Thousands of patient care technical employees across the University of California system went on a 3-day strike. This was the workers’ response to the UC Administration’s proposal to take away their benefits.
The workers held spirited picket lines in front of the UC hospitals and campuses. Comrades from ICWP went to distribute Red Flag to the strikers at the UC in Los Angeles. Workers were very receptive to our communist message. We quickly distributed all the Red Flags we took (about 100). People really liked it.
This mobilization shows the power of the working class. It has the potential of developing into communist workers’ power. Instead of striking for a living wage, or medical coverage, or retirement, we should be striking to put forward the need to overthrow this inhuman capitalist system with a communist revolution.
Anything short of this are futile attempts to reform capitalism, to try to twist its already twisted carcass into something that is a little less wretched, hoping to survive. We fight for their pennies, their chicken scratch. Money is significant to us in this capitalist system but the bosses just give us enough to keep alive to keep slaving for them.
Why then don’t we use our power as the working class to completely disrupt the capitalists’ system by having a political strike against capitalism and for communism. This would show the way forward and inspire millions of our class brothers and sisters nationally and internationally.
In such a strike, we would put forward how we would create our own communist way of being. In communism we won’t need or use money. We won’t have banks or jobs that turn us into the capitalists’ wage slaves. We will contribute what we can and receive what we need.
We would bring alive the communist slogan popularized by Karl Marx: “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” This principle refers to free access and distribution of goods and services. We the workers create everything. So we, the workers should have and control everything. With armed struggle for communism we will take back what is rightfully ours.
All workers are potential communists. Let’s remember humanity’s history of tens of thousands of years of collectivity. Talk about what it means to strike, what it means to have power, what it means to be a leader. We can all be leaders. Red Flag is the communist newspaper produced by the members of ICWP and contributed to by workers worldwide. Anyone can contribute to it.
Go online and read it. We all can contribute a little of our hard-earned chicken scratch to its production. Join in. Write, send money, read, discuss, build a base of communist comrades to create a better world by mobilizing the masses for communist revolution.