Bosses’ mouthpiece sends warning to elites

New York Times, 1/15–The secretary general of NATO, Mark Rutte, has said that the West is not prepared for the challenges that will come over the next five years and that it’s time to “shift to a wartime mind-set”… while World War III has not begun, “a world war is approaching”...closer cooperation among China, Russia, Iran and North Korea make a coordinated attack more likely, meaning we may have to fight three or four regional wars simultaneously…China’s shipbuilding industry has a capacity more than 230 times that of the United States. 

Capitalism leads to dying societies

CNN, 1/18–The rooms are filled with elderly residents, their hands wrinkled and backs bent. They shuffle slowly down the corridors, some using walkers. Workers help them bathe, eat, walk and take their medication. But this isn’t a nursing home – it’s Japan’s largest women’s prison. The population here reflects the aging society outside, and the pervasive problem of loneliness that guards say is so acute for some elderly prisoners that they’d prefer to stay incarcerated…With little family support, Akiyo had stopped caring about the future, or what would happen to her. Her 43-year-old son, who lived with her before she was imprisoned, often told her: “I wish you’d just go away.”

A fighter reminds us to forget the fairytale of progress on racism

New York Times, 1/24–[From obituary of Thomas Gaither PhD, one of the founders of the militant civil rights movement of the early 1960’s] “No question, the South has changed tremendously,” he said in 2011. “But the fundamental infrastructure of racism and segregation that called the shots in the South in 1960 are still in place. They have slightly different labels, they accomplish their goals by slightly different means, but there has been no real fundamental shift in who really calls the signals.”

One-third of U.S. workers are tapped out

Financial Times, 12/24/24–U.S. credit card defaults have surged to their highest level since 2008, reflecting mounting financial pressure on low-income households amid persistent inflation and high interest rates, with analysts warning of further economic strain in 2025...Due to years of high inflation and high interest rates, low-income consumers have been hit the hardest, and "the credit card debt bubble is popping"...Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, also noted…"High-income households are fine, but the bottom third of U.S. consumers are tapped out," he told the Financial Times. "Their savings rate right now is zero."

Racists get ready to rejoin the fight

BBC, 1/23–Leaders of the far-right organisations at the forefront of the Capitol riot who were released on Donald Trump's orders say they are planning to regroup. In an interview with the BBC on Wednesday, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes defended his actions during the 6 January 2021 riot and said he was "very grateful" to President Trump for commuting his sentence. Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison on a number of charges including seditious conspiracy, or plotting to overthrow the government. Meanwhile, Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, former head of the Proud Boys, indicated to reporters that he had rejoined the all-male group.

Mass incarceration is a tool of Israeli fascists

Al Jazeera, 1/24–When the Gaza ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas was announced on January 15, Ghassan Alyeean says his first feeling was relief that the mass killing of his countrymen might finally end…But the next day…Israeli soldiers raided Alyeean’s home in Bethlehem and abducted his 22-year-old son, Adam, who was supposed to sit university exams in the coming days. “They took him for no reason”...Since Israel captured and occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Israel has imprisoned some 800,000 Palestinians across the occupied territory, according to the UN and B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation. “[Mass incarceration] is part of the apartheid regime”...

On the 15th anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, our working-class sisters and brothers there are reeling yet again from an onslaught of violence by armed groups of small capitalist gangsters. Within the last month, these bloodthirsty gangs have gone on a series of murder sprees, massacring more than 350 people (New York Times, 1/6). This horror is just the latest chapter of a story of racist violence that began when the French first arrived in Saint-Domingue (the former name for Haiti) in the early 1600s. From then to now, one gang after another, from the French and U.S. imperialists to small-time local bosses, has subjected workers to vicious exploitation. Yet the history of the working class in Haiti, who overthrew slavery and French colonial rule,  also reminds us that workers never sit idly by in the face of oppression. Workers fight back!

