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| Workers are the only hope to "stymie" this capitalist offensive. The Courts are not ours. |
Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED
2-21-25
I have received a few sharp rebukes from some friends who think I am not taking the dangers of the Trump Administration seriously enough. Other friends have shared how terrified they are about the future.
Well I will assure my critics that I am concerned and think we should all be concerned. But why did we wait so long? We should have been concerned long before we reached the point of a second Trump presidency; we’ve just sat through 4 years of an Administration backed genocide. Should we not have worried about that? When Clinton Bombed Serbia, Bush bombed, everywhere along with Obama, should we not have been concerned? When Biden denied workers our precious right to strike should we have been concerned? And the ongoing decline in our living standards and rising inequality; isn’t that something to concern ourselves about?
As a social system reaches a point where it cannot take society forward, its institutions, its great thinkers and political representatives reflect this decay. Trump is a symptom of the ongoing unraveling of the mode of production we know as capitalism not the cause of it.
As Roger Silverman pointed out in his article I posted to this blog, Trump is, “…..a prime example of the most criminal, coarse, vulgar, corrupt, parasitic kind of money-grubbing market trader: not even a genuine entrepreneur, just a gambler, a property speculator. He creates no value, makes nothing, manufactures nothing, simply buys and sells at an astronomical profit.”
However, I do not believe the end of the world is nigh just because Trump got elected by a tiny percentage of the US electorate.
Trump’s Mandate
Let’s first dismiss the myth that Trump has been given an electoral mandate to rule. According to my findings, Trump received 77,284,118 votes or 49.8%of votes cast. Kamala Harris won 74,999,166 votes or 48.3 percent of the votes cast. Trump’s total margin of victory over Harris was 1.5 percent and the voter turnout nationally was 63.9 percent. Close to 90 million of those eligible to vote refused to do so.
So not only did Trump not receive a mandate, the majority of potential voters did not vote for him. This trend, the opting out of the electoral process, has been ongoing as US workers and sections of the middle class become more disgusted with the US political system and both capitalist parties that have dominated US political life for over a century. The graft and corruption in the US Congress and the bribery of politicians euphemistically referred to as lobbying, adds to the disgust and a tendency to abhor politics altogether which is a mistake.
It is not necessary to repeat here all the outrageous proposals and actions that Trump has taken in the first month of his administration as I am sure most people reading this are well aware of them. But there is already chaos. Someone----I can’t remember who---- pointed out that consciousness lags behind events and we witness this all the time, particular in the in the aftermath of major social upheavals and we are experiencing an historic shift in global politics and the relations between nations.
Domestically, it does appear at this point that Trump is having a back and forth with the Judiciary that is trying to block some of his executive orders, but further divisions will open up within the Republican Party and the menagerie of White Nationalists, neo-fascists, Christian Nationalists, Zionists and other elements in his administration. Some sections of the capitalist media are hoping the Judiciary and the courts will save us as the headline in the image included from a local paper indicates, but workers can’t rely on the capitalist courts.
The US working class will be forced to respond to these heightened assaults on our living standards as this process unfolds and the consequences of the increased attacks are felt. When traditional outlets fail us, working people take other roads, mass action, protests in the streets and, if necessary, sabotage. Federal and all public sector workers run the system and will, if need be, use their knowledge and familiarity with its working to disrupt it if necessary. But it’s inevitable in my view that a conscious movement will begin to develop. Workers have a lot to lose, we are very cautious about challenging the state and are well aware of the massive security apparatus the US state has.
In most of the discussions in the mass media, the idea that the US working class will play any role at all in the coming conflicts is pretty much absent. But that the working class will play a major if not key role in the period ahead, is the source of my optimism; it is the only social force that can turn things around.
Union Leadership and the Democratic Party
As the dust settles, more insidious enemies will have to be confronted, the enemies within if you like. As the US working class begins to push back, it will be the opportunists and “reformers”, the enemy within, that will present the immediate threat as they try to derail any strong independent working class opposition from gaining traction. This is especially true of the trade union hierarchy.
