FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
|
|
FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!International Communist Workers Party |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
Thirty-four wildcatting platinum miners at the Lonmin Mine in Marikana, South Africa were
murdered by South Africa's mostly black cops in August, 2012. They were shot in the back, shot
from helicopters, shot at point-blank range. If the end of apartheid is Mandela's legacy, so too is
Marikana.
The National Union of Miners called on the strikers to return to work. The company threatened
to fire them all. But miners and workers all over South Africa responded with a strike wave involving
at its peak over 100,000 miners, industrial and transit workers and squatters'organizations.
This mass anger reflects the vast disparity between the rich (including a few new black capitalists)
and the masses of workers. It highlights the betrayal of the hopes of those who fought against
apartheid and envisioned a just society. The response of the African National Congress (ANC) government
reflected the fears of the capitalists that the mass mobilization of workers will sweep away
their system of racist exploitation.
Workers around the world are in motion. Workers on strike from Greece to Egypt, from India to
China, and youth in the Occupy movement, responded to the devastation brought about by the
world-wide capitalist crisis of overproduction. But the masses in motion need organization and a
clear goal. The articles in this issue of Red Flag point in that direction: industrial workers from
South Africa, Central America, and the US are joining the International Communist Workers' Party.
We call on workers all over the world to join us in Mobilizing the Masses for Communism.
Nelson Mandela fought throughout his life and
won. The South African masses fought, were tortured,
massacred, inspired the world but have yet
to win.
The world's budding revolutionary communist
movement must critically assess the role of the
old communist movement in the fight against
apartheid and racism in general. These are the
tasks at hand as the imperialists bury their man
in South Africa, Nelson "We must rid ourselves
of the culture of entitlements" Mandela.
Mandela's fight was to liberate black capitalists
from the restrictions of apartheid. This task
would have been impossible without the heroism
of the black working class.
The African National Congress (ANC) that
Mandela led was not a revolutionary party. He
himself made that clear in 1964 at the Rivonia
trial, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
"The ANC," Mandela insisted, "has never
at any period in its history advocated a revolutionary
change in the economic structure of the
country, nor has it, to the best of my recollection,
ever condemned capitalist society."
We Must Critically Analyze the Old
International Communist Movement
No one in the ANC leadership ever challenged
statements like that. It should not be surprising,
then, that a major ANC leader like Cyril
Ramaphosa (who led the miners' union) now has
an estimated fortune of half a billion dollars, or
that Thomas Mbeki, the ANC leader who succeeded
Mandela as President of South Africa,
should challenge us to "just call me a
Thatcherite" (a follower of racist, right wing
British prime minister Maggie Thatcher).
It should be no surprise that, as one report put
it, "Mandela and his family have raked in millions
with his children and grandchildren active
in some 200 companies." It should come as no
surprise that, as early as 2001, George Soros
could report to a meeting of elite capitalists at the
Davos Forum, "South Africa is in the hands of international
capital!"
We've seen this story repeat itself all over
Africa, all over the world: a rebel leader emerges
from years in jail or the jungle to become a billionaire
despot.
Our party has lived, in El Salvador, through a
guerrilla movement which has, like the ANC, become
a new ruling party in the service of international
capital.
It should come as no surprise, but it does!
It does because the old international communist
movement never concluded that no fight
against oppression and exploitation can succeed
without destroying capitalism-imperialism, without
the development and leadership of a revolutionary
communist party like today's
International Communist Workers' Party.
As hindsight clearly shows us, the fight against
apartheid really meant two different things to the
two different social forces in black South Africa.
To the working masses fighting apartheid
meant things like running water, electricity, accessible
transit, the end of pass books with their
forced migration of male labor (working men
being forced to live in barracks hundreds of miles
away from their families). In short, it was a fight
against bitter and extreme exploitation.
To the elite, wanna-be black capitalists, it
meant the abolition of restrictions on where to
invest, where to develop real estate and so on.
