Statement released Oct. 25 by John Studer, Socialist Workers Party national campaign director.
Workers should cast their vote for the Socialist Workers Party Nov. 7. More importantly, they should look to the SWP’s program for a working-class road to defeat the assaults by the capitalist rulers.
The 2023 election takes place as working people worldwide have seen the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, as well as a bloody invasion and assault on the sovereignty of the courageous people of Ukraine.
The bosses and their array of middle-class apparatchiks use elections to try to get workers to look to their twin major parties, the Democrats and Republicans, for scraps off their table to lessen the miserable conditions we face. They look at us with disdain. They’re determined to prevent us from seeing our own worth and organizing as a class to fight against their relentless attacks. To keep us from recognizing we are part of a mighty international class with the same interests, and a common enemy — dog-eat-dog capitalism.
Under capitalism, every political question turns on the differences between two classes — working people vs. the domination of the ruling capitalist families. We need to build a party of our own that can lead our class to overturn capitalist rule and use workers power to rebuild society from top to bottom in the interests of the vast majority. A party that starts from the capacities of workers to uproot capitalist exploitation and all oppression and transform ourselves as we do so.
Making a socialist revolution is why the Socialist Workers Party exists.
The SWP explains why the fight against Jew-hatred and the forces that promote it is a burning question for all workers and the unions. Jew-hatred is inherent to capitalism. Only the working class can prevent the rise of new Hitlers out of the deepening capitalist crisis.
We are part of the fight to aid working people in Ukraine to drive Moscow’s forces out of all Ukraine, and put an end to the utterly reactionary attempt to eradicate the country and its people.
In the U.S. and worldwide the bankers and bosses are determined to push the burden of their deepening crisis onto workers’ backs. We face falling real wages and increasingly intolerable conditions. Organizing solidarity with today’s union struggles, like the United Auto Workers strike against the Big Three, is crucial.
But gains we win will inevitably be driven back if we fail to chart an independent political course. Workers need our own political party!
Whenever workers stand up to the employers we need hard-won constitutional freedoms for protection from government interference and attack. The Democrats’ drive to bring down Donald Trump deals blows to freedom of speech, assembly and much more. This is a key question in the class struggle today.
We fight to put an end to Washington’s six decadeslong economic war aimed at crushing the Cuban people and destroying their socialist revolution.
The leadership forged by Fidel Castro that led Cuba’s working people to take power and carry out the first socialist revolution in the Americas is an example for us to follow here. The SWP’s course is based on continuity with the leaderships of the world’s two great socialist revolutions — the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917 and Fidel Castro in Cuba.
The world’s imperialist ruling classes are marching humanity toward deeper crises, including the threat of fascism and a third world war. Whether that can be prevented rests on forging a combat party of the working-class with a leadership capable of organizing tens of millions to replace the class dictatorship of the imperialist rulers with workers power. That is not only necessary, it is possible. Join the SWP!