Red Flag Letters

Red Flag aspires to be a newspaper of a new type for a party, dedicated to mobilizing the masses around the world for communism. We’re breaking new ground and learning as we go. We will inevitably make mistakes—and disagree about what the mistakes are that we’re making. The letters page is a good place for comrades to engage in criticism and self-criticism, and help us learn to write in a way that will advance the work. We ask writers to be brief, and to criticize in ways that are sharp, but comradely. Collectively we have a lot to learn.

Reading the Red Flag always refreshes and uplifts one. The brilliant articles by comrades in El Salvador studying Dialectical Materialism and comrades in Los Angeles among the janitors and in the Boeing factory distributing a thousand leaflets for May Day in the capitalist Bernie Sanders’ rally are good. It is superb that activists in Afghanistan in the Middle East are working very hard mobilizing the masses for communism in that part of the world where religious fundamentalism reigns supreme. In this country the election circus is gaining ground once again for local government elections.
The bourgeois nationalist African National Congress (ANC) is embroiled in the Nkandla saga and it’s a topical issue at the moment. On the 16 of April the ANC is launching its manifesto here. We will distribute the May Day leaflets at that launch, as the comrades in Los Angeles have done.
—A South African Comrade

How do you boil water? This is a simple task. But the process of boiling water also explains some very serious truths about destroying capitalism.
To boil water you need to put the pot of water on the stove and heat it. If we keep heating the water, its temperature rises and after sufficient time the water boils.
When it comes to building the party, some comrades get very excited. They start talking about communism. But then when these comrades face serious obstacles or questions from other workers, they retreat and do less political work. Some comrades come back to do the political work of the party after a long period of inactivity.
The process of building for revolution requires consistent work. If we heat the pot of water for few minutes every day, it is never going to boil.
The Red Flag article on ‘twists and turns’ really helped us explain how we face real obstacles as we are building our movement. Comrades face serious personal and ideological problems: individualism, drugs and alcohol, problems and disagreements with our spouse, partners, fear of the bosses, the union misleaders.
What is the solution? We need to do consistent work of building the party. And the only way to insure that this work is carried on is by building collectives.
In a collective, comrades help each other overcome problems. And in case an individual succumbs to a temporary retreat, the collective still functions and consistently carries out the work of the party.
In a profound way, boiling water is like building for revolution. Both require consistency.
Please write more articles on dialectical materialism that relate to concrete struggles.
—Comrades in South Africa

French young people spend another “nuit debout” (night on their feet) to protest the proposed labor law that would strip away what few protections remain for workers. At all-night sessions in Paris at the Place de la Republique and in cities all over France tens of thousands of workers and high school students have made it clear that they’ve had enough of the socialist government’s pro-boss policies. Once again socialists have broken all their promises. Only communism can give youth a future.

Metro is a corrupted corporation that is deceiving and full of lies. The first lie is letting us think we have a union that has our best interest in mind. Our union, from what people say only wants our union dues bur doesn’t represent us in our time of need.
We have supervisors that follow what managers say and run too much of Metro and make us workers feel intimidated during our work time. They make employees feel too scared to talk about the injustice that happens day to day, year after year. If you speak your mind you will be labeled as a trouble maker and a sh*t starter. That leads to them determining if they will promote you or if you are stuck at the same position.
We have leaders that are over us but work with us and in the same union and are completely scared of the supervisors. They have a tendency to side with upper management and leave us alone against the entire company.
—An MTA worker

A letter in a previous Red Flag commented that many articles were written by common people, probably without journalistic training, as if that were a bad thing.
We think that’s one of the best things about Red Flag. It’s written by working people, whose life experiences have taught us to hate capitalism, and who are participating in the fight for communism. We reject the phony “objectivity” that journalism schools teach. Ruling-class newspapers are always limited to the point of view of the rulers. We write the truth of the class struggle that will emancipate the working class from the yoke of capitalism.
—Red writers

We made a mistake in the last issue of Red Flag in the article called “Building a Communist Collective on the Job” about Los Angeles MTA. In talking about a struggle with a worker that reached unbearable limits, the article said, “In the past we had helped get his job back after the company had fired him…” That is not the case. In fact, we helped him when he was suspended, not fired.
-- Red Flag

FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!

International Communist Workers Party

Letters to Red Flag

	FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party


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