CHICAGO, March 17—Illinois politicians are failing working-class college youth. Unable to agree on how to deal with the budget impasse, the bosses are furthering the attack on the working class by shutting down Chicago State University (CSU). This racist, sexist assault on the mainly Black and women students has been met with fightback and some communist leadership by Progressive Labor Party.
While all of Illinois’s public schools are struggling financially, CSU in particular is in the most precarious situation since it relies on the state for one-third of its budget.
CSU’s impending doom is already visible: at a February 27 press conference, CSU officials announced that all 900 of its employees face possible layoffs at the end of the semester. Three days earlier, the University had cancelled spring break in order to end the semester a week early.
CSU’s closing will pose dire consequences for its working-class students. It is the state’s only majority Black student public university. In addition, 70 percent of the students are women. CSU graduates more Black students than any other Illinois public college or university. It also sends more Black graduates to medical schools than all other Illinois public colleges or universities combined. Shutting down CSU would force many Black and Latin students into the low-wage job market or into the “economic draft” leading to military service.
Students and Workers Fight Back; Bosses Mislead
Some students and faculty are fighting this racist and sexist attack. On January 28, about 25 fighters marched onto the nearby I-94 interstate highway, briefly shutting it down, as well as two other expressways feeding into it. Then, on February 8, more than 50 CSU students and faculty rallied at the State of Illinois building and marched through downtown Chicago to protest CSU’s possible closing. We need more of this, as it exposes the working class’s refusal to take the losses of this capitalist-caused budget crisis.
Unfortunately, most students and faculty in the current struggle are won to the CSU administration’s line of protesting only within legal limits. The administration has brought to campus Jesse Jackson, members of the Illinois legislative Black Caucus, and other obedient servants of capitalism. Bernie Sanders used CSU’s convocation center for one of his rallies.
The message of these liberal politicians is to register to vote and rely on politicians to solve our problems for us. They defend capitalism and are misleading a new generation of workers to know their place in this racist, sexist system. This was evident when one student leader at the February 8 rally said: “We’re not asking for reform. We’re not asking for revolution. We’re asking for them to do their basic duty. Sign the darn budget.”
Leading with Communist Politics
But revolution for communism is exactly what is needed to fulfill the needs of CSU’s working-class students. The basic duty of politicians and government stooges is to defend capitalism’s profit needs. The proposed CSU shutdown reveals the universities as part of the ruling-class machine. Well aware of this fact, PLP members and friends have joined the protests, brought CHALLENGE into the classroom and have expanded our campus study groups. We’re struggling with students and faculty to understand that a revolution for a communist society is the only answer.
Under communism, a college education would be free, students and teachers would work collectively in planning the curriculum and racist and sexist divisions will be prohibited. Communist education would train students to critically evaluate and build their new society. There will be no more divisions between manual and mental labor.
In building for May Day — a worldwide communist holiday — our slogan at CSU is, “Don’t Vote, Organize for Communist Revolution.” Following liberal politicians and union leaders has already led to fascism in the U.S. Under their direction, the working class has been subjected to racism, sexism, wars, poverty, police terror and mass incarceration. Organizing for communist revolution means joining PLP to build a world free of these budget-slashing politicians, racist cops and their profit-hungry bosses. Another world is possible!

UPSTATE NEW YORK, February 21—Progressive Labor Party and friends created new potential for communist struggle here. A militant couple who fought alongside PLP in Ferguson invited four members to a forum they organized commemorating the 50th anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination.
They are a tough and wholehearted inter-racial couple, Megan and Keyon, craving revolution but complained of political isolation. The couple’s second interaction with us after Ferguson was communists taking the streets in a Fight like Ferguson forum that turned into a march through Harlem. After spending the weekend with us debating everything from identity politics to communist history, and taking literature like Road to Revolution and CHALLENGEs to read at the last time we met them, they began to see reformism for the marsh it was.
That Next Level S#*!
Megan and Keyon are staunch anti-racists and anti-sexists who developed a political line close to PLP through raising class struggle in their neighborhoods. The Malcolm X forum filled a whole room filled with college students, women, men, Black, and white looking for answers. Megan and Keyon quickly turned this forum into a struggle against reformism.
A Black professor opened with a presentation about Jamaica’s slave revolts. His conclusion: “Black people need to establish a world and space apart and need seeds in African culture.” Leave it to a reformist to turn exciting historical development into a mundane over-60 minute lecture. His nationalist politics received little response from the crowd.
Next, Megan talked about fighting back, not “watering down the politics to appease people” and wants “that next level S#*!” She got that ruthlessness about “calling out bs when I see it” in her work and in herself. She spoke openly about denouncing Sanders as another capitalist politician.
