To mobilize the abandoned working class, we need to revive the idea of solidarity.
November 18, 2024
Source: Boston Review
I am baffled, as I was in 2016, as to why so many liberals are still shocked by Trump’s victory—and why, in their efforts to dissect what happened, they can’t get beyond their incredulity that so many people would blindly back a venal, mendacious fascist peddling racism, misogyny, xenophobia, ableism, and so forth, while cloaking his anti-labor, anti-earth, pro-corporate agenda behind a veil of white nationalism and authoritarian promises that “Trump will fix it.”
We don’t need to waste time trying to parse the differences between the last three elections. In all three, he won—and lost—with historic vote tallies. The message has been clear since 2016, when Trump, despite losing the popular vote to Hilary Clinton, still won the electoral college with nearly sixty-three million votes, just three million fewer than what Obama got in 2012. Trump lost in 2020, but received seventy-four million votes, the second-largest total in U.S. history. For an incumbent presiding disastrously over the start of the Covid pandemic, that astounding number of votes should have told us something. And if we were honest, we would acknowledge that Joe Biden owes most of his victory to the uprisings against police violence that momentarily shifted public opinion toward greater awareness of racial injustice and delivered Democrats an unearned historic turnout. Even though the Biden campaign aggressively distanced itself from Black Lives Matter and demands to defund the police, it benefited from the sentiment that racial injustice ought to be addressed and liberals were best suited to address it.
I’m less interested in conducting a postmortem of this election than trying to understand how to build a movement.
Yet in all three elections, white men and women still overwhelmingly went for Trump. (Despite the hope that this time, the issue of abortion would drive a majority of white women to vote for Harris, 53 percent of them voted for Trump, only 2 percent down from 2020.) The vaunted demographic shift in the 2024 electorate wasn’t all that significant. True, Trump attracted more Black men this time, but about 77 percent of Black men voted for Harris, so the shocking headline, “Why did Black men vote for Trump?” is misdirected. Yes, Latino support for Trump increased, but that demographic needs to be disaggregated; it is an extremely diverse population with different political histories, national origins, and the like. And we should not be shocked that many working-class men, especially working-class men of color, did not vote for Harris. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is right to point to the condescension of the Democrats for implying that sexism alone explains why a small portion of Black men and Latinos flipped toward Trump, when homelessness, hunger, rent, personal debt, and overall insecurity are on the rise. The Democrats, she explained on Democracy Now, failed “to capture what is actually happening on the ground—that is measured not just by the historic low unemployment that Biden and Harris have talked about or by the historic low rates of poverty.”
The Democratic Party lost—again—because it turned its back on working people, choosing instead to pivot to the right: recruiting Liz and Dick Cheney, quoting former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, and boasting of how many Republican endorsements Harris had rather than about her plans to lift thirty-eight million Americans out of poverty. The campaign touted the strength of the economy under Biden, but failed to address the fact that the benefits did not seem to trickle down to large swaths of the working class. Instead, millions of workers improved their situation the old-fashioned way: through strikes and collective bargaining. The UAW, UPS, longshore and warehouse workers, health care workers, machinists at Boeing, baristas at Starbucks, and others won significant gains. For some, Biden’s public support for unions secured his place as the most pro-labor president since F.D.R. Perhaps, but the bar isn’t that high. He campaigned on raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.00, but, once taking office, quietly tabled the issue in a compromise with Republicans, choosing instead to issue an executive order raising the wage for federal contractors.
It is true that the Uncommitted movement, and the antiwar protest vote more broadly, lacked the raw numbers to change the election’s outcome. But it is not an exaggeration to argue that the Biden-Harris administration’s unqualified support for Israel cost the Democrats the election as much as did their abandonment of the working class. In fact, the two issues are related. The administration could have used the $18 billion in military aid it gave to Israel for its Gaza operations during its first year alone and redirected it toward the needs of struggling working people. $18 billion is about one quarter of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual budget and 16 percent of the budget for the federal Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program. They could have cut even more from the military budget, which for fiscal year 2024 stood at slightly more than $824 billion. Moreover, tens of thousands of Palestinian lives would have been spared, much of Gaza’s land and infrastructure would have been spared irreversible damage, and the escalation of regional war in Lebanon and Iran would not have happened—the consequences of which remain to be seen for the federal budget.
Workers improved their situation the old-fashioned way: through strikes and collective bargaining.
Of course, detractors will say that the Israel lobby, especially AIPAC, would not allow it. But the Democrats’ fealty to Israel is not a product of fear, nor is it simply a matter of cold electoral calculus. It is an orientation grounded in ideology. Only ideology can explain why the Biden-Harris administration did not direct UN representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield to stop providing cover for Israel’s criminal slaughter and support the Security Council’s resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. And only ideology can explain why the administration and Congress has not abided by its own laws—notably the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act, which prohibits the use of U.S. weapons in occupied territories and the transfer of weapons or aid to a country “which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights”—and stopped propping up Israel’s military.
