Tear Up the Tracks of Racist Capitalism

"What do you think will happen to that guy who killed Trayvon Martin?" a co-worker asked. "He might get a manslaughter conviction, but I wouldn't be surprised if he walks," I answered. "That would be terrible," he said. "I want justice for the family. I want him behind bars." "There's no justice," I responded. "Nothing will bring Trayvon back. But if Zimmerman goes to jail, maybe at least he won't kill another black teenager for a while."
"To me it's a man killing a child," he said. Then he told me that a cop stopped him for no reason when he was 12 years old. "The cop asked me what gang I belonged to," this black worker related, "and when I said I didn't, he pulled back his arm like this" – demonstrating – "and punched me hard in the face.
When he asked again I told him 'any one you want me to belong to.' When I told my father," he added, "he told me to stay inside." "That's the cops' real job," I said. "To terrorize whole communities so we do what the bosses tell us and don't fight back." He thought a little, and then said, "I'm not that crazy about Obama. Do you think it would be different if we had a woman as president?"
"No," I answered. "Look at Maggie Thatcher in England. She led the bosses' attacks on working people there. It's the system that's rotten, not just the individuals who run it. They all work for Wall Street, for the corporations. "Think about a train," I continued. "No matter who's in the driver's seat, the train runs along the same tracks." He thought for another moment before declaring: "Then we'd better tear up those tracks!"

—LA comrade

Courage, Fury, Love… and a Communist Political Line

I was eight years old when my mother took me to a guerrilla encampment in El Salvador. There I saw huge farms with pigs, beans and corn. I was excited to see how the guerrilleros organized the food collectively, and I also saw how they built home-made bombs.
But the most amazing thing was when I saw a fighter returning from a mission with a bullet wound in his leg. They took him to their hospital, bandaged him up, and he went out to play a soccer game with his comrades. The enthusiasm and strength of this fighter strengthened all his comrades in the fight to liberate the Salvadoran people from the oligarchy.
Remembering this reminds me of the guerrillero comrades in El Salvador who fought with bravery, conviction and love, giving their lives for a better society. But today those ideals of a better society for the workers are not reflected in the reality that we live in El Salvador. Here, life is worth less every day.
Those who in their day led the people in a fight for the benefit of the proletariat, with promises of land and a better life, now run the country, living in mansions, and traveling all over the world. The poet Roque Dalton said that they had become "petty bourgeois." I would say that from red they have become pink; even their initials are now lower case—from FMLN to fmln. Of course, the guerrilleros who died in combat are our heroes, but now we realize (and for sure several of them realized it then) that the revolutionary struggle needs more than courage, fury and love. It also needs a revolutionary communist line, the study of dialectical materialism and the understanding that the fight must be directly for communism.
In his day, Monseñor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, representative of the oppressed, fought to improve the precarious conditions of the Salvadoran people. We can't deny this, but we can make a constructive criticism of the forms of the political struggle against capitalist ideas. Now in the International Communist Workers' Party we realize that you can't make a communist revolution with just courage, fury and love, but that the revolutionary communist struggle must be linked to a completely communist political line. We need dialectical materialism to form communist leaders.
We honor those heroes fallen in the struggle and will always remember them, but we must do our best to fight directly for communism. The struggle requires mobilizing the masses for communism, and nothing less.

—Comrade in Spain

Summer Project Brings Growth Opportunity

Our summer project is a special time for many reasons, especially for seeing old friends and making new ones. I seized the opportunity to travel to Seattle with three wonderful comrades and was changed in the process! I know a little Spanish, but I always hesitated to use it because I couldn't express myself as well as in English. On this trip, I found that my comrades felt the same way about speaking English. We decided that, together, we'd work through our reservations and practice all the time. As we built our confidence, our small talk naturally turned into more substantive discussions about communism. Our pact immediately helped our party because, upon entering Seattle, we went straight to a pro-Trayvon Martin demonstration, where I met a Spanish-speaking man who gladly took our paper. I was amazed to actually find that I wasn't nervous to be in conversation with him! My other comrades offered their support, which gave me the confidence to try something I never would have before! As it turns out, this man came to our BBQ the following weekend, had good conversations, and looks forward to staying in touch!
Later, it was my turn to encourage my friends as they practiced their English while selling Red Flag. They did an excellent job and it seemed to come very naturally. They laugh because I've already thanked them several times while we've been here and I think my constant jabbering is starting to wear on them. I feel like my world has just doubled in size and, where we were bound as comrades before, now we are friends too!
Now I feel empowered to increase my commitment to ICWP with no more apprehension to reach out to my Spanish-speaking class brothers and sisters. I strongly encourage my comrades, who may have the same reservations I did, to trust their comrades to help them learn and to trust the masses to have the patience to listen and take them seriously.
A large factor in this leap forward for me was that my comrades never gave up in their struggle with me. I encourage all my comrades to never tire in helping each other overcome whatever may be holding us back in our political, social, and personal development. It will only make our party stronger!

--bilingual comrade

Studying Contradictions; Learning How to Win

During the LA Summer Project, we studied the Party's pamphlet on dialectical materialism entitled Communist Dialectics: The Philosophy of Struggle. We emphasized that all development takes place based on contradiction; the unity and struggle of opposites. We examined various examples: a basketball game, pregnancy and capitalism, concluding that contradictions are resolved by their intensification. And that at any given point one side of the contradiction is dominant. "So if we want our side to win," interjected a young comrade, "then we must do more, distribute more newspapers, have more conversations about communism with our friends and co-workers."
We discussed the falling rate of profit. "The bosses save money by bringing in more machines in the process of production," said a young woman. "Yeah, but they still have to pay the cost to maintain that machine or equipment," answered another young man. It became an interesting exchange. "But machines do not get angry and they don't rebel," added the first. "But the boss can pay workers different wages. He can exploit some while super-exploiting others and even work them to death like the Nazis did in the labor camps," added a third comrade. It became clear that the falling rate of profit is an inescapable result of capitalism's laws of development.
The capitalists constantly try to avoid the falling rate of profit with many measures: lowering wages, lay-offs, searching for new markets, resources and raw materials. Then the question was posed: "If every capitalist and imperialist in the world, like China, Russia, etc has to deal with the falling rate of profit, then what is the logical outcome?" "War! That's the logical outcome," answered a young comrade. Indeed the way they reset the falling rate of profit is through world war, by destroying the competition's factories and productive capacity. This is why organizing in the imperialists' armies becomes paramount, we concluded.

--Los Angeles Youth Comrades

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