On September 20, as millions around the world marched to protest climate change, the big oil and auto capitalists behind the movement were calling for stricter regulations—on themselves. A hallmark of fascism is the ruling class disciplining itself and squashing enemies within its own ranks. The call for self-regulation in oil and auto is a not-so-early warning sign. The big liberal U.S. imperialist bosses are accelerating toward fascism as they prepare for war and sharper attacks on the international working class.
The tension between capitalist camps in the U.S. is growing more and more volatile. The liberal finance capitalists, the big fascists, are being pressed on all sides—at home by the little fascists backing Trump, and around the globe by the Chinese and Russian capitalist bosses. The liberal bosses’ response is to push for regulation and to build mass movements like the climate movement under a patriotic umbrella. For workers, following these liberal rulers will be disastrous. Our only path is to turn their drive toward war and fascism into a battle for workers’ power—into communist revolution.
Split in oil industry
The split in the U.S. ruling class is dramatically reflected within the oil industry. The big oil companies have formed the backbone of U.S. imperialism for the last 150 years. They were originally dominated by the Rockefeller family and Standard Oil, which monopolized oil refining and distribution in the U.S. until 1911, when it was broken up into 34 smaller companies, including Exxon, Mobil, and Chevron—an early example of the U.S. ruling class disciplining its own. As oil replaced coal as the capitalists’ energy source of choice, the booming industry wrote or ignored the rules, contaminating the skies and rivers. But now the multinational oil “majors” are fighting off challengers within the U.S. and the ascendant Chinese capitalists. In the face of attacks from within and without, they have embraced regulations that add to their competitive advantage over the smaller, domestically oriented energy capitalists, as represented by the Koch family and fronted by President Donald Trump. As Time Magazine (8/29) noted:
The oil-and-gas industry was split on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) methane rules [under Barack Obama], with some prominent companies supporting them and many smaller producers pushing for their elimination. The EPA’s decision [under Trump] to side with a group of smaller fossil-fuel firms shows the influence these obscure companies retain within the Trump Administration—and the power they have to slow climate legislation...The split within the industry is partly a matter of scale. The EPA regulation—which required oil producers to implement a range of measures to stop natural gas leaks at new drilling sites, keeping methane from entering the atmosphere—posed little threat to big oil-and-gas firms, which could easily absorb the compliance costs necessitated by the 2016 rule.
Auto bosses conspire against Trump
As the big oil bosses push regulation and environmentalism to crush their domestic rivals, the big auto bosses have opened up their own front against Trump and his little fascist backers, including the Kochs, whose empire relies on the refining and distribution of petroleum products within the U.S. Along with three foreign auto makers (Volkswagen, Honda, and BMW), Ford conspired against the White House to hold to stricter emissions standards, in defiance of Trump’s rollback of Obama-era regulations.
While the auto bosses were plotting against Trump:
 [f]ormer members of Trump’s transition teams … sent a letter to the President…advising him to ignore the car companies and roll back the standards.…The letter was signed by Tom Pyle of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Shirley Ybarra, a former fellow at the Reason Foundation. All three organizations have close Koch ties, and Pyle was himself a lobbyist for Koch Industries (desmog.com).
Dueling political movements
The bosses’ factions are building dueling political movements to mobilize the working class. The small, Koch-led oil bosses are rallying millions around open KKK racists of the Trump-led Republican Party. The big oil bosses, now almost entirely concentrated in the Democratic Party, are funding a variety of liberal reformist mass organizations, including the pro-regulation environmental movement:
“The world’s biggest energy firms have rallied around a carbon tax as a climate measure … committing millions [of dollars] to lobby for such a policy”(Time, 8/29).
For the big fascists, the environmental movement’s value has nothing to do with cleaning up the earth. It is solely a way to mislead millions of workers to enlist in the bosses’ dog fight—and to undermine class struggle as the rulers move society into global war and open fascism. Boss-led movements can never liberate our class. They can never build a society to serve the interests of the great masses of people. Only building Progressive Labor Party and fighting for communism can do that.

“We want equality!” That’s how one worker described the strike of 50,000 GM workers, women and men, black, Latin, Asian, and white workers in the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. A big red salute to GM strikers. Their courage serves as an inspiration for workers everywhere. At least 12 strikers were arrested in Spring Hills, TN for attempting to stop car haulers from moving finished cars out of the company lot. From Michigan toTexas strikers confronted the police, whose historical role has been to protect property and attack organized labor.  
