Garment Workers Prepare for Communist Conference here ♦ Communist Solidarity here ♦
The Fight for Communism Unites Us All
India: Garment Workers Prepare for International Communist Workers’ Conference
BENGALURU (India), December 4— “For the first time in my life, I can tell my story and see how my life is no different than my brothers and sisters around the world. That is because I read Red Flag regularly and the fight for communism is what unites us all,” said Poonam.
“I feel like I am talking to those exploited masses. Each one of us has a unique story, but they all point to the truth that we have our capitalist exploiters.” Poonam was among about a dozen friends and members of ICWP in Bengaluru talking about the upcoming conference in El Salvador.
We started by asking how many of us have read Red Flag and how many of us distribute it regularly. That is when Poonam told her story of brutal exploitation that led her to read Red Flag seriously.
Everyone in the room had similar stories, and Red Flag became a unifying way of recruiting more comrades. When we read in Red Flag the story of another female worker in El Salvador, we forget where they are from. We feel that they could be somebody in our factory, our neighbor, our friend.
We are learning that when comrades feel confident about Red Flag, they feel confident about talking to their friends. It leads to a deeper struggle about why we need to fight for communism. Many comrades said that when we talk about communism, we must think clearly about how a communist society will be different from the bosses making a profit.
Communism Will End Thousands of Years of Sexism
Alisha is a garment worker who started coming to meetings recently. She struggled to get others to read Red Flag. So before giving it to her friends, she would read it and talk to them about it. In this way they are more likely to read it and spread it to other coworkers. She built a strong relationship with three women by talking about their lives. One told a story of facing spousal abuse. Alisha was eventually able to take her coworker to stay in a safe place.
The December conference will be very important in advancing our struggle for Red Flag to be a revolutionary organ of the party. It will tell the stories of Alisha and many others in building networks of Red Flag readers.
Another young comrade who joined recently said, “Growing up, I was expected to cook and clean every day. My brother was very abusive, and the family tolerated it. When the government gave a free cell phone to people in my village, my brother was the only one allowed to use it. One day I tried to use my cellphone, and he beat me up.”
She continued, “When I started reading Red Flag, I saw how sexism is everywhere in society. The domination of women has been going on for thousands of years. But we see that this society of making maximum profit from women workers leads us to fight for a communist society where nobody makes a profit.”
Our collective felt that the conference should emphasize more about how women workers are struggling with sexism and how we are taking leadership in building more women worker comrades. The sexist abuse our comrades have described is the tip of the iceberg as almost all women have experienced it.
Defeat Bosses’ Casteism and Anti-Muslim Fascism
It’s important to talk about how we are dealing with the increased oppression of the working class. The rulers are putting more restrictions on the workers every day. We face the effects of Covid that reportedly killed over 600,000 people here, high youth unemployment, hunger, and skyrocketing inflation.
The capitalist rulers constantly promote the division between Hindu and Muslim workers as a cause for all these problems. The Muslim workers are targeted for pogroms, bulldozer drives, police ‘disappearance,’ and long jail sentences without charges. But this is an attack on all the workers, especially Dalits, Adivasis, and even ‘Upper caste’ workers. The rulers are using these fascist tactics with cellphone use because they can very quickly suppress mass dissent.
Finally, the conference will open much-needed discussion about dialectical materialism. The important aspect of ‘likeness’ and ‘difference’ will lead to a better understanding of internationalism and the communist struggle for it. If workers everywhere in India, El Salvador, the USA, and South Africa are more alike, then what is dividing us?
The bosses use nationalism, gender, identity politics, religion, caste, race, language, tribe, etc. We propose that we discuss our party that is small in quantity has the quality to potentially change the world by becoming a mass party for communist revolution.
Communist Solidarity: “Workers Helping Each Other”
I come from a very small village in Bihar. Bihar is one of the most impoverished states in India.
My father was a day laborer who was trying very hard to support five children. My mother did the household chores. The money that my father brought was so little that many days we did not eat. It was very hard to hear my younger sibling crying at night when there was no food.
As the children grew older, my mother started working in a coal mine. It was very hard work. She would leave early in the morning. Her job was the most demanding task. She would carry heavy loads of coals on her back and another large basket on her head. There was no break as she worked over twelve hours a day. She would come home covered with coal dust all over her body.
My mother was only able to work in coal mines for about six years. She started having serious health issues. Her breathing was difficult. We had no money to take her to the nearest clinic eighty kilometers (50 miles) away. The government clinics are the last places people go. They lack sanitary conditions, and the doctors are poorly trained.
During those six years when my mother worked, we were able to have at least one meal a day. My older siblings were in big cities working odd jobs. When I was sixteen, I also left home. Many young girls in our village found jobs in the garment factories of Bengaluru. I followed them and have been working in various garment factories in Bengaluru for over eleven years.
I cannot remember when I joined ICWP. I guess it may be two years, during the pandemic. I received Red Flag either from a friend or someone who gave it to me at work. I am ashamed to say that I did not read it. However, I kept it in my room.
A few weeks later, someone gave me another copy of Red Flag. It was very hard for me because of the pandemic, my work was reduced. So, when I saw a Red Flag with a headline that said, “El Salvador: Communist Solidarity in Practice.” I grabbed it and read the whole article.
The article said, “only workers can help each other.” It made a deep impression on me. The more I read it, the more I understood that I was a worker also. And only workers like me, no matter where they come from, men or women, if we are united, can smash the oppressive system.
This article aroused my curiosity, and I started reading more articles from other areas. I like to read all the articles from El Salvador because what they are describing is related directly to the garment work in Bengaluru.
Comrades in our collective in garment factories are discussing the conference in December. This will be a great opportunity for us and other comrades all around the world to put into practice the communist principle of “workers helping each other.” I am very excited about the conference.
—Garment worker comrade in Bengaluru (India)
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