Communism Gives Red Soldier Hope here ♦ It’s All Because of the Meetings here ♦ Workers Create Everything here ♦ How Can Communism End Crime? here ♦
Communism Gives Hope to Red Soldier
SOUTH AFRICA, June 17— “I have been in the army for more than 10 years,” said a soldier from Johannesburg. “I still live in a government-subsidized house. At the end of the day, I am hungry. I don’t have meat in my refrigerator. There are thousands of soldiers like me. And the capitalists give me weapons to shoot the miners. I cannot do it.”
He took fifty copies of the Red Flag to distribute among soldiers.
Some days later an ICWP comrade asked, “How was the meeting with your fellow soldiers?” The soldier replied, “It was great. Some soldiers are very interested in Red Flag. I am more confident in ICWP and consider myself a member.”
Soon this Red soldier met with other ICWP members. They welcomed him warmly. He knows many industrial workers and will bring them, and other soldiers, to the meetings.
“Give me another stack of Red Flag, I am going to a different unit,” he said. He was very impressed with the articles from India. He wants a copy of the ICWP pamphlet ‘Soldiers, Sailors, Marines: Crucial to a Communist Workers’ Revolution.’
“ICWP is the way,” he said confidently. “My soldiers will stand with us. People like me had lost hope but now I have hope. I want to give hope to others.”
And It’s All Because of the Meetings
These meetings have taught us a lot about racism and sexism and how the capitalists benefit from the misery of the workers. We need communism to change it.
I know change is coming. It is not easy, but people are fed up with the system.
We really need transformation and information like this in order to have a changed mentality, leading to changed lives, to better living.
I’m loving the change of mentality. Being communist fits me well. It’s just that I never knew I had the heart of a communist.
I’m willing to learn and be able to share. I have a great way to communicate with others to win them over. ICWP is giving a very powerful message to us all.
I am willing to learn and walk the walk the best I can.
—New Female Comrade in South Africa
Mobilizing for Communism: Workers Create Everything
GQEBERHA (South Africa), June 8— “I was wondering why ICWP puts so much emphasis on the working class and industrial workers,” said a new comrade. “Now as we are discussing I get it. Workers create everything, like everything!”
“We don’t need bosses,” another comrade continued. “Capitalism has workers in Asia who make sneakers and garment workers in El Salvador. But all these workers cannot even afford to buy the things they make.”
In previous meetings, we talked about a communist future, a society without money. We emphasized the importance of the Red Flag both in recruiting workers and in the development of new and old comrades. When comrades stop using the Red Flag, they regress in their development and understanding of communism.
Therefore, in this meeting we had a collective reading of the previous Red Flag, particularly on the Inflation article on page 2. It follows the theme of money in capitalism and communist moneyless society as the solution to the problems of capitalism.
One comrade read the article out loud, paragraph by paragraph. We stopped in between for the comrades to comment, explain, expand, and ask questions. We talked about how capitalism and its monetary based society inherently breeds inflation.
Inflation is the rise of prices over time, especially the prices of consumer goods. The article explains it as “price gouging…which shrinks workers’ buying power causing starvation and making workers pay for the crisis of capitalism.”
For capitalists, workers’ wages are nothing but necessary costs of production. Bosses keep wages as low/down as possible to maximize their profits. They will replace the workers if it means maximizing profits without any concern about how those workers (and the people they feed) will be affected.
The article says, “money and exploitation define capitalist production.” This was particularly interesting to the comrades.
Comrades explained that exploitation of the workers is not a moral question. It is an objective process of capitalism. For example, 100 Volkswagen workers produce 100 cars per hour, 8 hours per day. The average money value of a car is R300k. Those workers will be paid the money value of 2-5 cars. The rest of the value they create goes to the bosses.
A relatively new comrade remarked that’s true because “where I used to work in trucking (logistics) a company would make R2 million on one truck trip. It owned hundreds of trucks. But all workers who drive distances will be paid not even half of that amount at the end of the month.”
This exploitation happens everywhere in the world every day. It is the workers that create everything, not money or the bosses. This was the theme of our meeting.
Money and imperialism go together. The imperialist rivalry is causing hardships everywhere for the workers. In South Africa workers cannot afford bread and food in general because of imperialist war in Ukraine. Comrades are being retrenched (laid-off) as a result.
The currency wars are causing havoc for the working class. South African imported goods are expensive while the exports are relatively cheap to the dollar. This hurts the workers here, who cannot afford things.
“All these things are interconnected,” remarked another comrade. “We must emphasize the interconnection because inflation in Europe, and wars there, often lead to things getting even worse here. We must not think that just because something is happening in Europe it doesn’t affect us.”
The meeting left people eager for more. We planned for the next one and new comrades vowed to come back and stay in contact.
Part of being a party member is attending discussion meetings like these. We can make them illuminating, not boring. They must be rooted to everyday life experience, and we can learn the lessons.
Red Flag is absolutely key. We must encourage each other to read it and mass-distribute it in industries.
How Can Communism End Crime?
GQEBERHA (South Africa), June 11— Our collective reading of an article from India triggered a lively discussion of this question. It described women athletes who were brutally assaulted by police after being subjected to sexual abuse by Brij Bhushan Singh, a leading member of the fascist BJP.
“How do we plan to deal with the likes of Bushan Singh and other criminals in a communist society”? asked a comrade. “Under capitalism, they open prisons as money-making schemes and exploit some prisoners as unpaid workers.”
Another comrade replied, “We won’t have crime in a communist society because we won’t have money. If we don’t have money, there won’t be any reason to commit crime.”
“In a communist society most of us will be communists but not everyone 100% will be a communist,” replied another new comrade. “How will we deal with those if they commit crime and other selfish acts”? she asked.
“There are reasons why people commit crime: unemployment, poverty, capitalist ideology,” another answered. “We will need to have a continuous struggle. For instance, in the Soviet Union, they had programs where they re-educated criminals and won them towards socialism. Most ended up contributing positively after some struggle.
“We will need to have something similar and win them through education towards communism. Those who commit heinous crime we will have to eliminate permanently,” he concluded.
This idea of eliminating those who commit violent crimes is not as radical as it sounds, a comrade remarked. “Even now there are death penalties under capitalism. Even in our communities and townships when someone is found to have committed a heinous crime like raping a child, the community often resorts to killing that individual, knowing that the police are useless.”
We will not need police under communism because the police are there to protect private property and capitalists.
“In communism, the community and collectives will be responsible for their own security. We have seen even now when the community together takes a stand, they often reduce these petty criminal acts,” added a comrade. “Just imagine a whole South Africa under communism with this outlook.”
One comrade pointed out that we can’t wait until after the revolution. He said, “We have crime now and it affects us, what can we do”?
A comrade replied, “Now we are a small number but if we use the Red Flag to mobilize where we live and win over the community towards communism and ICWP, we will then collectively deal with crime and criminals.”
“Yes,” another agreed. “We must win the masses to our party. We can even recruit some of the police because we grew up with some of them, they live in our neighborhoods. With enough numbers we can deal with criminals. Some work might even be done underground. We will win people once we effectively start doing that.”
However, it is the Red Flag and talking and fighting for communism that will advance the struggle. We must use it to win the community and working-class where we live.