the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Sep 2, 2024
The following is the text of a joint speech given at the Spark Festival in Detroit on August 11 by Working Class Party candidates Andrea Kirby and Gary Walkowicz.
This is a very important year for us. The working class has the opportunity to make a statement by not only voting for Working Class Party Candidates, but also by helping to build the party that will change the world.
I could spend hours telling you why we need our own party. Our wages are too low. Prices are too high. We live in a society that doesn’t provide a real public transportation system, but they make it almost impossible to afford a car, let alone the insurance. Housing expenses—regardless of if you rent or own, your costs are going up. Each year, they are going up on the rent, sometimes hundreds of dollars at a time. Home tax assessment values are going up each year, valuing the same home you had the year before at more and more, requiring more and more tax money. You or someone you know makes the choice every day between eating and medical care.
There are no good jobs for adults, let’s not talk about our youths and young adults. We see signs all over, “we are hiring,” but I know people personally that apply and never get called. You can go into the establishment and they can’t help you, you have to go through corporate HR. There is no number or email for HR, you just have to wait. Then they tell the media that no one wants to work.
Our overall standard of living is going down by the day. You all live it, so I don’t have to explain it. Neighborhood schools closing. Hospitals closing. No grocery stores. Pharmacies closing. Fast food restaurants closing. The cost of an education is growing by the semester. Our daily lives are becoming more and more about surviving and less about living and growing.
Every day, Washington decision makers are preparing us for war. No one wants to talk about war because war means death. And it will be the working class, not just in this country but all over the world, that will suffer. The working class will be sucked into war that will only destroy and have no benefit for any of us.
This starts long before soldiers hit the battlefield. Money has been diverted from social programs for decades. In 2023, the U.S. had a record breaking 858-billion-dollar military budget, not including the homeland security budget or veteran benefits. That budget is three times more than China’s military budget and 13 times more than Russia. It’s nearly 300 billion dollars more than the budgets for the 10 largest U.S. cabinet agencies all put together—including Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, State, and Transportation.
While the U.S. is growing their military arsenal, they are using their propaganda to demonize China, Russia or any other country that the U.S. may be preparing to go to war with.
The money the working class creates is being put in the pockets of a few and fueling the many wars going on across this planet. And I mean many—there is more than just the war in the Ukraine, and Israel and Gaza. Working-class populations are dying in the Congo and other regions in Africa, Haiti, all over South America and so many other places. It is what they don’t show us on mainstream media.
As Andrea said, working people are facing a crisis. We know that. We feel it every day. But rest assured, “help is on the way.” Or at least that is what we are being told right now. We have an election coming up in which the two main political parties, the Republicans and Democrats, are both telling us that if we vote for them our lives will improve. Both parties are promising us that if we elect them, they will fix all the problems that we are facing. Does anybody believe that?
We are told that we have a choice between which of these two parties we want to address the problems. Really? We have a choice? What choice? The Republicans and the Democrats say they are different from each other. Maybe the two parties don’t always talk the same. They may sound different. Sometimes one party or the other party will put up a new candidate, someone who sounds different, someone who says they represent something different.
But while the candidates may change, the two parties stay the same. While the candidates come and go, the two parties continue on the same path. Between them, the Republicans and the Democrats have been running the government of this country for going on almost two hundred years now. Sometimes they are in office together: one party has the presidency, and the other party has the majority in Congress. Sometimes the two parties take turns running the government. The Republicans hold the presidency and Congress, and then they get voted out and the Democrats get put in. Then the Democrats hold the presidency and Congress for a minute, and then they get voted out and the Republicans are put back in.
It is a merry-go-round. We end up right back where we started from. Nothing ever changes. What has either party done for working people over these last 200 years?
Nothing ever changes, because these two parties both serve the same master. Both parties serve the people who finance their campaigns. Together both parties serve the capitalists—the bankers, the corporate owners, the handful of rich people who own and control most of the wealth.