While candidate Trump had encouraged Netanyahu to “finish the job” in Gaza, don’t be surprised if President Trump “negotiates” a swift ceasefire agreement. (Reagan pulled a similar stunt when he secured the return of U.S. hostages from Iran on the same day he was sworn into office.) Such a deal would prove Trump’s campaign mantra that only he can fix it, strengthen his ties with his ruling-class friends in the Gulf countries, and permit the Likud Party and its rabid settler supporters to annex Gaza, in whole or in part, and continue its illegal population transfer under the guise of “reconstruction.” After all, the Biden-Harris administration and the Democrats have already done all the work of “finishing the job.” Gaza is virtually uninhabitable. Once we factor in disease, starvation, inadequate medical care for the wounded, and the numbers under the rubble, the actual death toll will be many times higher than the official count. And with nearly three-quarters of the casualties women and children, the U.S.-Israel alliance will have succeeded, long before Trump takes power, in temporarily neutralizing what Israeli politicians call the Palestinian “demographic threat.”
The 2024 election indicates a rightward shift across the county. We see it in the Senate races, right-wing control of state legislatures (though here, gerrymandering played a major role), and in some of the successful state ballot measures, with the exception of abortion. But part of this shift can be explained by voter suppression, a general opposition to incumbents, and working-class disaffection expressed in low turnout. I also contend that one of the main reasons why such a large proportion of the working class voted for Trump has to do with what we old Marxists call class consciousness. Marx made a distinction between a class “in itself” and a class “for itself.” The former signals status, one’s relationship to means—of production, of survival, of living. The latter signals solidarity—to think like a class, to recognize that all working people, regardless of color, gender, ability, nationality, citizenship status, religion, are your comrades. When the idea of solidarity has been under relentless assault for decades, it is impossible for the class to recognize its shared interests or stand up for others with whom they may not have identical interests.
The Democratic Party lost—again—because it turned its back on working people.
So I’m less interested in conducting a postmortem of this election and tweaking the Democrats’ tactics than trying to understand how to build a movement—not in reaction to Trump, but toward workers’ power, a just economy, reproductive justice, queer and trans liberation, and ending racism and patriarchy and war—in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Haiti, and elsewhere, in our streets masquerading as a war on crime, on our borders masquerading as security, and on the earth driven by the five centuries of colonial and capitalist extraction. We have to revive the idea of solidarity, and this requires a revived class politics: not a politics that evades the racism and misogyny that pervades American life but one that confronts it directly. It is a mistake to think that white working-class support for Trump is reducible to racism and misogyny or “false consciousness” substituting for the injuries of class. As I wrote back in 2016, we cannot afford to dismiss
the white working class’s very real economic grievances. It is not a matter of disaffection versus racism or sexism versus fear. Rather, racism, class anxieties, and prevailing gender ideologies operate together, inseparably. . . . White working-class men understand their plight through a racial and gendered lens. For women and people of color to hold positions of privilege or power over them is simply unnatural and can only be explained by an act of unfairness—for example, affirmative action.”
There have always been efforts to build worker solidarity, in culture and in practice. We see it in some elements of the labor movement, such as UNITE-HERE, progressive elements in SEIU, National Nurses United, United All Workers for Democracy, Southern Worker Power, Black Workers for Justice, and Change to Win. Leading these efforts has been the tenacious but much embattled Working Families Party (WFP) and its sister organization, Working Families Power. Their most recent survey found that growing working-class support for Trump and the MAGA Republicans does not mean working people are more conservative than wealthier Americans. Instead, it concluded, working people are “uniformly to the left of the middle and upper classes” when it comes to economic policies promoting fairness, equity, and distribution. On other issues such as immigration, education, and crime and policing, their findings are mixed and, not surprisingly, differentiated by race, gender, and political orientation. Most importantly, the WFP understands that the chief source of disaffection has been the neoliberal assault on labor and the severe weakening of workers’ political and economic power. Over the last five decades we’ve witnessed massive social disinvestment: the erosion of the welfare state, living-wage jobs, collective bargaining rights, union membership, government investment in education, accessible and affordable housing, health care, and food, and basic democracy. In some states, Emergency Financial Managers have replaced elected governments, overseeing the privatization of public assets, corporate tax abatements, and cuts in employee pension funds in order to “balance” city budgets. At the same time, we have seen an exponential growth in income inequality, corporate profits, prisons, and well-funded conservative think tanks and lobbying groups whose dominance in the legislative arena has significantly weakened union rights, environmental and consumer protection, occupational safety, and the social safety net.
