EDITORIAL
Workers Pushed to the Brink

Sep 16, 2024

In early September, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2023 two million more people were living below the official poverty line than the previous year. That brought the number of people living in poverty up to 43 million, or more people than the entire state of California.

Other official reports confirmed the fast spread of poverty and misery in 2023. The Agriculture Department reported that three million more people did not have enough money to pay for food on a consistent basis, compared to the year before. Food banks, the first line of defense for families in danger of going hungry, also reported an explosion in demand last year, often running out. And the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported skyrocketing homelessness in many parts of the U.S. Homelessness was up 61% in Southeast Texas from the year before, 35% in Rhode Island, 20% in both Tennessee and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

This economic disaster is not just happening to the great mass of jobless, or workers without steady work. Increasingly, workers with jobs, even supposedly decent paying jobs, can no longer pay their bills. These include plumbers, factory workers, airline flight attendants, pizzeria managers, not to speak of people who deliver groceries, sell eyeglasses and unload trucks at Amazon.

Working full-time, or two or three jobs, doesn’t guarantee being able to afford the basics.

This year, economic conditions are getting worse. The number of full-time jobs in the U.S. is shrinking. The official rate of unemployment is increasing. This spells even more widespread impoverishment, hunger and homelessness.

Government officials, top economists and the news media say the growth of unemployment is merely a “soft landing,” a supposed transition to a slower economy from the supposed “hot job market” of 2023! In fact, the growth of unemployment is the next stage in the ongoing war of the capitalist class against the working class.

For the capitalist class, times have never been better. Corporate profits are at record levels. Every year, companies dole out trillions of dollars to their biggest shareholders, through dividend payouts and stock buybacks. The stock market, bond market and real estate markets are hitting record highs.

The capitalist class is stealing all that money and wealth from the working class. They are robbing workers on the job, at the store, in our homes. They are turning increasing parts of the working class into paupers.

This is election time. Democrats and Republicans, from Harris and Trump on down promise to be the workers’ champions. They promise to supposedly “fix” things. Of course, it’s all just a scam to get our votes. These are the same brand of lying politicians who have presided over this thievery for more than a hundred years.

No, there are no saviors from up high.

The working class needs its own independent party, not just in the election, but to help organize workers as a powerful class. That party has to be built. That may seem impossible. But sometimes the hardest thing is for workers to take the first step in order to regain confidence in our own forces.

In the coming election, a vote for the candidates of the Working-Class Party in Michigan, as well as working class candidates running for office in Chicago and Los Angeles, can send a message to other workers that there are people ready to join that fight. Workers can defend our interests by uniting and organizing collectively. Workers can push the capitalists back on their heels. Workers can even run the society ourselves. Workers do all the work. We produce everything. Workers don’t need the capitalists at all.

Our big problem is that most of our class doesn’t know what our real potential is. But the history of the working class in this country, including the massive strike waves of the 1930s and the struggle of black people in the 1950s, the 1960s and 1970s show what kind of powerful fights the working class can carry out. Moreover, the history of workers’ movements and revolutions in other countries show how workers can organize their own powerful independent parties and can actually take the power away from the capitalist class.

No, there is nothing inevitable about the crises that workers in this country face today. When working people organize together, they can open up the possibility of a new future not only for themselves, but for all of humanity.