Red Flag Letters

The other day in my township there was a strike of parents, workers and students. They struck against the shortage of textbooks and teachers and the lack of proper sanitation in the schools. And then a thought struck me that these are the consequences of a capitalist education. These are the same people who teach learners, who limit the learners’ ability to think and to be able to do things for themselves, and their ability to cooperate with one another.
And then the thought struck me that in a communist education all these things, these shortages of textbooks, this lack of cooperation between learners and teachers and between learners themselves will be a distant memory. Under a communist education, no learner will be limited to learning some few subjects. A learner will learn as much as possible so that she or he can actually realize his true potential.
What I’ve noticed is that under a capitalist education, they seem to limit a learner’s imagination and ability. They don’t tend to push the boundaries, to push the learner to learn as much as possible, to go as far as she or he actually could. So under a communist education those boundaries which capitalist education has set trying to imprison the learner’s mind, will be pushed. So that’s why we should strive for a communist education, not a capitalist education.
So me and my friends were talking about the strike. I didn’t know why people were striking so they told me that sometimes there are 50 students in one class. So then you find there’s a lack of concentration by the learners, between the learners and the teacher. The teacher’s message doesn’t get across in the classroom. So when the learner doesn’t understand, the teacher doesn’t care about that learner; they simply move on to the next topic. That got me thinking about capitalist education. The learners are too dependant on the teacher and the message the teachers teach.
In a communist education, it will be much easier for other learners to explain to each other. If someone understands something better than another, we encourage learners to help one another so that they can move forward together, so they can learn at the same rate. At the same time, that strengthens now the bond between learners so that one doesn’t see himself as clever than another, but they help each other. Capitalist education fails to address those issues.
We’re not made exactly the same. Some learn faster and some slower than others, but it doesn’t make them more or less clever. They are the same. So it’s those problems that communist education can address and eliminate the stigma. When a learner is slow at grasping something, if they have more questions, now they become afraid of asking questions because they don’t want to appear dumb. A capitalist education doesn’t make a good foundation for learners to realize their true potential.
--Comrade in South Africa

Thanks for the document about the refugee problems. We live in Qatar in a very difficult situation. I know many people who have died in accidents in construction work. Many people are being injured; there are workers with no legs, no hand. It is sad to see this pain. We are not refugees but we come from many countries. We have no families here; the contractors keep our passports and we work like slaves many long hours and we sleep like prisoners.
Many people live in a small room. My room has 16 people and we have to sleep at different times because there is not enough space. All my friends come here from different countries because of war and no jobs. I have very little money so internet is very costly for me, but thanks for sending me your paper Red Flag.
As you know, many of my friends are from Syria. They don’t speak English so I showed them this document you gave me about the refugees. I translated it for them in Arabic. They say to me the situation in Syria is very bad, worse than for refugee people in Europe.
The situation is very bad in Qatar. We die there and we die here. We have no bombs
falling on us in Qatar, no war, but we feel we live in war. Everybody likes the idea of communism. We will make everything very nice if we don’t have people who kill us for money. I will give this document to many people here. I hope to see you one day.
--Comrade in Qatar

Seattle Teachers Strike for the First Time Since 1985

The Seattle Teachers’ strike is the result of the contradictions and self-destruction of capitalist education. However, it is also a window of opportunity to bring communist ideas to education workers, students and their families.
I retired from Seattle schools last year, but I have been on the picket line of the elementary school in my neighborhood. I also volunteered to let strikers use my bathroom. This has given me an opportunity to talk to a lot of people every day and give them our literature, including the new leaflet on the refugee crisis. We also distributed 200 plus of the ICWP pamphlet on communist education at the strike sanction vote, along with Red Flag.
Many of the teachers on strike are people I have worked with in the past, but too often my conversations with them focused on how rotten the district was, not on what we needed to do to change the world!
For example, I had a conversation with one young teacher over the dinning room table. He had already got the communist education pamphlet and Red Flag at the sanction vote the week before. We got to talking about our favorite TV shows. He told me that he liked one particular show because it exposed corruption in the criminal justice system. He remarked that it reminded him of similar corruption in the school system. In fact, most of the people I’ve talked to since the strike started have told me that the system is broken, and no amount of money is ever going to fix it!

