On This Page:
Note to readers ♦ Need More Red Flags ♦ Class Struggle in the Time of Coronavirus ♦ Wants More ICWP Literature ♦ It’s Really Time to Try Communism ♦ How to Share Articles from this Issue ♦
NOTE TO READERS: This is a special edition of Red Flag. It’s focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and communist responses to it around the world. It is coming out only electronically (in several formats). The next print issue (Vol. 11 #4) will appear next week, on schedule. It will include much of this material, updated as needed. Please stay as safe and healthy as you can under the unhealthy and fascist conditions imposed on us by capitalism-imperialism! At the same time, please do whatever you can to spread this communist analysis and to build the International Communist Workers’ Party far and wide.
Need More Red Flags
So far, I am also safe. I ran out of Red Flags. It is very difficult to work without them and mostly I am concentrating on the youth. There is a high school close to my home. Those young people are interested and they want to form an active group on Facebook. Some of them want to learn dialectics on Facebook and I was using old Red Flags.
—Janitor Comrade in South Africa
Class Struggle in the Time of Coronavirus
By March 22, coronavirus had killed two people in Colombia. A rebellion in an overcrowded prison claimed the lives of over twenty-three in the capital city, Bogota. Prisoners, mostly working-class poor, fought the military. A mass attempt to break out spread to 83 prisons across the country.
There is widespread fear. Stores are running out of supplies. Hospitals are without any credible equipment to deal with the possible explosion in the number of coronavirus-related cases.
Bogota, one of the largest cities in Latin America, has the most day-laborers. Many live in factory zones where the population density is over 55,000 people per square mile.
To add to the panic and chaos, the right-wing president asked people to pray. This caused many elderly poor to rush to church, further aggravating the crisis.
It is a matter of days before we see food riots.
In recent years, tens of thousands of young people started working for Rappi. Rappi is an online order-delivery service like Uber. It delivers everything from food to documents. Any morning you can see lines of young people in front of the fast food chains and other restaurants for delivery orders. They are all out of work. The tourism industry has collapsed. Tens of thousands of trade work done by electricians, plumbers, carpenters, clerks are gone.
Even before many start dying of coronavirus, poor children are starving, causing lifelong health problems. The government free-lunch program for schools fed hundreds of thousands of working-class children. Now the schools are closed and hunger has overtaken their daily existence.
The real mass attack on the working class has started in the form of job loss, eviction notices and empty shelves in the supermarket.
Last year there were massive demonstrations against the economic crisis that has affected our lives. University and high school students started street protests, and they were soon joined by the working class.
The government called in the army then, and now they are mobilizing troops in anticipation of massive protests. These soldiers come from very poor rural families.
It’s absolutely right that we need to organize soldiers, workers and students to overthrow capitalism that cannot even provide basic necessities. Colombia is one of the richest countries in the world in natural resources but we are constantly starving.
Indeed, we need communism. I and my friends read Red Flag with renewed interest.
—A comrade in Bogota, Colombia
Germany: Neighbors sing “Bella Ciao” in solidarity with quarantines Italian masses
Wants More ICWP Literature
Note: The following comments were written to a comrade in the US after a discussion about our fight for communism as the capitalist crisis deepens with the spread of coronavirus:
My grandfather was a nationalist freedom fighter and a respected teacher. He lived up to Gandhi’s ideals as best he could. My father, on the contrary, was a fervid Marxist. Both my grandfather and father suffered jail terms. I grew up in a thoroughly Marxist atmosphere at home and outside.
It is really heartening that you have still remained young at heart and can dream of a better world and fight for it.
Simply incredible! To remain a communist in the citadel of capitalism! I too am a diehard socialist. My dad was a communist and went to jail several times.
Can you send me please more literature of ICWP?
—Friend in India
Why It’s Really Time to Try Communism
The COVID-19 pandemic has very quickly changed the way we are living in the United States. Millions of us have been asked to remain at home. The more fortunate among them will still be receiving a paycheck. The lowest- paid workers, many in service industry jobs, are facing the loss of income. Many are unable to buy food, medicine, gas, or to pay bills. This new and uncharted territory will either bring the best out in each of us, or it will reveal our worst flaws. The sad truth is that most huge corporations are most concerned with their bottom line: raking in profits.
As someone who believes that Communism is the way forward, I am watching the many ways that the capitalist system leaves the working class out of their equations. The concern with extracting wealth from human beings, without addressing their basic needs, is what points to the evil built into the capitalist society. As an older single person, I have been contacted by my adult children, at least four siblings, and my comrades. I am very fortunate to have a support system, where people are concerned about my health and wellbeing. Communism would be a support system for everyone.
As a believer that communism holds the answer to the problems of modern society, I am seeing the many ways that the capitalist system dooms so many to misery, even death. For example, take the case of a sick person with few options to access medical care. A communist state-run system that would guarantee that every person would have access to medical attention, would have a healthier population. The existence of records to follow a person from birth to death would also contribute to a healthy society.
Most of all, in a society where goods and services were guaranteed, as a human right, sick persons could focus on making a full recovery. They would not have the stress of worrying how soon they might return to work. I am trying to do my part to work for a communist society.
—Comrade in Los Angeles County, USA
Colombia – Prisoners rebel after COVID-19 kills more than thirty in Bogota’s Modelo prison.
OTHER RESOURCES ON THE WEBSITE ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS AND THE FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM:
Article: Capitalism is Deadlier Than Any Virus
Articles about the Coronavirus from Iran, a health worker in Texas (USA), and Boeing Aerospace workers: here
Covid Emergency Leaflet:
here
Covid Emergency Leaflet in Spanish, Italian, French, German and Russian here
How to Share Articles from this Issue
To share a specific article on a multi-article page in this special edition: go to the correct page and select your article from the black links at the top of the page. Click the black link and when the page moves to the article, copy the link from your browser’s address field (at top of your page) and paste it into Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit or whatever. If you want to share a whole page, use the buttons at the bottom of each page. Please distribute widely.
Front page of this issue