I Became A Communist Because Workers Have More in Common Than Difference here ♦ Destroy All Borders here ♦
Demonstration against floating prisons for immigrant asylum seekers in Portland, England
I Became a Communist Because Workers Have More in Common Than Difference
I joined the party about seven years ago, when I was barely 20 years old. Before that, I was part of the African National Congress (ANC) youth league. However, I became disillusioned with the ANC politics or lack thereof.
In the ANC they were interested in gossip and factions. It was more like “Who do you support for this position?” and “What is our position or slate for the upcoming branch, regional, provincial and/ national conference?” It was never about doing anything meaningful to change the lives of the masses.
Eventually I left the ANC for a Black Consciousness movement which was primarily based in the University. Their politics were primarily focused on racial wars, as it were. They were mostly about the hatred for white people, whom they saw as evil quite literally!
In the ANC there was never any talk about capitalism and the system. In this movement there was, but the whole capitalist system to them was because of the evil white man. This appealed to us here in South Africa, given the history and the racial inequality. But it increasingly became difficult to explain countries in Africa which are capitalist although 90-99% of the population is classified as Black.
They couldn’t satisfactorily answer the question of Black capitalists: why the masses should see them as friends just because they are Black, while administering the system that oppresses them.
These lingering questions coincided with the effort and the struggle of comrade M to recruit me to ICWP. We used to have endless conversations about politics and ideas. He presented communist ideas, while I still had Black Consciousness ideas. Eventually he invited me to an ICWP meeting where there were other comrades from the US.
It was in this meeting that I warmed up to the party. I eventually agreed to join meetings and organize and learn its political line, the communist line. It became clear to me as the comrades were talking that workers all around the world have more in common than differences, despite nationalities and race.
It became clear that workers all around the world face the same oppression and exploitation. They have the same class enemies, the capitalists, whether those capitalists are Arab, Mexican, white or Black.
We all had to fight together to destroy this system of exploitation. For these reasons I became a party organizer then. I continue to mobilize the masses for communism. I was able to convince my friends to join the party. They have also become party members and organizers.
We have grown to organize and recruit mine workers in Rustenburg. All of this wasn’t automatic. Rather, it was through the struggle and learning. Throughout, I and the collective have been learning from our practice and struggles on how to become better communists. Communists are made, not innately created.
—Comrade in South Africa
Read our Pamphlet:
To End Racism: Mobilize the Masses for Communism here
Destroy all Borders! Workers Have No Nation!
“It’s unfair that they keep the immigrants, who are migrating to seek asylum, living on boats! How are they going to be able to work to help their families?” asked a co-worker.
I had shown him an article about how, in Portland, England, boats are being used as “hotels” (really prisons) for asylum seekers. According to the government, it’s cheaper than paying for a hotel on land for them.
This is just one example of the attacks on the working class by the capitalists and their governments.
In Africa some governments, like Tunisia, are trying to keep migrants away from their ports so that they don’t reach Europe. All in exchange for financial aid. And they drive them out to the desert with little food and water to make them give up trying to reach the coast!
Texas (USA) has installed barbed wire along the banks of the Rio Grande to frighten and stop the workers attempting to cross. These wires have harmed many people. One was a pregnant woman who had a miscarriage at the buoys in the middle of the river from the terror of seeing her other children trapped by the wires!
At Mexico’s northern border, more than 100,000 people are seeking asylum. And thousands more are on their way there to try to survive under this exploitative capitalist system.
Enough! While the bosses enjoy the profits made from our work, so many workers are sent to our deaths, trying to find work to help our families.
In any corner of the world where workers want to escape the misery into which capitalism plunges us, trying to move to survive, there are governments trying at all costs to prevent them.
This is the capitalist system that we must destroy with communist revolution, fighting for a world without borders. For thousands of years humanity knew no borders. Groups of people moved wherever there was water and animals to hunt.
Today’s borders have only been established over the last 600 years. They result from exploitation and wars between the bosses who have divided up the world and used workers to fight for them.
That’s why we must fight for communism, a society that will put an end to the idea that we belong to a country. We workers don’t have a country. We have our class, the working class. Join the struggle for a world without borders and exploitation.
—Comrade in Los Angeles (USA)
See Our Pamphlet:
Fight for the Day When No Worker Will Be Called Foreigner here