FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
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Marx identified capital as “private property in the products of other men’s labour” that only exists “by virtue of positive law.”  Capitalist laws establish it as “the governing power over labour and its products.”  That is, money is a social relation of production. 
When you start your work week, you need money for housing, food and transportation.  But you won’t get paid until later.  So you use a credit card (if you have one).  Or you hit up family or friends (“I’ll pay you back when I get my check”).  No wonder we’re always behind on our bills!
Capitalists need credit, too.  A garment boss needs to buy fabric and other materials before any clothes are made or sold, although workers won’t get paid until later.  And he or she can’t pay for materials or other expenses in clothes. 

Communism Eliminates Money
In capitalism, Marx explained, money is what brings labor power and the means of production together.  However, “in the case of socialized production, the money-capital is eliminated.  Society distributes labour-power and the means of production to the different branches of production.”
When we say we’ll immediately eliminate money we mean currency but also all forms of credit, “work-points,” “time-banks,”   Bitcoins or whatever. We won’t exchange stuff.  We’ll share it with whoever needs it, anywhere.
We’ll plan production collectively using our best assessment of needs.  Computers will make that easier than Marx could have imagined!  We won’t always get it right, but we won’t need money to sort things out.
“Hey, our garment workshop is running out of denim cloth.  And the comrades who were flooded out in the storm really need new jeans.” 
“We’ll do what we can, but we’re short on labor here in the textile mill.  Can a few of you come over to help?” 
We’ll need to keep track of the materials and labor we use.  But, unlike Soviet or Chinese socialism, communist production won’t try to “balance” income and outgo or try to come out “ahead.” 
The key to making society work without money is communist labor:  in Lenin’s words, “labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed not as a definite duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to fixed quotas, but voluntary labour … performed without expectation of reward … because it has become a habit to work for the common good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good.”
Lenin’s Bolshevik Party did not explain all this to urban or rural workers in a mass way as it organized for revolution.  So very few workers had the idea or habit of communist labor.  The Soviets decided they’d have to compromise by maintaining material incentives for labor. 
“It will take many years, decades, to create a new labour discipline, new forms of social ties between people, and new forms and methods of drawing people into labour,” Lenin argued.  “By overthrowing the bourgeoisie and suppressing its resistance, we have been able to win the ground on which this work has become possible.”
The Soviets tried to manage production with minimal use of currency.  But workers still needed money to survive.  Enterprises needed credit, and therefore a banking system. 
Money was still the lifeblood of society.  And money was still capital:  the accumulation of surplus value, although in the hands of the state. 
Lenin celebrated the Subbotniks who worked an extra day as a voluntary contribution to society.  But socialism actually created the ground on which widespread development of communist labor was impossible.

Let’s Begin Now to Develop Communist Labor Habits
Today the International Communist Workers’ Party tries to explain how communism can work.  But the conditions of wage slavery in our daily lives train us in capitalist habits of individualism, competition, racism and sexism. 
How can we begin to develop communist labor habits now to prepare masses to lead in the construction of communist society after we seize power through revolution? 
Capitalist crisis has already pushed many of us to the margins.  We survive only by pooling resources and sharing what little we have.  We must take advantage of these conditions to develop what Lenin called a “conscious realisation of the necessity of working for the common good.”  Our South African comrades are leading the way in this.
Others join volunteer efforts like helping to build houses or aiding refugees (as we’re seeing in Europe).  These, too, are opportunities to develop mass consciousness of the need and possibility of communism.
But the main way to develop habits of communist labor is by collectively and voluntarily doing the communist work of our Party.  That’s how we begin to create – in Lenin’s words — the new “labour discipline, social ties, and forms and methods of drawing people into labour.”  
And that’s why we need you to join the Party.

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