Xi Jinping’s capitalist government recently “celebrated” the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese bosses displayed the new Dong Feng 41 hypersonic ballistic missile, which can reach any target within the U.S. These traitors to the Chinese Communist Revolution were sending a clear message to their main imperialist rival: They are ready to claim the position as the capitalist world’s top dog. The Chinese bosses are ready to go to war to claim that position, even if it means spilling the blood of millions of workers.
The workers of the world celebrate October 1, 1949, as the day when our class, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), hailed the Party’s triumph over the bourgeois nationalists, who were backed by the U.S. Although the Chinese communists made many mistakes, they correctly placed their confidence in workers’ ability to seize state power and build a communist society. They advanced the international struggle for communism, most significantly during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR), which strengthened the theory and practice of collective organization of society and the economy.
Cultural Revolution: transforming society
During the GPCR, the young Red Guards launched a fierce struggle against capitalist ideology and practice inside the Party and within the working class. Championing political over economic incentives, the Cultural Revolution represented “a social transformation that was—in its origins—an attempt to prevent revisionism from taking hold in China’s Communist Revolution….[I]t was an attack on the class privilege that arose from socialist China’s bureaucratic system, and … an argument that class behavior should matter more than class background” (Origins, Ohio State University, August 2016). Nonetheless, the cult of the personality of Mao and the right-wing opportunism of the Party’s leadership smashed the GPCR and the Red Guards.
It is important to remember the extraordinary achievements of the Revolution. What was once considered impossible, the Communists transformed into living reality. The barefoot doctors extended healthcare to all and eradicated many diseases like syphilis and schistosomiasis. Decades later, their achievement was recognized by the World Health Organization as “a successful example of how to solve the shortage of medical services in rural areas” (BBC World, March 2018). Life expectancy was doubled, the “most rapid increase of any population in documented global history.” Infant and child mortality was reduced by 50-70 percent (Population Studies, 2015 vol. 69, no.1). Communists also eliminated sexist practices like prostitution, foot-binding, and forced marriages. Illiteracy was nearly eliminated: “the literacy programs mounted in China after 1949 constitute what is perhaps the single greatest educational effort in human history” (University of British Columbia Press, 1997).
Additionally, Communist China served as a beacon of hope for workers’ fightback everywhere, from Africa to Latin America to a fledgling Progressive Labor Party in the United States.  
But most of these advances could not be sustained, because Mao and the Party leadership ultimately lost confidence in the working class. They allied themselves with “lesser-evil” capitalists. China today is the antithesis of workers’ power, a complete betrayal of the communist society that the CCP originally fought for.
Lies and concentration camps
The 70th anniversary of this great event in working-class history was cynically used by China’s bosses to exploit nostalgia for Mao and the Revolution among workers in China. Xi invoked national unity and sentimentalist patriotism in an attempt to falsely legitimize his economic policies as communist. Why would a fascist government seek to label it communist? It is because 70 years later, China’s workers still remember what once was. In the name of communism, students and workers today are fighting back and rebuilding the true essence of revolutionary Maoism.
In response, China unleashed its brutal state apparatus of surveillance and arrests (The Guardian, 11/12/2018). The bosses’ fascist call for national unity has led to the destruction of scores of mosques in Xinjiang, along with the imprisonment of millions of Muslims in concentration camps and the use of new technologies like facial recognition to monitor and control the entire region (ABC International, 5/7/2019).
Potentially a ruler for life, Xi Jinping presents his grip on the CCP as essential for modernization and a stronger economy. In reality, the Chinese bosses are using fascism to prepare for sharper competition and eventually war with competing imperialists. Meanwhile, they are extending their economic power by developing multilateral financial institutions like the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, an alternative to the U.S.-controlled World Bank and the Japanese-controlled Asian Development Bank (Bloomberg 8/6/2018). Similarly, the Chinese bosses’ Belt and Road Initiative is designed to create a Eurasian economic corridor that will strengthen China’s industrial sector, its business vitality, and its control over the latest technology (National Bureau of Asian Research, 4/11), all while enhancing the Chinese bosses’ geopolitical and military position.
After receiving massive investments from the Chinese bosses, capitalist rulers in Greece and Hungary have defied the U.S. bosses. Even more troubling to the main wing of the U.S. ruling class is that Germany, the largest economy in the European Union, now has more trade with the Chinese capitalists than with the U.S. If the Chinese bosses continue to rise at the U.S. bosses’ expense, a global military conflict can be only a matter of time.
