ISTANBUL, Turkey September 19 –“In the last couple of days, two of our friends fell from the roof. One of them is in surgery right now. Our working conditions are horrible!” That’s how one worker described the strike of 2,000 workers at Istanbul’s third airport. The strike began on September 14, after two shuttle buses crashed, injuring 17 workers.
Turkey is a key player in the rival U.S. and Russian imperialist ambitions in the Middle East. As this imperialist rivalry sharpens, workers in Turkey are being squeezed and exploited harder and harder.The striking workers are demanding greater workplace safety, fair and timely payment, and clean living conditions. While the striking workers are not, in this moment, calling for communist revolution, Turkey’s bosses clearly recognize the danger of a rebellious and militant working class.
Police arrest 600 workers
Days into the strike, Turkey’s bosses responded by sending their police to raid the workers’ barracks in the middle of the night to look for the strike leaders. They fired tear gas and arrested about 600 people. Today, a judge ordered 28 workers and union activists held in jail on multiple criminal charges. The bosses are calling the strikers “terrorists” and are trying to hire strike-breakers to replace those who have been detained.
One newly hired worker said, "They told me that the protestors were provocateurs, traitors and terrorists. The person on the phone told me that people like me deserve to work at the airport and make a living…I've been unemployed for eight months." Workers’ conditions at the airport work site are murderous. According to Ahval News, 400 workers have been killed as the bosses rush the 30,000 total workers there to open the airport by October 29, Turkey's Republic Day. Turkey’s bosses screw workers, play both imperialist sides The new airport will be the largest in Europe and a showcase for Turkey’s president Erdoğan. Turkey’s bosses are cracking down on the working class as they flirt with the two big rival U.S. and Russian imperialist bosses competing for control over the Middle East.
On the one hand, Turkey is a member of the U.S. imperialist NATO alliance, is a key base for U.S. air strikes into Syria, and has sent ground troops to attack Kurdish forces fighting there. On the other hand, Turkey’s recent agreement to purchase Russia’s advanced S-400 ground-to-air missile defense system is not only a breach of U.S. imperialism’s sanctions against Russia, but a potential security threat. As Turkey’s military also possesses the U.S.’ new F-35 stealth fighter, the U.S. fears that mixing the Russian air defense system with the U.S. jets could expose the vulnerabilities of the F-35.
This fear recently prompted U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Wess Mitchell to warn Turkey’s bosses that relations could be damaged “in a way that would be very difficult to repair” should they complete the S-400 deal  (The Defense Post, 6/27/18).
Sharpening imperialism, growing fascism
After a failed coup attempt in 2016, President Erdoğan issued to a State of Emergency, sending hundreds of workers, soldiers, journalists and activists to jail. Since then there has been a dramatic rise in workplace injuries and deaths, and an increase in child labor. Workers’ protests are often met with police violence.The airport is being built by a consortium of Turkish companies with close links to the government and contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
 However, many sub-contractors have gone bankrupt as a result of the ongoing economic crisis and the Turkish lira dropping by 40 percent, leaving many workers unpaid or not paid on time. A typical day for the workers means having to wait for hours in the rain for shuttle buses to take them to and from the worksite. Meanwhile, their dormitories are full of bedbugs and fleas. “Those working for the main contractors are being paid, but most of those working for sub-contractors cannot get their salaries,” one worker said. “[They] call this a world project, but then fail to feed the workers [while] earning millions of dollars.” Another worker said that workers for sub-contractors are not allowed to eat at the on-site cafeterias. “[We] are not even allowed to go to the toilet. We do not have refrigerators. We are taking showers by using the water coming from ponds near the constructions site.”
