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.

I am joining myself to your party because I believe very strongly that the working people, all over the world deserve to be respected.
Over the past forty years, as an adult, I have seen how the system takes all the life and energy from my elders and spits them out, to die shortly after retirement. In a system that only cares for profit and overproduction, this happens over and over again, with no concern for the quality of life of the people who create wealth.
The state of our natural world, the protection of its resources and its living beings, is also a cause that is important to me. I want my children to grow up in a world that values them, values me, and only produces what is actually needed.
The current state of affairs, with the corrupt system that caters to businesses and crooked politicians and their cronies, has opened my eyes. There can be and will not be a “fair election.” The people need to represent themselves, form a united front and create the system where each person is taken into account!
The police state is not far away, we can see that in the militarization of the local police forces. These crooked cops are murdering people in the streets and are getting away with it. This cannot be allowed to continue, and I cannot stand by passively. I will use my time and energy to help the cause of the party, as well as I can, for as long as I can!
Viva La Causa, Viva la Gente!
--New member in Los Angeles, USA

The article on socialism and communism in the last Red Flag, starting with the general strike in France, mistakenly lumped together socialists like Francois Hollande in France and Bernie Sanders in the US with the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union.
We think that’s a big mistake. We owe it to our predecessors and to our comrades now and in the future to draw the lessons of history as accurately as possible.
Hollande, Sanders, and their ilk are the discredited remnants of the Second International. These parties were deeply reformist—totally wrong about the capitalist state. They included most notably the German Social Democratic Party of Kautsky and Bernstein, who became trade union bureaucrats and parliamentarians. They believed in elections and backed the German ruling class in World War I. They were—and are—deeply anticommunist and rejected workers’ revolution. Bernie Sanders is in that tradition, and when he talks about a “political revolution” he is using the term revolution as a marketing slogan, like“revolutionary new toothpaste.”
The Bolsheviks, the communist revolutionaries of the Third International, broke decisively with these class traitors. They defended proletarian internationalism and smashing the bourgeois state. They were communists, and a communist society, without money and social classes was their goal. They knew that it would take revolution to get there.
They agreed with Marx—mistakenly as it turned out—that socialism was a stepping-stone to a communist society. They also had a confused and contradictory position on revolutionary nationalism—another mistake. But to say that they became socialists, and in the end, failed, like all socialists before and after, is misleading at best.
We in ICWP have learned from their mistakes. Socialism is actually state capitalism. It keeps wages, money, and the labor market. The competition for survival inherent in the labor market means that it can never lead to communism, but eventually erases all the gains made by revolution and returns to open capitalism. “Revolutionary nationalism” ends up providing cover for a new ruling elite. The working class must fight directly for communism—without wages, money, bosses or borders.
The heroic struggles and fatal errors of the Communist Parties of the Third International taught us these lessons. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
--Red students of history

I feel very close to the mass line of ICWP.
I come from deep rural India from an upper caste Hindu family (caste is quite similar to race). I have witnessed the oppression of caste, class, and gender since childhood with a lack of consciousness. As a kid I used to take pride in my upper caste and had a blind nationalism.
I used to identify with Brahminical fascist groups. Later, during my studies, I came in touch with some communist activists and revolutionary literature. I read a lot in the last few years to unlearn what I had learned unconsciously.
For a while I was very confused. I was able to see oppression but couldn’t figure out how to fight it. The most confusing things were culture, family and religion. Sometimes more reading creates more confusion, especially when you are not able to correlate the ideas with material conditions. It takes time.
After I met comrades of ICWP, I started reading the basics of dialectical materialism. It becomes very clear when you develop a scientific understanding of society. I can correlate my academic understanding of physical science to understand changes and workers’ movements in society.
In this class struggle we are more similar to each other than different. Gender, race and nationality have been used by the ruling class to divide our force of production which is the backbone of capitalism. It is our urgent task to expose this to the masses.
We need to understand our power. It is we who run the world. Capitalism wants us to feel helpless and insecure.
We need to expose that the working class has power if we are organized with communist ideas. We must unite against the divisive forces like gender, race and nationalism. Let’s fight capitalism rather than fighting each other. We must fight opportunistic and reformist tendencies among us.
Let’s join the correct line and read, write and contribute to Red Flag and join ICWP.
Carry on the struggle comrades. We have a world to win. Join the revolution. Join ICWP.
--New Comrade

