International webinar on Sam Marcy’s legacy for today’s struggles

For over 70 years, Sam Marcy, a founding member and the late-chairperson of Workers World Party, dedicated his life to the liberation of the global multinational working class from the yoke of imperialism in all its oppressive forms. Feb. 1 will mark the 25th anniversary of his death in 1998. 

In recognition of this commemoration, Workers World Party will be hosting a three-hour international webinar on Sunday, Feb. 5 at 2 p.m. EST; 11 a.m. PST; and 7 p.m. GMT. The program is titled: “Global Class War: Lessons from Sam Marcy for Today’s Workers Struggle.” To register, go to bit.ly@globalclasswar.

This political forum will be exploring important aspects of Marcy’s historic thesis “Global Class War,” expounded on in two documents: “Revolution” (1950) and “Destiny of American Labor” (1953). The first document came out one year following the Earth-shattering Chinese Revolution in 1949 and the second at the end of the U.S.-led war against Korea. 

In a 1973 introduction to Marcy’s thesis, Vince Copeland, another WWP founding member, wrote: “This compilation of documents from Sam Marcy may at first sight seem a little formidable to new comrades. But actually, it is the shortest and simplest summary of the theoretical and ideological positions that led to the formation of Workers World Party that still constitute a large part of our doctrine.”

Copeland continued, “It is even possible to say that the document in particular was, when it was written in 1950 and still is today, a summary of world relation of forces between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, as well as a long-term orientation for proletarian revolutionaries.”

Since the founding of WWP in 1959, Marcy had written numerous pamphlets and books that have updated his thesis for contemporary struggles, such as “High-Tech, Low Pay”; “The Klan and the Government: Foes or Allies”; “Bolsheviks and War”; “China: The Struggle Within”; “Perestroika: A Marxist Critique”; “Generals Over the White House: The Impact of the Military-Industrial Complex”; “Busing and Self-determination” and more. These books can be read at workers.org/books.

The Feb. 5 webinar will include remarks from WWP First Secretary Larry Holmes, along with plenaries and break-out groups.  They will link Marcy’s writings to what is happening in the ongoing class struggle today — such as the organizing campaigns of Starbucks and Amazon workers; massive layoffs in high-tech industries; the U.S./NATO war in Ukraine; growing U.S. and Japanese military threats targeting China; and building class solidarity with people of color, migrants, women, gender nonconforming people, LGBTQ2S+ people and people with disabilities. 

The deepening global capitalist economic crisis and how the working class can and will fight back will be the major themes of the webinar.

Veteran party members who worked with Marcy and newer generations of members will collectively share how this great Marxist-Leninist thinker and organizer continues to influence U.S. and international working-class movements. These movements must keep going until the profit-driven capitalist mode of production, which promotes poverty, inequality and war, is swept away, once and for all.

What Marcy wrote in relation to the Korean War is still applicable today: “The fact that the opening phase of the war may manifest itself (or rather conceal itself), even if only initially and temporarily, as a war between nations, should not in the slightest degree obscure its clear-cut class character. 

“It is not a war between the nations but a war between the classes in this war. The geographical boundaries are social boundaries; the battle formations are class formations, and the world line of demarcation is the line rigidly drawn by the socialist interests of the world proletariat. Every worker must know his [her and their] place as well as his [her and their] duty.”