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By the League Basic Needs Electoral Committee
We stand at a historic juncture. Millions of Americans are protesting across the nation every week against the Trump administration’s turn to fascism – and the rapid elimination of human labor by digital automation that is driving it. These protests are creating a political crisis that the working class will have to fight to influence. Workers have a choice: either save the private property system and allow humanity to be destroyed or save humanity and the planet by destroying the profit system. Workers can begin to win when they coalesce into a social force to support each other’s struggles for basic needs and for justice.
BUILDING A SOCIAL FORCE
Working class political independence requires organizational forms and ideological development.
We need social and political organizations rooted in working class and dispossessed communities, democratically controlled by members and committed to securing class interests. The pandemic-born mutual aid networks and the recent labor organizing at Amazon, Starbucks and tenant unions in major cities are all important models for self-governance.
Ideological development is equally critical. We have to shed the illusion that capitalism can be reformed. This has begun. The current growing resistance shows workers contemplating programs in their class interests rather than simply fighting defensive battles against attacks.
AI: REVOLUTION IN THE ECONOMY
The political crisis is caused by the absolute antagonism between artificial intelligence (AI) and late-stage capitalism. Capitalism by definition is commodity production based on the buying and selling of labor power. When labor is eliminated, the system collapses. The World Economic Forum says 41 percent of employers plan to replace staff with AI. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has projected that AI will soon be delivering 30 percent increases in productivity every year.
The elimination of human labor creates a political dilemma for the ruling class. How to control – or eliminate – the surplus workers left behind? The spread of genocide today is not an accident in places like Palestine, Yemen and Sudan. In the United States, it is reflected in the trend toward mass deportations, mass incarceration and internment camps for unhoused people. It is the driving force behind today’s fascist offensive.
But it does not have to be this way. If workers controlled this technological revolution, it could produce an inexpensive abundance of basic needs, eliminate drudgery, solve pressing social problems and liberate humanity from unnecessary toil. The question is how to gain that control.
Social consciousness is the next step in that direction. Organizers of the nationwide April 5 “Hands Off!” protests estimated three to five million participants gathered in over 1,400 locations. Thousands of smaller community actions also took place, including Tesla Takedowns, May Day demonstrations, town hall meetings and school walkouts.
This is a social revolution and it is drawing in every sector of society and creating a wealth of teachable moments for politicization which entails education about building class power into a social force. When teachers striking for better schools find common cause with parents fighting housing insecurity; when environmental leaders connect ecosystem collapse to corporate tyranny, these are teachable moments.
FRACTURING OF TWO-PARTY POLITICS
Working class political organizations are forced to grapple with their role in the electoral system. Both major political parties today are thoroughly controlled by billionaire corporations, but the political crisis is forcing those parties to split and realign. The Republican Party is already rejecting workers who refuse to accept the technofascist agenda. The Democratic Party is splitting between its pro-corporate leadership and its base that is desperately fighting for its basic needs. A third party in the United States will arise from polarization in the existing parties which in turn opens space for new ideas and new political formations. It will not emerge simply because some people try to organize one.
The April Stop Oligarchy Tour with Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew enormous crowds in red and purple states in the Midwest and West. Since February, more than 600 town hall protests have erupted all across the country. GOP district lawmakers faced blistering criticism for the firing of federal workers, the dismantling of the social safety net and for threatening retirement funds and health care.
The spontaneous resistance arises from problems that can no longer be resolved within the capitalist system. As people realize that “government efficiency” means their own impoverishment, they search for political alternatives. Workers have no choice but to participate in this process and join the third parties as they emerge. Traditional politics cannot “fix” an economic system that doesn’t need workers anymore.
NEW SYSTEM
The strategic priority is to keep basic needs and justice work at the forefront, while collaborating with each other and with every sector of the social movement. This is how movements for health care, housing, education, women’s reproductive freedom, the environment, diversity, anti-criminalization, anti-deportation and anti-genocide can move forward. Working class victory demands a political plan that rejects a return to the duopoly’s corporate democracy. That is what led us into this fascist administration in the first place. It requires class-based and transformational solutions, focused on those with similar material circumstances while we continue to fight for unity against the common dangers of Project 2025.
Revolutionaries fight for the social consciousness that allows the working class to rid itself of old ideas and become politically independent of the ruling class. Socially conscious workers understand they are members of an exploited class and they need class solidarity to unite to defeat corporate rule.
Revolutionaries also always fight for the vision of a new system, one that democratizes technology and productive forces while decommodifying essential needs. This means public ownership of critical technological infrastructure, worker-controlled automation and the guarantee of housing, health care, food and education as fundamental human rights. Replace market anarchy with democratic planning. Organize production to meet human needs rather than private profit. It means creating governance forms and decision-making to ensure distribution based on need, not billionaire tyranny.
Published on May 23, 2025
This article originated in Rally!
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