The all-Black leading actors who are cast in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, now playing on Broadway in New York City, pay tremendous homage to a well-known play by pro-communist writer Arthur Miller. It’s about the deep alienation that results from the commodification of not only human labor but also human ideals and potential. But this production inevitably feeds into the current trend in bourgeois capitalist culture–on television, in media and in film and theater–of presenting Black  workers in fundamentally pro-capitalist spaces as “progressive,” when, in fact, the primary function of such representation feeds the illusion that material conditions for the masses are improved by virtue of some stars “making it.”  Notably, the current Broadway play continues the laudable effort on the part of Arthur Miller to present his “profit is evil, profit is wrong” assertion as a universal predicament for all workers regardless of race or ethnicity.  Still, the fundamental weakness in the play, overall and this rendition, in particular is that the “race blind” critique of capitalist alienation–partially challenged by positioning Black actors at the helm of this current production–continues to undermine the very commitment to portraying the truth about how racism and sexism are pillars of capitalist exploitation.

Make no mistake, Arthur Miller, in spite of his liberal tendencies, was no traitor of the communist movement. In 1956 when he was called into the House  Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the judicial arm of the bosses’ post-World War II vicious anti-communist political attack on the working class, Miller refused to name names–though surely he had many–risking even jail time to uphold his principles of workers’ justice.  

While figures such as Paul Robeson (see page 8) used theater in the twentieth century as a mechanism for invoking the power of internationalist proletarian culture, the general fact is that Broadway culture–on and off Broadway–is in many ways inaccessible for most workers, especially in times of stifling inflation such as exist today.  Just this past summer, young comrades in our Progressive Labor Party staged a short but powerful skit in the community outside of a public housing complex where one of our comrades resides, using this skit to shed light on the substandard conditions inflicted upon workers, inspiring many in the crowd to then participate in a CHALLENGE distribution in that same housing complex. It is this kind of art–theater as practice for workers’ empowerment–that our class must support, create, and use in the effort to overturn capitalist inequality and build a world in which commodity production and the alienation it produces–such as that embodied by the tragic character of Willie Loman–no longer exists.

U.S. prepares plans for world war
Foreign Affairs, 10/27–In its recent National Security Strategy, the White House wrote that “the [People’s Republic of China] and Russia are increasingly aligned with each other,”...the conflict in Ukraine is likely to be protracted…Chinese leader Xi Jinping…could try to seize Taiwan as the war in Ukraine rages on…China’s expanding interests and global footprint suggest that a war with Beijing would not be confined neatly to Taiwan and the western Pacific but instead stretch across multiple theaters, from the Indian Ocean to the United States itself.

A war with China could easily spill from east Asia into the Indian Ocean, which connects China with its sources of energy in the Middle East, and even to the Persian Gulf…even if things go well for Washington, and a Chinese missile campaign or amphibious invasion ends in failure, Beijing would likely fight on…But the presence of nuclear arsenals would also significantly raise the stakes of escalation. It’s not impossible that the war could produce the world’s first nuclear attacks since 1945.

Flooding in Pakistan is worse than terrible
Al Jazeera, 10/28–The catastrophic floods in Pakistan have pushed the country to the brink. These floods follow the COVID-19 pandemic, rising inflation and the most severe heatwave the country has faced in more than 60 years. When he visited in September, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said he had “never seen climate carnage on such scale”.

Across 81 districts, a total of 78,000 sq km (30,000 sq miles) of farmland were flooded. That’s an area bigger than the entire Czech Republic. More than 80 percent of crops across the country were damaged, according to the government. Thousands of hectares of standing food crops like rice, onions, tomatoes and other vegetables have been destroyed. More than 6,000km (3,728 miles) of roads and bridges have been damaged, causing significant disruptions to the transport of the food that has survived.

U.N. mulls invading Haiti again
NPR, 10/21–The United Nations Security Council is considering an international intervention in Haiti to open up aid corridors and resolve what the U.N. secretary-general calls "an absolutely nightmarish situation." Armed gangs have blocked the main fuel terminal in the capital since last month and severed access to aid routes…Nearly half the population faces acute hunger. And now the country faces an outbreak of cholera.

In response to this spiraling crisis, [Prime Minister Ariel] Henry has asked the international community to intervene with a "specialized armed force." But the request has been met with horror by many in Haiti, who are more than familiar with the checkered history of foreign intervention and occupation…U.N. peacekeepers brought cholera to the island over a decade ago, causing an outbreak that killed thousands of people.

