Industrial Workers’ Communist Collectives Grow Using Political Economy

Auto Workers Build Communist Collectives here ♦ Workers Mobilize to End All Exploitation here ♦ Revolutionary Greetings here ♦

Auto Workers Confront Impacts of Electric Vehicles and AI,
Build Communist Collectives and Distribute Red Flag in the Factories

CHENNAI (India), July 29—“An electric car has less than 20 moving parts. A typical automatic petrol gas car has about 1,200,000 moving parts. We are looking at millions of job losses by 2030,” said comrade Mohan at an ICWP collective meeting. Chennai, India is becoming a hub of electrical vehicles (EV). The factory where Mohan works is going to be converted into an EV plant. India is aggressively planning to produce 55 million EVs by 2030 compared to 35 million in the US.

A typical petrol car requires frequent servicing, replacements, and expensive repairs employing millions of workers. EVs will eliminate most of these workers. At Mohan’s plant, they make crankshaft and transmission engines. When the plants are retooled to manufacture EVs, they will be making motor shafts which will eliminate 80% of existing workers.

Mohan’s coworkers are scared, fearful, angry, and concerned about the future. He distributes RF to some of the 2000 workers. And by now, every reader has seen different articles talking about communism. Mohan said at the collective meeting that he believes that only communism can eliminate profit hungry capitalists, but he feels intimidated by the task. He feels overwhelmed.
But Ramesh, another ICWP member who works in another plant said if he can regularly distribute 20 RFs and have a collective at his place, that could reach out to hundreds more. We need to take the initiative. This collective gives us confidence in what we discuss and read in RF. He gave an example where comrades in El Sal vador are taking a similar approach to expanding their work by relying on new comrades.

Anger, frustration, and fear of future job loss can be converted into the desire for a communist revolution to end the capitalist system. We have about 6 to 8 comrades in our collective. We meet every month to review our work. A comrade brought up another important force that is affecting the automative industry.
Prior to AI, the industry was completely dependent on manual labour which required a large pool of workers. Robotics, machine learning, and computerized vision are eliminating many jobs. This AI onslaught on the working class goes beyond the manufacturing process. Many millions of jobs will be eliminated as AI becomes more mature in self-driven cars. Gig workers who rely on transporting workers and supplying meals to fast food chains will be redundant.
A comrade explained that capitalist bosses are always striving for efficiency. They need fewer workers to produce more. They build efficient machinery to achieve this. But only the workers produce a surplus value. Fewer workers will see a drop in the rate of profit. To counter this, the bosses resort to cutthroat competition to eliminate other capitalists, capturing more markets, creating trade barriers, and eventually physically destroying other countries where there is production.

In India, Tesla cars have 200% duty which forces the Indian capitalists to catch up in the EV technology. The Indian auto manufacturers collaborate with some Chinese companies that offer them joint ventures to share new ways to produce EVs. Vietnam and Thailand are entering the EV markets. With this increasing competition for the next generation of EVs with AI, the automotive industry will produce far more than the markets require.

This inherent need for efficiency and elimination of the workforce also gives us the potential to change the capitalist system. If Mohan and other comrades in Chennai can organize more collectives that reach thousands of workers with an outlook to end capitalism, it is a significant development that can influence the entire auto industry around the world.

Meeting regularly, distributing RF, and increasing its circulation is the antidote to the hopelessness that the bosses and the union leaders are pushing. To meet this demand our collective recognizes that we have to write and report our work in the pages of Red Flag.

Prepare for Communist Revolution to End All Exploitation

EL SALVADOR, July 29— “The exploitative boss has no interest in improving the life of the workers. Today you die and tomorrow there is already a replacement. That happened in the factory where I work,” said E. “Production continues. We are the ones who generate the wealth that goes into the pockets of a few, so you have to organize and fight.”

“We workers need to organize against the bosses, in every factory or workplace where we are,” pointed out P, a worker leader. “We must battle against this system that keeps us slaves to their profits. We will only solve this with the Communist revolution.”

“I work in a factory where we have some benefits,” said a worker leader of the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP). “They give us basic necessities, a $15 a week bonus, weekends off, and we don’t get direct insults from the owners. But this is part of their strategy. We are still always enslaved to a wage. They do this to prevent us from organizing and demanding what is fair. The profits are always in the millions for the boss.”

