Workers Must Destroy Capitalism with Communist Revolution
February 4—Workers for Trendyol, a huge Turkish e-commerce outfit, got a 38% pay increase following a strike—but the inflation rate is close to 50%. Protests spread to other e-commerce companies, to factory workers and to journalists.
LOS ANGELES (USA), February 14—”My co-workers are worried the value of the dollar is falling,” said A, an industrial worker, during a meeting of the ICWP garment collective that was studying inflation. “And that means there are preparations for war.”
Comrade B said, “It is useless for wages to increase, if the prices of what we consume have already gone up.”
Comrade C added, “Due to this crisis, many garment workshops in downtown Los Angeles have closed because they do not want to pay $15/hour. They prefer to have their clothes made in Mexico.”
“This crisis is not just here, it is global,” said D. “In other countries it is even worse. But I don’t see people protesting in the streets.”
Prices of things that workers must buy, like food and gasoline, have gone up sharply. In South Africa, Europe and elsewhere, they are around 6% higher than a year ago (7.5% in the US).
A rise in prices for many products all at once is called inflation. Its effect on workers is mainly bad since wages don’t necessarily go up too.
During the pandemic, many factories were shut down or reduced production because workers were sick or because they could not sell their products. Recently people have been returning to work and spending more. Now demand for many products is greater than the industries can make and transport to stores.
When demand is greater than supply, prices go up. This is a law of motion of capitalism. That is, it happens whether people want it to happen or not.
Higher prices don’t mean that things increase in value. Value is determined by the amount of human labor that it takes to make something, and that does not increase just because things cost more. Inflation means that money itself (dollars, euros, yen, pounds, etc.) is worth less than it used to be.
Capitalists don’t want inflation, but for different reasons than workers. It makes it hard for capitalists to plan and it usually leads workers to demand higher wages. Bankers especially don’t like inflation because when money is worth less, debts can be paid off with “cheaper” money.
So capitalist government banks like the US Federal Reserve System try to keep inflation low by raising interest rates. This makes it more expensive to borrow money. Workers’ credit card bills go up, even for things they have already bought.
Higher interest rates have contradictory results for capitalists. They may limit inflation, but they make it more expensive for capitalists to expand. But the banks’ tools for controlling inflation are not very effective.
Inflation shows that even the capitalists can’t control their system to make it do what they want. Inflation, and much more serious things, like economic crises, are built into capitalism. Because of the contradictions within capitalism, trying to reform it (to fix one bad thing) usually creates other serious problems.
“What does communism offer to end inflation?” asked E, a transit worker who attended the garment collective meeting.
“We cannot solve that,” comrade F replied. “It results from the internal laws of capitalism.”
“We still have individual and family dreams that we are going to be able to eat or pay the rent,” said G, a retired transit comrade. “But dialectical materialism teaches us that situations change, not for the better but for the worse, as long as the exploitative system exists.”
The communist philosophy of materialism recognizes that there are natural and social facts and laws of motion about material things and processes. These laws and facts don’t depend on human choices. They last as long as the things and processes continue to exist.
“We must give the vision to other workers, through Red Flag,” F urged, “of a communist world without markets and without money” (and so without inflation). “And we must show the need to create more communist collectives to destroy the capitalist system, and how communism will produce to satisfy the masses’ needs in a collective way.”
“We can use this crisis to mobilize our co-workers, friends and family to fight for communism,” concluded comrade H. “Also, we can organize workplace and street-corner protests against inflation and for the revolution.”
Read our pamphlet on Communist Political Economy here
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