The liberal fascist Peronist Party regained power in the October 27 Argentinean elections, as workers once again had to choose between two anti-working-class options. In this case, “center-left” president-elect Alberto Fernandez beat the free-market incumbent, Mauricio Macri. Fernandez made vague nationalist promises to reform his way out of a worsening recession and out-of-control inflation. It’s just the latest capitalist crisis in Argentina. Regardless of which political party happens to be in power, one thing is sure: the working class gets screwed.
Back on top, for the moment, is Vice President-elect and former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the Peronists’ star populist stooge. She will take office facing 11 cases of alleged bribery, embezzlement, and money laundering. In one case, her former chauffeur testified that he stashed 40 bags of money “in the mausoleum of Mrs. Kirchner’s late husband and predecessor, Nestor, who died in 2010” (Telegraph, 10/27).
From the U.S. to China, from Ecuador to Honduras to Haiti to Iraq, the bosses are mounting “anti-corruption” campaigns to discipline their ranks and contain workers’ anger. But since capitalist relations are rooted in individualism, it’s impossible for the ruling class to completely stamp out self-interest. Moreover, capitalism is based on the theft of the value of workers’ labor. It’s inherently corrupt from the jump! Cristina Fernandez steals—whether legally or illegally under the bosses’ laws—because that is what capitalists do. As one disillusioned former Macri voter told the New York Times, “I know they are all thieves, and I’m fed up of standing by while they all steal from me” (10/27).
Only a communist revolution can put an end to the bosses’ criminality. Only communism can create a society run by and for workers—without money or exploitation, racism or sexism, imperialist rivalries or imperialist war. Only communism can point the way forward for the international working class.
The Pink Tide of poverty
In 2003, on the heels of an economic collapse triggered by the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund, Nestor Kirchner came into power. He rode the Latin American “Pink Tide,” the same capitalist reform movement that elevated Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Argentina’s “left-wing” Peronists were elected after pledging to boost social spending and to end the austerity packages tied to massive loans from the IMF. Kristina Fernandez de Kirchner succeeded her husband as president in 2007 and was re-elected four years later.
For a time, conditions for workers in Argentina improved. Millions benefited from a new universal welfare program. More money was spent on pensions and unemployment benefits. Meanwhile, the Kirchners clamped down on the country’s “traditional powers,” including landowners and mainstream media, while subjugating judges and legislators. They subjugated the country’s judges and legislators while tightening the state’s control over industry—all hallmarks of rising fascism (Stratfor, 4/9/13). Meanwhile, their administrations took bribes for favors from industrialists like Paolo Rocca, “head of the conglomerate Techint Group and one of Argentina’s richest men” (New York Times, 8/25/18).
In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, the Kirchners’ protectionist, high-tariff policies no longer worked so well. As soy and beef prices plunged, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner cut back government spending and social services, which triggered mass layoffs. By 2015, her last year in office, “inflation levels were so high that Kirchner’s government had altered official statistics” and “roughly a third of the population lived in poverty” (New Yorker, 8/28).
In the profit-driven chaos of capitalism, any gains made by workers are invariably limited and short-lived.
Fake-left frying pan, imperialist fire
Once the Kirchners’ economic “miracle” lost its sizzle, the pro-market Macri campaigned on a “zero poverty” pledge and won office in 2015. He proposed widespread privatization and went all-in for foreign investment, heavy debt, and ultimately a $57 billion bailout from the IMF, the largest loan in that bloodsucking organization’s 73-year history (Telegraph, 10/27).
Macri had wide support among business owners and big farmers, two sectors that have made China the country’s second largest trade partner, surpassing the U.S. “Chinese investments in Argentina have multiplied in … mining, oil and gas, hydropower, nuclear energy, solar energy, biodiesel, transportation, telecommunications and electronics” (Argentine Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship, 2017). Most recently, amidst the U.S.–China trade war, the two countries struck major commodity export deals, a loud warning to the U.S. of China’s growing influence in Latin America (Reuters 9/10).
As favored bosses flourished, workers in Argentina found the new Macri reforms an even bigger disaster than the old Kirchner regime. When foreign investors failed to arrive, and the U.S. Federal Reserve hiked its interest rates, the peso lost more than half its value. The country’s poverty rate is up to 35 percent, and 52 percent for children under 15 (Buenos Aires Times, 9/30). Without the Kirchners’ lavish state subsidies, utility prices have gone through the roof. In September, thousands of protestors occupied downtown Buenos Aires to protest a food emergency. While Argentina is classed as “upper-middle-income” by the World Bank, it also ranks high for inequality, “slightly worse than the United States” (BA Times, 1/28/18).
