Fruit: ‘The working class needs to take power’
CINCINNATI — “This is the first time in my life I really feel like something I do can make a difference and change things,” Eric Wood, a cook at a restaurant here, told the Militant. He was attending a Sept. 22 meeting for Rachele Fruit, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president.
Wood recently endorsed Fruit’s campaign and plans to join campaign supporters bringing solidarity to an Indianapolis rally of postal workers fighting for a new national contract.
“The fight over whether the bosses or the workers run the government is the central question that matters for working people everywhere in the world, and the U.S. working class is decisive in that fight,” Fruit told the meeting. “The fight for workers power will open the door to ending the exploitative and oppressive conditions that are the source of the capitalists’ wealth.”
To advance along that course, Fruit said, workers “need a party of labor to mobilize and unite working people, independent of the boss parties. It must be a party based on the unions that can organize the whole working class to fight together, a social movement in struggle to replace capitalist political power with a workers government. A party of labor can help to organize our class to fight for the things we need in the political arena. ”
During the discussion after Fruit’s presentation, one participant pointed to union-organizing drives involving the Teamsters in the area. She asked what Fruit thought of the recent decision announced by Teamsters union President Sean O’Brien that the union wouldn’t endorse either Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump.
For decades the union, with 1.3 million members, has endorsed Democratic Party presidential candidates. O’Brien’s announcement has been met with furious condemnation from liberals and the middle-class left. In These Times ran a headline, “The Weird and Stupid Teamsters Non-Endorsement Fiasco.”
Fruit responded to the question by pointing to O’Brien’s speech at the Republican Party convention. He “did not break in any way from capitalist politics,” she said. “Instead, O’Brien and other officials still look to get favors from so-called friends of labor in both capitalist parties.
“We say workers need to make a decisive break with both parties of the bosses and form our own party of labor to fight for political power,” she said.
Despite talk of lowered inflation, Fruit said in her presentation, the cost of rent, food, child care and other necessities are up by 20% to 35% over the past four years. “Necessities like drugs for cancer and other life-threatening diseases cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars a year,” she added.
“As conditions of life for the working class deteriorate and wars escalate, millions of workers are being drawn into politics in a new and urgent way,” she said. “More workers today are organizing unions and using their unions to fight for higher pay and cost-of-living protection.”
Pointing to the strikes by 33,000 Machinists at Boeing, the 30-day strike by Communications Workers of America members at AT&T, and the continuing strikes by UNITE HERE hotel workers across the country, Fruit said, “Workers today are in a mood to fight. And contract deadlines are coming up as well for the 45,000 dockworkers in the International Longshoremen’s Association and 200,000 postal workers.”
“There are 16.2 million workers in the U.S. who are in unions,” Fruit said. “That can be a powerful force if united and acting together. But it only represents 10% of the working class and 6% of workers in private industry. The other 90% need to be organized along with our allies among exploited producers like small farmers, truckers and fishermen.
Fight against Jew-hatred
“We explain that Jew-hatred — a reflection of the crisis of capitalism — is also a life-and-death question for the working class and our unions,” Fruit said. “We have to act against every move to slander, scapegoat and attack Jews.”
“The persecution of Jews goes back two millennia,” she pointed out. “But with the dawn of the imperialist epoch, it became an international question. It is linked to the survival of the capitalist class in its death agony. The imperialist epoch opens the line of march of the working class toward power, it’s the epoch of socialist revolution.
“We defend Israel as a refuge for Jews from anywhere in the world,” Fruit said.
“But Israel cannot solve the problem. The solution is tied to building a revolutionary working-class party of all nationalities in every country, including Israel, that works toward workers conquering power.”
“We are for the Ukrainians defeating the Putin regime in its war against Ukraine’s sovereignty,” Fruit added. She pointed to the growing opposition of working people and soldiers in Russia to Putin’s war, describing it as “the most important solidarity possible for the people of Ukraine.”
“We don’t support the capitalist governments in Ukraine and Israel who depend on their fickle imperialist allies who put their own interests first. But if they win the wars they are fighting for the survival of their countries, the working class will have more space to organize, to unite and to find their allies in other countries.
Fruit ended her talk pointing to the Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution in 1917 and the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959. “In both cases they defied the most powerful forces on earth and won.
“The Cuban toilers have shown the world what can be achieved, how social relations will change, how human beings will change. And we fight like hell to defend that revolution.”
“What does it mean to endorse the SWP campaign?” one participant asked.
“The starting point is that you agree we need to break from the lesser evil politics of backing either the Democrats or Republicans,” Fruit responded. “And that you want to help us, campaign with us or join us as we win solidarity for workers on strike, or at rallies like the postal workers are planning for Oct. 1.”
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