NEW YORK CITY, November 21—One of the Progressive Labor Party’s chants says, “What do we do when under attack? Stand up, fight back!” At a New York City high school where students and teachers are constantly harassed by the administration, a young, untenured teacher did just that. She also struck a blow against sexism.
When the principal observed this teacher, she had a lesson with PowerPoint slides and had to open her lesson plan on her laptop. The principle was upset that she didn’t have a printed copy of her lesson plan, and he put a letter in her file chastising her. This violates the union contract, which states that administrators may only criticize the lesson, not the format of the lesson plan. Even the Chancellor’s weekly newsletter to principals warns them not to use a school handbook to amend the contract. Attacking little things like the format of a lesson plan is one way the administration keeps new teachers intimidated and prevents them from speaking up against bad practices at the school.
Here, as at many NYC schools, students and teachers face many problems. Too many administrators have never taught, almost all the classes are overcrowded, and we have a principal who pick on untenured teachers over nonsense.
Veteran and
New Teachers, Unite
The attacks are constant, but many teachers have fought back. Unfortunately, it’s mostly been the veteran teachers, who have tenure (job protection). Untenured teachers are told they have no rights and can be fired at any time, for any reason. As a result, it’s mainly veteran teachers who stand up to the administration, while those without tenure are advised to keep their heads down and be “team players”.
When this woman teacher began asking co-workers for help, she received conflicting advice. Some men, who historically fought back in the school,  said to do nothing and be a “team player” because that’s what the principal likes. This reflected a degree of sexism – that a woman shouldn’t stand up to mistreatment from a male principal. However, some female teachers and one male teacher, known for being a member of Progressive Labor Party, encouraged her to fight and not quietly accept the disciplinary letter.
Despite being untenured, she wrote a short rebuttal accompanied by evidence about the principal’s wrongdoing. These daily fights over lesson plans and the general harassment by bosses at work are important because they are part of the steeling of the working class that’s necessary for struggles that lay ahead. In particular, this struggle was a small blow against intimidation and sexist ideas at work.  
There are many more struggles occurring in this school that are all geared toward fighting back against an administration that pays lip service to wanting to help the students while attacking teachers and our ability to teach them. The dedication of teachers toward their students has motivated them to attend PTA meetings and build closer ties with parents. This act of defiance is an example of building fightback on the job and forging the unity of men and women necessary to fight capitalism.

In a previous issue (11/8), we described the mass rebellion of soldiers and sailors against the imperialist U.S. invasion of Vietnam, and pointed out that’s one huge omission from the recent Ken Burns PBS series on the Vietnam War, which the bosses’ press has been pushing as a ‘true history’ of the era.

The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) played an important role in that rebellion, and many of our members were among the rebellious soldiers. Starting in 1966, a year after our Party was formed, we sent members into the armed forces, sharply rejecting the then-popular pacifist ideology of draft evasion. We correctly understood that was a way out for only a few, while the military was based on a draft of mostly working-class youth.

PLP understood that those working-class soldiers could be—needed to be—won to anti-imperialist, communist ideas—and to turn the guns against the bosses. This was one of the lessons of the Russian Revolution, in which a key aspect was winning the Czar’s army to communist revolution.

Here we present what Ken Burns left out: the struggles of working-class soldiers, with communists among the leadership, against the imperialist war and the military’s officers and ‘lifers.’ While this is the experience of one comrade and his unit in the spring of 1973, it is a good sample of what took place in hundreds of units—and it was enough to scare the military brass. As one counter-intelligence officer testified before the House Internal Security Committee: “Other organizations were being overshadowed by…PLP in the 6th Army.”

We had been distributing literature explaining the class nature of racism and the need for multi-racial unity against the brass for six months, [including] 50 CHALLENGES per issue.

My company had been out in the field for three days. The foxholes we had been ordered to lay down in had been turned into swimming pools by the incessant rain. We were all angry as hell.

Some of us had been trucked back to the barracks. Our Captain ‘All-swine’ Alwine ordered us to get haircuts before returning to camp. Nobody wanted to. Many Black soldiers complained that nobody on base knew how to cut their hair. Following their lead, white soldiers also refused.

