It’s hardly a secret: Covid-19 is the disease, but capitalism is the pandemic. Never have class divisions been starker, nor their effects more deadly. Never have so few stolen so much of the wealth workers produce—and profited so handsomely from a horrible disease.
What is the cure for pandemic capitalism? It’s not a “kinder, gentler” capitalism. It’s not socialism. It’s communism.
No more production for profit. No distribution of goods and services only to those with money. No more private property hoarded in the hands of a few. No money! Instead, production and distribution for need.
The worse capitalism gets, the more viciously it vilifies communism. So-called “communist” countries like China are not a workers’ paradise. But they’re not communist, either.
Real communism means: From each according to ability and commitment, to each according to need. Collective struggle to increase everyone’s commitment and understanding. Abolish wage slavery, the material basis of racism and sexism. Fight for universal comradely relations among all the masses.
We need real communism now – more urgently than ever.
No more xenophobia or Islamophobia, no more borders or nations. No more racism. No more communalism, the fascist Indian capitalists’ “divide-and-rule” strategy. We need to fight these for our very survival. Racism, xenophobia and communalism are attacks on the whole working class!
No more sexism, no more exploitative relationships. Instead, respect, cooperation and sharing.
No more homophobia, ageism or ableism. Everyone’s abilities matter. Everyone’s needs matter.
One international working class making and carrying out decisions collectively in the interest of the masses.
May 1, 1920 in Moscow
Communist Labor – Key to Communist Society
On May Day 1920, the Soviet Union held its first All-Russian Subbotnik. This was a mass mobilization to voluntarily contribute a day’s unpaid physical labor to building the new society.
The material gain was secondary. Lenin explained the main goal: “the utilisation of the great First of May festival for a mass-scale attempt to introduce communist labour.”
The Soviet Union was a struggling socialist society fighting a civil war against its former exploiters and their imperialist backers. As Lenin had told non-Party workers in April, it was “still a very long way from the application of [communist] labour on a broad, really mass scale.” Socialism still meant wage-labor, markets, and other core elements of capitalist society.
Truly communist labor, Lenin explained, “Is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to previously established and legally fixed quotas, but voluntary labour. It is labour performed because it has become a habit to work for the common good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good.”
Communist Moscow railway workers had organized the first mass subbotnik a year earlier. Lenin called it “the actual beginnings of communism.” They brought to the fore “the more important task of positive communist construction, the creation of new economic relations, of a new society.”
Communist Labor Starts Now
Building communism, said Lenin, meant “transforming the very habits of the people, which have been defiled and debased by the accursed private ownership of the means of production, and also by the entire atmosphere of bickering, distrust, enmity, disunity and mutual intrigue that is inevitably generated.” This would be “the work of decades.”
Lenin thought that socialist revolution had made that work possible. We know now that socialist relations of productions were, at core, capitalist. Private property was abolished legally (“in the main”). But maintaining the wage system created a class divide: Soviet officials and managers on one hand, wage laborers on the other. Socialism was state capitalism. It turned dedicated communist fighters into a new capitalist class.
In the struggle between capitalist practice and communist ideology, practice was primary. Real communist labor and habits, the legacy of the 1920 May Day Subbotnik, could not thrive—nor even survive.
The International Communist Workers’ Party has learned a painful lesson. Wherever and whenever we lead masses to revolution, it must be communist revolution. The new society we build must be communist society.
Guarantee the End of Pandemic Capitalism: Build Communist Collectives Now
Building communist habits and relationships is the work of decades. But those decades start now.
Our communist labor today includes writing, reading, producing and distributing Red Flag/Bandera Roja. Deepening relationships with an ever-wider circle of coworkers, friends and relatives. Communist class struggle in many forms. Engaging in practices that can root and grow communist consciousness.
Most importantly, it means building Party collectives that become the nucleus of the new society. Each member becomes a leader. Each collective links to a wider circle of future communists. Each collective links to other collectives in similar structures on an increasingly larger scale. This is the International Communist Workers’ Party.
It is our plan to answer Lenin’s call a century ago:
“Let us build a new society! We solemnly and firmly promise one another that we shall hold out and win in this most arduous struggle. We shall work to do away with the accursed maxim: ‘Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost’ and bring into the day-by-day life of the masses, the rule: ‘All for each and each for all!’ We shall work for the gradual but steady introduction of communist discipline and communist labour.”
That is the cure to pandemic capitalism. That is the task of May Day 2020.
Join us in an International May Day Virtual Rally
Capitalist crisis and the global Covid-19 pandemic are attacking our class. But around the world, workers are stepping up in anger at the system and solidarity with their fellow workers and neighbors. Workers are seeing the need to end capitalism and its horrors.
This May Day we will bring together comrades and friends to review our forces and strengthen our commitment to recruiting masses to communist revolution. We will share greetings from comrades in many places and communist art of various kinds.
We will meet online on Sunday, May 3 at 10:00 am in Los Angeles and Seattle, 7:00 pm in South Africa and Spain, 11:00 am in El Salvador and noon in Mexico.
Please contact comrades in your area for the link to the meeting or email us at icwp@anonymousspeech.com
Long Live Communism! Long Live May Day!
Join the International Communist Workers’ Party
www.icwpredflag.org — Twitter @RedFlagBandera
E-mail: icwp@anonymousspeech.com
Instagram: @icwprf
Write to: P.M.B. 362
3006 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90007, USA
Front page of this issue
