Red Flag Letters

LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICAN COMRADES

Communist Revolution Will Smash Racism against Aboriginal People

In Australia, until the 1960s, Aborigines came under the ‘Flora & Fauna Act’, which classified them as animals, not human beings. A horrific picture of a group of Aborigines chained and kept like animals shows how dehumanizing racism is.
In response to this picture that was circulated on the Internet, a comrade in South Africa wrote these comments:
Who owns banks, private properties, profitable organisations, multinational companies?
Who makes laws? Who commands soldiers? Who came up with a police state system, etc.???
Who endorses wage slavery, racism, tribalism, xenophobia etc.?
ANSWER: CAPITALISM – way to make profit out of divisions.
What is the solution? My answer is COMMUNIST REVOLUTION WORLD WIDE.
I repeat: COMMUNIST REVOLUTION WORLD WIDE!
That’s what made me join International Communist Workers’ Party. I read Red Flag every day and mobilise the working class to join our communist classes to empower the great knowledge of true communism, not revisionism.
RED SALUTE, COMRADES! ALUTA CONTINUA!

South Africa: Soldiers Reading Red Flag

One of our comrades was relating a story to me about how he came about distributing the Red Flag to the soldiers, only to learn that these soldiers were already in possession of the RF. What I suspect must be happening is that we have a soldier who is receiving the RF. He must surely be the one who is distributing them amongst the soldiers. These enthusiastic soldiers, who were eager to meet with us, unfortunately had to go away for three months’ training.
Again there is a comrade I recruited sometime last year. I recently bumped into him. He urgently wants us to meet; he has keen interest into our party. Soon we will be meeting with this comrade and others.
It was very comforting to receive greetings from comrades as far away as Spain. It has also emboldened us to continue with our resolve to build the party on our shores. I also want to reassure our comrades in Spain that our thoughts are with them as well. Viva ICWP Viva!!!

Need to Expand Strategies of Mobilising Masses for Communism

Good day to all the ICWP Comrades and Red Flag readers from all over the world from El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras to Spain.
It’s been so long since I have written an article in the Red Flag and participated in the struggle to mobilise the Masses for communism due to some personal reasons and internal contradictions about which I am fully aware and know result from this capitalist system.
Me personally I felt like we as some members of ICWP are not working essentially, dedicated and committed enough to mobilise for communism and we lack the right way, the correct tools to utilize when holding meetings.
Capitalism is a brutal system and I feel like we are babysitting it and treating it softly on our side and we are moving very slowly or we are not fully committed. Due to these reasons I took a step back and told myself I will be active again when I see commitment amongst all of us comrades.
Also the other problem we had is that we have mobilized a lot of comrades but it’s impossible to gather them because we are in
different areas far from each other. We need to mobilize masses with a driven force because capitalism is driven by force as well.
I told my fellow comrade I will attend meetings again when we do things the proper way. My fault was not to overcome these contradictions but to avoid them, which was not how dialectical materialism taught me, but due to furious anger I had toward these problems I have mentioned I just avoided the whole thing, which was wrong.
So to all the comrades of ICWP, if we want to destroy capitalism, let’s be dialectical in all our approaches when fighting capitalism.
The working class is fed up, society, and the community are fed up with how things are. They also see how brutal capitalism is and honestly speaking the working class doesn’t even know the word capitalism, what it means and what this brutal system is called. But they know we are being exploited and treated brutally and inhumanly. People are suffering, poverty is at its peak, unemployment rate is very high, retrenchment rate is very high, and employment agencies have taken over our labour all over the world.
We need to be more committed to mobilise for communism, we need to expand our strategies of mobilising masses for communism urgently.

