FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
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LETTERS, CRITICISM AND SUGGESTIONS
Communism: One Human Family
We all depend on others—many others. Capitalism conceals this by putting money between production and use. We’re paid in money and get things by spending money. It seems we need money, not other people—except a boss to pay us.
In capitalism, the economic unit is the “family” or “household.” Families usually pool and share resources. Working-class families produce labor power. They are responsible for meeting workers’ needs so they can work the next day. They raise children to be the next generation of wage slaves.
The mid-20th century Hollywood “typical family” (stay-at-home mom, work-for-a-paycheck dad, kids) was never reality for most workers, even in the US.
Today, capitalism’s profound crisis puts unbearable stresses on families. Mass incarceration, wars and migration break up many. Few households can subsist on one paycheck. Women often carry a double burden of housework and a paying job (or two).
Few can “succeed” whether “on their own” or in a relationship. Problems multiply. We blame each other. Too many self-medicate with alcohol or other drugs.
In communism, we will all pool and share resources. Really, we will all be one family. Production and distribution based on need will replace capitalist markets. We will live and raise kids more collectively.
Communist society will reveal our interdependence. Nobody will have a boss or be one or act like one. Communism will be the material basis for winning the struggle against sexism and all the bosses’ “blame-each-other” ideologies.
In communism, we will all help and depend on one another. Nobody will depend on just one “companion” to meet all of their economic, social, emotional and sexual needs. We will have stronger and more varied relationships.
A recent letter said that “some women” (influenced by feminism) “have not been able to establish stable relationships.” It said that “there are women who live alone and have even more conflicts” than married women. It said nothing about men (influenced by sexism) who haven’t been able to establish stable relationships or who live alone.
Our Party shouldn’t echo capitalism’s sexist ideas that women are to blame, or mainly to blame, for relationship problems. As Red Flag commented, “the main ideology and behavior that disrupts relationships is male chauvinism.”
Communism, like feminism, insists that nobody “needs to put up with anything or anyone” who treats them badly. That’s why communists in the Soviet Union and China moved quickly to expand women’s right to divorce.
But communism, unlike feminism, has a real solution. By providing collectively for everyone’s needs, communist society will allow everyone to “succeed.” But not “on their own.” Nobody ever does that. We will all succeed – together.
—Single woman comrade in the US
Communism Will End Violence Against Women
In 1999 the UN declared 25 November the “International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.” It is honored mainly in Latin America.
The day commemorates the murder of the three Mirabal sisters by Dominican strongman Rafael Trujillo. They opposed his regime, and one rebuffed Trujillo’s advances.
But sexist violence is baked into capitalism. Only communism will end it.
Liberal bosses talk a lot about how they want to end violence against women. But they tolerate it. Their popular media – and (lately) political rhetoric – encourage it. Sexist violence in practise works as a form of terrorism to keep women in line. It is an attempt to force them to accept super exploitation at work and domestic slavery at home.
How can communism end sexist violence? First, we could abolish marriage and the family as legal and financial institutions. We don’t really have a choice here, because there will be no formal laws and no money.
This doesn’t mean the end of the family as a unit. People will still form partnerships, some of which will last a lifetime. They’ll still have kids and (usually) stay close to them.
But they won’t have to. If partners or other relatives don’t get along, they can separate. Remember that under communism peoples’ needs (including child care) are taken care of by society, not by parents and spouses. So separation will have emotional consequences but not material ones. The family will no longer be a prison cell.
Secondly, there will be no tolerance for sexist violence. If a woman is assaulted by her partner or anyone else they will be immediately be put on a mass trial (of, say, coworkers). If it is decided that the assault occurred there will be consequences. One possible consequence is that the assailant stay away from the victim. This will be enforced, not by a police force, but by the masses.
Furthermore, we’ll stamp out sexist bourgeois culture which implicitly glorifies violence against women in, for example, ‘thrillers’ featuring extreme, gory brutality.
– A Reader
In a Communist Society, We Won’t Need Drugs to Escape
Peruvian Communist Jose Carlos Mariátegui wrote in the 1920’s that peasants (farmworkers) in Peru lived a collective, communist lifestyle. He showed that these farmworkers lived and produced without money, pointing out that there was no reason to take them into the money economy of socialism. Instead they could go directly to communism.
He said that they planted and harvested their crops together, laughing and joking as they worked. Comparing this collectivity to the slave- like conditions other farmworkers were forced to work under, he showed that those who worked their land collectively with no bosses had fun and also produced much more than those forced to work under the whip.
