Back the working-class alternative to capitalist exploitation, oppression
WASHINGTON, D.C. — “As conditions of life for the working class in the U.S. deteriorate and wars abroad escalate, millions of workers are being drawn into politics,” Rachele Fruit, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president, told an Oct. 26 campaign meeting here.
Prior to her Washington visit Fruit had been in North Carolina where she expressed support and talked with people whose lives had been upended by the social disaster left in the wake of Hurricane Helene. She witnessed the widespread solidarity among working people who had been left by the government to fend for themselves.
“A campaign supporter sent me a video of coal miners from West Virginia bringing earth-moving equipment to rebuild a road in North Carolina. That shows how the working class can organize to respond with solidarity in the face of challenges,” Fruit said. “In just three days the miners — all volunteers — rebuilt a 2.7-mile stretch of a road allowing residents to return to their homes in an area that many say was abandoned by government agencies.”
Fruit pointed to the strike battle being waged by 33,000 Machinists at Boeing. “When I was on the picket line in Everett, Washington, we found the workers upbeat and determined to get more of what they need. In response to Boeing’s announced layoff of 17,000 workers the union organized a huge rally at the union hall two days ago. The bosses came back with a 35% wage offer but no pension, and once again the union membership has voted it down.
“More workers today are organizing unions and using them. Using our basic defense organizations, the unions, can increase our prospects for survival as a class,” the socialist candidate said.
“Despite their rhetoric about ‘hard-working families,’ the Democratic and Republican parties will not defend the lives and livelihoods of working people. They defend the interests of the capitalist class, and they make sure that the U.S. military is strong enough to defend their imperialist interests in the world,” said Fruit.
Fruit highlighted the anti-working-class policies and programs of both bourgeois candidates.
“In the presidential debate, Kamala Harris left no doubt that she wants to step into the shoes of commander in chief of the last imperialist empire when she stated, ‘We have to sustain America’s standing in the world and maintain a lethal fighting force.’
“Donald Trump has a proposal for an ‘efficiency commission’ headed by Elon Musk — one of the richest men in the world — who says any workers who strike will be immediately fired.”
Both candidates seek to deepen divisions within the working class, Fruit said. They promise the U.S. ruling class that they can chart a course back to stability and greater profits off the backs of working people.
Question is which class rules
“The fight for workers power will open the door to ending the exploitative and oppressive conditions that are the source of the capitalists’ wealth,” Fruit said.
“Hundreds of thousands of workers in the U.S. have been on picket lines just in the last couple of years. We say that the low point of labor resistance is behind us. Working people see each other in a new light. They see their humanity and their capacity for solidarity.
“Through union battles we learn that there are no individual solutions. It is our collective action that counts. This is the beginning of class consciousness.
“We need to chart a course to build a leadership capable of taking political power into our own hands. That’s why we call for the construction of our own party, a party of labor,” Fruit said.
She urged participants to join and build the SWP campaign and help introduce it to others.
Fruit also addressed the deepening showdown between Israel and the reactionary capitalist regime in Iran and its proxy forces. She pointed to airstrikes the previous evening by the Israel Defense Forces on Tehran’s military installations. The IDF dealt blows to the expansionist capitalist regime in Tehran and strengthened the protection of Israel as a refuge for the Jews.
“This war was declared by the Iranian regime,” she said. “But the capitalist media and governments are uniformly accusing Israel of escalating things every time Israel takes defensive action.
“We back Israel’s steps to prevent the annihilation of the Jewish people,” she said. The stated goal of Hamas is to repeat more pogroms like it did on Oct. 7 when it carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Nazi’s Holocaust in World War II. “Another Holocaust would be a brutal setback for all the toilers of the world, for humanity.”
Workers need a party of labor
The next day Fruit met several cafeteria food service workers who are members of UNITE HERE Local 23 in Washington.
Siddiqee Shukrullah had attended the campaign meeting the night before. “When will a labor party take power in the U.S?” he asked.
“I have no way of knowing,” Fruit replied, encouraging Shukrullah to “join in the fight to make that possibility a reality. Steps toward independent political action will come as workers transform our unions into effective, powerful instruments of struggle. What we need is a political party, based on the unions, completely independent and counter to the interests of the bosses’ parties, to mobilize and unite all working people.
“A working-class party could organize all working people to fight for the things we need. But it will take a fight for workers power to win them,” Fruit said.
“Even if we are just at the beginning of that fight, I am with you,” Shukrullah said.
