FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
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LOS ANGELES--“Care for a copy of Red Flag?” asked the Red Flag distributor.
“No,” said the MTA bus operator, “I have read it before and it is too negative.”
“Well, it talks about the real world and how to change it with a communist revolution,” was the answer. “The union says that in this contract they have reached ‘equality.’ Our view is that there is no such thing as equality. Everyone has different needs and satisfying those unequal needs unequally is the closest we can get to the capitalist illusion of ‘equality.’”
“I agree with that. The Bible talks about needs too. I’ll try reading your paper again,” said the operator.
Two weeks later, the same operator said, “I read your paper and I found it a lot lighter.”
“What’s my name?” asked the distributor. “I remember yours.”
“Tell me again and I promise not to forget it,” said the operator.
The distributor told him, adding “Have a nice day,” without offering the paper.
“Thanks. Let me have a copy of your paper, though” requested the operator before leaving.
A week later, this operator saw this distributor at another MTA Division passing out Red Flag. He opened his bus door and greeted the distributor cheerfully, by name!
This is but one example of the discussions and responses that our position on “equality” has provoked, before and after distributing hundreds of leaflets on this issue to MTA workers.
The leaflet exposed as lies the union’s claims that the new contract has “once and for all” eliminated the Two Tier system. It showed that it had instead created six new tiers.
We also exposed these traitors’ hypocrisy since some of the same union officials who negotiated this contract also negotiated the Two Tier contract that paid operators hired after July 1, 1997 significantly less than operators hired before that date.
Also, under the new contract newly hired full time operators will have to work 17 years, pass through those six tiers, before earning top pay.
“The union tells us the next contract will eliminate this. But, it took them 17 years to ‘eliminate’ the Two Tiers. I bet it will take them just as long to ‘eliminate’ these six tiers,” commented an operator at Division 3.
What’s more, the Two Tier system for part timers is still in force. They start at 65% of the pay of those hired before 7/1/97 and it takes them 2 ½ years to reach their maximum pay of 80% of those in tier one.
The union hacks “promised” to eliminate the Two Tier system to get the contract approved. Their only concern was to stop an MTA workers’ strike at any cost. The new contract perpetuates the Tier System and will save MTA hundreds of millions of dollars.
Capitalism promises equality and can’t deliver.
The capitalists hypocritically proclaim that “equal work” should be compensated with “equal pay.” Yet, “unequal” pay for “equal work” is the order of the day. Furthermore, even when paying “equally” for “equal work,” inequality is still rampant. If a single mother with two kids gets the same wages for doing the same job as a single person with no children, how is this equal?
Communism promises something better: to meet the needs of the world’s entire working class. It will deliver.
“Equality” and “inequality” are concepts created by class society. “Equality” was one of the slogans of the French Revolution, used by the rising French capitalist class to mobilize the masses of workers and peasants to overthrow the old feudal system. Their aim, however, was to impose their wage slavery’s dictatorship over the working masses.
Thus, “equality,” in spite of its high-sounding “idealism,” is nothing but a vehicle for capitalist class oppression. Communism does not strive to make everyone equal but to satisfy everyone’s needs.
In a communist world, without money, classes and exploitation, the word “equality” will be history along with wage slavery and the class that invented them. Instead, our watchwords will be collectivity and comradeship--producing together to meet everyone’s needs.