Then, Keyon have a speech about his journey from a “typical Black youth” to “being conscious and meeting his comrades in the PLP in Ferguson” and how that has influenced him to fight back. After some wholehearted struggle from us, he opened his speech with the poem, “Good Morning Revolution” by the communist writer Langston Hughes. Our friends’ presentations sharply contrasted in content and tone from the professor.
Halt Sexism, Reformism
During the Question & Answer period, two PL’ers spoke of how we are fighting for a communist revolution to create a world without racism, sexism and wars for profit, and eliminating the profit system all together. This can only be achieved though multiracial, international communist movement. The audience was applauded and asked questions. The PLP’s multi-racial presence of fierce women and men hinted at the kind of world we wanted to build.
Frustrated by the talk of revolution, the professor tried to end the forum by telling everyone to join his “action” to “improve the tactics of the police.” Boy oh boy, was that a mistake! He dared to clap in Megan’s face to shut her up. Megan halted the sexist gesture at once. She was called out the professor’s collaborationist politics with the police and politicians. “I’m not letting YOU get off talking about police reforms,” she said. Clearly, Megan and Keyon were fed up with reformism.
In a room full of strangers, the environment of reform vs. revolution made it feel just like home. We had passive supporters who came up to us after the event. No one— not even the righteous reformists—came out and said, “don’t listen to PLP.” In fact, one older man said, “this young woman in PLP just laid out what to do. They got a paper, a study group…She encouraged investigate…Now you can’t say you don’t know what to do.”
Taking Leadership from Working Class
After the forum, we met so many inspiring people—a woman who escaped NATO bombing of Yugoslavia; a Black soldier who understood the need for armed revolution—he also called out the bullsh*t of white privilege theory before we did; a social worker and a student who loved our ideas, and a self-labeled asocial film maker who took 20 CHALLENGEs to distribute.
During the post-forum dinner, our new and old friends discussed the need to organize with people. The couple realized they actually do have a base of friends to raise class struggle with.
We left them with 300 CHALLENGEs, which they agreed to distribute, a list of contacts from the event to create a political base. We also discussed the need for collective leadership outside of just Megan. Their friends and Keyon were willing to step up and give more leadership. They were excited about May Day and our East Coast College Conference on April 2!
They said the Party is the only organization where they felt “the most comfortable” with the people and where the politics and the world finally made sense. We were taken aback. Here is a bunch of people who came almost to the same conclusions without being in the Party. We aren’t the only ones fighting Sanders, voting, and Black nationalism. That’s inspiration!
All four of us PL’ers grew a little bit more that day, thanks to these brave members of the working class. We asked them, “you keep calling us comrades, you consider yourself part of the Party?”
They said, “there is nothing I disagree with, but I want to do more reading before I commit to a yes.” With consistent struggle and comradeship, the working class can look forward to having a communist base here!

Under the veneer of “stabilizing” the world economy, finance ministers and central bankers of the most powerful capitalist powers met in Shanghai, China to maneuver ways to compete against each other for world domination. Known as the G20, the group included China, the U.S., Russia, U.K., France, Germany, Japan and other up-and-coming powers like Brazil, India and South Africa. China’s economy in particular took center stage — representing its growth as a staunch competitor in the race for imperialist domination.
Capitalism Needs Competitions
The worldwide 2007-9 economic crisis of capitalism has never receded. Rather, it has spread from the U.S. to different parts of the capitalist world at different times, much like a row of dominoes in a circle falling down. From Iceland to Greece to Brazil and now to China, the interconnection between capitalist economies all over the world guarantees that the normal “boom-and-bust” cycle of capitalism reverberates far beyond the national borders of each economy.
Of course, each group of bosses is fighting like hell for the interests of the capitalists of “their country.” This is precisely why these thieves can and will never reach full agreement — each one is trying to get a leg up on all the rest. Competition, after all, remains an essential component of the capitalism.
China Looms Large
The Shanghai G20 takes place in the midst of the biggest economic downturn in China since the restoration of capitalism. The great economic boom of the 1990s and 2000s — which relied on the exploitation of former agricultural workers in China’s huge manufacturing centers — has ended since there is no longer a steady supply of cheap labor from the countryside. Many Chinese companies can’t repay loans given by the central government to keep the boom going. The Chinese commercial real estate upsurge has run its course. To keep Chinese manufacturing competitive, the Finance Ministry has devalued the Chinese currency by four percent, making Chinese goods cheaper for consumers overseas buying in dollars and other non-Chinese currency. This puts pressure on producers seeking to compete with Chinese production and is setting off alarms worldwide of the possibility of a currency war (Willem Buiter, Citigroup, 2/26/16).