The lifers immediately split us into two groups, one Black and one white. They ordered us into trucks. A few of us organizers scurried between them. Then it happened. All the Black soldiers got out of their truck and boarded the truck with their white buddies. Hugs and ‘power’ handshakes were exchanged as well as heartfelt vows to fight the brass together. We commandeered the truck, kicked the lifers off and sped back to camp.

It was night when we arrived. Our comrades had built small fires to dry themselves as they stood watch on the perimeter. We went from blaze to blaze, picking up more soldiers as we went. After circling the camp, we headed for the captain’s headquarters.

He must have seen us because he sent the chaplain out to run interference. The chaplain told us we were violating God’s word. We told him to go to the place where God is reputed not to be… He left in a hurry!

We caught the captain in his tent (he later would run out the back when he saw us coming). More than 50 of us, Black, Latin and white, presented our list of anti-racist demands: no bad discharges, no job discrimination, no riot control 15s (punishment without trial-ed.), no racist slurs from lifers, no genocidal war and, of course, no haircuts. We retired to the heated officers’ tent — no more wet foxholes for us!
The commanding lieutenant of my platoon, a recent ROTC grad, ordered us out to the perimeter. One GI (soldier) asked him where he hailed from. ‘Idaho’ replied the ‘lieuy.’ The GI shot back, ‘Where I come from we eat people from Idaho!’ The ‘lieuy’ left — for good.

I will never forget the camaraderie of those days. The grandeur of these rank-and-file soldiers uniting to fight the racist brass surpasses every Hollywood war epic.

The killing of four U.S. troops in Niger brought to light the escalating role of the U.S. military in West Africa—and the sharpening rivalry between the U.S. and China throughout this strategically vital continent.
In his March 2017 testimony before Congress, the commander of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) spoke bluntly about inter-imperialist competition in the region:  
Just as the U.S. pursues strategic interests in Africa, international competitors, including China and Russia, are doing the same…whether with trade, natural resources exploitation, or weapons sales, …. These competitors weaken our African partners’ ability to govern…and they also undermine and diminish U.S. influence.…
U.S. imperialism is determined to exploit African resources and labor in the service of corporate profits and geopolitical power. Former president Barack Obama greased the path for corporate entrenchment with programs like Doing Business in Africa Campaign, Power Africa, and Trade Africa. In 2014, in another Obama initiative, the U.S.-Africa Business Forum (USABF), public and private deals totaling $62 billion were cemented. Between 2008 and 2015, direct U.S. investment in Africa jumped more than 70 percent, from $37 billion to $64 billion  (Whitehouse Archives, 9/21/16).
China, Imperialist Giant in Africa
But China, which has quietly laid its groundwork in Africa for decades, remains far in the lead. In 2009, it surpassed the U.S. as the continent’s largest trading partner. From 2000 to 2014, trade between China and Africa rose more than 20-fold, from $10 billion to $220 billion, while US-Africa trade faltered (see graph, page 5). In 2015, to increase Chinese influence, President Xi Jinping pledged $60 billion over three years for African infrastructure projects ranging from pipelines, and ports to railways and highways, from manufacturing plants to electric power generation (Financial Times, 6/13, Forbes, 3/14). To protect its expanding role, China is establishing a naval base in Djibouti, in East Africa, the first overseas base for the People’s Liberation Army Navy. In addition, China has deployed a total of 2,500 troops with United Nations peacekeeping missions in South Sudan, Liberia, and Mali. President Xi has pledged up to 8,000 such troops, along with $100 million to the African Union standby force and $1 billion to establish a UN Peace and Development Trust Fund. More than a million Chinese nationals are currently in Africa as workers, contractors, or businesspeople (CNN, 7/13).
To counteract growing Chinese clout in Africa and stake a claim to the continent’s vast resources for its own empire, the U.S. is countering militarily. AFRICOM was established by President George W. Bush in 2007 and greatly expanded under Obama. This year, some 6,000 U.S. troops will conduct 3,500 “operations” out of military bases and U.S. embassies across Africa—a 1,900 percent increase since 2007 (Newsweek, 10/23). At least 800 troops are stationed in Niger, where the U.S. is completing construction of a $100 million drone installation capable of launching advanced attack and surveillance drones, like the MQ9 Reaper and Predator (Newsweek, 9/30/16).
U.S. Build for War
At the same time, the U.S. continues to build up its main base of operation in Djibouti and set up “forward operating” bases throughout Africa, which it describes as “temporary facilities” (Mother Jones, 9/6/2013). The U.S. recently agreed to commit $60 million to a joint anti-terrorist (read: imperialist) force under U.N. auspices. The European Union has likewise pledged $58 million, with France playing a leading role in the Lake Chad region, where it has longstanding colonial interests. The U.N. already has a force of 14,000 personnel in neighboring Mali (New York Times, 10/30).
The official U.S. rationale for expanding its military presence in Africa is to defeat the same radical Islamic insurgencies that U.S. imperialism helped create by devastating Libya and assassinating Muammar Qaddafi (Independent, 9/15/16). In reality, this expansion is a thinly veiled pretext to secure the bosses’ foothold and safeguard U.S. corporate investments and resource transfers. The U.S. imperialists’ best bet is to put U.S. boots on the ground. From Vietnam to Afghanistan, efforts to train local proxy military forces to defend U.S. interests have failed dismally (Foreign Affairs, Nov-Dec 2017). Most recently, in the October 4 ambush in Niger, local troops fled the scene before French special forces arrived.
As the conflict among imperialists escalates in Africa, the Middle East, the South China Sea, and Latin America, a global armed conflict grows more likely. The next world war will require a much larger U.S. army than the current active duty roster of 483,000 soldiers. Restoration of the military draft appears inevitable.
For the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party, there can be only one response. We must build a mass, international, anti-racist movement to turn inter-imperialist war into revolutionary war for workers’ power and communism. As the rulers’ latest fight for spoils intensifies, we look to our brothers and sisters throughout Africa to help lead this battle!

