Ecuador Study Group here ♦ Workers’ Struggles in Ecuador here ♦
Ecuador, November 15, 2024—”They turn off the lights. We will set the streets on fire.”
Ecuador Study Group
ECUADOR, March 3— “We’ re the majority everywhere,” said Rosario. “We run everything. We produce everything. How come a few capitalists rule over us?”
Four men and three women comrades were participating in a Zoom study group about events in Ecuador and the world.
Javier answered, “They rule over us by force (their police and armies) and ideologically. Their ideologies include racism, sexism, nationalism, individualism, and others that keep us divided and weak. We need to defeat all their poisonous ideologies with communist ideologies. We need unity and the understanding that we can destroy capitalism and build communism.
Samuel said, “Our communist revolution will eliminate private property, money, the market, and wage slavery. We will produce only for human needs, not for profit.”
People described the crime and gangs that dominate life in Ecuador.
Then Inez asked, “How can we live without money?”
Javier said that when he was young, he lived near Indigenous people who mainly practiced a collective lifestyle using very little money. They grew food together and shared it. There was no crime, no stealing, no fighting or killing. They sold some of their products to buy things they couldn’t produce.
Rosario added, “Where I live and farm, things used to be like that. There was no private property. Farming was done collectively, and we shared the food we grew. There was no crime. But capitalism destroyed this. Now all land is privately owned. With unemployment high, crime has surged. There’s a lot of mistrust between people.”
Berta explained, “To make a revolution we need to patiently explain to our friends why only communism can defeat capitalism, its attacks and ideas. Communism will end private property. We can live like our ancestors lived: without money, sharing everything, consciously building communism, using science and technology to make everyone’s life better.”
Inez asked, “What about China? Is it really communist? Isn’t the working class in China exploited?”
“The revolution in China was a mass struggle against capitalism. But the Chinese Communist Party implemented socialism, like Russia had done. Socialism kept wages and money. Products were sold for money on the market. The ‘communist’ leaders became the new capitalist-imperialist exploiters,” said Berta.
Bertoldo said, “The workers’ movement in Chile was defeated because US imperialism organized a military coup that overthrew socialist Allende. We couldn’t win because the US stopped the movement.”
“No. It was because of the internal contradiction of the movement. The Chilean Communist Party made the fatal mistake of supporting Allende and his line of peacefully transitioning to socialism. They thought they could nationalize the copper mines and other industries without mass armed struggle for power,” contributed Samuel.
Javier added, “The armies of fourteen imperialist countries invaded the newborn Soviet Union trying to crush the Russian Revolution in its cradle. The Russian Communist Party had none of the illusions of the Chilean CP. They mobilized the Russian masses for war, organized a Red Army of five million, defeated the imperialist forces and consolidated the Soviet Union. The internal is primary.”
“The Soviet Union let down the Chilean revolutionary masses by not supporting them,” said Bertoldo.
“By then, the Soviet Union didn’t support revolutionary movements anywhere. It was an imperialist country looking after its own imperialist interests,” said Berta. She added, “We’re one working class worldwide. We need one international revolutionary communist party, ICWP. When a revolutionary struggle surges in one area, our party will fight to support it and spread it everywhere.”
“We need to analyze and write more about why the old international communist movement failed,” Bertoldo suggested.
“How can we make sure that in communism the leaders don’t become power hungry bosses?” asked Oscar,
This led to a brief discussion about building a mass party where everyone is a leader, thinker, and doer, where no one is above the collective and where everyone’s opinion is respected and valued.
Samuel concluded, “The only solution for the working class in Ecuador is for us to organize to take state power and build communism. The working class needs to organize ourselves with the philosophy of dialectical materialism, to unite our class. We need a party to lead. That party is the International Communist Workers’ Party, and its paper is Red Flag.”
Rosario reported that a collective of six is reading and discussing Red Flag.
Read more about the Communist Philosophy of Dialectical materialism here
Workers’ Struggles in Ecuador
Ecuador is a bone of contention in the rivalry between US and Chinese imperialism. With the drug war as a pretext, the Ecuadorian government approved using the Galapagos Islands for building a US military base in preparation for its war against China. Chinese imperialists are using multi-million-dollar loans to gain influence in Ecuador, which owes them $14 billion. Neither imperialist will help the five million Ecuadorians who live on less than $3 a day.
Ecuador’s total debt to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and China is $84 billion, 70% of its gross domestic product. President Noboa has enacted higher taxes and reduced social program subsidies as austerity measures imposed by its creditors. All these imperialists are responsible for the masses’ suffering.
More than half of workers in Ecuador are employed in the informal economy. Only 3 out of 10 workers earn an income of at least the minimum wage ($470/month). Only 3 out of 10 families can buy the basic family food basket of $746/month.
The bosses never pay Ecuadoran factory workers or farm workers the full value of their work. They steal the surplus value (the unpaid value) as profit, keeping the workers poor so that they have to become wage slaves, that is, slaves to their wages in order to survive.
The government of Ecuador is controlled by the largest land and business owners: the oligarchy. Their only concern is protecting and increasing their profits, extracted from exploiting workers. Our working-class interests are quality of life and feeding and protecting our families.
Instead of meeting workers’ needs, the capitalists use their profits and the taxes we pay to put the military on the streets under the pretext of fighting competing cocaine gangs. They will then use the military against us when we rebel.
The April Presidential election is to decide which electoral party will rule, to enrich the next winners, and to make the people believe that change is coming. No matter which party wins or who is president, they all answer to the bosses: the oligarchy.
The internal contradiction here is the struggle between the working class and the capitalist class. The capitalist rulers protect their profits with the power of the State, its government, the police, and the army.
The working class needs a communist party, the ICWP. The only solution for the working class in Ecuador is to organize for communist revolution. Then we will all contribute to a communist society: From each according to their ability and commitment, to each according to their needs.