LANDOVER, MARYLAND, June 15—“The bosses can’t profit when the workers unite, shut it down and shut it tight” rang out in front of the Transdev Metro Access site, located on Hubbard Road in suburban Maryland. Transit workers at Metro Access garages are fighting for a living wage and decent benefits as they prepare to strike. These frontline workers drove disabled workers to doctors’ appointments, emergency rooms and other essential trips during the COVID pandemic and continue to serve despite their lower wages and benefits compared to other transit workers.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends at Metro are involved in the day to day organizing and help provide leadership to the workers. But PL’ers are also talking with drivers to think beyond the immediate contract. We are building a force to intensify the antiracist class struggle and march towards a communist revolution, a society run by workers serving other workers instead of profit-hungry bosses.
PLP believes that strikes can be turned into schools for communism, helping to build workers’ class consciousness, to help our class brothers and sisters recognize their true labor power. However, strikes on their own will never be enough to secure worker’s future as reforms are temporary. Workers must free themselves from the treadmill of reform to smash capitalism once and for all. We, the working class, have the power to build the world we want our families to live in free from racist and sexist inequality, low wages, and racist, mediocre health care. But, this world is only possible through a class conscious antiracist, antisexist, revolutionary movement for communism led by PLP.
Reformism and union sellouts derail revolutionary potential
As negotiations drag on, the workers are getting ready to step up the action. ATU 689 union workers turned out in force today to support these workers with retirees, circulator, and Metro drivers joining Metro Access workers against the Transdev bosses. These are the same bosses who fought against the striking Cinderbed transit operators for 84 days in Virginia before settling (see CHALLENGE, 12/4/2019). Circulator drivers recently showed the way with a three-day strike to get a better contract (see CHALLENGE, 4/27).
The bosses have cited “short-staffing,” caused by considerable turnover rates, to squeeze the Metro Access workers further. For over half a year, they have been forced to work grueling overtime schedules – up to 58 hours weekly – to make up for poor retention rates (atulocal689.org, 2/7). As subcontracted workers, they are grossly underpaid in comparison to workers at WMATA (Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority). Many of them, unsurprisingly, are Black and Latin.
According to strike organizers, they are seeking a 20-30 percent increase in overall wages for pay parity with other paratransit workers in the region, better healthcare plans, expanded vacation, and a seat at the table when management discusses rule and policy changes. But perhaps the most important demand is for the drivers to become part of WMATA, which would immediately give them access to better wages and benefits.
Union bosses only exist to negotiate the terms of exploitation for workers. Union bosses have sent strikers back to work with pitiful contracts billed as “victories,” and even “successful” strikes do not go farther than getting larger crumbs for workers. Under capitalism reforms workers mightily fought for are easily stripped away. Moreover, bosses need racism, sexism, unemployment, and imperialist war like living organisms need oxygen. Thus, no sweeping progressive reforms will eliminate these evils because they form the bedrock of the capitalist system.
Put class struggle on the right track towards comunism
When one worker described their lack of health insurance and oppressive unscheduled late pickups required by management,  a comrade responded, “Wow, we really need a revolution; check out our communist newspaper CHALLENGE.
The worker took the paper and we looked over the latest newsletter on negotiations together. Some retired workers eagerly took the paper to discuss the racist Buffalo murders and think about how to get younger transit workers engaged in the struggle. Only a communist world run by workers for the benefit of all can truly free workers from this violent system that routinely sacrifices human life and the environment on the altar of profits. The PLP needs all of these workers to join the broad struggle for a communist world!

NEW JERSEY/NEW YORK CITY, June 4—The Radical Caucus of the MLA (Modern Languages Association) organized a session, “’Democracy’ in a Time of War,” in recognition of the fact that workers worldwide are becoming more aware of the deadly nature of capitalist democracy and open to ideas of communist revolution. Members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) emphasized and supported the most internationalist, pro-working class ideas of this discussion, while putting forward the idea that a workers’ communist party is the only way to advance the cause of workers’ democracy. This session took place as part of the “Keywords project,” which regularly brings MLA people together to critically examine concepts important to antiracist- and anti-capitalist struggle. 

break mental vs manual labor—all workers use philosophy

Three progressive scholars briefly analyzed the term from different points of view—how Karl Marx thought about democracy, what W.E.B. Du Bois wrote about “abolition democracy” in Black Reconstruction, and how the term “democracy” is weaponized in U.S. war propaganda today. PLP was there with our MLA Radical Caucus friends as co-organizers and co-questioners. Our base at the event included professors, a K-12 teacher, a group from the PSC/CUNY left, a philosopher of art in Berlin, and a comrade who called this in from the tow-truck he was driving on Route 80: “Most working people I know are totally cynical about democracy. They, in a completely organic way, find it to be a tool of elites.” This was one of the most significant statements made at the entire conference, and it set the stage for PLP to help put forward the call for organizing a party and not leaving these conversations in the realm of the purely academic. 

