Communists Fight for Freedom from Wage Slavery
Women Lead Massive Struggle in India
“It is hard to describe our emotions when we saw a 92-year-old Muslim grandmother camping out with thousands of other women in the frigid nights of New Delhi,” said Asha, an ICWP comrade in Bengaluru. She and many of her neighbors are inspired by the ongoing occupation of Shaheen Bagh (a New Delhi neighborhood) against fascist and xenophobic laws.
“I am determined more than ever before to fight for communism,” Asha continued. “Both women and men have been supporting Shaheen Bagh. They are open to communism. My coworkers, too, want to know more about communism.”
Asha works in a garment factory. She and another comrade have started their own “Shaheen Bagh” collective to talk about communism and communist philosophy (dialectical materialism).
Since December, millions of women and men in India have fought in the streets against anti-Muslim citizenship laws and police violence. A group of women shielding a male comrade from police attackers became a symbol of the fight against capitalism.
Major universities in and around New Delhi have been on strike for four months. Desperate to break the students’ rising militancy, police carried out a military operation on Jamia Millia University in New Delhi on December 13, 2019.
The next day, students (mostly female) confronted police, forcing them to retreat. Chants in Hindi reverberated all over India: “Jamia’s women have shown the way, Jamia’s women have forced police to flee!” (Jamiaki ladkione rasta dikhaya hai, Jamilaki ladkione police ko bhagaya hai)
Capitalism Creates Rape Culture
Modi, the fascist Prime Minister of India, went to Kolkata, a major industrial city, to organize support for his xenophobic citizenship law. Over 100,000 women confronted him.
They performed a Bengali version of a Chilean song, “A rapist in your path.” The song blames the police, the judiciary and political leaders for sexual abuse and rape culture. The Bengali version called Modi a rapist and ended with a call for revolution. These mass upsurges, often led by women, create tremendous opportunities for the ICWP to grow. Our university collective is increasing. Our comrades in the garment and auto industries are organizing a weekend communist school to deepen our understanding of dialectical materialism. Comrades and readers of Red Flag in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Afghanistan have been inspired to organize in their own areas.
These mass uprisings are taking place in the midst of severe, many-faceted crisis of capitalism. A government study shows that India expects the largest human migration on the planet. Millions of rural people are losing their small farms and flocking to the cities. In next five years, an estimated 600 million dispossessed will be scrambling for slave wages.
“Azadi from Wage Slavery”
Capitalism is dependent on wage slavery. It requires a massive supply of wage slaves, including a “reserve army” of the unemployed. Close to a quarter of all adult women in India are among these wage slaves. On average they earn 65% of the pay of men doing the same job.
When capitalists want to expand production, they encourage women to work outside the home. In slow times, they discourage this with sexist lies that a “woman’s place is in the home.”
Capitalism throws the working class, the wage slaves, women and men, into direct confrontation with their capitalist exploiters. Communist revolution will resolve this contradiction by eliminating the oppressor capitalists as a class. No one will need money or work for wages. Everyone’s work will be valued and everyone’s needs will be met.
The end of wage slavery and class distinctions will destroy the material basis of sexism in all its forms, including rape culture. The ICWP will use communist workers’ power to broaden the struggle that we carry on today against sexist ideas and habits. Communism and only communism can end the oppression of women!
A popular chant in the streets of India is “Azadi!” (freedom) ICWP comrades are injecting it with “Azadi from wage slavery.” Masses greet this slogan with tremendous enthusiasm.
A song written by Faiz, a poet communist from Pakistan, has become a battle cry in India: “We will see, inevitably we will see that the rulers with their heavy crowns will disappear like a strand of cotton. The masses will march, inevitably we will see that there will be no exploitation.”
The masses will see, inevitably, the need to mobilize for communism. We bring Red Flag and communist chants to the streets to hasten the process. If you are not yet a member of ICWP, join us! Inevitably we will see that communism will triumph.
Read our Pamphlet:
The Communist Fight Against Sexism,
Available at icwpredflag.org/sxse.pdf
Other articles we have published on sexism are available at