The 2024 US elections and the tasks of the Socialist Equality Party

This resolution on the program of the SEP in the 2024 elections was adopted by the Eighth National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US), held from August 4 to August 9, 2024.

1. The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and its candidates, Joseph Kishore and Jerry White, are intervening in the 2024 presidential elections to advance a socialist, internationalist and revolutionary perspective for the working class. The SEP does not have a separate election program. It utilizes the election campaign to develop and popularize the program of the party, which is rooted in and based on the perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

2. In announcing the SEP election campaign in February, SEP National Chairman David North stated that its purpose is to “raise the political consciousness of the working class, to develop its understanding that no solution can be found to any of the problems confronting working people except through the ending of the capitalist system and its replacement with socialism, and that this great historical task can only be achieved by adopting a global strategy aimed at the mobilization of the power of the American and international working class in a unified struggle against the world capitalist system.”

3. In the present world situation, the theory of permanent revolution—originally formulated by Leon Trotsky in the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution in Russia and further developed in the course of the struggle initiated in 1923-24 against the Stalinist bureaucracy and its nationalist repudiation of Marxist internationalism—remains the essential theoretical foundation of revolutionary strategy. Trotsky insisted 1) that in all countries the struggle for and defense of democracy could not be separated from the fight to establish workers’ power and the implementation of socialist policies; and 2) the struggle for socialism was conducted on the basis of an international strategy directed toward the global mobilization of the working class against the world capitalist system.

4. However intensely the fundamental contradictions of capitalism manifest themselves in one or another crisis and however great the pressures of work in the national environment, the fight for socialism can be advanced only to the extent that the work of the revolutionary party is rooted in the internationalist strategy elaborated in the theory of permanent revolution.

5. The 2024 US presidential elections are unfolding amidst an unparalleled global and domestic crisis. The basic elements of this crisis are outlined in the statement of the World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board, “The working class, the fight against capitalist barbarism and the building of the World Party of Socialist Revolution,” published between January 3 and January 6, 2024. The SEP endorses this statement as a critical political foundation of its election campaign.

6. Not since the end of World War II in 1945 has the threat of a catastrophic third world war been so imminent as it is today. The US-NATO imperialist powers are aggressively intensifying the war against Russia in Ukraine, now in its third year. The fascistic Israeli regime, fully backed by the White House and its European allies, continues its relentless slaughter of the people of Gaza, which threatens to develop into a regional war engulfing the entire Middle East. The COVID-19 pandemic, now in its fifth year, has claimed the lives of over 1.4 million Americans and 27 million people worldwide. Amidst extreme social inequality and ruthless exploitation, the capitalist ruling elites are veering sharply towards fascism and dictatorship globally.

7. The crisis of global capitalism finds its most concentrated expression in the United States. Bourgeois democracy in America is on its last legs. One of the principal parties of the ruling class, the Republican Party, has acquired an increasingly overt fascistic character, headed by the former president, Donald Trump, who less than four years ago instigated a coup aimed at overturning the presidential election result and the entire constitutional order. The central priority of the Democratic Party is to cover up this political transformation in order to gain the bipartisan support of the Republicans for the vast escalation of imperialist war.

8. At the same time, the crisis of democratic forms of rule in the United States has global consequences. At the 2018 May Day rally, held two years after the election of Trump, the WSWS stated:

For all their wealth and power, the ruling elites stagger from crisis to crisis. The ascendancy of Trump in the United States is the most visible and ghoulish expression of the universal degeneracy of the capitalist class. But the ascendancy of Trump is of not only symbolic significance. Throughout the 20th century, and especially in the aftermath of World War II, the United States functioned as the ultimate guarantor of the stability and survival of the world capitalist system. It is incapable of playing that role any longer.

The past six years, including the four years of the Biden administration, have only deepened the crisis of class rule in the United States.

9. The same crisis that produces imperialist war and authoritarianism also creates the impulse for social revolution. The past two years have seen many expressions of mass opposition to imperialist war, including the global protests against the genocide in Gaza and strikes and protests against the ruling class assault on jobs, wages and social programs. In the broad mass of the working class, there is rising social anger and discontent. However, the transformation of this objective process into a conscious movement for socialism is not automatic. Building the revolutionary leadership, in the United States and internationally, is the decisive strategic question upon which the fate of mankind depends.

10. The SEP will therefore utilize the election campaign to explain the critical political questions confronting the working class, encourage the independent organization of the working class through the development of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), build the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) on college campuses and in high schools, and recruit workers and young people into the Socialist Equality Party.