The first presenter said that Marx doesn’t discuss democracy much but does focus on the closely related keywords freedom and equality, “key features of capital’s self-image” and ideology. Marx sees freedom dialectically: more of humanity is formally free under capitalism than in serfdom or slavery—which is why progressives including Marx fought against slavery and for universal suffrage. Liberal democracy does not liberate workers, the speaker continued, because capital first “frees” or separates workers from their own means of production. A “Marxist conception of democracy” must attack the impersonal economic domination of capital, which operates as Marx often said “behind our backs,” behind the appearances of political democracy in the state. But, the speaker concluded, our project of workers’ liberation from capitalism cannot avoid the terms freedom, equality, and democracy: “We must struggle to supersede capital from within capital” and reclaim the promise of democracy from its capitalist distortion and for the immense majority.

Du Bois, for his part, decried the loss of power by workers freed from slavery as Northern capitalists and former enslavers took all political power from them and smashed the Reconstruction of the South. The presenter said that what Du Bois revealed about Northern capital’s racist power grab in the South was the start of U.S. imperialist racism moving to do the same thing to workers globally, across the “Global Color Line.” “Abolition democracy” to Du Bois meant that any real democracy was impossible without the abolition of “property relations,” that is, really, capitalism, though he didn’t join the Communist Party till near the end of his life.

He ascribed the destruction of workers’ power in Reconstruction to bourgeois panic at the idea of the freed enslaved people and the proletariat banding together with real power. So much for democracy when it threatens the right to own and exploit labor. The direct, personal power of the enslaver was replaced “behind our backs'' by the economic domination of the owner of capital.

Workers need democratic centralism

The lively Chat brought up Mao Zedong’s theory of “New Democracy,” or “People’s Democracy,” which PLP sees as one of the roots of revisionism (abandoning communism) in the Chinese Communist Party, combated in the Cultural Revolution by views taken from the 1871 Paris Commune.

Democratic centralism needs to be explained in greater depth. What is the dialectic between mass participation and the local, on the one hand, and synthesizing leadership at the center, on the other?  Here’s an excerpt from a key PL document, “For Communist Economics and Communist Power” 

For the “democratic” part, one meaning is that there should be full discussion of a proposal before a decision is made. Another meaning is that decisions should be made in the interests of the working class, and in a way that not only will benefit the working class, but also train more and more working-class people to contribute to the running of the society….The word "centralist" means that after a decision is made, everyone should work to carry it out, whether or not they agreed with the decision. all centralism is for the purpose of building a society free of privilege and exploitation, based on "from each according to his ability, to each according to need." and developing the consciousness of the people to be able to implement that.

See www.plp.org for the full version. There is much writing about this which we did not take up here.

We ended by noting that armed imperialist democracy turning the world into its battlefield is a living refutation of the lies and illusions widespread about democracy under capitalism. The presenter on Du Bois spoke for us all, sick of the slaughter in Yemen and Ukraine and Buffalo and Uvalde, when he said: “When people in the Global South hear the word democracy, they shudder, because they know what is about to be dropped on them is not leaflets.”  The work of questioning brought us together in a powerful way. It strengthened us for the fights ahead as democracy shades into fascism. 

The discussion maybe brought some friends closer to seeing the need to join and build PLP. When campuses return in-person, Radical Caucus members can carry some of these insights into work on campus, such as teach-ins on the inter-imperialist war in Ukraine, where “democracy” means Javelins and Stingers and heavy artillery. A communist democracy means the working class running society based on need and commitment. 

