Labor's "Barbarossa" Moment
Fascism is coming. Unions ignored the warning signs.
An edited and expanded version of remarks offered at “A Strategy for Labor, A CUNY Panel Discussion of Honor of Merle Ratner,” December 12, 2024
Greetings! My appreciation for this invitation and this opportunity to honor our dear late friend, Merle Ratner. Her unexpected loss haunts us all. Merle was a committed leftist and socialist. She was also an internationalist in her DNA, with a particular focus on solidarity with the people of Vietnam. There were many things striking about Merle, not the least being her insistence on the essential need for organization. Merle recognized that without organization, the oppressed have nothing. And something that Merle always wanted to address was the future of organized labor and the role of the Left in advancing a revitalization process. It is with this in mind that the following is offered.
On June 22, 1941, Operation Barbarossa commenced with a blaze of artillery, accompanied by aircraft bombardment and massive troop advances. The German invasion of the USSR was treated by many people at the time, and later, as a surprise attack. After all, Nazi Germany and the USSR had signed a nonaggression pact in 1939. In fact, up to the minute of the invasion the USSR was still shipping raw materials to Germany in accordance with the agreement.
But the attack was no surprise. For months preceding the invasion, Soviet intelligence, and at a key moment the so-called “Lucy ring” (based in Switzerland), had been sending warnings to Moscow about a pending invasion. The warnings were ignored. Stalin and his inner circle would not take the warnings seriously, claiming that these were efforts by Britain to distract the USSR from the real nature of the war, i.e., the ludicrous Stalinian argument that this was simply an inter-imperialist war, no different from World War I.
When the invasion started, the Soviet leadership was dumbfounded. Stalin disappeared for one week; no one could find him. Thousands of Soviet soldiers and civilians perished due to the absolute failure of the Stalin leadership to recognize all the signs. The German advance was ultimately stopped outside Moscow due to a combination of factors including the onset of an early Russian winter—for which the Germans were entirely unprepared—and stiff Soviet resistance. As a side note, Operation Barbarossa was supposed to have started earlier, but Germany delayed it in order to invade Yugoslavia and Greece, saving fascist Italy’s troops from disaster. That delay may have saved the world.
We are facing our own “Operation Barbarossa,” a point to which I shall return.
The US trade union movement has been seeking its bearings for decades. It has been rocked by Cold War purges and repression, vicious anti-communism destroying entire unions, collaboration with US foreign policy in a series of international horrors, changing demographics in the working class, rising insurgencies within the working class and the trade union movement, economic reorganization, and the rise of neoliberal globalization. Yet even after all this, the US trade union movement has remained trapped in the paradigm set for it by American Federation of Labor founder, Samuel Gompers, a paradigm that focused the unions on wages, hours, working conditions, with no independent political action, and with active support for US imperialism internationally. Rather than make a full break with this paradigm, though increasingly aware of the crisis of US trade unionism, the movement’s leadership largely engaged in a sort of tactical hopscotch attempting to find the right space to land upon, failing to recognize that our opponents were playing a very different game: chess.
The absence of a clear strategic vision on the part of the leadership of organized labor has been linked to its failure to appreciate the “moment” in which we are operating. So, let’s discuss the “moment.”
Since 2009, labor—both organized labor and alt-labor—as well as much of the progressive movement have failed to identify and recognize the significance of the rise and transformation of a right-wing populist movement, a movement that morphed into the MAGA fascist movement. Labor and too many progressives ignored all the signals. In fact, one should really go back to the 1980s and the emergence largely in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest of various armed fascist groups that played within the swamp of right-wing populism, hunting Jews and people of color. There was the rise of the (white) Christian nationalists, moving to the center of the Republican Party. There was the 1994 Newt Gingrich-led “Contract with America” and the change in tone—literally—of partisan exchanges. And there was the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing/massacre and the revelation of the proliferation of right-wing militia groups around the US. While a few organizations, such as Political Research Associates, sounded the alarm, they were the equivalent of the “Lucy ring” sending information on the pending Operation Barbarossa, only to be largely ignored.
In 2009 we witnessed the Tea Party movement, later appended by the “birthers.” Yet, in the face of this mass movement, little discussion took place within labor and the movement was dismissed as an alleged “astroturf” movement‚ that is, a movement that was a fake, with no social base. When Trump and others promoted birtherism, again, it was ignored as the ravings of an unanchored lunatic that would have little impact…until it did.
