A fighting course forward for working people today

November 23, 2020

The Socialist Workers Party and its 2020 candidates raised proposals and set an example advancing the struggles of working people against the effects of a social, economic and health crisis caused by the workings of capitalist exploitation that isn’t going away.

The party’s uncompromising stand — organizing with fellow workers to fight for what we need, rejecting the lies of the bosses and their parties, who say we don’t have the “smarts” to do so — was attractive to thousands. This fighting perspective is as indispensible after the election as it was before.

Working people cannot let growing numbers of our class be cast aside and left isolated. The bosses and their parties have proved incapable of providing jobs for millions today and are throwing more out of work.

Only a fight by workers and our unions can force the government to fund a public works program to employ millions at union-scale pay, building the houses, hospitals, schools and many other things working people need. To prevent layoffs workers need to fight for a shorter workweek with no cut in weekly take-home pay, to share the work available around.

It’s at work that we can join together as a class to stand up to the bosses and stop them further offloading the crisis of their system onto our shoulders.

As workers resist bosses’ attacks on jobs, wages and working conditions, we can draw millions into effective struggles and mutual solidarity. And we establish the foundations for strengthening a fighting union movement and building our own party, a labor party. It would inspire and win to its side all those who are exploited and oppressed by capital. It would expose the lie, told many times over by Democratic and Republican politicians alike, that workers and bosses in the U.S. are “all in this together.” It is workers worldwide who share common interests and must unite.

Our allies are the thousands taking to the streets of Poland to defend a woman’s right to choose abortion. They are among the working people in Belarus fighting to rid themselves of the brutal Lukashenko regime. They are among the courageous demonstrators resisting the Nigerian rulers’ murderous cops.

We need to change which class is in power. Through our struggles, working people develop the courage, self-confidence and class consciousness necessary to build a movement, and our own party, to end capitalist rule. This is the road to replacing crisis-ridden capitalist rule with a workers and farmers government that will organize millions to put an end to the exploitative social relations of capitalism.

It would open the door to unleashing toiling humanity’s massive productive capacities, end the wars and environmental destruction endemic to the dog-eat-dog for-profit system, and advance the fight to eradicate racism and women’s oppression. Join the SWP and the Militant in this fight!