{"id":16083,"date":"2025-08-08T20:15:55","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T20:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/?page_id=16083"},"modified":"2025-08-08T20:15:55","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T20:15:55","slug":"from-a-report-given-at-an-international-meeting-of-icwp-a-new-communist-paper-for-a-new-communist-world","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/volume-16-number-11\/from-a-report-given-at-an-international-meeting-of-icwp-a-new-communist-paper-for-a-new-communist-world\/","title":{"rendered":"From a report given at an international meeting of ICWP A New Communist Paper for a New Communist World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-16084\" src=\"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/06_working-on-RF-edit-300x201.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"201\" srcset=\"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/06_working-on-RF-edit-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/06_working-on-RF-edit-1024x685.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/06_working-on-RF-edit-768x514.jpg 768w, https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/06_working-on-RF-edit-1536x1027.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/06_working-on-RF-edit-2048x1370.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">August 3, 2025\u2014 <b><i>Red Flag\/Bandera Roja<\/i> matters. \u201cWe fight for communism and nothing less.\u201d<\/b><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>This is not just a slogan but a strikingly new program. It\u2019s about how we organize. The way we work. We are still learning while we are teaching.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The main way that our international party figures this out collectively is through RF\/BR. How we do RF\/BR matters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Here\u2019s a contradiction: On one side, we are committed (at least in theory) to developing a new kind of communist paper. On the other side, in practice, we are not very clear about how we should be doing this.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t feel I have communicated my thoughts about this well enough, and I am still trying to think it through.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">This discussion is intended to strengthen our commitment by gaining more clarity about how our practice around RF\/BR should change. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><b>We suggest that the \u201cnew kind of communist paper\u201d will be one where the analysis and theory are grounded as firmly as possible in the practical work of mobilizing masses for communism.<\/b> Our line and the way we present it develop through this work. In conversations among friends and comrades. In the thick of the class struggle.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">As one comrade put it, \u201cour best articles model introducing communist ideas in a social setting with interactions between\u00a0activists.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">A powerful example:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>INDIA, December 3\u2014 \u201c<i>When I saw the El Salvador garment workers\u2019 article in\u00a0Red Flag\u00a0about wage slavery in Bangladesh,\u201d said a comrade, \u201cI immediately called a garment worker in Dhaka. She had been getting\u00a0Red Flag. I asked her about the strike. She said that with the war in Gaza, many workers are thinking of linking the struggle internationally. We are all wage slaves.\u201d Our Bengaluru collective met at a safe place to discuss the revolutionary potential all around the Middle Eas<\/i>t. And this was just the first paragraph.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Other examples: The article from El Salvador explaining dialectical materialism in the context of discussions in a garment factory. The sharp discussion about class analysis versus nationalism in the article about the South Africa Youth Day meeting.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><b>In writing about our work, comrades come to understand our politics better.<\/b> To become more skillful at explaining them. The work of writing and editing collectively is not a waste of anyone\u2019s time. It\u2019s a necessary part of the political development of comrades, collectives, and the party itself.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Doing this isn\u2019t easy. I struggle with it like everyone else. For example, a letter about an anti-ICE \u201cCommunity Defense Center\u201d I\u2019m involved with.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I took the first draft to a friend there, a leader who likes RF and encourages others to read it.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>He suggested some good changes which I made. But the second draft was still too much \u201cshow and tell\u201d and not enough about communism.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I took out a secondary anecdote and added instead a little about how the CDC reflects communist values. When my friend saw it in print, he liked it better.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">RF\/BR is not always clear enough about where differences in practice reflect or become disagreements about our line. More letters could help with this. More writers certainly would. More comrades participating in the editorial process, locally or in the editorial collective.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Still, as a comrade wrote recently, \u201cone size doesn\u2019t fit all.\u201d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Letters can have more varied approaches. A very useful recent TV review included friends\u2019 comments, but it wasn\u2019t basically grounded in the work. We hope this younger comrade and others write more like this.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Sometimes major class struggles or developments in inter-imperialist conflict need a more traditional expository style. There is a continuing discussion about how AI can be useful (or not) in helping to generate these. But we must always be aware of our main audience: new comrades and their friends around the world. And what they can learn about communism \u2013 beyond slogans \u2013 from our articles.<\/p>\n<h4><a class=\"icwp-list\" href=\"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/volume-16-number-11\/\">Front page of this issue<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>August 3, 2025\u2014 Red Flag\/Bandera Roja matters. \u201cWe fight for communism and nothing less.\u201d\u00a0 This is not just a slogan but a strikingly new program. It\u2019s about how we organize. The way we work. We are still learning while we are teaching.\u00a0 The main way that our international party figures this out collectively is through &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/volume-16-number-11\/from-a-report-given-at-an-international-meeting-of-icwp-a-new-communist-paper-for-a-new-communist-world\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">From a report given at an international meeting of ICWP A New Communist Paper for a New Communist World<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":6495,"parent":16066,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-16083","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16085,"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16083\/revisions\/16085"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}