FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
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SEATTLE, WA, USA—Eyelids were drooping at our early morning crew meeting. The topic was Boeing’s “new safety culture.” Most had heard this kind of pitch before. That is, until the bosses started to justify the company’s blame-the-workers approach by invoking the discredited broken-windows theory. Then all hell broke loose.
Broken-windows is one of the most racist blame-the-victim theories that capitalist academia has invented. It asserts that if one house on the block has a broken window, the whole neighborhood will deteriorate. It advocates for cracking down on petty crime as a supposed way to improve workers’ lives.
Of course, no evidence was ever presented to prove this. But who needs evidence when you can blame workers—particularly black and Latin workers.
The New York City police department first put this theory into practice. It rapidly escalated into the notorious stop-and-frisk program. Black and Latin workers were routinely harassed for no reason other than the (racist) whim of a local cop. (The justification: you won’t want the whole neighborhood going to ruin because some miscreant might misbehave on the street.) Too often racist murder by the cops was the end result.
The crew boss parroted what he had heard at a larger managers’ meeting: “What if there’s a gang jumping the subway turnstiles? Then everybody will start jumping the turnstiles and people will no longer pay the fare.” He later admitted he wasn’t thinking of a gang of white kids. And besides, why should there be fares at all?
In communism we’ll collectively provide the transportation we need. No more transit cops or cashiers to collect fares. After we eliminate those jobs, these folks can actually help people get where they need to go!
Bus drivers can concentrate on getting their passengers safely to their destinations, freed of the obnoxious job of demanding money.
While we’re at it, we’ll redesign housing. Broken windows will no longer be the responsibility of an individual home owner. We’ll design, build and repair housing collectively.
“Hell, in 2008 the banks foreclosed on at least 3 million homes,” commented one irate worker. “Who’s responsible for all the broken windows in those abandoned buildings? And the banks got billions for really destroying neighborhoods!”
Workers are the solution, not the problem
When the bosses talk about a “safety culture,” they point the finger at us. Individual workers, they say, are responsible for taking unsafe shortcuts and ignoring safety violations. The bosses’ need to amass more profits doesn’t even enter the picture.
According to the anti-worker bias of capitalism, one bad apple will spoil the bushel. Communists have much more confidence in the working class.
No longer will we suffer a culture and laws that blame other workers. All too often this blame falls on black or Latin, Muslim or immigrant workers.
Hence, threats and punishment form the backbone of capitalist social relations. This is the opposite of communist social practice.
Comradely struggle for communist principles will mark our practice. Millions will become skilled at deciding things collectively. The power and potential of the masses will not be a thing to be feared as do the bosses and their academic mouthpieces. It will be our great source of strength.
Masses mobilized with communist collectivity will guarantee our safety. The confidence we build in each other during this process will bury racist theories like “broken windows.”