Indeed, on the 221st anniversary of their historic defeat of colonial rule, workers in Haiti are fiercely fighting back today against the raw brutality and racism of capitalism. Like their counterparts in Gaza and Sudan, workers in Haiti hold no illusions about capitalism’s absolute inability to provide a decent life for our class. It is for this reason that Progressive Labor Party sees the leadership of Black workers as essential for revolution. Equipped with communist ideas, Black workers can lead our entire class out of the misery of capitalism and into a new world, where racist exploitation is outlawed, where all workers will be free to contribute to society, no matter where they were born or what they look like. 

Destroying the French slave system

Brute force and violence defined French imperial control of Saint-Domingue from the start. Under dreadful conditions, masses of enslaved people stolen from Africa toiled on lucrative sugar and coffee plantations day in and day out, filling the coffers of greedy French capitalists on the island and in France. The despicable business was so profitable  that the colony became the principal exporter of sugar to Europe. 

The enslaved workers fought back. In 1791, they set off the Haitian Revolution, which would deal a final and historic blow to the French slave system. Under the leadership of Jean-Jacques Dessalines and others, workers organized and fought until 1804, when they defeated a combined force of the leading colonizers of the time: France, Britain, and Spain. When the ashes settled, Haiti became the first country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery. This heroic revolt inspired enslaved workers and struck fear into slave owners throughout the world.

Then the capitalists struck back. Under threat of invasion, Haiti agreed to France’s demand for payment for the loss of their human “property.” This crippling debt, alongside continuous oppression and exploitation from other imperialist powers, has impoverished Haiti to this day (NYT, 5/2022). Haiti is now the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (World Bank, 11/2024).

Duvaliers, Clintons, cops from Kenya—gangsters all

Well into the 20th century, workers in Haiti were oppressed by a series of foreign and local gangs. In 1915, the U.S began a 19-year occupation, followed in the 1950s by a murderous 30-year reign of the father and son duo, “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc” Duvalier. These U.S. puppets used their feared militia, the Tonton Macoutes, to kill and torture thousands of workers and force thousands more into exile. In the wake of the 2010 earthquake, Bill and Hillary Clinton, like the rapacious imperialist dogs they are, exploited the catastrophe to impose a neocolonialist nightmare on Haitian workers. Their capitalist cronies stole fertile land from farmers in the north, drove rural workers into the cities, and opened the infamous sweatshop factory Caracol, which paid starvation wages while making clothes for Gap, Walmart and Target.

As in other times, workers fought back—not only against the U.S. exploiters, but also against President Michel Martelly, who’d welcomed the Clintons into Haiti. As reported in CHALLENGE (2/2014), GREPS, (Group for Reflection on Social Problems), a student activist group, put out a leaflet titled, “President Martelly, Enemy of Haitian Students!”

Now the workers of Haiti face a new onslaught from armed gangs that are seizing on Haiti’s instability, created by centuries of capitalist exploitation, to grab all they can. The tools of their trade: drug trafficking, kidnappings, murder, and rape. Last year, more than 5,600 workers were killed and more than one million forced to flee their homes (UN News, 1/7). Children make up 50 percent of the displaced and up to 50 percent of recruited gang members (Aljazeera, 11/22/24). As these warring gangs continue to tighten their grip, access to already limited healthcare, education, and other basic services is becoming unattainable. 

Worldwide bosses strike

In their latest bid for imperialist control, the U.S., France and Canada have committed to send in 2,500 troops to try to make the island stable enough for foreign investment. The force will be led by cops from Kenya, who began arriving last June and are notorious for the violent abuse of civilians (BBC, 6/26/2024). Such predators are unfortunately all too familiar to workers in Haiti.  Before and after the 2010 earthquakes, UN “peacekeeping” troops murdered and raped their way through the country. They also brought an epidemic of cholera that killed more than 10,000 workers, on top of the more than 300,000 that died in the earthquake. 

For anyone seeking more evidence that identity politics and nationalism are deadly for the working class, we need to look no further than the Dominican Republic, Haiti’s eastern neighbor. DR is another longtime target of imperialist brutality, notably a U.S. occupation from 1916 to 1924. Racist exploitation of workers there has its own brutal history. Taking a cue from Donald Trump’s fascist playbook, the Dominican bosses are building a wall along the Haitian-Dominican border and using racist terror, including the mass deportation of more than 250,000 Haitians in 2024 alone (CNN 1/2). The photographs of workers trapped in cages as they await their expulsion are graphic evidence that we cannot have a just world without smashing nationalism and borders.

