Racism is a capitalist ideology and brutal practice that pits workers of one ‘race’ against workers of other ‘races.’ Capitalists use racism to justify genocide, mass incarceration, and police and ICE terror.
Building Unity Among the Masses
Communism, and only communism, will forever abolish racism. We invite you to join the International Communist Workers’ Party in mobilizing the masses for communism.
Racism is the Nature of Capitalism: Not Human Nature
Capitalism invented racism. Its wage system needs and perpetuates it. The bosses maximum profits from paying some workers less than others. They justify this with racist ideas. Crucially, they need to divide the working class. They pit workers against each other, to try to keep their wage slaves from uniting against them to abolish wage slavery.
Racist unemployment, segregation and police terror force billions to accept abysmal wages, living and working conditions worldwide.
For centuries, the fight against racism has inspired untold millions to heroic acts of resistance. The masses have destroyed particular forms of racism: chattel slavery, open colonialism, South African apartheid. But they haven’t abolished the wage system, which generates new forms of racism just as oppressive as the old ones.
Capitalism—Based on Competition—Needs Racism
.Capitalism’s wage system forces us to compete with each other for jobs to survive. Thus capitalism creates the material basis for its “divide-and-conquer” politics. Racism undermines class-consciousness. Its an obstacle to our joining together to liberate our class from wage-slavery.
The bosses’ politicians and ideologues sow the seeds of racism. Their schools, media and culture water the poison weeds that take root.
Masses worldwide have bravely fought racism for centuries. They need to see that only communist revolution can end it.
Communism—Based on Cooperation—Must Eliminate Racism
Communist society will do away with money and wages, and competition. Workers are forced to compete to get and keep a job so we can buy groceries and pay the rent. Eliminating this competition for survival will eliminate the material basis for racist ideas and practices within the working class
Freed from the fear of individual poverty and mobilized to meet the needs of the working masses, we’ll decide together what needs to be done. Collective work will replace slaving for a paycheck. Instead of a slave labor job, there will be useful, needed work for everyone in meeting the needs of the masses.
We’ll cooperate to build housing, grow food, create new transportation systems, and produce the clothes, furniture, tools and toys that human beings need.
At first we may only be able to provide the bare necessities. But a fundamental communist principle is that nobody will live better or worse than anyone else. Everyone will be encouraged to develop their full human potential. Wiping out racism is therefore integral to building communism.
Communism will end racist terror. Ending class society will end capitalism’s need for racist cops, courts and jails – indeed all cops, courts and jails. Abolishing private property and exploitation will make it possible for mobilized masses to solve any social problems ourselves.
Fighting racism will be an essential part of everyday life—the only way we can work together to build a communist world. Those who have felt racism the sharpest will give key leadership in this fight. It won’t be automatic, but it will be obvious that to build the world we need we must defeat the legacy of racist capitalism.
Based on our pamphlet, To end racism, mobilize the masses for communism
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