Letters to Red Flag

Study Group about Communism in Pakistan here ♦ I Hate Money here ♦ On Climate Change articles here ♦ Red Flag is One of a Kind here ♦

First ICWP Study Group in Pakistan Struggles to Build the Party

I recently arranged a meeting with university students. In that meeting I tried to give them a bit of the idea about communism, and the drawbacks of rotten capitalism.

I was surprised that they had no clue about communism. When I started telling them about communism and our struggle, they raised a few questions which I was not expecting.

The first was: “In communism, everybody is equal, doctor, engineer, pilot, labourer, driver, etc. and they all would be getting equal facilities. Then who is going to study hard to become a doctor or engineer if you know that everybody gets equal things regardless of their educational attainment?”

I answered that people would be aware that education is good for themselves and society as a whole. In communism, people would attain educational degrees to benefit the whole community. Some people would prefer to get professional degrees and they would do so to contribute to the commune.

The second question was: “Because of communism, our society would stop having competition, which means our society is not progressing.”

I answered that society wouldn’t stop progressing. Competition is injected in societies by the bourgeoisie class just to control people and to get the masses to fight each other. Those who compete the hardest get material benefits like a big salary, big house and other luxuries.

In communism, the masses are not going to fight against each other, because the circumstances would be different. I also mentioned that the capitalists decide what profession should get maximum salary and who gets minimum wages. Like labourers who do manual labour are paid less and people having degrees and who do intellectual work are highly paid.

The whole game is maximization of profit and surplus value. Upper middle-class people are mostly in these positions, and they mostly have white collar jobs. This class tries to safeguard the interests of the capitalist class, for which they get perks in return.

I tried to answer all their questions, and they were slightly convinced. This meeting was so interactive that a few passersby joined as well. I hope if I organize meetings regularly and with different people, it would be fruitful for our party and our struggle. And, due to this, I would have a collective of young and energetic people.

I believe all comrades across the globe should arrange meetings with people, so our message gets conveyed to the masses, and our struggle becomes more and more effective.

SURKH SALAM

A Comrade in Pakistan

Fighting the Tyranny of Capitalism’s Money System

“I hate money so much, and that we are ruled by it,” exclaimed E. Our collective was discussing the article “How can communism work without money?” in the last issue of Red Flag.

“It affects everything,” she continued. “Our homes, relationships, families are torn apart when there isn’t enough money.”

C described how she brings this up when distributing the paper at rallies. “I ask them what they would do if they weren’t scrambling for a paycheck. One guy thought for a minute and then said he’d be fixing bikes for people.”

“We wouldn’t be judgmental about work like fixing bikes or serving coffee,” responded E, who works at Starbucks. If nobody were paid, she explained, manual work that is currently low-paid would be respected. “We would spend our time for the community.”

“Do you talk about this with other people?” B asked. “Family or co-workers?”

“One of my sisters is on the same page as me,” said E. “I think when people really don’t agree, there is no point to arguing with them. You have to lead by living your values.”

We talked a little about contradictions. People will say anti-communist, pro-capitalist things, but usually our friends have other ideas or values that conflict with capitalist reality. If we listen carefully, we’ll find opportunities to point that out and share something about our vision of a communist world.

“There are things people don’t like about their lives,” said E, “but they see it as a personal failing. Like going to a job they hate just for the money. They blame themselves. We are taught to blame ourselves rather than thinking bigger. But there is a solution.”

“It’s the Puritan ethic that misleads them,” suggested C. “In a communist society you wouldn’t feel that you were messing up. Capitalism creates winners and losers. There is a planned scarcity of success.”

“People don’t realize that the US is the evil empire, the Death Star,” concluded E.

“We all know more people who would like to be in discussions like this,” said B. “How can we get some of them to come to our next meeting? And, looking ahead, how we can build more groups like this.”

Collective in Los Angeles, USA

Comrades Criticize Articles on Climate Change

The page 2 articles in the last issue of Red Flag dealt with climate change and women’s leadership in fighting its effects.  Climate change is a global disaster caused by capitalism’s incessant greed for profits and we definitely should write more about it.

It’s also useful that the article pointed out the disparate impact of climate change on women, migration and the role of women’s leadership in mass organizing against it. We commit to writing more about this in the future.

We think a couple of things should have been included.

First, the massive role of NGOs (Non-Government Organizations) in formerly colonized countries. The article said: “From Bangladesh to Sudan, from Nicaragua to Fiji, women are organizing the masses to create local solutions.” It would be more accurate to write: “From Bangladesh to Sudan, from Nicaragua to Fiji, women – in NGOs – are organizing the masses to create local solutions, not a revolutionary solution.”

Imperialism left Africa, Asia, South and Central America by the front door only to return via the back door. Since the 1980s when the US-dominated World Bank and IMF started to make loans to ‘developing’ countries based on cutting state run health care, education, and social welfare programs, NGOs began to pop up like wild mushrooms.

Foundations (like the Ford Foundation, or Bill and Melinda Gates) grant money to civil organizations, or even propose them to organize around a specific program. The civil organization is therefore reliant on the charity of the Foundation. The NGOs that “empower” women to start small businesses are designed to deflect angry masses of women in oppressed communities away from revolution and into local self-help projects.

The article was right to highlight the upsurge in political activity among women the world over but it wasn’t clear on the key area, the NGOs, where the battle of ideas – pro-communist or pro-imperialist – needs to be fought.

Second, the political question of climate change cannot be addressed without raising the need for mass revolutionary struggle. The depth and urgency of the crisis means that the present hold capitalists have on state power will be increasingly challenged – by other domestic capitalists, by international rival capitalists and by the angry masses organized by ICWP.

When we say that “it’s only capitalism that stands in the way. Capitalism and the angry masses’ limited vision of what a communist world would look like” we must emphasize what capitalism really is.  It’s the dictatorship of capital—in which all the decisions are made to benefit the capitalist class and the armed power of the state is used to enforce them.  If we don’t emphasize this, we encourage an idealist understanding of social transformation.

In the US, it took the Civil War to wrest State power from the powerful profit-hungry capitalist enslavers and put it in the hands of the up-and-coming industrial capitalists. We can expect nothing less from the giant fuel industry, backed by the world’s largest military, which in turn confronts other states’ fuel and military and industrial might – World War in some form or other. Social transformation needs boots on the ground to confront capitalist state power and we can’t avoid mention of it.

West Coast Schools Collective

Red Flag Is One of a Kind

If it’s true that a single spark can start a Prairie Fire, then the issue before last was full of sparks the world over.

There was a spark from the factory workers in El Salvador dismissing Bitcoin by arguing “no currency will serve the working class.” Another from auto workers in Chennai, India, angry at job losses and capitalist crisis. There were more sparks from MTA workers in Los Angeles and Boeing workers in Seattle discussing building the influence and membership of ICWP.

All of these discussions were in the factories, the very site from which the capitalists get their surplus value, or profits. They all had something else in common too. They moved from reacting to the attacks of the capitalist class to stressing the need for a communist (not socialist) revolution. In short, they demonstrated a unity in action around the line of the Red Flag – Mobilizing the Masses for Communism.

Red Flag Comrade

Front page of this issue