I’ve always liked the movie “High Noon” from 1954. It seems like a pretty good analogy for Dallas on September 9-10, 2026. In both cases, a very bad guy has announced that he’s coming to town to do his bad business. The local people scurry around to protect themselves.
At first Mr Trump announced that they were holding the Republican Party’s first ever “Mid-Term Convention.” But later they admitted that there won’t be any convention, it’s just a fund raiser and a Trump extravaganza. In fact, most news reports include the idea that they are only doing it because Ken Paxton is losing his race for Texas Senate. They need something to buoy the boy.
Apparently, their big plans for fund raising were a little too big. A week or so after the announcement, they cut the price for a Trumpster ticket by 50%. In the electoral arena, nothing is going very well for the Trumpsters.
The movie was supposed to be a typical cowboy shoot-em-up, but things went wrong and they turned out one of the greatest movies of all time. The screenwriter had been blacklisted, so arch anti-communist John Wayne did all he could to destroy ticket sales. In fact, the real-life story of the production and eventual success of the movie is very parallel to the story in the movie: Values of courage and communal spirit are pitted against pure evil. In the movie, the local law enforcement personifies every cowboy hero in every cowboy story ever told.
As soon as the Marshall finds out that Mr Evil and his gang are coming, the Marshall’s bride-to-be tells him to run. In fact, she says she will leave him if he doesn’t. No pressure.
His loyal deputy, a total opportunist, tries to make a deal before agreeing to help, then he defaults completely. The old judge would like to help, he says, but his hands are too shaky nowadays. The Marshall’s old sweetheart, once the consort of Mr Pure Evil and more lately the deputy’s squeeze, is packing her bags to run. Katy Jurado was magnificent in this role.
As a teenager, I was proud to copy and sing the Frankie Lane popular version of the Title Song, but the Tex Ritter version on the original sound track, while not very accessible, was far better.
Now, I hear that tune when I think about the Trumpsters coming to Dallas.
“Oh to be torn twixt love and duty,
S’posing I lose my fair hair beauty?
Look at that big hand move!
Nearin’ High Noon…”
The townspeople here aren’t scurrying around in fear the way they did in the movie. We’re organizing.
As the election “season” begins, activists are weighing several options:
Ignore the elections
Outreach independently
Outreach for a candidate or the Democrats
Outreach along with progressive organizations
Outreach with the labor movement
The best tactic will be the one that correctly understands the situation and anticipates what will happen.
The situation is that the Republican hold over their previous voters is slipping. Democrats are gaining slightly in the polls, but there is no clear shift in power from one party to the other. Republicans are doing everything legally possible to undermine and rig the elections. The Democratic Party’s response is to complain, but their basic strategy is the same as any other election – to get as many votes as possible.
It should be obvious to all that the Trumpsters running the Republican Party will desperately cling to power no matter what it takes, legal or extralegal. We already know that they resorted to extralegal measures in 2020, and they will of certainty do so again if they lose in 2026 – only with a lot more firepower. It is entirely possible that they will even try to cancel the elections. Certainly, they will not hesitate at overthrowing them.
THERE ARE REALLY TWO GREAT CHALLENGES
The first challenge is to beat the Trumpsters decisively on November 3. The second major challenge is to overcome the Trumpster effort to overthrow the electoral process beginning November 4.
The easy way to win on November 3 is to work hard for the Democrats. But they will be incapable of leadership during the assault on democracy beginning November 4th.
WHICH OPTION IS BEST?
The first option listed above is ridiculous. The second one is best because it advances the possibility of winning both on November 3 AND November 4. But independent outreach work brings a risk of being isolated and could even endanger participants. It would require substantial participation.
The third option listed above works for November 3, but not for November 4. The 4th option works for both, but its effectiveness on November 4th depends on the strength of the organization supported.
The 5th and final option listed above is effective for November 3 and November 4. Unions are the strongest part of the working class and will be the backbone of the fight that begins November 4. It is also the safest choice.
In summary, if the progressive movement has the substance to carry out an independent outreach program, that would be best. If not, working with labor is best.
I was inspired by an article about China’s views on the United Nations and restoring multilateralism in all international relations. They encourage the United Nations to stand up for it.
The opposite of multilateralism is intense competition, including wars between states. I think most of us would agree with what the Chinese say in the article, but is multilateralism even possible? Maybe we need some clarification.
What’s a State? What’s a Nation?
Let’s do the easy one first. A nation is a group of people sharing some things such as history, language, religion, and culture. A good example that we often use is the Cherokee nation. Lots of them live in Oklahoma because they were forced to move there when their state was subjugated.
A state is an administrative body through which a ruling class carries out its affairs, including the subjugation of any other economic class that might get in their way. Our modern state is not run by the Cherokees, even in Oklahoma. It is run by rich capitalists who command police, armies, prisons, and border agents to control or kill anybody penetrating their turf.
