From New York City and Colombia to Burkina Faso and Palestine, nationalists claiming to challenge U.S. imperialism are once again having their moment in the sun—just as the U.S. renews threats to overthrow the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela (see editorial on page 2). U.S. imperialism, shaken by the rise of rival Russian and Chinese imperialism, is lashing out like a wounded animal. And yet everything these nationalists present as “new” for the working class is just the same old capitalism dressed up in modern clothes. In the 21st century, no one sold that package with more charisma than Maduro’s mentor, Hugo Chávez.

Today’s Latin American “Pink Tide” invokes the imagery of the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the 1970 election of Salvador Allende in Chile. But beneath their red banners, most of these projects have been rooted in the same 19th-century bourgeois liberal romanticism of José Martí and Simón Bolívar—and in the tradition of populist, developmentalist rulers like Juan Perón in Argentina and Rómulo Betancourt in Venezuela. All insisted they were on the side of the poor; all defended national forms of capitalism. None represented workers’ power.

After the communist-led defeat of fascism in World War II, the world’s colonial empires began to crumble. Millions of workers across Africa and Asia—often inspired by the Soviet Union and revolutionary China—rose up against centuries of European domination. But because the international communist movement failed to push these struggles toward genuine revolution (a process PLP analyzes in Road to Revolution III), post-colonial capitalism filled the vacuum. Wrapped in militant language, this new school of “developmentalism” disguised itself as socialism while keeping capitalist property relations intact.

Jawaharlal Nehru’s India became the model. Under the banner of “socialism,” Nehru promoted Import-Substitution Industrialization (ISI), using high tariffs and state planning to strengthen domestic capitalism and reduce dependency on imported goods. Limited welfare reforms lifted living conditions for millions who had suffered under British rule. But capitalism with welfare is still capitalism. That is why national liberation leaders across Africa, Asia, and Latin America—from the Non-Aligned Movement to later Pink Tide governments—won support from domestic capitalists and, eventually, became pawns in imperialist rivalries. In every case, without an international communist movement leading the working class, these projects were misled, co-opted, or crushed.

21st Century Socialism: Big Promises, Big Betrayal

For generations, Venezuela’s land and wealth were concentrated in the hands of families rooted in the old post-independence oligarchy. With some of the world’s largest oil reserves and rich agricultural potential, Venezuela was always a battleground between factions tied to U.S. interests and those seeking a more independent national path. By the 1980s, IMF-backed austerity set the country on fire.
Then came 1989: the Caracazo. A spontaneous uprising against fare hikes and budget cuts was met with police and military massacres that killed hundreds—possibly thousands—of workers. The Caracazo shattered the legitimacy of pro-U.S. political parties and became the gravitational center of all modern Venezuelan politics.

In 1992, a failed military coup led by Lt. Col. Hugo Chávez and fellow officers captured the imagination of millions. After prison, Chávez won the presidency in 1998, promising a “Bolivarian Revolution” funded by oil wealth and supported by alliances with Russia, China, and others. Ultimately, Chávez’s legacy was built on the illusion that a “multipolar world” could let Venezuela’s “21st Century Socialism” survive by maneuvering rival imperialisms against each other.

Mass mobilizations defeated the U.S.-backed coup attempt in 2002, and the simultaneous rise of allies in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Brazil accelerated the Pink Tide. Millions gained access to subsidized food, healthcare, electrification, and clean water. Internationally, Chávez’s fiery anti-imperialist speeches electrified youth disgusted by the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. For many, Venezuela looked like a genuine alternative.
But—as everywhere else—the content of this “socialism” left capitalism intact. Venezuela remained dependent on oil exports. When global prices crashed in the 2010s, the government could no longer finance its reforms. After Chávez’s death, Maduro inherited a collapsing economy, deepening shortages, and intensifying U.S. sanctions. His efforts to salvage the Bolivarian project have withered, leaving Venezuelan workers exposed once again to imperialist competition—with the threat of war growing by the day.