Many in the U.S. are also wary of Washington's history of occupation and intervention in the Caribbean nation. In 1915, the U.S. invaded Haiti and occupied it for nearly two decades …but it left behind chaos. Then in Operation "Uphold Democracy" in 1994, President Bill Clinton sent in more than 20,000 troops to restore ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.

New York politicians call in troops to deal with overflowing shelters
NY Post, 10/27–National Guard members are being deployed to New York City’s homeless shelters to help assist the overwhelmed facilities that are also housing migrants…The city shelter deployment came after Gov. Kathy Hochul mobilized 100 National Guard troops for deployment earlier this month to “provide logistical and operational support” to the city’s controversial migrant tent city on Randall’s Island.

The city Department of Homeless Services’ hit a new occupancy record this month, with 62,174 people living in shelters as asylum-seeking migrants continue to arrive from the southern border. The surge in migrants to the Big Apple forced Mayor Adams to declare a state of emergency and predicted it would cost $1 billion to house and provide social services for the nearly 20,000 new arrivals.

Worker to worker: Rodwell-Spivey organizing continues
      Last month, a group of comrades in Newark, NJ canvassed with Monique Rodwell, the mother of the Rodwell-Spivey brothers, in front of Save-A-Lot, a grocery store on Springfield Ave, (a street that was the site of the ‘67 Newark Rebellion) where we spoke to people and asked them to sign petitions. It was fantastic; we reached out to a lot of people. We got feedback about racial profiling and housing issues. Most of the residents were vocal about politicians who only came around when it was election time. When asked if they thought things were different since the election of Newark’s mayor, they all said nothing has changed. If anything, things have gotten worse.

We need more unity. I think that we should address certain issues differently. Communication is a must. People will feel more comfortable talking to people who are going through the same struggles and come from the same neighborhoods, because they feel like that person can relate.  And there are too many organizations, too many egos and not enough working together. We have to put aside personal differences;it’s about community.

Those who signed the petition need to get together soon.

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Build bonds with co-workers
Organizing in the Transit Workers Union (TWU) as a Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) worker has been challenging. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members try to learn as much as we can about our contractual rights within our union and within the bosses’ company so we can share that info with the rest of the workers. It creates that revolutionary potential when workers learn the limitations this system offers, paving a way to more fight back.

Many workers, myself included, are isolated and get bombarded with ideas and historical events of workers’ fightback not amounting to much, especially in recent fightbacks, like for George Floyd. But even when they do report our fightback stories the ruling class dilutes them of their militancy and lies about their effectiveness. They also remove any communist influence, birthing cynicism. Workers don’t know what we don't see. So it’s our job to read and share this paper that is filled with our victories and strengths.

This is where our strength comes from and without it any one of us can be prone to idealist ideology, like it’s enough to have a union that fights some of the time or Biden is “better.” Our co-workers don’t show up to meetings because the union misleaders don’t want them to. They don’t want the workers to bear witness to their limits.

Going to our union meetings where the leadership blames the workers for our problems is like meeting with vampires. It has taken a toll on me. The bosses’ influence translates into not trusting my coworkers with a communist newspaper. But I’m overcoming that influence as now I am willing to trust someone. I …am …… willing to trust someone. The bosses’ message is a lie. The answer is clear; we must be bold and confident in our line. As I have made bonds with many workers, now I see it was my own anticommunism all along. Time to remove that and practice trusting myself with my coworkers with communist ideas. Communist-led fight back has potential in transit. It’s the only way it has worked and continues to work; by trusting the working class. I don’t expect coworkers to join right away but I’m ready to show them the door. Soon, I’m sure to my surprise one (or more) will walk through it.
                
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Fighting bosses’ barriers against booster shot
This past week I tried to get my Covid-19 and flu booster from Walgreens. I heard by way of my nonprofit job that bosses at Walgreens recently made a partnership with DoorDash and UberHealth bosses to deliver Paxlovid, a Covid-19 antiviral in pill form for workers suffering from the virus. The week leading up to the Walgreens visit, I noticed in almost every interaction that I had with friends and comrades that someone had a cough or a tickle in their throat, or excess phlegm. I figured it was as good a time as any to get fierce about boosting my immune system. In the Walgreens near my home in Jersey City, one of the most expensive and quickly gentrifying cities in the U.S., there were tons of visibly sick people waiting at the pharmacy, and each was maskless; leaving them and us vulnerable. The place was not that clean, and the longer we waited, the more the store filled with coughs and lines of people. What I also noticed was that there weren’t many workers running the place - pharmacists or cashiers. I tried my best to be patient and wait, but as we neared closer to closing time, things looked bleak.

