We cannot afford to take idle time in the situation we’re in today. If the working families of America ever needed leadership? We need it now. Everyone has leadership quality.
That’s why I’m looking at you. We need leadership, you got it. Everyone has leadership quality, but most of us don’t use it. None of us can afford any further Indulgence.
I guess I should ask if you care. That would be the only. Screen that I would make. If you don’t care, then you probably need to reevaluate that, because everybody cares about everybody else.
So, I’m wanting you to take on leadership because it has to be done in the crisis that we’re in. I don’t think I need to go over the crisis, but just today we found out that the war effort that Trump is making in the Caribbean has gone so far that they are now attacking installations on the mainland.
On leadership, what is it? Well, the easy definition is just to say a leader has followers. Well, it’s obviously true. But it doesn’t really tell you much. In my studies of leadership, I learned a very valuable lesson when I was a elementary school teacher. Because some of the kids are leaders.
You do something called a sociogram, and you can find out which ones are. The kids are leaders, because in a sociogram, the children say who they look up to, or who they would like to spend time with, that sort of thing. And it turns out to be only a few of the people in the classroom.
A leader is someone who knows what to do next.
I guess you could refine that and say a leader is someone who is able to convince others that they know what to do next. But the trick is to actually know what to do next. Now, that might imply some study. Some of it is in books or stories. But a lot of study is just talking to other people and getting ideas.
You have to work within the framework that you have. But don’t start with the obstacles. You can get to the obstacles later and the problems and why it all won’t work or why it’s no use trying. You can get to that later. At this point, you’re just doing some studying and asking others and figuring things out.
Then. You have to analyze what’s possible. What framework are you working in? And you can look at the obstacles I guess at that time. The whole end of the process is that you come up with some options.
And this is where it gets interesting. This is where, for the first time, what I’m asking you to do may seem a little hard. It’s not going to require any natural abilities, it’s just going to take a little bit of your courage.
The next step is for you to try something. If it doesn’t work. try something else. But by all means, try something. And finally. Never give up! As long as the need continues to exist. And it is impossible to deny. That’s a need for your leadership exists. Right now.
Dallas activists had spoonfuls of ice cream and local history on December 21. A group of us gathered at a Dairy Queen just 2 miles uphill and west from downtown Dallas. At that site in 1854, socialists from Europe established their communal farm and changed North Texas forever. We talked about them and then walked together to see a stone monument nearby.
A French socialist named Victor Considerant rented horses in St Louis in 1850 or so. Then he rode to an open hillside outside the grubby little town of Dallas. The town was established only a couple of years earlier and was just beginning its first main industry, tanning stinky buffalo hides.
Considerant thought the area looked like his homeland and should, he figured, be good land for grapevines and a wine industry. Back in Europe, he was able to raise money for a stock corporation to start sending European socialists to Texas. They named their commune “La Reunion.”
They were literate people. Unlike the rough-hewn Scots-Irish frontiersmen tanning hides nearby, they were cultured, artistic, musical, and far-thinking people. Like the other socialist settlements in Texas from the time, they were “freethinkers” on religious questions and had no churches. What really set them apart was that they didn’t enslave other human beings.
“History Is Bunk”
The official story of Dallas, told in almost all the books, is that the only reason it became a great city and cultural center was because of the genius and foresight of the early capitalists who created it “out of nothing.” In truth, it was a crossroads long before the first trading post was set up. It was a shallow place in the Trinity river where natives and early Spanish explorers could cross.
Dallas was also a crossroad when the first transcontinental highway went through the middle of town and then came out toward Fort Worth on the very street that now passes in front of our Dairy Queen. The Dixie Overland Highway ran from Savannah Georgia to San Diego California.
The genius capitalists didn’t make Dallas a cultural center either. It was the socialists from La Reunion. The official story about all the socialist communards in Texas is that they failed because they weren’t good farmers and socialism just doesn’t work. But that doesn’t explain why they all went out of business at practically the same time, in 1860.
When the Confederacy established its wartime draft, soldiers went after the free thinking socialist communities. One of them, Comfort, near San Antonio, tried to send its menfolk to the Mexican border, but they were hunted down and massacred. At La Reunion, a shootout with the Confederates was their last page in history as a communal farm.
