It’s a hot fightback summer! From hotel workers, grad-student workers, writers, actors, workers are shutting it down!. Earlier this year, college teachers, healthcare workers, education workers, graduate students—all have walked off the job with overwhelming public support. As we go to press 40,000  rail workers from the United Kingdom are on the picket lines  leading the largest rail strike in 30 years. We may see strikes by 350,000 UPS workers in August and by auto workers this fall. Clearly, capitalism’s crisis appears to have triggered a period of sharper class struggle.

Workers are fed up with the inequalities—the rising cost of living, exacerbated by the capitalist-bred pandemic’s economic effects, stagnating wages, and more—which disproportionately hit Black and brown working families the hardest.

If you live or work in an area where workers are on strike, support the picket line! Greet workers with the revolutionary ideas of CHALLENGE and the chant, “hey hey ho ho! this capitalist system has got to go!”
Workers deserve nothing less than a communist world. That’s a world run by and for our class.

If the far-right Vox party joins Spain’s ruling coalition after the July 23 general election, it will be the first Spanish government to include open fascists since the death of mass murderer Francisco Franco in 1975. It would also mark the latest failure of liberal democracy to manage the growing global crisis of capitalism. As the U.S. bosses keep weakening in the face of an aggressive challenge by the Chinese imperialists, their junior NATO partners—the centrist parties that have ruled Western Europe since World War II--are losing their grip as well.

Instability is everywhere; everything seems up for grabs. With the war in Ukraine escalating and World War III looming, the old liberal democratic world order is in shambles. Confronted with runaway inflation, a wave of climate catastrophes, and mass unemployment (close to 13 percent in Spain), both the open fascist insurgents and the old guard liberals are scapegoating migrating workers—a hallmark of rising fascism. As millions of workers’ lives are upended in the general turmoil, a segment of the working class has been infected by the disease of anti-immigrant racism. In this dark night of weak class consciousness, the capitalist rulers are pulling out all the stops to mislead, deceive, and divide us. Regardless of which of the bosses’ factions wins the next round of elections, the rulers will ultimately need full-blown fascism to have any chance to destroy their competition and protect their profits.

Only an international mass workers’ movement, led by communists, can beat back the rising tide of fascism. Only communist revolution, spearheaded by the fighting Progressive Labor Party, can end imperialist war and create a society run by and for the working class. The profit system can’t reform its way out of this crisis. History shows us that it can never serve workers’ needs. Capitalism must be destroyed, root and branch. Join us—we have a world to win!

As liberal democracy weakens, open fascists rise
Six years ago in Spain, nostalgic for the Franco years (foreignpolicy.com, 6/29), a splinter group denounced the right-wing Popular Party as too soft and set off on its own. Widely dismissed and underestimated, the Vox party exploited workers’ anxiety over the Catalan separatist movement, which was pushing to break away from the richest region of Spain (centered in Barcelona) and form its own country. Using the classic fascist tools of gutter racism and sexism, and taking a nationalist page from the U.S. Small Fascist forces fronted by Donald Trump (“Make Spain Great Again!”) Vox “opposes abortion rights, denies climate change and rejects the need for the government to combat gender violence” (New Indian Express, 7/18).

Now backed by 15 percent of voters nationwide, Vox is being courted to form a new parliamentary majority by the Popular Party, which is favored to win the upcoming election after shifting to a more openly racist, anti-immigrant platform (El Pais, 7/24/2018). If that alliance comes to pass, Spain would join a growing list of European countries--including the old World War II fascist axis of Germany, Italy, and Vichy France--with openly fascist parties either within the government or as a leading opposition to the government. And with Spain next in line to hold the presidency of the European Union, Spanish fascists could influence the EU’s agenda.

When liberal democracy fails the capitalist class, fascism gives the bosses more direct control over all aspects of society, from the media and universities to industrial policy and war preparations. It’s no accident that fascism is the fastest-growing political movement in Europe today. This reality would have been unthinkable in the decades following World War II, when fascist parties were outlawed In Germany and marginalized in France and Italy. But times are changing, and fast. Millions of workers have lost confidence in the ability of the traditional post-war European parties to solve the glaring problems of capitalism. Europe’s capitalist rulers—the dominant banks and industrialists—are terrified of losing the white working class, a fear compounded by Britain’s departure from the EU and recent mass protests against the French bosses’ pension reforms. At present, these rulers aren’t moving to smash Vox or the likes of open fascist leaders like Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. If anything, they appear to be hedging their bets--just as they did in Germany in 1933, when they sanctioned Adolph Hitler’s appointment as chancellor by the liberal-backed president.  

