Haiti General Strike here ♦ Abolish money here ♦ Review of “American Skin” here ♦
Haiti: General Strike Shows Need to Mobilize the Masses For Communism
February 17—A general strike has shut Haiti down for two weeks. Workers are calling for President Jovenal Moise, whose term expired February 7, to resign. Newly elected US President Biden has supported Moise’s intention to rule for another year.
US troops occupy Haiti, as they have off and on for over a century. Haitian workers have a long history of militant struggle against imperialism..
The election or resignation of one president will not liberate the Haitian masses from the horrors of capitalism. Only communist revolution can do that.
Why do we need to abolish money?
Money is the root of the class contradiction. The capitalist class (the bourgeoisie) are the beneficiaries of the working class’ labor power. They oppress the workers to create wealth for the bourgeoisie. In return the working class is given the illusion “money”, or “wages”, wage slavery.
The banks lend you money that you pay back with interest. Money is an illusion called currency, fiat money or “near money”. It’s basically an IOU receipt. This means money doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the bank and you pay it back with interest every day, through rising prices and taxes. Inflation simply means that you are paying the interest back. In fact, you are getting poorer by a certain percentage every year if you are getting a pay raise that’s in line with the inflation rate. ICWP identifies the wicked ways of the bourgeoisie.
ICWP will end this bourgeois ideology that supports the interests of capitalism, abolishing borders and money. This is very important to our classless society. Let’s not forget that it would take 165 bucks today to buy what your 100 bucks bought ten years ago. It’s hurtful to know and understand that the working class in Marikana died for this illusion: money.
Platinum and gold, on the other hand, don’t lose value. They don’t succumb to inflation. The bosses take our gold with force, forcing the working class to dig it out for them, like an ox plowing a field of crops it never gets to indulge in. And then they give you a trading certificate in the form of a “salary.” In that way you are lent R 5000 a month, but you’ll collect that money by paying a transaction fee before you get it. This is how the World Bank and IMF works.
It’s all a vicious cycle to ensure the main capitalists get richer beyond measure.
How many kilograms of gold does a miner yield monthly? A kilo of Gold today retails at no less than R846,491 (US$58,658). The average gold miner gets paper representing less than 2% of that. Same with platinum and diamond mine workers. What mine workers are lent by these criminal oligarchs is just not enough to feed them. So, they are forced to come back the next day and continue to sell their labor power to this capitalist in exchange for wages. It is wage slavery.
Exchange is pure capitalism, but with ICWP we will have no such thing. In communist society we share. That is also why we need to end borders so that no country will be richer or poorer than others. Mobilizing miners is top on the list for our struggle.
We won’t win if we don’t destroy all forms of capitalism. Communism is the only pure way of life for all.
Join our collective to destroy this illusion and borders.
—Comrade in South Africa
Movie Review: “American Skin.” Multiracial Communist Revolution Will End Racist Police Murder
“I didn’t mean to kill your son!” screamed the white police officer who looked down the barrel of the gun of the father whose son he had killed. Nate Parker’s film “American Skin” has received a lot of attention with capitalist media and among the masses. A Black man and his son are stopped by the police. While recording with his phone in hand, the son is fatally shot by the officer. The police are not charged for his murder, and a year later, the story takes a turn.
The audience for this movie is Black workers and youth who have marched in the streets against racist police murder. The message is—you can’t win. Black workers take up arms, but it’s a suicide mission from the start.
A year after his son Kijani’s murder, Nate Parker’s character, Lincoln (Linc) Jefferson, watches as his murderer is let off (like in real life). Protest erupts outside the police station—but it’s only Black workers (not like real life).
Linc, a veteran, and an all-Black group of his ex-military comrades storm the police station and take the cops hostage. They retry the case, putting Kijani’s killer on trial. The “jurors” are a multi-racial group of civilian employees, prisoners, and bystanders.
The jurors confront the police in some of the most interesting dialogue in the movie. A Muslim prisoner explains the commodification of Black culture and how that doesn’t protect Black peoples’ lives. An arrogant Latino male cop has a heated exchange with a prisoner who calls him a traitor. A Latina cop speaks out about the sexism she and other women cops face on the job every day.
All of these dialogues are heated, but there is never any class analysis of capitalism and how it creates sexism, racism and commodification.
The cop who killed Linc’s son admits his guilt, justifying it by saying that racial profiling is the price that’s paid to keep affluent neighborhoods safe.
Where the movie goes from there is as inevitable as it is reactionary.
This is a profoundly defeatist movie. Linc and his comrades stormed a police station believing they could get justice for Kijani from the capitalist system that murdered him. Far from being revolutionary, the message of this film is that Black men who stand up to the system, even if they believe in its “justice,” will be exterminated.
Workers cannot have true justice by storming a police station, or by one racial or ethnic group taking up arms against capitalism.
The recorded execution of George Floyd last year ignited the flames of rebellion amongst the working masses of all “races” around the world. We must continue to work to mobilize the masses for the justice we need- Communist Revolution.
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