Dear bread and roses caucus,
Hello! I’m contacting you, as well as several of the other caucuses of the DSA, in an effort to form a united front for the establishment of a Labor Party, which I believe this country sorely and desperately needs. Now more than ever, in fact, as both working people in the US, and the people of Palestine, are being increasingly crushed and oppressed under the boot of Capital, and its continual crises. Its no secret, that beginning with the end of the second world war, union membership has faced a continual decline, that has seen no signs of reversal. Brutal austerity has followed. Despite this ruin we find ourselves in, a miracle has also happened; a tremendous shift in consciousness of the organized working class, in favor of itself and it’s own potential in socialism. This moment will not last forever, though; we do not find ourselves at the beginning of a wave, but rather, all gathered round a spark, that is all too quickly fading. For this spark, we must quickly add fuel, or else it will fade, and we may find ourselves in an even more brutal darkness than the one which we remember previously.
How can such a spark be made permanent, be made to last? We must achieve institutional representation. But what kind of institution is it that will fuel our flame, as opposed to smothering and extinguishing it (we must acknowledge both of these as possibilities)? It can be only a political institution formed on the basis of, and by the agency of, the organized working class; by their mass, collective, democratic action. This is a workers party. Other institutions, similarly democratic but elected by a membership undefined, and unorganized otherwise economically; this ambiguous agency is precisely what classical socialists referred to as ‘bourgeois,’ and had much weariness of. There is, of course, nothing wrong with such institutions, they are essential to civil society, and even some sections of the worker’s movement. But, that withstanding, they are still unfit for the task of keeping the flame of the worker’s movement alive, as their agency lies not solely in the organized working class, but elsewhere, in urban society as a whole.
Given this ephemeral character, such institutions are also not fit as fighting vehicles for winning reforms. Reforms must be fought for by the workers directly, through the hegemony of established representation, by a fighting party in civil society. When reforms are fought for indirectly, by institutions that aren't the direct expression of the organized working class, the fight itself carries less weight, and leadership can be easily bribed, bought off, or even eliminated, given a state of emergency. With leadership by these types of institutions, this is not a recipe for the effective mobilization of the masses, but rather their demobilization. A worker’s party, given its organic link to the very core of the Class, is the only institution fit to bring the masses into long-lasting and effective mobilization. Only mobilization by and under worker’s leadership could, also, accomplish a task as bold, and strategically complex, as splitting the Democratic Party, as well. For such a task, institutional memory is needed, on level higher and deeper than a rotating bureaucracy can feasibly provide. Such is only within the domain of the capacity of a worker’s, or labor, Party. To establish and build such a party, though, organizations, particularly caucuses representing socialist intellectuals, need to come together in a united front effort. Thus, it is my sincere wish that Bread and Roses Caucus will join the United Front to establish a labor party in the United States, as we hope many other Caucuses will as well.
I look forward to hearing back!
Sincerely yours,
Aimee Zee
