Workers in Philippines stage massive protests against capitalist corruption

ABC News, 9/21–Thousands of Filipinos have marched in the capital to vent their anger over a ballooning scandal involving bogus flood-control projects believed to have cost taxpayers billions of dollars…The protest on Sunday was largely peaceful but erupted into violence as riot police deployed water cannon[s] in clashes with scores of mostly young masked people who hurled rocks and shattered the glass of one police outpost…The Department of Finance has estimated the Philippine economy lost up to 118.5 billion pesos ($3 billion) from 2023 to 2025 due to corruption in flood control projects…Greenpeace has suggested the number is actually closer to $27 billion…

U.S. frets as China looks to take over

Foreign Affairs, 9/29–A great unanswered question of the second Trump administration has been how its outright rejection of the existing global order would affect China’s international strategy…Beijing has decided on a much more ambitious course, putting its plans on vivid display at a September meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization…Chinese leader Xi Jinping clasped hands with Russia President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and met with 18 other leaders from across the Eurasian continent. A few days later, flanked by Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Xi presided over a massive military parade in Beijing to show off China’s fast-growing arsenal.

Italian workers strike over genocide in Gaza

MSN, 9/26–Flight disruption is expected in Italy as airport workers strike over pay and in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Two major trade unions have called for walkouts on Friday, 26 September, with cancellations and delays expected at the start of the weekend…A demonstration will be held at the Milan Malpensa Cargo Department from 10am on Friday. Italian trade union Sindacale di Base (USB) has also called a 24-hour national air transport strike on Friday in a rejection of “the war economy”, saying it “opposes the genocidal extermination in Gaza and the war in Ukraine, and stands for peace and decent work”...

Netanyahu greeted with jeers, cheers and a walkout

France24, 9/26–The Israeli PM spoke after dozens of delegates from multiple nations had walked out of the UN General Assembly hall en masse, highlighting Israel’s isolation amid mounting opprobrium at the devastation it has wrought in Gaza…As Netanyahu began his address, unintelligible shouts echoed around the hall…Netanyahu sharply denounces Western countries for embracing Palestinian statehood…The Israeli PM claims Israel is applying more measures to minimise civilian casualties “than any military in history”...Independent studies have found that civilians make up as many as 15 of every 16 people killed by Israel in Gaza.

EU and Russia show signs of expanding war

Der Spiegel, 9/20–German troops monitor the airspace over Ukraine around the clock. Night after night, they see Russian drones deployed across the region, with increasing numbers recently turning up in the western part of the country…Polish F-16 fighter jets and Dutch F-35 stealth warplanes scrambled, with the aircraft shooting down at least three of the more than 20 drones…According to a NATO spokesperson, it marked the first time that Russian combat drones had been shot down over NATO territory…How should NATO react? Should the alliance respond forcefully? Or would that risk triggering an unpredictable spiral that could spin out of control? 

U.N. reports cholera on the rise in Haiti

OCHA, 9/25–During the second week of September, the World Health Organization/Pan American Health Organization (WHO/PAHO) reported 30 suspected cases of cholera across more than a dozen communes in five departments, bringing the total number of cases to more than 3,100 this year…less than a third of health facilities with inpatient capacity remain fully operational…OCHA warns that communities have limited access to clean water, sanitation conditions are poor at displacement sites, and insecurity has constrained access to affected areas…With just three months left in the year, the 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan for Haiti is 13 per cent funded – with only $118 million received of the $908 million required…

On the anniversary of the end of World War II, the Chinese capitalist ruling class flaunted a barrage of new high-tech weapons—hypersonic missiles and underwater drones, robot dogs and lasers (BBCm 9/3).  Leading the nationalist spectacle was China’s Gangster-in-Chief, Xi Jinping, along with Russia’s own top imperialist thug, Vladimir Putin. Their aim was to project unity and military might as the global crisis of capitalism heads closer to world war.

The Chinese Revolution and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that followed were the greatest advances in human history. They taught the international working class what it means to smash fascism, to seize state power, and to fight against the return of rotten capitalist ideas. But the state capitalists who run China today are spurred by nothing but profit. They build their wealth by brutally exploiting workers throughout the world, from Uighur and other Muslim agricultural workers in Xinjiang to auto workers in “slavery-like conditions” in Brazil (aljazeera.com, 2/11/22; BBC.com, 12/24/24).  

