At least 500 workers have been killed and hundreds of thousands more displaced since the start of a bloody civil war in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. This will always be the fate of the working class under capitalism, a system built on competition and exploitation, and which in times of crisis resorts to fascism and war.  As the U.S. bosses—the most criminal rulers of them all–call for “democracy,” we remind our working-class brothers and sisters to not be fooled by this trap. The capitalist bosses will never have our interests at heart. We call on workers in Sudan and across the globe to join Progressive Labor Party in the fight to smash this profit-driven system and create a communist world.

Imperialism creates instability in Sudan
Less than four years ago, the two current warring generals and capitalist thugs, Abdel Fatahl al-Burhan and Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, were championed by millions of Sudanese workers (and the U.S. ruling class) as they partnered in a coup d’etat against Omar al-Bashir, the blood-soaked dictator aligned with the Chinese imperialists. But as CHALLENGE pointed out (7/27/19), this fake campaign for “democracy” was in reality a violent push by the U.S. ruling class to limit the Chinese bosses’ influence over the region’s energy and trade routes. 

As we noted at the time, the main contradiction in Sudan is the same one shaping events worldwide: inter-imperialist competition among a rising China, a resurgent Russia, and a declining U.S.  We warned that workers in Sudan will be “sharing” power with the very forces responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of workers in Darfur and Yemen. Whenever workers are duped into compromising with the bosses, the consequences are deadly. Sudan, the third largest country in Africa, is now a tinderbox for an expanding regional war. As the desperate U.S. rulers keep losing ground to their rivals, their inability to control events will inevitably lead to a global conflict that will sacrifice millions of workers. The working class needs international communist consciousness more than ever to turn imperialist war into class war against the capitalists! 

Russia, China target Sudan’s riches
Sudan rests between two critical choke points on the Red Sea, a passageway for 10 percent of all global trade. The Suez Canal connects markets in Asia and Europe; the Bab-el-Mandeb strait links the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea. Sudan is also where the White Nile and Blue Nile rivers converge, a critical intersection for trade and access to fresh water. Additionally, it contains large reserves of gold and uranium, and houses critical infrastructure for refining and transporting oil from South Sudan. No imperialist power will easily let go of such a large prize. Russia’s interest in Sudan predates the current conflict.

In 2017, President Vladimir Putin joined with al-Bashir to form Meroe Gold, a subsidiary of the Wagner Group of Russian mercenaries. After al-Bashir was deposed and jailed, Putin strengthened ties with General Degalo, a criminal best known as a leader of the genocidal Janjaweed militias in Darfur, a region of western Sudan. Degalo built a vast pool of wealth and political power by leveraging his ties with al-Bashir to seize some of the richest gold mines in Darfur (Guardian, 4/17). The Janjaweed evolved into the Rapid Support Forces that are now at war with Sudan’s military.  Sudanese gold now appears to be financing Russia’s war with Ukraine in return for weapons and training for Degalo’s militia (CNN, 4/21).

Meanwhile, China has long relied on Sudan’s minerals for Chinese industry. Between 2011 and 2018, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, China made hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to Sudan and invested in oil pipelines, textile factories, railways, and bridges across the Nile. China is Sudan’s largest trading partner and their biggest supplier of goods. Stability in the region is a priority for the Chinese bosses.

U.S. complicity in Darfur genocide
Ever since Chevron discovered oil in Sudan in the 1970s, the U.S. ruling class has kept a hand in the country (Human Rights Watch, 2003). Under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency worked closely with the notorious General Salah Gosh, who rose to become head of intelligence for Sudan (The Daily Beast, 1/9/2019). Between 2003 and 2008, al-Bashir, al-Burhan, Degalo, and Gosh were responsible for the mass murder of at least 300,000 workers in Darfur and for displacing 2.7 million more. In return for al-Bashir’s help with a “counter-terrorism” campaign against Al Qaeda in Iraq, the U.S. bosses turned a blind eye to the genocide and kept sharing intelligence with Sudan.

Before the latest armed conflict broke out, the Joe Biden administration continued to negotiate with these war criminals to find a path back to “democracy,” the bosses’ word for capitalist dictatorship. But like the CIA support for U.S.-friendly pro-democracy coups in the Arab Spring in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Syria, U.S. moves in Sudan have backfired and further exposed the weakness of the U.S. ruling class.  