No strangers to resisting capitalist oppression, workers from Haiti are fighting back. Many are building solidarity with one another through mutual aid organizations. In neighborhoods controlled by small gangsters, they have united in groups like Bwa Kale for protection, turning the guns around on known gang members. Local self-defense groups have blockaded neighborhoods to keep out gang activity (Washington Post, 5/18/2023) 

In one sense, the history of Haiti is a chronicle of one group of savage gangsters after the next,  whether French enslavers, U.S. imperialists, local Haitian bosses or the hundreds of street gangs that rule much of the country today. They’ve all sought the same thing: to turn a profit on the sweat and blood of Haitian workers. But the history of Haiti is also a history of fightback, from the great revolt that ended slavery to now. Wherever we can, we should build solidarity and collective struggle with  the courageous workers in Haiti. The working class has no borders, only a common need to rid the world of racist bosses and their bloodsucking profit system. Progressive Labor Party aims to be the force that leads this fight. Join us!

LOS ANGELES, CA, January 12 – As of this writing, multiple fires have been  raging across Los Angeles for the last six days, consuming over 37,000 acres with the two largest and most destructive (the Palisades and Eaton fires) only 11 percent and 15 percent contained, respectively. This is a slight improvement as two days ago they were zero percent contained! Aided by capitalism-created climate change and the near-hurricane speed Santa Ana winds, “It may be the fire equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane,” said a wildfire expert (L.A. Times, 1/11). These fires have displaced over 150,000 people from their homes and killed at least 24 people with others missing. The death toll is likely to climb as searches through the rubble of thousands of destroyed structures begin. 

Climate crises like these will only become more frequent and intense as long as capitalism continues to exist. While the liberal capitalist rulers scramble to put out fires—both literal and metaphorical—caused by their disastrous system, they sacrifice and abandon us. As always, it is our class that steps up to provide rescue and much-needed relief, demonstrating that we are the only ones truly capable and fit to run society..

Under a communist world, led by the Progressive Labor Party, natural disasters would still happen, but with less intensity and frequency; workers would also be much better equipped to deal with the damages. Plans for evacuation will save the lives of elderly and disabled workers and rebuilding will be a collective effort informed by science and environmental safety not capitalist profits and greed.

Bosses’ climate disaster deadly for workers

“Already today, Los Angeles is roughly 3°C warmer than pre-industrial levels—double the global average warming—increasing the risk of hot and dry conditions conducive to wildfires” (CFR, 1/9). The combination of capitalism caused climate change, hyper wet seasons leading to mudslides, then expansive growth of brush followed by back-to-back years of record heat and dryness (summer of 2024 is hottest on record) led to a vicious cycle in L.A. This is then combined with the high intensity Santa Ana winds (a natural event) mixed with the climate change components and these firestorms are the result (NBC4, Los Angeles, 1/10). 

The destruction has been described like war zones, as apocalyptic, and compared alongside other “natural” disasters like the 1994 Northridge Earthquake and also the aftermath of the 1992 uprisings stoked by the fury of Black and Latin workers following the acquittal of the racist kkkops that beat Rodney King. “It looks like Berlin — or it looks like some part of World War II.  Everything is burned down. It is a level of loss a Los Angeles community has not endured in recent memory — if ever — despite earthquakes, fires, floods and civil unrest” (L.A. Times, 1/10).

Although the primary areas directly impacted by the flames are the mainly affluent neighborhoods of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, the working class of Los Angeles will not be spared. Within hours of the fires taking out the wealthy neighborhoods, the winds carried the ashes and polluted air nearly 50 miles from the burn site to areas covering Black and Latin neighborhoods. The smoke contains synthetic materials that can be much more hazardous than those from burning trees or grass (SF Chronicle, 1/9). Additionally, due to the disproportionately high levels of pollution in working class neighborhoods, including exposure to diesel particulate matter at levels twice as high as those in non-working-class neighborhoods, the addition of wildfire smoke exacerbates preexisting conditions compounding the health risks faced by these communities (UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute).