Borders Are Central to Capitalism
When capitalism began, around the middle of the 16th century in England, they tightly defined their borders. They defend those borders with every kind of armament. They don’t let anybody in or out without their permission. This fixation with borders was fairly new in history and doesn’t always make sense to working people.
Mexican Americans, for example, often say that they didn’t cross any borders but “the border crossed us.” Most of the Western United States was taken from Mexico, so it’s understandable that Mexican Americans believe they should be able to cross back and forth over the imaginary lines that capitalism established.
The way to understand capitalism’s borders is to think of gangster movies where the various criminals get together and define their “turf.” If a gangster is selling drugs on the wrong street corner, he/she is punished by the gang bosses. Similarly, capitalists established their borders by force of arms.
Borders Change, Or Get Changed
Long ago, what people called “China” was considerably bigger than what is pictured above.
“China,” or the “Mongol Empire” extended well into Europe, as you can see on this old map. The Mongols conquered a lot of territory, but subsequent dynasties lost it to other aggressors.
Plenty of modern borders weren’t drawn by the capitalists who lived there. They were drawn by the great imperialist powers. In World War I, for example, the Austrian Empire and the Ottoman Empire were on the losing side. Here’s a map from before the Great War:
Their former territories, along with a lot of Africa, were carved up by the victorious imperialists. Here’s a map of the Middle East from after WWI:
The joke goes that one of the squiggly lines on the border of Iraq was caused when somebody jostled Winston Churchill’s pencil.
Keep in mind that “nation” and “state” are entirely two different things, but nothing in this world is absolute and ideal. The Cherokee nation may not have its own state, but they have some administrative powers. There are nations that were able to win their own state. Pakistan is a good example.
Are We Going to Get the Multilateralism We Deserve?
No, we’re not. The modern state, with its defined borders and defending armies, is a capitalist creation. Capitalists have to expand. That’s why they had World War I, to settle who gets to expand where.
Remember the gangsters and their turf? Do you think the gangsters actually respect each other’s “territory” for any length of time?
We may long for socialism and the eventual “withering away” of states, but right now what we have is a world full of capitalist states and a few places where socialism is trying to defend itself from them.
After World War II, when the United States was firmly in control of most of the world’s economy, they were happy to allow the United Nations to exist. They talked about “multilateralism” all the time, just as long as they were the ones in charge.
But their hold on the world economy is slipping, and that’s exactly why they have started attacking other people’s borders. No border is safe.
Three alternatives are possible when we wake up on November 4, the day after the election:
No substantial transfer of power
Trumpsters substantially win
Anti-Trumpsters substantially win
In the first scenario, we go on with the day-by-day fight to keep from sliding completely into autocracy. In the second, we’ll do the same thing, but with a tremendous handicap. In the third scenario, we can expect the electoral fight to spill over into the streets.
In other words, the Trumpsters will do everything they can to overturn elections — even to the point of overturning the system itself. As they did in 2020, they will use everything at hand — but this time they will have at hand a lot more than a bunch of lawyers and a gang of violent loonies.
In Any Scenario, We Have to Unify
We have less than four months to pull the anti-autocracy forces together. It is not just a good way to win, it is the only way.
Against our unity effort is the mighty obstacle of sectarianism. While opposing the Trumpsters is common to many organizations and ideologies, each of them exists within its silo of isolation. Hardly any of us is open to working with everybody.
The Democrats, or course, have the simplest solution: vote Democrat. But they may be the most sectarian of all. For example, look at the way they gang up against their more progressive (and amazingly successful) candidates for office!
Today’s (7/14/26) Dallas Morning News has a strong lead editorial warning against “extremists” from the Democratic Socialist camp. I wrote them a letter asking if they were comfortable in the “middle of the road” along with yellow stripes and dead armadillos. I’ve seen dozens of articles imploring the Democrats to denounce their progressives because, they say, the American people are so reactionary that denouncing progressives is the only way for Democrats to win.
Cut off your nose to spite your face!
Who’s a Sectarian?
Almost everybody in almost every organization. We were fragmented deliberately by those who rule us, whether Democrat or Republican. We remain fragmented and have never in our history overcome sectarianism completely.
Now, we must. We can because we have to. It’s the only way to win.
How Do We Overcome Our Sectarianism?
Patiently explain.
We find ways to put aside our differences for the common goal of not becoming an authoritarian state in 2026. Texans, especially Dallasites, have a tremendous opportunity for unity because the Trumpsters are planning a gigantic fund raising extravaganza at the American Airlines Center September 9-10.
As usual, of course, every organization in town is working on separate events, but I may have thought of a way to get everybody out of our silos and working together. It has to do with the President (I’m the VP) of the North Texas Area Labor Federation, Tevita Uhatafe.
Unions may not be perfectly aligned, even with one another, but they have a better understanding of winning through solidarity than anybody. Tevita, whose nickname is “Brother Solidarity,” is the most powerful, and the least sectarian, labor leader around.
Tevita has agreed to work with me on an all-encompassing, totally non-sectarian and open, approach to opposing the Trumpsters on September 9-10.
How?
We’re going to do it on-line.