Some Chinese bosses are looking to the investor tax cut/deregulation regimes of 1980s U.S. and U.K. for inspiration. According to Jia Kang, an economist in the Ministry of Finance, “Thatcher and Reagan are highly regarded … [t]heir spirit was one of boldly taking on challenges and innovating, and that’s certainly worth Chinese people emulating” (NY Times, 3/4/16). Ask tens of thousands of British miners or tens of thousands of U.S. air traffic controllers who lost their jobs then about their bosses “boldness” and innovation.” In other words, Workers in China, beware!
Just as China is building up its military, and especially its Navy, to eventually challenge U.S. domination of South Asian and Mid-East trade routes, China and the U.S. are also fighting each other over who is to be the economic leader of the capitalist world. U.S. Treasury Secretary Lew, for example, demanded the Chinese stop keeping their currency artificially low, making Chinese imports to the U.S. cheaper.
One common refrain from Trump and Sanders is that U.S. capitalism has to gear up for a trade war with China. This cynical pro-worker posturing at the extremes of the electoral political spectrum is an effort to school all the many millions of newly activated voters in the lesson that to make the U.S. a great nation its workers must line up for a confrontation with China. No matter who wins this election that message reflects a long-term need of U.S. capital and will remain a fixture in the policy agenda of the next president.
Workers be on Guard
History shows us that imperialist war is inevitable. The lead-up to World War II, after all, featured currency wars, which led to trade wars and eventually armed wars. The inevitable march towards war can never be stopped by phony “statements of unity” issued after capitalist conferences like the G20.
The “stability” these servants of capital claim to seek only means a future of more efficient and vicious exploitation of labor. Imperialists only relate to each other in two ways: in war or preparation for war. The world’s working class is the only force capable of abolishing this deadly interchange of intense exploitation followed by mass unemployment and the increasing likelihood of major wars. Only under the leadership of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party can workers achieve the overthrow of bosses’ governments worldwide, finally bringing an end to centuries of misery and bloodshed for our class.

The court case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association is another attack on U.S. public sector union workers. Today, in many such unions, workers who refuse to join the union still must pay their “fair share” for the benefits both members and non-members enjoy. Under the guise of “free speech,” this case would end that practice. A non-union worker would pay no fee but still receive the same benefits as paying union members, significantly limiting the power of workers to fight back collectively. This idea of “fair share” has been upheld many times since the 1977 Abood Supreme Court case.
Since the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonio Scalia, the fate of Friedrichs is very much up in the air, but the attack on the working class is very much alive. And since public sector workers are largely Black and women, this is a racist and sexist attack, once again dividing and weakening the entire working class (see box).
In the past, when led by communists, unions won some significant victories. The include Social Security, unemployment benefits, the 5-day 40-hour work-week, better wages, and other gains, made with militant, often illegal. Workers broke the bosses’ laws. They fought pitched violent battles against hired gun thugs, police and army troops. In the U.S., they included general strikes in numerous cities and mass community support for anti-racist walkouts like the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike.
In the 1930’s, during the Great Depression, the rulers feared workers’ anger might lead to communist revolution as occurred in Russia. Their fears were fueled by the bonus march of World War I veterans, hunger marches and the 44-day sit-down strike against General Motors workers in Flint, Michigan. To appease and pacify the working class the rulers passed the New Deal reforms and were forced to allow some unionization. But eventually they installed a reformist, anti communist union leadership which kept their demands modest and did not challenge capitalism.
Today U.S. rulers are being increasingly challenged, both economically and politically, by imperialist rivals such as China and Russia. They need more funds for their present and future wars, meaning less and less for the working class. The union movement is a shell of its former self, allowing the ruling class to cut back or eliminate many past reforms such as welfare, housing, pensions, education, mass transit budgets, and benefits. The Friedrichs Supreme Court case is one more attempt to lower the living standards of all U.S. workers.
Reforms never last. The answer to Friedrichs and other attacks is to rebuild a revolutionary, fighting communist-led working-class movement. In the past, when communists tried to build such a movement, unfortunately they made winning reforms primary. The gains have been slowly taken away. The movement that we in the Progressive Labor Party are building must make revolution primary. Let’s get rid of capitalism once and for all.
What Can and Should We Do?
Today the working class has been divided and weakened, so the bosses attack and attack and attack. Racism, nationalism, sexism, and individualism harm our collective ability to fight back. We must spread the communist ideas of militant struggle wherever we are. Organizing on the job must address class solidarity, anti-racism, anti-sexism and call to smash capitalist exploitation. We need to build student-parent-teacher alliances in the schools, hospital worker-patient alliances and worker-client alliances wherever we can. We need to organize workers to fight racism much as was done during the teachers’ strike against the Chicago school system. PL’ers must involve themselves in the struggles large and small at their workplaces and in their communities. We can’t stand by idly while the bosses attack. However, our goal goes much farther than each individual struggle. We aim to eliminate the bosses’ attacks by building for, and winning, a communist revolution!