We Need Strong Collectives to Continue the Fight in Horrific Times here ♦ Why is it so important to go to the May Day March? here ♦
Mexico City, May 15—Comrades distributed hundreds of Red Flags during the march celebrating the Day of the Teacher.
We Need Strong Collectives to Continue the Fight in Horrific Times
“Truly, I live in dark times!” begins a poem “To Those Yet Unborn” by German communist poet Bertholt Brecht.
“An unwrinkled forehead suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs has simply not yet heard the terrible news. What kind of times are they, when to talk about trees is almost a crime, because it implies silence about so many horrors?
“I came among men in a time of revolt and I rebelled with them,” Brecht continues. “Our forces were slight. Our goal lay far in the distance. It was clearly visible, though I myself was unlikely to reach it. So passed my time which had been given to me on earth.”
I first found this poem fifty-six years ago, during the US war in Vietnam. It spoke to me then as it does now—of the horrors of capitalism and the challenge of fighting for a communist world.
I share it with my comrades this week because we are definitely living in horrific times. Anyone who is not in pain at the deaths that our class is suffering, from Yemen to Tigray to Ukraine, from Port Elizabeth to Buffalo to Uvalde, is truly insensitive. And we must not become insensitive to the pain of our class.
But if we are immobilized by our sensitivity, we won’t be able to fight to end the horrors of capitalism.
A younger comrade texted to me, “I’m definitely not immobilized by the tragedies that have just passed. I’m using my pain and anger to continue fighting for a world which does not suppress the masses.”
We must continue the struggle, but we can’t carry on that battle alone. Capitalism teaches us to suck it up, to keep our problems to ourselves, and to carry on—until we can’t anymore.
Communists know that we must build strong collectives that support each other in this struggle. Reach out to your friends and comrades. Share your pain and renew your dedication to fighting for a communist world.
A comrade
Why is it so important to go to the May Day March?
Spain—On May 1, after the march, my partner’s 15-year-old son asked us why it was so important to go out on the street. It was his first experience participating in a march.
At dinner we talked about the working-class struggles of the farmworkers in El Salvador, starting in 1932, up to the formation of the armed movements in the civil war in the 1980s.
We told him that in the past, the working day was over eight hours long; that in the past and today the bosses are only interested in the profits that we workers generate. And that thanks to struggles of workers in the past we have vacations and some other benefits that did not exist before. We talked about the history of the workers in Chicago and their fight for the eight-hour day. He was amazed at these stories of workers’ struggles.
But does there have to be so much violence to achieve changes to improve the conditions of the workers? And if those goals have already been achieved, why continue going out to the streets to demonstrate?
Violence comes about because the machinery that the system uses, such as the police or politicians making laws favoring the rich and powerful, force us to defend our rights. The bosses will never be on the side of the masses.
Building a communist system is a fight that we have to carry out as a family. Being part of the International Communist Workers’ Party is how we will be able to carry out that goal.
Communist practices such as collectively helping each other with household chores are signs that we can build a better world. Washing the dishes is not just a chore that mom has to do.
“Now I understand more. I think there are very strong reasons for the party to grow and for us to fight to change the world! I think I was being too conformist before,” my son told us.
For this world to change we have to spread communist ideas massively and thus dialectically prepare the workers for a struggle in the near future and to overthrow the capitalist system.
As a family we are the collective where the fight begins. We have to transmit those ideas. We start by defeating sexism and ensuring the party’s survival in quantity and above all in quality.
—Family of Comrades in Spain
Front page of this issue