The global eruption of American imperialism

11. The global crisis of the capitalist system is concentrated in the eruption of imperialist war, propelled by American imperialism. With the full backing of the United States and its allies in NATO, Israel has been engaged for 10 months in a brutal campaign of genocide and extermination of the Palestinian people in Gaza. The official death toll is nearing 40,000, while the real toll, according to the medical journal The Lancet, stands at 186,000 or more.

12. The Gaza genocide is a component part of a broader regional and global war. Israel’s assassination in late July of the top military leader of Hezbollah in Beirut and the top political leader of Hamas while he was in Tehran raised to a new level the danger of a direct US-Israeli war against Iran. From the beginning of the genocide, US military and political officials made clear that their support for Israel’s actions was connected to advanced preparations for a conflict with Iran, a principal ally of Russia and China in the Middle East.

13. As the January 3, 2024 WSWS International Editorial Board Statement explains: “The Gaza genocide is not a unique episode, best understood as a product of exceptional circumstances related to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the inherently reactionary character of the Zionist project and its racialist and xenophobic-nationalist ideology. The latter elements play, of course, a significant role in the actions of the Israeli regime. But the unrestrained ferocity of the present war, carried out with the full support of its imperialist paymasters and weapons suppliers, can be understood and explained only in the context of the breakdown of the world imperialist and nation-state system.”

14. The Gaza genocide is unfolding in the midst of the bloody US-NATO proxy war against Russia. As the war in Gaza has normalized genocide as an acceptable instrument of imperialist policy, the deepening of the US-NATO war against Russia has been accompanied by the de facto acceptance of a high level of possibility, even probability, that the conflict may lead to the use of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. The war has been relentlessly escalated by the US and the NATO powers since it began in February 2022, including through the provisioning of long-range weapons to Ukraine to target Russia and advanced discussions on the direct deployment of NATO troops. The US-NATO instigation of the proxy war in Ukraine is bound up with preparations for a US war against China, which is viewed as the central geopolitical rival of the United States.

15. The present crisis is the outcome of three decades of unending war that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union. American imperialism interpreted the dissolution of its Cold War competitor as an opportunity to use its unrivaled military force to counter the long-term decline of American capitalism. The first war against Iraq in 1990-91 was followed by the war against Serbia in 1999 and, under the framework of the “war on terror,” the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the second invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the bombing of Libya and the CIA-instigated civil war in Syria in 2011. The war against Russia was preceded, in 2014, by the US-backed regime change operation in Kiev, spearheaded by fascistic forces, to overturn a pro-Russian government.

16. The preface to A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony 1990–2016, published in July 2016, states: “The strategic logic of the US drive for global hegemony extends beyond the neocolonial operations in the Middle East and Africa. The ongoing regional wars are component elements of the rapidly escalating confrontation of the United States with Russia and China.” This is now taking place.

17. The fight against the genocide in Gaza cannot be separated from a fight against imperialism and the capitalist system. The SEP affirms the principles outlined as the basis of its July 24, 2024 rally in Washington D.C.:

• The essential cause of war lies in the capitalist nation-state system, the global financial interests of the giant corporations, and the ruthless drive of the American ruling class for world hegemony.
• The struggle against war requires the mobilization of the immense power of the American working class and its political independence from the Democrats and Republicans, the ruling class parties of imperialist war.
• The movement against genocide and war must be international, uniting workers globally based on their common class interests.

18. As David North stated in his remarks to the rally, “Those who want to talk about ending war without talking about ending capitalism would do best to observe silence and keep their ignorance from the rest of the world.”

Trump, fascism and the crisis of American democracy

19. The 2024 election campaign is unfolding amidst an unprecedented crisis of democratic forms of rule in the United States and internationally. The fundamental objective causes of the turn of the ruling class toward fascism and dictatorship are: 1) the escalating global imperialist war; and 2) the extreme growth of social inequality.

20. The present elections unfold in the shadow of the fascistic coup of January 6, 2021, during which Donald Trump sought to stop the congressional certification of his election defeat by Biden, abolish the Constitution and establish a personalist dictatorship. Trump has utilized the past three and a half years to strengthen the domination of his “MAGA” movement over the Republican Party.

21. In its statement of July 21, “After the collapse of the Biden campaign,” the WSWS Editorial Board wrote:

Less than four years ago, Trump left office in disgrace after his failed attempt to overthrow the Constitution and block the transfer of power to Biden and Harris. But today, Trump has the backing of a substantial section of the American capitalist class, including billionaires like Elon Musk. The possibility of a fascistic regime is not a matter of far-fetched speculation. It is a political reality.

