Capitalist stooges argue over why there’s no clean water
Bloomberg, 9/2–The water crisis unfolding in Jackson, Mississippi, was decades in the making: the culmination of crumbling infrastructure, systemic racism and more extreme weather. It’s also a stark warning of trouble to come as climate change piles new stress onto the essential services...In addition to warming up the planet by nearly 1.2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times, climate change is making precipitation events more intense, and therefore more likely to overwhelm strained systems. Lower-income and minority communities such as Jackson — which is 82 percent  Black and where a quarter of residents live in poverty — bear the brunt of the impacts. “It’s a consequence of many, many decades of disinvestment in water infrastructure, in general infrastructure in the city of Jackson.”

Pink wave in Latin America requires U.S. imperialists to adapt
Foreign Affairs, 8/31–Over the past five years, left-of-center politicians have won the presidencies in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Their rise prompted talk of a “pink wave” on the continent. That shorthand, however, is too facile: these leaders do not represent so much a wholesale ideological shift as a wave of anti-incumbency and the rejection of the elite Latin American political class…Western governments are struggling to constructively engage these new political actors, who almost uniformly are not members of the elite and were not educated abroad. That means diplomats will need to expand beyond their traditional networks to forge new connections…In order to preserve Western influence and steer the region away from China and Russia, Western diplomats must figure out how to engage this new crop of leaders…Ministries in Canada, the United States, and Europe…will also need to make inroads into nontraditional networks, such as unions, youth movements, informal sector workers’ associations, and indigenous groups.

War in Ukraine requires a grand strategy for U.S. imperialists
Foreign Policy, 2/2–The war also points to some problems for Washington’s strategists…While the collective West has condemned and sanctioned Russia and backed Ukraine, almost the entire global south has refused to choose sides. India is a U.S. partner in the Quad but has neither criticized nor sanctioned Russia—and has increased its imports of Russian oil since the war began. China has neither backed nor condemned the Russian invasion but has supported Russia’s claims that its attack was provoked by threats to its security from NATO. Many other countries in the global south view Russia as a large authoritarian country with which they can do business and accuse the United States of hypocrisy, given Washington’s own past wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan…If preventing the emergence of a rival hegemon in a vital strategic region remains a cardinal principle of U.S. grand strategy, then pivoting to Asia is essential, regardless of what happens in Ukraine.

Who pays for all those rich beach homes?
New York Times, 8/8–As sea level rises and storm surges grow more intense, beach towns on every coast of the United States will soon be sacrificing more real estate to Poseidon. A 2018 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that more than 300,000 coastal homes, currently worth well over $100 billion, are at risk of “chronic inundation” by 2045… Some $7 billion worth of beach replenishment programs, most under the auspices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, have added sand and bolstered property values in some of the most exclusive havens in the United States. Federal taxpayers typically pick up two-thirds of the tab…The lords of the beachfront were late to the coastal real estate game. The beach was initially deemed the most useless, undesirable space on the North American continent…The wealthy eventually realized their error. It’s hard to see how, exactly, they will hold on to much of this sea-level paradise in the face of rising waters and carbon-charged superstorms. But it’s not hard to guess who will end up covering their losses.

The following letters are from participants at a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) cadre school in Haiti. (See other letters in this issue)
*
The PLP cadre school was designed to strengthen our ideas about communism and the struggle against the capitalist system. Through this weekend school and the topics we debated, I came to understand that world history has always been a “lutte de classe” (class struggle), that no matter what type of person you are, you belong to a class. And that we have to struggle in the interests of our class.

Consequently, I am a future communist whose goal is to unite people from the disadvantaged classes, to help them recognize their class and the roots of the situation they live in, and to join in the struggle to eradicate the corrupt system based on “exploitation of man by man.” We must plan a revolution to change society and replace it with a proletarian dictatorship. In this sense, workers and students will live the life that they have always hoped for and deserve, based on their contributions to the growth and development of a just society.
*
I was happy to participate in the workshop with PLP. I liked the way it worked, with sessions that we all prepared for, with some of us leading the discussions, and all of us learning from them. It helped us understand our own reality, especially the debates we had. It helped us understand better the source of the misery that we and our parents live day to day. I thank PLP for this work that will help us move forward, in our understanding and in our struggle.
*
The three-day cadre school was a tremendous experience. It allowed us to better understand many things that we sometimes minimize but that play a big role in the decadent situation we are in.

We live under an unequal (and inadequate for most people) system that exploits all the resources, human and otherwise. In the school, we debated many different ideas, leading to an understanding that anything that we want to achieve must be thought out first, and must have a basis in the real world. We understand that the brain is the engine of all thought, but these thoughts are not created automatically; the conditions we live under are responsible for how we think.