But it wasn’t their last contribution to Dallas and North Texas. The population of Dallas was about 1,000. There were 500 or so communards. Most of them moved to the eastern part of town and established East Dallas, where their descendants still hold La Reunion celebrations. They contributed to the arts and even in politics. One of them became Mayor of Dallas and has a park, Reverchon, named after him today. They were the people who made grubby little Dallas a cultural center.
One of the simplest and easiest things that labor leaders could do is to ask people to wear a certain color on a certain day of the week. The fact that they don’t do it and have never done it is the saddest evidence that we aren’t employing the simplest tactic for bringing union members and our allies together into an effective movement.
There are some obstacles, but they are technical and barely worth mentioning. They have to do with “what color” and “what day.” The first question is the easiest to answer because red has been the color of the workers’ movement since 1789.
My UAW local promotes wearing red on Wednesdays.” By giving away free red shirts during contract negotiations, we’ve increased participation. The AFT in Dallas promotes wearing red on the Thursdays when they go to school board meetings. Various unions promote a color and a day during times of great need such as during contract negotiations, but they choose color/date for contrast, not unity, and limit the whole idea to their particular members.
The only union with an effective program is the CWA, which promotes red on Thursdays since one of their members was killed on a picket line some years ago. Because CWA is big and because they have by far the most effective color/day program, I recommend that everybody adopt red on Thursdays, even if their union has another color or wears red on a different day. It’s not that hard to choose a color twice a week, and it doesn’t have to be a shirt.
If labor leaders are just too timid to pick a color and a day, I recommend that they run a short and cheap on-line survey of members. It wouldn’t be binding and wouldn’t even be scientific, but it would be a start and at least a formalistic indication that we intend to build a movement.
All the small stuff aside, the easiest thing would be to make a motion in every labor meeting that we ask all supporters to add wearing something red on Thursdays to their other clothing plans.
In revolutionary politics, all tactics are good if they are appropriate in their time and place. Armed struggle and exclusive devotion to parliamentary work, for example, may have been good tactics in a certain nation at a certain time. In the United States right now, both are disastrous.
Don’t Shoot!
The obvious argument against armed struggle is that no one is going to out-shoot the U.S. military. It is the strongest military the world has ever known and has sufficient nuclear weapons to destroy the planet. Nevertheless, some naïve activists exhort us to “pick up the gun.” Perhaps the problem is just that they are new to the movement and haven’t thought much about what would work and what wouldn’t. More likely, they aren’t materialists in their thinking. In other words, they believe in religious or superstitious notions that exist only in their own heads. They don’t even consider the likely outcomes of their actions.
If they did think about outcomes, they might consider what actually happens when trigger-happy activists try to take on the establishment. A civil rights activist in Dallas some few years ago was able to shoot five policemen before they blew him up with a grenade attached to a robot. I’m not sure anybody remembers his name today, but the police collected large sums of money in donations. They got raises and improvements in their benefits. They held, and still hold, special public celebrations for their fallen heroes every year.
More recently, someone shot a right-wing commentator at a public presentation. The Trumpsters imposed the largest anti-free-speech movement in history. People went to jail; even more people lost their jobs – not because they had anything to do with the shooting or condoned it, but because they failed to speak about it with what the Trumpsters considered proper allegiance to the shooting victim. Presently, the guy’s wife is spreading his ideas to thousands, and the Governor of Texas has mandated that every high school in the state has to have one of his clubs.
And possibly the worst example ever is the sniper who apparently took a shot at candidate Donald Trump while he was making a televised speech. His ear may have been hit. His polling shot up. Some of his white Christian nationalist supporters said that the bullet was deflected by God. Trump implied the same. A little later, he was elected president of the United States.
Don’t Stop At Voting
The electoral sphere cannot be ignored because power actually changes hands there. Who gets elected and who doesn’t is of vital interest to the working class. But those who prioritize voting to the point of ignoring all other forms of organizing and political struggle are misleading us to the point of criminality.
The joke is that people attend a craps game where the dice are known to be loaded because, “it’s the only game in town.” The same could be said about American electoral politics. The Democratic Party and the Republican Party rigged the game decades ago so that American voters are hemmed in between them. Gerrymandering and allowing oceans of secret money to sneak into campaign treasuries are more recent deteriorations of democracy.
