Without a political party of our own, working people lack an essential instrument we need to defend our class interests on all the questions we face — from our struggles with the bosses to solidarity with Ukrainian toilers against Moscow’s invasion. We need to use our unions to break from the Democrats and Republicans and build our own labor party.
Strikes by workers at Warrior Met Coal, Chevron and elsewhere are taking on efforts by the bosses to make us pay amid a deep crisis of their capitalist system. Workers feel this crisis in today’s soaring prices that slash our real wages. More young workers are forced to put off forming families and pressures intensify on those trying to hold one together. Organizing to use our unions to stand up to the bosses is crucial, as is building solidarity with fellow workers.
We face a broader social crisis bred by dog-eat-dog capitalism. Years of mounting drug addiction is feeding a staggering rise in deaths from overdoses. The coarsening of human relations and breakdowns in solidarity are evident in mounting homelessness, mental illness and rising violent crime. The capitalist class has no interest in eradicating these deadly social ills. Any attempt to do so would eat into their profits.
When the Democrats and Republicans say they aim to protect “all Americans,” it’s a lie. Like all capitalist countries, the U.S. is class divided, and the capitalist rulers are out to defend their class interests against those of workers and farmers, both at home and abroad.
The capitalist rulers are driven today to cutthroat competition with rivals abroad to prevent going under. Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has further fractured the imperialist “world order” that issued from Washington’s emergence as top dog from the carnage of the Second World War. All capitalist regimes worldwide are building up their military and seeking space to defend their rulers’ property and power. This growing world disorder is feeding new wars — like Ankara’s announcement June 1 of plans to invade northern Syria to deal blows to Kurds there fighting for independence. Capitalism is marching towards bloodier national conflicts and a third world war.
Only the working class is capable of leading millions of the exploited and oppressed in revolutionary struggle. To do that we need to build a labor party, a party with a class-against-class road forward. Through our struggles, workers discover our own capacities for courageous, united and disciplined action and can forge an alliance with small farmers. We learn to rely on fellow toilers and unlearn what the rulers never cease telling us we’re incapable of doing.
Forging a tried and trusted revolutionary leadership from the ranks of our own struggles is crucial to advancing along a road to replace capitalist rule with a workers and farmers government. That is what the Socialist Workers Party exists for.