And the neoliberal assault is also ideological; it is an attack on the very concept of solidarity, of labor as a community with shared interests. David Harvey, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, David McNally, Nancy Fraser, Wendy Brown and many others have all compellingly articulated this challenge. In response to the 1970s strike wave and the global slump that opened the door for the neoliberal turn, the Thatcherite mantra that “there is no such thing as society; there are individual men and women” took hold. For decades unions have been disparaged as the real enemy of progress, their opponents insisting that they take dues from hardworking Americans, pay union bosses bloated salaries, kill jobs with their demand for high wages, and undermine businesses and government budgets with excessive pension packages. Remember Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign talking points: workers are the “takers,” capitalists are the “makers” who should decide what to pay workers. Neoliberal ideology insists that any attempt to promote equality, tolerance, and inclusion is a form of coercion over the individual and undermines freedom and choice. Such regulatory or redistributive actions, especially on the part of government, would amount to social engineering and therefore threaten liberty, competition, and natural market forces.
The idea of solidarity has been under relentless assault for decades.
Generations have grown up learning that the world is a market, and we are individual entrepreneurs. Any aid or support from the state makes us dependent and unworthy. Personal responsibility and family values replace the very idea of the “social,” that is to say, a nation obligated to provide for those in need. Life is governed by market principles: the idea that if we make the right investment, become more responsible for ourselves, and enhance our productivity—if we build up our human capital—we can become more competitive and, possibly, become a billionaire. Mix neoliberal logic with (white) populism and Christian nationalism and you get what Wendy Brown calls “authoritarian freedom”: a freedom that posits exclusion, patriarchy, tradition, and nepotism as legitimate challenges to those dangerous, destabilizing demands of inclusion, autonomy, equal rights, secularism, and the very principle of equality. Such a toxic blend did not come out of nowhere, she insists: it was born out of the stagnation of the entire working class under neoliberal policies.
That diagnosis points toward an obvious cure. If we are going to ever defeat Trumpism, modern fascism, and wage a viable challenge to gendered racial capitalism, we must revive the old IWW slogan, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” Putting that into practice means thinking beyond nation, organizing to resist mass deportation rather than vote for the party promoting it. It means seeing every racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic act, every brutal beating and killing of unarmed Black people by police, every denial of healthcare for the most vulnerable, as an attack on the class. It means standing up for struggling workers around the world, from Palestine to the Congo to Haiti. It means fighting for the social wage, not just higher pay and better working conditions but a reinvestment in public institutions—hospitals, housing, education, tuition-free college, libraries, parks. It means worker power and worker democracy. And if history is any guide, this cannot be accomplished through the Democratic Party. Trying to move the Democrats to the left has never worked. We need to build up independent, class-conscious, multiracial organizations such as the Working Families Party, the Poor People’s Campaign, and their allies, not simply to enter the electoral arena but to effectively exercise the power to dispel ruling class lies about how our economy and society actually work. The only way out of this mess is learning to think like a class. It’s all of us or none.
I am baffled, as I was in 2016, as to why so many liberals are still shocked by Trump’s victory—and why, in their efforts to dissect what happened, they can’t get beyond their incredulity that so many people would blindly back a venal, mendacious fascist peddling racism, misogyny, xenophobia, ableism, and so forth, while cloaking his anti-labor, anti-earth, pro-corporate agenda behind a veil of white nationalism and authoritarian promises that “Trump will fix it.”
We don’t need to waste time trying to parse the differences between the last three elections. In all three, he won—and lost—with historic vote tallies. The message has been clear since 2016, when Trump, despite losing the popular vote to Hilary Clinton, still won the electoral college with nearly sixty-three million votes, just three million fewer than what Obama got in 2012. Trump lost in 2020, but received seventy-four million votes, the second-largest total in U.S. history. For an incumbent presiding disastrously over the start of the Covid pandemic, that astounding number of votes should have told us something. And if we were honest, we would acknowledge that Joe Biden owes most of his victory to the uprisings against police violence that momentarily shifted public opinion toward greater awareness of racial injustice and delivered Democrats an unearned historic turnout. Even though the Biden campaign aggressively distanced itself from Black Lives Matter and demands to defund the police, it benefited from the sentiment that racial injustice ought to be addressed and liberals were best suited to address it.
I’m less interested in conducting a postmortem of this election than trying to understand how to build a movement.
Yet in all three elections, white men and women still overwhelmingly went for Trump. (Despite the hope that this time, the issue of abortion would drive a majority of white women to vote for Harris, 53 percent of them voted for Trump, only 2 percent down from 2020.) The vaunted demographic shift in the 2024 electorate wasn’t all that significant. True, Trump attracted more Black men this time, but about 77 percent of Black men voted for Harris, so the shocking headline, “Why did Black men vote for Trump?” is misdirected. Yes, Latino support for Trump increased, but that demographic needs to be disaggregated; it is an extremely diverse population with different political histories, national origins, and the like. And we should not be shocked that many working-class men, especially working-class men of color, did not vote for Harris. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is right to point to the condescension of the Democrats for implying that sexism alone explains why a small portion of Black men and Latinos flipped toward Trump, when homelessness, hunger, rent, personal debt, and overall insecurity are on the rise. The Democrats, she explained on Democracy Now, failed “to capture what is actually happening on the ground—that is measured not just by the historic low unemployment that Biden and Harris have talked about or by the historic low rates of poverty.”
