We planned this issue to coincide with Election Day, so you’re probably feeling pretty miserable right about now. Today, voters faced the unpalatable choice of filling in the circle for a party of capital, lodging a protest vote for a Green Party utterly disconnected from American workers, or supporting a puzzling Libertarian candidate.

To put it bluntly, no major political party represents your interests or those of your friends and family. The Democratic and Republican apparatuses appear impermeable to change from below, make little effort to mobilize people between elections, and routinely implement policies that hurt ordinary Americans.

The fact that working people lack a real political voice is no accident. The peculiar nature of US politics is inseparable from battles between elites and workers; in many respects it’s the result of the Left’s past defeats and the strength of US capital. Unlike many other democracies, we don’t have a labor party to represent the interests of working people. Instead of a political system in which conscious working-class political action plays a formative role, we have two parties beholden to the prerogatives of big business. In this system, demands for equity and justice for ordinary people are drowned out or ignored.