Capitalism’s Contradictions Attack Workers from Gaza to Bengaluru here ♦ El Salvador Maquila Workers Fight for a Communist World here ♦
Capitalism’s Contradictions Attack Workers from Gaza to Bengaluru–“Profound Opportunity to Overthrow Wage Slavery” with Communist Revolution
BENGALURU (India), February 25— “Every time I produce more shirts, I see fewer workers,” Anoli told our ICWP meeting. “The owner aims to increase production by 20%. How is it possible to increase production with fewer workers? We must put in more hours and work with the newer computerized system that forces us to complete our tasks at breathless speed.”
Anoli reads Red Flag and distributes it to her co-workers and neighbours. They are furious that it’s so hard to keep up with the cost of living. Many want a solution to this grinding poverty. Reading Red Flag, they see that workers everywhere face similar conditions.
“This is how capitalism constantly attacks workers,” Mani responded quickly. She joined ICWP two years ago. “We produce more and work hard, but our wages go down. Capitalists compete against other capitalists for more production at cheaper prices. In this cut-throat competition, the owners use extreme sexism, sexual abuse, and violence so we don’t complain, so we accept lower wages and long hours at the production line.
“The capitalist owners also replace workers with efficient tools,” Mani continued. “In my unit, an automatic cutting machine creates six hundred ready-to-stitch shirts every 10 minutes. This used to be a manual process done by a fabric designer, a cutter, and a separator. Now the computer does everything with every design and every thickness of fabric.
“We do the most demanding, tedious work and don’t even get time for bathroom breaks. So many young girls have kidney infections, as they work long hours without a break and their fingers are too numb to lift a cup of water. They become an extension of the machine.
“But we see a profound opportunity to overthrow this system of wage slavery if we understand the contradiction,” Mani concluded.
“Capitalist owners’ greed for profit undermines the capitalist system itself,” comrade Malika explained. “It creates an army of unemployed people. It replaces workers with machines. But only workers produce wealth for capitalists. So fewer workers mean that profits decline. This is an objective truth.
The capitalists try to overcome this contradiction by buying out their competition. In Bengaluru, only sixteen garment factories produce 80% of production. Just five years ago, there were over five hundred. These giant factories compete with those in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Vietnam, East Europe, and China.”
Garment Workers Ask: How Is Our Struggle Related to the Struggle in Gaza?
Some friends came to this collective meeting for the first time. They talk about the raging genocidal war on Gaza at work. They are extremely disturbed by reports of atrocities. They asked how we can help the comrades in Gaza and how our struggle relates to theirs.
Bengaluru is home to millions of garment and other industrial workers. It’s also home to a few multi-billionaires who profit from the IT industry. One, Murthy, owns the company Infosys, which has a strategic alliance with the Israeli war machine. He said, “Young Indians should work at least 70 hours a week if the country wants to compete with emerging economies.” His daughter is married to the British Prime Minister.
Another multibillionaire, Adani, owns Haifa port in Israel. His companies produce drones, munitions, and, in collaboration with the largest Israeli defence company Elbit, advanced avionics.
The Capitalists’ Contradictions Drive Them to Intensify Fascism.
“We begin to see the connection between fascists Modi and Netanyahu,” said Fatima, attending for the first time. “In Bengaluru, the fascist, sexist ruling party BJP is murderous. They threaten garment workers and especially a non-profit that works mostly with pregnant workers.
“The workers in Gaza and Bengaluru have more in common,” the worker concluded. “The letter from Gaza is very powerful when it ends by saying communism is the future.”
Sathya said, “Mass unemployment forces workers to look for jobs in very dangerous areas around the world. Last month, many
unemployed workers were lining up to work in Israel because north India has millions of unemployed.
They take very dangerous routes to find jobs in the Middle East. Now they are going to El Salvador and Ecuador, hoping for jobs in the US.”
“This meeting gives me enormous strength,” Anoli concluded. “It encourages me to build our Party, our ICWP. I came feeling a little bit depressed by so many terrible things happening around us and in the world. But meetings like this are very powerful because we have to eliminate this wage system.
“We need the masses with us. Only we can do it. They will put all kinds of obstacles to prevent us from organizing for communism. But those obstacles will create conditions for the masses to understand that only communism is the future,” she ended, to great applause.
Elections Only Change our Executioners–Maquila Workers Fight for a Communist World
SAN SALVADOR, March 1— “I had to quit my job in the factory to look for one where I could improve my wages,” said a worker organized in the International Communist Workers’ Party. “What I was earning was no longer enough for household expenses, even though now it means being away from home for days at a time and not seeing my family.”
“It bothers me to hear comrades in the factory saying that they are happy with the election results in El Salvador. As if this will help us workers with our difficult life under this bosses’ system!” said a worker leader of ICWP.
“We workers organized in the Party,” he continued, “must fight every day to win a world where the conditions of exploitation that we live, which are produced only to generate profits for the bosses, are changed into communism, the system of the working class. In communism, what we produce will be to help our lives. We will distribute to each according to their need and we will work according to our commitment and ability.”
The government in El Salvador carries out electoral struggles all the time. The election for President and deputies recently passed. Now we are approaching the elections for mayors and deputies to the Central American Parliament. Only 52% of potential voters participated in the presidential elections, where the highest number usually votes.
Does it change anything for the working class when you vote for a candidate? No. The workers’ lives continue to be submerged in exploitation. Voting only changes the executioners who will dedicate themselves to repressing the working class.
A friend of the Party who helps us with Red Flag said, “In five years, out of one hundred promises, the government has only fulfilled one. I don’t want to know anything about electoral politicians.” The government has militarized the streets and imposed the regime of exception to repress any attempt to denounce this situation. Government propaganda makes many believe that this country is living in the “first world.”
Fascism is increasing with the measures of these capitalist governments. Laws are presented to “stop delinquency” and “generate security.” In reality, they have the final objective of, at a given moment, repressing the communist ideas that proclaim that the whole working class must have a world with adequate food, housing, and education.
In a meeting with some young ICWP leaders in the maquilas (sweatshops), the comrades discussed the reality that the costs of all eleven products in the “basic food basket” have increased by over 27%. The minimum wage of a worker is $10 a day, and they have to spend it daily on food.
The legislative assembly approved $130 million for the 2024 elections. That money could have been used to supply medicine to hospitals that greatly need it, or to rebuild many schools that are in poor condition.
However, those who seek the votes that will allow them to continue living at the expense of the masses make promises, if they even make them, that they will never keep.
Elections don’t resolve anything. The working class must organize in the International Communist Workers’ Party and fight for the communist system.
Only Communism will resolve this precarious situation that workers face. In the face of growing fascism, the workers organized in ICWP, women and men, are fighting to win a new world that will meet the needs of all the masses.
Read our pamphlet:
“Mobilize the Masses for Communism” here