Around 27% of all eligible voters do not even register. 73% do. A great many don’t vote. In non-presidential races and local races, considerably more people skip voting. Wikipedia says that 64.1% of registered voters turned out in 2024. Of those, Trump won a plurality of 49.8%. Multiply .73*.641*.498 and you will get .23. In other words, 23% of the eligible voters in America elected Donald Trump in 2024. But he has used that “mandate” to impose the most anti-working-class rulings in modern history.
With few and largely irrelevant exceptions, elections rigged by the bosses will always result in victory for the bosses. There are exceptions, of course, and all bosses are not equal. Voting matters, but it is entirely untrue that the winners of our rigged capitalist elections represent the will of the people.
Real democracy has to assert itself from underneath all the gimmicks and pressures. That means working in all possible arenas of struggle. They include labor organizing, strikes, boycotts, fund raising, and mass demonstrations. The idea of abandoning all but the legislative arena deserves the name that Lenin used, “parliamentary cretinism.”
“Expect the worst and hope for the best.” – Accountant’s credo
The Worst
The world economic system will continue to tremble and quake
American manufacturing and the stock market will rise without improving the jobs situation
Artificial intelligence will gobble up jobs and tremendously worsen the jobs crisis that is already underway
Income disparity, juiced up by Trump policies, will drastically worsen
Communications, especially cell phone communications, may end healthy competition and become even more of an oligopoly
In the electoral arena, candidates will be straining to find a “middle” in an increasingly divided electorate
Mister Trump, who has already shown that he will stop at nothing to maintain and extend his power, will likely start a war and implement martial law as his continuing drive toward fascism continues
Unions will refuse to recognize the new situation and continue the exact policies that have so far lost nearly ¾ of our peak density
Millions will not be able to afford decent health care. Emergency rooms will be overrun
The Best
In the electoral arena, candidates will be forced to clarify their intentions during 2026. Where I live in Dallas, labor will pressure all candidates to reveal their stand on Gaza
Unions will be more aggressive in the electoral arena. Where I live, we are working on two union members running in the January 31 special election. Two Steelworkers have filed for statewide races in the coming primaries.
A growing but unguided mass movement against dictatorship has exploded
More and more people are figuring out the dangers and what to do about it
Some unions are discarding old ways and implementing a larger reliance on our magnificent popularity in the general population of workers
Youth and retirees, two sectors recently encouraged by the labor movement, are growing and adding muscle
The Starbucks workers, using a combination of strike and boycott simultaneously, are showing all workers how use labor’s popularity against the bosses. On December 22 alone, 19 Starbucks stores signed up for union elections.
The Indicators
Nearly all of this analysis comes from information gathered during the past week, and especially on Christmas Day when the Washington Post published ten charts describing the current U.S. economic situation.
Gold and silver prices set new records. The usual “gold bug” speculators are buying precious metals of course, but major investors and some governments are also buying them. Precious metals pay no dividends, but they are a haven of safety for those who think a worldwide financial crisis is imminent.
Two major financial indicators, a soaring stock market and an expected increase in manufacturing, are both rooted in investment in artificial intelligence. Investors are buying into it and energy-gobbling data center building way up and projected to be gigantic. At the same time, the labor movement is “cool.” Although Trump’s anti-labor policies explain some of the labor market problems, the main problem now and in the future is job-killing artificial intelligence. The same thing lifting the stock market and manufacturing in America is driving down the jobs market.
The union response, so far, is to try to contain artificial intelligence through union contracts. Even if this were possible, it wouldn’t solve the problem because most workers, more than 90%, have no union contracts. As the bosses without unions implement artificial intelligence to lower their production costs, they will undermine all workers, including those with union contracts.
Income disparity is the illness afflicting all workers worldwide. Among the many alarming reports comes this sentence from the current week by Politico: “Bank of America says its top account holders saw take-home pay climb 4 percent over the last year, while income growth for poorer households grew just 1.4 percent.” Even though inflation held at 3% during the past year and dropped to 2.7% for November, it’s still a lot higher than income growth for poorer households.
All of the major tech companies have hitched themselves to the Trump agenda, and for good reason. They produce artificial intelligence, and they all know that artificial intelligence is Trump’s main hope to lower production costs enough to outperform China and other worldwide economic competitors. “Lower production costs” is a euphemism for fewer jobs.