I left and tried to look up other, maybe better Walgreens that I could find based on Google reviews. Each review told an experience similar to the one that I just went through. I found a small, less mainstream pharmacy in a wealthier small town nearby. I noticed it was run by a family from India. Although the place was clean, well stocked and they made the process of getting vaccinated easy, the two people running the pharmacy had an on-edge method to keep the lines shorter, and a kid was stocking the shelves. Even the most well-intentioned people that start and run businesses still have to participate in exploitation. Walgreens, Uber and DoorDash are some of the wealthiest businesses in the U.S. They make their profits by also being the most exploitative. To smash exploitation and this whole racist, sexist system, we as working people need to fight for a full-fledged communist revolution. Only with masses of working people working together across borders to smash this system and build communism can we have a fighting chance for healthy generations to follow us and a healthy planet they can live on.

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Radiation, harmful only at high doses
The CHALLENGE article “Imperialism poisons workers with radiation” (10/19) rightly points out the U.S. bosses care nothing about our health. However, the article errs by highlighting radioactivity in general as the main cause of health problems from Superfund sites.

These toxic dumpsites, often located in Black and Latin communities, are primarily dumping grounds for often cancer-causing, but not radioactive, waste. The article also states  “[p]lutonium is the most-deadly.” Wrong. Radioactivity is generally harmless except at very high doses.

Radioactive isotopes are used both to treat and diagnose diseases such as iodine (I-131), which is used to treat thyroid diseases. I-131 is far more toxic than plutonium, but the doses used are below the threshold for harm. I-131 was the main worry in the aftermath of Chernobyl and Fukushima but estimated doses to the thyroid from those events were a tiny fraction of doses used in nuclear medicine to save lives.

All agents have thresholds that separate “too little” from “just right” from “too much.” What matters is the dose and rate of delivery. When used in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, plutonium was hazardous.

We live on a radioactive planet. We are all radioactive. Without radiation, we would fail to develop immune systems. Radiation is a necessary nutrient in low doses, and those doses are within the same range as the exposures from radioactive Superfund sites.

A study of twenty-six Manhattan Project workers accidentally received “significant doses” (see Gwyneth Cravens’s The Truth About Nuclear Energy). These workers were studied since 1951. Their cancer and death rates are the same as the average male population. Fifty years later, most were in good health.
Let’s learn more about radiation’s effects on health at various doses. Capitalism destroys lives with pollution, imperialist war, racism, and exploitation. We need to focus on that as we build towards communism.
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As the military conflict in Ukraine escalates, it shows just how unstable the world situation is today. With U.S. imperialists deeply divided and in steep decline, Western Europe in political chaos, Russian imperialists aligning with U.S. arch-rival China, and both rulers and workers beset by the latest international crisis of capitalism, competing bosses are speeding toward full-blown fascism and World War III.

Over the last two weeks alone, Ukraine’s nazi-laden military—propped up by the U.S. and European Union—blasted a critical Russian supply line in Crimea and shelled the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk. Russia retaliated with strikes on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, using cruise missiles and drones supplied by Iran, another U.S. arch-enemy. Thirty percent of Ukraine’s power stations were destroyed, and workers and children were killed on both sides. More than six thousand civilians have died since the war began in February (statista.com). Tens of thousands more face forcible dislocation as Russia imposes martial law on disputed territories. 

No matter which imperialist ultimately wins, workers will ALWAYS lose in the bosses’ wars–unless we organize and turn them into wars for communist revolution. Only when the international working class is won over to communism, a society run by and for workers, can we end the bosses’ genocidal imperialist wars for good.

As U.S. and Europe decay, WWIII inches closer
Although the European Union (EU) has joined the U.S. in passing anti-Russia sanctions, its dependence on Russian oil and gas has constrained how far it can go. “This consumption pattern has put the bloc in an extremely awkward position as the Kremlin continues its military aggression in Ukraine while it profits from sky-high energy prices” (Euronews, 3/5). While the sanctions’ impact on Russia has been limited (cnn.com, 9/16), inflation and high energy prices are battering the U.S. and EU economies. Britain, the most reliable U.S. ally, is in an out-of-control spiral of inflation and recession (BBC, 10/12).

The old liberal world order is in shambles. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the U.S.-led military alliance formed in 1949 to counter the Soviet Union, is growing unwieldy and weaker by the minute. From Italy to Sweden to Spain, openly fascist parties are taking or sharing power or surging in popularity. In France, with the liberal fascist government rocked by a general strike, the rising nazi National Rally party is calling for an end to sanctions against Russia and has slowed the flow of French weaponry to Ukraine (Al Mayadeen, 9/18). In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz “ is facing political backlash from opposition parties and members of his own coalition over the question of sending heavier military equipment” (foreignpolicy.com, 9/27).