The red guards were right
The Progressive Labor Party recognizes the enormous historical advances of the revolutionary communists of China. We are their heirs. We fight directly for a communist society as workers’ only alternative to the horrors of capitalism, fascism, and imperialist war. Like the Red Guards of China, we have confidence that our class will again embrace communist ideas and revolt for a communist world.

The opening of the Trump impeachment inquiry by the Nancy Pelosi-led big fascist liberal bosses is a sharpening of the battle between the big and small fascist factions of the U.S. ruling class.  The escalation in this fight between fascists exposes the desperation of the big fascist liberal bosses to take back the White House from their small fascist rivals, even if it means gutting the presidency - one of the ruling class’ key institutions. Since the main wing/big fascist faction of the U.S. ruling class is unsure it can win the 2020 election, they are taking this opportunity to try to smash Trump and his small fascist backers now.
The liberals or the big fascists have never cared about keeping children out of cages or any of Trump’s other atrocities. They pioneered them all. But world events are putting pressure on the big fascists to do something to hold onto their own murderous empire.
The fight among the U.S. bosses competing factions is happening as competition among capitalists around the world is moving towards more fascism and bigger wars. Tensions between Saudi and Iranian ruling class forces threaten to explode at any moment. Coupled with their own fascist crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, the Chinese bosses continue to lay the groundwork for wider imperialist expansion by winning a new generation of young people to nationalism like never before (NYT 10/6). The liberal big fascist U.S. bosses want one of their own butchers in the White House, not a president like Trump, tied to the domestically-oriented small fascist bosses like the Koch family who have their own more limitedview of empire.
Reject both sets of bosses
The increasing intensity of this ruling class split means each side of bosses will fight harder to win workers to support their faction.  We must put our confidence in the working class. There is no doubt: Trump is a gutter racist and open fascist who is also exploiting his base for personal gain. But it will take more than understanding how horrible Trump is to liberate our class. Our biggest danger is that too many workers have ceded leadership of our class to the big fascist liberals.  Their movements and politicians are in place to serve the interests of the oldest, most diversified and imperialist wing of the capitalist class whose rule has and will continue to devastate the international working class through racism, growing fascism and widening war. Our future lies in building Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and fighting for communist revolution to build a society led by the working class. Read, distribute and write for Challenge newspaper!  
A volatile situation
It is unclear how the impeachment battle will play out. The big fascists are struggling. Their loss of control of the Republican Party has been brewing since the 1990s impeachment of Bill Clinton and was intensified by the Tea Party’s openly racist anti-Obama movement. Thirty-seven state Republican Party organizations have adopted new rules that will effectively ban anti-Trump speeches at the 2020 Republican National Convention (NYT,10/2/19).  
As this U.S. ruling class split intensifies and the domestic small fascist bosses more completely take control over the Republican Party, the big fascists have been forced to try to create an unwieldy mass movement under the Democratic Party tent.  But the big fascist bosses controlled Democratic Party may be too frgamented by discord to get the White House back for the big fascist liberal bosses. The impeachment push, then, also flows from a lack of confidence that the big fascist liberal bosses can come up with a winning strategy for the 2020 election. Weakening or getting rid of Trump by election time has become an urgent matter for them. Behind all the layers of craven self-serving behavior in the Ukraine episode is the clear-as-day reality that Trump plans to keep his deal with the small fascist domestic bosses going until at least 2024 if re-elected.  
As Richard Haass, head of the blood-soaked, liberal-imperialist Council on Foreign Relations put it, the Trump presidency, at this moment, is the number one threat to the big fascist’s liberal world order (CFR, 3/19). After Trump’s determination to discredit the FBI and CIA it appears unlikely right now that significant portions of the coercive state apparatus will assist him in resisting removal from office.
As they struggle to regain control of the White House, the big fascist liberal bosses remain the greater danger. They control the biggest industries and have the most resources. Over many decades they have themselves carried out a vicious assault on the working class and built up the racism, which Trump has re-fashioned into a tool against the big fascists. Their shiny liberal rhetoric can’t erase their policies which led to the mass incarceration of Black workers carried out by the Clinton’s, and  Joe Biden’s, mass deportations under Obama, and his bailing out the banks at the expense of the working class, nor the stop and frisk policies devastating young Black and Latin men and the slaughter of workers in the Mid-East oil wars over the last 20 years.
The liberal big fascist bosses defend their racist regime through overwhelming control of the media, universities, big-city school systems, think tanks and foundations that work overtime to shape our political views and culture. Most importantly, even accounting for the openly racist supporters following Trump, the big fascist liberal bosses exert tremendous control over the leadership of our class through the unions, politicians, mass organizations, movements and culture they finance. Like a wounded animal they are looking to attack harder.  
