On this page: Prepare Future Leaders here ♦ Experiences Since Joining ICWP here ♦ Dialectical vs Mechanical Negation here ♦ US Presidential Election Could be Contested here ♦ Imperialist War and Communist Revolution here ♦
Please send us your letters, responses and suggestions to ICWP@anonymousspeech.org Red Flag thanks readers who have written with criticisms, comments, and stories. We encourage more to take part in the ongoing struggle to develop our communist political line.
Prepare Our Future Leaders
I wake up every morning still thinking about the drowning youth of Mzantsi, South Africa. Our leaders, whom we voted for, are busy filling up their pockets. The politicians are milking millions of Rands. It is unbelievable.
Look at our youth in South Africa between the ages of 18 years to 35 years. Most of them don’t work and many end up on alcohol and drugs.
Who is to be blamed? The answer is obvious. It is the system the politicians use to rule their countries. We are facing a huge responsibility as the members of ICWP. The struggle continues to teach the youth around the world about Communist revolution.
New Member of ICWP
My Experiences Since Joining ICWP
I joined ICWP 3 years ago. Then I went to Marikana to Mobilize the Masses with my Comrades. It was an unforgettable experience, although there were obstacles. We learnt that there is a lot to be done.
Every night we discussed the dialectics & everything we were discussing. We encountered some of the things the next morning, and that was encouraging.
We need to see growth in the Movement. Practice the principles of the movement, not just try to please family and friends.
We might not have enough material to do that, but planning everyday will help you want to do more than you can think. Like me for example. I don’t need to carry 100 Red Flag papers to mobilize. Everywhere I go I carry 2 to 4 Red Flags and start explaining about the Movement and its goals.
If anyone has ideas about mobilizing, please share them in the Red Flag.
Comrade in South Africa
Dialectical vs. Mechanical Negation
“Collectivity reigned in human society for hundreds and thousands of years before class society. We’re bringing it back! The negation of the negation!” Rafael exclaimed.
“Does everyone understand this ‘negation of negation’ idea?” asked Marcia.
“Googling it now,” said Vilma. “Give us your breakdown of it, though.”
“Negation in formal logic is ‘not,’” Marcia responded. “It is raining. Negation: It is not raining. Negation of negation: It is NOT not raining (i.e., it is raining). Mechanical negation.
“But in the material world, the negation of negation often does NOT get you back where you started. Ginny is a baby. Look at Ginny – she’s not a baby anymore — she’s a little girl. Look at Ginny now — she’s not a little girl [that is, NOT not a baby] — she’s grown. Obviously, she’s not a baby again. Dialectical negation.
“Class society negated pre-class societies. Our job is to negate capitalism (and with it, all of class society) in a way that allows for further development (communism). Not to ‘negate capitalism’ by bombing the planet to smithereens! That would put major obstacles in the way of further human social development.
“Classless communist society (negation of negation of pre-class society) will not be the same as early pre-class societies because it will be informed and shaped by everything that has happened since.”
Vilma had her own example: “tRump is not not amoral.” She asked, “And you’re saying that a new vision and a classless society would be informed by experiences and knowledge from past successes/failures. Yes?”
“Yes,” Marcia responded. “That’s why we have to learn a lot from past successes/failures.” And you are correct: He is not not amoral. He is amoral. Mechanical negation. Or dialectical negation: He is beyond amoral.”
Los Angeles Comrades
What If the US Presidential Election Results Are Contested?
Red Flag/Bandera Roja had a good article about the election but it had a serious weakness: for the most part it assumed that either Biden will win or Trump will win. It argued that either way we won’t see much difference.
It did mention the possibility that the “declared loser” might not concede defeat. In fact, there is a good chance this will happen, and even that there won’t be a declared loser.
I think it’s quite likely that election night and for a while after there will be no consensus on the outcome. As one commentator said, don’t think “election night”, think “election month”!
I’ve discussed this with many friends, family, ICWP supporters etc. and they unanimously agree. Amongst them, the opinion is that it is inevitable, given the closeness of the race and what’s at stake, that the election will be contested. They predict big demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, with police and armed fascists battling anti-racists.
Where it will go from there is hard to see. Trump has threatened massive force against people demonstrating against his (declared) victory and his buddy, Roger Stone, is calling for a military coup. What if the military is divided?
Unfortunately, my friends are also (almost) unanimous that there is nothing we can do. I argue that we do have a choice, which is to end this hellscape with communist revolution.
I admit that at the moment we are not strong enough to take advantage of the opportunity. But that means it’s vital that they join ICWP to ensure that the next crisis, or the one after that, will be capitalism’s last.
Worried Comrade
Imperialist Wars and Communist Revolution
In March 1871, during the France-Germany war, the French working class “stormed heaven” (Marx). For the first time ever, the working class seized power and held it for 72 days.
The French imperialists and German capitalists stopped their war and united to attack the revolutionary masses in Paris.
This was another “first”: the heroic French working class temporarily shifted the world’s main contradiction from great-power rivalry to the working class versus the capitalist class.
The German capitalists then released 250,000 captured French soldiers who were used by the French rulers to drown in blood what became known as the Paris Commune.
They were, however, unable to stop the Commune from inspiring the international communist movement. Forty-six years later, in the fourth year of World War I, the communist Bolshevik Party led the Russian working masses to power.
This, the second time that the working class seized power, temporarily liberated one sixth of the globe from the yoke of capitalism-imperialism. This reverberated among the world’s suffering masses, including millions of soldiers being slaughtered for the imperialists’ profits and empires.
It also sent shivers down the spines of the world’s warring capitalists-imperialists. Terrified that “their” workers and soldiers might follow the Russian example, they hurriedly ended the war and invaded Russia. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared their goal openly: “To strangle Bolshevism in its cradle.”
Again, the working class had shifted the main contradiction in the world from inter-imperialist rivalry to capitalism versus a communist-led working class.
Fourteen imperialist armies invaded Russia, joining forces with the counter revolutionary Russian White Army. The Russian working class defeated them all after five years of bloody war.
Millions were inspired worldwide. Many communist parties were organized on the Russian model. Many of them organized armed insurrections. Although all failed because of their internal weaknesses, for decades the class struggle’s main aspect worldwide was the international working class versus the capitalists-imperialists.
This temporarily prevented the imperialist butchers from going to war again on a global scale. But the Communist International’s 7th Congress (1935) adopted the line of building unity with the liberal capitalists/imperialists to defeat fascism. Then the imperialists felt free to start their global war in 1939.
In spite of the alliance, the western imperialists were still bent on destroying the socialist Soviet Union which still stood as a beacon of hope for the world’s oppressed masses. They bankrolled Germany’s formidable military build-up, hoping Hitler’s fascist hordes would vanquish the Soviet Union. It did not happen. Instead, the Russian Red Army turned the tide of the war in its favor, defeating the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad in early 1943.
It was the beginning of the end of Hitler’s “Thousand-Yeas Reich.” The prestige of the communist-led Soviet Union surged to new heights. Fearful that inspired masses might start revolutionary insurrections internationally, Russia’s “allies” (US and Britain) demanded the dissolution of the Third Communist International. Stalin complied in May, 1943.
Based on this history: Can the working class today change the main contradiction in the world like the Russian working class did in 1917? This time to communism versus capitalism—before WWIII explodes?
We think this can happen in the US and what ICWP’s role should be. We encourage Party collectives and Red Flag readers worldwide to write about similar possibilities where they live and their role in them.
Comrades in the US
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