WORKERS’ ACTION is the publication of Workers’ Voice / La Voz de los Trabajadores, a revolutionary socialist organization that was founded with the fusion of Socialist Resurgence and Workers’ Voice in March 2022. We are the sympathizing organization of the International Workers League – Fourth International (IWL-FI) in the United States.

We aim to build a strong, working-class, multinational revolutionary party that defends the principle of class independence and is capable of providing theoretical and political coordination for the struggles of exploited and oppressed communities.

Our ultimate goal is to build a socialist society—one in which productive resources are collectively owned and controlled by the people, not by corporations and the rich ruling elite; where wealth and knowledge are invested in human needs (food, health care, housing, education, and culture) and not in creating profits for a handful of exploiters; and where government is controlled democratically by workers, not by capitalists and a corrupt political regime. Building a socialist society means distributing wealth equitably, dismantling all forms of oppression (including but not limited to racism, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, and ableism), ending wars of plunder and conquest, and protecting the environment.

We do not believe these aspirations can be achieved under capitalism, which is a system rooted in exploitation and inextricably linked to inequality, war, and environmental destruction. Thus, we reject capitalist parties like the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, whose political projects openly protect business interests at the expense of workers and actively undermine and oppress our communities.

We fight for the immediate material needs of workers and oppressed people (such as better wages and benefits), as well as for social and democratic reforms that benefit the working class as a whole. But we must go beyond reforms and contract fights. To bring about a truly free and just society, we must mobilize the working class, along with all oppressed and marginalized peoples, to take political power and replace the capitalist order. Therefore, our intervention is geared not only toward winning material gains, but also toward building socialist consciousness and strengthening the power and political organization of our class in an independent and democratic manner.

Capitalism seeks to diminish the power and unity of workers by creating and sustaining social tensions and divisions among the oppressed. Sexism, racism, Islamophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, homophobia, transphobia, and the many other forms of oppression and discrimination are the product of capitalism’s drive toward the lowest wages, most meager living standards, creation of an auxiliary work force, denigration of unpaid labor, and the disunity that prevents an organized resistance to these conditions.                                               

Therefore, we support the struggles of those who are specially oppressed under capitalism—women and the LGBTQI+ communities, and those suffering national oppression. We support and help build movements for the oppressed with a class-struggle perspective so that such movements can articulate their own demands and develop political consciousness as a group.

The unpaid labor of women and other caregivers is vital to the functioning of capitalism, which privatizes and atomizes the labor and costs associated with raising, nurturing, and maintaining workers. This is why, beyond demanding full reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, the liberation of women and transgender and gender non-conforming individuals is predicated upon the overthrow of the capitalist profit system and its replacement with socialism.

We understand that the United States is an imperialist, colonial power. We defend the right to self-determination for colonized peoples both within this country and internationally, including the Indigenous peoples of North America and the peoples of U.S. colonies such as Puerto Rico, Guam, and Samoa. We support the demands of Native Americans, which have included recognition of treaty rights, confronting the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and full nationhood.

We support the right of self-determination for oppressed nationalities, including Black people, Chicanos, and Puerto Ricans. We stand against all forms of racism, and we demand open borders and the immediate closure of immigrant detention camps.

We note that police generally look the other way when racists and fascists attack, often targeting the victims of such violence. Defeating the far right requires a mass mobilization of broad social forces, including the ranks of the labor movement. As revolutionaries, we support the right of the oppressed and exploited to defend themselves from racist and fascist violence.

Climate change is the biggest threat that humanity and all life on this planet faces today. “Green capitalism” and individual consumer choices are entirely insufficient to tackle the catastrophe facing the planet. Fossil-fuel-driven capitalism must be abolished and replaced with a planned socialist economy based upon renewable energy, mass transit, and the shared and carefully planned use of resources for the public good. As a major step toward that goal, the energy industry needs to be nationalized under workers’ and community control in order to convert it to renewable energy sources.

