New Delhi, India, April 22, 2022
Workers Use Communist Philosophy in the Fight to End Capitalism
INDIA, January 20— “I used to think that my life was horrible, it was never going to change. I hated the system, but I saw no way out,” said Neelam. “But it made me very angry. When I saw Red Flag, I read that people just like me were trying to destroy the system and build a communist society without the capitalists. I saw hope. Rather than feeling a victim, I saw there are tens of millions of workers like me. If we are united, change will come fast.”
Neelam and dozens of other comrades from Bengaluru, Delhi, and Chennai met virtually to read and discuss Red Flag. Comrades made a special effort to bring new comrades. They had followed the recent international party conference in El Salvador and wanted to continue the struggle.
“If we understand laws of dialectical materialism, we will be able to counter capitalist rulers’ ideology that their system of wage slavery is going to last forever,” Neelam continued. “Everything in nature and society changes because of internal contradictions. Today, we are going to discuss how this helps in our struggle for a communist society.”
Neelam recently joined ICWP in a Bengaluru garment factory where she received Red Flag from another worker. Like many others, she faces many obstacles to attending a communist meeting. She rises at 4:00 am to get ready for work. It takes her about 90 minutes to go to the factory where she works a 12-hour shift. She arrives home exhausted, and immediately her other (unpaid) job starts: cleaning, cooking, and childcare.
With all this, Neelam made the time to come to a communist meeting. She saw the need to change the world. Now attending communist meetings is the most exciting thing in her life, not a sacrifice. Her introduction encouraged other comrades to participate in our dialectical materialism meeting.
Analyzing Internal Contradictions
Amit is an unemployed worker in Delhi. He joined the party during the tumultuous struggles against massacres of Muslim workers. He experienced firsthand the struggle for oxygen during the Covid times. He was involved in the Shaheen Bagh movement and the farmers’ agitation.
“We all know that when sowing seeds, we must bury them deep in the soil,” Amit said. “With some water, the seed transforms into a shoot that becomes a tree. If you take a stone and bury it underground for millions of years, it will remain a stone. The seed and the stone have the same external conditions, but their internal contradictions are different.”
Another Delhi comrade said, “The profit system that we live in creates an internal contradiction. It puts the working class in direct conflict with our capitalist rulers. They use casteism and religion to divide us. They think that by intense fascism they can continue to win some workers and keep their profits flowing. We saw in Shaheen Bagh, in Hathras, that whenever they suppress workers based on religion and caste, it gives us opportunities to win workers to communism.”
Another worker said, “I did not know what dialectical materialism was. I thought that philosophy was for some smart people. But today I saw that not only can we understand the laws of dialectics, but we can build for the communist revolution. We, the workers, create everything. Why can’t we create a communist society without money? Capitalists want us to think like them. They want us to fight and die for money. We want to fight for a communist revolution that will create a society for the masses, not the capitalists.”
Red Flag Unites Comrades Worldwide
Ramesh has worked in the auto industry in Chennai for over twenty years. He said, “When I read about the struggle of our comrades hundreds of miles away in Delhi, fighting against fascist Modi and his attacks on Muslims, it inspires me. My comrades at work talk about it.
“Then I read in Red Flag about the conditions of super-exploited workers in South Africa, the garment workers in El Salvador, the MTA workers in Los Angeles, the Boeing workers, and the garment workers in Colombo and Bengaluru,” Ramesh continued. “I think we are more alike than different. We may speak different languages, and we may come from different countries, but what unites us all is that we face the same capitalists. In India, five super-rich capitalists control eighty percent of the wealth. It is the same in other countries.
“Today’s meeting gives me ammunition to recruit more,” he concluded.
With this encouragement from comrades (women and men) joining the party, we are in a better position to mobilize our forces for communism on May Day and intensify our struggle to recruit the masses to ICWP. Communism is the future!
Read our introduction to communist philosophy here
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