He said he agreed with the part in ICWP literature that said as long as money and profit control the system of education it cannot succeed for our students or the teachers.
Clearly, these workers want to know “What can we do about it?” I tell them I believe that we need to mobilize millions of workers to establish a true communist world, where the working class has power… not the banks, or corporations. Only then will we be able to deliver a free and useful education to all workers and their families. As they stop and think for a few seconds, you can almost hear the door to opportunity open.
Of course, some think that we are dreamers. But we must see ourselves as planners. After war and revolution, we cannot go backwards to capitalism like the old communist movement did. Every day we hear from people all over the world who want to get active. Every day we learn about some incredible struggle going on, even in our own back yard! We have answers, lets get out there and circulate!
--Red Retiree in Seattle
Flash: A settlement has been announced. The strike is over, but the fight against racist capitalist education continues. More next issue.

We must recruit friends and co-workers to help circulate the global refugee crisis leaflet. Our communist answer to the crisis must get a wider audience not only because of what is happening today, but also because of what the capitalists have in store in the near future. I am doing my part.
Capitalist Germany will not solve the problems of Syrian refugees. In the current crisis, poor Syrians and other war victims who can’t afford to flee are left behind. At the best, they will spend the next 20 years in refugee camps in dire conditions. (Flash: Germany just closed its borders.)
Conditions are dreadful in Gaza. The E.E.C. regularly demands an improvement for the Palestinians there, without effect. Same with the Romas (‘gypsies’) (with a Special High Commission in the E.E.C. and unused funds) who are relentlessly persecuted in every country of Europe. They have to live literally on garbage dumps and recently a French mayor refused to bury a Rom baby in the local cemetery. And what about the migrants in Calais? More barbed wire fences.
Merkel took advantage of the situation to solve a looming German problem, lack of workers. Capitalism will use the skills of some refugees and discard the rest. For example, 6000 Syrian doctors work in French hospitals while NGOs struggle with insufficient resources to help displaced Syrian people. With their wars, sanctions, and health cuts (Greece) capitalism has caused the death of untold many children all over the world. Workers have nothing to expect from them.
The recent events have a very positive side. They show that - contrary to what the ruling class kept saying before they jumped on the Merkel bandwagon - most workers are not racist, anti-immigrant, or ready to join the fascist parties of Europe. On the contrary, all over Europe, people showed extraordinary compassion, solidarity and resourcefulness. Workers don’t need the bosses to solve their problems. Let’s build on this tremendous display of solidarity to fight for communism, which will truly strive to eradicate all this misery.
Workers have no nation.
--A Comrade

This is a small paragraph taken from a letter written by a Red Flag reader in the health sector to the head of his union.
“We hereby send a cordial greeting and at the same time solicit your support and guidance in resolving the conflict and labor harassment that has arisen on the part of the managers, clinic supervisors, and mainly by the doctors in charge of emergency services on the morning, evening and night shifts and the shifts accumulated at the hospital in general.”
Continuing with the list of demands, he mentions their complaints and suggestions, and ends with the following: “We ask for your valuable intervention to satisfactorily solve the above mentioned conflict which has turned into threats by the clinical supervisors mentioned above, whom we have addressed properly, with respect, and commitment to our assigned work area.”
My friend, a reader of this paper, gave it to me and asked my opinion about what it said. I responded that no doubt as workers we need to express our disagreements. However we must not fall into the capitalist illusion of reforms. Let’s not forget that reforms improve capitalism; revolution destroys it. The only thing that we workers need is to destroy the capitalist bosses and their whole governing system through building only one party, the International Communist Workers’ Party.
Working conditions will not improve under capitalism. And even if it appears that we have very “militant” union leaders, we cannot forget that they only serve the bosses’ interests, not the workers’ interests. They make us think that they are with the workers but beneath the surface, they sell the workers out. They are not our friends.
In spite of the fact that they are our class brothers and sisters, the union leaders are won to defend the bosses’ interests. Many workers do not believe in unions and are isolated from the struggle and others who think that they should fight for improvements at work join the union.
Workers of the world, let’s not fall into the bosses’ trap. As Communists we should never send a list of demands to the bosses or union leaders or be friendly with them. The bosses do not hesitate to kill us and to exploit our labor power. In Communist society, we will all work for everyone. “To each according to need, from each according to commitment” will be our slogan. Join the struggle for revolution not reform.
--Young Comrade from Mexico

