Declare war on all that divides our class

Larry Holmes WW photo: John Catalinotto

Excerpts from a speech by Secretariat member Larry Holmes to the WWP national conference on Nov. 17-18.

No matter what happens to the economy, or when it happens, it’s already a crisis for the workers. Imperialist globalization has reorganized the working class worldwide. With this new world division of labor it has made geographical boundaries irrelevant. It is beginning to level the living standard of workers all over.

General Motors, Chrysler and Ford want the workers to earn one third of their wages with no benefits, because that is what they pay workers in Mexico.

This knocks away an ideological pillar of capitalism in the U.S., the middle class myth. Let’s face it, a lot of workers have held up their homes as proof of it. “I have a home, I have a car, that is why I am different.” But this is substituting credit for crumbs. They are now using their houses as credit cards. Now that temporary opium is being taken away.

The ruling class did everything to keep the myth alive.

I believe the crisis we are facing raises anew the need for a workers’ party. I’m not just dusting off something from a book in the past.

A working class party can’t just be proclaimed, there’s no quick solution. You can’t just put out a magazine. It can only be built by engaging in the struggles of the workers.

Now that the situation is changing, one of the things we will have to do is go to the ones who want to have a working class party. Nothing is more important than young militants, Black, white and Latin@. And that youth movement must be oriented to the working class.

WWP is discussing what to do about the elections. The Democrats can’t win anything for the workers. The workers need to speak in their own name.

The biggest political problem is how to defend immigrant workers and keep them from being divided from the workers born here. Look at the Democrats—they want the Latin@ vote, but they don’t want it bad enough even to defend the right of the undocumented to have drivers’ licenses. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama can’t be depended on.

The immigrant workers brought back May Day and conducted what was really a general strike. The working class needs to emulate them, not out of sympathy but out of solidarity. The first thing we must do is declare war on everything that fragments and divides our class.

The working class must stand unconditionally with those workers who are more oppressed and exploited. When that happens, then you have unity.

We need more anti-racist mobilizations. There’s a class struggle over Martin Luther King’s birthday. We must take that day back and combine the struggle against racism with the struggle for immigrant rights.