The struggle for a revolutionary party in the U.S. is inseparable from the struggle for a revolutionary international party. Workers’ Voice is a sympathizing section of the International Workers League. Our origins and experiences of struggle in Latin America frame our understanding of the fight against global imperialism and the recolonization of the Americas. We call for the reconstruction of a democratically centralized Fourth International as the organ of the international working-class struggle for socialism.                                                       

To find out more about us, check our websites: www.workersvoiceus.org, www.litci.org/en

2019 — Socialist Resurgence is a new national organization of activists in the United States committed to the interests of workers and the oppressed, and the creation of a socialist world in which society is organized according to the needs of working people rather than profit. 

The core of our group originated as a tendency within Socialist Action (SA) that had been formed to defend the historic program of revolutionary socialism as practiced during the best years of Socialist Action and the Socialist Workers Party before that. Most of our founding members were expelled or resigned from Socialist Action in October 2019. 

Our Political Program:

Class Struggle & Independence: We believe that the world is divided into opposing social classes, and that the main driving force of modern history is the struggle between the working class and the capitalist class. We are active partisans of the working class and believe in the need for independent working-class politics—not alliances with the capitalists or any wing of that class. That is why we call for workers to break from the Democratic Party to build a Labor Party based on rejuvenated and militant trade unions that are controlled by the ranks. In all of our political work we seek to get workers to see themselves in terms of a class, and to recognize that their class interests are diametrically opposed to that of the capitalists. 

Revolution: We believe that the state and all of its institutions are instruments of the ruling class and that, therefore, they cannot be used as tools of the working class but have to be smashed. That is why we fight for revolution, instead of seeking to merely reform the system or work within it. When we fight for specific reforms, we do so with the understanding that in the final analysis fundamental social change can only come about with the overthrow of capitalism, and the establishment of a workers’ government. We participate in the struggle for reforms according to the method of the Transitional Program—that is, by attempting to aid the working class and its allies to visualize the necessary link between their current struggles and demands and the need for revolutionary action. 

Fighting Climate Change and Environmental Destruction: Climate change is the biggest threat that humanity and all life on this planet faces today. The ongoing climate crisis sets the stage for greater economic instability, deepening poverty, natural disasters, forced migration, food insecurity, rampant disease, military conflict, raging fires, imperialist rivalries, and mass extinction. “Green capitalism” and individual consumer choices are entirely insufficient to tackle the catastrophe facing the planet. Indeed, capitalism, with its tendency towards overproduction, alienating relationships, chaotic metabolism of resources, and drive towards profit at the expense of human needs and environmental costs, will never be tamed or greened. The solution to the climate crisis requires the overthrow of capitalism. 

Fossil-fuel-driven capitalism must be abolished and replaced with a planned socialist economy based upon renewable energy, mass transit, and the shared and carefully planned use of resources for the public good. As a major step toward that goal, the energy industry needs to be nationalized under workers’ and community control in order to convert it to renewable energy sources. Workers in the fossil-fuel industry who are laid off as part of the energy conversion process must be retrained and rehired at union wages. 

The Specially Oppressed & the Oppressed Nationalities: Capitalism seeks to diminish the power and unity of workers by creating and sustaining social tensions and divisions among the oppressed. Sexism, racism, Islamophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, homophobia, transphobia, and the many other forms of oppression and discrimination are symptomatic of capitalism’s drive towards the lowest wages, most meager living standards, creation of an auxiliary work force, denigration of unpaid labor, and the disunity that prevents an organized resistance to these conditions. 

Therefore, we support the struggles of those who are specially oppressed under capitalism—women and the LGBTQI+ communities, and those suffering national oppression. We support and help build autonomous movements for the oppressed so that they can articulate their own demands and develop political consciousness as a group. We do these in the interest of assisting the specially oppressed in their struggle to meet the most basic democratic rights denied to them and because socialist revolution cannot be made without uniting workers against such things as racism, sexism, and homophobia. 

