Letters, Vol 8, No 10

The Police: Capitalism’s Executioners

From the time that we are children, they brainwash us with a lot of garbage that is only for the benefit of the rich capitalists and not for the working class, or people with low incomes. One example is the police. Supposedly they were put there to keep order and peace and to protect us from criminals, but the reality is different. Everything depends on several things, for example, what social class you belong to, what is your “race” and on which side of the city you live.

I live in East Los Angeles, a few blocks from a police station. You could think that being so close to police surveillance you would be safer, but it’s the complete opposite: there is more crime, from prostitution to drugs, rape and even murder.

The bad thing about this is that many of these crimes have been committed by police, who without shame and without caring at all continue doing this. There are many stories that one can hear every day from people who have been victims or witnesses to these crimes. And to this day, although they have been denounced, these crimes continue to go unpunished, while many mothers continue suffering. I think the cruelest and most repugnant thing for them is to see the murderers of their children patrolling the streets looking for their next victim.

And this happens every day, not only in East Los Angeles, but in many other US cities and all over the world wherever the working class lives. And why is all this happening? Not because of the excuses that they make us believe on the news and with the supposed experts on the subject.

All of this happens because capitalism needs to exploit the whole working class and super-exploit certain sections of workers using racism. In the US, they are African Americans and Latinos; in other countries they are Africans, Muslims, Turks, Filipinos, etc.

With racist police terror, they try to terrorize us so that we don’t rebel against their wage slavery. Under capitalism, we will be poor all our lives, together with our children, and we will always be under the yoke of the capitalists (the bosses). We will be watched, harassed and humiliated and some of our children will even be killed by one or several of the capitalists’ executioners.

That is why we need a communist revolution to put an end to all of this. We need a communist society without police. In communism, there will be no exploitation, no money, no sale of anything, including drugs. This will eliminate many of the “crimes” that capitalist “justice” uses to jail and kill our class. The working class will guarantee our own security.

—A New Comrade

Struggle With Friends Advances the Line

While I was working on the article above about Venezuela, a friend, Jesus, came to my house. We sat in the living room and my roommate, Pablo, was with us too. I said “Dudes, today I need your help. I’m writing something about Venezuela.” This was not planned; it was an opportunity that I wanted to take advantage of.

They were astonished at what I had written.

Jesus told me, “How can you write that?”

Pablo commented, “I don’t know much but I think that’s an aberration.”

I was not surprised. Their comments focused on Venezuela being in a difficult process. They posed reformist and idealistic solutions. What came after was very interesting.

As they commented, I answered based on the analysis the party has made of the whole process of “21st Century Socialism.” One by one their arguments were refuted by our line. And they began to realize that there’s no easy solution—that only communist revolution can achieve what we want.

After the three of us agreed on this, we discussed what a revolution of this type would mean.

“It’s true, only by doing it that way can you make it work, but it’s messed up,” said Jesus.

“I think the time has come for each of us try to win someone else to these ideas,” I commented.

“Even in the Bible it says that,” Pablo said, laughing.

This discussion made me clarify many things for the article and I even made changes that they suggested.

This discussion would not have been possible without the struggle that has taken place with them and many other friends during the period of more than I year that I’ve been living here. It was essential to win their trust as a friend.

The time I shared with the comrades in Los Angeles helped me to see the potential of the friends—male and female—that I have around me. I can easily distribute eight Red Flags of this new edition. Every day someone is waiting to be organized.

This morning I got a message, “Dude, I keep thinking about Venezuela. I’m going to your house right now.” That’s how it is.

—A Comrade

Capitalism and Imperialism

What always confuses me is to read in the Red Flag the term capitalist-imperialist as if capitalists and imperialists have equally to compete to exploit resources, markets and labour. From my understanding, capitalism and imperialism are two different stages of development in a process. Dialectically everything in every process has changes and development.

As Lenin mentioned, the development of capitalism to monopoly and finance capital led to imperialism.* Then the imperialist countries started the export of finance capital to control other capitalist countries through, for example, the International Monetary Fund, and other means of lending capital. By this method they bring the smallest capitalist countries in their sphere and manipulate the government to do whatever they want them to do.

This is an important distinction and Red Flag’s use of the term capitalist-imperialist just confuses things.

*See Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Chapter X, “The Place of Imperialism in History”

—A Comrade

Why We Use the Term “Capitalists-Imperialists”

All imperialists are capitalists and all capitalists want to be imperialists. Those that don’t reach the rank of imperialists are, as the letter points out, willingly or by force tied to one imperialist or another.

The old communist movement, especially when fighting for national liberation, only attacked imperialism as the main enemy of the oppressed masses. They usually divided the national bourgeoisie or local capitalists into two camps: the reactionary ones that allied with the imperialists and the progressive ones that opposed the imperialists. These they considered “good capitalists” and welcomed them as allies of the working class in their national liberation struggle.

When we use the term capitalists-imperialists it is just to make clear that we make no such distinction and consider all capitalists – local or foreign – as deadly enemies of the toiling masses. Unlike the old communist movement, we are not only opposed to US imperialism but to all imperialists, including Russia, the European Union, Japan and China.

