Labor's leadership made Trump's rise possible.

In discussing these issues in the weekly phone conferences that Facts For Working People has and talking and writing about them on the blog, it makes us think a lot more about them.  People are very quick to blame third parties, independents or the Greens for example, for ensuring the victory of the worse evil over the slightly lesser evil.

But thinking about it seriously for even a short moment and reflecting on the past, it is blatantly obvious that we would be in an entirely different situation if the trade union leadership, the leaders of the working  class organizations had taken a different road other than class collaboration.  This is not true of just the US trade union leaders, but of the leaders of worker organizations  and political parties internationally. There was an early post about this issue: The Union Hierarchy and the Road Not Taken.

From the Stalinists (CP) in the French General Strike of 1968 to or the Spanish Revolution of 1936 to the lightning capitulation of Syriza, to the Troika in Greece after the referendum that gave Tsipras the green light to oppose the austerity package, movements have been stopped in their tracks, have ended up in defeat, due to the role of the workers' leaders. The greatest example of this of course would be the role of the Communist Party in Germany during the rise of Hitler.

Here in the US, the disastrous situation where we have a racist, misogynist and vicious opponent of workers' rights with a chance of becoming the president of the most powerful nation on earth if he defeats his warmongering opponent in the presidential election, is without a doubt made possible due to the labor officialdom atop organized labor refusing to offer an alternative to the US working class in the form of a workers political party.

With another deep recession or slump likely before the end of 2017 we are in for a very tumultuous period ahead.