NEW YORK CITY, April 22 — A multi-racial group of PLP members, including a young new member and a Party friend, traveled yesterday with a local anti-war group to the anti-war march on the Pentagon in Washington D.C. The marchers were predominantly white.

A PLP’er spoke, explaining that the war’s root problem was capitalism and that we must fight back as workers against the racist ruling class that Obama represents. We distributed CHALLENGE to the small but spirited crowd of a few thousand. The marchers’ anger was strong as we chanted, “They got bailed out, we got sold out!” and “Fight Back!”

For PLP’ers, veterans of previous national demonstrations, it was obvious that the mass anti-war movement was essentially an anti-Bush movement led by Democrats. Previous national demonstrations organized by, or with, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) — a national anti-war coalition tied to the Democratic Party’s liberal wing — drew hundreds of thousands.

Obama, the supposed “anti-war” candidate, is just as imperialist as Bush — he’s keeping combat troops in Iraq, expanding the war in Afghanistan and bombing Pakistan. But after Democratic victories in Congress and the White House, UFPJ has effectively declared, “Mission accomplished.”

 PLP efforts were modest. We need to struggle even more within our mass organizations to oppose Democrats’ leadership of the anti-war movement. In our local group we realized that as we took leadership in organizing for this march, more people chanted anti-capitalist slogans and discussed more class-conscious politics than at past actions of our group. The more people we bring, the greater our influence.

It was the first national anti-war march for the new young PLP’er. She saw lots of division among the various phony “left” groups but thought we could have been more effective if we all united around a revolutionary working-class line. But most fake left groups, like the march organizers, shouted “Iraq for Iraqis,” instead of calling for workers of the world to unite against both local and foreign bosses. The “radical” socialists who controlled the protest avoided working-class neighborhoods and marched to the Pentagon past mostly empty corporate buildings instead.

Veteran PL’ers explained to our new comrade that only PLP organizes to smash capitalism with communist revolution. We vigorously participate in reform movements — against certain wars or to win economic gains from the government or bosses — but our goal is to build a PLP of millions.

We know that the bosses can strip away any reform victories with their control of state power but a mass party of millions can smash their state and build workers’ power. So-called socialists may appear “left” but they mis-lead workers to support lesser-evil capitalists and build dead-end reform movements. PLP uses CHALLENGE to sharpen class struggle and win workers to our communist politics.

To build a mass party we must do much more to challenge liberals and fake leftists. Based on our revolutionary outlook, our group returned home more motivated to intensify class struggle in our anti-war group, schools, jobs and families.