Red Flag Newspaper
International Communist Workers Party
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Red Flag NewspaperInternational Communist Workers Party |
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ENGLAND--Over 2000 people demonstrated to demand
the closing of the notoriously brutal Yarl’s Wood
Immigration Removal Center for immigrants awaiting
either deportation or political asylum in the United
Kingdom.
90% of the inmates in this prison are women. They
face indefinite sentences. Some fled from torture.
Many have been subject to inadequate health care,
sexual harassment and rape in the prison.
Demonstrators demanded opening the borders,
and closing all immigration prisons.
We invite them to join ICWP to mobilize for communist
revolution to smash all the bosses’ borders and
prisons. In communism, all workers will be welcome
and cared for everywhere. All will contribute what
they can to collectively meet everyone’s needs.
SEATTLE, USA, March 5—Can we organize a communist contingent at this year’s May Day march?” a comrade asked at our potluck. Most responded by promising to march under our Red Flags on May First.
A Boeing worker who moved here from Detroit three years ago won over our guests. “I think now is the time to organize this contingent here,” she began. She moved to Seattle, hoping to stay with relatives. No sooner did she arrive, than her relatives were evicted.
“So for the first time I was homeless and I had an adopted child,” she explained. She had to navigate the city bureaucracy to find emergency shelter while training for a job. Opportunities for safe housing were few and far between.
“Now I read about the homeless emergency in Seattle and the company is closing my shop so I’m worried about being laid off,” she said. The final and most convincing argument was not her personal history, but the reality our class faces. “It’s not just about Boeing, but since 2008 there has been a big crisis for workers everywhere.”
This led to a discussion on how communism would abolish these global capitalist crises of overproduction like the one we are suffering through. Nothing less than communist production for need will succeed.
“The press won’t talk about the continuing depression,” she concluded. “We have a big opportunity here.”
Communist Discussion
Our friends and neighbors were upset about the spike in homelessness, layoffs, racism and many other cases where capitalism failed the working class. They came to our house to talk about communist answers and responses.
For example, some discussed lead poisoning in Flint. Everyone agreed GM destroyed Flint, but the most excitement was generated by an article in an earlier issue of Red Flag. The article explained how communism would end lead poisoning. It described how the Chinese, inspired by communism, mobilized millions to eradicate the plague of schistosomiasis. We could do the same with lead.
“Look at this!” exclaimed the aforementioned worker’s cousin as he passed an old issue of Red Flag to her.
A neighbor and school system employee was particularly impressed. “It’s so nice to talk about real things like the [communist] solution to homelessness and unemployment. It can be depressing when all that’s talked about is Trump’s latest bull.”
Communist Organizing Follows Communist Discussion
But this was a night of more than just talk. New and old friends took handfuls of leaflets and Red Flags. A school nurse, visiting from the East Coast, wanted to know what she could do in her area. Others couldn’t attend, but pledged to write checks.
The leaflet entitled “Communism Means Work and Housing For Everyone” was especially popular. We planned out how to distribute it at work, at neighborhood meetings and dinners, unions and to family and friends. And these are the comrades with a base and experience to do it!
One long-time party friend told how he was going to expand his communist work. “I’m taking this paper [Red Flag] to two more guys in my apartment complex. Rent keeps going up and they are struggling. One is in the Army,” he said after promising to come to May Day.
Now he has to win his friends to come to the march also. He should follow the example of another Boeing worker who brought two of her friends from the factory to the dinner. She is also a long-time party friend, who, in fact, had introduced him to us. And she was not satisfied, apologizing for not bringing more. Now that’s the [communist] spirit!
This response shows that workers in the US are also more and more open to communism, like workers in South Africa and elsewhere around the world. We need this kind of revolutionary enthusiasm to take advantage of the opportunity for the growth of ICWP here. On to mobilizing for a communist May Day!
Capitalist Crisis of Overproduction
A coal miner’s son asks his Dad why it’s so cold in the house. His Dad said, “Because they laid me off because there’s too much coal.”
