Build unity door to door!
On a recent Saturday, a couple of comrades and I joined a canvassing training for Janeese Lewis George outside the Highlands Grill in Ward 7. George is the latest D.C. mayoral candidate who uses progressive rhetoric to mislead our class. In total, about 30 volunteers came from across the city. There were high‑school students, professors, bartenders, college students, and community organizers. Most were Black. The lead organizers wore purple shirts and gave us a quick “talk‑to‑your‑neighbors” exercise so we could reach our across‑the‑river neighbors.
The event was undeniably well‑organized. The training emphasized a listening‑first approach: ask each person about what issue matters to them most, then gradually steer the conversation toward the candidate, her positions, and how to vote.
Yet, as I stood beside the volunteers, I felt a growing dissonance between the mechanics of the campaign and the material realities of our class. The promise that electing a progressive candidate will “fix” systemic oppression rests on the lie that a new face will fundamentally redistribute wealth and power. History shows that even well‑intentioned officials quickly become custodians of the same racist and sexist structures that exploit workers everywhere.
With George specifically, she proudly called for defunding the Maryland Police Department during her 2020 Ward 4 council campaign. After winning, she quickly flipped the script, pledging to raise the police budget to the maximum statutory amount. Politicians can and will do the bidding of the ruling class and try to keep us in the dark. We, the grassroots volunteers, never know what conversations are happening behind closed doors with corporate backers.
Ultimately, only a dictatorship of our class can bring the change we so desperately need. My conviction is that our collective power lies not in handing a ballot to a lying candidate who will escape accountability, but in organizing ourselves to meet our own material needs. Providing mutual aid, educating our neighbors, engaging in mass organizations, and organizing our co-workers. When we prioritize those struggles, we build a resilient community that can demand, not just hope for, real change.
That being said, the canvassing effort does offer a useful foothold. It gives a legitimate excuse to walk door‑to‑door, sit on stoops, and hear directly from neighbors (especially when confronting a media machine that wants us to stay divided based on gender, race, nationality, and sexuality!). These conversations are crucial for strategizing where Progressive Labor Party members should focus locally. So, I intend to return next week, not to sell a candidate, but to listen. I will ask my neighbors what they need today and use those answers to shape my club’s work as we take steps toward revolution. Propaganda has led workers to believe that one new face can be our savior. But the truth is simple: our power lives in solidarity, not in any individual champion. The workers, united, can never be defeated!
Building confidence to build a base
When I was preparing for the one day Progressive Labor Party (PLP) school, one of the texts I read was the PLP “Build a Base” document from the 1960s. Many interesting points were raised in the document, but because it was clearly written for more experienced PLP members, it made me feel a bit overwhelmed. Many thoughts were going through my mind after reading it: am I cut out for basebuilding? If I were to basebuild, what would it look like in practice? Would I find a method that feels natural to who I am?
During my discussions with my workshop group, I was able to find a lot of clarity. I became more certain of the necessity for communism—so of course I am cut out for basebuilding! We all are. We all have to be! And as I figure out how basebuilding will take shape in my life, our conversations gave me confidence that I can build off of the skills and relationships I already have, or will have in the future. I’m a student and a tutor, so that gives me lots of opportunities to connect with other young people who recognize that capitalism is destroying the world. If we were to develop a friendship, I have no doubt that would lead to more concrete conversations about PL’s work. (In fact, I’ve already experienced this)! At the root of my basebuilding trepidation, however, is a fear of rejection, something common to newer communists like myself. Overcoming this will take work, since it mostly stems from anti-communist indoctrination and my belief that others received the same conditioning.
However, I would like to leave you all with something wise one of my group members said: There are strategic reasons you should be upfront about being a communist, as being dishonest makes it harder to basebuild. But also, by withholding your communism from people in your life, you are pretending an important part of yourself does not exist. This has inspired me to be more honest with my friends, relying on the not-so-blind-faith that our love will challenge anti-communist rhetoric, leading to fruitful conversations and, more importantly, action!
