The Worker, Vol. 34, Number 12
Using the Workers' Press to Develop the Political Life of the Working Class and Broad Masses of the People
Today when an ever-growing polarization is taking place in our society. When on the one hand the capitalist class and the capitalist system are attacking the basic economic and political rights of the people and on the other hand the working masses are inevitably turning to the path of resistance and struggle, the mass media is one of the most dangerous weapons in the hands of the big capitalists.
For one thing, on an international scale, the capitalist media vilifies the nations and people who are struggling against U.S. imperialist domination. Even while U.S. imperialism is intensifying its aggressive wars in the Middle East, the U.S. government and mass media carries on a constant propaganda about “terrorism,” “fanaticism,” etc. in an attempt to justify its own aggression and terror against the Arab peoples. The U.S. government also uses its holy crusades against drugs and against communism as a cover for stepping up its intervention and aggression in Latin America and throughout the world. So too, the capitalist class claims that its huge nuclear arsenal and all-around militarization of society is the pride of the American people. But the masses, who are taxed to the bone and whose family and community members are maimed and killed in U.S. imperialism's aggressive foreign wars do not believe these lies of the capitalists.
So too, the mass media carries out a virtual blockade of silence against the struggles of the working people. The mass media, with its Machiavellian methods which mirror those used throughout the capitalist election campaigns, strive to pit workers in one factory against workers in another, older workers against younger workers, anglophone workers against non-anglophone workers, male workers against female workers, immigrant workers against native born workers, national minority workers against nonminority workers, abled against disabled workers, etc., etc., etc.
The mass media's raving American chauvinism, which is invariably accompanied by empty-boasting about the so-called "universal values" of American capitalism and “democracy,” has reached new proportions. The capitalists are spending billions or dollars, in order to attack the working masses, to disorient and fragment our movement, to prevent the all-around exposure of the rotting capitalist system.
The big capitalist class employs literally millions of means to bombard the consciousness of the workers on a daily and hourly basis. And all of the capitalist ideology has very definite motives and goals – to disintegrate the class struggle of the workers and to maintain forever the system of capitalist exploitation. Yet for all its sophisticated communications systems and propaganda networks, bourgeois ideology is completely and thoroughly bankrupt.
It is no wonder the people thoroughly hate the monopoly-controlled media. People know that the more important an issue is to the capitalists, the more the media will lie and lie. People know that for all the propaganda about a "free press" and "showing both sides," the media straitjackets every discussion within the limits of the agenda of monopoly capital while blockading the voice and struggles of the people. People see how the monopoly-controlled media tries not only to dominate the thinking of the people but to degrade it, pushing, on a massive and continuous basis, racism, anti-communism, and fascism.
The aim of the monopoly-controlled media is to depoliticize the people and marginalize any genuine opposition to the political agenda of monopoly capital, thus giving the capitalists a free-hand to impose their dictates on society as a whole.
Defeating the influence of the monopoly-controlled media requires going against the depoliticalization of the people and helping to create a new political culture in our country. Such a new political culture can only be created by starting from the aspirations of the people and developing the discussion amongst the broadest sections of people.
The Worker, newspaper of the Workers Party USA, stands in opposition to the capitalist media and in struggle against it. We expose the lies of the capitalists and tell the truth about the conditions, the struggles and victories of the working masses. The Worker aims at providing direction and policy for the working class and popular movements. We stand up for the interests and demands of the working people. We expose the capitalist system as the source of the suffering and exploitation of the people. We analyze the role of the various political parties, expose the class interests which lie behind the “fine words” of various politicians and put forward the independent class politics of the workers.
We popularize important struggles of the masses and try to sum up the experience of the masses in order to clarify the strategy and tactics for advancing the movement. We support the line of making the rich pay for the crisis of their capitalist system, the line of changing the political system so that the masses of people are placed in the center of the decision-making process, the line of mass struggle against imperialist militarism and war.
We stand for genuine socialism. The working class must place itself in the forefront of the movement for democratic renewal. As the class which represents the new productive forces, as a class which cannot emancipate itself except by abolishing private property in the means of production, the working class must necessarily strive for the creation of a political power which places sovereignty in the people themselves. It is the people themselves who have to create the means to break the monopoly of the 2 big political parties and claim their right to build and wield the political power.
