On June 22, 1941, in the middle of World War II, more than 3,000,000 Nazi troops invaded the Soviet Union. Fascist troops from Finland, Rumania, Hungary, Italy and Spain later joined them. This, the largest military attack in history on any country, was a second attempt by the capitalists to smash the world’s first workers’ state. Only 18 years earlier in 1917, right after the Russian Revolution, imperialist troops from 14 countries, including the U.S., Britain and France had invaded the Soviet Union to "strangle the socialist infant in its cradle." The Bolsheviks (communist revolutionaries) organized to defend their revolution. Though 4.5 million Soviet workers lost their lives, the communist-led Red Army defeated them. Now Adolf Hitler’s armies would meet a similar fate.
Virtually all Western military experts predicted Hitler would be in Moscow in six weeks. Capitalists in the U.S. and Western Europe didn’t care. They wanted the socialist Soviet Union weakened or even defeated by the Nazis. But less than four years later, Soviet troops marched triumphantly into Berlin, having smashed the "invincible" Nazi war machine.
About 80 percent of Hitler’s armies were tied down in Russia on the 2,000-mile-long Eastern Front. By the time the allies launched the D-Day invasion of France in 1944, the Red Army had already swept the Nazis out of all of occupied Russia and part of Eastern Europe and Soviet tanks were rolling towards Germany at 40 miles a day.
Today a flood of movies, books and TV specials tell us how the U.S. single-handedly won World War II, saving "Private Ryan" and the world. In fact, U.S. rulers were worried that if they didn’t invade France when they did, the Red Army would liberate all of Western Europe by itself.
Even Western historians agree the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the battle against Hitler and the Soviet victory at Stalingrad was the turning point of WWII. The USSR lost over 20 million lives defeating the Nazis (75 times the 300,000 U.S. deaths). And 75 to 80 percent of Nazi WWII casualties were inflicted by the Soviet Army. In the Nazi-occupied areas of the Soviet Union, "about two-thirds of the houses and productive capacity was destroyed." Not one bomb fell on the U.S. during the entire war. [All figures from The World Almanac of World War II.]
U.S. and British imperialists conspire against the Soviet Union
The imperialist conspiracy to smash the Soviet Union began long before WWII. The British and French rejected five separate Soviet proposals for an alliance against Hitler in the 1930s. The West supplied Hitler with oil, rubber and bank loans for his war machine. They hoped Hitler would move east and crush the Soviet Union and thereby prevent the spread of the overthrow of the capitalist profit system. When Hitler marched into Poland, Britain and France "declared war," but it was a "Phony War," because 110 Western divisions did nothing while the Nazis mopped up in Poland, hoping Hitler would continue to move eastward and invade the Soviet Union, the workers’ state.
But before they took on the Soviets, the Germans occupied Holland, Belgium and Norway. Hitler then invaded France. The French high command went over to Hitler’s side, allowing him to march into Paris in three weeks, driving British troops into the sea at Dunkirk.
Communist underground leads resistance against the Nazis
In almost all of Europe, the communist underground led the resistance that helped defeat the Nazis over the next four years. Communist-led partisans behind enemy lines in the Soviet Union alone destroyed one million Nazi troops, more than the combined total destroyed by the U.S. and British in the entire war.
When Hitler finally invaded the Soviet Union, the predicted "six weeks" victory never happened. German troops found total destruction and desolation in every captured Russian city or town — the "scorched earth" policy. Soviet defenders burned everything to the ground that could be useful to the Nazis and that they could not take with them. Then they organized armed resistance behind enemy lines. Over 6,000 factories were dismantled and moved east of the Ural Mountains, then re-assembled to produce weapons again, a feat requiring total unity and support of Soviet workers, unmatched by any country, before or since.
By December 2, 1941, the Nazis were just 20 miles from Moscow and the Kremlin (headquarters of the Soviet government). Joseph Stalin stayed in Moscow throughout this period and rallied the Soviet workers and Red Army. On December 6 (the day before Pearl Harbor), the Soviets launched a counter-attack on a 500-mile front and drove the fascists from the gates of Moscow. Hitler was forced to halt this offensive.
Battle of Stalingrad: Turning point of World War II
By September 1942, the Nazis had begun another offensive, reaching the outskirts of Stalingrad. They planned to take that city and then seize the oil of the Caucasus region to the south (bordering oil-rich Iran) and drive on Moscow to the north. But it was not to be. Soviet soldiers and workers fought for Stalingrad block-by-block, house-by-house and room-by-room to halt the "unbeatable" Nazi invaders. Workers in arms factories produced weapons for the Red Army working 24 hours a day. When Nazi troops captured factories, heroic Soviet workers and soldiers would take them back.