Elon Musk, in many ways the master tech investor, has practically cornered the market in communications satellites. He has already bought the software and established the partnership with T-Mobile that he needs to change all cell phone communications to satellite. Everybody who currently works in cell phone tech is in danger. The Communications Workers of America have a vital boycott against T-Mobile, but it hasn’t yet achieved nationwide participation.
Just two recent election results are sufficient to show the strain in the electoral arena. Mister Trump successfully used the power of the United States government to overcome the progressive government of Honduras. He failed to do the same in the New York Mayoral race. Candidates in 2026 will find it difficult to dodge the issues important to working people. For example, the Dallas Central Labor Council voted to pressure all candidates who apply for endorsement to reveal their positions on the genocide in Gaza.
War in Latin America is imminent. The Trump Administration has already discarded every aspect of international law and human decency in its attacks against Venezuela. So far, they have managed to resist the provocations, but Trump isn’t finished. He needs the popularity of a wartime presidency and, if it becomes necessary to maintain power, he needs an excuse to implement martial law and end democracy once and for all.
Our unions have taken hardly any positions on the coming war nor on any of the pressing international questions. Domestically, we continue to try to organize more workplaces under the rules set in the early Roosevelt Administration. We continue to try to use our diminishing membership base to affect legislative change, just as we have since around 1947 when we had 35% of the American workforce organized. Today, we have closer to 9%.
So… Why Are We Smiling?
Clearly, the Trump Administration and the billionaires it leads are flailing around in desperation. They aren’t acting out of strength nor confidence, but like boat wreck survivors trying anything and everything to cling to life. They have very little thought of what they are doing, and they are being led by an unstable person.
Democracy has taken hits, but is a long way from disappearing in a country convinced, for 250 years, that democracy is best. The worldwide system of governance is very weak against a super power, but it has the credibility of all caring people.
Our anti-war movement may seem small, but the structures created in earlier upsurges still exist and are ours to use. Our unions may seem small and timid, but we still have the power to shut down the major intersections of economic and social life. Organizations close to the unions, especially the youth and senior movements, are growing stronger.
Candidates in 2026 will be pressured to take our side, and more of them will
People are catching on. We have the communications ability for accelerated strategic progress. We haven’t yet agreed on a plan of coordinated mass resistance, but we are clearly headed that way.
In a recent discussion, I asserted that Trump will start a war soon, most likely against Venezuela. Nobody agreed.
They all said that Trump is doing everything possible to achieve a regime change in Venezuela, but won’t go as far as starting a war.
Some of them took a military view and said that he doesn’t have enough troops – estimated at “only” 15,000 – ln the Caribbean. The other 2.1 million Americans “under arms” are reserves or are deployed elsewhere.
Others took a psychological view and said that Trump is a coward who likes to create chaos but doesn’t really have the courage to start an actual war.
And Trump could never face the international condemnation that has already begun, they said. The murders already carried out on the high seas were “trial balloons” that have already brought harsh criticism from abroad.
Lastly, people said that Trump could not risk any further deterioration in his approval ratings in the U.S.. Public opinion, in other words, will restrain him.
In summary, my friends say that Trump is attempting to “create chaos” and to bluff the Venezuelans into an uprising leading to regime change. But all of the above reasons, my friends say, will prevent him from actually making war.
I replied that their logic was understandable in normal times, but we are not in normal times. No one living today knows what to do with the situation in the United States, because we have never faced it. The best path to understanding is to look at other autocracies in other countries and from other periods, inexact as that may be.
Here is the Situation
Here is my description of the current situation. It will be followed by the unassailable conclusion that Trump is going to start a war before 2027 unless the restraining force of the American people grows exponentially higher than it is today. Most of my information comes from common news sources, mostly the Washington Post.
“As of Friday (November 14), there were seven U.S. warships in the Caribbean: the guided missile cruisers USS Gettysburg and USS Lake Erie; the destroyers USS Gravely and USS Stockdale; and the amphibious ships USS Iwo Jima, USS Fort Lauderdale and USS San Antonio. The Ford was nearby in the Atlantic with the destroyers USS Mahan, USS Bainbridge and USS Winston S. Churchill.” Wapo 11/15/25
Amphibious ships carry armed personnel, usually Marines, to foreign shores. Guided missile cruisers, aircraft carriers and destroyers are just what they say they are. The United States is the greatest military power that the world has ever seen. As their world economic hegemony diminishes, and whatever goodwill they might have enjoyed is thrown away by Trump, military power is all they have left.
