FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!International Communist Workers Party |
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LOS ANGELES, January 5— Kaiser Permanente’s 2,600 California mental health clinicians represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) will launch a statewide strike on Monday, January 12. More than 700 other Kaiser workers will join the picket lines, including Northern California optical workers and Southern California medical social workers, speech pathologists, audiologists, health educators, and registered dietitians.
NUHW’s press release states that clinicians are protesting Kaiser’s chronic failure to provide its members with timely, quality services. Kaiser added 422,000 new members (patients) nationwide during the first nine months of 2014, many as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Staffing levels, which were already too low, have not kept pace. Withholding services while increasing membership is an effective way to score record profits, but it has led to woefully inadequate patient care.
This is an example of how capitalism hurts workers. Capitalists make profits by selling something people need/want for more than it costs them to pay for workers to produce it. They pay us a small fraction of what we produce, then work hard to divide us to pay us even less.
This is life under capitalism. The workers never really win when we fight to reform this system. We continue as wage slaves. We don’t work; we don’t have money, which under this system is essential to our livelihoods.
What if we turned this strike into a political strike for a system that actually worked for us? A communist system where we no longer worked for wages, but instead we worked according to our commitment and love for each other.
We could produce abundance, as we do today. However, we would all share this abundance rather than have it be hoarded by a wealthy few or go to waste because it was not “sold.” We could use time off to contribute to creating something better.
Is it possible to work for no pay? Sure it is! We do this daily as we care for our children, our elderly, and communities when we volunteer.
Is it possible to eliminate problems rampant under capitalism such as addictions, homelessness, unemployment, prison overcrowding, etc.? Sure it is! These problems are created by the capitalist system. They cannot be eliminated under capitalism because they are symptoms of a system that does not work for humanity.
After China’s communist-led revolution in 1949, addiction to opium, morphine and heroin were eliminated in three years! After over 20 years of almost no drug addiction, the problem in China started to re-emerge in the late 1970s after old-style capitalism returned.
If we rid ourselves of capitalism and create a communist society, then social workers would no longer be gatekeepers to services or used for social control. All workers would identify community problems and work together to resolve them. We would all share the responsibility of ensuring our communities worked and that our world worked!
We would not work for individual gain or individual companies, but rather for us to live as one. These ideas have been around for hundreds of years despite years of anti-communist propaganda. We CAN have a different and better world. We can have the Kaiser strike be different from one more reform struggle! Spread this vision by distributing Red Flag and joining ICWP.
MEXICO, January 6— Mass rebellions continue in response to the disappearance and probable murder of 43 students (normalistas) in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero on September 26.
The government, in turn, has strengthened its repressive apparatus. It has sent more troops to Guerrero and Michoacán supposedly to “fight crime.” In Michoacán crime actually increased after the government disbanded the “self-defense” groups.
The rulers’ concern, like the US rulers’ concern about Ferguson, is how to contain the workers’ indignation against exploitation and racist oppression. The Mexican president, Peña Nieto, referred to the need to overcome poverty in the southern states when presenting his ten measures to confront the situation in November.
But it is clear that capitalism will not do that. Even the bourgeois news analysts admit that those ten steps do not resolve the situation. Abductions and disappearances continue, along with payment for bribes and extortions. Mexico ranks second worldwide in human trafficking.
Capitalism itself is theft everywhere. Its profits come from exploiting workers. The capitalists fight among themselves internationally for profit, for markets and sources of raw materials. They expand their factories, mines and wells, leading to overproduction (as is happening now with global oil production) and cyclical crises.
Within each country, capitalists also fight like dogs for the wealth and profits. The money involved in the drug trade is enormous, so many want it. Banks get it and put it into circulation, investing in factories, commerce, and services. And in every country, the fight will ultimately be with bullets and workers the main ones who die.
It appears that the fight among the capitalists in Mexico and the US is sharpening. One Mexican faction has taken advantage of information leaked by the Wall Street Journal to attack Peña Nieto. This information concerned houses bought for his wife and his Finance Minister Luis Videgaray from the real estate company Higa, which is linked to the China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC). Peña Nieto had to cancel CRCC’s concession to build the high-speed train to Querétaro.
After this, Peña Nieto went to China and got a $10 billion loan for Pemex. Now he’s in the US. Mexico is caught in the middle of intensifying inter-imperialist rivalry.
Mexican capitalists are angry with the Peña Nieto government. Business executives are demanding a reduction of new taxes that affect them. The business magazine Expansión recently wrote that individual businessmen don’t want to reveal their stories about kidnappings and extortion. However, their associations like the Business Coordinating Council are demanding better protection against crime.
Their whole capitalist system is a crime against the working class. It is the legal extraction of the wealth and value produced by the workers. It has reached the point where the murderous bosses steal entire companies from each other. This happens in Russia, Africa and South America.
Capitalist competition is behind the fight for markets between China and the US, a fight that will lead to world war. The only thing that will stop it is a workers’ communist revolution against this society based on production for sale and profit. That is what ICWP is working toward. We urge the angry masses demonstrating against the murder of the normalistas and all the crimes of capitalism to join us!