As the Nazi-loving Juan Peron [see box], the notorious founder of Peronism, once said: “It is not that we were good, but those who came after us were so bad that they made us look good” (New Yorker, 8/28).
Latin America: hotspot for insurrection
Through much of Latin America, workers are taking to the streets in violent protest against decades of austerity, U.S. imperialism, and strangulation by the IMF. Massive demonstrations have broken out in Chile and Ecuador. A strike wave has erupted amid a challenged election in Bolivia. In Ecuador, protests against an end to fuel subsidies grew so intense that President Lenin Moreno fled Quito, the capital, and moved his government to the calmer city of Guayaquil.
As the history of Argentina shows, liberal bosses are the main danger. Capitalist reforms are deceptions that pave the way for fascism. The next global war is coming—and with it, sharper attacks on our class. As communists, we must support rebelling workers around the world. Most important of all, we must destroy capitalism with communist revolution, organized and led by the Progressive Labor Party. Join us!

*****

Founding fascist father
As Eva Peron became a media darling and self-styled champion of the impoverished working class, her husband, Juan Peron, helped many Nazis fleeing Europe after World War II to find a safe haven in Argentina. Among them were mass- murdering fiends like Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele. Peron also offered a haven for German profits that were generated by the Nazi war machine (NYT, 4/4/2005).
Though Argentina was technically neutral when World War II broke out, there was broad support for the Axis powers—in part due to the country’s large Italian and German communities, in part to a tradition of sanctioned anti-Jewish racism. Argentina refused Jewish immigration during the pre-war Nazi pogroms. Peron remained loyal to the defeated Third Reich throughout his presidency (1946-55 and 1973-74). He vehemently attacked the Nuremberg Trials, which held former high-ranking Nazis accountable for war crimes. He also worked with the Catholic Church to gain amnesty for refugee Nazis who’d settled in Argentina.

BROOKLYN, November 1— Over 1,000 protestors, including members and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP), illegally took to the streets of Brooklyn to fight the racist New York Police Department’s terrorism directed at Black youth in the subways. After marching in the streets for more than an hour, the protestors did a mass fare evasion action and took over one of the  busiest subway stations in Brooklyn while chanting “How do you spell racist? N-Y-P-D” and “No NYPD in the MTA!”
Cops protect profit
It’s inspiring to see workers and students break the bosses’ laws and attack racism with militant, multiracial unity. But it’s not enough to get the kkkops out of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). Police everywhere protect the bosses and their capitalist system, and racism is its backbone. Wherever fighting against police terror, we must also organize for communist revolution.
Liberal Governor Andrew Cuomo recently announced the hiring of 500 more cops to terrorize workers, particularly Black and Latin youth, for evading the $2.75 subway and bus fare. The MTA has plastered stations with messages that pit workers against one another and spread the lie that less fare evasion means better service.
While the MTA claims it will lose $260 million from fare evasion this year (CBS, 6/18), it plans to lay off 2,700 MTA workers (Daily News, 7/17) while splurging an additional $663 million on policing in the next decade (City and State NY, 10/28).
Capitalism criminalizes youth
The MTA spends $9 million every single day to pay back debt to Wall Street, some of which dates back a century or more (ny.curbed.com, 10/2018).  As shown by the recent installment of cameras in front of every turnstile in one Manhattan station, it is evident that the MTA cares about terrorizing workers more than providing quality transportation.
In late October, kkkops punched two Black teenagers during an altercation on a subway platform (The Hill, 11/1). In a separate incident, a teenager hopped the turnstile and was held at gunpoint by around a dozen kkkops who stormed his train car (The Huffington Post, 11/1). These incidents, along with the police murder of three Bronx residents earlier this month, sparked the uprising in Brooklyn.
The largely young and multiracial crowd chanted and gave speeches before taking the streets. Once in the streets, the march broke into a run at times, preventing the police from infiltrating the crowd. Bus drivers and motorists cheered us on. One worker carried a projector and projected phrases like “NYPD hands off our kids. Being broke is not a crime,” and “NYPD out of subway” in gigantic letters onto buildings. Calls to ban the police from the subways and the chant that “we keep us safe”contain seeds of communist ideas: workers do not need the bosses or police. We can organize a communist society that serves the needs of the working class and ends racism once and for all. This mass outpouring of rage demonstrated that years of liberal rule under Mayor Bill de Blasio have not extinguished the will of workers and students to resist racist police attacks.  
Liberal misleaders are trash
Despite these militant qualities, the march’s leadership displayed dead-end politics, including instructions to segregate the crowd, breaking its multiracial character. White marchers were asked to form a perimeter around the sides and rear of the march, allowing Black, Latin and Asian workers to lead. Our multiracial PLP group stuck together, rejecting the illusion that “whiteness” will protect us from a police attack. While a few white marchers tried to implement such folly, most marchers remained united. Young PLP members led our section of the crowd in chants like “NYPD, KKK, how many kids have you killed today?” and “If we don’t get it, shut it down!! Shut this racist system down.”  
