My Experience in the Party
I am a comrade in South Africa. I was in the land of bread and butter, toasted in the village of shacks and plants, in the environment of do’s and don’ts.
As I joined ICWP I came to realize that that’s not the way to live.
I’ve got eight months in the Party. While we were going house to house mobilizing, distributing Red Flags, I came across a question: “Is ICWP here to steal our country?”
My answer was that our country was already stolen from us by the capitalists! ICWP is here to help us get it back, because now we are only “free” to serve the capitalist system. We must ask ourselves why criminal activities are taking place and who are the real criminals.
We are only experiencing the rich getting richer and the poor getting all the way down. Let me not dwell on that. On the sixth of May we were having political classes. This became an eye opener for me: a group of people sharing the same idea. It’s where I realize I have found a home. Through these trying years, I have reached my destination.
The struggle must continue! Long live ICWP! Viva!
—A New Comrade
Everyone Must Become a Communist Leader
We were talking with the comrades about the issue of leadership: what it means to be a leader in a mass party, in ICWP. Comrades have come up with different examples of communist leadership but we all agree on one thing: that anyone can be a leader and everyone must be a leader.
We have demonstrated this, not only talked about it, that everyone can be a leader. I saw an attitude in the meeting yesterday. It was reflected in a letter that I read from an issue of Red Flag from December, 2014. It said, “Interestingly, our party is becoming younger. We have in our midst a large number of young lions. They are all still at school but they have demonstrated maturity in grasping our line.”
This was written three years ago. Now these comrades that the letter talked about have become leaders of the Party. One is mobilizing miners in Marikana, another is in another industrial area distributing Red Flag there, another is mobilizing in another area.
This development was not automatic. It was a struggle; we have been struggling with each other to understand and articulate the communist line of ICWP. This has yielded fruits and challenges. The party is growing. This now presents us with new challenges and opportunities.
So, I think it’s an interesting prospect and outlook for the future of the party. When you look, you see there is going to be continuity because of the young leaders. I think ICWP has a really bright future here in South Africa.
—Enthusiastic Comrade
Give the People What They Want! Part 2
It is easy to forget that the peoples of the world existed in their own intellectually driven communities prior to Western invasion. Many of their philosophies and systems of life are preserved (if only) in the memories of the victims. It is crass to assume that those communities may not want to revert back to their original states following a revolution or societal collapse – regardless of the promises of communism. After all, most societies already lived within some variation of the communist model before they were overrun by foreign ideals.
Insistence that science and rationality are the solutions for humanity is a wild presumption. Science is simply one way of uncovering truth about humans, the world, and the universe at large. Further, scientific research reveals that human rationality is inconsistent and unreliable at best. Similarly, spiritual sterility is NOT a shared reality for all humans. Yet refusal by nonparticipants to acknowledge spirituality’s meaning and value in the lives of the awakened makes communism’s proposition unfulfilling and empty – like a beautifully gilded cathedral with no soul. What do these apparently conflicting positions in the human experience mean?
Like the woman in the park who was dismissive of my personal reality and outlook in life, communist philosophy cannot succeed by denigrating or dismissing the intellectual capacities and philosophies of the world’s peoples. Let communist thinkers adjust the manifesto to reflect changing times and multiple realities. Those who thrive in stability can certainly appreciate the solidity of an ideal communist society (in contrast to a fluid anarchic state). But without evidence to the contrary, the people of the world can also reasonably suppose that the difference between capitalism and communism is little more than the frying pan and the fire.
Yes! We must strive toward working to live, not living to work. But if we embrace the concept of actually living, then to live without inhibition is our ultimate goal. If in the end, this freedom leads to our destruction because of the anti-social whims of a few, then the human story will be that of an unsustainable species. But if society succeeds in growing cohesively, only then can we truly celebrate human freedom.
—A reader
The Masses Need and Aspire to Communism
Pre-class communism lasted tens of thousands of years. Many aspects of that society have survived in the ideas, practices and memories of what happened prior to the “Western [actually European capitalist] invasion.” This includes indigenous people in the Americas as well as those elsewhere in the world who still have these ideas, practices and memories.
We the oppressed masses, the majority of humanity, are capable of again living collectively without money or exploitation. We can produce everything collectively and distribute it based on need. We have never stopped aspiring to do so.
