Three recent events exposed the current crisis of U.S. capitalism. On December 19, the Chinese capitalist bosses accused the U.S. of a “serious military provocation” a week after a U.S. Sir Force B-52 bomber—capable of carrying long-range nuclear weapons—few within two miles of a disputed artificial island built by China in the South China Sea.
On December 21, in Afghanistan, a geopolitical linchpin for both the U.S. and Russia, six U.S. troops serving with NATO were killed by a suicide bomber in the Bagram district—an area made infamous by the torture and murders committed by U.S. military personnel at the district prison.
In Texas, the same day as the Bagram incident, a grand jury declined to indict any cops or jail guards in connection with the death of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old Black woman found dead in her cell last summer after an arrest for allegedly failing to use her car’s turn signal.
As a high-stakes competition intensifies among the biggest imperialist rivals, the capitalist rulers of the U.S., Russia, and China, the international working class is caught in the middle. In their efforts to terrorize and divide workers in the U.S., the bosses have unleashed their racist killer cops. Meanwhile, the same U.S. bosses are faced with increasingly difficult—and deadly—choices as they struggle to prop up their declining oil empire in the Middle East.
More than ever, the international working class needs unity under the banner of the Progressive Labor Party. PLP is the only party that represents all workers, from the undocumented in New York to those fighting the UN’s imperialist occupation of Haiti to the dozens buried December 20 by a landslide of recklessly dumped construction waste in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. PLP organizes workers, students and soldiers to smash racist police state terror, racist borders and imperialist war with communist revolution.
Oil and Perpetual War
Ten thousand NATO troops are still stationed in Afghanistan. (NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a U.S. imperialist-led international military alliance.) Twelve years after the initial U.S. invasion of Iraq, more than 3,000 U.S. ground troops, backed by civilian-killing air and drone strikes, remain there. As the U.S. rulers escalate their war against the regional imperialist Islamic State (ISIS), growing numbers of U.S. special operations forces are being deployed in northern Syria. It is more and more apparent that more troops will soon be on their way—sent to kill their class sisters and brothers and to be killed, all to protect the bosses’ profits from cheaply extracted oil.
As gutter racist Donald Trump calls for shutting down mosques and banning all Muslim workers from entering the U.S., other presidential candidates are clashing over how to counter the ISIS threat in Syria. Liberal Democrat Hillary Clinton and mainstream Republicans Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie want to escalate U.S. involvement—and help rebels fighting the Iran-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad—by establishing a no-fly zone. Phony “socialist” Democrat Bernie Sanders and right-wing Republican Ted Cruz stand opposed, arguing that regime change in Syria could have unintended consequences that might “worsen U.S. national security interests,” as Cruz put it (Bloomberg.com, 12/20/15).
In reality, the disagreement is strictly tactical. None of these candidates question U.S. imperialism or its role in the global refugee crisis. None of them would dream of advocating that the U.S. abandon the trillions invested in the region by ExxonMobil, a flagship of the main finance capital wing of U.S. capitalism. All of them recognize the strategic imperative recently outlined by Stratfor (12/15/15), a global intelligence firm:
[T]he Middle East is a strategic supplier of oil to the global market, and the critical link connecting Africa, Asia and Europe….To bring about an acceptable level of stability — or instability, from the U.S. point of view — will require the commitment of tens of thousands of personnel on the ground and in the skies above the region, for many years to come.

Liberals Are the Main Danger

Sanders’ role is to divert workers and youth from militant fightback into the passive electoral process—and ultimately to vote for Clinton, a reliable tool of the finance capitalists. Historically, the main dangers to the international working class are the liberal politicians who run as the alternative to the likes of Trump or Cruz. For example:
Liberal Democrat Franklin Roosevelt forcibly deported up to two million workers to Mexico. He forced more than 110,000 workers of Japanese descent into concentration camps during World War II, and supported the apartheid oppression of Black workers in the U.S. South (see page xxx).
Liberal Democrat Lyndon Johnson escalated the U.S. imperialist genocide in Vietnam. PLP’s predecessor, the Progressive Labor Movement, organized the first demonstration against Johnson’s war in New York City’s Times Square in 1964.
Liberal Democrat Jimmy Carter declared the imperialist “Carter Doctrine” in 1979, stating that any threat to U.S. oil interests in the Middle East would be met with a military response. A top Carter advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wrote The Grand Chessboard, a book arguing that that control over Central Asia, including Afghanistan, was essential for U.S. imperialism.
Liberal Democrat Bill Clinton oversaw the racist destruction of welfare, the expansion of racist mass incarceration, and the intensification of police terror against Black workers. Clinton also executed the indiscriminate bombing of the former Yugoslavia in an effort to block Russian imperialist influence.
Liberal Democrat Hillary Clinton supported every one of her husband’s anti-worker atrocities, including the Iraq sanctions that slaughtered half a million children. As a U.S. senator, she voted in favor of the 2003 Iraq genocide.