Airport shut down has potential worldwide impact Turkey’s bosses play their deadly games playing the U.S. and Russian imperialist sides off of each other, while workers in Turkey are in the cross hairs of growing war in the Middle East, economic crises, and the sharpening divide between US and Russian imperialism that will lead to even wider imperialist wars and racist and sexist attacks.Meanwhile, these airport workers are daring to shut down production at a major imperialist crossroads- giving this strike an international impact, whether the workers realize it or not. A strike movement here could confound the Turkish, U.S. and Russian bosses’ regional power ambitions in the Middle East. That potential gives this strike an anti-imperialist aspect that ALL workers have a stake in supporting!Ultimately, what the striking workers are up against is this entire capitalist system and its imperialist rivalries- rivalries that cannot ever meet theirs or any workers’ needs. Ultimately, only communist revolution can resolve these sharpening imperialist wars in favor of the airport workers, and the entire international working class.
The Progressive Labor Party fights for an international anti-imperialist communist movement for all workers around the world. We call on all workers to support the Istanbul construction workers strike, and to build the movement to end imperialism and wage slavery!

The main wing of the U.S. ruling class is on the offensive to contain President Donald Trump’s threat to the liberal world order—the military, political, and economic system that sustained the U.S. bosses’ dominance—and profits—since World War II. Whether or not Trump winds up getting impeached or indicted, the chaos surrounding the White House is a stark sign of the decline of the U.S. empire.
On August 21, special counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller won convictions on eight counts of financial fraud against Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman. Minutes earlier, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, pleaded guilty to bank and tax fraud and directly implicated Trump in a campaign finance violation. On September 5, the New York Times, the main wing’s leading mouthpiece, published an Op-Ed piece by an anonymous “senior official in the Trump administration.”
 The author acknowledged that main-wing operatives in and around the White House “are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of [Trump’s] agenda and his worst inclinations….to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.”
In particular, the Op-Ed cited the president’s “preference” for Russian President Vladimir Putin, a main-wing imperialist arch-rival, and for North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, a leaning that could imperil the U.S. military presence in South Korea and its ability to deter or attack China.
On September 7, ex-President Barack Obama broke with tradition and openly savaged his predecessor’s “threat to our democracy”—in other words, capitalist dictatorship. On September 11, Simon & Schuster published Bob Woodward’s Fear, which depicts “a dysfunctional White House where some of Trump’s own aides think he is a danger to national security” (cnn.com, 9/12). Woodward is the Washington Post editor who once helped bring down Richard Nixon, another president who proved too unreliable for the main wing. Fear sold 750,000 copies in one day and immediately became one of Amazon’s top-five sellers for 2018, along with other Trump takedowns by Michael Wolff and former FBI director James Comey.
Rulers’ split is getting bloodier
Accelerated by the global erosion of their political and economic influence, the split within the U.S. capitalist class is growing clearer and sharper by the day. Finance capital, represented by the Democratic Party and traditional Republicans (see box), needs to rein in Trump and his racist base to protect institutions like NATO and prepare for World War III with inter-imperialist rivals China and Russia. These Big Fascists are pulling out the knives against domestically oriented capitalists like the Koch brothers and the Mercer family. For their part, the Little Fascists are advancing their isolationist, “Fortress America” agenda through the erratic Trump, his “anti-globalist” policy-makers like Steven Miller (and formerly Steve Bannon), and media outlets like Rupert Murdoch’s Fox empire and Breitbart News.
The recent weeks’ events show that the main wing rulers (Big Fascists), however weakened, still hold the upper hand. But regardless of how the bosses’ infighting plays out, the international working class will be assaulted by rising fascism, murderous racism, economic crisis, and a looming global conflict that could kill untold millions. Only a mass communist, anti-racist movement, led by Progressive Labor Party(PLP), can defend our class against the growingly desperate bosses. Only a communist revolution can smash the capitalists’ state-terror apparatus and put an end to imperialist war.
Fall of the American Century
As Obama noted in his speech at the University of Illinois, Trump “is a symptom, not the cause” of the U.S. capitalists’ disarray. In 2016, when this unstable con man exploited gutter racism and weak opposition all the way to the White House, it revealed that the main wing was losing its grip—both on its own capitalist class and on the loyalties of workers.