HHHHH
Neighbor: Hey, can I get your number?
“Hey, can I get your number?” I asked my parking neighbor during August of last year when the racist slumlords of our apartment complex towed her car through no fault of her own. Building management failed to communicate with the towing company that her parking pass was paid for, costing my neighbor hundreds of dollars in towing fees. In the face of typical parasitic behavior amongst the property owners, extracting every penny they can from the working class, forming connections was the answer.
We exchanged numbers in order to have each other’s backs in case of future mishaps with the slumlords. This small act eventually blossomed into a beautiful connection between my parking neighbor and me.
Months later, she reached out to me to express her frustrations with her new parking neighbor. Serendipitously, comrades and I from Progressive Labor Party were planning a game night to build a foundation for a tenant’s union around the same time she called. This granted us the opportunity to take our connection to a higher level by inviting her and her son to the game night and connecting her with other neighbors.
This game night turned out to be a huge success, enabling us to practice our line of forming multiracial unity amongst the working class by bringing a racially diverse group of neighbors together and challenging the isolation that prevents us from fighting the bosses.
When I invited my car neighbor to the game night, she immediately shouted, “Oh my goodness this is exactly what we’ve been wanting for such a long time! This apartment complex never organizes any community events for us!” Statements like these are a reminder of how important the Party’s leadership is in building a base in the working class by any means necessary.
*****
Town hall: Ed workers vs failing conditions
Two days ago, while walking near the Zócalo in Oaxaca City, I came across hundreds of people gathered in the town square awaiting the return of their representatives from a meeting with the state governor. After speaking with several participants, it became clear that they were primary and secondary school teachers, along with physical education instructors.
The issues under dispute include unpaid wages dating back to January, deteriorating working conditions in the schools, and the increasingly difficult circumstances faced by students. Some teachers also raised concerns about growing violence from outside groups affecting their communities.
Each year in Oaxaca, negotiations between the government and the teachers’ union center on salaries and working conditions, reflecting ongoing structural tensions that remain unresolved. Local newspapers have begun covering the struggle in greater detail, and it would be valuable for comrades closer to the struggle to report more fully on these developments in CHALLENGE.
This struggle is part of a broader pattern of attacks facing educators and the working class more generally. The situation bears close attention, and solidarity with these teachers is essential. The fight continues — la lucha continúa.
*****
One battle after another: bosses’ fever dream
Recently, our club and friends had a “movie afternoon” to watch the award-winning One Battle After Another film that depicts a ruling class fever dream of revolution. It was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, Sean Penn, and Chase Infiniti. This sounds like a sterling cast and director and should have been great. But our group begged to differ. One comrade wrote the following letter to express his critique:
Under the current fascist Trump Regime, bourgeois artists and directors need a way to distract and co-opt the energy of the people into idle debate instead of organizing. The contradictions of U.S. capitalism and “democracy” have resulted in blatant fascist violence by ICE to preserve the racist divisive status quo. Director Paul Thomas Anderson’s understanding that there is no hiding from the violence that has always been present in Black and brown communities has been twisted in this movie to portray working class revolutionary energy into indiscriminate fetishism and violence.
Anderson reflects the “othering” of blackness by portraying a perverse version of Black women’s supposed insatiable sexuality. Throughout history, the bodies of the marginalized have been trivialized in the pursuit of resources for the capitalist class. From the bombardment of Venezuela for oil to the rape of Congo for rubber, Black and brown people have always been objects to viciously attack in the eyes of the capitalist. Teyanna Taylor’s character represents the same psychopathic objectification forced on the women of marginalized communities. The female body is used as an excuse for violence of the pigs eating at the troughs of the bourgeois. It’s a disgusting use of Black actors and paints the women, usually the main contributors of the liberation movement, as distractions.
