My working-class hero
My dad recently retired after decades in the workforce, most recently as an MTA Mechanic in Los Angeles. In my eyes, he is the embodiment of the working class. He has woken at 4 am day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year for as long as I can remember.
He woke up every day to the grind. I imagine he did so with a sense of duty not only to his family but also to his co-workers, his friends and in solidarity with workers all across the world.
I have vivid memories of my dad in those wee hours, making himself coffee, getting his lunch pail ready, heating up food, getting his clothes ready. Stoic. Not complaining nor trudging.
My dad is a hard worker, he has always been. He’s disciplined and leads a structured life. He’s an organizer, fighter, revolutionary, activist, and protester.
He’s my hero. I imagine there are many workers like him across the world. Hard-working, loving, caring, honest people who do everything they can for their loved ones. Workers who fight day after day to keep the machine going and in hopes of a better life for themselves and their families.
My dad has lived his life by a certain philosophy. With a strong unwavering belief in a better system, a better way of doing things —a communist system. He has had his ups and downs, gone forward and back, left and right. But he continues to push forward. He tries to walk a straight line and I admire him for that. He has always stuck to his beliefs and let his communist ideals guide his way in life.
Being part of the working class isn’t always pretty, easy or glamorous. Workers more often than not deal with crappy bosses, unfair and unjust laws and a broken system.
Many people look down on blue-collar workers, seeing them as unintelligent, lazy or even suckers. They don’t realize that without these workers our society would cease to operate.
They keep our cars going, our power on. They provide us with food and other necessities. Workers go through late nights and early mornings, deadlines, sacrifices, conflicts, persecution.
There is so much beauty in the struggle of being a worker, however. There’s honor. It’s honest work. Many people prefer to take shortcuts, take the easy road, and prefer more glamorous work. They prefer a quick rise but that is oftentimes accompanied by an even quicker fall. I admire my dad as well as the millions of workers who chose and continue to choose not to take the easy route.
Although my dad is retired, I know that his job isn’t done. Like many comrades expressed at his retirement party, his political work is not done yet. I look forward to seeing what he’ll do in the future. Although Capitalism would have us believe that people become useless after they retire, we know that isn’t really the case.
Love you, dad.
Workers Discuss a Communist World Without Money
Recently our garment collective in Los Angeles (USA) got together for a social-political activity. We read the Red Flag article (Vol 12 # 10) that said, “We need a Communist World without Money”.
It is an article about workers’ struggles, very good. But we concluded that the content of the article was focused more on the minimum wage and not on explaining why workers need a world without money.
How do we explain to workers that a communist society will function without this capitalist instrument of oppression?
We Communists learn about the origins of humanity, which go back thousands of years, before the existence of social classes. Together with archaeologists and anthropologists, we investigate the evidence of how humans survived for thousands of generations based on gathering fruit and hunting. The whole group worked to get food, and all the work was for the benefit of all. No one lived by taking advantage of the work of another. That past makes us think of a much better future than what humanity lives today.
In capitalist society, all social relations are based on money. There are those who have the money and others only have their labor power to sell. Money is the bosses’ weapon of control.
Under capitalism there is no solution, because money controls all aspects of our life, from when we are born until we die. You can’t eat if you don’t have money. If you don’t want to freeze to death, you have to buy or rent a house or an apartment. And if you want to have a way to survive you have to go and sell your labor power to a boss.
In communist society, money will no longer exist. We workers will decide everything, from what is necessary to learn, what needs to be produced and what does not, what is healthy and what is not. In collectives we will decide the best for all of society. We will solve many problems that capitalism has created and for which only communism has the solution.
Self-critically, our collective did not delve deeply enough into the question, but we said we would continue the discussion. This topic is not easy at all, but we must follow it up with in-depth discussions, using past experiences everywhere that our ICWP is.
Later we savored a delicious meal as the discussion continued to plan new meetings and activities to invite more friends to these discussions and win them to the Party and the communist revolution.
