Only Communism Will End Racism
USA, April 12— A dark-skinned comrade from South Asia was riding his bike to his college class when police stopped him. They demanded papers showing that he was legally in the USA. Unsatisfied with what he showed them, they called for backup. White students began to gather around. Although they didn’t know the comrade, they knew racist xenophobia when they saw it. They yelled at the cops to leave him alone. After some tense moments, the cops retreated in the face of multiracial unity.
Racist incidents, often much worse, happen in the US and worldwide daily. Capitalism is the source of these horrific conditions. They will only end when capitalism and the capitalist rulers are in their graves.
Capitalism needs racism so it can extract super profits and divide the working class. The history of the capitalist USA teems with racism, including genocide, slavery, and other violence.
Capitalism has created the material conditions to perpetuate divisions within the working class, as well as to super-exploit workers of color. The capitalist bosses, via their media and schools, lie to us to create distrust and fear among workers based on color, ethnicity, birth country, etc.
We must eliminate the material basis of racism with communist revolution. This will not immediately end racism, but it will allow us to wage the long fight against the racist remnants of capitalism.
Communist society will abolish money, wages, and the labor market. Workers will no longer be wage-slaves, forced to compete for jobs to survive. Production will be organized around solidarity and cooperation. We will work collectively to produce for need, not profit. Segregation, racist schooling, the criminal justice system, and lack of access to health care will all be gone.
Anti-racism based on a communist understanding of class society requires multiracial action and solidarity. We must organize against racist discipline in schools, police murders of workers of color, and the daily impacts of inflation and layoffs.
In doing so, we must address the root causes of racism that harm people of color and divide the working class. We must fight the blaming and scapegoating that teaches white workers to fear their neighbors of color. We must push back against segregation in our communities and on the job with a revolutionary focus. We cannot allow capitalism to alienate and divide us.
To see the possibility of ending racism with communism, we must win masses to the International Communist Workers’ Party. We can’t have a successful revolution without it. It prepares the working class for the struggle to smash racism while fighting for communism. We need a base with experience in building communist relationships and fighting capitalism in all its forms, with all its terrors – racism, sexism, xenophobia, K, casteism, and more.
Kansas City, USA, April 16—Protestors demand justice for Ralph Yarl, a Black teenager shot by a racist when he knocked on his door by mistake
Fighting Racist Incarceration
An anti-racist movement in Oregon addressed “disproportionate minority confinement” (racist jailing) in the juvenile justice system. Youth of color, especially Black males, were arrested and incarcerated two to three times more frequently than their white counterparts.
A comrade asked questions about the origins of racism and why so many Black men are incarcerated in the US. The connection to profits became clear. Friends observed that capitalism caused this racist injustice. Many agreed that some form of revolution was needed. But they did not understand the mistakes of the Russian and Chinese revolutions and were not convinced of the need for an international communist party.
Some reforms emerged from this movement, but the struggle to win participants to communism was not sustained. Even the reforms were not sustained. Today there are even more violent police attacks and arrests directed at people of color.
Communist Revolution, Not Reform
We must collectively challenge and dismantle the racist conditions that are a key part of capitalism. Only communism will do this. Actions that do not address capitalism as the root of racism can never end it. Actions that do not show the need for communist revolution are never sustainable. Reforms, however hard-won, will be reversed.
We need solidarity that emerges from a revolutionary communist approach to racism. Not just to defeat capitalism, but also for the relationships and trust that can create the conditions for an anti-racist, classless society.
We must live our lives being the change that communism will bring. We must engage in communist relationships that are rooted in friendship, struggle, and solidarity. We must show up with and for each other in struggle against racist capitalism.
These real relationships, built in struggle, become a solid foundation to counter the racist lies, divisions, and fears that have separated us. Thus we lay the groundwork for our classless, communist society.
Read our pamphlet on racism:
To End Racism: Mobilize the Masses for Communism
Front page of this issue
