We are living in volatile times. The United States has the biggest war budget in the world by a long shot. But maintaining this premier military position comes at a great cost to the overwhelming majority here, and across the world.

Countries are spending ever more on their military while imposing drastic austerity measures on workers to pay for it all.

Yet, in the belly of the world’s biggest military beast the failure of the labor bureaucracy to break its partnership with the capitalist class has played a major role in convincing us that the only way we can fight back against their wars and austerity is to vote for whichever capitalist politician promises to throw us a bone. Once we vote for them, their obligation to us disappears into oblivion until the next election.

Meanwhile, the U.S./Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, the brutal treatment of documented and undocumented immigrants, the erosion of our democratic and human rights, and the continued assault on our living standards through increased austerity measures continues at break-neck speed.

Yet resistance is growing here and in countries around the world. Masses of working people everywhere are realizing that we have the right to defend ourselves against these attacks on our freedoms and our livelihoods that force us to pay for capitalism’s wars over resources and territorial rule—wars that serve the rich—that we spill our blood for.

The wealthy ruling elite do not sacrifice their lives on the battlefield—they sacrifice our lives.

Solidarity is power

What is sorely lacking today is a unified and democratically-organized resistance among workers that is totally independent of capitalist parties and their bosses—the kind of movement that can bring all non-capitalist sectors of our society together to combat the hardships we are enduring in order to pay for capitalism’s wars of oppression and exploitation.

War is how capitalism maintains its power over us. Our labor pours wealth into the coffers of the rich by funneling our tax dollars into the U.S. weapons-manufacturing industry and into the pockets of the war profiteers.

And all the while, they keep us in perpetual debt and on the brink of poverty with no way up the ladder but winning the lottery.

The working class, in general, has very few organizations of our own. Overall, only 9.9 percent of workers in the U.S. are represented by unions. Of those 9.9 percent, the rate for private-sector union workers is 5.9 percent. The rate for public sector workers is significantly higher at 32.2 percent.1

Currently, in the political realm, our only alternatives are to choose between two major capitalist parties, the Democrats or the Republicans—both controlled and financed by the wealthy elite who frequently donate funds to both parties to cover all their bases.

Building a movement against capitalist war and austerity

While we seem to be living in a very complex, contradictory and confusing world, humanity’s fundamental interests—food, shelter, healthcare, education—are the same for everyone. But the structure of capitalist production for private profit as opposed to human needs—condemns the masses everywhere to poverty and bestows untold wealth on the capitalist class. That is the basic nature and current state of capitalism’s descent into barbarism today.

Workers must fight for every penny we earn—and it still doesn’t cover all of our living costs. All over the world labor leaders who are in partnership with the bosses are negotiating—not for a bigger piece of the pie—but to hold onto the meager crumb of it that we have now. And soon, the likes of Elon Musk will become the first trillionaire on the planet!2

Worker’s power lies in solidarity

Capitalism is a class system consisting of a tiny, wealthy elite that rules over everyone else—the overwhelming majority of humanity. That’s why we need our own organizations independent of capitalists and organized to defend our own interests—the fundamental, democratic right of the majority to own and control the wealth we create through our labor.

Turning things right-side-up—on the side of the working class

We need organizations that are for socialism—workers’ organizations that will stand on the side of the oppressed everywhere.

History matters

In 1905, the workers’ revolutionary struggle against the autocratic rule of Russian Tsar Nicholas II was triggered by the “Bloody Sunday” massacre on January 22, 1905, when imperial troops fired upon peaceful, unarmed workers protesting the poverty and unemployment they had been enduring for years. This led to massive strikes and peasant uprisings against the autocracy of the Tsar.

Widespread demonstrations and strikes spread all over the empire and were brutally repressed by the tsar’s troops. In June 1905, sailors on the battleship Potemkin undertook a mutiny, and in October, a strike by railway workers turned into a general strike in Saint Petersburg and Moscow.

The striking urban workers established councils, including the inaugural St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. From then on, profoundly democratic workers’ councils spread like wildfire in workplaces, in workers’ communities and in the countryside, and eventually led to the 1917 Russian revolution that finally abolished the monarchy for good.

For the first time in history, the working class, through the democratically-structured workers’ councils, became the governing body—a “dictatorship of the proletariat”—the first socialist form of government under the democratic control of the working class. Over 100 years later, these events from history serves as a potent example for today’s working class.

The formation of similar structures in today’s world is essential to the survival of humanity.