Exciting Developments in South Africa

Greetings, comrades.
When I got to B’s place, I got to meet his wife for the first time. I introduced myself and our party ICWP and our intention to use their home as a venue for our conference in November. She welcomed the idea enthusiastically.
I was taken aback when she told me that she has been distributing the Red Flag to her workplace already. So I was the only one who was a stranger, not the Red Flag. Their small boys are doing their bit by distributing the Red Flag to the neighbourhood, I couldn’t believe this, and the small boy told me the story by himself.
Teachers at the nearby school are Red Flag readers, all because of the efforts of this wonderful family. The good stories shared by this family were really uplifting, I went home feeling upbeat.
I also would like to share some interesting developments around our contacts with soldiers. I couldn’t hide my excitement. Soldiers at a nearby command are reading the Red Flag. We have plans to meet with them.
We will also be starting with our classes on dialectical materialism with those comrades we recruited at an Economic Freedom Fighters rally on May Day. These were the comrades who sang the Internationale in Xhosa.

>I think that Red Flag made a mistake in the article on FIFA in v. 6 #9. One sentence says that football (soccer) “invites people of all body sizes to play and excel.” Now it’s true that many people enjoy football. Players can be short or tall. Even professional players can be heavier or lighter than average. However, even the “fattest football players of all time” have not been morbidly obese. Many workers are too frail or too overweight to excel in the game. Further, the sentence seems to imply (though it doesn’t actually say) that it’s a game for everyone. That’s not true for many with mobility issues who, for example, use walkers or canes or wheelchairs to get around.
Too often people with physical challenges like these are treated as though they are invisible. Our promise as communists is to value every-one’s contribution. We must make it clear that this specifically includes those with different abilities. That must start now, including guaranteeing accessibility to events we organize and avoiding language that seems to marginalize anyone.
--Reader

>Under capitalism, there is no “fair wage.” There cannot be “good” working conditions, no “adequate” medical care, no “decent” housing or education, much less respect and consideration for the men and women workers!
Capitalist wage slavery dehumanizes us. It pits us against each other in competition. Our historic task is not to demand useless reforms. It’s not to make exploitation more palatable. It is to abolish wage slavery!
For example, the majority of farmworkers in the San Quintín Valley in Baja California, Mexico or in the San Joaquin Valley in California, USA, are indigenous Zapotecos, Mixtecos, Triques, Popolucas, Seris or Yaquis, etc, from Oaxaca, Guerrero, and from Sinaloa, Mexico.
We are super-exploited, and racially discriminated against, but we have the great potential to provide crucial leadership to mobilize the masses for communism. Because only communist revolution will put an end to this racist wage slavery.
In a communist society, we will integrate the city and the fields, because we will produce food as well as industrial products. We will work in the areas of health care, construction, etc. We will plant and harvest the healthiest products in a healthy environment.
We will use machines whenever possible, but to make the work easier, not to “fire people,” but to give us time to study or travel or play or participate in an endless number of many, many new social activities.
Starting right now, we need communist solidarity not only inside our organization ICWP, but with those workers who have mobilized their strike and with the teachers of section XXII of the teachers’ union of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero and Michoacán, etc. With their massive public marches and their work stoppages they are exposing the racist capitalist system both in Mexico as well as the US, exposing their corruption and exploitation as the root of all our woes, sufferings and deprivations!
Together and coordinated, we must mobilize ourselves for a new world where we produce only to meet the needs of our international worker social class, not for the profits of a minority of racist capitalist murderous bosses! United and organized we will bring down this wage slavery! Let’s unite! Let’s unite!
--Comrade in the East of the US