A comrade in our collective was supposed to be in a meeting but he wasn’t there. So we asked him where he was. He told us that he was in church. That led to a big discussion about religion and communism.
Another comrade asked him which was primary, the church or the movement. He said the church is primary because he’s been inside the church longer than he’s been in the movement. So I don’t know if this was a sense of misguided loyalty.
I explained that religion and communism, even though they have similarities, can never co-exist because religion, to speak the brutal truth, is a tool that is used by the capitalist class to divert the working class from revolution.
Another comrade continues:
We explained that if you look at religion you realize that they promise hope for a world where no one has been. They promise that they must continue to suffer because there is a world that is waiting for them where there is no suffering.
Most of the time those religious leaders are busy misguiding the working class, that it’ s okay for them to suffer because there is this spiritual being who will save them after death. While they are preaching these religious ideas, they continue to live comfortably. But then there is a contradiction. You are telling the people it’s ok to suffer but while you are saying this, you’re not suffering. They are living comfortably, continuing to oppress the working class.
A third comrade adds:
I liked the discussion. Also, we made examples about the articles we read based on dialectical materialism. We tried to explain to him how ICWP and religion differ. But I think that he understood clearly about the movement and religion.
Conclusion:
We wanted this letter to have different views because we were in a collective debate and it would be wise to get some insight about what other comrades think.
Keep up the good work.
--South African Comrades

We thank the Los Angeles MTA (transit) workers and others who responded to ICWP’s call for economic help in the name of the comrades in South Africa. They needed this help to mobilize many men and women workers to the communist school on dialectical materialist philosophy.
Our party is growing rapidly in other parts of the world. We asked why US workers are not responding the same way. We asked several MTA workers what they thought the difference was.
A mechanic said, “The working class in this country doesn’t have the same history of struggle as in other countries. For example, May Day was born in Chicago with the struggle for the 8-hour day. However, most workers here do not know about it. The unions are completely domesticated. They are not fighting organizations, and they make us think that we are not the working class but the middle class.”
Another said, “I think that it is because of our many illusions. Despite understanding the real possibility of World War III and of economic chaos, we still cling to the illusion that nothing will happen.”
A third worker thinks that the bosses in other countries super-exploit all workers, while in the USA they create wage tiers to divide the workers and pit us against each other, or so that they don’t see the struggle of other workers as their own.
Hundreds of MTA workers read Red Flag, distribute it locally and internationally and donate money for the communist cause. But not enough of these friends are willing to mobilize now.
ICWP has a lot of political work to carry out. We must intensify the understanding of dialectical materialist philosophy so that workers have a more scientific view of social development, their analyses are objective, and they understand better the need to break radically with nationalist, racist and individualistic ideas.
It is not enough to proclaim ourselves to be against racism. We don’t do enough to end it. We don’t promote integration effectively enough. Too often latinos hang out with latinos, blacks with blacks, etc. Sometimes MTA workers don’t see how an attack on us is an attack on all workers.
We oppose nationalism but we don’t always support struggles of workers elsewhere or of undocumented workers here. We shouldn’t forget where we come from or ignore our own history.
We need to deepen our communist working-class understanding and practice by studying the history of our class, how economies function, and dialectical materialism.
We are sitting on a time bomb. Ignoring the alarms will only worsen things. Workers must organize now. It is urgent to get out of our “comfort zone.” Let’s take more responsibility for our historic role of burying the capitalist monster and building a new communist society.
--Red MTA worker

“Our South African comrades are bold in mobilizing the masses for communism. We have to be just as bold in calling out the nationalist organizations who hold back the movement here.”
This was the conclusion of a discussion of the editorial in Red Flag (v. 7 no 8) about the similarities and differences between the political work of our party in South Africa and elsewhere. Our study group included a comrade from another part of Africa, a comrade with family in South Africa, a young African American comrade and a more experienced black veteran of the US movement against apartheid. With such a rich variety of experiences, it is not surprising that we had a fruitful and wide-ranging discussion.
We talked about the importance of fighting subjectivity—which in our case includes the danger of concluding that it must be a lot easier in South Africa, and that it’s too hard to win people in the US to communism. We concluded that we have to look objectively at the obstacles we face and take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves.
Racist capitalism oppresses workers around the world. Although there are differences, there is the same basis for class hatred and the same desire for a better world. Nationalist fakers have betrayed the movement around the world. Capitalism around the world is in crisis. Workers will be less and less able to live in the old way. The same history, of communist parties that participated in class struggle but were defeated by their own reformism, is the legacy of the international communist movement around the world.
We in ICWP have learned from that struggle, often heroic and inspiring, but ultimately
betrayed by an incorrect analysis, that we must fight directly for communism. Because we are all part of an international working class in capitalist countries around the world, we can learn from each other about how to fight and how to win.
Onward, comrades, onward!
--ICWP comrades in Los Angeles

FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!

International Communist Workers Party

Letters to Red Flag

	FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party


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