Greetings from India here ♦ Greetings from UK here ♦ Capitalism Kills Even in Times of “Peace” here ♦
Foxconn workers, Chennai, India
Greetings from India to Our Comrades All Over the World!
We are members and friends of ICWP reporting from Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bengaluru, and Chennai. We are involved in daily struggles to advance our communist vision to the working class in garment factories, the automobile industry, and farm workers.
Recently 2000 factory workers got very sick after consuming food in the canteens of the Foxconn factory. Eight of these workers died. Immediately after this tragedy, 8000 Foxconn workers occupied the highway, joined by many others.
Some ICWP comrades and friends in the garment industry also joined. We explained to the masses that every tragedy, every death, every coronavirus victim has a signature of the profit system that is capitalism. We can only get rid of this system with communism, a society based on need that will not require money.
Profit maximization is killing millions of people around the world. We need to struggle to build communist members, led by ICWP. We are already building these forces in a mass way. We face all the obstacles of the bosses who try to mislead us by religion, caste, nationality, gender.
We are encouraged by our comrades in El Salvador to sharpen our understanding of communism. The bosses in India have imposed GST (like VAT tax) from 5% to 12%. This increase will cause 15 million people to lose jobs. The Covid crisis has thrown millions more into unending unemployment lines. Added to this, the youth are facing up to 60% unemployment.
Only communists have the outlook to destroy this system. We are planning a meeting in India next month. One working-class, one party, one fight, communism! Onward comrades!
London Comrade: Greetings to Communist Conference in El Salvador
I would like to convey my respect and admiration for the comrades in El Salvador who have the dedication and practical experience in the struggle of the 1980s and beyond of building a real movement for creating the conditions and relations for communism.
I would like to tell you about the small steps that we have begun to take in London, UK to spread communist ideas and materialist thinking in the workplace.
I work in a pharmacy manufacturing unit in a public Hospital. I have been a Communist, Marxist-Leninist a long time but in no organisation until I found the ICWP. I have always expressed my political views to my fellow workers. But now I can talk to my colleagues about the issues Red Flag talks about and introduce the international aspect of the working-class experience.
Many of my colleagues are migrant workers or their offspring, so they often have some interest in other countries. However, it’s not simply a case of me telling them about events reported in the paper. Through discussions with these workmates, I have learnt from them, and they have raised important questions which communists must take seriously.
I had one workmate who is from an Indian family, and I shared articles on the farmers’ struggle in India with him. He has relatives who are farmers in the Punjab, and he is well aware of the fascist nature of the BJP regime. He believes the current relenting of the BJP regarding the farmers is a ruse and that the Indian and Pakistani ruling class are secretly making a deal to plunder the Punjab between them.
A Somali comrade who grew up in Britain has been very interested in the Red Flag articles written by comrades in El Salvador. We have discussed how communism will eliminate money and the wage system. While she likes the idea, she thinks a few greedy people will sabotage it. I answer that these are ideological and cultural remnants and will require a Communist Party to defeat them.
Another workmate raised important questions from an article about agriculture. She grew up in Romania under the revisionist Communist Party. She said that agriculture was collectivised there, but it wasn’t popular because the peasants were too individualistic.
I told her about the Peoples Commune movement in China and said it was a question of ideological struggle and politicising the peasants which did not happen in Romania as it did in China. She said that the old landlord class in Romania became the intellectuals and officials in the ‘Peoples Democracy.’ This says a lot about how revisionism and capitalism can be regenerated when a communist movement makes serious errors.
Another workmate is from an Irish family, like myself. He approached me to talk about politics as someone told him I was a communist. He said he was very sympathetic as his father and an older brother were illiterate immigrant workers to Britain and communists. I give him the paper and he reads all of it. He especially likes the reports from Latin America and South Africa.
We can learn a lot from on-the-job discussion and distribution of the party paper. Most leftists in Britain stand on the same street corner for years with petitions demanding minor reforms and trying to sell their papers. The ICWP around the world understands that the workplace is the best place to engage and raise discussions.
The early communist movement based itself among the workers in the workplace. We must continue. From there we can work outwards. But it is the working class which can lead the masses in proletarian revolution to communism and has its direct interests in achieving communism.
Comrade in London
Capitalism Kills, Even in Times of “Peace”
During the recent international forum in El Salvador, a committed comrade said, “After feeling the warmth, then the blood comes. That’s what my mother objects to.” She was referring to the blood that is spilled by the working class in the battles, the confrontations and finally in the revolution against the enemy.
I responded that even in times of “peace” under capitalism, the working class, the oppressed of the world do not live in peace. There is widespread violence against us of all kinds, including police violence, gang violence, and the violence of starvation.
When I was six years old, my family lived in a small town in Mexico where there was no electricity, drinking water, school, or any type of medical care.
My little brother was born and my parents, like me, were very happy for Rafaelito’s arrival. One month later, he got sick. Since there was no doctor in town, my father asked a man with a truck to take him to the nearest clinic. It took us two hours to arrive.
When we got to the clinic, the doctor put the oxygen mask on my little brother. I could see the moisture of his difficult breathing in the mask. Soon the mask was clear. My little brother had stopped breathing. The doctor told my parents, “If you had arrived a little earlier, with proper treatment, your son would have survived.”
At that time, I did not understand why my little brother died. My mother said that God had wanted it that way. Later, I came to understand that it was capitalism that killed him. Capitalism kills, even in times of “peace.”
The comrade also referred to the comradely “warmth” we feel when we join the party and when we build communist relations in the revolutionary struggle. With this warmth we will put an end to a system that kills daily our working-class family worldwide.
And we’ll share this warmth in a world of true peace where the principle of “to each according to their need and from each according to their commitment” will be the guide of a new humanity.
Comrade in Los Angeles (USA)