Way Forward to Communism here ♦ Labor Contracts Legitimize Wage Slavery here ♦
LOS ANGELES (US), 2012—Striking nurse at Kaiser picket line with Red Flag.
The Way Forward to Communism
Talks on Picket Lines
SEATTLE (USA), November 3— “What is the role of communists at a picket line in 2021?” asked a grad student. He and his wife R, a worker, had met comrades at a demonstration. Today, in a meeting, his question provoked an hour-and-a-half discussion about labor, racism, and communism.
The previous day, a comrade had joined an informational picket of healthcare workers at a Kaiser Permanente hospital. The picketers had plenty of immediate economic demands, including opposing staff shortages and a two-tier wage system that would cut the salaries of new employees by 26%. But they were interested in more than the upcoming contract.
Two young union interns approached the comrade with the union misleaders’ official list of demands. The comrade told them about similar, but more militant, fights in Boeing plants around these very issues.
“What really encourages me, though,” he said, “was how blue-collar workers (including white workers) responded to the separation of immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border.” The International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) and friends had organized debates throughout a Boeing plant about fighting against xenophobia and for our communist vision of a world without borders. Production was paralyzed for hours.
Some Boeing workers and their families brought moral and physical support to protest encampments outside the ICE prison. They had long discussions about the racist history of the Seattle-area capitalists and about the bosses’ attempts to divide workers. Over several weeks, thousands read Red Flag.
“Workers are more than the product of the relationship capitalism imposes on us: the exploiter and the exploited,” the comrade summed up. “They are concerned about every attack on their class, particularly racism, sexism, and xenophobia.”
The interns talked passionately about the decades-long racist history of Children’s Hospital, where they work and organize. This opened a discussion of how only communism can end the capitalist horrors of racism, sexism, and xenophobia. The comrade and the interns exchanged contact information.
Other picketers were also interested. One saw the Red Flag article about fighting racist and nationalist divisions at the Los Angeles/Long Beach ports and responded, “I love to read articles like this!
“This is what we workers must do,” she added. To her, multi-racial, international solidarity was the most important outcome of any fightback against capitalism.
Comrades spread this struggle in a meeting of youth and those who work with youth. A high school student asked what our party does and how we relate to the emerging strike wave. Her area once had many industrial jobs. Now, many workers are unemployed.
Reformism, Racism, and the Prospects for Communism
Our friends are justifiably suspicious of trade union reformism for a variety of reasons.
Confidence in the international working class is essential to building a base for communist revolution. Ruling-class ideology aims to destroy this confidence.
Exploiting classes invented racism, sexism, and nationalism to pit one group of workers against another. We must defeat these divisive ideologies to succeed in making a communist revolution. Only a united working class led by a mass ICWP can win.
One brand of ruling-class ideology dismisses the revolutionary potential of the so-called “white working class.” This reactionary ideology asserts that all white workers benefit from capitalism-imperialism. Hence, it says, white workers are committed to reform. Reformist trade unionism serves their needs, unlike the needs of the “true” Black, Latinx and immigrant proletariat. This false belief undermines our ability to mobilize the masses for communism.
We fight these deadly ideologies by mobilizing for communism in our daily work.
Party members have emphasized in recent meetings that reform and communist revolution are in contradiction. Some friends see reform as futile. At the same time, many engage in reform struggle because they think it’s the only game in town.
Close personal and political relationships are key to transforming them into communist organizers. Potential ICWP members include those we work with, go to school with, etc., as well as those we meet at picket lines and demonstrations.
The discussion about communists at picket lines expanded during our meeting. R. listened carefully to the struggles of comrades developing party collectives at work, the army, and schools. Her big question was: Can we overcome the capitalists’ ideology among the working class?
Our communist work will settle the answer.
Our task is not to advocate militant reform. The way forward is marked by building lasting communist relationships. These will enhance ICWP’s ability to organize around communist ideas amidst the intensifying global class struggle.
Labor Contracts Legitimize Wage Slavery
USA, November 13—The Alliance of Health Care Unions called off its planned strike against Kaiser Permanente after reaching a tentative deal. Crucial details of the contract have not yet been released.
The two-tier wage system has been withdrawn, but staffing shortages remain. Vague contract language is meant to appease the exhausted, overworked healthcare workers.
Throughout the negotiations, workers argued that a two-tier wage system would divide workers. But the capitalist wage system always divides us. Meanwhile, staff shortages will wreak havoc on both workers and patients.
Kaiser poses as a different kind of business where profits are not the bottom line. A quick look at its Board of Directors proves differently. It is filled with executives from aerospace, military manufacturers, corporate finance, software giants, equity firms and investment bankers. Most of Kaiser’s services are outsourced to for-profit conglomerates. This will only increase as the ruling class targets healthcare, in general, as a huge profit source.
Trade-union ideology accepts all this. Workers in recent strikes had to override union officials. Deere workers rejected several union deals. Northwest carpenters wildcatted after rejecting deals five times. Many recent worker and farmer rebellions globally occurred without any union participation.
The bottom line: Even militant trade union reform cannot rein in capitalist exploitation. Only communist revolution can end the wage system and its divisions among workers. Only communism can launch a new era of collective healthcare.
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