*****

The Scramble for Africa in Historical Perspective

Imperialist exploitation of Africa is nothing new. Today’s national borders on the continent began with the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, establishing most of the continent’s borders today.  German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck used negotiations to avoid a European war over African territory. True to their racist colonial mindset, the European powers invited no Africans to these discussions.
As imperialists competed for dominance over the continent’s riches, Africans suffered the greatest losses. Leading up to World War I, Germany demanded a broader role in Africa at the expense of the British, French, and Belgian colonial powers. About 1 million people were killed in East Africa in the ensuing conflict. In World War II, over a million Africans were conscripted to fight for their colonial oppressors. After the war, the U.S. deepened its involvement in the continent. It plundered raw materials and tried to blunt the influence of the Soviet Union, which supported national liberation movements combatting colonialism.
These liberation struggles, influenced and often led by communists, seemed to hold great promise. Bold revolutionary actions were taken in Ghana (Kwame Nkrumah), Tanzania (Julius Nyerere), Guinea (Sekou Toure), Mali (Modibo Keita), Angola (Agostinho Neto), and Mozambique (Samora Machel). Because these movements allied with local capitalists, they reverted back to neocolonialism and capitalism. But their brave, anti-colonlialist struggle remains inspirational.
As the imperialist powers continue to exploit workers and resources in Africa as they challenge one another for world hegemony, PLP seeks to build communist revolution and smash capitalist exploitation for all time.