We talked about the development of classes, how the first human society was not based on class but on coexistence, learning how to tame nature. There were individual and collective interests, but the individual was not prioritized. That was the primitive form of communism. We discussed what it means to have class struggle, where we fight for the ideas necessary to make our class rule in our own interests. When we don’t fight for our class, if anything is “won” at all, it is merely reforms. And if all we fight for is to reform a corrupt, exploitative system, we still end up with a bourgeoisie exploiting the proletarians. But there are some people who understand this, and say no. I hope to become a committed fighter for the working class and to share what I have learned.
*
The PLP cadre school was really important for me, it helped me acquire new knowledge, it helped me understand the functioning of society, and it allowed me to think in a different way. It taught me how to fight to change this system today. The school taught me how to live collectively and how to support others in struggle. I think the school made me a new person with a new outlook on life.
*
During the PLP cadre school workshops, we had an opportunity to read and discuss with our colleagues all or parts of Historical Materialism, Road to Revolution III and IV, and Reform and Revolution. The readings allowed us to do a lot of reflection so that we could know how the world functions and why, how it was not always like this, and how it became like this.

It is essential that we know what we need to do and know how to arm ourselves, ideologically and materially. We learned that we need to prepare relentlessly, together, to fight the capitalist system that every day increases the misery of the working masses of people, here in Haiti and around the world, through poverty, racism, sexism, and war.

We spent a memorable weekend together, not only studying, but also sharing food, sports, and discussing many ideas of interest to us. I would like to thank the PLP comrades in Haiti and abroad who contributed their efforts to make this cadre school successful.
*
The cadre school session is a space where we learn to debate and to understand/respect everyone’s opinion. It was extremely important for us to participate in this workshop, it taught us to have confidence in ourselves when we read texts that contain new ideas. It taught us how to organize ourselves. I suggest that in the next cadre school, perhaps we can watch a film together and discuss its ideas. Overall it was a good experience.

Gutter racist school dismisses child for mutism
I am writing as a New York City school teacher on the eugenics and class warfare against students at my school. I teach a summer program that acts as admissions to our city’s “elite” public high schools. The program is only for students who are low income, non-English speakers, and/or live in the city’s shelter system. The Big Fascists (see glossary, page 6) use summer programs like this to produce the illusion that “elite” public schools are inclusive, diverse, and meant for working class students. I am here to attest to the fact that this is a lie! The school system uses the petty language and gesture of inclusion to continue genocidal practices aimed at our most vulnerable students.

I saw first-hand the bosses pushing out special education students and other students who do not conform to capitalist “productivity,” “meritocracy,” and “excellence.” In particular, I developed a close relationship with a student ‘E’ who was thrown out by my school for being selectively mute. E stopped speaking to anyone but his mother as a result of a traumatizing pandemic year. Because he did not speak, I would write notes to E in order to communicate with him. I also routinely kept in contact with E’s mother who did not speak English and struggled to advocate for her son in school.

My school administration was not just entirely unhelpful to E, but actively worked to kick E out of school as soon as they learned that a student with disabilities was in my classroom. The justifications for kicking E out of school consisted of pure eugenics with one administrator shouting that “special needs students do not belong at our school.” Other administrators used patronizing liberal language to insist that E would be better served at any school but ours. No one attempted to accommodate or find resources to support E in his learning. If I were not able to translate, there was not even a translator around to speak with E’s mother.
Sadly, I failed in the end and was unable to reverse the decision to kick E out of school. But in the struggle, I learned a valuable lesson: teachers and students must come together to fight back against Big Fascists hypocrites. The Big Fascists use “inclusive” programs and language as cover for their crimes against children and our class—they are never to be trusted.
******

China’s bold response to the recent visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and third in line to the presidency, exposed the decline of the U.S. as a superpower, the rise of capitalist China, and a sharpening competition that will eventually lead to World War Three. Pelosi’s provocative trip had nothing to do with the defense of “democracy” or the promotion of “freedom.” In reality, despite disagreements over her tactics within the U.S. ruling class, it was a move to defend U.S. imperialist profits with a risky show of power. The workers of the world must have the clarity to turn inter-imperialist war for the division of the world into a revolutionary war for communism where the working class runs society.

The U.S. capitalist bosses know that China is the main threat to their imperialist dominance and the global military advantage they’ve held since World War II. But their actions in the face of China's growing influence, particularly in the Pacific, do not match their rhetoric. On the economic front, China has built the Belt and Road Initiative and the Comprehensive Regional Economic Association. On the technological front, it is in the forefront of artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Militarily, China has developed the world’s largest navy. Its expanded nuclear forces almost rival those of the U.S.; in hypersonic weapons and other new technologies, China is out front.

Where the current U.S. defense budget is flat, after inflation, China continues to raise its military spending by up to 10 percent each year (foreignaffairs.com, 8/10).  President Xi Jiping has declared that China will become a “world-class power” capable of “fighting and winning wars” by 2049 (bbc.com, 7/28). As their recent military maneuvers demonstrated, they may be ready to move against Taiwan long before that point. Even before Pelosi’s trip escalated tensions, a U.S. admiral predicted that China might invade the island nation off its coast by 2027 (nbcnews.com, 3/10/21).

