WASHINGTON STATE -- There's politics and then there's politics.
There is the politics represented by the photo of Boeing Machinists (IAM) president Tom Wroblewski, Boeing commercial president Ray Conner, Washington State Governor Jay Inslee and u.S. Senator Patty Murray.
There is the politics of the new socialist Seattle city council member Kshama Sawant.
Then there is the potential of a political strike at Boeing.
The key question is, "Which do we choose?" Wroblewski hobnobbed with politicians and company brass in Olympia, the state capital, when Boeing factories erupted in revolt Monday, November 11. He hyped his role in engineering a special session of the state senate and house. They voted to give the company an extra $9 billion dollars of our tax money to keep 777X production in-state.
Then he used rhetoric about democracy as a cover to bring the new contract extension to a vote. Thirty-two thousand angry machinists were having no part of it. They rejected the contract extension 2 to 1.
Worse, he's still at it. "I personally met with Governor Inslee," his Thanksgiving email brags. "They [the politicians] want us to keep talking to Boeing. I've told them that's what you want."
That's news to us!
Working deals in Olympia and Washington, D.C. has led to the concentration of wealth in the hands of the biggest bosses.
"Nowadays, it's become more than money," commented another machinist. "It's about power."
Legislative politics has contributed to undermining our potential power, while emboldening the bosses. In the end, the illusion of freedom in the bosses' democracy only ensures our continued impotence.
Many here and millions around the world are seeing that elections, legislation and contracts are a fool's game.

Revolutionary Pretenders
This climate is ripe for mobilizing the masses for communism, but also for the re-emergence of pretenders.
Soon after the rejection vote, university of Washington economics Professor Kshama Sawant won a city council seat. She made national news when she responded to Corporate's threat to move 777X production because we rejected the company's proposal.
"We do the work!" she said at a downtown rally last week. "Boeing should be owned by the workers."
"We are calling for the democratic public ownership by workers and the community," she told another rally in 2012.
"Sounds just like the ICWP," texted a Boeing friend. Not really!
The ICWP invites workers to mobilize the masses for communism; Sawant advocates socialism. Communism would end production for sale and the tyranny of markets. Capitalist finance, including banks and money, would end. Socialism maintains all these things. Sawant promises that a socialist economy would not allow exploitation, but socialism maintains the capitalist mode of production, ensuring continued exploitation. Only communism can end exploitation by producing for need, not sale.
She criticizes Sweden for being capitalism light, but socialism itself is just another form of capitalism. Socialism was envisioned as a transitional stage to communism. It never worked. That's why we fight directly for communism.

The Way Forward
Boeing workers are used to the way economic strikes unfold. We would publicly fight over the employment conditions for months before the contract ended. The current crisis has thrown this out the window. It's not coming back.
This is the second time the union/company gang has opened the contract up while it was still in force. The legal possibility of a strike is gone in this scenario. Obscenely long contracts also help create a no-strike regime.
There is one way forward. We need political strikes that take aim at capitalism, pushing aside the system's laws, contracts and elections. Organizing for these political strikes must reject the capitalist politics embodied in the IAM's trade union strategy or the pacifist, electoral strategy of the new socialist city council member. Organizing for these strikes must help in mobilizing the masses for communism.
The cornerstone of this organizing will be networks of Red Flag readers and distributors. The organizing around rejecting this latest contract extension expanded these networks. We distributed eight hundred communist leaflets entitled "No Extortion: Take Back What Is Ours" at plant gates and through our networks in two days.
Groups of industrial workers have joined the ICWP from the sweatshops of El Salvador to the factories of South Africa. Now is the time for Boeing workers to step up.

Capitalists are an inhuman group. They amass mountains of wealth and profit as a necessary platform to amass even more wealth and profit (and the masses be damned).
The trouble with profits, however, is that they are private. They belong to one group of capitalists or another and in times of crisis, when markets shrink, the profits of one group threaten the existence of another. "One capitalist," Marx used to say, "kills many."
Certainly the aircraft industry is littered with tombstones, like De Havilland and Hawker Siddely in Europe or McDonnell-Douglas in the uSA. These tombstones form the foundations on which the two giants of today's world aircraft industry - Airbus and Boeing – are built. It's a huge market. According to some, the world''s capitalists will need 31,000 new aircraft by 2031, with the Chinese market alone needing some 4,300 large passenger aircraft.
Airbus is planning on selling some $544 billion worth of aircraft in China in the next 20 years. Boeing wants in too. However, the chances are good that the weak recovery in the world's economy won't last.
In that case, the market (31,000 new aircraft by 2031) and its profits would shrink. Yet, the threat to Airbus and Boeing doesn't just come from the potential down-sizing of the market. It comes from their projected share of the market. By 2018 at the latest, the first C919s are due to be delivered. Built in by Comac in China, the C919 is a direct rival to Airbus A320 and Boeing's 737. Comac, of course, has the inside track on the Chinese market. From the platform of the massive market in China, it will be able to achieve the economies of scale to rival Airbus and Boeing throughout the world. Suddenly the future for Airbus or Boeing doesn't seem so healthy.
This brings us to the second trouble with profits. They come from exploiting workers. When profits are threatened by a shrinking market, capitalists cut wages, benefits and speed up workers in an attempt to recoup their losses. Today both Airbus and Boeing workers are battling these attacks.

SEATTLE— The new socialist city council member advocates mass demonstrations in favor of a various reforms and socialism.
When asked how we can match the bosses armed might she answers, "We can't!" What is the road to her socialism then? Look at Egypt, she answers. Millions demonstrated in the streets. The rank-and-file soldiers were hesitant to fire on the masses so the Mubarak regime fell.
Indeed, we should look at Egypt. We allowed the capitalists to survive and within a few years the military took over.
That's why it is crucial to build a base for communism in the armed forces. We need more than rank-and-file soldiers that refuse to fire on demonstrators. We need masses of soldiers turning the guns around on the brass and their capitalist masters.
This will not happen spontaneously. We need waves of military organizers experienced in the tactics and strategy of mobilizing soldiers for communist revolution, now and in the future.