Rather than a fight against the racist hell of imperialism
and capitalism, their fight against
apartheid turned out to be a legal fight for the few
to own (or part-own) mills, mines, factories, and
banks.
What Is To Be Done?
This has left the working masses in South
Africa still fighting the racist hell of imperialism
and capitalism (see interview). Crucially, however,
they are still fighting, as the industrial and
mining strikes and township rebellions show us.
And because they are still fighting (now against
a state organized by black capitalists) they are
teaching the world that no fight against racism
can succeed unless it is an unrelenting fight
against capitalism and for communism.
It is vital that we all understand that racism is
a product of capitalism. We can achieve nothing
by fighting aspects of it in isolation from the fight
to destroy capitalism itself and replace it with a
communist, share-and-share-alike society.
In the US, for example, we cannot fight against
racist mass incarceration or the rampant racist police
brutality and fascist immigration laws without
fighting for communism.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, we cannot
fight racism against black and indigenous workers
without fighting for communism.
In South Africa, we cannot fight racist superexploitation
without fighting for communism.
This is the task at hand. Let the imperialists
bury their Mandela. We'll bury racism and capitalism-
imperialism by building the International
Communist Workers' Party worldwide!
Red Flag: Greetings comrade! We are very
glad that you have been reading Red Flag and
our Party's pamphlet on South Africa. You know
that the International Communist Workers' Party
(ICWP) is organizing internationally to overthrow
capitalism and build a communist society.
To do this we need hundreds of millions of workers
to join us. Would you and your friends like
to join ICWP?
Comrade XM: Revolutionary greetings to the
leadership and all members of ICWP worldwide!
Sure, we would like to join the party and participate
in the movement to overthrow the system
that has brought misery to the working class
everywhere.
RF: This is exactly what the bosses fear—
workers like you joining our party and spreading
revolutionary ideas. Please tell us about the current
situation in South Africa.
XM: With the death of Mandela, we have a
circus here. All the capitalist and imperialist
leaders have come here while the workers in
South Africa are under siege. We are fighting
against the sell-out ANC and their National Development
Plan (NDP) which is to attack workers.
That is how the capitalist bosses have
configured the world for their own interests.
They have created artificial borders to hide their
dictatorship.
We are fighting against e-tolling on our national
highway (new electronic tolls ). We are
fighting against labor brokers. We are fighting
against the abominable youth wage subsidy
(child labor), now disguised as an "employment
incentive tax" which the bosses and the ANC
want. This is how they divide the working class.
RF: You grew up under apartheid. Tell us
about your experience.
XM: It was a brutal system, growing up under
separate amenities as blacks in general and
Africans in particular. We were forcibly removed
from towns and cities and dumped into Bantustans
or homelands and black townships with no
infrastructural facilities. Poor schools with inferior
gutter education system. Poor hospitals, clinics,
roads. And police and dogs and barbed wires
to confine and discipline us.
RF: What do you think is the biggest obstacle
to the international communist movement?
XM: I think it is nationalism. We need no national
boundaries. Democracy only hides the interest
of the bosses. The ANC has indeed given
new life to imperialists and capitalists all over the
world by adopting the NDP which favors severe
attacks on the workers and gives free rein to the
bosses to plunder and profit.
RF: What do you think of the unions?
XM: The unions are by their nature reformists
and they have a very limited role. It is important
to transform their trade-union consciousness
and militancy to revolutionary working-class
consciousness by patiently struggling for
working-class interests to address this limitation
of the unions.
RF: Please tell our readers about your
work conditions.
XM: We work under very dangerous and
poor working conditions. We are always exposed
to extreme weather conditions. We
work day and night shifts and over weekends
all year long. We are the worst-paid. We are
constantly facing dismissals from brutal employers.
I am currently on unfair suspension
pending the outcome of a disciplinary hearing.
It is a pleasure to meet you, RF comrade. The
establishment of contact and solidarity of workers
from all over the world is very important. We
have the same struggle no matter where we are.
(The second part of the interview will include
our South African comrade's thoughts about mobilizing
the masses for communism and building
a communist society without money.)