- Information
The 500th Fight for West—No Justice under kkkapitalim
- Information
- 04 March 2023 258 hits
BALTIMORE, February 22—For the 500th time, we decried racism. A successful protest caravan, stretching 22 vehicles long, boldly wound through the city’s streets. The demand was accountability for the police murder of Tyrone West, and for all victims of police brutality. Tyrone’s life was stolen in July of 2013 by 17 racist cops, in the same way George Floyd and Tyre Nichols were murdered by capitalist thugs in blue. These 500 protests prove there is no justice under this capitalist system. As we demand accountability, we must also organize the fight for a world run by the working class - that’s communism.
Importance of a long-range outlook
Every Wednesday, for nine-and-a-half years, without fail, a street rally or a livestream event has been organized as a central part of carrying on this struggle.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has done its best to help strengthen this important anti-racist work. And PLP has simultaneously strived to share its vision of the future, a communist world with no more racism of any type, and no more police brutality.
Seven Party members from the DC area also participated in the caravan, adding strength and additional logistical capability that proved particularly helpful after the lead car was disabled.
New generation of fighters
A young comrade, who has made regular contributions to West Wednesday for some years, spoke at the final rally. He began, “No more police terrorism! I’m a member of the Progressive Labor Party, and my belief is in a revolutionary society where we go beyond this system.”
He went on to say the purpose of police under capitalism is to divide us racially, create fear, and suppress the whole working class. He ended with words that earned applause: “It’s good that we’ve come together as a…multiracial coalition.” Another young PL’er from DC also spoke, sharing that only with revolution can we end police terror.
Some tears and some comfort
The night before the caravan, at the final planning meeting, one topic was how everyone felt after so many years of struggle. A member of Tyrone’s family became tearful, talking about all of these 500 weeks, while Tyrone’s main killers remain on the police force, with promotions. But she also spoke about how vital the support has been for her, and about specific contributions by particular freedom fighters in the West Coalition.
In the case of a PLP member, she said he has given her comfort that helps when things are rough, based on an understanding he has shared that there is always a solution.
When it was this comrade’s turn to speak, he explained that dialectical materialism (the philosophy at the heart of communism) teaches that all things exist in paired opposites. Therefore, the existence of a problem implies the existence of its solution. Or, to put it another way, history poses no problem for which the solution doesn’t already exist. It was one of those moments when the positive role of communists, in an anti-racist mass movement, was clear, helpful, and heart-warming.
Working women leaders in the movement
During this evening’s caravan, Tyrone’s sister stood tall through a moonroof, speaking and chanting powerfully to everyone in the long train of vehicles and to passersby.
Things were well-organized, with the front and rear cars in steady communication. Flyers had been prepared for handing out at mini-rallies along the route.
However, before even reaching the site of the first mini-rally, the lead car, with flashers on, made the route’s planned turn onto a major street. That lead car was suddenly and severely rear-ended – and probably totaled – by a driver who turned, much too fast, onto the same street, from a different direction. The speeding driver may have been careless and distracted, or sent by police.
Three people were in the caravan’s lead car. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt, but their car was forcefully thrust off the street, across a sidewalk, and onto a home’s front yard, barely missing a major collision with a large tree.
Led by the women in the West Coalition, the caravan stayed in place, allowing time to deal with the situation. Then they re-organized a new lead car and rear car. Considering the time that had been lost, they wisely led the caravan directly to the final rally at City Hall.
Other volunteers had previously set up a huge grill at City Hall so that, after the final rally, delicious hot meals were ready for everyone. In addition, twenty-eight people took copies of CHALLENGE.
It was clear that racism is the weak spot of capitalism. Just like when the horrific murder of George Floyd sparked twenty million people to hit the streets for months of forceful protest, the horrors of racism, including the horrendous murder of Tyrone West, continually lead to mass movements within which new leaders step forward. The future is bright. Never give up in the fight for communism!
Millions of workers have been devastated by earthquakes in Turkey and Syria and a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio–and most of all, by capitalism. These tragic events were not “natural” disasters or accidents. Corrupt building practices and neglected infrastructure are part and parcel of a system that’s based on the ruthless drive for maximum profit.