Two days before the “Victory Day Parade,” China hosted a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Xi and aligned capitalists from Russia, Iran, India, and Pakistan promised to prioritize the “Global South.” But make no mistake: Not a single policy was proposed to benefit the workers of the world. These vile misleaders see workers as nothing more than disposable labor and cannon fodder. One contradiction of capitalism is that workers create everything of value—and that only the working class has the power to end the rulers and their imperialist wars for all time.

Unstable U.S. bosses lose ground

The intensifying struggle between the two factions of U.S. bosses, the Big Fascists of finance capital and the isolationist, “Fortress America” Small Fascists behind President Donald Trump, has left U.S. imperialism increasingly unstable. At stake are trillions in foreign investments, in particular in Middle East oil. Meanwhile, unconstrained by the liberal myths of a “free press” or “fair” elections, China’s bosses have gained an advantage by moving toward open fascism more swiftly than their U.S. rivals. The Chinese ruling class imposes rigid discipline on both workers and its own ranks. It is ready and willing to arrest any billionaire who threatens the interests of Chinese capital as a whole (bbc.com, 8/19/22).

Trump’s erratic behavior and the general unreliability of U.S. imperialism has led a number of national capitalists to move toward China’s bloc, a dynamic on full display at the SCO summit. Case in point: The U.S. slammed India with a 50 percent tariff for buying discounted Russian oil (Reuters 8/26).  (For more on Trump’s tariff crusade, see the 9/3 editorial in CHALLENGE.) 

In his ham-fisted efforts to isolate Russia, Trump acknowledged that he’s pushed both India and Russia away “to deepest, darkest China” (New York Times, 9/5). The Chinese bosses couldn't be more delighted. Despite their recent history of bloody border clashes with India, both China’s Xi and India Prime Minister Narendra Modi signaled closer economic coordination  at the summit (BBC, 8/31).

India is not unique. Bosses in Brazil and South Africa view the SCO/BRICS alliance as a chance to get out from under the thumb of the U.S., which for decades has squeezed them ruthlessly under threat of military intervention. Others, like Saudi Arabia (Reuters, 5/13) and Israel (Haaretz, 7/7), have used China’s outstretched hand to extract concessions from their U.S. masters, whether in the form of arms sales or support for the Zionist genocide in Gaza. Workers have nothing to gain by backing either of these imperialist death machines.

Atrocities of Chinese imperialism

Since 2013, China has used their Belt and Road Initiative to broaden their global influence by undercutting the U.S.-controlled World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Regional powers in India or Brazil are handsomely rewarded for jumping the sinking U.S. ship, in no small part through bribes and graft. In exchange, they enforce Beijing’s bottom line by breaking unions, violently putting down strikes, cutting social benefits for workers, and handing over natural resources to China. 

Racism has guided much of Chinese imperialism, with workers in Africa being targeted for especially fierce exploitation. Angola borrowed $45 billion and became the top exporter of African oil to China (Eurasia Review, 3/1) as well as a Chinese customer for arms (Further Africa, 3/5).

When global oil prices dipped, Angola could no longer make its loan payments, sending the economy into austerity and chaos. After workers rebelled against Chinese-owned companies (adf-magazine.com, 9/9) , the Angolan bosses responded with violent attacks against protestors, arbitrary detention, and extrajudicial executions (Human Rights Watch).

The Democratic Republic of Congo produces 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, a mineral in high demand for the manufacture of electric vehicle batteries. Chinese billionaires control 80 percent of cobalt mining operations in the DRC, paying poverty wages to millions of miners, including tens of thousands of children (Think Global Health, 2/10). And in Zambia, Chinese loans have led directly to default and mass unemployment (Wilson Center, 1/16/24).

When China’s rulers talk about their “focus” on the Global South, this is what they have in mind. In so doing, they are creating a powder keg of working class fightback. 

Turn the guns around!

As the British Empire declined, many workers welcomed U.S. imperialism with open arms. They believed its lies about spreading prosperity and “democracy.” But it wasn’t long before the U.S. capitalist rulers showed their true colors as the world’s leading exporters of state terror, mass murder, and working class suffering. 

Now China’s vicious ruling class is trying to deceive workers with promises of "multilateralism" and "modernization." The horrific reality of Chinese imperialism will only get worse as the global economic crisis deepens. China is staring at a major housing market bubble, slowing growth, and rising unemployment, (Reuters 9/15). These crises are opening the door for working class fightback in China.

