Beyond Symbolic Gestures here ♦ Communism Grows in Occupied Palestine here ♦
Capitalism Is Not Finished here ♦Desperate Rulers May Use Anything here ♦
Letter: Beyond Symbolic Gestures: Organizing Masses for Communism
Fraternal greetings, comrades.
Having read Red Flag, I agree that The Strokes’ performance at Coachella showed that even within the spaces created by capitalism, voices of protest and gestures that unsettle those in power can emerge.
However, I also believe it is important not to lose sight of the underlying contradiction or dilute it. A song, no matter how powerful, cannot substitute for the conscious organization of the working class or replace the political struggle necessary to transform reality. Coachella remains, above all, a showcase for cultural capitalism, where art becomes a commodity and rebellion runs the risk of being absorbed as spectacle.
That is why, rather than merely celebrating the symbolic gesture, we should highlight both its limitations and its potential. While thousands of workers face insufficient wages, unaffordable rent, grueling workdays, and the constant rising cost of living, the system offers exclusive festivals and messages of protest packaged as entertainment.
That is the true contradiction we must highlight. Capitalism turns even criticism into a product. But it cannot erase the material conditions of exploitation that most of us experience as the working class.
Imperialism, exploitation, and the commodification of culture will not disappear by the will of corporations or through isolated acts of rebellion. Furthermore, we must not forget that artists, even when they rebel for a moment, continue to profit within this system. And in many cases, certain acts of provocation also serve as a way to attract attention, sell more, and strengthen their own image within the market.
Precisely for this reason, the response cannot be limited to fleeting admiration or momentary outrage. The real task is to transform that discomfort into class consciousness, organization, and communist struggle. Only communism offers a real way out of a system that commodifies culture, makes life precarious, and turns every form of rebellion into a business.
The question, then, remains the same: Which side are we on? And how much longer are we going to wait? Are we on the side of capitalist spectacle? Or on the side of the working class fighting to overthrow this order and build a communist society?
That is why the struggle is not just about making a symbolic gesture, but about organizing on a massive scale, joining the ICWP, and distributing Red Flag to strengthen the conscious struggle of the working class and to advance toward communism.
—Comrade in El Salvador
Letter: Communism Grows in Occupied Palestine
The growth of our party in Tel Aviv, in the face of fascist terror and genocide, is inspiring. Many of my pro-Palestine friends here are happy to read about it.
Especially now, as the Israeli military has occupied over two-thirds of Gaza. And as it’s moving the “yellow line” every day to keep stealing more land. And as fascist settlers in the West Bank ever more brazenly attack Palestinians who have lived there for many, many generations.
You would think from the US and Zionist capitalist media that Israel is unshakeable. Maybe it just needs different leadership. That’s why it’s so important to learn from our comrades about the cracks in the foundation. About the growing potential for change.
Many of our comrades and friends there are reservists or veterans. They grasp the urgency of continuing to meet with draft-age youth and introducing them to communist ideas. Communist soldiers, allied with the masses of angry Palestinian youths and workers, can and will destroy the capitalists’ Zionist project. One day, they will build a communist liberated zone for all workers between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. And beyond.
One thing in a recent Red Flag article confused me, though. “Israel as a capitalist society is finished,” a comrade concluded.
Capitalist society is finished! Israel is finished! Yes! We will finish them off.
But the way the quote is phrased might lead some to think there could or should be a non-capitalist Israel. Or to think we believe that. We don’t!
We fight for a world without nations or borders. And most certainly without the apartheid state of Israel in any form. We should have used a different headline.
—Comrade in the USA
Letter: Capitalism Is Not Finished, but It Is the Last Stage of Class Society
This letter is about an article published in the last Red Flag about ICWP’s work in Israel. I don’t think the headline, “Israel as a capitalist society is finished” did justice to the article about our comrades’ communist work in Israel. It should have been something like “Israel: ICWP Reaches Out to Youth.”
The headline was also wrong in affirming the death of capitalism in Israel. I think the Red Flag collective should be self-critical for publishing that headline. Capitalism will only be finished when ICWP leads the oppressed masses – won to embrace communist ideas as their own – in an armed insurrection to fight directly for communist workers’ power.
Further, even when establishing communism in one country, it doesn’t mean capitalism is finished. We have learned from history that unless we establish it worldwide, our gains in one or more countries can be reversed. This is important because if we want our class to fight for this, we have to start putting that goal forward now.
I would say that capitalism is not finished yet, but it is the last stage of class society. Once, talking to a comrade, I said that capitalism had reached and passed its usefulness and it must be destroyed. He angrily said to me, “Usefulness? Tell that to a worker.” He said that from its very beginning capitalism had oppressed, exploited, raped, and murdered our class by the millions. How could that be called useful?
I could not answer. I thought I was quoting Marx but did not tell him that. I kept quiet because I knew he was right and thought maybe Marx was wrong. Actually, I found out later I was quoting Martin Luther King Jr., who wrote in 1952 to his future wife that capitalism “had outlived its usefulness.”
At any rate, I think it is better to say that capitalism was an inevitable stage in the development of class society once pre-class communism was divided into classes. Capitalism created the international working class. We are the grave diggers of capitalism and all class society.
—A Comrade
Letter: Desperate Rulers May Use Anything in Their Arsenals
The letter denying the possibility of nuclear war in the last issue doesn’t say anything about why the capitalists/ imperialists go to war or explain the cause of the expanding wars in Russia/Ukraine and Iran/Lebanon. It didn’t explain that capitalism in crisis means war to the death (workers’ and soldiers’ deaths) between the imperialists/capitalists over control of markets, workers’ labor, and resources. All for profit and empire.
The weapons being used now by Ukraine, Russia, the US, Iran and Israel, while not yet nuclear, are very lethal. And getting more so. The imperialists on both sides are preparing more tactical nuclear weapons, among other deadly weapons. Russia’s leaders have put in place a “dead hand”: if Russian leadership is taken out, nuclear weapons will automatically be released.
The letter said that an example of the capitalists/imperialists waging limited wars is that neither side had attacked desalination plants in the Middle East. Since that was written, the US bombed and destroyed a desalination plant in Iran. It left an estimated 30,000 people without water. Iran then attacked desalination plants in Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE. Without desalination plants, life in the Middle East is unlivable.
Capitalism/imperialism in crisis, and especially those imperialists desperate to maintain their declining empire, cannot be relied on not to use nuclear weapons or anything else in their arsenals. We are not trying to scare people, as the letter claimed. We are struggling to prepare ourselves, our friends and our whole class for the determined mass struggle needed to turn the imperialists’ deadly wars for profit and deadly system into the fight for communist revolution. Giving people illusions in the “rationality” of the imperialists does a disservice to our class. Maybe the writer didn’t mean to do that. But leaving that position unanswered would betray our class.
Mobilizing workers, soldiers and youth to end capitalist/imperialist wars for profit with communist revolution is the way to end capitalist horror, save countless lives and build the communist world the masses need and deserve.
—A Comrade
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