Red Flag aspires to be a newspaper of a new type for a party, dedicated to mobilizing the masses around the world for communism. We’re breaking new ground and learning as we go. We will inevitably make mistakes—and disagree about what the mistakes are that we’re making. The letters page is a good place for comrades to engage in criticism and self-criticism, and help us learn to write in a way that will advance the work. We ask writers to be brief, and to criticize in ways that are sharp, but comradely. Collectively we have a lot to learn.
LETTERS, CRITICISM AND SUGGESTIONS
Letters From South Africa
Build a Base among Industrial Workers
I can now drill steel pins perfectly, mill them as well using the lathe machine to make Grooves on the steel. It will take me four years to qualify and be paid, but what I do now gets straight into the production process. It doesn’t wait for four years. I had better concentrate on what I do best: drilling holes in the bosses’ system.
–A metal worker in South Africa
Bourgeois Democracy Breeds Fascism
Our thoughts and hopes are with you. We can’t help but think of the dialectical materialism video in relation to the goings-on in America and elsewhere.
Fascism and racism are on the rise once again. It is important that we derive our thinking from the working-class point of view. If we waver we will render ourselves useless like all other outfits who throw around a lot of rhetoric.
Bourgeois democracy breeds fascism and is only a cover for the capitalist dictatorship. Within its forms, the advance of fascism is steadily pushed forward. Fascism grows organically out of bourgeois democracy.
Preaching confidence in the law, in the constitution, in the capitalist state, means to invite and guarantee the victory of fascism.
The inauguration of Donald Trump as the Commander-in-Chief of US imperialism rightly scares the daylights out of millions of people in America and worldwide. It makes hundreds of millions angry. Thousands are pouring out in protests.
But their justified fear and anger are being cynically manipulated by the Democratic Party and its leftist servants to tamp down militancy and entrap protest in an electoral framework that offers nothing for the workers and the poor but the right to be exploited.
It is necessary to reject the lie that “democracy” can be reformed in the interest of the oppressed. It is nothing but a ruthless dictatorship of the capitalist ruling class. It is high time that as ICWP we intensify our “mobilizing the masses for Communism” campaign everywhere. It is the only solution to end our miseries under capitalist rule.
Phantsi nongxiwa phants!!! Abash capitaliste abashe!! Away with capitalism, away! Viva ICWP Viva!!
–Comrades in South Africa
Fascism and Trump
Capitalist bosses around the world are in a crisis of growing nationalism and populism. This comes from a number of reasons, like immigration, as if immigration was the cause of the economic crisis that they themselves are in. They forget that the regional wars in the Middle East and wars in Syria were caused by themselves in the pursuit of profits.
In 2008, the capitalists reacted with Globalization after the economic collapse. They advocated free trade, free markets. All of this was to say that this was the solution for the world’s problems. This was mostly driven by capitalists from the US and England and their allies.
Now they realize that this was not the solution. They are backing off from their globalization. Hence the Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump (a fascist and a true CAPITALIST—not to say the other capitalists are not also true capitalists).
Donald Trump now realizes that the USA is a declining power in the world that can’t dictate its terms freely in global affairs. Trump must go to more bilateral relations/engagements where the US will hold power because of their military.
What drives Trump is not that he wants to create better lives for the US working class. He is driven by the economy, by profit, like any other capitalist. He is planning to use the Authoritarian style to keep American businesses in America.
None of this will solve anything. We need to keep fighting him and the capitalist system— no matter how it is portrayed. As long as capitalism is the order of the day, these problems will continue happening and escalating.
What we need is to be united as the working class of the world. We need to fight to destroy capitalism, to continue to mobilize the working class in all corners of the world into one mass organization that is willing to fight and destroy capitalism and continue with the struggle for communism.
We need to fight capitalism from every side, whether from nationalist tendencies or fascist tendencies.
We will continue distributing the Red Flag and mobilizing the masses from schools, universities, industrial areas and mass gatherings as well as army barracks. We are willing to continue this struggle. We learn as we go forward. We write as we struggle; we analyze and continue to mobilize the masses for communism.
Only communism will destroy fascists like Trump and all capitalists all around the world.
–Young Comrade in South Africa
Red Flag replies:
Thank you for your letter.
We agree that today’s crisis shows the need and opportunity to mobilize for communism worldwide.
However, growing nationalism, racism and populism are the manifestations of the crisis, not its cause. This crisis is rooted in a capitalist crisis of overproduction. Capitalism’s rate of profit declines due to competition for maximum profit and automation. So capitalists-imperialists produce more goods than can be sold profitably; markets shrink. The capitalists’’ competition sharpens. They lay off workers, drive down wages, and produce even more with fewer workers.
Capitalists must fight for market share. Today they try to stop their rivals’ products with tariffs. Tomorrow they will destroy their rivals’ means of production through war.
Bosses must push nationalism and racism to win workers to fight for their profits. although competing capitalists have different tactics.
They need fascism, racism and nationalism to terrorize workers while winning them to fight for their empires.
As you say, the only alternative for workers of the world is to mobilize for communism.
Production and distribution will only be to meet human needs. No profits, no overproduction, no capitalism, no imperialist war, no nations, nationalism, racism or fascism.
