FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
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LOS ANGELES — “Things are not too good at the factory,” said an E & C Fashion garment worker.  “Last week I only worked two days. Many haven’t been working at all.”
“Is it true that the boss might close the factory?”
“Yes, there’s not enough work.”
“Even though they pay you so little, the Diesel brand pants that you make are expensive. With capitalism in crisis, fewer people can afford to buy them now.”
“True, but there’s not enough work to go around because there are too many people in the world. That’s why there aren’t enough jobs, and there’s so much poverty.”
This garment worker raises a question many workers have. They are affected by the bosses’ propaganda that there are “too many people.”  What is the real cause of the current crisis?

Capitalism, not overpopulation, creates mass racist unemployment, poverty and hunger.
Many garment factories in LA have laid off workers who are willing and able to produce clothes that workers need and lack. Meanwhile garment production is expanding in places like Bangladesh, where workers get an average of $37 a month, the lowest wages in the world.
The problem is capitalism. A few capitalists have plenty of everything. They control and sell all the useful things our labor power produces—for their profits.  They force us to be their wage-slaves so we can buy from them some of the food, clothing and shelter that we ourselves make.
Each boss competes to maximize profit.  Each tries to drive down wages and produce for the whole market. Workers produce more things than they can afford to buy. Workers at E & C Fashion can’t afford the pants they produce.
This creates a crisis of overproduction, the result of capitalist production for profit, not for workers’ needs. Factories that can’t undersell the competition go out of business, laying off workers, black and latino first, creating mass racist unemployment.
Internationally, the global crisis of overproduction drives imperialists inexorably to war, destroying “excess capacity” and the lives of tens of millions workers (or more).

There are not too many people. There are more people than the bosses can employ profitably.
Successful capitalists buy machines that force one worker to produce what three or four workers once did. Fewer workers produce more for lower wages. The productive labor power of masses of workers lies idle while billions go hungry and homeless.
The bosses, fearing workers’ potential to organize revolution, spread the racist lie that there are “too many workers.”  Seeking to justify their bloody wars, they want us to believe that mass murder would get rid of “excess” population.

Communism: many hands make light work
In China, before the 1949 revolution, many people starved even when crops were good.  Just a few years later, workers and peasants collectively produced enough for everyone.  They started reorganizing society so that no one would go hungry while others ate their fill.
The masses mobilized to stop diseases. Death rates declined; life expectancy rose.  Confident that they and their children would thrive, people began having fewer babies.
But the revolution installed socialism, not communism.  It did not eliminate money and wages. So the social gains were reversed as China became the leading capitalist-imperialist country it is today.
However, these gains point the way forward. Eliminating deadly capitalism will allow all workers’ labor power to collectively produce enough so that everyone has what they need.  Everyone will contribute their labor to plan, produce, problem-solve, and fight to advance our society. 
In communism, there will be plenty of socially useful work to go around, and plenty of time to build stronger social relationships and develop our full humanity.   We won’t compete with each other to be wage slaves.  Our labor power won’t be a commodity.  Instead, it will give life to us all.

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