Socialist Workers Party statement

To advance our struggles, workers need a labor party

March 8, 2021

Every battle workers find themselves in is strengthened by solidarity and support by fellow workers — from the fight for a union by Amazon workers in Alabama to the struggle of locked-out Marathon refinery workers in Minnesota.

We urge workers to take these fights to your union, church and to co-workers, friends and neighbors. Organize to get messages of support and contributions to the strike fund. Socialist Workers Party candidates are doing the same as we join every fight and campaign for solidarity.

There is no one else we can turn to for support besides our fellow workers and others who suffer the assaults of the capitalist rulers. We have to rely on this class solidarity against the attacks of the bosses and their government.

To advance our struggles, working people need a party of our own, a labor party. It would attract millions through principled defense of all the exploited and oppressed and by the conduct of its members in working-class struggles. It would help us understand that the bosses’ twin parties — the Democrats and Republicans — are obstacles to workers making progress. Through our struggles, we build our self-confidence and class consciousness.

Every political question working people confront today, from the millions who faced power outages in Texas to persistent joblessness to U.S. military intervention abroad, has to be answered from the standpoint of the interests of the working class.

Both Democrats and Republicans tell working people that “we Americans” have common interests and need to join in defending “our” way of life from foreign competition. This is a lie. Like all capitalist countries, the U.S. is class divided. Both of the bosses’ parties protect the ruling families and their drive for profits at the expense of working people at home and abroad. U.S. military intervention aims to shore up the fortunes of the world’s dominant imperialist power and is used to put down inevitable rebellions by working people.

The working class needs its own foreign policy — solidarity with the battles of workers and farmers against the rapacious encroachments of U.S. imperialism.

There is an example we can emulate. Led by Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement, working people in Cuba rose up to overturn the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and took power into their own hands. They established a workers and farmers government and, through their struggle, gained the consciousness and experience to use that government to forge a new future.

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