Organizing a Mass ICWP in South Africa
June 7—Yesterday we met as a collective to implement the plans we reported to the International meeting. We focused on recruitment.
We had to first address some internal challenges. The main one was the fear of growth. We’ve identified this as one of the major obstacles preventing us from moving forward and recruiting more people.
In our heads, probably unconsciously, we ask ourselves if we recruit a thousand people, what are we going to do with them, how we will be able to organize them?
So instead of being aggressive in recruiting, we have taken a snail’s pace. We have this notion that we need to maintain growth at lower levels so that we don’t have large numbers and we have control. That was the main thing for us to struggle against.
Our main job is to recruit the masses for communism, to ICWP. We had set ourselves artificial quotas. We had to push back against this—really hard. We need to aggressively do this with no quota. So we came up with specific plans about how we will actually do this.
On Monday schools are reopening here in South Africa. We will be going out again to high schools to recruit more students so we can make a collective of high school students. Then we can establish dialectics classes. Already plans have been set in motion. About five students in Zwide will start our classes next weekend.
In terms of recruiting industrial workers to the organization, the comrade in Motherwell pledged to invite his friends from work who he has shared our manifesto Mobilize the Masses for Communism with. We are still struggling with them but they are really open to our ideas. They have agreed to join. That is an important step. Our task is to explain to them what it means to join the communist movement.
In the next week or two we will focus on that. We will struggle with these new comrades so that they can also struggle with their friends and family members to join us.
We have an exciting journey ahead of us. Comrades have realized that, in whatever we do, what is primary is practice. As much as it is important to talk about our challenges and struggles, there has to be practice. Otherwise we are simply saying things.
That is the main focus of the collective on this side: getting more workers and students to join us, and not holding back.
Mobilizing for Communism Under New Conditions
EL SALVADOR—Our class has a history of struggle here. In the 1960s, workers’ fights against the exploiting bosses intensified. Hundreds of workers, men and women, went on mass strikes in 1967. City workers, teachers, farmworkers and students organized to fight against the bosses and their servants.
Many workers who fought alongside their class to build a revolutionary movement fell fighting for their proletarian ideals. But they created a class-consciousness and to this day the International Communist Workers’ Party has not let the Red Flag fall!
We have a history of repression, poverty, and death by military and civilian governments. Today we see the measures implemented by the fascist Bukele government, who, like the previous presidents, only thinks of defending capitalism. But even under these circumstances the workers have historically carried on the battle. And we continue to do so, today under the communist line, which is urgently needed to unify the whole working class.
The rulers are using COVID-19 as an excuse for social control of our class. We are making changes in this new scenario, under fascist attack, which has modified the way we live.
This pandemic limits us. It drives us to look for new ways of having more solid communist relationships that are achieved when one is in personal contact. But as communist philosophy teaches us, this is not forever. We must continue carrying out the task of changing the system.
Our class brothers and sisters in the maquilas, for example, are being exposed even more in this pandemic situation, but they are making the clandestine fight to advance ICWP.
In this situation, we have had difficulty distributing our Red Flag newspaper hand to hand. But the newspaper has been distributed electronically.
It has been hard to visit our comrades and friends in the communities. Extended broad meetings have not been possible. But we are communicating more frequently through networks and holding meetings through apps.
For study groups that had already started, each cell leader plans to maintain them electronically. A WhatsApp group has also been formed to share documents of interest in addition to the Red Flag.
We are building solidarity as a communist principle, to respond to this moment. We have carried out three distributions of a food basket to workers, friends of the party and their families, and small amounts of cash to those most affected. Thanks to the solidarity campaigns with comrades in the USA.
We need to establish a new way of working: to organize soldiers and workers to ICWP, distribute and read Red Flag, strengthen communist social relations, mobilize and support struggles. To mobilize the masses for communism!
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