The Democratic Party lost—again—because it turned its back on working people, choosing instead to pivot to the right: recruiting Liz and Dick Cheney, quoting former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, and boasting of how many Republican endorsements Harris had rather than about her plans to lift thirty-eight million Americans out of poverty. The campaign touted the strength of the economy under Biden, but failed to address the fact that the benefits did not seem to trickle down to large swaths of the working class. Instead, millions of workers improved their situation the old-fashioned way: through strikes and collective bargaining. The UAW, UPS, longshore and warehouse workers, health care workers, machinists at Boeing, baristas at Starbucks, and others won significant gains. For some, Biden’s public support for unions secured his place as the most pro-labor president since F.D.R. Perhaps, but the bar isn’t that high. He campaigned on raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.00, but, once taking office, quietly tabled the issue in a compromise with Republicans, choosing instead to issue an executive order raising the wage for federal contractors.
It is true that the Uncommitted movement, and the antiwar protest vote more broadly, lacked the raw numbers to change the election’s outcome. But it is not an exaggeration to argue that the Biden-Harris administration’s unqualified support for Israel cost the Democrats the election as much as did their abandonment of the working class. In fact, the two issues are related. The administration could have used the $18 billion in military aid it gave to Israel for its Gaza operations during its first year alone and redirected it toward the needs of struggling working people. $18 billion is about one quarter of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual budget and 16 percent of the budget for the federal Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program. They could have cut even more from the military budget, which for fiscal year 2024 stood at slightly more than $824 billion. Moreover, tens of thousands of Palestinian lives would have been spared, much of Gaza’s land and infrastructure would have been spared irreversible damage, and the escalation of regional war in Lebanon and Iran would not have happened—the consequences of which remain to be seen for the federal budget.
Workers improved their situation the old-fashioned way: through strikes and collective bargaining.
Of course, detractors will say that the Israel lobby, especially AIPAC, would not allow it. But the Democrats’ fealty to Israel is not a product of fear, nor is it simply a matter of cold electoral calculus. It is an orientation grounded in ideology. Only ideology can explain why the Biden-Harris administration did not direct UN representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield to stop providing cover for Israel’s criminal slaughter and support the Security Council’s resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. And only ideology can explain why the administration and Congress has not abided by its own laws—notably the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act, which prohibits the use of U.S. weapons in occupied territories and the transfer of weapons or aid to a country “which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights”—and stopped propping up Israel’s military.
While candidate Trump had encouraged Netanyahu to “finish the job” in Gaza, don’t be surprised if President Trump “negotiates” a swift ceasefire agreement. (Reagan pulled a similar stunt when he secured the return of U.S. hostages from Iran on the same day he was sworn into office.) Such a deal would prove Trump’s campaign mantra that only he can fix it, strengthen his ties with his ruling-class friends in the Gulf countries, and permit the Likud Party and its rabid settler supporters to annex Gaza, in whole or in part, and continue its illegal population transfer under the guise of “reconstruction.” After all, the Biden-Harris administration and the Democrats have already done all the work of “finishing the job.” Gaza is virtually uninhabitable. Once we factor in disease, starvation, inadequate medical care for the wounded, and the numbers under the rubble, the actual death toll will be many times higher than the official count. And with nearly three-quarters of the casualties women and children, the U.S.-Israel alliance will have succeeded, long before Trump takes power, in temporarily neutralizing what Israeli politicians call the Palestinian “demographic threat.”
The 2024 election indicates a rightward shift across the county. We see it in the Senate races, right-wing control of state legislatures (though here, gerrymandering played a major role), and in some of the successful state ballot measures, with the exception of abortion. But part of this shift can be explained by voter suppression, a general opposition to incumbents, and working-class disaffection expressed in low turnout. I also contend that one of the main reasons why such a large proportion of the working class voted for Trump has to do with what we old Marxists call class consciousness. Marx made a distinction between a class “in itself” and a class “for itself.” The former signals status, one’s relationship to means—of production, of survival, of living. The latter signals solidarity—to think like a class, to recognize that all working people, regardless of color, gender, ability, nationality, citizenship status, religion, are your comrades. When the idea of solidarity has been under relentless assault for decades, it is impossible for the class to recognize its shared interests or stand up for others with whom they may not have identical interests.
The Democratic Party lost—again—because it turned its back on working people.
