Unemployed South African Youth Build ICWP in Factory Districts here ♦ Workers Need ICWP’s Communism, Not SACP’s Socialism here ♦ Communism Will Use Technology to Meet Workers’ Needs here ♦
Unemployed South African Youth Build ICWP in Factory Districts: Industrial Workers: Key to Mobilizing for Communism
GQUBERHA (Port Elizabeth, South Africa), May 29— “If you do your work every day, just like I drive my taxi every day, people will listen to you,” said the taxi driver of a van that transports workers to the factories. “The bosses are lying; you are telling the workers the truth.”
This driver had taken Red Flag a week earlier, when we were distributing papers at large factories. Over seven thousand industrial workers are concentrated in this Coega Special Economic Zone, financed by Chinese imperialism.
While all workers and youth are important in our struggle to fight directly for a communist society, industrial workers face the brutality of the system directly in the factories through exploitation.
“Industrial workers are key to fighting the bosses and their system because without them there is no surplus value and no profits,” said a comrade.
Under capitalism, industrial workers develop class hatred and class solidarity in the class struggle. This makes them more open to communism and key to the revolutionary fight to win it. The bosses know that and work to win them to fascism. Communists must confront that.
The driver we met was waiting for his crew (riders) where many other taxi drivers wait for passengers at shift breaks. He said, “Rich is getting richer, and the rest of us are poorer every day.”
The perfect way to introduce how we can get to communism where there are no rich and poor. He read Red Flag carefully, exchanged contact information, and even delayed the passengers so he could talk with us about communism.
Building ICWP: From the Factories to the Neighborhoods
Our confidence grew as we learned from our experience.
We had a good Red Flag distribution at the Volkswagen plant in Port Elizabeth. The largest VW plant in Africa, it employs about four thousand workers, and produces over 100,000 Polo VW cars for export mostly to Europe. Each of us made solid contacts. One comrade knows a VW worker who also gets Red Flag. We know that winning these workers will require constant ideological struggle. We will continue to visit these industrial areas.
Two younger comrades took the initiative and showed a new comrade how to reach the masses with Red Flag. Each comrade met workers they knew from their township. One Isuzu worker told a comrade she knew how to apply for a job at Isuzu.
“If I were to be employed at Isuzu it would be very beneficial in our struggling to win the workers and trying to create a base inside,” the comrade commented.
We visited the house of a worker who wanted to come to our weekly meeting but was not able to contact us. He brought another worker who will be there next week. Communication in the townships is hard because connections are unreliable, and airtime is expensive. An older comrade has contacted seven comrades, including Isuzu workers, and plans to meet with them.
Later we visited another Chinese-owned factory that employs mostly workers from other countries. We made contacts with workers from Zimbabwe and Kenya. We hoped to meet other workers during lunch time, but the factory owner doesn’t always allow them to go on lunch. He knows that some workers do not have legal documentation and therefore won’t report him for locking them inside.
We aim to work with the contacts we made in this factory so they can distribute the Red Flag individually to other workers. Another comrade will send Red Flag electronically to his co-workers.
Advancing with the Red Flag
Unemployed comrades carried out these mobilizations. We estimate that we distributed over two thousand copies of Red Flag. We know we are the only party that gives a communist perspective to the workers.
Twenty-five young workers, mostly unemployed, enjoyed a high-spirited and politically sharp braai (barbecue) and meeting that concluded this project and kicked off its next stage.
By consistently distributing Red Flag, visiting industrial workers, and convincing them to join ICWP, we can affect thousands of industrial workers to fight for a communist society without bosses. This work must start with developing more communist organizers and forming a nucleus like the comrades who have shown the way.
We will take the taxi driver’s suggestion seriously and fight to continue our work, not for just a few weeks, but regularly.
Dialectical materialism states that “quantitative change leads to qualitative change.” Paper by paper, visit by visit, we must mobilize the working class all over the world to seize power through a communist revolution.
