SEATTLE (USA), May 1 — “Were the May ’68 demonstrations in France violent?” asked a young May Day marcher. She sought out a veteran comrade in our contingent who was herself a young worker in France during the revolt.
“But, of course!” answered our comrade.
There is no other way to wrest power from the capitalists. Reform won’t do it. We need communist revolution. And to do that we need to build the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) now.
That was the message of the 500 Red Flag newspapers distributed to those marching and lining the streets. The discussions with readers were longer than usual. The front-page pictures of masses on the move around the world piqued people’s interest.
Young people, like one quoted above, were particularly interested. One comrade told marchers that she distributed a communist paper because capitalism would never end racism, sexism and xenophobia—and communism would. Not only did she distribute many papers and get a lot of donations, but at least three young people said, “Right!”
Prior to the March
Before the march, a Boeing friend close to the ICWP commented on the revolts of the ‘60s and early ‘70s. He pointed to the Red Flag article about Paris 1968 and began to list various rebellions he knew about or was part of.
“Do you think we’ll see revolts like those again?” asked a comrade.
Our friend paused to ponder the question. “In the U. S., probably in about 3 years,” he estimated.
“Well, if you think we’re headed for a revolutionary situation, how do we prepare?” our comrade continued.
Then the discussion got interesting. It centered on the need to build the party so that this time we fight for communism. It got “real” when we started discussing students he worked with or that other comrades knew whom he thought could become leaders.
The main contradiction in this debate was whether we replicate what we did in the past, just harder and longer, or do we go all out for communism this time.
Bosses Build Cynicism
The bosses and their press have their answers. The nature of the times forces them to admit that Marx’s critique of capitalism has merit. But that doesn’t really threaten them if it’s not linked to communist revolution. Hence, they focus on trying to portray revolution as impossible and communism as a futile quest.
The New York Times ran a particularly revealing article on Paris ’68. It admitted that some students were not only fighting against the evils of capitalism “but for something — for a new way of arranging society, for new forms of economic and social and class relations.” Then, the article asserted that this change could never happen because, it said, workers were not receptive. In the end, all the revolutionaries got for their trouble was right-wing reaction.
The proof? Strangely, the article’s first example actually showed that aerospace workers were receptive. That certainly is our experience at Boeing when we propose communist solutions to both work-related issues and to capitalist attacks throughout the society.
The article dismissed this example because the sellout French Communist Party tried to block a worker-student alliance. Many at the time correctly concluded that a new revolutionary communist party was needed.
After the March
When we distributed Red Flag papers to students at their high schools and to Boeing workers in the plants, many asked us, “How did it go?”
A comrade’s neighbor wanted more information about communism after the march. He thought communism was a good idea, but first said “it couldn’t work.”
Then he said it would take a long while to get there because of “human nature.” He thought some more. “Who knows what will happen after we’re gone?” he speculated. “Then again, the way things are going, it may happen next year.”
This discussion ended the same way as the Boeing discussion: preparation to bring communism to the fore is key as revolutionary situations advance. Building a base for communism is our immediate task.
Demonstrations like May Day can provide crucial training for our members, new and old, as we struggle to put communism in the conversation. At these marches we can learn and teach others how to aggressively distribute Red Flag, a tool for communist organizing. The ICWP will grow as we zero in on communist base building.
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