FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!International Communist Workers Party |
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It started with a protest against a
9-cent transportation fare hike in
mid-June. Within days, 2 million
Brazilians were out in the streets in
80 cities protesting the $$billions
the government has squandered
building state-of-the-art soccer stadiums
for next year's World Cup
and the 2016 Olympics while workers
are denied healthcare, transportation
and education.
Black workers in Brazil, more
than half of its population of
200,000, 000 are super-exploited by
Brazilian, US, German and, increasingly,
by Chinese capitalist-imperialists,
receiving half of what white
workers get.
To build stadiums and related infrastructure,
Brazilian rulers evicted
over 250,000 families, mostly black
families living in horrific favelas
similar to the shantytowns of South
Africa. Police with heavy weapons,
attack dogs, and helicopters surrounded
workers' homes and bulldozed
them overnight.
The protests, started by students,
spread to the favelas and to industrial
workers, who are key to communist
revolution.
The International Communist
Workers' Party (ICWP) issued a
leaflet entitled "Brazil: WORKERS
DON'T NEED THE WORLD
CUP! WORKERS NEED COMMUNIST
REVOLUTION!" in Portuguese,
English and Spanish. The
leaflet called on workers in Brazil
and everywhere to mobilize the
masses for communism, the only
way to end the wage slavery of
racist capitalism.
"Exactly How the Masses Feel"
Our party's leaflet asking workers
to organize for communist revolution
struck an enthusiastic chord
with the masses in the streets of
Brazil. A friend who helped us
proofread the Portuguese translation
distributed leaflets in a northeastern
city in Brazil. He said,
"This is exactly how the masses
feel, they just don't know how to
say it. "
This comrade might not realize
it, but he has taken a big step in organizing
the international working
class for communism. This same
comrade was outraged when he
read our party's leaflet on the mass
murders of Bangladeshi garment
workers. His hatred for the bosses
found revolutionary expression
when he himself translated the
leaflet into Portuguese and gave it
to his coworkers and neighbors.
Learning from his experience of
distributing the Bangladesh leaflet,
the comrade was more organized
and reported to us the reaction of
the masses when he distributed the
leaflet on the rebellion of the Brazilian
masses in response to the World
Cup.
Slavery and Wage Slavery
"The Worker's Party (PT) has
cheated us. In reality they represent
the rich bosses of Brazil. We hate
them and don't trust them. We can't
rely on them, we want to know you
(ICWP)," said the comrade's friend
at work.
"The European colonialists enslaved
the native people here and
then they brought slaves. The effect
of slavery and racism are very deep.
The unions and PT never address
how to fight wage slavery."
"I know," said a co-worker, "I
agree 100% with the leaflet and I
am sure there are many people like
me, but how can you achieve communist
revolution? Just look at my
own city. They send police with machine
guns every time we demand
better living conditions."
Another friend of the party who
lives in São Paulo also distributed
the leaflet. He said that there were
many big and small strikes in Brazil
prior to the recent rebellions. He
described how the situation in São
Paulo galvanized the workers'
mood in the entire country.
Want More Information About
Communism
After May Day, Brazilian teachers
in São Paulo went on strike.
Their strike was supported by tens
of thousands of students. The
teachers' union leadership, which is
controlled by PT, feared the strike
might spread to other workers and
they asked the teachers to go back
to work at a massive rally in São
Paulo. The furious teachers chased
the leaders and they had to be rescued
by the cops.
The situation became explosive
when the mostly-black workers in favelas and the
neighborhoods where the workers live around the
football stadiums joined the rebellion. This
friend has some relatives where the aircraft manufacturer
Embraer has its largest plant in Brazil.
He is making an effort to reach out to these workers
with our literature.
"Everybody is disgusted and fed up with the
politicians and their lies. Dilma is afraid to show
her face in public. When you say communism is
the only solution, people listen, they think deeply
but they have been cheated so many times, they
need more proof that communism will work."
Millions are "takin' it to the streets." The
change these last few years has been so pronounced
that even the U.S. bosses' foreign policy
establishment has been forced to shift gears.