So I’m less interested in conducting a postmortem of this election and tweaking the Democrats’ tactics than trying to understand how to build a movement—not in reaction to Trump, but toward workers’ power, a just economy, reproductive justice, queer and trans liberation, and ending racism and patriarchy and war—in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Haiti, and elsewhere, in our streets masquerading as a war on crime, on our borders masquerading as security, and on the earth driven by the five centuries of colonial and capitalist extraction. We have to revive the idea of solidarity, and this requires a revived class politics: not a politics that evades the racism and misogyny that pervades American life but one that confronts it directly. It is a mistake to think that white working-class support for Trump is reducible to racism and misogyny or “false consciousness” substituting for the injuries of class. As I wrote back in 2016, we cannot afford to dismiss
the white working class’s very real economic grievances. It is not a matter of disaffection versus racism or sexism versus fear. Rather, racism, class anxieties, and prevailing gender ideologies operate together, inseparably. . . . White working-class men understand their plight through a racial and gendered lens. For women and people of color to hold positions of privilege or power over them is simply unnatural and can only be explained by an act of unfairness—for example, affirmative action.”
There have always been efforts to build worker solidarity, in culture and in practice. We see it in some elements of the labor movement, such as UNITE-HERE, progressive elements in SEIU, National Nurses United, United All Workers for Democracy, Southern Worker Power, Black Workers for Justice, and Change to Win. Leading these efforts has been the tenacious but much embattled Working Families Party (WFP) and its sister organization, Working Families Power. Their most recent survey found that growing working-class support for Trump and the MAGA Republicans does not mean working people are more conservative than wealthier Americans. Instead, it concluded, working people are “uniformly to the left of the middle and upper classes” when it comes to economic policies promoting fairness, equity, and distribution. On other issues such as immigration, education, and crime and policing, their findings are mixed and, not surprisingly, differentiated by race, gender, and political orientation. Most importantly, the WFP understands that the chief source of disaffection has been the neoliberal assault on labor and the severe weakening of workers’ political and economic power. Over the last five decades we’ve witnessed massive social disinvestment: the erosion of the welfare state, living-wage jobs, collective bargaining rights, union membership, government investment in education, accessible and affordable housing, health care, and food, and basic democracy. In some states, Emergency Financial Managers have replaced elected governments, overseeing the privatization of public assets, corporate tax abatements, and cuts in employee pension funds in order to “balance” city budgets. At the same time, we have seen an exponential growth in income inequality, corporate profits, prisons, and well-funded conservative think tanks and lobbying groups whose dominance in the legislative arena has significantly weakened union rights, environmental and consumer protection, occupational safety, and the social safety net.
And the neoliberal assault is also ideological; it is an attack on the very concept of solidarity, of labor as a community with shared interests. David Harvey, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, David McNally, Nancy Fraser, Wendy Brown and many others have all compellingly articulated this challenge. In response to the 1970s strike wave and the global slump that opened the door for the neoliberal turn, the Thatcherite mantra that “there is no such thing as society; there are individual men and women” took hold. For decades unions have been disparaged as the real enemy of progress, their opponents insisting that they take dues from hardworking Americans, pay union bosses bloated salaries, kill jobs with their demand for high wages, and undermine businesses and government budgets with excessive pension packages. Remember Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign talking points: workers are the “takers,” capitalists are the “makers” who should decide what to pay workers. Neoliberal ideology insists that any attempt to promote equality, tolerance, and inclusion is a form of coercion over the individual and undermines freedom and choice. Such regulatory or redistributive actions, especially on the part of government, would amount to social engineering and therefore threaten liberty, competition, and natural market forces.
The idea of solidarity has been under relentless assault for decades.
Generations have grown up learning that the world is a market, and we are individual entrepreneurs. Any aid or support from the state makes us dependent and unworthy. Personal responsibility and family values replace the very idea of the “social,” that is to say, a nation obligated to provide for those in need. Life is governed by market principles: the idea that if we make the right investment, become more responsible for ourselves, and enhance our productivity—if we build up our human capital—we can become more competitive and, possibly, become a billionaire. Mix neoliberal logic with (white) populism and Christian nationalism and you get what Wendy Brown calls “authoritarian freedom”: a freedom that posits exclusion, patriarchy, tradition, and nepotism as legitimate challenges to those dangerous, destabilizing demands of inclusion, autonomy, equal rights, secularism, and the very principle of equality. Such a toxic blend did not come out of nowhere, she insists: it was born out of the stagnation of the entire working class under neoliberal policies.
That diagnosis points toward an obvious cure. If we are going to ever defeat Trumpism, modern fascism, and wage a viable challenge to gendered racial capitalism, we must revive the old IWW slogan, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” Putting that into practice means thinking beyond nation, organizing to resist mass deportation rather than vote for the party promoting it. It means seeing every racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic act, every brutal beating and killing of unarmed Black people by police, every denial of healthcare for the most vulnerable, as an attack on the class. It means standing up for struggling workers around the world, from Palestine to the Congo to Haiti. It means fighting for the social wage, not just higher pay and better working conditions but a reinvestment in public institutions—hospitals, housing, education, tuition-free college, libraries, parks. It means worker power and worker democracy. And if history is any guide, this cannot be accomplished through the Democratic Party. Trying to move the Democrats to the left has never worked. We need to build up independent, class-conscious, multiracial organizations such as the Working Families Party, the Poor People’s Campaign, and their allies, not simply to enter the electoral arena but to effectively exercise the power to dispel ruling class lies about how our economy and society actually work. The only way out of this mess is learning to think like a class. It’s all of us or none.