The entire German Sixth Army and 24 of Hitler’s generals were surrounded and killed or captured in the battle of Stalingrad. Never again would the Nazis mount an offensive against the Red Army. Stalingrad was truly the turning point of the Second World War. The communist-led Soviet Union smashed the largest and most powerful army ever mounted by a capitalist power.
Internal weaknesses and reforms eventually destroyed the first workers’ state. Socialism retained too many capitalist concepts, especially wages and money, and the Soviet Union reverted to capitalism. But as a British general remarked in introducing a documentary about the Battle of Russia, "if it were not for the heroism of the Soviet workers, if Hitler had conquered the Soviet Union, millions of citizens in Britain and the United States would be dead today." We are slowly learning the hard lessons from the defeat of the old communist movement. But emulating the mass heroism and determination they displayed in defeating fascism is the goal of Progressive Labor Party in our fight for communist revolution.
The first issue of CHALLENGE (Vol. 1, No 1) came out on June 15, 1964. When we sold that first issue of CHALLENGE, most of us had no idea how significant it was AND the role that CHALLENGE would soon play in the fight against capitalism. The headline on page one was prophetic: Police War on Harlem. Barely four weeks later, the Harlem Rebellion started after racist KKKop Thomas Gilligan of the New York Police Department (NYPD) shot and killed young James Powell who, with his friends, was trying to cool off from the July heat by spraying water on themselves and a bystander who complained about it and eventually called the police. This killing was the last straw in a long series of racist oppression. The news media called the rebellion a “riot” but it was most definitely a rebellion! Most of the stores that were attacked were pawnshops that had been looting the residents of Harlem for decades!
The Progressive Labor Movement (PLM), which became the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in April 1965, put out its most significant (and briefest!!) leaflet: Wanted for Murder - Gilligan the Cop. Rebels carried the leaflet all over Harlem. The PLM couldn’t print enough of them!! ALL of the so-called “Black leaders” had the same false message: Go home and Pray ... don’t fight back!! But the NYC bosses knew exactly who to attack; the Harlem rebels and the PLM. So-called “free speech” went out the window. In essence, martial law was declared.
On a personal note, I sold the first issue of CHALLENGE in three locations: The Upper West Side of Manhattan, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and the Garment District in Manhattan. The PLM held weekly rallies in the Garment District and CHALLENGE was a big help in getting our message out. We sold CHALLENGE on the street to the garment workers and when the boss wasn’t around, we went inside the shops where we could talk more extensively to several workers simultaneously. Unfortunately, most of us (maybe ALL of us) didn’t understand anything about base building so we didn’t get workers’ names. That’s a key lesson for our newer members: ALWAYS get names so you can stay in touch and follow up with as many people as possible. That’s key to building the Party.
The police and sanitation departments harassed us while we sold CHALLENGE. They gave me quite a few tickets for supposedly “littering.” After my first ticket, the PLM got me a lawyer who taught me what to say at my trial. After my second ticket, I no longer needed a lawyer; I could defend myself and I did so!
CHALLENGE was the only newspaper, magazine, or TV and radio station that told the truth about the Harlem Rebellion, as well as the many other rebellions in Black neighborhoods throughout the U.S. The summer of 1964 made it very clear who were the sellouts and who supported the working class. Every one of us should do their utmost to ensure that CHALLENGE continues to be a working-class beacon that will help workers to understand the oppressive nature of capitalism AND the only solution to its miseries: COMMUNIST REVOLUTION!
Killer kkkops and mental health are class issues
May was mental health awareness month and National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) hosts a fundraising walk every May. During 2020 our family weathered some serious mental health crises and NAMI helped provide education, resources, and support.
Unfortunately many workers in crisis do not get the help that they need. In our work with families whose loved ones have been murdered by police, we have seen that many of them were in a mental health crisis and instead of giving assistance, the police killed them.
We decided that we would walk in memory of those workers whose lives were taken during a mental health crisis. Talking about mental health and how we can get help without calling the police is still a big problem. We know that under capitalism, workers’ health and well-being is not a priority. Only under communism will workers’ needs be put first.
We continue to fight for justice side by side with these families. We share with them the limited resources that are available as alternatives to the police under capitalism. We also struggle to turn this movement into a larger fight against the capitalist system that needs these racist, killer cops to terrorize the working class.
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Remembering a comrade
Regarding the obituary on Len Ragozin, many of us old-timers remember Len as having been the editor of Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) CHALLENGE newspaper around 1970 and as a writer of important articles for PL Magazine, especially on science and Marxism. He leaves quite a legacy in helping build PLP in our earliest days.
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Racist class violence, bedrock of capitalism
U.S. rulers regularly reject gun control because they say the problem is violent people not guns. But who are the violent people? Many participants in the Capitol insurrection were police and military who are responsible for most of the violence in the U.S. and worldwide. Capitalism exists because U.S. imperialism and fascism created the armed forces that allow bosses to steal labor and resources through violence.