Worker Comrade
The Chalchuapa Case: Opportunity for Dialectical Study
In the case of the Chalchuapa murders in El Salvador, ex-policemen and ex-military men are accomplices in the disappearance and murder of 15 officially-confirmed victims so far. This case is about to fall into oblivion. It is being swept under the rug. This is thanks to the effort of the government to stop the case with court orders and also thanks to public threats from the Attorney General of the republic.
The government of New Ideas—President Nayib Bukele—is behind the statements of the Attorney General and the Minister of Justice about “reviewing” the murders (in particular, the Chalchuapa case). With this, the creation of a new “Ministry of Thought” is planned, not as an institution with a flagship building, but as a campaign to dominate the collective imagination of the working class.
Karl Marx said that “History occurs twice: the first time as a great tragedy and the second as a miserable farce.” The case of El Salvador is not far from this description.
During a meeting, comrades said that there are similarities with this massacre and others that occur in Mexico or other Central American countries. Therefore, to address this issue, it was necessary to put this case in perspective. We must not only describe it but take a dialectical approach. In a way they are right.
However, I would like to bring to the fore this kind of “normality,” which involves taking this situation as something “similar” and not as a social phenomenon. A phenomenon that hits families affected by the irreparable loss of a loved one. From one member of our working class to numbers that eventually swell the ranks of the thousands of annual victims of organized violence and drug trafficking.
The dialectical approach to situations like this sets the tone for the organization and resistance of communists in times of calm, of crisis and in times of revolution. We learn from past events, and as developments occur, from the quantitative and qualitative approach to capitalist contradictions, etc.
The Nayib Bukele government is the prototype of the new fascist state that the bourgeoisie yearns for, with low intensity, but repressive policies. We are approaching situations seen before and during the civil war of 1980-1992. We can’t forget that in peacetime the bourgeoisie prepares for war.
We need more unity and more communist struggle, in El Salvador and the world! To resist the attacks of capitalism in the economic and political plane. Our goal is clear: to destroy this system which is incapable of “justice.”
We must take on the commitment to communist work, by spreading Red Flag and taking the discussion of the revolutionary communist alternative to the working class from today until we see our chains fall.
Comrade in El Salvador
Characterizing January 6 as a coup is incorrect
Were some members of the mob who invaded the Capital hoping that through some alchemy, Trump would be allowed to remain in office? Yes.
Was there even the remotest possibility that could happen? No.
The organizations who could claim to have members amongst the mob that was encouraged to invade the capitol by Trump, were thoroughly penetrated by operatives of or acting as informants, for the FBI and other “alphabet” security agencies, national and local.
In the exercise of power, the term “Deep State” (DS) embraces the policy setting and implementation of policy elements of the US government. The individuals filling these roles and the think tanks, universities and corporations they come from or go back to, are interchangeable. Their purpose is to serve the ends of the US Imperial State.
Trump mouthed words people wanted to hear. Follow through didn’t matter. Desperation dictated the words were enough for millions of people.
The mainstream media made billion$ putting forward “Orange Man Bad” and Trump got billion$ in free advertising.
The DS knew full well that the pro-Trump crowds were coming and could be incited to join a riot. The groups represented among the rioters were all infiltrated by national security state officers or informants. The capital police were ordered to stand down from any preparations to contain the pro-Trump protesters. A number of DC police were chummy with the protesters. The protesters included police. The huge number of “unindicted conspirators” has to include the provocateurs.
Up to 50% of the people who participated in the capital riot, had suffered hard financial times, personal bankruptcies and small business failures. They are victims of the imperial state and its neo-liberal regime.
The Deep State needs to ramp up domestic repression. January 6th is ballyhooed to that end. The elite in the institutions of the DS have concluded that the DS needs enhanced internal repression. The repression is necessary to respond to the following hardly exhaustive list of challenges: 1. Continued massive transfers of wealth, impoverishing and immiserating ever-increasing numbers of people. 2. Prepare for war against the rising powers of China and Russia. 3.The turmoil that is coming in the wake of catastrophic climate change, domestically and internationally.
January 6 performance was allowed to go forward—to justify increased repression. It was never going to be a coup. It was political theater.
A reader
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