On February 6, the mass collapse of flimsy buildings in Turkey and Syria killed 50,000 workers and displaced millions. Three days earlier, an oversized Norfolk Southern train with inadequate brakes burst into flames. Fifty cars derailed, spewing toxic chemicals into the air, killing thousands of fish in nearby waterways and potentially contaminating the area’s drinking water (Newsweek, 2/17).
As imperialist rulers hoard resources to prepare for their next global conflict, more corners will be cut at the expense of workers’ health and safety. To get workers to passively accept these disasters and then agree to fight in World War III, the capitalist bosses will need increasing fascist repression. ‘Lesser evilism,” the idea that some bosses are less racist, less sexist, or less profit-driven than others, will be a literal “dead end.”.
Under the leadership of Progressive Labor Party, the international working class must turn the guns around and seize state power. Only then can we guarantee that the construction industry, the railroads, the chemical plants, and the water treatment facilities serve workers’ needs. The only solution is communist revolution!
Turkey’s bosses: profits over workers
Instead of going all out to save and help workers after the earthquakes, the Turkish ruling class went all out to prepare for their regional oil wars with neighboring bosses in Syria and Iraq. Because of decades of racist displacement by the Turkish rulers, the Kurdish and Syrian populations were hardest hit by the disaster. Predictably, Turkish President Recep Erdogan dodged all responsibility: “What happens, happens, this is part of fate’s plan” (The Guardian, 2/09). Days later, Turkey resumed its bombing of Kurdish forces in Syria and resumed its pursuit of a $20 billion deal for F-16 fighter jets from the U.S. (Associated Press, 2/20). As the U.S. bosses square off against Russian imperialism in their proxy war in Ukraine, they’re doing all they can to strengthen NATO and consolidate its relationship with the Turkish ruling class. But Turkey has become an unreliable regional ally, as evidenced by its purchase of $2.5 billion in Russian missiles in 2017.
Like all capitalist rulers, Turkey’s bosses have long placed profits over people. To deflect the masses’ rage after a previous earthquake killed over 18,000 people due to faulty construction, Erdoğan promised tighter building safety codes. But in 2019, he boasted of granting zoning “amnesties” to contractors, 40,000 of them in the hard-hit city of Gaziantep alone (NPA Syria, 2/23). Warnings from disaster specialists were ignored (Birgun, 2/06). After the most recent earthquakes, Erdoğan’s regime moved quickly to funneling relief efforts into the corrupt Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, which is notorious for rewarding patronage jobs to Erdogan supporters.
U.S. infrastructure strategy a train wreck
President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Plan focused on the U.S. infrastructure crisis over helping workers survive the bosses’ latest economic crisis. As the U.S. rulers drive toward more full-blown fascism, they are calling for workers’ “sacrifice” and funneling more resources toward war preparations.One big problem for the bosses is the lack of discipline within their own class, including the railroad bosses. A core principle of Precision Scheduled Railroading, the operating standard for major railways in the U.S. is to eliminate “unnecessary” costs. In practice, this translates to fewer workers per train line, fewer safety measures, and less inspection time. Fronting for the dominant finance capital wing of the U.S. ruling class, Biden is squeezed between the railroad bosses’ push for maximum short-term profits and the rulers’ broader need for reliable transportation infrastructure for the coming global war, most likely with China. Regardless of how the bosses’ internal struggle plays out, workers stand to lose. Last December, cheered on by union misleaders, Biden signed legislation designed to kill a potential strike of over 100,000 railroad workers (CNBC, 12/12/22). Once again, we saw that workers’ allegiance to liberal capitalist politicians leads only to the betrayal of our own class interestsThe only thing that can save us from the rot of capitalism and the bloodbath of imperialist war is to fight back against all bosses and to build PLP.
A related example: Every two days, the bosses’ chemical companies have accidents. When workers fail to fight back, it’s more profitable for the capitalists to absorb the cost of these accidents than to pay for rigorous safety measures (CNN, 2/22). The bosses at Norfolk Southern are well aware that their accident rate has increased each of the last four years (NS Corp, 1/25). From 2016 to 2021, there were 13,000 violations relating to hazardous materials, or triple the number in the previous five years–a clear reflection of weak federal oversight (NYT 2/17). With over 12,000 chemical facilities across the country, many nearby residents have reason to live in fear. The predominantly white working class population of East Palestine and the surrounding area have been, systematically segregated from their Black and Latin class sisters and brothers. They are chronically unemployed, under-employed, and underpaid. Capitalism’s racist system hurts the entire working class.
