It is becoming clear to the whole working class that the bourgeois political parties do not act in our interests and have never worked for our benefit, that the class distinctions in our society cannot be remedied by reform or redistribution of power among members of the ruling class. Only by our class taking independent action can we fight against the attacks on our living standards and war, fighting for a society based on needs rather than profits.

Recent Democrat Faults and Failures

We’re capitalists, and that’s just the way it is.

Nancy Pelosi

The Democratic party has continually demonstrated that it is contrary to their interests to combat the direct attacks on the working class by Trump and the Republicans. During the Biden administration, the Democrats displayed the mutual agreement of the whole ruling class in favor of immigration crackdowns, state sanctioned genocide in Gaza, repression of oppositional voices, and an overall antagonistic relationship with the working class. All of these policies, either begun or expanded by the Biden administration, are now being continued under Trump’s administration with varying degrees of escalation. Now Democrats oppose the severity and heavy handedness of the Trump administration, but never the actual policies themselves!

By weakly challenging the Trump administration’s methods and not the policy, the Democrats curry support for themselves as the new “law and order” party. For example, during the LA protests, Governor Newsom claimed that “the federal takeover of the California National Guard was ‘not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because [Republicans] want a spectacle.’ ⁽¹⁾ He then urged protesters not to give them one, calling for “peaceful demonstrations”. In the same breath that Newsom supports opposition to Trump’s policy he is sure, with all his political succor, to threaten protesters with the LAPD in the event that opposition to Trump gets outside of Democrat control.

Yet, by this very statement, Newsom demonstrates a lack of understanding shared by the entire Democratic Party. The protests in LA, and subsequent sympathy demonstrations, highlight the working class’ ability to react to continuing repression outside of the Democratic or Republican parties. From the faintness of their opposition, the consistency of their policies, the repression of working-class activity, there is no distinction left to be made between the bourgeois political parties outside their respective methods and tactics. The problem is not simply that Democrats are using us to further their agenda, not that their platform is not radical enough, but that they take the political struggle out of the workers’ hands and sabotage our chances of building an independent class movement.

The Democrats are themselves, above all, capitalists. Their party represents a conglomeration of capitalist interests that invest in both the party activities and the campaigns of candidates. Democrats refuse to meet so many of the workers' demands because the interest of their class is directly opposed to the interest of ours. The Democrats opt to redirect our outrage to dead ends because if they didn’t we might strike at the heart of their power over us. How often is class action terminated on the rocks of bourgeois leadership? When Democrats encourage “oppositional” protests, and we heed their call, we remain subservient to capital by participating in the charade of democracy. If an effective opposition is to be made against our oppression, the working class must oppose all of the ruling class, not just one or another subsection under the direction of another.

Bourgeois “Solutions” to Working Class Problems

After progressive candidate Zohran Mamdani’s successful primary in the New York City mayoral race, progressive Democrats, and several groups on the left have made arguments that cracks are forming in the Democrat establishment. However, Mamdani’s program would actually maintain the Democrat status-quo while relieving pressure on the bourgeoisie from the overburdened NYC working-class by passing reforms that falsely appear to improve capitalist conditions. The progressive platform only guarantees leadership of production to members of the bourgeoisie that use unions and government agencies to act on behalf of the ruling class interests as a whole.

While these labor unions and government regulators claim to serve working class interests, they actually benefit from redirecting the workers away from class action that furthers our needs. Unions are bound by a thousand threads to the capitalist state and the company. Not only do they depend legally on the boss and NLRB, but in these times of crisis, they actively negotiate against the workers by enforcing losses on them. This translates to the direct struggle. As one labor leader once claimed, “no one wants to walk the picket line.” So often the unions call off strikes prematurely in order to reach a hasty settlement which returns the strikers back to work so the union can continue the status quo. By delegating away their power, the working class allows union representatives to overrule their original demands in favor of what is allowed by the capitalists who employ them. The same is true of government regulation agencies which act even more outside of the working class, merely enforcing legislation written by bourgeois representatives. Such policy only attempts to convince the working class of the effectiveness of bourgeois rule so that we might not take the struggle into our own hands.