This gives us a glimpse of life and work in communism, where we will not work for bosses or money and where workers will collectively invent new ways of producing to meet human need that combine work and fun.
In communist society, like the one Mariátegui described, work itself will be exciting, full of camaraderie, learning and creativity. There won’t be any need to use drugs to escape.
– A Reader
Comrade Tata in South Africa recently died. He met the International Communist Workers’ Party and Red Flag four years ago. He promptly joined and dedicated himself to mobilizing the masses for communism during the last years of his life.
To Comrade Tata,
Your hardened face showed a long history of struggle and your voice an absolute determination. You had dedicated your entire life to the eradication of the exploitation of the South African masses. You suffered harassment, beatings and imprisonment from an early age, but your spirit of struggle was never broken.
In your mature age you continued your struggle and soon met Red Flag and you were reborn. You realized, comrade, that at the end you had found everything that you had looked for your whole life. And you declared again with your absolute commitment that you felt eternally happy and full of confidence that this party, the International Communist Workers’ Party, will lead us to the final victory of communism and the abolition of all forms of exploitation.
We were moved and inspired by your dream in which you are surrounded by thousands of comrades (dressed in red). Comrade, we are converting your dream into reality every day. Comrade, you are surrounded by comrades of ICWP around the world.
And today when you are leaving us we all raise our fists high, we sing the Internationale and we honor you, comrade. And we again commit ourselves to your and our absolute struggle to eliminate capitalist exploitation from the face of the earth and build this communist world for which we all fight and which we so long for.
—Internationalist comrade in the US
A person who we know was attacked by fascist RSS goons in India. He is in hospital with a broken back and leg. The following is a message of solidarity to him from a comrade in South Africa:
Speedy recovery to our dearest comrade! Away with state brutality and repression. It would be an illusion to think that these atrocities perpetrated by the armed thugs of the state will go away by themselves. Only a communist revolution will sweep away all remnants of the bosses’ state. This brutality and cowardice meted out by these thugs will be met with the revulsion it deserves. We condemn this act of cowardice with the utter contempt it deserves. We pledge solidarity with our comrades in India and urge them to never give up the fight and class struggle to destroy capitalist rule once and for all!
We have got our party, our shield, the International Communist Workers’ Party, with the tools and instruments to destroy capitalist rule. Hence we are mobilizing masses everywhere for communism, differently from other outfits that only help to strengthen capitalist rule.
The masses learn through bitter experience
A few intellectuals may know historical truths and social developments by their study and genuine understanding. But the masses learn only through bitter experience, or, to put it in crude terms, after receiving the danda. That is the stick or baton the Indian police use to beat people up in the street.
Thus it was that the Indian masses learned after being befooled and kicked around for almost 70 years that the “Independence” of 1947 was no independence. Real independence is independence from poverty, hunger, unemployment, lack of healthcare and good education.
They learned that a real freedom struggle from foreign rule can only be an armed struggle as pointed out by our real freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, Surya Sen (Masterda), Bismal, Ashfaqulla, Rajguru, Khudiram Bose, etc. They all believed in armed struggle, influenced by communist ideas, and not the fake ‘freedom struggle’ led by that hypocrite Gandhi.
And the ‘democracy’ we got after 1947 was phony. It was only vote-bank politics craftily manipulated by our crooked politicians. They took advantage of the lack of understanding of the masses and tremendous casteism and communalism still prevailing in society to win elections.
It is only now that the Indian masses, through their bitter experience, are gradually learning the truth. They are realizing that the solutions to their massive problems lie outside the system, and not within it, that is by a revolution.
To achieve this revolution, the Indian masses will have to learn more, and go through rivers of blood and make tremendous sacrifices. But that is, unfortunately, how history operates. The vested interests in the present order will not give up their hold, and will not allow great changes in the country but will seek to retain the status quo, by putting up fierce resistance.
But our goal must be clear. We must be ready for attaining this objective whatever the cost in blood.
We have to establish a social and political order in which our people enjoy a high standard of living and decent lives, with employment, healthcare, good education, nutritious food, etc. for all. There must be no social discrimination against women, Dalits, minorities, etc.
For this struggle the people will have to use all their creativity, and devise the forms of struggle, as were devised by the people in the great French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions, led by modern-minded, brave, and self-sacrificing leaders. Only then will they get real independence.
And they will do it.
Arduous as is the path of the Indian people, their future is bright.
—A Comrade in India
