Download: Working People Need a Party Based on Our Own Class
Politicians stepped back when angry people flooded into the streets after the murder of George Floyd. The auto industry felt tremors when angry truckers shut down all traffic on the bridge between Detroit and Windsor. In the midst of crisis, angry struggles like these can break out suddenly.
But anger isn't enough. Struggle isn't enough. When we struggle, we need to have goals. We need a party that provides direction for those struggles. Such a party would be rooted in the working class. It would live in our neighborhoods and workplaces. It would take part in all the fights working people carry out. Its program would be based on the needs of the whole laboring population.
That party does not exist today. Instead, there is only a Republican Party and a Democratic Party, both servants of the capitalist class and its chase after profit. Those parties say we have "government by the people." It's a lie! The two-party electoral system chains us to the capitalist economic system.
Working people can break apart those chains. We can build our own party, one that unites all our forces to fight together for our common interests. It will be a party which detests racism and understands that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. The bosses work to create divisions inside our class. They try to set us against each other by our race and ethnic background, by sex, by citizenship, by age, by skill and education. A working class party would struggle to unite us around our common needs.
Working Class Party cannot claim to be the party that is needed. But our goal is to work to build such a party. Our election campaigns have provided a way for tens of thousands of working people to say they want their own party.
The campaigns for Working Class Party today can plant the seeds that will turn into a real working class party tomorrow.