Martin Luther King named racism as the essence of that violent culture. The U.S. is unique among imperialist powers in having built its wealth on the backs of chattel slavery situated within its own border. African workers were kidnapped and exploited by many imperialist powers, but only the U.S. brought chattel slavery to its own shores.
It didn’t take long for the early U.S. ruling class to understand that the most violent, brutal wedge – racism – had to be driven through the heart of the multiracial working class in order to reap the profits of chattel slavery. The all white slave patrols were the origin of the modern police force. Racist ideology was driven into the minds of white workers. This origin of profound racist division required constant reinforcement through violence. From the horrors of slavery itself, to the years of Jim Crow segregation, lynchings and the mass slaughter of Black workers who tried to fight back, the foundation of the U.S. was cemented with racist violence. It still is today.
Racism creates hate, division and fear among workers, creating huge profits for capitalists from wage differentials for workers of different races and genders doing the same jobs. Materialism and individualism are drummed into worker’s heads as the way to succeed by exploiting other workers and avoiding human and collective instincts like unions that would threaten capitalist power.
Only a communist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist struggle can defeat the racist, violent and war culture imposed on workers. The working class must defeat racism in all its forms in order to unite as one mighty force to smash capitalism and imperialism and build a communist society
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“The Internationale” comes to WBAI
The Memorial Day program for The New Day radio show on WBAI, New York asked for listener’s favorite songs. I was connected and asked them to play “The Internationale” to honor people worldwide who were fighting for a new world. A technician said he never heard of it but would look it up. I said it was sung in every language.
A few minutes later, “The Internationale” started to play and as I jumped around my room with my fist in the air, I realized the working class words to the music were changed.
After the song ended, the show’s moderator apologized that the song was a revisionist interpretation of “The Internationale” and that she would try to get the original to play sometime.
Anyway it was great for many radio listeners to hear “The Internationale” and connect it to people’s struggles around the world.
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Arab & Jewish workers unite! SMASH ISRAELI STATE TERROR
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- 29 May 2021 96 hits
The Gaza Strip is a burial ground for thousands of workers massacred in the never-ending Palestine-Israel Conflict, with the self-serving nationalist bosses of Hamas on one side and the apartheid Israeli state, in alliance with U.S. imperialism, on the other. In the latest round of violence over 11 days in May, at least 248 people—including 66 children--were killed in Gaza, while Israeli fatalities stood at 13 (Aljazeera.com, 5/24). The gap in death tolls is nothing new; it reflects a deliberate policy of collective punishment by the Israeli war machine and its openly racist government.
This one-sided war is also a sign of the deepening crisis of U.S. imperialism, as Russia, China, and Iran try to expand their influence in the area. The resulting instability could become the spark that sets off a global war.
Two toxins: Israeli state terror, Palestinian nationalism
With U.S. President Joe Biden defending Israel’s “right to defend itself,” the murderous Netanyahu regime is unleashing its military might against Gaza’s working class. As they hide behind their façade of “democracy,” the Israeli rulers are committing atrocities to guarantee their profits. In out-and-out war crimes, Israeli planes bombed at least six hospitals and 50 schools, devastated electricity and water plants, and shut down Gaza’s only Covid-19 testing lab (New York Times, 5/18).
As brave Gaza workers and youth rise up in the streets against impossible odds, we should ask: What is our fight in the Gaza Strip? Is it to demand an end to the Israeli occupation, the dismantlement of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, an end to ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, the establishment of a Palestinian state? We submit that none of this is enough. The working class deserves much more.
Progressive Labor Party condemns both the Israeli-U.S. massacre and the dead-end Palestinian nationalism promoted by Arab bosses in Gaza and the West Bank. We call instead for proletarian internationalism and communist revolution. We envision a world without profits or borders, where society will be run by and for the workers of the world. Only through the unity of Arab and Jewish workers can we defeat nationalism and smash the capitalist bosses on both sides.
What is happening in the Gaza Strip?
Since 1948, when the state of Israel was created, the people of Palestine have been violently pushed into only 20 percent of their former territory. Blockaded by both Israel and Egypt, the densely populated Gaza Strip has little water, sporadic electricity, no jobs, and no freedom of movement.
To understand how Gaza came to its current misery, we must consider the forces of nationalism, racism, and inter-imperialist rivalry in the bosses’ quest for Middle East oil. The Zionist state, backed by billions in U.S. military aid, basically stole the Palestinians’ land and condemned them to life in a de facto concentration camp while the bosses’ international organizations looked the other way (Amnesty International, 2017). The Zionist rulers’ racist and nationalist ideology has created a state of desperation among young workers in Palestine.
