{"id":7305,"date":"2020-08-14T04:41:12","date_gmt":"2020-08-14T04:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/?page_id=7305"},"modified":"2020-08-14T18:31:04","modified_gmt":"2020-08-14T18:31:04","slug":"more-letters-to-red-flag","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/volume-11-number-10\/more-letters-to-red-flag\/","title":{"rendered":"More Letters to Red Flag"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this page: Reform Struggles and Communism here \u2666<\/a> Peterloo Masacre here \u2666<\/a> <\/p>\n

Participate in Reform Struggles to Spread Communism<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The letter \u201cReflections on How to Fight for Communism and Nothing Less\u201d (Red Flag<\/em><\/strong>, Vol. 11 #8) made me think a lot about how we advance the struggles in the International Communist Workers\u2019 Party and build it in quantity and quality.<\/p>\n

\u201cTonight, I posted in WhatsApp a documentary called \u2018Workers without a boss.\u2019 Do you think it is very reformist?\u201d I asked my partner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think so, but there have been many discussions in the Party here about how we have participated in reform struggles in the factory,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Many ICWP comrades in the factories were union organizers when we met them. However, when they saw how we participated in their struggle, and raised it to another level in the extended meetings, they began to analyze that there was a world beyond the union.<\/p>\n

There was a big internal discussion when one of the comrade Party leaders participated in a struggle to improve the water quality inside a factory. \u201cBecause the Party does not support us at the moment,\u201d she told us. Our whole leadership group met to try to give a communist explanation of why reform struggles don\u2019t advance the struggles of our class.<\/p>\n

We concluded, with the help of the international ICWP leadership, that we should support these types of struggles for reforms, without being the ones leading them, in order to meet more workers and share our communist line with them.<\/p>\n

Workers said:<\/p>\n

\u201cI had never heard anything about Communism, but I saw that the Red Flag<\/em><\/strong> comrades inside the factory are very supportive, and they make excursions to the beach and the mountains.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSeveral times they had invited me to meetings, but I was afraid of communism, because of everything the union members have told me.\u201d<\/p>\n

We have socialized with these workers, who had never heard of Marxism-Leninism in their lives, much less Dialectical Materialism, who had been very militant in the union. Many have stayed with us and our communist line. Many ask our comrades for support inside the factory when there are confrontations with the bosses.<\/p>\n

We have distributed the flyer \u201cWho is stealing from whom\u201d in the factories. It has been very well-received by the workers. Some union leaders, seeing their militancy, tell them not to meet with us. But when they need to, they come to ask our comrades for ideological support. Because they already see them as more politically advanced. That makes more workers approach them.<\/p>\n

In our leadership meetings we have discussed Reform and Revolution, and how we should be present in the struggles of the factory workers. The reform should not absorb us, but fights for better wages and lower production goals serve us to tell the working class that there is the possibility of a world without money, without borders. That proletarian internationalism is possible and that they must join the International Communist Workers\u2019 Party.<\/p>\n

\u2014Comrade in El Salvador<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Peterloo Massacre<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPeterloo\u201d Movie Builds Working-Class Confidence<\/strong><\/h4>\n

A movie about a brutal massacre of working-class families at a protest rally sounds defeatist. The movie \u201cPeterloo,\u201d however, fills you with both class anger and class confidence.<\/p>\n

Peterloo is the name history has given to the massacre of workers at a rally in Manchester, England in 1819, a few years after the English defeated Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo.<\/p>\n

The film builds our class anger through a series of contrasting scenes. The public praise and rich rewards of money and promotions to the Army officers is counterposed to the silent dismissal of the foot soldiers. From three short scenes in the Manchester magistrate\u2019s court, we glimpse the brutality of class rule. And from conversations in different settings we understand the elite\u2019s fear of the French Revolution alongside the working class\u2019s support of it.<\/p>\n

And it builds our class confidence in scenes that show the breadth and variety of organizing that built the protest movement. Women\u2019s groups meeting in run-down halls, political groups in public houses, smaller groups writing a leaflet, armed groups training in secrecy and family discussions in the kitchen. In all of them there are conflicts as unity and disagreement co-exist.<\/p>\n

In fact, although the movie features the massacre at Peterloo, it is not about the massacre. It is about the building of a mass working-class movement.<\/p>\n

And the movie isn\u2019t about the weaknesses of that movement. It\u2019s about the mistakes it made in ceding leadership at the very last moment to a rich \u201cbig name\u201d pacifist orator. You don\u2019t leave this movie with a sense of defeat. You leave it with the sense Mao captured in his revolutionary days: \u201cFight and lose; fight and lose\u2026until we win!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014California (USA) comrade<\/p>\n

Front page of this issue<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this page: Reform Struggles and Communism here \u2666 Peterloo Masacre here \u2666 Participate in Reform Struggles to Spread Communism The letter \u201cReflections on How to Fight for Communism and Nothing Less\u201d (Red Flag, Vol. 11 #8) made me think a lot about how we advance the struggles in the International Communist Workers\u2019 Party and … Continue reading More Letters to Red Flag<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6495,"parent":7237,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7305","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7305","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7305"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7326,"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7305\/revisions\/7326"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icwpredflag.org\/wp\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7237"}],"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=7305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}