Robin D. G. Kelley is Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA and a contributing editor at Boston Review. His many books include Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Kelley has described himself as a Marxist surrealist feminist.
Labor’s Resurgence Can Continue Despite Trump
November 19, 2024
Source: Jacobin
Image by Kire1975, public domain
Does Trump’s reelection mean that the US labor resurgence is over? Not necessarily.
It’s true that the new administration is preparing major attacks against workers and the labor movement. And many union leaders will assume that the most we can hope for over the next four years is to survive through purely defensive struggles.
But unions are actually still well-positioned to continue their organizing and bargaining momentum. Here are seven positive factors that should ward off despair — and that should encourage unions to invest more, not less, in organizing the unorganized:
1. The economic forces fueling Trumpism also favor labor’s continued resurgence. After the pandemic laid bare the fundamental unfairness of our economic system, workers responded with a burst of union organizing and the most significant strike activity in decades. The same underlying economic forces — chronic economic insecurity and inequality — helped propel Trumpism to a narrow victory in the 2024 elections. But Trump’s actual policies will inevitably exacerbate economic inequality, undermining the Republican Party’s hollow populist rhetoric.
Stepping into the breach of Trump’s fake populism, unions remain workers’ best tool to provide a real solution to economic insecurity. And projected low unemployment will continue to provide a fertile economic environment for new organizing. As long as we remain in a tight labor market, employers will have less power to threaten employees who dare to unionize their workplaces and workers will have more bargaining leverage against employers, increasing the chances of successful — and headline-grabbing — strikes.
2. Unions can still grow under Republican administrations. It’s certainly true that the organizing terrain will be significantly harder under Trump and a hostile National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). But it’s still possible to fight and win even in these conditions.
It’s worth remembering that US labor’s current uptick began with the statewide teachers’ strikes that swept across red states in 2018 during Trump’s first term. And NLRB data show that putting major resources toward new organizing can go a long way in counterbalancing the negative impact of an adverse political context.
Unions organized significantly more workers under George W. Bush’s administration than under Barack Obama. Why? The main reason is that the labor movement in the early 2000s was still in the midst of a relatively well-resourced push to organize the unorganized, whereas by the time Obama took office, labor had mostly thrown in the towel on external organizing, hoping instead to be saved from above by lobbying establishment Democrats to pass national labor law reform. Labor can grow over the coming years if it starts putting serious resources toward this goal.
3. Labor has huge financial assets at its disposal. According to the latest data from the Department of Labor, unions hold $42 billion in financial assets and only $6.4 billion in debt. These assets — the vast majority of which are liquid assets — can help defend against the coming political attack and be deployed in aggressive organizing drives and strikes. Unions have the financial cushion to go on the offensive while simultaneously defending themselves from regulatory and legislative attacks.
4. Unions remain popular and trusted. According to a September 2024 Gallup poll, 70 percent of Americans approve of labor unions, the highest support since the 1950s — even 49 percent of Republicans these days support unions. Overall, Americans trust organized labor far more than the president, Congress, big business, and the media.
When workers have the opportunity to vote for a union at their workplace, unions win 77 percent of those elections. The American public also supports strikes. According to a poll by YouGov in August, 55 percent of Americans believe that going on strike is an effective strategy for workers to get what they want from management, compared to 23 percent who say no. Similarly, 50 percent of Americans believe it is unacceptable to scab, while only 26 percent say it is acceptable. Strong public support for labor continues to provide fertile ground for a union advance.
5. Organized labor is reforming. The bad news: most union officials remain risk-averse and their failure to seriously pivot toward organizing new members — despite exceptionally favorable conditions since 2020 — helped pave the way for Trump’s inroads among working people. The good news: the “troublemakers” wing of the labor movement is larger than ever, as seen in the dramatic growth of Labor Notes, the election of militants to head a growing number of local and national unions, and the emergence of much-needed rank-and-file reform movements in unions like the United Food and Commercial Workers.
Most notably, a reformed United Auto Workers (UAW) led by Shawn Fain is going full steam ahead with its push to organize the auto industry across the South — an effort that will soon get a big boost when unionized Volkswagen workers finalize their first contract. Rank-and-file activists across the country can continue to point to the UAW, as well as other fighting unions, as an example that their unions should be emulating.
6. Young worker activism is not going away. Most of the labor upsurge since 2020 has been driven forward by Gen Z and millennial workers radicalized by economic inequality, Bernie Sanders, and racial justice struggles. And contrary to what some have suggested, the 2024 election did not register a major shift to the Right among young people, but rather a sharp drop in young Democratic turnout.