It is right to fight for reforms, if those reforms assist us in changing the privately owned system of producing society’s needs that produces for profit, to one where what we produce, how it is produced, and how it is distributed (in harmony with the natural world, rather than at war with it), is determined by workers as society’s producers and consumers.
One of the reasons we have reached this point is the pro-business policies of the heads of organized labor and their incestuous relationship with the Democratic Party. The leadership of the 14 million member US trade union movement actually act as agents of this capitalist party within the trade union movement. The Team Concept, the philosophy that workers and bosses have the same interests reflects this relationship and is the source of the betrayals and concessionary policies that flow from it. Most workers abandoned this party long ago yet the trade union hierarchy continues to push this strategy as the only way forward. This is one of the reasons for Trump’s rise.
I checked some of the union websites to see if anything has changed. This is what the heads of the AFL-CIO had to say in their 2024 yearly report:
“We didn’t get the results we wanted on Election Day.”
But adds positively,
“…union members broke 57%–41% for Harris”
“If every working-class person in this country was in
a union, this election would have been a landslide
for Kamala Harris. We need more union members.
We need to organize, organize, organize. That is
the cure”
Lee Saunders Afscme President (my former union) says:
“AFSCME fought hard this year to elect pro-worker, pro-union supporters to office.”
He adds, “Anti-worker billionaires with little knowledge of, or interest in, public services are already hard at work figuring out ways to cut salaries, benefits and job security.”
Are there pro-union billionaires? Of course. They are the Democratic Party billionaires. We can trust them. And the pro-worker, pro-union supporters he is referring to are Democrats. This is how disconnected the trade union tops are from the average worker.
Saunders points out correctly that unions have a huge approval rating of 70% and goes on to say that, “Doubling down on organizing is how we’ll fend off the coming attacks.”
This is a similar emphasis on organizing as the AFL-CIO statement prior.
Organizing the unorganized, the vast majority of the working class, is crucial. But that’s work and most new members are often due to bringing in already formed organizations or associations.
The statement from the AFL-CIO and Saunders about organizing has two objectives. One is revenue and like any business, revenue contributes to profits. For unions it means more dues revenue which can fund the top leaders’ obscene salaries but, and this is the main one, it means more money and foot soldiers for the Democratic Party; it’s the Democratic Party equivalent of the Republicans troops, the Tea Party and Christian right wingers. It gives the union heads legitimacy in the eyes of the Democratic Party leaders. It’s not about building independent union power on the job that can win strikes and shut down production. And certainly not for building an independent workers’ political party as an alternative to the two big business choices.
A UAW press release on February 12th included this militant demand:
“To ensure these cuts are reversed, UAW demands immediate action from Congress before they wreak havoc on the working class, scientific innovation, and the future of public health.”
This is a disaster for workers. It’s the same old worn out approach that has brought us this far, appealing to the good nature of the representatives of capital. It’s as if they’re are unaware that we have lost ground under both parties. But for the union officialdom, there is no viable alternative. They are more afraid of the potential power of their members than the bosses’ are.
We should take note that some US unions have members in Canada and the UA is one of them. This will be an interesting aspect of the tariff war and insults Trump is throwing out about Canada. We must not be drawn in to this nationalist bullshit; it weakens us. Brian Bryant, the President of the UA (The United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada) has this to say:
“We urge President Trump to pull all stakeholders – government, business, and labor – together to forge a comprehensive strategy to protect and grow critical manufacturing in the United States and Canada.”
There’s the problem right there and the entire leadership of organized labor has this view; workers and bosses have the same economic interests; so let’s lay off foreign workers. The UAW is appealing to a president who said: “So, we’re going to be keeping foreign Christian-hating communists, socialists, and Marxists out of America. We’re keeping them out of America.” and is firing or attempting to fire thousands of US workers. Do we honestly think this bunch of thugs around him who are sending undocumented workers to Guantanamo concentration camp or deporting them outright is not going to come after the rest of us, particularly the unions.