Communist science – dialectical materialism – recognizes that everything is constantly changing. It defines the laws of motion of these changes. Aspects of dialectical materialism were developed over centuries all over the world, from China to Greece and beyond. It is based on the experience and understanding of the masses and is still developing. This is not Western ideology—it is universal.
Historical materialism is dialectical materialism applied to history. It describes the class struggle between the masses and their oppressors worldwide. This struggle caused society to transition from pre-class communism to slavery, feudalism and now capitalism – including socialism, a form of state capitalism.
Scientific communism analyzes this experience. It concludes that this struggle must inevitably lead to a communist revolution and the building of a scientific communist society worldwide. This is the only society that can fulfill the masses’ aspirations to return to the time when humanity was free of exploitation—but now at a higher level.
Communists do not want to throw out the culture and experiences of the masses. We strive to preserve those customs which help advance society and discard those which are harmful vestiges of ideologies that the exploiting classes imposed on us all throughout history. For example, Chinese communists kept acupuncture which came from traditional medicine. But they abolished the viciously sexist custom of binding women’s feet.
On the question of spirituality, as our comrades in South Africa wrote, “It would not be wise not to welcome people who are spiritual when we are building a mass organization because most people are religious or some way spiritual.
“A communist organization must accommodate everyone that agrees or that is against poverty (especially when it is imposed on them by others), crime, and all other horrors of capitalism. And not just for him/herself but for everyone in society, especially the victims of such horrors. In that way we can be able to build a cohesive sustainable society, a communist society.”
—A comrade
The book From #Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is capturing the imagination of many US anti-racist activists. As the letters below note it attempts an anti-capitalist class analysis of racism but fails to draw the critical conclusion. That is, we can only end racism by mobilizing for communist revolution and communist society.
But the letters disagree sharply on another question. Should our party encourage friends and Red Flag readers to read and discuss this book (“explosive”) or discourage them from reading it (“dangerous”)? What about other books, movies, and media that have a political line opposed to ours?
Please read and discuss the two letters and send in comments. Also, what do you think of the ways that the letters deal with reform movements like the Chicago teachers’ strike? Can they “make a dent” in the racist system? – Red Flag Editorial Collective
Discussing this book could be explosive
From #Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation is excellent in many ways. It examines anti-Black racism (the New Jim Crow) from a class—and anti-capitalist—perspective. But she fails to see the strengths of today’s movement and the possibility of building a mass party that fights for communism.
This review comes from a multi-racial study group of Party and non-Party forces. We suggest that other areas organize similar study groups. The results could be explosive.
Taylor highlights the leadership role of the black industrial workers in the strike wave of the 1970’s, attacks the theory of “white skin privilege,” and cites the class divisions within the Black community.
She says that the ascension of Blacks to political office, culminating in the election of President Obama, has masked—and justified—the persistent inequality that African Americans suffer. For example, in 2015, 25-year-old Black Baltimore resident Freddie Gray died from a devastating spinal injury after being arrested and brutalized by Baltimore Police. Unlike the 2014 murder of Mike Brown by a white cop in white-ruled Ferguson, Missouri, this happened in a Black-run city. Three of the six cops charged in Gray’s murder, the judge in their trial, the police commissioner, the school superintendent, everyone on the Housing Commission, the majority of the City Council and the Mayor are all Black. Yet Freddie Gray got no justice
From Marikana to Baltimore the failure of progressive nationalism to liberate an oppressed people has been spilled out in a line of coffins of those murdered by the state.
Taylor highlights the work of Blacks who fought for socialism, the leadership of Soviet leader Lenin, the work of the US Communist Party (CP) as well as the African Blood Brotherhood and other organizations closely affiliated with the CP. She cites the often-buried history of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, the Black Panther Party, the Third World Women’s Alliance and other Black organizations which embraced socialism in the wake of the post-World War II anti-colonial movements.
She calls for the development of a Black left that will organize and mobilize along class line. She praises the 2012 Chicago teachers’ strike to demonstrate the choices facing Black workers. The Chicago School CEO was a Black woman who united with Mayor Rahm Emanuel to close more than fifty schools in Black and Latino/a neighborhoods. An organized Black left would fight for a class struggle position and unite with the striking teachers and not support the Black school district CEO—but Taylor limits that to a call for militant reformism, rather than calling for a communist revolution, to root out the origins of racism.
