Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube

Class Struggle and Revolutionary Strategy

Editorial of Left Voice Magazine #5: We are seeing situations of instability, class struggle, and opportunities for the Left. Now, more than ever, socialists need a clear strategy for building up working-class power.

Left Voice

December 11, 2019
Facebook Twitter Share
Photo: Matías Baglietto

Class struggle is back. After many years of one-sided class war, working people across the world are rising up against the ravages of capitalism.

The opening shots were fired by the Yellow Vests in France. Sparked by rising fuel prices and austerity measures, this mass movement garnered international attention as protestors defied bans and injunctions, endured ruthless repression, and forced the government to retreat.

Get your copy of Left Voice magazine, which includes this editorial.

In late October, millions of people took to the streets of Chile. The trigger for this revolt was an increase in subway fares, but people on the streets chanted, “It’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years.” The movement is challenging the repressive neoliberal regime, passed down from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. As this issue goes to press, a civic-military coup, backed by the United States, has deposed Evo Morales in Bolivia. But the popular resistance in El Alto and elsewhere is opposing the new, self-appointed authorities, having stemmed, at least for the moment, the advance of the right.

In Ecuador, Lebanon, Puerto Rico, and other places, movements started out with different demands but quickly began to confront capitalist regimes that cannot offer more than minor concessions. In the United States, one year after a wave of teachers’ strikes swept the country, workers at the iconic General Motors Company went on strike for 40 days—the longest strike at GM since 1973.

Come to the release party for this issue on Friday, December 13, at 6:30 pm at Starr Bar, 214 Starr Street, Brooklyn.

After decades of retreat for the left, working-class organizations need to be rebuilt or radically transformed and the idea of a classless society brought back into the imagination of working-class people.

Given this situation, the left needs to think the question of strategy. We can look at the experience of Salvador Allende’s government in Chile in the 1970s to critically assess the idea of a “democratic” road to socialism. Doing so will provide insights into the current struggles against the Chilean government. While the masses demand “Out with Piñera,” the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) and the misnamed Communist Party seek to negotiate with the government. Paying lip service to the mass demonstrations, these reformist parties seek to channel the popular outrage into an institutional, controlled process.

Meeting the demands of Chile’s workers, youth, and women will require more than the crumbs offered by Piñera. It will require severe measures against the big capitalists who control the country’s wealth and resources. This cannot be accomplished via state institutions inherited from the dictatorship. A realistic strategy for working people fighting for their interests inevitably involves a confrontation with the capitalist state and the construction of a new order based on workers’ power. Although still small and scattered, bodies of workers’ self-organization are beginning to emerge: council-like structures that link the different sectors in struggle and have the potential to form a new leadership for the masses.

The situation in Chile poses all the old questions of revolutionary strategy. This is at a time when many socialists in the United States—both former revolutionaries and lifelong reformists—have declared that revolution will never take place in a country where the bourgeoisie has long granted democratic rights. This is part of their justification for lining up with the candidates of the Democratic Party of the bourgeoisie. The current issue of Left Voice magazine is an attempt to combat this defeatism, providing concrete examples of how revolutionaries around the world are intervening in this new moment of class struggle, and putting forward concrete steps to rebuild a revolutionary left in the United States.

The new period that is opening up is pregnant with situations of instability, class struggle, and opportunities for the Left. Reformists will attempt to save capitalism in times of crisis. Now, more than ever, socialists need a clear strategy for building up working-class power.

Facebook Twitter Share

Left Voice

Militant journalism, revolutionary politics.

Ideas & Debates

Fight Capitalism, Fight for Neurodivergent Liberation

Neurodivergent and disability liberation will have to come from the overthrow of capitalism and the building of a socialist system which values different forms of human behavior and directs resources to meeting human needs.

Sam Carliner

May 23, 2023

Eleven Shades of Skepticism and Electoralism: A Debate On the French Left and the Uprising

Our French comrades and members of our sister site and organization Révolution Permanente respond to a debate published in Contretemps and translated to English and published in Jacobin.

Juan Chingo

May 10, 2023

#AllThatsLeftPod: UPS Workers Prepare for a Strike

In this episode of the podcast, we discuss the contract fight at UPS, and what's at stake for the Teamsters and the labor movement.

Left Voice

May 2, 2023

May Day Memories of a Czech Communist Imprisoned by Nazis during WWII

Journalist and communist Julius Fucik wrote an account of his time imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo on cigarette papers and pencils smuggled into the Prague prison where he was held and ultimately executed for resisting Nazi occupation. The following is an excerpt of his recollections of May Day, International Workers Day, and the comrades who kept the hope of workers revolution and liberation alive from within the prison

Left Voice

May 1, 2023

MOST RECENT

Prof. Gail Green-Anderson of LaGuardia Community College at a rally outside Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s Manhattan office on Thursday.

Rekindling the Militant Spirit of CUNY’s Past

Mayor Eric Adams has announced an austerity budget that includes significant cuts to the City University of New York among other city agencies. In order to defeat these cuts, students, faculty, and other workers across the city must unite our struggles and be prepared to shut the university down.

James Dennis Hoff

May 22, 2023
People in Berlin demonstrating on the 75th anniversary of the Nakhba.

Berlin Police Attack Jews and Palestinians Commemorating the Nakba

On the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, the Berlin police banned all Palestinian demonstrations, and broke up a demonstration of Jewish Berliners in solidarity with Palestinians.

Nathaniel Flakin

May 22, 2023

In France, There is No Return to Normal for Macron

Anger of the French people at Macron's pension reform is far from extinguished, despite moves by the Inter-Union bureaucracy which weakened the movement.

Juan Chingo

May 20, 2023

All Trans Kids Deserve Care: A Response To Helen Lewis

Helen Lewis, noted anti-trans author, wrote for the Atlantic on the “child gender culture war,” saying that not all trans children should be given access to gender-affirming care. She is wrong.

Reba Landers

May 19, 2023