South Africa: Communist School

Advancing ICWP Collectives

After May Day we had a communist school with comrade members of the collective, and all the people from the event who wanted to join the movement. We talked about the inter-imperialist wars and the angry masses around the world and who should they be angry with.

We discussed how a communist society will work. This is the most important question to struggle with and try to explain to the masses. Of course, we will discover new things as we advance our communist ideas. But, we know that we want a society guided by the need to collectively meet the needs of the working class, free of exploitation and privilege for anyone.

We talked about how education will be organized to meet the needs of the masses. People will learn skills to do things useful to society. Theory won’t be separated from practical work. It won’t be like today where people who do theoretical work sitting in offices are viewed as more important than those doing practical work in factories.

Everyone will be able to work wherever they choose to work according to their ability, commitment and the collective’s need. We discussed that learning will be a lifelong process to meet the need of the working class, not to be used as a tool to train people to be better wage slaves for the bosses.

New comrades had questions. Some were concerned about how we will accommodate people who practice cultural activities, traditions and religion. We explained that the culture that people practice in society is indeed influenced by that society. The cultural and traditional activities we perform today are influenced by our capitalist society. People are not born practicing religion and traditions. Most people do so because they are forced to do so or because their families practice them, and they must follow the “family tradition.”

For example, a person may get a job or promotion and come back and slaughter a cow or sheep so as to thank their ancestors for blessing him/her with a job that pays better. Similarly, a person may thank God for blessing him/her with one. But we know that it is the capitalists that determine how much a worker gets paid and how many workers they employ.

People who are religious tend to believe that there is a third force that is invisible that influences humans on earth. Their ideas are contradictory with ours at times but a struggle is needed to overcome these ideas and to make sure that their ideas do not stop the realization of communism.

These are discussions that helped us as comrades struggle with and learn from each other and from the masses we are trying to mobilize. They helped advance communist ideas and overcome weaknesses that hold us back as a collective as well as individuals. These discussions are needed to struggle with comrades we are trying to recruit, to continue to advance our communist ideas, and recruit the masses to the party to join the struggle for communism.

Building One-on-One Relationships

We say Mobilize the Masses for Communism (MMC). Industrial, workers, soldiers and students, join ICWP and fight for a communist society. A society free of sexism, xenophobia, poverty, crime and exploitation.

We follow this principle by constantly distributing Red Flag, other party literature like Mobilize the Masses for Communism, and pamphlets in mass gatherings, colleges, and industrial areas. We know that this quantitative work eventually will lead to qualitative results. This is not automatic or mechanical: it needs one-on-one struggle with the workers and students we are trying to recruit the party.

An example: leading up to May Day and the communist school, there was a college student who stays on my street. We constantly chatted about a lot of things: politics, music, traditions, religion (his favorite topic), communism, and ICWP. He agreed with most of the things we say, especially that capitalism is bad and needs to be abolished.

He did not agree with our solution because he said there is no way communism would work. I struggled with him, explaining how communism would work. He would say, “People are greedy. Even when you win a revolution, people will just want to take things for themselves. You say there will be no police and prisons. How will you deal with such individuals?” (See page 2)

We explained to him that along with the struggle for communism, we will have to deal with people’s capitalist ideas and overcome them in a collective. A collective is good because individuals are part of it. Whatever the collective decides, individuals are part of that decision.

Secondly, people are not born greedy. Capitalist society and its system of wage slavery make people greedy and encourage them to be individualistic, to put their interests above those of other people.

Capitalism is chaotic. Its logic is to get everyone to put their interests above others’. It needs to be abolished and replaced by a society where everyone’s (the working class’) needs are met and everything is produced for use, not for individual profit. That is communism.

Communist society will influence people to have communist principles. People will see the need and want to work for the collective’s gain, not individual gain. With struggle, it will be a society where greediness and individualism will cease to exist. When greediness and individualism appear, the collective will deal with it.

After such discussions with the student, we invited him to the communist school and to come with all of his questions. He did.

During the school other comrades were able to answer his questions, and he understood communism and ICWP. He joined the party and now calls himself a communist.

Such instances give us confidence. They show that masses can be won to communism, not only by distributing Red Flag and our literature, but also by building one-on-one relationships with fellow students, workers and neighbors. The collective struggle with these friends is also necessary. The communist school not only answered the questions of some individuals; but I think it also helped our collective to grow.

Our political understanding has grown from this experience. The discussions and questions from the masses and new comrades not only helped them understand communism, but also helped us to be better prepared to answer them with ICWP’s communist line. After the school, six new people wanted to join ICWP, to learn more and be part of our collective. They were all females, which is great for our collective, which had been all male.

We can’t say we want to abolish sexism with a collective that only consists of men. It is up to us now to struggle with the new comrades to be active and to participate in our meetings and activities in mobilizing more masses for communism.

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