The idealized use of violence in the film, paying implicit homage to the Weather Underground, also paints a sexy picture of violence rather than showing the tedious, but actually impactful, work of organizing in one’s community. The “French 75” underground in this movie is hailed as revolutionary “heroes,” but they didn’t change the material conditions for anyone ravaged by the capitalist state as they simply blew up buildings.
Their violence only led to the movement being targeted and swiftly crushed by the state due to the romantic tactics of the organization, thus conveying depressing defeatism to the audience.
There are no romantic heroes in the fight for a better future. Willing participants ready to fight day in and day out for a better tomorrow is what is required. A movie showing our current reality of capitalist crisis while presenting workers and community members as passive actors will not lead us to revolution. It is obvious that we need to organize together for future generations if we want to see a better world, not focus on phony ideas of revolution. May we organize for a better future, not sit around and sedate our lives, like the bumbling petit bourgeois revolutionary “Bob” played by Leonardo DiCaprio!
*****
Minnesota school adapts to a war against students
Washington Post, 2/15–First period was about to begin Tuesday…The parent of one of the middle school’s students had been detained by immigration authorities, and the family needed help finding a lawyer. It was one more in a steady stream of daily crises that had confronted Leslee Sherk, Columbia Academy’s principal…tallying the latest number of students with at least one parent detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement: 16, up from 10 the week before…It was still a place of learning, even if 210 of its 700 students were now studying at home. But now it was also a food bank, a counseling hotline, a missing persons task force, an immigration resource center and a refuge.
Racist researchers given access to “protected” database by lax federal agency
New York Times, 1/24–Genetic researchers were seeking children for an ambitious, federally funded project to track brain development — a study that they told families could yield invaluable discoveries about DNA’s impact on behavior and disease. They also promised that the children’s sensitive data would be closely guarded in the decade-long study…The scientists did not keep it safe. A group of fringe researchers…gained access to data from thousands of children. The researchers have used it to produce at least 16 papers purporting to find biological evidence for differences in intelligence between races…Mainstream geneticists have rejected their work as biased and unscientific…
ICE has its roots in terrorizing people living near U.S.-Mexico border
Bloomberg, 1/26–When Mark Pettibone was swept off a Portland street into an unmarked minivan by a group of people in camouflage and tactical gear during the George Floyd protests in 2020, he had no idea who they were or where he would be taken...But many of these practices are not new in US immigration enforcement; they’ve migrated from border areas to the middle of America’s densest neighborhoods…“The Trump administration has deployed Border Patrol to places that are an enormous distance from the southern border,”…White House Border Czar Tom Homan…took another action to solidify a growing merger between two agencies that have historically operated quite differently: CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement…
U.S. and Israeli imperialists expand into Somaliland
Al Jazeera, 2/26–Somaliland is prepared to grant the United States access to its mineral resources and military bases, a senior minister says, as the breakaway Somali region pursues international recognition. “We are willing to give exclusive [access to our minerals] to the United States. Also, we are open to offer military bases to the United States,” Khadar Hussein Abdi, minister of the presidency, told the AFP news agency…Israel became the only country in the world to recognise Somaliland’s independence in December, something the territory has been seeking since declaring its autonomy from Somalia in 1991. The region seceded from Somalia during a civil war…
Protesters smash Brooklyn weapons maker working for Israeli fascists
New York Post, 2/21–The head of a drone-manufacturing company whose clients include the Israel Defense Forces said his business is being booted from the city-run Brooklyn Navy Yard …The company has long been the target of protests at the former Navy shipyard…a series of recent break-in attempts…led to broken windows and other damage at the industrial park…During a Feb. 11 rally, the anti-Israel protestors gained access into the lobby of the building Easy Aerial rents for six hours…Easy Aerial assists the Israel Defense Forces by supplying surveillance drones for reconnaissance missions and monitoring borders along the Gaza Strip and Lebanon…
Investors lose trust in the dollar and move to gold
Mises Institute, 1/26–Despite the consensus narrative, what we are currently experiencing globally is not “de‑dollarization,” but a broad loss of confidence in developed economies’ fiat currencies and sovereign debt as a reserve asset for central banks and institutions. This fundamental loss of confidence in the solvency of developed economies’ sovereign issuers is boosting demand for gold. However, the latest data shows no crossover or fiat alternative substitution…The real underlying driver is the deterioration in the fiscal and monetary credibility of developed economies.
