FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
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“Is the California drought real?” asked a Red Flag reader.  “My daughter says we’re all going to become refugees like the 1930s Dust Bowl refugees.” 
The capitalists lie so much that it’s hard to believe anything they tell us.  But there really is a drought.  If anything, it’s more serious than we’re being told.
The mountain snow packs were at about 10% of the old normal in 2009 when the current drought began.  Now they are close to 0%.  California’s main source of surface water has run dry.
More underground water, therefore, is pumped from the aquifers. But when aquifers are emptied, they collapse.  Even an end to the drought won’t refill them. 
Incredibly, California has not stopped Nestle and Starbucks from mining this water.  They bottle and sell in places that are not affected by drought!

The anarchy and insanity of capitalist production know no bounds.
Capitalists’ needs to maximize profits are called “rights” and protected by law and armed force.  Workers’ needs – like a steady supply of clean water – are not. 
Technical solutions to social problems are only developed and used if they are profitable – or if they are in the “national” (imperialists’) interest.

Communism, and only communism, can meet the needs of the masses. 
The world we fight to win has been severely damaged by centuries of capitalism’s institutional greed and imperialist war.  We will build a new world by unleashing the creativity and collectivity of the working class to surmount every obstacle. 
In a recent study group, four people – none engineers! – tossed around ideas for using solar energy to power desalinization plants.  Then a comrade said, “In communism we would mobilize mass meetings where workers could come up with many more ideas to manage drought or other problems.  And then they would try them out in practice.”
And if an area becomes truly uninhabitable (due to drought, rising oceans or nuclear war) communism will help everyone resettle.  They will be welcomed and their talents put to good use.  Relocation wouldn’t be a social disaster like the 1930s Dust Bowl refugees in the US or the drought refugees in east Africa in 2011.
“Climate change should be called climate deregulation,” commented a friend.  “Nature developed a lot of mechanisms to stabilize climate, like coastal rain forests, and capitalism is killing them all off.” 
The effects go beyond “warming.”  We’re also seeing more extreme weather events, like recent torrential rains in Texas and the heat wave that killed thousands in impoverished villages across India. 

Capitalism can’t handle the consequences. 
Some Gulf States and Israel are “solving” water problems with energy-intensive desalinization plants.  But Palestinians in the West Bank don’t get the water they need, and over 90% of the water in occupied Gaza is contaminated.  
The California governor is asking Californians to “pull together and save water.”   But super-exploited gardeners who tend luxuriously landscaped Beverly Hills mansions are not highly motivated to take shorter showers when they arrive home in South-Central LA.  
Four elite economists and psychologists explained (New York Times, 5/15/15) that traditional capitalist motivators – “changing the material cost” – won’t work to change people’s behavior. 
What works, they say, is “leveraging social concerns.”  But according to them, that means appealing to personal pride: wanting others to admire you or fearing public shaming. Capitalist economics and psychology, rooted in capitalist social relations of production, are mired in individualism.
Communist social relations are the opposite.  “We will create community, solidarity, feelings of identity among people,” said a friend who thinks about this a lot. 
Communism does not separate “academic experts” from workers.  It does not separate our understanding of production (economics) from our understanding of the producers (psychology).  Communist political economy does not separate production from power. 

Communism is rooted in collectivity. 
On a very deep level, this is what it means to be fully human.
Neuroscience has begun to identify feedback loops in the brain in which social behaviors (mothering a child, acting in solidarity) stimulate pleasure circuits.  That, in turn, generates cravings to engage in more social behavior.  “Capitalism is built on destroying that, making us think and act selfishly or from fear,” explained the same friend.
Communism is built on “thinking for yourself but acting for others” and not out of fear.  If this is how you want to live and who you want to be, join the International Communist Workers’ Party!

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