Trump the Bosses With Communism!
The U.S. rulers need a president who can galvanize the entire U.S. working class to fall in line behind imperialism, or at least to neutralize any resistance against the global conflict to come. The seeming chaos of the current presidential campaign reflects the rulers’ uncertainty over who might serve them best.
For the moment, some white workers are confused about why the U.S. has a real U.S. unemployment rate of 23 percent (shadowstats.com), or why millions have lost their homes, or why wages and social services keep declining. Misled by demagogues like Trump, they fall into the trap of blaming other Black or Latin or immigrant or Muslim workers, who are even more sharply attacked by the racist bosses. What gets overlooked is the root of all workers’ problems: the capitalist profit system.
Instead of surrendering white workers to racist politicians, PLP fights to win them to communist politics and multiracial unity. Our Party fought alongside the Black workers and youth who led the multiracial, anti-racist rebellions in Ferguson and Baltimore, giving leadership and lessons to our class worldwide.
As the bosses prepare for bigger imperialist wars, the international working class needs communism—now. We will get there by smashing the mad dog racists and exposing the liberal misleaders as servants of the capitalist class. Millions of women workers, Black workers, refugees, and undocumented workers—now under the capitalists’ sharpest attack—will be our strongest leaders on the road to revolution. Won to communist ideas and to joining PLP, they will be essential in our class’s ultimate victory. Join us!

We are marching in a compact group along a steep and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have…chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh!...[L]et go of our hands…[F]or we too are “free” to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!
— Vladimir Lenin, What Is To Be Done?