For safety, workers need communist revolution
Over and again, we see workers saving workers. In Pakistan, workers risked their lives by wading through toxic, deadly flood waters to distribute vital donations. In Haiti, workers are funding and running community kitchens, and providing clothing and shelter for striking garment workers.. In Turkey and Syria, thousands of workers and youth are breaking through the border to help other workers after the earthquakes.All of these efforts are courageous and essential. But ultimately, they will be futile if we fail to understand that we can save ourselves and our class only by smashing capitalism, the root of all these problems.
Earthquakes will keep happening under communism. But when the working class gains state power, and enforces strict rules for development and building safety, the human toll of these disasters will be far less. Transportation accidents will also occur under communism, though there will surely be fewer of them when workers are empowered to oversee the production and maintenance of these systems. When the means of production are owned by and for the working class, rather than by private individuals and corporations, a strong and resilient infrastructure will be viewed as a social necessity. By working together and sharing resources, liberated from the divisions of private property and wage slavery, workers will create a safer, freer world. Join us! Build Progressive Labor Party!
This is part one of a three-part series. This article is a republication and originally appeared in CHALLENGE in February 2021. The history here is worth reprinting, revisiting, and relearning every year.
Langston Hughes was the premier 20th-century poet for the U.S. working class, and particularly for Black workers. He spoke to their dreams of a world without racism and the harsh realities of Jim Crow and pervasive segregation. Born in 1901 in Joplin, Missouri, and raised in the Midwest, Hughes spent his early 20s attending colleges, working on ships, and traveling through West Africa and Europe. He became one of the leading artists of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, when writers, musicians, painters, sculptors, actors, historians, sociologists, and organizers made Harlem a dynamic center for culture and politics. Even the Depression of the 1930s could not dampen this creative environment for Black artists, thinkers, and organizers.
The 1930s was also the decade when many well-known artists embraced communist ideas in their quest to end the racist inequalities of capitalism. In 1932, Hughes went to the Soviet Union with a group of Black artists and filmmakers to create a film about Black life and racism in the U.S. South (The project was canceled after Franklin Roosevelt recognized the USSR). Later Hughes traveled to Spain for the Baltimore Afro-American, a weekly newspaper, to cover the anti-fascist struggle in the Spanish Civil War. This was the period of his most radical poetry, much of it submitted to New Masses, a weekly edited by members of the Communist Party USA (CP). One of his most famous was “Good Morning Revolution,” which Hughes wrote in 1932. It openly calls for a society run by and for the working class. Here are some excerpts:
Good-morning, Revolution:
You’re the very best friend
I ever had
We gonna pal around together from now on.
…
Listen, Revolution,
We’re buddies, see –
Together,
We can take everything:
Factories, arsenals, houses, ships,
Railroads, forests, fields, orchards,
Bus lines, telegraphs, radios,
(Jesus! Raise hell with radios!)
Steel mills, coal mines, oil wells, gas,
All the tools of production,
(Great day in the morning!)
Everything –
And turn ‘em over to the people who work.
Rule and run ‘em for us people who work.
Fighting Jim Crow and police murder
The political ground shifted in the 1940s, as the CP focused less on communist revolution and more on building an anti-fascist united front to defeat Germany in World War II. Black workers and communists advanced the “Double V” goal—victory against the fascists in Europe and victory against segregation at home. In 1942, Hughes was hired by the Chicago Defender, another prominent Black newspaper. His columns attacked the racist abuse of Black soldiers stationed in the South, which Hughes compared to Nazi Germany. In a February 26, 1944 column, Hughes described a Black soldier just returned to the U.S. from fighting overseas. The soldier suffered from “Jim Crow shock, too much discrimination—segregation-fatigue which, to a sensitive Negro, can be just as damaging as days of
heavy air bombardment.” In August 1943, when a Black soldier was shot and wounded by a cop after a fracas at the Braddock Hotel at West 126th Street, the rumor spread that the soldier had been killed. In the ensuing rebellion, stores were looted and property damage was estimated at up to $5 million. Six thousand National Guardsmen were called in and over six hundred people were arrested. (See Dominic J. Capeci, Jr., The Harlem Riot of 1943, Philadelphia: 1977.)
