FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
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February 1-- The “leftist” Greek government of Alexis Tsipras is the bosses’ latest attempt to calm the masses by posing as their defenders against the austerity plan imposed by the German-led euro zone. Yet in an e-mail to the Bloomberg news agency, Tsipras assured Greece’s creditors that he would not default or make unilateral demands, and would do nothing to jeopardize the country’s euro zone membership. The new Greek government is weighing its options. It has condemned US sanctions on Russia, and is flirting with a Russian bail-out. At the same time, it is threatening to block China’s bid to privatize the huge port of Piraeus—but is unlikely to do so. All of this shows the dangerous instability of sharpening interimperialist rivalry amidst a worldwide capitalist crisis.
It’s all about money for the bosses but for Greek workers and even middle class people it’s life or death. Despite massive demonstrations, strikes, and rebellions hundreds of thousands have been laid off.  A third of the population has lost their health insurance. The rest face a system in shambles.  A quarter of the population reports going hungry at least once last year. No matter what happens, the result will be more misery for Greek workers.
Money: what will we communists do about money? Easy:  we’ll abolish it immediately when we take power, along with all other symbolic forms of so-called “wealth”: stocks, bonds, debts, bank accounts (along with the banks) and cash. And with money goes the wage system, where workers work for pay that they need to get food, clothing, shelter, healthcare etc. In communism these things will be shared according to everyone’s need.
This is not a new idea –ever since Marx communists realized money would eventually disappear. August Bebel, a left-wing German socialist, wrote (over a hundred years ago) a prescient book called Woman and Socialism which has a few chapters on the future socialist/communist society (he doesn’t distinguish clearly). On money he says:

       “If there will be no [commodities i.e. goods produced for sale] in the new society, there will ultimately be no money, either. Money appears to be the counterpart of commodities, but is a commodity itself. .... the new society will not produce commodities, it will produce goods
       “ ... By abolition of the wage system, the exploitation of man-by-man, deception and fraud, adulteration of food, speculation, etc., will be eradicated. The halls of the Temples of Mammon will be empty, for stocks, bonds, promissory notes, mortgages, etc., will have become waste-paper.”

How will we organize the free and fair distribution of the products of labor? The masses will have to work out the details when the time comes, but it will likely involve communal social units like factories, schools, hospitals and housing collectives. Workers will decide what is needed, how to get it and how to share it out. For example, in all these places there could be canteens where people can eat (for free, of course). Bebel was adamant that what he called the “communist kitchen” would go a long way to liberating women from domestic slavery.
Imagine how much freer of worries our lives would be. No bills, no debts, no car or health insurance, no fees or taxes or fines. No one will fear going hungry, the cost of getting old or sick, or losing their job, because they will be taken care of: “to each according to their needs.”
The end of the wage system will end sexist and racist pay differentials and lay the basis for eliminating racism and sexism. There will be no unemployment because no money will be saved by preventing anyone from working. No longer will our youth suffer imposed idleness.
None of these will happen spontaneously. Years of intense struggle will follow the seizure of power to “work out the details.” Four hundred years of capitalist training will not vanish (even from the working class) overnight.
In addition, we will have to fight for communist collective production, while battling the imperialists’ many attempts to undermine our society ideologically and destroy it militarily. But at least then, without capitalist institutional baggage (like money) we can look forward to eventual victory.
Both the Soviet and Chinese communists eliminated money for a while under war communism and the supply system. But they brought back money and wages as soon as their civil wars were over, supposedly because the workers weren’t ready for communism.
We won’t make the same mistake. Money and the wage system are curses on the working class; communism will put an end to these curses.

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