And even after Trump 45 was defeated in 2020, there remained those who continued to deny that something of strategic significance had unfolded in the US. In the aftermath of January 6, 2021, there were two astounding comments coming from labor. One, that maybe this meant that progressives were pushing too hard and that we should slow down. Two, that US political institutions had displayed their ability to withstand a hurricane and reset themselves. For this latter group, the part two was that now the time had arrived to return to fighting centrist Democrats rather than isolating and crushing the far right.
Therefore, in addressing the question of labor’s revitalization, our starting point must be that labor becomes an antifascist movement or it has no future.
In his masterful work, Fascism and Dictatorship, the iconic Greek/French Marxist theorist Nicos Poulantzas noted that, in the years immediately preceding the victory of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany, the trade union movements in their respective countries had waged militant economic struggles. But in neither case were those trade union movements fully antifascist movements. They seemed to believe, as many of our friends do today, that a progressive, militant economic message will undercut the base of the fascists.
It did not work out quite that way.
Why? Because the fascist movements are not based on one grievance alone. Drawing on racism, sexism, selective anti-elitism, economic grievance, and most importantly, revanchism, fascist movements—when they are out of power—can be militantly anti-corporate elite, though this anti-corporate elite is regularly tinged with antisemitism and/or racism.
Transforming and renewing trade unionism today necessitates prioritizing the antifascist fight. This antifascist fight must have both a defensive and offensive character. Taking on neoliberalism—one of the key foundations for the rise of the far right—and carrying on visionary organizing efforts is certainly part of the answer insofar as this work helps to unite and galvanize the working class. But it is not enough.
Antifascism also involves providing answers and solutions to why the world is in chaos and why the US is in a state of a “cold civil war.” It involves a vigilant defense of democratic rights and an equally vigilant fight to expand democracy. In this sense we are not involved in so-called cultural wars, but we are involved in a fight over whether democracy loses or whether it is expanded and becomes consistent democracy. A social justice unionist framework can help us evolve the trade union movement into an antifascist force, a movement that truly recognizes that workers are 24-hour beings with multiple interests and concerns.
With all that in mind, here are a few suggestions on what needs to be done:
Renew the education of workers on capitalism, the far right, and how to fight them both.
Link labor—both organized and alt-labor—with other progressive forces. We need our own version of the French “New Popular Front,” that is, an alignment of forces that are not only fighting the fascists, but also articulating a positive program for the future, one that many people have summarized as the “Third Reconstruction.”
Organize “democracy brigades” within all labor organizations to combat the far right, i.e., committees of workers who will offer voter protection, defense of abortion clinics, opposition to book-banners, defense of migrants, and who will stand up when the fascists tell us to sit down.
Identify the key sources of power in contemporary society and develop strategies to undermine them, i.e., know our enemies and seek out their weaknesses so that we can defeat them (whether those enemies are small fascist groups, fascist movements, or oligarchs).
Unite labor with the environmental and environmental justice movements to counter the environmental catastrophe while fighting for structural reforms to rebuild, strengthen, and advance the social safety net, essential for people to survive planetary environmental crisis.
Push labor to fully embrace geographic and industrial strategies aimed at building economic and political power for workers, another step on the road to the Third Reconstruction.
To do this, we need organization. I have had the honor of helping to found standing4democracy.org, an antifascist, worker-focused organization, committed to uniting with others in opposition to the far right and toward revitalizing and transforming the labor movement, transforming it into an antifascist movement. I encourage you to join with us or to join with some other formation that is equally committed to advancing democracy.
The “artillery” will start firing at our positions the afternoon of January 20, 2025. The “tanks” will cross the border on January 21st. MAGA is seeking to paralyze all progressive forces through the speed of their advance and the devastation they intend to inflict. To defeat MAGA we must fully understand them, but also understand that our struggle will, for the foreseeable future, be asymmetric. We will need to be creative in response, and equally determined. Victory is far from certain, but in that light, defeat is not an option.
Thank you.
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The Labor Bigs are Fascists. The most disgusting these days is Shawn Fain who continues the fake UAW's scabbing. He has now volunteered us all for WWIII. Maybe Bill could take the time to read the Solidarity mandates of the UAW's Constitution and let us know why he like Fain?