To Hughes, the politics of the incident were clear. In his August 14, 1943, Chicago Defender column addressed to “White Shopkeepers Who Own Stores in Negro Neighborhoods,” Hughes wrote: “The damage to your stores is primarily a protest against the whole rotten system of Jim Crow ghettos, Jim Crow cars, and Jim Crow treatment of Negro soldiers. But, you say, you are not responsible for those Jim Crow conditions. Why should your windows be broken? They shouldn’t. I am sorry they are. But I can tell you WHY they are broken.” Hughes goes on to cite Black workers’ grievances, from racist unemployment to price gouging and substandard housing. He ends by observing: “I do not believe in mob violence as a solution for social problems. But I do understand what it is that makes many young people in Negro neighborhoods an easy prey to that desperate desire born of frustration—to which you contribute—to hurl a brick through a window.”
In his book-length poem suite, Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951), Hughes included the poem “Harlem,” which expresses visceral sensations of pent-up rage:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore----
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over ----
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Writing and Fighting anti-communist opppression
In the late 1940s, as the U.S. capitalist rulers vied for world supremacy against the socialist Soviet Union, the bosses’ federal government led the charge to investigate and harass members of the Communist Party USA. In January 1949, twelve CPUSA leaders, including Black New York City Councilman Benjamin Davis Jr., went on trial for violating the Smith Act by “advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.” Though Hughes never officially joined the CPUSA, his communist sympathies were clear. The FBI placed him under surveillance. Writing in the Chicago Defender, February 5, 1949, he declared that the trial was
the most important thing happening in America today . . . because it is your trial—all who question the status quo—who question things as they are—all poor people, Negroes, Jews, un-white Americans, un-rich Americans are on trial. . . . They are being tried because they say it is wrong for anybody—Mexicans, Negroes, Chinese, Japanese, Jews, Armenians—to be segregated in America; because they say it is wrong for anybody to make millions of dollars from any business while the workers in that business do not make enough to save a few hundred dollars to live on when they get old and broken down and unable to work anymore; they are being tried because they do not believe in wars that kill millions of young men and make millions of dollars for those who already have millions of dollars; they are being tried because they believe it is better in peace time to build schools, hospitals, and public power projects than to build warplanes and battleships.
By the 1950s, the bosses’ blacklisting and FBI harassment led many communists and leftists to retreat from open activism. But Hughes kept writing for the Chicago Defender until 1962. His bold and lyrical poetry, notably the two poems of One-Way Ticket (1951) that address lynchings in the South, live on as an inspiration to all who struggle against racism and for the international working class.
The group included a number of students and faculty from Manhattan College who are excited to be working more closely with us. Others came from our Racial Justice coalition. We aimed our poster at the cop station, chanted loudly, and then shared accounts of other racist murders like Deborah Danner and Ramarley Graham. The action was covered by TV12 and we were interviewed by a local paper. We vowed to keep up the fight and to keep the pressure up on our local cops to make them back off their racist policing.
Oppose Biden’s eugenic covid policies
The Biden Administration announced it will end the emergency provisions for Covid-19 on May 11, 2023. This has ominous implications for millions of people in the U.S. It means an end to free medications like Paxlovid, which will now cost $100-130 per dose, masks, and tests. An end to expanded Medicaid will leave millions uninsured. An end to access to food stamps for millions and an end to eviction prevention funds will increase hunger and homelessness. Medicare funded telehealth for seniors will end in 2024. This will imperil more people with Covid-19 especially as the more communicable variants of the virus arise.
At this date, 400 people are dying each day as people surrender their masks and have inadequate ventilation. Why? The capitalists are eager to get people back to the workplace to keep their crisis ridden system afloat.
Once again capitalism reveals its disgustingly racist and sexist disregard for, poor, Black, brown, disabled, elderly, retired, and indigenous workers.
Once you’re too old or sick to work and are not producing profit, you’re worthless and marginalized. Public health activists around the U.S. are circulating this petition and writing articles to alert the public. Please share this petition with your friends and organizations: “Oppose Ending the National and Public Health Emergency Declarations; https://tinyurl.com/prwuzf2s. And join the Progressive Labor Party to end the rule of the rich.
