Spain: Workers Need Communism, not Elections here ♦ USA neighbors discuss communist healthcare here ♦ South Africa-Need to Uproot wasteful capitalism here ♦
Spain: Workers Need Communism, Not Elections
At the beginning of the pandemic, we found a scenario of fear and concern. But also, of great anger against the capitalist system. Capitalism showed its true face: IT DOES NOT CARE ABOUT THE WORKING CLASS.
This pandemic has made it clear that we urgently need to change and destroy this system. We, the International Communist Workers’ Party, believe that for that to happen we need a Communist revolution.
The capitalist strategy was to reinforce large investments. Banks and large-scale supermarkets remained open throughout the pandemic, but small stores had to close. The capitalist chaos gave rise to the other, fascist, phase, which was to fill the cities with police.
The control by the imperialists to protect their profits has been reinforced by curfews almost everywhere in the world. Here there was a total closure at first. Nobody could walk in the street unless they had to go to a supermarket or a pharmacy. The fines for not wearing a mask were 600 euros or more. Many workers were fined for going out to seek a way to support their families.
Today, February 14, there are elections in Catalonia and, surprisingly, the politicking does not restrict the movement of workers to avoid massive contagion. The capitalist government is not interested in safeguarding the health of the workers, but only in exploiting the people with wages and keeping the mind distracted.
We do not need elections. We need to fight for a communist world so we can avoid the catastrophes that the capitalists cause.
Using technological resources to produce useful medicine, for the containment of diseases and to have healthcare in general focused on meeting the needs of workers, are a part of what we are fighting for.
Red Flag is the tool that we workers have so that we can discuss issues like this. It is our tool to use so that every day we are building this communist society.
Let’s share the Red Flag and spread communist ideas. Let’s discuss the articles with our co-workers and write to the newspaper to collectively continue to build our communist victory.
—Comrade in Spain
Conversation about Covid and Communist Health Care
“There is one spot that’s a little bit better in Seattle. Fire fighters and EMTs are going to underserved peoples’ houses to administer jabs,” said a neighbor during a discussion about the inequality of the global vaccine distribution program. He was critical of everything from sign-up crashes to line-jumping to racism and nationalism.
He knew that the extra help firefighters provided was insufficient, but it did point to the necessity of mobilizing masses to get the job done.
This led to a conversation about how communism will mobilize masses for healthcare.
We discussed how a million barefoot doctors were trained in China soon after the 1949 revolution. Workers in rural China were selected by their work crews and received six months of medical training each year. The other half of the year they spent working with their crews. Soon they were teaching certified MDs how to treat agrarian workers, who numbered in the hundreds of millions.
The communist strategy of mobilizing masses to advance health went beyond medical training for workers.
For example, schistosomiasis is one of the deadliest diseases in the world. It still affects over a billion people, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa. But the Chinese brought it under control soon after the revolution.
A microscopic worm causes this disease. To interrupt its life cycle, millions of farmworkers dug up and destroyed the snails that served as a host for the worms. In five years, the masses had virtually eradicated the disease.
Many thought these two mobilizations would lead to a new communist healthcare system. Unfortunately, the Chinese Communist Party chose socialism over communism and buried these attempts to put healthcare on a communist path.
We agreed that the situation would be radically different if medically-trained communist workers in the factories and fields were in charge of vaccinations. For example, these workers in the food-processing plants would guarantee that essential food production workers were vaccinated as soon as possible.
Today, most of these workers are Latinx. In Washington state, only 5% of initial vaccines have gone to Latinx workers, even though they make up 32% of the COVID cases.
We’re sending this letter to our study-action group chat that my neighbors participate in. I can’t wait to hear this collective’s thoughts on how our future communist society can advance public health.
—Seattle Comrade
Capitalism is Wasteful – We Need to Uproot It
The South African Government bought over a million doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine from an Indian pharmaceutical company, only to find that its efficacy in fighting the variant spreading here is 22%. That doesn’t meet the requirements of at least 60%, in order to be safe for use. So South Africa is confronted with this dilemma, and all goes to waste.
Capitalism is a wasteful system. The sooner it is uprooted, the better.
—Comrade in South Africa