- Information
Editorial: Imperialist rivalry - bosses clash, workers lose
- Information
- 13 February 2026 601 hits
On January 16, when Canadian and Chinese capitalist bosses signed a trade agreement to retaliate against U.S. tariffs, they exposed the decay of U.S. imperialism, the surging global volatility on the road to world war, and the rising fascism faced by the working class. At the World Economic Forum, millionaire banker and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney bluntly noted that the old U.S.-led “rules-based order is fading.”
Though no two nations are more economically tied than the U.S. than Canada, there is no honor among thieves. As the international crisis of capitalism intensifies, old alliances will be cast aside. With everything up for grabs, the junior rulers of the world–from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Arctic, the latest arena for global rivalry–must try to guess which imperialist power gives them the best chance to survive.
Workers know no borders and have nothing to gain by choosing one set of parasitic capitalists over another. There are no good bosses. When their profits are at stake, every one of them will sacrifice millions of our class sisters and brothers. In their anti-tariff protests in Europe and across the U.S.-Canada border, workers around the world are organizing and fighting back. They are showing us each day that WE can lead society. But only the communist politics of Progressive Labor Party–infused into struggles on the job, in our schools, in the streets, and in the military–can empower our class to turn these trade wars, and the shooting wars to come, into communist revolution.
“Donroe” Doctrine deepens U.S. imperialist decline
The snatch-and-go bandits led by Trump are imploding the foundations of the post-World War II U.S. empire. Rather than take on arch-rival China and project U.S. power throughout East Asia, South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, Trump’s “Donroe” Doctrine puts the Americas, from Venezuela to Greenland and Canada, in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism (Read about attacks on Cuba on page 5). Meanwhile, long-term U.S. alliances with Europe, Japan, India, and Australia are in jeopardy. In defiance of Trump’s threats, Canada agreed to slash tariffs on a small but symbolic number of electric vehicles manufactured in China. Across the other U.S. border, 20 percent of cars sold in Mexico come from China as well (Mexico News Daily, 1/15). Trump’s strong-man bluster has pushed these and other allies into the waiting arms of the fiercest U.S. imperialist rival. In a similar vein, amid Trump’s ongoing threats to take over Greenland, the European imperialists convened an emergency meeting in Brussels to consider counter-tariffs against the U.S. and expanded partnerships with China (Channel News Asia, 2/2).
It would be a grave mistake to see these developments as dictated by the whims of a deranged and increasingly unhinged maniac. Trump’s Donroe Doctrine represents the interests of the Small Fascist, Fortress America section of the U.S. ruling class. These gutter racists came to power after decades of failures, corruption, and brutality from the Big Fascist liberals of finance capital. Fascism does not spring from the impulses of a madman. It grows when the entire capitalist system is in crisis. All we are now witnessing, from ICE murders and abductions to the frantic scrambling of global alliances, reflect this crisis. The origin of today’s mass deportation, hyper-militarized surveillance state traces back a quarter-century to 9/11. Every president since, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama and Joe Biden, has done his part in the rise of U.S. fascism. While Trump may be making a qualitative leap, we can’t save our class by voting his party out. The Democrats’ next great liberal hope will have no choice but to pursue the same lethal trajectory. Only masses of organized workers, led by communist politics, can stop the bosses in their tracks. And only a communist revolution can destroy capitalism and fascism for all time.
The Arctic: new imperialist battlefield
As the world warms from capitalist-caused climate change, the commercial and military significance of two Arctic passageways, the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage, makes them objects of desire for Canada, the U.S., Russia, and China. In 1996, spurred by the already apparent melting of the polar ice caps, these rivals joined with several Scandinavian countries to form the Arctic Council, a vehicle to manage the competition over the region’s vast reserves of oil, coal, and rare earth minerals. But three decades later, such cooperative arrangements are now relics of the past.