We support the right of self-determination for oppressed nationalities, including Black people, Chicanos, and Puerto Ricans. We support the demands of Native Americans, which have included recognition of treaty rights, confronting the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, and full nationhood. We stand against all forms of racism, and we demand open borders and the immediate closure of immigrant detention camps. 

We note that far-right, nativist, and neo-fascist forces have been emboldened by Trump’s racist, Islamophobic, and anti- immigrant rhetoric. These reactionary groupings pose a threat to workers and the oppressed. Police generally look the other way when rightists attack, often targeting the victims of fascist violence. Defeating the far right requires a mass mobilization of broad social forces, including the ranks of the labor movement. As revolutionaries, we support the right of the oppressed and exploited to defend themselves from racist and fascist violence. 

Women & Social Reproduction: Our work is informed by a unitary theory that ties the oppression of women, cisgender and transgender, to the way that capitalism puts the cost of social reproduction onto the working class itself. 

Rather than believing that the oppression of women is a matter of biology, Social Reproduction Theory roots this oppression in a gendered division of labor in which women (both trans and cis) are tasked with sustaining capitalism through the reproduction, maintenance, and regeneration of the work force—while at the same time often holding down waged jobs. The unpaid labor of women and other caregivers is vital to the functioning of capitalism, which privatizes and atomizes the labor and costs associated with raising, nurturing, and maintaining workers. This is why, beyond demanding full reproductive rights and body autonomy, the liberation of women, trans, and gender non-conforming individuals is predicated upon the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement with socialism. 

Internationalism: While we support the nationalism of oppressed nationalities as progressive, we are internationalists, and as such we hold that the workers of one country have more in common with the workers of another than they do with their own nation’s capitalist class. We oppose the nationalism of oppressor nationalities as wholly reactionary. We seek to link the struggles of workers and oppressed across national boundaries, and to build an international revolutionary movement that will facilitate the sharing of experiences and political lessons from one country with revolutionaries in another. That is why we hope to maintain fraternal relations with the Fourth International. We strive to renew the revolutionary program of the FI and promote the international regroupment of revolutionary socialists by our participation in the Platform for a Revolutionary International. The work of the Platform can be followed here. 

Vanguard Party: The capitalist class is highly organized, and to overthrow it the working class likewise needs organization. We believe in the need for a disciplined party of professional revolutionaries based on a political program that incorporates the lessons of past working- class victories and defeats. While the class struggle ebbs and flows, there is a need for an organization of committed revolutionaries in order to maintain continuity and to prepare for openings in the struggle that require leadership. We believe that within such a party there must be complete and fair discussion, democratic decision-making procedures, and the right to form factions and tendencies to fight for different positions. However, the party must act as a common unit in carrying out the decided-upon line in order to test if it is correct or not. This is called democratic-centralism. 

United Fronts: Recognizing the divisions that exist on the left and within the workers’ movement, as well as the low level of class consciousness that exists among many workers, we seek to form united- front-type coalitions around specific actions and issues in which various groups have agreement. In this way, we seek to maximize the number of forces that can be mobilized around a given issue, demonstrate the power and effectiveness of mass action as opposed to symbolic small- scale and individual actions, and expose others on the left and the workers’ movement to our method of functioning and our political program. We also see this as an avenue toward achieving meaningful revolutionary regroupment. It should also be said that while we support the tactic of the united front, we are opposed to “popular fronts”—that is, multi-class alliances that subordinate the interests of workers to that of a wing of the capitalist class. 

Permanent Revolution: This famous thesis by Leon Trotsky holds that if revolutionary struggles in semi-colonial and under-developed countries are to be fully effective, they must be led by the working class and must develop into full-fledged socialist revolutions. A revolution cannot succeed if it must go through prolonged “stages” that shackle working people and poor peasants into an alliance with any wing of the capitalist class. To be ultimately successful, socialist revolution also needs to be international in scope. We believe that the Bolshevik-led revolution of 1917 remains in many key respects a model for a successful socialist revolution today—that is, a workers’ government based on democratically elected workers’ councils.