FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
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Decades ago, I worked at a factory in Chula Vista, California, between San Diego and Tijuana, where we made men’s suits. I worked in the cutting room, where the workforce was split between white American women and Mexican women who crossed the border daily to work. The foremen were bilingual Mexican Americans, but most of the women got along with a few words in each other’s languages.  We took our breaks at separate tables.
One day, the foreman came over to where I sat with the other English-speakers. “I’m so proud of you American girls,” he said. “It’s embarrassing to me as a Mexican, but the Mexican girls are just lazy. It’s only you American girls that keep up the pace and help me get the work out.”  
“You liar!” shouted Magdalena, the only Mexican-American young woman at the table. “When you come over to where the Mexicans eat, it’s always ‘How proud I am to be a Mexican’ and ‘Those gabachas are so lazy. It’s you, my countrywomen, who get out the work.’”
She said, “I eat with everybody. I hear how you talk. And the truth is that no matter how hard we work, we make $1.80 an hour. You’re the one who gets the bonus and the promotion!”
I thought about this while talking with a young African American comrade about the struggle we’ll face to eliminate the vestiges of racism in communist society.  He warns that it’s not going to be a slam dunk. Eliminating capitalist exploitation will not automatically eliminate the racist and nationalist attitudes and behaviors the capitalists built over generations to keep us separated. 
Obviously that garment foreman was pushing racism and nationalism to separate us.  (We’ll talk about the sexism—women workers being addressed as girls by male supervisors— another time.) What he left unsaid is the implicit threat:  Keep up the pace or you’ll be out of a job and we’ll hire one of “the others.”
That competition is an important aspect of what we mean by saying that the wage system itself is the material basis of racism.  You’ve got to sell your labor power to survive.  You’re forced to compete with other workers to get a job.  This means that capitalists constantly use everything they can to divide us, to lower our pay, to speed us up and intensify our exploitation. 
They compete with every other capitalist. Our labor is the only thing they don’t have to pay full value for, and the source of their profits. So they have to go all-out to lower our pay, to enhance their competitive edge, or they go under.
As capitalism developed, they invented the idea of “race” to divide us. The labor market and capitalist competition required them to pay some workers less, treat them worse, extract super-profits from them and keep a downward pressure on everybody’s wage.
Racist ideas justify this race to the bottom:  the lie that some people are inferior to others and deserve lower pay and worse treatment. 
Because racism is tied to the wage system, socialism couldn’t end it. In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, for example, workers still had jobs, collected pay checks, bought groceries and paid rent. Factory managers still had to compete with other factory managers to make a profit. The same need for competition and super-exploitation continued.
The only difference was that the profits were supposed to go to the society, not to some bosses’ lavish life style.
But there was still a labor market. Workers still had to compete for jobs. There were still unemployed workers; some jobs still paid more than others.
When we take power, we’ll eliminate “jobs.” No more labor market, getting hired and fired, collecting pay checks, and paying rent!  No more pressure to speed up to avoid being laid off! We won’t have to compete to get or keep a job. There won’t be bosses competing to see who can screw over the workers most profitably.
Collective and cooperative work will replace selling our labor power to survive.  Together we’ll figure out what needs to be done and how to do it.
Organized by the party, we’ll plan what to produce to meet the masses’ needs. We’ll cooperate to build housing, grow food, create new transportation systems, and produce the clothes, furniture, tools and toys that human beings need.
Eliminating the labor market and competition will eliminate the material basis for racism.
Racism will stand in the way of getting done what we need to do for human survival.  Fighting against racism will be an essential part of everyday life.  It won’t be automatic, but it will be obvious that it’s the only way we can work together to build a communist world.

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