A Vision of a World for Working People
The Editors of The Class Struggle Chronicle
8/1/2024
The Louisville Workers Brigade is a revolutionary organization as opposed to a reformist organization.
For many, that word—Revolutionary—can be scary, confusing, and loaded with all sorts of baggage. Images of bloody conflicts, assassinations, terrorists, plotting and scheming may come to mind. The Brigade would like to calm such fears and to present what we mean when we proudly proclaim ourselves to be a revolutionary organization.
To start, the Brigade defines revolution simply: a changing of the ruling class.
The founding of the United States began with a revolution: the overthrowing of monarchical rule by the colonies and the establishment of a new system built to enshrine the rising landowning, merchant class who shaped the core principles of this nation and who continues to rule this country to this day. This new ruling class made sure to make sacred private (corporate) property and developed a state which would serve their interests. Though the method of rule has changed over the centuries—from quasi-laissez-faire austerity to Keynesian interventionism to neoliberalism—the core economic system in which the owning class exploits the working class has remained ever the same.
When we speak of our present economic ordering, we recognize the inherent injustice in this system: the exploitation, alienation, exhaustion, oppression, and desperation the laboring masses endure while the parasitic class of owners fattens with the wealth they’ve stolen from us, exclusively wielding economic, political, social, and cultural power which they use to keep their position of authority. Despite the lofty rhetoric our nation’s leaders love to utilize, the values of democracy, justice, and liberty are absent for the majority of American workers.
The Louisville Workers Brigade continues the legacy of organizers before us who insist that reforming this present societal ordering is insufficient. Simply ameliorating the day-to-day conditions of workers—while needed in the short term—represents an inadequate band-aid placed over the gaping wound of the exploitation of a minority over the majority. Even if every working person was represented by a union, enjoyed healthcare and education as human rights, and was made to enjoy a “larger slice” of the economic pie, the system itself would remain unjust as the owning class would still retain its power to rule and working people would still see their labor’s value stolen by their bosses—albeit to a lesser degree, perhaps.
No, for working and oppressed people to truly find liberation from the chains of exploitation, a new economic ordering is needed and, with it, a new ruling class: a world where working people hold economic, political, social, and cultural power.
To realize such a world, revolution is needed. Again, remember: when we use the word revolution, we are simply referring to the transition of ruling power from one class (the owning class) to another (the working class). History shows that such transitions need not require violence, though many have. In the Brigade’s view, the nature and character of this transition lies in the hands of our oppressors, the owning class. Just as how one might escape the clutches of a mugger relies on the level of violence the mugger uses against their victim, so too does the ways and means by which the working class might find liberation rely on the level of violence the owning class wields against them. No one would condemn a victim for bashing a mugger on the head if the mugger had a gun pointed to their head. No one can condemn the slave rebellions of Haiti or John Brown.
Currently, the working class is both enslaved to the owning class and has the loaded gun of the state pointed at its head. The system that the American owning class has established is steeped in blood and has a long history of violent repression of anyone courageous enough to take a stand against it. When working people have finally had enough, have organized into an unstoppable and unified class, and vociferously demand the removal of this murderous regime, the owning class will face a choice: willingly and peacefully relinquishing its violent rule or continuing its vain attempt at grasping for its diminishing tyranny over the masses.
It's easy to say that the working class wants a world where it holds economic, political, social, and cultural power, but what does this tangibly mean?
To start, it means the end of exploitation. A world for working people would begin with the abolishment of wage slavery and the control of working people over their own workplaces and industries. Unlike our current economic ordering where decisions are made from a disconnected boss, a workers’ world would mean each working person would have a democratic voice in the production, sourcing, and distribution of the products they produce. Under such a system, working people will enjoy the fruits of their labor and will no longer have to settle for the scraps the owning class currently tosses to them. This ordering represents a collective ownership of industry and an egalitarian positioning of working people within their workplaces. After all, who better to be in control of industry than those who actually perform the work?