During this, volatile period the  liberal fascists calls for unity against Trump will try to mobilize people to support a state that attacks the working class.  Communism not liberalism is our way out of this nightmare.
Shedding the bosses’ leadership is the hard task at hand for the working class.  We can only do this when we join the movements led by liberal fascists and, through class struggle, reveal not just their inability to fulfill our aspirations for the world our class deserves, but their plans to lead us into wider war and more open fascism. Most importantly, through taking control of the class struggle away from the liberal big fascists our class will gain the confidence to fight for a communist working class led society. We must build a communist movement, the Progressive Labor Party. As long as we are trapped by the cynical idea that our class can’t lead society, we will follow the bosses into war and fascism. Breaking free of the bosses’ leadership and building a communist led workers movement will put us on the road to communist revolution, a worker’s led society and liberation for our class. Join PLP!

CHICAGO, October 9—For anti-racist learning and working conditions, education workers are set to strike on October 17.
The Chicago Teachers Union’s (CTU) leadership fights within the confines of a capitalist system that can never meet workers’ needs. Whether or not education workers go on strike next week, students, parents, and workers alike need to continue fighting for anti-racist conditions and push the limits of what’s possible under capitalism. Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) ultimate goal is to organize a revolution to overthrow capitalism, seize state power, and create a communist society.
Antiracist demands
The Chicago Public Schools serve 360,314 students—84 percent of which are Black or Latin, and 77 percent of which are working class living in low income households(cps.edu).
The issues are beyond demands for pay and health insurance costs. Demands include: an antiracist curriculum; sanctuary schools with more Black and Latin teachers; smaller class sizes; nurses, librarians, and social workers in every building; and improved working conditions for educators and custodial workers(The custodial workers suffer from poor pay and lousy conditions).They also demand access to affordable housing for students and workers. In addition to the nearly 17,000 homeless students, “about two-thirds of teaching assistants, school clerks and other paraprofessionals qualify for free or reduced lunch for their children” (Chicago Tribune, 10/9). Most of these demands are not legal to strike over (see box).
The 25,000 teachers are ready to strike; another 10,000 support staff and Park District workers are also prepared to walk off the job.
For the first time, educators are poised to be on strike at the same time as the hospital and homecare/nursing home workers of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Building unity across different sectors will be crucial to the gains workers can make in the class struggle. w
The progressive trap
Don’t trust politicians. The fact that Lori Lightfoot is the first Black gay woman mayor is a distraction from her liberal misleadership. Lightfoot co-signed on the billion-dollar construction of a new elite Chicago neighborhood, Lincoln Yards. These funds should have gone towards housing, education, or healthcare. She recently nominated Allison Arway for Health Commissioner. Arway helped close half of the City’s mental health facilities. When workers protested to stop a new $95 million kkkop academy, Lightfoot responded by saying she wanted to spend even more.
Workers should not be fooled by the identity politics of these government leaders who serve to keep the capitalist system running. In the same vein, the union bosses shouldn’t fool us either.
While Mayor Lightfoot is resisting contract demands, the CTU bosses have become quiet on the demands around sanctuary schools, rent control, and the city providing housing for students in these final weeks.
PLP members and friends are part of CTU and are organizing teachers, paraprofessionals, parents, and students to support demands to improve Chicago’s schools. At the same time, they promote the idea that only communism can provide students a worthy education. No amount of reform can eradicate the foundation of slavery and racism that built this system.
A “good education” necessitates a system built with the sole purpose of meeting all students’ needs. Capitalism will never provide that because the purpose of schools under this system is to prepare working-class students to be soldiers, wage slaves, or apologists and managers of capitalism.
Students in a communist society will be part of the learning and building of a world based on workers’ needs, not profits.
2019, the year of strikes
In Chicago, workers have witnessed a strike wave. It started with charter school teachers from Acero who waged a militant fight in December 2018, the first of its kind. In the following months, teachers at CICS and other charter schools also struck. Each of these strikes won many concessions that CTU is now fighting for at public schools. In March, graduate student workers at the University of Illinois at Chicago struck for the first time, winning significant gains.
More recently nurses at the University of Chicago on the South Side went on strike and nurses from Mt. Sinai, on the city’s West Side, have just authorized one. The capitalist class holds state power—everything from mayors and union leaders to schools and media make up that state power. For students to have an education that empowers them, we need to organize and smash this capitalist state.
