Time to Solidify Relationships here ♦ Students Want to Know What Winning Is here ♦
Boeing Strike Ends: Time to Solidify Relationships to Grow ICWP
SEATTLE (USA), November 7— “This is different,” said some Boeing picketers. They were comparing their recent strike to five previous walkouts in which a retired comrade had participated. This strike took place in a world at war. The power that Boeing represents is collapsing. And a new, diverse workforce is more open to revolutionary communist ideas.
Capitalist industry is built on a rickety platform of profits. The working class pays when the profits turn into multi-billion-dollar debts.
Boeing continues to sell off sections of its space and weapons divisions. Aerospace supply chains continue to degenerate. A major supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, is laying off 700 workers. Even with these cuts, the company doubts it can stay in business. Twenty-five hundred Airbus weapons workers will also lose their jobs.
Meanwhile, the decline of US imperialism has created a very different industrial workforce. Many of the new workers had already been forced to take on extra jobs to make ends meet. Furious younger Boeing workers hate the past sixteen years of stagnant wages and speed up. They are also acutely aware of the slaughter of the global working class and Boeing’s role in genocide and war.
Workers Pay for Capitalist Weaknesses
A Boeing picketer told comrades she “would probably be laid off soon.” She will join 17,000 of her fellow laid-off workers no matter what the new contract says.
She knows that in response to billionaires like Robby Starbuck and Elon Musk, Boeing executives have ditched programs aimed at hiring a diverse workforce. This will make it especially difficult for new workers – women, children of immigrants, Black and Latinx workers – to get jobs there in the future.
Biden praised the contract. The union leadership says strikers have won. Layoffs, racism, sexism, and xenophobia: that is hardly winning.
In communism, there will be no capitalists to hoard profits, nor will there be money. Production will focus on the collective needs of the international working class. Boeing workers built the aerospace factories and communist revolution will enable us to take them back. That is winning!
Lessons Learned and Obstacles to Overcome
During the strike, ICWP comrades and friends distributed thousands of Red Flags, leaflets, and pamphlets. We made many contacts and had lots of protracted discussions about communism. Solidarity messages from around the world illustrated the make-up of our one international communist party.
Our discussions at the plant gates went far beyond the usual trade union politics. From day one of the strike, comrades and friends focused on the revolutionary communist solution to exploitation and war. Friends who helped distribute ICWP literature engaged in intense discussions with comrades and other workers, bringing them closer to the party.
The social and political ties ICWP comrades make with industrial workers are essential for building the party and unleashing the power of the working class. We must solidify these ties. To do this, we must strengthen both our personal and political relationships. We must have conversations with our new friends so that we can understand their obstacles to joining ICWP.
To build the party, we need to understand the contradictions in each person: What keeps them from becoming communists? And within each of us: What keeps us from doing better, more consistent party work?
We plan to follow up with these new friends and build long- term friendships that can help develop new party members. This is some of the deepest and hardest work of building the party. We plan to move forward with patience and persistence to build these new relationships.
Our collective is planning a potluck for later this month. Besides old friends, we are inviting all the people we met over the course of the strike. It will be an evening of discussion, laughter, and camaraderie. We will stress that members of the working-class are not merely victims of capitalist horrors. We are the makers of our communist future.
Students Want to Know What Winning Is
Comrades and friends distributed thousands of pieces of ICWP literature at the Boeing picket lines in Seattle. We also made an extra effort to reach out to friends at high schools and universities. And we circulated hundreds of leaflets and Red Flags at coffee shops during the strike.
One high school student thanked comrades for the articles about Gaza. Another said, “I’ll read that!” when she saw the articles about the strike.
A University of Washington student from the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies knocked on workers’ doors to promote “progressive” politicians. When he reached the house of some comrades, he abandoned that discussion to get information about the Boeing strike. He wanted to know what communists mean by winning.
He didn’t trust the usual trade-union politics that limit the fight to economics. At first, he said stopping weapons production was winning. Then he changed his mind.
He eventually agreed that the real victory is when industrial workers embrace communist politics. And that is the only way to end imperialist slaughter. He took back issues of Red Flag to study what the party had organized over the previous eight weeks.
“The Bolsheviks had communists in the weapons factories for years,” remarked a comrade educator when he heard about this discussion. “When the revolution came, they were able to mobilize their fellow workers to arm the communist soldiers on the front lines.”
ICWP must aim to win industrial workers in the arms factories now to prepare for communist revolution.