The work of enunciating the standpoint, the policy and the theory of the working class movement is an essential part of organizing the working class as a class for itself. The genuine political party of the working class – the party that is so urgently needed in order to concentrate the forces of the working class and lead our struggles – can only be created through the widescale dissemination and enunciation of the independent politics and ideology of the workers.
In order to keep our articles concrete, in order to address the burning problems of the movement, in order to popularize the manifold struggles which are taking place we need the help of all our readers, of all the members and friends of the Workers Party, of hundreds and thousands of class conscious workers and political activists. It is necessary, not only that The Worker be widely distributed amongst the masses but also that our readers, correspondents and teams take a conscious attitude towards reporting on the class and mass struggles in their local areas, to analyzing the various political trends which operate amongst the masses, to summing up the experience of the Marxist-Leninists and class conscious workers in providing consciousness, organization and leadership to the masses.
The need to publish The Worker on a regular and frequent basis and to distribute it as widely as possible arises from the sharpening class struggle in the U.S. All over the country, on countless fronts, the working class and the broad masses of the people are struggling against the effects of the crisis of capitalism. Strikes and other economic movements of the workers are gaining in militancy. The workers are striving to turn their isolated economic battles into a unified national struggle of class against class. A new nation-wide upsurge is developing in the struggle of the black people and other national minorities against the intensifying racial discrimination and violent repression imposed on them by the capitalist state. In cities and towns everywhere, the anti-war, anti-militarist struggles keep breaking out on new fronts and with increased militancy. A spontaneous but broad movement of opposition to both capitalist political parties is growing.
The Workers Party, though with small numbers, is working amongst the broad masses to clarify the general conditions and aims of the proletarian struggle and to build up local communist units capable of leading the mass struggles in a determined and systematic manner. When we have taken up issues and struggles, we have persisted in them, trying to provide the agitational, theoretical and historical materials needed to advance the actual struggles of the masses, helping to change the ratio of forces in favor of the working class and its organized section.
In order to carry this work forward we need the sustained efforts of all the comrades and friends of the Workers Party and we also need to draw hundreds and thousands of militant workers and progressive political activists into the work.
For one thing, on an international scale, the capitalist media vilifies the nations and people who are struggling against U.S. imperialist domination. Even while U.S. imperialism is intensifying its aggressive wars in the Middle East, the U.S. government and mass media carries on a constant propaganda about “terrorism,” “fanaticism,” etc. in an attempt to justify its own aggression and terror against the Arab peoples. The U.S. government also uses its holy crusades against drugs and against communism as a cover for stepping up its intervention and aggression in Latin America and throughout the world. So too, the capitalist class claims that its huge nuclear arsenal and all-around militarization of society is the pride of the American people. But the masses, who are taxed to the bone and whose family and community members are maimed and killed in U.S. imperialism's aggressive foreign wars do not believe these lies of the capitalists.
So too, the mass media carries out a virtual blockade of silence against the struggles of the working people. The mass media, with its Machiavellian methods which mirror those used throughout the capitalist election campaigns, strive to pit workers in one factory against workers in another, older workers against younger workers, anglophone workers against non-anglophone workers, male workers against female workers, immigrant workers against native born workers, national minority workers against nonminority workers, abled against disabled workers, etc., etc., etc.
The mass media's raving American chauvinism, which is invariably accompanied by empty-boasting about the so-called "universal values" of American capitalism and “democracy,” has reached new proportions. The capitalists are spending billions or dollars, in order to attack the working masses, to disorient and fragment our movement, to prevent the all-around exposure of the rotting capitalist system.
The big capitalist class employs literally millions of means to bombard the consciousness of the workers on a daily and hourly basis. And all of the capitalist ideology has very definite motives and goals – to disintegrate the class struggle of the workers and to maintain forever the system of capitalist exploitation. Yet for all its sophisticated communications systems and propaganda networks, bourgeois ideology is completely and thoroughly bankrupt.