The working class in Pakistan is under attack. Inflation is rising out of control. The May inflation rate was officially over 13 percent and unofficially prices on key staples are rising at five to ten times that rate. Capitalism is utterly failing the working class, the crisis in Pakistan cannot be fixed, more war and fascism are on the horizon and the only way to combat it is by building the fight for communist revolution.We in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are trying to give the working class leadership and courage to fight against all these evils that hold back the struggle for an international communist revolution.
The rise in inflation is being triggered around the world by the breakdown in capitalism. Beyond the official inflation rate, the prices of basic food staples in Pakistan are skyrocketing: tomatoes are up 125 percent, onions are up over 60 percent as is butter and cooking oil (Pakistan Today, 5/2). When basic necessities rise, the working class, which pays a huge part of their income toward staples, suffers inflation at an extremely high rate. In Pakistan the unofficial inflation rate is likely around 40 percent. More than 50 percent of the total population of Pakistan is living below the poverty line and it is increasing every day.  The unemployment rate in Pakistan has reached 25-30 percent. According to a report to the Senate Standing Committee on Planning and Development, 40 percent of Pakistan's youth are currently unemployed even though many of them hold professional degrees!
U.S. and Chinese bosses squeeze the working class in Pakistan
On top of this crisis the big imperialists are squeezing the working class even more. The Pakistani bosses are in danger of defaulting on their international debt. Both the U.S. and Chinese imperialists told the Pakistani bosses to get a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). To appease the IMF, the government raised the price of fuel by over 33 percent and the IMF is still not satisfied and wants the price of electricity to go up by 50 percent (Financial Times, 6/3).
Within the Pakistani ruling class competing factions are nearly at war with each other and the ruling faction is terrorizing the working class to contain fightback against the worsening economic conditions and shut down the competing faction of bosses. Recently the government arrested hundreds of supporters of former president Imran Khan’s PTI party and banned Khan’s planned march on the capital (Reuters, 5/24).
This is leading to a division in the rank and file of the military establishment, civil bureaucracy and judiciary. The bosses are spreading fascism to curb the pro-working-class forces along with the supporters of Khan. Both factions of bosses are using different prejudices to keep the working class fighting with each other in the name of sectarianism, nationalism, racism and so-called political parties. Whenever the working class tries to forge a united struggle against exploitation and fascism the bosses use politicians to divide the working class on the basis of personality cults and other backward ideas.
The working class in Pakistan is caught in several inevitable crises of capitalism at once. Inflation was rising under the Khan government and has continued under the new bosses. The Chinese and U.S. bosses are competing to exploit Pakistan’s strategic position and their nuclear arsenal while bleeding the working class dry. The Pakistani bosses are at each other’s throats and are building violent racist and fascist movements to mobilize and control the working class. Reforms or better politicians won’t solve these problems. Only communist revolution and a society based on workers’ power will.
Workers must unite to smash capitalism
The working class is in search of basic food and shelter from severe weather conditions, but pro-capitalist misleaders are turning them against each other for their own interests. The working class in Pakistan is getting poorer everyday. They are deprived of basic necessities and can be prosecuted if they chant any slogan against the atrocities they are facing every day at work or at home. There are two groups of bosses fighting over the bones of the working class but both of them are against the working class. As for the middle class, it has for the most part been opportunist and has aligned themselves with both groups and supported imperialist interests by remaining in one party of capitalists or the other. They are also misleading the unions to serve the interest of the capitalist class. In the unions it is their duty to not allow poor workers to come forward and lead the real struggle for a classless society.
 The capitalists are controlling our lives; they decide our working conditions, wages and our future. Their economic policies are spreading poverty, exploitation, oppression, injustice and inequality. Their social policies are based on “divide and rule” which is why they are able to keep the working class deprived of every right to live happily. They are using fundamentalism, nationalism, sexism, sectarianism, racism and terrorism to keep workers silent.
 PL’ers in Pakistan are helping to break the chains  of our workers oppression link by link. We hope to lead our class brothers and sisters on the long march towards communist revolution. Join us!

Worldwide, the summer months are a time of training for Progressive Labor Party (PLP). As we gear up for a summer of learning, it’s helpful to reflect on past Summer Projects. The following article is a reprint from CHALLENGE in 1979.  

This issue, we look at the Tupelo Project of ’79. Lessons include:

• In the face of the Ku Klux Klan and the racist capitalist government, we must be bold and have confidence in the working class to take the lead of communists.
• Multiracial unity is our class’s weapon, and the bosses’ greatest fear.
• To sustain our gains, we must grow the Party and train more Black, Latin, Asian, and white young people in leadership.