*****
My first MTA union meeting
In January, I attended the TWU Local 100 mass membership meeting for New York CIty Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) workers. This was our first such meeting since the Covid-19 pandemic; it was my first ever. With our contract being up in May, many of my colleagues were no doubt looking to the union heads to show strong leadership in our imminent fight against management.
But, of course, the meeting instead exemplified how much in bed Local 100 is with the racist MTA bosses.
After the meeting’s initial meet and greet with separate departments, we were directed to a larger hall, where we sat and listened to these phonies tell us how they will bring a fight, while their actions have shown otherwise.
I also took note that the rank and file did not get a Q & A session to hold their feet to the fire…a clear harbinger of what was to come.
John Samuelsen, former Local 100 President and current TWU International president, began his speech with platitudes of his Brooklyn upbringing and history as a track worker, saying he will support us fully. But “Sleepy John,” as others have called him, soon echoed the TA’s contract time lies about having budget problems, which we all roundly booed. He also mentioned pushing for an amendment that would allow us to strike in lieu of the fascist Taylor Law.
Imagine asking the bosses for permission to withhold our labor-HA! Samuelsen also conveniently forgot to mention that he denounced our 2005 strike and gave us absolutely no support then.
Local 100 President Ritchie Davis also didn’t leave much to the idea that he will stand up to management. When a section of the crowd began chanting “Hazard Pay!” as he discussed our contract, he noticeably didn’t return their enthusiasm.
KKKop Mayor Eric Adams made a cameo appearance as well. He stood up and lied that his fascist initiative to clear out homeless encampments and the emotionally challenged in the subways with the pigs “leads with mental health professionals” and that “everyone is trying to distort what we are doing.”
Adams’ plan has been to flood the trains and station platforms with racist cops underground to attack special needs people, and forcing the unhoused to accept dangerous shelter conditions aboveground! That’s not a distortion at all!
While the talking heads proved disappointing, there were signs of hope. When one of the speakers said, “This is a militant union,” an audience member loudly said, “No it’s not!” in response.
Many of my co-workers aren’t confident the union will get them a good contract. Truth is, no union under capitalism will get any worker what they truly need and deserve. And that’s where the Party comes in, to present the only alternative: a communist world.
To that end, I was able to have a discussion with two train operators during the meeting. One criticized the fact that the union leadership made no mention at all about Tyre Nichols’ racist murder.
He noted how, as a Black union, that was a glaring omission. He also repeated the party’s line on having to fight anti-Black racism! Luckily, I had a spare CHALLENGE on hand to give them. I exchanged contacts with them and plan on choosing to work at the same line locations they do to keep meeting with them as much as I can. I hope to continue meeting other workers receptive to our line and will keep my best foot forward in doing so!
*****
No kinder kkkapitalism
Liberals and progressives often point out that citizens of some countries, especially Scandinavian countries, enjoy more access to social services than those in the U.S. Other places like Canada and the U.K. pride themselves on providing a better quality of life because they have universal healthcare.
However, this is largely theoretical, especially when we look more closely at Canada. Yes, all Canadians are entitled to free health care, but it is difficult for many Canadians to take advantage of their benefits. There are serious shortages of doctors in sparsely populated areas. Specialists are almost nonexistent except in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal or other major cities. People make long drives, sometimes days, for cancer care.
In a possible future communist society, we might assign doctors and other medical staff to underserved areas. That seems like infringing on an individual’s rights to our “democratic” minds, right? The difference is this – the physician would not be working for a wage. He/she wouldn’t be tied to a large metropolitan area in order to maintain a certain lifestyle. His/her lifestyle would not be any different from a bus driver, an electrician or a teacher.
Historically, British citizens have been very proud of their NHS (National Health Service). While they generally fare better than folks in the U.S., right wing politicians are continually trying to impose “austerity measures'' that would reduce access to health care. In Canada, federal and provincial politicians like Doug Ford are currently passing legislation to privatize parts of the healthcare system in response to governmental failure during the pandemic. Failing the public as an excuse to hand workers’ health over to the capitalist bosses is the name of this game, and it is one liberal politicians in countries with universal healthcare will keep playing so long as we allow it.
