Capitalism Does Not Exist to Meet Workers' Needs

Comrades often write in Red Flag that capitalism does not meet workers' needs. More precisely, capitalism cannot be reformed to meet the needs of the working class, because no reform can eliminate the fundamental contradiction of capitalism: capitalists make money off workers' sweat. Just as slavery did not exist to meet the needs of the slaves, but of the slave masters, capitalism exists to exploit, oppress and accumulate capital on the surplus labor of the working class, not to meet our needs.
If some workers in imperialist countries feel that their needs are being met, this is a temporary situation based on the imperialists' ability to deprive the oppressed masses all over the world, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America, of the basic necessities of life. Fifty percent of the working class in the world is malnourished, and one-third of the population barely survives on $2 per day.
The capitalists buy labor power in order to create surplus value, which is unpaid labor to accumulate capital to expand their factories and compete with other rival capitalists. The more they extract surplus value, the more competitive they will be. That is why they lower wages, speed up workers and cut benefits. Finally when they are desperate they lay off workers and bring in machines to produce more cheaply. But there is a fly in the ointment.
They create their own disaster and crisis of overproduction and the rate of profit declines. That is why they are drowned in the current crisis, and less and less able to meet the basic needs of even the workers in the imperialist countries.
The only way out for them is fascism and war. The only way out for us is communist revolution to get rid of these parasites once and for all. The real need of the working class is to get rid of capitalism, and on its grave build a communist society free of exploitation and wage slavery, where production is for human need, not for private profit.

—Reader in Los Angeles

My first experience in an international meeting of ICWP

A few days ago, for the first time, I attended an international meeting of ICWP. I felt nervous because I didn't know how everything was there, or if I had to arrive there as a person who knows everything. First, the homage to a comrade who fought for the working class in the factories was deeply moving. I didn't have the good luck to know her, but from the way the comrades talked about her, she was a person who had the strength to fight for the working class. And now that she is no longer here, the way to remember her always is to follow her example of struggle.
The experience I lived in the meeting, with the comrades from different places, was very exciting and satisfying for me, because I realized how the capitalist system exploits all sectors of the working class. For example, when the comrades from the maquilas gave their report, they told how the capitalist bosses super-exploit them. It is depressing to hear in person, in the voice of the workers, the way that they are exploited in the factories. I also felt powerless to do anything to help them, but I think that the best way to help them is to spread communist ideas, to fight to bury capitalism that exploits and kills the working class.
I think that reading the newspaper is not the same as listening to the reports in the voices of the comrades. Now that I heard the report of the comrades, I reflected and understood many things. I think that everywhere capitalism exploits the workers of the world, making them work in horrible conditions, mistreating them and paying them poverty wages, while the capitalists keep the profits, products of the workers' labor. But this is the reality of the capitalist system. Capitalism doesn't function for the working class and we must destroy it; we need to build communism.
The changes that I am experiencing as a communist are more notable each time. Now, when I returned from the international meeting, I commented to the comrades in Mexico that each time I understand more about how the capitalist system exploits the working class and I also understand that communism is the real solution for our class. I realize that I have contradictions that I must struggle to eliminate, accepting the criticisms of the comrades. With all this, I feel this need to continue sharing communist ideas with more people, so that every day there are more of us, and so that we destroy this monster that is absorbing us every day. Mobilize the masses for communism!

--Greetings from the collective in Mexico.

Why the communist army will be important

The world's wealth is owned by about 3% of the total population. This wealth is created by 97% of the population, which is the working class.
The pillars that will sustain the communist revolution will be the industrial workers and the communist army.
In El Salvador, there were two armies during the armed conflict: the national army and a Guerrilla Army. During that time, the Guerrilla Army was created with the goal of uniting with the people to conquer power.
In 1989 it launched a final offensive, "To the Top." In this offensive it believed that the people would come along with the Guerrilla Army, but it it didn't happen like that. The people left us, and that brought us to negotiate an end to the conflict without having achieved the conquest of power.
The Guerrilla Army was formed in practice and we achieved a preparation much better than the national army which counted on the support of the US for advice and weapons. Military training and organization are important for destroying capitalism, for which an armed and disciplined army are necessary. The Communist Army should be integrated with the working class with a communist education. Commanders won't have privileges, just the capacity to lead when it's required to defend the interests of the working class.

—Comrades in El Salvador

El Salvador: Permanent Dispute between ARENA and the fmln?

In El Salvador, as in many other countries, voting has served for practically nothing. Twenty years after the war ended, votes serve to promote identities and fears, not to solve problems.
We live in a permanent dispute between the false left and a recalcitrant right in which neither acts nor allows others to act. This dispute paralyzes and ruins our class and must not be allowed to continue.
The basic rule of this dispute is, "The worse the government gets, the better for the opposition and the worse the opposition, the better for the government." This leaves no place for a rational, serious debate to solve problems. In the end no matter who governs, both ARENA and the fmln sabotage themselves; and the Salvadoran workers end up paying the consequences. Problems are not being solved through elections. Insecurity grows; gangs gain power, and unemployment multiplies.
Expatriate Salvadorans supply the most flourishing business for the "G20," as the eight richest families in the country are called. The money from expatriate remittances ends up in a few hands and is taken out of the country. The fight between ARENA and the fmln is the most effective tool to maintain control of the country. The polarization has given ARENA and the fmln full control of the national politics, but the main beneficiaries have been the G20 because this quarrel has allowed them to take full control of the economy and to appropriate remittance money. This money, instead of bringing improvements to the country, has been converted into commercial centers and luxury hotels in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and even Miami. Just one G20 family made an investment of $250 million in the Dominican Republic and others became partners with the multi-millionaire Mitt Romney, ex-US Presidential candidate of the Republican Party. ARENA-fmln, a relationship of love and convenience ARENA and the fmln are the parties born for one to be the negation of the other. The problem is that now, in the peace, they have learned to live politically by being in permanent conflict and in a perverse relationship of love and hate in which they win and the working class loses.
A Communist Force is Indispensable Elections do not produce benefits to the people out of the kindness, good intentions, or ideologies of the politicians. The ARENA-fmln polarity favors ARENA and the G20 because the fmln continues to be the party with the antisystem rhetoric. ANEP-FUSADES-ARENA know that if the fmln is the only option, the electoral results are predictable and they could rule another twenty years. The oligarchs of the G20 want a democracy with an ornamental opposition; they want a left that is poor, barefoot and in the street. What is at play is not just one more government, but the opportunity to begin a restructuring of economic and political power. This is the first positive effect of the presence of a communist alternative.
Given that the ARENA-fmln bipartisanship has failed, a political system for the working class is indispensable. The comrades organized in ICWP are building a new vision of the liberation of the working class in the organization and struggle for a political system which generates a full life, whose priority will be the improvement in life for all. This is possible only by fighting for communist ideas.

--A comrade in El Salvador

Red Flag responds: Thank you for your letter. But we disagree with you. Both ARENA and the fmln represent the interests of different sections of the capitalist class. They could never represent the interests of the working class. They are not the negation of each other. Their negation would be a mass revolutionary communist party, the ICWP, fighting to overthrow all the capitalists and build communism. Even if the ARENA and fmln were able to cooperate with each other, it would be to attack the working class even more and to perpetuate the existence of capitalism. As the letter correctly points out, only communist ideas and a communist revolution represent workers' interests.

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