The Militant extends a warm welcome to readers who subscribed during our successful eight-week campaign to expand the paper’s reach, as well as our other goals. Many of you were struck by the paper’s explanation that today’s spreading wars are aimed at enriching the same capitalist class that is stepping up exploitation of working people here at home.
Backed by both the Democratic and Republican parties, the bosses try to pit native-born workers against those attracted here from abroad. They push down the wages of all workers, impose life-threatening speedup and force us to work schedules that drain our strength and do damage to our families. Their cutthroat conflicts with rivals abroad for resources, markets and plunder are marching humanity toward fascism and a third world war.
None of these things are choices the capitalist rulers make. Their dog-eat-dog system drives them to expand or perish. The crises, runaway inflation and periodic depressions that mark capitalism will not cause it to collapse on its own accord. They will find ways to redivide the Earth yet again on our backs.
Capitalist rule has to be overthrown by the conscious action of the working class in its tens of millions. That requires a Marxist party with leaders tested in the class struggle, capable of leading the toilers to take political power into our own hands.
Working people don’t have to start from scratch. The Socialist Workers Party has been forged and tempered over the past century in working-class battles and in response to big world developments. It has assimilated the lessons of the two great revolutions of our epoch — the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the 1959 Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro. The SWP learned in blood the deadly dangers of Stalinist and Maoist forces and their tendency to link up with fascist thugs.
The party acts on the fact that workers are capable of running society to meet the needs of the great majority.
Today you’ll find SWP members in the thick of union and political battles. They’re walking strike picket lines and building solidarity. They’re joining demonstrations against the explosion of deadly Jew-hating assaults. They organize and build actions to oppose Washington’s aggression against Cuba. The U.S. rulers have never forgiven working people in Cuba for fighting to improve their conditions of life and work by making a socialist revolution.
Everywhere they go, SWP members chart a road to strengthen the unity, confidence and fighting capacities of working people, and our trust in and reliance on fellow workers. They champion struggles against racism and women’s oppression, and engage in discussion on the next steps on a line of march to power.
SWP members are working with others to promote the recently published book, Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa by Cuban revolutionary Víctor Dreke. His firsthand account of Cuba’s decisive aid to that struggle helped change the course of African history. The book is invaluable for showing what a socialist revolution makes possible. And that revolutionary leadership of the highest caliber will emerge from the ranks of working people as we fight to change the world.
To join in the rich life of building such a leadership, join the Socialist Workers Party.