The Working Class Needs a Political Party!
The Louisville Workers Brigade
11/11/2024
The 2024 U.S. elections are over. The Brigade released a brief statement on Wednesday briefly outlining our analysis, but we wanted to further elaborate on our thoughts within a full article here in our publication. Our statement immediately following the election is reprinted at the bottom of the article…
Deep down, most Americans know that our supposed “democracy” is a sham. Despite boisterous rhetoric and very public arguments, the Democrat and Republican Parties are really more alike than they are different. Both are imperialist, funding genocide and wars the world over. Both are agents of the owning class, offering bailouts to corporations while enacting austerity measures against working people. Both respond to political and social struggle against exploitation and oppression with severe state repression, bloating the budgets of racist police departments and siccing the National Guard on peaceful protestors. Both engage in strikebreaking, picket line-crossing, and contribute to the erosion of labor power. Both fail to protect (and often engage in open hostilities against) the most vulnerable people in society: Queer folk, people of color, women, immigrants, the poor, substance users, etc.
To be sure, each of the two major political parties have their “distinguishing features,” usually exemplified in hollow stances and empty promises regarding social or cultural issues. Of course, most politicians, like the members of the owning class who control them, do not really care about these social and cultural issues, but simply use them to garner support from their base and to weaken the strength of our class by dividing us against each other. These issues, that politicians play with like toys, represent the long-fought struggles of oppressed people; the grift, hypocrisy, and deceit that the owning class and their political pawns employ to weaponize these struggles for personal gain is utterly despicable and adds insult to injury to already marginalized communities who yearn for liberation.
The two major political parties cannot be reformed into vehicles of liberation for working and oppressed people. This is because both parties are instruments of the owning class, political pawns designed to divide the working class while simultaneously consolidating power for our exploiters and oppressors. There have been numerous attempts to reform these parties from the inside, but each has always resulted in either the complete repression and expulsion of progressive forces or the co-optation and eventual corruption of supposedly “left” politicians. Left-progressive forces enter the major political parties to find their demise.
So, the big question: What is to be done?
Despite the divisions and animosity between members of our class, the Brigade believes there is reason to hope for a path to liberation. Here in Kentucky, despite a divided electorate on the top of the ballot, working people came together, setting aside partisan infighting, to resoundingly reject Amendment 2 which would have funneled public funds into private and charter school. In fact, not a single Kentucky county had majority support for this pillaging of public education.
Every. Single. County. in the Commonwealth voted down Amendment 2.
Together, Kentucky workers sent an unequivocal message to the owning class and their political pawns: Keep your blood-stained hands off of our working class institutions!
This illustrates that working and oppressed people are very much capable of recognizing their class interests. It highlights the power of a unified working class.
There are innumerable pressing tasks before the U.S. working class: from strengthening the labor movement with a class struggle approach, to uniting progressive causes into a cohesive movement, from providing political education to workers, to incubating resistance in arenas currently neglected. All of these needs are important and must be addressed, but the most urgent objective must be the establishment of a new political party for working people. We label this as the most urgent objective because such a political party will serve as the guide, lead, and center for all other progressive-left struggles and movements. Steeped in working class ideology and unwaveringly dedicated to working class interests, such a party will provide crucial analyses of rapidly changing conditions, strategically direct our forces in how best to secure power, and will ultimately lead us towards replacing this economic ordering with one designed for working and oppressed people.
In our analysis, the Brigade cannot currently identify such a political party within the U.S., though we do recognize that many groups are striving towards this noble aim and are making progress. This is part of the reason why the Brigade was started: to avoid needless sectarian divisions, organizing within the chief struggle of our economic ordering (the workplace), seeking to educate, support, and unite working class forces in our community in preparation for the day when a working class party is finally established. We believe our work is part of this development, pushing for the coming together of the most politically advanced elements of our class to constitute a political vehicle for revolution. Once such a party is founded—and gains the following, confidence, and respect of the working and oppressed masses—the Brigade is eager and ready to pledge our loyalty, work, dedication, and energy.
Through a working class party—composed of revolutionaries trained and educated in history, economics, philosophy, theory, and organizing principles—the divided working and oppressed masses can be educated in real working class history, not owning class propaganda that maintains and feeds the status quo. Through a working class party, the seemingly-disparate struggles of workers, Queer folk, women, people of color, immigrants, substance users, incarcerated human beings, and those fighting abroad for liberation from the yoke of imperialism may be connected and framed in a coherent and cohesive picture of exploitation and oppression under our current economic ordering. Educated with this information and guided by the experience and knowledge of this working class party, working and oppressed people can lay aside the social and cultural divisions that the owning class has weaponized for our enslavement and can begin the work of securing economic, political, social, and cultural power for our class. Through a working class party, we can finally secure meaningful reforms to improve the material conditions of those suffering and, ultimately, can wage a revolution to establish a new society where the days of exploitation and oppression are left in the dustbin of history where they belong.
Despite whatever lay ahead over the next four years, things will not fundamentally change unless working and oppressed people band together. This will not happen until a working class political party is established to provide the education, analysis, leadership, experience, and knowledge that we need to overcome the many obstacles our exploiters and oppressors have used to maintain their stranglehold on power.
For those not currently involved in the movement, for those scared or anxious or confused on where to begin: study, seek trusted mentorship, and jump into the work! The Louisville Workers Brigade continues to educate, support, and unite left-progressive forces in our community and we welcome anyone and everyone to join us. As always, please do not hesitate to reach out if we can assist you in any way.
The struggle continues, Fellow Workers! Solidarity forever!