Workers Need ICWP’s Communism, Not SACP’s Socialism
At Strundale, an automotive hub, when we mentioned “communism” some workers were confused. They thought we represented the South African Communist Party (SACP). We explained the difference. The SACP allies with the ruling African National Congress, whose leaders are among the owners of the very same companies that exploit the workers daily.
SACP advocates a socialist society where the government replaces individual bosses from controlling the means of production without replacing the wage system. But the individuals in control will receive special privileges, and that creates a new ruling class. In contrast, as the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) we are fighting for a classless society.
A worker in another industrial area also thought we represent SACP. He saw the word communism and said, “I’ve been looking for you, how much is the joining fee?” A comrade explained that we are not SACP but the ICWP.
We are fighting directly for communism, a society where the means of production will be owned and controlled by the working class. A society where the workers will contribute according to their ability and benefit according to their needs. He gave us his number and we will continue to struggle with him to join the party.
Three women took Red Flag in Perseverance, another industrial area. One started to browse through it, then said, “I don’t want to hear about politics because it makes people hungry. They will want us to protest and lose our jobs.”
A comrade explained that we are not an electoral party or a union, and we are not saying they must protest and lose their jobs. We want them to join ICWP to fight for a world without bosses who retrench them (lay them off) to lower costs and maximize profits. A society where they won’t worry about hunger.
Communism Will Use Technology to Meet Workers’ Needs, Not to Create Mass Unemployment
SOUTH AFRICA, May 23—Massive unemployment is devastating the lives of whole communities here. If you count people who have given up on looking for work, 46% of the workforce is unemployed. Two-thirds of youth (15-24 years old) are unemployed. People are hungry. People are afraid. People are angry.
Khwezi (not his real name) is a 38-year-old Black worker. He has worked for eight years for an American company, Huggies, that makes disposable diapers. Until last year, 102 men worked in his unit, divided into ten teams. Their tasks were cutting, stamping, gluing, assembling, and shipping.
Last year there was a massive layoff in his production unit. “In 2021, the bosses told us that we were not meeting our targets,” Khwezi told us. “They said if we don’t improve, we will have layoffs.”
The workers were very nervous, as most of them worked for a contractor who charged them as much as half their pay. They had no security, no paid leave, and no medical services. Effectively they earned less than the daily minimum wage. All of them walked to work from a township far away because they could not afford transportation.
“The bosses said they were going to upgrade our entire unit, which would make our tasks easier, and it would improve efficiency,” Khwezi continued. “Everybody understood that would mean more work for some of us and many workers would lose their job. When the new machines came on the production line, they asked ten workers to go to specialized training. We realized that they were phasing out the other ninety workers and we were going to be the new unit.
“The new automated machine that I operate is producing 1000 pampers a minute. All the tasks are done by 10 workers instead of 100 workers. The machines require one person to operate everything from cutting to shipping.”
This phenomenon has been occurring for hundreds of years, since when the capitalist system took its root. The bosses need more profit. They compete with other capitalists. This forces them to create efficiency, speed up, and automation to lower the cost of production.
This requires the bosses to invest more into machinery that replaces workers. And since only workers create profit, fewer workers can only be profitable for the bosses with a huge expansion of their market share, thereby directly destroying their competitors and causing even more layoffs.
Capitalism is at present in crisis. It has produced enormous forces and efficiency to create commodities in huge numbers. But instead of the workers benefiting from the fruit of our labor, the bosses have created conditions of mass layoffs. The drive to increase profit is causing the rate of profit to fall. It undermines the entire capitalist system. It presents itself as racist layoffs worldwide. It pits workers against other workers.
Only when the workers seize the means of production from the bosses can we free the working class from wage slavery. We must unite employed workers with the unemployed in our common goal to smash capitalism and create a communist society.
In a communist society, free from exploitation, the fruit of our labor will enrich entire humanity as we build our society based on our needs. Health care, housing, and education will rest on a new foundation. No more of capitalism’s vicious racism, unemployment, starvation, gang violence, and profit wars!
We are bringing this message to the hungry, angry masses to recruit them to our party.
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