South Africa, May Day 2019
What are communist social relations and why are they crucial? This report helps us start to answer these questions.
We look forward to a communist society where all production and distribution will take place without money or markets, wages or profits. We will depend on each other to produce what we need based on commitment to the common good. Nobody will live better or worse than anyone else. Nobody will be able to exploit or oppress anyone else. That is, the world will function, in every way, on the basis of communist social relations.
The report from South Africa suggests how the steps we take today can build an international party that will become capable of winning communist revolution and building communist society.
SOUTH AFRICA, June 2 — Our collective is growing. Its composition has changed. We now have seven industrial workers who have taken Red Flag regularly into their workplaces. They are putting the party’s line into practice.
We’ve made significant progress on recruiting female comrades. Six months ago, the comrades were all males. We needed the balance and perspective of active female comrades so they can give leadership to the organization. Now there are seven female comrades.
We needed to be self-critical and analyze our past work. We relied too much on technology (being on WhatsApp). We forgot what is important is relationships, interactions, visiting contacts.
Some comrades joined but then stopped being active. We needed to deepen the communist struggle and build communist relations with them. This relationship is needed so that when you struggle with people, they know it’s not a personal attack. It’s not out of spite or anger but because we know that they can do better.
We carry out the struggle in a comradely way. As the ties become deeper, the level of political struggle and the understanding of the line become deeper.
We had some female comrades before but we were lax. If someone didn’t come to the meeting, we would lose interest. We had to change a lot of things.
Sometimes it may seem that you are doing this for some other reason—personal gain or trying to “hit” on someone. We have to approach it delicately so that they know that when we want to meet with someone it’s about the political work.
We want to deepen the personal relationships so that they are able to withstand the political struggle. This is a game changer.
The recruitment of female comrades has energized the collective. Comrades have been struggling with each other and with new comrades. That has had a positive effect on recruiting and keeping the new comrades active.
We need to be more observant during and after meetings. In the past we invited female comrades to meetings to talk about communism. Then after the meetings, the guys would go outside to chat and some female comrades would talk on the side. We needed to come up with ways to interact more and not isolate each other.
A few weeks ago, there was a meeting, then lunch. Some female comrades offered to wash the dishes. Some male comrades were outside chatting and not paying attention to this conversation inside about the dishes.
One male comrade was inside. He offered to wash the dishes and the women would rinse and put them away. This gave us more time to talk about some of the ideas that were still new to them. Now the conversation was more personal. Even the comrades themselves alluded to this example when sharing their experience in the party.
When we talk about fighting sexism we can’t simply talk. We need to show more. People actually believe by seeing.
We can’t talk about fighting sexism and at the same time believe that a woman’s place should be in the kitchen. We can’t just eat, put the bowl in the sink, and assume that there are people who are going to clean it for us.
We need to be mindful. Maybe sometimes we are not conscious in what we’re doing. We need to pay more attention to these details because they can either build the organization or they can destroy it. What we do counts and what we don’t do is important because it can impact negatively on the collective.
Another Breakthrough
We met M in a college. He liked communist ideas. He didn’t live far. He came to some meetings. When we asked him, he committed to join the party.
Then we had a dinner about a month before May Day. M invited a friend. She didn’t come, but the two friends she invited came. We talked. They liked the ideas and decided to come the following week. They also brought the friend who hadn’t come the first time. Red Flag was key in this process.
This led to more people coming to the May Day Dinner. Since we knew there would be more people, we had a sit down, where we prepared for the dinner and also ate ice cream. This setting helped us answer people’s questions. We stayed up all night talking and playing games.
This deepened the communist relations. New comrades started to feel comfortable around the other comrades. They talked more in the meetings. In the past, sometimes people didn’t talk until three months after they started attending. This sped up the process. They started inviting their friends.
Deepening communist relations, changing our approach, made a major difference. Now these comrades are actively recruiting for the party, actively distributing the Red Flag. One of the new female comrades has already brought three of her comrades to the party.
She also put more agency into the collective because she proposed we have to be out there more, talking to people, not just sit in meetings, but actively recruit.
There are other comrades who actively distributed Red Flag on May Day. Now they are distributing it in their schools, universities and work places. One comrade took the Red Flag to work and some of her friends were asking about it. Now she’s giving it to them on a regular basis.
We need to reflect more deeply on this development. Not to pat ourselves on the back, but to learn more deeply from our successes as well as our failures. This will help grow the party.
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