On September 6, just days after the SCO Summit, Canadian and Australian warships sailed through the Strait of Taiwan (Reuters, 9/6)— a desperate attempt by U.S. proxies to signal strength in an era of U.S. imperial decline. It is only a matter of time before such provocations trigger a full-blown conflict. We know the imperialist bosses are planning to force the international working class to do the fighting, suffering, and dying.

That is why workers must start organizing now, under the banner of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party, to build the mass movement we need to turn the guns around. We must replace capitalism with a society run by and for the international working class: communism.

Washington, D.C., September 6—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members joined thousands of Black, Latin and white workers who gathered to protest the fascist federal government’s occupation of the District of Columbia. We marched to Freedom Plaza outside the Wilson Building, where Mayor Muriel Bowser collaborated with President Donald Trump to terrorize city residents. Worldwide capitalism is decaying by the minute. We’re witnessing genocides, worsening conditions, inflation, record displacement, violent kidnappings of migrant workers, climate change, and sharpening competition between the U.S. China, and Russia. The smaller domestic capitalists, those fronted by Trump, plan to use the D.C. occupation as a model for targeting Black, immigrant, and antiracist workers nationwide.The emerging U.S. federal police force—a hallmark of fascism, as evidenced by the Nazi regime in Germany—is a bipartisan creation, decades in the making.

This march demanded removal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, aka the 21st century gestapo, and Park Police, an end to their racist profiling, and support for unhoused workers whose tents and possessions have been destroyed. Chanting “Down, Down with Occupation, Up Up with Liberation,”  D.C. residents, CASA, Free D.C., and anti-genocide protestors controlled the streets for a couple of hours. PLP further called for communism while managing a literature table and distributing over 200 CHALLENGES along with many more PLP flyers about ICE, public health and transit.   

ICE out of our trains!

In our conversations we highlighted our campaigns around the transit system, which is one of the forces that has the power to shut down the city. Many local struggles against ICE show the multiracial unity of the city but need the power of the workers in the subway, buses, electricity, water and communications to advance. We attacked WMATA (Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority) for running ads for the Border Patrol and using their transit police to help ICE at subway stations. When people asked what we could do, we urged them to contact WMATA customer service and plan to join us to testify and protest at the board meeting at the end of the month. Engaging with station managers, operators and other riders is necessary to build this campaign. We called for safety measures like workers on automated trains and free fares to stop attacks on drivers. Take funding from the deep pockets of the large businesses and entertainment centers that benefit from the transit system. Some local bus systems have eliminated fares already. Protestors were enthusiastic about our focus on transit and signed up to help out. 

Making connections

Some of us also went to a program at the University of the District of Columbia to meet “rising organizers” and explain about PLP and the need for revolution against capitalism. A lot of young people want to build a revolutionary movement to destroy fascism and change the world. We went home with over 45 contacts from the two events.

Fighting dead end revisionism

There are a number of fake left organizations that are fighting the occupation. They include open revisionists and social democrats. Most of the non-hardcore revisionists can be won to revolutionary politics. How do we do this?  Our strategy in D.C. is to strengthen our base among transit workers and win them to provide leadership to the rest of the working class. We say make them strike-ready because they have the leverage to shut down the city. Only a massive disruption can defeat fascism and win working class power!

To mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of Progressive Labor Party, CHALLENGE is publishing a series of articles on our Party’s history, from its origins as the Progressive Labor Movement (PLM) to its presence today in more than two dozen countries worldwide. This is the second part of an article on PLP’s historic fights against racism. The previous part discussed the Harlem Rebellion and PLP’s leadership in fomenting it.
The Harlem Rebellion of 1964 raised the fight against racist oppression to a new level while exposing the class treason of Black reformist leadership. After Harlem, more than 100 cities in the U.S. felt the torch of rebellion. PLP’s leadership in this struggle set the tone for our unceasing fight against racism:

Beating down racists in the streets

From the 1970s to the current day, PL’ers have organized hundreds of attacks on the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis wherever they spread their racist garbage. Rejecting the pacifist mythology that these gutter racists would fade away if ignored, we have attacked them head-on—and confronted the capitalists’ cops who protect them. We have mounted these anti-racist, multiracial actions in New York City, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Detroit and St. Louis. We’ve done the same in smaller communities like Tupelo, Mississippi, Scotland, Connecticut, Jamesburg and Morristown, New Jersey, and scores of cities and towns in California. We invaded the Nazis’ headquarters in Chicago. We beat a white supremacist leader in a Boston television interview. These militant anti-KKK/Nazi actions have involved an estimated 100,000 or more workers and youth.

