Communism Now! here ♦ Humanization of Health here ♦ Social Imperialism is not Communism here ♦ Mexico, October 2 here ♦
Mexico City, October 2—Thousands of protestors took to the streets to remember and repudiate the massacre of hundreds of students on October 2, 1968. The murderous government of Mexico tried to silence the voices that called for a better world. This mass murder relied on the moral support of the US government and the directors of the Olympic Games, which took place shortly afterward. “I was there in 1968 and now I’m in ICWP,” said a comrade.
Communism Now!
Crises in capitalism are inevitable. Every few years there is a major crisis facing capitalist economies, which always leads to major suffering of the working class.
The capitalist world is currently facing a major crisis. Capitalists are scrambling for dominance as their profits fall. Wars are being fought which threaten a world war between the USA-led West and the Chinese-led bloc that includes Russia.
Poverty, suffering is on the rise, caused by high energy prices. All of us are affected by these capitalist wars and crises. In South Africa, capitalist forces are fighting for the control of the country.
The western-made and -backed billionaire president Ramaphosa and his faction are trying to align and give greater control to the West, especially through the control of the energy supply in South Africa. However, as the capitalist crises increase, the workers are starting to reject Ramaphosa and to an extent his African National Congress (ANC).
Ramaphosa has a reputation of being a “workers’ guy” given his history within the unionist movement. This has always given him some political leverage. However, this no longer works. Workers in the country are rejecting him, seeing him as the source of their suffering.
These are not just workers but workers that are led by the ANC trade-union allies in COSATU. Politicians of the ANC, including another unionist Gwede, have all faced rejection at different political rallies as the workers increasingly see them for what they are (capitalist lackeys).
The rejection of these political lackeys is a positive step towards the fight for communism. Although workers are increasingly rejecting these figures, as we concluded in one of our meetings, this does not automatically mean they will be for communism.
The end of capitalism, or capitalism as we know it now, is almost set in history. However, for communism to emerge amid capitalist ruins, we must actively work for that eventuality.
Mobilizing for communism now is our rallying cry as we recruit the workers who reject capitalist lackeys. Communism now! is our cry as we live our daily lives as communists, not only becoming communists in meetings and mobilizing rallies.
We must actively use our literature for education as we are attempting to do to create communist consciousness of the working class. Comrades agree that to consolidate the workers who show interest in our party, we must have political classes for theoretical understanding as well as having the practical experience of recruiting and mobilizing for communism.
Therefore, with dedication and commitment, we regard a communist future would not be in a distant epoch. Rather, we will realize communism now!
—Comrades in South Africa
“Humanization of Health”: Bosses Blame Workers for the Precarity of the Health System
The El Salvador Social Security Institute (ISSS) recently held a workshop on the “humanization of health.” Its General Director of Insurance was in charge of blaming the workers for the shortcomings of the health system.
She declared: “You must put yourself in the patients’ place. The complaints of ill-treatment are due to some of your colleagues. Starting today, think about how to change your job. You must do your part, we as an institution already trained them. Now it depends on you.”
This attack seeks to transfer blame for the structural failures of the health system to the individual level. It seeks to implant guilt in the health worker. The number of health workers is insufficient to cover the demand. This causes fatigue and physical and mental exhaustion in the workers.
“We live in a problematic situation,” an obstetrician mentioned. “Government propaganda makes workers believe that the work we do every day is accomplished by the first lady of the republic and the president.”
“We are all afraid of being sued. The government blames us for the lack of personnel and the lack of medicines and medical equipment needed to care for patients,” added another worker.
A health system must have universal coverage, be equitable, and be consistent with scientific and technical quality. Public health research reveals the need for a health system based on primary care that meets the basic and elementary needs of the population. We need referral hospitals that have the technology needed to attend to more complex pathologies.
Nations like Cuba and some former Soviet republics were characterized by a robust primary care structure, based on health centers spread throughout their territory. They promoted preventive health and a more active life for health care workers. But this is a threat to pharmaceutical companies, health insurance consortia, and other companies that monopolize workers’ health.
Even such systems will never be able to develop their full potential, as it represents a threat to capital. Not to mention that in these nations the capitalist socio-economic structure was left intact with the wage system. And the divisions between doctors, nurses, health service assistants, and other health workers, which promotes elitism in the medical and nursing professions.
Only by changing the social system from capitalist to communist will workers be able to opt for a health system that truly puts human health at its center and reason for being.
It is therefore necessary to unite the health workers with the workers in the factories and the countryside to fight against the true enemy, the bourgeois state. Let’s organize more health and maquila workers to fight for communism and build a health system based on universal, free, equitable and comprehensive primary health care.
—Red Doctor
Learn from History: Social Imperialism Is Not Communism
Comrades reported that a worker from Eritrea told them, “The communists were terrible in my country,” referring to the Soviet-backed Derg (1974-1991). Eritrea, formerly part of Ethiopia and now an independent country, fought a war of secession during the Derg regime.
A popular movement rose against King Haile Selassie in 1974 with a mutiny of rank-and-file soldiers in several provinces. The Derg, a military junta, took advantage of the instability, suppressed the popular movements, and took power.
Their power rested on organizing peasant associations against the feudal landlords and organizing and arming the lumpen proletariat of urban Addis Ababa to attack the popular movement and shoot down anyone who opposed the junta.
Ethiopia had been a US client during Selassie’s reign, and the Soviet Union and China were the first countries to recognize the Derg government. Ethiopian Marxists were aghast! The USSR was a state socialist system, not a communist state. In relation to Ethiopia it was social imperialist.
The last conference of the Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions, (CELU), held in September 1975, called for the restoration of all civil rights and for the formation of a proletarian political party. When CELU members distributed leaflets at the airport, Derg security forces attacked them and gunned down seven of them. The Derg outlawed CELU in 1977, imprisoned the union leaders, and formed their own All Ethiopia Trade Union.
The Derg was a military dictatorship. It nationalized financial institutions and 72 factories while crushing workers organizations. That doesn’t make a regime communist or even socialist. It’s a fascist-corporate state.
The Derg’s land reform made residential rentals state property and put large agricultural estates in the hands of ostensibly peasant-run collectives. This attack on the feudal remnants kept power in the hands of a fascist military junta serving the interests of the corporate state.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union used the Derg, and, more crucially, the Cuban military, to conceal its social-imperialist character. Castro himself visited Ethiopia and sent 13,000 soldiers to support the Derg in its war against the US client in Somalia, against the secessionist movement in Eritrea, and against domestic opposition.
The Derg’s slogans were “Ethiopia First” and “Ethiopian Socialism.” These are fascist slogans. The Derg declared “red terror.” They called Marxist or Maoist or radical movements “CIA agents” who should be shot on the spot. These Marxists, Maoists, and radicals fought for reform, not for revolution. There was never a communist party organizing workers to take power in Ethiopia.
Someday there will be.
—Comrade who escaped the Derg