One hundred and two years ago, November 7, 1917, marked the beginning of the single most important event of the 20th century, the Bolshevik revolution, which directly inspired the Chinese revolution and anti-imperialist struggles around the world from Vietnam to Africa to Latin America.
Russia’s working class, headed by the revolutionary communists of the Bolshevik Party and its leader, Vladimir Lenin, freed one-sixth of the world’s surface from capitalism. They proved once and for all that it was possible to strive for a world without exploitation, where those who produce all value, the working class, can enjoy the fruits of their labor and not have it stolen by a few parasitical capitalists and their lackeys.
The Bolshevik revolution was the first serious attempt by workers and peasants to seize, hold and consolidate state power. Even though capitalism has returned to the former Soviet Union, workers will not forget that the Soviet working class defeated capitalism in 1917; smashed the imperialist armies of 17 countries (including Japan, the U.S., Britain, France, among others) which invaded Russia in 1918 to try to crush the revolution; freed the masses, especially women, from the yoke of capitalist, feudal and religious oppression; and then in 1945 defeated the mightiest and most barbaric army the capitalists had ever organized: the Nazi Wehrmacht.
The revolution frightened the world’s bosses, who immediately sent armies from 17 countries to try — in Churchill’s words — to “strangle it in the cradle.” From 1918 to 1923, millions of workers led by the Red Army defeated the imperialists’ counter-revolution. Nearly five million died in that battle, many of whom were the most committed workers the revolution had produced. Lenin himself died because of injuries inflicted by a hired killer.
The masses showed great courage and determination to defend and build their revolution, under the leadership of their revolutionary party. They proved that the revolutionary violence on the part of the working class and peasantry were vital to the seizure of state power.
Achievements of the revolution
The Bolshevik Revolution brought Russia to heights of productive development that capitalism, given a similar time period and circumstances, could never have dreamed of. Bringing the working class to power, the Revolution coordinated their social-economic efforts for the production and exchange of the necessities, the comforts and even some luxuries of life, making them available to all. The Soviet system of production was for use, not for profit. This can only be accomplished by abolishing capitalist profits and the private ownership of property, with its exploitation, poverty, unemployment, racism, fascism and imperialist wars.
In the 1930s, when the entire capitalist world sank into depression, and tens of millions worldwide were left jobless and starving (much like today), the Soviet Union was forging ahead building a new society without unemployment and hunger. They created some measure of a decent life for workers in an incredibly short time, transforming a 90 percent illiteracy rate into one in which nearly everyone was literate.
Around 1938, without any official declaration, the USSR had achieved the era of free bread. One could enter a cafeteria, order little or nothing, and receive all the bread one wanted. You needed, you received — at least to that extent. Even during a drive for heavy industry, living standards rose strikingly when the rest of the world was mired in the Great Depression.
The Soviet Union not only freed workers but also fought against racism and sexism. The battle against racism was particularly significant. As pro-communist Paul Robeson said about his trips to the Soviet Union, he “felt like a human being for the first time since I grew up. Here I am not a Negro but a human being. Before I came I could hardly believe that such a thing could be…. Here, for the first time in my life, I walk in full human dignity.”
Heroic fight against the Nazis
In 1941, the bosses again tried to destroy the revolution. Hitler, using all of Europe’s resources and the largest military machine ever assembled, invaded the Soviet Union with four million troops. They discovered the Soviets were no pushover as occurred in Western Europe. Hitler’s prediction — endorsed by western military “experts” — of capturing Moscow in six weeks went up in smoke.
Nazi troops found total destruction and desolation in every captured city or town — the “scorched earth” policy. Soviet defenders burned everything to the ground that they could not take with them and then organized armed resistance behind enemy lines: the Partisans.
Over 6,000 factories were dismantled and moved east of the Ural Mountains, re-assembled to produce weapons again, a feat requiring total unity and support of Soviet workers, unmatched by any country, before or since. Soviet soldiers and workers fought for Stalingrad block-by-block, house-by-house and room-by-room to halt the “unbeatable” Nazi invaders. Workers in arms factories produced weapons 24 hours a day for the Red Army, working 12-hour shifts. When Nazi troops captured factories, heroic Soviet workers and soldiers would re-take them.
The entire German Sixth Army and 24 of Hitler’s generals were surrounded and killed or captured in the battle of Stalingrad. Never again would the Nazis mount a successful offensive against the Red Army. Stalingrad was truly the turning point of the Second World War. Not until the Nazis were on the run following their defeats at Stalingrad and in the Battle of the Kursk — the biggest armored battle in world history, involving millions of soldiers and 6,000 tanks — did the U.S.-U.K. forces invade Western Europe. It was the communist-led Soviet Union that smashed the Nazis, the largest and most powerful army ever mounted by a capitalist power.
