By Dee Sánchez

This article is based on a talk given during a May 18 Workers World Party national discussion focused on “The decline of imperialism, the global class war today, the changing working class and the tasks of the party.” 

When you are unable to understand the effects of capitalism and you see the conditions of people, your family, your neighbors and your community, you question everything that’s wrong within. Why can’t you get out of debt? Why is your neighborhood in a debilitated condition? Why is our local school system constantly cutting out essential services for children? And you internalize those as inherent parts of being poor, Black and Brown.

You also wonder why the U.S. is in constant wars — while claiming to spread democracy and protect human rights. You wonder about the constant murder of Black and Brown people at the hands of police who claim to “protect and serve.” And you listen to politicians claiming they must reach across the aisle to compromise on issues that significantly impact the day to day lives of working people.

Then one year a virus sweeps the world and you see and watch how callous and careless the U.S. politicians are at protecting lives and properly informing us, and this ultimately results in more than one million deaths, the highest per capita mortality in the world.

You witness how natural disasters rampage through small countries and how insignificant the people of those countries are to the U.S. leaders, to the extent that they lie about the death count. And one day you bear witness to horrific acts of violence against a people who for years suffered numerous attacks of displacement, famine, resource denial and constant surveillance.

You’re witnessing genocide and also witnessing the complicity, funding and support this country provides. The uselessness of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice in the face of a genocide, but mostly the barbarism and terroristic nature of the U.S. rulers is now in full display.

U.S. can’t hide its nature

The contradictions are clearer each day. U.S. imperialism has reached a point where it can’t hide its war-driven nature and its refusal to follow the lead of its people. Even when people are asking for better wages, free health care, a ceasefire in Gaza, climate-change policies, inclusive books in schools — to name a few — they’re met with the U.S. ruling class’s active repression against its own U.S. citizens.

These are not the most revolutionary demands, but it’s revealing that even in the face of baseline demands, the U.S. state sides with oppression and fascism.

And while internally Washington wages war against its own citizens, its repressive and genocidal nature is most oppressive against the peoples in the Global South. The U.S. and Israel have bared their fangs most evidently in their genocide against the people of Palestine, fully exposing who are the world’s real thieves and murderous terrorists.

U.S. imperialism continues to plunder Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands and Western Asia, stealing resources, relying on low-paid labor, stealing land and murdering Indigenous peoples. These acts are all part and parcel of the foundational history of this country.

As the original settler state, the U.S. is the architect of and holds the blueprint for the fascistic ideologies that the Nazi regime repeated in Germany and were the progenitors of Israel. This formation and its iteration today must be reckoned with if we are building class solidarity.

Imperialism weaponizes differences

The ruling class has weaponized our identities to divide us. The most oppressed people in our class must be wary of this weaponization and strive to build class solidarity. We’ve been misled often by focusing on the “best female candidate” or look over here at the “first Puerto Rican this or that,” with claims that these candidates understand our community, and they best represent us.

Time and time again these feckless representatives have revealed themselves as class traitors. Our communities should take lessons from past revolutionaries and today’s community organizers and activists who are internationalists and anti-imperialists and were and are on the ground fighting, on different fronts, for our collective liberation.

On the other hand, white workers must have their own reckoning and abandon the wages of whiteness, abandon their propagandized worldview and recognize colonized peoples’ humanity.

It’s safe to say that working class people as a whole must do some real grounding, built around political education and mass collective work. Mobilizing the working class in actions is essential, but insufficient if devoid of political education. The U.S. propaganda machine works overtime to keep the state’s fascistic actions under wraps, but the cracks are unmasking this crumbling empire. The work of Workers World newspaper is integral for this, but perhaps in the near future we can take up other forms of media and dedicate as much if not more attention to those modes of communication.

I’m also of the mindset that revolution is built and led by young comrades. It’s not that the elders don’t have a dog in this fight, but the young comrades’ point of view and how they choose to move this party should be given special focus. A material analysis of our party will dare us to consider what has changed and what is changing in the party.

How do we adjust to those changes? How do we continue the same process as the composition of party membership changes? This is no suggestion to change ideology but to consider changes in tactics.

I submit what I said today for criticism and to further struggle, because I’d rather struggle with comrades where revolutionary love and patience abounds. I also know that it is in this struggle that we sharpen our analysis, which is essential to furthering our message to the masses.