Red Flag Newspaper
International Communist Workers Party
|
|
Red Flag NewspaperInternational Communist Workers Party |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
| |
OAXACA, MEXICO, June 22—Tens of thousands of teachers, on strike against Education Reform, together with thousands of sympathizers, have waged pitched battles against thousands of riot police. At least eleven class brothers have been killed and hundreds of our class brothers and sisters have been wounded.
In the battles to evict strikers from the roads and villages they occupy, the police have several times been forced to flee like rats. The masses, furious at the repression and fed up with the constant attacks of the capitalist system, have burned the cars, helmets and shields that cops abandoned in their flight.
Hundreds have shown solidarity by preparing food and collecting water and medicine for the demonstrators in different parts of the state and country. This workers’ solidarity shows the potential for communism.
These masses in struggle yearn for a better world. Only communism can achieve this world. That’s why the battle cry of the teachers, men and women, must be “Death to Capitalism! Power to the Workers! Let’s All Fight for Communism!”
To make this a reality, comrades from International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) have been distributing our communist literature in the strikers’ camps in Mexico City. We must extend these efforts to Oaxaca, Guerrero, and other states where the teachers are in struggle.
We call on these teachers and the masses of farmworkers, city workers and students who support them, to join ICWP and help mobilize the masses for communism.
Only communism, a society without money, can meet the needs of our class. Capitalist exploitation—its wage slavery—is the cause of all the evils that we suffer, including poverty, racism and sexism.
Our struggle must not be to repeal capitalist laws or improve capitalist education. We have to destroy them along with the capitalists and their system. Their education is designed to produce submissive wage slaves and to strengthen and perpetuate the ideologies that keep the capitalists in power.
Communist education will create communists, who will combine mental and manual labor, without privileges for anyone. All of us will do both. We will not have tests, grades, diplomas, or titles. We will study for life and we will all do farm work, industrial work, and also work in scientific fields.
In this rebellion, the main task of our members is to bring communist ideas to the masses. It should be the main task of all teachers: distributing Red Flag to their co-workers and supporters in struggle. We must organize study groups and recruit to ICWP.
Reformism Holds Back Revolution
Trade union ideology and the capitalist electoral process are major obstacles that hold back the teachers and masses in struggle from seeing communist revolution as the only solution.
That’s why our message must be clear: Union reform struggles—no matter how mass or militant—give life to capitalism. The same is true when we participate in capitalist elections. Only communist revolution will eliminate capitalism.
The unions emerged as organs of workers’ defense. They are instruments to regulate our wage slavery, not to destroy it. That’s why union leaders end up as friends of the bosses and the union ends up being part of the State and sharing its capitalist ideology.
The teachers’ union (CNTE) is not free from this. It functions within the system, participates daily in capitalist politics like the national teachers’ union (SNTE) and runs its members for mid- or low-level deputies or officials in the state governments of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Michoacán.
They also support other politicians and their parties like MoReNa because “MoReNa has pledged its support to the teachers.” Lopez Obrador, the top leader of MoReNa, promised that if they won, they would repeal education reform.
In 2010, asking teachers to vote for the PRI candidate Gabino Cue, he said that Cue had his “complete trust.” The state police, on orders of now-Governor Cue, are those who massacre our class brothers and sisters.
We are in a period of a deepening crisis of overproduction and sharpening competition for markets and sources of raw materials between the great powers. The bosses are forced to reduce wages, raise the retirement age, use our pension funds (even losing them in stock investments), eliminate labor contract protection, etc.
However, let’s not fight to “live better” under capitalism. Let’s fight to destroy it with communist revolution. For that, we need to convert ourselves into the COMMUNIST WORKING CLASS, that is, into a Party. That is ICWP’s goal. Education workers and all workers and students, JOIN ICWP!
BREAKING NEWS: JUNE 22– The US government is beginning a mass deportation of migrants from Africa. As many as 100 men, mostly from Ghana and Nigeria, have been transferred to Krome Detention Center in Miami for deportation. More transfers have been reported from California, New Mexico and Alabama. “They are all crying,” a Ghanaian man told an immigrant-rights activist. Many face prison or worse if they are forced to return to the country they fled. Working people truly have no nation. In communism there will be no more borders and no deportees. Everyone will be welcome everywhere.
“The International Communist Workers’ Party is growing in South Africa. People are getting more aware of communism. It is exciting to see the development.”
Seven youths and two workers from ICWP had a very successful mobilization at the 40th anniversary march in Soweto commemorating the 1976 uprising there.