All this was accomplished under the leadership of Josef Stalin. No wonder he is reviled to this day by world capitalism.
Lessons to be learned
Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks suffered from many political weaknesses, which led to the return of capitalism to the USSR. From the beginning they believed that to achieve communism, first socialism had to be established, a belief Karl Marx had advanced. We have learned from that experience that socialism retained capitalism’s wage system and therefore failed to wipe out many aspects of the profit system. Socialism put forward material incentives to the working class rather than political ones as the way to win workers to communism. We must win masses of workers to abolish capitalism’s wage system and its division of labor and fight directly for communism.
Today, no country is led by communists, but this is a temporary historical setback. While this long and volatile era of widening imperialist wars and fascist attacks on the working class is upon us, every dark night has its end.
PLP is a product of both the old International Communist Movement and the struggle against its revisionism. Pseudo-leftist groups have not learned history’s lessons and continue to fight for nationalist “sharing of power” with capitalists, a la Venezuela’s Chavez, not for the working-class seizure of power and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Our movement is daily fighting to learn from the Soviet Union’s great battles and achievements as well as its deadly errors that led to its collapse, mainly that reformism, racism, nationalism and all forms of concessions to capitalism only lead workers to defeat. Give the ruling class an inch and they’ll grab a mile.
We honor the bold fight by the workers of the Bolshevik Revolution against capitalism and for a working-class communist world. Today, we must organize workers, students and soldiers to build a mass, worldwide, working class Party that will turn this era of imperialist wars into a new, international communist revolution.

Philadelphia, November 5 — Today, over 80 healthcare workers and local organizers from the NGO Puentes de Salud (“Bridges of Health”) protested detention centers, deportations and borders at this year’s meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Progressive Labor Party members, who have been active in the American Public Health Association (APHA) for several decades, helped lead the march from the site of this year’s convention in Philadelphia to an ICE office several blocks away. Marchers from the mass organizations  held up signs such as “$$ crosses borders, why not people.” Workers also led chants calling for “No Borders!”  recognizing that borders only help the capitalists and divide
Health justice means internationalism, revolution
Highlights of the rally included:
There were speakers from Doctors 4 Camp Closure (D4CC), People’s Health Movement and Life Undocumented. We met new friends from Puentes de Salud two weeks earlier through contacts made at a D4CC rally. An undocumented immigrant from New York City with Life Undocumented spoke of his struggles with stress and PTSD even as he had become an anesthesiologist.
A young immigrant from Mexico became tearful and angry as he explained that U.S. capitalism had driven people out of their countries, that Customs and Border agents singled out transgender immigrants in the camps for harassment and sexual assault, and that now the vicious capitalists are attacking them here.
A young medical student from the University of Pennsylvania led songs of resistance as we marched back to the convention center. A creative student joined PLP’s “Troublemakers Coffee Hour” and made a sign: “I like my country like my whiskey –without ICE.”  
Many signs from Health Impact Partners said “Immigrant Justice Is Health Justice”. Members from Chicago’s Radical Public Health group displayed their radical t-shirts proudly. 30 marchers signed up to be contacted in the future to strengthen the fight against racist deportations and ICE.
A PLP doctor attacked capitalism’s continuing failure to provide health care, from her days 50 years ago organizing a free clinic in Durham, North Carolina, for Black and white workers, to her work today in a Maryland free clinic serving immigrants lacking decent health care from Latin American, Africa, and Asia.
She called on the marchers to build a revolutionary communist movement with multiracial unity to end this exploitative racist system of capitalism.
Another comrade from Philadelphia explained how his parents had immigrated from Europe under severe conditions and he appreciated the immigrants stepping up to speak here. He urged marchers to organize support for immigrants in their unions and on their jobs, much as we were doing at APHA.
Long term outlook key to victory
Several sections of the APHA endorsed the rally as a result of the 30 years of activities and struggle within this 13,000-strong organization by PLP members, including engagement in the International Health, Medical Care, Community Health Planning and Policy Development, and Socialist Caucus as well as in local chapters throughout the country.
We also built the rally by distributing 1,100 flyers calling for an end to deportations, detention and borders just before the opening APHA session on Sunday and at multiple sessions during the conference. We also used resolutions that APHA has previously passed supporting health for immigrants and no separation of families to encourage participation.
