Vol. 79/No. 25      July 20, 2015

BY JACK BARNES  
The participation of Blacks in the mass social movement of the 1930s that built the industrial unions, and their fight against segregation in war-related industries and the armed forces during World War II, were the leavening that made possible the rise of the proletarian-led struggle for Black rights in the 1950s and 1960s. That struggle, moreover, was part of an advancing wave of revolutionary victories against imperialist domination and capitalist exploitation that swept from Asia and Africa through the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

The social and political consciousness and attitudes of tens of millions of working people in this country were transformed. The combativity demonstrated in those fights encouraged young people and others to build the movement against the Vietnam War in the 1960s, as well as to launch a new stage in the fight for women’s emancipation.

All these battles have left us with a different world today, and with a different working class — one that’s larger, substantially immigrant, with a much weightier component that is Black. For that very reason, however, we’re not going to see a simple repeat of any of these struggles. We’ll build on what we’ve conquered: on our unions, on our victories over important aspects of racist and antiwoman bigotry and discrimination. Those triumphs raise the stakes in labor’s battle against capital, in the revolutionary working-class struggle for political power. The necessity of class conscious proletarian leadership becomes even greater — a leadership in which the social and political weight of workers who are Black, who are Latino, who are female will be greater than ever before.

Working people don’t have to give up anything we’ve earned in struggle. But we can add to it. We must add to it. In that sense — even with the grave weakening of the labor movement as a result of the class-collaborationist, pro-imperialist course of the union officialdom — the working class is stronger than at any time in history, both in this country and worldwide.

That doesn’t mean we’re anywhere close to revolutionary class battles in the United States today. It doesn’t mean there won’t be setbacks and defeats along the road to a victorious socialist revolution. But it does increase our odds of winning, if we succeed in building a strong-enough working-class leadership, tempered in class battles and schooled in the strategic and programmatic lessons from battles by those who came before us.

It all depends on what we do.
 
 
Related articles:
Emblem of racist assaults comes down in S. Carolina
Black rights fight has transformed millions  
 
 
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