JUNE 17—The fire at the Grenfell Towers in London is finally out. The anger of the working class has just started to burn.
It’s a scenario that will haunt us. Kids screaming for help seconds before the smoke and fire consumed them. Desperate parents throwing children out of windows, hoping they would be caught. A still unknown number of our class sisters and brothers who burned alive or jumped to their deaths.
Already a mass multi-racial outpouring of support for the survivors has overtaken anything the government has tried to organize. The first identified victim was a Syrian refugee, Mohammed Al Haj Ali. Survivors include families from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia.
“What do I want to happen?” a worker from the area told a reporter. “I want there to be a revolution in this country. (Expletive) the mainstream media. They act as mouthpieces for the corrupt government. People need a revolution. Nothing short of that!”
But the masses will not spontaneously conclude from Grenfell that we need communist revolution. Socialists and other reformists in the United Kingdom are trying to direct this anger into support of the Labour Party. They encourage the chant: “[Prime Minister] May must go.” It’s up to Red Flag readers to spread the communist message to the angry masses.
The Grenfell towers inferno proves again the murderous contempt the bosses and their politicians have for the lives of workers.
The building had one stairwell, no sprinklers, no alarms. All legal.
Even worse, the Kensington council just spent millions refurbishing the building. Sprinklers? No. Alarms? No. The money went for plastic cladding (siding) to make the building look better to wealthy residents nearby. The council had to choose between flammable and fire-resistant cladding. They chose the flammable cladding to save six thousand pounds.
Every year tens of thousands, mainly workers, are killed in fires, earthquakes, floods, mudslides and other ‘accidents’ and ‘natural disasters.’ But the real disaster is racist capitalism and, as in London, the shoddy construction resulting from cost-cutting.
Worldwide, one billion people live in slums. Another hundred million are homeless. Under capitalism, decent housing for the masses is not profitable. So it doesn’t exist.
But can communism do better? Yes! Communist housing will be better, and not just in quantitative terms (more space, more sprinklers, thicker walls). It will also be qualitatively better.
We don’t know exactly how people will choose to live, but most of us will likely choose more communal living. It’s more social and less alienating. And it makes it easier to collectivize housework, freeing women workers from the drudgery of individual “kitchen slavery.”
Obstacle to communal living: the wage system
Soon after the 1917 revolution, Soviet planners began organizing communal living arrangements. Some were based on types of work or other common interests. Others were high-rise buildings consisting of communal apartments. Each was shared by several households that might not have anything else in common.
Communal apartments often worked out well. However, the socialist wage system undermined them. It reinforced individualism. Each household had to use its income to buy necessities. So they usually locked up food and other supplies instead of sharing them.
Still, these socialist projects were better than the slum blocks of private apartments built quickly and cheaply by the openly capitalist Soviet government of the 1950s.
In rural China, most families occupied “sections” of housing arranged around shared courtyards. During the People’s Commune movement (1958-59), the wage system was almost eliminated. This traditional housing lent itself to collectivized housework. Free communal dining rooms, child care, laundries and more allowed women to participate more fully in productive labor and political struggle.
Party leaders praised this mainly as a way to boost production, rather than as a way to create communist social relations. Within a few years, however, the “capitalist road” won out. People continued to live in the same housing, but no longer communally.
When the masses, led by the ICWP, establish communism, we will immediately abolish money and the wage system. Communism will create the material basis for communal living. What kind of housing will we choose to build?
Hard to say. Capitalists have worked hard to win workers to an individualist private-property ideal of single-family houses. Many workers hate the cramped and dangerous high rises that capitalism builds for workers on the cheap. But tall buildings can be beautiful, spacious and safe – like those built today for the rich.
The justifiable rage and mass demonstrations around Grenfell demand that we redouble our efforts for communist revolution to end capitalism. Let’s start planning how to replace capitalism’s horrible individual housing with safe and comfortable communal living.
SEATTLE, June 20 – Hundreds marched last night to protest yet another vicious act of racist police murder. On Sunday night, Charleena Lyles, a pregnant black woman, mistakenly called the cops to report a burglary. The cops saw a knife in her hand and shot her twice in the chest, killing her in front of three of her four children.
Workers and students responded with high school walkouts and street demonstrations. The biggest started Tuesday evening, when angry supporters joined Charleena’s family, friends and neighbors at the apartment complex. Red Flag was distributed throughout and was well received. We made a mistake and left before the growing crowd marched four miles to the University of Washington. There the young marchers confronted the cops at Montlake bridge.
Lesson learned: never underestimate the potential of the masses! But it was also clear that the masses need communism. Their call for “justice for Charleena and her family” can never be answered under capitalism.
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