LETTERS, CRITICISM AND SUGGESTIONS
No to Elections! Join ICWP! Fight for Communism!
The past two conferences in Central America and the USA have been great experiences for the collective in South Africa. They have encouraged us to be more determined and active in contributing to the growth of ICWP to be a mass movement to mobilize millions of working-class brothers and sisters to a communist revolution.
After hearing about the work and progress of the party, we are encouraged by the working class from the rest of the world joining the struggle for communism and joining the mass party ICWP.
With elections around the corner here in South Africa, again we are seeing the show about to intensify. The Capitalist political parties are campaigning for votes. They are going to the working class, telling them they are their hopes and that the working class should trust in them to deliver the necessities of life. They claim they take care and will take care of the working class’s needs while also claiming that workers must exercise their power by voting for them.
If that was the case our needs would be taken care by now. In fact, power is with the working class and the masses, not their votes. Elections are the illusion given as fake democracy and freedom in capitalist societies.
The horror faced by the working class is not as a result of a particular government or particular political party. It is the result of a particular class, the Capitalist ruling class, which dictates and exploits the working class and the rest of the masses. This exploitation is facilitated and administered by the different governments or political elites within artificial borders they call nations that are used to divide and conquer the working class and keep it from uniting.
The crisis of capitalism and the capitalist imperialist rivalry continue to produce exploitation and horrible living conditions and death for the working class. We mobilize our brothers and sisters to join the struggle for communist revolution to smash capitalism and start building communism, to smash borders and build a world where the working class produces for their needs.
It does not matter which political party is at the helm. Their goal is to exploit us for profits. They have killed the working class brothers like the Marikana mine workers the minute they demand even for reform.
The courage of the mine workers to fight and die for their needs showed us the will and the need to accelerate the destruction of capitalism and fight directly for communism.
The reluctance of the working class to participate in the elections shows us they need a revolutionary change that will produce a society and a system that will be based on the needs of the working class. We invite our sisters and brothers who see communism as the only solution that can free us from this exploitation to join the mass party ICWP and play a leadership role in capitalism’s destruction.
—Comrades in South Africa
A Mountain of Cheese
“While Americans consumed nearly 37 pounds per capita in 2017, it was not enough to reduce the country’s 1.4 billion-pound cheese surplus. The glut, which at 900,000 cubic yards is the largest in U.S. history, means that there is enough cheese sitting in cold storage to wrap around the U.S. Capitol.” – National Public Radio (NPR)
This amounts to about 20 pounds of cheese for every child in the USA.
NPR blames the fickle tastes of consumers:
“Suppliers turn that extra milk into cheese because it is less perishable and stays fresh for longer periods. But Americans are turning their noses up at those processed cheese slices and string cheese — varieties that are a main driver of the U.S. cheese market — in favor of more refined options.”
NPR conveniently forgets that millions of hungry poor people (in the US alone) can’t afford to turn their noses up at anything edible. But if they want a piece of the cheese mountain, they have to pay!
In communism, nothing would stop hungry people from starting to chew through the mountain. Because food would be distributed freely, not sold.
The real cause of the cheese mountain is capitalist overproduction. But NPR’s sources see the only problem as low prices: “If you’ve got too much of something, the price has to go down until consumption rises,” Cornell University Professor Andrew Novakovic says.
“Too much” … too much to sell, not too much to feed hungry people.
The capitalist solution to overproduction is not to give food away. That would undercut the market. Instead, cut back production:
“The price of letting pounds of cheese sit idle in cold storage comes back to dairy farmers. Since the 1970s, the industry has consolidated but now even those [larger] farms can’t compete. In Wisconsin alone, hundreds of farms closed in 2018.
“A lot of farmers would say, ‘Well, make it stop.’ But the fact of the matter is we’re still pushing out a little bit more milk than we know what to do with,” Novakovic says.
We workers know what to do with that milk. Let hungry kids drink it!
Hunger under capitalism is not caused by food shortages. Workers already produce plenty of food. We could easily produce plenty more – say, by reopening hundreds of closed dairy farms.
Hunger is about labor discipline. It functions to keep workers in their lousy jobs by threatening them with hunger. Even more effective, capitalism threatens to make their kids go hungry. And to make the threat believable, it has to be carried out sometimes. So hungry kids are vital to making capitalism (and workers) work.
In communism there will be no hungry kids. And no need for terroristic labor discipline because workers will eagerly work for a system that takes care of them and doesn’t lock up mountains of food.
—Angry comrade
Love Life, Love the Struggle for Communism
In the recent international meeting of ICWP, I shared in the political development of several comrades, from the newest to the most veteran in the class struggle. It was fascinating to listen to the comrades, as well as those who nodded or shook their heads, expressing their feelings.
However, I was struck by some questions that were not answered and I returned home with them. These revolved around how will education be in the communist society? How are we educating ourselves now? What kind of communism are we? These could be very general and we could downplay them in our class struggle, but I didn’t stop thinking about them.
These questions are also part of a love for defending life. It means having confidence in what we do, “feeling” what we do, loving the struggle.
I shared this with a friend of the Party. She commented that she usually sees the people of the “left” as sad, angry with life, or cold. She sees that I am not like that, because of all the negative events that we have shared.
This is what another comrade in Mexico says: “Why wait until communism? Let’s make communism our way of life starting now.” This means transmitting life, not in a mechanical way, but in a conscious and dialectical way.
Many negative things exist in capitalist society and we are fighting for this system to come to an end. Each comrade, each member with their commitments that do not imply tolerance, comfort, competence, minimum demands, etc.
I believe that each comrade must be motivated to read, to develop skills, to expand their limits, to leave their comfort zone. They should not wait for another to tell them what they should or must do. This must arise from that need to educate ourselves as human beings.
It is true that communism is developing and we are developing it with our practice, theory and practice, practice and theory. We are directly responsible for our political advances. We are our Party.
I know that we should not be embarrassed or insecure when talking and expounding the ideas. This is normal up to a point, but we should talk about it. Only then can we unite and transmit trust.
We want quantity and quality and we need a communist society where money does not classify us or indicate how much we are worth and where each worker can find complete development as a human being. This makes them stay to fight with us in a conscious way for our emancipation. Join our struggle.
—A Comrade from Mexico
LOS ANGELES, USA–Hundreds of marchers at the Women’s March here gladly took over 700 copies of our pamphlet “The Communist Fight Against Sexism.” Many multi-racial groups of young people stopped to talk and take copies of the pamphlet and Red Flag. Others took pictures of our communist signs. “I came here to learn. This is what I want. Thank you,” said one young woman marcher. Many who took the communist pamphlet were impressed when we said it was written internationally for the fight to eliminate sexism and build a communist world without racism and sexism. (See pamphlet here)
