The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) is calling on all workers to support the campaign of Joe Kishore for US president and Jerry White for vice president.
Trump and Biden do not speak for the interests of workers, but for corporations and the billionaires. The Democrats and Republicans agree on far more than they disagree. They agree on war, on austerity, on bailouts for the rich.
The working class, the vast majority of the population, is effectively disenfranchised. We are given the right to vote for one of two candidates that represent the interests of our employers.
The SEP is fighting for a society run by the working class and in the interests of the working class. Socialism means equality. It means an end to a society in which the labor of the vast majority is exploited by the tiny minority. It means the establishment of genuine, democratic control of the economy to meet social need, not private profit.
These elections are being held under extraordinary circumstances.
In the Middle East, Israel is carrying out a horrific genocide in Gaza, with the support of the Biden administration. Hospitals, food distribution sites, and civilian homes have been deliberately targeted, with over 33,000 killed and 72,000 wounded, the vast majority women and children. Doctors, journalists, food aid workers and others have been executed with the dead bodies bulldozed into ditches.
The Democrats and the Republicans back the genocide in Gaza because the American ruling class, the oligarchs and billionaires, see it as part of a broader war for world domination. This includes the escalating US-NATO war against Russia, which risks nuclear annihilation, and the developing confrontation against Iran and China.
At the same time, both the Democrats and Republicans are determined to make the working class pay the massive costs of these wars. Tens of thousands of teachers are being laid off, schools are closing and bridges are collapsing, even as Biden signed a bipartisan spending bill last month that provided $825 billion to the US Defense Department.
Every year, nearly $1 trillion is squandered on America’s war machine, while the government says there is no money to help working class families who are paying 30 percent more for groceries than they did in 2020 or to prevent the deaths of 1,000 people a week who are still dying from COVID.
The ruling class is also waging a war on democratic rights. Trump is seeking to divert social anger by scapegoating immigrants and building a fascistic movement to crush the growing opposition of the working class. The Democrats, meanwhile, have declared an “all-out war” on third parties and are courting right-wing Republicans and embracing the attack on immigrants and other democratic rights, in order to win bipartisan support for its war policies. A war that has no support in the population cannot be waged without imposing dictatorship.
In opposition to both parties, the SEP advances the following:
Break the economic monopoly of the billionaires and millionaires! US billionaires saw their collective wealth rise to $5.2 trillion in November 2023, the highest amount ever recorded. The ill-gotten gains of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and the other corporate parasites must be seized and used for the public good. The giant banks, corporations, technology and communications companies must be transformed into public utilities, collectively owned and democratically controlled by the working class. Record student loan, auto, credit card and household debt must be canceled.
Trillions for schools, health care and infrastructure, not death and destruction! The US spends more on war than the next 11 countries combined. The war machine must be shut down, all overseas bases closed and the nearly $1 trillion a year defense funding used instead for a crash program to refit every classroom with modern learning tools and ventilation to ensure clean air to prevent illnesses like COVID-19, hire millions of teachers and nurses, build low-cost housing and public transit systems and eradicate poverty.
Stop all job cuts! Guarantee the right to good-paying, safe and secure jobs for all! Giant corporations like UPS, the Big Three automakers and Big Tech are carrying out massive job cuts. They are using Artificial Intelligence, robotics, autonomous and electric vehicles and other technological innovations to increase productivity and profits and discard millions of workers. Under the control of the working class these tools can be used to shorten the work week and, at the same time, vastly improve the living standards of all workers.
Defend immigrants and democratic rights! The SEP insists that every worker must have the right to live anywhere they choose with full citizenship rights. At the same time, we defend abortion rights and oppose all forms of discrimination that are used to divide and weaken the working class.
Unite the working class internationally for peace, social equality and a secure future for the next generation! None of the problems facing modern society—war, the pandemic, climate change, economic security–can be solved on a national basis. The SEP fights to unite American workers with their class brothers and sisters around the world in a common fight for international socialism.
The Socialist Equality Party is running in the US presidential elections to break through the logjam of the capitalist two parties. Our aim is to build a powerful political movement of the working class that will transfer power and decision-making from the super-rich few to the vast majority of the population, the workers whose collective labor produces all of society’s wealth.
The past year has seen an explosive growth of strikes and protests in the US and around the world. But the Biden administration has utilized the services of the trade union bureaucracies to prevent this movement from coalescing into a powerful movement against capitalism and war. This included the phony “stand up” strike by United Auto Workers bureaucracy, which was followed by a sellout contract that has paved the way for the mass firings of temporary workers and tens of thousands of layoffs as the auto industry transitions to EV production.
In opposition to the pro-war and pro-capitalist labor bureaucracies, the SEP calls on workers to build rank-and-file committees in every factory and workplace to fight job cuts and for workers’ control over the speed of production, the introduction of automation, and health and safety. These committees, democratically controlled by rank-and-file workers themselves, will form the basis to abolish the union apparatus and transfer power to workers on the shop floor.
The SEP is also fighting for the expansion of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) to coordinate the struggle against job cuts and corporate dictatorship across national borders.
The two big-business parties are determined to prevent the SEP from getting on the ballot because they do not want the growing struggles of the working class against job cuts, inflation and capitalist exploitation to be connected with the fight against genocide, world war and imperialism. But the war at home against the working class cannot be stopped without uniting with workers and young people around the world to stop war and put an end to the capitalist system that causes it.
The SEP is your party! Help us get on the ballot in Michigan and other states! Donate to support our campaign! Go to socialism2024.org to join this fight and change the course of history.