Labor
Rank and File Strategy
The most critical task for socialists is to help develop a labor movement that is militant, left-wing, and democratic. Working-class people’s greatest strength is in the workplace because capitalists depend on the exploitation of labor to make their profits. And the workplace brings workers of all backgrounds together and generates common interests that can be the basis for powerful movements.
With this in mind, socialists should organize as rank-and-file workers and rebuild the connection between the socialist movement and the militant minority of workers already organizing in the labor movement. Together, we can work to build unions that are democratic forces ready to confront employers, organize the unorganized, and lead wider working-class political fights.
Given our limited resources, such attention should be focused for now on strategic industries — those in which workers have the best opportunities to organize and the most leverage to make demands on employers. Where possible, we should work with union officials who share our perspectives, while recognizing that in many unions existing officials stand in the way of this vision.
The Centrality of Class Struggle
Capitalism is a system built on exploitation, one in which people are divided into classes that determine what they get and what they have to do to survive. On top, the capitalist class — a tiny minority made up of owners of major corporations and powerful managers — dominates society. The profit and rent they live off of comes from the vast majority of the population on the bottom: the working class.
But in this exploitative relationship, those on top also depend on the labor of working people. As a result, capitalism endows us with enormous potential power. As workers, we have the power to stop production and the flow of profits, or to create a political crisis when public employees strike. And as the overwhelming majority of society we have the capacity to overturn the political system that protects capitalist power.
Ending capitalism will require mobilizing this immense power, and this puts the question of organizing the working class as workers at the center of questions of strategy. This key point — what we call the centrality of class struggle — is at the heart of our perspective on what it will take to change the world.
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