In election years, many people ask themselves: what will this person or party do for me? Or, what will they do for our country? And political campaigns answer with a bunch of promises of things they probably will never do.
There are many things that we all need: jobs that pay a living wage; affordable quality housing; healthy food and clean water; guaranteed health care for everyone, including reproductive health care; quality education; freedom from violence; an end to wars; and much, much more.
But what stands in our way of achieving any of these is not the whims of some politician, but the very system of capitalism itself, which prioritizes profits over the lives of working people. We have only been able to win important concessions from this system when we fight for them.
This happened in the 1930s, when mass workers’ movements and strikes forced President Roosevelt to implement reforms known as the New Deal. It happened in the 1960s and 1970s, starting when masses of young people, women, Black people, Latinos and other people of color led movements that forced President Johnson to make reforms known as the Great Society. Even President Nixon was forced to give in to the pressure of social movements and create things like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In these cases, these reforms were passed only after mass social struggles in the form of strikes and mass protests challenged the business-as-usual of the capitalist system. To make their society governable again, these politicians were forced to make some changes.
They didn’t make these changes because they wanted to. They made them because they were forced to — by the power of social movements coming from our workplaces and in the streets. When we’ve won social struggles, politicians often try to take credit for our victories. But we can’t afford to be distracted by the fear-mongering and false promises of these elections. There is no need to line up behind the promises or the threats of any politician.
We don’t need to settle for whatever crumbs they may throw our way. We are the majority. We make society run in every way imaginable. And we have the power to make the changes we need — not just to achieve small victories, but to change the whole system.