7. The (latent) power of unions to disrupt the political and economic system is high. Despite declines in union membership and density (the percentage of the workforce in a union), union members still have significant representation in critical sectors of the economy.
Labor’s existing power provides a base for beating back the worst of Trump’s attacks and expanding union representation to nonunion workers in the semiorganized sectors. In addition, coordinated strikes or labor unrest in any of these sectors would significantly disrupt the functioning of the economy or public services, providing a potent tool for workers and unions. While logistically and legally difficult, workers and their unions have the power to shut down critical sectors of the economy if they so choose — an approach that could repolarize the country around class lines instead of Republican-fueled scapegoating.
8. Republicans may overplay their hand, creating new openings for labor. A scorched-earth legislative, regulatory, and judicial attack on labor law may create unintended opportunities. For example, if the Supreme Court follows Elon Musk’s bidding by throwing out the National Labor Relations Act — the primary law governing private sector organizing — states would have the power to enact union-friendly labor laws and legal restrictions on strikes and boycotts could be loosened. As Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB’s general counsel, told Bloomberg, if the federal government steps away from protecting the right to organize, “I think workers are going to take matters into their own hands.”
Image by Kire1975, public domain
Does Trump’s reelection mean that the US labor resurgence is over? Not necessarily.
It’s true that the new administration is preparing major attacks against workers and the labor movement. And many union leaders will assume that the most we can hope for over the next four years is to survive through purely defensive struggles.
But unions are actually still well-positioned to continue their organizing and bargaining momentum. Here are seven positive factors that should ward off despair — and that should encourage unions to invest more, not less, in organizing the unorganized:
1. The economic forces fueling Trumpism also favor labor’s continued resurgence. After the pandemic laid bare the fundamental unfairness of our economic system, workers responded with a burst of union organizing and the most significant strike activity in decades. The same underlying economic forces — chronic economic insecurity and inequality — helped propel Trumpism to a narrow victory in the 2024 elections. But Trump’s actual policies will inevitably exacerbate economic inequality, undermining the Republican Party’s hollow populist rhetoric.
Stepping into the breach of Trump’s fake populism, unions remain workers’ best tool to provide a real solution to economic insecurity. And projected low unemployment will continue to provide a fertile economic environment for new organizing. As long as we remain in a tight labor market, employers will have less power to threaten employees who dare to unionize their workplaces and workers will have more bargaining leverage against employers, increasing the chances of successful — and headline-grabbing — strikes.
2. Unions can still grow under Republican administrations. It’s certainly true that the organizing terrain will be significantly harder under Trump and a hostile National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). But it’s still possible to fight and win even in these conditions.
It’s worth remembering that US labor’s current uptick began with the statewide teachers’ strikes that swept across red states in 2018 during Trump’s first term. And NLRB data show that putting major resources toward new organizing can go a long way in counterbalancing the negative impact of an adverse political context.
Unions organized significantly more workers under George W. Bush’s administration than under Barack Obama. Why? The main reason is that the labor movement in the early 2000s was still in the midst of a relatively well-resourced push to organize the unorganized, whereas by the time Obama took office, labor had mostly thrown in the towel on external organizing, hoping instead to be saved from above by lobbying establishment Democrats to pass national labor law reform. Labor can grow over the coming years if it starts putting serious resources toward this goal.
3. Labor has huge financial assets at its disposal. According to the latest data from the Department of Labor, unions hold $42 billion in financial assets and only $6.4 billion in debt. These assets — the vast majority of which are liquid assets — can help defend against the coming political attack and be deployed in aggressive organizing drives and strikes. Unions have the financial cushion to go on the offensive while simultaneously defending themselves from regulatory and legislative attacks.
4. Unions remain popular and trusted. According to a September 2024 Gallup poll, 70 percent of Americans approve of labor unions, the highest support since the 1950s — even 49 percent of Republicans these days support unions. Overall, Americans trust organized labor far more than the president, Congress, big business, and the media.
When workers have the opportunity to vote for a union at their workplace, unions win 77 percent of those elections. The American public also supports strikes. According to a poll by YouGov in August, 55 percent of Americans believe that going on strike is an effective strategy for workers to get what they want from management, compared to 23 percent who say no. Similarly, 50 percent of Americans believe it is unacceptable to scab, while only 26 percent say it is acceptable. Strong public support for labor continues to provide fertile ground for a union advance.
5. Organized labor is reforming. The bad news: most union officials remain risk-averse and their failure to seriously pivot toward organizing new members — despite exceptionally favorable conditions since 2020 — helped pave the way for Trump’s inroads among working people. The good news: the “troublemakers” wing of the labor movement is larger than ever, as seen in the dramatic growth of Labor Notes, the election of militants to head a growing number of local and national unions, and the emergence of much-needed rank-and-file reform movements in unions like the United Food and Commercial Workers.