Working class can only rely on itself

Our Party, friends and base are involved in mass organizations and looking for ways to support.  Ironically, some of the same mutual aid groups that were being attacked by the state during the post-George Floyd uprisings and campus occupations in response to the genocide in Gaza, are being called upon for support. The state now has empty water reservoirs, empty or low water pressure hydrants, but instead of organizing all out support is unleashing racist kkkops and National Guard troops on communities out fears of “looting.”

Bosses use their own climate created crises as an excuse for fascism. Former Long Beach chief of police, who defended the kkkop that murdered Cesar Rodriguez by throwing him in front of a moving train on a Metro platform in 2017, is now the top Sheriff for L.A. County.  On Thursday he announced a mandatory curfew from 6 pm to 6 am and “requested support from the California National Guard to assist with traffic control, infrastructure protection and looting deterrence for both the Eaton and Palisades fires” (L.A.  Times 1/9).  

Democratic Party politicians have prioritized funding the racist police state over building the necessary infrastructure to fight wildfires, let alone prevent them from stopping the production of fossil fuels in the state. California boasts one of the largest prison systems and Los Angeles County has the largest jail system in the world. The murderous county sheriffs enjoy a ballooning multibillion-dollar budget and their LAPD counterparts consume more than half the entire city budget. Yet, the fire department recently faced cuts of 2 percent, or nearly $18 million (ABC News, 1/11). 

Racist slave labor forced to fight blazes

These budget cuts have led to a continued reliance on slave labor to put out fires. Our class siblings behind bars, are risking their lives fighting the very fires created by this racist, sexist, capitalist system as nearly “1,000 incarcerated men and women have joined the frontlines in a battle against record-breaking wildfires burning across southern California” (BBC,  1/10.) Additionally, essential water reservoirs were left empty and quickly fire hydrants became empty or with low pressure for firefighters struggling to put out the fires.  A water policy expert from Arizona said, “In the L.A. area, it would have been very expensive to develop additional storage adequate to mitigate or even fight the wildfires in these higher-elevation pressure zones, but right now I’d imagine most people in L.A. would say it would’ve been worth the cost.”  

Capitalism can never solve climate change. Bosses are driven to prioritize profits over people for their survival. So as long as we allow this system to exist, we are signing the death sentence of our class and our planet. Take this article as an urgent call! We need all workers to join Progressive Labor Party so that we can destroy the global system that is murdering our planet. Only under communism will we see an improvement in the health of our earth. Then we can make decisions in the best interest of our class. Smash climate change and the resulting disasters with communist revolution!

On June 3, 1907, Premier Stolypin of the Russian Tsar’s government canceled the reforms that the regime had granted to contain the 1905 Revolution. Stung by the defeat of the armed uprising and betrayed by reformism, the Russian working class fell into several years of relative apathy. 

But the 150 or so underground cadre of the Bolshevik party kept functioning illegally. Revolutionary work never stopped, despite the repression that for months at a time blocked contact with Lenin (in exile after November 1907) or even among Bolshevik committees within Russia.

The Bolsheviks ‘’retreated in good order,’’ as Lenin said. He and the underground Bolsheviks fought off demoralized internal forces  that pushed for an alliance with the sellout Mensheviks, while thousands of others (including almost all of the intellectuals) quit the party. It was their perseverance in illegal revolutionary work, under the most dangerous and discouraging conditions, that set the stage for the dramatic Bolshevik upsurge from 1912 to 1914.

On April 4, 1912, in the Siberian gold fields, the Tsar’s troops shot down 500 workers. This atrocity sparked nationwide political strikes. A half-century later, Leopold Haimson, an anti-communist “expert” at Columbia University, acknowledged “the reception that the workers gave, as the war approached, to Bolshevik as against Menshevik appeals” (Slavic Review. 1964, p. 629). 

After 1905, the Mensheviks’ aim was to become an officially tolerated and open labor party along the lines of the German Social-Democratic Party, the largest of all the parties in the Second International. The Mensheviks led such class-collaborationist labor organizations as the bourgeoisie permitted to exist. 