The Trump Administration raised the bounty on the President of Venezuela to $50 million. “Operation Southern Spear” has blown up a number of boats and killed their passengers. Trump asserts, without any evidence, that they were all carrying drugs from Venezuela to the United States. Hardly anybody with any knowledge agrees.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation announced in October that the Venezuelans had foiled a “false flag” attempt to blow up the U.S. Embassy. Newspersons here discounted the report. The U.S. State Department suspended operations at its Caracas embassy in March 2019. If the embassy had been destroyed with any loss of American life, Trump would have had a welcome excuse for military action.
NBC News announced that the U.S. Department of State has categorized Venezuela as Level 4: Do Not Travel due to crime, civil unrest, etc. They proclaimed that Americans should not travel to Venezuela and that they should avoid the Venezuela-Colombia border.
The Trump Administration has already sent armed troops into several cities. He told a meeting of top military leaders that they might be practicing on the U.S. citizenry. Partly because of Trump’s disdain for morality and law, his approval ratings have been falling.
Even though newspersons focused on Trump’s disappointment at not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, it actually went to a certain Maria Corina Machado. Machado has been a long-time advocate of U.S. intervention in Venezuela. On November 14, an article ran in the Washington Post describing how she is lining up corporate leaders with promises of privatization and protection of American corporations as they raid Venezuelan wealth, especially oil.
In November, in spite of gerrymandering and myriad schemes to undermine the election process, Republicans were humiliated at the polls. Democrats and pundits began predicting a Blue Wave of victory against Trump in 2026.
How Do I Know Trump Will Create a War?
There are several good arguments and one unassailable one. Begin with American presidents in history. Most of us can’t name them all, but we can name the “important” ones like Washington, Jackson, TR Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. All of them were warriors. More recently, Bush the First tried to portray himself as tough by invading Iraq, but was criticized for pulling back without achieving regime change. His son learned the lesson, re-invaded oil-rich Iraq, and enjoyed two relatively strong terms of office. Iraq and Venezuela, by the way, are famous for their oil reserves.
But no one can understand today’s situation in the U.S. simply with domestic examples. Our present situation is entirely new. Look, instead, at other countries and other times. Trump is a fascist and all fascists are military leaders. Fascism doesn’t just define its relationship to the populace. It also defines its economic policies and its relationship to the rest of the world. Trump, so far, has followed in the footsteps of such notable fascists as Franco, Pinochet, Mussolini and Hitler – except that he has not yet claimed the title of military leader.
For those who are unconvinced, I ask them to look at posts on social media. Many posts are already calling for criminal proceedings against Trump and the Trumpsters. Their disdain for morality and law has clearly put them into the criminal class. They know it. They see the same social media posts that you do.
If the Trumpsters were to lose power, they would be subject to criminal charges and would risk spending the rest of their lives in prison. Furthermore, they know it. They must, therefore, stay in power.
In order to stay in office and out of jail, they need a war to give them special powers, including the power to declare martial law and use the military against the populace. That’s why they have to do it.
At 7PM on September 16, I will get to open an on-line discussion about fascism. Even though these aren’t the times to sit around and study scholarly stuff, I couldn’t pass this one up. Fascism is upon us in America and people need to know what they are fighting. I’ve started circulating some questions and, bit by bit, some of the information I’ve gathered. Hopefully, people will get in touch about the link for the class.
Some questions to think about
When one considers the history of fascism in various nations, trying to define fascism is like nailing jelly to a wall. True? False?
Fascism is best described as “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.” True? False?
“Fascism is capitalism in its death throes.” True? False?
A ruling class can opt for fascism at one time, then later opt for some other form of administering their state. True? False?
The United States is already fascist and has been for some time. True? False?
The Trump Administration has revealed itself to aspire to fascism. True? False?
The threat of fascism will be erased if Democrats win the 2026 mid term elections. True? False?
Fascism comes when the capitalist class is at its strongest. True? False?
Fascism comes when the capitalist class is at its weakest. True? False?
When the capitalists’ economic situation is desperate, and when the progressive movement is threatening them, capitalists are likely to opt for autocracy and fascism. True? False?
When the capitalists’ economic situation is desperate, and when the progressive movement is threatening them, socialists have a great opportunity. True? False?
When confronted with the possibility of fascism, the united front is the way forward. True? False?
