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Police Brutality: We Need to Organize for Communism ♦ Communists Fight to Destroy Racism ♦
Police Brutality: We Need to Organize for Communism
SOUTH AFRICA, July 9—Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, the chaotic inhumane capitalist system has been laid bare for everyone to see. The “failure” of the capitalist system to respond to the threat posed by the pandemic is really an expected outcome. It is an expected outcome of world capitalism trapped in a deepening economic crisis of overproduction and drastic decline in the rate of profit. Its way out is fascism and war.
Nairobi, Kenya, June 8, 2020
Capitalism, driven by self-interest and exploitation, kills daily many of poor masses all around the world.
It has been three months since the lockdown here in South Africa. The capitalist force has been in full flow destroying lives, whether through job losses or the police and soldiers killing citizens. Police brutality is used by the capitalists to intimidate and protect their interests.
Ever since the brutal killing of George Floyd, many people all around the world have taken to the streets to protest police brutality. These movements have mistakenly or consciously focused only on racist elements of [capitalist] police brutality.
The major emphasis on racial aspect of police brutality only focuses on the symptoms of capitalism. Police brutality is not a “racist” issue in of itself; rather, racism and police brutality are a result of the immoral capitalist system. Capitalism created racism and through imperialism it has spread it to the world. This has created a racist mentality in police forces worldwide.
Police brutality is found in every country: Black police unleashing it on Black masses, Indian police on Indians etc. Capitalism uses the police to protect the capitalists’ wealth as they intimidate and kill the poor.
Recently in South Africa a man was brutally beaten by police and they kneeled on him while he was naked. The police were acting from the instruction they received from the mayor of Cape Town who, in turn, was trying to protect the ‘private land/ property’ of capitalists. The home (shack) of this man was destroyed.
The capitalists in Cape Town want the masses to be evicted because they did not pay for the land they built their homes on. Capitalism, in its pursuit of profits, results in many working-class brothers and sisters starving, poor with no homes or shelter. It destroys lives and using the police, it brutally kills and beats workers in order to intimidate them.
To tackle racism and police brutality, we need to destroy capitalism. We need a communist revolution. Workers around the world must build and struggle for communism and destroy the capitalist system.
In the ashes of capitalism, we need to build a society that is driven by collective effort to care, that produces things in order to meet the needs of the masses. Needs such as shelter, food and security.
The contradictions of capitalism which amplified the pandemic, and are also amplified by it, have resulted in many disillusioned people having grievances and angry towards the system. These grievances provide workers with an opportunity to turn it into an organized anger aimed at getting rid of capitalism and usher in a new communist world.
Increasing police brutality towards the masses shows a weakness of the capitalist system. We need to realize and seize these opportunities. We need to intensify our struggle, to organize ourselves as an international working-class to fight this exploitative system. To do so we need a communist party (ICWP), to join collectives, deepen our understanding and application of the philosophy of change: Dialectical Materialism. It is our world to win.
Communists Fight to Destroy Racism
It is great that so many people around the world are having conversations about systemic racism – where does it come from? Are people naturally racist? What do we do about it?
Many people who do not have a communist analysis of the source of racism are trying to find individual solutions to a problem which is actually caused by the system under which we labor. Many white liberals (and black people referring to them) use the words “white privilege.” I have been trying to understand my own discomfort with that language.
To my mind, the things referred to as privileges – NOT to get murdered by the cops; NOT to be unsheltered, hungry, without medical care; NOT to fear racist or xenophobic attacks are not privileges – they are what all humans deserve.
We discussed my letter in the club and I came to a better understanding of the usage. A comrade told me about a conversation she had with some former neighbors, who are black. They told her that their youngest son and all his friends now carry a gun with them everywhere they go, even camping. The comrade knew their son as a good, well-liked kid. But he and all his crowd are deathly afraid of being assaulted anywhere. They obviously cannot depend on cops, etc. to save them. Most white folks who are not communists would assume that they could always call the police to save them.
People of color have to think about racism all the time. There is no getting away from it, closing your eyes and ears, taking a “break.” A white person, even a person of good heart who hates racism, has the opportunity not to think about it for a while – in school, work, walking on the street, grocery shopping, wherever. For POC, racism is a reality, and potentially a deadly one, ALL the time.
As communists, we must have the same vigilance about racism no matter what our color. The working class around the world is in a life-and-death struggle with the ruling class and only communists have the tools and historical understanding to provide the necessary leadership to mobilize the masses to overthrow the rotten system.
And essential to this mobilization is the fight against racism. Unless we are in the forefront of this struggle, unless we are fighting every day in the best way we can to smash racist ideology, there is no way that communism can win.
So being an anti-racist fighter is at the very heart of being a communist. We want to be sure our friends, families and co-workers understand that this is key. We fight against racism not because we are good people, but because we are communists who understand that the only way we can truly break our chains is by uniting and mobilizing large sections of the working class. We truly have a world to win!
Comrade in the US
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