LOS ANGELES, USA — Comrades at MTA (public transit workers) are mobilizing our fellow workers for communism. Workers are reading and distributing Red Flag, supporting it with their donations, joining and taking leadership in the Party.
In recent months, the workers’ club of MTA, members of ICWP, has been very active studying the political line of the party. We have discussed the philosophy of dialectical materialism. We have also emphasized combining communist theory and practice.
In other study groups, we have investigated the inevitability of economic crises and wars under the capitalist system. We have discussed nationalism and racism, and especially the history of the class struggle, its triumphs and failures. Among the triumphs, we highlighted the ability and correctness of the communist understanding that it is the industrial workers and farmworkers and soldiers who are indispensible to ensuring the victory of a revolution.
We workers are the ones who produce everything in capitalist society. And the soldiers have the military training and weapons needed for revolution. What we want to point out here is that our party needs a base in those groups and that the work that other comrades and friends carry out distributing newspapers and leaflets outside the factories, barracks, or bus divisions is very important. Some new communists at MTA have been recruited based on our outside work.
Among the failures of the old communist movement, the main failure was tthat they fought for socialism, a system that tried to be the mother of all reforms and gradually move toward communism. They fought and they tried, but they were destined to fail because the production relations of the capitalist system were kept intact.
Because of this, our club struggles ideologically with all our co-workers, mechanics, service attendants, and bus drivers, to win them politically to the idea of fighting directly for communism.
But we also struggle to involve ourselves in practice. Many workers help distribute Red Flag. We struggle for them to donate money to the party as a communist political act. Donations have been collected for the work in South Africa and El Salvador, because this builds internationalism and loyalty to ICWP.
Our club is multi-racial—whites, blacks and latinos—because to win we need to destroy the racial barriers which the ruling class has artificially created. We are struggling to recruit women. Unfortunately, there are not many women mechanics. However, we are trying to recruit two women workers as soon as possible because we know that our club with communist women workers will be a dagger in the heart of the enemy and a blow to sexism.
Recently we had a meeting with comrades from El Salvador. We met to prepare the speech for the May Day dinner that a black comrade mechanic will give. We talked about his personal experiences, how he joined the party, and the need to give more leadership. We also had a bar-b-q in a park in which black, latin and white mechanics and drivers participated.
Two mechanics went to visit workers of another division to invite them to the dinner and the May Day March. We have also communicated with Red Flag readers from the trains to invite them to the dinner as well as the march.
The process of raising communist consciousness is not automatic. It requires constant struggle with the comrades, and especially with ourselves. It is a daily struggle to be able to destroy the capitalist ideas and practices that infect the workers’ movement. But when the workers begin to join ICWP, convinced that a communist society is the only solution, and are willing to spread the ideas of the party and feel proud to be called comrades, they are like a flame that spreads to devour the forest.
Perhaps this article doesn’t fully reflect the communist atmosphere that exists in our workplace, but our ICWP is respected and Red Flag is very popular. We will continue writing to tell you about more ideological struggles that take place everyday and the actions we have taken to denounce capitalism when the workers have been attacked, as well as the terror that the bosses have of our communist analysis.
Long live the International Working Class! Long Live May Day! Long Live Communism!