The finance capitalists’ decline was driven by two catastrophic failures. First, after spending $5.7 trillion on war in Iraq, the second-leading source of cheap petroleum, U.S. imperialism finds itself in a weaker position in the Middle East than before. Iraq’s oil supplies remain insecure. European allies are turning to meet their energy needs from Russia, which is also calling the shots in war-devastated Syria.Second, the financial crisis of 2008 was spurred by short-term greed and a general lack of discipline in main-wing financial powers like Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs. Obama’s subsequent bailout of banks and other financial institutions cost $17 trillion.. By 2014, according to the International Monetary Fund(IMF), China had surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest economy (bbc.com, 12/16/14). By 2050, the U.S. economy is projected to rank third, behind both China and India (fortune.com, 2/9/17).
It’s not Trump—it’s fascism
Trump himself is a minor historical figure. He will likely be neutralized by the upcoming midterm elections and most  likely forced out, one way or another, by 2021.
But the Trump phenomenon is highly significant as a marker of rising fascism worldwide. It reflects the advanced decay of the post-World War II order and the glaring inability of the profit system to meet workers’ most basic needs. The extreme instability of capitalism worldwide has generated massive unemployment and wage stagnation, the erosion of the European safety net, an epidemic of opioid addiction and suicide, and a more than 68 million refugees, internally displaced people, and asylum-seekers (www.unhcr.org).
To divert workers’ anger from the capitalist rulers’ failures, the bosses are blaming the most vulnerable victims—with a vengeance. Hence the monsoon of anti-immigrant racism, a basic building block of electoral success for Trump and his European counterparts. Open fascists have taken power in Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. They represent significant opposition forces in Germany, France, Britain, and Greece. In the September 9 parliamentary elections in Sweden, until recently romanticized by the bosses’ media as a bastion of enlightened “social democracy,” the fascist Sweden Democrats polled a record 18 percent (rt.com, 9/9). The liberal world order is in retreat. Internationally, the bosses’ current crisis presents PLP with a significant opportunity. By strengthening our anti-nationalist, anti-racist fightback, by uniting with immigrant workers wherever we are active, we can both grow as a revolutionary organization and lay bare the insoluble contradictions of capitalism.
Liberals are the main danger
As the U.S. approaches its midterm elections this November, the Big Fascists are positioning themselves as defenders of “democracy”—a gross distortion of their true history as racist mass murderers. The bosses are hoping to counter workers’ cynicism—and the alienation of Black, Latin, and younger workers, in particular—with fake “socialists” like New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, militant-sounding liberal misleaders like Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts, and the Black gubernatorial candidates in Georgia and Florida. All of these Democratic Party politicians depend on and defend the capitalist system. When push comes to shove, they will betray the working class on the road to fascism and genocide.The over-the-top celebration of war criminal John McCain (see page 4), whom Ocasio-Cortez lauded for his “human decency,” was designed to rally both workers and capitalists around the embattled liberal world order. Obama’s headlining appearance at the dead senator’s funeral, side-by-side with George W. Bush, reflected a concerted, bipartisan effort to revive the main wing.  Leaders and stooges of finance capital are pointing the way to a more lethal form of fascism than Trump and his cronies could even imagine.
But working-class fightback is alive and well. Workers and students in many cities are standing up to attacks on immigrants by both ICE and Trump’s gutter-racist base. These struggles are opportunities for working-class consciousness to take root. With PLP involvement and leadership, the working class will take the only alternative to fascism, big and small—the path to communism revolution.

*****

Who’s in the main wing?

The main wing of the U.S. ruling class represents the interests of finance capital. It includes the largest banks and financial institutions, like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, as well ExxonMobil and other multinational corporations. Together they established the post-World War II imperialist liberal world order, in which the U.S. dominates the world economy by controlling Middle East oil and guaranteeing that the U.S. dollar remains the worldwide reserve currency. They created and control institutions such the World Bank, NAFTA, the IMF, and other international economic institutions. They created NATO and other military and political alliances. Over the last 60 years, these international agreements and institutions have brought these capitalists billions of dollars in profit—all paid for with the blood and misery of tens of millions of workers exploited across the globe.

