Soldiers and Sailors: Key Force for Communist Revolution

India: Soldiers Call on others to defy bosses’ orders here ♦ Letter to a Comrade here ♦ Win leadership of workers and soldiers here ♦ Armed Struggle Must be for Communism here ♦

India: Soldiers Call on Others to Defy Bosses’ Orders

A video of over one hundred soldiers defying the Indian government gives us plenty of reasons to realize how weak fascist governments are all over the world. These soldiers openly called on their comrades around India to follow their lead. The soldier who spoke repeatedly told the viewers, “We are not rich. We did not come from factory owners. We don’t live in mansions. We are sons of poor kissans (farmers), and we learned our values from them.”

The state of Punjab is called “India’s Breadbasket,” with its many farmers. Punjabis form about 20% of soldiers in the Indian Army, although they are, overall, around 2% of India’s population. Punjab borders Kashmir, with its restive population and 1 million soldiers. Further north is a vast icy land facing China, where most of the Indian soldiers are Punjabi Sikhs.

The soldier who said, “we will fight shoulder to shoulder with kissan” has sent a shock wave through the Indian ruling class. It shows a mass appeal among soldiers. The defiant soldiers’ challenge reaches all farmers, not just Sikhs. Modi and his fascists have started a campaign of demonizing Sikhs, branding them as supporters of Khalistan, a separatist anti-India group.

It is crucial to distribute Red Flag to soldiers and farmers, especially the soldiers we already know or can get to know. Winning the soldiers to communism can change the course of history. Masses in India are in motion. It is creating unprecedented opportunities for us, as the working class, as we confront the oppressor class.

Letter to a Comrade

Thank you for being my friend. Knowing one another is a gradual process and here are few things I think you should know about me. I am a US citizen and a soldier working in a United Nations peace-keeping force in Iraq. I love meeting people and sharing ideas and also, I care about nature and human beings.

I received your newspaper Red Flag. I was very impressed by some stories from India and another from South Africa. It is really amazing to get the news from El Salvador because my parents came from Peru. I am all for the farmers in India. On my way to Iraq, I spent three weeks in Mumbai. I know farmers as very hardworking people and there are so many rich people who don’t work for a day.

I want to know more about communism. Almost everybody in my unit likes to help people. I am planning to talk to them about your newspaper.

—Active-duty Soldier

Win the Leadership of Workers and Soldiers

“At the end of the day, these presidents are doing what they are told to do,” said a transit worker during a lunchtime meeting of Red Flag readers and ICWP members. “There’s basically no difference. I didn’t like Trump. He said a lot of racist stuff and did it because he felt like that would put him in office again. Now, Biden he’s racist also. He’s kind of under the ground with it. The thing about Biden he’s put a lot of women in power.

“Like I’ve said before, they’re all puppets,” this Red Flag reader continued. “It’s the big bosses who run this country.

“We’re running out of resources—they’re already preparing for it. There’s going to be a war. They’re talking about that there’s going to be a war in other places. But there’s going to be a war right here. We’re in a crisis—an all-out crisis. It’s slowly coming.

“You can’t even buy bullets anymore. Guns and bullets have doubled and tripled in price. I bought bullets five years ago because everybody was buying them. The government, school board, everybody. The reason was to prepare what we are coming to now. It’s coming so close. We’re about to be in a depression. It could create a civil war. There’s no money circulating. The rent is higher than the money you’re making.”

Workers’ discontent increases. Fascism comes from both the Republicans and Democrats. Republicans with a fascism based on open racism, and Democrats with fascism based on nationalism.

Our communist movement appears weak, but objectively we are strong. Because as a Party we are prepared to lead, we have an idea, a plan, based on the study of communist ideas and on the history of the class struggle.

As for the military, thousands of workers know how to handle weapons. For example, Comrade H and his son are army veterans. Many other MTA workers and family members are, or have been, in different branches of the US military.

The important thing is to reach more workers and soldiers with communist ideas. Despite all that has been said before, nothing assures us that we will automatically win the leadership of the proletariat. We have to win them.   We are not the only ones who propose answers for the crisis. There are idealists, reformists, fascists and revisionists who also try to win the hearts of the workers.

May these current conditions serve us to accelerate, to advance in the organization of more study groups, wider networks of Red Flag readers, and to recruit many more members for the Party!

—MTA transit worker comrade, Los Angeles (USA)

Armed Struggle Today Must Be for Communism

EL SALVADOR, December 2020—”Do you remember when we bought rifles from those Honduran officers?” C asked at an end-of-the-year gathering in a rural area.

“Yes, and from here,” P responded. (We also bought them from Salvadoran officials.)

C explained: “In a meeting of the Central Committee and the Military Committee of our organization in 1976, that afterwards became part of the FMLN, the decision was made to send comrades into the Salvadoran army.

“Commander Licho was a comrade farmworker, among others, sent into the government army. Commander Alfredo was one of the Commanders who were sent to support the Sandinista National Liberation Front in 1979 in the seizure of Managua, Nicaragua.

“When they finished their time in the government army, they returned to our camps. They were our military instructors. Other comrades were sent to several countries to be trained militarily. They returned with the political-military mission of organizing the leadership of our group.

“The military committee was very clandestine in recruiting the comrades to be sent to the army. The majority of them were rural and urban workers. Some officers were won over to revolutionary ideas, but that was a more complex task.

“The comrades who joined the army did so to prepare militarily and get weapons for our nascent guerrilla army. When they went on leave, they met with us in clandestine places to analyze their political-military advance. They studied and knew the positions of the government army and thus we had an advantage at the time of a military attack.

“Another way we worked was to have contact with the families of the soldiers who were recruited by the government militia. We managed to meet with them when they came home on leave. At home, their organized relatives made them see the plan of our organization, and many of them became part of the FMLN. Commander Goyo was one of these recruits.”

As ICWP we meet in the homes of some of these ex-guerrilleros who were soldiers in the government army. We have been able to recruit them, based on political struggle, to be part of our working class and to distinguish the injustices committed by the officials and the rich of the country against the rural and city workers.

Some of them read and distribute Red Flag. They are also part of the discussions of the ideological line of ICWP and participate in our meetings since they see the need to be in the struggle for communist revolution.

—Ex-Guerrillero, now comrade of ICWP

Read our pamphlet:

Soldiers, Sailors, Marines: Crucial to a Communist Workers’ Revolution

Available here

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