We are of the working class. We recognize ourselves as part of the working class because we have no meaningful ownership of the institutions that produce everyday essentials. Nor have we inherited large sums of compounding wealth. We have nothing but our bodies and minds, and we are forced to put them to work. We are compelled to carry out unfulfilling jobs, work long hours, piece together dangerous hustles, or else suffer precarity and deprivation. In short, our lives are dominated by capitalism. Only capitalists and the upper strata of society benefit from this arrangement. Our freedom will only come from collective ownership, access, and control over the means of life. The DSA’s objective should be to end capitalist exploitation and domination for good.

Despite our shared condition as part of the working class, our individual experiences are often different. This is a main feature of working class life. We experience class society through racialized and gendered identities; according to work types like blue collar, white collar, and unwaged labor; and through our full-time, part-time, or unemployed status. Internal separations and inequalities of power between us are fundamental features of life under capitalism. Racialized and gendered oppressions are intensified and fortified by our class subordination. If we expect, through the articulation of economistic reforms, that such oppressions will resolve themselves, we end up with a flat, insufficient form of the class struggle that cannot lead to liberation. We must be vigilant in navigating the contradictions generated by these internal divisions, and build real class power, not by pretending that these divisions don’t exist, but by acknowledging and confronting their historical reality, which means supporting the struggles and demands of oppressed factions of the working-class. 

Making demands of capital and the state are primarily useful when doing so organizes us as a class. Organizing as a class teaches us how to collectively fight and win. We learn how to sustain protracted strikes, occupations, blockades, and take-overs. We improve our ability to rout white supremacists, pressure bosses, force politicians to act, or reverse displacement. As we get organized, we build our capacity to fight and endure together. Our ability to become a collective force allows us to reclaim the dignity and autonomy that has been forcibly taken from us. We will seize control of the world that was built through our collective exploitation and domination. All of this we want, yet none can be had exclusively through the ballot box. 

Building working class power in the long term calls for creating and sustaining bases of class power. This could mean building organizations such as new labor or tenant unions. It could also mean organizing within existing organizations, such as labor unions, and transforming them into weapons that our class can wield. Whatever the case, the process of building power is not the same as accessing capitalist state power. Unlike building power, accessing power changes our political viewpoint by moderating our demands and forcing us to accept the rules of the state. Rather than organizing active collectivities that struggle for the common good and remake our sense of collective belonging, accessing power can move us to accept passive political roles as citizen-subjects. We cannot accept the rules handed to us by capitalist society in the struggle for a new society. Concessions from the capitalist classes come as a response to our collective power.

We live in an age of intense capitalist crises that appear everywhere. Environmental destruction; stagnating wages and rising costs for workers; rapid displacement; violent police management of Black and brown people; brutal objectification of feminized workers; excessive working hours for those on salary; high levels of debt; the explosion of mental health problems among us; everyday social isolation; and an anti-democratic radical right bent on establishing minority rule — all of these are symptoms of today’s capitalist disaster. Some time ago, our class maintained solidarities based in the factory, in the neighborhood, and in common ways of life. These solidarities gave us access to at least some collectively shared life essentials. Collective access to essentials protected us from unpredictable changes in the market, such as housing insecurity or rising expenses. Decades of counter-revolution have destroyed most of these bonds. We have been turned into isolated individuals. We are left with few organic connections between us. As a consequence, we are forced to rely on the capitalist market for almost everything. More market-dependent than ever, the ongoing crisis of capitalism now makes itself appear in every facet of life. We feel caught in a paradox: our era seems apocalyptic, while at the same time capitalism seems indestructible. But the opposite is true. The world has yet to end, and capitalism can be overthrown.

We oppose all institutions that block working class power. Engaging in struggle reveals enemies beyond the boss and landlord, who directly attack working class organization or who attempt to steer it away from power. Some enemies have already become clear. This includes police departments, the Democratic and Republican Parties, those union officials who seek an accommodation with capital, and nonprofit organizations that co-opt and redirect social movement militancy. There are those, like the Republican Party, who obviously oppose us. Others, such as those in control of the Democratic Party, hide their opposition behind false acts of goodwill. They publicly advocate policies that are said to reduce harm. But their real goal is expressed in their relationship with Goldman Sachs and other capitalist institutions: to manage capitalism more efficiently as an alternative to replacing it. Their paternalistic harm-reduction schemes can never replace, and will often decay, working class power.

