The decay of capitalism is making itself felt more sharply every day. This has led to a growing radicalization of workers and youth with millions rejecting the system. According to a recent poll, one million Canadian youth want communism. Fightback, the Canadian section of the International Marxist Tendency has launched a campaign titled “Are you a Communist” with the aim of organizing this growing layer of communists in Canada. As part of this campaign, we are opening the pages of our magazine to ask the question: why are you a communist?
If you are one of these hundreds of thousands of communists in Canada and would like to explain to our readers why you are a communist, you can make a submission of no longer than 500 words to our editorial board at eb@marxist.ca.
I remember the exact moment I realized that capitalism must be overthrown. It was only a few days after the murder of George Floyd sent shockwaves across the world. Millions of people were forced to come face-to-face with the irrational cruelty of capitalism, and think to themselves: “There must be a better way.”
I was one of these people. Searching for an answer, I found myself on Twitter of all places, (although I have since learned that Twitter is generally a terrible place to learn anything valuable.) Yet, it was there that I came across a simple but brilliant explanation of the role of police in capitalist society. In a system where the unemployed serve as a “threat from below” to the employed, in order to keep wages down, it’s the task of the police to attack the poor—those who must steal, or sleep in public spaces, to survive—not to mention the racist heritage of the police which is still alive today. There will always be poverty, racism, and violence as long as there is capitalism. After realizing this, a flame was ignited in me. All I could think was: I will do whatever it takes to end this system.
My journey through the realm of seemingly radical ideas was a swampy one. For a time, I was enamoured with anarchism. I then fell down the dead end of identity politics. I even briefly took an interest in Maoism, and the absurd Stalinist theory of “socialism in one country.”
And then I learned that there was a revolutionary organization, fighting to overthrow capitalism in the real world. That organization is Fightback, and the International Marxist Tendency. I learned how to engage with the Marxist method of understanding the world, and my outlook changed entirely. Classic texts like Lenin’s The State and Revolution and Engels’ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific helped me realize that a socialist world is not just a dream. It is possible.
Some of my friends are sometimes confused about why I spend so much time and energy, and why I sacrifice my money, to build an organization which is currently relatively small and seemingly powerless. The answer is that Marxist ideas provide us with a long-term view of events. History is on the side of communism, but the working class will need a consciously-built revolutionary party in order to get there. Nothing gives me greater joy than building it. As Leon Trotsky wrote, “Our party takes each one of us wholly, but in return it gives to every one of us the highest happiness: the consciousness that one participates in the building of a better future, that one carries on his shoulders a particle of the fate of mankind, and that one’s life will not have been lived in vain.”
Capitalism is horrifying, and there is only one way to end the horror once and for all: revolution. Join the International Marxist Tendency to build a future worthy of humanity. There is no time to waste and there is no greater fight—let the flame of revolution burn bright!