When PLP chanted, “Don’t vote! Revolt!” some marchers joined us, but a large portion was reluctant. Instead, many protestors shouted “One solution! Revolution!” That’s what Bernie Sanders says. But his revolution involves voting and that’s far from revolutionary.Leaders of the march come from neighborhood mass organizations that will be the foot soldiers for mayoral candidates against de Blasio’s record of racist gentrification.
No election will change the reality of debt service, where the MTA funnels billions from the working class directly into the coffers of finance capital. Those who led today’s march allow militant youth to hold up signs saying “revolution” as long as the movement funnels back to the ballot box on election day.  To paraphrase Malcolm X, you don’t have a revolution by begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it.
Instead of voting let’s fight back through our mass organizations: on CUNY campuses, in our unions, and  in our churches against liberal Governor Cuomo and the MTA bosses racist attacks on workers and youth in the city. PL’ers will continue to raise the communist flag, and politicize  workers and students vis-a-vis lousy service, fare hikes, and the racist fare beating campaigns that criminalizes mainly Black and Latin working class youth.
Cannot vote in justice
Workers cannot vote our way to justice. We need a communist revolution. The working class built every inch of the subway; it should be ours. Through communist revolution, we can take it back and build a world run by the international working class: a world without police, without racism, and without profit. Join us.

October 4 marked the 83rd anniversary of a great battle against fascism — the “Battle of Cable Street” in London’s East End. In 1936, under communist leadership, British and immigrant workers broke the ranks of the cops, who protected the fascists, and smashed the fascist attempt to march and freely organize in working-class districts.
The constant communist-led, anti-fascist organizing over many years led to the understanding and empowerment of the working class. This battle also shows that the working class should never give in to nationalist leaders. Both Jewish and Irish community and religious leaders tried to convince the masses not to fight the fascists, fearful of “causing more problems.”
For 300 years, the East End of London had been the home of poor working class immigrants. In 1936 the area’s population was largely Polish and Russian Jewish, Irish Catholics and non-immigrant English workers.
In the midst of a severe depression, Sir Oswald Moseley’s Blackshirts movement (BUF, British Union of Fascists) was growing among the unemployed, white-collar workers and small businessmen. Moseley sent committed fascists into the East End to beat up and terrorize Jewish, made scapegoats for the economic crisis. On the streets, fascists would scream “kill the k….”
Ruling class funds the fascists
Many of Britain’s upper and ruling class funded the BUF. Some of Britain’s big newspapers, such as the Daily Mail, Evening News and Sunday Dispatch, promoted  the BUF. The recently crowned King Edward VIII had wealthy fascist friends in Britain, France and Germany. The police often turned a blind eye to the fascists’ beatings of Jewish workers.
Moseley decided to show his strength by marching 10,000 uniformed Blackshirts and thousands of supporters directly through the Jewish/Irish neighborhood. The police commissioner Sir Philip Game ordered his cops to support the march.
On October 4, 10,000 cops were assigned to protect Mosley’s fascists. The official Jewish “leadership” advised Jewish workers to stay indoors and not show aggressiveness towards the cops.
But up to 500,000 people from the East End and other parts of London came out to stop the fascist march. Communists and trade unionists, many themselves Jewish, led the attack on the fascists in the streets. At Cable Street, the police, armed with nightsticks, attacked, while mounted police charged the crowd. Horses stumbled because children were hurling marbles under their hoofs and bursting bags of pepper under their noses. Women threw the contents of chamber pots from windows.
The fascists screamed derogatory names for Jewish workers. But the people chanted, “They will not pass!”
Jewish, Irish dockers unite
The masses erected barricades. A truck was turned on its side to block the street; old mattresses, bricks and pushcarts were thrown on top. An Irish anti-fascist bus driver drove his double-decker bus across the road, forming a barricade between the police and the anti-fascists.
The army of fascists demanded the police escort them through the masses of workers. At Cable Street, the massive wall of workers held their ground and only backed off to pick up bricks or bottles to throw at the cops and fascists.
The fascists were under a constant hail of bricks, bottles and stones. Despite arresting over 100 anti-fascist fighters, still the police could not move the masses as they held the cops in a vise grip.
Eventually, the Police Commissioner canceled the BUF’s march. But now the police had to save them from being killed by the crowd. They attempted to escape. But the anti-fascists, waiting for them, shouted, “Get them!” and crashed through the police lines. They then chased the fascists out of London’s East End.
For days, people celebrated throughout London. The fascists continued to try to organize, but it was clear that workers wouldn’t be easily won to fascism.