While I admire “Red Soldier’s” work in the armed forces I think his/her front page Red Flag article went seriously astray. The article calls the masses “clueless.” Worse, it calls his fellow soldiers “clueless” and the masses “even more clueless.”
To borrow a phrase, I think “the masses are clueless” is not a communist principle.
Why, according to the article, are the masses clueless? Because they don’t believe a US/China war is imminent.
If that’s clueless, then count me in, because I don’t believe it either. The main reason is that I don’t yet see the kind of frantic war preparations that led up to WWII.
Adam Tooze in his book The Wages of Destruction described how in 1933 Germany gave up trying to compete economically with its rivals. Instead, they started spending every spare pfennig on armaments and training. Neither the US nor China is doing anything like this.
The real problem with the article, however, is that it doesn’t talk about communism, or the party, or winning soldiers to communism, or recruiting them to the party. This is the whole reason that communists join the armed forces! Not to shake the masses out of their supposed cluelessness.
If you think about why workers join the army you find plenty of grounds for winning them to communism and the ICWP. For a start, many join because of (racist) unemployment. Under communism, everyone works, in the (red) army or out. And everyone will be given the opportunity to learn advanced skills.
Many join for the benefits (like healthcare) for them and their families. Under communism, everybody’s needs – healthcare, but also food and housing – will be taken care of free of charge (there will be no money).
Many join under the mistaken impression that the forces are free of racism. However it is no mistake to expect that communist revolution will deal a fatal blow to racism. And under communism, we will eventually exterminate racism for good.
Finally, it’s true that some join because they’re willing to fight to make the world better. Great – there’s no better way to fight than in the Red Army that the ICWP will eventually build.
The real struggle is to convince soldiers that communism is achievable. After all, it sounds too good to be true!
It can be done, but there is no shortcut. Trying to shake them up with horror stories of coming massive destruction, real or imagined, will not work.
--A Comrade

Red Flag comments: We agree that the word “clueless” was a mistake. Instead, the English should have used the same phrase as in Spanish: “the masses don’t realize…”
However, the young soldier who wrote the original article nowhere used the word “imminent” to describe world war. It actually said that “there is no way of knowing for sure when World War III is going to happen.”
We should struggle with our comrades to sharpen their understanding, seeing it as a dialectical process of constant change and appreciate their commitment for the fight for communism

>I was introduced to Red Flag three years ago. The first time I worked with the Party I didn’t know much about communism. In fact, I thought it was bad.
But when I started to understand what communism was I began to wonder, “Maybe this is good for me because communism doesn’t look down on the working class like the capitalists do.”
Capitalism wants us to be slaves to the bosses so they can increase their profits and get more power and control worldwide.
Capitalism robs workers. The capitalists pay minimum wages to workers like me. And we have to work extra-long hours. Actually, we are the ones that produce everything and we should get all the value of what we collectively make.
Capitalism also uses media to deceive us into believing that our economy is doing very well. The bosses are doing well because we workers are doing badly. It makes me want to fight capitalism harder.
For that reason I have joined the Party. With our paper Red Flag we are going to fight for every worker’s benefit, all around the world. We won’t overproduce like the capitalists must, leading to depressions and war. Under communism we’ll organize together to produce according to the need of people. We are going to prepare our children by giving them the best education, an education dedicated to the wellness of all people.
--Seattle construction worker in the ICWP

“We become ourselves through others” versus “Think for yourself. Act for others”
“Take care of yourself... Look after yourself... Think for yourself.”

Phrases like that don’t crop up in a language by accident. One way or another they reflect dominant social or political struggles of the times. These particular expressions usually reinforce one of the main planks of capitalist culture: individualism.
The communist movement is full of counter expressions. Vygotsky’s insight that “We become ourselves through others” suggests how liberating a communist society could be.
Imagine a world where each of us was conscious of the value of others in our own make-up. Of course, communists set out to act like that now but the dominant capitalist culture keeps running interference on us. It will be the mark of success for our revolution when such a collective understanding becomes a mass phenomenon.
If the intent of the “Think for yourself, Act for others” was to encourage fuller participation in collective discussions, that’s good. However, the wording encourages us to think one thing but do another. That’s no different than the way capitalism operates. Perhaps if we tweak the wording we can get a slogan closer to the intent of the argument. How about “Think and act with others?”
This short exchange is useful because the revolution we are working for will not just sweep away the old world of political and economic relations but the very culture of capitalism too. Even our everyday language will change, both making and reflecting a shift in our emotional makeup.
Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win.
--Comrade in Bay Area (US)

FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!

International Communist Workers Party

Letters to Red Flag

	FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party


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