Fight for communism!
Liberal democracy is a nationalist tool to mislead and pacify the working class. From Sudan to the U.S., we are asked to choose between one mass murderer and another. When we are fooled by the bosses into thinking that their fight is our fight, we lose sight of the essence of capitalism: imperialism and war.
The only solution is communist revolution and a dictatorship of the working class, a society run by and for workers. It is our task to expose this dogfight between the bosses and the slippery slope to World War III. We must connect the attacks on workers in Sudan to attacks on workers everywhere. Join us! Build a fighting PLP!

On May Day, as part of the mass march of Section 22 of the teachers union of Oaxaca, 15 workers hoisted the red flags of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and chanted revolutionary slogans.

We distributed 2,000 flyers with the slogan “Communist May Day,” electoral democracy is bosses’ dictatorship, highlighting the deceitful essence of the capitalist class’s electoral democracy. We attacked the bootlicking political parasites of the pro-bosses’ parties that support this criminal capitalist system that oppresses the working class throughout the world.

We also called on workers to join our revolutionary communist party, PLP, to make revolution and build communism, a new society without bosses that serves the needs and interests of the international working class.

We enthusiastically wore caps imprinted with the PLP logo. Young men and women carried a banner that invited workers and students to “Destroy capitalism!” and “Fight for a communist world!”

Our slogans resounded in unison during the march and in the main streets of the Historic Center of Oaxaca City, drawing the attention of teachers and other workers who were witnessing the mega-march. The slogans that we chanted with energy and great enthusiasm were: “This march is not a celebration, but a struggle and a remonstration”, “May Day is a Workers’ Day”, “The proletarian struggle is not parliamentarian”, “Electoral democracy is bosses’ dictatorship”, “The only path to freedom is workers’ dictatorship”, “Fight, win, workers to power”, “Government and bourgeoisie, the same crap”, “Who are we? The communists from PLP ”, “The workers’ struggles have no borders.”

At the end of the march, we had a get-together where we discussed our participation in this commemorative march of the international working class, and we agreed on activities to give continuity to the revolutionary process outlined by our revolutionary communist party, PLP.

The folloing letters are International May Day Greeetings!
Our Party, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has been sending out the alert to the workers of the world that the capitalist, imperialist world needs wars, big and small, as they fight each other to secure their profits. Every day events show that this is real and inevitable. The end of the reign of the U.S. capitalists is not acceptable to the Western imperialists. They are ready and willing to shed every last drop of our blood to keep their power.

The war in Ukraine, for example, is leading to an escalation of economic and financial difficulties throughout the planet. The risk of major conflict in Taiwan is drastically increasing. Meanwhile, the struggle for the riches of the African continent continues to escalate between the Western powers, Russia and China. Alliances shift between countries according to their capitalist interests.

*****
The working class, our class, is the most threatened by the escalation of conflict among the world’s bosses. Exploitation, poverty, hunger, lack of free access to clean water and health care,  racism and sexism: these capitalist ills are on the rise throughout the world. So, comrades, we must say no to the capitalists' wars for profit. We must shout loudly, “Turn the guns around!” and prepare to fight in our own class interests.

Our war is the war to bring about communist revolution, the war to end once and for all the criminal capitalist system. Our war is the war to save the planet from the destruction caused by the profit system. Our war is to build an egalitarian world free of racism, sexism, and poverty. Comrades, this May Day—and every day—we are organizing workers wherever we live and work to remind our class that the fate of the world is in our hands, that we must pick up the red flag of communist revolution and foil the capitalists’ plans. We must amplify revolutionary struggle.

In this tumult of war, in these moments of uncertainty and torment for the working class, our Party must continue to grow, strengthen and expand. Despite a most monstrous level of misery for workers by the criminal bosses and their flunkies, the Progressive Labor Party in Haiti is organizing workers and students to bring them into the Party and to fight for communist revolution. We are in working class communities, involved in struggles big and small, to win our class brothers and sisters to understand the roots of the tremendous exploitation they face and why egalitarian communism is the only solution. We are in schools and universities to win students, teachers and campus workers to fight back against the miserable conditions that capitalism has created. Our Party is modest, but our commitment is growing: our confidence in the working class and the Party expands our possibilities. Criticism against practices of the capitalists and the communist solidarity that we struggle to show every day allows us to build trust in the masses and allows the masses to have trust in the Party.

