NEW YORK CITY, November 1—“I’m moving at a snail’s pace, but I’m getting stronger.” That’s how one comrade spoke for all of us as our Progressive Labor Party (PLP) club launched our new members’ class. Over the past 18 months, our club has recruited three new members, Black, Latin, and white, women and men, older and younger.
One is an unemployed worker, won out of an antiracist fightback around homelessness. Another is a staff member at a community college, and the third is a full-time professor at City University. Both are involved in our work in the CUNY staff and faculty union, PSC, and all three have been to May Day. They each have strong, long-term personal/political ties with one or more members of our collective.
We launched the class to strengthen our new comrades ideologically, make them more familiar with the main aspects of PLP’s outlook, and thereby strengthen our entire collective and our ability to build a communist world. We started by discussing the front-page CHALLENGE article on the girls’ volleyball team in a Brooklyn H.S. fighting racism (CHALLENGE, Oct.20).
One member quickly pointed out the unequal funding between sports teams that are mainly white students versus those that are mainly Black and Latin students, and how the bosses enforce racist inequality through their state power, in this case the New York City Department of Education. Another showed how this struggle reflected three of the 10 points in the PLP “Our Fight” column; anti-racism, anti-sexism, and collectivity over individualism. The third stressed how PLP’s involvement in mass activity, like the volleyball team or the annual Hoops for Justice event against police terror, allows the Party to raise our politics with a wide range of people in a very concrete way. Everyone focused on “What is winning,” and how struggles like this can literally be “schools for communism.”
We discussed base building, and how PLP has deep, long-standing ties with students, teachers, and parents at this school. The new members didn’t know this and thought that we should make that clear in future articles. They also wanted to know more about the discussions with students, teachers, and parents about PLP because they are trying to have similar conversations. What questions did people raise? How did we answer them?
Over the next few months, we will introduce dialectical materialism (Jailbreak!: Dialectical Materialism), how  PLP operates (On Democratic Centralism), Black workers as a key force for revolution, and why revolutionaries must fight nationalism. The first two texts mentioned can be found under ‘Key Documents’ on plp.org. We are open to suggestions and if there are similar classes, please share your experiences by writing a letter to CHALLENGE.

Laying the tracks for class struggle

I have been involved with a group of bus and rail transit workers for over a year. I am retired but part of this group of organizers. We have had rallies, demonstrations, virtual and now in-person meetings, confronted sellout union leadership, fliers, and participated in a YouTube radio show (twice) that has a growing following. Union members have led and organized these struggles!

At our most recent in-person meeting, we did have a struggle about the vaccine. Everyone there, except one person was vaccinated. A bus driver told us about her co-worker and friend who died of Covid-19 a few days before. She said she would try to win people to get the vaccine. A rail mechanic said we have to respect and care for others and that is one reason he got the vaccine - to protect the more vulnerable people in his life. Someone mentioned  that we have to respect the point of view of workers that are hesitant about the vaccine, while at the same time pointing  out the racist nature of the police union. We all agreed that the mandate would be used to punish workers. Yet police are being put forward by some members of our class as leaders that the anti-vaxxer union members should respect and follow.

It was hard for me to struggle against these ideas, which strengthen individualism and reject science and history. Workers in our base say they don’t want to  be  told what to do and or have their personal choice violated. Racism in medical care for Black and Latin workers has clearly contributed to many  of workers’ mistrust and fear. Yet, racism has guaranteed that Black and Latin workers are dying at higher rates than white workers. It’s apparent I have not struggled hard enough to win friends and union brothers and sisters to the Party’s line about the growth of fascism. 

There is a lot of work to be done! Selling CHALLENGE and discussing the articles, struggling over communist ideas - this is what we need to do!

**

‘I’m a communist, too!’

Despite the pandemic, students and workers have not stopped organizing. This fall I participated in two overnight events alone.  Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and friends can learn from these struggle opportunities. The first was a protest in Annapolis, Maryland with CASA calling on the Governor to extend the eviction moratorium. After the rally I spent the night with 50 tenants and supporters at a church parking lot. We met from 9 PM to midnight! At one point I said I was there because "I hate capitalism and am a communist!" This was different from people saying they were there because housing is a human right.Several people asked for CHALLENGE  after hearing my politics and three of them said "I'm a communist too," , I spent a cold, rainy night outside of the U.S. White House Covid Response Coordinator, Jeffrey Zients’ house with 20 young workers  and joined the 6 AM wake up call (see article). Each hour outside, we lit candles and read about workers from other countries who had died of COVID One particularly intense story was about the death of "Dr. Charles,"a revered OB-GYN doctor from Uganda that  fought for women's rights and died without ever making it into a hospital. There were a lot of political and social conversations throughout the night and capitalism was discussed much more than at the rally itself. It was great meeting the folks in person who I had been on Zoom with planning the event for weeks. I now plan to send CHALLENGE to several of these folks from as far away as Portland, Oregon. I did raise the Party’s line  in these conversations but both events would have been even better with more PLP members in attendance. Be on the lookout for opportunities like these and bring a good sleeping bag.