This is why organized labor has lost ground and a huge factor why US workers in general have seen a decline in our living standards over the past decades. The heads of organized labor see the unions as employments agencies with themselves as the CEO’s. Compare the statements above, to this one from the US of the 1840’s:
"Brethren we conjure you...not to believe a word of what is being said about your interests and those of your employers being the same. Your interests and theirs are in a nature of things, hostile and irreconcilable. Then do not look to them for relief...Our salvation must, through the blessing of God, come from ourselves. It is useless to expect it from those whom our labors enrich." *
Just this week the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin sent out a memo, detailing the Democratic Party’s new “pro-union” approach as part of the Party’s program to combat Trump. What Martin is doing here is appealing to the trade union hierarchy to help the party out in its efforts to get back in the game. The Labor leaders and their “progressive” allies provide massive amounts of support, money and human material to the Democratic Party. I recall my national union, AFSCME, provided some 40,000 volunteers for Mondale back in the 1980’s. This is practically a political party in itself.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has rejoined the AFL-CIO after splitting from the national body in 2005 along with other national unions. Some lefts and especially those who call themselves “progressives” were elated thinking the split was over something substantial like breaking with the Team Concept for example, but it was all about organizing more members in order to have a larger electoral presence.
I stress again that we are in the early stages of what is an economic and political crisis and the social one is around the corner; be patient. We are seeing some pushback from workers and youth. Here in Oakland California young high school students protested the presence of ICE in the city. There were protests in LA against the rounding up of immigrants. Federal and state workers will unquestionably be forced to retaliate. Then the consumers who are dependent on public services, or health care as pathetic as it is in the US, or the IRS or the DMV. The wait at the DMV is not due to lazy workers, it’s due to mismanagement. Millions of people’s lives are dependent on public sector workers including those that rely on air travel.
Look at the money organized labor waste’s trying to play the political game their way by bribing them. Of the $1.8 billion spent between 2019 and 2020 on political lobbying, $1.4 billion came from union general treasuries, which are funded by worker dues; $287 million came from government union state and local PACs and lobbying; and $57 million came from federal PACs, according to the NILRR study, which cites public financial disclosures that union officials are required to file to the Labor Department, as well as data from political spending watchdog sites OpenSecrets.org and FollowTheMoney.org. A lot of money but we can’t defeat capitalists with capital, they have more of it. We have numbers and our hands on the machinery that makes things happen.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/organized-labor-political-spending-2020-election
Being concerned is one thing but panicking or thinking that Trump and his menagerie will be able to just do what he wants is a mistake; US history from below teaches us that. There will be a blowback as the dust settles and whether it begins outside of organized labor among the unorganized or even the students (the French General Strike in 1968 has some lessons here) the effect on the trade union movement will be significant and may even cause a long awaited fracture and break from the policies of the present pro-market clique.
Lastly, if you are in a union you should be waging a campaign for a complete break from the old way. The need for an independent party of the working class is more pressing than ever. You can introduce resolutions forcing debate on the need for a program and campaign for jobs for all, a shorter workweek, a minimum wage that is not poverty level. To counter price differences in different areas, it should be linked to a basket of goods, the necessities people need to live a safe and secure life.
Healthcare for all. A mass transit system, free education and protect the USPS. It’s a myth that the private sector is more efficient than the public. Efficiency for the privatizers is profits, for the rest of us it’s human needs.
And we must break from the America first mindset and build solidarity with workers throughout the world. We tackle immigration by focusing on why people leave their homes and risk death to find a job here, anything. We must combat US foreign policy that is the real cause and solidarity means helping workers in the former colonial countries raise their standard of living; they don’t leave their communities because they don’t like them. Starvation is a driver, that’s what brought poor Irish, Italians and other Europeans here. Capital doesn’t respect borders, they will always export it for better deals and cheaper labor. And in the last analysis, if we don’t deal with the climate crisis which is a direct product of the industrial age, our children have no future.
I think it might have been Marx or Engels that said sometimes the masses need the “whip of the counterrevolution” to force them to take action. I think we are experiencing a bit of a whipping. There are no guarantees in life but we take the plunge anyway. The present crowd are overconfident; they will make mistakes.
*1840's appeal from New England laborers to their fellows to abandon the idea that the employers/capitalists would solve working people's problems. Philip Foner History of the Labor Movement Vol. 1 p192
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