*****
The PLP in Haiti sends you these revolutionary greetings. Let the struggle of the working class and its communist party—the PLP—continue! Let our voices ring out loudly along our marches and in all our May Day events: “Workers of all countries, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

CHICAGO, April 7 – Communists from Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined with a multiracial crowd of dozens of workers and youth to organize against capitalist-caused gun violence. The occasion was an annual “Peace Walk” on the city’s northwest side, organized by various faith groups and mass organizations.

The physical and emotional trauma unleashed upon workers who are victims of gun violence is horrifically profound and wide-reaching. For many Black and Latin workers particularly, living in neighborhoods that have been systematically neglected by the city’s racist liberal mis-leadership, the damage cannot be understated.

But whatever amount of violence is committed by workers against other workers, it pales in comparison to the poverty and violence inflicted on our entire class by the racist and sexist capitalist bosses every day. Rather than relying on one set of fascist bosses to “protect” us from another set of fascist bosses, PLP calls on workers everywhere to build a mass revolutionary movement that overthrows our common oppressors and constructs a communist world where all workers are given an opportunity to thrive.

Revolutionary versus reactionary violence
The action began at the front of a local church known for social-justice organizing. A handful of speakers addressed the crowd, including those who had personally lost loved ones to gun violence. Different proposals were put forward during the speeches on how to address the violence, including praying more, pushing politicians to pass stricter gun laws, and finding ways of building community and mental health treatment among neighborhoods.

In the absence of a revolutionary communist outlook, many well-intentioned efforts from workers can get funneled into treating just the symptoms of this sick profit system and not attacking it at the root. At their worst, many of the reform campaigns pushed by the liberal Big Fascist wing of the U.S. ruling class can lead to gun laws that get enforced in racist ways and result in more criminalization and incarceration of Black and Latin workers.

To sharpen the political tone, a PLP member made a sign that read “A violent system breeds more violence – Let’s build a collective world” which was met with agreement by many in attendance. We also distributed at least ten copies of CHALLENGE newspaper to help connect this struggle to the wider international movement against capitalism with its deadly competition and wars for profit.

As communists, it’s important to make it clear that we are not pacifists – but there is a legitimate difference that must be made between reactionary violence and revolutionary violence. Reactionary violence is that violence inflicted by the bosses and the kkkops and militaries that they control to prop up their decadent system. This reactionary violence is also unfortunately used by many workers who sometimes choose to mimic the capitalist bosses to attack and prey on our own class.

On the contrary, revolutionary violence is organized force wielded by the masses under communist leadership to overcome the oppressive capitalist forces. It is ultimately what will be necessary to do away with a system that crushes so many workers and our potential every single day. Destroying capitalism is our proposal to end gun violence!

KKKops and bosses are the real gangsters
During the walk portion of the event, we were disgusted by the presence of two kkkop escorts from the racist Chicago Police Department (CPD). Although some of the marchers might be won to the idea of the cops keeping our class safe, the reality couldn’t be further from the truth – CPD is by far the biggest gang in the city!

To protest their presence, a PLP member quickly listed a number of names of Black and Latin youth gunned down by CPD in recent years and waved it in killer cops’ faces. The list  included LaQuan McDonald, Rekia Boyd, and Adam Toledo. We can expect no peace while the klan-in-blue are given free rein to stalk and terrorize our class for the benefit of their capitalist masters.

We were quick to point out to our friends at the event that it’s impossible to expect a city to take care of its youth when over one-third of the annual Chicago budget is spent on the kkkops (The Civic Federation, 6/23/20). This mind-blowing amount doesn’t even account for the payouts to workers who are victims of police terror, which in itself has amounted to close to $600 million since 2016 (WGN, 4/3).

What’s all the more telling for us workers is that all these attacks have been going on for decades with the open consent of Chicago’s Big Fascist (see Glossary, page 6) liberal leadership. New Black progressive Mayor Brandon Johnson – who predictably walked back previous claims to defund the police during his campaign – will not alter this trend. A capitalist system that is rocked by crisis has no choice but to resort to more fascist violence against workers, and all politicians back capitalism at the end of the day.

Join PLP for working-class power and collectivity
Imagine a society where all youth and workers were given the resources and means to contribute to the wellbeing of society, free of cost. Where youth engage in learning and collective action to shape society based on their interests, and practice pro-worker means of resolving conflict among ourselves. It’s not a pipe dream; it’s an egalitarian communist society! For all of us who truly want a world of peace among all working people, we invite you to join and help build PLP today.