Workers from four factories took part in these conversations during a recent communist political school. Five new participants talked about why they were attending. One said, “We are a couple of workers. My partner and I used to work in the factory where most of the workers here work, but we moved to another factory. We have received the Red Flag newspaper, and we want to learn more.”
Another new comrade said, “There should be laws saying that the wealth and profits generated by the workers in the maquilas be distributed equitably.” A health care worker pointed out, “We should fight for a system where workers organize for a better life, for a communist system, like the one we all seek.”

J, an industrial worker, said, “It’s hard to believe that we workers can advance factory production. The bosses know how to do that.”

Another worker replied, “We workers are the ones who produce all the commodities, everything of value. The bosses are nothing without us. Put a single machine to produce and you will realize that, by itself, it produces nothing. The profits of the bosses are generated by us.”

“The workers who are here know a lot about political economy,” a comrade commented. “I am only going to try to recall what we have discussed in many communist cell meetings and extended meetings. We must study how the social relations of production come about and how workers, day by day, are robbed of their labor power by the exploiting boss. How the class struggle is determined on the basis of the bosses’ exploitation.”

In pre-class societies, food and everything that was needed was shared according to the needs at that time. This is a reference point for how it will be in communism, producing collectively for humanity, now using technology.

“As the comrade said, the bosses, as owners of the means of production, cannot ever generate profits from the goods. Because only men and women workers, through our labor power can transform raw materials into goods. The bosses appropriate the use value that the workers have produced and make it an exchange value for their profits.”

“They make us work for a pittance of a wage, not enough to cover the basic food basket to feed our families, and they are millionaires,” pointed out an ICWP worker leader.

“In communism we will produce what is needed to meet the needs of the working class. But what is communism?” asked a worker who was attending for the first time.

A comrade replied, “I’ll tell you in three words: the wellbeing of the collective. Things are no longer going to be produced for profit but to meet the needs of our class.”

This led us to discuss the need for reading, writing, and distributing Red Flag newspapers. “We need all comrades to read the articles in Red Flag, to write so that other comrades will also read it, and it should be distributed more and more every day.”

“Each one of the families that attend these meetings should encourage the children, young and old, to become part of the Party,” said V, a young worker.
The atmosphere of political discussion felt strong. The sound of nearby ocean waves reminds us that although it seems there is no movement in the sea, it does not stop; and underneath the waves, it continues to break rocks.

Revolutionary Greetings from El Salvador

Today on a beach here we shared a few hours with comrades from the factories. We were approximately 40 people, from adults to children.

Observing the faces of these comrades was very satisfying for me, since it is the first time that I have shared in a political work meeting. It was good to see the gestures, the smiles when we met again to deal with daily issues, problems that they face in their workplaces. It is here where they comment on their experiences.

Exploitation of workers historically has been part of the working-class experience. Our problems have been normalized by our predecessors. They are accepted with the belief that we must make ourselves worthy of better living conditions for the family. But this is not true, because the capitalist system conditions the population from the family nuclei to formal schools. It designs programs that increase the wealth of the capitalists, not for the benefit of the masses.

Today I heard what communism will be like. It will be like the paradise that we have always been taught about heaven. But we are going to build it here on earth.

Some comrades ask what happens if there are no factories or bosses. They worry that if there is not going to be work, they will not be able to feed or take care of their children. It is here where it is raised how life would be under a true communist system: conditions of struggle for equity, with quality of life, for the wellbeing of the entire working class.

Here is where the importance of more information to the population is shown with study schools about communism, reading the newspaper Red Flag and distributing it. Because only in this way will the fear and misconceptions about communism be eliminated. Also working from the family, to change the thinking in the new generations. Because undoubtedly, they will be the ones who will enjoy a different system, with better conditions equally in the different areas of their lives. It will definitely be a better world free of the exploitation of workers.
I am glad to be part of the International Communist Workers’ Party and part of this struggle for equity, liberation from the bosses’ yoke, and social wellbeing with communism for all. We will see each other at the next meeting.
Forward, Comrades!

—A Health worker.

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