September 25-The racist war hawk is finally dead! The late Senator John McCain is being celebrated by the ruling class as a great “hero”—an elaborate display of self-serving hero-worship for their own benefit. But McCain was a determined enemy of the working class, in the U.S. and around the world – both as warmonger and lawmaker.
Never a hero, always a criminal
The son and grandson of admirals, McCain was a pilot in the U.S. war against the Vietnamese (from the 1960-70s). McCain was a dive bomber pilot, murdering indiscriminately from the sky, dropping bombs and napalm on the working class in Vietnam. He gained fame when his plane was shot down and he was captured, spending five years in a prisoners of war camp (POW).
While many Vietnam veterans came to understand the imperialist and racist nature of the war, McCain internalized U.S. imperialism’s racism. In spite of his captors fishing him out of a lake, treating his wounds and keeping him alive, long after the war. Yet McCain continued to call Vietnamese workers by racist terms, boasting that he would hate them his whole life.
Along with racism, the fable that U.S. wars defend U.S. workers, rather than capitalist profits, underlies the term “hero” as applied by the bosses to those who willingly slaughter our class sisters and brothers overseas. In that vein the ruling class hailed this murderer as a hero.
To the working class, the real heroes in Vietnam were the workers whose communist-led People’s War, defeated U.S. imperialism. As well as the tens of thousands of U.S. working-class soldiers who rebelled against the bosses war.
McCain parlayed his second wife’s wealth along with his military service into a long political career. With four years in the House and thirty-one years in the Senate, he was the Republican choice to oppose Barack Obama for president in 2008. During that campaign McCain raised warmongering in the Middle East to an art form, famously singing about bombing Iran, among other targets. He was among the first to push President George W. Bush for an invasion of Iraq following 9/11.
McCain’s undeserved reputation as a “maverick” obscured his consistent support for the general interests of our exploiters and oppressors. While he occasionally opposed President Trump publicly, he voted with him 80 percent of the time. Furthermore, like Trump, he was a consistent racist, keeping white supremacists on his payroll (Daily Kos 6/19/2008), voting against making Martin Luther King’s birthday a federal holiday, and opposing the removal of the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s Statehouse.
Never saw a war he didn’t like
In the 1980s McCain was a supporter of the Nicaraguan Contras, notorious for rape, torture, and murder. McCain’s unflagging support for U.S. wars included those against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and his backing of the current years-long Saudi bombing in Yemen that is still causing massive deaths, hunger, and disease. He advocated air strikes against North Korea, supported anti-semitic neo-Nazi Oleh Tyannybok, leader of the extreme right-wing Svoboda party in Ukraine, and pushed Trump to provide them with military aid to surround Russia with pro-U.S. fascist regimes (Business Insider 12/16/2013).
As Rolling Stone magazine described him “He never saw an invasion he didn’t support, and it’s sadly fitting that the last piece of legislation to bear his name was a massive military spending hike that scored the rare trifecta of support from mainstream Democrats, Republicans and Donald Trump.” (Rolling Stone 8/28)
Even politicians who pose as friends of the working class help to build the cult around McCain and praise him in death in order to further their own careers and promote the myth that bosses and workers in the U.S. have the same interests. (e.g., Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez).
Never pretended to be pro-worker
McCain, however, never pretended he hadworking-class sympathies. He had a solid voting record against taxing big business, and he was always for increased imperialist military spending, and domestic surveillance of the working class. In addition he was a sexist who spoke in favor of overturning Roe vs Wade (which legalized abortions, ),and  rarely voted in favor of rights for immigrants , and unions. He also never voted for critical things like environmental protection or education funding (https://bit.ly/2x4SD1D).
