FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
ICWP@Anonymousspeech.com

SEATTLE, US, May 1--Our communist contingent made a big impression on at least one marcher. She came up to our table to tell us that, to her amazement, she ran into someone “who believes in capitalism”!
No wonder she was amazed. The vast majority of people who gathered for the Seattle May Day march were obviously against capitalism. The chants, signs and leaflets made it clear they were fed up with racism, deportations, low wages, unemployment, killer cops, homelessness, and all the other capitalist horrors big and small.
We in the ICWP were there with an alternative – communism. A society based on mutual aid, rather than competition. A society where everyone works and the product of this work is distributed according to need. A society without money or wages, where everyone gets food, shelter, education and healthcare.
Only the ICWP offered this alternative. Some supposedly Marxist groups timidly offered socialism. But socialism is just capitalism: it maintains wages and the market economy. Therefore, as an alternative to capitalism, it is a non-starter.
There were also groups promoting identity politics and single- issue causes like a $15 minimum wage. At best these movements make small, temporary changes then collapse. Typically, they collapse without having any effect. We don’t ignore these movements; we reach out to people who are involved. But we want to get activists off the reformist treadmill and into the ICWP, to make a revolution that will permanently end capitalism’s horrors.
We spent many weeks building for May Day. We held a dinner whose highlight was a speech by a person new to us about the importance of May Day. We made a list of people who would or might come and kept in touch with them by phone, email, texts, and of course good old fashioned physical face-to-face visits in their homes and at work. We made a big banner with the ICWP logo and with MOBILIZE THE MASSES FOR COMMUNISM in bold yellow type on a red background.
When the day came we set up an ICWP table at the march starting point. The table had Red Flag, of course, the new End Racism pamphlet, the global May Day leaflet, the global refugees leaflet, a leaflet on Bernie Sanders and socialism, and our Mobilize the Masses for Communism. On the march itself we distributed 550 copies of Red Flag with our communist anti-racism pamphlet as an insert.
As usual a number of people encountered unexpected obstacles and couldn’t make it. But enough showed up that our contingent was able to make an impression. The decisive factor was not the size of our contingent but the fact that we were offering something – namely communism – that nobody else dared (or even thought to) mention.

Joining the ICWP: Those Who Do the Work Make the Best Decisions
In evaluating our experience one thing struck us. This is the situation (which we’ve seen before) where people who do not consider themselves ICWP members work just as hard as people who are members. For example, they distribute Red Flag and other ICWP literature. They talk to other workers about communism and bring them to ICWP events. They proudly hold a banner calling for communism.
The one thing members do that our great friends don’t do (or at least, not as much) is regularly meet to make decisions on how to carry out the work. This mirrors a devastating characteristic of capitalism: those who do the work don’t make the decisions.
Our plan must be to break with our capitalist training. Those that do the work can make the best decisions. This is a key aspect of communist culture. These new friends have the ability by virtue of their practice, not only to join the party, but to lead. And those who have been in the party for a time must listen carefully to the contributions of our new comrades.
Many new comrades have joined the party all around the world. For example, after our conference in South Africa new recruits began almost immediately to explain to other workers, family and friends what it means to join the ICWP. Another part of our plan is to show how these (and other) new recruits contribute to mobilizing the masses for communism.
Everyone in our contingent was happy with how it turned out and the first-timers were impressed. Our next job is to recruit them (and those who couldn’t make it) to the ICWP. Together we can end capitalism and all the evils that the May Day marchers denounced.

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