I ask this because I’ve recently gotten into creating a union for my work place and noticed that North America is really the only place where a Labor or workers party never took off.

It would be probably be doable to unite the unions into a political party similar to the UK Labour party after the world wars. The major point is, is that the party would have to be purely an economic party with each individual member deciding for themselves how to vote on social issues.

  • @darthelmet@lemmy.world
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    84 days ago

    Maybe? I guess it depends on how genuinely committed they are to fighting for everyone. Personally I believe that Capitalism is the big thing we need to deal with first and foremost and that social equality will be easier when we’re all economically secure enough to resist exploitation but… it doesn’t always go that way. We kind of saw how mid century labor union’s exclusion of black workers not only was bad for black people, but also weakened the movement because it lacked that broader solidarity with the rest of society. (Among other factors that eventually brought it down obviously.)

    So I do think we could benefit a lot by having a party that focused it’s efforts on the most critical issues: Inequality, democracy in and out of the workplace, climate change, and greatly reducing the military, police, and surveillance state’s capabilities and authority. Things that don’t just affect all of us, but which represent fundamental barriers towards all forms of progress. But we do still need to be careful that this lack of a more explicit social program doesn’t allow the party to become exclusionary. Progress for some at the expense of others isn’t progress. It’s also just strategically bad.