Boeing letter here ♦ More on “race” and racism here ♦
August 22— Dock workers shut down the UK’s largest port in a strike over wages that might last more than the eight days originally announced. Capitalists fear further disruption of their supply chains, already hit by an ongoing series of rail strikes. They fear even more the day when industrial workers will turn from reformist strikes to the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system.
Awaken to the Need for Communist Revolution
The most recent issue of the Seattle (US) Boeing Machinist Union newspaper features an editorial by the union president entitled “The Awakening of the Labor Movement.” He boasts that the Machinists are ready to “support the next generation trying to change the world.” He touts the Boeing union as now one of the most diversified and inclusive unions in the labor movement. For instance, he says, the Boeing union now includes “workers who help homeland security take care of this country (the US).”
He says the new generation of organizers at Amazon and Starbucks are learning from the solidarity of the Boeing defense workers in St. Louis. A Filipino activist at an ICWP collective meeting asked if this “solidarity” included struggle against Boeing’s continued production of weapons that enable the bombing of Muslims on Mindanao.
Hours after this editorial appeared, a Machinist called a long-time Boeing comrade. He had just left the union hall after a futile effort to get a three-month paid paternity leave promised by Washington State law.
He can’t! The contract that the international headquarters rammed down the workers’ throats ten years ago takes precedence over state law. The contract lets the company get off without paying a dime. This is not the first time the union carried water for the company. Each time this happens, our friend takes a few more Red Flags to distribute to his co-workers.
The president ends his self-congratulatory editorial by quoting Isaac Newton: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
“The Machinists are the giants now,” he concluded, “lifting up the next generation of union leaders.”
His view of “solidarity” is poisoned by hubris, nationalism, and imperialist ideology. He can boast all he wants, but he bows before the altar of U.S. capitalism/imperialism.
That is the nature of trade union, reformist politics. It teaches each worker to put their immediate economic needs above the collective welfare of our global family.
Communist solidarity is the opposite. Capitalism cannot be reformed in a way that serves the world’s workers. The ICWP is one international party, not a coalition of allied national parties. Its aim is to mobilize the global working class for communism.
The awakening we need is to grow the party and build for communist revolution.
—Retired Boeing comrade, Seattle (USA)
Read the ICWP Pamphlet: “The Industrial Working Class and Communist Revolution” here
Capitalism’s Racist Practices: Material Basis for “Race” Concepts
Red Teacher’s letter (last issue) explained the crucial point that “the whole concept of ‘races’ is a social construct created by the capitalists to divide us and maximize profits.”
A biologist puts it this way: “‘Race’ cannot be biologically defined due to genetic variation among human individuals and populations.” Since scientists sequenced the human genome twenty years ago, this is rock-solid established science.
But we are social beings. Saying that ‘races’ are a social construct doesn’t mean denying their reality. How society racially identifies someone massively impacts their life. Where they can live or work. What schooling or health care or even food they can get. How others treat them.
Because it’s not just the concept of ‘races’ that the capitalists created. They also created, institutionalized, and sometimes wrote into law the practices of racism. This is the material basis of racist ideology. It’s “divide and conquer,” yes, but more accurately it’s “divide, super-exploit some while exploiting all, and conquer.”
Crucially, capitalism’s wage system – growing side by side with its enslavement of Africans and their descendants – was the root of racism. It was the reason and the basis for capitalism’s social construction of the concept of ‘races.’ It still is.
So I think it’s misleading to say that “Racism is a byproduct of the idea of races itself.” It’s true that individuals’ racist prejudices and actions wouldn’t exist without the capitalist-created “idea of races.” But that idea is a byproduct of capitalism’s racist practices.
Why does this matter? Because racism is a deadly social reality, even though race has no biological reality. Because we must understand how dangerous it is when some well-meaning people say they are “color-blind” or “don’t see race.” What they aren’t seeing is racism.
It matters most of all because we can’t destroy the capitalists’ socially constructed concept of “races” without destroying the capitalist class itself through armed communist revolution. During and after that revolution, constructing communist society means continuing to mobilize masses to identify and attack every remnant of capitalism’s racist practices.
By the way, there’s no human “race” either. Modern humanity is the species Homo sapiens, the only remaining species in the genus Homo. There were earlier human species: Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo floriensis, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and more.
Were they “fully human”? Are we today “fully human”? Can we even imagine what it is like to be “fully human” until we build and consciously inhabit communist society?
—Another comrade in Los Angeles (USA)
Read the ICWP Pamphlet: “To End Racism, Mobilize the Masses for Communism” here