SEATTLE, WA — We have had more in-depth discussions about communism at work during the past two months at Boeing than during the past two years.
Boeing workers have been embroiled in the latest contract extension struggle since November. We no longer play out the old routine preceding a contract's expiration. Contracts never end now. They are extended. The company and the union open the contract every year or so. This latest extension shifted the ground on which we stand. The need and feasibility of mobilizing the masses for communism was pushed to the fore.

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A Red Flag article in mid-December denounced "ceaseless votes" like those forced on us to extend the contract. It concluded, "Communism will succeed [instead] by the active effort of mobilized masses."
A friend who distributes the paper in the plant had continued this conversation with his 19-year old daughter. "You'll get no argument from me," he told a comrade. "Voting is an illusion of freedom! When my daughter asked if I voted, I said not any more."
"I understand when a people are denied something by the government and they finally get it after all we went through, you can get excited," he told her, "but I learned that it didn't matter that someone who looked like me was in the White House or any office. He still works for the capitalists."
"You have to mobilize the masses," he added. He admitted this was not the whole communist strategy, as he understood it. We considered how communist factories could mobilize the working class, how this would create new relationships throughout society.

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More workers are paying attention to relationships. A new hire was particularly interested. He saw how vicious capitalism was. The bosses pulled out all the stops to attack us this time. He began to wonder if his life had any meaning under this system.
"The capitalists throw us into these factories," he complained. "We form superficial relations at work to the detriment of more significant relations outside of work."
"Does it have to be that way?" asked a comrade. Capitalist relations of production corrupt every relationship. If we changed the mode of production we could change not only the relations at work, but in society at large.
Today the bosses own the means of production. Profit is their goal. We get jobs only if they can exploit us.
Communism would change exploitative jobs into collective labor. We would turn factories into centers providing for our collective material needs. Even more importantly, we could turn them into centers for education and social fulfillment. Work would cease to be numbing drudgery. It would be at the center of the struggle for our humanity. We get a taste of communist relations today when we organize collectives to mobilize the working class for communist revolution.
Then the comrade invited the co-worker and his wife to a party at the comrade's house. The following Monday the co-worker apologized for not making it. He wanted to hear about his fellow workers who came. Mostly, he wanted to continue the original discussion.
"I would have pulled back if you mentioned communism when I was younger," he admitted, "but all this [contract extension struggle] has confirmed capitalism isn't working!
"I take it from our discussion about factories that you don't think China is communist." "Nope, it never was," agreed our comrade. The Chinese leadership didn't believe the masses could embrace communism. They built "new democracy" and socialism, not communism. The basic nature of production didn't change.
Millions saw this mistake and started the Cultural Revolution, the first mass mobilization against socialism's betrayal. The active masses during the Cultural Revolution gave us a sneak peek at how communism could work. From their insight and sacrifice, we learned to have confidence that communism can succeed.
After a half-hour discussion of revolutionary history, our friend asked if there was a book he could read. We settled on on Marx's Communist Manifesto and the manifesto of the International Communist Workers' Party (ICWP),Mobilize the Masses for Communism.
Now we must turn these in-depth discussions into expanded networks of Red Flag readers and sellers, and ICWP growth.