She sees racism as the main obstacle to building a revolutionary movement in the USA. But racism doesn’t change the fact that life for white Americans in getting worse as income inequality increases. She says that the majority of the poor, of those without health insurance, and of homeless people are white. She acknowledges that whites on average do better than Blacks, “but that does not say much about who benefits from the inequality of our society”—the capitalist class! Taylor states that this is the basis for class unity to defeat racism and, we would add, capitalism.
ICWP must build a new Communist movement, present a real analysis of the capitalist system to the working class, and recruit and encourage workers and the oppressed people to build a movement for a communist future.
—Comrades in the Bay Area
We can’t recommend this dangerous book
The new book From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (BBL) does a good job exposing some futile strategies for ending racist police terror (e.g. voting in Black mayors and police chiefs). But it has a fatal weakness. It doesn’t tell us what we should do.
What we really need is a communist revolution that will sweep away the cops, courts and prisons. A revolution that will abolish money, private property and the wage system. A revolution that will end super-exploitation, and exploitation in general. A revolution that will lay the basis for ending racism altogether. But you won’t find anything like this in BBL.
On the positive side, Taylor emphasizes the role of the Black industrial working class, for example in the Detroit rebellion. Her class analysis of racism attracts the very workers and students that can lead a mass mobilization for communist revolution. We owe it to these future leaders to present a communist vision and plan.
The book does not offer a Marxist strategy for ending police terror and racism. You can read the last chapter of BBL up, down, and sideways and not find more than a few vague hints about what socialism would do about racism.
Fortunately, we have another source. In January 2017 Taylor wrote an article about the Women’s March for Socialist Worker (a socialist, not communist, newspaper). Again, nothing about how socialism will deal with racism. But she does clearly lay out a strategy. That strategy is to “build a movement”.
And what will be the goal of this movement? To “stand up” to the current assault.
What a dead end. Racism and police terror have gone on long enough. We need a mass communist party (ICWP) that will end them for good. Not a vague “united front” (with whom?) that will only “stand up” to the latest assault.
The problem with the movement strategy is that movements don’t automatically produce communists. And they don’t even make lasting dents in racism. In fact, short of outright rebellions, movements have very little effect. Even the best movements can’t, in the long run, defeat the bosses’ state power.
The Civil Rights movement smashed Jim Crow, but the US is objectively more segregated than ever. The Detroit rebellion won auto jobs for some Black workers, but now Detroit is a poisoned wasteland. The anti-apartheid movement smashed apartheid, but South Africa is still a viciously racist society.
This is why we can’t recommend Taylor’s book. It’s dangerous because it could help convince yet another generation of activists that a movement alone can defeat racism. We’re not against movements. Fights against racism are essential and can even make a small dent. We participate in movements and are ready and willing to lead them.
However, even a movement led by communists cannot end racism and police terror (although a communist led movement will make a bigger dent). Their real value is they allow us to move some people from trying to fix capitalism to trying to overthrow it.
For this we need a communist party that explains why merely fighting militantly is not enough. The ICWP does this in our leaflets, in Red Flag and in our daily interaction with family, friends and coworkers. The BBL book doesn’t even try.
—Comrades in Seattle Area
Socialism is State Capitalism
We think that the article in the last Red Flag about North Korea was helpful in showing that North Korea is not a communist country and that communism will eliminate money and wage slavery.
But it should have defined North Korea as a socialist state, although it did call it a state capitalist country. Socialism is a form of state capitalism.
The article differentiated between two kinds of capitalist countries. In one, individual capitalists and corporations control most of the resources (as in the US). In the other, the state owns everything and state bureaucrats make all the decisions, exploit the working class and live like kings. Some capitalist countries have aspects of both.
But the article then made a statement that is unintentionally confusing: “Capitalists …never speak about the advantages of the state’s ability to direct resources to identified needs.” This seems to imply that state capitalism is better or even that socialism is something different from state capitalism.
The leaders of North Korea set up a socialist state using the Soviet Union as a model, as they did in China, Vietnam and Cuba.