It is no wonder the people thoroughly hate the monopoly-controlled media. People know that the more important an issue is to the capitalists, the more the media will lie and lie. People know that for all the propaganda about a "free press" and "showing both sides," the media straitjackets every discussion within the limits of the agenda of monopoly capital while blockading the voice and struggles of the people. People see how the monopoly-controlled media tries not only to dominate the thinking of the people but to degrade it, pushing, on a massive and continuous basis, racism, anti-communism, and fascism.
The aim of the monopoly-controlled media is to depoliticize the people and marginalize any genuine opposition to the political agenda of monopoly capital, thus giving the capitalists a free-hand to impose their dictates on society as a whole.
Defeating the influence of the monopoly-controlled media requires going against the depoliticalization of the people and helping to create a new political culture in our country. Such a new political culture can only be created by starting from the aspirations of the people and developing the discussion amongst the broadest sections of people.
The Worker, newspaper of the Workers Party USA, stands in opposition to the capitalist media and in struggle against it. We expose the lies of the capitalists and tell the truth about the conditions, the struggles and victories of the working masses. The Worker aims at providing direction and policy for the working class and popular movements. We stand up for the interests and demands of the working people. We expose the capitalist system as the source of the suffering and exploitation of the people. We analyze the role of the various political parties, expose the class interests which lie behind the “fine words” of various politicians and put forward the independent class politics of the workers.
We popularize important struggles of the masses and try to sum up the experience of the masses in order to clarify the strategy and tactics for advancing the movement. We support the line of making the rich pay for the crisis of their capitalist system, the line of changing the political system so that the masses of people are placed in the center of the decision-making process, the line of mass struggle against imperialist militarism and war.
We stand for genuine socialism. The working class must place itself in the forefront of the movement for democratic renewal. As the class which represents the new productive forces, as a class which cannot emancipate itself except by abolishing private property in the means of production, the working class must necessarily strive for the creation of a political power which places sovereignty in the people themselves. It is the people themselves who have to create the means to break the monopoly of the 2 big political parties and claim their right to build and wield the political power.
The work of enunciating the standpoint, the policy and the theory of the working class movement is an essential part of organizing the working class as a class for itself. The genuine political party of the working class – the party that is so urgently needed in order to concentrate the forces of the working class and lead our struggles – can only be created through the widescale dissemination and enunciation of the independent politics and ideology of the workers.
In order to keep our articles concrete, in order to address the burning problems of the movement, in order to popularize the manifold struggles which are taking place we need the help of all our readers, of all the members and friends of the Workers Party, of hundreds and thousands of class conscious workers and political activists. It is necessary, not only that The Worker be widely distributed amongst the masses but also that our readers, correspondents and teams take a conscious attitude towards reporting on the class and mass struggles in their local areas, to analyzing the various political trends which operate amongst the masses, to summing up the experience of the Marxist-Leninists and class conscious workers in providing consciousness, organization and leadership to the masses.
The need to publish The Worker on a regular and frequent basis and to distribute it as widely as possible arises from the sharpening class struggle in the U.S. All over the country, on countless fronts, the working class and the broad masses of the people are struggling against the effects of the crisis of capitalism. Strikes and other economic movements of the workers are gaining in militancy. The workers are striving to turn their isolated economic battles into a unified national struggle of class against class. A new nation-wide upsurge is developing in the struggle of the black people and other national minorities against the intensifying racial discrimination and violent repression imposed on them by the capitalist state. In cities and towns everywhere, the anti-war, anti-militarist struggles keep breaking out on new fronts and with increased militancy. A spontaneous but broad movement of opposition to both capitalist political parties is growing.
The Workers Party, though with small numbers, is working amongst the broad masses to clarify the general conditions and aims of the proletarian struggle and to build up local communist units capable of leading the mass struggles in a determined and systematic manner. When we have taken up issues and struggles, we have persisted in them, trying to provide the agitational, theoretical and historical materials needed to advance the actual struggles of the masses, helping to change the ratio of forces in favor of the working class and its organized section.
In order to carry this work forward we need the sustained efforts of all the comrades and friends of the Workers Party and we also need to draw hundreds and thousands of militant workers and progressive political activists into the work.