LETTERS, CRITICISM AND SUGGESTIONS
South Africa: Struggling with Miners About the Role of Unions
On our trip to Rustenburg, comrades from Port Elizabeth met with some of the new comrades who are forming the nucleus of the ICWP collective there. We have been struggling with some of them, like comrade Lwazi, for several years.
We talked about the role of unions in a communist revolution and in communist society. The comrades in Rustenburg said that unions have a role to play in the emancipation of the working class. We strongly disagreed with this position.
Unions have no role in the emancipation of the working class. Instead they help the bosses exploit the workers. Unions are not saviors of the miners, but servants of the bosses.
We gave examples from the massacre in Marikana five years ago. Most of the workers who left NUM joined a new union named AMCO, because AMCO was promising that miners would get 12,500 R ($843) a month and housing allowances. AMCO said they would push for these companies to build clinics because in Marikana there’s only one clinic that services thousands of miners. None of this happened. Most of the workers are earning 8500 R ($573) a month. The highest earners get 8700 R a month.
Most of the workers are loyal to a union because of the strong propaganda machine that they have and also because they are suffering and they see them as their salvation, which in time proves to be fatal to the workers.
Explaining this is helpful to understand the dangers of union bosses and helps us understand the reason why workers are not joining us in droves. Many are joining the EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters). Comrades explained that we are not populists. We do not make ridiculous claims.
Another miner’s criticism is that what we are promising is something for the future, not something that can be realized in five years’ or two years’ time.
We were clear and honest with them that we don’t have a quick fix for capitalism. We offer now a chance to fight for a communist future. For us to be in a stronger position to do that, we need them and others to join us and to spread Red Flag. Once they do that, we will be closer to effecting the revolutionary change we need. We need their help and commitment. We need them to invite more workers to join the organization.
The miners we met with appreciated our honesty. They are not accustomed to this. Every time they have meetings with union bosses or shop stewards, they make some elaborate promises. The workers see that those promises have not materialized. They can’t say that the unions are helping workers in the present because they are not. They are just facilitating the exploitation of the workers.
The shop stewards are picked among the workers. They are given some board seats and once they are there, they get housing allowances, car allowances, etc. They forget about the workers. They are not in these positions to represent the workers. They are there to suppress the workers and to shut them up. Those positions are only bribes so they can further facilitate the exploitation of the working class.
Before the meeting our new comrades were pro unions but after the meeting we got the sense that some of them are realizing how futile it is to trust the union bosses. They believed us because we are talking about something that they see every day.
—comrades from Port Elizabeth, South Africa
Gaza Crisis Demands Urgent Fight for Communism
November 18—I had a heart-wrenching conversation with a 24-year-old comrade in Gaza this morning. She reads Red Flag when she can with the use of a translator. She described the horrific situation in Gaza. She has a family of 11. Her parents had a small olive grove decades ago which is now replaced by an expensive housing project. The Israeli fascists razed it and built a wall to protect it.
Three of her sisters have a life-threatening illness caused by the atrocities of the blockade. She said the family goes without food for days to help the dying members. Every day she spends her day in lines to get some charity food and then she goes looking for jobs that don’t exist. At night the whole family cries in agony and desperation. Constant fatigue tires them so they fall asleep only to be woken up by the merciless bombing of the demonic supersonic Israeli fighter jets.
She told me that most people think that Hamas is as brutal as the Israeli rulers. She believes they are both the same. “We can manage things ourselves if we get rid of them,” she said with disgust and disdain. “Managing things ourselves” would require us to smash the capitalist system and its repressive state.
“The working class from Bolivia to Gaza to Kashmir can manage things without the bosses,” I said. I was beginning to engage with the comrade.
“Yes, for sure,” was her resounding answer, “but what can you do? What can we do? My three sisters are dying, we are hungry.” The call came to an abrupt silence. I really hope her family is managing to survive.
What can we do? We need to build for communist revolution with the utmost urgency, dedication, seriousness and humility. We have the power to overcome all obstacles because capitalism survives by creating its own grave diggers.
At this time, we are unable to send our comrades food or doctors to take care of the family in need. But we can intensify our struggle wherever we are, fighting for communism with more dedication and confidence that this sick and degenerate system of profit can and must be crushed.
—Comrade in North America
Doing the Right Thing Is A Class Question
December 7—At this point, the debate surrounding the 737MAX crashes is not about the facts. It’s about racism, xenophobia and siphoning wealth into the hands of the ruling class.
How else can you explain the continued publication of lies about foreign pilot error? Even as Boeing suspends publicly offering this excuse, these lies continue popping up like a bizarre game of whack-a-mole.
Many of us at Boeing have fought this kind of racism and xenophobia on the shop floor. We should have no illusions. We may have momentarily driven the racist xenophobes underground, but there is no escaping them under capitalism. (Boeing is still using the “foreign pilot error” argument in hidden legal proceedings.)
Red Flag helped us understand the material basis for these persistence lies. An article (Trump Is Small Potatoes Compared To Those Who Rule Boeing, Vol.10, Number 14) showed how the private equity and hedge fund Blackstone dominates the board.
Blackstone doesn’t produce a thing. Producing commodities hasn’t generated the biggest returns (profits) as the global capitalist crisis of overproduction intensifies. Instead, Blackstone relies on financial tricks.
Chief among those tricks at Boeing is the artificial inflation of its stock price. Boeing has spent an unprecedented $43 billion buying back shares over the last six years. In comparison, the development of the whole 737MAX cost less than $10 billion.
Boeing could have built a completely redesigned safe plane for a few billion more. It would still have had billions left over.
But that is not how Blackstone works. More and more of our labor goes into siphoning wealth into the hands of the rulers at firms like Blackstone. They do this is by scheming to raise the price of the stock rather than by investing in production.
When that fails, the ruling class falls back on its traditional scapegoats, racism and xenophobia. In Boeing’s case, that’s foreign pilots from Africa and Asia.
Now we know what board chairman Calhoun, from the Blackstone group, meant when he said, “He (CEO Muilenburg) is doing everything right.”
Mobilizing for communism means no more Calhouns, no more Blackstones, no more racist or xenophobic excuses. The value we make with our labor will go into providing for our class. That’s our definition of “doing everything right.”
—Boeing workers