Socialism (state capitalism) is not an improvement over countries in which capitalists and their corporations control the state. In both, workers’ labor power is exploited to enrich capitalists or the state bureaucrats who form a new capitalist class. In both, the capitalists need a repressive state to control the masses. The article should have made this clearer.
—Red Flag Editorial Collective
Mobilize for Communism Today
I liked the thrust of the article from Seattle calling to “break the never-ending cycle of racist cop murders,” as it reported on the angry demonstrations protesting the murder of Charleena Lyles. A thirty-year-old black woman, Charleena had been shot dead by cops in front of three of her four children.
The story was very powerful and argued correctly that we need to mobilize for communism. Unfortunately, the article then went on, “In communism, the party will regularly organize mass meetings at workplaces….”
It jumps the key step of how to mobilize for communism today. Instead it said, at some unspecified time in the future some communists will organize…and so on. It’s a sharp contrast to the urgent anger of the speakers: “Fix the system. We are dying. We are burying our children.”
Unfortunately, the comrades played down their key role. They organized discussion in at least one major industrial plant. Industrial workers create all the surplus value that keeps capitalism running. Winning the majority of them to the need for communist revolution will spell the end of capitalism.
“Fix the system”. with communist revolution; Because “We are dying” we’ll organize political strikes against racist murders; “We are burying our children” so “Let’s bury capitalism!” With the skill and energy the comrades in Seattle have, all the points about communism could be aired in the workplace discussions about actions. And I think they would make the point more powerfully.
Visions of the future (knowing where we want to go) are vital and it is actions like these that give those visions life and force.
—Comrade in California (US)
Party Work in the Military
As a participant in a recent meeting of Party members and supporters on work in the military, I was very impressed with the organization and the content.
This was the first I had heard of the policy of teacher work being “pre-military” work.
I also had never participated in a discussion in a left group where work in the armed forces was discussed from many positions – theoretical, political, and historical.
It was uplifting to see young leaders so thoroughly discussing military work through the lens of the Party’s analysis. It also was insightful to hear the comments of various participants who had been part of the military provide historical background to both their work in the US military but also the work in the military of communist movements internationally. One of the most clear lessons of the meeting was that the possibility of victory in the communist revolution is lessened if the Party lacks military cadre.
—Red Teacher
Marines Gladly Take Red Flag
On Friday night, we talked about work in the military. On Saturday, we drove to Oceanside to talk to Marines. Some of the young comrades were nervous. I have been in the Navy. But I too was dreading rejection because the military has so much anti-communist propaganda.
We had seven comrades to canvas the small town and have conversations about communism with enlisted men and women. We passed out 50 Red Flag papers and close to 20 ICWP Military Pamphlets. (available at icwpredflag.org/MIL/mpe.html)
My group of three had five conversations. I’ll talk about one of them. We offered a paper to an Asian Marine in his 20s who said he didn’t like that people don’t think for themselves. He knew a world war was coming. He understood that working-class soldiers would be sent to fight, bleed and die for the elite class of society. He knew that was wrong.
We talked about how communist society will not have classes. We won’t fight for the benefit of the upper, elite, rich class that only has interest in us as wage slaves in their factories, farms and cities, producing goods that they take from us only to sell them back to us.
He agreed that soldiers were integral to the success of communist revolution because they are the ones who would be sent to kill us in an insurrection. However, they are also our brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, mothers and fathers, and our children. When we unite our working class, we will wipe clean the capitalist’s class society and built a communist world free of racism, poverty, money and oppression. Humans will no longer fight each other, but we’ll have advancement of us and every living thing on the planet.
We smiled and thanked each other for the great and inspiring conversation. Our new friend walked away with his Red Flag newspaper and Military Pamphlet in hand. We walked on happy to be surprised and inspired again and again throughout the day.
—Comrade ex-sailor
SOUTH GATE, US, July 23—About half the marchers in a rally for a single-payer health care system took Red Flag, including the young woman with the sign. As the attack on health care sharpened over the past two weeks, workers have taken to the streets in marches and rallies across the US. ICWP members and friends have brought communist ideas to these rallies. Only communism—based on need, not profit—can take care of workers’ health.
Front page of this issue
