International Working Women’s’ Day here ♦ India Elections-Reject all Capitalist Parties here ♦ South Africa-Need More communist Political Education here ♦
EL SALVADOR, March 8— On International Working Women’s Day, thousands of working women in El Salvador held a massive march struggling for and demanding an end to gender violence. That includes arbitrary captures, femicides, and sexual violence, which have increased despite the current emergency law. Working women, let’s give leadership and unite the masses with ICWP! To fight for a change from the capitalist system to a communist society free of sexism, racism, and xenophobia! Long live the Communist Revolution!
Read Our Pamphlet:
“The Communist Fight Against Sexism”
India Elections: Reject All Capitalist Parties, Join ICWP
“They come every five years with small crumbs and go away everyday with truckload of wealth”, said an ICWP comrade. This is a popular saying in the local language. She was referring to the intense campaign for the May Karnataka state elections. Both the ultra-racist BJP and the opposition Congress Party are showering workers with cash, cell phones, tablets, welfare schemes.
ICWP comrades in Bengaluru held a large meeting about our plans for expanding our communist recruitment drive. New comrades attended the meeting because the high-pitched election campaigns are affecting everyone. The Congress Party appears to offer an alternative to the BJP’s vile racist campaign. To many people, the Congress plan of higher unemployment benefits and low-income housing is more attractive than the BJP, associated with corruption, poor infrastructure, air pollution, and above all, skyrocketing unemployment.
“I have a neighbour whose son has been unemployed for the last six years. He lives in a very crowded small unit with his parents. The father is the only wage-earner in a family of five. The son is despondent because he can’t find any job. Last month he got a day job to put up BJP posters in our neighbourhood. He makes Rs.100 (US$1.25) a day. “
Another friend at the meeting reviewed the plight of unemployed youth. “In the past, they took care of their elderly parents. Now they are a burden.”
She knows another young unemployed IT graduate. After years of unemployment, he got a “volunteer” position in BJP’s IT Cell. It is a well-organized unit that promotes BJP’s fascist ideology in social media. The Karnataka BJP IT Cell has a volunteer army of about 125,000 who make less than $100 a month. They are involved in vicious trolling, fake media news, and mass surveillance.
Some in our meeting have turned their attention to the Congress Party as a solution. Two comrades have volunteered as Congress Party door-to-door campaigners. They get to know many workers living in extremely poor neighbourhoods. They are doing this because they think the Congress Party is better than BJP in reaching out to the workers. But they are not completely convinced. They see that the Congress Party, once in power, is no different.
—Comrade in India
South Africa: Need More Communist Political Education
The political work of studying dialectics and political economy helped us advance in recruiting new ICWP members. When I first joined the movement, I was a member of a Pan-Africanist movement. The only material I was familiar with was literature from Pan-African writers.
In studying dialectical materialism and other things, I saw that my Pan-Africanism ideology was a narrow view. I thought there should be African solutions to African problems. I wasn’t viewing the problems in terms of the whole world—that there are many people suffering. Lots of people—white, Black, Asian, Indian—experience exploitation daily.
Exploitation or capitalism has no colour. As long as capitalists can extract profits, they will exploit you, no matter what colour you are. I used to have the notion that when we’re talking about capitalism, we are talking about white people.
Today, also, when we talk about the bosses here, the first thing that goes through our minds is white people. There are Black capitalists who also exploit Black workers. It helped me change my outlook to an international outlook.
Having that communist outlook helps, whether we are organizing or just chatting socially. We should keep in mind that these are people I need to win over to communism. I think that has been lacking, and it has a relationship with the lack of studying dialectical materialism.
We can use the study of dialectical materialism, history, and economics to recruit young people. I’ve talked to lots of young people. Whether you go to a meeting of ANC or EFF or whatever, most of the young people there complain about the need for political education. The only response they get from the leaders is “you should read the constitution of the EFF” and other useless things.
It becomes a problem for them and an opportunity for us because we have a superior line. We shouldn’t shy away from engaging with whomever, whether in the EFF or ANC. We should have confidence in the line.
Lack of confidence in the line is directly related to lack of study of dialectical materialism. The less struggle around dialectical materialism, the less confidence you will have in the line.
To recruit more students, we must put more emphasis on political education. The youth want it, and we know our line is better than any alternative the bosses can put out there.
The letter in this issue from an EFF member shows the political work that remains to be done. The writer joined the EFF, not because she agreed with them, but because she saw no other alternative for radical changes needed in our society. What they are proposing is not new— socialism is over 100 years old.
We as a party need to show more confidence in the line to engage more young people around dialectical materialism, to struggle with them, whether they agree with us or not. We should re-evaluate things including recruitment of students. We can and must do this work.
—Comrade in South Africa
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