In the 2024 election, in three states in the U.S., an effort was made by working class and revolutionary candidates to put forward an alternative to the two capitalist parties who claim to represent us. In Michigan, Illinois, and California, the Working Class Party stood candidates for Congress in a number of districts. The fact that a party stood in the election calling for the working class to represent itself was enough to win several hundred thousand votes.
In Michigan, the Working Class Party has run five times since 2016, and has received enough votes to remain on the ballot in the coming elections. There, they ran candidates for local congressional districts and for state-wide education board positions. Across the board, these candidates increased their scores from last time, and the state level candidates won tens of thousands more votes.
In Illinois, for the first time, the Working Class Party was able two win enough votes to automatically remain on the ballot in the next election. This is a victory as it means that the party will not have to collect signatures again just to get on the ballot. Instead, the party will automatically be included, and activists may turn their attention to the real campaign.
In California, the Working Class Party ran one candidate for the 37th Congressional District. California’s electoral laws make it very difficult to put a party on the ballot, so he ran as an individual and was the only alternative against a Democratic Party politician. Given the choice, voters chose to cast 30,000 votes, or 22% of the votes collected, for this candidate. If anything, this shows the frustration people feel with the Democrats.
The candidates didn’t run to win office. They ran to represent the working class, to present a perspective to working people that we can fight back against the attacks on our lives that are happening, and that under the coming administration are sure to get worse. This effort, though modest, shows that it is possible to present another perspective and win the support, at least at the ballot box, of hundreds of thousands of people who agree that the working class must stand up for itself.