In America, the purpose of the united front is to elect anybody who opposes the Trump program. True? False?
The united front is a broad coalition of all anti-fascist organizations and individuals. True? False?
In the broadest sense, the workers’ interest is always primarily in the form of government. Dictatorship versus democracy. True? False?
“Mango Mussolini”
I’m creating a Power Point presentation to deal with the questions. But first, here’s what I have learned:
Why Study Up?
We study fascism today because we must stop it. Let us dispense with the academic side in as few words as possible, so that we can move on to the all-important prescriptions for how to overcome the fascist threat in America today.
In the present study of fascism, bear in mind that it is a form of government chosen deliberately by a capitalist class as a way of administering their state. Historically, capitalists chose limited democracy because it works best with their economy; but sometimes they choose fascism. This is one of those times.
ACADEMIC AND HISTORICAL DEFINITIONS
Fascism is best described as “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.” According to Georgi Dmitrov, in a collection of his reports in 1935 and 1936, “Against Fascism and War,” fascism is “the power of finance capital itself. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations.”
Mussolini called it “corporatism.”
Google definition:
Fascism is a far-right, ultranationalist, and authoritarian political ideology that prioritizes the nation and its leader above all else, emphasizing national unity, military strength, and the elimination of perceived threats through violence and propaganda. It is characterized by a cult of personality, a rejection of individual rights and democratic processes, and a focus on national decline and rebirth. Fascism advocates for a totalitarian state with centralized economic control, often resulting in the suppression of dissent and the persecution of minority groups.”
IS FASCISM FATAL? IS IT PERMANENT?
We nearly always study fascism by looking at Italy and Germany in the 1930s and World War II, when fascism rose, was defined, and was crushed by the capitalist countries still operating under limited democracy.
But fascism has occurred at other times in other countries. These countries used limited democracy before they became fascist and were using limited democracy afterward as well. As these countries and situations are more recent, they may be more relevant for our present study. Why did their capitalist class choose fascism and why, later, did they let it go?
“WHAT” IS LESS IMPORTANT THAN “WHY”
As you learned in “Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,” historical developments have an economic basis. A nation’s capitalist class chooses fascism as their way to deal with their economic problems. Authoritarian fascism is less efficient than partial democracy; consequently, fascists intervene in their capitalist economy. Hitler directed the corporations involved in war production and Donald Trump is today using state power to force business decisions and buy shares in key corporations. The need for higher profit rates call for another extreme government tool, and that tool is war.
The other, perhaps more pertinent, way to explain why capitalists choose fascism is that they need it to overcome their own domestic opposition. The German capitalists allied with the Social Democrats in order to stop the growing Communist opposition. After World War II, the Indonesian capitalists murdered a million Communist voters. The Vietnamese, Chileans, Brazilians, Argentinians and others, allied with U.S. imperialism, used “the Jakarta method” to violently overcome opposition in their countries. In later periods, when socialist opposition was less of a threat, they allowed partial democracy to return as their form of government. It’s more efficient.
WHAT MARX DIDN’T TELL US
Marx correctly predicted that capitalism will fall of its own weight. For example, the worldwide depression of the 1930s convinced many progressives that capitalism was finished. What Marx didn’t predict and what he never saw, was that capitalists can conduct world wars that destroy commodities, people, and factories. Then, afterward, the survivors effectively get to leave all our dead behind and start anew!
A SHORT HISTORY OF AMERICAN FASCISM
Early American fascism evaporated almost immediately after Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. In the 1960s, as a response to a growing civil rights and anti-war movement internally and the beginnings of a slip in American economic domination of the planet, the John Birch Society began to take the main role in promoting American fascism. When the Republican Party under Reagan embraced white nationalism, fascism bloomed. Careful and deliberate legal, electoral, and cultural schemes, underwritten deliberately by some of the richest Americans, paid off for them in 2024 when they consolidated their hold over one of the two major capitalist political parties. They are, at present, using every apparatus, including state power, to dismantle the former method of class rule and implement autocracy and fascism.
IS THIS CRISIS A DISASTER OR AN OPPORTUNITY?
American capitalists are losing their economic hegemony over the world and their political hold on the people. Opting for fascism is a sign of their weakness and desperation. Would any set of rational and strong people choose an unstable spokesperson like Donald Trump if they were comfortable with their choices?
