The International Working Class

If social class is about the relationship people have to the institutions of power, rather than just income and who owns the means of production, then the global working class share that experience, disadvantage and political invisibility in common in a way that middle class people may not understand. It makes sense for us to learn from one anothers' experiences of by-passing oppressive class structures in different countries and across history.

This section is to support that learning and to provide an antidote to the pull of the political Right that exploits our feeling of exclusion and invisibility. Yes, we are denigrated and yes, we are blocked and yes, the middle class that judge us even when they don't realise they are doing that are part of that problem, but we are on a dangerous path if we allow that to push us toward nationalism.

We can learn a lot from the working classes who have shared and still share our struggles and oppressions from all across the world. Their working class social histories and struggles are as fascinating and vital to the cause of socialism as our own.

Bolivia election: Evo Morales's leftwing party celebrates stunning comeback

Exit polls for presidential election project win for Luis Arce as rival concedes defeat (The Guardian, Oct 2020)

“We will govern for all Bolivians … we will bring unity to our country,” said Arce, leader of Evo Morales’s leftwing MAS party on celebrating a stunning political comeback after roundly defeating right wing and 'centrist' rivals in Bolivia’s presidential election.

“Viva the Bolivian people! Viva democracy!” Tweeted Gleisi Hoffmann, the president of the Brazilian Workers’ party.

Portugal’s socialist alliance soundly defeated its challengers on the right, offering rare good news for the left in Europe (The Atlantic, Oct 2019)

"Portugal’s left-wing parties have been able to maintain close ties to the country’s organized working class, a voting bloc that elsewhere in Europe has, at least in part, voted with the far right. “In this sense, the Communist Party acts as kind of a shield” against a far-right insurgence, said Pedro Magalhães, a political scientist at the University of Lisbon".