Such resolutions can be used to strengthen local struggles as well, like the one in Philadelphia to close the Berk detention center and turn it into a drug treatment center, and the fight to abolish borders. Comrades and many young health-worker allies have similarly used the resolution against racist police brutality passed after a 3-year struggle (“Law Enforcement Violence as a Public Health Issue”) in local battles against brutal cops.
communist revolution
Abolishing borders and providing decent health care means destroying capitalism through revolution, not elections, and so we made the fight for communism front and center by distributing over 400 copies of our CHALLENGE Special Edition with the bold slogan, Revolution will not be on the ballot!
The revolutionary communist movement PLP is building is international. A powerful moment in our organizing included meeting a young public health researcher from Puerto Rico who recounted the details of the demonstrations numbering a million people against the failure of the Puerto Rican governor to serve the people after Hurricane Maria. While the corrupt governor was driven out of office, our new friend agreed that the working class failed to seize control of the government because revolutionary groups were too small and unprepared. Our job is to change that by helping her build the PLP in Puerto Rico to create the revolutionary leadership needed there – and around the globe.

NEW YORK CITY, November 20—The liberal NYC Council voted to close the Rikers Island prison complex, which has hounded mainly Black and Latin workers since 1935. Four new houses of horrors are expected to take its place. While capitalism unleashes its terror machine on Black and Latin workers, the communist movement looks to these oppressed workers as potential leaders for a just world, communism.
Prisons necessary for capitalism
Rikers is a massive complex of 10,000 beds. It currently holds around 7,000 daily and is now slated to close by 2026. As crime rates continue to fall, these liberal politicians still cling to the stick of the police and the courts to maintain their status quo. Rikers Island, one of the most racist, vile institutions, preys on and imprisons workers and is bad for all but the rulers.
Capitalism is guilty of murder
Under the liberal bastion of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Kalief Browder, a young Black man was robbed of his youth when he was sent to rikers as a teenager and held for three years with no court date on suspicion of stealing a backpack. After spending a majority of that time in solitary confinement, he was released. Unable to cope with the trauma that capitalism inflicted on him, he committed suicide. This is just one documented experience that reflects the racist terrorization of Black and Latin youth under capitalism. Kalief Browder, the Exonerated 5, and the youth being harassed in recent years by the MTA police (see last issue of CHALLENGE) is why we fight to smash racism.
Under the system of capitalism, the police, jails, and courts exist to keep workers separated, scared, and docile. At an outrageous cost of both resources and suffering, these new prisons will displace workers only to lock them back up for the sake of control.
Reform vs revolution
Workers are in motion against the new prisons, but without widespread working-class unity and a communist party, these efforts are doomed to fail. One protest was in Kew Gradens, Queens, where the Mayor plans to build a towering lockup for more than 1,400 inmates.
Capitalism disregards workers’ safety; our labor can be lawfully commodified and sold. When the main wing of the U.S. bosses abolished slavery, they still kept a loophole: “…except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted…” In other words, prison labor. Every imprisoned worker is one less visible voice of dissent in the face of the bosses.
Working for a better world
Currently under this racist capitalist system, Black, Latin, and women workers are the most brutally exploited. Capitalist bosses dehumanize workers using this special oppression. They use their state apparatus,especially the police to terrorize workers, and protect their bosses, politicians. But the main reason the bosses use racist terror is to divide workers. The capitalist’s biggest fear is  multi-racial unity, and working class leadership. They shudder at the thought of workers breaking their shackles and taking power. Under communism, the working class will have the power to make and enforce all of the laws which society operates under. The working class will hold all decision-making power for its own call.
 Only when the international working class holds power over their own lives can we expect to cultivate a world without racism, sexism, and all the lies that divide us. Under communism, crimes against the working class will be tackled by our class, for our class, with our class.

*****

Liberal venom comes in many flavors
Liberal misleaders are not all united behind this Rikers plan either: “In a sign perhaps of the challenges and opposition ahead, Councilman Carlos Menchaca, who represents parts of Brooklyn, said the legislation did not go far enough to address the reasons people end up in jail. ‘This vote only enriches developers in the short term,’ said Mr. Menchaca, who voted against the proposal. ‘I do not trust this mayor, do you?’” (New York Times, 10/17).
Let’s not be fooled by Menchaca, the City’s first Mexican American to hold public office. This councilperson will play a role in ushering in gentrification and displacement of Latin and other workers. Industry City (it was once a manufacturing complex) has been redeveloped into a campus of companies. Despite his big talk about hurting residents, Menchaca is moving forward with Industry City’s $1 billion rezoning application, which will upzone “20 percent of the neighborhood’s industrial waterfront property” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 11/7).
