LETTERS, CRITICISM AND SUGGESTIONS
Letter to a Comrade in El Salvador
We read your letter and we liked what you had to say about communism and how you helped the little girl that needed to use the restroom. We both think it is good to give your ideas to other people because it opens their minds so that they can think differently. It’s really good that you explained communism to your co-worker. Communism can serve and benefit everyone because all of us will be able to make the best things that we may need and share them.
We have studied a little about surplus value and we believe that the workers deserve the full value of what they produce. But if this was the case, we would not have any bosses. The bosses steal the money from the workers and they pay the workers a little. This is the way the bosses increase their capital.
In the Communist Manifesto, it says “there are two enemy camps, in two great antagonistic classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletarian.” The working class is the proletarians and the bosses are the bourgeoisie and there is a constant battle going on until the working class defeats the capitalist class.
You remind us of one of our mothers because she used to work very hard like you do. We are glad you’re doing something good for working people.
After reading your letter and getting to know a little about surplus value and the Communist Manifesto both of us are strongly considering joining the ICWP and being part of the movement.
With respect and love,
—Two 10th-grade high school students in Los Angeles, USA.
Need Multiracial Communist Fightback Against State Terror
The birthday of a member of the Oakland, California-based Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality provided the backdrop for a fun Saturday afternoon in Antioch, California this July. What made the Saturday afternoon event so powerful was the spirit of solidarity that one could feel between the participants.
The birthday celebrant, who is white, was himself a victim of police brutality by Antioch Police. The Oscar Grant committee defended this person with an activist campaign. Many of the participants of the picnic were also white, but Oscar Grant was Black.
Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old African-American man, was fatally shot in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day 2009 by BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California. Grant was unarmed and murdered, shot in the back while lying on the metro platform under police custody. The BART cop was later found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and served one year in prison before being released.
The victims of police terror are primarily working class and are of many different ethnicities. Police terror can be successfully organized against as a struggle against state terror, with the goal of communist revolution. Solidarity must be on a class basis.
The picnic demonstrated the possibility that communist revolutionary unity can occur on a multi-ethnic basis in the United States. We must celebrate this unity and share its success to all far and wide.
—Comrade in California, USA
TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS, August 6—Thousands take the streets to call for the resignation of President Hernández in the light of new corruption allegations and the ongoing fight against privatization of schools and medical services.
Learning and Working
Thanks to the South African autoworker comrade who wrote about how the bosses use his “apprenticeship” program to super-exploit him.
My college just got a grant to expand apprenticeship programs. This fits with the statewide “Guided Pathways” policy that is supposed to get students through college and into jobs faster. Students aren’t supposed to “waste time” studying things they “won’t need” on the job.
Talking about this with co-workers, I have noticed several contradictions.
First, most people go to college largely to get a job, or a better job. The sooner (and cheaper) the better. Job-oriented programs are appealing.
But these jobs only exist for some boss to exploit them. Capitalists decide what students will or won’t “need.” They define this as narrowly as possible. In extreme cases, students may only learn enough to do one specific job for one specific company (say, Apple or Cisco).
The bosses used to pay new workers for on-the-job training. Now, future workers must pay for their own training. Sometimes with loans that take decades to repay. Also, workers’ taxes pay for their training at public colleges.
The main contradiction comes from the class struggle. The “jobs” students need for short-term survival are not (as many think) their ticket to “the good life.” The more people who are trained, the more competition there is. Wages go down.
And the capitalists must find ways to automate these jobs, to cheapen production and stay competitive. Then workers have to go back to school for yet more training.
We can resolve this contradiction only by fighting for communism – eliminating social classes and capitalist relations of production. In communism everybody will learn many skills – mainly while doing many types of work. We’ll organize production to meet everyone’s needs. Sharing will replace buying and selling. Meaningful work will replace exploitative jobs.
More students should do like our comrade in South Africa: join an apprenticeship or another training program to get a job where they can organize co-workers for communism.
Some criticize “school to work” programs by correctly noting that what employers “need” for workers to know is not the same as what workers actually need to know to defend their class interests on the job and in the political sphere. But here’s another contradiction. They defend a “liberal education” that itself has never taught students what they actually need to know. Capitalist schooling will never teach us what we need to destroy capitalism and build communism!
We must teach ourselves and each other. As Brecht advised workers in his poem “In Praise of Learning:” “You must know everything! /You must take over the leadership!”
We learn to do communist work “on the job.” We learn how to do it better with the collective study of communist philosophy.
As we build communist society, many of us will learn much more about the natural world and how it works. We will learn from books and discussion, reading and writing, as well as in production. The study of history, literature, the arts and more will help us understand how to build a communist world.
