Break with the capitalist parties, build a labor party
MIAMI — The culmination of Rachele Fruit’s campaign stop here was a public meeting at the Socialist Workers campaign headquarters here on May 5.
To begin with, you have to start with what is unfolding, what the capitalist rulers in the U.S. and worldwide are out to accomplish, and what that means for working people everywhere, she said. The bosses and their governments in each country are seeking to defend their own predatory interests against each other, in a world of deepening disorder and conflict. And they all seek to do so on the backs of the working class.
“I’m running for president, the highest executive officer of the most powerful — and the last — imperialist empire.
“I am running on the program of socialist revolution. That’s what I’m going to talk about tonight,” she said. “The fight over which class will rule is the central question that matters for working people everywhere in the world.”
“The U.S. is a weakened imperialist power, but still the most powerful ruling class in the world. Its rulers seek to expand their economic, military and political control throughout the world just like their competitors, allies and enemies alike,” she said.
“As the crisis of capitalism deepens, they become more ferocious. As my party said when Washington invaded Iraq in 1991, we were witnessing the opening guns of World War III, and that has escalated since.
“We were the only people raising this then. Today this seems self-evident to millions.”
“This trajectory has been accelerated by Moscow’s assault on the Ukrainian people and their independence and by Hamas’ Oct. 7 pogrom against Jews in Israel,” Fruit said. “Ruling classes everywhere are looking for more weaponry and new allies.
‘A course to take political power’
The road to prevent World War III is for workers to break from the parties of the bosses and chart a course to take political power into our own hands.
“Hundreds of thousands of workers have been on picket lines in the last couple of years. They are fighting side by side for their families, their union, their class — rail workers, UPS workers, ‘Big Three’ autoworkers, bakery workers, hotel workers, flight attendants, nurses, teachers, actors, screenwriters and more. Through these fights they begin to see each other in a new light, in their humanity and their capacity for solidarity. They often say that they aren’t fighting primarily for themselves, but for future generations.
“The U.S. working class has proved itself capable of historic accomplishments, as the backbone of the first two American revolutions, for independence and to overthrow chattel slavery; the gigantic workers’ upsurge that led to the organization of the industrial unions in the 1930s; and the Black-led proletarian social revolution that brought down Jim Crow segregation in the South.
“While the competing imperialist rulers — armed to the teeth — threaten fascism and war,” Fruit said, “the SWP says we are living in the epoch of revolution.”
Fruit pointed to the centrality of the fight to defend the constitutional freedoms that were won in these revolutions — freedom of speech, assembly, of worship, the right to due process, and the rest. These are under attack today and they will be critical to our future battles.
“It is the working class that will have to fight to defend them — and defend them for everyone, including our political opponents and enemies — against encroachments, primarily by the Democrats today, in their panic to destroy Donald Trump as the only way to reelect Joseph Biden. At the same time, all the capitalist parties seek to clean up the reputation of the FBI and expand the use of the government’s secret police. A bipartisan deal was reached to reauthorize its warrantless surveillance powers, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”
Fruit pointed to the numerous legal moves by the White House and Democratic prosecutors to frame up Trump. Each of them aims to prevent him from running for president and prevent millions from being able to vote for him.
Fruit has been active in working-class politics in Florida for many years. “The Republicans in charge here target our rights as well,” she said. “We’ve seen book bannings, attacks on the unions, increased use of the death penalty, attempts to outlaw abortion and so forth. On April 17, the anniversary of the defeat of the U.S.-organized and armed mercenaries at Playa Girón, the Bay of Pigs, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis surrounded himself with surviving members of those mercenaries to sign a bill mandating kindergartners be indoctrinated on the ‘evils of communism.’
“Our campaign will speak out to defend the Jewish people,” Fruit said. “The Oct. 7 massacre, carried out by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad with help and direction from the reactionary capitalist government of Iran, was a pogrom that slaughtered 1,200 people — mostly Jewish civilians — leaving over 5,000 wounded, seizing over 240 hostages and raping and abusing scores of women.
“This was the largest anti-Jewish pogrom since the Nazi Holocaust, and it unleashed a firestorm of bourgeois and middle-class Jew-hatred around the world,” she said.
Fruit pointed to the new book prepared by the SWP leadership, The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class.
“It explains that the persecution of the Jews goes back two millennia. But with the dawn of the imperialist epoch at the end of the 19th century, the weight and place of Jew-hatred in social relations changed, it became an international question,” she said. “It has a permanent place and function for the propertied ruling families, and the fight against it is tied to building a unified revolutionary working-class party of all nationalities in every country.”
The SWP is campaigning to win endorsers for the Fruit campaign, from anyone who agrees the working class has to break from the bosses’ parties once and for all. Join in today!