In 2019, the U.S. Defense Department published its “Arctic Strategy” to limit Chinese and Russian leverage in the region. Trump’s threats to move into Greenland and even Canada are simply more belligerent expressions of these long-term strategic goals. Beginning in 2023 under Biden, U.S. and NATO troops engaged in military exercises to deploy “a combat-credible force to enhance the power in NATO’s northern flank” (Newsweek, February 2023). Last month, as the old coalition splintered, NATO members Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, and Norway felt compelled to send troops to Greenland to counter Trump’s threatened aggression. While communist revolution won’t immediately stem the tide of global warming, it’s safe to say that a world run by workers won’t be turning melting ice caps into an opportunity for further degradation of the planet–or for profit-driven war.
Down with all bosses and their borders!
The popular anti-Trump slogan–“Canada is Not For Sale”-- belies the fact that the racist Canadian bosses have been brutalizing workers for centuries. Even as it celebrates the “world’s longest undefended border,” Canada “incarcerates thousands of people on immigration-related grounds every year,” with longer and harsher detentions for Black workers (CBC, 6/17/21).
Canada has a long, ugly history of racist terror against Indigenous workers, whose children were forcibly removed from their families and interned in government schools. Indigenous women and girls were targeted for racist, sexist violence. These atrocities are not relics of the distant past. A 2017 analysis found that Indigenous workers were more than 10 times more likely to be shot and killed by police (CTV News). “Despite making up just five percent of Canada’s population, 30 percent of the country’s prisoners are Indigenous. Across the prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta – regions that have higher populations of Indigenous people – that number rises to 54 percent” (Al Jazeera, March 2021).
For the workers of the world, there is no good choice between the imperialist, viciously racist nationalism of Trump’s U.S. and the “underdog” nationalism of Canada and other junior capitalist powers. Whether delivered with Trump’s truculent buffoonery or Carney’s slickness, nationalism is a deadly trap. It aims to bind workers to “their” ruling class, all the way to the concentration camps and killing fields, to war and fascism and genocide. PLP organizes around internationalism, the idea that workers worldwide must unite to defeat this racist, sexist profit system. Only by smashing all bosses and borders can we build a world that workers deserve.
CHICAGO, January 27—“What do we want? ICE out! When do we want it? Now!” 100 Veterans Administration employees and community members gathered outside Jesse Brown VA Medical Center on a sunny, 10-degree day in a demonstration of solidarity against the ICE/CBP murder of Alex Pretti (see box for definitions). Alex Pretti was a nurse at the Minneapolis VA and was killed by ICE/CBP agents when he stepped in to help another worker. But he is not the only one killed by ICE/CBP – these fascist thugs have murdered Renee Good, Keith Porter, Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, not to mention the 32 workers who have died in ICE custody in 2025 (Guardian, 1/4/26). Capitalism in decline leads to fascism and fascism needs a scapegoat. The ruling class is scapegoating immigrants to enact violence against all Black and brown workers.
Racism is key to capitalism and the bosses will always resort to racist state violence to keep us divided and living in fear.
The rally was organized by several unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), SEIU and NNU. Speakers included nurses, veterans, and medical residents. Some pushed for removing ICE from neighborhoods and spoke on BP’s yearslong ongoing violence (WTTW, 1/27/26). While the good-heartedness of the speakers was clear, the politics needed sharpening—nobody mentioned racism or capitalism. Luckily comrades from Progressive Labor Party were there and distributed more than 50 copies of CHALLENGE, bringing communist ideas to the masses.
The rally ended with a march around the VA medical center. Of the three rallies held this year at the Chicago VA in response to attacks on federal workers, this was the most well attended and the most militant, and it was great to identify more coworkers to build the Party.