Inflamed: Inspiring but insufficient

The popular book Inflamed (2021), by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, is both enlightening and enraging. While they expose the environment as a culprit for most diseases, their solution is backwards—as in go back to a pre-capitalist society. Marya and Patel suffer from anti-communism. 

Inflamed has several themes. One is that inflammation is behind most disease processes in all parts of our bodies, an idea more accepted by conventional medicine. The authors carry the idea farther, showing how the environment, both physical and social, is deeply entwined with inflammation. The second main theme is that modern medicine has detached bodily systems from each other and the body from the world it inhabits just as modern humans have fallen out of harmony with themselves and the world around them. They argue many indigenous cultures  are better synchronized with their environment. 

However, a solution is sorely lacking. They describe our environment as colonialism and as capitalist colonialism. The supposed remedy is to emulate non-industrial cultures by “walking backward into the future” (p. 351). But the authors do not address how, not to return to pre-capitalism but to consider what comes after capitalism and how to get there. 

The main problem with the book is anti-communism. If you don’t believe it is possible to construct a society run by and for the working class through organizing a Party, then your only option is to persuade capitalists to be nicer exploiters. These authors proclaim communism will always fail because of individualist human nature. Progressive Labor Party believes workers can run a society based on the common good.

The Role of Inflammation

Acute inflammation may result from an infection, injury or psychological stress and initiate healing mechanisms like fever, bacteria hunting macrophages, wound healing, and the fight or flight reflex. Stress is the body’s response to any threat, and it activates the nervous, endocrine and immune systems to produce inflammatory signaling proteins (cytokines) and hormones to respond in the short term.

Chronic stress, however, may generate a chronic reaction from which the body never heals, be it from ongoing pollution or the stress of racist and sexist inequality under capitalism. Chronic stress leads to chronic diseases: diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, osteoarthritis, chronic obstructive lung disease, and Alzheimer’s.Even aging is accelerated by chronic stress (p. 68).

The authors detail the ways our systems are affected by inflammation. Stress activates an axis from the brain that releases hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that in turn activate immune cells to release C-reactive protein and others. In the face of chronic stress this mechanism is disrupted, resulting in constant low-grade inflammation. 

The response to new threats is lessened and the body is less able to defend against infections, such as Covid-19 (p. 92).We know that chronic diseases like diabetes and chronic obstructive lung disease result both from inflammation and toxins like air pollution and are more prevalent among the urban working-class and non-white residents.

 Inflammatory racism

The Covid-19 pandemic explains how modern medicine both ignores the higher toll of disease on Black, Latin, indigenous, and Asian working-class people in particular and our class in general. Racism means that members of the super-exploited group have higher C-reactive protein, a marker of chronic inflammation. This is true of Black workers in the U.S., Muslim workers in Burma, Dalit workers in India and many more (p. 232).Compared to white workers, Black workers in the U.S. have higher rates of chronic diseases and have a shorter life expectancy—all conditions related to inflammation.

The authors give examples of how indigenous cultures have avoided high stress levels. However, when any of these societies were disrupted by colonization and the imposition of modern industrial agriculture and production for profit, disease and social disruption followed. The drive for profit hurts workers’ health. 

What is to be done

So how can we change that world? Although we can learn from indigenous societies, today’s conditions are different. We can’t recreate life from the past for the mass of the world’s population in a sustainable way. Communism, a society run by the world’s workers for the world’s workers, is the future we need.

The authors support the movement to abolish the police that target and kill mainly Black and Latin members of our class. The demand is to redirect police funds to housing, schools, job creation and other community resources (p. 258). The authors write, “Abolishing the modern private corporation doesn’t mean ending coordinated enterprise but rather holding it accountable to the people it serves''(p. 334). However, the authors’ own evaluation of the hunger for profits, the cruelty of capitalist exploitation, and the violence perpetrated in world conquest illustrates the illogic of this demand. Their anti-communism leads them to reject the logical conclusions of their own research.

A system based on the repression of the few by the many needs a repressive force to quell dissent. A system based on profits, capitalism, cannot sacrifice profits to benefit workers.

We need a movement to destroy capitalism. This will require a violent, massive, international struggle that will be built on the basis of reform struggles focusing on multiracial worker-led movements and not building illusions about reforming capitalism. 

This movement may also be inspired by the worsening cataclysms that capitalism will bring—climate disasters and world war. As a new worker-led society is constructed, many of the insights about medicine and the connection of the physical and social environments to our health will become clearer. But only then.