On May Day, 1975, we mobilized 2,500 anti-racists in Boston to march against the segregationist, terrorist organization called ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights, accurately nicknamed Racists On A Rampage). When they physically attacked us, we routed them. We subsequently organized a summer project to combat ROAR’s mob violence and its anti-busing racism. We integrated formerly all-white beaches, held antiracist summer schools for Black children, and rallied to escort Black children into their first day of integrating formerly all-white schools. Our efforts smashed ROAR. 

On May Day, 1976, we marched into Chicago’s Marquette Park, where Nazis had barred Black people. Black workers cheered and welcomed us like we were a victorious army. The next weekend white neighborhood workers routed a Nazi rally. We integrated that neighborhood and the Nazis were finished.

No nazis in academia!

Simultaneously, PLP exposed academic charlatans — like E.O. Wilson, Richard Herrnstein, and Arthur Jensen — who spewed racist filth about the “inferiority” of Black workers and the Nazi fantasy that unemployment was inherited in their genes. We mobilized demonstrations wherever these racists appeared, chased them off auditorium stages, and even poured a pitcher of water over Wilson’s head in the middle of a lecture. (Our member called out, “Wilson, you’re all wet!”) PLP’s position was clear and uncompromising: No free speech for racists.

Throughout this period, PLP helped organize the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR), a mass antiracist, multiracial group that led many of these struggles.

In Southern California, our Party has organized against the anti-immigrant Minute Men. We have gone to border towns to fight racist attacks on immigrant workers from Mexico, rallying support from citizen workers around the slogan, “Smash All Borders!”
More recently, PL’ers have taken to the streets in Brooklyn and Los Angeles to protest the police murders of Black women, men, and youth by racist cops.

PLP also advanced the protest against the cops’ murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, raising our slogan — “Fight Like Ferguson!” — among thousands across the country. Our Party is building a movement for rebellion against racist police and ICE terror, not pacifist appeals to ruling-class officials.

Antiracism on the shop floor

PLP has consistently raised the issue of racism among organized workers to unite them against the bosses’ racist attacks. In 1973, when a New York City Police Department undercover cop shot a Black 10-year-old in the back in Queens, a PLP club at the Ford auto plant in Mahwah, New Jersey, brought the atrocity onto the factory assembly line. Our Party petitioned the do-nothing union local leadership to take a public stance and demand that the cop be indicted for murder. The workers’ response was electric. They were galvanized into action during a contract struggle that previously had been limited to economic issues. Their heightened political consciousness and militancy led to a weeklong wildcat strike against 100-degree temperatures in the plant, which in turn set the tone for the Chrysler Mack Avenue sit-down strike two months later (see CHALLENGE, May 6).

Beginning in the 1980’s, PLP has provided antiracist leadership to 6,000 Washington, DC Metro transit workers. At one point, the local’s overwhelmingly Black membership elected a white PL’er as their president, defeating a passive Black incumbent. As Metro bosses exclude people convicted of crimes by the rulers’ criminal injustice system, they close one of the few avenues for many Black workers to obtain a decent-paying job. PLP has demanded that the union oppose racist background checks. 

Many workers were won to our Party as a result of our generational commitment and leadership to antiracist fightbacks! 

Fighting racism internationally

PLP is now actively organizing on five continents.

In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, political assassinations, and fights between gangs and U.N. soldiers, we spread the struggle against U.S. imperialism and racism, which have enslaved workers there for two centuries.

In Israel-Palestine, PL’ers are exposing and fighting the intense racism of the Israeli bosses (with U.S. ruling-class support) against workers from Africa and Palestine, who are victims of super-exploitation. We are also organizing workers against the Israeli rulers’ genocide of Palestinian workers..  

In Pakistan, PL’ers are mobilizing thousands of workers to fight racist super-exploitation by Pakistani bosses in alliance with U.S. imperialism. The bosses have slaughtered thousands in sweatshops, drone attacks, and through their corruption and mismanagement of disastrous flooding.

These are only a few highlights of PLP’s long fight against racism, the ideological foundation of the profit system. The struggle against racism will prepare our class to overthrow capitalism and obliterate exploitation and divisions among workers. It is the watchword of the Progressive Labor Party.