Capitalism is the antithesis of equality. A system rooted in exploitation cannot bear the fruits of equality. Only communism can cultivate a worker-run system that will eliminate racism, sexism, and nationalism. For that, workers need an international party, Progressive Labor Party.
Two-tier wage system
Seven percent of the 430,000-strong workforce is made up of temporary part-time workers (TPTs), who earn about $15 an hour, the same as the New York City minimum wage. They do the same work as fulltime workers. Meanwhile, GM CEO Mary Barra made $28 million last year.
GM wants to expand the use of TPTs, who are referred to as “in progression” workers that have not been accepted as fulltime even after working for 5 or more years. They work unpredictable schedules, cannot build seniority, and are subject to arbitrary discipline and firings without union protection, even though they pay union dues. It’s a slave labor system. The strikers want them hired as full-time and the TPT classification ended!
Awash with record profits, they closed four plants, demand further concessions in order to cut costs by $4.5 billion by the end of 2020 and reduce capacity. “The strike could be costing GM $75 million-a-day, according to JPMorgan analysts” (Business Insider, 9/21). This reflects both the power that workers have collectively, and the level of exploitation under the racist profit system. “It’s a staggering figure, but it pales in comparison to GM’s whopping $26 billion in profits in 2018.” (Business Insider).
This also points out the need to abolish wage slavery with communist revolution, where we will produce for the needs of the working class, not the profits of capitalists.
Capitalist competition hurts workers
GM is caught in the sharpening competition for cheap labor and markets as the global auto market heads into a systemic downturn. They have to reduce capacity and make big investments in electric cars or face extinction. It’s also estimated that Trump’s trade war with China has cost GM and Ford roughly $1 billion each in North America. Workers everywhere will pay a much higher price as the U.S. and China continue on a collision course to another world war.
UAW leadership in bed with bosses
The corruption of the UAW leaders is hanging over the strike like a toxic cloud. The UAW and Fiat-Chrysler executives were charged for a bribery scheme. UAW president Gary Jones and former president Dennis Williams are also the targets of a federal criminal complaint “in a conspiracy to embezzle more than $1 million of member dues and spend it on Palm Springs villas, steakhouse dinners, cigars, more than 100 rounds of golf and $400 bottles of Cristal Champagne” (Detroit News 9/18). UAW Region 5 Director Vance Pearson, who succeeded Jones as Regional Director, was recently arrested and charged with multiple counts of fraud, embezzlement and money laundering.
Nationalism is a capitalist idea
The unions in the U.S. are a shell of its former self. In the absence of a communist movement and the then-beacons of working-class power, Soviet Union and China, nationalism and reform consumed the unions. Decades of economist fights and patriotic, anti-worker slogans of “Buy American” have crippled working-class fightback. The union bosses serve to negotiate the exploitation of workers with the capitalists. These unions have in effect become ruling-class institutions.  
On the other hand, there are 50,000 workers who are fighting back, following the strike wave of teachers, hotel, fast food, and Stop & Shop workers.
PLP supports the strike by going out to picket lines with whatever bosses’ organization we are in: unions, schools, churches, community groups, hospitals, and transit. There is always a potential to turn strikes into schools for communist ideas and practices.
Workers want equality. Workers can build equality when we smash capitalism and build a dictatorship of the working class. Smash GM! Fight for communism!

BALTIMORE, September 10—As the weekly West Wednesday rallies continue to demand accountability for the murder of Tyrone West by twelve to fifteen Baltimore Police and a Morgan University officer, President Donald Trump spent most of a week tweeting that the city of Baltimore is a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.” This disgusting racism means, in his eyes, that the people of this majority-Black city are sub-human.
Two of the liberal bosses in Baltimore organized a statement by ten major capitalists and their allies – published as an op-ed in the local Sun newspaper – to seemingly defend Baltimore against Trump’s venom. The article praised their large investment activities in the city as moving the city to ever-greater prosperity. A speaker from Progressive Labor Party at one of the West Wednesday rallies, pointed out that anti-racist organizers should not be misled into thinking that Trump’s liberal opponents, those who signed the statement, are in any way our allies in the fight against racism.