Organizing on the job
Workers, including Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members, also organized a moment of silence for Pretti at the VA. The hospital bosses were asked to have a moment of silence over the loudspeaker, which is the standard when a veteran dies in the hospital. They refused even this small show of support and one of the hospital bosses even said that the moment of silence wasn’t allowed. But workers don’t give up just because the bosses say so. It did take more time to organize on the five units compared to getting a moment over the loudspeaker, but it was worth it. Every supervising physician and medical resident working that day in the hospital was told about it. Many brought their teams, including their medical students. Nursing managers told all the nurses in their units. Working collectively and building up our numbers increased our strength and safety.
The workers leading the moment of silence at their individual units made a collective decision to tell the attendees that the bosses had not allowed the moment of silence over the loudspeaker, but we had organized one anyway. People who attended said how glad they were that it had happened. This is just a small example of bosses being unnecessary. Workers decided a moment of silence was important and made it happen despite the bosses’ saying no. Everything that matters, like healthcare, teaching, industry, only happens because the working class makes it happen. Workers can only rely on each other and never the bosses.
These small acts of defiance build our bonds with friends and coworkers and build our organizing skills for the next fight, always with the goal of building towards a communist revolution. We need to keep organizing, struggling with workers to build a mass movement, and be ready when ICE/CBP returns to Chicago. We have already discussed how to keep our patients and coworkers safe from ICE/CBP at work. We learned from and took inspiration from Minneapolis healthcare workers who have shared their experiences with ICE in their hospitals. Another struggle for federal workers will be within the AFGE union. AFGE represents both VA employees and CBP which means that Alex Pretti was murdered by two fellow union members! Workers are already starting to organize to push AFGE to stop representing CBP.
Racist liberal politicians are not the answer to state violence
Liberal politicians will try to convince us that voting for them is the solution to ICE/CBP terror. And what are their solutions? Body cameras, banning the ICE gestapo from wearing masks, and judicial warrants (CNBC, 2/4) According to the liberals, if these demands are met, terrorizing workers, deporting them, separating families and letting workers die in ICE custody is fine!
Another “solution” the liberals will tell us is a win for the working class is better training for ICE. How could better training for fascist thugs ever help the working class? Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez, the ICE agents that murdered Pretti, joined ICE in 2018 and 2014, respectively (ProPublica, 2/1). Jonathan Ross, who murdered Renee Good, has been with ICE for 10 years (NBC News, 1/9). The only class that benefits from better trained ICE killers is the ruling class.
The last month has shown that workers know that the system is rotten. PLP will keep doing the work of building relationships with workers, and building a mass movement for a communist revolution – the only way that the working class will have an egalitarian society free of police terror, poverty, racism, sexism, and borders. Join us!
In 2026, as was the case over 500 hundreds years ago, Black workers remain the most brutally attacked section of our class. Now as then, they must help take the lead in building an international communist movement. U.S. history is a chronicle of genocide, slavery, segregation, and enduring racist oppression. Black workers have less invested in the capitalist status quo. Since racism infects all relations within the profit system, they stand to hold fewer illusions about “justice” or “democracy” under the bosses’ dictatorship.
Though not immune to the false hope of reformism, Black workers are better equipped to understand its limits. As the young rebels in Ferguson declared: “The whole damn system has to go!” And so: Black workers are a key revolutionary force because of their basis for class consciousness—for class solidarity with all workers and class hatred of all capitalist rulers.
Our Party has developed the understanding that racism and capitalism are bound together. One cannot exist without the other. Only an international communist revolution can liberate the world’s working class from the ravages of racist imperialism. Only a united, multiracial working class can win the fight for communism. Black workers are central to that struggle.
Workers in general are degraded by capitalism. As a class, we have nothing to lose but our chains. Latin, Muslim, Asian, and women workers all suffer under special oppression by the U.S. ruling class. From the U.S. and Mexico to Europe and the Middle East, immigrant workers—most of them dark-skinned—are terrorized and scapegoated at the fault lines of rising fascism.
