Communist Work in the Military here ⊠Supporting Gaza from Elsewhere here âŠ
El Salvador: Women guerrilla fighters during the Civil War of the 1980s. The working class is the basis of the Red Army.
Communist Work in the Military: Controversial but Essential
EL SALVADOR, January 18â âSoldiers are key to communist revolution. This is not only a phrase to be repeated at each meeting. It is really a serious issue that we must consider,â said D at the first meeting of the workersâ leadership group here after the international conference of the International Communist Workersâ Party.
The situation of growing fascism worldwide shows that our class siblings are dying in the bossesâ wars. Therefore, the meetings of the maquila worker comrades have begun placing the need to build the Partyâs military work at the center of the discussion.
âWhoever sends you to fight or die on the war front does so for their own economic interests, very far from what the working class needs,â said a comrade.
In this country and in many others, the vast majority of soldiers are the children of maquila and rural workers. So, within the factories there is enormous potential for thousands of red soldiers to emerge. Industrial and military work are the two pillars of ICWPâs struggle.
For example, in Gaza, the fascists have murdered thousands of class siblings: children, men and women. That does not matter to the genocidal capitalists. But to millions among the working class, it does. They are mobilizing around the world against this capitalist horror.
In this environment of war and genocide, the ICWP has done important work: distributing communist literature, making contacts, and making the Party line available to the masses. Our base is being consolidated in the work of organizing more comrades into the ranks of ICWP. Sooner rather than later, they will form the Red Army.
âIn this context, returning to the ideas shared at the December conference, we talked about the need to see what the concrete possibilities are of organizing the soldiers who would do the military work. To build a red army as the comrade speaker said,â explained a comrade.
âI think that no mother would like her children to go to the army and to war. I saw a friend who attended the previous conference with her children and was worried about this issue. But I think it is a necessity,â said K.
We need to win young people and their parents to the idea of ââthe urgent need to do political work in the army and fight resolutely for Communism. To expand their networks of friends by inviting them to read Red Flag. To talk to them and show them that only the communist system can put an end to this rotten capitalist system.
In conclusion, the topic was much discussed and controversial. But in the end, we concluded that it is more than necessary. âWe cannot wait much longer, we must begin. This is our task, each one of usâ concluded M.
The plan will be discussed in all the collectives of the maquilas and the countryside, the main base of the International Communist Workersâ Party.
Gaza Genocide: How Can Comrades Elsewhere Organize Effectively?
âPeople have realized that standing on a street corner yelling is not a strategy that will defeat genocide,â I said to a friend. We were at a pro-Palestine demonstration doing just that. âNeither was lobbying legislators or passing City Council resolutions.â
âWhat would be effective?â she asked, really wanting to know. We moved a little way to where it was quieter.
âArmed struggle,â I replied. âMainly in Palestine. Armed struggle for communism. But an effective strategy here in the US is to organize for communism inside the military.â She listened eagerly as I explained some of the history we have published in Red Flag.
âThere is a particular opening right now,â I continued. âTrump threatens to use US military personnel to conduct mass deportations. But tens of thousands of US troops are immigrants. Many more are from âmixed statusâ families. Will they follow orders to deport other immigrants? Will their buddies?â
âA lot wonât,â my friend agreed.
âWe all know people with relatives in the service,â I said. âWe can talk to them about refusing orders to carry out this attack on their working-class family. And orders to attack other workers anywhere in the world.
âWe saw in Syria what happened when soldiers refused to fight for Assadâs government. Without revolutionary organization, they didnât take the next step of fighting to take power into the workersâ hands. But discussions about refusing orders can easily lead to talking about turning the guns around. And about the communism we need to fight for. Revolution in the USA would be a powerful help to the masses in Palestine and a lot of other places.â
We agreed that itâs important to do whatever we can to help people in Gaza directly â like donating to a grass-roots group that feeds many hundreds every day. But thatâs not enough. There wonât be a communist revolution in the US tomorrow. But we have to start organizing people for it now, or it will never happen.
The new pamphlet about Palestine will be especially useful if it highlights the strategic importance of organizing for communism among military personnel, and among potential recruits and draftees, everywhere.
âComrade in the US
Read our pamphlet: Soldiers, Sailors, Marines: Crucial for a Communist Workersâ Revolution
Available at: Â icwpredflag.org/mpe.pdf