Strikes, when organized and led by communists, can be schools for communist ideas and influence. Through the class struggle, workers can gain confidence and realize the potential for our power. The full realization of that potential requires workers to be part of Progressive Labor Party’s revolutionary communist movement.

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Contracts and laws don’t protect workers
In 1995, Illinois passed a racist law limiting what teachers can strike over. This law only applied to Chicago, a district where 80 percent of the students are Black or Latin. Now most schools don’t have a librarian and only have a nurse one day a week(see page 7).
In the mostly white school districts, teachers have the right to strike over these issues. Those schools also have nurses, social workers, and librarians. The union leadership operates within the confines of legality regarding a strike, and this limits the potential for sharper class struggle. The bosses should not set limits and terms of what workers can strike over.
Capitalist laws are written for the purpose of keeping workers down. Just as students and workers in the 1960s illegally sat in at segregated lunch counters and as West Virginia teachers illegally struck last year, education workers must strike over what students need, legal or not.
No contract can protect workers from imperialist wars, racist police killings, or ICE raids. A contract can temporarily push bosses to a stalemate, but because the bosses have state power, workers are always at the mercy of the ruling class. One year after the militant CTU strike of 2012, the Chicago capitalists closed 50 schools, overwhelmingly in Black communities that could’ve been centers for potential fight back.

KOLKATA, INDIA, October 1—Students of Jadavpur University (JU), in the city of Kolkata, have proven that they are equipped to resist the racist and sexist attacks of India’s largest Hindu-fascist student group. They trapped a pro-fascist government minister, resisted the police, and beat back an attempted campus invasion of the fascist scum attempting to retaliate!
The students’ mass bravery shows once again that only mass movements of students and workers can defeat fascist movements. These students’ next target should be the fascist international liberal order (see box). The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party salutes and stands with the JU students and we call on them to help build a mass international PLP to smash the capitalist system spawning these fascists around the world!
University students unite...
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is a fascist movement. Its racist “Hindutva” or Hindu-only identity politics ideology, backed by racist and sexist violence, was created and funded by Hindu capitalists. RSS organizes among Hindu workers and students to promote fundamentalist religious Hindu policies to split the working class with racism against Muslims, Christians and Dalits (the lowest caste Hindus). The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the political party allied with RSS, which runs the government. In recent years there have been lynchings and other killings of Muslims and Dalits by supporters of RSS.
On the eventful afternoon of September 20, JU’s anti-fascist students exposed a campus event by the ABVP (the student wing of the RSS) for what it was—a pro-fascist political rally pretending to be a welcome meeting for first-year students. Thanks to the antifascist students, hardly anyone attended.
...and explode against fascist scum
The students erupted in protest! They trapped the minister and his bandits for hours before the governor of the state (a Central Representative and RSS stooge) rushed in with a large contingent of police and rescued the minister. During this commotion, hooligans of ABVP broke into the campus and molested female students. They also vandalized and set on fire the Arts Faculty student union room. Condemnation of such a vicious act came from every quarter.
A subsequent attempt by the BJP to storm the JU campus came on September 25. They were resisted by the students, teachers, and other campus workers who jointly formed a human chain numbering in the thousands. Progressive workers of Kolkata in the state of West Bengal stood firmly made vows to resist any future act of aggression by the reactionary Hindutva forces.
Fightback in Kolkata has international consequences
The militant, anti-fascist bravery of these students and workers sets an example for all of us. India is soon to be the most populous country on earth. Meanwhile, the liberal misleadership of the fake “opposition” Congress Party leads the workers and students into the trap of elections and the liberal strain of fascism. History has shown that it is only mass communist-led workers’ movements that can hold back the fascists!
The connections between the class struggle in Kolkata and the international working class are deep, as the sharpening imperialist rivalry between the U.S., Russia, and China threatens our class with all-out war.
While still the world’s most lethal empire, U.S. imperialism is increasingly straining to hold itself together. India’s capitalists are key U.S. imperialist allies countering Chinese imperialism’s growing influence with Pakistan’s capitalists, fueling India and Pakistan’s regional imperialist rivalry over the water-rich region of Kashmir.
Turn mass struggle into revolution
In India, many phony groups have used the word “communism” to betray the working class. We expose these phonies and fight for workers and students to build on the powerful ideas pioneered by scientific communist fighters like Marx and Lenin to create a mass Party with the principles anti-racist and anti-sexist revolutionary communism.The Progressive Labor Party is working internationally to build such a Party. With the leadership of heroic workers and students such as the ones from JU and Kolkata, our Party can unite the working class of the world to resist international fascism and war and destroy capitalism forever.