In 1901, when Lenin wrote these words, the Bolsheviks were a small communist party struggling to earn the leadership of the Russian working class. Revolution seemed a long way off. But between 1905 and 1914, a massive strike wave in Russia was followed by a ruling-class crackdown and then a global, inter-imperialist conflict: World War I.  By 1917, these upheavals had set the stage for the world’s first successful communist revolution.  The revolution couldn’t happen until conditions matured—but at the same time, the Bolsheviks had to be ready.  
As we assess the developments of 2015 and look forward to 2016 and beyond, the task of Progressive Labor Party is to emulate the Bolsheviks. Even as we participate in reform battles, we must never retreat into “the marsh” of reformism or passivity.  Our historical task is to build a mass working-class party to smash capitalism, seize state power, and establish a communist dictatorship of the working class—a society run by workers to meet workers’ needs.
Worldwide, 2015 saw a sharpening of the kind of Great Power rivalries that sparked World War I and World War II.  Talk of a third world war is in the air. The Russian bosses became more aggressive, projecting military power from the Ukraine to Syria. China expanded its imperialist base in the South China Sea while openly challenging U.S. hegemony in global financial markets with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.   The U.S. ruling class has countered with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a “free trade” agreement designed to constrain China.
In the Middle East, in an effort to consolidate control over the region’s oil, the U.S. has escalated its air strikes and drone attacks, murdering uncounted civilians there. Several Republican candidates for U.S. president are now calling for a new ground invasion, this time aimed against the Islamic State, or ISIS. The U.S. rulers know they cannot protect their oil wealth without a restored military draft and a major ground invasion. They also know they cannot execute a ground war without political support from the U.S. working class—something they don’t have, at least not yet.
The seeds for ISIS were planted by the desperate U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the more recent escalation of the conflict in Syria. While the small-scale terror of ISIS pales against the monumental state terror of U.S. imperialism, the group is an extreme example of “the marsh” of religion.  The ISIS bosses’ “caliphate” is in fact a mini-imperialist state with its own designs on Middle East oil.
The refugee crisis caused by imperialist rivalry, and in particular by ongoing war in Syria and Afghanistan, saw workers in Europe open their doors to their working-class sisters and brothers. As the bosses resorted to open racism to deport the refugees back to misery and death, the international working class responded heroically. Workers have no borders!
Faced with the perpetual crises of capitalism, too many workers in 2015 sought answers from the “marsh” of liberal bosses. In Greece, the working class placed its hope for meaningful resistance in Syriza, a party of the so-called radical left. In reality, however, Syriza’s role was to rally workers to vote before selling them out. Similar sellout, fake-leftist movements in Spain, Brazil, Venezuela and South Africa have pushed workers deeper into the jaws of capitalism.
Danger and Opportunity
In the U.S., the heart of global imperialism, 2015 saw cities rocked by anti-racist rebellion. From Baltimore to Chicago, Black youth led the way and exploded against racist police terror.  Building on the Ferguson rebellion of 2014, these actions grew into a multiracial mass movement that terrified the U.S. ruling class.  Calls from “the marsh” of identity politics by Black Lives Matter and others are working to undermine the revolutionary potential of this movement.  PLP has championed multiracial unity in all fightback struggles, and we are growing in numbers and influence.  Join us in this work in 2016!
Today the bosses are whipping up anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant racism to keep us divided and win support for the bigger wars to come. Gutter rightwing politicians like Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen dominate the capitalist media and embolden the fascist right. As the bosses’ push the phony pretext of fighting “terrorism,” immigrant workers suffer the brunt of racist attacks and deportations.
But the main threats to our class are not the Trumps and Le Pens. The biggest dangers are liberal capitalists like Barack Obama and Pope Francis, who deceive honest workers in the name of reform. But capitalism can never be reformed to serve workers. It can only serve profit, first and last.
Out of the Marshes, Into the Class War!
Throughout 2015, the Progressive Labor Party was in the thick of struggles in more than two dozen countries. Our Party continued to fight to organize the international working class into a mass party of millions, and to turn imperialist war into class war for communist revolution.
PLP broke marching bans in New York City after two cops were killed there. We fought the racist expansion of Jewish settlements in Israel-Palestine. We organized teachers and students in East Africa and led mass marches against the United Nations occupation in Haiti. In Pakistan, we built leadership—with an emphasis on leadership by women—and fightback across the most vulnerable sectors of the working class.
In July we confronted the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina while exposing the capitalist-funded Black Lives Matter misleaders. In Haiti and East Africa, we exposed fake leftist politicians with a long track record of corruption. The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party organizes the working class not to vote in some electoral charade, but to revolt. We don’t settle for crumbs off the bosses’ table. We organize and fight to smash this entire racist capitalist system and the imperialism, racism and sexism it relies upon.
The year 2015 also marked PLP’s 50 years of waging fights for communism in schools, on the job, in the streets and the military. Our international convention in August passed the torch to a new generation of communist leaders who are mainly women and immigrant. It’s revolutionizing the concept of leadership — anyone and everyone who fights in the interest of the working can be a leader. This new collective leadership further advances our fight for a mass, international communist movement. The coming year will be one of struggle inside and outside the Party to make the needs of the whole working class our top priority.
For our kids, for the victims of racist police terror, drone strikes, imperialist devastation and the refugee crisis, let’s dedicate 2016 to connecting the struggles of our class worldwide to our fight for communism. Let our New Year’s resolution be to attack every manifestation of capitalism. Let us resolve to join mass organizations wherever workers are fighting, and to share with them our vision for a communist world—a world free from racism, sexism, inequality, and imperialist war.

CHICAGO, December 15—Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, with a 96 percent “yes” vote. For several months, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) have threatened a racist layoff of 20 percent of a workforce that serves mainly working-class Black, Latin and immigrant students. If the Illinois General Assembly fails to approve $500 million in funding by the end of January, and the layoffs are enforced, a strike is a strong possibility.
Members and friends of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are in the thick of organizing and fighting with multiracial unity against these racist cutbacks.
Racist Bosses Take Aim at Students
Students in Chicago’s school system, like others with a mostly Black and Latin population, are bearing the brunt of U.S. capitalists’ sharpening imperialist rivalry with Russia and China (see page 2). The rulers need to keep our class divided, impoverished and intimidated to enable them to restore a military draft for the broader global conflict to come. The CPS slogan, “Students First,” is, in reality, “Bankers First.” The school system borrows hundreds of millions of dollars in municipal bonds, and pays back billions to the biggest banks in debt service. Meanwhile, CPS bosses claim they are too broke to pay for basic necessities for Black, Latin and immigrant students.
The CTU’s liberal leadership has fought militantly for the rank-and-file. But like all labor unions, it fights within the confines of a capitalist system that can never meet workers’ needs. By contrast, PLP’s ultimate goal is to organize a revolution to overthrow capitalism, seize state power, and create a communist society.
The capitalist class holds state power, and to end capitalism the working class must take that power from them.
Chicago Class Struggle: School for Communism
PL’ers and friends organize and support anti-racist struggles within the CTU. While PLP fights within the working class to win reform demands, we also understand that a final victory can be won only by building CHALLENGE networks and a mass PLP for communist revolution. In September 2012, PL’ers joined Chicago’s teachers, students, parents and workers citywide in a massive, seven-day, anti-racist strike. As a result of this militancy, workers won some temporary concessions. But under capitalism, any crumbs the bosses concede are inevitably taken back. In May 2013, Chicago’s Board of Education closed 50 schools, virtually all of them in Black neighborhoods. The closures disrupted students and laid off school workers. Since then,. Chicago’s working class has fought back with boldness.
CTU’s contract expired July 1, 2015. Over more than a year of negotiations, the union has put forward reform demands for fewer police in schools, smaller class sizes, racial integration, an end to over-testing, a $15 minimum hourly wage for all CPS and vendors’ employees, and more school nurses, social workers, librarians, and services for homeless students. Union members have been emboldened by a rally of 5,000 students and workers in November, a hunger strike, demonstrations at Bank of America, and numerous walk-outs and “walk-ins” (morning rallies by staff, parents, students and community members, who then walk into the school together.)
When the Chicago police were forced to release a video of the police killing of Laquan McDonald in cold blood, the CTU leadership called on workers to support demonstrations against the murder and its coverup. But the CTU leaders again revealed the limits of liberalism by fixing the blame on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Anita Alvarez, the Cook County state’s attorney and notorious defender of killer cops. They called on workers to back “better” politicians, like Hillary Clinton. As anti-racists passed a resolution in the CTU’s representative body to protesting Laquan McDonald’s killing, PL’ers attacked the whole racist capitalist system.
Our fight for communist revolution and to build a mass revolutionary party stands in contradiction to the union’s reliance on liberal politicians. We’ll keep organizing our friends and coworkers to keep picketing, chanting, sitting in, and marching. We are learning and fighting in the class struggle with our sisters and brothers, and building an anti-racist movement with multiracial unity and our Party’s communist vision up front.

