South Africa to El Salvador: Organizing Workers and Youth

Building communist Collectives among youth here ♦ Sharing Red Flag article here ♦ Health Care Workers Serving the Workers here ♦ Change of Perspective after joining ICWP here ♦

Marikana, 2016

Need to Build New Communist Collectives

EL SALVADOR– For years I have wanted to see the International Communist Workers’ Party grow even more. In recent years, I began a plan to win more young people to communist ideas. To do this, I shared Red Flag among students from the National Institute. I helped them with their homework and took advantage of the time to talk to them about communist ideas.

Three young people got excited about this. But when they commented to a teacher that the person helping them with their homework talked to them about communism, their teacher began a struggle to stop this. They stopped visiting me. They told me that the teacher said that he believed that communism was bad. I explained to them the mistake they were making, but only one continued to meet with me. At the end I lost contact with him too because he transferred to another school.

With this experience in mind, I started another struggle, in the school where I work, with youth from Junior High School. I was always aware of their Social Studies topics and when I covered classes for an absent teacher, I took the opportunity to introduce communist ideas. I managed to build a group of five young people. They were very interested. The problem was that when they left to go to high school, I lost contact with some of them.

By 2020, I set myself the goal of resuming this strategy to win young people to our communist party. We were in the process of gaining their confidence so that they would accept my guidance in their tasks and take the opportunity to talk to them about communist ideas. But everything got paralyzed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, all these experiences have helped me to realize that, yes, young people can be won over to communism. I have not given up and I will not give up on carrying out new projects to recruit more people.

Now I am starting another project, from the family group. I have four readers. I can speak directly with them to say that only a communist revolution can help us defeat capitalism. I will continue fighting to win more people to communism.

All this experience has helped me to learn more about how to go about struggling better to win more young people to communism and to organize them into the International Communist Workers’ Party.

Red Teacher

Sharing Red Flag Articles Helps

Recently, we were sitting with my friend whom I’ve been struggling with to join the party, when we got the latest issue of the Red Flag. We shared one with him. While we were reading, he saw an article by another comrade on religion.

It inspired him and he opened up. He said, “This is a good article. In the end of the day, the promised land is a society where people will live without the bad things we see now.”

He always believed that my refusal/skepticism to go to church with him was because, somehow, I’m a wrong person or because of the party or something. We talked further and deep after that. He told us a lot more about his work. He works at a bread factory.

He said, “I can really see how the bosses will squeeze everything in us workers until we are dry, with no life. We work at the factory for eight to ten hours a day and get paid only R9-R12 ($0.70-$0.90)/hour.”

That money they get cannot even buy a loaf of the bread that they make. Whereas they make thousands/hour for the bosses.

He went on to say, “This job has taken so much of my life, man. I go to work at 6 in the morning, come back later. I’m tired. I can’t even do anything but go straight to sleep, then wake up the next morning. It’s the same thing again!

“The money I get later in the week goes to transport. I am literally left with nothing, nothing! I’m grumpy, man. All I see is the factory and my room. I have no social life. I can actually feel being drained physically and emotionally by work.”

In communism we won’t have to work long hours because we will be producing for the needs of our class, not for profit and there will be useful work for everyone to do. There will a contribution for everyone to make.

The reason workers all over the world work long hours is that capitalist bosses want to make maximum profit by reducing the number of workers so that they don’t have to pay much in wages. At the same time, they extend hours so that the few that are left can cover for the reduced number of workers.

My friend took a few copies of the Red Flag and said he was going to give them to some workers at his workplace. He said we must go there and distribute the Red Flag because workers are not happy. They are angry.

Workers have every reason to be angry. But most importantly, workers have a reason to fight the capitalist bosses, destroy their system with a communist revolution, and establish a society where they don’t work for money and for individual bosses, but for their needs.

Comrade in South Africa

Health Care Worker: Serving the Workers in the Face of Bosses’ Attacks

EL SALVADOR— “They discriminate against me every day,” said a comrade, “even though I do my work as part of Social Security (the national health care system) very well. For the bosses in the factory, I am still a rock in their shoe.”

The discussion in one of the cells where we deliver Red Flag opened with a reader who works in health care inside the factory. After receiving Red Flag, she talked about how her organized struggle within the International Communist Workers’ Party has made her feel useful for our working class, but at the same time attacked by the bosses and their servants.

“I am a bit desperate at the moment because for the bosses, my role as a worker is of little value,” she continued. “They want me to leave.”

After hearing this, a worker comrade told her, “Take heart, don’t lose the Party line; continue in the vanguard of the fight, because this is seen worldwide through the Red Flag.”

Some questions arose from this discussion. What will daily life be like in a communist system? How will we all be treated?

Workers in the maquilas have begun to trust the revolutionary line of the ICWP that there will be no class differences. That is, there will be no more exploited or exploiters, since these acts of discrimination occur only in this bosses’ system where workers never see our labor power valued.

The bosses are only interested in us giving our labor power to them to generate their production, to absorb all our time and labor, while they keep all the profits. In communism, production will be generated according to the needs we have. We will have more time for our families and friends. Not like today, when they don’t even want us to take the customary Easter vacation.

At the end of the meeting, the comrade health care worker said, “I will write a letter and send it to Red Flag, so that workers from other parts of the world can become aware of our daily struggles.”

The Change of Perspective After I Joined ICWP

It is a pleasure to be a part of the struggle to mobilize the masses for the ICWP and to educate people about what it means to be a communist. What I mean by “pleasure” is the changes of growth and knowledge I have gained in the party.

Being a comrade of the ICWP has made an immense impact in my being. Now I’m aware of the exploitation the capitalists are using to gain control over the Republic of South Africa and around the world. This is true whether people believe it or not.

My collective has a great potential, the way I see it. The potential which we can use to address the masses that enough is enough to the capitalist manipulative tactics to divide us. Truly speaking, borders, poverty, sexism, politics, television, etc., are the tools used by these evil animals to divide people.

But the most dangerous tool that conquers all is money. They use it so that we can see ourselves better than others, as money is the means of exchange which binds us to them and makes us vulnerable at times.

The most sickening part of this cancer in this cycle we revolve about is that nobody of the working class sees how deep and dirty those we work for are. Because nothing that is made by the working class is made for the needs of the working class, but for a capitalist’s gain. And the profit made by the working class also goes to the capitalists. Just think about it. Isn’t that beyond being cruel?

I can talk till nightfall about my eyes being opened so much at what is happening around the globe. But the point I’m trying to drive home is: ICWP is really with and for the working class’s rights to what they deserve after all.

I’ve been a comrade of a political party, but I’ve never learned so much, I’ve never been cared for. I was never exposed to the truth, but I was given tasks to deceive people of the money mostly. But my morals never allowed me to do so. I was forced to back off because I couldn’t lie to our people.

Today as a member of the ICWP, I stand for what is right. I stand for what people deserve. I got a collective that believes in the moral value of honesty, leadership, integrity, and most of all, communism.

I would like to take this opportunity to assure comrades of the ICWP that the party stands and rises due to the dedication we give to make sure that it grows. We thank and salute for their support all the comrades of the ICWP around the globe: “Forward Comrades, Forward”!

A Comrade in South Africa

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