EL SALVADOR—"We must be critical and self-critical." While it's true that an important advance was achieved in the organization of men and women workers in the International Communist Workers' Party in this country, a meeting was needed to evaluate the results of that meeting in which workers from 4 factories participated and in which 11 new members joined ICWP.
A meeting of the central leadership was held, and another with the worker leadership in this country. Of the conclusions that were discussed, the first was: "we need to be more organized and bring to these meetings an agenda that shows our level of organization." One of the points raised was why we began the meeting without having put forward the point about inter-imperialist rivalry, the international situation and how this comes to affect the working class in this country.
Winning the working class is one of the main goals of ICWP and in this evaluation it was discussed that it will require a struggle against the reformist ideas that many of these workers bring from their old organizations. We need to know how to answer the big question, "and what do you win going around organizing people for communism?" Also, "Who funds you and where are the Party's offices?" These are normal questions that workers who come from unions and electoral parties ask, workers who want to take the qualitative step of going from being reformists to being communists.
It was explained in the Party leadership collective that in this meeting workers expressed ideas such as: "The union is the only organization that struggles for the workers;" "These sellout leaders of the teachers' union are corrupt, our leaders aren't;" "What can a youth know about wage slavery if he has never experienced it?" This opened up a debate about how to combat this trade union reformism in these meetings.
"The excitement about having more workers organized with communist ideas in ICWP can lead us to make mistakes in the line and we can't allow this to happen," stated one of the party leaders. "External and internal factors can lead us to make mistakes in the consolidation of the political line and ideology, and we other party members are obligated not to allow this to happen." At this point in the meeting, we emphasized the dialectical category of quantity and quality. At the meeting with the worker leadership, it was clear that some of the comrade workers in charge of the work in these factories were upset.
"I had to be there," said a comrade who had a problem on the day of the meeting and could not attend. Since he is one of those who has contacts with some of the workers, and since his past history in the union and his evolution to communism make the women workers see him as a leader who they trust, it affected the meeting. This showed him that his presence is necessary but also that he should give more leadership to those comrades.
It was concluded that there must be a strong struggle for communist ideas against the reformist ideas of the unions in these factories. We must be patient but also see the urgency of exposing these false leaders who only help the bosses oppress the working class. Confidence in our class is crucial to continue organizing around the communist ideas of ICWP and through Red Flag to organize more men and women workers in these and other factories.

Next Article