Garment Worker Comrades Confront Fascism with Communist Organizing and Ideological Struggle
EL SALVADOR, August 2021— “We’ve spent more than a year in unusual circumstances due to the COVID-19 crisis. This presented obstacles to having frequent activities, collective meetings outside the factories and extended meetings. Family groups of workers and students were involved, and they have given us very good results,” a comrade worker leader observed.
S said to V, a former comrade: “We are going to come to your house to visit your family, so that we can talk about the Party. Both of you are factory workers who are important to the struggle.”
“We’ll be expecting you,” V answered.
We are currently meeting and making plans to visit worker comrades who read Red Flag. So that they join the ranks of the party and so we can strengthen communist relations with other comrades who have been less active.
“We are not going to deliver newspapers in a mechanical way,” said a comrade party leader. “Instead, each worker must understand the political and ideological struggle that they are carrying out with the other readers within the factory.”
Communist Ideological Struggle Makes ICWP Grow
We are developing a permanent campaign to understand and spread ICWP’s ideas. We will do this through Red Flag, motivating each comrade to read it, write for it, and take more copies to give to other workers, relatives and friends.
These activities inside and outside the factories have enabled us to build three new collectives and develop new men and women worker leaders. This also helped us to march as an organized disciplined group in this year’s May Day march.
During the worst part of the Covid-19 pandemic, we made necessary changes, communicating through social media. Of course, we missed the personal social relationships that are so necessary among comrades.
“But during this time, thanks to the solidarity of workers organized in ICWP internationally, we were able to support the comrades with basic necessities while they weren’t working in the factories,” a worker leader explained. “We also supported the women workers who were on a hunger strike.”
Bosses’ Fear of the Working Class Makes Them Tremble
The government is using fascism as a weapon to try to stop working-class organizing. The streets are full of soldiers and police, and tanks, which haven’t been seen sine the war, are in strategic places. This growing militarization is the recourse of the current capitalist leaders.
Discontent among the working class is growing in the face of the economic situation, job loss and repression. Also, workers are rejecting the imposition of the new Bitcoin currency.
Repression is the bosses’ response to the threat they feel in the face of the imminent uprisings or strikes that the working class will once again carry out. This is the fear that these “paper tigers” have. They appear to be strong, but what they fear is the greater strategic power of the organized working class, as Mao Zedong said.
Faced with this situation, we have discussed a security plan to guarantee the continued growth and advance of ICWP and the integrity of the comrades. We meet to plan the work, taking the current situation into account. We meet to understand how the capitalist system works, its weaknesses and how to build a movement to end it.
An important step is the formation of a collective in the capital. This represents an opportunity to expand our communist work. We have already planned the first meetings for the study of dialectical materialism led by women and men workers.
This knowledge is the weapon that the working class must have in order to understand how changes occur so we can win the struggle for communist revolution.
Organize among Soldiers
“My brother, who is also a worker, has a friend who is a young soldier to whom we plan to give Red Flag,” said a worker.
We think that the struggle to recruit soldiers for communism is a huge step that the working class needs and is taking through the ICWP.
The work of the collectives of the ex-guerrilla combatants (FMLN) continue to bear fruit. A farmworker comrade said, “I have a friend who is in the army. This week I will give him the newspaper.”
“We did this work for many years within the guerrilla movement, and we will do it with more strength today with ICWP,” said another farmworker.
Today, more than ever, the working class needs to organize in the International Communist Workers’ Party, to fight directly for Communism and put an end to this rotten system.