—A Comrade

Communism will have no borders and no nations

At the southern border of Mexico, poverty converges with the reduction of natural areas due to the expansion of livestock, and crops of exotic species like palm oil and eucalyptus, sugar cane and forest plantations such as teak wood.

At the southern border, indigenous communities survive on natural resources and crops, mainly corn and beans, as well as by selling their labor power at ranches and pastures. Workers live in small houses of wood and lamina, floors of earth. Groups of evangelists, Christians, and Catholics, among others show how there’s a road of salvation and hope for the workers.

This border is a border crossing where, day after day, 2 to 5 people walk along the Ceibo-Tenosique Highway in search of reaching the United States. Only some groups of people are visible. The rest walk through the mountains, go by train, in public vehicles, among others routes.

People travel with sadness in their eyes, dirty clothes, torn shoes, and a backpack on their backs, hoping that someone picks them up or gives them a little food. Usually the Migra stops them, puts them in their vans and takes them or asks them for money and lets them leave.

At the Southern border, criminal gangs transport drugs, weapons, and people. At the southern border some people become “illegals” and others nationalists. The southern border is only a reflection of all the borders that the capitalists use to delimit their economic areas.

In communism there will be no borders or nationalism. We workers will move freely from place to place when necessary, for pleasure or to help our class brothers and sisters.

In communism, nature will teach us new ways of relating to each other and the workers of the world will know how to take care of the earth and manage it depending on the conditions that they encounter.

A communist society has to be our hope and, for that, every day with actions, discussions, spreading the ideas, we can build it. Let’s destroy and build ideas dialectically. Every day we workers see ourselves involved in reformist ideas, but by sharpening the struggle around these ideas we can advance politically. In appearance there is no change; in essence it creates a revolution in people.

—Young comrade in Mexico

What will auto workers do in communism?

For the most part, they won’t build autos!

Instead we’ll build buses, trams, trains, subways, bicycles, scooters, wheelchairs, even planes and helicopters.

And buses etc aren’t the only kind of vehicles we’ll make. Until the bosses are wiped out world wide we’ll have revolutionary civil wars to fight. We’ll put plenty of resources into building tanks, APCs, jeeps, motorized artillery and the like.

But what about autos? Yes, we’ll keep making them, but not on the ridiculous current scale.

Globally there are about ten million auto workers (including those making parts) and they make nearly seventy million cars a year. This means big profits for the auto bosses. The ‘auto industrial complex’ is at the heart of the world capitalist economy. It is the logical result of competition and the profit motive.

After the revolution we’ll inherit it – the auto factories, the parts factories, the oil and gas industries, the road networks, the factories that produce steel, glass, plastic and rubber. With the bosses gone we’ll be free to decide what to do with it. And the question will be, is workers’ time spent building cars (and driving and maintaining them) well spent in terms of workers’ needs?

It is not time well spent. There are already a billion cars on the planet (a quarter of them in the US). Every year more than a million people are killed in car accidents and thirty million or more are injured or disabled. Millions more are killed or sickened by air pollution. Of course in many countries (like South Africa) owning a car is, for average workers, an impossible dream. But not owning a car won’t save you from being killed in or by one. In South Africa again, the real annual road fatality total is probably over twenty thousand per year. Your chances of being killed on the road in South Africa are much higher than in the US.

The communist collective forms of transport will be safe, non polluting (eg electric or powered by biofuels), comfortable, and operated by trained, sober, alert operators. The switch to communist transport will save many millions from death, injury and disease. And from long hours driving, stressed out, isolated, and away from friends and family

Communism means today’s auto workers will make things that serve the working class, not more millions of poison-spewing death traps.

—A Comrade

Liu Xiaobo: Good Riddance

On July 13 Liu Xiaobo, Chinese dissident, died of liver cancer while on medical release from prison. Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 and his death was treated as tragic by US, United Nations and European politicians. Liu called for the “westernization” of China, that is, replacing the current Chinese capitalist system with US-style capitalism.

Like many Nobel Peace winners Liu was not an advocate of peace at all. He endorsed the US attack on Iraq, and its wars in Afghanistan, Korea and Vietnam. In his book Lessons of the Cold War, he wrote that “The free world led by the US fought almost all regimes that trampled on human rights … The major wars that the US became involved in are all ethically defensible.”

The Nobel “Peace” award has often been given to major capitalist war makers. Nobel winner Barack Obama was commander-in-chief during US wars in at least 5 different countries. Nobelist Henry Kissinger is notorious for war crimes in Cambodia and Indonesia, among others. Lying Myanmar politician Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel winner in 1991, tries to cover up her army’s mass racist violence against the Muslim Rohingya minority, and refuses to let United Nations representatives into the country to investigate it.

It should be no surprise that all these pro-capitalist “peace” heroes are really war makers and hypocrites. Capitalism’s fights over profits make war an integral part of the capitalist system. Only communism can bring worldwide peace. The masses will be the real heroes of peace by mobilizing for communism.

—Comrade in the US

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