Progressive Labor Party’s task is to expose the false promises of nationalists and liberal reformers—from NYC’s Mamdani to Maduro to Colombia’s Petro—and fight for the only force capable of ending imperialism once and for all: communism.

CHICAGO, November 15 – Long live the October Revolution! Over 30 members and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) gathered in a local fieldhouse for our annual celebration of the working class seizing state power under communist leadership in 1917. Participants were treated to an afternoon filled with inspiring history, motivating speeches, collectivity and revolutionary joy.

This year’s celebration emphasized the pro-worker things that we stand for, including internationalism, social equality, and the working class cooperating to build and run society in radically better ways. The working class running society with these egalitarian politics is the only way to defeat capitalism and its rampant racism, sexism, and nationalism.

In the current climate, in the thick of capitalist decay and misery all around us, the fact that the communist Bolsheviks succeeded in leading millions of workers, youth, soldiers, and sailors to overthrow the capitalist bosses fills us with revolutionary optimism. It’s their revolutionary legacy – their incredible gains as well their many errors – that our Party strives to study, celebrate, and build upon as we grow our mass PLP to one day take power from the bosses again.

The working class transforms society

A comrade emcee kicked off the program with a brief background of the monumental October Revolution. For the first time in history, the working class overthrew the ruling class and set about building a society without exploitation of the many by the few. The newly formed Soviet Union covered approximately one-sixth of the Earth’s surface and helped inspire more revolutionary movements all over the world, including in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

The program then shifted to a more interactive segment, where we split up into smaller groups to visit three different stations, each with a posterboard presentation that covered what the working class was able to accomplish after gaining state power.

The three themes at each of the stations were confidence in the working class, collectivity, and material gains in workers’ lives by focusing on revolutionary gains in education, industry, and women’s health. PLP members at each station gave brief explanations of how these different fields were organized to serve the working class. Participants showed enthusiasm for these ideas and commented on what they would want in a communist society, including quality healthcare for all and better food in schools.

In the education section, it was highlighted that schooling was completely free to all students and encouraged them to think critically and to act collectively in figuring out solutions to problems, as opposed to the individualist and elitist approaches preferred in capitalist society.
The women’s health section emphasized how the Soviet Union was the first state to legalize abortion back in 1920, which ended up saving hundreds of thousands of women’s lives. Also shared was how childcare was collectivized, so women workers could more freely participate in social, political, and economic functions of the new workers’ state.

The presentation on industry showed how the Soviet Union was able to transform itself from a mainly agrarian society into a highly industrialized power in a short period through collective planning and action. Workers in industrial settings wielded more authority than ever in deciding how production would be organized. Beyond just raising the material wellbeing of workers across the board, communist methods were key in building the discipline and military output necessary to defeat the fascist Nazis in World War II.

Revolutionary speeches

After the presentations, it was time for the keynote speech. A comrade detailed her path of being won to join the Party through relationships she built with comrades over years. She encouraged everyone present to join the Party too, because like the Bolsheviks, we don’t stand a chance to defeat capitalism without having that mass organized force:

“We know that workers are the only ones who can save the working class and there needs to be much more organization. The Bolsheviks had to organize before the revolution – the revolution didn’t just happen out of nowhere. We need to do the same and we need people to join the Party to build a mass movement so that workers can again take state power.”

Following this comrade’s speech, we had two PLP members fresh off their experience describe their fightback with dozens of other health workers against the liberal fascists at the American Public Health Association conference and their defense of the Zionist genocide in Gaza (see CHALLENGE, 11/26). Another comrade spoke of her efforts organizing across the city with other workers to resist the fascist kidnapping of immigrant workers by the ICE Gestapo, a struggle that she referred to as the Civil Rights Movement of the present day, encouraging everyone to get involved.

We then capped the celebration off by singing the Internationale, the communist anthem that helps bind all our struggles together across the planet. Capitalism is an international parasite, so our struggles to defeat it must be international too!

Standing on the shoulders of giants

As communists, we know that history and culture are weapons in service of the working masses to understand and shape society in the interests of the working class. We stand on the shoulders of giants to glimpse the bright communist future that is ours to win! Let’s fight like the Bolsheviks and make revolution come all the sooner.

