SEATTLE (USA), August 10â âItâs not just knowing youâre exploited,â wrote Bill for a meeting of Boeing activists. âClass consciousness is about understanding how power operates, how the capitalist world functions, from wage slavery to the war machine.
âOnce the understanding spreads around the world, the ruling class canât manage us with contracts and slogans anymore. The system isnât broken. Itâs doing what every class society has always done: squeezing labor from the many to feed the few.
âWe are the class that labors. The capitalists are the class that lives off us. So, when they wave the flag as the last resort, donât be fooled. Their loyalty is to profit, not us.
âAnd it doesnât stop at the US border. The same class that exploits us here exploits workers across the globe. They start wars, then cage refugees fleeing them. Whether you are a machinist in Wichita or Seattle, a seamstress in Honduras, or an olive farmer resisting the erasure in the West Bank, youâre in the same fight,â Bill concluded.
These meetings bring together more than a dozen rank-and-file workers from factories in the Seattle area and Wichita, Kansas. An ICWP comrade has known one of the original organizers, Hank, for over a year. Hank recently invited the comrade to participate.
Bill and other Boeing workers want to take action and learn from historical experiences. Hank asked the comrade to write about Boeing workersâ response to the separation of migrant families during the first Trump regime. The meeting was especially interested in the work stoppages in many areas to discuss how to fight back.
To emphasize the importance of communist international industrial work, two articles from Red Flag were sent to the meeting, one from El Salvador and another from South Africa.
An East Coast comrade sent a letter. Decades ago, US Navy Reservists were ordered to build cages for Haitian refugees but refused. The meetingâs participants were inspired by the reservistsâ refusal to have anything to do with detention centers.
Bill noted that some older workers are now following the direction of younger workers, who make up the bulk of these meetings. Younger and older Boeing workers are now more concerned than before about what is happening globally, including Gaza genocide, the US-NATO/Russia war in Ukraine, and slaughter in Sudan.
Boeing workers are attracted to Red Flag not only because of the âeconomicâ struggle, but because of the global political attacks that end up drawing more into the international communist struggle.
Everyone got excited when it became clear that ICWP distributes Red Flag/Bandera Roja at the Boeing gates. Larger distribution inside the factory and at the gates is the next step. Comrades have asked members of this action committee to distribute Red Flag to their friends and co-workers.
Bill ended the meeting by referring to the necessity of concrete action. He believes concrete struggle should go beyond the factory floor. He warned that Democrats and Republicans are always trying to preserve capitalism at the expense of the working class.
The union president, Jon Holdon, says we need to âsave the company from itself.â We need just the opposite. Industrial workers must be ready to rally masses for communism to save themselves from the company and many kinds of capitalistsâ attacks.
Communist class consciousness moves the working class to a shared goal of changing society by seizing the means of production and establishing a communist society. It thus changes from a class in itself to a class for itself.
âWhoâs afraid to talk about class? Cause I ainât,â said Bill. Class consciousness isnât just an idea, itâs a weapon. A weapon that can unleash the power of the masses.
Pamphlet: Soldiers, Sailors, Marines Crucial to a Communist Workersâ Revolution: here