In short, reforms under capitalism are usually short lived or sometimes a complete smoke screen. Only under communism will all people have access to the care they need and deserve.
Like the film’s predecessor, Avatar 2 vividly showcases the evils of imperialism as seen through the Resources Development Administration’s (RDA) violent plunder of Pandora, a habitable moon on Alpha Centauri, to extract unobtanium, a rare earth compound found there. The second installment of Avatar kicks off more than a decade after Jake joins the Na’vi and leads the war against the RDA (sky people). Jake and Neytiri are now husband and wife with four children. After turning earth into a barren planet the RDA returns to Pandora in an effort to colonize it for human settlement. Jake and Neytiri’s idyllic family life in the Pandoran paradise is uprooted by RDA’s attack on their clan, and they’re forced to flee– much like the international working class around the world does everyday to escape the deadly grip of U.S. imperialism.
Alienating class conflict
While the film does a good job of making us hate imperialism and its disastrous consequences such as genocide and environmental destruction, it promotes harmful, racist, anti-worker ideas. The most damaging aspect of Avatar 2 is that it is devoid of class analysis. Although it depicts the colonization of Pandora by the RDA and we clearly see that the Tulkan hunters are capitalists driven by the profit motive, the central conflict is not between workers and bosses, but between natives and settlers. This is clear in its one-dimensional representation of the antagonists and protagonists. In the film, most if not all humans are rotten capitalists from the imperialist RDA, to the violent military recruits, and the Tulkun hunting capitalists who wish to kill these enormous manatee-like animals to extract highly profitable age-defying serum out of their brains.
The only humans who are depicted as “good” are those who surrender to nature like Jake who goes native and Spider, the villainous general Quatrich’s son, who rejects his militaristic human father and is loyal to the Na’vi. The working class is virtually non-existent in this fanciful tale. This perpetuates the myth that workers are responsible for climate change. The does not make a distinction between workers and capitalists and lays the blame on all humanity for environmental destruction and imperialist violence. By contrast, the film relies on the racist myth of the noble savage to depict the Na’vi as pure people in communion with nature who are powerless against the forces of progress. It never shows technology being developed by the native population except for bows and arrows. It keeps them entirely ensconced within the archetype of the noble primitive. By keeping them in an Eden, the film enables the audience to identify and even sympathize with the Na'vi while still being able to disassociate themselves from them as fellow workers.
At best Avatar 2 promotes nationalistic indigenous decolonial struggles as opposed to revolutionary class struggle. In the film's climax, we witness the positive character development of the Metkayina Clan, an oceanic Na’vi species who later abandon their pacifism after captain Miles Quatrich teams up with poachers who kill a Tulkuln to draw out Jake Sully. The Metkayina join forces with the Sullys and a fierce Tulkun and defeat the RDA and the poachers. While this demonstrates an overt rejection of pacifism in favor of armed struggle there is no political ideology grounding the Na’vi’s struggle. Instead, what is waged is a moralistic war against good and evil fueled by a kind of tribal nationalism, spirituality, familial protection
Cameron builds a liberal Eden
So, why did James Cameron spend an obscene amount of money, making a movie about the wageless, moneyless, primitive communism of a population being plundered? And what message does a film made by one of the wealthiest and most celebrated directors have for workers? Though the film does communicate the need for violence against imperialist exploitation, it never creates a moment where the working class can see themselves as revolutionary agents. By making the protagonists a different species, living on another planet in the distant future, Cameron is telling the modern proletariat that they are ill-equipped to smash capitalism. They should adapt to climate change embrace eco capitalism and live in harmony with nature like the Na’vi.
Far from promoting a revolutionary message, Cameron believes that a kinder greener capitalism is possible. A self-professed environmentalist and vegan, Cameron' Avatar films promote his liberal politics, championing individualism and romanticizing primitive communism. For Cameron all worker’s need to do is be in tune with nature and live a “responsible” green capitalist lifestyle. Still, Avatar 2 is worth watching if only for the opportunities it creates to counter the myth that only a morally superior alien species is powerful enough to smash imperialism with real-life historical examples of revolutionary working-class heroism from the Soviet Union to China.
