SEATTLE (USA), September 14 – A comrade’s neighbor recently asked him how he could justify working for a huge capitalist corporation (as he also does). The comrade replied: “That is where the workers are that we need for a revolution. Many of these workers are young and come from many areas of the world.”
The neighbor identified an important contradiction. The comrade identified the way to resolve it. This shows how dialectical and historical materialism – communist philosophy of change — helps advance communist work.
Almost ten years ago, the International Communist Workers’ Party set out to mobilize the masses for communism. Will we succeed?
That depends mainly on the hard, but rewarding, day-to-day work of building communist relations with many people at different levels of political development. Our clubs must analyze our progress and build a collective base with our friends.
Sometimes, we mistakenly conclude that fighting directly for communism means staying away from all reform activities. Or we might think that we just need to be in mass organizations and write leaflets, articles, social media posts.
The real question is what we and our friends should do in these activities that will win more communist fighters to join our party. This requires long-term struggle.
For example, Boeing workers have struggled a lot at work over immigration issues and the fight against fascism. We’ve gotten some workers to help and recruited a few.
In Los Angeles, MTA transit workers have raised communism at one worksite for many years. Dozens of workers have come around the Party and some have joined. Some now work elsewhere and distribute Red Flag at their new worksites.
Investigation, Criticism and a Plan
The Seattle party club discussed expanding the struggle and recruiting at a high school with a very international student population. Over 100 students and staff have read each issue of our paper for several years.
Many love it. Students snapped up the issues that described our communist response to Islamophobia. A friend who volunteers at the school got a few students to distribute the paper.
But the opposite side of this story is that we have only made one solid connection from our outside distribution. We haven’t recruited anyone. What can we do to create the kinds of relationships we need with students and staff to recruit and consolidate them as party members?
We figured out a way for one of the comrades doing this work to get more deeply involved with students and staff. We hope this will help us work more collectively with our friend. Meanwhile, we’ll maintain outside distribution.
Another comrade, an immigrant worker, has distributed the paper to co-workers in small numbers, also for about two years. His friends – also immigrants — tell him the paper is good. But it has not created any sparks.
What does create heat is the debate about communism and President Obrador of Mexico. The TV coverage confuses his friends. Is Obrador good or bad? Has Obrador been blocked by right-wing forces in Mexico and the U.S.? Is he a communist or not? Is communism good or bad?
Our club discussed this. We compared it to questions that friends had raised about the Obama presidency in the US. By helping the comrade with the struggle to resolve these specific dialectical contradictions in his friends, we expect to advance the process of recruiting and consolidating them. The collective in Mexico has agreed to help.
The only way to find out the main contradiction in communist work is to do it.
The Dialectics of Growth Based on Our Political Work
In Seattle, in South Africa, and in other areas we are learning how to examine our political work and how to advance it using dialectical materialist philosophy.
Identifying the contradictions of capitalism – especially the main contradiction— is useful in discovering the potential for recruitment and its present limits. These contradictions are sharpening rapidly.
From the townships in Port Elizabeth to the maquilas in San Salvador, we’ve only begun to tap the vast pool of potential communists and communist organizers. We need to sharpen and resolve the internal contradictions that keep us from doing more and better.
To realize this potential, we have to spend the bulk of our time building a communist base with those we hope to involve and recruit. The bulk of our party discussions should center on this topic. Let’s share our experiences in these pages.
Friends, readers, comrades: Plan now to attend one of the conferences that ICWP is planning to mark our tenth anniversary in January! Contribute your ideas about how to make them as useful as possible! Raise and contribute the funds we need to make them happen!
Front page of this issue
