Statement issued by John Studer, Socialist Workers Party national campaign director, Feb. 20.
Socialist Workers Party candidates Rachele Fruit for president and Margaret Trowe for vice president, along with SWP candidates across the country, point the way forward for the working class.
They offer a road to break with the parties of the ruling rich and for workers in our millions to chart a course to take political power into our own hands, end capitalist exploitation and join the fight for a socialist world. A world free of the wars, national oppression and social catastrophes that are built into the imperialist epoch. Fruit and Trowe explain we need our own party to make that possible.
The U.S. government defends the interests of the capitalist ruling families, whether a Democrat or a Republican is in the White House. Both of the bosses’ parties insist they govern for “us,” when everything they do — at home or abroad — is to protect the class interests of the capitalist rulers. In the imperialist epoch, their rule has relied on workers feeling they have no alternative but to hold their nose and choose the “lesser evil” between the bosses’ two parties.
Pressure to pick the “least worst” in 2024 is exacerbated by Democrats’ hysterical claims that Donald Trump and his working-class supporters are “MAGA fascists” who must be stopped by any means necessary.
The 2024 election comes at a time when workers are turning to our unions to fight to make progress. More workers are walking picket lines, joining union rallies and building solidarity. This leads us to discuss the broadest political and international questions that set the framework for our battles.
The bosses grow wealthy off our labor. Their profits are utterly dependent on promoting competition among workers, through multitier contracts, maintaining women’s second-class status, treating immigrants as pariahs and doing everything to destroy working-class solidarity. The rulers and their upper-middle-class hangers-on try to convince us capitalist social relations are part of human nature, that we’re incapable of changing them. That cut-throat capitalist rule is the best we can hope for, and if we keep our heads down we can rise out of our class.
The conquest of power by workers during the Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution in 1917, and by working people in Cuba in 1959, led by Fidel Castro, refuted these lies, opening the door to the working class constructing a different world.
So too, do the historic accomplishments of the working class in the U.S. In mighty battles workers forged powerful industrial unions in the 1930s. Millions took to the streets to tear down Jim Crow segregation. Revolutionary leaders of the highest caliber, like Malcolm X and Farrell Dobbs, were forged in these battles. This points to the possibility — and necessity — of making a socialist revolution in the U.S.
In the course of our struggles, workers acquire discipline, self-confidence and class-consciousness. We learn to turn our backs on all who teach submission to the profit-driven dictates of the wealthy rulers. Above all, through class struggle our views of our own worth are transformed.
Fighters will be won to building a working-class leadership with the integrity and courage to lead millions to conquer political power. This is what the Socialist Workers Party campaign will be recruiting to in the coming months. Join us!