USA, November 11 — “I do not have much faith in our leaders. Racism is deeply embedded in everything,” a Red Flag reader said about two major trials addressing racist murders of Black men.
A “modern-day lynching.” This is what lawyers for Ahmaud Arbery’s family called his murder by three white men, one a former cop. Arbery’s “crime” was jogging through their Georgia neighborhood as a young Black man. Although the murder was taped, it took over two months for the killers to be arrested.
The defendant in a Wisconsin case, a teen-aged aspiring cop armed with an AR-15-style rifle, shot and killed two anti-racist protesters and wounded a third. He said he intended to “protect” businesses after police shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
Working class fury has erupted globally. Millions have marched in Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Millions in India have fought day-to-day battles against the fascist Modi government attacks on Muslims and Dalits. The class war against racist murder is worldwide.
“We don’t ask the bosses for anything; we organize to overthrow them,” a comrade said. Another comrade asked her, “Isn’t it better that the cop who killed George Floyd is in jail?”
“No,” she responded. “He is in a protected part of prison with guards who love and defend him. That is the ‘best’ outcome under capitalism for the killers of Ahmaud Arbery or other racist murderers.” These trials will make very little difference because they are based on the laws of the capitalist ruling class.
All jurisprudence (cops, courts, and jails) was developed to ensure the capitalists’ ability to exploit workers and to protect their “property,” including enslaved people. Modern policing grew out of slave patrols, the suppression of the working class and imperialist military slaughter. Each was linked to capitalism’s needs during a specific historical period and was built on racism.
Racism is key, politically and economically, in guaranteeing exploitation. Blaming other workers for the horrors caused by capitalism divides our class. It allows the capitalists to extract super-profits from minoritized people and lowers wages for all workers.
Communism, in contrast, depends on collective production to provide for our collective needs. It will require massive campaigns to end racism and other divisive ideas and practices. It will end the need for jails, police, and war.
The International Communist Workers’ Party aims to mobilize masses to become communist fighters on every front. In workplaces, schools, barracks and eventually in a revolution to overthrow the rotten capitalist system that poisons our daily lives. To end, once and for all, racism, injustice, and exploitation.
In the work of fighting for and then establishing communism, we will develop and apply the principle of collectivity: From all according to their ability and commitment, to all according to their needs. We will support our neighbors and comrades, seeing their thriving as essentially linked to our own.
The potential for communist recruitment is growing now. New ICWP members are crucial to developing the ideas and energy necessary to create a communist future. With no money and no borders, with everyone fed and clothed and housed, we can release true human potential and find caring, sensible ways to deal with any problems that arise.
“Mutual aid and communal support” is how a high school Red Flag reader describes communism. No one flourishes while another starves. No one has a mansion while others live on the street. The racist, xenophobic violence of the capitalist state, the police force, courtrooms, and jails will be gone.
“The bosses’ criminal justice system is built on racism and racist structures,” added the young reader. She, like millions worldwide, can no longer accept this way of life. She won’t put her faith in the bosses’ courts.
To end racist murder, we must build a society based on communist structures. Communist revolution will immediately end the wage system. Racist divisions will have no place in collective work. When our young friend, and many like her, join the ICWP we’ll be on our way to eliminating the plague of racist cop killings with communist revolution.
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