our communist politics and set the tone for a year of Party fightback.
Across the U.S., students, teachers, and workers demanded that the bosses’ public schools take their health seriously. In Chicago, working-class youth took militant action as city bosses, Big Fascist Black Mayor Lori Lightfoot, representing the liberal, dominant wing of the ruling class, and the sellout union bosses did nothing to stop Covid-19 infections and deaths on campuses.
At City University of New York (CUNY), ongoing struggles exposed that capitalist education administrators remain the lapdogs of the liberal Big Fascist wing of the capitalist class.
And as countless workers lost loved ones, and killer kkkops like Jason Van Dyke were set free, PLP continued to remind comrades that capitalism is at the root of the violence against our class. It is the capitalist bosses who attack us with poverty and police terror, disproportionately targeting Black and Latin neighborhoods.
In New Jersey, our Party has been a thorn in the side of Newark's Big Fascist Mayor Ras Baraka by keeping the Rodwell-Spivey fight alive. Our fightback has gotten bogus felony charges against the brothers reduced to misdemeanors, and we’ll continue to fight until they’re completely dropped.
PL’ers and friends declared there are NO GOOD MAYORS, COPS OR POLITICIANS! The only way to defend against attacks on our class by liberal misleaders like Baraka is to build toward communist revolution.
Rising inflation and an unsustainable cost of living had workers worldwide unable to meet their families’ basic needs. July saw Panama face one of its biggest protests in decades, spurred by rising food and fuel prices (LA Times, 7/19/22). Britain remains in the midst of one of its biggest strikes in recent years, with over 200,000 workers demanding better pay and working conditions (CNN Business 11/15/22).
In Greece, a 24-hour general strike called by private- and public-sector unions was set to shut down most services around the country (ABC News 11/8/22).
And in Belgium, authorities were forced to reduce airport capacity by 70 percent to avoid disruption from a strike (Crisis 24 12/10/22).
When workers of the world unite we can bring this racist capitalist system to a halt.
Shut this racist system down!
Liberal fascism looms ahead of WWIII, but working class solidarity prevails.
In 2022, both wings of the ruling class continued to splinter–particularly in the U.S., as the Big Fascists struggled to discipline themselves and the more openly racist Small Fascists as capitalism spiraled into deeper crisis.
One year after the assault on the Capitol by loyalists of Donald Trump, the vicious battle between the two factions of U.S. capitalism continues to grow hotter. In January, the Big Fascists took a clear step toward full-blown fascism by establishing a new federal unit to target “domestic terrorism.” Just one month later, we witnessed the old liberal world order disintegrated even further and the Russian capitalist bosses invaded Ukraine.
In this period, when capitalism is descending to a new level of hell, it is imperative for our class and PLP to forge a new way forward by smashing the rotten profit system with communist revolution.
In November, over 100 protestors rallied in defiance of a possible U.S. imperialist invasion of Haiti.
Hundreds of thousands in Sri Lanka joined a protest movement storming the Presidential palace and chasing the president out of the country.
In response to the floods in Pakistan, PLP organized medical camps with the help of friends and is trying to build a base among displaced workers.
In Colombia, thousands of workers, enraged by the breakdown of public services, tax hikes, a plan to privatize health care, and five-plus decades of civil war, mounted mass demonstrations. where workers and youth and PLP fought alongside our class siblings in the trenches, injecting the struggle with revolutionary politics every step of the way.
Changing the course of imperialist wars is a monumental task, but it is something our class has done before. We must attack head-on the nationalism and racism being spread among our class by the bosses.
Who’s day? Our day!
No year in review would be complete without MAY DAY - OUR DAY!
It’s a day when workers from across the globe march to commemorate our triumphs, propelled by a vision of a world without exploitation, without capitalist borders, and run by the working class.
We march for the universal demands of all workers: against imperialist war, against racism and sexism, for the unity of immigrant and citizen workers, against wage slavery, against fascist police terror, and for the communist solution to all these attacks facing the international working class.
PLP celebrated May Day internationally and then carried that same fighting spirit to our Party’s annual Summer Project, which centered around two major events: a march in in Brooklyn to protest the 2012 murder of Shantel Davis by police detective Phil Atkins, and the imprisonment of Justin Rodwell and the legal attacks on his family in Newark. The project was a show of resistance against the bosses and their enforcers, an unapologetic expression of the Party’s politics.
Only solution is communist revolution!
Our rallying cry is for international working-class consciousness and solidarity. Our marching orders are to turn the guns around, to transform inter-imperialist war into communist revolution.
Our fightbacks of the past year offer glimmers of hope that the international working class will one day be the human race. With this unwavering faith in our class, scores of workers, students, and soldiers fight for communist revolution, workers’ dictatorship, and a world free of the profit system’s horrors.
Workers of the world unite! Organize in the workplace, in mass organizations, with friends and family.
Look to our class brothers and sisters who have shut down trains, planes, and profit streams.
Smash racist chains and organize for one solution, and one solution only:
A communist revolution!