Less than two months after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the latest in a string of U.S. military defeats since the Vietnam War, tensions with imperialist arch-rival China may be simmering to a boil. Over five days in October, China conducted 150 warplane sorties near Taiwan’s coast in the South China Sea, “an alarming escalation that coincided with China’s National Day celebrations” (msn.com, 10/13). For the finance capital main wing of the U.S. ruling class, military conflict with China appears to be just a matter of time—and the time may be sooner than later.
President Joe Biden is doubling down on the “great-power competition” declared by predecessor Donald Trump. As Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in March, only China has the economic and military might to “challenge” the U.S. China already leads the world in critical technologies, from telecommunications to artificial intelligence (robeco.com, 5/10). It has the world’s largest navy and by far the most active military troops. “[G]reat powers are simply unwilling to let other great powers grow stronger at their expense,” noted the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, the liberal U.S. rulers’ top foreign policy journal. “Cold War II is already here….China is likely to be a more powerful competitor than the Soviet Union was in its prime. And this cold war is more likely to turn hot” (foreignaffairs.com, November-December).
As the U.S. empire teeters and China’s bosses turn to intensified nationalism to deflect the mass anger of exploited workers, the chances of an armed clash—whether planned or by miscalculation—are greater than ever. As Blinken acknowledged, “Our relationship with China will be competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must be” (reuters.com, 3/3).
Only a new mass force of communist-led workers, organized from New York to Shanghai and beyond, can drive the profit-driven warmakers from power.  Only communist revolution can move forward from these dark times to smash the borders that divide our class.  
Taiwan: caught in imperialist crosshairs
Since the 1950s, Taiwan has stood as an outpost of U.S. liberal democracy in China’s backyard—and an obstacle to China’s regional dominance. Today the stakes are higher than ever. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is the world leader for microchips, “the building blocks of the 21st-century digital economy” (New York Times, 10/20). Biden’s administration recently reaffirmed its commitment to an independent Taiwan as “rock-solid” (Reuters, 10/6). In June, with the bipartisan U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, the U.S. Senate “controversially” called for treating Taiwan “as a sovereign state of ‘vital’ strategic importance” (Foreign Affairs, November-December).
In a related move, Biden spurned French imperialist allies by displacing them in a huge nuclear submarine deal with Australia.  U.S. imperialism hadn’t shared offensive nuclear power on this scale since 1958 (NYT, 10/17), signaling a more aggressive posture toward Chinese imperialism in the Pacific (see map).  
Is China ready to be top imperialist?
In the twenty-five years since the 1996 crisis, Chinese imperialists have squeezed the working class to direct huge flows of capital into a frenzy of arms deployment.  China spends about $200 billion a year on its military, up 800 percent over the last 30 years (statista.com, 6/21). According to Politico, “…the U.S. military is on track to be outgunned [by China] — potentially in quantity and quality of armaments — by the end of President Joe Biden’s first term” (5/21).  “I worry that they are accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States,” Admiral Philip S. Davidson, the retiring commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March. “Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before then, and I think the threat is manifest during this decade; in fact, in the next six years” (NYT, 10/12).  
Although both China and the U.S. have been cautious to avoid direct military confrontations thus far, Taiwan is a wild card.  The brutal move by China’s ruling capitalist “Communist” Party  to absorb Hong Kong has been well-received by workers in China. An attack to take Taiwan could divert workers’ attention from slowing economic growth and a troubled housing market, where giant developers like Evergrande are collapsing from debt.
Since the 1990s, as capitalism has taken deeper root in China, workers have not forgotten class struggle. They’ve launched thousands of local campaigns targeting oppressive conditions and bosses.  Despite the Chinese bosses’ drive for nationalism, the legacy of communist ideas is still alive in the Chinese working class.    
U.S. ruling class bumbling toward war
Chinese imperialism has been given a huge opening by repeated blunders by the U.S. bosses, from the failed “War on Terror” and the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the 2008 global economic collapse, to the botched response to Covid-19 and the deep split in the ruling class itself.
The segregationist, kkkop-backing Biden-Harris team was supposed to be save the empire after the disastrous Trump years.  The purging of the names of open racists from military bases reflects the liberal bosses’ understanding that a fighting force built on white nationalism can’t win future wars.  A global conflict with China will require a draft that draws on the entire U.S. population, not just the white working class. The bosses need more Black and Latin officers to lead Black and Latin troops to their deaths.  
As the threat from China grows, the political battle between the liberal fascists of finance capital and the more open fascists fronted by Trump continues unchecked.  The liberal Big Fascists can’t afford to lose the White House in 2024 to a white nationalist candidate. But their eroding power to shape events makes the world situation even more volatile.  
Opportunities and dangers in the dark night
From the great Soviet and Chinese communist revolutions to the inspirational victory of communist masses in Vietnam, the international working class has proven that it’s possible to defeat the forces of imperialism. But to many workers today, it may feel impossible to end racist police murder, or abolish the mass murder of poverty, or stop the sexism that makes women fearful of walking down streets at night. It may feel impossible to stop U.S. and Chinese imperialists from going to war over Taiwan—or to halt a runaway climate disaster.  
Workers of the world: Do not despair!  Our class has the ability to dethrone the imperialist warmakers from Washington to Beijing and to banish the profit motive. The road to revolution is not a peaceful road or an easy road.  But it is our historical task to smash the bosses’ rotten nationalism, racism, sexism, and individualism with our super-power: internationalist working-class consciousness.  We have a whole, wide world—a communist world—to win.