QUEENS, NY, December 9 — A picket line at LaGuardia Community College united professors, staff, campus workers and students to overcome a climate of fear and speak out. Members of Progressive Labor Party helped organize this alliance to expose the racist disinvestment in public education. The chant, “Students, faculty, staff unite. Same struggle, same fight!” fired up over 100 protesters who made time on the last day of classes to join the struggle.
Union members of both the Professor Staff Congress and local DC 37 (campus workers) have gone more than five years without a contract, while students have seen their tuition increase each year. Where is the money going?
In short, it’s going to make up for racist city and state budget cuts in education for mainly working-class Black, Latin, Asian, and immigrant students. In 1990, tuition covered 22 percent of total community college budgets, with the rest paid by the city and state. Now, tuition covers 45 percent of overall costs. Meanwhile, students who can’t afford college are being pushed into the military by a capitalist system that needs the working class to fight imperialist wars, not to learn. But students, faculty, and staff have had enough! We need education, not oil wars in the Middle East. We need a communist world that will value our labor and intellect not as commodities for profit, but for the good of society.
The atmosphere at LaGuardia is tense, with untenured teachers and adjuncts fearful of losing their jobs if they speak out. A recent survey found that of all CUNY faculty, those at LaGuardia overburdened by job demands outside teaching. Overworked, underpaid, untenured faculty hop from meeting to meeting to comply with administrative policies to “improve” the college. These initiatives often leave devoted faculty members with no time or energy to actually help students—or to fight back for our class. At the rally, student leaders reported intimidation from administration to discourage their involvement. For at least one student, the warnings led to a deeper commitment to this struggle.
On the morning of the rally, College President Gail Mellow sent a long email to LaGuardia workers. It suggested that CUNY faculty should be grateful that the administration’s proposed contract did not include furlough days or increased contributions for health benefits, like SUNY’s recent sellout contract. Mellow also said:
I wanted…to remind us all about the freedom of expression. It is a hallowed tenet of our democracy, and one we should all cherish. Throughout America’s history, the ability to publicly state one’s opinion without interference is part of what makes us a great country, and I want to simply affirm and welcome the LaGuardia’s chapter efforts.
This “reminder” was a threat to silence militant fightback, the only way for students and staff to win anything of value. The college administration fears a strike, but most of all they fear a multiracial worker-student alliance.
But we will not be pacified by crumbs from the bosses when we know the working class has created all value and can run the world without them. In defiance of the president’s email, students, faculty and staff shouted out for solidarity: “Tax the Rich, Not the Poor! Stop the War on CUNY!”
Students who were not yet courageous enough to stand with the picketers said they were inspired. With more struggle, those students will soon be leading the way! This is only the beginning of a long fight. Over coming months, PLP and friends need to build worker-student unity. We must raise class consciousness and win people to see that attacks by the bosses will continue as long as capitalism exists. The only way to create schools and work that meet our needs is to build a communist society. Students and workers, unite!