Like the leaders of the AFL-CIO today, Menshevik leader Julius Martov hoped in 1909 for a more progressive Duma (parliament) to legally “protect” open labor unions. Since the Mensheviks wanted to abandon illegal revolutionary party work, the Bolsheviks called them “Liquidators” -- a label the Mensheviks accepted.

When the strike wave hit, the Mensheviks tried to hold it back. As the business journal Russian Review noted in 1913, “The Mensheviki point out the harmfulness of mere disorderly and inconsiderate striking” -- the bosses’ term for political strikes -- “but the movement continued its plunging, incalculable way.” 

The working class rallied to the one and only force that had never yielded its opposition to capitalism: the Bolsheviks. Thousands of workers joined. Even the Menshevik lzgoev admitted that Pravda’s impact on the St. Petersburg working class in 1912 and 1913 was a “most impressive sight.” 

The Mensheviks were driven from all positions of influence. In the fall of 1912 “Bolshevik candidates won in six of nine labor curiae (constituencies) in Russia, including all six of the labor curiae in the major industrial provinces” (Haimson, p. 630). They replaced Mensheviks in the Metalworkers’ Union, the workers’ insurance councils, by 1914, even in the “labor aristocracy,” the Petersburg Printers’ Union. 

By July 1914, the Bolsheviks a significant majority of the governing boards of the trade unions in St. Petersburg and Moscow. At “a meeting of the Menshevik faction in the Duma, in late January, 1914, the Georgian deputy, Chkhenkeli, observed in an equally catastrophic vein that the Mensheviks appeared to be losing all of their influence, all of their ties, among the workers” (Haimson, Slavic Review, December 1964, p. 632).
Menshevik writers themselves admitted defeat. “Menshevism caught on too late to the reviving danger of Leninism,” wrote Martov in November 1912, “and overestimated the significance of its temporary wholesale disappearance.” As Bulkin, a Menshevik mis-leader of the Metalworkers Union said after being unseated: 

Led by the Bolsheviks, the masses have chased the Liquidators, these valuable workers, out of all leading institutions … The experienced pilots of the labor movements have been replaced by ones who are inexperienced, but close in spirit to the masses . .. Bolshevism ... has found its support in the masses’ state of mind.

Unlike 1905, when the Mensheviks controlled the Soviet there, St. Petersburg (later Leningrad, now St. Petersburg again after the fall of the Soviet Union) was now the center for militancy. This was “undoubtedly in part,” concludes Haimson, “because of the Petersburg workers’ great exposure to Bolshevik propaganda and agitation,” and “a long-standing exposure to revolutionary and specifically Bolshevik indoctrination” (p. 637).

The Bolsheviks’ illegal work permitted them to continue. Police informers did succeed in penetrating their highest ranks. In July 1914, one Bolshevik Duma (parliament) delegate and three of the seven members of the Petersburg City Committee were cops. Dozens of arrests swept away leading cadres. “Yet even under these conditions the Bolshevik Party apparatus managed to survive, to retain some old and recruit some new members” (p. 637). 

Lenin fought the ever-present opportunist tendency to neglect illegal work. As quoted by a secret police report, Lenin said: 
Our victory, i.e., the victory of revolutionary Marxism, is great ... But this victory has its limits ... If we want to hold our positions and not allow the strengthening labor movement to escape the party’s sway ... we must strengthen, come what may, our underground organizations. We can give up a portion of the work in the State Duma which we have conducted so successfully to date, but it is imperative that we put to right the work outside the Duma.

In July 1914, the Bolsheviks called for a nationwide general strike. On July 9, rank-and-file Bolshevik workers insisted it was time ‘’finally and without delay to issue a call to go over to an armed uprising …” Their leaflet ended: “Our motto is -- hail the relentless struggle against the government and the capitalists! Down with capital! Comrades, get ready! Hail socialism!” A week of armed struggle ensued before the uprising was put down. 

According to the anticommunist Leopold Haimson, even if  World War I, which began two weeks later, had not further weakened the tsar’s monarchy, a Bolshevik-led socialist revolution was likely.(Slavic Review, March 1965, p. 1).
Next: The culminating upsurge of 1917.