In the most recent elections in Germany, the most committed fascist nation during World War II, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) expanded its base, even after AfD members were arrested for helping to plan a fascist coup last December. The party is polling up to 20 percent, “neck-and-neck with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats and behind only the conservative CDU/CSU bloc” (france24.com, 3/7). In France, the National Rally headed by Marine Le Pen is now the highest-polling party in the country. Amid the ongoing rebellion over the French cops’ cold-blooded killing of a 17-year-old son of North African immigrants, it’s calling for harsher treatment of migrating workers, wholesale evictions of public housing residents for minor offenses, and the building of more prisons—the bosses’ modern concentration camps.

In their desperate attempt to hold on to power, the rulers’ mainstream liberal agents, from Joe Biden to Emmanuel Macron, are quickly adopting their own more virulent racist and anti-immigrant policies. From the Texas border to the segregated suburbs of Paris, they’re enabling mad-dog police terror. In France, the kkkops have even prohibited protests against their own racist violence! The result is a political spiral toward fascism. As the big capitalists move to the right, they’re legitimizing and energizing far-right parties that have little or no stake in liberal democracy. Vox, for example, is banning unfriendly news outlets from its events and calling for them to be shut down (Reporters Without Borders). As the bosses’ contradictions continue to sharpen, we can expect the liberals to follow suit in ditching the phony freedoms of capitalist democracy.

Only communists can defeat fascism
The working class cannot afford to sit around and wait for the capitalists to try to fix their unfixable contradictions. Economic and inter-imperialist crises inevitably lead to rising fascism and wider war. In World War II, the force that stopped full-blown fascism in its tracks was a communist-led working class. Although communists and other anti-fascists were defeated in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, they inspired workers throughout the world in the global conflict that followed, culminating in the Soviet Union’s destruction of Nazi Germany. The revolutionary Chinese Communist Party played an important role in beating back fascist Japan.

The Communist Party of Italy led the resistance that smashed the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.
Today there are but two paths before us: fascism or communist revolution. There is no middle ground, no third way. As communist theorist R. Palme Dutt observed in Fascism and Social Revolution (1934), “Capitalism in its decay breeds Fascism. Capitalist democracy in decay breeds Fascism. The only final guarantee against Fascism, the only final wiping out of the causes of Fascism, is the victory of the proletarian dictatorship.”
And so our choice is clear. Build Progressive Labor Party!

The murder of Nahel M. on June 27th by a traffic cop in Nanterre, France set off a nationwide rebellion against racist police murders. Even after the cop who shot Nahel was arrested, people’s anger and cynicism about the system continued to explode. This multiracial rebellion, led by teenage Black and North African workers, spread to more than 200 cities and towns across France. They responded with violence as the police attacked the young rebels in the streets and arrested more than 3000 people over five nights of demonstrations. The rebellion in France is inspiring as it shows the potential power of the working class. At the same time, like so many uprisings before, without an organized communist party and a political vision of fighting for a workers led society it ends as quickly as it began and leaves many people cynical about fighting back.

Nahel was shot by the police at point blank range. Initially the police lied and said he had tried to run them down, but video exposed their lies and showed them murdering Nahel by shooting him through the driver side window as the car started to drive away.

At first French President Emmanuel Macron tried to ignore the rebellion. He was recorded attending  a concert on the second night. But the clashes between young people, angered at the ongoing racism of French capitalism and the police, spread beyond the working-class areas and thousands of people marched in the center of Paris. Macron, who visited police barracks to support his racist killers, looked to the police and the more fascist elements in the country to put down the rebellion.

The rebellion exposed, once again the extreme racism of capitalism. Nanterre is a working-class suburb that has a large number of people of North African descent as well as Black workers. Youth unemployment in Nanterre is at 23 percent (CNN, 7/1) and in France more than 20 percent of teenagers live below the poverty line. Many of them live in suburbs like Nanterre. Instead of the French bosses creating jobs for young people, the area is heavily policed. Across France the police have used identity check powers to harass and terrorize the working class. Young men perceived as Black or North African are 20 times as likely to be stopped by the police than the rest of the population (Guardian, 6/30).

As the demonstrations have died down the French ruling class has organized pro-government rallies across the country. These “restore order” rallies have been led by the most openly racist elements in France, including the fascist Marie Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) which is calling for more prisons and to have people that are arrested for any reason to be evicted from public housing. The working class can’t rely on the bosses to fix capitalism. Instead of making things better the bosses respond with more racism.

These rebellions have shown once again that the working class has the power to shut down and overthrow capitalism. It has also shown that this will only happen by the building of a revolutionary communist movement that can fight to take power through communist revolution.