Under our present system, managers are appointed by the owning class to act as a buffer between them and the workers and to enforce their will upon them. In a workers’ world, the need for strategists, specialists, and administrators would still be needed, but would be of a radically different character: with the absence of parasitic bosses, managers would be democratically elected by the workers, appointed to fulfill the workers’ mandates. These worker-elected managers would be directly accountable to the workers themselves and would be subject to recall should they fail to fulfill their responsibilities.
No longer driven by the insatiable hunger for profit (stolen wealth from working people), workplaces and industries will no longer be tied to planned obsolescence or wasteful production without any real purpose. Instead, workers will be able to plan production around human needs and sustainable usage. The dire catastrophes of climate change and pollution can meaningfully be addressed by a society that values the dignity of human beings and our environment and can ensure a bright future for those generations who shall come after us.
Our current system requires a constant pool of unemployed people: the bosses use these vulnerable people as a bat over the heads of the employed, constantly threatening to replace them with one of the less fortunate. In a workers’ world, dignified and productive work would be available to all who are able to work, offering them a vital place in the production of a worker-led society. Because of this, working hours and workweeks will be able to shorten. Technology will be used to enhance and better the lives of working people, no longer utilized to take away their livelihoods in an effort to maximize profits.
When working people secure economic power, they will also enjoy control over the political sphere of our country. A new form of government can emerge—one driven by working people. Our present political system, by its nature, consolidates power in the hands of a massively wealthy few industrialists, bankers, and landowners. In a workers’ world, politicians would no longer be disconnected, corrupt stools paid by the owning class to do their bidding. Instead, elected officials would represent the diverse working class, with teachers, firefighters, authors, artists, janitors, miners, and linemen populating the chambers of political bodies, from the smallest municipalities to the largest national governing organizations. Such elected representatives would remain connected with their industries, to be continually linked with and conscious of the diverse working class they represent and are a part of. Such positions would be viewed as a public service, not as a pathway to wealth through lobbying (legal bribery) as it is now.
A workers’ world would not be a perfect utopia, of course. Problems, complications, and shortcomings will always exist. In a society controlled by working people, however, these troubles can be addressed collectively as a population. No longer will working people be forced to face the curveballs of life in isolation. Basic human needs such as healthcare, education, transportation, shelter, and sustenance would be considered human rights, and these important services would be free of the profit-motive so that people’s needs can be treated in a humane and dignified manner.
In this vision of a new society, workers would also possess control over their social and cultural lives. This begins with the elimination of chauvinisms and bigotries which the owning class has used to divide workers against each other. Racial animosity, sexism and misogyny, queerphobia, and nativism will wither away as these divisions are overcome through the collective and democratic crafting of this new society. Women, racial minorities, immigrants, Queer people, and other vulnerable communities would enjoy true legal protections. The system of tyrannical policing, designed to oppress poor working people and communities of color, would be abolished, replaced by worker-controlled community defense. Art and culture can become arenas of leisure, entertainment, and solace for working people, no longer commercialized and commodified as more products to sell for profit.
In this worker-led society, imperialistic wars would become an atrocity of the past. The exploitation, oppression, and pillaging of other countries would end, returning sovereignty and independence to other peoples and safeguarding security and peace for us and our neighbors on this shared globe. The human carnage and environmental devastation of our current world can be replaced with peaceful and cooperative coexistence with peoples across the planet.
This is the vision of what a world for working people can look like. We present it, not as a concrete or definitive outline for what society can look like, but as an ideal to struggle and strive for. The details and specifics are not for us to determine—they are for the international working class to decide upon and implement for their own collective wellbeing.
The Louisville Workers Brigade is a revolutionary organization dedicated to raising the class consciousness of working people so that our class can proceed to this next phase of our economic, political, social, and cultural existence. We are not bomb-making terrorists, but neither are we thoughtless idealists. Instead, The Louisville Workers Brigade embraces a scientific and historical approach to addressing the most pressing needs of the working class. We believe that the working people of the world can and must unite to overcome the current ills of our present system. When this occurs, we look forward to the day when working people may live in harmony with each other and the world.