Meanwhile, Russia has deepened its ties with China, the main threat to U.S. imperialist dominance: “[T]otal goods traded between China and Russia surged 31 percent to $117 billion during the first eight months of 2022 compared to the same period last year” (foreignpolicy.com, 10/22).

The powerful BRICS coalition (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), with 40 percent of the world’s population, has effectively backed Russia by staying neutral on Ukraine. India abstained from a United Nations Security Council vote to condemn Russia’s invasion (Washington Post, 10/10). Led by Saudi Arabia, the oil-exporting coalition of OPEC Plus—which includes Russia and Iran—undermined U.S./NATO sanctions against Russia by agreeing to a production cut that will bolster Russia’s revenues (Foreign Affairs, September/October 2022).

Imperialists’ weakness and volatility
Russia’s rulers have their share of weaknesses: a relatively small GDP (11th in the world), stagnant growth, and a heavy reliance on petroleum in a world that is slowly but surely reducing its dependence on fossil fuels (Georank.org, 2022). But like their counterparts in China, the Russian bosses have one big advantage over their rivals in the U.S. They are significantly closer to full-blown fascism, with a more united and disciplined capitalist ruling class that can maneuver more quickly and efficiently.

Although Russia has lost ground on Ukraine battlefields of late, the U.S. bosses have more fundamental problems. They are facing a sharp decline in military recruiting, and with “China and Russia challenging U.S. leadership globally, the lack of qualified recruits could become a fundamental national security handicap” (bgov.com, 9/21). While Putin’s recent military draft has been internally attacked and resisted, it’s difficult to imagine how stumbling President Joe Biden and a fractured U.S. ruling class could even try to pull one off.

The U.S. Big Fascists of multinational finance capital, represented by the Democratic Party, have stayed unified to this point in sending tens of billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine. But their hands may soon be tied by the “America First” Small Fascists—including a crop of anti-interventionist military veterans—who have hijacked the Republican Party. (See glossary, page 6) With the Republicans strongly favored to retake control of the House of Representatives in the November elections, the party’s second- and third-ranking leaders “wouldn’t commit to… keeping the aid flowing”” (Defense News, 9/16). House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made his intentions clear: “I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it” (Washington Post, 10/18).

Turn the guns around!
As three nuclear imperialist powers lock horns over who will control the world’s resources,  they represent extreme danger and mass death for the working class worldwide. We cannot be fooled into picking a side in the bosses’ dogfights for supremacy. Workers in Russia are showing the potential for rejecting the bosses’ lethal nationalism. More than 200,000 have fled the country to avoid conscription into the military (msn.com, 9/28). Thousands of workers in 32 cities took to the streets against Putin’s draft, despite brutal police violence and the threat of prison time for breaking Russia’s anti-protest laws (The Guardian, 9/21).

The working class has a long and courageous history of fighting back In 1905, sailors led by communists on the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled and killed the ship's officers. They sailed to Odessa, where a mass insurrection and strikes against the Russian bosses were in full force. When Czarist battleships were sent to intercept the rebels, their sailors refused to fire. The rebels escaped and sank the Potemkin to keep it out of the bosses’ murderous hands. Many of those sailors later helped build the Bolshevik movement that led the working class of Russia to power in 1917.

In 1972, Black sailors aboard the USS Kitty Hawk rebelled against racist attacks and the Vietnam War. According to the historian H. Bruce Franklin, the fightback grew out of “a coherent antiwar movement called SOS (Stop Our Ships/Support Our Sailors) that emerged on three of the gigantic aircraft carriers crucial to the Tonkin Gulf Strategy.” For two days, as Black workers fought with sailors loyal to the U.S. Navy, the ship was unable to launch its planes to attack North Vietnam. After more fighting broke out on the Kitty Hawk's oiler, the USS Hassayampa, the Kitty Hawk was forced to retire to California, “where it underwent a ‘six-month refitting job.’ The sailors’ movement had thus removed this major aircraft carrier from the war.” Several other carriers were sabotaged or set on fire, with thousands of crew members signing antiwar petitions, publishing onboard antiwar newspapers, and jumping ship to avoid service in the Vietnam genocide.

We must learn from the past. The power of the working class lies in refusing to fight for any group of fascist bosses. Only an organized, international working class, won to communist ideas, can smash the imperialists’ wars once and for all. Join us!