22. Trump has said that if he returns to power, he will act as a dictator on “day one,” and that if he is re-elected, “you won’t have to [vote] anymore.” He has placed at the center of his election campaign a fascistic attack on immigrants, who he has said are “poisoning the blood of our country,” a fascist phrase pulled directly from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He has pledged to mobilize the National Guard to carry out mass arrests, build “vast holding facilities” to detain millions of immigrants, and end birthright citizenship, which would make tens of thousands of children born in the United States stateless people.

23. The program of the Republican Party articulates the interests of the corporate and financial oligarchy, which see in Trump’s combination of authoritarianism and pseudo-populism an instrument for escalating a massive social counterrevolution. At the same time, Trump is able to capitalize on broad-based discontent that finds no expression within the political establishment.

24. As the July 21 WSWS Editorial Board statement explained, “The Democratic Party long ago abandoned any significant connection with social reform measures that would advance the living standards and democratic rights of working people. It is a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence agencies, focused above all on the assertion of the global interests of American imperialism. This is combined with the promotion of identity politics aimed at dividing the working class and advancing the interests of privileged sections of the upper-middle class.”

25. The central priority of the Democratic Party and the Biden administration after taking office was the instigation and then prosecution of the war against Russia. It was to pursue the war that the Democrats sought and continue to seek a bipartisan agreement with the Republicans. In his first speech following the attempted coup of January 6, 2021, Biden called for a “strong” Republican Party. The administration has sought unity with Trump to pass anti-immigrant legislation and congressional Democrats backed the ultra-right House Speaker Mike Johnson to obtain tens of billions in funding for the war against Russia in Ukraine.

26. The Democratic Party is relying ever more directly on a corporatist alliance with the trade union apparatus to suppress the class struggle at home and subordinate workers to the war policy of American imperialism. This is what Biden meant when he referred to the AFL-CIO bureaucracy as his “domestic NATO.” A central role is being played by the United Auto Workers apparatus, headed by Shawn Fain, who is promoted by the Democratic Socialists of America and other pseudo-left organizations. Under Fain, the UAW endorsed Biden and then Harris. The UAW has promoted the unions as an “arsenal of democracy,” which in fact means an arsenal of imperialism and war.

27. The Socialist Equality Party rejects the claim that the growth of the extreme right can be countered by supporting the Democratic Party. Even if Trump is defeated in the November election—and fails to carry out another coup d’état—the objective economic and social contradictions of American imperialism drive the ruling elites, with or without Trump, to dictatorship. Trumpism is a symptom of a systemic crisis that cannot be resolved democratically within the framework of capitalism. As Lenin wrote in October 1916, in the midst of World War I and only four months before the outbreak of the February Revolution in Russia: “Political reaction all along the line is a characteristic feature of imperialism.” [Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, Collected Works, Volume 23]

28. The SEP will warn throughout our election campaign that it is impossible to fight fascism except through the independent mobilization of the working class. The pseudo-left supporters of the Democratic Party, including figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, play a particularly foul role in maintaining the stranglehold of the two-party system and thereby strengthening the fascist right.

29. The emergence of Trumpism is the outcome of a protracted political process. At the time of the theft of the 2000 election, the SEP explained that the decision of the Supreme Court to hand the election to George W. Bush, and the acceptance of this result by the Democratic Party, demonstrated that there did not exist a significant constituency for bourgeois democracy in the ruling class.

30. On July 1, the US Supreme Court ruled, in Trump v. United States, that the president has unlimited powers to violate the Constitution and break any law. In analyzing the historical roots of the concentration of power in the presidency, the WSWS wrote (in “The Supreme Court and the Counter-Revolution of July 1, 2024”):

President Reagan faced no punishment for the Iran-Contra scandal, in which a secret funding operation of Central American death squads was run out of the White House in contravention of a congressional law. President George W. Bush invoked the “theory of the unitary executive” to wage the so-called War on Terror, which, his administration claimed, permitted it to organize the forced disappearance of suspects in an international gulag of torture prisons, including at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. President Obama asserted in 2010 the chief executive’s prerogative to carry out assassinations of citizens he declared to be enemy combatants (a precedent cited favorably by Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett in her concurring opinion in Trump). President Trump, in 2020, openly boasted of ordering the assassination of an American protester, Michael Reinoehl, in Washington state.