Some 22 years before the Chinese communists seized state power Mao argued, “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture . . . A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”
The problem with the article “Confront Opportunities” (Red Flag v. 6 #15) is that it undermines historical materialism and the brutal nature of class rule.
The article explains, “ Abundance will be a boon, not an attack, because it will mean that we can satisfy everyone’s needs. It will mean that we can work less, and slower, and more safely, and with less damage to the environment.
“We can use the extra time to enhance our educational, political and cultural life. For in-stance, workers could use the extra time to organize revolutionary support for others still under the yoke of capitalism like the recently striking Potosi (Bolivia) miners.”
This paints a picture that communism is going to fall from the sky. It understates the fact that repeated crises of over production will lead to world war.
Sharpening contradictions among imperialists are already causing proxy wars. Institutions like the World Bank and IMF (created by dropping nuclear bombs to serve US imperialism), the role of the US dollar as a reserve
currency etc., are becoming obstacles to rising Chinese capital. Many such contradictions can only be resolved by world war.
On the other hand, we have 7 billion opportunities! From the mines of Marikana and Potosi, to Ferguson and Ayotzinapa, the message is the same. The expansion of capitalism in last 50 years has created the biggest working class in history. So no matter when we seize power, it will inspire workers around the world to fight for communism.
Seizing state power will be a bloody affair and certainly defending it will be even more bloody. We will be fighting among ruined and ravaged cities, nuclear devastation. It will not be the way the editorial describes “less work, work slower, have extra time, abundance”. Quite the opposite.
First and foremost, communism is the negation of capitalism. Our revolution will unleash new forces of production. The shift from
working for private profits to working for the good of community will liberate us in ways it’s hard for us to detail. But first we will have to defeat capitalism.
Our fundamental task at this time is to prepare the masses for violent communist revolution. If we understand and struggle against the obstacles, we will be able to take advantage of the overwhelming opportunities to smash capitalism once and for all. As Marx put it, “The prehistory of human societies ends with this formation (communism).”
--Comrades

The article “Confront Opportunities” (Red Flag v. 6 #15) correctly states that communist revolutionaries have good reason to be optimistic. I think it’s unfortunate, therefore, that its conclusion seems so pessimistic.
The article says that the opportunities to advance communism that surround us “really are overwhelming us.” It gives examples of how our Party work has fallen short. But it gives no examples where we have started to take advantage of opportunities, even in a limited way.
On the plus side, the box was helpful. It showed how to move conversations from “what’s wrong with capitalism” to “what’s right with communism.” But the box still didn’t illustrate how we can do what the article said we should.
Fortunately, other articles and letters do provide examples. The South Africa comrades made the connection between the Potosi miners’ struggle and the experiences of miners there. We can see how that will help them build the Party.
We shouldn’t be pessimistic or feel overwhelmed. We have already begun to make limited efforts to “open up new arenas of struggle.” We don’t all agree on what tactics are consistent with our political line of mobilizing the masses for communism, so there’s a lot to discuss.
Let’s talk and write more about the work we’re doing. That way we’ll learn how to do it better and differently and more.

Having worked, and lived in a capitalist racist society, I saw and learned that we the people must fight for a Communist society. The killing of people by the police is only another way of this capitalist society showing their fear.
Yes, fear. They are afraid that we will all get together--that they will have a mass that they can’t control. Division is one way of keeping the people apart. “Oh yes, let them believe they are different.” This must be stopped. We are all human.
What are they afraid of? Are they afraid of the people and the struggle they bring to the table when they are united for freedom? Are they afraid of a world of communism? Of every-one heading in the same direction with the same cause - a team, all team players? Yes.
Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech, I believe, was talking about a communist society/world, the people united as one, moving and supporting each other for the same cause. That cause is Communism.
When I read the Red Flag articles about lead found in the environment in El Salvador, the so-called suicide of Sandy Bland in Texas, and when I read about Vester Flanagan shooting two reporters in Virginia and then his suicide— it just serves to show us the results of people being abused and the bosses saying “we found no evidence of wrong-doing” by their murderous cops or system.
Flanagan was a newscaster who was fired two years ago. He felt he had been discriminated against because he was a gay black man. The news station said “we had to get rid of him” and the rest of the media repeated it. This, after he was dead, when he could no longer give his side of the story. In incident after incident, they assassinate people’s character after they assassinate the person.
There must be a revolution for a communist world for our world will change. Let’s keep supporting The Red Flag Army towards a Revolution.
--New California Comrade

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International Communist Workers Party

Letters to Red Flag

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	International Communist Workers Party


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