Organize for Communism in “Green Prison” of Banana Plantations here ♦ Imperialism in Sudan here ♦ Making Red Flag Better and Easier to Read here ♦
Organize for Communism in the ‘Green Prison” of Banana Plantations
“The death of a worker cannot happen in the silence of the working class. We need to denounce it and fight to change this rotten system,” I told a friend who reads Red Flag.
With great courage she had shared the situation of a worker who died in the banana plantations owned by the transnational company Del Monte. The boss had denied him permission to go to the hospital, in Duacari, Limón province, in the Atlantic zone of Costa Rica. He is the second worker to die in the banana plantations this year.
“We have to denounce it internationally. It can be published in Red Flag,” she replied.
Del Monte has expropriated the lands of the Indigenous communities through laws that the government approves. The laws give concessions on the lands, exempting them from taxes and allowing them to import machinery for their exploitation.
Del Monte continues to contaminate the rivers with chemicals in the pineapple and banana crops, poisoning and exploiting the workers, bringing death in all possible ways.
As communists organized in the International Communist Workers’ Party, we stand in solidarity with the families of all the workers who have died working in the exploitative companies that enrich themselves at the workers’ expense.
Our solidarity is in the fight to change this rotten capitalist system with its banana companies that destroy everything in their path. As the Honduran writer Amaya Amador said, they are a “Green Prison.”
Communism is a collective system that will be able to end exploitation because the organization of all aspects of life will be collective. The production of food will be according to the needs of humanity and not for profit.
This case of Duacari, Limon reminds us of the hard life that the workers lived under the bosses of American companies such as the United Fruit Company, the Standard Fruit Company, and the Cuyamel Fruit Company. These sucked the worker’s blood to make their profits, exploiting workers in Honduras and other countries for hundreds of years, bringing death and misery.
But the working class has never given up. In the face of this crude repression and exploitation, the labor movement responded with a strike in 1954 that fought for some reforms, managing to mobilize more than 30,000 workers.
The political organizational work continues. The International Communist Workers’ Party mobilizes the masses for the communist revolution. The workers in the banana plantations need to organize collectives to achieve this. We invite you to read and distribute Red Flag, the newspaper of the working class.
“Workers of the world, unite!”
—Comrades in Costa Rica
Imperialism in Sudan: Why Workers Need Communist Revolution
Several Red Flag readers read some articles and discussed how we are, worldwide, with the economic crisis. That is, the subjugation of the working class under wage slavery and how to get out of it.
Questions included: Why the conflict in Sudan, and what is its impact? Why is a communist revolution necessary?
R tells me, “Sudan is no exception among African countries, former British or French colonies that have a fratricidal power struggle to give power to one tyrant or another.
“Sudan’s gold, exploited by the pro-Russian hitman group Wagner, does not bring wealth to the working class but only violence and irreparable damage to the environment. Either Western imperialism or Putin’s Russia is attacking the workers.”
On the other hand, C comments, “Historically we know that to liberate oneself a revolution is necessary. We have seen three revolutions in Sudan, in 1964, 1985 and 2019. It is currently a power struggle where we can see three bosses in contention: The Force of Freedom, Rapid Support Forces, and the army led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.”
The masses, tired and fed up with the situation that exists under a capitalist system, struggle and rebel through protests and liberal revolutions. It is a desperate cry of a class that wants change.
Regardless of who governs now, what we need is a communist society. We conclude that a communist revolution is necessary to overthrow all the chains of wage capitalism in pursuit of the common welfare.
Let’s mobilize the masses for our Communist Revolution and put a stop to these crimes of exploitation!
—Comrade in El Salvador
Making Red Flag Better and Easier to Read
Red Flag/Bandera Roja is good, but it can be better, especially for people who find reading hard. Here are some ideas that don’t need a lot of extra work or resources.
First, we should make articles and letters shorter. Articles should be less than 650 words, and letters less than 350 words. RF/BR often has longer ones.
Longer pieces take up space and are hard to read, even for people who read well. It looks like a “wall of words,” as one comrade put it. We should ask authors or editors to make long pieces shorter before printing them.
We should also use simple words, aiming for a reading level of around grade 8 or 9.
It might be useful to group some pieces into columns like Opinion, History, Life Stories, Life in the Party, Communism Explained. The Opinion column would feature ideas that are not ICWP policy. Right now, anything that isn’t party policy is just a letter, not a full article.
We need a Communism Explained column. Now, each article has its own small explanation of communism. People say RF/BR repeats itself a lot. One main explanation would save space and stop this.
Another idea is to have a short summary (1-3 sentences) at the start of each article.
More empty space would help readability. We should have blank lines between paragraphs.
We could also have short articles in other languages, like French for RF and Brazilian Portuguese for BR.
Making articles shorter is hard for some people, but technology can help. I tried the latest AI chat (GPT-4), and it is good at making summaries. It doesn’t leave out politics and seems to understand revolutionary communism. This letter follows these ideas. The original version was much longer and more complex. I asked GPT-4 to rewrite it in simpler language and this is what I got, with minor editing.
—Comrade in Canada
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