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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.

LETTERS, CRITICISM AND SUGGESTIONS

ICWP End Racism Pamphlet Should Have Educated About US Racism

When I first read To End Racism: Mobilize the Masses for Communism, I was very upset. I thought it was useless because it has nothing for African American and other readers in the US. There are articles about racism in Latin America, India, and South Africa, nothing on the sordid, long history of racism in the US. While the intent may have been to reflect the international aspect of racism, African Americans and others in the US are also part of the international working class. I have since read and studied the document and reconsidered my initial reaction. However, I do have some suggestions.
It explains how ancient and feudal slavery was different from capitalist slavery and document how racism is a capitalist invention, not something ancient and universal. However, some clarification is needed. The 3rd paragraph on page 1 says, “Starving European laborers of Jamestown, Virginia saw Native American societies…” This needs a date and explanation that Jamestown was a British colony in what eventually became the US.
In the 4th and 5th paragraphs, it talks about the creation of a multi-ethnic maritime proletariat and servant and slave codes in British colonies. Which British colonies should be stated, particularly in what is now the US.
Paragraphs 1-3 on page 8 should be expanded into an article on the value of slaves in the US and their labor in producing the cotton that provided the capital for industrialization and international banking. This could include the information in Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told (although he writes about passive resistance to capitalism, survival, not its elimination).
I think that an article on the racist history of the US—slave-holding founding fathers, concessions to slave-holding in the Constitution, racist terror and Reconstruction, Jim Crow, racist Supreme Court decisions, etc. would inform African-Americans and others in the US as well as people internationally. I grew up in the South and experienced Jim Crow, US apartheid: racially separate schools, even on the college/university level, not being able to eat at lunch counters when shopping, segregated seating on buses, railroad cars, wards in hospitals, etc. There was also apartheid in the US military until 1948. 
These most gross aspects of U.S. apartheid are gone because of multiracial class struggle in the Civil Rights Movement. However, racism still exists in mass incarceration of African American males, racially segregated housing, police murders, and, particularly, racist ideology perpetuated in capitalist media, politics, and education. The more things have changed, the more they have remained the same.
Red Flag must continue to educate on the capitalist origin of racism, why reforms will never destroy racism, and why only communism will eliminate racism.
--Bay Area, California, US Comrade

May Day Greetings Circle the Globe

Messages of greetings were received from 11 industrial cities across South Asia.  Most importantly many comrades discussed and distributed Red Flag at various May Day events.  The highlight was the industrial city of Bengaluru (Bangalore) where our literature reached the garment workers.  We are making similar efforts to reach tea workers in Kerala, India where we have some readers of Red Flag. 
We also received May Day greetings from Turkey, Croatia, Lebanon, Nigeria and Brazil.  A comrade in Turkey said he distributed the global leaflet on the refugees under fascist conditions prevailing in Turkey.  He also reported that there is virtually a civil war in Turkey and the masses are looking for an alternative to the fight among the bosses.  The workers and students are ready for revolutionary change. He also said that a worker was run over and killed by the police at a May Day demonstration.
Our party is growing internationally and the masses are looking at the only alternative that will end wage slavery once and for all.  ICWP is determined to mobilize the masses for communism. Join us now.

Fight Sexism to Win Communism

A great strength of the El Salvador May Day article was that it reflected the material concerns of women workers.  But it was a mistake to write that “in ICWP we are conscious of the need to restore the dignity of women as a form of reparations” for past sexism. 
First, dignity is a sense of self-worth and self-respect. Nobody can give it or take it away from you.
True, capitalism constantly tells the masses, especially women, that we are worth little or nothing.  Communism arms us with the under-standing that we are the creators of value and the makers of history.  But many, many women have maintained dignity – and courage and fighting spirit! – in spite of all the sexist attacks. 
Second, some demand “reparations” from those who have exploited, robbed and profited hugely from our labor.  For example, some in the US demand “reparations” for slavery.  This is not a communist outlook.  We do not make demands on the capitalist ruling class.  We fight to overthrow it. 
When the article says that “we” will make “a form of reparations” for what “they” (women) have suffered, the “we” sounds like “we men.”  It implies that male workers (not capitalism) are mainly responsible for the humiliation, violence and disrespect inflicted on female workers.  It also implies that “we” in ICWP are men when the article itself talks about the important roles of women comrades in ICWP.
A better sentence might have read:  “In ICWP we are conscious of the need to fight against all forms of sexist attacks on women in order to build the unity we need to win and build communism.”
And that’s what we must do!
—Comrade in Los Angeles, USA

Revolutionary Greetings from Afghanistan

May Day greetings from Afghanistan comrades and thanks for keeping in constant communication with me here.  I want to assure you that I am trying to form units of comrades who will form part of our movement and I am doing all I can afford to translate the literature in Dari, the language commonly spoken in Afghanistan.  I will write articles about the situation here.  I really appreciate your struggle for the international working class and will remain in contact with you.
--Comrade in Afghanistan

 

The End of Apartheid Only Changed the Skin Color of the Capitalist Oppressor

On this day (27th April, 1984) all South Africans came out in numbers to vote for a free and fair South Africa. Little did they know what was in store for them.  Pain, suffering, abuse and starvation. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) took everything for themselves and their capitalist backers and left the vast working class that brought them to power to fend for ourselves.
Every time we go to mobilize the masses for communism all the comrades that we meet have a lot to complain about. 
“The ANC has brought us nothing but pain and more suffering,” said a comrade from Despach near industrial town Uitenage.  I am really happy about the work we are doing when I heard an elderly comrade say, “Thank you ICWP for coming here. Now we have hope for the future.”
Even a student from a local college got very interested in the communist ideas and the future without the bosses, borders and money.  He asked for more Red Flags to give to his friends and family.
In conclusion, this so-called Freedom Day should be seen as the day when white on black racism of open apartheid ended only to start black on black racism.  The end of apartheid has put a small number of blacks in positions of power and some have become millionaires.  Only communism will end this racism. The masses are with us everywhere we go. They want to hear about the communist future.
--Comrades in South Africa

 


“Journalistic Training”

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

OOPS!

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

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