To Win Significant, Long-Term Change in America, We Need Class Struggle
Joe Biden’s inadequate stimulus is the best workers can expect if they aren’t organized and fighting. But if we’re to see more policies that benefit and empower the working class, we’ll need more workplace organizing, more strikes, and more class struggle.
Thousands of demonstrators take to the streets, stopping traffic and circling city hall in a show of support for the ongoing teachers’ strike on October 23, 2019, in Chicago, Illinois.(Scott Heins / Getty)
Analysis of Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) has been all over the map. Some commentators have hailed it as a sea change in American welfare and fiscal policy, or even the end of neoliberal orthodoxy. Others have emphasized the relief package’s shortcomings. The Left seems uncertain, wrestling with how to relate to the Biden administration and the (narrowly) Democratic-controlled Congress.
We are in uncharted territory, at least in light of the Democratic Party’s recent history of embracing austerity with open arms. But the Left should neither overestimate our strength nor the extent to which Democrats are championing a social-democratic agenda. The ARP is a temporary stimulus, the best workers can expect if they aren’t organized and fighting. We shouldn’t expect these limited relief measures to last, since the macroeconomic conditions which have persuaded capitalists to allow them can change like the wind.
If we’re to see more policies that materially benefit and structurally empower working people, the working class needs to be organized and militant.
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