Daniels, misleader # 1
One organizer of the newspaper statement, Ron Daniels, is the President of Johns Hopkins University. Just a few months ago, Daniels used a massive mobilization of city police to suppress the 37-day sit-in that was boldly fighting for three powerful, anti-racist demands:  
Stop the administration’s plan for Hopkins to have its own private armed police force.
Stop the University’s complicity with ICE. Specifically, end university contracts funded with millions of dollars from ICE, to train medics, without whom many viciously anti-immigrant ICE activities cannot be conducted.
Support accountability regarding the cops who murdered Tyrone West.
Ever since the very beginning of the sit-in, protestors at West Wednesday have included Hopkins students, and they know, all too well, that Daniels is definitely not our friend.  
Plank, misleader # 2
Kevin Plank is the other organizer of the newspaper statement against Trump’s racist remarks about Baltimore. Plank is the CEO of Under Armour, which is headquartered in Baltimore, and participates in racism globally. Virtually all of Under Armour’s products are made by third-party manufacturers in some 15 countries, with about 60% of the company’s products made under sweatshop conditions in China, Jordan, Vietnam, and Malaysia (Capital Gazette, 2/11/17).
In Baltimore, Plank – who is one of Maryland’s richest men–is developing a large new section of the city known as Port Covington, which will include offices, shops, apartments, and the new headquarters for Under Armour, all on a long waterfront expanse, a plan that profits from the crumbling conditions of predominately Black working class neighborhoods.
When Daniels and Plank were named, during the Party member’s speech, there were loud boo’s for each of those men, from participants at West Wednesday. It was therefore easy for the PLP speaker to stress that the liberal, anti-racist & anti-Trump mask worn by these two capitalist organizers – Daniels and Plank – must be ripped off, for they, even more than Trump, directly exploit and oppress the workers and students of Baltimore. At one point, the speaker said, “The liberal businessmen like Plank, and the liberal education leaders like Daniels, in a certain sense are more dangerous than the right-wingers like Trump because they fool us, and therefore can get away with more horrible realities.”
In response, one of the students who had boldly participated in the sit-in, called out, “That’s right! That’s dope.”
Much the same can be said about the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and other liberal politicians will not lead us to an anti-racist future, despite their posturing. Perhaps even more effectively than Trump and the Republicans, liberal politicians will lead us to more intense racist exploitation and world war. They will attempt to rally the multi-racial working class of the U.S. into a nationalist force to defend U.S. imperialism, as its empire sinks in relation to that of its imperialist competitors, like China.
The event ended with an invitation to attend the CHALLENGE discussion group, right after the rally, once each month. PLP members in Baltimore vow to continue to raise communist politics in these bold anti-racist actions one CHALLENGE at a time. This action is affectionately known as C-DAWWG (Challenge Discussion After West Wednesday Group). This November we will celebrate our one-year anniversary with perhaps some cake and commitment to analyze and change the world.
The only way out of the false choice between liberal and conservative bosses is to build a mass movement to fight them both, and ultimately get rid of them and their racist system altogether with revolution and communist workers power!

OAXACA, MEXICO–Last weekend, members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) participated in a forum with a huge group of teachers of Section 22 from Oaxaca of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE, its initials in Spanish) about PLP’s dialectical materialist analysis concerning education, imperialism and the working class alternative.
A group of comrades presented the party’s assessment that the greatest threat confronting the world’s working class is the big fascists of the liberal US financial wing of the ruling class. The role of the López Obrador government was also discussed. They showed that the imperialist and Mexican capitalists plan to carry out their megaprojects in the south of the country with the mask of this democratic and popular government. Finally, we talked about the importance of teachers having an active role in organizing and raising awareness of the communities where they work to change the system in which we live.
Teachers expressed the commitment and difficulties they face in giving a better educational alternative to their students and their communities through the Plan for the Transformation of Education in Oaxaca (PTEO) that is promoted by our union section against the employers’ plans. One teacher acknowledged that the effort they have made for 35 years has not been enough and that they must prepare for a long struggle; this reflects their understanding and confidence that their class will get involved in a long-term struggle.Another teacher said that education is related to politics and that changing education means changing the system. This understanding has emerged from the union struggle, but also from the effort that our party has made to expand the political boundaries of the immediate union struggle towards a more revolutionary struggle.
One of the teacher comrades invited the teachers to read and distribute our Challenge newspaper, participate in our study circles and join the PLP. The forum was inspiring and represents the potential of our class to lift the flag of communist revolution; they understand that it will not be a quick or simple process.