Brooklyn, October 19—About fifty comrades and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) gathered to celebrate the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and the accomplishments of the revolutionary giants whose shoulders we stand on. We started out by working collaboratively on art work intended to create designs for a new t-shirt. After a shared meal, we moved the tables to the sides of the room so that we could sit in circles to discuss a variety of questions related to what life might be like after a communist revolution based on reforms actually achieved in the Soviet Union, China and Cuba after their revolutions.

What would a world run by workers look like?

The topics engaged us with ideas about healthcare, education, work conditions, and collective living. Armed with markers, the groups annotated the questions with their ideas about what a communist world would look like. We rotated the questions, so that each group was able to discuss a variety of questions. For instance, some groups explored what would happen if apartment buildings or neighborhoods shared collective kitchens, resulting in less of a burden on each individual family, stronger community ties, less food waste, and more diversity in cuisine. We speculated on how much our society would improve if health care were separated from the profit system so that doctors could concentrate on patient well-being and research that would most benefit humanity rather than drug companies. 

Everyone has a role in building the Party 

A rousing speech encouraged us to follow the examples of the revolutionaries who have gone before us. We each received a check-list of contributions we could make in the coming weeks, from giving a CHALLENGE to a friend to joining the Party. After singing the Internationale in Spanish and English, we mingled with new and old friends, chatting about the questions which had been posted on the walls and admiring each other’s art projects. The group of young and older people who had planned the art activity made a commitment to meet regularly to plan more collective projects. Friends attending their first Party event came away with a new understanding of our revolutionary optimism. Experienced comrades left energized by the enthusiasm of new members who helped lead the event. In a climate of deep fear and pessimism, PLP is still fighting for a better future for the whole working class by crushing capitalism once and for all.

ICE abducts, union stalls, workers organize

It is important that we sharpen and push the political work in our unions. Last November, education workers in the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) introduced a resolution encouraging chapters in schools across NYC to create immigrant defense committees. It took three months and the help of Progressive Labor Party comrades for UFT leadership to even include the resolution as a discussion item in their agendas. Another four months passed before the UFT leadership put it to a vote, and it finally passed in June, right before most of us had summer break. This was after ICE had already kidnapped Bronx high school student Dylan Lopez Contreras and Queens high school student Derlis Toaquiza. There was no official notice from the union about either of these abductions. Meanwhile, the UFT was blowing up my phone with reminders to vote in the primary election in June and general election in November. The unions serve as yet another tool to funnel workers into dead-end electoralism instead of seeing ourselves and our class as the answer for the end to fascist attacks against our students.

Many comrades have refused to wait around for union leadership and have already been building anti-ICE collectives for some time. Self-critically, I have been a little more slow-moving, but momentum has been picking up! I used the resolution as an opportunity to build on anti-deportation work from last year, when some coworkers and I organized Know-Your-Rights training for each grade. I handed out copies of the resolution at the first chapter meeting of this school year and invited anyone who wanted to join to do so. Since then, we have had around four or five meetings with around eight members, and more are interested in joining! We have a lot of ideas and are currently working on making a bulletin board to communicate to students who are on the committee, share legal resources, and help build an antiracist school culture. In the committee, we have also had discussions about the racist legacy of the Democrats, the genocide in Gaza, anti-Haitian racism in the Dominican Republic, and Zohran Mamdani. Several of the coworkers involved have received CHALLENGE, three recently marched with the PLP contingent at an anti-ICE protest, and one has attended PLP study groups. The fight continues!
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Communist response: turn ‘personal’ crisis into collective care

Recently, our Party club has been helping a base member navigate a difficult domestic situation. This worker and their three children have been living under constant stress from the abuse of another family member who is seeking to evict them from their home. But we’re committed to not let that happen.

To help support them, we’ve helped our base member contact lawyers who are knowledgeable and willing to take on her case. We’ve initiated some fundraising efforts to help raise money to retain the lawyer, which rarely comes cheap. We’ve accompanied them to the court hearings to make sure they feel supported in that intimidating atmosphere. And we’ve made house visits to help prepare dinner, play games with the children, and try to help them take their minds off the situation for a while.