Fascism is not an inevitable extension of capitalism. It can be stopped and, in fact, the weakness of the capitalist class gives progressive forces their best possible opportunity.
THE UNTED FRONT IS OUR STRATEGY
A united front is a broad coalition of working class and allied forces who agree to stop fascism. It is built by a serious of concerted working class activities that draw our class forces together. Concerted activities include strikes, boycotts, organizing drives, contract fights, and more general activities for progress such as civil rights and civil liberties fights. Unions, as the strongest, most democratic, and most popular institutions in America are of special importance. Activists deliberately initiate and/or support activities in order to build the necessary national coalition. Our goal is a socialist system where everyone’s human needs come before the desires of the tiny capitalist class.
From Dmitrov: “CONTENT AND FORMS OF THE UNITED FRONT”
“We must tirelessly prepare the working class for a rapid change in forms and methods of struggle when there is a change in the situation. As the movement grows and the unity of the working class strengthens, we must go further, and prepare the transition from the defensive to the offensive against capital, steering towards the organization of a mass political strike. It must be an absolute condition of such a strike to draw into it the main trade unions of the countries concerned.”
SUMMARY
American capitalists are opting for fascism because 1) they are losing their economic hegemony over the world and 2) they are losing political control over the people. Left unchecked, they will commit greater and greater atrocities, up to and including world war. The working class and its allies, working in a united front, can stop them. Further, we can break their rule and allow the people to move up to a better system.
Will the Democrats save America from fascism or do we need a Workers Party? I think it’s the latter. The former, counting on the Democrats, has been tried over and over without success. Fascism in America has been a long time coming, and the many Democratic Party administrations of the past didn’t stop it.
The Workers Party idea isn’t new. It isn’t even American. Lots of other countries, with parliamentary system instead of two-party winner-take-all elections, have Workers Parties or Labor Parties associated with their union movement and pledged to the interests of the working class.
The Democrats and Republicans both represent the interests of the billionaires. Some of the billionaires may have slightly different opinions that are reflected in their choice of which party to support in a given election, but they own both parties in an overall sense.
Would working families be better off with a Workers Party?
Here are few advantages:
* Independent political voice: A workers’ party would provide a platform for workers to voice their concerns and advocate for policies that directly benefit them, independent of corporate influence and the agendas of major parties.
* Addressing economic inequality: Supporters argue that a workers’ party would focus on issues like raising the minimum wage, creating living-wage jobs, expanding social safety nets, and holding corporations accountable for unfair labor practices, which they believe current parties neglect.
* Democratic accountability: A workers’ party, accountable to its members, would ensure that elected officials prioritize the needs of working people and fight for their interests, rather than being influenced by corporate donors or elite interests.
* Building class unity: A workers’ party can unite different segments of the working class and marginalized groups in a common struggle against the influence of the wealthy and powerful.
* Facilitating social change: Such a party could serve as a vehicle for broader social and political change by mobilizing workers and activists to challenge the status quo and push for a more just society.
Is a Workers Party the Best of the Alternatives?
Probably the prevalent hope for stopping fascism is reforming the oldest political party in the world until it gives up its billionaire base and embraces the working class. This is not a new idea. It has been tested time and time again and always failed.
What about just skipping the whole idea of an electoral party for workers and going straight to socialist revolution? This would be the hope of anarchists and amateurs. It has a lot of appeal for them but isn’t much more than a fantasy. Successful revolutionaries in other countries did not turn up their noses at electoral work, nor any other arena of struggle for that matter.
Is a Workers Party Possible in the Present?
Up to now, the answer to that question has always been “no.” The last successful third party was the Republican Party which grew because the Whigs had no solution to America’s division over slavery. Since then, the two billionaire parties have done everything possible to maintain the status quo. The legal barriers to a third party are formidable.
It takes a lot of money to win elections.
While romanticists imagine a working class that is united in its electoral preferences, practical politics tells us that it isn’t true. American workers are all over the map, and voters make their choices the same way they decide what commodities to buy – by emotion rather than reason.
But is it possible?
For a number of reasons, I think that the American Workers Party may have come into its time:
* A growing number of Americans believe that the Democrats fail to adequately represent the interests of the working class. Witness the growing protest movement, with five million demonstrators on June 14, 2025 alone.
Low turnout in elections shows that people don’t really care for either party.
