This May Day I distributed Red Flag here ♦ Putting Talents to Work for the Masses here ♦ We are Comrades, not allies here ♦
This May Day I Distributed Red Flag
On May First I was in the Embarcadero, San Francisco, passing out Red Flag Newspaper. The plaza by the Bay filled with working people, their families, union brothers and sisters, non-unionized folks, and the unemployed. All were there to celebrate International Workers’ Day.
On the front page of The Red Flag was an article about comrades organizing factory workers in El Salvador. Another news story was about workers in India, organizing to fight laws that would bankrupt millions.
We passed out a flyer reporting on the pandemic in India. In India, Oxygen for medical purposes is available only to the super rich. India produces 60% of the world’s vaccines, but less than 10% of India’s population has had a Covid vaccination.
In the Embarcadero this International Workers Day, many people listened, and took the flyer and Red Flag. Some of the folks I met worried about the vaccination shortages, they spoke of their doubts about a capitalist health care and corporate system that is driven by money and profits.
They wanted to talk about how patents and licensing agreements have halted production of the vaccines.
I remember all the times in the last 30 years I had marched that route down Market to the Civic Center. I had marched in Earth Day demonstrations, the Women’s March, marches against racism and state violence, from Rodney King to Oscar Grant to George Floyd. I had marched in anti-war demonstrations, protesting the war in Vietnam, Iraq, Haiti, and in “Hands off Cuba”, and “Hands off Venezuela” protests. I remember the marches for immigrants’ rights, and the Occupy protests against ingrained economic inequality.
All those demonstrations resulted in at most incremental changes to a corrupt capitalist system, followed by sweeping backlash.
This May Day I passed out a paper that’s about getting rid of that militaristic, racist, sexist system. I was promoting a system of full participation of the people, a communist system that prioritizes human rights, health, education, a system of free access to goods and services. “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” – Karl Marx, 1875. I believe that the International Communist Workers Party can create the world workers need and deserve.
—San Francisco Bay Area (USA) Comrade
Putting Our Talents and Skills to Work for the Masses
“I love this!!!” exclaimed a friend who read a draft of “Communism Values Everyone’s Work, Realizes Everyone’s Potential” (Red Flag v. 12 #5). “It’s something I think about all the time— all the troves of untapped potential in our society simply because the capitalist system is too unimaginative and cruel to find roles for everyone’s unique talents and skills.”
Her favorite line was, “A communist system of production looks at what work needs to be done and how it can be done collaboratively by those willing to do it.”
This friend is a talented and busy young writer and comedian. Our question to her – and to all Red Flag readers—is how she feels she can contribute to Red Flag and the International Communist Workers’ Party.
We have a lot of communist work that needs to be done now!
—Comrades in Los Angeles (USA)
We Are Comrades, Not Allies
“When people say ‘comrade’,” argues the writer Jodi Dean, “they change the world.”
As a form of address, she argues, it immediately dismisses old relations (hierarchical, identity, political etc.) and promises new ones.
Communism is not just the future. It is the vision of the future we comrades share, organize and struggle for right now.
In the moment of greeting, it allows us to see our political horizon as communists involved in our emancipatory struggle. Our struggle against capitalist exploitation and its market forces of wage slavery, racism, sexism and imperialism.
Comrades are not allies who tolerate one another in a limited struggle. Communists cherish one another, Dean argues, in common, revolutionary struggle. Comrades are a necessity.
All this and more she argues in a short book, “Comrade.” It provided our book club with a very lively discussion. It would be interesting to hear what others think.
It also prompts me to encourage others to, at least, sign their letters to Red Flag as comrades,
—Comrade Reader
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