Answering the hard questions

When members, friends and allies gather for the Workers World Party Conference in New York Nov. 17-18, it won’t be for a set of morale-boosting speeches—as important as those may sometimes be for revolutionary activists fighting in the belly of the beast.

Instead, they will be asking the hard questions that people have about the prospects for class struggle and socialism in the United States and worldwide. They will be looking for ways to shed light on answers that will help illuminate the road ahead.

Many people would agree that capitalism stinks and the world is in big trouble while it runs amuck. But they wonder: Can the working class fulfill its historic mission as Marx and Engels defined it in the Communist Manifesto, to bring about a revolutionary transformation of the social and political order toward the ultimate obliteration of inequality?

Can capitalism be overthrown, or are we doomed to live in ever-diminishing conditions? Or to see the world destroyed through escalating war and environmental ruin?

Many reformers and academics embrace Marx’s analysis of capitalism, but say he got it wrong on the working class. Why does WWP think the working class is still the crucial force of change?

Do the setbacks to workers’ rights and the fundamental changes in its composition bode ill or well for the future of the struggle? What is the likely outcome of the global leveling of wages of workers in imperialist and oppressed countries brought about by the new phase of imperialism popularly known as globalization?

Because the working class and oppressed have been pushed back for the last three decades, does this mean they are incapable of fighting back anymore?

History offers us some clues. The Paris Commune and the international struggle for the eight-hour workday erupted after years of quietude following the European uprisings of 1848. In the mid-1910s, while working on his analysis of imperialism, Lenin told an audience of students that he thought it might be many decades until the revolution began. Just a couple of years later—exactly 90 years ago—the great Russian Revolution commenced.

If the working class is capable of rising to the challenge—then is a revolutionary party necessary? Can socialism really work? Is any revolutionary society doomed to repeat the problems and mistakes of the Soviet Union in the 20th century, or do different material conditions and class relationships point the way toward a different outcome?

An important contribution to this discussion is the document “Challenges in Organizing the U.S. Working Class in the Post-Soviet Period,” originally presented by WWP at the International Communist Seminar in Brussels last May. It is available for download at www.workersworld.net, along with conference information and registration. For more information, email [email protected] or call (212) 627-2994.

The WWP conference, “Fighting Racism and War—For a Socialist Future,” will be held in the school auditorium at 127 E. 22 Street in Manhattan. Registration begins at 9 a.m. on Nov. 17 and the first panel will kick off at 10 a.m. On-site childcare is available.