Dare to struggle — Dare to win!

NEW YORK CITY, October 30—At least 3,000 transit workers protested in the streets in a mass union rally outside the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) headquarters in downtown Manhattan. Transit workers were opposing the bosses’ latest, racist contract offer. MTA bosses offered transit workers miserable two percent pay increases, wanted increased healthcare contributions, more part-time positions instead of full-time, and more years to top pay for new hires. And the leaders of Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) Local 100 had no plan to fight back. The rally resembled a festival with blaring music and a slick, self-promoting video. The backup plan was to appeal to Governor Cuomo, no friend of the working class (Wall Street Journal, 10/21).
No “fair contract” under capitalism
Progressive Labor Party members, who are active in the struggle, passed out leaflets and sold over 200 CHALLENGES. We explained that the MTA bosses and the TWU misleaders are both part of the capitalist system and under capitalism there is no such thing as a “fair contract.” Workers produce everything and we should receive and distribute everything. And this contract is racist.  The mostly Black and Latin transit workers in NYC have the lower wages, compared to their mostly white counterparts at the Long Island Railroad and Metro North.
 Those suburban systems move 89 million riders compared to 1.7 billion NYC passengers annually. This racist divide and conquer strategy is how capitalists exploit all workers. Only communism can end this exploitation. Under communism profit would be illegal and the workers would run all aspects of society, never having to beg for crumbs from the bosses again!
A festival, not a fight back rally
This rally resembled a festival more than a call to fight back because the leaders of TWU Local 100 are in bed with the MTA bosses and Democratic Party politicians! There was no fightback feel. One track worker mentioned that the union doesn’t even have a list of demands ready. He has no confidence in the TWU misleaders. Their claims that they’ll “shut it down” if necessary are false bravado. TWU president Tony Utano has a close relationship with Governor Cuomo, who enacted a new pension tier reducing benefits for newly hired state and local government workers (Reuters, 3/15/12.) Cuomo is the one pushing the MTA’s gutter racist fare beating campaign, criminalizing Black and Latin workers—which Utano, strongly supports (New York Times, 6/19). Both Cuomo and the union misleaders are also behind flooding the subways with thousands more kkkops, first to monitor transit workers to catch them “stealing time.” Now they blame riding workers who don’t pay the fare for cutting in on their profits. Riders are not the enemy of transit workers, the bosses are.
Union misleaders perpetuate sexism and racism
The union misleaders are also going along with the MTA bosses in perpetuating sexism. State and federal laws require breast-pumping stations for women workers, yet the MTA system has none. But the union hacks have reduced this to a bargaining chip, instead of fighting for it everywhere, from the job sites to the courts. Under communism women workers will never be discriminated against because sexism would be illegal.
TWU leaders are not organizing or winning workers to strike. The union isn’t strike ready, and not serious about exercising workers’ power in any way. The union leadership has shown its own reactionary, racist nature. When a Black transit worker fell to his death two years ago, Utano blamed it on him being “big” rather than blaming the MTA bosses for failing to replace a weak, out of date railing that could not support him. Meanwhile the MTA bosses are sending workers to their deaths. Instead of making cosmetic makeovers to stations they should invest in worker’s safety, but they don’t.
Our decrepit working conditions and treatment are other issues. Crew rooms are often filthy and unkempt. Transit workers sent to 2 Broadway face the harshest punishments for even minor operational incidents, and the union does little to address this. MTA workers do indeed have the power to shut this city down once they understand that workers don’t have to depend on union misleaders or their capitalist politicians.
MTA bosses serve the billionaire bankers
The MTA bosses will always be loyal to the banks they’re in debt to. This is why the system is forced to endure racist train and bus service cuts. Subway cars are filthier, because the MTA cut 66 slots for car cleaners last year (The City, 9/10), and they are planning more “terminal car cleaning cuts” through 2023. This is why the ridership will continue to endure fare hikes. The MTA bosses will keep reducing service wherever they can to keep filling Wall Street’s pockets. It’s typical capitalist greed, and workers are always in the crosshairs. The “progressive” Democratic Party state leadership that is presiding over these cuts is further proof that liberals are no allies of workers.
Fight for communism, working class power
We must understand that the fight for better conditions and pay is intertwined with the larger struggle to destroy capitalism. The ruling class MTA bosses couldn’t care less about us. Local 100’s ultimate interests lie with them as well. Transit workers are a critical cog in the bosses’ profit drive. The bosses love to scapegoat both transit workers and riders. The bosses depend on our division to keep their capitalist system going and their profits flowing.
Communists in the Progressive Labor Party want to unite all workers against all bosses into a revolutionary movement that destroys this racist and sexist system. We are for communism where working class power rules.