31. For all the political rhetoric about “freedom and democracy,” the American political system is structured to ensure the stranglehold of the financial and corporate oligarchy. Massively restrictive ballot access laws; undemocratic institutions such as the Electoral College; the disproportionate power given to small states in the US Senate; the domination of money in the electoral system, including through unlimited funding of super-PACS; the lifetime appointment of Supreme Court justices without a popular vote—all are structured to exclude from political expression the interests of the vast majority of the population.

32. Basic democratic rights cannot be secured outside of a frontal assault on the wealth and privileges of the corporate and financial oligarchy. A handful of billionaires in the United States controls a record $5.2 trillion in wealth. The top 10 percent owns two-thirds of total wealth, while the bottom half owns only 2.6 percent.

33. As the January 5 WSWS International Editorial Board statement explains, “The accumulation of personal wealth, while immensely significant in its own right, is secondary to and connected with the immense concentration of economic power in a small number of mega conglomerates owned by the capitalist ruling elites.” The gigantic banks, hedge funds and private equity firms control trillions of dollars, while the large corporations exercise monopolistic control over the entire economy.

34. The growth of social inequality is incompatible with democracy:

All talk about defending democracy and fighting fascism while ignoring the fundamental question of class and economic power—and, therefore, recognizing the necessity for the mobilization of the working class on a global scale for the overthrow of capitalism—is cynical and politically impotent demagogy.

The program of the Socialist Equality Party in the 2024 elections

35. The election campaign of Kishore and White advances a socialist and revolutionary perspective for workers and youth. This Congress reaffirms the fundamental positions detailed in the document, “The Breakdown of World Capitalism and the Fight for Socialism in the United States,” adopted at the First National Congress of the SEP in 2010. This includes:

36. The basic social rights of the working class. The Socialist Equality Party proposes that the working class adopt the concept that there exist social rights that are essential to life in a complex modern society and are, therefore, “inalienable.” These rights include: the right to a job, the right to a livable income, the right to leisure, the right to decent and affordable housing, the right to utilities and transportation, the right to high-quality healthcare, the right to a secure retirement, the right to education, the right to access technology and communications, the right to a healthy and safe environment and the right to culture.

These rights, essential to modern life, can only be achieved through a fundamental reorganization of economic power and the redistribution of wealth within the United States.

The vast wealth created by the labor of generations of workers must be taken out of the hands of a privileged few and put at the disposal of the people as a whole.

37. The expropriation of the banks and financial institutions. The banks and other big financial institutions must be expropriated, with full protection for small depositors, placed under public ownership and operated under the democratic control of the working class. This will make available enormous resources for a public works program to eliminate poverty and meet social needs in the US and internationally.

38. The nationalization of major corporations. A handful of gigantic corporations controls large sections of the economy, which is subordinated to private profit and the demands of Wall Street investors. All privately owned industrial, manufacturing and information technology corporations valued at $10 billion or more must be transformed into publicly owned enterprises, with full compensation for small shareholders and guarantees for all pension and healthcare fund investments. Industries critical to the basic functioning of society—including telecommunications, social media, agriculture, education, healthcare and transportation—must also be subject to public ownership and democratic control.

This does not mean the nationalization of everything. Small- and medium-sized businesses, which employ millions of workers, are themselves in desperate need of reliable sources of credit and relief from the unfair monopolistic practices of the large corporations.

39. For workers’ control. The expropriation of the banks and corporations must be accompanied by the establishment of genuine democratic control over production. This is the necessary basis for the development of a rational plan of global production and distribution to replace the anarchy of the capitalist market and ensure that all decisions are based on social need. Decisions affecting conditions of work, safety, salaries, hiring and hours must be subject to the democratic voice of the workforce.

The introduction of new technologies, including Artificial Intelligence, electric vehicles (EVs) and new and ever more advanced forms of communication, has enormous potential to improve the living conditions of everyone. This is only possible, however, if these technologies are controlled and implemented by the workers and for the workers. Advances in production must be used not to increase corporate profits but to reduce the workweek with no loss in pay.

40. For social equality. The past half-century has seen a shocking growth of inequality. Trillions of dollars have been handed to Wall Street and the rich in the bank bailouts of 2008-2009 and 2020, the first year of the pandemic. This, combined with decades of a one-sided class war, has resulted in a situation where the wealth of the top 10 percent is now $101.62 trillion, or 67 percent of the national total, compared to the wealth owned by the bottom 50 percent, $3.78 trillion, or only 2.5 percent.

