Above: anti-genocide graphic from the World Federation of Trade Unions
In the past, I’ve said that the unions will be able to serve as an above-ground link to the masses for anti-imperialist organizations which may become criminalized. I was imagining a scenario where after we’ve been forced underground, communists and our allies will be able to connect with the workers through the labor orgs, which I expected to remain legal. I still believe I was right to expect this, but now I think my prediction needs a qualifier: even though the unions will technically remain legal to associate with, the reactionary forces are likely going to gain even greater control over them. This is apparent from how Trump has illegally fired the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, leaving it without enough members for its proceedings to be valid. Whenever Trump may replace the old General Counsel, the NLRB will come to have a leadership that’s more on the side of the employers than the last one.
This is a tactic that feels familiar when you’ve studied the history of the U.S. government’s war on union power, as chronicled by William Foster in American Trade Unionism. For our class enemies to carry out this maneuver in the present era, when U.S. imperialism is trying to create the conditions for war with China, means that it represents one part in a much larger campaign against dissent. It shows that as the capitalist state expands its repressive efforts against pro-Palestine, antiwar, communist, and other dissident groups, it will only allow the unions to remain legal if they can be made into reactionary appendages. If they don’t try to interfere with the next assaults on the workers, and join with the ruling class in trying to suppress worker struggles.
This is in effect an attempt to illegalize the unions, because the goal is to criminalize all efforts at making the unions do what they’re supposed to do. As strikes continue to become more frequent, and the police state targets the workers involved in these fights, the reactionaries hope these workers will find absolutely no support from their labor leadership. They’re in place to create a united front between the neocons within Trump’s cabinet, the national security state, law enforcement, and the most anti-worker elements of the labor bureaucracy. In response, we must create a united front between the revolutionary forces; which means building connections among the revolutionary union elements in this country, and all the international forces that are resisting imperialism. And in this moment, when the Gaza genocide has created a gargantuan global wave of pro-Palestine momentum, we have a massive amount of potential allies around the world.
To carry out this fusion between the U.S. proletarian struggle and the world’s anti-imperialist forces, communists in the United States must take on a highly active role within labor organizing. We need to rediscover the skills which our predecessors mastered; the skills required for initiating worker struggles, assisting the workers in their fights, and unifying the revolutionary forces both within American labor and internationally.
Writing during the time when U.S. communism was strong, Foster observed that “Due to their Marxist-Leninist training, Communists are practical organizers of the workers, know how to estimate the forces of the enemy, and know what tactics to apply.” To regain these strengths, U.S. communists must study the history and theory of organized labor; which entails reading a great deal of material, with American Trade Unionism being one among many books we ought to seek out. (Labor Today International has a good reading list for this.) These resources can give us the tools to connect the unions with the global anti-imperialist movement, and by extension the dissident orgs in this country; which will maximize our ability to counter the state’s attacks, as well as to advance the broader revolutionary cause.
This project to build international and national ties isn’t the entirety of what we’ll need to do in order to survive the crackdown. Our local ties, the relationships we build in our immediate areas, are our most important connections; our international ties are the second most important, while our national ties are the third. In order to do anything, we must make sure that everyone involved in the revolutionary effort has solid local cadres; ones which have mastered secret work, and can therefore continue operating no matter how severe the repression gets. These are the practical needs of a revolutionary movement when it hasn’t yet gained state power, and it’s facing a capitalist state that seeks to crush it. The great value of international ties is that they put a global mass revolt on the side of our local organizing projects.
The vast majority of the globe’s people, as well as emerging superpowers like China and Russia, share an interest in ending U.S. hegemony. The rise of the pro-Palestine movement has brought the masses of most countries into an active struggle against the empire, creating a worldwide popular force so powerful that it’s gotten many governments to boycott the Zionist entity. And this pro-Palestinian upsurge could play a crucial part in the demise of governments which have refused to resist the genocide, such as Turkey and Jordan.
Within the global pro-Palestine movement, there is strength on a massive scale. Should organized labor in the United States connect to this source of strength, and become highly involved in the anti-Zionist struggle, then it will make itself part of a force that’s existentially threatening the imperial state. And communists have an indispensable role to play in the effort at bringing the unions towards that stage. The ruling class, its repressive apparatus, and its allies within the labor bureaucracy will try to destroy those who participate in this revolutionary unionist trend. But the more energy we put into advancing that trend, and the more we bring the masses into this project, the better we’ll be able to counteract the suppressive attempts. And should the state still succeed at criminalizing the organizations it wants to criminalize, then our earlier work will put us in a better place to overthrow the state.
Our success depends on how robust of an infrastructure we’ll have created, how many mass ties we’ll have established, and how strong our global united front has become. Every ingredient in this mission is indispensable, and there are many aspects that must be properly accounted for; but becoming equipped for these challenges is the purpose of Marxist-Leninist training. We must take example from Foster, and master those revolutionary skills.
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