Only the mass organization of working people and our allies in direct opposition to, and dedicated to the overthrow of, capitalism and the establishment of socialism worldwide will save us from capitalist annihilation and the destruction of the entire planet. (Read Ten Days That Shook the World, by John Reed, and The History of the Russian Revolution, by Leon Trotsky. Learning from history is essential to the victory of today’s struggle for human freedom and dignity.)

Organizing the working class

There are three basic workers’ organizations that can unite us into a power strong enough to end the dictatorship of the wealthy over the poor—and establish the rule of the majority—the masses of workers and our allies:

The United Front

Our power is in our numbers. The United Front is how we can maximize that power by organizing democratically structured, broad-based alliances of different groups, organizations and individuals to come together to achieve our immediate and very urgent goals:

• To stop the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank and to demand that the U.S., Israel, the UK and all those countries that have supplied weapons and money to carry out this genocide, pay for the reconstruction of Palestine under the democratic control and supervision of the Palestinian people themselves.
• To force an end to Israeli apartheid and, instead, support the creation of a democratic, secular Palestine from the river to the sea—including the right of return—with equal rights for all.
• To organize massive resistance to, and defense against, ICE raids, with the goal of dismantling ICE altogether.
• To end deportations and bring back all those deported and ripped apart from their families. We stand in solidarity of all migrants because there is no such thing as an “illegal” human being.
• To organize against the assaults on our democratic rights—the right to protest and build defense committees to protect us from police and military violence at our schools, communities and workplaces. We stand in solidarity for our democratic right to free speech and assembly, and to build organizations in our own defense and under our own democratic control.

There are a myriad of other issues effecting the overwhelming masses of humanity at the hands of the capitalist dictatorship of the wealthy over the poor—the right to a sustainable environment, a woman’s right to control our own bodies, LGBTQ+ and Trans rights, prisoner’s rights, and more.

We need to build broad coalitions in support of all these rights.

Democratic principles

Each of these coalitions must be profoundly democratic—one person one vote—and open to everyone who agrees with the issues no matter who they are, and no matter whether they may differ on other issues. This assures the greatest number people united together to achieve the goals of each coalition.

United front coalitions are also a training ground for building a united movement of the working class to end capitalism and build socialism everywhere—to save all life on earth.

The Labor Party—a party of the working class that will advance the cause of all workers

The first, most important components of a Labor Party are that it fights for the betterment of all workers—for housing, healthcare, education, safe and healthy food—and against capitalist war, oppression and austerity.

In order to be effective, it must be completely independent of the existing capitalist parties. It, too, must be profoundly democratic and under the control of the majority of the membership. And it must appeal to the entire working class—including all those united-front, independent coalitions in the defense of workers’ democratic rights mentioned above.

It also has to challenge the allegiance of the current labor bureaucracy who are in partnership with the bosses. We must demand they abandon their ongoing support of the two capitalist parties or be voted out of office. We need a new labor leadership dedicated to taking on the bosses and building an independent fighting force for all workers’ rights—we need a Labor Party.

The vanguard party

We currently live in a dictatorship ruled by the capitalist class—a tiny minority that profits from war, racism, sexism—pitting people against each other so that we blame each other for our suffering—instead of from the true cause of it—capitalism.

The ruling-class’s dictatorship over the means of production and the private ownership of the vast profits produced by our labor relegates our lives to a constant struggle for survival.

The vanguard party must be a profoundly democratically structured party of the most conscious and disciplined workers and our allies.

The ranks of a vanguard party must be able to put aside some of our differences in order to lead the masses into a movement strong and united enough to overthrow capitalism and bring the working class into control of society—the economy, the state and the government. It is the kind of workers’ organization that can actually be powerful enough to establish the democratic dictatorship of the overwhelming majority of humanity—a worker-controlled organization strong enough and united enough to build a socialist society based upon the production for human needs and wants of all, and not the profits of the tiny few—a socialist society based on freedom, equality and justice for all.

The vanguard party may seem more out of reach than the United Front and the Labor Party at this time but is an urgent prerequisite for their ultimate success.

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1 https://www.google.com/search?q=what+percentage+of+people+belong+to+unions+in+the+US+in+2025

2 “Elon Musk Buys $1 Billion in Tesla Stock as Board Defends His Pay”

Tesla’s chief executive bought the stock after the company’s board proposed paying him nearly $1 trillion if he achieves certain performance goals.

By Kailyn Rhone, Sept. 15, 2025, New Yori Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/business/elon-musk-buys-tesla-shares.html