Both parties serve the very bosses who exploit the labor of working people. Both parties serve the capitalists who raise prices and lower wages. Both parties serve the capitalists who cut jobs, who take away full-time jobs and turn them into part-time, temporary jobs. Both parties take our tax money, away from schools and roads and medical care, and give that tax money to the corporations and the banks. Together both the Republican and Democratic parties serve the capitalist class.
I say that it is time for something different. The capitalists have two parties. I say that it is time that the working class has its own party. And I believe that a lot of people agree with that.
So, let’s talk about the Working Class Party. This party did not just fall out of the sky. Some of you have been around for the journey, but it is a story worth telling again. In 2016, a handful of individuals petitioned and got over 50,000 signatures to put the party on the ballot. This was an indication people agreed that we need our own party.
We have received as many as 229,000 votes in one candidate position to remain on the ballot here in Michigan. This year, we had 5 more candidates than we did the last election cycle, totaling 15. The Working Class Party is now running campaigns in 3 more states, California, Maryland and Illinois.
This is a start toward building what the working class needs. It is an important start to building a mass working-class party. A party everywhere built by workers everywhere.
What would a mass working-class party do? What would it look like? A working-class party would be a party that would lead a fight of big sections of the working class at the same time. It would lead a fight of the whole working class. It would organize a fight to go up against the power of the capitalists.
The capitalists have power based on the labor done by the working class. The capitalists make the decisions on how our labor is used, and they take most of the profit produced by the working class. The capitalists run the economy for their own benefit.
But the working class sits at the heart of this whole economy. We are the economy. We make everything run. As they sing in the song “Solidarity Forever,” “without our brain and muscle, not a single wheel would turn.” That is power. That gives us a power greater than what the capitalists have—when we use that power.
Because we make everything run, we can also decide to make everything stop. A working-class party would use that power to organize a fight for workers to get what we need and get what we deserve.
A mass working-class party would not hold back the power of the working class as the union leaders do today. A working-class party would use the force of the working class to impose the higher wages we need, so that when prices go up, our wages would go up—immediately. A working-class party would lead a fight to divide up the work so that everyone who wants a job can have a job, and no one is forced to work themselves to exhaustion.
A working-class party would lead a fight so that public money is used for public needs—schools, roads, hospitals—instead of being given away to the billionaires of Wall Street, like it is today.
A mass working-class party would lead a fight for a better future for every working person. Such a party can even lead a fight to get rid of this system that exploits working people. We can build a decent society for all. This is what a mass working-class party could do.
Today we do not have a mass working-class party. The WCP in Michigan and 3 other states is not the party that we need. But what we do in WCP can be a step forward toward building that mass party. What we can do today is to use elections to reach as many people as possible. We can continue to build what we have started here.
Even if none of our candidates get elected, we can accomplish something important. We can use the election to tell the truth. We can say that working people deserve better. We can tell workers that there are answers to the problems that working people are facing. The money is there. We can tell workers that elections don’t change things, but the working class can change things.
The working class has the power to fight for what we need and to impose on the bosses to get what we deserve. Every campaign that we carry out gives us another opportunity to reach more workers. And by voting for us, it gives more workers the chance to say that they agree with us, and it shows them that they are not alone.
We don’t have the millions of dollars that the Democrats and Republicans have, to be on TV every 5 minutes. But we have all our connections within the working class, our co-workers, our families, our friends and neighbors. Every single person sitting here can be part of something that would contribute toward building a mass working-class party and can contribute to the fight that the working class can make in the future.
Honestly, money is very important, but you as a person are more important. The success of the Working Class Party depends on each and every one of you, your money and your voice. You talking to people you know. Friends, family, coworkers. People in the grocery store, at the mall. This will spread the message.
Money is very important, but the strength built by the real human connections is just as important, if not more. It will be those connections that will make us strong during the attacks. Commercials and Tik-Tok videos may spread the name, Working Class Party, to the world, but that is all it will do. We need the working class to physically build the ties that will create the Working Class Party. The message of the Working Class Party needs to spread to all 50 states, not just in a few states. Like the old but wise saying goes, there is strength in numbers.