A Party Rooted in the Working Class

Strategic Construction in Some Class Sectors
We believe the working class is the social subject that can do a socialist revolution to build a new society based on workers’ democracy, freedom, equality and freedom from any form of exploitation and oppression. Therefore, we need to build a political party that can organize the working-class from within. This is done through the participation in, and development of its daily struggles and the conscious construction of the party in the key sectors of the working class.

 
The Social Subject of the Socialist Revolution
Many classes and popular sectors, can play diverse revolutionary roles, from putting down governments to even changing the political regime by overthrowing ruthless dictatorships. But our goal as socialists is not only to win mass material gains or lead democratic revolutions, it is to push these movements to attack the roots of the capitalist system and create a new October, a new workers’ government that will build from the bottom-up a socialist society. For this specific and strategic task, we believe that the working class and, in particular, its productive sector is the only one that can act as a strong lever of power through mass action, directly targeting the production profits which is the weak point of the capitalist class. We assert the industrial proletariat is the social subject, the engine, of the socialist revolution, because it can give confidence to the broader working class to fight as a whole, and create the unity and power necessary to win.

 
Definition of the Working Class or Proletariat
Marxists have developed a precise understanding on the transformation and changing roles of the different class sectors of the working class as capitalism developed in the 19th and 20th centuries. We want here to clarify some concepts and vocabulary in order to be precise in our political project. By “working class” or “proletariat” Marx and Engels understood the growing masses that were dispossessed of the means of production through the spread of industrial capitalism and forced to sell their labor power in order to survive. The working class, in a general sense comprises the wage workers of course, but also their families and the unemployed. The working class families and the unemployed function as the reserve army of labor for the capitalist class. The family, furthermore, ensures the realization of unpaid reproductive labor to sustain the exploited class, it does so by perpetuating and reinforcing the oppression of women.

 
Where We Want to Build Our Party
While our party wants to set deep roots in all of the sectors of the working class, we know we need to build a strong political base in its industrial and productive sector in order to be able to implement our political strategy. We know that a strike of any productive sector of the working class (be it longshoremen, teamsters, mine workers, food workers, machinists or auto-workers etc.) will have an incomparable political effect on the production of mass profits than a strike of teachers, public workers or nurses, for example. The latter can cause huge disruptions when they spread but only the former can bring the country to a total halt.

In the course of developing a dual power situation through the accumulation of struggles and the extension of political influence of the party, it will be crucial that the party reaches a leadership position in those productive sectors. Strategically speaking, unless we win leadership over those who can directly damage the production of profits of the major corporations, and we manage to put them at the center of mass mobilizations and ongoing revolutionary uprisings, we will not be able to weaken, and ultimately defeat, the ruling class.