El Salvador: Industrial Workers Key to Mobilizing Masses for Communism here ♦ Mexico May Day: Let’s Fight for Workers’ Worldwide Emancipation of Workers here ♦
Industrial Workers: Key to Mobilizing the Masses for Communism
EL SALVADOR, April 10— “Faced with this crisis of capitalism and growing fascism, we workers have a plan,” commented a comrade worker leader. “We are reorganizing our collectives in the factory since some workers have moved to other factories. We will organize in the communities where we live. This will strengthen our communist political struggle.”
The conditions under the “regime of exception,” which make fascism more evident, demand greater organization of the working class organized in the International Communist Workers’ Party. It demands going out to spread communist literature, including Red Flag, to more workers.
The capitalist crisis means that governments around the world are subjecting the working class to fascist conditions.
Several communities with a history of organizing have recently experienced repression and intimidation by the government’s army. This is happening in southern Chalatenango, which suffered systematic repression during the civil war in the 1970s and 1980s.
The government forces deployed a military encirclement of 5,000 police and soldiers to capture two people for a murder that occurred in the area. This number of police is meant to terrorize the inhabitants of these municipalities, most of whom were combatants of the FMLN guerrillas. It is not aimed at resolving the case.
The death of millions of workers worldwide is the responsibility of the capitalist class, who are never persecuted by the police.
Fascist intimidation must not scare us. On the contrary, it should set in motion the organization of the working class in this and other areas. ICWP will lead this struggle. The bosses are doing the same thing in the factories. It is becoming normal for the police to be in the surrounding areas and even inside the factories, trying to terrorize the workers.
Workers Led by ICWP are Fighting Fascism Inside the Factories
Workers organized in ICWP have spoken out inside the factories against the growing fascism with the slogan “Who’s stealing from whom?” ever since the bosses accused two workers of stealing some T-shirts.
The bosses exploit and rob the sweat and blood of the workers inside the factories every day. It is the workers’ hands that produce the profits (surplus value) the bosses make by paying workers low wages and keeping for themselves the lions’ share of the money from selling the products workers make. This is the enormous daily theft that all capitalists commit.
For many years, the working class has organized and fought, making it clear how the capitalist thieves function. We continue to do so with ICWP’s communist line, now with the clear goal of mobilizing the masses for Communism. For a society without money, wage slavery, sexism, and racism.
A worker leader emotionally said, “I’m leaving this factory to work in another sweatshop, but my comrade D is staying to continue ICWP’s work. We have worked together. She knows how to do this work. I will continue my communist work where I am going next.”
Another comrade worker responded, “We will be there, comrade, to support you and bring Red Flag to more workers.”
ICWP is organizing the working class to end the capitalist system of reforms that divide and enslave us. Building ICWP is our answer to intensifying fascism and conditions of poverty caused by wage slavery.
Let’s Mobilize on May Day for Communism
“I will work on my day off, so I can go to the May Day march,” said T, a worker, at a recent extended meeting. There we planned our participation for the commemoration of International Workers’ Day.
A young worker approved this decision. He reaffirmed, “We’ll march to raise the voice of the working class. We have to be visible to the world. We are fighting for a better world for our class brothers and sisters and for our children.”
We are forging the history of struggle for Communism internationally. Today borders divide us, but Communist revolution unites us.
Collectively we will commemorate the workers’ struggles that came before us by demonstrating this May Day.
We concluded this extended meeting by pointing out how many families will march this May Day. We recounted the history of struggle of this historic day for the working class. We emphasized the need to demonstrate to commemorate this day, in which the organized working class is mobilized worldwide. It is a day that allows us to go to the masses and massively distribute our Red Flag.
“Thank you, comrades,” the 5-year-old son of a worker couple ended by saying.
Urban and rural workers, students, health workers: All out to march for Communism!
El Salvador: Distributing Communist Leaflets to Garment Workers
See: Communist Revolution Will End Fascist, Sexist Capitalism from Latin America to the US
May Day in Mexico: Let’s Fight for the Worldwide Emancipation of the Working Class: Communism!
The great imperialist capitalist powers, the U.S., the European Union and Japan on the one hand, and China, Russia, and Iran on the other, are fighting for markets and sources of raw materials, with wars that are about to become global, even nuclear. Capitalism is the problem, not this or that politician representing this or that capitalists. The solution is communist revolution to overthrow them, to eliminate wage slavery and the whole capitalist system of trade.
The use and enjoyment of our labor power by the capitalists–not just the abuse of it– is exploitation. Therefore, we must not just fight low wages and poor working conditions. We must fight to end the system of wage labor. The problems are so many that they will not be solved with one or another reform, putting patches on capitalism.
The capitalists have increased the degree of workers’ exploitation. They took advantage of the pandemic to lower wages, extend the working day, and automate production even more. Billionaire Carlos Slim proposed compacting the work week to three 12-hour days and extending the retirement age by 10 or 15 years.
During the elections, the electoral parties proposed to reduce the work week from 48 to 40 hours. But in the end, they shelved it. President AMLO proposed an average monthly salary of sixteen thousand pesos (US $957) but did not comply with it. He proposed laws, including reinstatement of the “solidarity pension system,” claiming that retirees would receive a pension equivalent to their last salary. He finally said that this would only be in the long run. The much-extolled increase in the minimum wage benefits only half of 1% of those who declared they receive the minimum wage, since most of them do not have an employer.
The AFL-CIO, the Canadian unions, and the American industrial relocation interests propose “labor reform” through the T-MEC (Mexico-United States-Canada Treaty). This is promoted in Mexico by the US embassy, supposedly to “democratize” union leadership and eliminate the “false unions” that only protect the employer. It actually eliminated thousands of small unions. It encourages the existence of multiple unions in each company or industry, breaking up the unity of the workers. It has left all the old leaders intact.
Those who advocate “reforming” wage slavery proclaim that it is not possible to end it now. So, they support the proposal to reduce the work week to 40 hours, increase vacation days, and reduce the daily work day: “since productivity has increased and workers produce in less than twenty-five minutes the value of their labor power (wages), working the remaining seven and a half hours for the profit of the capitalist.” We workers need to get rid of capitalism altogether!
In the past, communists in Russia and China kept the relationship of workers working for a wage, with the state as their employer, ultimately restoring all capitalism.
May Day began as an international struggle for the eight-hour workday. The Second International in Europe called for the elimination of capitalism, but that goal was not at the forefront of the movement. Today we need to overthrow the capitalists, smash their state machinery, and build a state of free-associated workers under the leadership of ICWP. A state that defends the power of the working class, prevents the return of all exploiters, and supports the liberation of workers all over the world.
Contribute to the struggle for the worldwide emancipation of the working class! Join ICWP. Write your experiences of struggle in Red Flag and help spread it.
Read our Manifesto: “Mobilize the Masses for Communism” here
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