Join SWP in 10-day effort to deepen reach to workers

BY PAUL MAILHOT

The Socialist Workers Party National Committee has launched a 10-day political campaign, Nov. 3-12, to introduce working people to the just-published book The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record: Why Washington Fears Working People by Jack Barnes, the party’s national secretary. The SWP is urging workers and young people who’ve met party members at their doors or at political actions in recent months, and who’ve become interested in the SWP’s working-class response to the capitalist crisis, to join in.

This 10-day campaign is a special, concentrated effort that will help strengthen the political campaigning on porches and doorsteps in working-class neighborhoods that’s at the center of the activity of Socialist Workers Party members day in and day out in cities, small towns and rural areas across the U.S.

Whichever candidate — Democratic or Republican — is named the winner Nov. 8 and installed in the White House in January, the capitalist crisis and political discussions among workers and farmers about its consequences for our families will continue to deepen. The elections themselves can and will “solve” nothing, because there are no solutions under capitalism. Workers are looking to understand the roots of the joblessness, police killings, speedup and many other crises we face, and how we can fight effectively against the ongoing assaults by the bosses and their government — and win.

That’s why the working-class explanation and political course presented by SWP leader Jack Barnes in the new book are so necessary. He tells the story of the anti-working-class legacy of Bill and Hillary Clinton during their eight years in the White House from 1993 to 2001, and why that record foretells what’s in store for working people in the months and years ahead. The three articles by Barnes were published in earlier versions in 2001 and 2008, but the words read as if they were spoken today.

This week party members and others will take the introduction to the book printed in this issue of the Militant to workers’ doorsteps. We’ll begin reading the book together and discussing what it says about our future and the need to build the SWP. We’ll take time off work during the 10 days to maximize our reach and geographical spread.

In order to concentrate on this political campaigning, SWP members in cities across the country are not organizing Militant Labor Forums on Friday, Nov. 4. That’s one of the nights you can join them in going out and talking with workers in your area.

The book will be sold at a special price of $5. Socialist workers are organizing to get 1,000 copies into the hands of working people and others over the 10 days, and keep going from there.

Barnes explains the roots and the scope of today’s grinding worldwide contraction of production and hiring, the capitalist financial crisis and Washington’s bloody and expanding wars. He points to opportunities to build a working-class party to combat the consequences for working people of this global capitalist calamity.

The propertied families and their hired political servants consider working people to be “deplorables,” even “irredeemable,” as Hillary Clinton put it during a September fundraising talk in New York. But as Barnes explains, the capitalist rulers have no answers to the crisis of their economic and political system — based on exploitation and oppression — and a growing number of them sense the class-struggle explosions that loom ahead. They fear our potential power.

On Friday, Nov. 11, the Socialist Workers Party will organize special Militant Labor Forums across the U.S. to celebrate the 2016 SWP election campaign and the party’s year-round propaganda activity to use the new book and other party material to talk with workers about the SWP and its program.

We will show people the Militant and two other new books: Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege, and Learning Under Capitalism, also by Jack Barnes, and Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? A Necessary Debate Among Working People by SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters.

To join in, contact the nearest Socialist Workers Party branch, listed in the directory on page 4. Or order a bundle of books from pathfinderpress.com.

Paul Mailhot is a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party.

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