Murderers like McCain will never serve the needs of our class. The politicians and pundits who have jumped to praise him are only exposing whose side they are really on. Our class’ future depends on liberating ourselves from the horrors of capitalism by fighting for a communist society.

“Racial segregation in housing … was a nationwide project of the federal government … designed and implemented by its most liberal leaders … racially explicit policies of federal, state, and local governments defined where whites and African Americans should live ….The policy was so systematic and forceful that its effects endure to the present time.” These quotes are from the preface to The Color of Law, a new book by Richard Rothstein. The general ignorance of the history of de jure (by law) segregation is so profound that Chief Justice John Roberts could get away with saying that since residential segregation “is a product not of state action but of private choices, it does not have constitutional implications.” Rothstein also shows how racist housing laws contributed to segregated education, income differentials, the large differences in wealth between Blacks and whites, and stymied working class unity.
The diehard racist Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1912. He oversaw total segregation in every area of work, from bathrooms to cafeterias. The first federal housing was built for defense workers during World War I, exclusively for white families. Black workers were forced into segregated slums often far from their jobs.
Local municipalities began to develop zoning laws that required homes with lots that would make them unaffordable to most Black workers. President Hoover’s advisor, Frederick Olmsted, stated, “ in any housing developments which are to succeed…racial divisions…have to be taken into account”.
Zoning laws, could not completely exclude middle or higher income Blacks. This was tackled by exclusionary lending practices. Since the Russian Revolution, Washington was terrified of the attraction that communism might hold and sought to encourage single home ownerships as a way to give white families a stake in capitalism. In 1933, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) began easing terms for mortgages. To exclude Blacks, HOLC drew color-coded maps of every urban area to define areas of “risk”, which were colored red and included all Black areas. This is the origin of the term redlining. President Roosevelt’s New Deal housing programs were all segregated by race or excluded Blacks altogether.
The New Deal’s Public Works Administration (PWA) strove to increase housing for middle and working class, but its housing was required to follow “neighborhood composition,” thereby maintaining patterns of separation. In 1937, the U.S. Housing Authority, which continued the same policies, replaced the PWA; in 1940 The Lanham Act created defense-worker housing only for whites.
The Federal Housing Authority (FHA), created in 1934, required absolute racial segregation. The FHA also discouraged loans in urban neighborhoods and encouraged them in newly built suburbs. Blacks could only get private home loans, with higher interest rates.
Post WW II the FHA permitted local authorities to continue building segregated public housing. Veterans Administration (VA) loan appraisers were financing most housing by 1948, all in segregated developments. Only 2 percent of purchasers were Black GIs. In 1954 the Eisenhower administration declared that the invalidation of “separate but equal” in education did not apply to housing. As late as 1984, 10 million federally funded housing tenants in 47 metropolitan areas were almost all segregated by race and every predominantly white project had superior facilities, amenities, and services. In 1973, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded that the “housing industry, aided and abetted by government, must bear the primary responsibility for the legacy of segregated housing.”
The author also discusses how Black neighborhoods were nearer to industrial and polluted areas, and had inferior schools and transportation. Rothstein decries the long-term segregation and inequality that has been created, seeing it both as a moral evil and a loss for the society as a whole. He proposes some solutions, but acknowledges they are unlikely to be enacted.
What the author fails to consider is that the American capitalist system depends on racism for survival. The wage differentials alone between Black workers and White workers add up to about half of total corporate profits. Not only do lower wages and services save huge amounts of money, but segregation insures that Blacks and whites will live and be educated apart, keeping racism alive. Racism divides working people from each other. When Black workers earn lower wages and have higher unemployment, wages and working conditions for all suffer. When imperialist wars are to be fought racism is needed to brand the enemy as fearsome and inferior. When increased rebellion looms as conditions worsen, fascist repression relies on racism and nationalism.
We in the Progressive Labor Party see fighting racism, nationalism and identity politics as essential to building a movement that can wipe the scourge of capitalism from the earth and build an international communist movement. Living together would help us fight together for an egalitarian communist world.