The apologists for capitalism claim that inequality is not related to the economic crisis, as if the withdrawal of trillions of dollars from productive use has no economic impact. The continual and insatiable drive of the financial aristocracy for more and more money has bankrupted the country and fueled one speculative binge after another. The same corporate CEOs who say they have no money to pay decent wages and who carry out massive job cuts somehow manage to pay themselves and their top executives millions or even tens of millions of dollars every year.

Immediate measures must be taken to promote social equality and a radical redistribution of wealth, including a progressive income tax that places the burden of taxation on the rich while lowering taxes for the vast majority of the population. Taxes on the profits of all major corporations must be sharply increased. The wealth of the capitalist oligarchs must be seized, while immediate measures must be taken to alleviate the crushing debt burden on workers, including the cancellation of household and student debt.

The fight for social equality includes opposition to all forms of discrimination based on race, gender, ethnicity, religion, national origin or sexual orientation. However, genuine equality does not mean the rationing out of limited educational and job opportunities on the basis of race or other categories. The SEP opposes racial and gender identity politics, which is based on the interests of sections of the upper middle class that seek greater access to positions of power and privilege within the capitalist system and the state.

41. Oppose militarism and war. The SEP calls for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US troops from the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. All military and financial aid to Israel must be stopped immediately and all arms shipments ended. The vast US military and intelligence apparatus and the massive arsenal of American imperialism, including the stockpile of nuclear weapons, must be dismantled, along with the shutting down of the hundreds of US overseas military bases and the disbanding of the standing army. This will free up immense resources to pay reparations to countries ravaged by US militarism and to meet critical social needs at home. The SEP opposes advanced plans by the ruling class to reintroduce military conscription in an attempt to dragoon millions of workers and youth to fight and die in the wars of American imperialism.

42. Defend democratic rights. The Socialist Equality Party advances democratic demands, including the abolition of the Electoral College, the elimination of unreasonable and undemocratic ballot access restrictions on third parties; the abolition of the Senate, which allocates disproportionate representation to small states; and the establishment of elections for all positions within the state, including for justices on the Supreme Court. We defend all democratic rights, including the right to an abortion, and equality for all individuals regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation.

Genuine democracy cannot be achieved within the existing state institutions. Nor is it possible without a complete restructuring of social and economic relations. The anti-democratic institutions and repressive organs of the capitalist state (the professional military, police and intelligence agencies) must be abolished and replaced by organizations of workers’ control and power, to establish a democratic and planned economy on a world scale.

43. Defend immigrant workers. The corporate-controlled politicians, media and trade union officials scapegoat immigrants and whip up racist and chauvinist sentiments. They promote the contemptible lie that this oppressed section of the working class is to blame for rising unemployment, falling wages and attacks on social conditions—the product of the corporate-driven attack on the entire working class. Their aim is to divert rising popular anger and frustration away from the capitalist system and divide and weaken the working class as a whole.

The SEP fights for the repeal of all anti-immigrant laws and the disbanding of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the US Border Patrol. It calls for all undocumented workers to be guaranteed full legal rights, including the right to work and the right to travel to their countries of origin without the threat of being barred from returning and separated from their families. Against the attempt to militarize borders and persecute immigrants, not only in the US but all over the globe, the working class must uphold the principle of open borders—the right of workers to live and work in whatever country they choose with full citizenship rights.

44. For a socialist public health program to globally eliminate COVID-19 and other pathogens. The response of the ruling class to the pandemic in the US and internationally has evolved into a “forever COVID” policy of unending mass reinfection, debilitation with Long COVID and death. This policy has been based on the subordination of public health to private profit and the repudiation of basic public health measures to prevent the spread of deadly pathogens.

The SEP reaffirms its resolution passed at the Seventh National Congress in 2022, which stated:

The two alternatives posed before mankind are either unending mass infection, debilitation and death, or the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and implementation of a policy of global elimination, to end all human-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2. The strategy of elimination requires the universal deployment of every weapon in the arsenal of measures to combat the virus, including mass vaccination, testing, isolation and contact tracing, along with the temporary shutdown of schools and non-essential production, with full income to workers and support for small businesses.

A rational response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the broader health crisis requires the establishment of universal, socialized medicine. The stranglehold of the giant insurance companies must be ended and the profit motive must be removed from the entire healthcare system and replaced with universal high quality healthcare, free and accessible to everyone.