The DSA should aim to organize working class people and cultivate a revolutionary militancy that will overthrow capitalism. To this end, we must build real, which is to say practical, solidarities between people. Building practical solidarities is done through action, not through words. Real solidarity will be made if we remain open to supporting different parts of our class as they become politically active. Since the future political activity of different parts of our class is unpredictable, we must always be prepared to change course, act on new situations, and remain ready to take necessary tactical risks. In other words, we must be strategic without becoming dogmatic. Doing so will ensure that we become powerful together, and it is only together that we may endeavor to create a new world.

Class power arises from working-class institutions, not advocacy organizations. Rather than building class capacity, advocacy organizations often neutralize struggle by displacing decisions onto professional staff. As those within institutionalized non-profits often have different material interests than those impacted, advocacy organizations can neutralize class conflict instead of building power around it.

Building working class power requires us to understand our collective worries, desires, and needs. In the immediate term, this means studying, identifying, and organizing around our collective experiences. As the second largest socialist organization in US history, we have a unique opportunity to organize DSA members. Inquiries regarding work, rent, consumption, and sociality should be continually conducted for DSA members. In addition, we must conduct inquiries for those external to our organization, so that we can find ways of empowering others in our class. We can begin with those close to DSA members, like co-workers, neighbors, friends, and associates. We have to retain an outward-looking stance if we want to grow and develop solidarities throughout the working class. As our class gains a shared sense of trust and organizational strength, we will build a path to victory.

Working class power is international or it is nothing. The system of capital that confronts us is thoroughly global; it reaches well beyond the boundaries of the United States. Capitalist exploitation means extraction in Africa, exploitation in Asia, and the propagation of urban slums throughout the Global South. This system of global capitalism is not natural. It is enforced by the military might of the United States government. Our development of class power through international solidarities stems from our collective opposition to the US government’s capacity to build empire and inflict imperialist violence. The history of the US state is riddled with imperialism, slavery, genocide, and colonialism. We must always remember this history, for it shows the development of the American state as a terroristic capitalist formation. Just as global capitalism, today’s working class crosses all national borders. Capitalism is a global threat, and only a globally organized working class is sufficient for fighting it.

Reforms are consequences of the power we build. Our goal is not to win reforms; our goal is instead to foment the strength and organization necessary to transcend capitalism. The world that we have inherited is in crisis and capitalism must be overcome. Aiming for specific reforms will diminish our organizing, make us unprepared for intensive mass movements against the system, and can even prevent the resurgence of working class power from transforming the unbearable conditions of our lives. This is not to say that we are against the advent of reforms. On the contrary, reforms can bolster working class confidence, raise expectations for different and better futures, and help position anti-capitalism in a wider discourse. Yet if our strategy becomes reducible to reforms, we lose sight of the possibility for a new world. We also risk reducing our horizons to such a degree that serious reforms become impossible to achieve. This is the paradox of reformism that we must avoid: reforms can be helpful for revolutionary organizing, but if they become the object of our political vision the possibility of obtaining them recedes further into the distant horizon.

We want a stateless and classless society. However far off this horizon, it informs our everyday political practice. For us, communist practice roots out the domination of capital, including its many symptoms. The use of bureaucracy, technocracy, and top-down organizing runs contrary to the principle of such a practice. Oftentimes, preoccupation with geopolitical intrigue gets in the way of forming real working class solidarities, and impedes the development of a realistic analysis of local conditions. We follow Marx when he wrote “we call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.”

The DSA has a great potential for promoting and unifying working class struggles. We can do this by supporting self-organized power in all parts of our class. We hope comrades far and wide will join us in this effort. Together, we can win the world and forever cast off our chains.