Significance of Mississippi
To many who remember the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s, Mississippi symbolizes the most extreme racism, the most brutal murders of Black workers and antiracists, and the stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan.
For Progressive Labor Party, Mississippi signified a base for revolution among Black and white workers, spreading the ideas of multiracial unity and the fight for communist ideas in the South. Today, we celebrate the heroic struggle of the Tupelo Summer Project of ’79. About 100 communists and friends—Black, Latin, Asian, and white—took part in this struggle.
Though relatively small (population of 20,000), Tupelo was an industrial center with over 14,000 workers. The South was important to the ruling class as an industrial area because its carefully-nurtured tradition of racism made it the citadel of low-wage, non-union labor, where the bosses have been able to keep the working class divided and weak in order to extract extra profits.
The project showed that masses of white workers and students in Tupelo and throughout the South are winnable to antiracism.
Below is an edited excerpt from PL Magazine (Fall 1979) analyzing an aspect of the Tupelo Summer Project:
The great July demonstration
Sixty-five antiracist marchers, organized by Progressive Labor Party and its [then-mass organization] International Committee Against Racism (IlynCAR), were marching through the streets in Tupelo, Mississippi chanting, “Death to the Klan.”  
Shots rang through the air.
As the bullets grazed two marchers, , a disciplined group of people, Black and white, rushed out of line, isolated the racist who wielded the gun, and beat him to the ground. In the fight that ensued with this Klansman, or Klan supporter, the antiracists broke his neck. While this was happening, the marchers, maintaining a tight discipline that won them the respect of Tupelo’s working class, continued the march. The marchers, encouraged by the friendly faces that lined the streets and by the workers who joined the march, were able to withstand the menacing threat of the Tupelo police, who aimed their cocked guns at them.
From the start, it was clear that the racist local rulers wanted to stop this march. A new ordinance was created by the city government banning sound devices (in response to successful PLP-led rallies in the past). The police and their flunkies systematically tore down posters in the housing projects; and a permit for the march was not granted until the very last minute.
As the march gathered in front of the courthouse, the bosses’ seat of power, a militant rally began, attracting a lot of people in the area who joined in chanting, “The cops, the courts, the Ku Klux Klan, all a part of the bosses’ plan.”
‘Before I was scared, now I’m mad’
Many militant workers in Tupelo have come to see InCAR as the main mass organization that can lead workers in the fight against racism and the resurgence of fascist groups like the Klan. One Black woman worker said, “Before I was scared, but now I’m mad.” This represents the feeling of many people here, that there is no longer the luxury to sit back and watch the ruling class and its flunkies hold power, that they have to get active and build a movement that has as its goal the destruction of the ruling class ideas of racism and fascism, and in the final analysis, the ruling class itself.
The political climate is changing rapidly in the South, and only groups like PLP are prepared to respond to the changes, to give leadership and organize the multiracial, antiracist fightback that is necessary to move workers to the left.
The United League, a Black reformist group, recently cancelled a march scheduled for Okolona (a town not far from Tupelo) today, because its leader Skip Robinson, essentially chickened out of the struggle. More and more people are realizing that the leadership of UL cannot stand up to the rigors of the class struggle.
Workers put themselves on the line
Respect for PLP was growing in Tupelo. Two residents of Tupelo put up their houses as collateral so that our comrade could be bailed out of jail. When the two marchers who had been wounded were treated in the hospital, they were warmly received and treated by white doctors and other hospital workers. After the march stopped to rally, hundreds of Black workers surrounded the marchers to protect them from the cops (who would have been only too glad to be trigger happy).
This was the first time a racist had been beaten by an antiracist march in Tupelo. The leadership of the UL had always guaranteed the safety of the KKK and the cops by holding back the anger and hatred of Black workers in the fight to liberate themselves from the racism they faced every day. The bosses always think that they can destroy a worker’s movement by getting its leaders, but little do they know that leaders always spring up in the midst of struggle. There were  many, many people right in Tupelo, and other cities North and South, and there still are today, who can develop as working-class leaders in the fight against racism and fascism, and they were and are being trained by Progressive Labor Party.
This was readily proven by the response not only of the marchers, in their determination to continue the march, not to be intimidated  by the cops’ harassment, but also by the tremendous support of the local people. Over 200 copies of InCAR Arrow and CHALLENGE were sold, 4 people joined InCAR on the spot. Another demonstration was planned on the spot.
The main lesson PLP learned in Tupelo, as everywhere, is to be bold. The bolder we were, the more seriously people took us and the more willing they were to respond to us. Workers understand that the system will come down hard when you try to fight it. They are also ready to understand that you only win on the offensive.

The time period is different, but there are still lots of lessons to take away. Let’s be bold at our annual summer project in New York and New Jersey this year from July 6—July 13! Contact your local PL’er or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for more info!