On June 16, 1976, police killed hundreds of high school students who were protesting a new law to force students to study in Afrikaans. In response, black youth and workers across South Africa organized massive revolts against racist apartheid. Last week, youth marched also to protest today’s racist education system and other capitalist evils.
The comrades discussed their experiences:
A: “It really went well. That conversation with the girl from the youth work was the highlight of the day for me. It lasted about 15 or 20 minutes and was very productive. We exchanged numbers and there will be a follow-up meeting with her and her friends. (See box, page 3)
“To them the concept of communism was new. They had never heard anything like it. It seems as if they are looking for people like us.”
B: “They had never heard about communism, but they were really keen on hearing a lot more about it. Many people were keen on getting Red Flag. We had to explain to them what communism was. They didn’t know such a party existed in South Africa or in the world in general.”
C: “Going there was a good idea to make them aware because some of them aren’t aware; some have wrong ideas because of capitalism.”
D: “I agree. Even ANC (African National Congress) members were interested. Some people are really misled. Some people in the ANC don’t know what it really is. We didn’t go there to recruit members on the spot but the fact that we distributed so many papers was impressive.
“Maybe some won’t read it, but some will be keen on it, will read it and know there is such a thing as communism. If we continue to distribute Red Flag at such gatherings, people will know about communism and we will get more members.”
A: “Comrade, this was the first time you went to the masses to distribute the Red Flag. At first, you don’t know what to expect, but as the day goes on, you feel more confident.”
E: “Yes, when I saw the reaction to Red Flag it was something.”
A: “People were more open. Some people asked me for the paper, instead of me asking them.
“This was the first time we went to coloured areas to distribute the paper. The response was so overwhelming so this is something we should consider. I gave many coloured people Red Flag. I was surprised. We should do this more.”
B: “This shows that there are so many racial divisions. Sometimes we forget that the whole working class is being exploited regardless of their skin color or country. It was a great experience for me personally.”
F: “The most important thing is that we reached our goal. We distributed most of the Red Flags.
E: “At first I felt shy, afraid, to approach people and tell them about Red Flag and communism, because I had never done it before. But as I went on telling people about this organization and Red Flag, it was great.”
G: “This was my first time. At first I was lost, nervous. But as the day went on, I felt I was presenting something I knew for a long time. I talked with people who were black, white, and coloured about Red Flag. It was a good day.”
C: “It was the first time I approached white and coloured people as well as black people. We were able to give these youths what they need. We distributed about 450 papers; that’s a lot. We should be very proud.”
A: “So what do we want to see from this development? What do you want to see happening now?
D: “Keep mobilizing; keep going to events like this.”
C: “This experience gave you courage to mobilize more, to go further, and to distribute more.”
B: “It also shows that we should keep studying dialectics because it’s helping. It empowers us to be able to explain communism with more clarity to the masses so they can trust and believe in it.
“Because many people, especially here, have been promised so many things and haven’t gotten any of them, like by the ANC. So if we come as a new party, we offer communism, it’s hard for them to believe it’s possible. Studying dialectics teaches us that aspects of communism happened before and helps us show people that communism is real and is the way forward.”
To End War, Mobilize For Communism
At the 40th Anniversary of the Soweto Uprising March, a young woman and her friends were gathering 200,000 signatures to petition South African President Zuma to make engaging in wars illegal by international law. Supposedly, he will only consider it when they have 200,000 signatures. But what they fail to understand is that local, regional or world wars are actually not caused by human hatreds among people, like if we hate Zulus, or Americans or something.
I told them it’s deeper than that. In capitalism, there is always competition between capitalist countries, inter-imperialist rivalry. Sometimes the competition can get ugly. Sometimes there are direct wars and sometimes proxy wars. Like in Syria right now, there are 20 armies there.
These armies are not there in the interest of international peace, but to advance their national interests. None of them are there for the interest of the working class. They are not looking at the suffering and dying in Syria, but to advance their own interests and pushing racism to stop the migrants from flooding Europe. Those people are fleeing poverty and war in Syria. The working class was fed up with the Assad regime and they rebelled as Arab spring, even though it was based on wrong ideas.
I explained that it is a proxy war. The Syrian regime is supported by Russia, which has military bases there. Each country wants to expand their sphere of influence. If Syria were to fall, it means that Russia won’t have any military presence in the Middle East so it’s important for them to maintain the Assad regime. The US and its allies want to stop Russia. They all want to be perceived as humanitarian. But to end wars, we have to mobilize for communism