FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
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SOUTH AFRICA—We had a casual but very interesting meeting today. We also welcomed a new comrade who eagerly accepted our line and showed tremendous appetite to join our party. We reflected on a meeting we had with Transnet workers on the Port Elizabeth harbour. (See R.F., V. 5 #15) We saw that labour brokers were at the center of the miseries of workers but we also saw that capitalist system is the main cause. We will keep in touch with these workers and keep track of developments on a weekly basis. We have plans to recruit them to be members of ICWP with a view of forming another cell.
Fortunately, we have copies of the whole series of Communist Dialectics. We will make photocopies for everyone. We plan to start with the first lesson in two weeks’ time. We will meet again next week and also make sure that all comrades are available and ready to start. Our recruitment drive continues with the distribution of the Red Flag to various companies like General Motors. We also learnt that GM is threatening workers with retrenchments (layoffs) to make them submissive and not to strike. This threat comes after the four-week strike by more than 220,000 metalworkers in the metals and engineering sector. GM was one of the auto companies most affected by the engineering sector strike. Workers are open to our ideas; we want to reach out to workers using the Red Flag and GM is our target.
We are experiencing very cold and rainy weather over this weekend, but that did not dampen our spirits. Comrades attended the meeting in big numbers. Everyone was excited to hear about the upcoming visit by a comrade as well as a proposed conference to be held later in South Africa. Comrades were already zooming in on venues to be used, like schools in the area and community halls, they were having a field day. One comrade volunteered to write minutes of the meetings to keep track of things to do. We also emphasized the importance of expanding the network of the Red Flag readers as well as targeting workers at GM, Ford, VW, Continental Tyres, Bridgestone, Firestone, etcetera. We will be meeting again next week on Sunday. Come one, come all.
EL SALVADOR—“The distributions of Red Flag and leaflets outside the factory have already started to give results, comrades!” a worker leader told us with great revolutionary excitement. “That some workers from the factory have already started to contact us means a great advance for our ICWP,” he continued.
This week the workers organized in the International Communist Workers’ Party had a meeting with a worker leader to mainly discuss the responses of the men and women workers in the factories where we have massively distributed Red Flag.
“There are two co-workers in the factories who took the newspaper and contacted me to find out more about our communist line and what is ICWP. One of them asked me if we were some party that participates in elections, because if we were he was not interested. I explained that we were a communist party fighting for worldwide revolution and that our ideology was that we men and women workers should never again be exploited,” he continued telling us.
“Oh, if it’s like that, then we want to be in the meetings that you have and we will organize in the Party,” these workers ended up saying.
This report by a comrade leader of the workers’ cell excited all the other participants in this meeting.
As the next point on the agenda and after hearing about the response of the working class, it was raised that we need to spread communist ideas massively in all these factories, by passing out leaflets that reflect the internal struggles in each factory. We need to publicly expose the bosses’ fascism, and explain how we members of the working class are organizing ourselves and fighting to exterminate the capitalists and their servants.
As a final point, and given the advance that ICWP is having among the workers of various factories in the Salvadoran capital, we decided to have a party collective that supports communist ideas at each meeting that we have, and that these meetings be carried out once a month, together with other members of the International Communist Workers’ Party of the whole country. We decided to make an effort to add other comrades from neighboring countries. Everyone agreed to carry out this idea and to conclude every year with a communist school. It was also agreed that if possible a member of the international leadership of the party participate actively in this end-of-the-year meeting.
With the efforts of each member of ICWP, communist ideology is growing and showing that only by fighting for worldwide communist revolution will the working class be coming out stronger. The struggle continues…from El Salvador to South Africa, from Los Angeles to India, from Mexico to Brazil.
LOS ANGELES, CA—At Los Angeles MTA, one afternoon last week, close to the end of my shift, I started talking to two mechanics on the night shift. One of them said in a joking tone to the other, “Look at that guy” (referring to me) “he’s a socialist like you.” The other mechanic is from a country that used to be part of the socialist republics of the USSR.
He continued, saying that socialism would never win because people are selfish and that capitalism is about the best system that could exist.
When he finished, I clarified that I am not a socialist, but a communist. I said that the facts of history show that during the great revolutions, thousands and millions of workers, solders, farmers, students, etc., have united. If today there is no communist country it’s not because people didn’t unite to fight for a new society, but rather because the old communist parties believed that to get to communism it was necessary to go through the stage of socialism.
After the victory of the revolution, with power in their hands, the communists, instead of directly installing a communist society, opted for the socialist road, which left the capitalist system in place, with some reforms, but its roots intact. The proletariat is now uniting again. This time we won’t settle for half measures, because communism will be installed immediately after the seizure of power.
The worker that had made those comments tried to give credibility to his arguments, while the other one told him, referring to me, “Listen to what he’s saying. He knows what he’s talking about.”
“No,” said the first worker, “capitalism won’t disappear.”
“Look,” I answered, “all the societies that came before capitalism disappeared because social development can’t stand still. Just like capitalism replaced feudalism, in due time it will be replaced by communism. Dialectical philosophy has proved that everything that is born develops and dies. And capitalism, as a system, is dying on a world-wide scale.
“Listen, listen,” the ex-socialist mechanic told him. “I believe what you say,” he told me, “ but I’m going to join you when I see more people.”
The comments of the first mechanic are not those of a reactionary, but of a worker who is trying to overcome the mistrust that he still feels because of the defeats of previous revolutions. This mechanic is a careful reader of Red Flag and always contributes economically for the paper. I’m sure that one day soon he will expand the ranks of our party. Patience and urgency will make the difference so that these two mechanics join our party very soon.
The conversation ended here because the whistle announced the end of the shift. They had to go to work and I had to go home.
