FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
ICWP@Anonymousspeech.com

Do we need unions or are they capitalist organizations which perpetuate our wage slavery?
A discussion concerning unions and trade-union ideology is going on among Los Angeles transit workers at MTA and among Red Flag readers and members of the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) in many countries.
Some say we need unions to fight for our immediate needs:  higher wages, benefits, etc. Others claim we need them to defend us from the capitalists’ daily racist and sexist attacks such as firings and suspensions. In contrast, some denounce unions as roadblocks to communist organizing.

How do we communists do political work where unions exist?  What is revolutionary communist class struggle? 
We fight directly for communism.  Does that mean not leading reform struggles as communists did in the past?  Does it mean we don’t view these struggles as stepping stones to win workers to fight for communism?  Then how do we move workers into revolutionary communist class struggle?

This article introduces a series about major labor struggles worldwide since 1848 where the communist parties chose to win masses to trade-union reformism instead of to fighting directly for communism.  Why did they think this was the only way to win them to a revolutionary communist outlook? 
We hope to show that the potential to win workers to fight directly for communism has existed in all these struggles.  It is the only way our class can end exploitation.
We invite party members and other Red Flag readers worldwide to help further develop our revolutionary strategy and tactics for winning workers, soldiers and youth to fight directly for communism and avoid the traps of trade unionism and all reformism.

Our goal:  World communism, a society without classes
This idea is not outlandish. Classless society existed for more than eighty thousand years. In this pre-class communism, everything produced by human labor power, mental and manual, was shared according to need.
Class society, which developed in the last eight thousand years, changed this. Human labor power was made captive to produce mainly for the needs of a small, parasitical, exploitive ruling class. These rulers expropriated as their private property all the instruments of production, including most importantly, human labor power itself.

Since the dawn of class society, the oppressed masses have waged a relentless struggle to end their exploitation and oppression.  This includes rebellions, armed uprisings and revolutions.
Victory, however, has eluded them. It can only be achieved by advancing on the basis of pre-class communism’s collectivity and production of use value only.
This requires a revolution and the abolition of private property, money, markets and wage slavery. It requires building a world without racism, sexism and borders where everyone’s contribution is welcomed and appreciated and everyone’s needs are met.

Only the working class is capable of leading such a task.
We have learned much from the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, the Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1966-1968, and 168 years of communist experience in class struggle.  We have learned that the key to victory is building a mass communist party that mobilizes the masses for communism, and nothing else.
Our predecessors didn’t think this could be done.  Instead, they built relatively small communist parties.  They mobilized the masses for reformism, mainly through trade unions, as the way to win them to fight for socialism. Instead of building one massive communist party worldwide, they organized reformist struggles on a national basis.
Both their strategy and their goal were wrong. Trade union ideology is capitalist ideology. It strives to reform capitalism, not destroy it. It legalizes, justifies and embellishes capitalism’s exploitation and oppression.
Absorbed by their reformist practice, most communist parties became reformist organizations and eventually disappeared. A few, which led successful socialist revolutions like in China and Russia, ended up creating capitalist-imperialist countries.  They tried to do the impossible:  transforming socialism – state capitalism – into communism.
It is not enough, however, to know what our predecessors did wrong. They did their best.  Now it is our turn.  The burning question for us today is how to avoid the pitfalls of reformism.  How do we build the International Communist Workers’ Party by developing and mobilizing for revolutionary communist class struggles? 

Next Article