As the U.S. tries to counter China’s buildup with its Quad alliance with Japan, Australia, and India, imperialist war drums are beating loudly in the Pacific. It’s up to the workers of the world to reject all of these criminal bosses and respond with international working-class unity and communist revolution.

Taiwan: inter-imperialist flashpoint
Taiwan has been an anti-communist haven since 1949, when Chiang Kai-Shek and his nationalist band of murderers and thieves fled there after being smashed by Mao Zedong’s communist forces. The future of Taiwan is critical for both China and the U.S., the island’s two biggest trading partners. The Taiwan Strait, as the main shipping route for "goods from Asian factory hubs to markets in Europe, the US and all points in between" (bloomberg.com, 8/2), is a linchpin for global supply chains. Taiwan manufactures two thirds of the world’s computer chips and more than 90 percent of the world’s advanced semiconductors, essential components for both industry and modern militaries (bbc.com, 8/8; sputniknews.lat). In addition, if China takes control of Taiwan, it “could be freer to project power in the western Pacific region and could possibly even threaten U.S. military bases as far away as Guam and Hawaii” (bbc.com, 8/8).

Today the U.S. promotes Taiwan as a beacon of "democracy" in a period when liberal democracy is failing left and right. In fact, Taiwan is a beacon of super-exploitation and rotten, anti-worker ideas. Its capitalist bosses have fostered a Taiwanese national identity to divide workers from their class sisters and brothers in China and throughout the world. The country’s prosperity has been built on apartheid--the racist treatment of 700,000 migrant workers from Southeast Asia, who labor in unsafe factories and are exploited and controlled by third-party labor brokers (thediplomat.com, 10/10/19).

Taiwan’s nationalist poison is a core part of the ideological arsenal to win workers to fight in the impending inter-imperialist war. The communist antidote is proletarian internationalism. Only a united, international working class can sweep away the imperialist, fascist forces.

U.S. imperialists in decline, China on the rise
The Chinese imperialists used Pelosi's trip to escalate their nationalist rhetoric about "One China" (elfinanciero.com.mx). Under the pretext of guarding its territorial security, the Chinese bosses moved their ships into Taiwanese waters and other areas of the South China Sea. Similar to the Russian bosses’ invasion of Ukraine, these imperialist attacks only promote nationalism. They do nothing good for the working class.

Inter-imperialist rivalry inevitably leads to war. This provocation of the U.S. imperialists is one more sign of their desperation to contain the rise of China and their inability to weaken China’s deepening alignment with Russia (jordana.com.mx, 8/17). Pelosi’s trip also signaled the corruption within the U.S. ruling class. Pelosi and her son, Paul Pelosi Jr., met secretly with one of Taiwan's largest computer chip manufacturers. It's probably no coincidence that Paul Jr. "has the second largest stake in a related Chinese company" (thegatewaypundit.com, 8/15).

The U.S. bosses realize that time favors the Chinese in the inevitable military confrontation. However, Biden’s off-script remark that the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily against a Ukraine-style invasion revealed the lack of discipline within the dominant liberal wing of the U.S. ruling class. In this case, the U.S. bit off more than they could chew. China responded to Pelosi’s visit with unprecedented and aggressive military maneuvers around Taiwan, including a simulated invasion that might accelerate their war plans.

As the decayed U.S. ruling class selfishly grasps at every chance to protect its capital and prop up its sputtering stock market, the Chinese bosses are grappling with a banking crisis that has left hundreds of workers in Henan without savings. A Chinese mortgage crisis threatens the economic stability and future of the middle class. But even as the stability so doggedly pursued by Xi Jinping is in danger, he protects his power with promises to the workers that the Chinese Communist Party—a nest of corrupt capitalist bureaucrats and profiteers—will solve the crisis. But the Chinese bosses long ago reversed the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and plunged the world into a dark night from which we are still struggling to emerge. They have nothing to offer the working class but exploitation, misery, and death. When workers turn the guns around, these bosses must be among the first to go.

The working class will end the dark night

Amid this escalation of inter-imperialist rivalry, workers in South Korea held massive protests against military exercises between South Korea and the U.S., demanding an end to the military alliance and the departure of U.S. troops. Liberal bosses will always turn to nationalism to mobilize workers to support their imperialist plans. Our Party must be present in these struggles to organize workers around communist and anti-racist ideas, and to inject internationalist class consciousness.

Amid rising racism, sexism, nationalism, and fascism, Progressive Labor Party stands as the future of the working class. We must sharpen the struggle to turn movements against imperialist war into movements for communist revolution. In the midst of the growing danger posed by rival capitalist gangs, we must maintain our unwavering trust in and dedication to our class. Our goal is to end this criminal system and build a communist world of social equality. Join us!