Statement by Joanne Kuniansky, Socialist Workers Party candidate for New Jersey governor, Aug. 18.
President Joseph Biden claims his foreign policy “is the right one for America.” But there is no “America” that stands above conflicting social classes — the capitalist ruling families, whose wealth and power stands on exploitation and oppression at home and abroad, and working people, who have no power other than our ability to unite in our millions and fight to take political power into our own hands. Today we face an assault at home on our jobs, wages and working conditions, and the capitalist rulers’ wars and plunder abroad.
For 20 years the U.S. rulers used working people as cannon fodder in Afghanistan, in a vain attempt to establish a stable and subservient government that could rule the country for capitalist interests, and to strengthen Washington’s power across Central Asia. Their deadly intervention made it harder, not easier, for working people in Afghanistan to organize to take control of their own destinies, to fight effectively against both capitalist and warlord exploiters and the reactionary Taliban.
The U.S. rulers claimed they were fighting a “war on terror.” Their real goal was to gain markets, deal blows to their rivals, increase profits, and defend their place on top of the imperialist pecking order. In pursuing those goals in Afghanistan, Washington helped the creation of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Those same rapacious goals lie behind Washington’s colonial rule in Puerto Rico, plunder of Haiti, and the brutal sanctions they enforce on the peoples of Iran, Venezuela, North Korea and Cuba.
In the unions and on the job, Socialist Workers Party members speak for the interests of all those exploited and oppressed by capital and explain we need to fight to defend our class interests, not those of the bosses. The working class needs our own foreign policy, based on the fact we share common oppressors and common class interests with working people worldwide.
A good example is the aid being provided to those battered by last week’s earthquake in Haiti by hundreds of international medical volunteers from revolutionary Cuba, who have been there for decades. The U.S. rulers’ decadeslong intervention in Haiti has aimed to profit off the Haitian people’s labor and natural resources, creating conditions that turned a natural disaster into a social catastrophe.
Workers need to break from the Democratic and Republican parties and build a political party of our own, a labor party, based on our unions. The SWP aims to be part of building the leadership needed to organize millions to take political power into our own hands, and unite with fellow toilers worldwide to fight for a socialist future truly worth living.