Lessons of 1989: Soldiers and Workers Are Key
The waves of protests around the world made us all reflect on how to change the governing system that increasingly puts the majority of people at disadvantage. These remind me of what I experienced in 1989, the year of change in Eastern Europe.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall began to topple and massive protests led to the overthrow of all dictatorships in the region.
What motivated people to put their lives on the line? Was it the widespread poverty described by a lack of goods and food? Was it censorship, misinformation, restricting travel? Was it the brutal and fearful ways in which these governments secured their power?
In Romania, where I lived, the arrest of a Hungarian pastor in the small town of Timisoara sparked an uprising. It grew, fueling massive protests nationwide.
Following presidential orders, the army and police tried to stop the Timisoara protesters with batons, tear gas, guns and tanks. Undeterred, more locals joined the demonstrations. The government tried to incite large groups of rural workers to embark on trains and go fight the “hooligans.” When they got to Timisoara, these workers joined the protesters.
Soon the entire country was flooded by unrest. The Romanian president organized a rally in Bucharest, the capital, and spoke from the balcony of the Central Committee building. He condemned the Timisoara uprising and accused the protesters of treason.
After a few minutes, the crowd (estimated at 100,000) suddenly burst into a roar: “Down with the dictator!!” The president stopped speaking and his special guards rushed him to safety.
That was the moment many of us had dreamed of but never imagined it would happen in our lifetime. It was the moment when we all decided to fight back, to stop being afraid. We all understood that we were finally having our Romanian Revolution.
As in other Eastern European countries, the scope of the revolt was clear: to replace the tyrannical regime by a democratic one. People wanted their rights and their dignity. But, unlike our neighboring countries, the Romanian Revolution was not a velvet one.
The tyrant president urged his special police, conventional police, and army to forcibly suppress the demonstrations. Tragically, many were killed, injured, or arrested. Then something else unprecedented surprised all of us. Most of the young soldiers could no longer obey the government that was forcing them to harm civilians. Gradually, all of them joined the demonstrators.
In one instance, a woman offered food to some army men. She said that her son was serving elsewhere in Romania and he was most likely being ordered to suppress protesters, too. She was worried that the soldiers had not eaten in days. The army men, very touched, lay their guns on the ground, and joined the protesters. Then more and more did the same. The masses started shouting, “The Army is with us!”
The tension slowly died down. The outcome is well known: the tyranny was abolished.
Since then, revolts and uprisings around the world have changed even some of the governments most difficult to change. I am hopeful that people in North America will become more politically active and more determined to eliminate injustice in this part of the world.
—Red Flag reader
Red Flag responds: Thank you for this inspiring story! It shows us how quantitative changes (bigger and bigger protests) can lead to qualitative change (toppling a government). Socialism in Eastern Europe was another form of capitalism and so was the liberal government that followed the uprising. The uprising we need everywhere, to create a qualitatively different society is communist revolution. The quantitative change necessary to make that happen is more Red Flag readers becoming communist organizers.
Thoughts on How to Fight for Communism and Nothing Less
The old communist movement failed because they didn’t fight for communism. But that wasn’t their only failure.
As the experience of some of us shows, the movement could have developed the long term goal of communism and still end up not achieving that goal.
Therefore, we developed the line Mobilize the Masses for Communism and nothing less. It means that we don’t fight for reforms of any kind.
The working class, however, has been trained for the last several hundred years to fight for reforms. The same could be said of the international communist movement during its almost two hundred years of existence.
Instead of reformist class struggle, we talk of organizing communist class struggle. Communist class struggle is mainly about ideological class struggle: replacing capitalist ideas and practices, embedded in us and the working class, with communist ideologies and practices.
That is our main task. This struggle starts by building communist social relationships with coworkers, friends and families. We engage them in political discussions ranging from world current events to what is happening at work and in their lives. We distribute Red Flag and other literature. We write articles and leaflets with their help about issues important to them.
We use the communist social relations we forge to recruit them to be Red Flag readers and distributors, to come to study groups, and to join the Party.
Not fighting for reforms, however, does not mean we don’t participate in them. For example, if workers strike for higher wages where we work, we join the strike; walk the picket lines; and fight with them against the scabs and their police protectors.
This will allow us to struggle with them to organize for a communist revolution instead of fighting for reforms. We could strive to expand the distribution of our literature. We can struggle with them to adopt our revolutionary slogans: “Abolish wage slavery with communist revolution!” “No borders, no nations! Fight for communism!” etc.
We intensify the ideological struggle by intensifying our efforts to recruit them to the Party. The goal is to build Party collectives. Once in the Party, we strive to turn them into communist leaders to repeat this process as often as possible.
By doing this, we will increase our forces and our influence will grow among the workers. Now, we are in a better position to put into practice the concept that “theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.”
Actually, we can put it into practice at a higher level. Creating networks to distribute our literature, building study groups and recruiting to the Party are instances of “theory becoming a material force after being gripped by the people” we work with.
Also, we are at the point for bigger qualitative changes: that material force can now mobilize larger numbers of workers. Besides continuing and expanding the ideological struggle with more workers, we can respond more massively to capitalist attacks, and when possible organize offensive actions of our own.
We could organize work slowdowns, work stoppages, strikes, demonstrations and marches under our banners and slogans: communist political actions indicting capitalism and calling for communist revolution.
Our goal would be to broaden, deepen and sharpen our ideological struggle with the forces we move and those impacted by our actions. Such actions could galvanize our class nationally and internationally, advancing the struggle ideologically and organizationally. Repeating this process consistently will enable us to build the Party we need to make a communist revolution.
Not fighting for reforms doesn’t mean not fighting. It means waging a resolute ideological struggle to organize and lead communist class struggles;
—Comrade in Los Angeles (USA)
Read our manifesto:
Mobilize the Masses for Communism
Available here
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