Jack Barnes

Tribunes of the People and the Trade Unions Jack Barnes

The authors of this book—Karl Marx, V. I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Farrell Dobbs, and Jack Barnes—draw on generations of revolutionary struggles by working people to explain why organizing to strengthen the unions is not only essential to the fighting unity and political striking power of the working class. It’s central to building a revolutionary proletarian party as well. But the activity of a workers party neither begins nor ends there. It begins by extending the party’s political reach in all directions, to cities, towns, and farms. By exchanging views and experiences with all layers of workers, farmers, and other toilers—irrespective of skin color, language, religion or sex. By broadening cultural horizons and knowledge of history and the world. A tribune of the people uses every manifestation of capitalist oppression to explain why it’s workers and our allies who can and will—in the course of struggles by the unions and beyond—lay the foundations for a world based not on violence and competition, but on solidarity among working people worldwide.