Why We Need a Workers Party

15 March 2020
Ashton Ayers

Why We Need a Workers Party

It is time to form a new party based explicitly on the interests of the working class. We need a party that is made of working people, that organizes working people, and that fights for working people. Neither the Democrats or the Republicans represent the working class. Both parties represent the interests of corporations, of business, of landlords, of the rich and upper-middle class, and are either hostile to the interests of working people, indifferent, or only give lip service to the issues that affect the working class.

At this time there is a working class movement around us, and more people than in decades are becoming class conscious, politically active, and engaged in organizing. This has taken place in many different spaces, in Tenants Unions, community organizations, in labor unions, in student groups, in the DSA, and also within the Democratic Party through the strategy of entryism. In Iowa this strategy of entryism has not been successful, and after 4 years of trying and throwing all that we had into primary challenges we have not won. We have registered thousands of non-voters and young people for the Democrats, knocked hundreds of thousands of doors, made millions of calls, and the party’s leadership remains ideologically opposed to giving a single inch to working-class advocates. Where are the Democratic politicians in Iowa fighting for single payer, for college for all, for worker ownership, for agrarian reform, and for a green new deal? There aren’t many at all. 

Meanwhile the liberal status quo politics of the Democratic Party fail to present a meaningful alternative to 50% of Iowans that continue to withhold their ballots in elections. The Republicans control the vast majority of the state, including a trifecta of our state government, while appealing culturally to rural Iowans that cast ballots against their own self interest. The Republican Party props up corporate agriculture, assaults the civil rights of Iowans, and aggressively opposes any meaningful change for working people.

You may agree that the two parties have failed us, and I would like to present the alternative that we can form our own party for the working-class.

We should now come together to form a new party of Workers that advocates explicitly for the working-class in direct contrast to the other parties of money, business, and the status quo. We should not spend anymore time begging for concessions from parties ideologically and materially opposed to the interests of working people, we should organize our own party so that our energy, effort, organizing, creativity, and passion is used to build our own institutions that can counter and win against those in power. 

We can build a Workers Party and we can win. We can bring in the thousands of Iowans that were inspired to political action because of insurgent campaigns like Bernie 2016 and Bernie 2020. We can bring in the thousands of young people that are unregistered or unsatisfied with the two party system. We can bring in the hundreds of thousands of disinterested people that have given up on trying because there is no one to advocate for their material interests. We can build a year-round movement organization and party that fights against capital while building class consciousness across Iowa and defining what working-class means and what the working-class needs. We can unite the hundreds of active partisan organizers, thousands of passionate working-class people, and hundreds of thousands of working-class people that have yet to identify with the working-class and have yet to join the struggle for our mutual self-interest. We can build a platform of radical change for our state and set the narrative on political and collective action. We can train activists, organizers, and candidates for office. We can advocate for political change and win. We can organize in communities and on campuses and win. And we can run candidates for office and win.

So let’s please discuss the need for a Workers Party, what it would mean, what it could be, and what it could do, and then move into action steps on making it a reality. Thank you all for being a part of this.