We need a workers’ party if we are to win any lasting change.
With the far right in control of all branches of the U.S. government and the Democratic Party increasingly reliant on the military-industrial complex for its candidates and fundraising, the need for a left-wing party is clearer than ever.
Political parties draw their power from an organized social class. In the cases of the Republicans and the Democrats, this is the organized rich, divided according to their social conservatism and supported by relatively small segments of the upper middle class. They represent different shades of the same inequality, which is why the Democrats have made no serious effort to benefit working people or increase public investment since the 1970s. We have a choice between ‘woke’ white supremacy and exploitation, and naked white supremacy and exploitation.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. A socialist party draws its strength from the working class and is the conscious weapon of the masses against inequality and exploitation. Such a party fights the fight of the working class — for peace, against racism, for workers’ control, against property and privilege — alongside other organizations. Only this kind of a party is capable of consciously organizing the struggle of the workers against the American ruling class; single-issue organizations will never be enough.
A socialist party cannot function like a capitalist party: A group of donors with a media wing and a database of voter information. Socialist parties, like the Party for Socialism and Liberation, live and die by their members. They train themselves to be organizers, to be disciplined activists, to be revolutionaries. The members control the party directly by electing the leadership, organizing struggles and building the base. Socialism does not appear as a fully-formed idea in the heads of millions; it is a physical thing we will build with our hands and our collective will. It is this structure, combined with its roots in and direction by the working class, that makes a socialist party incompatible with a liberal party.
A coalition of working-class organizations and liberal donor groups will always implode under its own contradictions, as top-down control by rich liberal groups clashes with the organized will of the mass base. The 2016 primaries and the continued marginalization of the Democratic left is exactly this type of conflict. In trying to fuse working class interests with the political structure and strategy of the ruling class, the Sanders campaign guaranteed it could never govern or lead the party, even if Sanders had won the 2016 Democratic primary.
The struggle for equality and justice will not be won by waving the red flag and proclaiming insurrection. Yes, the working class grows its consciousness and power through fights, but also through collective social acts. Parties need to be in the people's lives to provide solidarity and comradeship in an atomized, antagonistic world. Building a workers’ party happens through mass resocialization. We need block parties as much as we need workplace blockades.
Red Star: A party for everyone
