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.

The collective here is becoming very strong and new comrades are learning from practice, A young comrade said, “If I had not met you (ICWP), I would be wasting my life thinking of I, I, I, joining drug gangs and being an alcoholic. I want to thank you for opening and advancing my hatred of my conditions to the root of the problem—capitalism. Now I always think of we, we, we. Our Communist School is a huge advancement for the international working class and I want to contribute to it financially.” And so we got a contribution from a comrade who would have been killed or made useless by capitalism.
We are all very encouraged by changes happening quickly in our lives so we can dedicate ourselves to communism. Another comrade correctly said, “It is our party.”
We are all working over 18 hours a day to make the coming school a beacon of hope and change for the international working class.
—A comrade in South Africa

First, I want to thank the comrades who made the Communist school possible. It really inspired us and it really makes us want to do more, to want to go out there in the world to mobilize the masses for communism, as many as we can.
In my perspective, the day of the school itself really went well because of the theme of the communist school that day. We were talking about change. We were not only talking about future change; we were talking about change that was already there in front of me. Because there were comrades in the last conference who were at the communist school and who were participating fully, engaging as if they had been inside the party for years.
And so it really showed me on that day that it’s not difficult for the masses to trust in our political line and transform into being active members of the party. So that’s the change, that’s one of the things I took from the day of the school.
It was really inspiring to see those comrades inside my collective who we had recruited in the last conference and how they blossomed into really fully fledged communists, who are dedicated members of the party.
—A Comrade in South Africa

Thirteen years ago I began my university studies. One night when I was returning from school, a man followed me on the road to my house. He tried to rape me.
This event changed my live in several ways. First, the situation made me very depressed. I no longer wanted to live. Second, it drove me to enter a religious institute to become a missionary for about a year and a half. The aim was to heal my heart and to find meaning in life that at that moment I was losing.
In addition there were conflicts at home due to my younger brother’s illness (epilepsy). He is now 23 years old and doesn’t walk or talk. There was also my father’s alcoholism and the poverty that drove another brother to emigrate to the US, a step toward the disintegration of the family.
At that time I had no class consciousness. Nor did I think that capitalism was the cause of all these events that were destroying the family. Nor did I think about our working class around the world. Like me they suffer from the ravages of a system that exploits us and condemns us to death, taking away the hope, confidence and dignity of human beings.
Today, with all this going on, plus femicides, trafficking in women, gender violence, that is sexism and racism around the world, I am happy to belong to our international collective, that is, to our ICWP. It has given me the political clarity to be able to contribute to this historical process of the liberation of our international working class.
And I am here, like all our comrades worldwide, struggling against our internal contradictions. We strive every day to contribute to the training of the people who need to kill the capitalist bosses and their whole system.
Today, together with my class brothers and sisters and comrades, I hoist our banner in my heart. I encourage all our class brothers and sisters to remember that despite everything we experience under capitalism, we must not stop fighting.
Today more than ever, we must have the certainty that our Communist society is possible. Those of us who are nothing today will be all, as the comrades in El Salvador said so well.
And here we are. The commitment to our struggle guarantees us that we are mobilizing the masses for Communism. We are making it the priority in our life, because, as I say to friends who have read our newspaper, “Can we live in another way? What would happen with our life if we were not communists? If we didn’t fight for a world in which each person receives according to their needs and gives according to their commitment and capacity?”
So, now I ask all the comrades and class brothers and sisters around the world, what would we be if we did not take in our hands, the responsibility to liberate our class? What would we be if we did not mobilize for Communism? Join ICWP!
—Young Comrade in Mexico

The phenomenon of Bernie Sanders has aroused the curiosity of young people in the US. He has proclaimed that he is a social democrat. He proclaimed a war on the rich, calling them the 1%, claiming that the middle class has disappeared, and offering that public colleges should be free and that we all should have universal health insurance.
He compares the United States with other nations of the first world (like Denmark and Sweden which have Social Democratic governments), claiming that they live better and those workers have more benefits. He has proclaimed his so-called political revolution, which makes the bosses uncomfortable, but doesn’t scare them. Sanders has shown how the Democratic system is not so democratic and even if it were, the bosses will only give us crumbs.
He only wants to reform the capitalist system. He wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour when the bosses can raise the cost of living whenever they want to.
Sanders has called on the youth to vote for him. The truth is that nothing will change without a true communist revolution. We shouldn’t believe that by voting or wanting to reform a constitution the bosses will obey.
—A Comrade