Anti-Black racism is a global epidemic. Black workers have an especially urgent case to revolt and smash the bosses’ state. Throughout U.S. history, from the time they were brought from Africa by force as a pool of no-wage labor, they have served at the forefront of every working-class movement: the war against slavery, the struggle for civil rights, the mass strikes against the industrial bosses, the fights for jobs and housing and decent schools, and led the fight in Vietnam against the U.S. military. Wherever workers have confronted the profit system and its parasites, Black workers have stood at the front lines.
Wherever workers have confronted the profit system and its parasites, Black workers have stood at the front lines.
Black workers have always fought back
Workers everywhere have always fought back against the bosses, with Black workers frequently leading the way. This tradition dates to the time of enslaved workers running away, many of whom fled to the mountains. They created self-sufficient communities and defended themselves with armed violence, as necessary.
In 1739, the Stono Rebellion involved as many as 60 enslaved workers in the British colony of South Carolina. The colony’s legislature was so terrified that it placed a costly 10-year moratorium on the import of Black slaves from Africa. The bosses’ property and lives were at risk.
In the 1790s, the Haitian Revolution defeated Napoleon Bonaparte’s army and repelled British and Spanish invaders, abolishing slavery in the richest colony in the Caribbean. These Black liberators spread fear among enslavers throughout the Western Hemisphere. They inspired hundreds of rebellions throughout the Americas, all of them violent.
In 1831, Nat Turner led more than 60 slaves and Black freedmen in blazing a bloody trail through Virginia. The rebels did away with Turner’s master and the master’s family, then terrorized the owners of 15 other plantations. Turner inspired John Brown, who led a multiracial group in an 1859 attack on a federal arsenal in West Virginia. The raid on Harpers Ferry sparked the American Civil War to end chattel slavery.
Over the two centuries preceding the Civil War, historians have documented more than 250 uprisings involving 10 slaves or more on U.S. territory alone.
In the Caribbean, rebellions like the First Maroon War in Jamaica (1728-1741) grew into all-out military combat. After the Maroons repeatedly defeated British forces, the imperialists were forced to sign a peace treaty.
In 1760, an even larger rebellion in Jamaica called Tacky’s War became “a massive shock to the imperial system.” Black workers from the North and newly freed slaves from the South played a vital role in the U.S. Civil War (see “Marx and Du Bois,” p. 18). In the aftermath, the victorious Union capitalists—Rockefeller, Morgan, Vanderbilt, Carnegie—relied on racism to keep workers divided.
In the North, mainly white and immigrant workers waged fierce battles against steel, railroad, and coal industrialists. In the South, mainly Black workers—often led by women like Ida B. Wells, a former slave—fought against lynching and other racist abuses throughout the Jim Crow era.
Between 1898 and 1902, rising U.S. imperialism defeated Spain and then attacked Filipino independence fighters in the Philippine-American War.
The Filipino warriors, many of whom identified as Black, made antiracist, class-conscious appeals to Black U.S. soldiers. As one wrote, “Why don’t you fight those people in America who burn Negroes, that make a beast of you, that took a mother’s child and sold it?" In a foreshadowing of the Vietnam War, many Black U.S. soldiers deserted.
Black workers are a key revolutionary force because of their role in the U.S. military, where they represent 17 percent of active-duty enlisted men and 30 percent of active-duty enlisted women. They will play a major part in the next global war—and in turning an imperialist war for profit into a class war for communist revolution. Black workers are a key revolutionary force because of their disproportionate numbers in basic U.S. industry and transportation. Within major U.S. cities and metropolitan areas, Black workers are concentrated in mass transit, health care, education, the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, and FedEx. They retain the potential to shut down major population centers and critical infrastructure.
If our class is to seize and hold state power throughout the world, Black workers and their leadership are essential for another fundamental reason. Our class cannot possibly destroy racism—the lifeblood of capitalism—without their leadership.
