Friday, February 12, 2016 at 12:31PM

Nearly a century ago, the working class of the Russian Empire stormed the palaces of their capitalist Russian bosses. The world changed forever. Led by the Bolsheviks, their revolutionary communist party, peasants and industrial workers turned the imperialist World War I into revolutionary war. They established the world’s first workers’ state over one-sixth of the globe.

Daring to struggle and daring to win, those communists led the first attempt by our class to wipe capitalism off the earth.

It’s cleanup time again. Each day, the world’s rulers intensify their racist and sexist oppression of the international working class. Each day, they move closer to the next world war.

Workers are increasingly fed up with deteriorating conditions and they are looking for solutions. Some are choosing the gutter racism of the right: Donald Trump swept the New Hampshire primary and fascist parties are on the rise in Europe. Some are choosing the fake left: socialist candidates are finding widespread support from Spain to the U.S. to Greece.

None of these options have anything to offer the working class. All they will do is win another generation of workers away from revolution and towards reform. The Progressive Labor Party is an international revolutionary communist organization fighting and build a mass party of millions in 27 countries to smash global capitalism.

Afghanistan: U.S. Bosses Can’t Stop Killing

U.S. imperialists are steadily losing ground to their Russian and Chinese rivals. Represented by liberal mouthpiece Barack Obama, the U.S. bosses signed a nuclear deal with Iran—not for peace, but to buy time to rebuild their war machine. To hold on to their embattled empire, the capitalists know they’ll need more viciously racist budget cuts—plus a military draft that will likely include the compulsory registration of women (New York Times, 2/2/16). To protect their profits, the rulers are ready and willing to spend millions of workers’ lives.

In Afghanistan, where the U.S. has been at war since 2001, the bosses’ bloody grasp is slippery at best:

Top U.S. military commanders… are now quietly talking about an American commitment that could keep thousands of troops in the country for decades (Washington Post, 1/26/16).

A follow-up (2/6/16) elaborated:

Senior Pentagon officials are now examining a range of steps…in what is expected to be a bloody 2016….Obama has already abandoned plans to end the military presence entirely by the time he leaves office…

Elections: Imperialist Tool

Whoever wins the next U.S. presidential election will be commander-in-chief of the occupation in Afghanistan—and nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries. In other words, the winner will be at the service of finance capital. As Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin pointed out in 1916, capitalism inevitably leads to imperialism—the exploitation of labor, resources, and markets outside a nation’s boundaries.

Lenin showed how the big banks, like today’s Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, are directly tied to institutions like ExxonMobil. Finance capital depends on capitalist government’s capacity to control oil, minerals and workers in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Southern and Southeast Asia.

Sanders’ Blood-Soaked Liberalism

U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has seized the attention of masses of students and young workers and increasing numbers of Black workers. Hillary Clinton, the imperialist bosses’ candidate of choice, barely beat Sanders in the Iowa causes before getting trounced by the self-proclaimed “socialist” in the February 9 New Hampshire primary. Sanders’ talking points never vary; he denounces rising inequality and vows, if elected, to “break up” the biggest U.S. banks.

As it turns out, this position has been endorsed by many arch-capitalists. As the billionaire-owned Forbes noted (January 17): “Regulators and the stock market aren’t waiting for the election of President Sanders…Big banks would be more valuable if they were broken up into pieces rather than keeping them intact.”

By tightening financial regulations and disciplining the banks, the leading bosses would tighten their hold on the financial system. The dominant capitalist wing, aligned with ExxonMobil, could then channel profits into rebuilding a weakened U.S. military. For finance capital, the top priority is to occupy the Middle East and Central Asia and consolidate control over cheaply extracted oil.

As a congressman and U.S. senator, Bernie Sanders voted “yes” on the invasion of Afghanistan, for “regime change” in Libya, for the U.S.-led NATO devastation of Yugoslavia, and—after one initial “no” vote—for the ongoing war and occupation of Iraq. Appearing on “Face the Nation,” Sanders said he was “impressed by the quality” of assassin-in-chief Obama’s foreign policy. As Counterpunch observed:

Imperialism is like a tank parked in your living room, too big to ignore…[F]oreign policy cannot be separated from domestic policy. They are two sides of the same coin that directly affect each other. ….Supporting Bernie Sanders means ignoring — or minimizing — his imperialism…. (1/5/16).

Revolution and Reform

For the moment, there is no place in the world where workers hold state power. In general, the mass movements addressing racism, sexism and imperialism are misled by liberal capitalist stooges, from Bernie Sanders to the fake-left Pakistan People’s Party.

PL’ers and friends are hard at work within these movements to struggle for communist ideas and win workers to organizing a mass, international, fighting PLP. Even as our class suffers attack after attack, even as we face the worst refugee crisis in history, we have the power to build a new Red Army and seize state power. Learning from both the mistakes and triumphs of the working class in the Soviet Union and China, let us transform the bosses’ imperialist bloodbaths into revolutionary war. Let us smash all racist borders, and take the revolution all the way to communism. Join us—and help lead us!