Capitalism is driven by competition for maximum profits. This means that each capitalist produces undersell his competitors and capture the market. This leads to the capitalist crisis of overproduction: more goods are produced than the market can absorb.
Without sale, there’s no work. Workers are laid off, which means they can buy less of what they have produced, which makes the crisis worse. Markets shrink. The competing capitalists lower workers’ wages, introduce more machines, and more workers are laid off.
Eventually, the capitalists resort to fascism to repress the rebellious workers and win them to fight in their imperialist wars to eliminate the capitalist competition from other capitalist countries
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These are excerpts from communications between ICWP and a comrade in Afghanistan
—Hope this note finds you all healthy. I am active in left- wing politics in Afghanistan. I got your web address via a comrade and I hope to get to join this international party. Please kindly help guide my way. And let us know how we can study more about your successful party.
—Thanks for the responding and explaining better about ICWP. Please call me to discuss what is needed to be done to be in a comradely exchange of views for creating communist society.
—We are happy to hear from you and be your party in Afghanistan. We’re glad to have a comradely relation to reach our revolutionary aims. Our collective here will learn from your advanced revolutionary ideas and make a RED WORLD.
Your website is a very good tribute and a good way to broadcast the ideas of the working class and to make people aware of the real revolutionary struggle that started back in 1917 under the leadership of Lenin.
The world needs such working class movements since we know capitalist hands make the world worse and worse, day by day. Therefore, we should also try to get those people who have been harmed, and workers, out of this mess built by all Imperialism.
It is time for workers and those struggling for revolution to reunite worldwide with as much anger and determination as possible as before, to break all the protective walls which this capitalism created to grind down the people under their feet and spread their terror to whole world, especially in countries like Afghanistan. Long live communism!
EL SALVADOR—“Before beginning to talk about dialectics, I want to say that my son and I were analyzing the material about dialectics and we think that contradictions occur every day but what makes us advance more rapidly or more slowly is our internal contradiction,” said a farmworker, member of the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP).
The communist work carried out by the ICWP clubs continues growing here and in the rest of the world, from Los Angeles to New Delhi. In a recent club meeting about Communist Dialectics we discussed why it is important to know communist philosophy and how it helps us in the revolutionary and transformational process of our work.
Before starting a full discussion about dialectics, we discussed the work being done every day in each area where we are involved.
A comrade mentioned the importance of reaching more workers each time with Red Flag and our manifesto, Mobilize the Masses for Communism, of losing our fear of what workers would say, while taking all necessary care. This refers, in other words, to be more open and thus to get more effective results.
Another comrade mentioned strengthening ties to those in the army and his efforts to get soldiers to write for our newspaper Red Flag and reflect their opinions about communism and the ICWP. That is, change ourselves first, and then by our example invite more men and women workers to join our struggle. In doing this, the comrades show their fellow workers the qualities that a revolutionary must have: discipline, commitment, and leading by example.
Comrades are carrying out constant discussions with farmworkers to improve communication and coordination among the different communist clubs. We can add to this the arrival of a new comrade to the party, after a long time of being away; but his ideals remain firm. His goals for revolution have not diminished with time.
Communist dialectics allows us to discover the way to accelerate changes for a communist revolution. Dialectics establishes that the unity of opposites is temporary and transitory and only the struggle of opposites is constant. This has been shown throughout history. It can be seen in the daily struggle that exists between the reformist electoral political parties and those of us who are struggling for communist revolution.
Besides this, dialectics teaches us that during the struggle for power by the Red Army, led by ICWP, during the taking of power by the working class and in the following period, contradictions will arise inside the communist movement in key aspects like distribution.
For example, a struggle could arise about transporting resources of the Middle East to America, or how to organize the education system. These contradictions must be resolved with constructive criticism and practice in a strong, well-organized party.
At the end of the meeting, we discussed the mobilization that we will carry out for the 2016 International May Day March of the working class.
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