Seattle, USA
The same day we started writing the Detroit anti-racist rebellion article, a fellow worker collapsed while running his machine. Four workers gave him CPR to keep him alive. As I was leaving, an exhausted and tearful guy from his area gave me the bad news. He died in the hospital.
Although an immediate safety issue wasn’t the cause, job stress must have been a factor. Further, his death didn’t stop the bosses from making everyone in his area work overtime (more stress). Even more motivation to get this important communist Detroit article written and distributed!
This sparked angry discussions and meetings, organized and spontaneous. There were calls for political action and discussions about how only communism can end this destruction of human life (more next issue).
Many talked about a particularly galling issue some years ago. The bosses in our building decided to get rid of all disabled workers to increase “productivity.” One guy, who rode in my van, had a bad arm. He worked like hell at his job. We used to kid him about how he had better slow down.
In order to fire him, the bosses transferred him to a job where he had to raise his bad arm above his head. He couldn’t.
We all went to bat for him. The author of the Detroit article had a particularly sharp fight with management, but, in the end, the bosses got rid of him.
“How can people be like this?” said another worker in my area.
“These are not people,” I answered. “They’re bosses.”
Boeing’s top boss just praised the head of commercial production for cutting costs and increasing productivity. Capitalist production is organized around making more profits. Those that are willing to sacrifice our lives to increase profits are the ones who “rise” in the management ranks.
Capitalist competition creates selfishness. On the other hand, communist production based on our collective needs will form the material basis for winning men and women to think of the world’s workers first. We can start now, but by changing the basis of production we can assure that the process succeeds on a bigger, more permanent scale. I was surprised at how many agreed with me when I said this.
We often say that industrial workers are key to making a communist revolution. They are also central to developing the new men and women that will guarantee the success of communist society after we seize power.
—Another furious, but hopeful, Boeing worker
Seville, Spain
In Seville, the temperature went up to over 40 degrees C (104 degrees F). For construction workers, it is so hard to work in this heat that one of them died. He was paving a road with asphalt in Morón de la Frontera near Seville. This July 13 it was over 104 degrees F when his co-workers warned emergency services that he was in poor health. The 54-year-old worker died because of the ruthless conditions capitalism subjects workers to all over the world.
The capitalist system doesn’t care if the workers don’t have what they need; they are only interested in their profits, their production. The reformists and the unions have raised their voices to the sky over this event, but they will do absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening again. We workers are simply not important to them except to produce profits. Neither reformists nor any union can solve the problems that the capitalist system gives us.
To end these murders caused by capitalism, the only solution is to destroy capitalism and build a communist system. In communism, the workers will not be exposed to these circumstances because we won’t work for money. Surplus value will not exist. Workers will enjoy the benefit of working in safe conditions because we will produce to meet the needs of our society.
Workers around the world do not need to be exposed to excessive hours of work, miserable wages, and this pure, hard exploitation that the bosses demand. We won’t work for profits! The working class will build a world with a better quality of life and without the vices and capitalist ideas that make some feel more powerful than others.
The International Communist Workers’ Party fights for Communism to become a reality. Help us to build a new world, sharing Red Flag with friends and discussing the issues that Red Flag publishes. Form part of this movement by building a mass Party and a new world: a communist world! Long live communism! Long live ICWP!
—Comrade in Spain
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