Transit Workers Organize Communist Class Struggle
Recently members of ICWP at MTA (public transportation) met to discuss the importance of our Red Flag newspaper in spreading communist ideas as the crucial, most advanced answer to capitalism’s fascism that is expanding worldwide.
We understand that the struggle is not easy, because there are obstacles that affect the thinking and feelings of some workers. Some have illusions that they will not be affected. Others think that they can’t do anything. Some ask what good the marches and strikes are.
All these ways of thinking are products of the reformist organizations that have been in charge of disarming the working class ideologically for years. Nevertheless, many more men and women workers are open to communist ideas and to developing the work of organizing.
In fact, one of the decisions we made in the meeting was to speed up the struggle to organize a political strike for communism and against capitalism.
We also decided to visit and call more co-workers and to organize a forum to explain to them the need to join this campaign and to join ICWP.
–Transit worker comrades
Fighting Sexism on the Job
In 1974, I worked in a garment factory that specialized in men’s leather coats. I and 5 other male workers stood around a large table sorting out and matching by size and color all the pieces for a given coat. About 200 other workers, mainly women, sewed the pieces together.
Given the location of the restrooms, everyone passed by us on the way there. When young women passed, my coworkers would hiss, whistle and make “cat calls” at them.
I disapproved of this behavior, and being a communist, I confronted them. I called their behavior disgusting and said that they wouldn’t like their girlfriends, sisters or mothers to be treated like that. This just got them angry at me without changing their behavior.
Taking a different approach, I decided to try to interest them in having political discussions. They were all Catholics, and I am an atheist. We started discussing the existence or nonexistence of God. Then we spent hours discussing the role of churches, especially the Catholic Church, as instruments of the ruling classes to keep the masses oppressed.
Then we talked about our oppression, how the boss became rich from our labor (in few years he was a millionaire). We talked about the role of the “Migra,” immigration laws, borders and nations. We talked about revolution and the role women played in the struggle for the liberation of the working class.
About three began to read my communist newspaper. One read Gorki’s The Mother. Another read How the Steel Was Tempered. None came to any of the demonstrations or meetings I invited them to. However, for the time I worked there, their attitude toward the women changed. There was no harassing of them. Politics is all we talked about, with the exception sometimes of boxing and soccer.
–Comrade in Los Angeles USA
Making the Journey to True Communism
I have worked in the school and preschool systems in a large American city for 30 years. Now I have been thinking of ways that these places would become part of our coming improved social system.
It has been very helpful to picture them as centers for their communities. Public schools and libraries are already in place, used to serve local children, students and adults. I see them serving as clinics, food distribution centers and continuing to provide library services. There could be a local nurse or doctor’s office that would serve to address immediate and simpler healthcare.
The cafeterias could be used to feed people in large groups, with local families forming and organizing their schedules to provide meals to their areas. There would be healthy mixing of age groups, a sharing of food cultures, less energy used to cook in individual homes. There could be a poem and song period, after meals, to encourage culture and creativity!
Of course, over time, these would have to be restructured and more efficient buildings would take their place, but as a start, a way to make the journey to true communism a reality, existing buildings could be used!
–Comrade in the US
“I will refuse to round up immigrants”
Already being part of the National Guard, and reading that the Trump Administration was considering using the National Guard to round up unauthorized immigrants infuriated me. Those of us that join the National Guard are asked “to swear to protect our country.” The working class has no nations.
The very same capitalists have created these so-called countries through their wars of world dominance. They get us, the working class, to defend them with our very lives. Now I am being ordered to go against my working-class brothers and sisters and actually participate in the efforts in their deportation.
As a communist, I will refuse and get my comrades in arms to refuse such orders. I will spread communist ideas inside the National Guard, like the idea that workers from one “country” do not need to be fighting workers from other “countries” and dying for the benefit of the capitalists, but rather the idea that the international working people united can overthrow all capitalists with communist revolution.
With communism, there will not be a National Guard arresting and deporting working people, but rather a Red Army fighting to expand, sustain and hold communist social relationships worldwide, where people will live free of exploitation, modern day slavery and share everything that we produce. With this being said, as a National Guard soldier and a communist I truly can say that communism will get rid of all social classes and borders so we the international working people can unite and live as one.
–Young soldier
“So Many White People Taking Red Flag!”
I am an immigrant worker, a member of ICWP, and recently I was distributing Red Flag in Los Angeles at one of the biggest marches I have ever seen.
It surprised me very much to see whole families of white people, especially tens of thousands of young white women with signs against sexism. But what caught my attention even more was that many of them enthusiastically took our communist newspaper. This gave me the certainty that we can build our party (ICWP) among white, latino, black, and asian workers and students.
Racism is growing with the venomous xenophobia that the government is pushing along with the attacks on the families of undocumented immigrant workers. But the anger of all workers is growing and these workers will put an end to fascism, if we win them to fight for communism.
We live in a country in which the majority of workers are white and they are an important force to put an end to racism and capitalism. They will never be free from exploitation while other workers in the US and around the world are super exploited.
The unity of all workers will make possible the creation of a communist society, where wage slavery does not exist and we can end the bosses’ rabid exploitation of the workers. Let’s fight for communism.
–Comrade in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES (US), February 4 – Masses in the US fear that the new Republican administration will shred their already-inadequate health insurance. Hundreds rallied for a US universal health care plan, and many welcomed Red Flag and our communist line.
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