HAITI, July 2—Since January 2023, the two-year “Humanitarian Parole” program has offered Haitians, Venezuelans, Cubans and Salvadorans the possibility of entering the U.S. without going through the traditional “illegal” channels. This program, which in reality aims to reduce the number of migrants crossing the U.S. borders, has been praised by many Haitian workers and others who only dream of fleeing a country plagued by gang terror, economic misery, and political instability. Even children only talk about traveling. But the reality is that U.S. imperialism prefers to camouflage the problems that we are facing more than to really come to our rescue. In the capitalist world, solidarity is not an option: the big fish have no mercy for the little ones—the countries of the global north have no compassion for the countries of the global south. Their only aim is to squeeze profits off the cheap labor of migrants.

“I can't wait, I can't wait any longer for my approval to come,” admits a young graduate in legal sciences who is doing his second year of internship as a lawyer. He draws up a list of others like himself who have sponsors in the U.S. and have already applied to the program. He adds that many of these applicants, who have been waiting six months in limbo, are in danger of developing mental disorders from the stress, in particular depression. They are living on the edge, fearful of the insecurity created by the gangs and the rampant inflation that increasingly impoverishes them and their families. And there are others who can not find sponsors because the conditions set by Biden & Co. are very difficult for sponsoring friends and family members.

Those who do manage to leave come from all sections of society: workers (employed and unemployed), professionals, public and private executives, teachers and students. “Our country is pushing us out; we are not needed here,” said one person interviewed for this article. “It’s like we are in a pressure cooker, and the chief chef has opened the valve to let some steam out. This won’t solve the problems that the Haitian masses are facing because of the profit system.”

This is the march to Canaan, the Promised Land. Some people say it is a forced exodus even believing that the U.S. has hidden interests. Many know that what waits for them on the other side is not the gold in the streets but rather more racism, unemployment or low-wage jobs, underserved schools and hospitals, crowded and overpriced housing. So many deplore the program, but the contradiction is that it is hard to resist the urge to take advantage of it. They hope they will be able to fade into the population after the two-year “parole” ends.

U.S. Imperialists Can’t Find Other Countries to Intervene/Invade Haiti
For several months now, the “international community,” that is the imperialists and their local lackeys, have been dithering on finding a solution to the crisis in Haiti. None of the countries in the region is willing to give in to U.S. demands to field an invasionary force to restore some semblance of stability. The U.S. bosses’ decline in influence in the region is evident. Even Canada, a long-time imperialist player in Haiti, is hedging; the best they could come up with is setting up an office in the neighboring Dominican Republic to monitor the situation. The Dominican government rejected that idea, and both countries issued a toothless statement regarding their commitment to stability in Haiti.

The politicians in the Haitian bourgeoisie continue to act as if they are wearing blinders. Most working class people understand that these politicians are not their friends but are looking out for their own personal interests, looking for any opportunity for some sort of power grab. The local bourgeoisie crawls on hands and knees, in search of favor from the imperialist powers and multinational organizations.

The only solution is to stand up and fight back
You can feel the level of insecurity and fear in the masses. So when a Progressive Labor Party comrade says that she is not going to look for a sponsor to leave, that she is willing to “fight back against the capitalist system that has created this mess,” she is often met with skepticism. But using patience and all the tools of historical and dialectical materialism that she has learned in PLP cadre schools and study groups, she can say that the workers of Haiti have fought for their liberation in the past and will do so again. Capitalism and imperialism have built-in contradictions that make life a misery for one, very large class of human beings who produce all value in society. That we have not just a few Polish soldiers (who deserted Napoleon’s army during the Haitian Revolution and fought on the side of the enslaved workers), but will fight for the solidarity and unity of the entire international working class. We will build a new revolutionary communist movement that fights resolutely in the interests of our class.

This young comrade can make the difference in our ability to organize workers for communism and an egalitarian society! We have taken modest steps, engaging with our local populations in fighting against “food insecurity”—hunger through collective kitchens; organizing to provide masks and public sanitation kiosks against the Covid-19 pandemic; working together with our neighbors to rebuild homes and infrastructure after the 2021 earthquake in our area. These are all struggles that our Party initiated along with our friends to combat the local bosses who neglect the needs of workers and line their own pockets with ‘international aid.”

We can do better and we can do more. There are many more like her who would like to maintain their conviction and their composure in such troubling social, economic and political situations. In the current chaos, the ideological foresight of the members of the PLP is revolutionary. Raising class consciousness through struggle and political education is a necessity for the growth of our Party. This will be our goal this summer in our cadre school.

Long live our struggle, long live PLP. Onwards to the final victory!