Socialist Equality Party candidate at meeting of UPS workers: The war abroad is also a war on the working class at home

On April 8, Socialist Equality Party candidate for president Joseph Kishore was invited to participate in an online meeting of UPS, and other logistics workers. The meeting was called by the UPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee in response to ongoing layoffs in the industry and to discuss recently unveiled plans by UPS executives to close at least 200 facilities, eliminating thousands of jobs.

The situation facing UPS workers is universal. There is a wave of layoffs, affecting auto workers, teachers, health care workers, and other sections of the working class, in the US and throughout the world.

This is a policy not just of individual companies, but of the ruling class as a whole. The ruling elite is seeking to drive up unemployment, to create conditions for increasing exploitation and to smash opposition from the working class through a policy of economic terrorism.

In many different industries, this restructuring is facilitated using advances in technology, including automation or Artificial Intelligence. In a rational society, that is, one based on social need, such technologies would be used to increase the standard of living of workers. Instead, they are being used to reduce the standard of living of workers, to lay workers off, to reduce pay and increase exploitation.

That is capitalism. Capitalism in its essence is a social and economic system based on the exploitation of the working class for profit. Companies are run not on the basis of social need, of the needs of workers, of society as a whole, but in the interests of the ruling class, of the owners of the banks, the corporations, the Wall Street investors.

Increases in profits go to stock buybacks, to dividends, in other words it is all shoveled into the pockets of the corporate and financial oligarchy.

The number of billionaires in the US has risen from 614 to 737 over the past four years—the four years of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this period of immense social crisis for the vast majority of the population, the combined wealth of the billionaires has nearly doubled, up 88 percent over that period, from $2.947 trillion to $5.529 trillion.

Unimaginable sums of wealth are accumulated by this oligarchy. That is the character of capitalist society.

Biden recently issued a statement on Twitter/X that said “capitalism without competition is exploitation.” This is part of his demagogic effort to posture as a friend of workers, which is a complete lie. But the statement is itself false. There is no capitalism without exploitation. Exploitation is at the core of capitalism, that is, the exploitation of the vast majority of the working class for the benefit of the owners.

The experiences that workers have described in this meeting could be repeated a million times over—pregnant workers being laid off without health care, workers losing their jobs without notice. One brother put it well: “They only want to know how much money they can drain from us before they screw is over.” That is the nature of capitalism.

In the present election you have two parties that represent the interests of the employers. Politics is a reflection of society. The owners of production also own the politicians. 

For the Democrats and Biden, the overriding priority is war. Several speakers have referred to the genocide in Gaza. This is one of the greatest crimes of the modern period: Over 40,000 people killed in six months, an entire population of 2 million people turned into refugees, nearly all the buildings of Gaza damaged or destroyed. It is a monumental crime, for which the American government, the American ruling class is guilty. And it is part of a global war.

On the other hand, there is Trump, who seeks to exploit social anger, selling the snake oil of nationalism, the false claim that the enemies of workers in the US are workers in other countries. This is an attempt to cover up the fact that the real enemies of workers are those who are exploiting you, that is the capitalist class.

The attack on immigrants and democratic rights will be directed at the working class, at all opposition to the capitalist ruling elite. That is why that Trump says that the greatest enemy is socialism. He is terrified of the working class.

The trade union apparatus is critical in supporting the ruling class policy. The Socialist Equality Party encourages the formation of rank-and-file committees in every industry. What workers have described on this call—of the union not telling workers anything—that is a universal experience. The apparatus collaborates with management in imposing contracts, lying to workers about what is in them, as is now clear in what is happening at UPS.

The apparatus is also collaborating with the state in war. UAW President Shawn Fain, who like Teamsters President Sean O’Brien was promoted as a great reformer, recently said to Biden that the apparatus was “going to war” for him. He meant not only the war on the working class at home but also the war abroad.

The development of a movement in the working class against the war of the capitalist class at home has to be connected to a fight against the war of the capitalist war abroad. It is, in reality, one war.

The SEP supports the development of rank-and-file committees in every industry. A worker said there is only so much that one can do as one person. This is very true. The strength of the working class is in its unity, but the unity of the working class is only possible through a rebellion against this corrupt apparatus.

There are many tendencies in and around the Democratic Party that talk left, but most of these tendencies promoted Sean O’Brien, promoted Shawn Fain, lied to workers that this would be the way they could advance their interests. They oppose what is really necessary, which is the organization of the rank and file in organizations that you control, in opposition to the entire apparatus.

There is a lot of misinformation about what socialism is. Socialism is a society run by workers, for the workers, in the interests of the workers. It is a society in which exploitation is ended, class society is abolished and the process of production is controlled democratically for social need, so that advances in technology will serve the interests of society as a whole.

The Socialist Equality Party is running in the elections to build a socialist leadership in the working class, to transform the enormous social anger expressed in this call, into a political movement for socialism, that is a complete reconstructing of all of society.

Many, many workers and young people are realizing that there will not be change by tinkering around the edges. What is required is a complete transformation of how society is run, in the US and around the world.

Read more at socialism2024.org