Red Flag Newspaper
International Communist Workers Party
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Red Flag NewspaperInternational Communist Workers Party |
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LOS ANGELES, USA—Because of the result of the Presidential election many workers were upset. They were not staunch supporters of the Democrats, but they saw Trump’s election as a victory of fascism. Due to this, they are more willing to listen to our Party’s proposals. Some of them have already joined the Party. We had a meeting and afterwards we talked with other workers to ask them to get active with us. The response was very positive.
In the meeting, we distributed the pamphlet Mobilize the Masses for Communism to discuss in the next meeting. It seems that our work is bearing fruit.
This is the result of ongoing communist political work. ICWP’s political work at MTA has intensified in the last few months. The election has led to discussions about the bourgeois parties, the war, fascism, etc. This provides an opening to emphasize the need for ICWP as the only real solution to the current and future problems of the workers.
Lately we have been meeting as a Party club. We have discussed, among other issues, the role of ICWP in the unions, how we should carry out this work and whether the unions under communist leadership could become revolutionary organizations. Some co-workers think that, yes, our participation at that level would give us more influence over many workers. We decided, however, that our task is not to be reformist leaders but instead organizers of the Party.
We have also made a plan to recruit new members to the Party. Since there is a broad base and by concentrating on some of the workers, we can bring them to study groups that we are starting next week. As part of this project, comrade X promised to pass 5 newspapers immediately to people in his base. We are certain that this comrade will play a very important role. He has a broad group of friends and is very serious about the need to build the Party. So far our group is all men, but there are women workers who read Red Flag who think favorably of the Party’s politics. We plan to recruit them.
We also plan to organize Party clubs on the afternoon shift and the night shift. We have talked to readers to find out if they were willing to help and they agreed to do so. This work will require a lot of commitment and patience, to give shape to these groups. However we are counting on workers who are willing to distribute the newspaper internally. But some of them are still reluctant to come to activities outside of work.
The atmosphere in general is very political. There are many discussions about whether it is possible to win and maintain a communist society. Also we talked about the need to prepare for the revolution. Some emphasize the need for weapons but we concluded that weapons alone are useless if we don’t have a strong and massive Party. Communist soldiers will supply the weapons.
In addition to organizing internal clubs, we are elaborating a bigger plan to work constantly with workers from other divisions and also from rail who are part of the Party’s political base and are readers of Red Flag. Many of them are personal friends of Party members.
These small achievements are the product of internal political work and also of work outside the divisions. Forward comrades! What you do counts!
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*Communism will organize masses to decide everything
*Communism will develop mass consciousness of our
mutual interdependence
*Communism will free us from capitalism's drive to
maximize profits by finding the cheapest solutions
*Communism will also free us from the chains of tradition
Read full article in the next edition
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SOUTHERN INDIA — We have a small group of ICWP (International Communist Workers’ Party) members here. We receive Red Flag and discuss the ideas of the ICWP in our weekly meetings.
Most workers here do not speak or read English. We translate some of the articles in our local language. The workers who we are trying to reach out to are in tea plantation, garment and some work in cement factories.
After the elections in which Modi and his fascists came to power, things have changed very quickly here. Hindu fascists are building their para-military organization RSS, which was crucial in Modi coming to power. When Modi was the Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat, he organized RSS to mass-murder Muslims and then he won the state elections again.
In our area, RSS has been recruiting youth to their fascist ideas. But there is a fierce opposition to RSS because we live in an area where the old communist party used to have a mass base.
People from different religions live here very peacefully. The RSS strategy here is to attack Muslims and target them as belonging to a “terrorist group” that supports Pakistan. This way they can win Hindus to RSS. RSS is armed and does not hesitate to kill people who oppose them. Recently they brutally murdered a Hindu professor who was an atheist and opposed RSS.
Our group read and discussed the ICWP pamphlet on ending racism. We are trying to put forward communism as the only solution to fascism in the form of Hindu religion. Capitalist bosses want us to believe in idealism. They want us to believe that things don’t change and they want us to be proud of a glorious past that never existed for the masses.
We are offering the masses our firm determination that we will oppose RSS and counter them with revolutionary violence for communism. In the face of intimidation and threat of death we are learning to advance our ideas.
When we explain to the masses that communism is the only solution, we defeat our internal fear. The working class is eager and willing to join us regardless of terror of RSS. We have a long way to go but we are determined and fearless.
—New ICWP Collective in India
Between 2011 and 2013 China poured more concrete than the US did in the entire 20th century!
In communism that would be a great contribution to world health. Replacing mud floors with concrete in the world’s poorest homes would cut out 80% of parasitic diseases. For workers in Haiti and worldwide, it would be a life saver.
If you think that’s what we should do, then you think like a communist. You should join us to help mobilize the masses for communism to build a world where production is for human needs – unlike capitalism that uses this cement to build nuclear missile launchers and silos.
Everything in China, the US or anywhere is produced to make profits. Nothing is just for human need. Capitalist China’s drive to world leadership is as big a threat to world peace as is the US’s drive to contain it. Day by day, the choice gets clearer: support their dirty cluster- and suicide-bombing wars, or organize the communist revolution we need.
Of course, it’s not just concrete that makes China such a deadly rival to the US. Their steel-making capacity is bigger than that of the US, Japan and Germany combined. The story is similar in dozens of other industries.
The US, however, is still dominant in two key areas: finance and military power. By controlling the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and having its Dollar as the world’s main reserve currency, it still controls and supplies capital around the world. Its control is underwritten by military dominance, on which it spends almost as much capital as the entire world combined. Just to save its banking and industrialist elite’s wealth and power, the US has already wasted between $4-6 trillion in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Four challenges, however, upset this standoff.
*The huge inequalities in wealth and income, gaps not seen on this scale for 150 years. Layers and layers of working-class anger are buried in these statistics.
*The growth of the working class itself, now close to 2 billion strong. Never in history has it been such a dominant factor.
*The crisis of overproduction and falling rates of profit. When capitalist production fails to turn a profit, the need for wars to eliminate rivals becomes more intense.
*As inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens so does class war. As capitalist production and distribution fail even to sustain the masses, production solely for the masses - communism - becomes more urgent. (more here).