The Choice Today here From Bihar to Isfahan here
The Choice Today
October 25— “In response to nuclear devastation, masses will turn to producing food collectively without money and share it based on need. It will be communism,” said a comrade.
“People lived like that before. They grew food and shared it with neighbors. No money exchanged hands. It was a better way of life,” answered a friend.
“If any imperialists use nuclear weapons, the masses across the world will rise up and demand an end to deadly capitalism. They will fight for communist revolution,” said another comrade.
“Even bombing Iran with a ‘tactical’ nuclear weapon won’t get the US control of Iran without a massive force of ground troops. You can’t take over a country from the air. The US rulers would face rebellions among those troops. So would other rulers,” said another friend.
A “tactical” nuclear weapon could kill everyone within a 50-mile radius and spread radioactive toxins in the atmosphere farther. The rulers use the term “tactical” to hide the truth, to trick us into passivity. They are planning mass racist murder.
The possibilities of ending the US-Iran war through diplomacy are practically zero. Iran is part of the China-Russia bloc challenging a declining US imperialism for world domination. This, however, will require a redivision of the world, which will require war on a global scale.
The 20th century saw two such world wars. The victors of World War II – the Soviet Union and US imperialism – carved up the world’s territories at the 1945 Yalta Conference. The US became the world’s dominant imperialist power.
Now China has risen as US and Western imperialists’ main rival. This rivalry is fueling an expanding World War III. China aims for a new redivision of the world, dominated by itself.
History shows that no dominant imperial power ever steps down without a fight. Rising powers have more maneuverability. But they don’t give up without a fight either.
War then becomes these imperialists’ only option. The question facing them, and declining US imperialism most urgently, is what kind of war: a conventional one or a “tactical” nuclear one?
A US conventional invasion of Iran would require one or two million soldiers. That force would take six months or more to assemble. The US rulers are trying to get allies to fight for them. There is no place they can assemble such a force outside the range of Iranian missiles and drones.
Iran has a large, mountainous territory and huge armed forces. Even if a US-led force were assembled, defeating Iran on the ground (if possible) would take months, perhaps years. Supplying such a campaign would be almost impossible.
Then is US imperialists’ only option to use “tactical” nuclear weapons in Iran? They are now discussing this openly. Trump and Netanyahu threaten Iran. If neither Iran nor the US backs down, those threats could become a reality.
The rulers can’t make war without the workers’ compliance. An important lesson of the US loss in Vietnam was that many soldiers refused to continue killing and dying for US imperialism.
Russian soldiers in World War I didn’t just resist. They deserted the front to join the fight for revolution in Russia. Workers and soldiers are the ultimate and decisive weapons.
War is the deadly logic of a system based on competition for maximum profits. Capitalists compete and fight for workers’ labor power, natural resources and market share. Our labor power – bought by the capitalists for a wage - is the capitalists’ most important commodity.
To end wage-slavery and genocidal wars, we must destroy capitalism and its wage system. We must abolish money with a communist revolution. As free workers, we will produce only to satisfy the masses’ needs.
Then we’ll share the world: without borders or nations, without the racism and sexism created by the exploiters to divide us. Without money. No more imperialists’ wars to redivide the world!
Masses won’t spontaneously fight for communism. This requires a mass communist party that mobilizes the international working class for communism.
Today that means spreading communist ideas by distributing Red Flag, organizing communist class struggle, and recruiting millions – especially soldiers, industrial workers, youth, and students – to the International Communist Workers’ Party.
From Bihar to Isfahan: Hope for a Communist Future
Friends in Isfahan could not stop looking at the photos in Red Flag, from Bihar (India) and Arab and Jewish residents in Tel Aviv. It sends a powerful message that contrasts with the patriotic songs we hear commemorating the butcher of Tehran. One shows hope for a future with communism without borders, oppression. The other is desperately trying to revive the old, crumbling capitalism by clinging to fascism and wars against our class.
The women comrades’ story inspires us. We follow their struggle in New Delhi. The conditions are the same in Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, Mashhad, and every town and city in Iran. Mass unemployment, abject poverty. Meanwhile, in both New Delhi and Tehran, a few super-wealthy people have built exclusive malls, five-star hotels, gated palatial condos, and super-expensive restaurants.
Joblessness is so dire that fake employment agencies funded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are requiring unemployed women to post revealing photos along with their CVs. They screen these women for jobs as prostitutes in the Gulf countries, Istanbul, Russia, and Central Asia.
My father, the family’s only breadwinner, saw his monthly wages fall from $104 to $36. After US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared an economic war on Iran, the oil refineries are working at 20% capacity. Wages are falling like a brick. Ordinary items are unreachable to the masses. Iran has plenty of gas, so malls, supermarkets, small shops, restaurants, and coffee shops are brightly lit. But you hardly see a customer. It looks like a ghost city.
I went to the market with my father. Prices had already risen since the previous day, so we chose only the essentials. My father could see from my expression that we could not afford everything in our basket. We had to put back the sugar, oil, and toothpaste, reducing the total from $5.46 to $3.20. Even then, he had to charge it on a credit card whose interest rises daily.
We watch on TV, the President Pezeshkian and the foreign minister Araghchi going all around the world in their private airplanes, making deals with imperialist countries, the Oil Monarchs.
How can the Iranian workers, soldiers, the masses in general on starvation wages, wave the flag of Iran? But that is the reality. The Islamist ideology has a certain grip on the masses. But as in the New Delhi protests, this ideology is paper-thin.
The masses are hungry. The Iranian flag is not going to feed them. Actually, it is going to kill them.
I am reading the ideas of ICWP more deeply. While I agree with it, I am still learning. The stories in Red Flag, are very inspiring. I am sure they inspire people everywhere.
I have concluded that the Iranian masses, during the uprising that overthrew the pro-imperialist Shah in 1979, overthrew one tyrant with another, with the Islamist ideology draped in nationalist capitalism. It is time to end the rule of all the tyrants.
My next letter will have greetings from other like-minded people in my city.
—Reader in Iran
Read Soldiers, Sailors, Marines: Crucial to a Communist Workers’ Revolution here
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