I have raised these ideas with co-workers and students. We chat in the hallways, we meet on committees, we stick together against the attacks of administrators and politicians. About a dozen co-workers read Red Flag. We are making plans to spread these ideas further.
—California (USA) teacher
Are we really free?
We cannot run away from the fact that we are still enslaved. The capitalist society is ruling the working class, the students along with the minors…how so?
First of all, the working class is “brainwashed” by the bosses: Making them believe that without them they wouldn’t survive in this world. Making them work long hours, threatening the workers, etc. But if you really look at it, it’s actually the bosses that need the workers the most because without them they can’t make sales. Hence when the workers go on strike for a raise or whatever reason, they threaten to fire and hire someone else. They make the working class believe that they are the ones that need the jobs more than them, when its actually the other way around.
Secondly, there’s the students. Students can’t get a “better education” without paying huge amounts of money, leaving them indebted and depressed. And once they find work, they earn a small amount of money that won’t cover the school debts. They end up being the bosses’ slave, bowing down for everything the boss says. Where’s the freedom?
Thirdly, the minors are taught from a very young age that money is everything, education is the key to success. They are not teaching them the struggle they have to go through all for money.
Where is this freedom? What are we really free from?
Just take a moment and imagine how simple life would be without capital. Where everyone would be in the collective, where everyone’s opinion matters, no sexism, no one superior than the other. International Communist Workers’ Party is here to make that change and that change is possible with your input and support.
Let’s unite and fight the struggle for better living…Aluta continua!
—Comrade in South Africa
Sing in One Voice for Communism
The capitalist society is ruling and ruining the world. Many years ago, the youth of South Africa fought for free education, equal rights and freedom. But as the youth of today, are we really free? Do we have equal rights? Is there freedom?
No. Instead we are suffering even more.
We are money slaves. We believe that without money we haven’t “made it in life.” In order to get better education, we have to pay hard cash for it. Why is that?
When working we all know men and women don’t earn the same salary even though they are doing the same work and working same hours (sexism).
We are not free of wage slavery. But as the youth of today we are in debt. We work hard and long hours to pay our debts. We pay too much varsity fees. Some take loans, paying thousands of school fees, but end up earning R4000+ as a monthly salary…is that fair? No.
We end up being depressed, some dropping out of school, overworking ourselves because we are forever indebted.
Can you imagine how precious life would be without money? Yes! That’s where communism comes in. Anything and everything is possible if we all unite and sing in one voice. It may seem impossible to live a life without money but it is 100% possible. Capitalist society has ruined everyone. It is time for that to change and we need each and everyone to be a part of the change.
—New mom in South Africa
Learning Dialectical Materialism Helps Us Do Better and Overcome Weaknesses, Doubts, Obstacles
The collective, for the past three weeks or so, has been studying dialectical materialism, the communist philosophy of knowledge and change. New comrades are learning from old comrades who have a bit of experience on dialectics. The process is not one-way. Also, comrades with experience are learning and expanding their knowledge as a result of this collective studying.
This communist knowledge has been helpful and somehow illuminating for the new comrades. We studied the laws of dialectics: The Unity and Struggle of Opposites, Negation of Negation and Quantity into Quality. Having analysed these laws and their importance in our revolutionary struggle towards communism, it has helped to clarify and answer some doubts which some new comrades had about the movement.
For example, one comrade thought at first that we were too passive, not urgent enough when we were holding meetings, distributing the Red Flag and having collective discussions with fellow workers, friends etc. She thought what the collective was doing was not useful.
She changed her mind after having understood how quantity can change into quality (the growth of the party). And how meetings and discussions can help us resolve our internal contradictions, which in turn strengthens the party. She said, “Now I see where mobilising the masses comes from and how the party can grow from distributing the Red Flag and having discussions and meetings to critically discuss our weaknesses”.
We are putting the knowledge we have gained from this into practice. We are realising the dialectical relation between reading and writing. Since we have been reading and discussing certain articles (especially page 2) as a collective (while encouraging our friends to read the whole paper not only in the meetings but as individuals), more comrades have started to write more for the paper. They are putting the party’s line at the forefront of their writing.
We are studying dialectics not just to know about dialectical materialism but also to improve on the theories through the experience of our struggle. We see the need to change this crisis-infested capitalism, which brings about exploitation and misery to the working class from India, USA, Brazil, South Africa etc.
In South Africa, the latest stats show millions losing jobs, unemployment at all-time high, job cuts from every sector. Growing and mobilising masses to the party has never been more urgent. We are committed to expanding exponentially from the moderate growth of the collectives.
—Comrades in South Africa
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