Menchaca, and other liberals like him, still serve capitalism. In fact, they serve the most dangerous wing of the U.S. ruling class: the Big Fascists. This wing has the U.S. global Empire, in mind when enacting policies and buying working-class votes. They are Big Fascists because they pose a more lethal threat to the working class than Trump and his brand of domestic Little Fascism. The Big Fascists will use the working class to discipline their national enemy. In doing so, they will also aim to steer the direction of working-class movements and funnel them into a war effort against China and Russia. This is the fascist apparatus that Menchaca and Co. are a part of.

NEW YORK CITY, NOVEMBER 19– At a recent Delegate Assembly of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), delegates were voting on whether to recommend the recent contract offer to the members. Not surprisingly, the contract presented before us was trash and drew the ire of a spirited group of 7K or Strike (7kos) members. The meeting was another attack and distraction brought to you by the sell-out union. Capitalism is only about profit for the bosses and misery for workers, no matter how much the liberal misleadership of the union and their politicians try to mask this.
The ongoing struggle around the contract has presented PL’ers in the fight with the perfect opportunity to raise our communist politics, and build student-worker solidarity in a time of rising fascism and racist attacks. Progressive Labor Party members, also part of the 7kos, participated in the forceful agitation against the union leadership to denounce their hypocrisy for force-feeding workers a contract that would only ensure the continuation of poverty wages.
On a positive note, through this struggle we’ve been able to expose the crisis of capitalism, and make CHALLENGE a regular staple on campus. Our goal is to continue to put forth the understanding that capitalism can never provide quality education or meet workers’ needs, and to win workers to fight for communism.
Agitate
 The union misleaders have been touting this contract as one of “equity” and “parity,” hailing it as a “historic breakthrough.”But the barrage of racist attacks on the working class by the CUNY administration, their CEO’s and fake progressive leaders Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio show no signs of slowing. Many campuses are crumbling and students must contend with broken elevators, broken sinks and toilets, missing lights, classrooms that are unfit for learning, etc.
All throughout CUNY campuses students must endure wretchedly racist learning environments even as tuitions climb. This goes hand in hand with the racist teaching conditions that educators are battling against. Recently, in secret bargaining sessions with CUNY, the union misleadership agreed to a contract that contains one racist attack after another. It offers measly two percent annual raises, which is below inflation, especially in New York where housing costs skyrocket every year. It locks part-time faculty, the most exploited and disproportionately Black and Latin constituency in the union, into poverty wages until the contract expires in 2022.
It abolishes yearly contractual raises for part-timers, but tellingly, not for full-time instructors, and increases workloads for part-time instructors. All this is stacked up mainly against Black and Latin faculty and students.
What’s more, the racist nature of these attacks is clear as day when we hear that there is no money for better college campuses, but plenty of money (billions), for the four new jails the Mayor wants to build in our backyards (NY Times, 9/4).
Build a base
As we battle the three-front battle against the bosses racist attacks, the sell-out union leaders, and their liberal politicians, PL’ers on campus have been using it as an opportunity to connect the contract fight with the racist attacks against students at CUNY. On a number of campuses, we’ve been involved in campaigns to highlight the deteriorating physical conditions, and trying to link the working conditions of professors and the learning conditions of students. Some student leaders have attended a number of union meetings and spoke up about our need to unite.
The whole experience has been a learning process, and our students have been leading it, as the majority of them are also workers and bring with them this understanding to campus struggles. At the same time, we’ve been leading a wide-scale organizing effort to reach as many members as possible to convince them to vote against the contract. In these conversations, we point out that, unlike the union leadership, which is content to lobby in Albany or at the CUNY Board of Trustees, 7K or Strike has a very clear plan to move us to a more militant option: a strike.
We plan to take the lessons from teachers around the country, especially Chicago, who have built years-long campaigns to win support from parents and students. It is in these conversations that PL members are able to bring forward communist ideas most directly.
Class struggle is in session
With the contract up for a vote later this month PL’ers will continue to try to expand the limits of what’s possible as well. We will continue to work in student organizations, set up strike committees with students and faculty, and continue to agitate for fighting .
Finally we will continue to raise workers consciousness around the understanding that we must continue to fight for better learning and teaching conditions wherever we are.
Ultimately the crisis of capitalism, and subpar learning conditions can only be solved when workers fight for a communist society: where education will be used for the transformation of society, and for the benefit of all.