Perhaps one of Mamdani’s most radical reform propositions is the establishment of “a network of city-owned grocery stores focused on keeping prices low, not making a profit”. ⁽²⁾ However, the relationship between workers and their work place would remain fundamentally unaltered by such a change of hands. Mamdani tries to justify these government stores by claiming that, “without having to pay rent or property taxes, they will reduce overhead and pass on savings to shoppers. They will buy and sell at wholesale prices, centralize warehousing and distribution, and partner with local neighborhoods on products and sourcing”. But then, is this not the same process by which private capitalists accumulate wealth and resources in ever greater scale, demand a continuing reduction in their cost of production year over year, and strive violently to produce cheaper and cheaper goods against their competition even in the event of a temporary loss in profits?

Were a growth in the concentration of capital ever capable of freeing the working class, would it not have been free decades ago? Why now, in the hands of the state, would the same productive relations suddenly benefit the working class? The reality is that Mamdani’s state grocery stores come in the face of an already massive decline in profit in that sector of the economy resulting from Covid-19 lockdowns, the ever rising operational cost of massive supermarket enterprises, and competition with online stores like Amazon. By state-ifying failing stores, the government is able to eat huge losses and reorganize the workplace to achieve maximum profitability and competitiveness. These more efficient stores can then be privatized and sold off to investors who will reap the benefits of new profits, and the reduced cost of groceries for the working class will be undercut by an intensification in the labor process and inflationary cuts to real wages.

Furthermore, even if any or all of Mamdani’s policies could be achieved by his administration, the union-built housing projects would only benefit the small section of the working class which have access to union membership and work for companies with government contracts, while the housing crisis and the suffering of the other members of the working class goes unaddressed. Government grocery stores would be limited by the financial constraints of the US government, which itself sustains its position of power through inflation and tax burdens on the working class. This principle of limitations is what defines any reformist platform. In order for any of Mamdani’s platform to be implemented in the first place, he first has to get elected and second has to get buy-in from the rest of the bourgeois political structure, introducing even more potential for a watering down of any meagre amount of working class interest. More importantly, all of his solutions rely upon the continuation of the pre-existing capitalist state structure.

Self Activity Over Delegation

Not only do band-aid solutions not work, but the root of the issue lies in the capitalist system as such. The United States government exists to support the interests of the capitalist class, to protect their investments and expand their margins of profit. Each politician is either themselves a capitalist or a representative of one or another huge moneyed interest who funds, supports, and dictates their campaign. A change in capitalism’s “implementation” is not only incapable of changing working class conditions but rather is explicitly against our interests. Progressive policy is not “better” for the working class than conservative policy; the two are unique expressions of the same capitalist rule. Just as Republicans pit the working class against itself over immigration status to secure rising profits from reduced wages, progressives state-ify and regulate away inefficiencies in order to intensify the extraction of profit from the working class. Such “progress” is a step sideways for the bourgeoisie and yet another a step backwards for the working class. Rather than allowing these political parties to continue to exploit us in our own name, the working class ought to reject the miserable leadership of the capitalists and seek to forward our own class interests. So long as the working class is led by the agents of capital, in the state or in the unions, the crisis of capitalist war, exploitation, and oppression will continue unhampered by decorative political red tape.

The distinctions between the working class and the capitalist class can not be reconciled; they must be overthrown. The interests of those wage laborers who work in order to survive are directly opposed to the class which employs that same labor power to fill their own pockets with greater and greater profits. While the working class fights for survival through strikes and labor action, the fight still remains on defensive ground against ever increasing exploitation. The bourgeois interests in the unions and political parties, who largely take over leadership of this battle, always stop short of achieving victory for the working class due to the fact that they act on behalf of an opposing class interest. If the class war is to be won, it can not be through marginal, progressive, and relative betterment of the working class. Each such measure merely sidesteps the problem, the working class must seize political power for themselves and throw off the system of wage labor which conditions their oppression!

To this end, workers must go beyond the union-led strike, the reformist platform, and national borders. By forming committees of workers within the workplace which direct labor action themselves, rather than delegating power to the unions, we can put forward our own class interests in its entirety and without compromise. Self-organized associations of workers in all industries are essential to bringing about a class-wide offensive against bourgeois political power and uniting with our working class comrades across the world to fight the global imperialist powers of capital. Ultimately, the working class under its own leadership through an international communist party will finally be able to throw off the chains of the capitalist mode of production, which relies upon profits and exploitation, to create a new international society based upon the production of our needs instead.

Internationalist Workers’ Group
September 2025

Notes:

Image: InformedImages (CC BY 4.0), commons.wikimedia.org

(1) newsweek.com

(2) zohranfornyc.com