Progressive Democrats like Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett are being passed over for good committee assignments by other Democrats (Dallas Morning News)
Independent and third-party voter registration is growing, largely at the expense of Democrats (NBC News)
Two major labor leaders, Randi Weingarten and Lee Saunders, quit the Democratic National Committee, saying it isn’t doing enough to “open the gates” and win back the support of working-class voters. (The Guardian)
A democratic socialist won the most votes in the first round of the Democratic Party primary for New York Mayor. He defeated billionaires and union supporters from the traditional wing. So called “moderate” Democrats attacked him during and after the election. They will run their candidate against him as an Independent! (Washington Post).
Political winners like Trump, Obama, and AOC have proven that they can raise money without the help of the national political party
People no longer get their information from the major parties. They get it from their phones, social media, etc.
Do these facts prove that a Workers Party is feasible? At the very least, the facts show that it is more feasible than it used to be.
Given that Americans are being forced into fascism, it’s time to develop an alternative.
The for-profit economic system must be ended. Today’s unprecedented political activity must be turned toward ending this system and birthing a new system of cooperation and democracy. The opportunity is now and may soon pass by, just as two great opportunities were missed in 20th century history.
Great hordes of protesters are springing up like grass on the Earth. They are fearless and strong, but not united in purpose. In America, many of them believe that they need only to replace Musk and Trump with Democrats. They are mistaken, and, if they don’t achieve a better understanding, will probably fail even in their modest hopes. Even if they succeed, they will have solved nothing except, perhaps, a delay in fascism.
Look behind the Musk/Trump fascist spokespersons at the underlying economic situation and our place in material history.
Musk and Trump are powerful figureheads, but figureheads still. The other politicians, newspersons, judges, and law firms kneeling before Musk/Trump give a clue to the breadth of the fascist trend. The power behind it all is the billionaire class.
The billionaire class would not have chosen comic madmen and unpopular ideology if they weren’t desperate. In fact, the capitalists are aware that they are drowning in a thrashing sea. Musk/Trump and fascism, they hope, will at least keep them afloat until they can find a way to restore the profit streams that keep them alive as a class. In their desperation, and because they have no conscience, they are willing to bring about a third world war – this time against China.
Armchair socialists who believe that world war is impossible and that capitalism will die of self-inflicted wounds, aren’t helping.
Capitalism will not die of its own internal contradictions, as some bookish “Marxists” choose to believe. Like flatworms cut in half, capitalism can regenerate its missing parts.
This was demonstrated after World War I and again after World War II. In those wars, hundreds of millions died, many more suffered lifelong debilitations, and the wealth of ages was destroyed or converted into military equipment that was either blown to smithereens or discarded as useless later on. Afterward, the capitalists who had won picked up and went on to create a new phase of prosperity for themselves.
In 1914 and again in 1939, capitalism’s internal contradictions brought the system to the precipice of extinction just as Marx and Engels had predicted. But nineteenth century Marx and Engels had no experience with mechanized world war. The twentieth century bosses didn’t step aside in acknowledgement of the fact that history had already outlived them and they had nothing progressive to offer the human race. Instead, they set themselves at each other like cannibals and came close to destroying everything.
After the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were evaporated, it was commonly thought that a third world war was impossible, since the existence of the planet was at stake. Bookish “Marxists” took comfort in believing that world war had become simply impossible and that the internal contradictions explained by Marx, usually described as the tendency of the profit rate to decline, was still operating to bring the bosses to their eventual knees.
Past bosses had no qualms about ordering millions of automated deaths nor of destroying civilization’s wealth. In fact, a lot of them did quite well in the wartime economy. The bosses on the winning side also reaped a bonanza in post-war prosperity.
Even though the corporate-owned newspersons describe the Musk/Trump regime as chaotic and senseless shenanigans, they have a clear purpose that is completely in line with the wishes of the billionaire class that sponsors them. They intend to bring everyone possible under their control and to direct them, like a collective battering ram of nations, corporations and individuals, against their economic adversary — China. A trade war is hardly the beginning, because only the mighty U.S. military might be able to overcome China’s commercial advantages.
If the billionaires are not stopped and removed from power, they will sooner or later carry out a third world war at immeasurable cost to the people and the planet. That’s how they handled their inevitable internal crises before; that’s how they will handle them again, unless they are stopped.
genelantz 