45. For a rationally planned reorganization of the world economy to reverse climate change and protect the environment. Among the many environmental disasters confronting mankind, perhaps the most dangerous is climate change caused by global warming, driven by the capitalist exploitation of fossil fuels and other natural resources on the basis of private profit. The reality of climate change not only imperils the lives of hundreds of millions through rising oceans, more severe storms and the impact on agricultural production, it also creates the conditions for the emergence and spread of deadly pathogens like COVID-19.

Capitalism, rooted in the nation-state system, is incapable of addressing the global environmental crisis. Only the intervention of the international working class, in collaboration with principled scientists and engineers, can develop the technical methods and economic restructuring required to save humanity from impending global catastrophe.

46. The achievement of the SEP’s program requires the independent organization of the working class and its political independence from all capitalist parties and mechanisms for suppressing the class struggle. Therefore, the SEP calls for:

47. Build the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC)! To advance its interests, the working class must build genuine mass organizations—rank-and-file workplace, factory and neighborhood action committees—independent of the trade union apparatus. These organizations must begin with the needs of the working class and must be democratically controlled by the working class. They must take ever greater responsibility for unifying the working class—employed and unemployed, skilled and unskilled, native-born and immigrant, across different industries and workplaces—and organizing their common struggles in the United States and throughout the world against the capitalist class.

In initiating the formation of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees in 2021, the International Committee of the Fourth International stated:

The IWA-RFC will work to develop the framework for new forms of independent, democratic and militant rank-and-file organizations of workers in factories, schools and workplaces on an international scale. The working class is ready to fight. But it is shackled by reactionary bureaucratic organizations that suppress every expression of resistance…

The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, with the political assistance of the Fourth International and the Socialist Equality Parties, will strive to unify workers in a common worldwide struggle, opposing every effort by capitalist governments and the reactionary proponents of the innumerable forms of national, ethnic and racial chauvinism and identity politics to split up the working class into warring factions.

The central role of the AFL-CIO in backing American imperialism reveals the relationship between the development of an independent movement of the rank and file against the apparatus and the fight against war. The UAW and Shawn Fain’s central position in the Biden administration’s war agenda underscores the significance of the 2022 election campaign of Will Lehman for UAW president, on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program that called for the transfer of power to the rank and file and the development of the IWA-RFC. Lehman received 5,000 votes, despite a systematic campaign of voter suppression by the union apparatus in alliance with the state, revealing the broad base of support within the working class for a rebellion against the union bureaucracies and for socialist policies.

48. For the political independence of the working class. The fight for this program—for the social needs of the working class, for the defense of democratic rights, for an end to war—raises at every point the necessity for the independent political organization of the working class. It is impossible for the working class to advance its interests within the framework of the Democratic Party and the capitalist two-party system in the US.

The Socialist Equality Party opposes all political tendencies that work to block the independent political mobilization of the working class. The SEP opposes all those middle class organizations, including nominally “socialist” groups, which claim that the Democratic Party can be pushed to the left through mass pressure. This position is aimed at preventing the working class from establishing its own independent political party. The election campaigns of Jill Stein (Green Party) and Cornel West promote the fiction that opposition to war and inequality can be advanced without opposing capitalism. They speak for sections of the upper middle class that are tied to the capitalist system and imperialism.

49. For a workers’ state. The aim of the SEP is not to reform the existing institutions of the capitalist state but to abolish the capitalist state and establish new political structures and a workers’ government—that is, a government of the working class, by the working class and for the working class which will implement the socialist policies that are required to meet the needs of working people. A workers’ state must be based on new forms and structures of participatory democracy—arising in the course of revolutionary mass struggles and representative of the working class, the vast majority of the population.

For the international unity of the working class and world socialist revolution!

50. The Socialist Equality Party asserts that the interests of the working class in the United States can only be advanced as part of a united movement of the working class throughout the world.

51. The problems workers confront in the United States are, in essence, the same as those confronting workers in every other part of the world. An escalating global war, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, inequality and the growth of fascism and dictatorship—these are not merely American problems. They are world problems that require global solutions.

52. Capitalism is a global economic system. Vast transnational corporations scour the earth for the cheapest labor and for raw materials, producing for a world market. The same banks and financial markets dictate policy in every country. Because production is global, the problems of mass society can be resolved only on the basis of an international socialist program.

53. The SEP in the United States is in political solidarity with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the World Party of Socialist Revolution. The task of the SEP in the US is to develop within the working class a socialist leadership, based upon the international perspectives of the Fourth International, the movement founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938 in opposition to the Stalinist betrayal of the Russian Revolution.

54. The election campaign of the SEP in 2024 will fight for this perspective, the only way forward for the working class in the United States and throughout the world.