Saladin Muhammad’s View – building an independent working-class and oppressed mass political party
Originally published on 9/7/2019
The popular front strategy of many on the Left against fascism has meant supporting the so-called liberal wing of capitalism — in the U.S. case, the Democratic Party, as the so-called lesser of two evils. Forces on the Left, especially among the nationally oppressed working-class sectors, must develop and promote an independent political action program that links running and electing political candidates to a strategic program and plan to build areas of mass-based power.
Uniting the mass bases around an independent program and in worker assemblies that run local candidates for offices in non-partisan elections, or organize for local and statewide referendums, can begin to establish the identity and challenges of the mass party in the electoral arena.
Elected officials must be accountable to a conscious and active political mass base — a mass base that is not only active in elections but that, day after day, is building power and influence in the social and economic institutions within the political districts, cities, counties, and states of the elected officials.
We also must expose how bourgeois democracy intentionally disenfranchises large numbers of working-class people of color, and how the vote for the highest office of the United States, the president, is not decided by the majority vote of the citizens. The building of mass-based struggles challenging this undemocratic electoral system must be one of the major tasks of the mass work toward building an independent mass working-class and oppressed peoples’ party.
The labor movement, as the most organized and resourceful section of the working class, must be won as a major force for building an independent working-class and oppressed mass political party. With rank-and-file democracy and control and a social-movement unionism perspective, trade unions are in the best position to help forge unity among a large percentage of the U.S. multinational working-class.