Most notably, a reformed United Auto Workers (UAW) led by Shawn Fain is going full steam ahead with its push to organize the auto industry across the South — an effort that will soon get a big boost when unionized Volkswagen workers finalize their first contract. Rank-and-file activists across the country can continue to point to the UAW, as well as other fighting unions, as an example that their unions should be emulating.
6. Young worker activism is not going away. Most of the labor upsurge since 2020 has been driven forward by Gen Z and millennial workers radicalized by economic inequality, Bernie Sanders, and racial justice struggles. And contrary to what some have suggested, the 2024 election did not register a major shift to the Right among young people, but rather a sharp drop in young Democratic turnout.
7. The (latent) power of unions to disrupt the political and economic system is high. Despite declines in union membership and density (the percentage of the workforce in a union), union members still have significant representation in critical sectors of the economy.
Labor’s existing power provides a base for beating back the worst of Trump’s attacks and expanding union representation to nonunion workers in the semiorganized sectors. In addition, coordinated strikes or labor unrest in any of these sectors would significantly disrupt the functioning of the economy or public services, providing a potent tool for workers and unions. While logistically and legally difficult, workers and their unions have the power to shut down critical sectors of the economy if they so choose — an approach that could repolarize the country around class lines instead of Republican-fueled scapegoating.
8. Republicans may overplay their hand, creating new openings for labor. A scorched-earth legislative, regulatory, and judicial attack on labor law may create unintended opportunities. For example, if the Supreme Court follows Elon Musk’s bidding by throwing out the National Labor Relations Act — the primary law governing private sector organizing — states would have the power to enact union-friendly labor laws and legal restrictions on strikes and boycotts could be loosened. As Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB’s general counsel, told Bloomberg, if the federal government steps away from protecting the right to organize, “I think workers are going to take matters into their own hands.”
Conclusion
Labor’s decades-long tendency to defensively hunker down is one of the major factors that has led our movement — and the country — into crisis. Turning things around will depend on pivoting to a new approach.
The strongest case for labor to scale up ambitious organizing efforts and disruptive strike action is not just that it’s possible, but that it’s necessary. Without increased initiatives to expand our base and to polarize the country around our issues, union density is sure to keep dropping. Organized labor’s last islands of strength — from K-12 public education and the federal government to UPS and Midwest auto — will become extremely vulnerable to attack. And unions will be forced to fight entirely on the political terrain chosen by Republicans, who will paint them as a narrow interest group of privileged employees beholden to “union bosses,” Democratic leaders, and “woke” ideology.
Sometimes going on the offense is also the best form of defense. The best way to expose Trump’s faux populism is by waging large-scale workplace battles that force all politicians to show which side they’re on.
Nobody has a crystal ball about what lays ahead, nor should anybody underestimate the importance of defending our movement — and all working people — against Trump’s looming attacks. But it’s not factually or tactically justified to dismiss the potential for labor advance over the next four years.
Conditions overall remain favorable for labor growth, despite Trump’s reelection. Political contexts matter, but so do factors like the economy, high public support for unions, labor’s deep financial pockets, the growth of union reform efforts, labor’s continued disruptive capacity, and the spread of young worker activism. Rebuilding a powerful labor movement remains our best bet to defeat Trumpism, reverse rampant inequalities, and transform American politics. Now is not the time for retreat.
Chris Bohner is a union researcher and activist.
Labor’s decades-long tendency to defensively hunker down is one of the major factors that has led our movement — and the country — into crisis. Turning things around will depend on pivoting to a new approach.
The strongest case for labor to scale up ambitious organizing efforts and disruptive strike action is not just that it’s possible, but that it’s necessary. Without increased initiatives to expand our base and to polarize the country around our issues, union density is sure to keep dropping. Organized labor’s last islands of strength — from K-12 public education and the federal government to UPS and Midwest auto — will become extremely vulnerable to attack. And unions will be forced to fight entirely on the political terrain chosen by Republicans, who will paint them as a narrow interest group of privileged employees beholden to “union bosses,” Democratic leaders, and “woke” ideology.
Sometimes going on the offense is also the best form of defense. The best way to expose Trump’s faux populism is by waging large-scale workplace battles that force all politicians to show which side they’re on.
Nobody has a crystal ball about what lays ahead, nor should anybody underestimate the importance of defending our movement — and all working people — against Trump’s looming attacks. But it’s not factually or tactically justified to dismiss the potential for labor advance over the next four years.
Conditions overall remain favorable for labor growth, despite Trump’s reelection. Political contexts matter, but so do factors like the economy, high public support for unions, labor’s deep financial pockets, the growth of union reform efforts, labor’s continued disruptive capacity, and the spread of young worker activism. Rebuilding a powerful labor movement remains our best bet to defeat Trumpism, reverse rampant inequalities, and transform American politics. Now is not the time for retreat.
Chris Bohner is a union researcher and activist.