Churchill wryly told his World War II ally Stalin, after the Red Army had stopped Hitler’s invading army in its tracks: “I’m lucky I didn’t kill you back in 1919.”
In 1919 Churchill had been in charge of invading forces from 14 capitalist countries attempting to overthrow the new Soviet government and to put in power the generals of the counter-revolutionary “White” Russian army fighting a civil war against the “Red” Soviets. From 1918 to 1922, troops from the U.S., Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Serbia, Poland, Rumania, Turkey, Czechoslovakia, Greece, and China intervened on the side of the “Whites” in the civil war which killed over seven million Soviet workers and peasants. Michael Sayers and Albert Kahn wrote the book The Great Conspiracy (1946), our main source here, about this now little-known invasion of the young Soviet Union. It shows the lengths world capitalism will go to to prevent the loss of its profit system. Revolution, and counter-revolution, are not a tea party! But in this epic test of its strength, the first workers’ state triumphed.
The First Plot Is Hatched—and Defeated
The WWI Allies (Britain, France, Italy, and the U.S.) feared in 1917, as the German army was pressing the Russian army to near collapse, that Germany would gain control of the vast natural resources of Russia (oil, coal, wheat, and timber, much of it owned by Allied capitalists), and be free to concentrate their forces against the Allies on the Western front.
Rebellious Russian troops were deserting in the tens of thousands, having fought for three years against superior forces and suffered more casualties than all the Allies combined, and many were joining the revolutionary committees known as Soviets. As one soldier said:
Show me what I am fighting for. Is it Constantinople or is it free Russia? Is it democracy or is it the capitalist plunderers? If you can prove to me that I am defending the Revolution, then I’ll go out and fight without capital punishment to force me. When the land belongs to the peasants, and the factories to the workers, and the power to the Soviets, then we’ll know we have something to fight for, and we’ll fight for it.
A U.S. spy on a mission to keep Russia in the war, Raymond Robins, reported from a Russian village that when he asked to see the local government official, he was told to see the chairman of the Soviet, the workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ deputies. “But that’s some sort of revolutionary organization!” Robins protested. “I want the regular civil power.” “Oh that!” the peasants laughed. “That doesn’t amount to anything. You had better see the chairman of the Soviet.”
Robins’ reports from the field favored reaching terms with the coming power in Russia, the Bolsheviks, but the decision of the Western capitalists went the other way. Sir Samuel Hoare, chief British spy, said a military dictatorship in Russia (replacing the first post-Tsar elected government of Kerensky) was the solution. The Allies planned this putsch before the Soviets’ revolution, hoping to install the Russian army head Lavr Kornilov as dictator on September 6.  Kornilov on September 8 called for the overthrow of the Kerensky provisional government and marched on Petrograd with 20,000 troops, accompanied by French and British officers in Russian uniforms. But the Petrograd Soviet mobilized armed workers (Red Guards), soldiers, and sailors, who defeated the plotters’ forces in four days. A Soldiers’ Committee secretly formed by the Bolsheviks within his own army arrested Kornilov. The first plot actually strengthened the Soviets.
The World-Shaking Bolshevik Revolution
Still underground, Lenin called for “All Power to the Soviets! Down with the Provisional Government!”  On November 7 the Bolsheviks took power in Petrograd:
To the Citizens of Russia!
The Provisional Government is deposed. The State Power has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies…
The cause for which the people were fighting: immediate proposal of a democratic peace, abolition of landlord property rights over the land, labor control of production, creation of a Soviet Government—that cause is securely achieved.
That night the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies met in the Smolny Institute, the mud of the trenches still on the soldiers’ clothing, and a short, stocky man in a baggy, unpressed suit declared: “We shall now proceed to construct the Socialist order.” It was Lenin, who headed the first Soviet government formed that night.
As he later told Robins,
We are going to challenge the world with a producers’ republic. We are not putting in the Soviet anybody who simply owns stock, and simply has ownership. We are are putting in the producers. The Donets coal basin will be represented by the producers of coal; the railroad by producers of transportation; the postal system by producers of that system of communication, and so on.
The working class had taken state power. But the counter-revolution was about to begin.
Secret Diplomacy
The invasion to crush the Soviet workers’ state was set in motion by secret diplomatic moves among the Allies. Though Robins still, after meeting with Lenin, recommended relations with the Soviets, the U.S. was plotting to overthrow them.
On December 2, 1917, Ambassador Francis sent Washington his first confidential report on the activities of General Alexei Kaledin, Ataman of the Don Cossacks. Francis described the General as “Kaledin, commander-in-chief of the Cossacks, numbering 200,000.” General Kaledin had organized a “White” counterrevolutionary army among the Cossacks in southern Russia, proclaimed “the independence of the Don,” and was preparing to march on Moscow to overthrow the Soviet Government. Secret groups of Czarist officers in Petrograd and Moscow were acting as anti-Soviet spies for Kaledin and were maintaining contact with Ambassador Francis.
The U.S. recommended a secret loan to Kaledin via the British or French, then publicly denied it, but on December 23, 1917, the British and French met in Paris and secretly concluded an agreement to dismember Soviet Russia. England was to receive a “zone of influence” in Russia, giving her the oil of the Caucasus and control of the Baltic provinces; France a “zone” giving her the iron and coal of the Donets Basin and control of the Crimea. This secret Anglo-French treaty shaped these two nations’ policy towards Russia.
It took until 1922 for the eventual triumph of the Soviet people over the Whites and the Allied troops.