With a lot of technical help from Travis Cantwell, who joined me to put on a successful “Labor Day Breakfast” during the pandemic, we’re planning to stream anti-autocracy speakers and Q&A sessions all the way through the Trumpster extravaganza. They are charging $5,000-$20,000 for a ticket. We’re charging nothing. Talk about democracy!
We will also post every speech on YouTube so people can watch them later.
Newspersons will be the first people invited. Next, we’ll invite spokespersons from every anti-Trumpster organization that has a following.
Who?
Why not get the most outstanding anti-Trumpster speakers? Since it’s on-line and free, we should be able to get Zohran Mamdani, Mayor of New York. We should be able to get dynamic labor leaders like Randi Weingarten of the AFT or Shawn Fain of the UAW.
We should be able to get the most critical candidates, but we shouldn’t stop at electoral politics. Let’s also invite the Palestinians, the peace movement, the communists, the retirees, the feminists, the gays, the church leaders — any single spokesperson for any single organization with a following against the Trumpsters.
That’s the way to unity! That’s the way to win!
–Gene Lantz
I’m on KNON.org radio 89.3FM at 9AM every Saturday. I post all over the internet. My personal web site is https://lilleskole.us.
I’m wholeheartedly advocating your campaign in Congressional District 33. My reasons may be unique.
It’s not because I dislike the other two candidates. Julie Johnson and Colin Allred have been solid for labor and for retirees. I’ve always liked them both and would have had a hard time choosing between them if you hadn’t come along.
It’s not because I think electing a new congressperson this November will significantly change the awful direction that our nation is going. I am not convinced that we will even have American elections in November.
My reasons for supporting you are strong. They include some specific parts of your program, but are more about the salutary effect you have on our fragmented progressive movement.
I admire what seems to be growing respect between you and another candidate in a different district, Reverend Doctor Frederick Haynes III. You and I are recently acquainted, but I have been listening to Haynes for decades and I have never witnessed a better spokesperson for unity between the civil rights movement and labor. Also, I have never heard him say anything that wasn’t absolutely true.
I was tremendously impressed by your call for shortening working hours without cutting paychecks. I have never heard a candidate with this program, and I don’t believe that even old-timers in the labor movement are likely to remember that “30 for 40 [hours] with no cut in pay” was once a basic demand in the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
Shortening the working hours without cutting pay is the only possible solution to the threat of automation. Artificial intelligence, today’s most prominent form of automation, is being promoted fanatically by big business and the Trump Administration. It has one and only one purpose: layoffs. Even though artificial intelligence is in its first stages, America is already in a jobs crisis, and it will get worse unless we shift to your solution.
The other proposals for fighting automation and artificial intelligence are tragedies. They consist of minor attempts at legislative regulation and, most forlorn hope of all, controlling automation with union contracts. 90% of American workers don’t even have a union contract!
Ordinary progressive spokespersons are insufficient in these times, because these are not normal times. We are facing an aspiring fascist dictatorship that can only be stopped by a strong, intelligent, and well-integrated people’s movement. Judges haven’t stopped it, and neither have legislatures, nor will they.
We need spokespersons like you who understand the threat, can clarify it for others, and can point us toward solutions. Most particularly, you have the potential to help overcome the boss-invented divisions that are holding us back. Racism and chauvinism are the best known of these sociological maladies, but jingoism must also be overcome. For far too long, some of our political representatives have voted well enough on domestic issues, but they almost inevitably failed us on international ones.
Your message of unity is the same that Dr. King expressed at Riverside Church in 1967. He tried to heal the rifts dividing labor, civil rights, and the peace movement. Dr King is gone but the rifts remain, until now when we finally have an opportunity for clarity and unity.
President Trump is spending almost $1 trillion dollars on the military, and he recently called for a 50% increase! The main beneficiaries of American militarism are oil companies. He isn’t making America great, he is making rich America obscenely richer.
America is running out of time. Spokespersons like you have to explain the danger and put forward the only possible solution – unity!
As I write this on January 3, 2026, the nations of the world, even moderate nations, are condemning the U.S. invasion and occupation of Venezuela. For American workers, the best news is that the national labor movement, the AFL-CIO itself, has joined the international labor community in condemnation.
The AFL-CIO’s action opens the way for discussions and resolutions in every labor body in America. The obvious demand is to remove all U.S. military forces from Venezuela immediately. Everyone must participate!
What we face in the United States goes much further than the invasion of a sovereign nation. We are facing a government that has committed itself to the use of bullying and brute force in order to achieve its aims. That bullying will not stop in Venezuela, nor will it stop in other invaded nations. It is, and has been for some time, the regular practice of the Trump Administration within the United States.
We can expect violence from them as they try to stop us from exercising our rights as citizens. They will be attacking protesters. They will be, they already are, looking for ways to frame anybody who stands against them.
And yet we will protest. We will demand our rights, including the right to vote unfit people out of office. This is the greatest test of the democracy in our history since the Civil War. We cannot fail.
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.
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.
genelantz 