Socialist Workers Party launches 2018 campaigns: SWP statement

August 6, 2018

Join the Socialist Workers Party campaigning around the country to build the labor movement and fight for a working-class alternative to the dog-eat-dog, crisis-ridden capitalist system of war, racism and exploitation.

The SWP campaign explains why workers’ defense of our class interests requires a course to unify millions of working people to fight to overturn the rule of the capitalist class, establish a workers and farmers government and reach out the hand of solidarity to workers fighting capitalist oppression around the world.

All the capitalist candidates — Democrats, Republicans and so-called independents — discount the capacities of working people to wage such a battle and transform ourselves along the way. Hillary Clinton and those leading the “resistance” against President Donald Trump view the working class as “deplorables” and aim to restrict our rights. But we can change the world and this perspective gets a greater hearing among working people today.

The SWP starts from the solidarity and common class interests of workers in the U.S. and around the world, against those who exploit and oppress us. We explain the crisis of the rulers’ capitalist system is tearing their “world order” apart today and this opens political space for our struggles.

The ruling capitalist families use Washington’s economic and military power to protect their interests against their capitalist rivals and against struggles by working people fighting for a better life. These assaults abroad are an extension of their attacks on working people at home.

In face of the capitalist-imposed social disaster devastating the lives of working people in the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico, the party calls for cancellation of the island’s debt. Independence for Puerto Rico! And we stand with fellow workers there and across the globe confronting the incapacity of the capitalist class to provide the most basic necessities of life — electrification, medical care, literacy to millions.

The SWP stands with fellow working people confronting the ruinous consequences of Washington’s wars, demanding the U.S. rulers get their warships, troops and bombs out of Korea, the Mideast and Afghanistan. Washington should end its sanctions on Korea and Iran and dismantle its entire arsenal of nuclear weapons unilaterally. The party’s candidates distribute the SWP’s statement “For Recognition of a Palestinian State and of Israel” that defends “the right of Jews everywhere to take refuge in Israel in face of the global rise of Jew-hatred” and “the unconditional right of the dispossessed Palestinian people to a contiguous, sovereign homeland on territory … conquered and occupied by the Israeli government during the 1967 war.”

The heart of our campaign is knocking on workers’ doors in cities and farming communities to discuss capitalism’s crisis and the burning need for independent working-class political action.

Each of the SWP’s candidates is a participant in labor struggles and social protests. We join union picket lines, protests against attacks on abortion rights, actions to prevent farmers from being driven off the land and marches against cop killings. We fight to build the labor movement as the powerful force for working-class solidarity it can be, by championing the struggles of all workers. And we explain why workers should control safety conditions and fight for workers control over job conditions.

SWP candidates are at the forefront of advancing unity among working people in face of the bosses’ relentless efforts to deepen divisions among us. In their drive to attack workers’ wages and lengthen the workday, the bosses pit native-born against foreign-born workers. We campaign for the unions to champion the demand for an amnesty for all immigrants in the U.S., putting them in a better position to fight alongside workers born here.

In the course of revolutionary struggle workers in the U.S. are capable of developing the courage, self-confidence and class consciousness necessary to do what fellow working people did in Cuba in 1959 — overturning capitalist rule and bringing workers and farmers to power.

If the fight for this kind of future sounds good to you, the SWP is your party! Join our campaign!