In recent years, they have dealt almost exclusively
with how to undermine their imperialist
competitors, and as the US decline confronts the
rise of China, this is still their main concern.
Now, however, they must also factor in rebellion
among the masses, starting with or infecting key
sections of industrial labor. The working class is
in the house!
"Democracy Isn't Working," Chant Millions
Democracy is a convenient cover for imperialism.
The bosses' think tanks praise democracy
to the heavens.
How then can they explain why there are so
many massive street revolts in their sacred
democracies? Thomas Friedman of the New York
Times reflects the thinking of these ruling class
strategists. He comes up with three excuses.
He blames elected officials for not respecting
minority opposition, especially if this opposition
might be friendlier to U.S. bosses' interests.
Social networks and smartphones allow the aggrieved
to link up with others and hold flash
protests. Here he makes the same mistake that
many of our friends do, thinking that all you need
for a revolution is a Facebook page and a Twitter
account, instead of doing the real work of building
a base for communism among workers, soldiers,
and youth.
Thirdly and crucially, "'middle-class' workers
are being squeezed between a shrinking welfare
state and a much more demanding job market."
This super-wealthy mouthpiece of imperialism,
who has worked for the New York Times for
thirty years, tells the worlds' workers to work
harder and constantly "retool" themselves for
new jobs if they want to "be in the middle-class."
What hypocritical misleading rubbish!
The Truth Will Set the Working Class Free
The truth is that capitalism is becoming increasingly
ungovernable as the bosses' economic
crisis drags on. The bosses can't rule in the old
way.
The bosses can't rule in the old way because
masses have decided they can't live in the old
way. From Egypt to Syria, from Greece to Portugal,
from Bangladesh to Turkey, from South
Africa to Brazil and back to Egypt, millions testify
to this truth.
In the face of such mass unrest, the bosses have
tried to preserve their exploitive system by convening
or electing new governments. When even
that fails, they call out the armed forces like they
have in Egypt.
Within these more brutal forms of rule are the
seeds of mass revolutionary consciousness.
Rank-and-file soldiers are workers themselves.
Armed with communist consciousness, they can
turn the guns around on the generals and their
capitalist masters.
Deciding you can't live in the old way is still
not discovering how to live in a new way. That
requires a vision of a communist society without
money, banks, borders, and, most crucially wage
slavery—one that forges new relationships based
on collectivity and cooperation.
Masses of workers see through the lies of the
bosses' "middle-class" pipedream. Capitalists
steal the fruits of our labor every second of every
day. The greater crime would be to let the bosses'
steal from us the opportunity these rebellions afford
our class to end this exploitation with communist
revolution.
Understanding the potential of these rebellions
echoing across the globe can inspire us to revolutionary
initiative. Occupy in the U.S. was an
echo of these rebellions. Sharpening class struggle
among teachers, farmworkers and industrial
workers in Mexico and Central America reflect
this growing rebellion, emerging from sharpening
inter-imperialist rivalry and the persistent capitalist
crisis.
Mobilize the Masses for Communism
Our party invites you to join us in mobilizing
the masses for communism. This is our guiding
principle, before and after the revolution. Today
it takes on particular meaning.
For example, consider the 34 martyred miners
at Marikana, South Africa or the millions fighting
the cops in Brazil. They give the lie to the idea
that progressive capitalism can be reformed to
serve our interests. They show once again that
racist exploitation cannot be eliminated without
eliminating capitalism itself. They make the fight
for communism even more relevant.
Workers have exhibited heroism on a scale not
seen in many years, in more places than we can
easily imagine. This heroism must not be squandered
on replacing one boss with another, one
capitalist politician with another. This heroism
calls on our Party to spread the vision of a communist
world far and wide.
What the streets tell us is that the masses in
motion, armed with such a vision, can put an end
to the horror that is capitalism.
Today the bosses must deal with rebellious
masses. When these rebellious masses mobilize
for communism, the bosses won't be around to
deal with anything.