Capitalism divides us, communism unites us
Throughout history, the capitalists and their governments have used ethnic and racial divisions to divide workers and advance their own political and economic agendas. Workers on both sides of the bosses’ borders suffer the cost of Israel’s occupation. The poison of anti-Arab racism leads workers in Israel to accept cuts in social services to finance the country’s military.
Meanwhile, workers in Palestine are misguided into taking sides in the dispute between the corrupt West Bank bosses of the Palestinian Authority and the Islamic fundamentalists of Hamas. Neither faction has anything to offer workers. Palestine needs a mass anti-racist and revolutionary movement under communist leadership to create a society run by and for the working class.
As we march in Colombia, Chile, Italy, and all over the world to protest against the occupation of Palestine, we must be clear that both racism and nationalism are tools used by capitalists to protect their profits. Wars between imperialists force workers to fight and kill their class brothers and sisters to protect the capitalists’ interests. History is rich with examples of unity between Arabs and Jews. Under communist leadership, we can rekindle that unity, defeat the exploiters, erase all borders, and smash the murderous capitalist governments.
The latest attacks on the working class in Gaza—and in India, Mexico, and Brazil--are driven by the international crisis of capitalism. We see it clearly in the U.S., where hundreds have died at the hands of the racist police. We see it in Colombia, where thousands have been massacred or disappeared, most recently during a general strike where 41 civilians were killed by the brutal cops.
PLP calls for workers to organize class interests, not the bosses’ rotten profit system. We call for the workers of the world to unite and fight to build a communist society without nationalism or religion, where the only flag will be red. Once workers unite in their struggle to build a communist future, it will spell the capitalist system’s demise.
Fight for communism, abolish all borders!
NEW YORK CITY, May 14—In the French Revolution Georges Danton came up with the slogan “Boldness! Again, boldness! Always, boldness!” That describes the rally today of sixty City University of New York (CUNY) students and a few faculty, multiracial, multi-gender, and all ages marched from Hunter College to John Jay College. Their demand: abolition. Abolish the police, prisons, the carceral state, settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and imperialism.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) would add that all these forms of oppression are a necessity under the capitalist system, and we cannot eliminate them without abolishing capitalism itself, altogether and everywhere! That means building an organization, an international revolutionary communist party, PLP, which works explicitly to abolish capitalism and all its oppressions and build egalitarian communism.
These new keywords of struggle come close to but don’t quite say “Abolish capitalism.” But they inspire a new wave of militant youth, and here they lifted up the important specific demand to remove police from CUNY. Speakers from Hunter also described struggles to save Asian American Studies and the Center for Puerto Rican Studies there.
The march refused to get a permit, took the streets and blocked traffic, had its own medics and lawyers in our ranks, and prepared everyone to link arms and stay together in case of an incident.
A young PLP comrade joined another marcher to block traffic on Park Avenue with their bicycles. Following the 2020 summer of rebellion which taught us to rely on ourselves in struggle, these marchers were serious. You can get too used to obeying bourgeois laws.
Remove kkkops from John Jay
The boldest demand was to remove the Klan in blue from John Jay, which was founded in 1965 as the College of Police Science (COPS). “John Jay’s training programs target its majority working-class, [Black, indigenous, Latin, and Asian] student body...to work for the institutions of organized violence,” said the pamphlet from the Cops off Campus Coalition (see box). “We believe that police and prison abolition is the work of our present and the promise of our future.” They declared May abolition month.
The event also highlighted CUNY’s collaboration with U.S. imperialist war: John Jay’s Certificate in Homeland Security, Baruch’s agreement to “a formal partnership” with the CIA, and, the program of York and City Colleges with the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), a college program training officers for the U.S. military. Education is one part of how the ruling class legitimizes its system; colleges function to reproduce oppressive class relations and support the bosses’ aims. We cannot separate colleges from its capitalist role.
The march attracted a heavy police presence as it exited Central Park into “Lenape Circle” (erase Columbus from that circle!), passing the Trump tower and heading for John Jay and CUNY’s Office of Public Safety. At these stops, speakers called for solidarity with Palestinian workers and slammed campus policing for attacking students who fight back.
The future will be bright with a new generation of anti-capitalists. The main danger continues to be nationalist and identity politics—on campus and in the streets. PLP has to offer them the legacy of communist politics, boldness, and discipline; the organizational and political strength that comes from an experienced communist party; the long history and deep philosophy of communist workers the world over. The long march to abolish capitalism and build a society of comrades has a long past and a long future.
PLP invites every marcher at this CUNY event to come into our Party and build it up with their bold vision and action. Colleges are also an arena of fightback against tools of capitalism: cops, ROTC, and the CIA. Say it again: Join the PLP to abolish capitalism and build an egalitarian communist world.