Admittedly, these aren’t the flashiest actions but are nevertheless crucial to the movement and type of world that we want to build. As communists, we push to understand and explain how the countless daily attacks confronting the working class are rooted in a class society that lives off exploitation, while dehumanizing workers and treating us all as expendable. None of this abuse, whether it comes from an intimate partner or the bosses, can be fully understood without considering how capitalism functions.

To this end, the personal is political, and vice versa. These smaller actions are connected to the class struggle, and we seek to model how the working class in a communist society would handle problems differently. There are no actions we can take that are too small to win ourselves and others into the lifelong fight for a communist world. 
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Enough! March vs. State violence

In the October 29th issue of CHALLENGE, we shared the news of the disappearance of Abril, a worker beloved in her community of Álvaro Obregon, Michoacán. Her car was burned. The evidence suggests kidnap and sexism. There was a sit-in in the capital. Now, the violence in the community has increased to a new level. The municipal president of the community of Uruapan (very close to Álvaro) was shot to death. He was an independent candidate (previously MORENA the new reformist and capitalist party) and he demanded more resources from the national government for local security many times. President Claudia Scheinbaum, MORENA, and the national government were ineffective. They provided few resources for the search for Abril in spite of making propaganda that they care about disappearances and femicides. Scheinbaum is a capitalist first, and gender doesn’t matter. They live to protect the profits;. They cannot mobilize the masses as a class to fight sexism. This would be a profound threat to the profit system. We cannot depend on the capitalist state to defend workers like Abril. They don’t even protect officials. It is the same bosses and their profits that are the root of the violence, and the state protects them. It is protection from the power of the workers.

Early this month, workers all over Mexico marched for:  a

1. the assassination of Uruapan Michoacán Municipal President Carlos Manzo
2.  the lemon farmer from Apasingan Michoacán Bernardo Bravo 
3. Homero Gomez Gonzalez guardian of the butterfly monarch sanctuary 🦋 in Uruapan Michoacán. 
4.  Abril
5.  the 43 Students of Ayotzinapa Normal.
6. all the disappearances in General. 
7.  all the mothers searching.
8.  the youth.
9.  the women. 
10. the Children.
10. the murders.
11. The extorted. 
12. education.
13. medical care.
14. Above all for a free México that is already tired of all the impunity.

To say enough! We are tired of this rotten government. We combine various social issues in our demands because they are all related to violence, which originates in the same capitalist system. We also remember that the working class has to seize state power. No government serving the capitalist class can protect the lives of the masses. 
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‘Nuremberg’ exposes U.S. fascism’

The movie Nuremberg with Rami Malek was based on historical events concerning Nazi fascist Herman Goring, one of the architects of WWII and the Holocaust. U.S. Army military psychiatrist, Dr. Douglas Kelley, was assigned to interview Goring in preparation for the Nuremberg Trial. The events up to and during the trial exposed the internal political contradictions of capitalism and imperialism. Dr.Kelley said to Goring “There are rules in war about bombing factories and civilians, but you just can’t slaughter an entire race in death camps!” (But it’s ‘ok’ to do it with military  bombers?) Goring counter argued “And you Americans dropped an atom bomb on a Japanese city vaporizing people!” The then communist led USSR under Stalin’s leadership had a policy  of not bombing enemy civilians  because it was considered anti-working class. When Goring  was put on trial, on the witness stand, he said nationalist  garbage was no ‘different’ than Trump’s  ‘Make America Great Again’  trash. Toward the end of the movie, Dr.Kelley tried to warn America that what Hitler and Nazis did could happen in the U.S., and on that note, he was right! As long as capitalism exists, when it’s in crisis, the bosses will turn to strong arm fascism to attack workers, like America’s gestapo, ICE. Only a  communist revolution, to destroy global capitalism by workers led by the Progressive Labor Party (LP), can eliminate fascist terror.
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