The ICWP celebration of the May Day Dinner and March was the culmination of another year of communist political struggle. Maybe all the work carried out during the year was not fully reflected in all our friends in the base of the party participating in these events as we hoped or wished. However this year brought many who are getting involved and who are becoming communist leaders.
The leadership committee of ICWP in Los Angeles played a very important role in carrying out the May Day dinner with its speeches, play, communist chorus, the decoration of the hall, the sound system, in addition to coordinating the transportation for our base and their friends to the event.
We should feel proud because these are completely communist activities. Our collective is composed of women and men workers, ex-soldiers, and teachers. Courageous and determined, we are struggling firmly against the odds in the advance to conquer each new inch of enemy territory.
We understand that we are the advance guard of a great Red Army. In our ranks we still make many mistakes. We personally have many weaknesses that slow our advance. But with our dialectical understanding and our practice, and without fear of criticism and self criticism, we will overcome our weaknesses and get closer and closer to the final victory of communism.
We know that we are not marching alone. Many other workers in different countries are also marching, confident that the political line of ICWP, of Mobilize the Masses for Communism, will be the path to victory.
Thousands of workers worldwide identify with the line of our Party, because it is not the invention of a few “wise revolutionaries.” Instead it is the result of the critical study of the history of the class struggle with all its successes, but even more important, with its failures and mistakes. Our political line is not a dogma; it is a revolutionary science.
That said, we must return as spiders to weave webs of Red Flag readers. Let’s go again to the factories, the shops, the fields, barracks, and schools to recruit new members. As a young student said in a speech in the play at the dinner, “Let’s mobilize our co-workers, relatives, and friends but let’s start with ourselves, giving more to reach the goal of a world without borders,
without wages, without racism, without wars, that is, a communist world.”
Let’s strive to make our next May Day is much more successful, correcting the mistakes we made in this one and struggling to bring those who did not attend this time and also their friends and relatives.
We have nothing to lose but our chains; we have a world to win.
—Worker comrade in Los Angeles

EL SALVADOR—“The anger of the workers, the death of the exploiters!” “If you want to rob, Aznar will show you how to do the job!” The youth chanted these and other slogans in front of the hotel where the Asociación Nacional de la Empresa Privada (ANEP) was holding its annual national meeting for private enterprise (ENADE).
ANEP invited José Maria Aznar, the ex-President of Spain to speak about how to fight corruption. The funny thing is that he has been sanctioned and fined for evading taxes and exposed in the famous Panama Papers for creating “ghost” companies.
A group of young friends and members of ICWP met as a collective to plan the protest. We discussed the direction we wanted to give the demonstration, taking into account that it would be through an alliance with other organizations. We decided that it would be a call to the class struggle. Under the name “EVADE” (“tax evasion”) we designed signs, flags and slogans that would encourage class hatred.
On the day of the event, about 250 of us walked through the most exclusive streets of San Salvador. For a few hours, we workers took control of the elite neighborhood. When we reached the hotel, the businessmen at the entrances were astonished and hurried inside. Others left quickly in their cars. We saw the biggest exploiters in the region parading in front of us. The atmosphere became tense and tempers heated.
“Why are you walking faster?” some asked.
“In the factory they scream and insult the workers, but in the street they cower in front of us,” a youth yelled at a recognized maquila boss. Behind the insults and shouts was the class hatred.
This activity triggered a series of actions and direct attacks against the bosses, exposing us because of emotional impulses.
Analyzing this activity objectively, we need to highlight certain aspects. It was primarily convened and planned by members and friends of ICWP, but it was not for communism. It is not enough to have an anti-capitalist mobilization or a mobilization for class struggle. We must always mobilize the masses for communism. We need to bring the idea that only the abolition of money can put an end to capitalist corruption.
The working class must be conscious that we should not fight for the bosses to pay their taxes or that politicians not be corrupt. These actions are part of to the nature of capitalism. As long as money and capitalism exist, the rulers will be bribed to benefit a group of bosses.
We must be conscious that the bosses’ exploitation, repression and enrichment at the expense of our labor power and the scarcity we face will never end if we do not fight directly for communism.
The activity provided an opportunity to speak with internationalist friends and with a group of women fighting for clean drinking water in their communities. However, we did not have enough copies of Red Flag.
From this activity we can learn lessons from the mistakes and successes we made as a youth collective. One thing is clear: we will not let the bosses have even a moment of peace. The working class is each time more conscious that capitalism doesn’t work. We are the ones who must show them the correct path, communist revolution.
—Comrade in El Salvador

Red Flag adds: The courage and boldness shown by the friends and comrades is part of what the working class needs to make a revolution. But the most important thing is our communist political line. The masses already have hatred of the capitalist system. What they don’t have are communist ideas. If we don’t take them these ideas it means playing the bosses’ game and believing that the capitalist system can be reformed. We invite them to take this communist boldness to the maquilas, the students and the farmworkers

FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!

International Communist Workers Party

Letters to Red Flag

	FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party


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